Burma: Girls Prostituted to Serve Military Officials

[donsu]

http://www.feministpeacenetwork.org/2007/11/01/burma-girls-prostituted-to-serve-military-officials/


Isn’t it interesting that when the protesting monks are attacked by the Myanmar/Burmese military, the world is horrified, but the military sexually exploiting young girls? Apparently no big deal.

As the tireless Jennifer Drew notes, the gender-neutral language in this one rare article in the Guardian (UK) article, “Child Prostitutes Available At $100 a night: the human cost of junta’s repression: Military officials profiting from sex industry as sleazy trade flourishes amid poverty and misrule, say international campaigners” invisibilizes the Burmese girls who are being sexually trafficked. The headline’s referral to child prostitutes and the human cost of trafficking is misogynistly misleading, as Drew points out, there is no mention in the article of Burmese boys, only Burmese girls.

Yet as the beginning of the article makes quite clear, this is a story about the sexual exploitation and rape of girls:

“This is a side of life the Burmese military junta might prefer you did not see: girls who appear to be 13 and 14 years old paraded in front of customers at a nightclub where a beauty contest thinly veils child prostitution. Tottering in stiletto heels and miniskirts, young teenage girls criss-crossed the dance-floor as part of a nightly “modelling” show at the Asia Entertainment City nightclub on a recent evening in Rangoon.”

-snip-

As Drew points out, articles like this, while on the surface doing a great service by reporting this horrible story, are in reality contributing to the marginalization of the issue of violence against women and girls.

“It is male officials profiting from this ever increasing abuse of women’s and girls’ human rights. But articles such as these by using gender neutral language serve to invisibilise the global abuse of women’s and girls’ human rights as well as once again invisibilising the core issue which is the global belief men as a group are entitled to buy women’s and girls’ bodies in order to rape and sexually abuse them.”
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if american women had any power this would not be happening - in Burma, in the US or anyplace else.


down with militaries! down with the power of the penis!

[aikoaiko]

1. I just don't see how calling girls children is misogynistic.

[donsu]

2. children = boys and girls. no boys were used for sex

saying 'children' instead of 'girls' lessens the impact. muddys the water.

[aikoaiko]

4. I guess it depends on how you look at it.

To me, the headline containing children makes it clear that these girls were under the age of consent -- too young.

"Girls" is more ambiguous.


Either way, the point is that the practice should stop or be stopped. I'm all for dropping a bomb on Burma military headquarters.

[Basileus Basileon]

3. Ah, this is sickening.

But referring to them as "child prostitutes" is the appropriate term and is not misogynistic, much as articles about Burma's impressment of "child soldiers" is not evidence of misandry.

[Possumpoint]

5. Sounds Like Someone Is Jealous

If it wasn't for the power of the penis you wouldn't be on this earth.

Now that I got my dig in, men that rape or molest girls should be executed on the spot. The same could be said for men abusing boys.

What about the women who abuse. I could never find them when I was growing up.

[wicket]

6. SICK SICK SICK

:puke: