Caring About Sexual Slavery
Suki (star girl)
November 18, 2006
Last year this time I wrote a letter to Glamour magazine about its Women of the Year issue, commending the editors for including a raped woman on the list, and suggesting that next year they include a ‘typical’ prostitute. If you take all the for-sale females in the world, and extract a typical profile, it would probably look like this: she is 15-years-old; she was sold by her parents around age 12; she now has AIDS; she is held in debt-bondage; she is controlled by a pimp.
Glamour came through in its current (Dec.2006) issue, at least part way. Somaly Mam is profiled (p. 255). A former sex slave in Cambodia who was sold by her parents, Somaly now runs a center to help girls and children escape from sexual slavery. According to the Glamour story, during her time in the brothels, Somaly saw other girls caged and beaten. When she saw her best friend killed by a pimp, she was inspired to escape and help others. Somaly tries to give the girls she rescues, many of whom have AIDS, a lot of love. She says she tries to “help them heal, physically and emotionally” (p. 255). One big difficulty she faces, in all her compassion, is that brothel owners threaten her life daily.
I want to pair this up with another recent article, by NY Times columnist Bob Herbert, in which he asks why outrageous acts aren’t receiving the outrage they deserve. Herbert concentrates on the massive violence toward women, sexual and otherwise, that is simply a part of everyday life all over the planet: bride-burning, trafficking, ritualized gang rape, women beaten as a matter of course in societies where this is still the norm for controlling them, etc.
I wrote this response to him:
Mr. Herbert, look on your own doorstep for the reason why outrageous acts stir little outrage. Lack of media coverage. You yourself write for a paper that devotes little space to these issues. A few brothel columns every once in a while by Kristof and a few lines by you and an occasional comment on a rape in Darfur—and that’s about it. Not even any mention that the women of that country are genitally mutilated, so rape is even more devastating to them: apparently the male perspective of the NY Times does not consider the abomination called FGM worthy of note.
Kristof is admirable in that he at least pays compassionate attention to the trafficking/sexual slavery issue, but I wonder why he is the only one of your columnists actually engaged in an ongoing attempt to educate the world about the miseries of brothel life, given the scope of the problem. (Some think that the sex trade now exceeds the drug trade in profits for mafias in Asia and Eastern Europe and for transnational gangs worldwide.)
I am a professional writer and I have submitted numerous Op-Ed’s on many aspects of sexual violence/trafficking/prostitution to the NY Times. Not one printed. Your Op-Ed section should have a sign on it—‘For Men Only’—since I never can find female voices raised in alarm, or anger or passion, in that space.”
That said, to Mr. Herbert, I am grateful to him for at least devoting a column to the violence (sexual and otherwise) against women that is a pandemic, not just an epidemic, across the globe. (Many of my other articles detail this problem, and its many facets, so I don’t need to pause to give examples here.)
Glamour could have gone still farther and made one of the trafficked, one of the still sexually enslaved, a part of its pantheon of influential women. I see this trafficked/raped/enslaved being as even more admirable than activists, or concerned women politicians, or businesswomen with power because she is surviving, without power. She is enduring the deepest humiliation and pain that can be inflicted on our bodies as women: ongoing serial rape, day after day. And she is surviving.
With not much help from the rest of us. That is my point in pairing up these two pieces from very different sources, Glamour and the NY Times. Where’s the rest of us? Why aren’t women’s voices all over the world raised, in outrage, with passion, with deep anger, over this abomination called prostitution (sexual slavery, trafficking, they are all the same). And men’s, too (those of them who aren’t customers of the enslaved).
I’d like to see a Million-Woman March on Washington (and London, and Paris, and Bangkok, and Las Vegas, one of the major sex-for-sale centers in the US). No, a Ten-Million Woman March. (And let’s add Manila and New York and Berlin and Amsterdam, and all other trafficking destinations. And let’s invite caring men to join us.)
Glamour’s biggest Woman of the Year was Sandra Bullock. She received a lot more space than little Somaly Mam. That’s understandable. Bullock’s a big celebrity and little Somaly is barely known. And how many Glamour readers actually want a long article detailing the miseries of the sex trade for children and girls sold into it in depressing, poor countries like Cambodia. They’d rather read about Bullock telling little girls they can do anything if they try. (The problem is, if you’re in a brothel bed, you really can’t. Being raped all day makes it tough to become an actress, or a writer, or even a barista at Starbuck’s. There is not much left, physically or psychologically, to try with. And mostly, even if you escape, you’re going to be battling severe PTSD and AIDS for the rest of your life. Not much recipe for inspirational maxims and success stories here. Sadly, for every Somaly Mam who escapes, there are thousands who will die in their brothel beds. )
Glamour, after all, is a sanctuary. We women know we won’t be raped in its pages. It gives us privileged few of the world a place where our sexuality is celebrated and reveled in, not degraded through rape, sexual slavery, prostitution. Where would we go for sexual sanctuary if this magazine detailed the harsh sexual reality outside of its safe boundaries? It is too difficult—to really know what happened to Somaly’s child body in that brothel.
I think that the Fabled Pages of Angel Space called the Victoria’s Secret Catalogue performs the same function—sexual sanctuary in a hard world. There girls can revel in being outrageously provocative, without punishment. No one is going to rape these thonged girls, with their shining, taut, naked expanses of tummy (and bellybutton), for flaunting cleavage, and rounded buttocks.
It is a beautiful fantasy, and one we women all need—sexual freedom without fear of punishment for taking the license of our own sensuality. No “she deserved it because she dressed so shamelessly” in this sacred, innocent catalogue space.
But I think there is a way that the glamourous world of the safe, pampered woman can interact with the wretched space of the sexually enslaved one. Activists like Bullock, and Charlize Theron and Susan Sarandon and Angelina Jolie, could all get together, in one big powerful group, and go into brothels enslaving women, girls, and children (whether in Cambodia, or India, or in Europe or the US) and publicize the wretchedness of their inmates. And, of course, physically, take those girls out of there. (I wonder why Jolie has not done this yet in Cambodia since she has adopted that place as her second home. I also wonder why she did not adopt a girl child there, to keep her out of sexual slavery, when she adopted her son.)
These celebrity women have the power to do all this because they are so high profile. I would also like to see every high-profile woman politician (Hilary Clinton and Condi Rice, for example) do the same. On their political trips abroad, they could greatly serve the cause of suffering women, girls, and children if they visited red-light districts and our major media (like CNN, the NY Times) gave full coverage to this. Show the conditions under which the women work. And then take them out of there, set up sanctuaries for them….
This is not a radical idea. It simply makes humane commonsense to me. I wonder that women in power in the world (actresses, political leaders) have not thought of it before.
Even we ordinary, low-profile women could do so much—if we all united, with the celebrities and politicians. Just imagine, all of us, marching by the millions on Washington and Paris and London and Bangkok. Marching, and taking all those girls out of sexual slavery. And marching and marching and marching--until all the brothel beds are empty.
Glamour came through in its current (Dec.2006) issue, at least part way. Somaly Mam is profiled (p. 255). A former sex slave in Cambodia who was sold by her parents, Somaly now runs a center to help girls and children escape from sexual slavery. According to the Glamour story, during her time in the brothels, Somaly saw other girls caged and beaten. When she saw her best friend killed by a pimp, she was inspired to escape and help others. Somaly tries to give the girls she rescues, many of whom have AIDS, a lot of love. She says she tries to “help them heal, physically and emotionally” (p. 255). One big difficulty she faces, in all her compassion, is that brothel owners threaten her life daily.
I want to pair this up with another recent article, by NY Times columnist Bob Herbert, in which he asks why outrageous acts aren’t receiving the outrage they deserve. Herbert concentrates on the massive violence toward women, sexual and otherwise, that is simply a part of everyday life all over the planet: bride-burning, trafficking, ritualized gang rape, women beaten as a matter of course in societies where this is still the norm for controlling them, etc.
I wrote this response to him:
Mr. Herbert, look on your own doorstep for the reason why outrageous acts stir little outrage. Lack of media coverage. You yourself write for a paper that devotes little space to these issues. A few brothel columns every once in a while by Kristof and a few lines by you and an occasional comment on a rape in Darfur—and that’s about it. Not even any mention that the women of that country are genitally mutilated, so rape is even more devastating to them: apparently the male perspective of the NY Times does not consider the abomination called FGM worthy of note.
Kristof is admirable in that he at least pays compassionate attention to the trafficking/sexual slavery issue, but I wonder why he is the only one of your columnists actually engaged in an ongoing attempt to educate the world about the miseries of brothel life, given the scope of the problem. (Some think that the sex trade now exceeds the drug trade in profits for mafias in Asia and Eastern Europe and for transnational gangs worldwide.)
I am a professional writer and I have submitted numerous Op-Ed’s on many aspects of sexual violence/trafficking/prostitution to the NY Times. Not one printed. Your Op-Ed section should have a sign on it—‘For Men Only’—since I never can find female voices raised in alarm, or anger or passion, in that space.”
That said, to Mr. Herbert, I am grateful to him for at least devoting a column to the violence (sexual and otherwise) against women that is a pandemic, not just an epidemic, across the globe. (Many of my other articles detail this problem, and its many facets, so I don’t need to pause to give examples here.)
Glamour could have gone still farther and made one of the trafficked, one of the still sexually enslaved, a part of its pantheon of influential women. I see this trafficked/raped/enslaved being as even more admirable than activists, or concerned women politicians, or businesswomen with power because she is surviving, without power. She is enduring the deepest humiliation and pain that can be inflicted on our bodies as women: ongoing serial rape, day after day. And she is surviving.
With not much help from the rest of us. That is my point in pairing up these two pieces from very different sources, Glamour and the NY Times. Where’s the rest of us? Why aren’t women’s voices all over the world raised, in outrage, with passion, with deep anger, over this abomination called prostitution (sexual slavery, trafficking, they are all the same). And men’s, too (those of them who aren’t customers of the enslaved).
I’d like to see a Million-Woman March on Washington (and London, and Paris, and Bangkok, and Las Vegas, one of the major sex-for-sale centers in the US). No, a Ten-Million Woman March. (And let’s add Manila and New York and Berlin and Amsterdam, and all other trafficking destinations. And let’s invite caring men to join us.)
Glamour’s biggest Woman of the Year was Sandra Bullock. She received a lot more space than little Somaly Mam. That’s understandable. Bullock’s a big celebrity and little Somaly is barely known. And how many Glamour readers actually want a long article detailing the miseries of the sex trade for children and girls sold into it in depressing, poor countries like Cambodia. They’d rather read about Bullock telling little girls they can do anything if they try. (The problem is, if you’re in a brothel bed, you really can’t. Being raped all day makes it tough to become an actress, or a writer, or even a barista at Starbuck’s. There is not much left, physically or psychologically, to try with. And mostly, even if you escape, you’re going to be battling severe PTSD and AIDS for the rest of your life. Not much recipe for inspirational maxims and success stories here. Sadly, for every Somaly Mam who escapes, there are thousands who will die in their brothel beds. )
Glamour, after all, is a sanctuary. We women know we won’t be raped in its pages. It gives us privileged few of the world a place where our sexuality is celebrated and reveled in, not degraded through rape, sexual slavery, prostitution. Where would we go for sexual sanctuary if this magazine detailed the harsh sexual reality outside of its safe boundaries? It is too difficult—to really know what happened to Somaly’s child body in that brothel.
I think that the Fabled Pages of Angel Space called the Victoria’s Secret Catalogue performs the same function—sexual sanctuary in a hard world. There girls can revel in being outrageously provocative, without punishment. No one is going to rape these thonged girls, with their shining, taut, naked expanses of tummy (and bellybutton), for flaunting cleavage, and rounded buttocks.
It is a beautiful fantasy, and one we women all need—sexual freedom without fear of punishment for taking the license of our own sensuality. No “she deserved it because she dressed so shamelessly” in this sacred, innocent catalogue space.
But I think there is a way that the glamourous world of the safe, pampered woman can interact with the wretched space of the sexually enslaved one. Activists like Bullock, and Charlize Theron and Susan Sarandon and Angelina Jolie, could all get together, in one big powerful group, and go into brothels enslaving women, girls, and children (whether in Cambodia, or India, or in Europe or the US) and publicize the wretchedness of their inmates. And, of course, physically, take those girls out of there. (I wonder why Jolie has not done this yet in Cambodia since she has adopted that place as her second home. I also wonder why she did not adopt a girl child there, to keep her out of sexual slavery, when she adopted her son.)
These celebrity women have the power to do all this because they are so high profile. I would also like to see every high-profile woman politician (Hilary Clinton and Condi Rice, for example) do the same. On their political trips abroad, they could greatly serve the cause of suffering women, girls, and children if they visited red-light districts and our major media (like CNN, the NY Times) gave full coverage to this. Show the conditions under which the women work. And then take them out of there, set up sanctuaries for them….
This is not a radical idea. It simply makes humane commonsense to me. I wonder that women in power in the world (actresses, political leaders) have not thought of it before.
Even we ordinary, low-profile women could do so much—if we all united, with the celebrities and politicians. Just imagine, all of us, marching by the millions on Washington and Paris and London and Bangkok. Marching, and taking all those girls out of sexual slavery. And marching and marching and marching--until all the brothel beds are empty.