He who allows oppression, shares the crime. – Erasmus Darwin
My two main sources of topics are emails from readers (thank y’all very much!) and things I find on other blogs and websites. I subscribe to a number of them and visit several others daily, and though most of the items I can use are of the “news” variety I also derive inspiration from other people’s blog essays. When this happens I always give credit, but what’s interesting is that sometimes I go off in a slightly or wholly different direction from the original source. Regular readers know that one of the blogs which most often inspires me in this way is The Naked Anthropologist, by Dr. Laura Agustín; I first discovered her while researching “Something Rotten in Sweden” and since then I have learned more about the issues surrounding “human trafficking” from her than from any other source. I highly recommend her column, which provides a wealth of valuable insight into the way problems are defined into existence by people who like to put everything and everyone into tidy little pigeonholes and then become frustrated and angry when people refuse to stay put in their assigned slots.
She and I have both had Nicholas Kristof on our minds lately (and though I can’t speak for her, let me tell you that for me that experience is rather like having a really annoying song stuck in one’s head). Kristof’s been harping on this whole “sex slave” thing for years now, but it seems as though lately his name and asinine statements keep popping up practically everywhere I look. Anyhow, Dr. Agustín’s December 4th column started out by reporting that an article which cited and largely agreed with her about Kristof was apparently censored by the site’s managers:
Writing on Nicholas Kristof’s tweets about saving sex slaves, I said that the important point to criticise is his boast to have caused the closure of six brothels. Whether you believe that brothels are workplaces or slavery dens, you need to ask what the result will be for those working inside when those sites are suddenly closed down (some answers to that are described in this video). Someone at In These Times wrote about that article of mine, apparently agreeing with my main points, but the post was taken down the same day, making me wonder if the site owners will not allow any criticism of Kristof. Is he such a sacred cow for liberal-leaning news-site managers? Even if they claim to be independent, as it says on their website? It seems absurd, what harm did their blogger do?
This is especially interesting because In These Times is not entirely hostile to sex workers; Michelle Chen’s “Making Sex Workers Visible in the Village Voice Media Ad Controversy” (which mentioned yours truly and linked this blog) was first published on the site and concluded with the sentences, “Even people who object to sex work on principle or support anti-trafficking crackdowns can’t deny that sex work will always be a part of society, whatever the law says. In their struggle for justice and respect, sex workers don’t need to be “saved” from that reality, but they do need to be heard.” Yet apparently, questioning Kristof’s motives and/or veracity are Not Allowed. Dr. Agustín continues:
The writer had called her article ‘Seventh Grader’ is not an insult: The Naked Anthropologist vs. Nicholas Kristof, in reference to my comment that it is offensive he would ‘refer to a young person in Cambodia with a made-in-USA label like seventh grader‘. She thought it was silly of me because Kristof writes for a US audience who understand that 12-year-olds belong in seventh grade. But many people understood what was annoying about Kristof’s comment, and my guess is he himself likes to think of his work as international, since he at least sometimes lives in Cambodia and writes for the New York Times. The issue here is colonialism, the imposition not just of the words seventh grader but of the whole world view behind them, a world in which people who are 12 are said to be school children and nothing else because 12-year-olds are claimed to have the right to absolute innocence, lives in which neither work nor sex have a part. Such a claim is questionable in the USA itself, but to transport it wholesale onto a young stranger in Cambodia, a girl glimpsed in a brothel, is to impose an outside interpretation on that girl and the cultural context she’s found in. You can say, based on your belief of what’s right in your culture, that she’s a seventh grader, but you thereby maintain control of someone not in a position to resist, you exploit and victimise her without knowing anything real about her. Kristof says she’s a slave, therefore she is one: is that right?
This is where I veered off in a different direction; Dr. Agustín went on to talk more about Kristof’s colonialist viewpoint (interestingly comparing it to that of the narrator in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness), but my mind followed the thread which led from that reductionist (and pigeonholing) term “seventh grader”. In a comment on her blog, I wrote:
Even in the United States, not all 12-year-olds are in 7th grade; I was 12 until two and a half months into 9th grade. Nitpicking? I don’t think so. The idea that a 12-year-old is a seventh-grader, regardless of her actual grade, life circumstances or maturity level, is no different from the idea that a 16-year-old is a “child” due to being as little as 366 days short of her 18th birthday.
Americans tend to adhere to the dangerous concept that labels define reality; the majority of people in this country (including most politicians) believe that to belong to a political party defines one’s beliefs, that it’s an “all or nothing” package deal like Christian sects. And I’ve encountered people who make the bizarre argument that the courtesans of history could not have been prostitutes because they were respected while prostitutes are degraded victims. The label (whether “prostitute”, “Republican” or “7th grader”) is believed to tell those who hear it everything they need to know about the individual it is used to refer to.
What I’m trying to say in my long-winded way is, you are absolutely right to zero in on Kristof’s use of that term as an important clue to his attitude and aims; it’s your gift for seeing things like that (which others often miss) that make your writing such an eye-opener!
Then in her reply to my comment, she saw something I hadn’t really considered; that the “all or nothing” syndrome I brought up might explain why In These Times censored that article:
Perhaps it is what you say, that Kristof must be all right or all wrong, and since he went to fancy schools and writes for the Times, he must be all right – ergo, I must be all wrong. It is a very dull way to look at the world.
She also called my attention to the hostile comments on her earlier Kristof article, pointing out that most of them did not understand what was wrong with the label. Interestingly, a number of the anti-Kristof comments in that thread made the same observations about his creepy fascination with young “sex slaves” as I have on several occasions; one even asked “Would you want him near your daughter?” (I certainly wouldn’t).
Kristof and his ilk (including all who support him and stop their ears to criticism of his motives and methods) want the whole world crammed into tidy little pigeonholes that they define, and because they’ve decided that “prostitution is humiliating” they conclude that all prostitutes are “slaves”, that armed and brutal force is the way to “free” them, and that criminalization and brothel raids are therefore “good” no matter what happens to the victims of those raids once Kristof has gone back to New York.
(UPDATE: Whether due to Dr. Agustin’s criticism, action by author Lindsay Beyerstein or an honest mistake by In These Times, the vanishing article has been restored; I have updated my link to reflect this. Thanks to Windypundit for calling it to my attention).
One Year Ago Today
“Mecca” debunks the oft-repeated prohibitionist lie that wherever prostitution is legalized or decriminalized the number of hookers surges dramatically.
You and she may be right on this point but you will NEVER defeat Kristoff on it and it will always be a point in which he appears to own the “saner” argument. Americans, nay – basically every nation in the West has it culturally engrained in them that all 12-year olds are entitled to their “innocence”. And … not just that, but every political / economic philosophy you can find in the West subscribes to that notion – whether it’s (modern) Capitalism, or Socialism, or Communism. Hell, Maggie – I think you are one of the smartest people in the world and this is a notion that I can’t even break myself from.
I would have said to Robert E. Lee – don’t do a frontal attack at Gettysburg, but hit their left flank hard … and I would give that same advice to you and the Doc here when going after Kristoff. He’s vulnerable – but not via this route he’s not. I just don’t see anyone in the west ever “accepting” 12 year olds in prostitution.
I’m not saying that 12-year-olds should be prostitutes, and neither is Dr. Agustin. What she and I are both saying is that it’s asinine and (ultimately) stupid to say that a person “is” something when in fact he may not be. Kristof’s declaration “a 12-year-old is a 7th grader” would have sounded incredibly stupid to me in September of 1979 (when I was a 12-year-old 9th grader), and it sounds equally stupid to people in countries whose educational systems don’t use “grade” systems exactly like the American. If a Masai tribesman declared “a 14-year-old male is a warrior” Kristof might think him moronic, but his declaration is no more or less sensible than Kristof’s. And “all prostitution is exploitation” is stupider still.
Like I said – you are probably right on this but just remember this … there are a lot of parents out there and when they think of a 12 year old Cambodian girl, that they’ve never met – it’s natural for them to relate that girl to the 12 year old daughter in their household. Kristoff knows this well. I’m not saying it’s correct, just saying that’s a natural tendency. And you need to be careful with your own experiences because you are on the FAR RIGHT of the “bell curve” – where most of us aren’t. You gained maturity a lot earlier than most of us, became more open-minded and receptive to new ideas in a way many of us would like to be – but aren’t yet capable. How many “average” women could deal with sex work, and dirty cops, and potentially violent customers – and even two instances of rape the way you have? How many of them have your intelligence? Even men (well especially men – since we’re probably the dimmer of the sexes)? Not that many.
I DO think it’s very honorable that you and the Doc go after Kristoff on every front and you do it with logic rather than emotion – but he’s not ever going to fight fairly. He’ll always resort to that 12 year old Cambodian girl as an appeal to people’s prejudices and he’ll always point out that your argument about “colonialism” is really a peripheral argument to accept that girl’s position in life.
Sorry to get off topic but this topic is a day old so it shouldnt matter too much but….i read this comment on the nypost website in the comments section and it is an example of how callous people can be when it comes to women who are involved in the work of prostitution:
“this is terrific. This idiot hooker drowns by mistake, and now we have to spend millions looking for a serial killer. WHO CARES!? LET HIM KEEP KILLING, that’s valuable money we could spend on education. And other hookers!!”
I know both of us would want to punch the hell out of this arrogant fool. Thats all i have to say.
By the way the person this guy was talking about was Shannan Gilbert(the woman that law enforcement were spending ages looking for on Long island and finally found)
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/remains_of_missing_woman_shannan_kyuF55l2CFe80JpaJrK8YJ
Unfortunately, murder victims are trashed constantly online and off. It isn’t just the victims who were whores. It’s ALL kinds. Their surviving family and/or friends get trashed also. I know this 1st hand. However, on the positive side, there’s people working all the time to stop this ###*** which is at the LEAST to try to get people to care, etc. I’ve seen many comments like the 1 you’re quoting, unfortunately. But, progress HAS been made, thank God. And there’s people working tirelessly to educate and at least try to get people to care and to see ALL murder victims don’t deserve this kind of ###*** talk no matter what. Their surviving family members and/or friends don’t deserve it either along with the WILFULLY ignorant ###*** said about them.
Forgot to mention the family members and/or friends of murderers get ###*** also even if they had NO involvement in the murders their family and/or friends committed.
FWIW, In These Times has put the post back online, and they’re saying it was deleted by accident. Given Lindsay Beyerstein’s history of working with publishers who aren’t terribly web savvy, I find this explanation totally plausible.
I suspect at least some part of saying “7th grader” instead of “12 year old” is that 7 is a smaller number than 12. It sounds silly, but people are going to react to the number more than it’s meaning, so for propaganda purposes it’s useful to use the smaller number.
I really hope Kristof isn’t that clever. 🙁
@Krulac
I’m going OFF TOPIC to respond to your comment about Robert E. Lee. There were more than a few people who told him not to attack from the front. But Lee did not listen because he knew in his heart of hearts that the South was not supposed to win. Or, to put it more mystically, his Deeper Self told his Waking Self what needed to be done, and he acted accordingly.
Now, if the Phillip K. Dick view of alternate timelines is a reality, then maybe this happened in another timeline, and the South won the war. However, I’ve never been in favor of the “AT” viewpoint as being real, because, paradoxically, it ruins the concept of free will if we make a decision in one “timeline”, and then are condemned to make the opposite decision in another.
I’m not capable of “psychoanalyzing” a man who’s been dead for over a hundred years. I’m just not that smart.
I’m also not smart enough to appreciate the concept of alternate timelines – I have enough problems just keeping up with the one I’m in.
I don’t think it ruins the concept of free will because there can be an infinite number of time lines. Say, ten million of them where you get it right vs only one where you get it wrong.
To get back on topic, Nicholas Kristof should have been fired the very minute he recommended sweatshops as an alternative to prostitution. Sweatshops? Seriously? But then the sexism in the NYT is readily apparent when you consider that they only have one regular female columnist (Gail Collins), and she is only allowed her job because she cracks a joke in every other sentence she writes. So a female can’t write for the NYT unless she’s a certified comedian? How sexist is that?
Kristof advocated for the Iraq War when it was just getting started, yet in any war that occurs, it inevitably follows that human trafficking will flourish. And it did: millions of Iraqi women were trafficked, many initially just to feed themselves and their families. But hey, for Kristof to focus on Iraqi women would be for him to admit he made a mistake. So it’s much better to focus on trafficking that the United States didn’t directly cause, such as in India or Cambodia.
That’s just proof positive that the objection is to the inclusion of sex in the exploitation, not exploitation in itself. As though sweatshop female workers haven’t been raped or sexually assaulted. Please.
It’s also not coincidental that among Somaly Mam’s biggest backers is the fashion (i.e. garment) industry.
I just thought about Zoolander.
“What am I supposed to do? My entire panty line is made in Vietnam!”
What “trafficking” in Iraq did the US directly cause? Seriously here … I was in Iraq and participated in this war. If any trafficking occurred it was a result of the voluntary free movement of women.
Which is a RIGHT they did not have under Sadaam.
It’s fine to argue that the US shouldn’t have entered Iraq – it’s FLAT OUT FALSE that Iraqis aren’t more free today because we did.
Again – I was there.
Yes, the Iraqis are certainly more free than before.
Since Saddam Hussein was removed from power, Mutah (temporary marriage) has become legal in Iraq. Since these type of arrangements require no witnesses, nor proclamation in public, nor written contract, it means zina (fornication) has effectively been abolished for Shias.
Prostitution is de facto legal as a consequence, since it can’t be proved that the couple involved were not secretly “married” at the time.
Also – one more thing – you seriously have cause and effect skewed here. The US enters Iraq – kicks out a dictator … then Iraqi women are found in various other nations participating in prostitution – ergo, the US caused the trafficking. This conclusion is ludicrous.
I can apply this same scenario to the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Romania. There were no women being “trafficked” out of these nations when they were Communist – because the penalty for crossing borders without authorization was a bit … shall we say … severe?
Now that they are Democratic nations – are we to blame Democracy for the presence of any Czech or Romanian women in Germany as prostitutes?
I don’t think so.
I think she meant that the economic turmoil and high level of violence that occured during the first several years of US occupation led to all the trafficking (both voluntary and involuntary). This sort of thing happens in all major wars.
I feel I must step in here to defend the sweatshops; like prostitution, people are often morally outraged at their existence because of logic that amounts “I’d never work in one, therefore they’re bad.” Remember, every industrialized country in the world went through the sweatshop stage. The only reason we don’t still have them is because we’ve had enough capital accumulation to make them economically unnecessary.
Also remember that, like most cases of prostitution, the people who work in sweatshops do so voluntarily, because it’s better than the other choices available to them (which are typically subsistence farming and, yes, prostitution, and [despite the theme of this blog] prostitution is not the preferred choice for everyone). Furthermore, sweatshop labor is often a step up from where many of the workers are coming from, which is subsistence farming (which doesn’t have weekends or any kind of assurance of payment for labor).
Obviously none of this applies if the workers work in sweatshops under threat of force, but we already have a term for that; it’s called slavery.
Nice comparison of sweat shops and prostitution. I very much agree.
While I do tend to snarl at sweatshops, it is true that they are often a step up for those who work in them. I feel, though, that it’s a phase which a nation should pass through as quickly as possible.
I would prefer that my own nation either butt out and let it happen when it’s going to happen, or help it to happen a little faster. I do NOT like it when, through either governmental or corporate actions, we prolong the sweatshop phase.
My problem isn’t so much with sweatshops as with the asinine pretense that working in them is somehow a step up from prostitution. 🙁
For some, it is; they would be the ones who go from prostitution to sweatshops when the latter becomes available, or for those who choose sweatshops over prostitution. More choices in employment is always a good thing. (And the simple fact is, there are far more jobs available in sweatshops than as prostitutes. The prostitution market would collapse under its own weight if all of the sweatshop workers tried to enter it.)
This is especially true on the thorny topic of children in sweatshops; yes, it offends our sensibilities, but in many cases those children are still faced with the same problem as adults. There are no schools, and even if there were, even if they’re free, the families can’t afford to send their children there and also eat. Thus, there are only four options generally available: subsistence farming, sweatshops, prostitution, or thievery/other illegal activity. Of those four, sweatshops are (IMNSHO) the least bad of the four choices, because as I said, subsistence farming is harder than sweatshop labor, and children (preteens, young teens) shouldn’t be prostitutes.
I totally agree; every job is right for somebody, else nobody could be induced to do it except at gunpoint. The problem is the hysterical, prudish narrative that “anything anything anything under the sun” is better than sex work for anybody, and that a strong, sexually-assertive, independent woman is better off making $2 a day than $200/hour.
I suspect that in any community where a woman makes only $2 a day doing non-prostitute work, it’s a damn rare hooker who can earn $200 an hour.
I didn’t mean the same community. Trafficking fanatics claim it’s “better” for an impoverished woman in the Philippines to stay home working in a sweatshop for $2 a day than to be “trafficked” to the US to make $200/hour as an independent escort.
Ah. Gotcha.
For myself, I’d feel guilty going to some impoverished nation and paying a girl $20 or so for sex. But I wouldn’t feel at all guilty about paying that Philippina hottie $200. That’s good money, even in places like California or Honolulu.
Unless, of course, I had reason to think she wasn’t hooking by choice. But I’m not going to just assume that.
And if she wasn’t, what then? What if her “pimp” beats her up for not getting you to date her? Is that your responsibility?
Take a look at tomorrow’s column.
I’m not sure I understand the question. I should hire her even if she’s genuinely enslaved? I should call the cops is what I should do, and hope I can get immunity. Of course, either legalization or decriminalization would make that a lot easier.
How can you tell if she’s “genuinely enslaved”? You mean forced by a boyfriend to work? So if you suspect your cashier at Wal-Mart is “genuinely enslaved” would you call the cops, or is it only hookers who need that intervention?
The majority of women whom the media calls “enslaved” aren’t chained up in a room and won’t admit to being coerced even if asked.
By “genuinely enslaved” I mean forced to work, against her will, punished if she doesn’t or tries to change jobs. And yeah, that goes for cashiers, burger flippers, hookers, and vegetable pickers. Butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers.
As to how would I know… how the hell WOULD I know? If she acts scared, and freaks out when I try to cancel? I wrote an imaginary scenario in the comments of “Validation.” That’s the sort of thing I’m talking about, except she doesn’t have to be underage.
@Krulac
The trafficking I’m referring was primarily in Syria, where there were millions of Iraqi refugees, refugees that had no monetary support. Many Iraqi women had to engage in what is called “survival sex”, which means that they did it merely to eat (for them and family members). Now that doesn’t necessarily translate into trafficking, but it does in the sense that they were doing it mostly against their will, and if they worked for an employer, that employer was able to withhold their passports and other ID. Holding someone’s ID is definitely a form of trafficking.
Can we send Kristof a pedobear sticker?
LOL! Too bad we can’t get Anonymous to bomb his comment threads and mailbox with Pedobear images; he’s exactly the sort of person Pedobear was designed to target!
Do they have a suggestion box? I can’t think of a more deserving party…
People, Anonymous is not your Personal Army. They aren’t doing this out of some desire to make to world a better place or anything like that. They are petty, cruel people who do a lot of impressive stuff for their own amusement. They don’t care how deserving the person you want them to harass is.
They care about hurting people for fun, that’s what they do, that’s what they like to do. Sometimes you laugh with them, sometimes you cry.
“Americans tend to adhere to the dangerous concept that labels define reality; the majority of people in this country (including most politicians) believe that to belong to a political party defines one’s beliefs, that it’s an “all or nothing” package deal like Christian sects. And I’ve encountered people who make the bizarre argument that the courtesans of history could not have been prostitutes because they were respected while prostitutes are degraded victims.”
This highlights another problem with labels, they leave the interpretation up to the beholder. This is why I am very hesitant to label myself as any kind of “-ist” or “-arian”, like “capitalist”, “libertarian” or, worst of them all, “feminist” (although I suppose I could accept “archeofeminist sensu McNeill”), because I would abdicate declaration of my principles and leave me vulnerable to whatever (mis-)conceptions the other part has about the label.
People like Kristof either provide the desired definition themselves, or count on the general public to have the “right” preconceived notions of the label. This, however, also leaves them open to subverting, by co-opting the label, like gays did (and the Brights try to).