Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore's Campaign

Some of you may have seen that Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore's foundation for sex trafficking awareness, has launched its social media campaign this week, “Real Men Don’t Buy Girls.” I stumbled across a story about it in a tech blog, and a remarkable comment that I wanted to share here, because I think the comment is unusually enlightened and open-minded. I think it might represent some of what many of us here–on both sides of the table–think about our hobby. Bottom line: it's all about CHOICE.

Here's a link to the post I stumbled across: http://tcrn.ch/hzhQgj

Here's the comment that got my attention...

John F.X. Berns · Works at Online Travel Technology Geek

This campaign is, I fear, a great oversimplification of the problem. While I agree that sexual slavery is horrible and must be eliminated, that's just one small facet of an industry and the problem is the "forced slavery" and not the sex industry itself.

In most cases women make a rational choice to enter the sex industry. Of all the alternatives that they have available to them, choosing to be a sex worker offers them the greatest opportunity to improve the quality of their lives.

For example: a girl born into a poor rice farming family in Northeast Thailand has limited options. She is lucky if her family can afford to pay for even a high school education. So she can stay in her poor village and work for $100 a month, she can move to a larger city and work as s tore clerk or maid for $200 a month (with higher living expenses) or she can become a sex worker in Bangkok and make $1000-2000+ a month (the same as a Thai person with a an MBA and 5-10 years work experience) or move to Singapore and make $5000-$10,000+ a month.

So the choice for her becomes "do I stay here and work for barely enough money to survive or do I enter the sex industry and break the cycle of poverty for me and my family?" Factor in the Buddhist concept of Karma and it's easy to rationalize that the stigma of being a sex worker is far outweighed by the gook Karma she achieves by taking care of her family and paying for her younger brother to go to college.

In that financial and social context, working a few years in the sex industry does become a rational CHOICE for women.

And let me emphasize one word again: CHOICE. Unless it's made of their own free will, it's not acceptable.

As for HIV: Yes, HIV is a risk--but a manageable one--and it's just another variable in the risk/reward equation.

While eliminating the sex industry would eliminate the forced sexual slavery, it would also eliminate a rational choice for women that offers them a way for them--and their extended family--to break the cycle of poverty.

Part of the problem is the prejudice against sex workers; if you extended the same policy to the coffee industry, you would be telling people to stop drinking coffee because some coffee beans are picked by child laborers--and that seems obviously ridiculous at first blush: you would be punishing legitimate farmers as well as those that relied on child labor.

For more information on the other side of the argument, see the great work that the people at the Empower Foundation have done to help women that have chosen the sex industry as their path make better decisions regarding their careers and their financial future: http://www.empowerfoundation.org/index_en.html.

Cheers,

L4L