It's Time to Retire Super Bowl 'Sex Trafficking' Stings and Myths

For sex workers and their clients, Super Bowl season can mean a higher chance of getting nabbed by cops.

Super Bowl LVIII is fast approaching. For many Americans, that will mean gathering with friends to watch the game, enjoy some sort of dip-based snacks, and gripe about the halftime show. But for sex workers and those who would like to patronize them, it will mean a higher chance of getting nabbed by cops.

Under the guise of "stopping sex trafficking," authorities tend to ramp up prostitution stings around Super Bowl time. The ostensible motive behind this is that large sporting events like the Super Bowl draw an influx of traffickers and their victims to the locales hosting these events.

Yet no one has managed to marshal evidence of these hordes of traffickers allegedly descending on Super Bowl cities. The best authorities can do is sometimes point to a spike in Super Bowl weekend arrests of sex workers and their customers—a spike easily explained by the fact that cops are making a concerted effort to catch people offering to sell or pay for sex.

The Super Bowl sex trafficking myth is a sequel of sorts to an earlier idea—that domestic violence increased around the Super Bowl—for which there was also no evidence. Both myths have served a political agenda.

In this case, the myth gives law enforcement license to do more policing of sex workers and more surveillance generally; lends itself to splashy campaigns by nonprofits that use these theatrics to garner donations; and bolsters an idea (sex trafficking is everywhere!) used to push tough-on-sex-work policies.

Sex Workers Call To Stop the Stings

This year's Super Bowl takes place at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. Today, Nevada sex workers and their allies will be gathering at the stadium to protest Super Bowl sex stings and the myths that encourage them.

"Every year, the Super Bowl is used as an excuse to violently arrest sex workers under the guise of anti-trafficking raids," notes a press release about the protest, which is being organized by the Las Vegas Red Umbrella Collective (LVRUC); the Sex Workers and Erotic Service Provider Legal, Educational and Research Project (ESPLERP); and the International Sex Worker Foundation for Art, Culture, and Education (ISWFACE). This "Stop the Raids" coalition also held two days of workshops and community-building activities for sex workers over the past weekend.

Police, media, and nonprofits "are all touting that false and misleading narrative that large sporting events cause forced labor in the sex trade and therefore warrants arresting us," says Maxine Doogan of ESPLERP. "It's clearly not good for us, or the sex trafficking victims or our clients to be burdened and punished with a prostitution arrests."

Their goal "is to call attention to the public and the press that we're not forced to work in the sex trade," says Doogan. "It's not OK to call us and our clients 'sex-trafficking victims and traffickers.' We're workers, and our clients are our clients."

Vegas Super Bowl Gives Juice to a Fading Myth 

A decade ago, almost all reporting on "Super Bowl sex trafficking" seemed to be wholly credulous of law enforcement's narrative. From 2010 to 2016, 76 percent of U.S. print media stories on the subject "propagated the 'Super Bowl sex trafficking' narrative," according to a 2019 paper published in the Anti-Trafficking Review. Back in 2014—when Maggie McNeill challenged this narrative in Reason—questioning it was a pretty lonely perch.

In recent years, more outlets have been willing to push back against the official narrative, and pieces challenging it have appeared in such publications as Sports Illustrated, The Washington Post, Slate, Vice, and The Atlantic.

But there's still plenty of life yet in this old trope. Stories about Super Bowl sex trafficking have been peppering Las Vegas media in recent weeks.

Some groups pushing it tend to be less certain in their rhetoric than we've seen previously. But they still suggest that sex trafficking could increase around the Super Bowl. "It really comes down to basic numbers—where there are people the possibility of crime and trafficking increases," posted Agape International Missions (AIM) in January. "As the Super Bowl draws thousands of people to one location, this holds true."

Thank you to @its_apenalty for having AG @AaronDFordNV at today's event to discuss how the OAG and law enforcement are working to end human trafficking in Nevada. pic.twitter.com/uOHeE4hH9s

— NV Attorney General (@NevadaAG) January 29, 2024

The fact that this year's Super Bowl is happening in Vegas gives groups another angle for spreading discredited propaganda. Prostitution is not legal in Las Vegas, but many think it is, due to the city's reputation and the fact that some counties in Nevada do allow legal brothels.

"While the general link between human trafficking and Super Bowl host cities has become more speculative, Las Vegas may provide an exception to this conclusion," AIM suggested, adding that praying and giving to groups like AIM could help combat this.

This is how a lot of "anti-trafficking efforts" go: a mission to raise "awareness" about the issue that in turn encourages donations to the nonprofit "raising awareness." Which might all be well and good if these groups were making substantial strides toward helping people in abusive or exploitative situations. But often their "outreach" and "support" efforts amount to little more than additional "awareness" raising, and perhaps handing out bags of toiletries to people police pick up in prostitution stings.

Campaigns like the "It's a Penalty" initiative working to spread "awareness" about Super Bowl sex trafficking aren't running shelters for victims or helping them find jobs or providing them with legal aid. No, the folks behind these initiatives spend their time and resources doing things like passing out branded stickers and pens, making ads featuring professional athletes, and encouraging people to report their hunches to authorities.

Can You Spot a Sex Trafficker? 

A Las Vegas nonprofit called Signs of HOPE "will be educating employees at Caesars Entertainment, MGM Resorts Wynn Resort properties" about how to spot sex traffickers, reports the Las Vegas Sun.

This is another anti-trafficking trope—that eagle-eyed hotel staff, airline employees, salon workers, etc., can spot the "signs" of sex trafficking if they're just "aware" enough. But the "signs" taught tend to be utter nonsense: a mix of sexist, racist, or classist stereotypes with things broad enough to apply to just about anyone.

For instance, Signs of HOPE chief Kimberly Small told the Sun that the potential signs of being a trafficking victim include lack of eye contact, excessive phone use, or being too quiet.

Signs of HOPE, It's a Penalty, and other groups urge people to report anything suspicious. It's an ethos likely to lead to the harassment of any women dressed provocatively or acting flirtatiously.

Hosting spot-a-trafficker trainings may net cash or good P.R. for the groups that run them and the corporations that make employees sit through them. But no one seems to be offering evidence that it is helping anyone catch traffickers or rescue their victims.

We have, however, seen plenty of cases where it's led to people getting reported for being in interracial couples or multiracial families. There's also some evidence that it leads to increased surveillance of women generally.

For the 2024 Las Vegas Campaign, we want to express our gratitude to our incredible partners: @wynnlasvega@mgmresortsintl @caesarsentertainment @lasairport@raiders @airbnb @Hilton @southwestair
Carlson Family Foundation @motel6 @ihghotels@ahlafoundation pic.twitter.com/MsfzCdNnVB

— It's a Penalty (@its_apenalty) January 25, 2024

"Small added that people should even be aware of odd-looking situations, such as when a young child is being picked up by an older person, especially if the child seems unfamiliar with them," reported the Sun. This manages to mix two trafficking myths into one: the idea that there are large swaths of actual children in the U.S. being trafficked, and the idea that trafficking—of adults or minors—is generally done by strangers.

"The truth about trafficking, particularly in the context of minors, is that it is often not perpetrated by strangers but by those within their own circles—friends, acquaintances and, tragically, family members," writes ISWFACE's Victoria McMahan Parra in The Nevada Independent. "This pattern of exploitation, deeply rooted in a complex web of socioeconomic factors, reflects a systemic issue that goes beyond the simplistic narratives often peddled by sensationalist media and misinformed anti-trafficking campaigns."

Why the Myths Persist

Media in general, and especially local media, tends to be deferential to official narratives, especially when they're coming from cops. Their business also thrives on lurid stories and warnings of danger. So it's not surprising that apocryphal tales of Super Bowl sex-crime spikes keep resurfacing in the press.

More interesting is why police are framing these efforts as sex trafficking or human trafficking stings in the first place. If it's just an old-fashioned vice squad doing an old-fashioned prostitution sting, why all the fanfare about traffickers? Why not just tell the public they're out to catch consenting adults who mix money with their sex?

Reason's J.D. Tuccille explained this pretty concisely back in 2016:

Opponents of commercial sex find themselves on the wrong side of shifting public opinion, so they pull a little rhetorical sleight of hand….The implication of the "trafficking" terminology is that prostitutes are slaves—and they're being hustled off to a major sporting event near you.

Spending taxpayer money and police time to make sure people aren't privately trading sex for money (or vice versa) is the kind of thing many folks dislike. Stopping slavery sounds so much more noble—a cause that everyone can get behind.

It also lets the federal government get involved. Selling and paying for sex aren't federal crimes. But sex trafficking—defined under federal law as commercial sex involving minors, force, fraud, or coercion—is. That gives the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security a good impetus to intervene (and if the stings just happen to serve as a good cover for all sorts of surveillance, so be it).

Framing prostitution stings as anti-human-trafficking initiatives also lets local law enforcement access grant money the feds give out for stopping trafficking. These grants do not exist, theoretically, for simply stopping some guy from paying a consenting adult partner for sex.

Of course, all of this goes on without anyone having to actually prove that their work is helping victims of violence or abuse.

What results are "taxpayer-funded sting operations" against "men and women who are engaged in work our government has deemed unacceptable," writes Parra in her Nevada Independent piece. She notes that even when police stings do uncover people who could use assistance or protection, they're often treated as criminals because they fail to fit some perfect victim image. "These stings, rather than addressing the nuanced and pervasive nature of trafficking, only perpetuate a cycle of criminalization and marginalization of already vulnerable groups."

Today's protest in Vegas will be the third for Stop the Raids, which previously organized a protest in Phoenix around Super Bowl time last year and also a protest in Los Angeles last December.

The Los Angeles rally was held in protest of City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto's policies "that criminalize and harass sex workers and their clients, all under the guise of rescuing sex trafficking victims," according to the group's website. "Feldstein-Soto has been weaponizing the archaic Red Light Abatement Act of 1913 to shut down motels where LA residents, particularly sex workers, had worked indoors safely."

Today's Image

Las Vegas, 2022 (ENB/Reason)