There was a "white slavery" panic back in the day, a century or more ago. It was mostly driven by the puritanical assumption that any woman engaging in sex work

There was a "white slavery" panic back in the day, a century or more ago. It was mostly driven by the puritanical assumption that any woman engaging in sex work must be imprisoned against her will, but it often went hand-in-hand with racism towards the supposed perpetrators. I think the idea that random middle-class people were abducted off the street and forced into prostitution hasn't been mainstream in a long, long time, but it seems like a perfect fit for the current appetite for right-wing fantasy, so I won't be surprised if we start hearing about it again.