@reiko trafficking was one of those terms i could never feel like i had a solid definition of as a kid, people either used it differently from each other or used it super imprecisely (or god forbid refer to legal definitions) and now as an adult i can recognize that when there are terms that are like that it's because people are trying to cover for something fucked up
trafficking is not a meaningless word, it means having your moves controlled by people who make money off of you. if you get flown out to an island to do a bit of labor and then you come home with a stack of cash in hand and no complaints about what work you were asked to do, you have still technically been trafficked. it's very often done to people without documentation and it can also be done by parents to their kids if they are turning the kids into a source of cash. it was infamously done to brittney spears by her dad for decades right in front of everyone, so it's done with varying shades of legality, tho obviously anonymity and ignorance are usually factors protecting traffickers.
many, many kids go missing at the border, never to be seen again. the entire government is complicit in stealing human life and selling slaves. trafficking gets to be a priblem of daunting proportion
it's difficult to speak of my own definition as objective without foreclosing understanding what my conversational partner really means. "trafficking" isn't meaning-less exactly but *overstuffed with meanings*, it has to be first unpacked to the specific complaints a person has with real or hypothetical events
@reiko @ViciouslyKind often people use these words loaded with multiple meanings to do a kind of bait and switch thing (usually completely unintentionally) so i try to go out of my way to make sure people are on the same page with the definition of a word. one of the easiest tells that someone's on some bullshit is when they react negatively to clarifying questions (usually assuming you're implying something so they can talk for you)
