At the Karma Nightclub in Minneapolis a few days ago, April 5, there was a Players Ball.
Let’s stop for a minute. That’s a publicly-advertised wild bash at a nightclub, celebrating pimps’ business… What’s wrong with this picture?
It’s bad enough that we look at the record of arrests related to prostitution and we find that manifold more prostituted females are arrested and punished than pimping males. That is one reason the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2008 aptly requires statistics on those arrested in prostitution to separate the numbers of arrests for prostituted people from the johns and pimps.
Pimps regularly engage in the force, fraud, and coercion that under the law qualify them as sex traffickers – whether or not the females they victimize are foreign nationals or U.S. citizens. But what’s worse is a culture which lionizes pimps. Pimps are celebrated as hip – in film, in television, in music lyrics. They are seen as cool for “sticking it to the man.” They are treated like they are admirable iconoclasts rebelling against the Establishment.
But just think about how their true specialty is acting out against the woman. To the woman from whom they take every cent received from johns, upon threat of punishment — to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. To the woman they allegedly protect but regularly intimidate and beat. The regular violence pimps employ is far from the glamorized image in popular music, videos, TV, and films. Take it from Rachel Lloyd, a survivor of sex trafficking who leads Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (GEMS), “So what’s it really like for us? They never tell us that we’ll never see any of the money we make…the beatings, the physical torture we’ll receive.”
Filmmaker Spike Lee said it all: “As African-Americans we let artists slide,” he observed to an audience in Toronto four years ago this spring. “I think that we have to start to hold people accountable.” Of gangsta rappers he noted, “These artists talk about ‘ho this, bitch this, skank this’ and all the other stuff. They’re talking about all our mothers, all our sisters. ” Looking at the big picture, he commented, “[W]e’re in a time when young black boys and girls want to be pimps and strippers, because that is what they see. . . .Something is definitely wrong.”
Later that year in Tennessee, Spike Lee said most trenchantly, “We’ve put pimps on a pedestal.” Exactly.
But lest you think this a moralistic sermon aimed at failings of the African-American culture, don’t. We should be most concerned about the businesses serving as enablers of this cultural symbolism.
We are rightly hearing more about the need for corporate social responsibility—indeed accountability – for supply chains of products made on the backs of victims of human trafficking. Yet that worthy agenda is typically aimed at human trafficking for labor exploitation – rather than for sexual exploitation. It is aimed at the girls found two years ago in sweatshops embroidering blouses for the Gap in India; the children and college students forcibly mobilized into harvesting cotton in Uzbekistan; and the slaves clearing fields for cattle or chopping sugar cane plantations to produce biofuel in Brazil.
Business fuels sex trafficking too. Entertainment companies that make money celebrating pimps on TV and what’s on your family member’s iPod are partly responsible for a culture of impunity for pimps. Take the movie “Hustle and Flow” whose main protagonist is a pimp or the HBO series “Hookers at the Point” which glamorizes pimp-controlled prostitution in the Bronx.
This kind of glamorization of the degradation of women by men is why as State Department Ambassador to fight human trafficking, I picketed HBO in New York with feminist colleagues for its egregious series “Cathouse” last fall.
Players balls like that at the Karma Nightclub – gathering gross exploiters for an orgy to celebrate what they do – are only the most flagrant example of a perverse respect for pimps. It’s time for some healthy disrespect. They deserve to be “dissed.” And punishment with significant jail time when a player is dehumanizing his fellow human being. Not a party.
How do we stop these players balls from happening right under law enforcements’ noses?
Also, besides boycotting anything that supports sex trafficking, what else can we do?
I totally agree. I would suggest the police or ICE should raid these Players Balls and arrest the pimps in one big swoop. Obviously the fact that they can throw parties like these and don’t fear any arrest speaks volume of the impunity they face for the crimes they openly commit. It’s time for people to stand against this kind of flagrant and shameless impunity.
[...] An End to R-E-S-P-E-C-T for P-I-M-P-S [...]
This posting points a just finger towards businesses and marketing which depict damaging aspects of our culture as ‘sexy.’ Thanks for calling a spade a spade. Now…how do we confront the overwhelming appearance of dehumanizing behavior as ‘hip’?
True, though this all is, it must be held in a certain amount of tension. I think this post and this idea hangs in the balance on two words “healthy disrespect.”
I have worked with many organizations and agencies in Mexico City, Bangkok, Phnom Penh, Amsterdam and New York City over the past few years, with the goal of finding ways to get women out of trafficking situations (with wholistic sustainable after care), as well as trying to bring to justice the proper people. I have seen some very hard things that I won’t go into detail about here.
Here’s my point. To “disrespect” anyone has never, historically, been a positive move. To disrespect the “institution” of pimping is one thing, but to disrespect the pimp is dangerous.
For us to disrespect, is nothing different, in motive or thought process, of how a pimp or trafficker views their victim. This may come as a shock, it most definitely did to me when I began thinking through all of this.
Now, in saying all of this, I am by no means saying that anyone reading this is going to being a “wiping out” of pimps nation wide. I don’t even assume that this article is promoting the complete disrespect for the humanity of a pimp. I simply want to address this because I feel it must.
Also, I believe that punishment is only half, if that much, of what needs to be done to rightly address the “demand” side of human trafficking. To believe that prison time will remove the desire from the hearts of men (and women to be fair) who profit from human trafficking, is as naive as thinking that pulling the leaves off the top of the weed will remove the root. I have met men and women who were at one time involved in the trafficking of other men and women, who have been convicted deeply of their ways, and have turned around to open up safe houses for trafficked women and children, who have made it their goal to pay off debts of trafficking victims. Punishment is necessary, I do believe that, however, it is not all that is needed. In my study of history and the human heart, I have become more and more convinced that there are few things more powerful and life transforming (from the inside out) than the personal story of men and womens life change. I believe that to some degree, the hearts and motives of men must be addressed by other men who have walked through similar situations. This will never happen if a “healthy disrespect” takes a turn for the worse.
Regardless of one’s religious views, one must see the transformational power of the song Amazing Grace, a song sung world wide in a vast array of languages, played at weddings, funerals, and various other ceremonies. The song was written by a man named John Newton, a former slave trader. Newton was instrumental in helping to end slavery in the 19th century.
A healthy disrespect, or de-glorification, of pimps/traffickers is indeed a good thing, so long as it stays healthy and does not rob the humanity from the pimp/trafficker. To rob them of their humanity is for us to do to them what they do to their victims, making us become the very thing we try so hard to fight against.
Aside from the cultural responsibility of the media and entertainment business, it seems to me that we have become generally apathetic about “neighborhood associations” with respect to their primary function….protecting families. Yet most neighborhood and home owners associations are more concerned with making sure the grass is cut to 3.5 inches in heigh than they do in organizing and protesting such events or clubs.
We have churches on every corner…a powerful news media…and a plethora of anti trafficking websites….but what are we doing beyond reading articles in outrage or disgust?
Seems to me, its time to breathe some life into social disobedience when the letter of the law is put ahead of the spirit of the law. When legal eagles and police forces “”protect”" strip clubs or prostitution or pimps, rather than shutting down these people…I think it violates OUR RIGHTS.
I have a right to live in a neighborhood without strip clubs on every corner. I have a right to raise my family without prostitutes up the street.
I have a right and a responsibility to fight back. All the rhetoric in the world wont do squat if we do not roll up our sleeves, organize people and fight back! If youre lucky, youll have a policing organization that sympathizes. Chances are, they do….but they have their hands tied with legalities and crafty sleeze ball lawyers who defend the pimps or the club owners.
AMEN! Glamorizing pimps and prostitution is one of the factors that plays into why violence and specifically domestic violence is such a huge problem in our world. We need to start teaching and broadcasting in the media respect for women instead of the men that exploit and abuse them. And educating people everyday how their support of media icons that promote pimping, prostitution, and violence just adds to the problem whether or not they realize it.
It’s refreshing to see an entry about this blatant violation of the TVPA. However, I have found from being an abolitionist who is actively protesting against pimps and traffickers, how easy it is for one of these criminals to stalk and slander someone and even the most “professed abolitionist” will believe any lie against women.
It seems even in the movement a traffickers word is taken over a victim’s. The pimps and traffickers have parties and balls because they can.
I was at the 2 “Cathouse” protests and was stalked and I know for sure that members of the protest were approched and lied to by these pimps. I am not even involved in trafficking, however, a quick point and slanderous statement of “she’s a prostitute” changes the demeanor of those who were lied to at both protests.
So when you see these balls and shake your head as to how they can happen, remember the victims of trafficking you sided against and how you helped these animals.
All they have to do is call a victim a “ho, slut. hooker, bitch, madam or freak” and you will go along with anything they say from then on out.
That’s really not the showbiz industry’s fault. The fact is, most of these rappers and hip-hop artists, such as Chingy and Eminem, had difficult childhoods and grew up in tough circumstances. Some may have been SURROUNDED by pimps and prostitutes, for all we know. But while they sing about it and may encourage it, they don’t actually partake in it. According to Wikipedia, the only hip-hop artist who actually partook in “pimping” was a rapper named “Suga-free”.
I understand how the media can influence how a society behaves or what behavious it encourages. But really, we should be mad at those who let themselves be influenced by that propaganda. We should be mad at those who will hurt themselves and those around them just to be what is considered “gangsta”.
People, music was never meant to hurt. It was never meant to kill or harm those who have access to a radio. It is, like all other forms of art, a medium of self-expression, a way to channel experience, feelings, emotions, and thoughts. If one is stupid enough to not know that and think its cool to be as evil as the people the artists have met, then its THEIR FAULT. THEIRS. Not the music industry, not the parents who failed to raise them ’cause they’re lazy….THEIRS, DAMMIT!
If they want to ignore basic human values and the essentials of human decency, then its their choice.
But never believe that, for one millisecond, that ALL rappers and hip hop artists really want to take advatage of a girl forced into prostitution. It may not show in their music and behavious sometimes, but at the end of the day, they are human.
She is soooo correct! I called the police to stop harrasment by a neighbor. This man who had mental health problems would scream abusive names including ho, bitch, etc. The cop who responded to my call asked “Well, are you one?” I was standing with witnesses to the neighbor’s regular barrage of abuse and we were all dumbfounded! This is a very sick society.
She is soooo correct! I called the police to stop harrasment by a neighbor. This man who had mental health problems would scream abusive names including ho, bitch, etc. The cop who responded to my call asked “Well, are you one?” I was standing with witnesses to the neighbor’s regular barrage of abuse and we were all dumbfounded! This is a very sick society.