On today, February 7, you will probably see many people with a big red X on their hands. This is apart of the End It Movement's campaign to raise awareness for modern day slavery. Despite what the history books may teach, slavery did not end at the close of the Civil War. In fact, slavery exists in 87% of countries DESPITE being illegal in all. According to International Justice Mission there are 40 million slave and the trafficking business makes $150B annual,
What is modern day slavery?
Slavery can be summed up in one word: bondage. Forced labor, bonded labor, human trafficking, being born to an enslaved parent, child slavery, and forced marriages are all forms of modern day slavery. Modern day slavery preys on the weak and on the desperate. Many times slavery exists in places with corrupted and greedy governments, but this is not always the case. According to this article on The Guardian, approximately 400,000 people are living as slaves in the United States of America.
Pornography and slavery
Sadly, pornography has reached new heights. Here are a few statistics about pornography (you can read the full list here and here):
- Porn sites receive more monthly traffic than Netflix, Amazon, and Twitter combined.
-64% of people ages 13-24, actively seek out pornography at least weekly.
-64% of trafficking victims are sex trafficking
Pornography is not harmless. This comes from an article on humantraffickingsearch.org
Pornography is in and of itself a form of sex trafficking. There are multiple organizations, such as the Salvation Army that believe due to the exploitative nature of the industry, pornography is also a form of sex trafficking. Interviews with women who spent time in the pornography industry are almost identical to the stories from sex trafficking victims. One interviewee explained I came home bruised and sometimes a little bloody from the rough scenes. I shot… scenes where they slapped me and spit on me and called me horrible things. A recent report that held Interviews with 854 women in prostitution in nine countries…made it clear that pornography is integral to prostitution. In every country, almost half of the respondents said that they were forced to make pornography while enslaved in sex trafficking.
There are many reasons you should not support pornography, and I suggest checking out the website Fight the New Drug for more information
Why should you care?
Human life is valuable. All human life is valuable. If you do not believe that, then I am afraid that this is not the article to convince you. Maybe we will get to that later. Slavery is the degradation and devaluation of human life. You should care because you could be the one in the situation. You should care because people deserve better. You should care because it is morally and legally wrong.
What can we do?
I cannot pretend to be perfect. I use many products daily made by slaves, as I'm sure most of us do. Unless we have plenty of time and money, then I'm sure we will never be able to completely eradicate our contributions to the slavery movement. We can make baby steps. A lot of clothing is made by slaves, but a lot of the clothes not made by slaves can be quite expensive. We could try wearing the clothes we already own more, buying less, or shopping at second hand stores. If we just consume less and take better care of what we have, then we can decrease our slavery footprint. And we can be aware of these signs and take action when necessary.
