If you follow me on twitter you will have noted a 140 character missive I posted this morning which read
“Woke up late, power is out, dog has diarrhea and an Edmonton radio station is holding a contest to win a Russian bride….the fuck?”
The power outage and the dog diarrhea (Outside this time! Yay!) are small potatoes compared to the third.
I think I’m late to the moral outrage party on this one and the contest has since undergone renaming and minor tweaking to appease the masses but seriously…the FUCK?
Who thought of this? I don’t know what outrages me more, the fact that some numbskull (Look! I’m so mad I’m ranting like my dad! Next I’m going to start calling people jackasses) thought this was somehow funny, or all the of thousands of people defending this stunt as a harmless joke.
Do you have any idea how many people had to approve this contest before it went to air? How many underlings it took to support it, middle managers to sign off on it and execs at the top to give the final approval? This contest went through many, MANY channels before it hit the airwaves and it was approved at Every. Single. Level.
Obviously radio programs like this thrive on controversy and I’m sure a large portion of the approval was due to the fact that the contest would stir up just the kind of outrage and anger that I’m feeling- we’re talking about them aren’t we?
BUT, we’re also talking about the process by which sexual slavery, sexual exploitation and human trafficking has become an acceptable joke for an audience comprised largely of middle-class white males (Also, coincidentally the demographic that makes up the largest portion of sex-trade consumers. Weird.)
Guys, sexual exploitation does not just go down in Russia or Thailand or the Philippines. It happens every day, in every major city in the world – and I’m not talking about prostitution where sex is bought and sold, I’m talking about PEOPLE being bought and sold.
I’ve seen it, I work with teens to prevent them getting sucked into it and if those idiot shock-jock radio DJ JACKASSES could see the effects, and if any of the idiot men who entered this contest thinking it was funny could understand what it means to be taken, commodified and intruded upon, well son, shit like this wouldn’t be happening.
Your homework is to go read The Natashas. And then cry. And then get pissed off and stand up and demand that this bullshit stop happening.