Carrie N. Baker

An Examination of Some Central Debates on Sex Trafficking in Research and Public Policy in the United States

This article provides an introduction to some central debates in research and public policy on sex trafficking in the United States, with particular attention to how these debates play out among feminists and concluding with recommendations for guiding principles on future directions for public policy and research.

Obscuring Gender-Based Violence: Marriage Promotion and Teen Dating Violence Research

abstract This article argues that United States public policies have prioritized marriage and healthy relationship promotion over research and education about gendered violence in teen dating relationships, despite evidence of the prevalence of intimate partner and teen dating violence that disproportionately impacts women and girls. The lack of a gender-based analysis reflects a shift from a feminist framing of violence that focuses on the safety and well-being of women and girls based on an analysis of gender, power, and structural inequalities, toward a conservative focus on individualistic solutions to gendered social problems like poverty and violence.

Challenging Narratives of the Anti-Rape Movement’s Decline:

A recent trend in scholarship characterizes the anti-rape movement as founded with radical goals and achieving success at reforming rape laws, but then declining because of co-optation by the state. This article challenges narratives of decline in light of the history of the anti-rape movement and current anti-rape activism. By focusing their critique on criminal justice and therapeutic approaches to sexual violence, and failing to account for the diversity of the anti-rape movement, advocates for narratives of decline ignore parts of the movement that challenge the state and other parts that use broader cultural and community-based strategies to end rape.