I’m a child trafficking survivor: QAnon has politically commodified my trauma
I call myself a child trafficking survivor because “trafficking” is more succinct than explaining how my dad pimped me until age 10. But the term that once offered me solace with its linguistic distance from the more graphic realities of my childhood has been co-opted. The word I could use to explain my fear of men in white trucks has been hijacked by QAnon conspiracy theorists. In recent years, the word “trafficking” has been rendered meaningless and sensationalized through the political commodification of real survivors’ trauma. And this is harmful to us all.
The “Q” in QAnon is allegedly a real person. I wish I could talk to him and ask him to stop using the trauma of real trafficked children to stoke moral panic. QAnon has tapped into bipartisan fear, twisting a tool that the Tea Party didn’t have in 2009: a captive audience during a pandemic. As COVID has spread, many of us are housebound, quarantined and jobless, uncertain about the future minute-by-minute. Since March, QAnon’s influence has increased dramatically because it is easier to reach people in a pandemic when they are bored, frightened, out of work, glued to social media, and starved for human interaction. Instagram has its own community of female influencers and fearful mommy blogger “QAmoms”. Pastel QAnon is recognizable by its gentler pink and…
