Prejudice against women

[northstar]

THANKS Margrace for coming forth with this issue.

Betsy you acknowledged the Female Genital Mutation and inquired what do l suggest we do. Like this topic is very important to address, so are the combined prejudices against women from the most serious to those from our trusted diplomates.

The FGM is currently tracked internationally, although it has been found in the Middle East, Asia and Africa where children are barbarically mutilated to make them more desirable for marriage. Understanding and acknowledging that these crimes are occuring and being supported by cultural and religious reasons is the intial step to begin change.

The Natasha's is acknowledging a very real situation in which women over 1 million women and children are raped, abused and sometimes murdered in our world. Why does this exist? The law of supply and demand. And the demand is mainly men, the victims mainly women. Again the first step is to recognize the problem, the next is refuse to support it, and the third is to get involved to make others understand it and work to get it acknowledged by our leaders.

The beginning is taking this as a serious problem...

here is an excerpt

by Christopher Guly

Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

OTTAWA - Over an award-winning career that spans 34 years, Canadian investigative journalist Victor Malarek has written books about his life growing up on the streets of Montreal, the plight of Canada's immigration policy and an "inside look" at the country's illegal drug scene. Yet none of them were as disturbing to compile as his fifth and latest book about the trafficking of women and girls for sex.

In "The Natashas: The New Global Sex Trade" (Viking Canada, $36 Canadian; negotiations are under way for a U.S. print run and an international film), Mr. Malarek estimates that of the 1 million young women sold worldwide for sex every year, one-quarter come from Eastern Europe, including about 100,000 from Ukraine alone.

"As soon as the Iron Curtain crumbled, organized crime replaced it with a plastic zipper," Mr. Malarek said in an interview.

"Eastern European women did not register on the prostitution market. But in just over a decade, they went from nothing to 250,000 of them out there in the flesh trade," he noted.

Known as "Natashas," primarily in the Middle East where men consider them all to be Russian, girls as young as 10 years of age are shipped all over the world. As Mr. Malarek's book explains, they line the streets of the red-light districts in Austria, Italy, Belgium and Holland; "stock" the brothels in South Korea, Japan and Bosnia; work nude in massage parlors in Canada and England; are locked up as sex slaves in apartments in the United Arab Emirates, Germany, Israel and Greece; and star in peep shows and seedy strip clubs in the United States.

Ukrainian women are usually taken to Belgrade through Hungary and then distributed to Bosnia or Italy, according to Mr. Malarek. Or, they end up working as prostitutes in the United States via Mexico as several did in an elaborate human smuggling scheme that resulted in murder and rape and an FBI investigation a few years ago.

If the women aren't smuggled into a country, they often enter under visitor visas or as refugee claimants. Though Canada is a "minor player" compared to the volume flowing to the U.S., Western Europe or Israel, they can apply here for a special entry permit as exotic dancers.

More often than not, the women never dream of becoming prostitutes.

"They think they're going to be waitresses, nannies, work in a hotel, that kind of thing. Then they get busted and broken," said Mr. Malarek, who spoke here at the National Arts Center on October 21 at an event sponsored by bookstore chain Nicholas Hoare Ltd. and the Ukrainian Professional and Business Association of Ottawa.

"Once women are beaten into submission, they never question their pimps after that. They do as he says or he will kill them, and the other girls see it," the journalist continued.

An 18-year-old Romanian whom Mr. Malarek calls "Sophia" in "The Natashas" (all the women's names are changed to "ensure that they do not endure further humiliation or embarrassment") told him about the so-called breaking grounds of Serbia.

Young girls from Ukraine and other former East Bloc nations watched in horror as "very mean and ugly men" raped some of them.

"Those who resisted were beaten," Sophia said. "If they did not cooperate, they were locked in dark cellars with rats with no food or water for three days."

Many attempted suicide.

Sophia recalled a "very beautiful" Ukrainian girl who had refused to submit to the men in charge of the center.

"They beat her, burned her with cigarettes all over her arms," she said.

"They hit her with their fists. They kicked her over and over. Then she went unconscious [and] just lay there, and they still attacked her anally. When they finished, she didn't move. She wasn't breathing. There was no worry on the faces of the owners. They simply carried her out."

Sophia and her compatriots assumed that the Ukrainian was buried in a fresh mound of earth in a nearby forest.

"On her third day of captivity," Mr. Malarek writes, "Sophia was 'trained.'"

He said that horrific stories like that abound where women who refuse to acquiesce die as the result of being thrown off balconies or receiving severe beatings.

Those who submit don't last very long, said Mr. Malarek, whose grandparents are from Ukraine. "The market eats them up voraciously and uses them for six months, where sometimes women are servicing 20 or 30 men a day. Then they are tossed out like a used dishrag or dumped on a side road because there's plenty more where they came from. It's a sense of, 'you're used; you're gone. Get out of here.'"

He explained that the "vast majority" of these young Eastern European women involved in the sex trade are sent home with sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV.

For their services, men pay anywhere from $30 to $200 (U.S.), depending on the look or the age of the girls or women, who see none of that money. "They're lucky if they get a hamburger to eat a day," said Mr. Malarek.

But the gangs involved in this global trafficking network earn "huge" profits, he added. Mr. Malarek said that women can sell anywhere from $500 to $10,000 U.S., and pimps can make back their investment in less than a week.

"This is a $12-billion-U.S.-a-year industry, and it represents the world's third largest criminal money-making venture behind drugs and weapons," he stated. Yet little is being done to stop it.

the rest can be found here-

www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/2003/510306.shtml

[betsy]

NorthStar,

Thank you for posting an excerpt from the book.

I do believe that white slavery is happening, and it is not something new. Not that I am dismissing it. I am only acknowledging this kind of problem had been going on for ages. As a teen, I've heard of plights by Filipino women applying for jobs overseas, thinking they'd be going as nannies or become members of performing arts going from cities to cities all over Asia.

It is an organized crime syndicate that's usually behind these enterprises.

They must have been improving their methods too, what with all the new technology now.

It is so easy to say...do not support it. I hope it's as simple as that. But that is tantamount to just wishful thinking. There will always be someone who will be willing to pay to indulge in sick fantasies. And there will always be some enterprising individual willing to provide the supply. This is like the drug war. We've been facing and fighting it...and after all these years, it seems we're losing.

Yes, I would also imagine that a lot of these clientele would not be the normal johns picking up women in our streets. The kind of sick brutalities that await a lot of the victims is just too horrific to imagine.

I had seen the movie Hostel....and it makes you wonder and cringe, do those kind of places already exists?

We can only always try to keep up the fight. PREVENTION may be the best thing that we can do.

Governments all over the world should inform and warn their citizens about these things. Parents should warn their children. To be wary. Not to be gullible. Although in some cases, it is the parents who sell their children.

It is depressing. I find the world only seems to get uglier as it grows older.

[scribblet]

In reading the posts on here especially about US soldiers committing rape and sexist rants about Belinda Stronack, I would like to challenge the strong, rightious men on here to read Victor Malecks book called The Natasha's, the global sex trade and who is involved.

This is a world wide problem and the internet has made it very profitable for government officials of all countries who either profit from this or condone it. Please read the book and then lets here your opinions.

Okay, I give up, US soldiers are committing rape and sexist rants about Belinda ? How informed are they about Belinda Stronach, I wouldn't think they would care enough about one of our MPs to make any sexist rants.

[jefferiah]

If feminists are about equality of sexes, then the movement should not be called "feminism", since it refers to only one sex, one group. Imagine a group called "White Male Anglosaxons". What would your automatic opinion be of that?

[betsy]

If feminists are about equality of sexes, then the movement should not be called "feminism", since it refers to only one sex, one group. Imagine a group called "White Male Anglosaxons". What would your automatic opinion be of that?

I agree. It rings of exclusivity! The name is misleading. They should change it...

[betsy]

If feminists are about equality of sexes, then the movement should not be called "feminism", since it refers to only one sex, one group. Imagine a group called "White Male Anglosaxons". What would your automatic opinion be of that?

Yeah, the feminists are saying that it IS about gender....if they are saying there is an imbalance of power between genders.

What the feminists don't seem to realize...or don't want to admit is that.....

The delineation of power distribution is not between men and women. It is between those who have been able to gain power...and those who have not. We see lots of men....as well as lots of women....who were not able to gain power.

If the feminists admit that it's not a power imbalance between genders, they have to explain why there are so many more men who had gained power than women. Because feminists believe not in the equality of the genders...but in the superiority of women, delineation on the basis of gender requires less self-analysis.

The leaders of the feminists movement are not concerned about other women. They are concerned about establishing their own power. In other words, the idealism of the feminist movement has long ago evaporated.

REAL WOMEN do not think like today's feminists.

[margrace]

No. Please enlighten me as to the terminology with which you are obviously familiar.

I'd advise that you stop playing dumb if it weren't so obvious that you ain't acting.

Women are cats, men are dogs we all know that.

SO the phrase like "top dog" is an insult to women?

How about someone who "works like a dog"? I suppose this is to be percieved as an insult to women by BLACK DOG and other overwhiney lefties?

How about "DOG AND PONY SHOW"? Surely this is in some way directed at the female underclass as well?

The song "who let the dogs out" certainly must have been misinterpreted by thousands of youths as a song about MEN? Black Dog and his lefty crybabies wouldn't have it! This is secretly a song about poor Belinda and other downtrodden women so oppressd by the societal reference to them -and only them- as animals.

Allow me to introduce you to my friend "context".

I wonder why this is the las post I can read. There evidently is a second page but I get an error message when I click on it to read it

[scribblet]

The leaders of the feminists movement are not concerned about other women. They are concerned about establishing their own power. In other words, the idealism of the feminist movement has long ago evaporated.

REAL WOMEN do not think like today's feminists.

I agree Betsy, NAC is one example, thankfully their funding is drying up.

[Black Dog]

Yeah, the feminists are saying that it IS about gender....if they are saying there is an imbalance of power between genders.

What the feminists don't seem to realize...or don't want to admit is that.....

The delineation of power distribution is not between men and women. It is between those who have been able to gain power...and those who have not. We see lots of men....as well as lots of women....who were not able to gain power.

So, because there are other power imbalances (let's say between races and between classes), then there's no gender power imbalances?

If the feminists admit that it's not a power imbalance between genders, they have to explain why there are so many more men who had gained power than women.

So let me get this straight: you admit that there's a power imbalance betwen men and women, yet deny it has anything to do with gender. So I have to ask: why is there a power imbalance between men and women?

Because feminists believe not in the equality of the genders...but in the superiority of women, delineation on the basis of gender requires less self-analysis.

Care to elaborate, or better yet, make this coherent?

The leaders of the feminists movement are not concerned about other women. They are concerned about establishing their own power. In other words, the idealism of the feminist movement has long ago evaporated.

There's your trouble: there is no singular, monolithic feminist "movement."

[jefferiah]

Also I think, whether you agree with abortion or not, the term "pro-choice" (a woman's right to choose) drags feminism into the argument, and the issue of male oppression. There are many women who are against abortion, these are not all "submissive wives in long dresses". The phrasing "a womans' right to choose" is clever, instead of saying "in support of abortion". This is quite similar to some Bush supporters saying if "you dont support BUsh, you hate America and Israel, etc". We all know this is not true right. And when you dont support abortion, it does not mean you are trying to keep women down and hamper their progress, any more than being anti-war means you are trying to destroy your own country. The reason pro-lifers do not support "a womans right to choose" has nothing to do with women at all, except for that fact that women are the ones who bear children (this was not something I decided). The real reason is we believe that any persons right to choose ends where anothers right to live begins.

[Black Dog]

The reason pro-lifers do not support "a womans right to choose" has nothing to do with women at all, except for that fact that women are the ones who bear children (this was not something I decided).

Uh...since women are the one's who bear children, then the ability to decide whether or not to terminate a pregnancy is going to be a womens' issue. You can't remove them from the equation.

[jefferiah]

The reason pro-lifers do not support "a womans right to choose" has nothing to do with women at all, except for that fact that women are the ones who bear children (this was not something I decided).

Uh...since women are the one's who bear children, then the ability to decide whether or not to terminate a pregnancy is going to be a womens' issue. You can't remove them from the equation.

Look what I am saying is, is that if it were a man bearing children pro-lifers would still be pro-life. The reason pro-lifers are pro-life is not because its a woman involved. Pro-lifers are not anti-woman. They just believe that the fetus has a right to live. They arent doing this because its a woman bearing that fetus, or to try to keep women down.

[Riverwind]

They arent doing this because its a woman bearing that fetus, or to try to keep women down.

No that is is just a conquence of belief system that puts the interests of clump of tissue that could turn into human being ahead of the interests of an already living and breathing human being...

[jefferiah]

So therefore my statement was correct. If you look above and read my statemen again, you will see I did not exclude women from the issue. I excluded women from the reason pro-lifers do not support abortion. For the pro-life stance it is not about a woman or man. Its about the unborn child.

[jefferiah]

Now you are getting to the real issue. Is the fetus alive? Is it human? Why not ask Dr. Bernard Nathanson, one of the original proponents of the abortion movement and subsequently an abortion doctor after Roe v Wade who promptly quit when he began to see things differently, or the millions of former abortion doctors who came to believe through personal experience with the procedure that a fetus is more than a clump of tissue.

[JerrySeinfeld]

There is indeed a power imbalance in our society - women hold most of the important power.

[Black Dog]

Look what I am saying is, is that if it were a man bearing children pro-lifers would still be pro-life. The reason pro-lifers are pro-life is not because its a woman involved. Pro-lifers are not anti-woman. They just believe that the fetus has a right to live. They arent doing this because its a woman bearing that fetus, or to try to keep women down.

So what? At the end of the day, abortion is a women's issue, regardless of the anti-abortion side' rationale.

There is indeed a power imbalance in our society - women hold most of the important power.

Maybe in Jerryland, but there, people wear hats on their feet, grass comes out of lawnmowers and hamburgers eat people.

[JerrySeinfeld]

Look what I am saying is, is that if it were a man bearing children pro-lifers would still be pro-life. The reason pro-lifers are pro-life is not because its a woman involved. Pro-lifers are not anti-woman. They just believe that the fetus has a right to live. They arent doing this because its a woman bearing that fetus, or to try to keep women down.

So what? At the end of the day, abortion is a women's issue, regardless of the anti-abortion side' rationale.

There is indeed a power imbalance in our society - women hold most of the important power.

Maybe in Jerryland, but there, people wear hats on their feet, grass comes out of lawnmowers and hamburgers eat people.

Well certainly you're not suggesting childbirth is an unimportant issue?

[Riverwind]

Now you are getting to the real issue. Is the fetus alive? Is it human?

The answer to this question is religious not scientific. Every so called 'scientific' argument for calling a fetus human can be matched by an equally valid 'scientific' argument that a fetus is not human. In our society we respect the people to choose the religion of their choice. This means that people should be free to decide for themselves whether a fetus is human or not.

[JerrySeinfeld]

Now you are getting to the real issue. Is the fetus alive? Is it human?

The answer to this question is religious not scientific. Every so called 'scientific' argument for calling a fetus human can be matched by an equally valid 'scientific' argument that a fetus is not human. In our society we respect the people to choose the religion of their choice. This means that people should be free to decide for themselves whether a fetus is human or not.

And they are free to do that - or I should say WOMEN are free to do that. Certainly an odd predicament for a group which "lacks power" in life's important realms such as home or family.

[Black Dog]

And they are free to do that - or I should say WOMEN are free to do that. Certainly an odd predicament for a group which "lacks power" in life's important realms such as home or family

You mean they actually have sovereignty over their own persons? OutRAGEOUS! 'course you don't mention how rare that is in this world, nor do you mention all the other ways women lack power.

[JerrySeinfeld]

And they are free to do that - or I should say WOMEN are free to do that. Certainly an odd predicament for a group which "lacks power" in life's important realms such as home or family

You mean they actually have sovereignty over their own persons? OutRAGEOUS! 'course you don't mention how rare that is in this world, nor do you mention all the other ways women lack power.

Actually if you read more carefully you'll see I refer to OUR SOCIETY (not the world). I would concede your allusion to the fact that women's power dynamic is certainly in a diffrent realm in other parts of the world (read: Muslims cuontries).

The point I'm making is an interesting one, though. You're right when you say they have sovereignty over their own persons in our society which is a given. What I'm talking about is the result of that. That sovereignty, for good or bad, also results in a great deal of power (the original issue here - you're skipping aruond).

[Black Dog]

Actually if you read more carefully you'll see I refer to OUR SOCIETY (not the world). I would concede your allusion to the fact that women's power dynamic is certainly in a diffrent realm in other parts of the world (read: Muslims cuontries).

So women have no power there, but too much here. Uh Huh.

The point I'm making is an interesting one, though. You're right when you say they have sovereignty over their own persons in our society which is a given. What I'm talking about is the result of that. That sovereignty, for good or bad, also results in a great deal of power (the original issue here - you're skipping aruond).

Please tell me about the vast power women wield in our society. Is it political? Economic? What?

[JerrySeinfeld]

First things first - I'd be interested to see how your weak attempt at logic can link an MP making a comment about a particular woman as being a comment upon our society's view of women as a whole?

Ah, now I see what your getting at. Your approach is so confused its hard to make heads or tales of it.

You're referring to this statement I made above: "But I think it does say something about how our enlightened society views women."

I'll have to bring you along slowly. First: can you think of a common derogatory term for women with canine connotations?

Ahhh, yes black DOG

In lefty circusland ...the strange and bizarre world known as "Neveroffendanyoneorevenbepercievedtobepossiblyoffendinganyoneland", I think we should enact a new law:

Whenever referring to someone as a BYATCH, especially someone who humiliated you publically, betrayed her professinoal colleagues and is named as "the other woman" in a high profile divorce case, make sure you don't just call her a BYATCH, you need to throw in a qualifier:

"I would like to remind everyone that the word I am about to use or perhaps just allude to or gesture is directed solely at the vile piece of work not sitting in that seat, and not at the entire gender to which she happens to belong."

That ought to keep the offended-police at bay 'till the next parlaimentary outbreak (oops, it's already happened!).

[JerrySeinfeld]

Actually if you read more carefully you'll see I refer to OUR SOCIETY (not the world). I would concede your allusion to the fact that women's power dynamic is certainly in a diffrent realm in other parts of the world (read: Muslims cuontries).

So women have no power there, but too much here. Uh Huh.

The point I'm making is an interesting one, though. You're right when you say they have sovereignty over their own persons in our society which is a given. What I'm talking about is the result of that. That sovereignty, for good or bad, also results in a great deal of power (the original issue here - you're skipping aruond).

Please tell me about the vast power women wield in our society. Is it political? Economic? What?

You need to look beyond your basic measures. There is a lot more giong on in the world than a bunch of MPs sitting in parlaiment or a bunch of CEOs making capital expenditure decisions. Think of your day to day life. Family, home, purchase decisions, childbirth decisions, home buying decisions, home decorating decisions, decisinos about what we put into our bodies, decisions about when generally get married, start families, etc. I would argue that women handle many of these decisions on AT LEAST an equal footing with men, and maybe even hold the balance of power in these areas. So when you think about it, sure you could argue that men might have more decisino making power when it comes to where to build the next wal mart...but do they? After all, perhaps it's women who dictate shopping habits, buying patterns and ultimately where that stotre goes? It's a nuanced subject and I don't expect you'll grasp it right away, but think it through a bit. Women hold a great deal of power in our day to day lives, and indeed hold virtually all decision making power in one of life's BIGGEST realms: ie. procreation. So to argue that women lack power is a one dimensinoal look at the society we live in.

ALthough with more Muslims moving in, that could change, too.