Here's last week's replies to the W.S. Discussion Board postings of two other students on sex trafficking. (SEX TRAFFICKING??? Hello Google searches!!!)
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Samuel is right; it is not enough. A three-year working visa and some food stamps is not enough to offer a person who has been brought into this country and used for sexual slavery.
It is not enough because we are a global "superpower" and as such we need to set an example of compassion and justice. It is not enough because it is our own American citizens who engage in "sex tourism" and abuse women and children who are trafficked here to the United States.
In Human Rights: Sex Trafficking and Prostitution, Alice Leuchtag refers to a report published by CATW in which Donna Hughes observes that, "... sex tourists apparently feel they have a right to prostitute sex, perceiving prostitution only from a self-interested perspective in which they commodify and objectify women of other cultures, nationalities, and ethnic groups. Their awareness of racism, colonialism, global economic inequalities, and sexism seems limited to the way these realities benefit them as sexual consumers" (582).
America is a nation continually evolving in its awareness of the inherent evils of racism, sexism, colonialism, and socio-economic oppression and yet somehow there is an apparent shifting scale in that while these things are [hopefully] viewed as wrong within our own country, they are not so wrong when perpetuated against people in a foreign country. Especially when these people are the often victimized, always marginalized, women and children.
Two weeks ago a woman I know called me and told me that her employer, a prominent attorney, is planning his visit to Columbia. She laughed and said that he has to leave the country to find places where underage prostitution is legal. She joked that he'll probably get kidnapped, a rich old white Texas lawyer, and his body pieces will be mailed to his office with ransom demands. She finished with, "If he has to do this, couldn't he just go to Mexico? It's both closer and safer."
When I voiced my outrage and expressed how horrible it is, she tried to assure me that child prostitution is accepted in "those cultures," that it helps the economy, that there's no harm in it.
I'm disgusted. That this is apparently a prevalent mindset, that this can be condoned, that a politically liberal attorney who works to help victims of oppression and injustice, thinks it is his right to go to Columbia and f*** kids on his vacation.
We need to take stronger action to combat this. If we cannot police foreign nations, we must offer asylum for those brought into our country for the purposes of prostitution, we must prosecute or citizens involved in sex trafficking, and we must continue to raise public awareness of this issue so that rich old white Texas lawyers are aware that this behavior is neither acceptable, tolerated, or condoned.
Reply 2
I think what Ms. Hughes is saying, is that through the descriptions and "ratings" these men post on the Internet regarding their experiences in foreign nations with underage prostitutes, we have a window into the extent of the pain and humiliation endemic to the sexual trafficking of these girls and women.
We see that these women and girls are a commodity. A commodity that can be rated and evaluated as one would assess any product available for purchase. We see that these women are dehumanized, objectified; they area product valued solely for the sexual satisfaction they can provide to their purchaser.
These men should know better. These men do know better. What I find particularly appalling is that these are American men, men raised on the principles of freedom, equality, justice and fairness, and yet apparently they leave these standards behind when crossing into so-called Third World countries. Apparently there is a shifting scale within the conscience of these men, some colonial mindset that condones their participation in the sexual exploitation and oppression of foreign women and children. I think it's disgusting. I think it's loathsome. It makes me suspect that these men must long for a return of the United States to a more feudally patriarchal past so as to enable them to continue their depravity here unfettered and unquestioned, to sexually use and abuse women and children with the impunity they can only currently find in foreign countries.
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