Sex trafficking
There are a number of misconceptions about sex trafficking. Sex trafficking and human trafficking are not to be confused with human smuggling. Human trafficking for sexual or other labor may involve transporting victims across international borders, but to meet the definition of trafficking, there needs only to be exploitation of an individual after they have been coerced or deceived, so it does not necessarily involve transportation across national borders. Human trafficking and sex trafficking are often used as synonyms. However, trafficking for non-sexual exploitation may be even more prevalent than trafficking for sexual exploitation, though accurate estimates of trafficking rates are extremely difficult to obtain. Sex trafficking tends to receive more attention from aid organizations and donors due to the greater public outrage that forced sexual labor evokes compared to forced non-sexual labor and thus incidents of sex trafficking are more frequently reported.
Sex work
The topic of sexual labor is often contextualized within opposing abolitionist and sex-positive perspectives. The abolitionist perspective typically defines sex work as an oppressive form of labor. According to opponents of prostitution, it is not only the literal purchase of a person's body for sexual exploitation, it also constitutes exertion of power over women both symbolically and materially. This perspective views prostitution and trafficking as directly and intimately connected and therefore calls for the abolition of prostitution in efforts to eliminate the overall sexual exploitation of women and children. Opponents also refute the idea of consent among sex workers by claiming that such consent is merely a submissive acceptance of the traditional exploitation of women. For these reasons, opponents believe that decriminalizing sex work would utterly harm women as a class by maintaining their sexual and economic exploitation while "serving the interests of pimps, procurers and prostitutors".