The Reality of Sex Trafficking

America has done a remarkable job in corrupting the society to think in a form of mind of consumerism.  Corporations, advertisement, and entertainment are what seem to devour over lives.  Propaganda, as well as pop culture, is something that we as citizens allow to influence us.  We have given marketers the right to a higher authority to make us believe in what they put out.  The advertisement and entertainment industry has blurred our visions and tainted our minds to think and act a certain way.  It has made us believe in fantasy and ignorant to reality.  It has failed to spread awareness of potential harm in our society.  Although some businesses support cancer research and obesity awareness, it has failed to expose the harms of poverty, human trafficking, and slavery.  Marketers only have an eye for wealth and the only reason they support causes like cancer and obesity is because they get more funding and they aren’t too risqué.  Most people have a problem with dealing with the word “sex” due to its controversial acts.  Because of this, people are at a lack of information about sexual abuse.  Sex trafficking, a part of human trafficking, is a modern-day form of slavery in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act is under the age of 18 years (1).  Sex trafficking is a multi-billion dollar industry worldwide (1).  Due to its increase in demand, it is the 2nd most profitable illicit business globally (1).  Unfortunately, most people don’t even know a clue about it. 

I had the opportunity to go to a screening of the documentary Cargo: Innocent Lost produced and directed by Michael Cory Davis.  Davis started off as a struggling actor, but later realized that he didn’t like the entertainment industry and the world of materialism that it brought.  Davis first witnessed the atrocious acts of human trafficking when he got offered to act in a famous soap opera in Bulgaria.  While acting in Bulgaria, Davis came upon a girl named Svetlana and was easily inspired to spread the word about sex trafficking due to her story.  He produced this film to bring awareness in America about these crimes.  In the early 2000’s no one had even heard of the word sex trafficking.  After the release of the documentary in 2007, the U.S. government put into law the Trafficking Victims Prevention Act which allowed the imprisonment of people involved in the trafficking enterprise.  Davis stated that since Americans are already exposed to so many sexual commercials, he had to gratify the sexual abuse scenes in his film to really make people understand what these innocent victims were going through.  Every cry and every preach for help was heard and seen in these scenes.  It was a form of sexual violence gone to a whole another level.  I, personally, was mentally and emotionally petrified by these scenes.  I could hear some people in the audience crying, while others had to leave the room.  None-the-less, these scenes in the film is what actually makes people realize how horrifying the sex trafficking industry really is. 

The sex trafficking industry targets vulnerable, foreign, young women in the ages of 12-18 and manipulates their mind into thinking that coming abroad to another country will make their lives a lot better.  Sex trafficking victims are promised a better life and a chance at the American Dream if they come into the U.S.  However once they are deported to America, or any other foreign country, they are put into work as prostitutes without their will.  They are sent to brothels, night clubs, and massage parlors and are forced into sexual slavery.  They are often times confined into a tiny room and are required to please the slave owners or their customers at any given time.  Customers would often times be very brutal to the victim because they have paid for it and they want to get their money’s worth.  The victims would inject themselves with drugs, like cocaine, to numb their experience.  The slave owners and the customers would not use condoms and therefore would transmit STD’s to the victims. The victims would then later be blamed for transmitting the STD’s and would be abused even more.  The documentary stated that some sex slaves saw up to 45 men per day.  Due to the constant sexual intercourse, women were forced to get abortions or deliver their baby and sell it on the black market.   The documentary stated that traffickers have a “recipe” to keep these women in the industry.  They say that one of the ways to keep them from being strong is to take away any support system that they have.  The traffickers would change the location of the victims every two weeks to ensure that they didn’t become comfortable with anyone around them.  Another part of their recipe is to break down any sense of self-will or self-confidence that the victim may have by depriving her of her rights to freedom.  The sex trafficking victims were told when to eat, sleep, and please and were denied any right to go outside. 

American parents have done a good job in protecting their children.  Due to this, more American children have fallen into the sex trafficking trap.  Foreign countries, such as China and Japan, have had a high demand in women with blonde hair and blue eyes.  Due to this, sex trafficking continuous to increase in the United States.  Davis stated that San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York are three of the biggest cities that are involved in sex trafficking.  I am from the Bay Area and I have never heard of the word human trafficking.  This just shows how little information the society has about it.  Over 3,000 kids per day are kidnapped in the U.S. and no one knows why.  The government has now concluded that some of these kids may have been involved in sexual slavery.  It is devastating to see young children being stripped away of their childhood and forced into sexual slavery through abuse.  Constantly being traded and sold is dehumanizing.   No one deserves to experience this and have their innocence stripped away.  In my opinion, even the death penalty, is not a justifiable punishment to the slave owners. 

It angers me to know that I didn’t have any knowledge about these crimes because I was brought up in America.  When talking to my cousin, he stated that he had done a case study about human and sex trafficking in his high school in England.  He was required to know the details about the business and the sufferings that the women had gone through.  This just proves that America is very ignorant to certain matters that may be controversial.  I believe that everyone in America wants to help.  However, when money is involved, or when certain situations are too sticky to handle, we tend to ignore them.  We only take action when it becomes a part of everyone’s lives or when it becomes harmful to our society.  But often times, it is too late then. 

After I finished watching the film, I began to think why didn’t these women try to escape?  However, at the question and answer session at the end of the screening, Davis explained to me that a lot of the sex trafficking victim’s slave owners threaten them to kill their family back home.  They had men watching their every move and made sure that no one knew about them.  These women continued to receive the sexual abuse to save their family.  It was horrifying to see the devastating acts being done upon these victims.  It was hard to realize that no one is really safe.  San Bernardino itself has had an increasing number of human trafficking in the recent years.   Davis has tried his best to help strategize a plan and to train the police officers nationwide into suspecting more of these crimes and victims.  What these women had to go through was just heart breaking and fearful for me to watch.  Since I am an independent college student, I tend to travel alone.  However, after viewing this documentary, I am now becoming aware of my surroundings and am making sure that I am not vulnerable to the human trafficking industry by being street smart. 

Davis has learned to use his acting skills to produce documentaries to get awareness.  He has transformed from an actor to an activist.  He uses his fame of being an actor to get other famous actors, such as Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, to promote awareness of sex trafficking.  Davis is truly an inspiring individual and has succeeded in getting the government involved in this issue.  Just the power of one individual can make such a big difference.  Racism, poverty, slavery, and human trafficking will never be diminished.  However, we can try our best to keep the number of victims to these crimes low by helping to spread awareness.  With this knowledge, I can now educate others and help spread awareness about these crimes. 

For more information on sex trafficking visit the following website:

http://www.istoptraffic.com 

Trailer of the documentary:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWc6C7oxNEQ

Scenes from the documentary:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBcm0PdjoKs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZDwX_3XxRI&feature=relmfu

Work Cited

1.  "Sex Trafficking." Artists United For Social Justice. Web. 21 Mar. 2012. <http://www.istoptraffic.com/>.

Daddy Poem -Sylvia Plath

Power of Words

Sylvia Plath’s poems were definitely ones I had to read more than once in order to fully understand the meaning behind the text. I believe both of the poems were difficult to analyze and comprehend. Without knowing further details about the author, who also happens to be the narrator, and the war between Germany and the Jews Plath’s poems are just words with no meaning.

At first the poem “Daddy” was confusing but once I read Sylvia Plath’s background and looked up key words I didn’t know the poem makes a little more sense then it did originally. The narrator starts off by announcing that she will no longer deal with living “in a black shoe” (Line 2). Choosing the color black to describe the shoe gives me the impression that her life was one consisting of unhappiness. Then in the following stanza we find out that she is talking about her father. The words “I have had to kill you” makes me jump to the conclusion that she is the one who killed her father but in the next line she states that her father “died before she had time” (Line 6-7). This left me wondering what it was she didn’t have time to do before her father died? I don’t believe she means it as simply as she states, she does not mean she didn’t have time to kill her father herself. So, does she mean she didn’t have time to get to know him or that she didn’t have the time to be the daughter he would of wanted? It’s all-only an unanswered mystery unless you continue to read her poem in its entirety.

I continue to question how the narrator truly feels about her father. She gives mixed emotions and uses both negative and positive descriptions throughout the poem. For example, her words “I used to pray to recover you” in line 14 represents her hope to cure her father from his sickness and make him healthy. But, later on she compares her father to Hitler and continues to talk about the theme of Germany and war with the Jews. The “neat mustache” immediately put the image of Hitler in my head, especially after she previously mentions the fear she had towards her father and his “Luftwaffe,” which is the German word for air force used during WW II. She proceeds with another disapproving detail of her father when mentioning the swastika and the word black in the same stanza. The symbol is a representation of evil, so, the narrator has gone from describing her father as being her God to being a swastika. She even makes it a point to emphasize the color of the swastika: black. This once again gives a dark, evil, mysterious image of the narrators’ father.

The father criticized in this poem is portrayed to great extremes to everything from a Nazi, the devil, and even a vampire in the end. I did notice the word black is continuously repeated and I believe she does this to stress the opinion she has of her father. Although we are first unsure of her feelings, she resolves the issue using multiple similes and metaphors and the reader ultimately discovers her true view in the final stanza when she calls her father a bastard. Her conviction is final. Since she chose to make a number of her stanzas reflect the brutality of the Nazi’s/Germans and Jews and compared her father to Hitler himself, I am curious to know what exactly he did to make her feel so bitter towards him?

"In Search of Air" - Theater Performance by Lida Winfield

I had the opportunity to witness a brilliantly executed theater performance about living with Dyslexia, a learning disability.  The performance was performed by a nationally known dancer named Lida Winfield.  Winfield was first diagnosed with Dyslexia when she was in middle school.  Her hour long performance allowed her to share her life experiences with the learning disability.  Dyslexia is a learning disability that makes it hard for students to distinguish between numbers and letters.  People with this disability have fluctuated symptoms making it hard to read.  One day she can read a novel with minimal errors, while other days she can’t even make out some of the words.  She stated that she often found herself “drowning and swimming” throughout her life and struggled to find the balance between them both in order to grow.  She gave many examples of when she found herself “drowning” in school and felt that she was good for nothing.  She explained that all the negative remarks she got in high school about her Dyslexia is what pushed her to focus less in school and more on her passion for dance.  It wasn’t until she enrolled in a college, which was meant for students with learning disabilities in Vermont, that she started “swimming.”  The small college allowed her to get the special attention that she needed and she was able to graduate with a master’s degree in interdisciplinary fine arts.  She has had the opportunity to tour in Europe with the Double Vision Dance Company.  This experience, as well as being a dancer in the Heddy Maalem’s From the New World festival is what made her performance strong. 

Being a dancer, I have seen many different styles of dance ranging from jazz to ballet to hula to Bollywood.  However, Winfield’s style of dance was unique.  She liked to call her dance moves as “creative movements” rather than a particular style of dance.  Her performance included a lot of talking (which was needed in order for her to tell her story) and dancing.  Since she tried to emphasize her story to the audience, she focused more on perfecting her storytelling rather than her dancing.  At the question and answer period at the end of the show, she admitted to have improved most of her “creative movements” on stage.  With experience, I believe that improving is a difficult task.  Improving requires the dancer to let their body to be free by not being afraid of letting out their emotions.  Winfield had a repetition of steps in her choreography in order to grab our attention to emphasize a certain point; just like the repetition of words in the novels that we have been reading in class.  Winfield also used different tactics, such as yelling, to highlight a certain point.  On the contrary, she also became silent when she wanted her words to really sink into her audience.  Her use of fierce facial expressions made me fearful of her at some points.  I think she wanted her audience to feel that sense of shock, fear, and uncertainty to show that she is strong; even with a disability. 

Winfield gave many examples of people that brought her down as well as people that inspired her.  Surrounded by an educated family, Winfield was always expected to succeed.  She stated that she felt “stupid” when she couldn’t meet the expectations of her sister; having a PhD in evolutionary molecular biology.  However, the one person that believed in her was her mother.  Although we may think it is wrong, her mother used to do her homework for her so that she wouldn’t have to face shame at school and at home.  Unfortunately her mother died of cancer when Winfield was in high school.  When receiving her high school diploma, she realized that she couldn’t even read what was written in the diploma.  She graduated high school with a reading capacity of a 2^nd grader and with the “inability to spell the word broccoli.”  

Winfield’s story telling through her theater performance was effective in making her audience hear her story.  She is an inspiration to all people with a disability.  Her success, along with multiple failures, gives hope for people with disabilities to not give up and to pursue their passion.  She makes us realize that there are always going to be people that bring you down by criticizing you.  We just need to learn to turn that criticism into positive energy and to exert it into something that we truly enjoy.