Privileged white men giving devastated, impoverished women of colour money for sex is vile exploitation, not prostitutionThe sexual abuse of women and girls by certain men who worked for Oxfam is clearly despicable. Let us not muddy the waters by describing this as “the use of prostitutes” or by pretending this is the first time “do-gooders” have done wrong. Prostitution implies choice and consent. It is not clear how any choice was made, in the devastating aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, when women had so little that they were bought for the price of a meal or a cheap pair of shoes.Abuse is the result of a power imbalance and it happens in places where those caring for the powerless break the implicit trust. In care homes, in boarding schools, in religious institutions, in all these places that operate in their own unique moral universes, the most vulnerable have been abused by their so-called protectors. We know how phenomenally slow and reluctant many of these institutions have been to react to abuse scandals, preferring instead to see the ruining of lives as an internal matter. The relocation of abusive Catholic priests to other dioceses, for instance, is a form of absolute denial about the harm that has been done. Continue reading…

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/12/the-oxfam-scandal-shows-colonialism-is-alive-and-well