human sex trafficking conference update...
okay, so i went and it was really informative and i left actually feeling like i have some good tools and resources.
here are some of the more disturbing things i learned:
at one point some dude in the back raised his hand to ask a question.
"what can johns do to help these women?" he asked, and i nearly threw up.
seriously. i turned around to get a good look at him and he reeked of that sleazy "john" vibe. later i realized he was there with some sexworker's union, obviously trying to pass himself off as one of the "good guys" while in reality only protecting his "right" to sexual access to women and children's bodies.
i don't remember the answer precisely, but it was something along the lines of: the demand for women's bodies creates the "market" for trafficking, therefore if demand is ended, the market will cease to exist as well. unfortunately, it's unlikely to happen anytime soon, especially with the normalization of pornography and sex tourism and the myth that men who go to impoverished countries to pay for sex with poor women and children are actually "helping" them.
one of the real ways to help desperately poor people out of poverty is supporting and funding micro loans from organizations like kiva, which i can't recommend highly enough.
melissa farley was brilliant and amazing and you can find all of the material she covered on her website. she is most definitely reviled by the pro-pornstitution crowd. the animosity coming from the group of women from st. james infirmary was palpable throughout her whole presentation, but particularly during the question and answer period.
of course, their questions were along the lines of "you suck." and "many sexworkers are super happy and empowered." and "you didn't mention the HUGE percentage of MALE sexworkers." which aren't exactly questions, but then, they had their own agenda which wasn't to inform themselves about TRAFFICKED WOMEN but to promote themselves.
i didn't fail to notice that they all appeared to be white, middle-class, american women and i wanted to point out that maybe if they weren't so blinded by their own capitalist greed, they might be able to focus on the topic of the conference which was TRAFFICKED WOMEN and not "sexworker rights".
there was another white, middle-class, american woman from a local sexworkers' union and she used her question to try and discredit melissa farley and norma hotaling by asking kala bokelman, of the U.S. department of state, if "the numbers being thrown around today aren't exaggerated and highly debated." ms. bokelman answered that she could look up the stats on the state.gov website herself.
i have no idea what purpose it serves or in whose best interest it is to argue that it's actually only x number of women and children being kidnapped, raped, tortured, and abused and not y number. isn't even one way too many*?
which is why i don't think that pro-pornstitution feminists and anti-pornstitution feminists will ever see eye to eye on the subject. because to me, one is too many and when i want to talk about her, and how to help her, the only thing they want to talk about is the one "happy hooker" who is thrilled with her career choice and how creating more laws to protect other women is in fact oppressing "hh" and her ability to make a buck.
upon further research, my mistrust of them was enhanced by this article that points out the conflict of interest involved in caring about women while at the same time trying to make money off of them:
overall it was a great conference, however, i do wish that the pro-pornies could save their rah-rah-ing for their "sexworkers' convention" or whatever and focus on those who are in the industry against their will when that is the topic at hand.
* if only it was just one woman. most organizations estimate that it's hundreds of thousands per year. source
UPDATE: welcome twisty and feministe visitors! i would like to also direct your attention to this post which provides a lot of information and resources for trafficked and prostituted people.
here are some of the more disturbing things i learned:
1) human sex trafficking rates #3 in profitability, right after guns and drugs, bringing in an estimated $15-30billion annually.
2) in san francisco, they arrest minors (!) for prostitution even though the men paying to rape them are clearly in violation of statutory rape laws and (IMO) should be prosecuted as sex offenders and pedophiles.
3) in atlanta, they've seen children as young as ten being arrested (!) for prostitution.
at one point some dude in the back raised his hand to ask a question.
"what can johns do to help these women?" he asked, and i nearly threw up.
seriously. i turned around to get a good look at him and he reeked of that sleazy "john" vibe. later i realized he was there with some sexworker's union, obviously trying to pass himself off as one of the "good guys" while in reality only protecting his "right" to sexual access to women and children's bodies.
i don't remember the answer precisely, but it was something along the lines of: the demand for women's bodies creates the "market" for trafficking, therefore if demand is ended, the market will cease to exist as well. unfortunately, it's unlikely to happen anytime soon, especially with the normalization of pornography and sex tourism and the myth that men who go to impoverished countries to pay for sex with poor women and children are actually "helping" them.
one of the real ways to help desperately poor people out of poverty is supporting and funding micro loans from organizations like kiva, which i can't recommend highly enough.
melissa farley was brilliant and amazing and you can find all of the material she covered on her website. she is most definitely reviled by the pro-pornstitution crowd. the animosity coming from the group of women from st. james infirmary was palpable throughout her whole presentation, but particularly during the question and answer period.
of course, their questions were along the lines of "you suck." and "many sexworkers are super happy and empowered." and "you didn't mention the HUGE percentage of MALE sexworkers." which aren't exactly questions, but then, they had their own agenda which wasn't to inform themselves about TRAFFICKED WOMEN but to promote themselves.
i didn't fail to notice that they all appeared to be white, middle-class, american women and i wanted to point out that maybe if they weren't so blinded by their own capitalist greed, they might be able to focus on the topic of the conference which was TRAFFICKED WOMEN and not "sexworker rights".
there was another white, middle-class, american woman from a local sexworkers' union and she used her question to try and discredit melissa farley and norma hotaling by asking kala bokelman, of the U.S. department of state, if "the numbers being thrown around today aren't exaggerated and highly debated." ms. bokelman answered that she could look up the stats on the state.gov website herself.
i have no idea what purpose it serves or in whose best interest it is to argue that it's actually only x number of women and children being kidnapped, raped, tortured, and abused and not y number. isn't even one way too many*?
which is why i don't think that pro-pornstitution feminists and anti-pornstitution feminists will ever see eye to eye on the subject. because to me, one is too many and when i want to talk about her, and how to help her, the only thing they want to talk about is the one "happy hooker" who is thrilled with her career choice and how creating more laws to protect other women is in fact oppressing "hh" and her ability to make a buck.
upon further research, my mistrust of them was enhanced by this article that points out the conflict of interest involved in caring about women while at the same time trying to make money off of them:
A sex workers' union accuses a city-funded health clinic of promoting dance club owners who exploit and endanger employees by violating labor laws and offering illegal private booths in which dancers are vulnerable to rape and sexually transmitted diseases.
The St. James Infirmary, a free health clinic for sex workers, is working with several clubs at Erotic Health Day today to bail the clinic out of a $75, 000 budget deficit. Eleven adult clubs have offered to donate 10 percent of today's earnings, an anticipated $10,000.
In return, the clinic's Web site promotes Erotic Health Day and the participating clubs.
overall it was a great conference, however, i do wish that the pro-pornies could save their rah-rah-ing for their "sexworkers' convention" or whatever and focus on those who are in the industry against their will when that is the topic at hand.
* if only it was just one woman. most organizations estimate that it's hundreds of thousands per year. source
UPDATE: welcome twisty and feministe visitors! i would like to also direct your attention to this post which provides a lot of information and resources for trafficked and prostituted people.
Labels: capitalism, feminism, pornstitution, poverty, radfems, sex trafficking, sex work, violence against women
ms. jared shits you not at
8:26 AM
11 Comments:
Damn straight, ms. j, one IS too many. Great post, thanks for going to this conference and spreading the word about what you heard.
By
Amy's Brain Today, at March 14, 2007 12:57 PM
I second Amy's comment. I'm constantly bewildered by the pro-porn crowd's reaction to people like melissa farley. Surely they realise that not every prostituted woman is happy? Even those women who claim to be thrilled by what they do must realise that there are women and children who aren't? Thanks for the links: the St James Infirmary one is particularly sickening but MF's site is grand. Pip x
By
Pippa, at March 15, 2007 3:31 AM
Really interesting post. Somehow, some way, more attention and resources must be focused on sex trafficking. Thanks for being such an energetic part of the effort! How does one say "you rock" en espanol?
By
Ann Bartow, at March 15, 2007 5:43 PM
i'll find out and get back to you, ann. coz i can say the same about you. you rock too, my sista!
By
ms. jared, at March 15, 2007 7:08 PM
Thank you so much for this enlightening post! It frustrates me to no end when people miss the point. I think the reason "happy hookers" are at the forefront of the minds of so many is partly because of highly publicized, high-end call girls (like Belle de Jour).
I'm personally for decriminalization of prostitution itself- that way it can be regulated to keep STDs under control, to make sure prostitutes actually get paid, to give them legal protection from abusive customers and employers (as opposed to getting ten year old girls arrested- as though that girl was walking the streets by choice?!?), etc.
That kind of thing would work somewhat here, for (essentially) non-enslaved citizens, but I still feel a bit helpless as to what can be done for trafficked women.
If that weren't clue enough that I need to be educating myself more on this issue, I'm curious as to what exactly a "john" is.
To Wikipedia!
By
Abbey, at March 15, 2007 10:45 PM
just found your blog, good read. the idea that 'johns' are somehow helping makes me shiver, too. one IS too many. but how can we address this?
markets are amoral - not necessarily *immoral* (although one could easily make that argument) but amoral - that is they function without any guiding principles sans maximizing profits.
there's a lot of organizing that needs to be done around this issue, undoubtedly - but attacking the sex trade without attacking capitalism itself is a bit like trying to alter a shadow instead of altering the substance of its caster.
i'd like to see much greater integration between these struggles and the anticapitalist movement - but unfortunately while there is some overlap i see too much of the feminist movement ignoring the 'caster' and too much of the anticapitalist movement ignoring certain aspects of the 'shadow' - specifically the negative effects that markets have on women.
one thing that troubles me, though - i see the 'anti-porn' sentiments so common among feminists to be kind of a distraction - i see porn as being essentially neutral. think of it this way - it's kind of like the news.
watch a TV news broadcast, and what you're going to see is undoubtedly going to reflect the interests of dominant institutions within society - you're going to get news that reflects the needs of business, the military, the state. but is that an inherent characteristic of news? or simply the form most of it takes within modern class society? i don't see this as being inevitable, at all - with revolutionary change to society would undoubtedly come a revolutionary conception of what 'the news' should look like.
isn't porn kind of the same? porn in our modern society undoubtedly serves to exploit and degrade, and much more often than not the subjects of such exploitation and degradation are women - no argument there. porn, like the news, also serves to uphold and perpetuate certain ideology within society - a twisted modern form of patriarchy that reinforces the disgusting notion that those who are being exploited and degraded actually WANT to be degraded, just as the news upholds the status quo of capitalist society and makes us aspire to be more passive consumers.
but is that an inherent characteristic of porn?
what would pornography in a liberated, post-capitalist society look like? i think it's an important question to ask. i'd argue with anyone who claims to be 'anti-porn' that yes, porn as we see it today, the CAPITALIST PORN INDUSTRY, is a bad thing. but is imagery of humans, designed and disseminated for the purposes of stirring up sexual desire inherently bad? if so, why? and if not, what can be done to transform this practice, which in its current state is quite bad, into a state that isn't bad, and could actually be quite positive and liberating?
i think the argument can easily be made that the problem is the market - porn is made for the purposes of maximizing profit - just as people are kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery for profit. but would porn in a post-capitalist society resemble anything at all like what we have today, considering:
a) that the profit motive would be absent
b) that in creating such a radical transformation of society, highly positive developments in the social, political, and economic relationships between women and men would be a necessary precondition for such a change
c) that such a society would mean the elimination (or at the very least an extremely dramatic reduction) of alienation from society - it would be a world in which people have meaningful control over the institutions that shape their lives would create
i think what we would see could in fact be highly positive.
buy a pair of basketball shoes at the store, and those shoes are more likely than not to be made by some 15 year old girl in Southeast Asia getting a terrible wage and drinking water laced with birth control pills so her reproductive system isn't a source of lost productivity for the capitalist.
and the manufacturer of those shoes is also more than likely to be selling us the image of professional athletes and holding them up as a role model for society - and thus reproducing the ideology that if we want to emulate said role model we'd better buy said shoes. but are these things inherent parts of a basketball shoe?
no, with the transformation of society we can radically transform the productive process so that people who make basketball shoes are actually empowered. is porn really any different?
By
j, at March 15, 2007 11:11 PM
Thanks for this great post, Ms. Jared! The part I like most right now is the part about the hostility towards Melissa Farley and Norma Hotaling, just because misery loves company, I guess. In my mind today I went through my list of everything anti-pornstitution feminist leaders have had to go through on account of their work, and on the one hand, I felt comforted; on the other hand, so discouraging to have to comfort yourself by reminding yourself of all women have had to go through because they spoke out against porn, prostituting women, sex trafficking.
Anyway, thanks for blogging about this!
Heart
By
Cheryl, at March 16, 2007 1:10 AM
I don't like the idea of prostitution, but I don't like Melissa Farley either. Her website is full of arguments like: "Prostitutes have no rights, so let's deny them any rights", or "Cops rape, kill and rob prostitutes, so the law should grant them a lot of power over prostitutes." This kind of "feminist" is part of the rapist crowd, just like pimps, traffickers and johns.
If all prostitution is rape, and if rape is about power - why not give more power to the victims? What about a law saying that pimps cannot acquire property, and any cent they earned since they became pimps belongs to their slaves? Why not make pimps and johns pay for the psychiatric treatment of prostitutes? And, for God's sake - stop jailing rape victims! If that's society's way to protect women, then women have to be protected from society more than from anything else.
By
Anonymous, at March 16, 2007 7:16 AM
Thanks for blogging about this, and how great to find another anti-industry writer with such a great link-list.
By
Theriomorph, at March 16, 2007 10:44 AM
I am on an anti-trafficking task force in my city, and it's important to know that some of the organizations involved are fundamentalist christian and neo-conservative. The Bush admistration claims to have a great moral concern with this issue. It may be a heart-warming example of diverse people coming together to fight a terrible human rights emergency, but if politics makes strange bedfellows, we better know who we're in bed with.
By
ninjanurse, at March 16, 2007 11:29 AM
Great post
If you are interested in connecting with others to fight human trafficking... check out www.notforsalecampaign.org
By
Anonymous, at March 26, 2007 3:43 PM
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