Great Saint Nick

Hopefully you got more than just coal from Santa Claus this Christmas!  I got some pretty sweet stuff myself, including a 12 pack of razor blades (it's amazing how our Christmas wishes change with age and necessity). But my favorite Christmas present this year was the Attorney General of California approving the wording of the Californians Against Sexual Exploitation Act ballot initiative on Christmas Eve!  That means that registered California voters can begin collecting signatures to get the initiative on the 2012 ballot.  If you live in California and are interested in helping or signing, click here.

Christmas is a really special time for CAS' little victory, due to one of our best known Christmas figures, Saint Nicolas.   The real man was Nikolaos of Myra, a Greek bishop who lived in the 200s. (Yep - 200s!  And Greek! Somehow I always pictured him in some 17th century German town).  He was renowned for caring for the poor, and one story says that a certain man became very poor and was going to sell his daughters into prostitution.  In order to avert this horrible destiny, Nikolaos threw a bag of gold in through the family's window one night.  Thus the girls were spared, and good ol' Saint Nick became one of the first men in recorded history to save girls out of sex trafficking.  Pretty crazy, huh?  But pretty darn awesome.  Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

Hope your Christmas was wonderful and I look forward to moving into a more just New Year with you!

The Good Thing About Sex Trafficking

There is a story* about a Holocaust survivor named Corrie ten Boom.  The story goes like this: Corrie and her sister Betsie were in the Ravensbruck concentration camp together.  The concentration camps were cold, harsh, dirty places, and this particular one was plagued with fleas.  The ten Booms were Christians and one day they were praying when Betsie prayed, "Lord, thank you for the fleas."  Corrie would have none of it, "I will pray," she said, "But I can never be grateful for the fleas.  I won't pray that."  Some time later one of the sisters, both of whom had been in a different concentration camp prior to their stay at Ravensbruck, asked why the guards here didn't bother them when they were in their shared living/sleeping quarters - the prisoners even had the freedom to have a Bible study with how little they were harassed.  The response to ten Boom's question: "They don't bother us because they don't like the fleas." So...there was a reason to be grateful for the fleas after all!

As Betsie felt about the fleas, so I feel about sex trafficking.  The truth is, commercial sexual exploitation of girls has taken place forever, only it's always been called "prostitution".  Many, many, many older prostitutes will tell you that they were coerced into it when they were still underage; in the world of Sex for Sale, it is rare that a woman decides on her own and in a position of strength to sell her body.**  Because of the stigma that follows prostitution, many people of my generation have been duped into thinking that prostitution should be legalized*** as a form of empowerment to women because it "gives women the right to do what they want with their bodies".

Empowerment?  Are you kidding me?  When did buying into group think become so important to you that you stopped using the brain in your head?  Prostitution doesn't give women power over their own bodies - there's still a system of pimps and madames and men who hire these ladies because they want to abuse something.  How is that empowerment?

This is why I am grateful for "sex trafficking".  I am grateful that the monstrosity of kids being sold for sex has become a hot-button issue in pop culture, that it has a title and a growing system of laws against it.  I am grateful because it is slowly (so slowly it hurts sometimes!) shifting our societal view of "prostitution".  Slowly, slowly people are beginning to realize that "prostitution" most often begins as trafficking. "Sex trafficking" helps both conservative and liberal people see "prostitutes" in a new light.  A prostitute is not the nasty little whore who lived down the street and was always "asking for it"; nor is she the sexually liberated woman who knows her own mind and gets what she wants.  More often than not she is the victimized girl who needs a chance to get out of her situation and become a truly empowered, healthy, and free human being.  So...I am grateful for "sex trafficking" because it is changing the way we think of "prostitutes". 

--- 

*This story can be read in Corrie ten Boom's book The Hiding Place.

**I hate not having statistics or something to cite here, but this is information I've just gleaned over the years I've been informed about sex trafficking.  Once you start reading things about commercial sexual exploitation you begin to understand how prostitution is synonymous (and always has been) with trafficking underaged girls.

***I am for the legalization of prostitution if it looks as it does in Sweden!

Preemptive Strike: Educating Our Police

For years traffickers have been getting away with their shenanigans because of a police force and court system that are uneducated about the issue.  Commercially exploited women and children are poorly treated, being arrested repeatedly while their pimp goes free, or being let off if they do a little "favor" for the arresting officer.  One of my friends was trafficked as a 14-year-old, and when she was finally able to call the police she was arrested, charged, and sexually abused by her probation officer.  This, unfortunately, is not an uncommon story.

Yet even in this depressing scenario, there is hope.  International Justice Mission (IJM), in conjunction with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, conducted a study in the Philippines called Project Lantern.  Over the course of 4 years they focused on educating and training the police force and judiciary system for anti-trafficking in Cebu.  The result?  After only 4 years there has been a 79% decrease in the number of children available for commercial sex in Metro Cebu!

This ought to be a strong call to us in the United States, where women are supposedly "equal".  If a patriarchal country like the Philippines can see such a dramatic decrease in sexually exploited children in only 4 years simply by educating those in law, then let's educate our law enforcement too.   California Against Slavery is trying to put a measure on the 2012 ballot that would make it mandatory to train law enforcement against sex trafficking.  I believe this would be the first law of its kind in the U.S. If you're in California I urge you to sign the petition for the initiative and vote in the upcoming election.  If you're in another state, consider organizing a coalition and talking to law makers about enacting a similar law.   If anyone complains that it would cause the state to spend more money than they have, just point out how much money will be saved by jailing the perpetrator instead of having a revolving door of trafficked children going through the system...

I Am a Human Being

This is not a personal blog so my desire is that it be semi-professional, devastatingly informative, and not too chatty.  But sometimes my heart gets so wound up into the issue that I just want to burst.  Right now is one of those times.

I am a woman.  And I am sick to my core of women being viewed as objects, as lesser than, as easy prey.  I am a human being.   I have thoughts in my head, desires in my heart, skills in my hands.  I have the intrinsic right to protect my body, as far as I am able, from disease and abuse.  No one - no one, no one, NO ONE - has the intrinsic right to take that from me.  Anyone who desires to use me, manipulate me, physically hurt me, or willingly and unfeelingly subject me to emotional or physical harm or disease for his or her own benefit is acting outside the bounds of his or her rights.  

I am a human being.
It is not okay to use human beings.
It is not okay to misuse human beings.
It is not okay to abuse human beings.
The attitude of these men toward human beings is not okay.
It is not okay,
it is not okay,
it is not okay.

We throw around the word objectification a lot, but that's exactly what people who rape and traffick or knowingly use those who might be trafficked have done.  They have taken a human life - this bottle of experience and creativity and emotion and potential and life - and reduced it to any common object found lying around the house.  And less, even, because I bet every single one of the men interviewed in the article above has a smart phone or a laptop or a car or a favorite beer mug on which he places higher value than he has placed on the prostitute he's shagging.   

How can this be?  
How is it possible to think this way?

Oh God, change the heartbeat of the world, please.

Freedom Gifts for Christmas

Hey friends! Though this blog mainly address trafficking within the United States, we all know that it's a global problem and there are several international organizations that offer unique ways to give gifts to survivors of trafficking during Christmastime. My favorite is IJM, as they work in all areas of trafficking and are really big on training and utilizing local law enforcement.  Their 2011 Gifts of Freedom Catalogue can be found here.  So do something different for your loved ones this year and change the world in the process.