Human trafficking is a horrific crime that takes a full person and degrades them into a thing to be sold. True assistance, the type I have seen Polaris Provide provide to our clients over the years, is the type that works to reverse the effects of this horrible experience by treating individuals with the utmost respect and dignity.
We take our value of empowerment very seriously in every stage of our response while helping a person out of a human trafficking situation throughout our involvement in their recovery. Though we assist hundreds of victims of human trafficking every year, you will notice that we don’t have a lot of photos of victims on our website. Why is that? Because we recognize that if any of us on staff had gone through that kind of experience, we wouldn’t want to be asked to display it publicly, so why would we ask this of our clients? Sure they could say no, but by simply asking them we would remove their option to have been treated with the utmost respect and privacy. The goal is to treat our clients as we would want to be treated if we were in their shoes—empowered and respected.
I remember reading one male activist’s description of how he traveled overseas to “rescue girls in brothels.” A photo showed him wearing army fatigues and he proudly discussed the details of his undercover cameras and dangerous operations. When an interviewer asked how many “sex slaves” he had rescued, his response was something along the lines of “not enough.” This type of conversation makes my heart sink. We are not talking about “sex slaves” we are talking about people. If he was helping 100 men who were forced to work in a soup factory would he say he had rescued 100 “soup slaves?” No, he would say that he had helped 100 men to freedom. Just because individuals are forced into commercial sex, does not give us the right to wed these individuals to that identity. When we make this mistake, we are perpetuating the problem. When men start thinking that they are called to bust down the doors of brothels and rush in to save the day, they are often committing the same fundamental crime against women that human traffickers have already committed—the only difference is that instead of treating a women as if she is a thing to be sold, they are treating her as a thing to be saved. Both actions serve to aggrandize the person who is objectifying women, and neither is particularly helpful in empowering women, or ending human trafficking in the long-term.
As mentioned in Part I of this blog, to help end sex trafficking, men need to respect women. That goes for everyone: policy makers, police, activists, and every Joe in between. Pimps and johns are all young boys before they involve themselves in this crime. Our goal should be to demonstrate the type of equality that will make the notion of a trade in women un-imaginable to our children. If human traffickers respected women as equals, they would never think that they had the right to abuse and sell another person. If the johns I speak to in “John school” every month respected women as peers they wouldn’t buy women’s bodies with a blind eye to their agency. And if my male peers and I learn to respect women as we work together to end this problem, we will create a world where our daughters and sons will not be able to fathom the type of gender inequality that contributes to sex trafficking today.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by TassaTag, Liza Harding. Liza Harding said: How can #men oppose sex #trafficking? It's easy: respect women (part 2) http://bit.ly/i0SYW8 #womensrights via @Polaris_Project [...]
The desire to break down doors and “save the day” when confronted with unimaginable suffering is an imminently HUMAN response that is felt by both men and women. I feel it equally towards the victims (both male and female) of sex trafficking, child abuse, religious persecution and a hundred other sources of human misery.
For you to equate this with the “same . . . crime against women that human traffickers have already committed” is sloppy at best and deeply insulting at worst.
Do men run a heightened risk of developing a hero complex? I’d say probably yes. But I dare you to sift through the motives of any human being and find one whose intentions are 100% altruistic. My guess is that, if you were honest with yourself, you’d admit that you feel a certain sense of smug superiority over the “fatigues guy”.
I could be wrong. Whatever the case, he is your ally. A small strategic tip: don’t alienate your allies by grouping them in with your enemies, especially for the sake of making a point that could easily have been made in another way, and to greater effect.
I totally agree with you regarding your main point here. If we were to make every man in the world respect women, there would be no sex trafficking problem. And if I could get pigs to fly out of my ass, I would have free bacon for life. You call yourself an activist because you sit at a computer and type away. Wow, you are a hero. Meanwhile, you belittle a man who put his ass on the line to ‘rescue girls from brothels’. I’m willing to bet if you asked the girls he saved from those brothels, they would not be singing the tune you are. How is this man’s contribution to the cause in any way glorifying anyone? He is saving individuals from being sex slaves. That’s what they were forced to do. Its not their identity, but it is, and always will be a part of them. Again, I absolutely agree with your main point. If we create a world where men and women are equals, where children are raised to respect both genders equally, then the problem would decrease. But it would never fully go away. And in the meantime, as we wait for a perfect world, why don’t we let the brave men save some girls from being sex slaves, and you can sit on your ass and type on your computer.
[...] How can men oppose sex trafficking? It’s easy: respect women. The above quote is from part 1. In part 2, he really calls male activists and men in general – calls me – to task. When men start [...]
I agree with what you said about labels. One of the things that drives me crazy is when I see headlines that refer to “Child Prostitutes” or “Child Sex Workers” — how fundamentally disrespectful!
I fully agree that respecting women as equals is the single best thing any man can do to help stop trafficking of women. However:
Without knowing the circumstances of Ms. Holst’s comment to you, I venture that my response would have been, “That’s your problem. I’m here to stop slavery, not to make myself acceptable to you.”
Women “don’t need men who are willing to help them, they need men who are willing to follow them.” Seriously? They don’t want help, just followers? Any man should be willing to follow a woman who knows how to lead; but no one should follow a woman just because she’s a woman. And no one should refuse to follow a man just because he’s a man. Your statement means that men are to be kept out of leadership positions in the anti-trafficking movement. Which means that you don’t want all the available leadership talent, only about half of it.
Since when did simply asking a question become equivalent to removing options? You and your fellow staffers presume to know, without asking, what trafficking victims don’t want, but the guy in – heaven forbid – army fatigues is wrong in thinking that they want to be rescued from brothels?
If I’m ever being brutalized, anyone who rescues me will have my profound gratitude, regardless of wardrobe, ego or personal failings. And I devoutly hope that my cries will be heard by some Neeson-wanna-be, and not by you.
You criticize the rescuer for the term “sex slaves,” yet your own account indicates that it was the interviewer who used the term. And by what insane logic do you conclude that men who carry out rescues commit “the same fundamental crime” as sex traffickers?
Your next sentence claims that “neither [selling nor saving victims] is particularly helpful in empowering women….” Isn’t it a little sexist to subtly suggest that women need help in being empowered?
So: Men have to prove ourselves trustworthy to our female co-activists; we can’t lead, only follow; and we can’t rescue anyone from a brothel. I’m guessing that the anti-trafficking circles you move in are noticeably short of male volunteers. Which, of course, gives the more radical feminists among you another “reason” to fault men.
I hope visitors to your site will realize that there are numerous organizations that welcome anyone’s sincere offer of help, without vetting their PC credentials and without immediately distrusting them because of their gender. I know this because I work with some of them.