When those with power introduce a new technology into a
system of oppression and exploitation, it enables the powerful to intensify the harm and
expand the exploitation. This characterizes what is happening as predators and pimps, who
stalk, buy and exploit women and children, have moved to Internet sites and forums for
advertising, documenting and engaging in sexual exploitation.
Sexual abuse and exploitation are indigenous to all patriarchal
cultures, institutions and nations, but the recent, rapid economic and political
restructuring in many regions of the world has escalated the trafficking of women and
children. There are approximately 200 million people around the world who are forced to
live as sexual or economic slaves.[1]
The widespread political and economic restructuring, referred to as
globalization, involves large shifts in wealth, employment and populations in a complex
set of processes that is freeing those with power from local and even national regulation
and control. Supranational corporations and international banking institutions that are
richer and larger than most countries, and organized crime syndicates that are richer and
larger than some countries, are setting the pace and are no longer accountable to any
national government. In this milieu, women and children are increasingly becoming
commodities to be bought, sold and consumed by tourists, military personnel, organized
crime rings, traffickers, pimps, and men seeking sexual entertainment or non-threatening
marriage partners. The global sexual exploitation of women and children that is
accompanying globalization is a human rights disaster. Pino Arlaccki, who heads United
Nations efforts to fight organized crime said, "Slavery is one of the most
undesirable consequences of globalization." He added, "We regret this is not
considered as a priority by any country at the moment."[2]
Accompanying and facilitating globalization is a revolution in
communications and technology. The computer based telecommunications system known as the
Internet can send text, images, audio and video files around the world in milliseconds.
Significantly, the cost of access to this global communications network is within the
financial reach of most people in wealthier nations. Within the last five years this
network with its worldwide audience has been undergoing commercialization. Some of the
commodities are women and children. The Internet has accelerated and deepened the
marketing of women for the purposes of sexual exploitation.
Forums on the Internet have become meeting grounds for pimps selling
women, predators buying women or stalking victims. Web sites and newsgroups have become
show rooms and bragging spaces for every type of violence perpetrated against women and
children.
Like other powerful constituents of globalization, the Internet is
almost without any regulation. Its international reach and new technologies have made
local and national laws and standards either obsolete or unenforceable. Nicholas
Negroponte, Director of the Media Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
and founder of Wired magazine said, "As we interconnect ourselves, many of the
values of a nation-state will give way to those of both larger and smaller electronic
communities."[3] With Internet technology and communications pimps and predators can
access global markets and unsuspecting victims. Pimps can locate their computer servers in
countries with the most libertarian laws and operate outside the reach of regulations in
all other countries.
The Internet allows pimps and predators to create their own culture outside community
standards or interference. The technology of computer based communication also provides a
high degree of privacy and anonymity for men to engage in stalking, viewing and buying of
women and children in acts of sexual exploitation.