it's NOT funny. it's NEVER funny

and it's NOT right for our children to be exposed to this in a comedic way

Guest P

Please welcome Guest Blogger, Caroline Heldman, PhD.  Heldman is an Associate Professor of Politics at Occidental College.  Her research addresses the American presidency, race, gender, and the media.  She co-edited the popular book, Rethinking Madame President: Is the US Ready for a Woman in the White House? Dr. Heldman is also a regular political commentator for Fox News, Fox Business News, and Al Jazeera English.  She blogs at FemmePolitical and Ms. 

Guest Post: Disney Ride Still Makes Light of Sex Slavery

by lisa 

As many as 4 million people — most of them women and children — are sold into slavery globally each year, according to the United Nations, and 70 percent of those women are trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation [PDF]. An estimated 200,000 American children are at risk for sex trafficking each year, and the International Human Rights Law Institute estimates that 30,000 sexual slaves die annually from abuse, torture, neglect and disease.  So why is Disneyland still asking us to laugh at an overt depiction of sexual slavery in its popular Pirates of the Caribbean ride?Many of us have floated past the scene of a pirate captain selling captured women as “brides,” with the banner “Auction: Take a Wench as a Bride.” Viewer focus is drawn to a rotund woman on the auction block, an object of open derision due to her weight, as well as to a red-haired woman with her breasts on display, an object of hoots and hollers from surrounding drunken pirates..........