Archive
An Answer To A Daring Defense
Ed Brayton published a post, those of you who’ve been following this have probably already read it, and in it he said:
And can we stop all this nonsense about “radical feminism”? There really is such a thing and it is embodied by folks like Andrea Dworkin, second wave feminists who are anti-sex, anti-porn, anti-prostitution. Does that really accurately describe pro-sex feminists like Ophelia, Stephanie, Jen, Greta and Rebecca? If you really think that Rebecca Watson or any of the others he names hates men, you cannot possibly have met them.
First of all, it’s not all about men, you know. Particularly not when you want to invoke the ‘not anti-porn or anti-prostitution’ defense. But, in more detail:
And can we stop all this nonsense about “radical feminism”?
No. Not just yet.
There really is such a thing and it is embodied by folks like Andrea Dworkin, second wave feminists who are anti-sex, anti-porn, anti-prostitution.
Um, Andrea Dworkin probably wouldn’t like you calling her anti-sex. The ‘anti-sex’ accusation is a gross oversimplification of complex critiques/analyses of sexual power dynamics.
Ed doesn’t seem to understand much about radical feminism. There is more to it than just having some sort of blatant ‘anti-porn, anti-prostitution’ stance. He doesn’t seem to understand that the ‘rape culture’ theory and the ‘patriarchy theory’ – in particular the way these concepts are talked about and used by his feminist friends these days – those theories are the foundations of much of the anti-porn and anti-prostitution positions and are radical feminist in origin.
Does that really accurately describe pro-sex feminists like Ophelia, Stephanie, Jen, Greta and Rebecca?”
Greta – is the most ‘not anti-prostitution’ of the bunch. She’s a former sex worker herself and she came out swinging during the Tasleema Nasrin sex slavery thing, but other than that she hasn’t written anything about sex work issues in a long time. What she does write isn’t really about the current policy issues, some that are urgent, that sex workers are trying to address. It’s ironic that Greta has ignored the end demand statutes considering I’ve read things from her that were very pro-client. She doesn’t seem to have noticed that clients are being criminalized all over the place. I’ve never even seen her tweet or even RT anything about any of the legislative battles that have been waged in regards to prostitution in recent years.
Jen – Well she wrote a post making fun of the anti-porn people once, so there’s that. And she once wrote a post about how Belle Du Jour turned out to be a – gasp – scientist. In that post Jen said her position on prostitution was that it should be ‘legalized, regulated, with background and std checks’ – which, um, ok, is technically ‘not anti-prostitution’ but it’s definitely not a ‘pro-sex worker’ stance. I’m not even sure who is supposed to be getting the background and std checks? The clients or the workers? I have a feeling she was thinking ‘the workers’ because that’s what everybody always says. It’s more the sort of stance that some MRAs have, actually. Her main concern though was that the whole Dr. Brooke Magnanti thing might reflect badly on other ‘women scientists’. Dr Magnanti, btw, is still out there fighting the actual anti-prostitution movement. As for Jen, other than those couple of posts I haven’t seen her do or say anything in reference to these issues.
Rebecca – She also has not actually said much of anything about these issues. She used to have those ‘bordello’ parties at conventions?… It was really just an appropriation of the prostitute identity, meanwhile she did nothing to raise awareness of sex work or ‘not anti-prostitution’ issues/stances, and she hasn’t since from what I’ve seen. I can only remember seeing one or two threads ever on skepchick about prostitution/porn and one I remember was about whether you can do that stuff and be a ‘feminist’, – nothing she’s ever written/published has addressed the real policy related issues. I’ve seen more on skepchick that helps the anti-prostitution positions actually…. Sure she did the pseudo-nude calendar thing, but has since learned the error of her ways and says she thinks that women should not do such things. She’s similar to Jen with boobquake here – basically, these women did something a tad risque and when people used it against them they turned tail and ran right over to the ‘I learned my lesson, other women who do such things just don’t understand the real risks!’ position.
Ophelia – Pretty sure she is actually anti-porn and anti-prostitution. She’s pretty slick about it, and I’ve never seen her blatantly admit it, but she’s said/written lots of things that add up to enough that it makes it clear to me. It’s too many things to even try to list. There was even a thread on the Atheism+ forum where people had noticed her ‘anti-sex positive feminism’ rhetoric. And she lets her commenters attack sex workers on her threads without ever seeming to notice or care. It’s ironic here because Ophelia herself seems very concerned about what other people allow on their own comment threads.
Stephanie – I tried to introduce a document about the problematic anti-trafficking legislation during a discussion of ‘gender feminist vs equity feminist solutions’ (I didn’t choose that terminology, mind you) on her blog and it was ignored. Stephanie has no interest in these issues and so when I finally got her attention she ends up basically telling me ‘gee criminalization doesn’t seem to help but this conversation isn’t really about that’ – even though the conversation actually was specifically about, and inviting, criticisms of ‘gender feminist solutions’. She might not think ‘criminalization’ makes things better but she, like everybody else, has not once written anything about the nitty-gritty-it’s-happening-now movement of further criminalization.
None of these women, or PZ, Ed or any of the rest them have done, said, written, tweeted, mentioned, or seemed to notice at all any of the ‘not anti-prostitution’ issues happening out there. None of them mentioned the International AIDS Conference or the sex worker protests that were happening, just as a small example, and that was huge news in the ‘not anti-prostitution’ circles I run in. It’s all so ironic considering the huge influence of religion in regards to these issues, and considering how much money religions make with the anti-porn anti-prostitution movements, and how they use that money to spread intolerance of all kinds across the globe. You’d think such dedicated ‘pro-sex feminists’ would care about these things.
Just saying, for people who want to use the “we’re not anti-prostitution” defense they sure don’t seem interested in speaking out against the actual anti-prostitution movement.
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ETA: Here’s a video I made a couple months ago covering some of the things I mentioned above:
Allowable Enterprises
There’s a piece about trafficking & backpage on Salon containing the quote:
“While the aim of FAIR Girls to rescue victims and stop the sex trafficking of young women is laudable, the devotion of significant resources to an ad campaign dedicated to a non-solution is unfortunate.”
To which this comment was posted in response:
“…non-solution…” I don’t agree that it’s a non-solution. It’s just one that Village Voice Media doesn’t want to make. If you knew that your enterprise allowed for children to be prostituted over and over again, you might want to consider going as far as shutting it down.
To which I say:
Criminalizing and stigmatizing prostitution IS the “enterprise” which allows for “children to be prostituted over and over again”, so perhaps we had best shut that down.
♥
Yikes
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I’m sure it’s not as bad as it looks.
I’m afraid to click any of the results.
I’m going to play the sims instead. I made a pretty house. I’ll take pictures and share! :)
Destroyers Of Gods
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We’ll never be free.
We are too strong a tool, too great a force. We are there in the beds, in the arms, in the heads – of all the worlds men, those most powerful men.
And we are tools of them all – but for sex least of all – more for the secrets we learn, the plans we know, told by men whose weaknesses we see laid bare, right before our naked eyes.
“Sex class” some may call us, but we are the control class, the tool class – and the CRIMINALIZED “institution of prostitution” – as they call it – is the toolshed keeping us all nicely ordered and ready for use.
If we are let out of the shed – to lead lives of our own – they lose their tools. Their most precious, most useful tools.
Everyone has a part – to keep the toolshed locked up tight, it’s the most important door in the world to keep locked. With no tools, they have nothing. They’ll never stop watching, won’t ever stop checking that the door is locked.
They keep us trapped, with no words to communicate the strength of our ‘empowerment’, and under attack the whole time, on all sides, from ‘friend’ and foe alike. Attacked by those who know our status as tool and want to keep it that way.
Their army is full of those who merely follow – who’ve been listening to lies that say we are better off in the shed – kept there forever – for our own good. If only those people would stop believing the lies… don’t they hear us?
Can’t they hear us yelling and screaming to be let out? Don’t they hear?
Can’t they smell the stench as our bodies die, and pile up in here, decaying in the fetid dark?
Stuck in this shed! Forgotten by history! No burial, no announcement, no respect. No headstone says Whore. Daughter, Wife, Mother, Whore. We loved them all.
But no.
Separate those women, the daughters, the wives, the mothers. The whores. They are not all the same – would that mother leave a daughter to rot in a shed? Likely not, but just a whore – she may – if we convince her that daughters and whores are never embodied together. They teach the difference between women and the tools of whore, just to make sure the tools stay locked.
Daughters are not whores, Wives are not whores, Mothers are not whores, Women are not whores. Only whores are whores, they teach.
And mothers and daughters and wives and all women still suffer as the whores suffer and they still ask why. Can’t they see – they are trapped in that shed too. We are all whores.
No they say. They say we must kill the whore within us, and be women, as women. Don’t they know that the whore lives in them? And the only way to eradicate ‘whore’, is to eradicate women?
They don’t believe, and they become the guards of the shed. Passing some tender thing in through the gap beneath the door, to hear us squeal with delight at the pittance. The guard feels righteous and kind for giving tender things to the whores who are trapped in the shed. But still, the guard guards, and still we want to be free.
Won’t the guard believe? Won’t they ever believe? Will they wait until it’s too late like so many others before, who finally saw, only too late? Once the strength is gone from their body and the numbers have gone from their ranks, seeing what’s true doesn’t matter, when there’s little strength left to fight.
And by then, a new army of the young is positioned outside the door of the shed – and who has the strength to fight an army of youth? Pitiful few old whores, that’s who.
We are the eternal scapegoat – the blame tool – destroyers of reputations, of careers, of states, of nations, of worlds, of gods.
Why on earth would they ever let us out?
Presbyterians ♥ Whores
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In the beginning:
God of compassion: your Son Jesus showed mercy to a woman condemned by harsh judgment, and gave her life. We pray for prostitutes, who are victims of lovelessness, or of a craving to be loved. Keep us from easy blame or cruel dismissal. May our church seek them out, and show such genuine friendship and true grace that they may know your welcome, and live among us, as sisters of Jesus Christ our Lord.
God? Could you maybe deliver them to understanding and acceptance instead? Because otherwise I will be easily blaming and crueling dismissing these people just as they do to others
And a little later:
With the advent of a new millennium and this report, the writing team thought it was important to begin asking questions about certain male behaviors: Why do men rape? Why do men frequent prostituted women? Why do men beat their wives and lovers? Why do men incest their daughters and granddaughters? Why do men urinate in public? There is one answer to all of these questions: Because they can. Even though all of these behaviors have been deemed criminal by our society, they are epidemic.
Of course! Because they can. And everyday that the fine upstanding Presbyterians manage to resist raping, incesting, beating, and urinating in public is a day that they get to feel superior to all those other less godly men who can’t manage to control themselves. Just in case you were wondering why other men support these bullshit lies – it’s so they can feel like paragons of self control for not raping women all the time like those unsaved non-christians do. It’s only the power of GOD that stops them from raping every woman they see. Let’s hope presby dudes don’t lose their faith, or it’ll be rape madness all over.
And what’s with the study from half a century ago?
Then further on:
Invite your friends to join you in taking the Prostitution Test (Appendix A). Find out what you already know and what you need to learn about prostitution and prostituted women.
Remember it takes two to “turn a trick.” Don’t blame the victim. Engage in conversation about the role of men in prostitution and sexual exploitation, not only as pimps, but also as clientele. Why do men frequent prostitutes? Why do men rape? Why do men commit incest? Why do men batter their wives and lovers? Why do men urinate in public? It is a form of exhibitionism.
You already asked me those questions, you penis obsessed pervert. And I already took your offensive test, fuckwit. And thanks for telling me to “know what I believe”, but I really don’t need a list from church to tell me that. Only moral inferiors need lists to tell them what to believe.
Know What You Believe
Establish for yourself and your congregation a list of your core beliefs about prostitution and sexual exploitation. The following list is from “Pornography: Far from the Song of Songs,” but there are others you can add:
• God is the source of human dignity;
• There is equal dignity of women and men as being created in the image of God;
• Human beings were created with the possibility for the ultimate acts of celebration and joy in sexuality;
• God calls human beings to positive expressions of mutual affirmation and commitment, especially as typified in the calling to faithful, respectful marital and family relationships;
• The historic pattern of dominance and subjugation in human relationships is a distortion of God’s intended creation;
• God’s gift of sexual pleasure is fulfilled in acts of human love and mutual respect;
• God demands sexual responsibility, balancing love for the self and love for the other;
• God calls us to promote the dignity of all persons and to confront the circumstances in society that negate the integrity of human life;
• Christians are called to model the covenantal, compassionate community;
• The love of Jesus Christ is the Good News, (and brings) empowerment to a world filled with conflict, alienation, and fear.
Would it be impolite, or improper of me to ask people if they are pushing a religious agenda when they talk about “dignity” and use those other buzz words we hear all the time? Because it seems like maybe it’s sort of impolite for these moralist shitfucks to go around trying to turn us all into sisters of Jesus, especially since they are doing it for the glory of a god I don’t believe in at all. I’d really like to start calling them out on what I know is their real agenda.
Can I try to force them to smoke weed and sleep around, and conform to my personal faith? No, probably not…
I’m getting pretty goddamned sick of this murderous religious persecution that is being committed against sex workers with decency laws trussed up as anti-trafficking efforts.
And I’m getting pretty goddamned sick of the psychological warfare being waged on sexually liberated women of all feminist persuations by rape prevention scare campaigns that have convinced a generation of young women that they are LUCKY to find a man who isn’t a rapist.
Rational Thinking Skeptics
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I’m reading through a thread over on the Dawkins forum with the title “Why Is Feminism Still Important?” There’s 52 pages in the thread, – wait – no, I was wrong, there are actually 252 pages because the threads cut off at 100 pages (1000 posts) and the mods continued it. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
The whole thing is incredibly disheartening. I’m not at all surprised though, these days I expect to be disheartened. I’ve gotten used to people who think of themselves as critical, skeptical and rational thinkers being the most ignorant about what is actually going on in feminism. Well, it’s a toss-up between the skeptics and the conspiracy theorists as to who is more obtuse. I mean, everyone is just a friggin ridiculously wrong about what is going on, but I’d have expected the skeptics and conspirators to have been paying at least a little bit of attention and to have bothered to research a thing or two.
Parts of the thread are like feminism 099, as opposed to feminism 101, with the conversation focused on the typical “men vs. women” thing. Most of the guys are whining about how they never got a break and they are white males, so feminism is totally wrong; and the women are whining about how the guys just don’t understand that white males are the standard against which other people are measured. Lots of custody talk, divorce talk, privilege talk, and basic shit like that. Of course I didn’t read every post – maybe about 400 posts, 40 pages of skipping around in the different threads, so maybe there was some exciting discussion that I missed.
It’s so fucking annoying the way pop feminism rants about how the “white male” is considered the end all and the be all, and they complain about how that has to stop, and yet THEY can’t fucking shut up about it. 90% of the conversations I read are the same old shit, where feminists sit around and talk about what men think of them: do men hate women? do they wanna fuck us all? do they wanna rape us? do they wanna make us be strippers? do they wanna sex traffick us? why do men say they like sluts and not nice girls like us? why do men watch porn? why do men cheat? blah blah blah on and on.
Ugh. And I’m a feminist who sticks up for men a lot of the time – I mean, I know what happens. Shit. Tiger Woods’ situation was clear evidence of the favoritism given to women when it comes to domestic violence – it was sickening to see so many people say that IF he cheated, and IF he was attacked, then he deserved it. That doesn’t mean I don’t get sick of feminism always being talked about in terms of what it’s done “to men” and “for women”.
But, the problem is that lots of folks think these feminists are actually misandrists when they aren’t – though they cultivate that image, they do it to obscure the actual goal of roping everyone into religiously defined “Dignified Living”. Yes religion, it’s not hard to find their blogs, where they spell god as g-d, or where they talk about the new liberal church they just switched to… though, yeah, not everyone who spells g-d, and not everyone who goes to church is the same way…
Consider Woods again – he cheated, therefore he is hated. The women he cheated with – if feminists actually favor women as a group – those women wouldn’t have been vilified the way they were. Maybe some people think those women are favored because they hear feminists doing the victim talk thing, where the “other women” seem to get a pass and excuses given for their behavior.
People who don’t understand that it’s insulting to have people assume you have no free will, or were trained to be a “thing for sex” – well those people are usually considered mentally unstable in some way – according to the statistics most of them were brainwashed with religion starting at a very young age, and they are forever scarred and damaged by it. It’s not their fault, I don’t blame them, I blame their parents for not loving them enough, and for society thinking of them as trash.
The typical feminism-ignorant non-feminist hears a limited range of stuff when issues like the Woods situation get talked about. From what I can tell, they see only two parties – the men, and the women, and they don’t see the difference between the cheated on wife and the ‘other woman’ and they discount or overlook the way women think about other women. In one circumstance they will point out the woman v. woman situation, for example they will come right out and say that they think women tend to be jealous in this way or that way, but put those same jealous women into the larger feminist theories – and all of a sudden we are sisters in feminism thinking with a hive mind. OH YEAH! I saw this video the other day and it’s sort of an example of what I mean. If you click that text link It should be geared up to the right spot where they guy is talking about Catharine MacKinnon and says: “I know it’s clients that your judging, I know it’s not prostitutes – you LOVE prostitutes because you want them to put their clients in jail after they take their money, isn’t that what the Swedish Model is?” – or you can watch the whole thing embedded below – the part I’m talking about is at 5:40…
I don’t know who that guy is – probably someone diametrically opposed to everything I support or something, but he had a video up looking for MacKinnon quotes, and I’m what they call “flush” with MacKinnon Quotes, so I started watching and left a couple quotes, and then I heard the ‘you love the prostitutes’ line and my heart broke a little bit.
But that’s the same sort of thing that always happens – the prostitute is lumped in with MacKinnon who tells everyone that she speaks for “prostituted people” – and it’s such bullshit. Such total bullshit.
Status Quotients
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First off, I’m doing some upgrading (i.e. breaking what actually works) on my computer this week, so if I seem absent, that’s where I’ve absented to. If I ever get finished fixing the stuff I broke for no good reason at all whatsoever, I’m planning to come and fix-up ruin a bunch of stuff here on/in my theme and categories and pages and stuff. I got all sorts of plans for organizing things in the most perfect way. I’m menstruating (mark your calenders!) and am experiencing the delusions of grandeur super-genius side effect of menstruation that all us women, of course, experience. In my case it was helpfully accompanied by, as usual, the “irrationally enraged emotional breakdown” side effect that insures I will be left alone to be the delusional person super-genius that my hormonal fluctuations enable.
Other than that, I’ve been reading about the “settlement movement” which was, from what I’ve read so far, made popular by Jane Addams who founded Hull House in Chicago. At some point the other day I came across in my readings the mention of “The Two Miseries”, and came to learn Jane Addams said that one misery was the plight of the poor, and the other misery was the plight of privileged college-educated girls who were bored and/or sad but mostly feeling useless. Apparently the perfect solution was to let the college girls use the help the poor in order to lessen their malaise.
A primary concern of Addams was the young immigrant women that she saw as prone to exploitation as well as easily tricked and trapped into lives of prostitution due to their unfamiliarity with US custom, procedure, and language. Yeah, it’s that status quo, the one where privileged women turn into Nightmare Nannies for all the poor unfortunates of lesser breeding. Addams wrote a book titled A New Conscience and An Ancient Evil, which so far sounds like an olde timey version of Kathleen Barry’s Female Sexual Slavery, or pretty much anything written by Catharine MacKinnon. For instance:
It is easy to see why it thus becomes part of the business to break down a girl’s moral nature by all those horrible devices which are constantly used by the owner of a white slave. Because life is so often shortened for these wretched girls, their owners degrade them morally as quickly as possible, lest death release them before their full profit has been secured. In addition to the quantity of sacrificed virtue, to the bulk of impotent suffering, which these white slaves represent, our civilization becomes permanently tainted with the vicious practices designed to accelerate the demoralization of unwilling victims in order to make them commercially valuable. Moreover, a girl thus rendered more useful to her owner, will thereafter fail to touch either the chivalry of men or the tenderness of women because good men and women have become convinced of her innate degeneracy, a word we have learned to use with the unction formerly placed upon original sin. The very revolt of society against such girls is used by their owners as a protection to the business.
Deja Boo.
So, just saying, again, nothing radical or even remotely “groundbreaking” or “status quo busting” about anything the anti-prostitution crowd says, not to mention Addams, like MacKinnon, like ALL of them – was influenced by the writings of men. So, not only is it not status quo busting and not at all new or radical either, it’s not even original thought from any of these women. Prostitutes at least haven’t been brainwashed the way those types have been, by seminary education straight outta patriarchy that says a woman‘s dignity is in her vagina enjoys sex best when committed to a particular individual.
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Also, Look! at all the neat-o stuff I’m “reading”; I just discovered that I can put google books on a google shelf for google reading a little google later when I have more google time.
Worst Illusion Ever
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This David Copperfield shit. Just WHAT THE FUCK!
Sure seems to me like somebody just framed this woman for prostitution in order to get the rape charges against David Copperfield dropped.
I don’t know if Copperfield raped her, or if she lied, or what… but the fucked up reportage of this incident is enough to piss me the fuck off. And ya know, I quote this shit, and then want to bold it to point out the egregious parts, but all of it is egregious!
Read more…
“Statement Of Probable Cause”
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This is disgusting and outrageous and has little to nothing to do with David Copperfield:
Read more…
I Like This Lady
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This is a couple of minutes cut out of the Day 2 link on this page If you’re so inclined, this particular discussion starts @ 155:18. – yep that’s 155 minutes in. It was frustrating to listen to, especially when another woman said that it sounded like she was, in a way, re-objectifying or re-victimizing the trafficked women. Argh.
Police State DNA Collection
This is what they need to do for everyone, then they can start concentrating on what matters most – corpse identification.
And we sink further and further into the police state: where the police aren’t there to PROTECT us, but instead are there to PUNISH us on behalf of the state.
DALLAS – Prostitutes in Dallas can soon submit their DNA to a database in case they become victims of violent crime.
Dallas police Lt. Christina Smith said the collection could start soon after the next roundup of area prostitutes area in three weeks.
Dallas police and other local authorities have garnered national attention for their prostitution diversion initiative, which rounds up prostitutes in the area and gives them the option of rehabilitation instead of jail time.
Prostitutes would submit DNA samples voluntarily.
Dallas police say prostitutes are much more likely to be victims of violent crimes than the general public. The new DNA database would help identify prostitutes whose bodies might turn up at a crime scene.
Maythia Hicks, who spent 20 years as a prostitute, said the dangers of prostitution are rampant.
“It’s a big problem because you never know what you’re going to run across out there,” Hicks said. “You’ve got crazy people out there.”
Celebrate Human Trafficking (awareness) Month! (in san francisco?)
Yesterday was “Human Trafficking Awareness DAY” – and I was totally unawares. I’m calling it political protest – take that! you awareness pushing theocrats! I will be unaware! Just try and stop me, you fuckers!
Interesting. Timely.
And a bit of deja vu too. Katie Roiphe, Mary Daly – what do these two women have in common BESIDES both being mentioned one atop the other on several blogs over the past couple days?
Here’s a clue:
Picking On Religion Again
Quick thoughts.
Why do so many people use the “can you cite that?” crap when it’s already been expressly explained in derailing for dummies that such simple research is something people should do for themselves.
That so many people were unaware of Mary Daly’s transhate is shameful. I didn’t read her books, but I fucking went and searched out parts of it to read, and I found RIGHT AWAY that there was a problem. It wasn’t hidden, all it takes is googling ”Mary Daly”.
Starting The New Year With Understanding
I talk about trafficking a lot here, and I thought it would be a good idea to review exactly what “trafficking” is. Usually, trafficking is considered to be 2 seperate things: sex or labor trafficking, but there are actually 3 different types of trafficking covered under 2 separate headings:
Regular old “Sex Trafficking”
and:
“Severe Trafficking” which includes:
a) severe sex trafficking; and
b) labor trafficking
The actual definitions are explained on page 1529 of this pdf of TITLE 22 (TITLE 22 is unironically the legal code for: ”FOREIGN RELATIONS AND INTERCOURSE” yeah- intercourse!); here is the part about Labor Trafficking, which is covered under part (B) of the severe trafficking definition:
(8) Severe forms of trafficking in persons
The term “severe forms of trafficking in persons” means—
(A) (snip – covered below)
(B) the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.
Even without all the specific terms crowding it up, the definition of “labor trafficking” is pretty clear. Sex trafficking though is broken up into 2 different types of trafficking, regular sex trafficking and severe sex trafficking. Here are the definitions:
(9) Sex trafficking
The term “sex trafficking” means the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act.
(8) Severe forms of trafficking in persons
The term “severe forms of trafficking in persons” means—
(A) sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age; or
(B) (snip – covered above)
You probably already notice that there is a crucial difference between these two definitions of sex trafficking. Only “severe” sex trafficking requires the trafficked person to have been forced or defrauded or coerced in some way. The non-severe sex trafficking, or just plain “Sex Trafficking” – requires no force or trickery or pressure of any kind, all it requires is that there be a “commercial sex act” involved. Recruitment, Harboring, Transportation, Provision, Obtaining – none of those words convey force or fraud in any way. Perhaps “recruitment” could have a shade of “coercion” in it, but if they meant it to cover “coercion” they would have worded it that way.
The term “commercial sex act” also has a definition provided in US Code:
Commercial sex act
The term “commercial sex act” means – any sex act on account of which anything of value is given to or received by any person.
That is the entire definition, there is no clarification of what is considered to be of “value” at all. What is of “value” is left up to the police, task forces, and prosecutors to decide. Do you trust your local police that much? Your local prosecutors? Your local lawmakers? I sure as hell don’t.
Short Answers
Ok, I got a thought-provoking comment the other day, well a couple of them actually, but this particular comment had some questions I’ve attempted to answer, here’s question 1:
How does one effect change in the organizations that perpetuate the problem that you are describing? (to paraphrase: the problem of conflating trafficking with prostitution and prostitution with being an inherent victim of rape-culture type systemic oppression)
Short answers are (yes omg, this IS the short version!) –
Read more…
Shameful
Does anyone EVER read this stuff?
Jesus Fuck. Does anyone EVER read this stuff? Do they even read the articles about the reports? I can’t believe this crap.
This report about The Commercial Sexual Exploitation Of American Indian Women And Girls In Minnesota that everyone is Oh My!ing and Isn’t It Sad!ing about is seriously vile.
Christmas Is Special Because Of Jesus!!
