Why We Don't Pay Attention to Human Trafficking

As previously discussed, human trafficking, or modern day slavery, is not a common household topic. Two possible reasons for this have been purported in CES 301 discussions: the contemporary obsession with celebrity culture, and the view that women are disposable creatures.

In the past, Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon model dictated the way in which people viewed each other and their world. If every person thought they were being watched and judged based on their actions, but wasn't entirely sure if they were in fact being watched, they would behave with the best behavior possible. Such a model would lead to people showing compassion for others, particularly those in need of help, like slaves. There were many movements of such humanity during slavery in the United States in the 1800s, such as the Underground Railroad. The people in the North helped escaping slaves partly because of the culture they were brought up in, but also because they might have wanted to appear to others compassionate. People in the South who might have been sympathetic to slaves might not have acted on those feelings because they were afraid they were being watched and judged by others; the Panopticon model can thus influence actions both positively and negatively.

Currently, however, society has moved past the Panopticon model into a culture that is crazed by celebrities. Instead of watching each other, people watch the few and base their behavior around those that they want to emulate. This decreases the likelihood of modern day slaves receiving help for multiple reasons: people remain completely ignorant of how people around them live because they are solely focused on celebrities; the media bypasses the chance to raise awareness in order to focus on celebrities and thus receive higher ratings and more advertising dollars; when cases of slavery or abuse are exposed, such as the recent case involving Jaycee Dugard, the media and its viewers focus only on that one individual instead of illuminating how countless others worldwide suffer in a similar manner. The sensationalized media feed the celebrity culture that detracts from awareness of real world issues, such as human trafficking.

Melissa Wright in Disposable Women and Other Myths of Global Capitalism discusses another reason why issues such as human trafficking fail to attract the public attention they deserve. Wright explores the mentality regarding female factory workers in China and Mexico, and how their bosses view them as disposable body parts, not as fully functioning human beings. This attitude can also apply to the way in which most people view victims of human trafficking: since the majority of those victims come from third world countries, and a lot of them are women forced into sexual labor, they are mentally dehumanized by the people who deal with them. Certainly the men who engage in sexual acts with women forced into prostitution do not care whether their partner is a real person; they only see the woman for the body parts she presents for their use and disposal. The men forced to work as manual laborers are also only valued for their useful body parts, but in their case their muscles, arms, hands, and strong backs are more important. And once these body parts fail to operate in an efficient manner, the people who belong to these body parts are disregarded and disposed of by their exploiters.

The combination of the celebrity culture and the disposable mentality can help explain why human trafficking is largely ignored, especially by developed Western nations such as the United States.

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