Demand & trafficking

Demand, pornography & prostitution

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ABOUT DEMAND

FAQ

STOPPING DEMAND:
The Swedish vs.
The Dutch Model

Actions We Can Do

 

 

 

 

Who are the demanders?

According to researcher Donna Hughes, many of the assumptions we make about demanders are myths:

  • The men are lonely

  • The men have sexually unsatisfying relationships

  • The men are more likely to have sexual partners than those who do not purchase sex

  • They are basically decent men looking for a bit of fun.

  • Prostitution protects good women against rape.

  • Male biology is different from female biology and requires multiple women for satisfaction. Men have a right to sex.

  • Sex is just like any other form  of work.

So – what do they want?

  • Sex acts their wives will not do

  • The excitement of hunting for a woman they can buy for a short time

  • Sex without relationship responsibilities

  • Sex in contexts where they can dominate and are not required to be polite or nice; where they can humiliate, degrade and dominate women and children.

What drives demand?

Men throughout the world are socialised into a model of masculinity.

Men are assumed to be naturally competitive and aggressive, and being “a real man” is therefore marked by the struggle for control, conquest, and domination. A man looks at the world, sees what he wants, and takes it.

How many men purchase sex acts?

This, according to Robert Jensen, is the model of masculinity to which every man is exposed. This does not imply that he accepts it explicitly or without question. (Robert Jensen, GETTING OFF: -Pornography and the End of Masculinity, South End Press, 2007, p. 26)

Additional socio-cultural reasons:

  • The systemic preference of men over women as manifested in attitudes of gender inequality which exist almost universally throughout the world

  • The prevalence of pornography, which results in the growth in demand for sex

  • Consumerist behaviour that commercialises and commodifies women's bodies

  • Greater acceptance of sex tourism by countries of origin of the tourists when carried out in another nation and with women and children who are residents of that country

Economic reasons:

  • Desire of employers for an unskilled and cheap labour market

  • Confinement of women’s labour in the domestic and entertainment spheres and in the informal sector

  • Development policies and patterns that depend on temporary migrant workers

Political reasons:

  • Military bases with their enormous prostitution infrastructure

  • Unequal and exploitative political and economic relations

  • Restrictive migration policies

  • Sales of arms and increased armed conflicts

  • Weak law enforcement mechanisms

  • Ineffective and corrupt judicial systems

Catholic Social Teaching

The trade in human persons constitutes a shocking offence against human dignity and a grave violation of fundamental human rights.

The Second Vatican Council has pointed to “slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children, and disgraceful working conditions where people are treated as instruments of gain rather than free and responsible persons” as “infamies” that “poison human society, debase their perpetrators” and constitute “a supreme dishonour to the Creator.” (Gaudium et Spes, 27)

Such situations are an affront to fundamental values shared by all cultures and peoples, values rooted in the very nature of the human person. ... Attention needs to be paid to the deeper causes of the increased “demand” that fuels the market for human slavery and tolerates the human cost that results.

Pope Benedict XVI on the occasion of the 92nd World Day of Migrants wrote:

It becomes easy for the trafficker to offer his own ‘services’ to the victims who often do not even vaguely suspect what awaits them. Many times trafficked women and girls are exploited like slaves in their work, and not infrequently in the sex industry too.

The challenge for the Catholic church and any other institution will be how to translate its teachings against human trafficking into action. The churches have a special role to play both in respect to the victims and to the men who are demanding sex.

Education in the churches should

  • warn potential victims

  • help people understand that it is the men who want acts of prostitution who are creating the demand for sexual slavery

  • teach that this demand violates human rights and is a crime against humanity.