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Yes, I was confused. Which problem were you talking about, prostitution or human trafficking? Those are two different issues.

While people can certainly talk about these two issues separately, they are most certainly inter-related because many victims of trafficking are forced into prostitution.

As I see it - the thread started on the subject of trafficking only...but considering a "solution" means looking at the problem as a whole and it seems ridiculous to consider the topic of trafficking without any mention of prostitution. One poster brought up the (good) point that you can't just look at all those involved in prostitution as being trafficked into it - it seems that there is some disagreement about just how common it is to be forced into prostitution (or what counts as being "forced").

I can also reiterate my point that part of the problem in my view is that people want to simplify things by diving people in to victims and prostitutes (or some other extremes) and that's just not the case.

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it is something which someone turns to when they have no other apparent choices. therefore, all prostitutes are enslaved.


Hmmm. OK, but seems that could be said about farm laborers, ditch diggers, or any undesirable job, except the prostitute will probably make more money.

I would agree that many people are de facto "enslaved", yes, though a)people readily acknowledge that being a ditch-digger or whatever is unpleasant and probably a last resort, while there are plenty of (perhaps the same) people who would not acknowledge the same thing about prostitution. b)I think the long term "effect/damage/risk" of being a prostitute is a bit more serious than those of being a ditch digger...and farm laborers are, I think, less likely to have someone threatening them or their families if they leave the job, or to be shunned if they quit and return home.

Unfortunately here in Denver there is a rather large prostitution problem and, naturally, with that comes the human trafficking. For the longest time the City and State viewed all prostitutes they caught the same, as criminals. That may work for women who go into the sex trade for financial gains (Yes, they can make a large sum of money off of it here) but it doesn't help those women who were either forced or coerced into it. Finally the city has started to differenciate between willing participants and unwilling participants. As long as you treat both of those groups the same, you will always make it more difficult to help unwilling participants.

this reminds me of a made for TV movie I saw a while back..it was called Human Trafficking..it starred mira sorvino. It was a very shocking and sad film about trafficking in the US.

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As long as you treat both of those groups the same, you will always make it more difficult to help unwilling participants.

You can't treat both of those groups the same. Things aren't only black or white. If someone wants to be a prostitute for whatever reason then what's the problem? It's strictly bussiness. If someone is being forced to do that that's a complitely different story.

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Originally posted by disaster:

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As long as you treat both of those groups the same, you will always make it more difficult to help unwilling participants.

You can't treat both of those groups the same. Things aren't only black or white. If someone wants to be a prostitute for whatever reason then what's the problem? It's strictly bussiness. If someone is being forced to do that that's a complitely different story.

It's exactly that things aren't black and white that's the problem in separating prostitution from trafficking. The line between forced and willing is grey. Especially in the 3rd world. If your family is literally starving, does your choice to become a prostitute make you "willing"?

Well, I think that we all agree that this is about as sticky as issues come (pun intended).

I assume that most of you are familiar with the US 'War on Drugs' in which we pump all kinds of money, weapons and air-borne poisons into those countries supplying us with drugs. We destroy livelihoods as the peasant level, introduce gentic conditions that will persist for generations, and lots of other bad stuff. Why do we do this??

Beacause it is concrete action. It is quantifiable. But mostly because its easy. And in a way, it is the right answer. But not really.

Really, the issue, and we all know this, is the insatiable appitite of americans for drugs. We want them for many reasons, most of which boil down quite nicely though. We are a society thouroughly divorced from personal meaning and connection; we are taking such massive amounts of drug because our lives (as we live them) suck. They suck because we have absolutly no grasp as to what is really important to us, individually or as a culture.

So, with drugs or prostitution (whatever flavor you pick), the real issue is demand. We have human beings who are so spiritualy (meaning whatever your sense of beauteous life may be) disconnected that chaining a 8 year old girl to a bed is a turn on. Thats F*CKED! Until this sorta thing is dealt with, at whatever levels we can reach, (be they international, national, or more effectivley, at the community level) we are left to scamble and gape, trying desperatley to do with stopgap measures that which can only be accomplished through the healing of our modern cultures.

To me the questions to consider are why a person would find pleasure in using others in this way? What happened to them? How (why) did we let them get damaged so badly that they want to damage others? And, just how far are we willing to put ourselves out to deal with this...not just donating, or volunteering at ground zero, but dealing in discorse of values and human ethics with those around us?

I've been mulling this topic over for quite some time, because there was a part of my reaction couldn't get my finger on. There's been a lot said that I agree with here, and something I think is missing. If I may, I think the problem has three aspects that are crucial:

1. Poverty which pushes people over and over again to desperate decisions
2. organized crime, which (as we see in the drug business) is really hard to get a hold of
3. sexual violence, which seems to be a mostly male domain

Yup, I'm going to get all feminist on you.

First off, I am in no way saying that all men are sexual predators. I do think though, that many societies raise young men to have a sexuality that is aggressive enough that it condones sex with people who are less than truly willing. Let me offer some examples:

1. A man in Europe goes to a sleazy but legal brothel to have a sex with a 19 year old prostitute in a shabby room. There's a goon watching the bar room (and her) and she might possibly be under the influence of drugs to make this all more bearable. She feigns interrest and pretends to be having fun.

2. A UN peacekeeping soldier goes to brothels while he is serving in Bosnia. The place is run by tough guys who could possibly (who'd have guessed) be in the mafia. The houses outside are shot to hell. He has sex with either a local girl (who he knows is trying to keep her family from starving) or a suspiciously young girl from Moldova who smiles and says nothing.

3. Either a frat boy from some college or a young man of Algerian descent in the Paris slums (insert either according to will), sees a young woman dressed (in his eyes) like a slut. He makes advances and - wether she agrees or not - continues.

4. A young turkish man insults another by saying "I'm going to fuck your mother". In his eyes it is always the man who fucks, and the woman who IS fucked. And a man can control a woman's reputation, virtue and WORTH by deciding to fuck her or not.

I know these situations are different, but they are all situations in which men have sex with women or threaten to even though they know that this is not entirely voluntary on her part. Can any of us imagine a woman doing the same? (I know it happens sometimes, but these exceptions extremely rare and the women involved usually have some kind of pathological illness).

It also happens time and time again that institutions like the military which are primarily male and focused on violence (war is violence) tend to increase the number of such acts. In peace time soldiers go to brothels more often than civilians and in war soldiers surprisingly often turn into rapists.

I think this leads us to where we have a chance to end human trafficking. The demand for prostitutes is not tied to social despair like the demand for drugs. The demand for cheap, objectified (and possibly violent) sex is tied to the tough-guy, agressive sexuality that many societies teach boys and young men. All the activities I listed are either condoned or at least considered "something she had coming to her" by society at large, as if the men involved were just folloowing an uncontrollable wild instinct. We need to change this because it harms us all, and I include the perpetrators/johns in this all.

Very good

I wasn't trying to say that use of prostitution and its props of human traficking descend directly from, as Elis put it, social despair. I do however believe that if such social despair were healed, these sorts of sexual anticcs would generaly cease.

To take it back a little, I agree that the sexual attitudes socialized into young meals are often aggressive and even abusive at heart. But I think that these traditional outlooks have thier origins in less-than-holostickly ethical social structures.

However, thats pretty pie in the sky.

As an aside, I would also like to respond that in my experience of women's sexual attitudes, which has been confined to those I could meet in N America, I am often struck by how facilitating they are towards what I would call humanly destructive sexuality in males. I am talking about, for instance, a woman who has caused herself to be educated well, is liberal and active in her opinions, she isn't obviously hung up on sex or body image. She demands to be treated equally, can hold her own and better in discussion, commands (as far as any of us) her own destiney, etc... But yet, when is comes to sex, she wants the guy to grab her, throw her down on the bed, strip off her clothes, push her legs apart and fuck her. She gets off on being, if not completely, over-powered. Its a toughie. And frankly, it pisses me off.

I'm up for a good fuck, but not when it comes with this tripped out role I'm supposed to fill, that of aggressive and 'power full' male relating to the passionately passive and receptive woman.

I dunno how this exactly relates to sex traficking.....I guess maybe I could say that as women's movements in the west (and elsewhere) have been spuring the evolution of sexual attitude among women, perhaps that has left the classic balance unwieldy. ie. there are not enough passive and receptive women for all the power-full males we're creating, so it is finding an outlet, as basic forces will?