“‘My Body Was Not Mine, but the U.S. Military’s’: Inside the disturbing sex industry thriving around America’s bases”
“Women’s sex work has long been used to help keep male troops happy — or at least happy enough to keep working for the military. Today, commercial sex zones thrive in tandem with many U.S. bases around the world, from Baumholder in Germany to Fort Bragg in North Carolina. Many look much the same, filled with liquor stores, fast-food outlets, tattoo parlors, bars and clubs, and prostitution in one form or another…
Dating to the 1945 U.S. occupation of Korea, when GIs casually bought sex with as little as a cigarette, these camptowns have been at the center of an exploitative and profoundly disturbing sex industry — one that both displays and reinforces the military’s attitudes about men, women, power and dominance…
U.S. military authorities occupying Korea after the war took over some of the “comfort stations” that had been central to the Japanese war machine since the 19th century. During its conquest of territory across East Asia, the Japanese military forced hundreds of thousands of women from Korea, China, Okinawa and rural Japan, and other parts of Asia into sexual slavery, providing soldiers with “royal gifts” from the emperor. With the assistance of Korean officials, U.S. authorities continued the system absent formal slavery, but under conditions of exceedingly limited choice for the women involved…
Filipinas and, to a lesser extent, women from Russia and former Soviet republics have generally replaced Korean women as the primary camptown sex workers. The South Korean government’s creation of the E-6 “entertainer” visa has allowed Korean “promoters” to import the women on a legal basis. The E-6 visa is the only Korean visa for which an HIV test is mandatory…
at issue are also the broader American military culture, and the sexism and patriarchy found in the United States, Korea and much of the world. The behavior of men who take advantage of exploitative sex industries is often excused as a matter of “boys will be boys” — as merely natural behavior for male soldiers. In fact, there’s little about the behavior that’s natural. Men on military bases and women in camptowns find themselves in a highly unnatural situation, one that’s been created by a series of decisions made over time (mostly by male military and government officials). Those decisions have created a predominantly male military environment, where women’s visible presence is overwhelmingly reduced to one role: sex.”
This is genuinely disturbing. This is sex slavery, for the US military. This is when power lets people entitle themselves to others’ humanity. This is how misogyny and white supremacy turns a desire into a need, and recasts the fulfillment of that need as something that is necessary for the greater good of all groups: it is okay to force others to make sacrifices for this need, because sexually fulfilled American men are so integral to maintaining the well-being of the human race.
These beliefs allow people to commit actions they understand to be morally wrong, because it seems as though they are done in pursuit of a greater moral good.
