THE SLAVE TRADE & SEXUAL ABUSE
Human trafficking and the sex industry.
Ladies and Gentlemen, guests and distinguished speakers, Slavery, Human Trafficking and the Sex Industry are a mutually supportive gruesome threesome which, thanks mainly to media exposure, and the efforts of NGOs across the world, such as Education for Peace, have at last come to the attention of a mass public.
This has had some unusual effects. Currently descendents of African slaves in the USA are demanding reparations from Capitol Hill for the suffering, not of themselves but of their ancestors. If such a move was successful it would pose interesting questions for virtually every country on the globe, because the slave trade is as old as human history itself.
From the civilisations of Mesopotamia, to the pyramid builders of Egypt, from the cradle of democracy in Greece to the Roman Senate, from the Mayan empire of Central American to the Hang dynasty of China, from the Ottoman Empire to the Nubian Kings of Africa, slavery has flourished as commerce. Historically, all points of the compass have embraced the notion that a human being can be a commodity to be sold or exchanged as an object of production, a beast of burden, a bearer of arms, or a source of entertainment – and crucially, regardless of the consent of that human being.
Although far from being the first or the last, Roman Emperors, via their policy of “bread and circuses” to keep the “mob” occupied, used slaves as mass entertainment. Gladiators pitted their skills against each other, wild animals and declared enemies of Rome, to provide amusement for their Masters.
The Coliseum and other arenas provided the venues for this public spectacle, “sport” with certain death as a consequence and continued living as a prize of victory. It validated the notion that using human beings in this way was acceptable. Historians estimate that at one time about half the population of Rome were slaves, so it seems reasonable to suggest that some slaves colluded in this “snuff theatre”. Such were the numbers of slaves in Rome that there was slave culture and hierarchy – which extended to the semi-heroic status of those participating in the gladiatorial battles. As a means of enjoyment it pandered to the basest of human emotions, the visceral shock of violence.
Hollywood has learned the lessons of the success of the Coliseum very well and has made billions from it.
The role of men and women under the yoke of slavery was prescribed according to their physical attributes. Both males and females were units of production in agriculture, animal husbandry, and small craft industry. Men were seconded to bear arms in time of war and in sport, women were concubines and maids.
This use of human beings as unwilling labour & entertainment is not just a part of distant history. In WWII the Nazis used Jews, Slavs, Roma, and other “undesirables” as forced slave labour, with the more physically attractive women of these so-called “inferior races” inducted into the infamous “joy division” to provide sexual services to Nazi Officers. The Japanese army used similar practices, with slave labour for the males and “comfort women” status for the females. The repercussions of this are still ongoing with surviving “comfort women” demanding reparations from the Japanese government.
The link between slavery & sexual exploitation is self-evident in the historical Harems of the Sultans, in the concubines of the Chinese Emperors and the mixed race children on the tobacco plantations of 19th century Virginia USA. But it is the industrialisation of this crime in contemporary times that is most staggering, with reliable estimates that it could be more profitable than the narcotics industry.
The sex industry, leaving morality aside for a moment, is an entertainment industry, albeit of a degraded nature. It is very largely for the enjoyment of men. It is a very ancient industry that, if you will excuse the pun, has straddled every society since the dawn of time. Despite condemnation, stigma and illegality, the sex industry has survived and thrived. In my opinion it is very debasing for both a man and a woman to engage in a monetary transaction for the sexual release of one party to the transaction. But it is far, far, worse when one party is being forced into the transaction against their will. And it is indescribably more debased when one party is a child.
So in the sex industry we have cascading levels of debasement, in consensual prostitution, slavery in forced prostitution and frankly, abomination in forced prostitution of children. So whilst I may abhor every aspect of the sex industry, not every part of that industry is equally bad, and not every part involves slavery as commonly defined.
Such grades of “bad” are reflected in Slavery itself. A human being worked to near death in a concentration camp, existing on starvation rations, is not the same as a bonded slave in charge of a household, with responsibilities and a reasonable standard of living & comfort. Both involve the ownership of one person by another, both are slaves, both are an affront to humanity, but one is less bad than the other.
PAGE 6