Sex In The Public Square - inequality - Comments

Apologies!

Elizabeth — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 06:29:19 -0800

Stacey, I am so sorry that this post got lost in the forums list for so many days. Thank you for your patience and a big thank you to Chris for figuring out how to solve the problem and get the post to show up in the forum topics list! I hope that it will now get the attention that it deserves!

Great post!

kerwynk — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 13:49:23 -0800

Just wanted to thank Stacey for such a great post! Kudos! :)

Economic exploitation

Elizabeth — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:38:47 -0800

Stacey, it seems to me that you put your finger on something very important: the broader problem of global labor exploitation and its connection to the unsustainable American consumer market. It puts me in mind of something Debbie Nathan said about the day care sex abuse panics of the 80s, and that sociologists have pointed out about other panics: that is, they tend to happen during periods of some great cultural uncertainty/anxiety.

What you're suggesting is much the same, and I think rightly so. We must have to work awfully hard to be blind to the level of exploitation that is necessary to sustain our intensely consumer-oriented lifestyles, and one way to ease that strain -- and the dramatic uncertainty around how long we can continue to live this way -- is to panic about something that seems completely separate from it. That not only makes us feel better because we don't have to think about exploited labor more broadly, but as Ren and others have pointed out it actually diverts resources away from addressing the root problem.

I'd love to draw some immigrant-rights advocates and economic justice folks into this discussion so that we can put more of the pieces together. Thanks for a post that puts them all on the table!

To me it is amazing the

RenegadeEvolution — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 19:26:05 -0800

To me it is amazing the amount of time and resources that are wasted on hunting down and harassing the willing when those things could and should be better put to helping victims.