A sex trafficking education and prevention group spoke on issues of violence against women and the sex industry Thursday night at the Wilmette Theatre.

Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, a regional group that works to eliminate the sex trade in Chicago, was invited to speak at the event co-hosted by the YWCA Evanston/North Shore. The documentary screening and discussion drew a crowd of about 30 people.

CAASE’s executive director Kaethe Morris Hoffer told the audience that between 100,000 and 300,000 children are victims of sexual exploitation in the United States. In Chicago alone, she said, 16,000 to 24,000 women and girls are affected by the sex trade every day.
“If you think about the normalization of sex as a commodity in our culture, the message that boys and everybody gets is the normality about strip clubs, pornography, all the things that commodify sex and demean and degrade girls and women,” Morris Hoffer said.

The presentation and Q&A followed a showing of the documentary, “Demand,” which discusses the worldwide sex market through interviews with victims, pimps and clients. The film emphasizes that the solution to ending sex trafficking and human exploitation can be found through targeting the demand of the industry — those who buy sex.

Morris Hoffer said CAASE has established a fund in Chicago that will hopefully collect money from arrests made against people who purchase sex. The money collected would be allocated to police departments making arrests in order to incentivize further arrests, as well as to a general fund that community organizations can pull from to fund public health projects and housing for victims in need of services after exiting the industry.

“People purchasing sex have disposable income,” Morris Hoffer said. “This is not that somebody is going homeless because they’re not buying sex. The thing to understand is that they have extra money. Purchasing sex is a learned, specific behavior.”

Cece Lobin, women’s empowerment coordinator at the YWCA, said projects like these are why she believes Chicago is a leader in the fight against human trafficking around the world. Morris Hoffer disagreed, and said she thinks that although Chicago has made some headway, the city ultimately still needs drastic improvement.

“It continues to be the case that the city of Chicago’s police department continues to treat prostitution the way most criminal justice systems around the world have always done so,” Morris Hoffer said. “More than 90 percent of arrests are landing on girls and women being prostituted … while the men are getting tickets.”

Lobin added that beyond just punishing buyers of trafficking victims, the end to sexual and human exploitation also lies in a general cultural shift away from dehumanizing women.

“At the YWCA we have specific programs for men and boys about loving, healthy relationships absent of this abuse and what that looks like,” Lobin said.

Carol Jungman, an Evanston resident, said although the focus on ending trafficking should land on changing male sexualization of women, all women have a role in talking to the men in their lives about the dangers of normalizing objectification of women.

“Men have to take the initiative,” Jungman said. “They have to be held accountable, that’s where this all starts. It’s a visual thing, men see images and then these images are actualized in their conduct with women in real relationships.”

Ultimately, men can be aided in the task by doing away with society’s dominant image of masculinity, Morris Hoffer said.

“Boys live in a culture that sends so many horrific and toxic messages about masculinity and what it means to be a man,” Morris Hoffer said. “We really need to stand and teach them about the humaneness and gentleness of men and boys.”

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