Written by:
Victoria A. Brownworth
Photographer:
Duncan Walker
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this Issue of Curve:
Vol. 15#3
Anniversaries demand reflection. I have been writing this column for 13 years, and my own life has changed considerably during that period. Some changes were devastating: I was diagnosed with MS and struggled with cancer. I went through a bad divorce from a long-term relationship. My mother died. And a number of friends, including two women I lived with, died from cancer.
Other things that happened in those 13 years were marvelous: I published 14 books, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, rescued nearly 500 cats and taught hundreds of students. I fell in love again.
In the years I have written this column, I have always been guided by the dictate Robin Morgan taught me when I was a teenager: The personal is political. These columns, even when they have addressed global issues like war and peace, poverty and privilege, have always been personal. They have been, first and foremost, columns from my heart.
I know I have touched many of you over the years, because I have received countless letters from readers. For many, my voice has been one of validation: Reading this column has made women feel less isolated, because I have written about what they themselves were feeling. This column has also saved lives: I have received letters from women who had critical screenings because I wrote about my own experiences with cancer. And this column has exhorted women to create change, reminding those who have plenty that many women have little.
I wasn’t sure what to write for this issue’s column. I had considered ignoring the Curve anniversary altogether: I was instead going to write about Mother’s Day and the complexity of choosing motherhood, as some lesbians have done, and the feelings engendered by choosing not to have children, as other lesbians have done. I think that’s an important issue. But I feel the need to write about something more pressing and immediate, something personal and political, something that is keeping me up nights. I’ve been thinking about the traffic in women and girls.
No one wants to talk about this issue. I first read about it in college, as a young socialist studying the works of Emma Goldman. I have since interviewed and written about women and girls who are being trafficked, but I need to write about it now again. Because rather than getting better, it is getting worse, and what is being done to women and girls so that men can have a few minutes of pleasure is obscene in the truest sense of the word.
After the tsunami tragedy in December 2004, after hundreds of thousands of people were listed as dead or missing and another half million were displaced, word started to leak out that homeless children and adolescents were being abducted for sexual slavery. The news shocked some Westerners, although not enough to keep the story in the forefront of our attention. Many learned for the first time that sex tours to Southeast Asia and surrounding nations, like India, are plentiful, and young girls, because they are thought to be virgins and free from disease, are a highly profitable commodity. In Thailand, a man can buy a girl — a toddler, a preschooler — to have sex with her. (A recent report confirmed that one man had paid $10,000 to have sex with an eight-month-old girl.) In other parts of Southeast Asia, girls are bought and sold daily by their own parents because there is not enough money to feed the rest of the family. Girls are subjected to forced abortions, beatings, HIV infection and homelessness.
It’s not only Southeast Asia, of course. Throughout the former Soviet bloc, women and girls are trafficked to Europe and even to the United States, lured with promises of jobs, then indentured into sexual slavery or sold as brides. Women and girls from Eastern Europe, Mexico, Latin America, Asia and America are being held all over the United States.
International treaties prohibit the traffic in women and girls; many have been in place for a century. But they are not being enforced. Why not? What are all the pro-family Republicans (and Democrats, for that matter) doing about this issue?
It will take powerful people to address the sale and barter of women and girls as if they were items of trade. For 13 years, I have been asking my readers to make the world a better place for women and queers (and everyone else), and now, on Curve’s 15th anniversary, I am asking again. Write to Secretary of State Rice, to your senators and representatives, to the United Nations. Write to the president and his wife, who tout moral values and have two young daughters: Tell them that women and girls are suffering and dying, and that something must be done.
We can create change. Raise your voices for the women and girls who are being trafficked worldwide and let them know that they are not alone. That’s what we are trying to do here at Curve — give voice to the voiceless. We can’t do it alone. We need your help.
SPEAK OUT: Want to fight sex trafficking? Here’s how.
>> Polaris Project
http://www.polarisproject.org
>> Captive Daughters
http://www.captivedaughters.org
>> Coalition Against Trafficking in Women
http://www.catwinternational.org
>> Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking
http://www.castla.org
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