Women Of A Certain Class

238 East 50th Street, New York City, NY: this is the address of one of several apartment buildings in a few upper class New York City neighborhoods that maintained a prostitution ring for the past year. This location was seized last month by undercover detectives who had been investigating  a 42 y.r. man from Brooklyn, NY who arranged and maintained it. The ringleader, William Thomas, had kept two websites advertising sex with Asian women. The price for sex: $200. The men who bought services: wealthy businessmen from Wall St. The women who were using their bodies for sex were photographed in ads as sex objects who dressed in play clothes that portrayed them as maids and school girls.

After I read this story I just kept thinking, can we talk about the perception society has about women of particular cultures? How a full grown man can get sexually aroused by a woman dressed as a child is beyond my thinking. Women, who are enticed to work at little to no pay, is a painstaking pervasive reality in our society, one that is maintained not only by the people who participate but also by the people who create the environment for it to exist. The way the world views women and children and the often obvious overlap is painful and disastrous to our development. The manifestation of the way in which the world perceives women and their role in it perpetuates the options our society disposes us to. My question then is, where do we begin to challenge the systems and the people that hold these fixed beliefs of us being things that are at will, used, manipulated and subservient?

Asha...

* Please check our gallery tab or Flickr where new photos from our Human Trafficking event this past Saturday are up!