Steinem and Slavery

Listen to this amazing interview with John Ashbrook and Gloria Steinem.

Steinem is promoting the new book, Enslaved: True Stories of Modern Day Slavery, which she wrote the forward for.

Steinem, deserved icon of the Feminist movement, does a superb job of emphasizing how the agenda of Feminism is to see all persons and communities treated equitably and humanely. So she's all over the modern-day slavery conversation like white on rice.

Tons of great stuff in this interview, but one of the most compelling points Steinem makes is about how the focus in lurid industries is always taken off of the demand side.

We demonize prostitutes, porn stars, etc., and we recoil at the thought of men kidnapping, manipulating and exploiting women and children into slavery and sex trades, but we don't think about the demand in these equations.

Steinem points out statistics that show that business in human trafficking is more lucrative for the criminal agents than drug smuggling/dealing or illegal arms dealing. Without the market of people paying money for the chance to dominate a human body, the trade would not exist.

Great quote (paraphrase): "We need to eroticize cooperation and mutuality" (as opposed to the eroticization of violence and domination in the sex industry).

I'm gonna read this book.