Canada 150, Saskatchewan Austerity, the Ottawa Police & more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List March 26 - April 2

This week's list of articles, news items and opinion pieces that I see as must reads if you are looking for a roundup that should be of interest to The Left Chapter readers.


This list covers the week of March 26 - April 2. It is generally in order of the date of the article's release.

1) Senator Lynn Beyak says she has 'suffered' with residential school survivors

John Paul Tasker, CBC News

Senator Lynn Beyak says she doesn't need any more education about the horrors of the residential school system because she "suffered" alongside Indigenous people who were sent to the institutions.

Read the full article.

2) The All-Male Photo Op Isn’t a Gaffe. It’s a Strategy.

Jill Filipovic, New York Times

During the great Republican health care debacle, President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence met with the far-right congressional Freedom Caucus to discuss, among other things, stripping out requirements for insurance companies to cover maternity, newborn and pregnancy care. After the meeting, Mr. Pence tweeted a photo of two dozen men sitting around a table. Kellyanne Conway was reportedly in the room, but in the picture the vice president circulated, there was not a woman in sight.

Read the full article.

3) Toronto councillors want to deny Pride funding over police ban

 Michael Smee, Laura Fraser, CBC News

There is a move underway by several city councillors to have Pride Toronto denied city funding because of its decision to exclude the Toronto Police Service from this year's festivities, CBC News has learned.

Read the full article.

4) Droughts, floods from weird jet stream linked to Arctic heat

Scott Sutherland, The Weather Network

Something strange is going on, with more incidences of unprecedented heat waves, droughts and flooding happening in recent years, and based on the latest research, it's looking more and more like climate change is to blame.

Read the full article.

5) Rape fantasy Elle isn’t a five-star masterpiece – it’s sick

Bidisha, The Guardian

Rape apologists: do you like the cinema? Have you always suspected women secretly want to be stalked, brutalised and raped? And that the biggest woman-haters on the planet are not men, but women themselves? Then brace yourselves for a celluloid treat.

Read the full article. 

6) What do many lone attackers have in common? Domestic violence

Hadley Freeman, The Guardian

Desperate attempts to profile Khalid Masood after the Westminster attacks blame Islam, Kent or even drunk teenagers, but the common thread in terrorism is often misogyny

Read the full article. 

7) Toronto’s councillors bury themselves in Scarborough’s subway

Edward Keenan, The Toronto Star

There’s something that probably ought to be cleared up. There’s a perception out there — it arose during Tuesday’s city council meeting debating (again) the extension to the Bloor subway line to the Scarborough Town Centre — that proponents of the competing LRT proposal have somehow delayed the construction of the subway for years.

Read the full article. 

8) Building the “Saskatchewan Advantage”: Saskatchewan’s 2017 Austerity Budget

Charles W. Smith and Andrew Stevens, Socialist Project Bullet 

Saskatchewan's 2017 budget landed with an unenthusiastic thud last week. Riddled with cuts, job losses, public sector wage reductions, and tax increases, the Saskatchewan Party's austerity budget has garnered few friends, with critics ranging from organized labour movement to small businesses.[1] The government's budget has several fiscal goals: aggressively tackle its $1.3-billion deficit in three short years, overhaul the tax structure away from progressive forms of taxation to consumption taxes, and dismantle key aspects of the social welfare state.

Read the full article.

9) 'I feel duped': Why bank employees with impressive but misleading titles could cost you big time

Erica Johnson, CBC News

Mike Black says he feels "completely betrayed" after trusting RBC Dominion Securities employees with impressive-sounding titles to manage his life savings, only to earn far below the market average for six years.

Read the full article.

10) ‘Expect no apology’ for comments about ‘gay lifestyle,’ Brad Trost’s campaign says

Marie-Danielle Smith, The Star Phoenix

Conservative Party leadership candidate Brad Trost’s campaign is not backing down after controversial comments Tuesday about his discomfort with the idea of people being gay.

“In case you haven’t noticed, Brad’s not entirely comfortable with the whole gay thing. And if you haven’t noticed, you have not been paying attention,” campaign spokesman Mike Patton said in a “campaign update” video put out on social media Tuesday.

Read the full article.

11) Ontario Tory says 'zero tolerance' for doctors who sexually abuse patients is 'intolerant'

Press Progress

A Tory MPP says he's concerned a "zero tolerance policy" towards Ontario doctors found sexually abusing patients would not be in keeping with Canada's identity as a "tolerant society."

Read the full article.

12) Complainant in Kamloops sex assault case devastated by judge's comments, Crown stay of charges

Kim Bolan, Vancouver Sun

A woman who accused her stepfather of sexually assaulting her decades ago plans to file a complaint with the Canadian Judicial Council this week over controversial comments made by the B.C. Supreme Court judge presiding over her case.

Read the full article.

13) She’s Hot: Female Sessional Instructors, Gender Bias, and Student Evaluations

 Andrea Eidinger, Active History

“I think your feminist stances are slightly overcorrecting reality. I’m sure minorities had a harsher experience than women, ESPECIALLY today, a point you seem to overlook. You’re a really nice person though.”

That comment comes from my student evaluations from one of the first courses I ever taught, back when I was still a graduate student. At the time that I read that, I burst out laughing. I mean really, how else can you react to that kind of statement? But many courses and student evaluations later, I am starting to think that this is reflective of a larger problem in the world of academia, and history in particular, with respect to female sessional instructors and course evaluations.

Read the full article. 

14) The pro-choice memoir we all need right now

Denise Balkissoon, The Globe and Mail

A pregnant teenager learns that the fetus she is carrying will be born without a functioning circulatory system. At no point will it be able to breathe for itself – there is no way that it can live. The teenager decides not to terminate the pregnancy, telling her obstetrician that she is “praying for a miracle.”

Read the full article. 

15) Policing the police in Sask.: Time to consider independent civilian agency, says justice official

Dan Zakreski, CBC News

In February, Ryan Donard ran into the Fond du Lac River in Stony Rapids after RCMP responded to a complaint at a house in the northern Saskatchewan community, according to a news release.

Read the full article. 

16) Lynn Beyak tells residential school survivors she wants audit of all First Nations spending

John Paul Tasker, CBC News

After hearing testimony about the atrocities committed in residential schools, Senator Lynn Beyak asked survivors at the Senate's Aboriginal peoples committee Wednesday what they thought about her plan for a national audit on all First Nations spending.

Read the full article. 

17) Canada 150 is a celebration of Indigenous genocide

Pamela Palmater, NOW Magazine

This year, the federal government plans to spend half a billion dollars on events marking Canada's 150th anniversary, prompting a great deal of debate about its historical treatment of Indigenous peoples. The majority of Canadians don't have all the facts about that, while First Nations continue to live the crisis-level effects of that legacy. Perhaps Canada should cancel its celebrations and undertake the hard work necessary to make amends.

Read the full article. 

18) Pro-Abdi wristbands a response to 'slap in the face' police campaign

 Amanda Pfeffer, CBC News

A retired Ottawa firefighter is launching his own line of wristbands in solidarity with the family of Abdirahman Abdi as a counter to a police campaign in support of the officer charged with manslaughter in Abdi's death.

Read the full article. 

19) Chrystia Freeland Can Rest Easy Now

Sheldon Kirshner

Congratulations, Chrystia Freeland.

You’ve won.

You and your handlers not only buried a legitimate news story, but convinced a compliant media, a cowed Jewish leadership and a spineless Jewish press to ignore it, as if it never even existed.


Read the full article.

20) A Message From the End of the World

Ariel Dorfman, The New York Times

Here in Chile, in the far south of the Southern Hemisphere, it has been the summer of our discontent. Never have so many natural catastrophes in a row hit this country at the end of the world. For once, it is not the earthquakes that have assailed us since time immemorial or the tsunamis that often follow, devastating land and coast, mountainscapes and ocean. This time, our unprecedented woes have all been man-made.

Read the full article.

21) Egypt’s Coming Revolt of the Poor

Zeinab Abul-Magd, Foreign Policy

Earlier this month, bread riots erupted in Egypt. Thousands of angry demonstrators blocked roads and crowded around state-affiliated bakeries, protesting a government decision to reduce the number of loaves of subsidized bread each family could purchase. As security forces clashed with rioters in poor localities in Alexandria, Kafr El Sheikh, Minya, and Asyut, protesters chanted, “We want to eat!” Social media activists have dubbed the movement “the supply riots” (intifadat al-tamwin).

Read the full article.

22) Why should we trust the Ottawa Police Service?

Tyler Dawson, Ottawa Citizen

What’s especially alarming about Ottawa police officers wearing solidarity bracelets isn’t so much that the wristbands exist, it’s that the officers involved clearly didn’t much care about whether or not there’d be blowback and how it would damage policing in this town.

Read the full article.

23) Video offering $1K reward for recordings of Muslim students praying ignites fears

Shanifa Nasser, CBC News

Staff with the Peel District School Board in southern Ontario are being cautioned to be "extra vigilant" about a video making the rounds online offering a $1,000 reward for recordings of Muslim students in any school in the region "spewing hate speech during Friday prayers."

Read the full article.

24) The ‘feminists should be nice to men’ trope is back. So is The Handmaid’s Tale

Van Badham, The Guardian

Creeping back into commentary is the notion that male power will be kinder to women if they flatter it. If history can’t demolish this notion, maybe fiction can.

Read the full article.

24) Inside the Dangerous Convergence of Men’s-Rights Activists and the Extreme Alt-Right

 David Futrelle, NY Magazine

James Jackson had a plan. Traveling by Bolt Bus from his home in Baltimore to New York City, the 28-year-old Jackson hoped to strike a blow for the beleaguered white race by carrying out a bloody massacre of black men in Times Square, using a two-foot sword he’d brought with him for the occasion.

Read the full article.

25) Mike Pence doesn't eat alone with women. That speaks volumes

Jessica Valenti, The Guardian

The vice-president’s rule is insulting for men and limiting for women. But let’s not let Pence’s sexism distract us from his whole party’s sexist agenda.

Read the full article.

26) Sergeant who Tasered dying Sammy Yatim faces misconduct charge

Wendy Gillis, The Toronto Star

Nearly four years after Sammy Yatim was shot eight times on an empty streetcar, Ontario’s police watchdog has ordered that a misconduct charge be laid against the veteran Toronto police sergeant who Tasered the 18-year-old as he lay dying, the Star has learned.

Read the full article.

27) It's better to be rich and mediocre than poor and bright in the UK, admits Education Secretary

Will Worley, The Independent

Lower-achieving pupils from rich families earn more than talented poorer children, the Education Secretary has admitted.

Read the full article.

See also: Climate Change, Police Malfeasance, Lenin & more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List March 19 - 26

See also: The NDP Leadership Race, the Dutch GreenLeft, Gavin McInnes & more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List March 12-19

Sorry Tom Walkom, but Trump is an accused sex offender who does not 'make sense'

I have liked Tom Walkom, National Affairs Columnist for the Toronto Star, for a very long time.

Or, more accurately, I have respected his analysis and ability to cut through the rhetoric of politicians, including (or perhaps especially)  those on the left.

But yesterday, in a column Sometimes Donald Trump makes sense, Walkom went more than a bridge too far in his attempt to expose and vilify the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

While some of Walkom's analysis and commentary on Clinton's position may well be true, as may be his views on Trump's position on Syria specifically, Walkom begins his column by saying:

Donald Trump may be an awful person. I don’t know. What I do know is that his recipe for dealing with Russia and Syria makes more sense than that of Hillary Clinton.
The awfulness of Trump is very much in the news these days. His approach to women has long been boorish. But now come allegations (which he denies) that he is also a groper.
American voters will have to decide whether these allegations are true and — if so — whether they disqualify the Republican candidate from the presidency.
But lost in the furor over Trump the libertine are real foreign policy differences between the two candidates — particularly in the all-important war against Islamic radicals known as Daesh or ISIS.

Why not deconstruct this opening for a moment as it is is staggeringly wrongheaded and acts as an ugly apologia (intended or not) for misogyny.

 Donald Trump is an awful person, and if Walkom does not know this he is no progressive.

Rhetorical devices aside,  Trump has not simply been accused of being 'boorish' towards women (as if that would be ok), he has been accused of sexual assault.

Let us be clear, so that Walkom and everyone else understands, being a 'groper' is a male code phrase for sexually assaulting women. It is not simply 'boorish', it is a crime, that makes Trump not a 'libertine' but a sex offender...and that absolutely disqualifies him from the presidency.

Walkom needs to take his head out of his ass and join the 21st Century.

As Rolling Stone noted "Donald Trump is talking about how he is eager to sexually assault women, just because he can, just because he's famous."

He has now been accused of sexual assault - not groping, boorishness or being a 'libertine' - by multiple women and he has been betrayed by his own recorded comments and by his own actions.

Regardless of how his position on Syria may stack up versus Clinton's there is absolutely no excuse to try to bolster your argument by diminishing the misogynist reality of Donald Trump's words and actions.

Tom, you may not know if Trump is an awful person. But I can assure you that all of the women he sexually assaulted do.  

And that means that while his position on Syria may seem better to you, you cannot escape the truth that if you are flippant about the actions of a man like Trump towards women, you enable these kinds of actions by men overall.

No matter the original intent, that is simply the sad and grotesque reality.

No faith in the system -- The profound injustice of the Ghomeshi verdict lies in its context

The acquittal of Jian Ghomeshi and, most especially, the vicious and ugly judgement from Justice William Horkins that unnecessarily went out of its way to vilify the victims in the case and to perpetuate basic rape culture myths, has been met with widespread outrage and anger in many quarters.

Predictably it has also been widely celebrated or apologized for and by exactly the usual suspects and in the usual ways that one would expect.

Generally those who seek to justify the verdict do so by disingenuously acting as if the outcome, the tactics used by the defense and the contemptuous attitude of the judge are somehow unique to this case. That the outcome of a man walking free despite multiple complainants is somehow unique to this case. That a man getting away with the sexual assault of women is somehow unique to this case. That the "whacking" tactics and excessive scrutiny of the conduct of the victims after the assaults occurred (as opposed to, say, perhaps taking a look at the subsequent conduct of the accused)  is somehow unique to this case.

That it was all really only about the rights of the accused and the details of this specific case.

The problem with that view, even if you accept its premises, is that the Ghomeshi trial and verdict did not occur in a vacuum. At all.

It occurred in a society and a context where over 99% -- over 99% -- of sexual assaults result in no judicial consequences for the perpetrators of any kind.

Only a fraction of assaults are ever reported, only a fraction of those result in serious charges, and only a small fraction of those result in convictions.

There is no other crime where the victims are treated in an analogous way, where the wheels of justice so rarely turn and where turning to the courts, the police and the crown turns out to be so frequently not just futile but to result in the public and judicial pillorying and humiliation of complainants,

People talk about the evidence, and the evidence is overwhelming that the system has evolved to shield the male perpetrators of violence against women and children from being held legally to account for their crimes. It does this in countless systemic ways that range from the way the authorities respond to sexual assault and abuse to the basic attitudes and beliefs about it and about women held by those in positions of power throughout the system.

As Scaachi Koul put it in her brilliant deconstruction of the circumstances around the Ghomeshi case, I Hope The Ghomeshi Verdict Makes You Fucking Furious:

Women, and girls, and anyone who has ever had someone take a piece of their life away through sexual violence or harassment, knew the verdict wasn’t going to go our way because the system wasn’t even built for us. It was built for the men it protects, the ones we try to expose. Men who are accused of assault get a fair trial, but the women who accuse them are the ones who actually have to fight to protect their reputations. 

As was noted in 2014 in The Globe and Mail:

It’s a crime like no other. A violation of the self as well as the body – an assault on trust, on privacy, on control. It’s also an offence with an afterlife: a sense of bruising shame and guilt.
And it happens to women in Canada every 17 minutes.
Some of those women place calls to services such as the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter – about 1,400 of them last year alone. 

“These are not just women who live in poverty or need,” says Summer-Rain Bentham, one of the counsellors who answers their calls. “These are women who are teachers, doctor or lawyers; women whose husbands may be police officers or judges.”

But if these women are hoping for more than support – if they are hoping for justice – the phones might as well keep ringing.
Less than half of complaints made to police result in criminal charges and, of those charges, only about one in four leads to a guilty verdict.
Women know this. Which explains why, according to the best estimates, roughly 90 per cent of sexual assaults, even those referred to crisis lines, are never brought to the attention of the authorities.
Queen’s University law professor Pamela Cross, an expert on sexual assault, says that if someone she knows personally were attacked, “I would advise thinking very hard” before calling the police.

A survey by Justice Canada itself found "that two-thirds of the men and women who took part had no faith in the justice system, the process of filing a complaint against their abuser and the prospect of seeing a conviction."

This history of injustice towards women and sexual assault victims -- a crime the perpetrators of which are 98% male -- exists and has to be taken into account when one looks at the Ghomeshi case. As one woman commented in a thread I saw on Facebook, "The disbelief of women is historical and deep and has little to do with these particular complainants."

The whole system is stacked against sexual assault victims from the second they even try to report and we have seen this time-and-time again.

Ghomeshi was known for his behaviour widely for years and was institutionally protected at the CBC due to his power and stature. He has been protected again by the justice system. It is widely known that there are many, many more victims.

No one with an ounce of intellect actually thinks that everyone who has publicly or anonymously said that he assaulted them could all be lying in some vast conspiracy. Anymore than anyone actually believes Bill Cosby is innocent. As Now Magazine put it, "Does anyone really believe that Jian Ghomeshi did not assault those women?"

And yet Ghomeshi is acquitted. And yet the crown, the judges and the courts fail yet again. And yet a justice writes a judgement eviscerating the victims.

This outcome, this result of a profound and deep systemic injustice, this product of a system designed by and within the power structures of patriarchy, this is part-and-parcel of our society's history of violence towards women and girls.

 This is the real social and justice issue that needs to be confronted.

See also: Jian Ghomeshi's acquittal and the systemic misogyny of the justice system

Jian Ghomeshi's acquittal and the systemic misogyny of the justice system

As many have suspected would happen, Jian Ghomeshi was acquitted today.

The verdict, sadly, is not much of a surprise and is grotesquely indicative of how in sexual assault trials it is still really the victims who are on trial. In this case, the treatment of the three complainants shows this very clearly.

What is truly revolting and stunning is how the "judgement" by Ontario Court Justice William Horkins in parts reads like it was written by Paul Elam at A Voice for Men or by some other "men's rights" ideologue!

After dismissing and attacking the credibility of all three of the women in the case,  the judge wrote of , while avoiding stereotypes about victims, "the need to be vigilant in avoiding the equally dangerous false assumption that sexual assault complainants are always truthful".

Fucking seriously. He actually wrote this.

In 2016.

It is a shockingly ideological statement that simply turns reality on its head. As if there is an equivalence between the two in a "justice" system where the VAST majority of sexual assaults are never reported, let alone to brought to trial and where those that are most often result in acquittal!

The facts.

A report by the Justice Department itself found:

A majority of sexual assault victims have little to no confidence in the police, the courts or the criminal justice system, according to a new government survey that echoes what advocates have been saying for years.
The responses in the Justice Canada survey indicate that two-thirds of the men and women who took part had no faith in the justice system, the process of filing a complaint against their abuser and the prospect of seeing a conviction.
The majority of victims of both child and adult sexual abuse did not even bother filing a complaint with the police, fearing they would be blamed or wouldn’t be taken seriously, the document says.
“Survivors also often feel they are not believed and are somehow to blame,” says the report in The Victims of Crime Research Digest.
“There was a perception among some that while the survivor must cope with the traumatic experience, the accused is not punished.”

"Little to no confidence in the police, the courts or the criminal justice system". I wonder why.

 According to a different study by University of Ottawa professor Holly Johnson:

Her research also shows how often sexual assaults reported to the police aren’t recorded as a crime. This happens when after an initial investigation, the police decide a crime didn’t happen and so will register the complaint as “unfounded.” In her paper, Johnson writes “sexual assaults are subjected to ‘unfounding’ to a far greater extent than any other crime.”

There are countless other studies and statistics that all say the same thing.

The general and systemic "false assumptions" about sexual assault victims are the exact opposite of what Horkins implies and the notion that there is an equal need of vigilance against sexual assault victims being truthful is, as one commentator put it, idiotic.

Justice Horkins' entire judgement shows the very real ideological and male supremacist patriarchal beliefs that are a part of the bedrock of the justice system as a whole. A part of its foundation. There is, indeed, a "political correctness" at work in our courts and society, and it is systemic misogyny.

Correction: An earlier version of this piece used the widely shared but incorrect quote: "We must fight against the stereotype that all sexual assault complaints are truthful". This was wrong. What was actually said in the judgement was "However, the twists and turns of the complainants’ evidence in this trial, illustrate the need to be vigilant in avoiding the equally dangerous false assumption that sexual assault complainants are always truthful"  The piece has been modified to reflect this. 

Children are never "sex workers" -- They are victims of rape and child abuse

In a neo-liberal society driven by right wing extremist narratives that ultimately infiltrate even the left, it is not at all surprising to see ongoing attempts to normalize the most horrific forms of exploitation -- especially if this exploitation involves primarily those who come from families or communities that are marginalized by poverty, racism, colonialism and violence against girls and women.


One of the worst of these is the persistent -- and revolting -- use of the term "sex worker" to describe girls and boys who are underage or children.

Whatever one may think of the broader debate around the terminology and language related to prostitution, it is simply impossible to understand the widespread use in the Canadian media and beyond of the term "sex worker" in relation to children who are victims of rape and sexual exploitation.

A recent example stems from the police sting operation that caught 22 men in the Greater Toronto Area allegedly willing to purchase sex from what the media called "an underage sex worker". 

There are countless other instances of this sickening misuse of a term already arguably designed to make prostitution seem a far less oppressive institution of male sexual violence than it really is.

This reached a new low with an astonishing piece of what amounts to denial of the realities of child sexual exploitation written by a predictably male writer, Noah Berlatsky,-- and which of course uses the term 'child sex worker' in the title -- that astoundingly seeks to claim that it is the police who pose the greatest danger to sexually exploited minors, as opposed to the men who are raping them or profiting from their rape. It does so by using some very selective sources and in a very selective way and by ignoring many initiatives by outreach organizations in conjunction with police both continent and worldwide.

While there can be little doubt that police sexual assault is an issue, and that police abuse is always an issue, and while prostituted children should never face criminal sanction anymore than any other prostituted women or men should, this article's narrative is so glaringly at odds with the actual reality of child prostitution  both in North America and globally it is a simply stunning and depressing comment that a major publication would publish this at all.

In order to accept its conclusions one has to somehow accept that the sexual violation and exploitation of minors is not intrinsically violent and is not intrinsically rape, both of which it is. That is the real threat to these children. The fact that they are being sold and raped by adult men on a regular basis.

Yet, even those seeking to end child sexual exploitation, like The Borgen Project, title a blog Thailand: Child Sex Workers but then go on to state:

It is estimated that perhaps as many as 800,000 children under the legal age of consent for sexual intercourse (16 years old) are victims of enslavement for the purpose of coerced prostitution. Often procured to much older men against their will, these victims of pedophilia often consist of young girls trafficked from the uplands of Thailand as well as from neighboring and countries. Forced to work in the touristic cities of the coasts, the most infamous among them being Pattaya, a large number of them have been lured by the promise of other occupations involving tasks of non-venereal descriptions.
The gargantuan pedophiliac sex industry also includes many young boys between the age of 10 to 13-years old. Like their female counterparts, they are forced to engage in coital relations with mainly Western men. UNICEF puts the number of children affected by HIV/AIDS, both having been born with and contracted in Thailand at 300,000.
Not only are children who are forced into prostitution exposed to diseases and violence of unspeakable luridness, they are also deprived of their opportunity to be children and to go to school. The result of this lack of opportunity and qualification is a vicious cycle from which victims of child prostitution find difficult to disentangle themselves. Some become procurers and some continue working in the industry.

Which begs the question, given that "sex worker" is a term created by and being enforced as some type of litmus test by those who want to see prostitution laws liberalized and brothels institutionalized, why is this term being used to describe what are child rape and abuse victims?

Especially as this is what all underage and child victims of this horrific form of sexual violence are.

In  2014 the United Nations noted:

Children are more at risk of being sexually exploited or sold than ever, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, Najat Maalla M’jid, has warned, urging a global response to crimes that are increasing in an interconnected world.
“Millions of girls and boys worldwide are victims of sexual exploitation, even though this issue in recent years has gained increased visibility,” the expert said during the presentation of her final report to the UN Human Rights Council.
“The availability of child pornography online is growing. Child victims of online sexual exploitation are younger and younger, and the images are more and more horrific,” said Ms Maalla M’jid, whose report reflects on her six-year tenure as UN Special Rapporteur and provides an overview of the main issues and trends relating to her mandate.
The UN independent expert warned that certain forms of sexual exploitation are increasing: sale and trafficking of children for sexual purposes and economic exploitation, child sex tourism and online child sexual exploitation. But she noted that the true scope of the problem is not clear due to inadequate legislation, lack of reliable data, and under-reporting.
“The clandestine nature of such exploitation, the fear of reprisals and stigmatisation, as well as the lack of child-sensitive complaints mechanisms, also hamper our understanding of these crimes,” she said.
Various factors increase children’s vulnerability, the Special Rapporteur said, including social tolerance and impunity, persistent demand and global criminal networks profiting from the increasingly lucrative trade in exploiting children.  

UNICEF states "Sexual violence against children is a gross violation of children’s rights. Yet it is a global reality across all countries and social groups. It can take the form of sexual abuse, harassment, rape or sexual exploitation in prostitution or pornography".

It goes on to note that:

The 2014 UNICEF study, Hidden in Plain Sight, estimates that around 120 million girls under the age of 20 (about 1 in 10) have been subjected to forced sexual intercourse or other forced sexual acts at some point of their lives. Boys also report experiences of sexual violence, but they do so to a lesser extent than girls. While more recent global estimates on sexual violence among boys are unavailable due to the lack of comparable data in most countries, girls typically report lifetime rates three times higher than boys in High Income Countries. Millions of more children are likely exploited in prostitution or pornography each year around the world, most of the times lured or forced into these situations through false promises and limited knowledge about the risks. Yet the true magnitude of sexual violence is hidden because of its sensitive and illegal nature. Most children and families do not report cases of abuse and exploitation because of stigma, fear, and lack of trust in the authorities. Social tolerance and lack of awareness also contribute to under-reporting.

According to Equality Now:

Trafficking women and children for sexual exploitation is the fastest growing criminal enterprise in the world. This, despite the fact international law and the laws of 134 countries criminalize sex trafficking.
At least 20.9 million adults and children are bought and sold worldwide into commercial sexual servitude, forced labor and bonded labor.
About 2 million children are exploited every year in the global commercial sex trade.
Almost 6 in 10 identified trafficking survivors were trafficked for sexual exploitation.
Women and girls make up 98% of victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation.

They go on to state:

Survivors of sex trafficking tell stories of daily degradation of mind and body. They are often isolated, intimidated, sold into debt bondage and subject to physical and sexual assault by their traffickers.  Most live under constant mental and physical threat. Many suffer severe emotional trauma, including symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and disassociation. They are at greater risk of contracting sexually transmissible infections, including HIV/AIDS. Many become pregnant and are forced to undergo often unsafe abortions.

According to the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights in Canada:

The sexual exploitation of children is a deeply–rooted reality in too many Canadian homes, families and communities.
It is not at the margins of our society, it is at the centre.
It happens to children we know – by men and women we know.
It deserves greater public attention and action.
Most of these child victims have been sexually abused by those close to them: relatives,
friends, and other familiar faces. Sexual exploitation happens to children we know. It happens to children on the streets of our communities who have been trafficked and sold for sex. It happens to children in front of home video cameras. The committee heard that in one year there were almost 9,000 reported sexual assaults against children in Canada. The overwhelming majority of sexual abuse goes unreported. Eighty per cent of child victims of sexual abuse are girls.
The committee was told that nowhere is the devastation of sexual exploitation more
pervasive than among Aboriginal children and youth, who represent over 90% of those being exploited in certain cities. Programming and services for urban and off-reserve First Nations, Métis and Inuit are often much less robust than for those on-reserves. Poverty, drug usage,homelessness, family violence, and racism are all contributing factors and compound the urgency of finding real solutions.
We are failing these children. It is time to take action.

Note just how significant issues of poverty, racism, colonialism and systemic misogyny are through all these narratives as that is what the "commercial" rape and violation of children and underage youth is. It is a manifestation of all of these horrific oppressions and forms of violence, committed overwhelmingly by men, in their most base and atrocious form.

No child can engage in "sex work" as no child can ever give consent in any meaningful sense.

To call 10, 11, 12, 13 or 14 year old girls or boys "sex workers" is not just grotesque and sick but implies that they are engaged in "work", an allegedly consensual activity, when "consent" on the part of children is simply impossible.

Children at this age cannot give consent. In every case -- every single case -- where an underage girl or boy is being sexually exploited commercially they are victims of rape  and of child sexual abuse and the "johns", pimps and traffickers responsible for their brutalization should be held to account as the pedophiles or perpetrators of child rape they are.

Not just the media, but everyone needs to stop using fundamentally vile and reactionary terms like "child sex worker".

Instead we need to acknowledge this male violence against children for what it really is and demand that our government and society take steps to end the appalling, racist, colonialist , misogynist and incomparably violent and viscous sexual abuse of and violence against children and youth that is intrinsic to the sexual exploitation of young girls and boys and that has nothing whatsoever to do with "work".




See also: Statutory rape is rape -- In every single case

Statutory rape is rape -- In every single case

With the death of David Bowie the depressingly long road that lies ahead in the battle to end the narratives that enable rape culture are becoming abundantly clear.

Largely lost among the general mainstream celebration of Bowie's considerable accomplishments as an artist and his impact on popular culture are a small group of writers who have wanted to remind people of Bowie's sexual actions towards and involving young teenagers -- actions that are both legally and morally rape.

They have done so in pieces like David Bowie and believing children., David Bowie was a musical genius. He was also involved in child sexual exploitation. and Remembering Bowie: The Man, The Legend, The Sexual Abuser among others.

What has been shocking and distressing is the countless comments one encounters in response to these articles -- even from men and women who self-describe as progressive or feminist -- saying any number of variations of "they were groupies and they consented to the sex so it was not rape" or "it was the 70's" or "it was a different context", etc.

In the specific case of David Bowie, as a blogger put it in the piece David Bowie: Musical Genius, Gender-Bending Icon, Alleged Perpetrator of Sexual Violence:

He also is said to have had sex with (read: raped) girls young enough to be in junior high school, and at least one rape allegation against him. He is, like so many of your faves, problematic. It is not uncommon or unheard of for older men with fame and power to use that to exploit young girls hungry for love and acceptance. It’s also not uncommon for people to sweep this reality under the rug because they don’t want to admit that someone they admire is capable of doing these things 

But David Bowie did this, if Lori Maddox is to believed (and i choose to believe her). He “took Lori Maddox’s virginity” — as she puts it— when she was just 14 years old (I have also heard this number be 13 or 15. Either way, nothing changes). Regardless of how she views the encounter (and, to her, it was consensual and she remembers it fondly), the fact of the matter is that legally and emotionally, a 14-year-old girl cannot consent to an adult man, particularly an adult man with rock star status who provides alcohol and drugs. That same night, according to Maddox, he had a threesome with 14-year-old Maddox and 15-year-old Sable Starr. No matter how you spin it — and I want to be clear that these women are entitled to their own personal narratives — even if they could not and did not know better, he should have. Regardless of what the details of the story are, statutory rape is illegal and it was illegal in 1970, too.

This is the critical point that bears repeating: "the fact of the matter is that legally and emotionally, a 14-year-old girl cannot consent to an adult man, particularly an adult man with rock star status who provides alcohol and drugs."

And this is true irrespective of the "context", the decade and, as she makes clear, whether the young people in question "consented".

In the powerful and moving piece The Myth of the Teenage Temptress: Or Why A Young Girl Can Not Consent to Sex With An Adult Man, a woman wrote of her sexual exploitation by older men when she was a teen, to which she nominally "consented":

 And so I created Prodigy chat rooms with names like "13yo girl home alone" and spent hours chatting and having phone sex with the men who would find me there. I "dated" men in their 20s and 30s that I met at the movie theater, online or hanging around local college town with my other underage girlfriends. I pursued these relationships with with Lolita-like abandon. The terrifying thing is how few adult men ever said no. 

I was not coerced. I consented to all these sexual encounters in the basest sense of the world. But I was making choices that I wasn't emotionally equipped to make. Legally, that's why statutory rape laws exist. Because like an intoxicated person, an underage person is not truly capable of informed consent...

...I spent the next decade of my life wrestling with demons borne partly of sexual trauma. I became addicted to drugs, risky sex, and alcohol. I still struggle to learn that there are better ways to get attention than with my body, that my sexuality isn't the only thing that makes me worthy of love and attention. 

Still, I made it out of my teen years alive; Cherice Morales wasn't so lucky. 

What I needed, and what she needed, were strong male role models in my life who knew how the fuck to say "No thanks" to a little girl's come-ons. Because it doesn't matter if a young girl is saying yes, it's an adult man's job to say no.

This is not simply about David Bowie and when people accept the notion that young teens or children can give consent they reinforce this terrible and violent rape justifying "myth of the teenage temptress" and empower and embolden those who enage in or excuse such conduct in their self-justifications and victim blaming. They do this as well when they simply refuse -- as was the case with so many and Woody Allen -- to believe the children's or young people's stories at all.

If it was ok for David Bowie, how was it wrong in this-or-that context where there was also supposed "consent" on the part of the child?

Make no mistake about how dangerous and destructive these ideas are and excusing such conduct is. When we undermine efforts to stop the lies and myths that perpetuate rape culture we ensure that sexual assault and abuse of children and young teens will, in many cases, continue to be seen not as rape but as some minor transgression that a (in the vast majority of cases) man was somehow enticed into.

On a broader level these excuses remind us why it really should be no surprise how the Bill Cosby and Jian Ghomeshi "extremes" of famous male rapists who were able to victimize women for such a very long time happened.

When we make excuses for or simply ignore the vile behaviour of so many other well-known celebrity or sports figure male serial abusers, spousal abusers, child sexual exploiters and rapists on every step of the vicious ladder that leads right up to them, we ensure that they will happen again.

They happen precisely because so many of us continue to think this way and believe these myths.

We must stop and counter all attempts to claim that there was a context in which it was acceptable for men like David Bowie, and many other rock stars at the time and after, to sexually exploit and abuse children or, in his case, young teenagers.

Because what you are saying if you believe this is that there are some cases and situations where it is permissible, understandable or forgivable for an adult to have had sexual intercourse or sexual contact with children, pre-teens and young teenagers and it is not.

It is wrong morally and legally.

It is never acceptable, understandable or forgivable and it is always rape.

In every single case.