Tag Archives: sex trafficking

Meet A Group Of Feminists Who Aren’t Afraid To Go Topless

Julie GersteinSeptember 29, 2010 //

Well, that’s one way to get the job done: A feminist group in the Ukraine has gone to extreme measures to get out their message. Members of FEMEN, a Ukrainian feminist group, have taken to topless protesting to get their point across. The group supports everything from equal pay and anti-sex trafficking bills to fighting for increased voting rights and against unfair utility taxes.

Founded in 2008 by a group of fed-up Ukrainian college students, FEMEN aims to rally young women to feminist causes. “I set up FEMEN because I realized that there was a lack of women activists in our society; Ukraine is male-oriented and women take a passive role,” explains founder Anna Hutsol. Keep reading »

Why Shutting Down Craigslist “Adult Services” Won’t Actually Make A Difference

Julie GersteinSeptember 7, 2010 //

Last week the popular online classifieds site Craigslist shut down one of its more lucrative sectors — its “Adult Services” section. Thanks to an effort lead by Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut attorney general, the Craigslist’s “Adult Services” section is now “censored” and unavailable to users. Blumenthal and his associates fought to shut down the the section down because they believe that it was promoting not just prostitution, but child sex trafficking. Said Blumenthal: “… these prostitution ads did not promote a victimless crime. There is human trafficking in children, assaults on women.”

Proponents of the “Adult Services” ban believe that it will help shut down sex and child traffickers by giving them one less venue out of which to operate. But is that really true? Keep reading »

Ruh Roh: Americans Charged With Kidnapping 33 Haitian Kids

Jessica WakemanFebruary 5, 2010 //

We’ve all heard the saying, “No good deed goes unpunished” — and that’s proven to be true for 10 Americans who flew down to Haiti after the Jan. 12 earthquake. Recently the Haitian government arrested a group of 10 Americans, most of whom are members of a Baptist congregation in Idaho, as they tried to take 33 children on a bus into the Dominican Republic. Members of the group say they were just trying to help. But Haiti has charged each American with kidnapping, which, if convicted, carries a possible sentence of five to 15 years in prison, and criminal association, which carries three to nine years.

Yikes. International diplomacy incident, anyone? Keep reading »

Swords, Knives, and No Men: Ukraine’s All-Women Amazon Tribe

Jessica WakemanSeptember 24, 2009 //

Running away to the forest with an all-women tribe of ass-kicking Amazons is a fantasy few of us will ever realize, despite the vows we decree when we’re pissed off at some bozo. But in Ukraine a tribe of 150 women, who call themselves the Asgarda, live in the Carpathian Mountains completely separate from society and train in the martial arts. The Asgarda aren’t jilted lovers, though—some of the tribe members are quite young. The women have seceded from society because sexual trafficking is rampant in Eastern European countries like Ukraine and gender oppression is a fact of life everywhere in the world. But the fed-up women of the Asgarda isolate themselves from men in a statement of female empowerment and independence. Keep reading »

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