I'm always aghast at those people who steadfastly deny appalling human tragedies and scandals and insist they're fabricated by scaremongerers and fantasists. So often they just perpetuate misery and prevent effective help.The list of things denied is endless - the Holocaust, repressive dictatorships, torture, police brutality, tribal violence, slavery, apartheid, global warming. There's always someone with a vested interest in saying, everything's just fine, your imagination's running away with you.
The latest scandal to get the three blind monkeys treatment is people trafficking. Although numerous agencies insist thousands of men, women and children are being lured to other countries to do low status, low paid jobs, with their lives totally controlled by traffickers, the deniers maintain that nothing of the kind is happening and we are all being deceived.
According to them, all these so-called trafficking victims travel to other countries of their own free will and in most cases end up in decent, respectable jobs. Even if they become prostitutes this is because they like being admired and sought-after and stirring sexual desire.
They aren't passive victims desperate for help but free agents shaping their own lives. Their attempted saviours are just liberal do-gooders infantilising those in question in order to further their own careers and the 'rescue industry'.
This 'phoney' concern is even painted as colonialist and xenophobic, keeping those truculent foreigners in their place. The reality of widespread degradation and exploitation is obviously too much for them to admit.
You can present these ostriches with enough damning evidence to fill a pantechnicon, but still they won't accept it, still they go their own sweet way. There's nowt so queer as folk.
See for example: Sex At The Margins by Laura María Agustín
.................................................................................
I didn't get the second job - damn! Oh well, the hunt for the ideal job continues....
