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Comment by thaumasiotes | Hacker News Reader

> Sex trafficking and sex work can be distinguished (i.e. one can have sex work without sex trafficking).

Note that this contradicts nearly all official usage of the term "sex trafficking", which just refers to sex work. Far and away the most common kind of sex trafficking is a woman working independently trafficking herself.

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The idea that a woman can traffick herself if she is interested in doing sex work is nonsense. Sex work and sex exploitation are not the same thing. (Though I do not deny there exists exploitation in much of sex work.)

Exploitation by politicians?

Sex exploitation happens from politicians, yes, but also cops, johns, pimps, traffickers, etc etc.

The less legal sex work is, the more underground it needs to be. The more underground it is, the less recourse women have to address exploitation.

Despite any official misuse the term, actual "trafficking" is involuntary. One cannot traffick themselves.

Traficking has nothing to do with it being involuntary. Many trafficked people did so voluntarily and of their own initiative.

Sorry, but if they weren't forced, coerced, or tricked/otherwise manipulated into into it, then they're not being "trafficked." There has been an attempt over the past several years, at least in the US, to redefined the meaning of the word to encompass all forms of sex work. To say that someone, working alone and of their own free will, is "being trafficked", is absolutely absurd and is what we were discussing.

https://humantraffickinghotline.org/what-human-trafficking/m...

And this contradicts nearly all colloquial usage of the term "sex trafficking" which most understand to mean coercive.

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