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The analysis of international programmes must represent more to us as feminists than simply a detached theoretical discussion of distant events in remote places. Analysis must be situated on the fundamental premise that there is something I can do, right here and now, to engage in a struggle against patriarchal forces that are not so global as to be overwhelmingly complex, but rather so common as to be surprisingly predictable, and if challenging, yet surmountable. We must persist, even in the face of a universal enemy, because we owe it to ourselves and because we owe it to the women who struggle more intimately with, and suffer more excruciatingly under, the everyday manifestations of every day. Through this forum, I hope that we can pull concrete examples from international legislation and programmes to achieve the following: (1) to analyse and compare the relative advantages and disadvantages of various types of international action, emphasising in what ways they conform, or present obstacles, to feminist aims, (2) to draw appropriate parallels to national and local happenings, and (3) to generate concrete measures we can take within our own lives that will contribute to the feminist struggle, locally, nationally, and internationally. I begin with the example of prostitution and trafficking law at the international level and draw parallels to the obstacles faced by American feminists in their fight against all forms of violence against women. While I invite responses to my own analysis, I also would welcome you to analyse the international issue of your choice, providing of course a feminist perspective. --YMB |
Submission 1 Yoshi M. Bird. womanrebel@aol.com [Respond to this submission.]
International action directed at sexual trafficking is typically predicated on the false division between "forced" prostitution on the one hand and "free," or "voluntary" prostitution on the other. The use of women by men in prostitution, as well as the universal male prerogative of unlimited sexual access to women at all times, is an affront to our dignity as human beings. Prostitution is a form of sexual slavery, and trafficking is its trade. Only by recognizing the instrumentality of sexual inequality in determining women's status of political and social inequality can we hope to make meaningful progress in the fight to elevate women's status around the world.
Recent international efforts to address sexual trafficking include the European Union's Stop programme and the United Nations' Draft Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking of Persons, especially Women and Children. Neither measure explicitly connects trafficking to the larger "legitimate" sex industry that routinely buys and sells human beings-- often with the support and/or participation of national governments. Anti-trafficking efforts must recognize the situation of sexual trafficking within a larger inter-cultural continuum of male violence against, and ownership of, women.
One solution that naturally suggests itself is that perhaps legislation designed to combat violence against women can do more for anti-trafficking efforts than vice versa. However, upon closer scrutiny, this assertion is shown to be equally false, as many international measures instrumental in the fight against male violence are inclusive only of physical, and not of sexual, violence. For example, the EU's Daphne programme, an initiative committed to combatting violence against women, currently funds only 17 projects (out of 49) that make explicit mention of sexual abuse. Plus, the division of the EU's programming into the Daphne and Stop initiatives renders it impossible to launch anti-prostitution projects under existing funding schemes. Daphne does not consider prostitution a form of violence, and while Stop deals with trafficking, it does so only by contributing money to government bodies dealing with the issue and not to NGOs who contact both trafficked women and prostitutes and by limiting assistance to training and conference projects, rather than awareness-raising or victim assistance. (Read a thesis I wrote on international anti-trafficking and prostitution-related within the UN and EU)
While all of this is clearly of interest to us as feminist students in the United States, it can seem daunting to consider how we can, individually, make some contribution to the anti-trafficking, anti-prostitution effort. The truth is that we have similar battles to fight here within our own country. Here in the United States, women are criminalized for being exploited; when a woman is prostituted, the john, whose sense of unlimited entitlement to women's bodies and sexual services allowed him to purchase another human being, is not perceived as having made a choice. Instead, the woman "chose" to engage in a criminal activity, and although theoretically, both have committed a crime under our current prohibitionist system of prostitution law, she is more likely to be prosecuted. The fight to change our prohibitionist system into an abolitionist body of law continues on. Organizations like the Coalition Against Trafficking of Women (CATW) and Women Hurt in Systems of Prostitution Engaged in Revolt (WHISPER) need our efforts to combat the universal male prerogative that claims that sexual access to, and purchase of, women is acceptable and indeed indisposable. We as students can intern or write for these organizations; we can dedicate our studies and research to prostitution and trafficking and we can publish them ourselves, either in print or on the internet. We can rally against irresponsible national legislation, like the Wellstone/Slaughter Bill (The International Trafficking of Women and Children Victim Protection Act, s.600), that perpetuates false dichotomies of coercion among prostituted women. (Read Dorchen Leichtdholt's analysis of the Wellstone/Slaughter Bill) We can and must study law to find in-roads for the legitimation of feminist objectives at the state level, and we can and must find subersive and creative ways in which to circumvent the state when our efforts are thwarted. We must become a unified voice so angry, so thunderous, and so universal that we will be unavoidable; they will not ignore us because we will not allow it.
Moreover, we must engage in the relief effort, because as important as the end goal may be, it is a long way off, and we can only claim to be feminist if we extend aide to the women hurt in systems of oppression now, at this moment, in an era when prostitution is acceptable. Just as the battered women's movement has created shelters for the victims of battery, the prostitute relief effort has created systems whereby prostituted women can seek escape from their pimps and the johns who exploit them. Organizations like Alternatives for Girls in Detroit, MI, and Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive (HIPS) in Washington, DC, organize secure vehicles to do rescue work among prostituted women in inner cities. Hotlines exist where volunteers locate a prostitute in danger and dispatch vans to transport her to a safe and anonymous location. Even as students, we are able to lend our transportation and our free time to volunteering for these organizations, and after our education, we can found such organizations ourselves. And even if not all outreach groups are ultimately abolitionist, where we can help, we must, particularly while we are students. We must be pragmatic and remember our limitations, but we must also maintain our ultimate vision of abolitionist freedom.
Trafficking of women is not something that happens to women on another continent, and it does not happen in its own vacuum of oppression. Trafficking of women is part of a larger system of oppression that includes battery, rape, incest, pornography, prostitution, and other forms of male violence against women. There is much we can do, and if we are to make significant headway, we must organize toward unified, multidisciplinary action mobilizing our unique talents and resouces.
