Anu’s story: Unpacking the conflation of sex work and sex trafficking

Abstract

Using I-poems and poetic inquiry, this paper takes a case study approach to discuss the distinctions between consensual sex work and sex trafficking by situating the knowledge and lived experience of a first-generation South Asian Canadian independent indoor sex worker. Through Anu’s words describing her own experiences with both empowering work and instances of exploitation, this paper posits that engaging in the sex trade is legitimate work when workers have agency. Despite the stereotypes perpetuated in anti-trafficking discourse, especially of South Asian women, Anu defies the expected role of a helpless trafficking victim. In highlighting Anu’s story, we aim to provide a complexified and nuanced view of sex trafficking and its common conflation with consensual sex work. This conflation leads to further harm, as can be seen in Anu’s story, when anti-trafficking legal measures do not provide safety nor justice for sex workers who experience exploitation but are not perceived as adhering to controlling narratives of a “marketable victim.”