Somaly Mam and Patriarchy

Mam was sold into sexual slavery at age 14 by a man she knew only as “grandfather”, although he was not related to him in any way. “Grandfather” was in fact Mam’s owner, and her his slave. For the next decade she was a sex slave, better known as a prostitute, forced by her pimp to see an average of six clients per day. If her clients were dissatisfied with her, they would beat and rape her, before giving her back to her pimp, who would torture her, usually by covering her with maggots. When she was in her early 20s, Mam escaped, and decided that she wanted to dedicate her life to helping those she left behind. In 1996, she founded AFESIP (a French acronym for Acting for Women in Distressed Situations), which has already saved over 6,000 girls from sexual slavery.

It is indisputable that Mam, who has survived the years of rape, torture and brutal oppression to rise up to bravely fight the rich and powerful brothels, is a hero. And it’s also indisputable that the sex trade, and the trade in humans in general, drips with evil. The sex trade industry, which relies on the general oppression and degradation of females to bring in money, makes over $36 billion per year, making it the second largest source of cash for organized crime.

The abomination of sexual slavery brings up an interesting question: how on Earth do they get away with it? Hasn’t the billions of dollars worth of foreign and thousands of UN peacekeepers been enough to stop this atrocity? Unfortunately, the UN armies and legions of good-intentioned aid workers like Mam have been only treating the symptoms. The root of the problem lies in one of those big words radical-feminists love to throw around: The Patriarchy.

In feminist jargon, the Patriarchy refers to the status quo system of male dominance over women. Many scholars trace the orgin of Patriarchy back to the days of Abraham, where they say it originated because women had the burden of child birth and raising the children, and thus were excluded from the “God-Israelite” covenant outlined in the Torah. The male dominance quickly took off from there, with women’s rights shrinking at an alarming pace. Soon, male dominance become just a part of life, no more extraordinary than breathing. Mam regularly mentions this in her autobiography, stating that things like women not being allowed to choose their husbands and women being treated as chattel as “just the way things were”.

Although most want to believe that we left this “age of dominance” in 1919, with the passage of the 19th amendment which guaranteed women the right to vote, Mam’s story proves that much of the world still regards women to be second class citizens. Even the United States, the self-proclaimed “Most Christian Country on Earth”, boasts a booming prostitution industry.
Despite their endless whining about the endless harms of Patriarchy, few feminists will volunteer to offer a solution. This is understandable, however, seeing how deeply entrenched in society the Patriarchal system is. Most major world religions and even governmental systems (Aristotle’s most famous treaty of government contends that the state evolved from the Patriarchal family, although most scholars try to ignore that part) are rooted in Patriarchy. Nothing short of a violent revolution, followed by a complete gutting and rebuilding of society would be required to eliminate the Patriarchy. It looks unlikely that the Patriarchy will go away, since it is so deeply entrenched in society. Does this mean that the efforts of people like Mam are in vain? No, since she is brave enough to bring the issue to the table, putting her miles above most.