Seeking Freedom for 15 year old human trafficking victim sentenced to prison! Petition link here.

image of Latesha Clay is from here

What follows is from Change.org.

On January 11, 2016, a date proclaimed as National Human Trafficking Awareness Day, an inexcusable atrocity was committed against the human rights of a child. At the same time that government officials, law enforcement agencies, advocates, survivors and allied citizens of the United States brought attention to modern day slavery and the importance of being victim centered, our own justice system failed in the protection of a 15 year old human trafficking victim. News media stories disregarded her status as a minor and published her name, while maliciously burdening her with guilt, as our society is prone to do without consideration of facts and laws that attempt to extinguish the plague of victim blaming. Her charges of armed robbery and unlawful imprisonment are predicated entirely on her involvement as a child advertised online, to be purchased for sex. This is an act that a minor cannot be held responsible for consenting to under federal and state law. It is also not required for force, fraud or coercion to be proven in cases involving minors under federal and state law in order to prove that the minor is in fact, a human trafficking victim. This can be found in Michigan state law at:

Trafficking a Minor MCL 750.462e

Covers both sex trafficking and labor trafficking of a minor
NO Force Fraud or Coercion Required
"regardless of whether the person knows the age of the minor"

In addition, Michigan is a state that has enacted Safe Harbor laws relating to victims of human trafficking.

Safe Harbor - Safe harbor was one of the key reforms in the 2014 Michigan human trafficking legislative package.

2014 PA 336 amends MCL 750.451 to provide Safe Harbor to minor sex trafficking victims by presuming that a minor found engaging in prostitution is a victim of human trafficking and mandates law enforcement to refer the minor victims for appropriate treatment within the Department of Human Services.
2014 PA 342 amends MCL 712A.2 to provide Safe Harbor to minor sex trafficking victims by establishing probate court jurisdiction for minor human trafficking victims who are dependent and in danger of substantial harm.
2014 PA 335 amends MCL 780.621 to provide Safe Harbor by allowing victims of human trafficking to clear their criminal record of crimes they were forced to commit by their traffickers.

Latesha Clay of Grand Rapids, Michigan, was used as bait for a robbery scheme which placed advertisements inviting sexual acts with a teen on Backpage so that men would respond. These were not hapless victims, but predators who arrived with the intention of sexually assaulting Latesha, the true victim. Michigan Penal Code lists Solicitation of prostitution as a crime, Prostitution and Solicitation, Sections 750.448 - 750.462 - See more at: http://statelaws.findlaw.com/michigan-law/michigan-prostitution-and-solicitation-laws.html#sthash.nH2pSng4.dpuf

Furthermore, the same human trafficking laws provide for certain penalties when solicitors attempt to purchase minors for sex:

[For the rest of the petition language, please see *here*.]

Stop deMANd for Trafficking in Girls and Women

A few years old, this is not at all a message that is close to expiring. From the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW), this short video is called:

Men's Responsibility: Ending Demand for Sex Trafficking
 oalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW)

Pro-Rape "Neomasculinist" Activists On The Run

Getty image of Ricky Nelson and John Wayne is from here

A story is trending right now that isn't new and isn't a trend. But it is disgusting and horrifying. It is being covered by mainstream media like BuzzFeed, International Business Times, and The Guardian. From The Guardian:

The leader of a self-described neo-masculinist movement has cancelled a series of meetings planned for cities worldwide on Saturday because he “can no longer guarantee the safety or privacy of the men who want to attend”. 

Daryush Valizadeh, who goes by the name Roosh V, posted a brief statement on Thursday apologising to his “supporters” whom he said were “let down by my decision”, but said he “could not stop men meeting in private groups”. 

Meetings were planned in 43 countries, including Britain, where planned gatherings in Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, London, Manchester, Newcastle and Shrewsbury raised concern among police chiefs and MPs. 

Nearly 80,000 people signed an online petition calling for Roosh V’s group, dubbed Return of Kings, to be banned from the UK after they advocated women being banned from voting, described a woman’s value as dependent on her “fertility and beauty”, and that women with eating disorders make the best girlfriends.

Before the events were cancelled, shadow Home Office minister Sarah Champion MP demanded that Theresa May take action against the group using hate crime laws. 

“Rape of women has increased by 41% in the last year. I’m appalled that the government [is] sitting idly by whilst a group who believe women are pieces of meat without any rights are allowed to spread their poisonous ideology in the UK,” she said. 

“As far as I’m concerned Return of Kings are encouraging violence against women and girls. This should be viewed as a hate crime and the government and police should use our existing laws to deal with it swiftly to show we won’t accept anyone promoting abuse.”

The irony is that these men think they aren't safe to promote rape. The are apparently safe enough to commit it.

All women are the targeted objects in this rape culture, and anyone raped in the U.S. or UK is viewed as being both emasculated and feminised for having endured the violation. Rape is also a common tool of colonial invasion as are other forms of spiritual and material theft, occupation, and sadism.

Rape and trafficking are radical profeminist issues because girls and women are the primary population of the harmed and the horrified. The harm and the horror isn't natural, or a God-given right, or socially inevitable. And so some activists organise to stop it.

New to me is the term, 'Neomasculinism'. For masculinism to be 'neo', as in 'neofascism', doesn't that mean it had to go away for a few decades? This certainly hasn't happened with masculinism--it has ruled the West for far more than decades. The practices being promoted are not simply manifesting a typical patriarchal value system. With old-fashioned and neo masculinism, white male supremacist 'sex' tourism re-enacts the actions of millions of colonialist rapists over 500 years. The men who engage in such procurement and pimping, buying and selling, owning and slaving of human beings--disproportionately women and girls of color--are normal men, not psychotic monsters. These men advocate and do what the Western World stands for: building its oppressive strength and identity on the backs and the rest of the bodies of the poor, non-privileged, and female, primarily. But also by degrading Black people, Jews, lesbians, and gay men. There's a lot more going on than misogyny.* What appears at the following website is fifty shades of vile, combining misogynoir and anti-gay arguments with antifeminism and anti-Semitism.

*Daryush Valizadeh: Top 10 most insane quotes from Return of Kings leader Roosh V.

Daryush, or Roosh V., is a leader in this particularly 'no-apologies' manifestation of pro-rape activism. This one rape tourist has self-published the "how to's" of travel and gross sexual assault, region by region.

Because the typical values beneath his honesty are so despicable, he is viewed by some on the left as an 'extremist'. For example, from Wikipedia:

In a March 2012 report on "The Year in Hate and Extremism", the Southern Poverty Law Center included Roosh in a list of manosphere sites which it described as hateful and misogynistic.^[20][21] His inclusion on the list was reported by several publications, some of which mocked the inclusion for being extreme.^{[11][22][23][24]}Business Insider's Michael Brendan Dougherty opined that the SPLC was undermining its credibility by listing Roosh.^[25] In response to criticism, the SPLC later clarified that it was not labeling the sites as members of a hate movement, but wished to draw attention to "specific examples of misogyny and the threat, overt or implicit, of violence".^[26]

The problem with colonial rapism and its proponents isn't the fact that they are hateful or extreme. I wish they were extreme, meaning less 'status quo'. Rapists adore committing acts of violation and enjoy reinforcing stigma against people targeted for rape. This isn't extreme. It is an utterly normal occurrence. The heterosexual husbands and boyfriends who enjoy violating their wives and girlfriends are not 'abnormal'. The procurers and buyers of 'sex' deepen the dehumanisation of people targeted for rape, but not in ways that mark them as unusual. They sometimes travel great distances to do it, but they also do it locally. Normally. It's not that hate isn't often part of the degradation; certainly it is or ought to be experienced as hatred--or at least gross disregard, disrespect, and abuse. But we know many people love the people they abuse, and that many abused people feel loved by their abusers.

Categorising rape as a 'hate crime' would be useful in the U.S. and the reason it hasn't happened is because, it is argued, the courts would be clogged with rape cases, newly prosecuted as hate crimes. Never mind that most rapes aren't reported. Or that most people don't have access to good lawyers, or experience with the criminal justice system, or only know it as a place to be revictimised. Or that rich men pay off victim after victim. Or that most rape tourism, organised by folks like Roosh V, is effectively unprosecutable. At the same time, calling rape a hate crime, makes sexual subordination into the crime of men mishandling negative emotions, or understands the problem as a kind of virulent bigotry. Better the term for the category of felony be "subordination crimes".

I think the real problem isn't men's emotional problems, or even bigotry; it is masculinism--the sexual entitlement, structural power, gendered privilege, and cultural belief in the right to violate others--whether old-fashioned or neo.

As a post-script, here's a group of boxers who have a message to deliver to these rapists.

I enjoyed seeing this very much:

http://www.papermag.com/toronto-female-boxing-club-roosh-1585607001.html

Pornography: Andrea Dworkin (1991) a British documentary about her work against graphic sexxxism

portrait of Andrea Dworkin is from here

What is sometimes forgotten when one considers Andrea's work against the pornographers, pimps, traffickers, and men who consume pornography as a way to get a sexual male supremacy fix as well as another lesson in how to be a misogynist, is that Dworkin was not a single-issue activist. Her work was against white and male supremacy and that included a lot of social-economic-political terrain.

The problem with the pornography industry, first and foremost, is that it is white and male supremacist and promotes anti-woman and anti-feminist practices in men. It also promotes those practices in women and trans people too.

When I hear her addressing an audience or crowd, what strikes me is that it is so uncommon for anyone in media or in front of a camera to be deeply outraged by any form of structural violence that targets women and girls specifically and systematically, perhaps most especially if the women and girls are not privileged by class and race. We all know that the chances of dominant media caringly, insightfully, and consistently reporting on the disappearance and murder of poor women and girls of color are low to non-existent.

To hear Andrea address a group on political matters is to be reminded of what an appropriate response is to white and male supremacist and racist-misogynist violence.

Here is the link to the documentary, on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9j7-zZks08

Domestic Terrorists, Misopedists, and Serial Violators of Women: what terms do you use for these abusers?

WE MUST STOP ABUSIVE MEN 

FROM COMMITTING

image is from here

AGAINST WOMEN 

AT HOME

Change "Domestic Violence"
(Reasoning: too invisibilising of the fact that the primary emergency is horrendously abusive men controlling, dominating, beating, mind-fucking, serial raping, and crushing the wills of women, so...)
To "Domestic Terrorism", "Patriarchal Domestic Terrorism" and "Men Terrorizing Women Domestically"

Change "LGBT" (eliminate GLBT) 
(Reasoning: total invisibilisation of intersex, intergender, and asexual people; also, finding an acronym that visibilises Two Spirit, Same-Gender Loving, and Non-Gender Conforming--or Gender Non-Conforming--people)
To  "LGBTIA"


Change "pedophilia" and "pedophile"
(Reasoning: no harmer of children should be popularly called "a lover of children" or a "child-lover", so...)
To "misopedia" and "misopedist", or "child hating" and "child-hater", or "child raping" and "child-raper"



Change "Sexual Trafficking and "Sex Trafficking"
(Reasoning: invisibilises the age- and gender-based harm completely)
To "Rapists Trafficking Girls" and "Pimps Trafficking Raped Girls"


Change "Porn Addict" and "Sex Addict"
(Reasoning: Makes the actions seem harmless, like no one is being hurt and oppressed)
To "Serial Violator of Women"

What do you think, readers? Concerns? Questions? Comments? Answers?