Marriott’s Sex-trafficking Initiatives Are Dangerous Paternalism

New training targets and suspects all single women

Is the woman in this picture an escort trolling for dates; a woman who needs to be saved from herself? Or is she perhaps a woman who is meeting a friend for a drink before heading to a party or the symphony? Maybe she’s a CEO celebrating the deal she just sealed or a sales associate out on the road blowing off some steam after a long day?

She might be any one of those things, but she almost certainly isn’t a woman who is being sex-trafficked. So why is Marriott making it a priority (500,000 trained so far) to teach it’s employees to look for women who don’t speak English well, or drink alone at the bar, or don’t want housekeeping — and report them to management and perhaps to law enforcement? It’s a laudable idea to try to prevent actual sex-trafficking, but Marriott is not only conflating consensual sex work with trafficking, but they are also using criteria that might apply to all kinds of women who travel alone. Marriott International’s notions about helping women translates instead into paternalistic control and absurd levels of trying to save the world from women. It’s making manifest all the patriarchal fears about what might happen if women are allowed to live their lives independently of male-dominated control.

Sex trafficking is a very serious issue, and one that is admirable to try to disrupt, but if you don’t even understand what you are dealing with, it seems unlikely that you are going to get very far. Meanwhile, it’s fostering the patriarchal notion that single women are suspect — a danger to themselves and others. They shouldn’t be trusted, because what self-respecting woman would be in a hotel room or a hotel bar by herself?

Unfortunately, this seems to be a growing trend.

This only seems to be the tip of the iceberg in terms of restaurants, hotels, and other businesses recently shutting out single, female patrons for fear that they are potential sex workers. Earlier this month, Nello — a chic restaurant on NYC’s Upper East Side — came under fire after allegedly banning a female executive (and Nello regular) from dining alone at the bar as part of effort to “crackdown on hookers.”

First of all, the kind of “hookers” who are eating in upscale restaurants are not typically being run by pimps anymore. They are mostly independent entrepreneurs or women who have consensual business relationships with screeners/managers. Sex trafficked women aren’t drinking in hotel bars by themselves. It makes sense to keep an eye out for women who are not being allowed to speak for themselves, who seem uncomfortable with the man they are with, who are not seen to be freely coming and going. Those are women who might potentially be being sex trafficked.

Also, anyone under the age of 18 (which is considered the age of consent) is automatically considered to be sex trafficked if they are engaged in sex work. Marriott, how about training your employees to keep an eye out for people like that, and leave off the other parts about any adult woman who is in one of your hotels alone or who seems to potentially be having sex in your hotel, to be suspect?

When James and I travel, I typically book the reservation and pay for the room. We have different last names, and so there’s no real indication that we are married. We often travel with sex toys and lube and ask for things like extra towels. Sometimes those things are just for us and sometimes we are meeting someone else; someone that we are going to have sex with. That’s not an indication that I am a sex worker or a trafficked woman — it means I’m an adult woman who can go where she wants and do what she wants with whomever I choose to do it with.

James told me about going on a business trip a while back with the CEO and CFO of the major corporation that he worked for. Both were attractive women in their late 40s, which admittedly isn’t what the typical American executive looks like, but that doesn’t mean that the only other option is high-end escort, which is what they were initially taken for. He said the women handled it in a good-natured way, but how absurd that in this day and age a well-dressed and attractive woman who isn’t out with her husband is assumed to be a sex worker! It says a lot about where our national consciousness still is on this topic.

And why can we still not differentiate between consensual sex work and the scourge of human trafficking? I think it’s because we as a society don’t want to. A woman who affirmatively likes sex is still a bit scary? Our society demands that women be sexy, but heaven forbid that they be sexual (except for their man’s pleasure), particularly on their own terms. But to presume to save a woman from her own choices freely made is to be condescending and paternalistic in the extreme.

“I know what’s best for you, sweetie, and it sure isn’t you having control over your own body and your own life.”

“Trying to police women’s actions will not stop sex trafficking,” Santos reasons. “It also gives people this savior complex, where they believe that all sex workers need to be saved because they think we are being abused. Reality is, plenty of sex workers choose this work and really enjoy it.”

Veronica Santos is just one of the many voices speaking out against Marriott’s misguided initiative to train its employees to spot and assist vulnerable women by suspecting all single women. Drinking alone in a hotel bar, even if you are pretty and have acrylic fingernails, does not make you a sex worker. And even if you are, it doesn’t necessarily make you someone in need of being saved.

© Copyright Elle Beau 2020 Elle Beau writes on Medium about sex, life, relationships, society, anthropology, spirituality, and love. If this story is appearing anywhere other than Medium.com, it appears without my consent and has been stolen.