PUNJAMMIES™ are made by women in India rescued from forced prostitution seeking to rebuild their lives. Proceeds from the sales of PUNJAMMIES™ provide fair-trade wages, savings accounts, and holistic recovery care.[Slew of cheerleading posts redacted.]FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT BUY THESE FUCKING THINGS
These are made by women who are FORCED OUT OF THEIR CHOSEN JOBS AND FORCED INTO GARMENT MAKING which is an incredibly common problem with “rescue programs” in exploited nations. This company is founded by a white woman who wanted to ‘save’ poor oppressed brown women from the sex industry and so what happened? Now these women are working shit jobs with shit wages after being forced into the justice system and been given the option of prison time or this.
That is NOT choice, that is NOT helping, this is a SCAM and a FARCE and yet another example of WOMEN’S LABOR BEING EXPLOITED. The rescue industry is a major provider of labor to garment manufacturing, it’s not CHOICE, its FORCE and EXPLOITATIVE.
bolding for emphasis because wow.
someone asked me for a source and this is yet another moment where I wish Andrew were still alive ugh but APNSW The Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers, have written about this extensively some of which is on their wordpress
Seriously people, always be critical of ANYTHING that claims to be ‘rescuing sex workers/trafficking survivors’ because its almost NEVER what it appears.
Honestly I would be surprised if any desi person didn’t look at this cokie-eyed from the get go, because once you’ve been called a “stupid Pun” by some cracker you don’t hear that shorthand slur of “Punjabi” without an instinctive twitch. Basically they might as well be called “Cooliepants” or “Curryknickers” or someshit like that.
Sorting out the links in the previous reply
https://www.facebook.com/leelaneena (amazing activist’s Facebook, connected with APSNW, publicly available through their website)
https://www.facebook.com/APNSW Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers Facebook
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-27903426 article about sex work in Indonesia, specifically the closing of the Dolly Red Light District
http://www.lauraagustin.com/tag/rescue-industry Laura Augstine’s tag about the rescue industry
http://apnsw.wordpress.com/page/8/ Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers discussing anti-trafficking in Cambodia, HIV and several other articles.
All of these are great sources for learning about the rescue industry in Asia, and the phenomena of forcing sex workers out of their jobs into garment manufacturing which is a huge problem for sex workers there. What people like @entitledlesbian I think was their URL fail to realize is that this is an industry that profits from the moral panic of sex trafficking, pushes for criminalization which directly includes the State criminalizing condom usage and performing brothel raids (as does The International Princess Project, who makes these pants). This is how they get their labor; through criminalizing sex work. It is an intersection of misogyny, racism, whorephobia and capitalism.
More about trafficking here
Signal boost.
Don’t support sex worker “rescue” programs. Just. Don’t.
I think what a lot of people don’t realize is that those scary-sounding statistics on human trafficking you hear on the news are greatly exaggerated due to the erroneous belief that all sex workers are victims of trafficking and vice versa. These statistics then fuel sensationalist reporting and op-ed pieces, which convince the majority of people that sex work is eeevil~, which in turn create an environment that allows these seemingly benevolent “rescue” organizations to thrive. After all, most people who consider themselves liberal know that sex under any sort of coercive circumstances is rape, and we want to help rape victims, right? But the truth is that the vast majority of sex workers choose their work of their own free will, and most victims of human trafficking are not forced into sex work, but into manual labor like the textile industry. Y’know, the very industry that “rescued” sex workers are forced into by these exploitative organizations.
So if you really want to help sex workers, listen to them. Read their blogs, watch documentaries produced by them, attend protests of police treatment of sex workers, and do what you can to spread their perspective on their own work. And if you want to actually reduce the amount of harm that sex workers are statistically much more likely to experience due to their jobs (because many do experience rape and other forms of violence on the job but cannot report them without risking arrest), please consider joining the fight for decriminalization.
Beltainefaerie's Flights of Fancy 