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The Campus Rape Crisis & Sex Trafficking

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Brian B.
The Campus Rape Crisis & Sex Trafficking

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We're currently hosting our discussions at Café Walnut, not too far from our summer meeting spot in Washington Square Park. The cafe is near the corner of 7th & Walnut in Olde City. The cafe's entrance is below street level down some stairs, which can be confusing if it's your first time. Our group meets in the large room upstairs.

Since we're using the cafe's space, they ask that each person attending the meetup at least purchase a drink or snack. Please don't bring any food or drinks from outside. If you're hungry enough to eat a meal, they have more substantial fare such as salads, soups & sandwiches which are pretty good and their prices are reasonable.

The cafe is fairly easy to get to if you're using public transit. With SEPTA, take the Market-Frankford Line & get off at the 5th Street Station (corner of 5th & Market), and walk 2 blocks south on 5th and then turn right on Walnut Street and walk 2 blocks west. With PATCO, just get off at the 9th-10th & Locust stop and walk 3 blocks east & 1 block north. For those who are driving, parking in the neighborhood can be tough to find. If you can't find a spot on the street, I'd suggest parking in the Washington Square parking deck at 249 S 6th Street which is just a half block away.

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THE CAMPUS RAPE CRISIS & SEX TRAFFICKING: MYTHS VS. REALITIES

INTRODUCTION - A BRIEF HISTORY LESSON IN "SEX PANICS":

This meetup will address the recent focus of both the news media & law enforcement on rape & sexual assault on college campuses and sexual trafficking of young women. While both types of crimes do occur and are horrible and worthy of harsh punishment, the highly inflammatory nature of sex crimes should make us wary of the prevailing media narratives around these issues, especially when we consider "moral panics" in the past that have surrounded allegations of sexual deviancy & sex crimes, which are sometimes known as "sex panics". Heavy media coverage leads people to believe that terrible but statistically rare events or behaviors are common. In turn, this fear often leads to persecution of minority groups as "folk devils", the passing of poorly crafted legislation, and law enforcement efforts to crack down on the alleged problem which can result in decreased civil liberties & other unintended consequences.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic

Several notable sex panics have occurred in U.S. history. One of the earliest occurred in the 1830s at a time of rising Catholic immigration which aroused anti-Catholic sentiment among many Protestants. Several salacious stories about young nuns being abused in convents led to a massive public outcry and the raiding & burning of the Ursuline Convent in Charlestown, Massachusetts, despite the fact that no solid evidence of any wrongdoing was found.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Monk#Atmosphere_of_anti-Catholic_sensationalism

In the late 19th century, progressive reformers obsessed with enforcing "social purity" and "social hygiene" banned pornography & contraceptives with a set of federal acts known as the "Comstock laws". They led a widespread campaign against the "solitary vice" of masturbation, which they alleged caused everything from blindness & chronic fatigue to insanity & death. (These fears about masturbation seem to have started with doctors & psychiatrists working in insane asylums seeing inmates openly masturbating and succumbing to the "false cause fallacy" -- i.e. instead of realizing that the inmates' insanity lowered their inhibitions, leading to unashamed masturbation, they assumed masturbation had driven them insane.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_hygiene_movement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harvey_Kellogg#Views_on_sexuality

These moral reformers, along with activists from the women's suffrage & temperance movements, began to push for legal bans on prostitution which had heretofore been legal in many areas of the U.S. As part of their efforts, they often spred horrific tales of what they called "white slavery" - i.e. young white women being abducted & forced into prostitution. These tales often featured ice cream parlors run by Italian immigrants that served as fronts for underground prostitution rings or opium dens run by Chinese immigrants that kept white female opium addicts as sex slaves. Public pressure led to the passage of the Mann Act in 1910 which made it a federal crime to transport women across state borders for the purpose of "prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose". Its primary stated intent was to crack down on trafficking for the purposes of prostitution, but the ambiguity of "immoral purpose" effectively criminalized interracial marriage, since at the time 30 out of the (then) 48 states enforced "anti-miscegenation" laws, and also criminalized crossing state lines to commit adultery. Partly to address public concerns over women being smuggled in from foreign countries to work as prostitutes, the US passed immigration acts in the 1920s to curtail aliens from entering the country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sexual_slavery_in_the_United_States#White_slavery

Fear of outsiders "raping our women" were also behind about a quarter to a third of the Jim Crow-era lynchings of black men. White Southerners didn't merely use vigilantism to address rape accusations against black men. In the case of Emmett Till, an accusation that he had wolf-whistled at a white woman was considered justification by the woman's husband for murdering him. Conversely, white men in the South were free to sexually exploit black women, a tradition known as "paramour rights", and this roused no public outcry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States#Statistics

In the late 1950s & early 1960s, the American & British media became obsessed with juvenile delinquency among two youth subcultures -- called "mods" and "rockers" in the U.K. and "preps" and "greasers" in the U.S. Much of the initial coverage revolved around fist-fights between the two rival subcultures, as well as raucous behavior at rock n' roll concerts, but journalists soon began to associate these subcultures with various other social problems like teen pregnancy & drug abuse. This sort of lurid media coverage of youth subcultures continued with a moral panic over "free love" among the hippies of the late '60s and "swinging" among the disco crowd in the '70s, which was often attributed to drug use & decline in traditional morality. These panics conflated sexual experimentation & drug use in small subcultures with sweeping generational shifts in social norms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mods_and_rockers#Academic_debunking

In 1980, "Michelle Remembers", a salacious book about Satanists molesting children became a bestseller, and when allegations of sexual molestation at the McMartin preschool surfaced in 1983, it led to a moral panic about "Satanic ritual abuse" that spiralled out of control when psychiatrists began using "recovered memory" techniques that elicited false allegations of horrible abuse and child sacrifices. Similar allegations emerged at more preschools & daycares throughout the 1980s & early 1990s, only dying down once skepticism emerges among some law enforcement authorities.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_ritual_abuse

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DIRECTIONS ON HOW TO PREPARE FOR OUR DISCUSSION:

The videos & articles you see linked below are intended to give you a basic overview of some of the major debates over sex trafficking & sexual abuse scandals. As usual, I certainly don't expect you to read all the articles & watch all the videos prior to attending our discussion. The easiest way to prepare for our discussion is to just watch the numbered videos linked under each section - the videos come to about 40 minutes total. The articles marked with asterisks are just there to supply additional details. You can browse and look at whichever ones you want, but don't worry - we'll cover the stuff you missed in our discussion.

In terms of the discussion format, my general idea is that we'll address the topics in the order presented here. I figure we'll spend about 30 minutes on each section.

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I. BINGE DRINKING & DATE RAPE DRUGS ON CAMPUS:

1a) WKBW-TV, "Study finds drinking locations linked to sexual assault" (video - 2:12 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afCkgcNRGVs

1b) Caroline Kitchens, "Date rape drugs: Facts vs. myths explained" (video - 5:19 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qu90VKEa2xk

II. RACIAL BIAS & MEDIA NARRATIVES IN CAMPUS RAPE TRIALS:

2a) Pop Sugar, "What the Sentence For Brock Turner [vs. Corey Batey] Tells Us About Our Broken Justice System" (video - 2:22 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2EPNpQpezo

2b) Christina Hoff Sommers, "Here's why Rolling Stone's UVA rape story went viral" (video - 7:02 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJYvMXjcd9I

III. THE MISSING DC GIRLS & "MISSING WHITE WOMAN SYNDROME":

3a) PBS, "After viral story on DC girls, understanding the real perils for missing children of color" (video - 7:47 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFD8r7pP-uE

3b) Truthloader, "Missing White Woman Syndrome - does it really exist?" (video - 2:58 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YWw5X1rkTQ

IV. SEX TRAFFICKING MYTHS & THE FOSTA/SESTA DEBATE:

4a) WXYZ-TV Detroit, "Debunking human trafficking myths" (video - 2:46 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCAgh6vhvyw

4b) Kare11, "Verify: Is the Super Bowl the single biggest sex trafficking event in the world?" (video - 4:40 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEjw6XcRM-c

4c) Vox, "This anti-sex trafficking law could end internet freedom" (video - 5:17 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBaqDjPCH8k

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Cafe Walnut
703 Walnut Street · Philadelphia, PA
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