In the company of wolves

How ICTs Contribute to Violence Against Women – summary

The internet’s contribution to human-trafficking for ‘sex work’, the pervasive and excessively dominant presence of pornography (if not pornography itself), and the use of image-trafficking and chat-forums for networking information about, and for advertising specific, women and children being made available through sex-tourism, or to be bought as mail-order-brides from ex-Soviet and some Asian countries: without even going into the ways in which the internet’s vast capacity for expressive freedoms, and multiple means by which opinion might be conveyed, are exploited for the uncensored reels of bigotry, racism, sexism and prejudice – without, of course, any apparent understanding of the privileges bestowed upon these users in order that they might be in a position to express their bigotry - or any of the Net’s other lower-key contributions, if not to violence per se, at least to inciting violence and sowing seeds of negativity - the internet’s link with the seedier aspects of the so-called ‘sex industry’ (are there any aspects that aren’t seedy?) is where the greatest threat lies and where perpetrators of violence hide.

Apparently where there is commercial sex, there is violence.

Below are a number of articles, two about the potential dangers in-store for mail-order-brides, one arguing for the ways in which all aspects of the sex-industry – legal or otherwise – are in fact inextricably linked, and one article arguing that each aspect must not be confused with each other in order to address the ones posing real and immediate danger to the lives of women; referring specifically to the importance of separating prostitution from sex-trafficking.

Let's separate the issues: www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/1792
The interlocking, underlying connections between all aspects of the sex-industry: action.web.ca/home/catw/readingroom.shtml?x=53795
Mail-order-brides: www.urban.org/publications/900982.html and www.protectionproject.org/eo1.htm

I understand the practicalities of separating issues in order to deal with each more affectively, but it’s so significant that the underlying theme throughout is sex, and more specifically, attitudes towards (what is presented as) women’s sexuality. What every single branch of the sex-industry’s commercial enterprises cash in on, and indeed rely upon, is the projection of male desires for women’s sexuality not only onto women involved in porn (which, these days, is everyone from college students to corporate climbers) but also, as the industry increasingly pervades the every-day, women not involved directly in porn; presenting that visualisation as some kind of ‘truth’ about female sexuality, removing sex from sex itself in order to make it packageable, saleable, cellophane-wrapped and profitable.

Sex has been stolen from women for cynical commercial enterprises – its ultimate expressions of cynicism ranging from the clever ‘sell’ of porn to women themselves as post-feminist, cool, and liberating, all the way to resorting to human trafficking of the most vulnerable people globally in order to continue to feed this hunger for sex-which-is-not.

human trafficking

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Buy a bride on Myspace! (She's going to need that drink!):
Kazakhstan Kazakh woman mail order bride

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How exactly is this the new feminism?
pussy cat dolls l dont need a man

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