Feminist Research Education Development and Action Centre Reports Index

The FREDA Centre for Research on Violence against Women and Children Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children and Youth: National and International Perspectives Yasmin Jiwani, Ph.D. presented at  IT'S A CRIME! An Act Local - Think Global Conference on the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children and Youth  April 30 - May 1, 1999 Vancouver, BC Thank you. First of all, I would like to acknowledge the First Peoples' of this land and for giving me the space here to be able to say these words, I would also like to acknowledge the conference organizers and everybody in the audience. And to acknowledge in particular, my Aboriginal sisters. I would like to begin, first of all, by focussing my presentation on two very integrated issues. One is the issue of difference and the other is the issue of structure, the very mechanism which make sexual exploitation possible. Let me tell you at the outset, in our perspective, and in terms of the work we do, we're not really interested in factors which would lend themselves to a psychological examination in terms of why people feel the way they do. We're more interested in why society permits the kinds of things that happen, to happen. We're interested in why certain groups have privilege over other groups and how these structures of domination and oppression interact to make certain groups more vulnerable to violence than others. I want to start off with the whole notion of children and youth. We talk about children and youth. A lot of government policy is framed in terms of children and youth. But children and youth are generic categories. They don't take into consideration, gender differences. They don't take into consideration the fact that girls and boys are raised differently, they are rewarded differently, they are perceived differently and they are framed differently. So how one is actually brought up is very important in how one gets treated. What kind of position one has in society is really critical to how one is seen, heard, or given voice in society. And those are very important factors. Internationally, it's been found, for instance, that girls tend to be less immunized, tend to be breast fed a lot less, suffer a lot more in terms of health, are discriminated against in terms of access to education, access to information, access to health care, are exploited more.(1) But even when we look here in Canada, there are startling differences. If one were to begin to unpack the general statistics that are packaged under the rubric of children and youth, one would find amazing differences. For instance, girls are the victims in 80% of the cases involving sexual assault by a family member.(2) If one were to look at police statistics in terms of sexual assaults that have been reported, most are girls. If one were to look at statistics on kidnapping and abduction, most are teenage girls.(3) If one were to map violence along gender lines, we would find that more than half the women in this country, young women under the age of 18 who have experienced violence, are girls.(4) So there are definite gender differences. There are gender differences in terms of how the sex trade actually gets played out. There are gender differences in terms of which strolls are allocated to girls versus boys, and who is controlled by pimps - in terms of girls versus boys. So there are a lot of gender differences. But more than that, more than gender differences, the most critical factor underlying the ways in which differences are communicated and differences get played out within this whole arena of sexual exploitation is power and hierarchy. Certain groups are more exploitable than others, and that has to do with the hierarchy within this country. It is not surprising then that when one begins to look at this hierarchy and crosses it with a gender access, one begins to see the groups that are the most vulnerable to sexual exploitation. I'm talking here about the First Nations, I'm talking here about Aboriginal girls because not only are Aboriginal people, within this nation state that we call Canada, at the very bottom, but being at the very bottom, they are constructed as those that are not only rejected and dispossessed, but the disposable ones. That's why it's not surprising to see the number of deaths as a result of sexual exploitation, as a result of the violence of the sex trade, among Aboriginal girls. It is not surprising that street involved girls, who are mostly Aboriginal, have a mortality rate that is 40 times the national average.(5) When one begins to look at that in terms of how this hierarchy gets played out, it is not surprising then, to see that the next group of really vulnerable young women and girls are poor women, immigrant and refugee young women and girls, are all the girls who are rendered more vulnerable because of the intersecting forces of sexism and racism combined; sexism and homophobia combined; sexism and ableism combined. If you look at statistics of girls with disability, one would find that they are at least four times more vulnerable to sexual violence than the average.(6) So when one begins to look at this, all of these factors actually come together and the intersection of gender-based discrimination with forces of oppression such as racism, sexism, classism, ableism, combine to make certain groups of young women and girls more vulnerable to violence.(7) Now, my focus here is on what makes this happen. Why is it possible? How can we live in a society that has an incredible standard of living, that has the privilege, that has all of those things that make it a "progressive, developed nation" in the hierarchy of nations. How is it that we could permit that? How is it that we could permit a situation where Canada ranks second in terms of child poverty? Where one in three children in the cities and one in five children in rural areas comes from a family which is poor? How can we permit that and what are the factors that make the trade possible? What are the factors that make exploitation possible? I want to point out that within the literature and within the research that we've done in this area, one of the key debates around this whole issue of exploitation is what's known as the work/agency debate. In other words, is this sex work, is this work that people engage in because it's work, because they want to do it as work? Our focus here is not so much to get into this debate, but to look at the conditions that make sexual exploitation, sex work, possible in the first instance. What is it that makes this work? One of the key factors, as I pointed out, is poverty. If we're looking at national/international linkages, poverty is one of the most crucial variables and it's there because when you look at who the dispossessed here are, who the disposable ones here are, and if you look at the nation states where sexual exploitation is being carried on, where there are major markets occurring, it's those groups, that cluster of nations that is generally considered the South. In other words, the ones that don't have power, privilege, control. The ones whose economies have been rendered hostage to the Western world. I'm talking here about the impact of structural adjustment programs, the impact of globalization, the impact of aid, the impact of multinationals going in where the sex trade sites are happening.(8) And it's not surprising that when one looks at it like that, it's countries which are extremely dependent on foreign currency, it's countries where foreign invasion, incursion, occupation has already occurred: in the form of U.S. military bases, in the form of war, sites of war. So you've got a situation where the power hierarchy that's in this country is also mirrored in terms of this country's position in relation to other countries internationally. Within the international sex trade, it is very interesting that what comes together are facets of what is already happening here. Within the West, there is an incredible glorification and an incredible valorization of youth. It is amazing to see magazines that are coming out now where every single model looks like she's younger than the previous model. Where more and more of these models are becoming waif-like. They are so thin, so emaciated, so malnourished, but that is held up as the sign of beauty. That is held up as the way in which one ought to be, the normative value, the normative body, the sign of beauty. It's a combination of age and gender that makes this possible. It is not just happening to boys. It is very much coming out of what happens to girls. When one looks at sexual exploitation, when one looks at sexualized violence, the thing that's underpinning that violence is power relations. It is how you can exert power over that which is considered to be powerless. When one is young, when one is thin, emaciated, all of those things connote a situation of vulnerability, a situation of powerlessness which then allows for the dominance to occur. But what's happening internationally is not only that the glamourization of and the complete focussing on youth takes place, but combined with that is the whole discourse of exoticization. It is the discourse of difference and historically, it's been mapped out in many different works. What we're seeing is a playing out of Orientalism where the West has constructed a particular picture of the East, and the women of the East are then considered to be palatable as sexual objects. You're seeing the fusion of two different discourses which allow this to happen. Propelling that is the whole notion of youth, childhood, innocence, etc. with virginality which is this whole notion which renders one into thinking, "Oh, if they're young, if they're untouched, if they're pure, that means they don't have AIDS." This is one of the factors that's moving the international sexual exploitation movement of men because they go out there thinking that they can use these bodies and that because these bodies are so young, they won't get contaminated with AIDS. As a result, many of these countries are now seeing an escalation in AIDS of the kind that is not happening anywhere else. It's all being taken over there.(9) One of the things that is so critical in this whole area is to look at relations, not just of dominance, but how they work together, how they reinforce each other. So in a sense - I'm going to borrow from Sherene Razak's work(10) - Razak describes a situation in Victorian England where she talks about bourgeois men who go out into the slums. They go out into these "zones of degeneracy," the idea being that when they go in there, they test out what's out there, they test out their masculinity, they become rejuvenated, they come back, and they reinforce bourgeois notions not just of masculinity, but of respectability. She argues that that's what sustained these two moral areas at that time in England. And she brings it to contemporary times by locating the Third World, the countries of the South, where all of this stuff is taking place, as those areas "of moral degeneracy" where the West can go. Western men can go there, they can fantasize, they can play out their fantasies, they can get their masculinities reaffirmed and come back to the respectability of the West. This is, in essence, what's happening here. It's happening not just internationally, it's happening here in Canada when you look at the hierarchy. Because who is it that goes down to frequent the street? Who is it that gets a sense of their morality and respectability reinforced? And who is it that actually has a relationship where they want to exert so much power and dominance, that they go after those who are dispossessed, those who are most vulnerable? Having laid that out, I'd like to end with something that we discovered when we were doing our research. This, by the way, is part of the research that the Alliance of Five Research Centres on Violence, of which the FREDA Centre is a member, conducted last summer.(11) We spoke to girls across the country, and one of the things that came through very clearly is that they are very aware of how they are being perceived, treated and devalued. Many of the girls in the focus groups that we conducted said that the ideals of beauty, the ideals of what are considered to be beautiful in this society as a girl are unreachable for many of them. And for some of them that can achieve it, it shows them that they can, in fact, use that to get what they want. So it's a matter of seeing what's rewarded and what's not. The things that are rewarded are the things that make them sexualized objects. It's very easy, once you get rewarded in that way, to accept it and to use it. After all, we try to use whatever skills we have to survive. On the other hand, it's the glamourization of street life as it is portrayed that reflects what society values and rewards. These pictures are not very different from the pictures of the rewards of assimilation that immigrant women and girls get from mainstream society and from the mainstream media. That's the ideological tool that keeps the system going. So we have to deconstruct all of those things. We have to deconstruct the whole notion of choice. And I think, more importantly, we have to look at this whole matter structurally, because when men go to parts of the world that are away, that are foreign, that are exoticized, to do what they have to do in order to get their masculinities reaffirmed, at the same time these very men are also closing the doors to this country. How else are the women, and the girls, and the boys, and the men who are impoverished and rendered into desperate situations there, supposed to escape those situations? We have to tie this into the immigration debate, we have to tie it into who gets citizenship, who is considered to be a citizen in this nation and who is accorded that right. And when you look at the recent directions that the immigration and citizenship Ministry is going, it is alarming to see that the doors are closing, that the only way those people are going to be able to get into this country is as migrant workers. As migrant workers, they will have to pay their taxes and they will have to do the work, but they won't have any rights. And if you look at domestic workers and you look at their vulnerability to violence, it's there. It's forefront in the research, it's not new. Any kind of dependency situation is going to engender some form of violence. And what we're doing as a country is essentially perpetuating not only a dichotomy in terms of a north-south relationship, but also we are fuelling the sex trade. Think about it. Why would women and girls be strapped to the bottom of a truck to come into this country? What would propel someone to do that? Why would girls and young women from Thailand come into this country to work as sex slaves? Who would work as sex slaves? We have to interrogate the whole notion of choice and we have to interrogate how all of these systems interlock to make this possible. How is it that we can valorize youth, exoticize difference, and at the same time do what we're doing in the name of justice? We've always argued, at the FREDA Centre and within the women's movement, that we need to dismantle structures of oppression. We need to dismantle the dynamics of power and domination. And we need to create a situation of accessibility, equality and justice because that's the bottom line. Thank you. Endnotes 1. Friedman, Sara Ann with Courtney Cook. Girls, A Presence at Beijing. New York: NGO WGGs (Working Groups on Girls), 1995. 2. Fitzgerald, Robin. "Assaults against Children and Youth in the Family, 1996," Juristat, 17(11), 1997. 3. Kinnon, Diane and Louise Hanvey. "Health Aspects of Violence Against Women." Available at: http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hl-vs/pubs/women-femmes/can-usa/can-back-promo_4_e.html 4. Russell, Susan with the Canadian Federation of University Women. Take Action for Equality, Development and Peace: A Canadian Follow-up Guide to Beijing '95, ed. Linda Souter and Betty Bayless. Ottawa, ON: CRIAW, Canadian Beijing Facilitating Committee, 1996. 5. McIvor, Sharon D. and Teressa A. Nahanee. "Aboriginal Women: Invisible Victims of Violence." In Unsettling Truths: Battered Women, Policy, Politics, and Contemporary Research in Canada, ed. Kevin Bonnycastle and George S. Rigakos, 63-69. Vancouver, BC: Collective Press, 1998. See also, Davis, Sylvia with Martha Shaffer. "Prostitution in Canada: The Invisible Menace or the Menace of Invisibility." 1994. Available at: www.walnet.org/csis/papers/sdavis.html 6. Razack, Sherene. "From Consent to Responsibility, from Pity to Respect: Subtexts in Cases of Sexual Violence involving Girls and Women with Developmental Disabilities." Law and Social Inquiry, 19, 4 (Fall 1994): 891-922. 7. Jiwani, Yasmin. Violence against Marginalized Girls: A Review of the Current Literature. Vancouver, BC: FREDA, 1998. 8. Brock, Rita Nakashima and Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite. Casting Stones: Prostitution and Liberation in Asia and the United States. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1996. See also, Sturdevant, Saundra. "The U.S. Military and Sexual Violence Against Women." Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, 27, 4 (1995): 91-94. 9. Hodgson, Douglas. "Combating the Organized Sexual Exploitation of Asian Children: Recent Developments and Prospects." International Journal of Law and the Family, 9, 1 (1995): 23-53. 10. Razack, Sherene. "Race, Space, and Prostitution: The Making of the Bourgeois Subject." Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, 10, 2 (1998): 338-376. 11. Alliance of Five Research Centres on Violence. Final Report on Phase I, Violence Prevention and the Girl Child, Final Report. February 1999. Available at: www.harbour.sfu.ca/freda/reports/gc.htm Home   ||   Reports Index