scholarly journals Racialized Rescue Narratives in Public Discourses on Youth Prostitution and Sex Trafficking in the United States

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 773-800
Author(s):  
Carrie N. Baker
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
White Male ◽  
The United States ◽  
Male Dominance ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Sex Trade ◽  
Neoliberal Governance ◽  
The Media ◽  
And Gender

This article presents an analysis of how activists, politicians, and the media framed youth involvement in the sex trade during the 1970s, the 1990s, and the 2000s in the United States. Across these periods of public concern about the issue, similar framing has recurred that has drawn upon gendered and racialized notions of victimization and perpetration. This frame has successfully brought attention to this issue by exploiting public anxieties at historical moments when social change was threatening white male dominance. Using intersectional feminist theory, I argue that mainstream rhetoric opposing the youth sex trade worked largely within neoliberal logics, ignoring histories of dispossession and structural violence and reinforcing individualistic notions of personhood and normative ideas about subjectivity and agency. As part of the ongoing project of racial and gender formation in US society, this discourse has shored up neoliberal governance, particularly the build-up of the prison industrial complex, and it has obscured the state's failure to address the myriad social problems that make youth vulnerable to the sex trade.

The Celebritization of Human Trafficking

2014 ◽  
Vol 653 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dina Francesca Haynes
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Trafficking ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
Public Policies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Public ◽  
Dominant Discourse ◽  
The Media

Human trafficking, and especially sex trafficking, is not only susceptible to alluring and sensational narratives, it also plays into the celebrity-as-rescuer ideal that receives considerable attention from the media, the public, and policy-makers. While some celebrities develop enough expertise to speak with authority on the topic, many others are neither knowledgeable nor accurate in their efforts to champion antitrafficking causes. Prominent policy-makers allow celebrity activists to influence their opinions and even consult with them for advice regarding public policies. Emblematic of larger, fundamental problems with the dominant discourse, funding allocations, and legislation in current antitrafficking initiatives in the United States and elsewhere, celebrity activism is not significantly advancing the eradication of human trafficking and may even be doing harm by diverting attention from aspects of the problem and solution that sorely require attention.

“Can’t You See I’m White?”

differences ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Ducille
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
The United States ◽  
Practical Application ◽  
White Males ◽  
Conference Theme ◽  
Vassar College ◽  
The Media ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Masses

This essay was originally delivered as the keynote address at a conference on passing held at Vassar College in April of 2019. Titled “Quiet As It’s Kept: Passing Subjects, Contested Identities,” the conference was inspired by the legacy of Vassar’s first African American graduate, Anita Hemmings, who passed for white before being outed by her roommate shortly before graduation in 1897. DuCille maintains that the timeliness and importance of the conference theme are signaled by what both the media and the masses tout as the most diverse slate of candidates ever to vie for the office of president of the United States. Challenging the practical application of theoretical claims of race as a social construction, “Can’t You See I’m White?” explores the ways in which their racial and gender “difference” from the typical roster of white males seeking the presidency has made some of the candidates—most notably Senators Kamala Harris of California and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts—the subjects of unprecedented debates about identity, biology, and culture. These debates, which raise questions not only about who gets to be black or brown or red but also who gets to be American, duCille claims, take on even greater significance in the time of Trump and the rise of white nationalism.

Essay Reviews: The Hidden Message in Anti-Violence Public Service Announcements

1995 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 292-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Gerbner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Service ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Service Announcements ◽  
Media Industry ◽  
Urban Violence ◽  
Television Programming ◽  
The Media ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Time Warner

In this essay, George Gerbner reviews eight television public service announcements (PSAs) that deal with urban violence and are produced by the media conglomerate HBO/Time Warner. Gerbner couches his critique of the PSAs in terms of the historical tension between the commercial nature of television in the United States and broadcasters' mandated role to serve the public. In creating a framework to understand the anti-violence PSAs, Gerbner broadens the discussion to include both the media industry in the United States and the demand for violence television programming in the international marketplace. Although he acknowledges the high production value of the PSAs, Gerbner contends that the race, age, and gender of the characters, as well as the situations depicted, constitute a hidden message of stereotyped violence. Gerbner argues that the images portrayed in the PSAs reflect the type of violence that is presented by the television industry itself, not the kinds of violence that may actually exists in the United States.

scholarly journals Prostitution Decriminalization Campaigns in the United States: Libertarianism or a "Decent Society"?

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jody Raphael ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
District Of Columbia ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sex Trade ◽  
Harm To Others ◽  
Decent Society ◽  
General Community

Recently, legislative campaigns to totally decriminalize the sex trade industry in a handful of U.S. states and the District of Columbia failed, but a look at campaign supporters and their arguments demonstrates that libertarian principles are mainly guiding their efforts. This article explores how libertarianism principles, when applied to the sex trade, could bring about severe and lasting harm to others, including sellers of sex, potential victims of sex trafficking to meet the new demand, and the general community. Philosophic principles of liberty have been incorporated by courts, which find that liberty is never absolute and requires a balancing test in order to create a "decent society."

scholarly journals Prostitution Decriminalization Campaigns in the United States: Libertarianism or a "Decent Society"?

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jody Raphael ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
District Of Columbia ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sex Trade ◽  
Harm To Others ◽  
Decent Society ◽  
General Community

Recently, legislative campaigns to totally decriminalize the sex trade industry in a handful of U.S. states and the District of Columbia failed, but a look at campaign supporters and their arguments demonstrates that libertarian principles are mainly guiding their efforts. This article explores how libertarianism principles, when applied to the sex trade, could bring about severe and lasting harm to others, including sellers of sex, potential victims of sex trafficking to meet the new demand, and the general community. Philosophic principles of liberty have been incorporated by courts, which find that liberty is never absolute and requires a balancing test in order to create a "decent society."

scholarly journals The Racial Gap in Employment and Layoffs during COVID-19 in the United States: A Visualization

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 237802312098839
Author(s):  
Felipe A. Dias
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Fixed Effects ◽  
White Male ◽  
Large Body ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gender Inequalities ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Outbreak Period ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Fixed Effects Regression

A large body of sociological research has shown that racial minorities and women experience significant disadvantages in the labor market. In this visualization, the author presents evidence from the Current Population Survey examining the effects of the coronavirus disease 2019 crisis on racial and gender inequalities in employment in the United States among prime-age workers. The author shows that the white-nonwhite gap in employment increased significantly during the post-outbreak period. Results from individual fixed-effects regression models show a strong white male advantage in the likelihood of being laid off for post-outbreak months compared with women, black men, Hispanic men, and Asian men.

Carceral Trauma at the Intersections of Race, Class, and Gender

2021 ◽  
pp. 72-85
Author(s):  
Cassandra D. Little
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Justice System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Prison Industrial Complex ◽  
And Gender

This chapter will provide a firsthand analysis of one woman's journey through the prison industrial complex. The intent is to bring the readers proximate to how trauma intersects with incarceration, gender, and race. The goal is to challenge our criminal justice system's need to over-criminalize and over-incarcerate women at alarming rates. Since 1980 the number of women in United States prisons has increased by more than 700%. These rates of incarceration of women have outpaced men by more than 50%. By drawing upon lived experience interacting with the United States Criminal Justice System and empirical data, the author will provide evidence that will argue that the experience of being incarcerated is traumatic and dehumanizing for many, but even more counterproductive for women.

Fighting for “Respectability”

2011 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 350-376 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Rhodes
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Working Class ◽  
White Male ◽  
The United States ◽  
Media Representations ◽  
The Public ◽  
Gendered Identities ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Media

In the United States and the United Kingdom, the White male boxer has long held a special appeal among the public and media. Boxing “heroes” are constructed not only on the basis of Whiteness but also on the basis of their perceived “working-class” nature, at a time when “working-class” or “blue-collar” identities in both the United Kingdom and the United States are subjected to forms of negative stigmatization. However, central to the appeal of the White, “working-class” boxing hero is their asserted “respectability,” which is used to establish distance from less “respectable” forms of raced, classed, and gendered identities. The media representations that surround boxing champions Ricky Hatton and Kelly Pavlik illustrate the way in which their “respectability” is asserted, explored, and related to broader conversations about a perceived growing “White underclass.”

When Temporal Orbits Collide: Embodied Trans Temporalities in U.S. Prisons

Somatechnics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rae Rosenberg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Prison Industrial Complex ◽  
Trans Women ◽  
And Control

This paper explores trans temporalities through the experiences of incarcerated trans feminine persons in the United States. The Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) has received increased attention for its disproportionate containment of trans feminine persons, notably trans women of colour. As a system of domination and control, the PIC uses disciplinary and heteronormative time to dominate the bodies and identities of transgender prisoners by limiting the ways in which they can express and experience their identified and embodied genders. By analyzing three case studies from my research with incarcerated trans feminine persons, this paper illustrates how temporality is complexly woven through trans feminine prisoners' experiences of transitioning in the PIC. For incarcerated trans feminine persons, the interruption, refusal, or permission of transitioning in the PIC invites several gendered pasts into a body's present and places these temporalities in conversation with varying futures as the body's potential. Analyzing trans temporalities reveals time as layered through gender, inviting multiple pasts and futures to circulate around and through the body's present in ways that can be both harmful to, and necessary for, the assertion and survival of trans feminine identities in the PIC.

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