What happens when you get many thousands of men together for a major sporting event?

Along with the hot dogs and beer, women and girls go on sale.

The NFL Super Bowl is apparently one of the biggest human trafficking events in the United States, with tens of thousands of women and girls brought in to provide sex for the fans at last year’s game in Miami. Many of them were forced into prostitution and some were underage. State agencies rescued 24 children who had been sold into sexual slavery at that event alone. This year, officials in Texas (where the Super Bowl will be held) are cracking down on traffickers and warning ‘customers’ that if they buy sex in the days leading up to the big game, they must know they are likely complicit in trafficking, human enslavement and/or prostitution crimes against a woman or child.

In Europe, major football (soccer) matches like the European Championships and the World Cup prompt a similar influx of ‘sex workers’. If the area is not already rife with women willingly (though I use that term loosely) selling themselves, more are bused in. At this summer’s World Cup in South Africa, up to 40,000 prostitutes are estimated to have been in the country to meet demand. Other large sporting events in other countries attract similar problems, I’m sure.

I’m glad that the Texas authorities are concerned about this and that they are being proactive in minimising the amount of trafficking and forced prostitution going on in the days and weeks surrounding the Super Bowl, and I’m glad that they did mention the ‘customers” complicity in crimes being committed against these women and girls, but I’m still not convinced that they are approaching the problem in the right way. Just as with ‘regular’ prostitution, it is almost impossible to deter supply when the demand is so high. Traffickers, pimps and brothel owners will always have jobs as long as men are roaming the streets or banding together in groups to demand sexual services, whether through visual stimulation (like at strip clubs) or sexual contact and intercourse, with women they see as available and willing, even if, in reality, that is not the case.

Surely these men — these middle class, otherwise decent men — know better? Shouldn’t they know somewhere deep down that soliciting sex from prostitutes, girls who may be the same age as their own daughters, is wrong? I don’t believe for a second that their ‘natural urges’ are what drive them to purchase others’ bodies. There is nothing natural about having sex with a child quivering in fear, or a drug-addled, poverty-stricken corner prostitute, or a non-English-speaking woman tied to a filthy mattress in an outbuilding. There is nothing natural about stuffing money into a woman’s underwear while she shakes her breasts and dances on a pole so she can put food on the table for her kids or fund her education.

In short, there is nothing natural about the objectification of women.

It is, however, historical. Prostitution is called the world’s oldest profession not because it is inherent and will never go away, but because since the beginning of recorded history it has been accepted and encouraged in our male-dominated society. While women are oppressed and at an economic disadvantage to men (and make no mistake, they are — even in so-called progressive,  industrialised nations), they will continue to use or be forced to use the only currency all of us has: our selves.

So why are we not doing more to target the demand for purchase of others’ bodies? Why are we not coming up with awareness-raising national ad campaigns targeted at the men who buy sex at these sporting events? Instead of lecturing women about the dangers and pitfalls of prostitution, stripping or walking alone at night during these testosterone-fuelled events, why aren’t we punishing and lecturing and scolding the men who take advantage of them? Why are the messages that do exist not getting through?

Sports has long been one of the only culturally acceptable ways in which men can spend time together and socialise outside of work without women present, along with going to the pub. Going to the cinema (unless it’s to see the latest action or sci-fi movie), a restaurant, the park or the town centre for a bit of shopping with another (straight) male friend would be unthinkable or at least uncomfortable for many men. In a group for a special occasion, perhaps. But just one-on-one with another dude, at a nice restaurant? Gay alert! Masculinity malfunction alert! All ego stations manned!

It’s not their fault, really. Just as hetero, middle class women have been conditioned to believe that the path to true sisterhood is paved with shopping trips, gossip, spa days and al fresco lunches, hetero, middle class men have been conditioned to believe that sports, beer, women and technology are the only acceptable ways in which they can socially bond and still be ‘normal’. At any event that is primarily focused on one of these things, the others are bound to be added on. So at a sporting event such as the Super Bowl, it comes as no surprise when beer, women and technology are ladled out like tasty side dishes for consumption with the entrée.

Beer and technology are products and services, that’s fine. Advertise and tout them all you want. But when women are lumped into that category and seen as a given, something sold alongside the team hats and hamburgers, that’s when the long shadow of the dark side of sports comes marching on the field.

And how is the idea that women are for sale being reinforced? Why, with all of the busty beauties and lovely ladies appearing in the ads selling the beer and the technology. You can’t watch a Super Bowl and its renowned halftime ads without seeing dozens of breasts, bums, bikinis and come-hither looks (from the cheerleaders and the women on TV), inviting the men to check out their goods while they think about buying some others.

Taken in isolation, of course these ads are not single-handedly responsible for the objectification of women. But it’s an example of the culmination of the drip-drip effect, being constantly fed in tiny, everyday increments to men and boys (and women and girls) across the nation and across the world.

Figuring out how to impede traffickers, while important, should not be the main concern of the officials in Texas, or anyone else concerned with stopping these crimes. It all begins — has always begun — with the idea that women are less-than, that we are subservient beings with no sexuality of our own besides the kind that satisfies or complements men’s.

Want to stop trafficking? Start with the beer commercials.
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