In his November 12th Toronto Sun article “Accused Trafficker Offers Great Times” Brad Hunter declares, “Sex work and sex workers do not bother me…Too many Mrs. Grundys wag self-righteous fingers at women — and a world — they know nothing about. But sex trafficking is quite another matter. It is a 24/7 crisis that stings victims from St. John’s to Tofino.”
The article masquerades as an anti-human trafficking piece but is little more than a flimsy pro-prostitution rant. There are two things that all us guys know on the subject: 1. Forcibly offering up a young woman for sex is wrong. 2. The money that buys sex funds the crime of human trafficking.
Clearly, Brad, along with almost every other man, is anti-human trafficking. Big deal, it’s a cheap term. If they cared enough to change their behaviour, human trafficking would never have become a prevalent concern.
It’s not just the men. Cities like Toronto, or Edmonton where the “accused trafficker” resides, take their cut by granting licences for indoor prostitution. While such corrupt practices seek to legitimize prostitution, it remains a crime in Canada because it’s inherently exploitative and commonly involves human trafficking. Even if human trafficking is not involved, the “sting” Brad mentions still occurs, causing extreme and often irreparable harm. All the while, mayors like Tory and Iveson continue pretending to care.
Brad is partly right. Normal people don’t think well of prostitution and don’t understand why people engage in it. Calling them “Mrs. Grundys,” he infers that their opinions are too prudish to be taken seriously. I happen to know dozens of respectable adults who were blind to the commercial sex industry until it came knocking. They are the sleep-deprived, heart-crushed members of a support group I run for parents devastated by the exploitation of a daughter of any age.
When it happens to your own daughter it turns your world upside down and you’ll do anything to stop it. You’ll be hard pressed to find anyone who has more clarity than my ‘Grundys’ on how prostitution, let alone human trafficking, destroys young lives. So-called “sex work” may not bother Brad, but perhaps it would if he saw it through the eyes of a parent.
Absolutely correct, John.
Sexual objectification and exploitation is dehumanisation whether or not a person is being paid for that dehumanisation/abuse. Some people are so poverty stricken that they think prostitution is the only way out or the only way they can survive, and does Brad not realise that no one is waving the judgemental finger at these people (usually girls and women)? No one blames the prostitutes for their desperate positions, Brad. We blame you, the punters and the pimps for accepting, normalising and promoting women’s role as sex objects in society to be used for male gratification and treated as commodities and property. No one is judging the prostitutes, but we see you…
And sex-trafficking wouldn’t even exist if people (usually men, in this patriarchal world) hadn’t become so desensitised to the sexual exploitation, commodification and dehumanisation of others, as exemplified in prostitution. Prostitution is closely related to human trafficking; if a person can be desensitised enough to be OK with another person having the role of prostitute (under the guise of it’s OK because there’s so-called ‘consent’), then that is a slippery slope into worse and worse desensitisation, resulting in worse and worse dehumanisation and degradation of (usually) girls and women.
I used to be homeless and have met homeless prostitutes who did it out of desperation or because their heroine-addicted boyfriends forced/coerced them into it. Prostitution is nothing to accept or champion, whereas helping people out of desperate situations is what is required here. And I find it disgusting how mainstream media propaganda is constantly trying to brainwash girls and young women into seeing self-objectification as ’empowering’ to females in an attempt to maintain a fresh supply of attractive meat for the lions. Disgusting.
Equally disgusting is how mainstream media and so-called ‘academic’ propaganda is trying to brainwash young males into thinking that being a man equals being a lion, constantly suggesting that they’re ‘effeminate’ or a lesser man unless they forsake their humanity and decency and turn themselves into a predator (to some extent at least). Not only that, they tell them that this is what WOMEN WANT them to be, and that they will lose out with women unless they conform. E.g., they say that women want *dominant* men (not true, especially given that their idea of *dominant* involves being an overbearing, aggressive bully), and ‘nice guys finish last’.
So in a climate like this, everyone, both male and female loses, but with more devastating consequences for females generally speaking.
Aside from knowing prostitutes whilst being homeless, and although I have never been a prostitute myself, I was a sex-slave (obviously against my will) for nearly 1yr and can see the strong connection between these two crimes against (usually female) humanity. For one, neither would exist if there weren’t men who are so desensitised that they see girls/women as something to be used, bought and sold for sex. For two, these men generally prey on girls and young women who are already in desperate situations with no one to look out for them, no one who cares and no one who will help. And no one who will miss them or report them missing if they were to disappear.
If Brad is such a woke acceptor of prostitution, perhaps he might want to consider prostituting himself to men who he neither likes nor finds physically attractive (as desperate prostitutes regularly do) in order to make a few extra bucks. I for one promise not to wave the judgemental finger at him, and have fun with that, Brad.
Thanks John.