Traffic and Trafficking

I read an article in The New Yorker magazine about human trafficking. Wow, was it depressing. Basically, it exemplifies the idea of women as commodities for free trading around the world. Their bodies - or more appropriately, physiologies - are routinely degraded, devalued, and dehumanized for sex or the idea of sex. Part of me read this article in the, "Shame on the rest of the world for being so evil" point of view, but at the end, I thought to myself, "Shame on all of us."

The things we tolerate as women, and even propagate, in terms of patriarchy, are unreal. There are people out there who still don't believe in marital rape. There are daily infringements on our reproductive freedoms (women = baby machines), constant images of women as sex objects in advertisements from everything from perfume to beer to movies to fast food meals. My favorite manifestation of late, and my favorite topic of conversation around this daily humiliation, is the Heineken ads with the robotic woman-keg. Basically, this is advertised as the perfect woman: big breasts, big hips, without a personality or free will, and she pumps alcohol. Wow, great. The way this and arguably every society around the world treats women is despicable, and it leads to a culture in which human sex trafficking is allowed to continue. If women were respected everywhere, it would not be able to happen.

All or most of the women in the article wound up in Dubai as sex slaves. This would make perfect sense if Dubai were some hole-in-the-wall place out of the sights of the world (like if no one had ever heard of it), but it's not. It's one of the wealthiest, if not the wealthiest, cities in the wealthiest country in the world. Tons of US and other international corporations have huge stakes in Dubai, and many US universities are considering setting up international campuses there. This is a place where rich people go to play and free enterprise reigns, so it is no wonder that those same rich people pay a ton of money for sex with abused, illegal prostitutes. It is also no wonder that in a country where oppression of women is the norm, victims of trafficking are arrested instead of aided.

I think this all really gets back to not only our devaluation of women, but our complete and utter dependency on oil. This, of course, brings me to traffic.

There are too many people in New York. I cannot wait to leave this place. I took a long bike ride on Saturday, which would have been fine, but I rarely had an opportunity to glide uninterrupted through the streets because there was always some car not paying attention about ready to kill anyone with slower reaction times on a bike. It's a jungle out there, and they're all driving huge cars. You'd think with gas prices these people would stay home, but one should never underestimate the American impulse to get out and burn fossil fuels. It's amazing.

To conclude: stop human trafficking - ride your bikes.