Recently, I came across a memoir by Rachel Lloyd entitled Girls Like Us - Fighting For A World Where Girls Are Not For Sale, which crosses perspectives using both her work with GEMS: Girls Educational and Mentoring Services in New York City and her own personal journey and experience in the trafficking world.
I would encourage you strongly to read this book, along with their documentary, entitled Very Young Girls, which is available via Netflix. My personal notes, found in this blog, are only highlights, and the most moving pieces of this book are found in the individual stories, as well as the past that inspired Rachel Lloyd to found GEMS. Also, my personal interest areas reflect only a small portion of the vast amount of work to be done within this field of work. I tend to focus on legislative reform, whereas many volunteers are far more interested in mentoring and restoration, or rescue. All of these areas are equally vital to ending the problem, so reading this book will shed further light on areas I may gloss over due to it not being my specific area of work and research.
Chapter 5 - Pimps:
Rachel talks about her history in the life, describing the customers who came in. In her experience, many of the attributes could be determined by culture. For example, Middle Eastern clients were described as, "cheap with [money] and possibly rough with the girls." Americans? Yeah, there's a standard for them as well. They are, "too loud, too cheap." Her madam "would have a fit if we... didn't quietly endure being roughed up."
She meets a man in the club who seems interested in her romantically, but she discovers that he wants to make money off of her. He drives her to the track outside of town and says, "You going to work here for me. This is you. Hure." When she tells him she doesn't want to work for him and asks to go home, "his demeanor immediately changes and he becomes rough and threatening... No one knows where I am... I'm crying but compliant... When we get to my apartment building, he insists on coming up with me and forces me to show him where I live. He rapes me, telling me that it is only fair, as he has to try it first... I hide from him for weeks."
Another romantic interest lures her into a relationship by wooing her. Eventually, she is "so enraptured... that I'm happy to give him anything and everything he wants, until... it's no longer a choice. I'll love [him] with all my heart and soul... I'll think I could die for him - and I nearly do." She goes on to say, "The one thing I never see him as is my pimp. It isn't until much later that I remember... he had twisted some wire coat hangers... to beat me, that I turned over my money to him every night and got beaten... At the time, he's just my boyfriend and I'm just a girl who dances in a club."
Rachel goes on to talk about pimping and how widely accepted it is within today's culture. It's not taboo; it's mainstream. In fact, it is glorified in today's society. One passage that has me marking "SICK!" in my margins sickens me most especially because I didn't even recognize the wrongness of it when the song came out; in fact, I liked it, worked out to it, sang it without ever realizing the detriment that it was causing. Here's the passage:
"Hip-hop clearly needs to take responsibility for its ongoing misogynistic images and lyrics, but rappers alone could not have achieved what has become a mass acceptance of pimp culture. The tipping point came in 2003, when 50 Cent released his platinum-selling song 'P.I.M.P.,' in which he describes one of the girls working for him as having 'stitches in her head.' Several months later, Reebok rewarded him with a $50 million sneaker-deal endorsement. A few years later, Vitaminwater did the same. Why wouldn't they? 'Fiddy' proved unequivocally that no one was objecting to his blatant degradation of women and girls when 'P.I.M.P.' went platinum three times." Furthermore, "Snoop brags about his pimping," calling it a "childhood dream." That's right. His dream was never to become a famous rapper. It was to become a pimp, "Cause pimpin' aint a job, it's a sport. I had a bitch on every exit... 'cause bitches would recruit for me." He also received a ton of endorsement deals. No one objected to him showing up at the 2003 MTV VMAs with women on dog leashes.
The word "pimp" has become an acceptable phrase in pop culture. References are found everywhere from music to TV. HBO produces a scripted show about them. There is an actual event called a Players Ball. It is an annual "convention that awards real-life pimps with trophies." How is this legal??? The reference refers to shows, like PImp My Ride, Pimp My Bride, and yes... even Pimp My Bible. The Academy Awards gave an Oscar for Best Original Song to "It's Hard Out Here For A Pimp". Yet, when someone commented about Chelsea Clinton being "pimped out" during Hillary's campaign, that reporter was suspended. Rachel observes that, "The connotation of the word remains the same. It's society's attitude toward pimps and pimping that has changed." I added to this observation, "For worse!"
Going back to the Oscar winning song, I have to agree with Rachel's sentiments. "It was pretty clear to anyone watching that the song denigrated women and positioned pimps as hustlers just trying to 'get by.' Apparently, the Academy had considered the word bitch to be too risque for prime tim etelevision, as it was replaced by witch, yet somehow they did not think that lyrics like 'Wait I got a snow bunny, and a black girl too / You pay the right price and they'll both do you'... were offensive. " My margins read, "WTH! Stop the madness and double standard!" This still outrages me. Today's culture towards pimps is one of Validation when it should be one of Incarceration!
Rachel Lloyd says it well when she writes, "Pimps are not managers, protectors, or 'market facilitators'... [they are] leeches sucking the souls from beautiful, bright young girls, predators... stalking their prey." She turns the focus from glamorous pimps towards the effect on these victims, "girls with lifelong scars, girls traumatized and broken... brainwashed,... beaten for not meeting their 'quota'" She dreams of taking the mic at the awards show and sharing the stories of her girls, a girl pimped out by "people she believes to be her adoptive parents," and another "beaten by a two-by-four, and like 50 Cent described, left with stitches in her head," and still another, "held down... while they used a home-tattoo kit to tattoo his name all over her body including on her hands and neck". She then asks, "What would it take for pimps not to be seen as cool or sexy? FOr people to believe that they cause real harm?"
She shares more of her story, which I STRONGLY encourage you to read, because ti shows a real, emotional side and answers the question many people ask, of how someone could be willingly sucked into this kind of life and was it really possible that they were tricked into this. The book can be found here, Girls Like Us - Fighting For A World Where Girls Are Not For Sale.
The story also supports her assertion that, "Just as there is no single profile of men who are batterers or child abusers, there is no single profile of pimps." Pimps rarely ever have one girl because the celebrated glamor "comes from the macho ideal of having multiple women meeting your needs." There are also multiple types of pimps, from violent ones to sophisticated, from sociopathic to low-rent subway pimps. "Anyone who makes money off the commercial sexual exploitation of someone else is pimping them, be they a parent, a pornographer, or a member of an organized crime syndicate... male, female, or transgendered... all ages, races, and ethnicities." She cautions against buying into the stereotypical black man with a cane and suit, saying that, "Most people making money off the commercial sex industry are not men of color... Traffickers [are] a broad range of ethnicities and roles, from white American men who run child sex tourism agencies, to Korean massage parlor owners..." She posits that traffickers "prey upon those that they have the most access to."
There is a general "script" as Rachel calls it that most pimps and traffickers follow. They rarely vary, because the script is extremely effective. They use "the same mind-control...as cult leaders... brainwashing and violence strategies to keep their victims under their control." She points to a tool called Biderman's Chart of Coercion that psychologically breaks down tactics that are effective in gaining control over another. Pimps use this heavily. In laymen's terms, monopolization of perception is when pimps don't let their girls talk to people who aren't in the life, or to a more severe degree alter perception to make outsiders into enemies or complete strangers, calling them "squares." Enforcing trivial demands is when the pimps will make girls do small, stupid things just to see if they'll obey.
Pimps have different sets of rules. For example, the women must walk in the street while the pimp walks on the sidewalk. Girls are not allowed to look any men directly in the eyes and must keep their head lowered. Punishment happens frequently for any number of perceived issues, from disrespect to not making enough money in a given night. It ranges from beatings, group harassment by multiple pimps until you break a rule so they can all beat you, kidnapping by another pimp until you make enough money to return to yours, and more. These punishments are designed to "break down individual will." They also use "divide and conquer" tactics to ensure even more breakdown of will. They encourage competition between girls for their favor, encouraging girls to rat each other out in exchange for better treatment for themselves. They create a culture where, "it'll be in [one girl's] best interest to snitch if [another girl] tries to run away; otherwise they'll all be beaten."
At an Out of Darkness training, I received a copy of a letter from the antebellum south. This was an instructional letter about how to properly break down slaves to ensure full obedience. I considered printing or linking to this material here, but decided against it. As informative as it is to activists and those trying to end trafficking, I felt that if even one person with bad intentions came across this piece of information and used it to their advantage for he wrong reasons, it wasn't worth hundreds of people learning about how pimps work. The reason I mention this, is because the letter is frequently handed around to and by pimps. It is recirculated today; but instead of being used in regards to its original purpose, pimps are using the instructions and tactics in this letter to ensure absolutely slavery and loyalty among their victims. Rachel mentions this in her book as well, stating that, "Pimps and traffickers are using the same lines, the same rationale, the same tactics as their predecessors in the antebellum South. Pimps thrive in America, a country where a modern-day slave system is too often justified and ignored."
She focuses a bit on the trauma this pimping causes the victims. Even when they are no longer part of the life, "the humiliation, the physical and emotional pain, the trauma, the nightmares, all feel the same. The damage is done." Instead of the story she shares, I will share one that I heard from Amy Fatzinger of Sparrow's Nest Ministries. She shared the story of an 18 year old who graduated as class valedictorian and was a leader in her church. She was from an upper class, white family. The heartbreaking part of this story is that her father had been selling her for profit since she was 13 years old. She looked happy and healthy in school and no one in church realized that she was sold until she escaped to college.
Following this, she talks about how pimps are aware of the damage, but their "motivation to change is minimal." In my margins, I add, 'Give them a reason to stop! End the low-risk factor.' If motivation to change is part of the problem, then perhaps motivating them externally can be part of the solution. Rachel again mentions, "the glorification of pimps and minimization of their violent acts in American culture" and says that it is "critical to bring it back to the reality of their crimes." In a plea that struck me as sad in itself and a bit desperate, she says, "We don't have to demonize them. Stopping the glorification would be enough for now."
On a local level, I'd like to share more information that I received from Amy. I wasn't aware that these existed. There is something called a Secret Auction House. In this auction, girls are paraded around and sold 20-30 times in a single night. One of these houses exists in Flowery Branch, so the misconception that this happens downtown is further shattered.
