Rape and the sex trade. Pervasive Crimes but Much Neglected

I was reading in my local paper yesterday that 6 out of 10 Latina's are raped on their perilous journey north to the United States.  They are raped either by the people who bring them or the authorities that detain them along them way.  I have often thought of what it must be like in a woman's mind whenever she meets a man, in a bar, a club, or wherever young people meet.  When I think back to my younger days it never crossed my mind that the woman I might be leaving to go home with would endanger my life of assault me sexually.  For most men, the latter is thought of as a dream come true or a bit of a joke but real sexual assault is a violent and invasive act. Below: stealing young girls lives

I don't really know what the "official" definition of rape is and have purposely not looked it up, but I have come to define it widely myself.  Manipulation, lying, coercion, getting someone drunk in order to have sex with them.  Rape must surely include many different aspects to it. Then there is abuse of children, young boys and girls.

The Latina's yesterday's article in the San Francisco Chronicle referred to are economic refugees, forced to migrate north by the savage realities of the free market.  NAFTA alone has driven more than a million Mexican farmers off the land.  These farmers once eked out a living subsistence farming but could in no way compete against the giant mechanized agribussines of its neighbor to the north.

Women are overwhelmingly, though not exclusively, the victims of this crime.  In the numerous conflicts that exist throughout the world, rape is literally a weapon of war and sex with young girls, or young boys, is a tradeable commodity for the food that a family needs to survive.

According to the UN at least 60 million girls who would otherwise be expected to be alive are "missing" from various populations, mostly in Asia, as a result of sex-selective abortions, infanticide or neglect. (UN Study On The Status of Women, Year 2000) and Globally, at least one in three women and girls is beaten or sexually abused in her lifetime. (UN Commission on the Status of Women, 2/28/00)

The sex trade throughout the world is a thriving business, one that thrives only because capitalism cannot feed people. In South East Asia, 40% of girls are sold in to prostitution to feed their families.  The prostitution of young girls is such a lucrative industry; 22% of foreign tourists enter Cambodia for sex according to a 2000 report.  Four million young girls are trafficked annually with one million entering the trade every year to keep supply up with demand.  Who knows how many die through neglect, violent murder or suicide in these situations.

Rape is not a mystery crime either.  One report in 7 different countries found that 60% of victims new their attackers. 

In the US one in three women will be assaulted in their lifetime with 89% of the victims knowing their attackers and in 2002 there were 247,730 incidents of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault.* But most assaults go unreported due to the humiliation, mental pain and social bias that women have to deal with in the courts and the media.  According to the US Justice Dept. only 26% of rapes are reported.
group of rapists protected by law

It is impossible in many ways to determine the extent of this criminal activity because within the family, legitimized by the "sanctity" of marriage, rape has to be quite a regular occurrence.  And the numerous conflicts and wars create fertile ground for violence against women and young girls, forced sex with no accountability whatsoever.

Class society is violent by its very nature.  In the modern capitalist economic system, the purchase of a human being's life activity by another and the right to use it for their own personal gain is a relationship based on violence and coercion. It is undoubtedly a major contributor to the subjugation of women.  A human being's labor power is a commodity, sex is a commodity, it is only natural then that these commodities will be traded, sold and marketed.  Sex, the desire for men to control women, to "have" the women they want will always be a selling point under capitalism.

The struggle to change our perceptions of each other, what we are and what we aren't can only be successful with the elimination of class society.   For centuries women have been portrayed a certain way by the class of men that rule.  Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote:
"A woman's education must therefore be planned in relation to man.  To be pleasing in his sight, to win his respect and love, to train him in childhood, to tend him in manhood, to counsel and console, to make his life pleasant and happy, these are the duties if women for all time, and this is what she should be taught while she is young." **

I have not taken any women's studies courses and never been to university.  My experience with women has been my mother, sister, my women friends, lovers and partners; and of course in the workplace. where we fought together against the bosses and the system that exploits us and sows division between us.  It was this struggle more than any other that helped me understand more about the struggle women go through and how we must fight together to change society for the better.

So I am not posting this blog as some expert on women's issues by any means.  The article in yesterday's paper made me think of this issue again.  As a victim of a sexual assault as a child it reminded me of how powerless I felt, how ashamed and how complex it all is. I thought of the millions of young girls as young as 12 or 13 working in the brothels of the world in the most horrific conditions and what this existence must do to them as human beings.

This alone is enough to encourage us to wage the struggle to take control of the society in which we live. To control the production of food alone would reduce the sex trade.  We can produce adequate food, shelter and all the necessities of life including the need to grow intellectually as human beings; but capitalism can't.  The sex trade, like the trade in corn or currencies, is as natural to capitalism as its wars for the control of the worlds natural resources.

*George Mason University Sexual Assault Services
** Quoted in, Half The Sky: Virago Press