As I was growing up, I always just thought that prostitutes were dirty women. Dirty women who would do anything for their next drink or their next crack rock, that they chose this life for themselves. I never thought of it as women who were being forced to do something against their will. I’ve always been the child that thought the world was full of happy people and rainbows, that no one would actually hurt another human being.
Yet as I grow older, as I mature and start to slowly open my eyes, I see that the world is indeed not full of happy people and rainbows, and more often than not, someone will hurt you before they help you.
Now, don’t go thinking that I’m a pessimistic person, because I am not. I still believe that there are good people out there in the world, I just think that the bad people outnumber the good people by a heck of a lot.
Recently, I’ve been looking more and more into the issue of human trafficking, in Canada and the world. I wouldn’t call myself an expert by any means, but I would say that I am more informed than most of my friends. Frankly, I find it quite amazing that I haven’t really heard of this before, and I’m just stumbling across it now. Then again, I always thought the world of full of cute puppies and smiles, so I didn’t watch or read the news in fear of that bursting my bubble. Some days I wish I could go back to that feeling, that sense of innocence.
I used to like going to the strippers, talking about them and laughing at them, same with the prostitutes you see in the downtown east side, or, as some people refer to them, the “ladies of the night”. My first reaction now to strippers is, “I hope none of them were trafficked”.
Do some people even realize what it means to be trafficked? My friend and I were talking about prostitutes, and I said to him, “I hope they weren’t trafficked”, he replied, “I’m pretty sure they were”. And that’s it. No outcry for their human rights being diminished, for being treated like a DVD or game you rent out time and time again. Just a shrug, and on goes your life, because if it’s not happening to you or someone you know, what do you really know about it?
It’s also so hard to know whether someone is prostituting for themselves or because they are being forced to. How does one tell? A john probably doesn’t want to look the girl/woman in the eyes because they may feel guilty already, they may know what they are doing is wrong, but they need a release, they need a woman’s touch. Or maybe they get off on it, on the fear and helplessness of the person who they have bought for the hour to do whatever they wish to do. Some victims may even seem as if they are willing, after years of being beaten, of being told that this is their role in life and all they can do, that if they run away and go back to society they will be turned away, labeled as a whore.
Some people think that prostitution should be legal, so there can be regulations, people will be forced to do it safely. But if it’s legal, won’t it just be that much easier to traffick more people? How many more girls will be tricked into doing these scarring acts?
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