Both situations offer assistance in exchange for something.
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That is the first problem.
A philanthropic aid organization is not supposed to be giving out aid in exchange for anything. Charity is just that: giving with the expectation of nothing in return. Thus any missionary organization raising money (including gov't grants) to do charity work and then does expect something from (or tries to get something out of) those it is using the resources to help, would be exploiting.
The exploitation is worse when those who are being coerced (or influenced) to change are at a disadvantage and so likely to give in, where they would not have under normal circumstances.
Agreed.
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A commercial business is not giving out aid at all. Any and all businesses are by nature exploitation. They offer money in compensation for work, which is less than is expected to be received for the product of the work. It is however up to the worker to choose the amount of money they are willing to work for.
It is true that a person in a poverty stricken area is more likely to accept a job that if they had money they may not have chosen, or work for cheaper than in a more affluent country. But that is always true with all businesses and work. There will always be jobs which are not desirable and yet someone must do them. It will often be the people who need money that choose to do them.
"There will always be jobs which are not desirable and yet someone must do them."
Posing for nude photographs is a job that "must" be done?
Since when?
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This points up why charities are not supposed to act like businesses and get something in return for the aid they provide. Charities are not supposed to be businesses, not even "spirit" businesses.
Unless you were going to exclude commercial business from Afghanistan, afghanis were going to be exploited as all employees are. The poorest would have accepted very bad jobs.
Since this is impossible (unless contra is right and we switch to a communist production model... though I would point out someone would still get stuck with the shit jobs) companies were going to come in.
What makes sexual work different than other businesses, other than your own moral position?
It is not the work, but the source of it.
If this work arises out of the culture because the women choose it out of a large spectrum of many choices, then great, more power to them.
If it's a choice between eating or keeping a roof over one's head and posing nude, then it isn't really much of a choice, is it?
The only reason they target the poor people is because those people are desperate for paid work and have few other options.
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This is obviously NOT what was motivating Hustler, and I would imagine any other established sexually oriented business going into Afghanistan. Regions such as that (extreme poverty and war torn) are dangerous and have setups costs which make them prohibitive. That is to say, if all one was doing was trying to find the cheapest people to get to do the work, one would not be going into Afghanistan.
It is true that they'd probably be willing to work for lesser salaries (compared to US actors) but that wouldn't make up the difference.
I checked the exchange rate this morning, and it is 42 Afghan currency to $1US. This is likely much better now than it was when Huslter wanted to go in, right after the invasion.
I disagree that the costs wouldn't make up the difference. They obviously thought that the potential for profit would be worth it. Surely you aren't suggesting that Hustler was on a charitable humanitarian mission? No, it's sensationalistic to do this, and would have given them tons of publicity.
Afghan women... are largely Islamic, which means that posing for nude photographs would be very much against their religion, and would almost certainly get them in large amounts of trouble; disowned from her family, or possibly imprisoned or executed.
Isn't offering money to a person to do what they ordinarily would not do if they were not in need of the basic necessities of life exploitative, especially when the whole point of the nude photographs is that they were of Islamic women from a war-torn area?
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Now this is ironic. We go in and overthrow an Islamic regime that was repressing women and are now (using force of arms) allowing them to take jobs and get educations that are forbidden according to many there, yet turn around and say they should not get into sexual work because THAT is against their religion and culture.
I'm not saying they cannot get into sexual work.
I just think it should arise naturally out of their own culture if they choose it rather than being influenced by another culture and coerced and exploited when they are desperate for the basic necessities of life.
Let Hustler come in when the Afghanis INVITE them.
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Don't you realize you are simply saying enough freedom to offend their common cultural biases, but not enough freedom to offend our own?
If they are free to choose eating or posing nude, is that real freedom?
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What makes this more amusing is that I am sure you felt great about all the images of women not wearing their head/body coverings, or wearing makeup or getting an education (viewing that as freeing themselves), yet appear to feel that the same women getting undressed and feeling good about their bodies would NOT be freeing themselves.
Never said that.
If those women want to get undressed and feel good about their bodies, I'm delighted for them. If they did it for free, we could be sure they were "freeing themselves", and not doing what they have to, and in fact are highly opposed to, simply to survive.
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Interestingly enough both sets of images are equally offensive to the religious conservatives of that culture. When photographers paid women to shoot them as they went to school or work, how was that less exploitative? Because the women would do one but not the other?
Going to school, removing veils, and wearing makeup arose naturally from them. Nobody paid them to do these things.
Did journalists pay the women to be photographed going to school or work? I wasn't aware that news organizations paid people in this way.
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I already told you I have friends from that region. Despite the rigid codes there is porn and there are people making it, and wanting to make it because they like sexual freedom and expression just as much as people anywhere else. What happened after Saddam fell? Even though not a religious conservative, even he had repressed sexual imagery, so after he fell the movie houses began showing R and X-rated movies. That was NOT US media coming in to set things up. They do it all by themselves.
Exactly. They do it
all by themselves.
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It is a bias to think women there want X but not Y, because you view X as something desirable and not Y.
I don't know what they want, and I don't view sex work as always undesireable. It should come from the people, however.
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Now, could there be women who decide to take a sexual job in order to make the money, though they would not normally do so and do not like the risk that it will pose? Maybe. But you name me jobs that women are going to work where they will not face the same problem?
If women are going to finally be able to work, they will do so against cultural proscriptions, and perhaps their own desires, out of necessity.
Right?
No, not right.
Page Not Found | Webster University
Afghan women in rural areas have always worked alongside men in the fields. In the capitol, women often wore Western dress, served on Parliament, and worked in a variety of professions, including medicine, engineering, architecture, media and law. During the many years of war, as men were killed, went missing, or became disabled, the survival of the family came to depend on women's income. Before the Taliban ban on female employment, 70 percent of the teachers in Kabul were women, 50 percent of the civil servants and college students were women, and 40 percent of the doctors were women.
The Taliban militia came to full power in Afghanistan 1996. The culture of the Afghan people is not that of the Taliban. The extreme restrictions on women's public lives is their imposition.
especially when the whole point of the nude photographs is that they were of Islamic women from a war-torn area?
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No no no. The point was to show women in that region freeing themselves of repression they had been living under, especially sexual expression.
Sorry, I don't buy that.
The point was to make money. Hustler makes money not by lifting people out of repression, but by paying people to perform sex acts on camera and then selling the images.
Or do you really subscribe to the view that Hustler is on a high-minded, self-sacrificing crusade to liberate the women of the world?
It was about the money. It's always about the money.
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Again it is a bit hypocritical to cheer women as they remove the Bhurka and then blanche at the idea of them taking anything else off.
I don't. It should arise naturally from their own culture, when they have lots of choices, not when they are in dire straits.
I seem to recall that your reason for bringing this issue up in the first place was that you objected to the US government letting other aid organizations into Afghanistan but not this porn mag photographer.
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No. The US allowed press in from all other organizations, including those that would normally not be acceptable, to take all sorts of pictures, including images that would not be acceptable to general Afghanis, and yet denied Hustler because it was deemed offensive to US and Afghan beliefs. That's hypocrisy.
Which other images that were taken would not be acceptable to general afghanis, given the relatively cosmopolitan nature of Kabul not 10 years before?
Consider the diplomatic nightmare if one of the first things the US brings to an Islamic country is pornography.
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But they already did. We allowed women to shed the mandated clothing (which to them is the equivalent of going nude in our society), as well as wearing makeup (which is specifically like dressing as a hooker), and then having pictures taken by our press and broadcast all over the world.
Those were the impositions of the TALIBAN on Afghani culture.
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Your statement above can only come from an ethnocentric bias.
No, I think I have it pretty much right.
I also don't think the Jimmy Dean Sausage company should be setting up pig farms and sausage factories over there right now, either. Might seem a little like cultural imperialism, don't you think?
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And by the way we also allowed them to get educated and become more independent of their families and husbands.
We didn't "allow" that. We gave them the choice to return to how it was for them before the Taliban came, and they did.
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Why is that not a diplomatic problem? Oh yeah, because that's what WE wanted to see.
It's also what THEY wanted to have happen.
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In the end we were removing a restrictive gov't in order to change that culture, or allow it to change.
No, we removed a restrictive government in order to return the culture back to what it was before the restrictive government siezed power without the consent of most Afghanis.
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Many of our changes though well broadcast to the smiles of people in the US, are offensive to many there.
Really? Are you sure? Are the conservative Islamics representative of the majority of people in Kabul and Afghanistan?
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In the end, ask yourself this...
Is a woman who chooses to brave the censure of many in her culture to do what she is willing to do, perhaps sometimes out of necessity to make money rather than do exactly what she wants, doing a good thing or a bad thing? Should she be able to if she wants to?
Now what if that includes taking off her clothes for a camera or being sexual in some way?
If there is suddenly a difference, what is it?
There is no difference, if it comes from within her culture and is part of a wide spectrum of choices.
A "necessity to make money" is not the same as "a necessity to make money to buy food because one is starving".
The first is a choice, the second is desperation, and will cause people to make desperate choices. A company that knowingly takes advantage of this desperation, like Hustler wanted to, is exploitative.
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But back to the main argument. Clearly a charity should not be raising issues like this at all. They should give the people what they need, without further expectation. The people receiving the aid should have confidence in that process.
Agreed.
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