If you peruse the various organizations that combat sex trafficking, you will usually find a consistent narrative that the women and children are victims. The men are evil.
Hard to argue with that.
But … here’s where I’m going to get into trouble. If we’re really going to solve the issue, we need to understand the motivations behind the perpetrators. What drives these sick, depraved men?
Red light district, Bangkok. Photo by Rachel.
I’m not smart enough to answer that question. But I do think we need to ask it more often. An understanding of the issue shouldn’t stop with the simplistic narrative that we’re given by organizations that have refined their “elevator talk”.
Most NGO’s keep things simple because that’s what pulls on our heart strings, raises the most money, and/or is the best way to express their mission in the few minutes we’ll actually listen to them. So we hear about the victimized child or woman, and our hearts break. Rightfully so. I’m just not convinced that hearing half the story helps us solve the issue.
I’m not trying to justify the behavior of men who pay for sex, often with underage girls or children. That’s just sick to me. I don’t want to defend the trafficker or the pedophile. I don’t understand such behavior, and truthfully I don’t want to understand it. I would be perfectly content with castrating the bastards and then sending them to hell.
Sadly, I can’t do that. Nor should I. Until true justice reigns on earth, I think we need to better understand the brokenness that lurks in the hearts of such men. Only then can we truly create solutions.
Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn wrote a great book titled, “Half the Sky“. The title comes from the Chinese proverb that women hold up half the sky. The book traces the challenges of women around the world and how addressing such issues can be transformative. I love the book and encourage you to read it.
Photo by Rachel.
But I keep wondering … what about the other half of the sky? What about the men?
Many of them were abused as children. Probably safe to say that all of them struggle with some kind of dysfunction. A few are delusional enough to be looking for a lasting relationship when they frequent a brothel. Some are so ignorant that they don’t recognize the girl is 16, or that they are perpetuating an evil system of exploitation. A few — both johns and traffickers — think they are contributing to the economic well being of the child by alleviating her poverty.
Now, we can call such men stupid. Exploitive. Dysfunctional and hurtful. But once we’ve finished the name calling, have we truly understood them? Far too often, we have not. Truth is we don’t really want to. We want to label them as evil and be done with it.
That might feel good, but it doesn’t solve the problem.
Until we understand and reach out to the other half of the sky, won’t it continue to fall?
“How can we hope to make the imperfect things perfect, unless you keep before your eyes the vision of God, who is perfection? The prayer that is only against evil destroys itself. If you look at nothing but sorrow and sin, your heart may be at first full of love and pity, but presently anger — righteous perhaps, but still anger — will enter and begin to crowd out love; and then despair will come and deaden pity, and at last will even smother righteous anger. And then there will be silence; for the heart that is filled with despair cannot pray. It is not enough to know that the world is full of evil, we must know also that God is good.”
Florence Converse