Human trafficking…where does it begin, and how will it end? Why should I be concerned?
First of all, human life is in jeopardy. If slavery of any kind is alright, then anyone and everyone could be at risk. If owning a slave is acceptable as long as their skin is a certain color, then anyone who’s that color would be marketable. Gender, age, social status, nationality, or color of hair; all of these could be used to determine the ones who could be owned, or who can do the owning.
Who on earth has the authority to determine who is better than another? Who can say who is subhuman and who isn’t?
The answer should be obvious to all, but apparently it’s not. Throughout history men and women have attempted to elevate themselves to the position reserved only for God Almighty. Some Christians have mistakenly believed it was God’s will for them to own another human. And, of course, people who are anti-Christian love to point out the hypocrisy within the church.
But God has determined the value of each of us, regardless of anything peculiar about us. We are of immeasurable worth! The price isn’t even negotiable. Created on purpose, for a purpose. In fact, the value is so great, you won’t find a price tag!
However, there are many who disagree. Their ideas, their needs, are the only ones that matter.
So where does human trafficking begin? If we could discover it’s starting point, maybe something could be done about it.
In my opinion, the buying and selling of children, women, boys, etc. has its roots deep in the human heart. Jeremiah the prophet said, “The heart is deceitfully wicked; who can know it?”
The love of money and the desire to control another has its roots in the unregenerate heart. Jesus said, “The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil” (Matthew 12:35 ESV). Greed and lust come from an evil person’s heart.
Here is a truth that makes society very intolerant and fighting mad:
unless a person is born again, their heart is evil; rebellious toward and contrary to the divine nature of God.
So it’s no wonder that human trafficking is on the rise. Wickedness, the spirit of lawlessness, and selfishness is ever increasing because society, as a whole, believes in tolerating everything except righteousness.
Slavery can and does happen within a marriage, between a husband and wife, or within a family, between the parents and their children. Whenever one person believes another person exists solely for their pleasure or profit, slavery is present. Domestic violence and abuse are examples of a slavery mindset.
Pity the husband, wife, or children who actually believe that garbage; who believe they are someone’s slave.
Sometimes I wonder if our politicians ascribe to the idea that the American citizenry exist solely for the government’s benefit. But, that’s another subject.
Society rants and screams against the horrific injustice taking place. Sex slaves, child pornography, child labor camps, forced prostitution, and the like. What wickedness! Something MUST be done.
But society has paved the road, and even built the freeway system for these things! The devaluation of human life takes place every time a baby is murdered. Society tends to use different words, such as, “medically remove a fetus”. But murder is murder, whether the majority agrees or not.
For awhile in this country, the majority agreed slavery was okay.
What if, instead of calling it human trafficking, someone referred to it as a “choice”?
A man would have the right to rape his wife, molest his kids, because they are his family. As the argument goes, he is “pro-choice” so that should make it alright. And a woman should also have the right to take the little boys and girls in her daycare facility, and force them to perform acts of perversion because, as she sees it, it’s her right. It’s her home. And she’s “pro-choice.”
Society feeds that mentality, that spirit, with its obsession with self-pleasure. Anything and everything is okay, “as long as it doesn’t harm someone else.”
But who determines what is harmful? Society? The majority? Politicians? Judges? Ha!
God has tried to weigh in on the subject, but He’s been voted out of any leadership role. His commandments aren’t allowed anywhere someone may be offended.
I wonder if the woman who’s just been raped by a “paying customer” was offended? The one who’s been pimped by her “lover”? I really find it hard to believe she was “pro-choice” any more than an unborn baby is “pro-choice”.
The only way to stop human trafficking, or slavery of any kind, is to begin promoting the value of everyone from the unborn to the elderly. Male, female, black, red, or purple. Stop exploiting the young, pretty, handsome, and smart. Stop using people. Period.
Advertising executives may need to find out more about the products they’re peddling, instead of how much “skin” it takes to get people to buy.
Let free speech be about sharing ideas and not about selling sex. Selling sex cheapens the act and degrades those involved. It ignites fires of lust to unquenchable, uncontrollable heights; to where the committing of a violent crime is the only way a person can get relief.
Human trafficking will not be stopped by enacting laws against it. It won’t be curtailed by making stiffer penalties.
After all, the law means nothing if society has rejected the Truth, the Life, and the Way.
What do you think about free speech? How would you stop human trafficking? Should it be stopped?
Thank you for reading this post. Please comment, I’d love to hear what you think. For more posts, please go to http://eepurl.com/PaJK5 and sign up for posts via email. Thanks.
Jan Grace 
13 responses to “Human Trafficking? What If I’m Pro-Choice?”
I am a sex trafficking survivor. I was 14 years old, and it went on for a year and a half. I was beaten, repeatedly raped by hundreds of clients, and almost died at the hands of my traffickers. This was in America. I am a US citizen. And I am pro-choice.
And this post makes me want to vomit.
“I wonder if the woman who’s just been raped by a “paying customer” was offended? The one who’s been pimped by her “lover”? I really find it hard to believe she was “pro-choice” any more than an unborn baby is “pro-choice”.”
How dare you. How DARE you. Most of the trafficking survivors I know are pro-choice. Do you know what happened to me when I became pregnant with my trafficker’s child? He gave me a coat-hanger abortion. That is why I am pro-choice. I refuse to live in a world where women will be forced to endure that kind of unspeakable pain because they cannot get a legal, safe abortion.
How DARE you presume to know what trafficking survivors feel. I am sickened, disgusted, and offended by this post as a survivor.
Shame on you.
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I do admit I don’t know everything, nor can I presume to know what people feel who have endured such violations. And I am sorry it happened to you.
In the quoted paragraph I was attempting to say that the victims, such as yourself, were not given a choice. Things were happening that they couldn’t stop, couldn’t control. They were not “pro-choice” in regards to their circumstances.
And, I am truly sorry I offended you.
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Please, help me understand what you are saying, because if I am reading it correctly, you are trying to compare pro-choice people with human traffickers. Let me set an example up for you of what you said, tell me if it is accurate.
You would be offended if I were a female, and did not want a child and could not support a child, or the child would be born deformed, or whatever reason people have for choosing an abortion.
You would be just as offended, and consider the previous to be just as evil as someone who kidnaps, sells, and tortures people to death.
Someone who destroys entire lives is just as evil as someone who decides they don’t want or cannot provide a decent life for a child?
So, I’m an atheist, does this make me a bad person? Am I inherently evil? Here’s what I don’t do: I don’t judge people for their own beliefs, or their own decisions about their own lives, as long as it doesn’t negatively effect my life or the life of others. You do, you stated that in this article. Who’s more evil, a person who condemns another based on their beliefs, or a tolerant atheist who doesn’t interfere in others personal beliefs or choices. You can be religious all you want, I don’t care. Do you care if I’m not? Why?
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What I am trying to say is both are degrading and devaluing to the human. And the root is in man’s heart.
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Jan, there is no nice way to say this: you need to delete or recant this post. It’s horrible.
First, your thesis “unless a person is born again, their heart is evil; rebellious toward and contrary to the divine nature of God.” is so wildly inaccurate, I was afraid to read what came after. Christians don’t have a monopoly on right and wrong. And just because someone is “born again” doesn’t mean they aren’t capable of extreme evil. I don’t need to be a christian to tell you that sex trafficking is wrong.
Second, it’s obvious that you think that both abortion and human trafficking are bad. But it’s also obvious that you don’t know the first thing about either one of them. I think that if you are going to speak to social issues like this, you have a responsibility to do research to support your claims.
Third, you don’t have any qualms about making the leap from abortion to human trafficking, but you failed to mention anything about the death penalty.
I really think that you spend sometime researching when addressing, well, anything. You can’t make the claim that society has paved the way for human trafficking without giving some evidence. You can’t dismiss all the bad things that happen as ungodly wickedness.
This post is extremely offensive to me because instead of making a principled against human trafficking, you instead errantly compare it to abortion and get so lost in your position ends up being against ad executives instead of sex traffickers.
Finally, I can make an argument against sex trafficking without using the bible or any other religious text. Can you make an argument against abortion the same way? I think it’d be a lot harder because the issue much more nuanced than you’re willing to admit. If you want to take positions on issues because you’re a christian, that’s fine. But don’t expect non-christians to be convinced by your “reasoning” because it’s not really reasoning.
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Like, dislike, or even hate this post, is okay. Each person is entitled to their own opinion.
Sex trafficking does have its roots in the heart of man, as does every other kind of evil. Truth is truth whether or not someone uses a scripture reference. Abortion is wrong because taking an innocent life is wrong.
Using the ad exec was my way of saying we need to stop feeding people’s lust.
I don’t write so people can agree or disagree with me. I write to try and get people, Christians and non-Christians alike, to think beyond the status quo.
Yes, every single one of us are capable of much evil. The person who is born again does have the Spirit of God within, helping them change. Of course, it’s still up to the individual.
Society keeps moving toward the “everything is okay” except righteousness. It would not surprise me that even human trafficking would eventually become acceptable. That’s the direction man’s heart is taking them.
No, it isn’t right. Abortion isn’t right. Capital punishment is only right, in my opinion, in extreme cases where there are credible eye witnesses, not just circumstantial evidence.
Anyway, thanks for commenting.
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You want people to read your blog and thing beyond the status quo, but then say things like “Society keeps moving toward the ‘everything is okay’ except righteousness” Show me where you are getting this information. How is society moving toward everything is okay? What is your definition of righteousness? I don’t see how making flippant off-the-cuff remarks like that, expecting readers to understand what you’re saying, is helping them to think beyond the status quo. Is there even such a thing as the status quo?
In fact, I think it just reinforces the stereotype that evangelicals are holier-than-thou, anti-intellectual, and intolerant. Even your comments about abortion are over-simplified and ignore the nuances of the issue. You can’t ignore the fact, and then say that society doesn’t accept your righteousness. Anyone that doesn’t think just like you is wicked and evil.
You’ve told me on several occasions that you don’t understand everything in the Bible. But that doesn’t seem to stop you from condemning all of society. Conversely, the “born again” believer get’s a free pass because they Spirt of God will help them change. What good is being born again if you don’t love your neighbor? What good is having God’s love if you’re not extending it to other people? Why reserve your Christ-like behavior for other Christians?
If it wouldn’t surprise you if human trafficking became acceptable, then what good is your faith in God? Is it Christ-like to have such a piss-poor outlook on life? How can you love God or other people with that perception of the world?
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If capital punishment is right in extreme cases, why isn’t abortion? Why do you get to make that determination? Both are ‘murder’ are they not? If a judge and jury doesn’t need God’s approve to make that decision, why does a woman?
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Abortion is one of those contentious topics. You are not going to change my mind about my stance on it; and I am not attempting to change yours. I understand that you are trying to make an appeal to people who are pro-choice as to why they should not be pro-choice if they value human life. I do not have a problem with that. The problem that people have with many Christians is not the just the “hypocrisy” , but the judgmental attitude that comes with it. How can you think that the death penalty is OK in some cases? It negates the idea that no one has the right to decide who lives and who dies that you are using as to why people should be pro-life when it comes to abortion. The death penalty is deciding who is subhuman and unworthy enough to not live. It is still murder, but since it was a “bad” person it is OK. Hypocrisy. There is good reason for their being a separation of Church and State. It should stay that way. Not all sins are equal just because the Bible says they are.
Not all “sins” are equal and neither are all “sinners”. There is a reason why people are offended that you are comparing a woman choosing to terminate the life of her fetus with human traffickers. Human traffickers have absolutely no regards to society or anyone’s life. In general, women who choose to get an abortion DO care about the child’s life they are ending; they’ve weighed the alternative and chose to have an abortion. Human traffickers have a negative impact on large segments of society.
You are right that enacting stiffer penalties won’t eliminate anything any person does. However, neither will Christianity. Being a Christian does not eliminate the ability to do wrong. You are right, “sin” or sociopathy is in the “heart” or genetic make-up of mankind. It will not be eliminated, at least until we fully understand the biological and sociological reasons why some people who are sociopaths enjoy harming people. We are not becoming more abject as a society. The problems that plagued society previously are the same ones that plagued society in the past. The difference is that because we can see what is going on in communities beyond our own, we can see all of the problems and it is harder to ignore them. Christianity MAY only work for those who choose it. It is not a cure all and it never will be.
Since you did ask, if people actually cared about the lives of children, they would do something to help them when they are born. The state of our child protective and foster system is a testament for that. People only care if the child is a fetus. It is their responsibility if the child is a fetus. After that, let’s just blame the parents. If people actually cared about people who have been abused or subjected to human trafficking, they would not presume to speak for them or their experiences. We are not going to eliminate “sin”, so instead we should focus on helping people who are victims of abuse get their lives back together on their own terms. For people who are Christian, that may mean not trying to convert them. This is because when you are “trafficked” or in abusive relationships, you are told who you are, what to think, and what is best for you. Even if your intentions are well meaning, I promise it feels like judgment and someone denying your ability to decide what is right or wrong for yourself.
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As a survivor of sex trafficking I am disgusted and upset with every part of this post. People like me don’t seek help because of people like you, the phrases you used trigger PTSD severely. I was trafficked from the ages of 12-18 and then was dragged back into that situation last year and barely escaped again. There are no resources for people like me because of people like you. Because the focus is overseas or because side-jaunts into the abortion debate get taken and are valued far more than helping survivors. Because the focus is on ending trafficking entirely and not helping people get out and recover. You can end trafficking as well as you can totally end rape. You can’t, it is in human nature, the ugly side of it, but there. People participate in trafficking without even knowing, because they want something they can’t get with consent, or in other forms of trafficking like labor they want work done cheaper no matter the cost to the workers. It is about power, control, and money. Money has existed far prior to our society, barter and trade systems didn’t work to help everyone get things they needed to survive. Don’t blame money, it is humanity. Even beyond all that there are sociopaths, psychopaths, and extreme sadists that have it in their psychology to do these things and just aren’t willing to fight it or stay away from people. There are people who just want to hurt others because they can, society didn’t make them that way, the devil didn’t make them that way, their choices did. Free will enabled them to do those things, that is it.
What happened to me happened in the United States, I was raised Christian so you can’t even say that if I believed in God it wouldn’t happen. I was raped by more people than I could ever count, tortured, and completely and totally demeaned in every way your mind could probably imagine. Many of these men were Christian, praying before they did what they wanted or after, calling me a harlot and a temptress. They were ‘reborn’, and in before “we aren’t all like that” or “they weren’t really saved”, how does one get saved? The prayer to accept Jesus’ sacrifice, baptism, reading the Bible, and attending service. They convinced themselves either that what they were doing was in line with the Bible due to cherry-picked quotes and reading it from their own perspective instead of objectively or they believed praying for forgiveness repeatedly or blaming me would keep them “pure of sin”. Many of the most sadistic clients involved the Bible and used it to justify their actions or at least remove the blame from themselves, they had done all of those things, according to the church they were saved. No not all Christian’s do that but not all ~true~ Christians are excellent people who value all humans equally.
Through all of that I am pro-choice, I am solidly pro-choice. When a woman is stuck in a situation like that and knows the baby would be pulled into it, guaranteeing they won’t is an act of love and mercy. If I couldn’t protect my little sister, how would I have protected a child? Especially as the pregnancy became obvious? I did get pregnant, 3 times. Twice it was ended by kicking me, forcing me to drink, or drugging me. I was 12 and 14 at the time. The third time was the only time I knew I was pregnant before it was ended, I was 17 and I was going to run away. I was told that my son would be raised treated like me as soon as he could be, that they would take him by abducting me as I turned 18. One of the boys I was trained with when I was 12 was born there, he didn’t even have a name, I wouldn’t have that for my son and there was nothing else I could do to save him without getting him killed with the rest of my family in retaliation. I was going to try to run away anyway but somehow they found out I was planning to and they ended the pregnancy as painfully as they possibly could. At 18 I was pro-life and couldn’t think of an abortion, I was convinced if I did God would hate me even more than I was taught to think He did by my traffickers and what I was going through would became 30x worse because that was the propaganda I was raised with in the church. That an abortion was the highest sin. If I was smart I would’ve had a professional abortion, saved he and I both pain, but I thought God would rather he be raised in poverty by a high school drop out on the run, a severely mentally ill high school drop out, or put into my cities foster care. Though in my city the foster care system is rife with abuse more than anything else, so if I did that I’d be risking him getting molested or trafficked either way. There were no options.
If women in situations where they know that child would have a horrific life due to circumstances they couldn’t change want to end their pregnancy to save their child pain, to save them growing up in a horrible situation with little to no chance at a decent life or at best a monumental struggle, more power to them. Because I wish I had and I think God would understand that. They can do no more to my son, they could only end his earthly life, his soul is back in Heaven. But at least he wasn’t tortured for years by his biological father before he got there. Raised knowing nothing but pain, not even being named, never knowing God existed. Being pro-choice and being against human trafficking isn’t mutually exclusive.
Pregnancy can not only result in trapping a child in a horror story, but also trap their mother due to parental rights laws. Even if I had run away, if I had been found but not reachable my trafficker he could sue for joint custody of my son and for 18 years I wouldn’t be able to leave the area without his consent because he had a right to visit his child. Meaning it would be guaranteed we would both be trafficked. Even if I wanted to risk adoption, my trafficker could stop it with a paternity test. My last pregnancy I was 17, that is age of consent in my state, and going to the police would’ve killed not only my son but my whole family. The police were involved once, they didn’t believe me and told the man I reported, what they did because of that I would rather have died. If the police had taken it seriously I probably would have, along with the rest of my family. Then, because they make a lot of money at this, they would just remove themselves from the jurisdictions reach.
There isn’t a way out of this situation safely because there aren’t any resources, only scant (and rarely enforced) laws, and no one willing to either believe it even happens in America or help. People would rather argue about things like “if we converted the entire world to Christianity there would be no more traffickers” or “an abortion is as bad as raising a child to be raped from toddlerhood, participate in child pornography, bring more victims into the world, tortured, and eventually killed due to age or disease or by accident”. I barely got out by escaping to college the first time and moving to a different city the last time, I remain out by rarely ever leaving my home. There is no help for me and if I had ended my son Benjamin’s life it would be out of love and mercy, not devaluing him. I would not be as bad as his father. No woman wants to have to do that, but they do it so their children aren’t stuck in situations like theirs or worse. Unless you are in a position like that, don’t judge it. Take the log out of your eye before taking the splinter out of someone else’s. Judge not lest ye be judged.
If you are told your child is dead inside of you, if you are told they are severely deformed and will either have physical pain or “locked in” syndrome where they are mentally there (and not mentally delayed) but simply can’t communicate, if you are 15 and your boyfriend got you drunk and had his way and your parents are going to throw you out if they know, if you are 15 and your boyfriend is your world for whatever reason and will not only leave you but destroy everything in your social life if you don’t have sex but you’re Catholic and were told that condoms and birth control are a greater sin than pre-marital sex, if you are being beaten by your husband who prevented you from working so you were forced to rely on him and had nowhere to go and found out you were pregnant, if your father raped you and you got pregnant, if you were being trafficked and got pregnant, if you get pregnant and have no money to raise a child and know what our foster system is really like and know that child’s life would be an endless hell of growing up feeling no one wanted them and they were passed around and abused and neglected, if you are of color and know that children of color are rarely if ever adopted in America or if you are tribal and know that your child couldn’t be adopted by a non-tribe member so they would be stuck in the system for years then be even less likely to be adopted and end up in foster care anyway…
When one of those situations applies to you, when you understand the situations that women are in when they consider abortion, then you can talk about your own choice in that matter. Sparing a child neglect, abuse, rape, systemic violence, extreme poverty, or endless physical or mental pain with little to no relief is not as heartless as taking a child and letting hundreds of men rape them. Sometimes more than one at a time. Putting images and video of it on the web. Torturing them. Purposefully impregnating them, then ending the pregnancy while making them listen to their child’s heart stop beating over a fetal heart monitor. It is not as heartless as making them wish their mother had never let them be born. The comparison is disgusting and there is no way you could ever understand either point of view, you weren’t there, you weren’t trafficked, and it is highly unlikely that you have been in a situation similar to any I have described. Don’t judge things you don’t understand, it is God’s place to judge, His place to decide what is and is not sin, His place to make a hierarchy of bad to worst. Not yours. If you want to help trafficking victims then work locally, I can guarantee you that there is trafficking going on within 10 miles of your location no matter where you are. Don’t make it about converting them, don’t lecture them on what is and isn’t their fault, don’t use buy and sell language, don’t say you pity them, and don’t tell them they are as bad as the people who did this to them because they considered saving their own child from it. Give them resources, counseling, information, job training, shelter, help your police force understand so if it is reported they can be kept safe. But don’t do what you just did in this article.
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You are still honestly comparing the choice to have an abortion with being raped, tortured, and sold?
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I am saying both devalue the life of a human. I am saying that anyone can use the “it’s my choice” argument, right or wrong. I’m not minimizing the pain and torture someone like yourself must have endured. Not at all. But I am trying to get each of us to imagine what a baby in the womb must go through when it is ripped out of it’s safe place.
You have a voice, even if it wasn’t heard or listened to. A baby has no voice. But it does feel pain.
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The situations aren’t comparable. They are completely and totally different situations, trafficking affects an ESTIMATED 27 million people in the world (and that is an extremely low ball estimate since counting people being trafficked is near impossible as for the most part it goes unreported, some are born into it and never known to exist, many countries did not contribute data to the study that fact is derived from etc etc). People die every single day at a whim or by accident or due to disease because of trafficking, people are being tortured or forced into labor or raped or a mixture of all those things right now. Continuous torture, horrible conditions, rape, assault, and every horror you can imagine for years on end with no foreseeable way out, that is what trafficking is.
An abortion is the potential mother’s choice to spare her child from what would be a horrible situation for the child. Our foster care systems are abominable, abusive, corrupt, and all around terrible. There are around 4x as many children up for adoption as there are people looking to adopt in America that can legally do so, those not adopted go to..the aforementioned foster care system. Keeping the child, to what, watch them starve at best because the parent/s aren’t financially stable? At worst the person abusing the woman discovers the pregnancy and kills her because of it and then you lose both lives. Or this child is born into a situation where they feel nothing but rejection from society, or nothing but excruciating physical pain, or they are totally unable to communicate with the outside world, or the condition or deformity they were born with kills them in the first few years (or even days) of life. Worse still the child is born in an abusive situation and is abused or tormented all their life as well. An abortion is an act of mercy and love, an act of protection. Trafficking an act of horror. Any pain the child feels in the act of abortion (most are done well before a central nervous system is firmly in place so in many there is no sense of pain at all) is minimal compared to the pain their potential mother is seeking to spare them from.
All of that aside, you’re just seeking to combine two special interests you have to make it simpler for you to slacktivist for them. Ending abortion and forcing all of those children into the world would do nothing for human trafficking except spread it. Combining them makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Trafficking doesn’t happen just because of dehumanization, it happens because of sadism, and a lust for power and control. It happens because of free will and choices freely made by the trafficker when there was no one to stop them, no one to help their victims, and no one to help those lucky enough to survive them. It doesn’t happen because someone goes to have an abortion and many if not most who have that procedure done aren’t dehumanizing the child, they try to push it back in public and handle the grief privately. You truly have no idea what you are talking about or comparing, these things are not remotely comparable.
It would be best not to discuss things you don’t understand, maybe if you spent more time talking to actual victims of human trafficking, learning how to help without doing even more damage like you have done today, and learn what victims of trafficking actually need and not just what you have decided for them. Maybe you should learn not to make broad stroke comparisons using two things you don’t remotely understand and have never been in the position to understand.
Show human decency. You have had multiple survivors tell you that what you said is messed up, I get backpedaling to insist you aren’t a bad person but no one called you one. We called your words terrible. You simply don’t understand, you’re being judgmental, and the language you used in what you wrote has harmed survivors of the very thing you claim to be fighting against. Your desire to control the situation, your slight effort to help, it’s doing the opposite. You don’t know what you’re doing, you don’t understand the impact of your words or what they mean. If you have any real desire to communicate about this matter so that you can learn what not to do, what wording not to use, and what you can do to actually help then my email was registered by your page so I could make this comment.
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