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 workers' rights
Sex worker advocates who are fighting for legalization or decriminalization of prostitution contend that criminalizing consensual sex acts among adults creates a black market which worsens the problem of forced human trafficking rather than reducing it. They decry the paternalistic attitude of what they disparagingly call "rescue missions", law enforcement raids that regard all sex workers as in need of "saving" fail to distinguish the minority of sex workers who are coerced from the vast majority who engage in sex work voluntarily. Furthermore, liberal feminists such as Ronald Weitzer and Gayle Rubin, argue that the definition of sex work as inherently violent has created a “moral panic” that influences political discourse. They contend that this "panic" has led to the construction of a trafficking victim who may actually be a woman migrating for work. These feminists argue that this can backfire because it does not protect those women who voluntarily enter into sex work.