Mary G. was born from the boats. Her children were born from the boats too, all fathered through her liaisons with male customers. She has never known anything else. Like generations of Native girls and women before her, Mary and her family are inextricably tied to prostitution in the great port city of Duluth, Minnesota. Long before the term sex trafficking entered the public lexicon and began appearing in headlines, Native women like Mary and her mother Ruthie were lured into prostitution. Largely driven by poverty and homelessness as well as an underlying racism that sanctioned the sexual degradation of Native women, generations of them have sold themselves to survive.
For years the citizens of Duluth, as in so many other cities, looked the other way at the disreputable exchanges between prostitutes and seamen. They were discounted as part of the cities rough-and-tumble harbor culture and reputation. And prostitution, the world’s oldest profession, was seen as a benign vice, a victimless crime, an example of “boys being boys.”
Like most Native women around the Great Lakes, I have heard the shameful term boat whore whispered since I was a child. We all knew about women who disappeared to “work the boats” and more important, we knew it was not a topic for discussion. Perhaps internalizing the inexplicable collective shame of being Native women in white America, we cringed when hearing about boat whores, fearful that their experience and reputation might somehow infect us, too. The story of the boat whore has been like a queer kind of natural disaster that visits destruction on the powerless yet holds them responsible.
Until now.
Advocates such as Melissa Farley, founder of Prostitution Research & Education, maintain that prostitution and the sex industry create a demand for women that is being fulfilled by sex traffickers. According to Farley, there is little difference between sex trafficking and prostitution. Prostitution is typically depicted as an activity of choice while sex trafficking involves force and coercion for the participation of innocent girls in the sex trade.
Farley believes that the attempt to separate the two is illogical, creating a false distinction between innocent victims of trafficking from those who choose prostitution. Farley points out that no such line exists, since most prostitutes enter that life between the ages of 12 and 14, far too young to make such a momentous decision. Prostitution and trafficking are expressions of sexual violence. The vast majority of individuals being bought and sold for sex must answer to a pimp figure who not only benefits from their sexual exploitation, but also dictates every aspect of their lives, says Beatriz Menanteau, a staff attorney with the Women’s Human Rights Program in Minnesota.
Further debunking the notion that prostitution is always a matter of choice, the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women reports that 92 percent of women engaged in prostitution said they wanted to leave prostitution but couldn’t because they lack such things as a home, job training, health care, counseling and treatment for drug and alcohol addiction.
Mary’s campaign against sex trafficking began when a pimp lured her daughter “H” into prostitution at age 14. H is now 19. “She was 14 when the first pimp got hold of her. She’s with another one now. He posts her picture online to get johns,” Mary says.
When H began coming home with expensive clothing and a cell phone, Mary suspected that she was being prostituted. Nothing she said, however, could break the hold H’s pimp, J.D., had on her.
H tells Mary that J.D., 38, loves her. Mary notes, however, that he beats H. and throws her out when her bouts with mental illness erupt. J.D. promised to marry H but threw her out again after stealing the $50,000 per-capita money she received from her tribe at the age of 18.
Despite all that, H insists that she loves J.D. and tells Mary, “Mom, that’s just the way it is with pimps and hos.”
Mary has sought out activists and police in an effort to help H, and to call more attention to sex trafficking. Putting her shame aside, Mary speaks out publicly about her family’s experiences. “All for the love of H,” she says.
“J.D. threatened to kill me if I talked,” Mary says. “He said he knew how to get rid of people by putting them in a vat of acid.”
Mary is walking through her fear because the stakes in this fight are high. She is a mother bent on saving her daughter who—for Mary—is still the little girl who couldn’t sleep without her hands entwined in Mary’s long black hair.
Mary is not alone. Increasingly, advocates and law enforcement are spreading the word that the world’s oldest profession is anything but benign; it is a form of sexual violence that disproportionately targets the poor and girls and women of color. Breaking Free, a St. Paul, Minnesota-based organization that provides services to victims of sex trafficking and prostitution claims that more than two-thirds of those working in prostitution in Minneapolis are women of color. This information is based on data regarding their clients they serve. Nationally, available information from sources such as Donna Hughes, professor of Women’s Studies at the University of Rhode Island in her fact sheet, Race and Prostitution in the United States, suggest that women and girls from racial minorities are disproportionately represented in the sex trade. She notes that in 2002, 55 percent of girls under 18 who were arrested for prostitution were African American. She also says that only 39 percent of women arrested for prostitution in 2001 in New York City were white.
Farley and other advocates are working to reframe the public discussion surrounding prostitution and sex trafficking by changing the language and clearly identifying prostitution as a form of sexual violence. “Prostitution is a systemic issue rooted in oppression, abuse, exploitation and, often, racism,” she says.
Indeed, in their report, Shattered Hearts: The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of American Indian Women and Girls in Minnesota, the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center reports that nearly all of their clients who have worked as prostitutes had been sexually abused in their homes as children. Studies such as The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico by the Center for the Study of Youth Policy at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work, indicate that physical and sexual abuse at home are among the primary risk-factors for youth entry into the sex trade. Therefore, Native women and girls—who suffer the highest rates of sexual assault of any ethnicity in the country—are especially vulnerable to traffickers.
According to the Shattered Hearts report, homelessness is the most immediate reason that Native girls enter the world of sex trafficking and prostitution. Typically, Native girls run away from abusive homes, end up homeless and become easy targets for pimps who offer food and shelter in exchange for sex.
The sex trafficking of Native girls and women is a story 500 years in the making, says Sarah Deer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She is a professor of law at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul and has done extensive legal work and research about violence against Native women. Deer is also a member of Amnesty International USA’s Native American and Alaska Native Advisory Council and has testified before the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.
May 9, 2012 -Yesterday, the House Judiciary Committee marked up and passed the Adams (R-FL) version of the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act (VAWA), H.R. 4970. Tribal advocates-as well as women’s advocates across the nation-worked very hard over the past few weeks to defeat this partisan bill that excludes key protections for Native women and rolls back protections for other vulnerable populations. But, in a near party-line 17-15 vote (Representative Ted Poe (R-TX) crossed the aisle and voted against the bill’s passage), H.R. 4970 passed out of the House Judiciary Committee. The bill is expected to come to the House floor for consideration by the full House of Representatives as early as next week.
