This comment was from Erin on the post “Why Your Daughter May Be the Most Popular Drug on the Street“
Wellokaythen, I do agree with you that not all prostitutes are simple innocent victims. I do agree with you that there is a far larger story. I’m not claiming that all prostitutes have a heart of gold. But there is clearly a certain amount of women that end up in prostitution because of a disparity in power. A disparity that men certainly hold if we look at who is being sold and who is doing the selling.
To be fair, I do think men that grow up in a certain environment can be victims of that environment and how they were treated as well. They can both be victims and perpetrators of crime. I don’t think any boy grows up wanting to be a pimp unless he is severely diluted about the business in it’s glorification. But the difference is that we don’t usually see men becoming the prostitutes and the women becoming the pimps. There are cases where women will sell other women, but it’s not by far the majority. And even fewer yet do we ever hear of women selling men. In such circumstances, it appears men turn to selling women and women in turn are the market profit object. It appears that men are more willing to sell women then women are in selling men. Both genders that end up in such circumstances are partly victims of the life they found themselves in. There is no denying that. But there is also a disparity of power in the whole prostitute/pimp dynamic that we aren’t recognizing or talking about.
This doesn’t even begin to touch on how pop culture glorifies the pimp/ho dynamic. As if it’s something funny that a man has “hos”. He’s “big pimpin”, he’s the “man”. She’s simply the “ho”. The “bitch”. The “slut”. It’s funny right? Parts of our culture seem to think it is.
I however will say that when it comes to underaged girls and boys, then you have a whole other layer that infact is about preying on those that are less worldly and that are more weak. They do not have the resources to be on the same level as a grown adult that introduces them to a world of prostitution that knows the ins and outs and knows how to manipulate those more weak.
You claim the article’s approach to talking about the issue is to treat women like they are stray pets. Show me an example of that in the article. I never once thought the article was insinuating that the women in these situations where close to “pets”. And I find attempting to relate that to the situation more damaging then anything the article has stood for. It seems that any mention of situations that target young girls or women becomes a target for how coddled women are. And it just leaves me shaking my head.
I was lucky. I was raised in a lovely home with a middle class family with two parents that loved me. But despite how lucky I was in this, I was hardly ever “coddled” just because I am female. No one gets out of this world unscathed. And I personally resent the anger directed to women in general anytime an issue is brought up that does appear to be a gender issue. That any specific mention of young girls and women is a dirth on their sole. So much to the extent that they are actually bitter that anyone would even want to bring light to an issue that does infact happen. I just don’t get it. I get not being interested in a certain topic. I suspect many men and women don’t care about the sex trade. But I don’t get actual anger and bitterness for the issue being talked about. I also think women are much more targeted to degradement and objectification then men are. There are things you can do and say to women in a lot of popular male sexual media that you could never do to someone based on their race or religion.
Look at DavieByron’s response. Why is he even reading this article if he doesn’t think it happens? He takes this as an opportunity to use emotionally charged words like “hysteria” in an attempt to degrade the importance of the issue being talked about. Highly emotional words can be used both ways, to support a cause or to debase it. And attempting to attach the word “hysteria” to an issue that does infact prove to be real, is an attempt to debase the cause. Now if you don’t care about human sex slavery, that’s one thing. But it’s not that he doesn’t seem to care so much as he has actual anger and disappointment that it’s an issue that’s being addressed. Because of an idea that women are pandered to. And that’s just strange to me. Because even as a middle class white woman, I don’t live in a world that panders to me. I got my own battles to face just like men do.
It’s so strange to me that people will believe the worst can come out of any situations. But strangely, when it comes to sex, people want to ignore the negative things that can come from. Porn addiction? It’s impossible for someone to be addicted to porn! Sex addiction? Noooooo, people don’t have sex addiction in our culture. They only have every other imaginable addictions. A person can be addicted to Facebook, drugs, drink..we have a country of morbidly obese people and people in debt that can’t even afford the homes they knowingly bought. But sex? noooo, there couldn’t possibly be anything that happens with sex within our culture. I actually think that sex is probably the biggest driving force of dysfunction in our society. But because we in general have a hard time talking about it, even the good aspects of it, we can’t even seem to address the negative ones. Such as the reality that human sex trafficking does happen. Now if you want to call an honest discussion about something even law enforcement officials will tell you happens, “hysterical”. You can. But to me, it’s just a ploy to undermine the situation just because certain people don’t like the idea of women being protected or helped in society because of what certain men have called a “dysfunctional” of society for protecting women.
By the way David, this part is partly to you, it clearly isn’t just “white slavery”. It’s plain “human” slavery. This happens in every country in the world. More so in third world countries that have less respect for women and children (yes young boys included in that) then other places where there are more freedoms and education for women and children. These type of women, among having less education, have less financial prospects compared to American women (who even then can get into those kind of situations.) Although if you really read anything about the topic of human slavery, you would see that it nothing like a “UFO”. That it’s been logically identified as something that happens. And that it’s a big part of organized crime. But that rather makes sense to me. Why would organized crime stop at laundering money and drugs to make money? They wouldn’t. And relating this situation to something tangible, something we all are all familiar with, such as drugs, to something like the sex trade that most of us are less familiar with, seems to be an apt way to make this issue more real. Much more so then any commentary on a comparison between drugs and women turning women into objects. It’s funny to me how all the sudden a few men here are worried about turning women into objects within the comparison of drugs and how they are peddled. But I doubt many men are thinking about that when they undoubtedly click on their favorite porn site for a few minutes to relieve themselves. Finally, we have men that are worried about comparisons of women being turned into objects. But it’s only because of a core dissatisfaction with the topic at hand. Where is that level of dissatisfaction for how women are objectified everyday?”
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photo: alessandro_isnotaurelio / flickr
@Erin: the main problem I have as a man on the topic of prostitution it that just about everyone except MRA and other men (like this site) takes about prostitution is that ONLY girls and women are in the sex trade. As others have pointed out the data says this is wrong. I will try an analogy , “Breast Cancer”. We know from the data that some men get breast cancer. Now think about his for a second. You read an article about BC, see a movie about it, watch a news story on TV or go to a blog… Read more »
It’s a narrative that feminists spin about the world to further their political ideology. The above comment by Erin doesn’t even seem to differentiate between prostitution and trafficking (which basically just doesn’t exist). “Hysteria” is exactly the right word for that sort of pattern I think, and “white slavery” was the word historically used instead of “trafficking”. Let’s face it the hysteria doesn’t work if non-white women are being “trafficked” because it isn’t scary enough, and as for men, talking about male victims would be counter-productive to the image that is being developed. Why spend so much time in your… Read more »