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US federal law defines sex trafficking as the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act. The crime is not dependent on whether a border is crossed, or whether it occurs on the street, through the Internet, in a massage parlor, or any other particular setting. Most public and private resources dedicated to human trafficking in the past decade have been crisis oriented, understandably geared toward rescuing and rehabilitating victims and, to some extent, prosecuting perpetrators like pimps and members of trafficking syndicates. However, policymakers, academics, and activists increasingly are recognizing that the endless supply of victims wont abate unless we combat the demand for trafficking. That is to say, trafficking implies a commodity in a supply-distribution-demand chain. Promisingly, a
growing number of countries and cities worldwide have designed policies and programs to end this demand. In Eastern Europe, since the 1990s, the classic situation has been that recruiters (male and female) set up legitimate-looking modeling agencies, newspaper ads and job fairs. Throughout the imploded economies of these post-communist countries, they promise desperate women employment in foreign countries that will enable them to provide for their families back home. The employment turns out to be a life of sexual exploitation and abuse. That pattern has reappeared in conflict zones and areas of extreme poverty worldwide. And in a nightmarish extension, hundreds of thousands of small children of both sexes are being kidnapped or sold into brothels by family members. In the U.S. (and worldwide) trafficking is almost interchangeable with prostitution, since most prostituted women and virtually all prostituted children are being pimped. Most women interviewed say they want a way out but cant find one. With TV and film documentaries, new legislation, conferences, university courses, newspaper columns (notably Nicholas Kristoff in the New York Times), magazine articles and books (several have come out in the last two years, authored by survivors, researchers, and activists), trafficking is being exposed, but there is much more to understand. As media has picked up the rallying cry, horror stories about the fate of trafficked women and children are plentiful, while almost no attention is being given to the demand (purchasing) side. Likewise, law enforcement is complicit in creating a sense of impunity among buyers. Astoundingly, police in the U.S.
pick up approximately ten sellers for every buyer. Given that a prostitute usually has been bought ten times a day or night, the real disproportion of arrests is one hundred to one. While legislation with dramatically increased fines is moving through many state legislatures, even our miserable laws could be enforced in a gender-neutral way, and that would make a huge difference, according to Ambassador John Miller, former head of the Trafficking in Persons office of the US State Department. The person purchasing sex is as culpable as a pimp or trafficker, and, adding nuance, there are many ways in which the buyer, like the woman or child purchased, is a victim of his own action. (Although prostitutes are male and female, and the differences in their experience are often slight, this case focuses on the large majority of sellers, who are women and girls.) And so the call for change neednt be mean-spirited. Abolitionists may maintain a position of universal compassion, even as they insist on a change in society. Below are some of the most salient reasons that purchasing sex is destructive. (Although much in the paragraphs below applies to pedophilia the compulsive buying of sex from children that topic is not explicitly addressed here.)
1. Basic Human Respect There is a qualitative difference between having ones ideas plagiarized, being punched in the stomach, having a full wallet stolen, versus being dragged into a dark alley and raped. Sexuality is intrinsic to personal identity in a way that other parts of a person are not. Respect means recognizing and valuing a
person at the level of identity, and putting anothers sexuality on the market violates the standard of respect on which our society is built. That standard is embodied in norms and laws that prohibit scores of actions: murder and stealing; bullying children; spitting on people; harassing employees. The list goes on. Disregard for human decency is reflected in degrading words whore, slut society uses when speaking about women whose bodies are being bought. A johns attitude frequently is I paid for you, so I own you. I can do whatever I want with you, or to you. A common belief is that by definition a prostitute cannot be raped. Selling her body, she has sold her basic human rights.
sexually abused. Prostituted women and children suffer from disease, addiction, destitution, rape, and trauma at a rate many times higher than the general population. Journalist Dawn Tongish reported in 2010 that the Dallas Police Department is now taking DNA samples from women and girls selling their bodies to truckers, given that they are 200 times more likely to be killed. You were born with a name and you should die with a name, the police tell their recruits. They add that identification of their bodies could give their families closure. Buying sex encourages a lifestyle that creates for the women and girls permanent physical damage and emotional scarring. Purchasing sex and genuine empathy toward the woman being bought are incompatible. Paying for sex is at least callous and at worst violent.
her situation with her original father (from whom she escaped or was removed), and thus has an irresistible pull. Frequently the sellers have been manipulated or deceived. In many situations, they have been subjected to explicit violence and threatened with more if they do not bring in cash for their pimps. According to scholar Catherine MacKinnon, Most if not all prostitution is ringed with force in the most conventional sense, from incest to kidnapping to forced drugging to assault to criminal law. Men who buy sex are almost all aware at some level even if they are in denial that women and girls would not be selling their bodies if they were not subject to coercion. Solid public policy is not built around a small number of exceptions. In the ante-bellum United States, the existence of blacks who were owned but not abused did not make slavery less wrong. Similarly, the existence of prostituted women who are not abused does not make the purchase of their bodies less wrong.
mans nose begins. An individual purchasing the body of another for sexual gratification is participating in, and helping fuel, an industry that is overwhelmingly destructive not only to hundreds of thousands of women and children, but to society as a whole. The industry attracts unscrupulous profitmotivated traffickers, fuels organized crime, feeds an appetite for illicit sex, and perpetuates an unjust society. One persons pursuit of happiness must not be at the expense of anothers life and liberty.
Most secular and religious ethics have at their base some version of Abraham Lincolns words: As I would not be a slave, so would I not be a slave owner. In Christianity, its called The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. For Jews, the Talmud enjoins, What is hateful to yourself, do not do to your fellow man. The first Imam in Shia Islam and fourth Caliphe in Sunni Ali ibin Abi Talib said, You should desire for others what you desire for yourself, and hate for others what you hate for yourself. Immanuel Kant wrote that action must be evaluated against the prospect of every person committing that action; yet few who buy sex think it would be all right for their wives, daughters, sons, or themselves to be selling their bodies for others sexual gratification. Situation ethics (Joseph Fletcher) offered some relief from Kants strict measure, but he says that digression from that norm must be in the service of Agape love of ones neighbor. Buying another persons body for ones own gratification does not meet that test. It is inherently narcissistic, self-absorbed, and hostile. (Farleys recent research reveals a significant difference between buyers and non-buyers in the desire to dominate women.) The June 12, 2011 New York Times refers to naked hubris.
raped 15,000 times by her 18th birthday, when she suddenly consents. In most prostitution encounters, then, the buyer is taking advantage of the fact that someone elses life has gone desperately wrong. But not all men are so innocent. Thrill seeking builds on itself: most men filling planes headed for Thailand to rape children did not start their purchasing as pedophiles. Child-sex seekers are plentiful in the US. Atlanta research commissioned by A Future Not A Past reported that 47% of shoppers proceeded with their efforts to buy sex when given three cues that the seller was under eighteen. In Girls Like Us, Rachel Lloyd, founder and executive director of Girls Educational & Mentoring Services, and herself a survivor, describes her work with hundreds of adolescents like Aisha: One day she rolls up a leg of her sweat pants to show me the crude tattoo of her pimps name that hed handcarved into her inner thigh as he sat between her legs holding a gun to her head. Whether the person he buys is of age or not, the buyer is participating in a trade in which children, who are more vulnerable than adults, are being harvested for their bodies.
priced escorts does not change that power discrepancy, since (as described above) the crushing number of people selling themselves are women and girls who have been raped and otherwise sexually traumatized by men when they were younger. Those who seem to freely choose a life of prostitution do so against a backdrop of inequality. Men commit the great majority of violent crimes suffered by women. In addition, the advantage men have over women and children in terms of physical strength, financial means, and social status is an essential factor in an assessment of how voluntary the sellers choice really is. Males and females dont start out on an even playing field. Financially and psychologically, the ability to buy implies entitlement. Whether gender differences are grounded in socialization or biologically determined is irrelevant. They are real. Swedish and Norwegian Parliamentarians (among others) say that the trade in womens and girls bodies must be viewed from the perspective of pervasive and blatant male privilege. A society in which women held equal power to men would behave differently. Its no accident that headlines have outed Cisneros, Clinton, Edwards, Engles, Gingrich, Hart, Kennedy, Sanford, Spitzer, Schwarzenegger, Vitter, and Wiener. The New York Times article quoted above asserts, When it comes to scandal, girls wont be boys.
beating up his girlfriend or wife. That parallel is intentional: Sex buyers confirmed having committed significantly more sexually coercive acts against women (non-prostituting and prostituting women) than non-sex buyers. A large national sample examined by Monto and McRee, as well as other studies, show that men who use prostitutes have more frequently committed rape. As a group, these men are much more likely than non-buyers to commit many other crimes. In Farleys Boston research, almost three times as many buyers reported prior felony convictions compared to non-buyers. In almost every crime area, whether breaking and entering, shoplifting, disorderly conduct, or assault, the johns had committed significantly more offences. The discrepancy is so significant that Farley recommends that police regularly collect DNA samples from arrested men, and that they interrogate the men (instead of the victimized women and girls) for information regarding pimps and traffickers.
The drive to legalize prostitution is a misplaced effort driven in part by a small group of feminists correctly worried about the unjust stigma heaped on those who are selling. They make a valid point that laws and law enforcement should be transformed so that individual prostitutes receive care, not punishment. But rather than aiding prostituted women with regulations such as health check-ups, legal prostitution attracts illegal prostitution (such as with children), as traffickers recognize an environment where buying is acceptable. The mayor of Amsterdam has been gradually shutting down the red light district for exactly that reason. Canadian journalist Victor Malerek (The Johns) calls legalization harm reduction rather than harm elimination. Legalizing prostitution is a gift to Johns. It is an invitation to rape and will only exacerbate demand. It will not empower women, as the message that it will convey is It is okay to buy and sell the bodies of women. Prostitution according to Malarek is not a job opportunity or an occupation but a lifelong jail sentence.
acting out. In these and other situations, multiple interventions are possible. An astounding 88% of Boston buyers say they would be deterred by knowing that a letter would be sent to a family member if they were arrested. (In Sweden, where street prostitution is down 80%, a letter ordering the buyer to appear in court is sent to the man, but at his home address.) Other deterrents approximately as high are adding the person to a sex offender registry; putting his photo or name in the local newspaper, or on a billboard or the internet (although these public measures are disastrous to innocent wives and children); suspending his drivers license or impounding his car; imposing a higher fine or requiring community service. For those who frequently and regularly purchase others bodies, individual therapy and twelve-step programs for sex addicts can help men retrain their minds and restrain their actions. Members of Sex Addicts Anonymous poignantly explain: When we started attending SAA meetings we heard stories similar to ours and realized that recovery from our malady was possible. We learned through the SAA Fellowship that we were not hopelessly defective. In other words, the powerful urge to buy sex is a sickness that can be healed. In corroboration, in San Francisco, arrests and one or two day johns schools (designed by a survivor) have reduced recidivism by more than 40%.