Weiner Isn’t The Most Important Penis Story

With all the penis talk taking place in Washington, it’s a shame that some of the actual horrific or sex trafficking stories don’t get as much attention. The Nation’s Ari Melber wrote about a thirteen year old boy from Syria who was taken from his parents, mutilated, and the entire event was recorded and put on YouTube. The video went viral and because the image is so graphic (the boys penis is shown being cut off) that YouTube took the video down until large amounts of people complained and was put back up.

According to Ari “The boy was separated from his parents at a protest against the Assad government, which allegedly mutilated, castrated and killed him, then returned the corpse to his family, who risked their lives to produce the video. The boy’s father is now reportedly missing as well.”

Then in yesterday’s New York Times, Nicholas Kristof wrote a story about a ten year girl from India whose family might sell her to a brothel. Now don’t forget, you are reading this online and are living in the 21^st century, but in India, 90 percent of girls end up in the global sex trade. Kristof conceals the girls identity so she will not be put down by her classmates, but describes how far she has already come in her studies: “Both her parents are illiterate, but she learned English and earned excellent grades in an English-language school for middle-class children outside the red-light district.” The pimps in India go into low income communities looking for attractive young girls. They convince the families to give them the girls by describing the job as a farm hand out in the western part of the country. But once in the brothel, these girls have no defense against any sexual transmitted diseases.

Unfortunately, these stories are not rare. According to UNICEF, 1.2 million children are trafficked every year. Sexual exploitation is the vast majority of the trafficking, with the next being forced labor. It is one of the fastest growing “industries” in the world generating $9.5 billion a year.

The case of Congressman Weiner is a legitimate political issue, but do you really believe he is the only one out there sending pictures of his penis to college girls? I get spammed by fake Twitter accounts almost every day. But this story is getting more attention because Weiner is a member of Congress, and unfortunately the children that Nicholas and Ari described do not get the attention they deserve.