Tonight I saw the film Playground, a documentary about child sex trafficking inside the U.S. That is to say, American children. A reasonable amount of attention is given to trafficking of foreigners either into the U.S. or being used for sex tourism. But in scale, the domestic problem is even more serious.
The film cannot be everything, and I think that is to its benefit. Libby Spears makes a very tight, targeted and effective documentary that focuses on how these girls are taken into the sex trade as early teens; perhaps after early childhood sexual abuse, out of a broken or dysfunctional family, or even out of a nuclear family, and the way in which they are trapped and mistreated by the nature of the lifestyle and some public policies that are ineffective. It goes into other areas that are necessary but brings it back to the victim. For example, it mentions that we spend so much of our resources and focus on offenders and so little on victims, not managing to break the cycle of violence. It also delves briefly into the source of demand.
In some way I think the question of demand is most interesting. There are things we can do to address supply in terms of providing better assistance to the girls, and boys, involved, and we should do them, but ultimately, as long as there is demand, there will be financial incentive to abuse.
I think it is pretty clear that the sex industry is fueled by an underlying sexual frustration in the male population. It is the oldest profession so there is a good indication that this is not something about modern culture or feminism. Men simply have sexual desires in excess of what will naturally be available. Where there is scarcity, there is money to be made off of access to that good.
When we talk about simple adult sexuality, I think there is a good argument to be made here for legalized prostitution. It is not free of problems, but it certainly seems a less destructive outlet than prohibitions that fuel profitable organized crime, pimps, and ultimately trafficking. It becomes less simple when talking about minors. It is certainly reasonable to restrict prostitution to adults, but we probably practice too great a denial of teenage sexuality, both among teenagers (they need proper sex education) and between teens and adults (we need more contextual consent laws rather than rigid age-based laws).
But what are we to say about the demand for underage sexual partners. The film classifies some as having a problem between their legs, something in their life stalled their sexuality at a young age. This seems a sensible claim, and though these men may become monsters, there is something pitiable about them. They have a compulsion beyond their control that I would equate to being gay in a world that maintains legal and moral taboos against such thoughts.
The second group is one with a problem between their mind related to psychological development out of a purely selfish, antisocial behavior. This is someone who is careless with others, willing to exploit and harm everyone around them for their own base (and instant) gratification. This is a far less pitiable group. It is also a group that probably is involved trafficking simply because the opportunity is presented and thus is only intractable so long as the prior group needs an illicit outlet.
Unfortunately, I just don’t know how you eliminate this problem. One might hope that the legalized prostitution would sop up most of those who presently make child prostitution profitable. Perhaps they have no direct interest but end up there through the gateway process. They start with illegal prostitution and then they just get addicted to violating norms. Do we really think this sexual perversion is as widespread as the incidence indicates?
Anyway, this is a very difficult issue, and I think we are too often caught up with easy critiques such as the sexualization of children by pop culture. Children have been sexually abused for ages. Greek and Roman cultures in particular were known for abuse of boys. Perhaps our faults as a species have taken a new form with new technologies, but the faults are not new. Failing any miracle way of curing the faults, policies simply serve as mitigation. They might direct the fault to less bad outlets or they might simply do a better job picking up the pieces. At the end of the day, policy cannot strive for a perfect world it cannot deliver, it needs to strive for that which it can accomplish.
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