let's pretend that sex trafficking is because pimps exist.

i went to a seminar on human trafficking put on by wedgwood, a trafficking education and support program. the representative who spoke did a thorough job of explaining the global and local presence of held slaves-- adults and children, sex workers and agricultural laborers.

the accounts of the victims were mortifying,

the techniques of the pimps were disturbing,

and the proximity of these occurrences was upsetting.

much of the presentation was not to engage the world of trafficking on a global scale but on a local one. businesses, intersections, and events such as art prize were cited as hotbeds for sex slaves, and the relevance of such injustice and trauma was important for me to be affronted with. community members working locally to engage this silent presence is vital.

but,

i found myself dissatisfied with some unacknowledged presences. having never taken a gender studies class in college, i owe my awareness of gender & power to my smart friends. they always remind me to consider the many ways gender passes unacknowledged when engaging issues of justice, and today's seminar was a perfect example.

it's easy and simple to pose the pimp and the prostitute as these extreme instances of how someone with power can coerce and destroy someone without power. the audience this morning accepted the trafficked girls and boys as victims of sick, power-hungry individuals- - not victims of a patriarchal power structure we all uphold. the pimp was never linked to masculinity as a product of a constructed, maintained, and affirmed system of power where men are subject and women are object. the men in the room and the power we act out every day were not acknowledged as being the fundamental source of this social disease-- the buying and selling of people for sex.

how are we to attempt to solve a problem when the reason for the problem isn't even voiced? do we [men] really think that sex trafficking is a isolated occurrence and not deeply connected to messages told to us [as men] by our culture? does our society not support the demeaning of women? can we not see that {men as heros in movies} and {men pimping 16-year-olds} are two points on the same continuum?

until issues like human trafficking are discussed not as random fluke occurrences by particularly evil people, but as symptoms of systematic social ills, we're going to continue to toss those seastars into the ocean one---at---a---time. that's what i think.