Nongrievable Bodies: Sex Trafficking Subjects Embodied in Social Media Rhetoric
Abstract
Every year thousands of women, men, and children are trafficked for sexual exploitation (sex trafficking) around the world. Legal, social, scholarly, and theoretical discourses all discuss sex trafficking, yet often times the individuals who are in the middle of these conversations are sex trafficking subjects themselves –who ultimately matter the most—yet are often the most ignored and impacted. Implementing mixed method research, I investigate the social media rhetoric, specifically Facebook, from the nonprofit organization, Truckers Against Trafficking (TAT), to examine how the bodies of sex trafficking subjects are represented visually and measure to what degree this representation impacts the embodiment of sex trafficking subjects. If the selected public discourse enacts troubling rhetorics of estrangement, victimhood, and abjection onto the body of sex trafficking subjects, I aim to call a change in rhetorical awareness.