Marriage Trafficking: Women in Forced Wedlock by Kaye Quek

Author:Kaye Quek [Quek, Kaye]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Prostitution & Sex Trade, Feminism & Feminist Theory, Social Science, Political Science, Women's Studies, General, Gender Studies
ISBN: 9781317216025
Google: ZnhQDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 39206998
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-11-30T00:00:00+00:00

iii. The purpose

International law defines the exploitative ‘purpose’ for which women are transported to a foreign location as the most significant aspect of the trafficking process (Raymond 2001, 5). Article 3 of the Palermo Protocol states that trafficking occurs ‘for the purpose of exploitation’ and defines exploitation as including ‘at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs’ (UN 2000, Article 3a). In sex trafficking, women’s exploitation most often takes place in prostitution, as victims are made to sexually service hundreds of men over a period of years, for whom they have no desire or attraction and for which they are paid little more than means to survive (Barry 1995; Jeffreys 2009; O’Connor and Healy 2006). In MOB marriage, a comparable set of conditions is in evidence. In the same way as victims of sex trafficking are used, women in MOB marriage are expected to sexually service men for whom they possess no desire over a substantial period of time, for which they are not paid and to whom they are unable to say no (Lindee 2007; Stepnitz 2009). The key difference is that while women who are trafficked for prostitution are required to service several hundred men and are publicly accessible, women in MOB marriages are (usually) restricted to servicing one man, their husband, and their prostitution is private. One other important difference is the assumption in MOB marriage that women will perform domestic servicing of men in addition to sexual servitude, which does not usually occur in trafficking for prostitution.

The promise of women’s sexual availability, found on MOB websites, points to the overlap between sex trafficking and the MOB trade in relation to sexual exploitation. As in sex trafficking, women in MOB marriages are bought with the expectation that they will be available for the sexual use of men. Notably, academic research on the MOB industry reports cases in which male buyers ‘boast about having “bought” brides because they cost less than the services of a prostitute’ (Langevin and Belleau 2000, 88; Meng 1994, 223). It is in this aspect of women’s sexual use by men that the links between the MOB trade and sex trafficking are particularly clear, as men seek to gain in MOB marriage the sex that is available to them through the industry of sex trafficking but on a longer-term and private basis.

One way of understanding the model of sexual relations that are promoted in both sex trafficking and the MOB industry is through the radical feminist concept of the ‘sex of prostitution’. In Chapter 3, the notion of the ‘sex of prostitution’ was discussed as a means of conceptualising the nature of women’s sexual exploitation that occurs in marriage trafficking. It refers to the idea that the type of sex practiced in prostitution is one based on the sexual servicing of men in which women’s own pleasure is irrelevant (Barry 1995, Jeffreys 1997, Tyler 2012).

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