Commodity

                                     (photo: west-info.eu)

In CRIMINAL MINDS, the hit American series produced by Mark Gordon, the unsub (unknown subject) will often pick his victim from the streets. The predator then proceeds to his intention of killing the prey in the manner he is fantasizing: he would allow the victim to suffer, skin her or him, disembowel him/her or proceed directly to exterminating the hapless life of the victim. For the unsub, the victim is a useless person… a dehumanized creation. Therefore, the prey is an insignificant part of the society, a pawn in the game he created. (The pronoun he is constantly used since statistics tells us that most of the serial killers are male.)

Since time immemorial prostitutes are considered as the unintended members of the society. They are taboo in social gatherings and they were even considered as accursed. According to mentalhelp.net  there are many reasons why people become sex workers. Some of them have stated that they are attracted by the large sum of money they can earn while they are still young. Others see it as a way to pay for education and further advancement. There are even those who say that they are helping the lonely people to chase away their loneliness.

In third world countries like the Philippines, there are those who consider vending their flesh as a way of survival. They get their resources through prostitution to buy their basic needs like food. There also those people who are born poor and are pressured to cope with societal pressures and trends that they will do anything just to be “in” like having gadgets and clothes en vogue.

But what is the role of us social beings in the community where this fact is starting to thrive among us?

There are those children (male and female) who roam the street for a fee in exchange of sex. They could be considered as budding prostitutes and they are being patronized by the adults as well. Looking at the situation, one could really see the young ones as the victims since the adults around them are allowing them to become what they should NOT be. Their parents are failures in monitoring their well-being to the point that guidance is nil. The patrons are also looking at them like some kind of commodity: like food which could be bought to eradicate their cravings...like a liniment to soothe a fleeting itch.

In a cyclical process, one factor benefits the other to make the flow effective. But these processes are often geared towards the betterment of an output or outcome. But the vicious cycle of allowing things to be skewed must be broken so not to allow worse things to happen. Prostitution and trafficking on persons must not grow in the society. One effective way to deal with it is to become NOT a willing participant of the act.

As adults, there is a need for us to be harbingers of making these people to become humanized. We do not participate on the trade. We could inject ourselves on the system but become an educator. People are human beings, a person is a human with being. Inside them are spirits which could be brought towards the light rather than be pushed to the abysmal darkness. If we patronize them in the de-humanizing process, what are we? What kind of education and morality do we acquire out from the resources our parents spent for our education? What is our BEING and BECOMING?

Yes, we could be imperfect but we could always try to bounce back on situations when we fall. There are valid contributions that we could do not just on our professions but on the societal health in the society where we belong.

“Someone’s thrown away their children...You can see them running from your smile.” - Dio