Fans of human trafficking will be pleased to hear that a massive World Cup-related mobilization of the pan-European sex industry is in the offing. The objective is reportedly to “import” an estimated 40,000 women from Central and Eastern Europe into Germany and cram them into toilet-sized fuck-huts in a newly constructed “mega-brothel” so that the 3 million 2006 World Cup fans will have human receptacles into which to spwat their football-frothy fuckwads. Because lard knows you can’t watch a sporting event without getting up every five minutes to go prong some bitch.
Check it out at Coalition Against Trafficking In Women.
47 comments
1 ping
SneakySnu
March 9, 2006 at 10:29 am (UTC -6)
So many great Twistyisms packed into a single paragraph!
Amber
March 9, 2006 at 11:28 am (UTC -6)
Good lord. I feel lunch coming up.
Mary Sunshine
March 9, 2006 at 11:56 am (UTC -6)
Thanks for the link, Twisty! I signed the petition.
Hmmm … wonder if any of those polygamous mormon “families” have their money invested in this one, too?
Galloise Blonde
March 9, 2006 at 12:00 pm (UTC -6)
I got this link myself in an email from my real life maiden aunt. Somehow I doubt they will get much success in enlisting support from football team members, as they hope. The Scotsman has a whole category devoted to ‘Football and sex assault claims.’
Kelley
March 9, 2006 at 12:15 pm (UTC -6)
I’m so appalled, I don’t know what to say. Except, of course, I blame the patriarchy.
Fuckers. I hereby renounce my ability to speak German, and will NEVER again watch World Cup soccer for their participation in this human rights atrocity.
Sam
March 9, 2006 at 12:20 pm (UTC -6)
I’ve been seeing articles about this floating about the trafficking activist community and in European newspapers for weeks but I’ve seen almost nothing in the American media. Thanks to Twisty I have a wee bit less to grumble about today.
The European Women’s Lobby has begun a petition on the matter as well.
Petition to red flag sexual slavery during the World cup
Twisty
March 9, 2006 at 12:31 pm (UTC -6)
Why should Americans care if a few thousand Romanian sluts get bought at the World Cup? It’s not real football, and Romanians are filthy commies.
manxome
March 9, 2006 at 1:07 pm (UTC -6)
The “blame” button just seems so inadequate these days. Can we get a “pulverize” option?
Arianna
March 9, 2006 at 2:02 pm (UTC -6)
I told my roommate about this, and he said it was mentioned months ago in his International Business class at university.
Kat
March 9, 2006 at 2:54 pm (UTC -6)
Oh my god. I thought this was a joke! Then I clicked the accompanying link, and, sweet jesus! What the hell is wrong with people?
FamousSovietAthlete
March 9, 2006 at 3:28 pm (UTC -6)
“Why should Americans care if a few thousand Romanian sluts get bought at the World Cup? It’s not real football, and Romanians are filthy commies.”
This comment alone justifies my internet connection fees.
I adore you, Twisty.
Pony
March 9, 2006 at 4:07 pm (UTC -6)
I suppose they’ll need on-site medical? Here’s an opportunity for those highly ethical ABu Ghraib medicos.
Rene
March 9, 2006 at 5:01 pm (UTC -6)
My husband believes that the uniforms that female high-school basketball and volleyball players typically wear — the panty-sized short-shorts — were obviously designed by pervy middle-aged male coaches. I suggested that maybe the shorts were more comfortable or aerodynamic or something, and he said that if that were the case, the boys would be wearing short-shorts, too, which I suppose is true.
Nevertheless, as Twisty pointed out, there’s no way to escape the male gaze, especially if you’re a woman under the age of 40.
This is my first post since registering. Let’s see if it goes through.
Rene
TP
March 9, 2006 at 5:02 pm (UTC -6)
Well, there you go. Our civilization has finally degenerated to the point of the Roman Empire, where prostitutes were openly sold during all the games and spectacles as a matter of course.
Little girls will be directed to the sterling example of the Empress Theodora, who reportedly fucked her way up from circus whore to become the come receptacle of the Emperor himself.
Though I guess I’m a liberal, if you get right down to it, I’m starting to notice that so-called liberals will promote so many things I object to that I wish there were another way to go besides right or left. Up, I guess.
Romanian prostitutes! The blood runs even colder when one is married to a first generation Romanian woman.
Rene
March 9, 2006 at 5:18 pm (UTC -6)
Whoops. I just realized that my debut post-registration post was appended to the wrong thread. I meant to post what I said about the female basketball and volleyball players to the rollerderby-girl thread, but I got confused somewhere, obviously. Carry on!
As long as I’m here, though, I will confess that I support the legalization of prostitution. I don’t approve of it, mind you — I also don’t approve of pornography, strip clubs, vinyl siding, and rap metal — but I believe that we’d be better off it were legalized and regulated. It makes me sad that women become prostitutes, of course, but it also makes me sad that for so many women marriage is a form of prostitution — they transform themselves into breeder fuckbots for the highest bidder, and they convince themselves that they’re the ones getting over. At least prostitutes are more honest about it.
These World Cup fuckshacks are disgusting, though, no doubt about it. It seems analogous to the mail-order bride situation — impoverished women forced to sell their bodies because they have nothing else to sell.
Rene
Mandos
March 9, 2006 at 5:52 pm (UTC -6)
I think that TP is selling Theodora short. I’m given to understand that Theodora deserves at least some of the credit for what happened under Justinian. But maybe TP knows better.
mrs_enid
March 9, 2006 at 5:52 pm (UTC -6)
What the frill is wrong with people that they are so coarse that they can’t see that prostitutes really are human beings? How can someone really make an argument that women would choose to prostitute themselves at the World Cup in shacks the size of a toilet, if other viable employment alternatives were available? Are these johns really that deluded as to where these women come from and how they get there, or do they just not care that they’re essentially buying a slave?
Mrs. Enid (f/k/a Lady Ms. Esq.)
witchy-woo
March 9, 2006 at 6:38 pm (UTC -6)
Not care that they’re buying a slave? Actually, if any of them ever gave it a moments thought I think they’d quite like the idea. Mostly though, they won’t think about it because, essentially, they don’t care.
Catharine
March 9, 2006 at 8:28 pm (UTC -6)
Well, it’s nice to know that free enterprise is alive and well and thriving around a damn game of European football.
~C~
thebewilderness
March 9, 2006 at 9:47 pm (UTC -6)
I have to confess that I have a tiny tendency to OCD, so maybe that is why I have been thinking (over and over)if torture is acceptable slavery cannot be far behind. I suppose there will be another name for it, indentured servitude carries too many negative connotations. If a rapist has a right to parenthood in SoDak and women are human resources, human trafficing of virgins may have a bright future here in the US. Ihave to go outside now.
Kate
March 9, 2006 at 10:11 pm (UTC -6)
Yes, trafficking of virgins is something that many continuously try here in the states until they get outta hand and the cops come in.
Oh, the American dream, I can see most American men supporting the same for the Stupor Bowl. Get a hard-on watching the men in tights tackle eachother and then just go and relieve yourself in a fuck-booth.
Feeling down about your team losing? You can be a winner for five minutes and twenty bucks during half-time!
Scrape your knee, scrape your horn, all in a boy’s night out.
We women have so far to go, so very very very far to go.
How in the hell can Germany, a supposed ‘first world civilized’ European nation condone such wholesale exploitation of human flesh and then sit on the UN council and feign support for the supposed efforts of the UN on improving the position of women worldwide?
I think this just blows the whole lie wide open now doesn’t it?
ljdugan
March 9, 2006 at 10:59 pm (UTC -6)
Oh, let’s just boil it down, shall we? Any woman having anything to do with any man–sexually, that is–is just a another tool–pun very much intended, for the patriarchy. You want to enact change? Leave ‘em at the curb. Sorry, I’m tired of the hyperbole.
darkymac
March 9, 2006 at 11:53 pm (UTC -6)
I suggested that maybe the shorts were more comfortable or aerodynamic or something, and he said that if that were the case, the boys would be wearing short-shorts, too, which I suppose is true.
An example in support of Rene’s husband’s thesis:
Now these fellas are athletes.
It’s AFL, the Australian football code, known as “footie”.
It’s a running game where players are permitted a limited amount of body contact, and it’s played in wintertime.
The shorts have been short ever since victorian era restrictions on flesh exposure for men were relaxed. The jerseys have been short sleeved even longer. The logic behind least leg and arm cover is both that there is smaller area of material for opponents to grab in a tackle and that the limbs need least restriction possible to achieve balletic leaping, kicking and skyward reaching.
Heat efficiency would also be a factor; these athletes range on the largest football field for long periods and an Australian winter rarely has freezing conditions, even if occasionally bitter ones
.
I know I shouldn’t objectify, but how can you help not gazing if you like seeing legs and arms doing extremely good work?
On the other hand, only a mother could love some of the heads.
Swimming sport is another good example of the rig being the central objective, not the look:
There has been a convergence from budgie-smugglers for men and neck-to-crotch suits for women to the full-body water-suits for both sexes. There are a few below-the-waist hold-outs in the men’s distance swimming, but most are choosing the full water-suit right now.
Professional basketball rigs? Clearly advertising revenue and fashion-driven, both for men and women. The men don’t need to wear such long baggy shorts and shirts and the women don’t need to be nearly naked for either sex to perform athletically.
Any opinions on the sport-ness of beach volleyball?
Victoria
March 10, 2006 at 3:01 am (UTC -6)
I had no idea that Germany had legalised prostitution, so Googled it to find out more. I was shocked to find out that not only is it legal, but some women could be legally forced to enter the trade on threats of reduced benefits… See this article here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/01/30/wgerm30.xml
witchy-woo
March 10, 2006 at 3:36 am (UTC -6)
Thankfully, Victoria, that little gem has been identified as an urban myth (for now, at least…) – see here: http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/brothel.asp
Victoria
March 10, 2006 at 5:20 am (UTC -6)
Thanks witchy-woo. I made the mistake of assuming a newspaper would be reporting facts, not hypothesis! *blushes* Oh dear, and on my first post too.
I’m still shocked by the above, and the knowledge that the football fans would take full advantage of those facilities…
Grace
March 10, 2006 at 7:20 am (UTC -6)
Theodora deserves at least some of the credit for what happened under Justinian
Y’know, Mandos, I REALLY hope this double entendre was unintentional. ;-)
I think you’re right that Theodora was a fairly powerful and influential empress (and heaven knows many of her Byzantine successors followed her example).
Arianna
March 10, 2006 at 8:02 am (UTC -6)
Darkymak:
I love beach volleyball. It definitely differs from court volleyball, not just in rules, but in difficulty. Mind you, just because it’s *beach* volleyball, doesn’t mean it needs to be played in bikinis!
Jezebella
March 10, 2006 at 11:14 am (UTC -6)
ljdugan: I’m calling “not fair.” I can’t help that I’m hetero and I like sex with men, I was just born that way. I’ve jumped the fence and frankly, it wasn’t my cup of tea. Maybe you find it easy to give up sex with men, but don’t call me names because I choose to do so.
I’m not giving up my boy-lovin’ for the rest of my life because we live in a patriarchy, and this refusal does not make me a tool of the patriarchy. Are we all gonna quit work, too, because the whole economy is patriarchal? I suppose I shouldn’t go to the doctor if I’m sick, or the grocery store when I’m hungry? Uh-uh. I’m not opting out of our entire culture, much less giving up one of the few things that is pure pleasure for me, because the system is fucked.
Don’t blame girls who fuck boys, blame the patriarchy!
TP
March 10, 2006 at 12:34 pm (UTC -6)
Mandos! Yes! Mandos! My aim is more to amuse with bitter irony than to convey verifiable facts.
The Secret History by Procopius is the source of my anti-Theodoran scorn, and is not to be trusted. For all any reputable historian knows, Theodora lived and died a virgin, since she never made any babies. My memory could be faulty, but that’s my recollection.
She was a power of some significance. The Roman Era was one in which women could rise to power in certain ways, and it carried over to the Byzantines, who followed Roman Law.
Also, Cleopatra must have been an incredibly strong woman to hold her own against her brother’s claim to the throne of Egypt, for example.
As for prostitution at the games and the circus, that’s pretty well-established fact.
Pony
March 10, 2006 at 12:50 pm (UTC -6)
Promotion in Roman times was ordained on those with the biggest dicks. Really. This didn’t leave a lot of room for powerful women.
darkymac
March 10, 2006 at 1:03 pm (UTC -6)
I say TP old boy, didn’t Procopius report a daughter for Theodora?
And it’s a kind of burlesque theatre that she started out in – her one big turn being a Leda and the swan act performed with geese that were lured to her groin with sprinkled grain. Is that what you mean by ‘circus’?
Readers should be minded that this was all on the cusp of the descent into the Dark Ages and acting, indeed all things to do with the Theatre, were considered in the 6th Century to be bad and nastiness incarnate. Inside another fifty years it was to be banned altogether. Theodora could have been a prostitute, but then so were all actors tarred in those times.
A bit like today really.
And get a listen to Handel’s oratorio ‘Theodora’. Not wildly popular then or now, but his favourite and full of good tunes.
Sam
March 10, 2006 at 2:52 pm (UTC -6)
Rene said, “I support the legalization of prostitution…marriage…At least prostitutes are more honest about it.
These World Cup fuckshacks are disgusting, though, no doubt about it”
Those fuckshacks are men being honest about how they feel about women, but I’m not about to give them cookies for ‘honestly’ reducing women to semen spitoons at the rate of 20-30 men every day, the average in legal German brothels.
There’s a weird misconception that being paid to get your ass pounded and your mouth stuffed with the unwashed cocks of drunk/drugged, middle-aged men is a better experience if it happens in an expensive hotel room with Laura Ashley window treatments instead of in a by-the-hour motel with unwashed linen thumbtacked over the window.
(Warning, ugly truths ahead, avert your eyes if you’re a fuck-me feminist because this might kill your sexy buzz.)
I have never forgotten these words of a survivor of prostitution speaking of women who speak in favor of legalized prostitution, and I hope readers will not forget them either.
“I don’t think that all these people could ever understand what it is like to be annihilated and then remade in whatever image they want over and over again.
Experiments with new names and new personalities that might be more profitable. The owners trying to change your appearance, your personality, everything about you to squeez a few more dollars out of whatever is left of your humanity.
Talking to crumbling wrecks of people who come in desperately looking for someone to talk to, be close to, feel superior to. Receptionists who have never done it but pretend to understand the “girls†and give out stupid advice about how to deal with clients, which more often than not just makes you realise how they look down on you or fantasise that they were doing it too. Or clients calling you “good girl†like a dog. Stupid mind games like separating workers who have become friends or playing people off of each other.
Maybe they have never begun to hallucinate from sleep-deprivation, lack of light and air and overload of drugs. Maybe they’ve never seen the faces of people they lost transposed onto clients and others.
Maybe they have never seen other workers slowly crumbling into nervous wrecks, then being thrown out by the management. Maybe they never saw the long-term effects on someones personality after a client smashed their head through a glass door. Or how pathetic they look when someone doesn’t pay them and gloats about it. Maybe they never listened to a teenage girl from their own home town telling you how great the work is in between how she took 10 eccys over the weekend and stopped breathing after her parents would not speak to her on the phone.
Maybe they never had sex with someone with white shit on their dick who smelled like a dog and then laughed at YOU. And maybe she never had people pull the condom off then say that you wanted it. Maybe they don’t know how much having sex when you have stomach problems from heroin hurts. Maybe they haven’t felt like she’d just had a knife stuck up her when someone sticks his dick up your arse with no lube.
Maybe they haven’t watched on coldly from a distance as their immediate personalities dissintegrate leaving only the basest instincts and desperate will to survive. Some things are too hard to look at and some words too hard to say. Working in a brothel gives you a birds-eye view of the world crumbling and society braking down. There is no light and no hope, just entropy, cold cynicism and survival.”
Kat
March 10, 2006 at 5:33 pm (UTC -6)
Sam, wow. Thank you for posting that.
Violet Socks
March 10, 2006 at 6:20 pm (UTC -6)
Procopius hated Theodora with a passion and is the source of her reputation as a whore. Please note that the sexual reputation of almost every powerful woman in history has been impugned. Calling a powerful female ruler a slut, whore, fiendish pervert, etc., is just the patriarchy slapping the bitch down for drawing outside the lines. It’s the same old story, from Hatshepsut to Hillary.
Violet Socks
March 10, 2006 at 6:27 pm (UTC -6)
Sam, where did that come from? I would like to be able to quote that the next time I get into an argument on prostitution.
ljdugan
March 10, 2006 at 7:35 pm (UTC -6)
Jezebella: Let me clarify what I meant. I don’t for one minute blame women, but yes indeed, do blame the patriarchy. How could I blame women when it it also my belief that sexual orientation is inherently biological? And no, I wasn’t being literal when I wrote “leave ‘em at the curb.” It was more a frustration that sometimes it seems the only way to change the system is to walk away from it and start over. That, of course, I do not believe to be possible or realistic.
Being “a tool for the patriarchy” goes to my sentiment that our patriarchal society views a woman with a man as his. As in belonging to him. Personal property, on some level. It is to state the obvious to note how utterly defeating that is, and that most women deal with this to some degree every day, if not with a male lover, then a father, brother, boss, etc. It is the overt and covert oppression. It’s not women but society’s treatment of women, and society’s assumption of a woman’s lack of agency with which I have a problem.
Sam
March 10, 2006 at 7:51 pm (UTC -6)
It was first posted at Stan Goff’s blog Feral Scholar. I have a strong feeling I know the woman who wrote it based on certain facts revealed and from having met her at a conference, but it was written anonymously and ultimately I don’t know if my hunch is correct.
The Porn Debate
http://stangoff.com/?p=2#comments
Jezebella
March 10, 2006 at 8:16 pm (UTC -6)
Well, there you go, ljdugan, we’re on the same page altogether. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just walk away and start it over?
hugs and kisses,
Jezebella
Violet Socks
March 10, 2006 at 8:18 pm (UTC -6)
Thanks, Stan.
Violet Socks
March 10, 2006 at 8:18 pm (UTC -6)
I mean SAM! Jesus.
ljdugan
March 10, 2006 at 8:48 pm (UTC -6)
Oh, Jezebella, wouldn’t it just?
Hugs and kisses right on back.
jc.
March 11, 2006 at 5:03 am (UTC -6)
I am always amazed when people still claim that youthful
participation in sports will build healthy good characters and instill them with positive values….
Other “good” things that cause an increase i prostitution:
a U.N. peace keeping forces presence, check out the stories,scandals and charges around actions in former yugoslavia.
Or international aid efforts, check out the disgusting situation that developed in Cambodia when the rest of the world decided to build up the country.
Otherwise I think that your readers in the us. should be aware that prostitution in post war Germany is an old old cynical story and the present media story is just business as usual, just alittle more effecient.
Pony
March 11, 2006 at 11:44 am (UTC -6)
I must have missed it. Who claimed this, where?
“…I am always amazed when people still claim that youthful
participation in sports will build healthy good characters and instill them with positive values….”
darkymac
March 12, 2006 at 3:35 am (UTC -6)
Well then Arianna, since there’s all that sand about, best to have least clothing for it to chafe in ay? But still no bare chests for women professionally? Hmmm.
I shall observe more carefully the next beach volleyball game I see; I must admit that I enjoy the larger team tactics more. And especially I enjoy games with men and women playing together on each team. They appear to really have great fun without dropping their athletic standards. They are a joy to umpire!
hedonistic
March 12, 2006 at 7:06 am (UTC -6)
(BTW thanks Pony for the earlier advice, I tried to email you but the link to your name didn’t work, bah!)
Those petitions will have no effect, they are pointless. The only think that might work is a boycott, but THAT sure ain’t happening. Unless the women who are fucking the men who attend go all Lysistrata on them.
“Leave ‘em at the curb” is the only way to deal with men who treat women as commodities. Unfortunately, as a (mostly) het woman who realize ALL men treat us as commodities, regardless, this means there is no one around for me to fuck.
Oh well.
hedonistic
March 12, 2006 at 12:58 pm (UTC -6)
could I have possibly made more grammatical or spelling errors in the last post? I blame the patriarchy.
Feministe » “Mega-Brothel.”
March 9, 2006 at 2:09 pm (UTC -6)
[...] Queasy nod to Twisty, who really says it all. [...]