“If this was such a good profession, then why is everyone dying to get out of it?” – Prostitution Survivor, in documentary The Right Track
In my mind, prostitution and sex trafficking had always been separate from one another. One requiring consent, the other requiring force. Sex trafficking was evil and criminal while prostitution, while not ideal, was one’s choice.
This documentary proved me wrong.
“The Right Track” provides a raw look into the reality of prostitution, as told by the women who have personally walked its dark alleys. My blurry idea of the commercial sex trade was quickly brought into startling clarity by these women’s stories, as they took me to where they have been and where they never want to be again.
NCOSE is very grateful to the Jensen Project for spearheading this powerful documentary, and for the survivor leaders and other experts who shared their stories and insights, including Melanie Thompson, Brenda Myers-Powell, Audra Doody, Tricia Grant, Yasmin Vafa, and more. We are also honored to have had our very own Christen Price interviewed as an expert for this documentary.
The Survivor Stories
When she was only 18, a survivor decided to join a strip club. She was young and thought life as a stripper would be glamorous and empowering. What she found instead was an industry bent on exploiting her. Her life turned into a nightmare as stripping soon turned into selling sex, which quickly led to being trafficked.
In the film, the survivor takes you to her first strip club in Houston where she says, “If I could tell my 18-year-old self anything, I would say ‘Don’t go in.’”
Another woman’s story in prostitution started when she was experiencing poverty. Feeling hopeless, she was persuaded to join the sex industry. She says, “They didn’t kidnap me and bring me here, but I definitely didn’t have any other options.”
While standing outside her old group home, she describes scenes of women being beaten, raped, and even being thrown out of the second story window. These two women, and many other women included in the film, endured similar treatment.
What shocked me the most about these stories was that society would have considered each of the survivors either an “empowered sex worker” or a dissolute “prostitute,” rather than a survivor of heinous exploitation.
This film illustrated to me that, somehow, we’ve gotten it in our heads that if someone consents to even one step of the commercial sex industry (usually without fully understanding what they’ve signed up for or as out of a lack of viable other options) then they deserve any form of abuse that follows. Even if that abuse includes sex trafficking.
Violence and Harm in Prostitution
Legal = Safe?
This documentary also gives you an insider look into what legalized prostitution looks like in practice, both through the tour of a Nevada brothel and shocking footage of the legal brothels in Berlin.
You are brought into a legal brothel in Nevada where the owner Bella teaches you that a man can have anything he wants as long as it matches his wallet. She demonstrates how the women can be chained up and speaks into her radio that women are marketed as flavors “vanilla, chocolate, and everything in between”.
Suddenly the line between a human and a product becomes very fuzzy.
In the footage of Berlin brothels, they show countless women placed in window displays, dressed in lingerie. Images of distorted Barbie dolls in boxes came to my mind as these scenes played across the screen. Women distilled down into a sexual object for the pleasure of men.
The Sex Buyers
In an exclusive behind the scenes moment, you get to stand with officers as they engage in a reverse sting operation created to arrest sex buyers. You sit behind the door of a motel room and watch as they arrest over half a dozen men.
Sex buyer are often the unseen side of the commercial sex industry, but the side that is contributing to it the most. Buyers create the demand that incentivizes the entire existence of the prostitution and sex trafficking marketplace.
For me, one of the most impactful scenes in the entire film was an interview of a convicted sex buyer. When asked what led him to the point of buying sex the man says, “It was porn. Ya know you see it online and then you want to see it in 3D.”
Here at NCOSE, we work to expose connections between pornography consumption and sexual exploitation. So, when I heard that interview, I felt a deep sense of vindication—pornography was the reason he decided to buy sex.
They are undeniably linked: pornography acts as marketing for sex buying, and sex buying fuels sex trafficking.
The Survivor Model
In a beautiful call to action from the survivors themselves, you see many of them taking steps to help survivors heal and inform policymakers by advocating for the Survivor Model. This model criminalizes sex buying while decriminalizing the prostituted individuals, allowing those who are victimized within the sex industry to receive support and exit services, while holding accountable those who abuse and purchase women.
I found it noteworthy that not one of the survivors supported the idea of legitimizing sex buying. One survivor powerfully stated, “I believe the shame should be placed on the shoulders of those who have purchased us.”
Who better to condemn than the ones putting money into the machine that’s making it work?
And who better to listen to for policy advice on the commercial sex industry than those who have lived in its dark corners?
Conclusion
In a world rife with misinformation and disinformation, this documentary provides a lens of clarity into the world of the commercial sex trade and exposes the links between all forms of sexual exploitation.
The Right Track changed my view on prostitution forever.
I learned that prostitution and sex trafficking often seamlessly intersect, and that prostitution in and of itself causes trauma and pain. I learned that the shame should be placed on the shoulders of those who are purchasing exploited individuals, rather than the exploited individuals themselves.
More than anything else, I learned what empowerment looks like. I didn’t see it in the eyes of the women in a Nevada brothel or in the women behind the glass windows in Berlin. I saw it in the eyes of the women who were free.
If you want an honest look into the commercial sex trade told by the people who have lived it, then look no further than The Right Track documentary.
Keep an eye out for the film being shown at various DC film festivals over the next year. Watch it and let it change you. Then act!
Support the survivor model in your area! Condemn the buyers, free the survivors.
