I grew up under the terror of “stranger danger”, then became an adult and learned that it was mostly fake

And now that my generation is becoming parents I’m seeing it relabeled as “sex trafficking” and fake nonsense is spreading AGAIN

Time is a flat circle

To be clear: yes, sex trafficking is a real thing, and horrible.

No, sex traffickers are not routinely kidnapping young children they’ve never met from public places in broad daylight.

Not every strange or uncomfortable encounter is sex trafficking.

My Facebook feed is literally filled with posts from random awkward/weird encounters labeled as sex trafficking and reported as a failed kidnapping to the police

And the actual accusations are literally, like, “looked at my kid”

I look at kids in public! They’re cute!

I saw another one, dead serious, because an adult asked another adult for directions in a large city full of tourists

That’s not sex trafficking it’s asking for directions

This isn’t raising awareness it’s labeling normal behaviour as a moral panic

We should take sex trafficking very seriously, which is completely undermined by innocent behaviours being labeled as sex trafficking until the term becomes meaningless

I am concerned, also the @yourewrongabout ep on this is WELL worth your time

It also bugs me because women are ALREADY pressured into living into constant terror and encouraged to avoid basic and normal habits (walking after dark, driving after dark, existing in a room with a man) because we “need” to be in constant fear of being attacked

Don’t get me wrong - it’s good for women to stay safe and protect themselves, and you gotta do what helps you! But I think there’s also a drastic exaggeration of many fears that restricts women’s lives unnecessarily, and that’s not cool.