US Sex Trafficking, Women's Human Rights and the Politics of Representation

Human rights and global feminist praxis have enabled important political work that addresses the transnational scope of gender violence. While the notion of women's human rights has this great positive potential, it has also been critiqued by scholars and activists as yet another site where uneven, global relationships are perpetuated and where addressing a material violence can perpetuate another kind of violence, particularly through the discursive act of representing 'victims' and explaining the causes of human rights violations. For instance, in the US, those wishing to seek aid as subjects of sex trafficking must often argue their own cultural 'backwardness' in order to be legible as 'legitimate' victims. Through a critical look at US governmental sex trafficking documents and legal cases, this work explores how 'victims' come to be defined and represented through adjudicating discourses; such discursive inquiry suggests that the paradox of universality at the heart of human rights necessitates more than the strategy of including women in order to ensure justice.