Gendercide

Sonnie Kirschbaum
10B

(Photo of Long Pross from the New York Times)

You have just arrived into the beautiful country of South Africa on your annual spring vacation with your thirteen year old son and eight year old daughter. While walking the streets you see a young girl, not a day over eight, like your own daughter, walking with a an older woman. You think you yourself, “How nice! A mother and her daughter.” But look a little closer. You see the girl wearing pounds of makeup which makes you think she put on her mothers for fun. You're wrong. This young girl, not a day over eight, has been made-up to be turned into a slave. To be raped and clearly punished for being an uneducated young girl. The global statistics on the abuse of young girls are heartbreaking. More girls have been killed in the last fifty years, simply because they were girls, than men killed in all the battles of the twentieth century. This gendercide has more deaths than the amount of slaughters in all the genocides of the twentieth century (Kristof, xvii). Look down at your daughter. Your safe daughter. Now look at the young girl being thrown into being apart of the gendercide. What will you do?

Anyone who thinks slavery is an exaggerated term to describe sex trafficking as slavery should take a look into the lives of young girls like Geeta Ghosh, whose story I read about in the book Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof. Geeta grew up in poverty while living in Bangladesh. Soon she fled from abusive parents when she was only eleven. She then came in contact with a friends “aunt” offered to help Geeta with her troubles and offered to take her to Sonagachi, which is known as the largest red-light trafficking districts in all of Asia. At first, the aunt treated Geeta well, but when she turned twelve she dolled her up and threw her into a room with a large Arab man. Geeta was scared to death. When she pleaded with the man to let her go he showed no sympathy and instead tore off her dress and raped her (Kristof, 28).

Another example of this is Long Pross, another young girl whose life was chronicled by Kristof in the New York Times. From one side she looks like your daughter, friend, or sister but when you look at the other side of her you can see the damages from the horrible childhood she had gone through. From Nicholas’s interviews he could tell she was feisty, but sweet someone who you would not expect to have gone through what she did, someone who doesn’t deserve abuse. Pross was only thirteen not even having her first period when a woman kidnapped her and sold her to a brothel in Phnom Penh. The brothel owner, a woman, (which is not atypical in Cambodia), beat Pross and tortured her with electric current until finally the she finally gave in. She was kept as a slave within the brothel, her hands tied behind her back at all times except when with customers. Brothel owners can charge large sums for sex with a virgin, some thinking it cures the AIDS virus most men get. To make money like many girls, Pross was painfully stitched up so she could be resold as a virgin. In total, the brothel owner sold her virginity to customers four times. Pross was always inhumanly punished each time she let a potential customer walk away after looking at her. “I was beaten every day, sometimes two or three times a day,” she said, adding that she was sometimes also subjected to electric shocks twice in the same day. Just like in the US “pimps” use violence, humiliation and narcotics to shatter girls’ self-esteem and to keep them loyal to the life they are forced to live (New York Times, 2009).

But how can we stop these horrible crimes? Sex trafficking at its worst is the slavery of the 21st century, yet it has become one of the fastest growing industries in the world (Karin Koen). You can see this at the Chai Hour 2 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, the capital. The place is like an aquarium. Girls being sold to men through a glass window. So last month, Cambodia's top-ranking female police officer ordered a raid on the Chai Hour II and rescued 83 girls. They were taken to a shelter run by Afesip, an aid group mainly financed by Spain (New York Times, 2005). But raids like this are only useful if you have to power like them. Also in fiction books such as Sold, by Patricia McCormick tells the story of a young girl sold into a brothel but saved by an American spy. These are jobs for a limited about of people. So lets say you are young but still want to help the cause. As Nicholas D Kristof mentioned in his book a group of young high schoolers at the Overlake School in Redmond, Washington. A private school with 450 kids with an annual tuition of 22,000 dollars. These kids are usually raised in upper-middle class homes. The principle of this school, Frank Grijalva, was looking for a way to show his students how the other half lives. Frank had heard about Bernard Krisher a former correspondent who was so alarmed by poverty in Cambodia that he formed American Assistance for Cambodia. Krisher believes rescuing girls from brothels is the best way to help them. By being able to prevent them from turning to that type of life in the first place. Which is keeping them in school. That is a luxury in Cambodia as not many families can afford for their children to go to school. Krisher’s main program is 13,000 dollar donations can build a school in Cambodia. So Grijalva figured his students can sponsor a school in Cambodia emphasizing the importance public service. Students conducted bake sales, car washes, and talent shows and taught themselves about the gendercide of Cambodia. They soon raised the money and by February 2003, construction was complete and they just helped many girls dodge the world of sex trafficking (Kristof, 17).

The war of slavery is not over. It is up to us as women to stop this horrifying issue. These young girls and women are being abused simply because they are women. We, the more fortunate women must help. We are one, therefore this is our problem. This is all happening to us our sex. Raise awareness. Look closer into the people around you. We can make the difference.