Today I read a very interesting piece on state collusion with pimps, pornographers, and surrogacy brokers. Those who cause such intense misery for women make lots of money with very little overhead--so, a high profit margin. States looking to solve their budget woes begin to look on these purveyors of misery as cash cows--those the poor cows in question are real human women.
Take prostitution: "In Germany alone, the industry is estimated to be worth $16.3 billion, according to Germany’s Federal Statistics Office’ . . . Like how drug dealers realised that the trafficking and sale of women and girls was a profitable revenue stream, as women and girls could be used over and over again, so did States. Women and girl’s vaginas, anuses, mouths can be sold repeatedly to different men generating different taxes . . . Globally, Havocscope estimates the total revenue of selling sexual access to females to be $186 Billion annually, some governments are taking a cut from this similar to how a criminal pimp would."
More specifically, legal prostitutes in the Netherlands pay 33% of their income in taxes. In Germany they pay taxes, too, and in order to street-walk, a prostitute must pay a government vending machine 6 euros per night. The state sees these women as entrepreneurs, whom they can use for revenue.
Porn, too, produces big money--and attracts big investors. "A Financial Times investigation revealed that ‘in 2011, the company received a $362 million loan, with a 20.4 percent interest rate, from 125 “secret” investors, which included JPMorgan Chase, private-equity giant Fortress Investment Group, and — naturally — an Ivy League college… Cornell University’." States wink at any oversight of porn producers and purveyors because they, too, pay big tax bills.
Surrogacy is a new money-maker for some states. Take Greece for example: "‘Greece is home to about 60 assisted reproduction centres, a considerable figure given it has a population of less than 11 million’.33 The sale of women’s wombs and their children is one-way Greece has tried to claw its way out of its government-debt crisis following the 2008 crash and in 2014 international surrogacy to non-EU citizens was legally opened up. This potentially provides lucrative revenue as the ‘global surrogacy market is expected to beat USD 27.5 billion by 2025, according to a new research report by Global Market Insights, Inc.’.34 To compete in the market of selling women’s reproductive capacity and their children Greece needed a unique selling point. Thus, ‘Greece differs to other countries in that the child legally belongs to the paying couple before insemination which negates the need for adoption papers. The child is then officially registered within the first 10 days of life and the surrogate disappears from the records without a trace’.35 The mother is erased, underscoring the idea of woman/mother as a tool for others."
A few days ago I wrote about the corruption of science. What we see here is the corruption of policy: to augment budgetary revenues, states are willing to wink at industries that bring abject misery to millions of women. This is evil, and its fruit is heartbreak, degradation, and violence. Where are the states that insist women's bodies are not for sale, no matter what? There are a few, but it is a precious few. Why are women worth so much and so little at the very same time? As commodities they are lucrative; as human beings they have no value. The older I get, the more I hope to see God's justice.