Do you remember the days of slavery?

I'm sure many of you have caught the recent campaign by MTV against women trafficking and sex slavery. I think it's a commendable campaign and a necessary one. It's tragic how so many women have their dreams and lives shattered by being forced into this slavery. It makes you think though.

Why is sex slavery abhorring? What makes it so? The sex bit or the slavery part? If this industry is, as indeed it is, abhorring because it is slavery then why stop at that? I mean, slavery is behind most of the things bought and sold in today's global market. Why stop at sex slavery? Aren't the sweatshops which employ women and children for 16 hours a day for mere cents also equivalent to slavery? Isn't being beaten, threatened and even killed for attempting to improve your working conditions tantamount to slavery? Aren't supervisors sporting sub-machine guns condemnable too? What is different? Why does MTV not carry such a campaign? What about slavery inside prisons?

In my eyes it is quite simple. The people behind the sex industry are generally unknown criminals. The people behind sweatshops are businessmen. Big businessmen. Brands that MTV needs for advertising money. MTV cares more about its image than anything else. It just wants to look progressive. Think about all the campaigns MTV does. Not one has an identifiable culprit. The ones that come to mind are about racism, AIDS and the sex industry. All commendable causes mind you. And all are necessary campaigns, but it's apparent conscious effort to take up causes without identifiable guilty parties is fishy to say the least. The way I see it is that MTV just wants to take up 'safe' causes. The day MTV campaigns against all slavery and calls for a boycott against established companies who use such production methods, is the day that I start taking it seriously.

For further information about sweatshops go to:

www.sweatshops.org

www.behindthelabel.org

www.nlcnet.org