By free will or force

THE WAY THINGS ARE

By Colette NiReamonn Ioannidou

The frost was spread over the field like splintered glass. There was silence of the kind that hovers over a neglected graveyard where nothing moves. The trees with their stark silver branches were still as though listening for some descending tremor that could be felt only by their deep-set roots. The lake was a sheet of platinum beauty. A robin flew off a thorn bush its wings the only sound in the hush of early morning. It called out but there was no answer. The sun became braver and lifted its watery skirts to sweep away the edges of night that clung to one side of the sky as though wanting darkness to linger, to hide some unworthy thing from the truth of daylight. In the vague uncertain distance, a horse whinnied and a cow mooed. Then the silence returned to dominate the fields and the lake. Soon life would shake itself out of its sleep stupor and reluctantly begin to move into the chill of the day. The day would make no impression on A6-22 for she was lifeless.

I wrote this story a few years back. It’s set in the not-too-distant future and concerns a lonely, autistic man whose beloved companion is an expensive, sophisticated robot that looks, feels and sounds human. She’s A6-22 whom he says was murdered by a member of his community, a community in which some felt his companion was an ‘unnatural abomination.’ The unsympathetic police chief says it’s merely mechanical destruction. The younger officer assigned to the case, takes a different, more understanding point of view and wonders if rape was a motive.

I’m a huge fan of Line of Duty. Segments of the series dealt with human trafficking. Unfortunate, abused women and girls were described by their captors as ‘livestock’ and that’s how body-traders see them, nothing more than flesh; meat to be enjoyed by men who are complicit in their misery. Sex slavery comes up a lot on film now, it’s part of the world in which we live. Bitter Daisies (Netflix) is another series that delves into that shop of horrors. Men and women who run these gangs, or people who profit from their dark web saleable offshoots can, we have to presume in some cases, separate the humilities and atrocities they inflict on the children and even babies of others, from the love and devotion they feel towards their own offspring.

On a BBC channel recently two sides of the sex and pornography for sale story came up. One looked at how in the view of some activists, any business pertaining to sex themes should be removed from prominent sites in towns, kept far from schools or religious buildings. Stripping was covered (pardon the pun) and a professional stripper gave her take which was, she enjoyed her work. No one was forcing her to do it, it was how she earned her money. A woman who ran a strip club said her rules were very strict, the men who came to see a stripper perform were not allowed to touch or taunt her girls.

Prostitution has been around a very long time and some people see sex work as a service to lonely or insecure men or men whose wives don’t satisfy their secret needs, or women afraid to come out as gay, a safety valve for those who would otherwise not have any open options. A woman who chooses to be a sex worker of her own free will has the right to choose how she lives her working life. However, when a woman or girl, or worse, a child, is taken by force and kept imprisoned against their will so their bodies become commodities to make unscrupulous people rich, this is criminal and we have to be very grateful to those who have the courage to fight the unfeeling minds that control the trafficking. Think of the nasty deeds performed on the dark web and the police staff or platform moderators whose job it is to watch ‘content’ that emerges from the deviant minds of men and women who wilfully perpetrate sex crimes for cash.

Police staff have to go through hours of unspeakable acts perpetrated against helpless captives. How is their mental health affected, how much of that could any normal person view and not be in need of professional help? How much can you pay a decent human being to absorb and report the multitude of crimes on the web? The Swinging Sixties gave those of us emerging as young people then a freedom of sexual expression no generation had before us. There was simulated sex on film, we could read about it in novels, buy books that taught how to enjoy what, up till then, had been weighed down by so many taboos; it was healthy.

What is happening now is sick. Girls in UK schools are being sexually harassed because boys watch easily accessed porn that allows them to think girls are submissive objects to be explored. The future will see ‘companion’ robots evolve but, as said in Bitter Daisies, the fight for the rescue of tormented women goes on. And on and on…