Sex Buying Isn’t a Game Campaign

Daytona 500

Rights4Girls launched another leg of our Sex Buying Isn’t a Game national billboard campaign right outside the Daytona Speedway to draw attention to sex trafficking and sex tourism that can surge around large-scale sporting events. The Daytona 500 draws tens of thousands of out-of-town visitors, and with that increase in tourism, both traffickers and sex buyers can seek to capitalize on increased demand for commercial sex. Rights4Girls is using the visibility of the race to spotlight how buyers fuel exploitation — including sex trafficking — in the shadows of the celebration and excitement.

R4G has been making an extraordinary impact nationwide with powerful sports-themed billboards advocating for safety and justice for survivors of trafficking and exploitation. Featured prominently in over a dozen cities nationwide, these striking messages are raising awareness and driving critical conversations in both the public and media about the harms of sex buyers and how they create the demand that fuels sex trafficking.

Did you know that the mortality rate for women in the sex trade is 200 times that of the general population.³ And over 90% report being shot, raped, strangled, beaten, burned, stabbed, or punched, with most of that violence being committed by sex buyers?⁴

Our report Buyers Unmasked reveals sex buyers as largely aware and indifferent to overt signs of coercion and desperation in the people they purchase for sex. Survivors deserve our support. We must insist on justice and accountability.

Our Buyers Unmasked report showcases sex buyers in their own words from their posts taken from online "hobby boards" (think Yelp but for prostitution). As one sex buyer from Los Angeles put it:

"She is an object that’s placed there by society for men like us to use and move on with life."

This mindset is the invisible engine that fuels sex trafficking and the sex trade. But over twenty states are pushing to enact meaningful accountability for those who exploit vulnerable members of our communities, the results of which can lead to loss of employment or professional license, hefty fines, loss of family law rights related to child custody, child visitation, or adoption, registering as a sex offender and/or preclusion from certain professions.

For too long, society has told women and girls that they’re the ones who must change— their clothes, their behavior, their expectations— in order to live in peace and safety. Similarly, the burden of surviving sexual exploitation and abuse has historically been placed on survivors: to live with shame and trauma while perpetrators often escape accountability and stigma associated with their actions.

For a more in-depth look into the mindset and attitudes of sex buyers and how they fuel the sex trade, as well as proven solutions to end exploitation and trafficking, check out our latest report, Buyers Unmasked: Exposing the Men Who Buy Sex & Solutions to End Exploitation.

We were thrilled to join the Crimes Against Women podcast to dispel with harmful myths around the sex trade and especially the colonial construct that prostitution is the “oldest profession,” (spoiler alert: it’s not; hunting, gathering, midwifery, etc.) The episode delves into our work at Rights4Girls, including our abuse to prison pipeline research and advocacy around criminalized survivors, racial disparities impacting survivors of gender-based violence, and how we can achieve safety and justice for our most vulnerable women and girls. We also discuss our report, Buyers Unmasked, its findings concerning commercial sex offenders, and how we move towards survivor-centered solutions that bring safety and accountability to our communities.

Campaign Impact & Reach

“Major events like the Daytona 500 bring a lot of fun and festivities, but they also attract thousands of male tourists with the ability to purchase vulnerable women and girls for sex,” said Yasmin Vafa, Executive Director of Rights4Girls. “This is a disturbing and dangerous issue year-round, but can take place in a particularly concentrated way during major sports events like NASCAR or the Super Bowl.”

“We’re heartened that Rights4Girls launched this campaign, as it so closely aligns with our work to underscore this often-invisible aspect of sex trafficking,” said Dr. Inderjit “Vicky” Kaur Basra, See the Girl CEO. “Sex-buying is not a harmless or victimless crime. We hope these billboards – coinciding with the Daytona 500 – shift the focus to the demand, the buyers who drive the market and fuel the harm and violence perpetrated on the most vulnerable among us, including children.”

Buying Sex Should Be A Disqualifier (billboard)

Watch & learn about the campaign in central Florida:

To read more about sex buyers, including some well-known cases, see here:

For more reports and data related to sex trafficking, sexual violence, justice involvement, and/or the sex trade, please see our Resources page.

Sources

¹ Melissa Farley et al., “Prostitution and Trafficking in Nine Countries: An Update on Violence and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder,” Journal of Trauma Practice 2, no. 3–4 (2004): 33–74, https://doi.org/10.1300/J189v02n03_03.

² Farley, Melissa; Banks, Martha E.; Ackerman, Rosalie J.; and Golding, Jacqueline M. (2018) “Screening for Traumatic Brain Injury in Prostituted Women,” Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence: Vol. 3: Iss. 2, Article 5. https://doi.org/10.23860/dignity.2018.03.02.05

³ Potterat, John J et al. “Mortality in a long-term open cohort of prostitute women.” American journal of epidemiology vol. 159,8 (2004): 778-85.

⁴ Jody Raphael and Katie Feifer, “Get the Facts: What We Know about Sex Trafficking, Sexual Exploitation, and Prostitution in the United States,” (World Without Exploitation, January 2020), https://www.equalitymodelus.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Get-the-Facts- January-2020.pdf