Maybe I'm just suspicious and cynical...
Or maybe, I am well-acquainted with the 'white slavery' trope that first flowered in the early C20th and went on being resorted to by journalists looking for a sensational story into, I think, at least the 1950s -
An ordinary young woman going about her business, though this was usually about pleasure such as shopping or going to the movies, was surreptitiously injected with a narcotic and borne off by a 'helpful' older lady, and ended up in a Buenos Aires bordello.
People who were actually working in social purity/moral welfare organisations hated this narrative - after wasting time chasing up similar stories - and were wont to point out the implausibilities, e.g. it's not actually easy to inject somebody in outdoor clothing with morphine.
So I did feel some resonances with this current thing in the news: Chloe Ayling told Italian police she was attacked by two men as she attended a photoshoot last month, drugged and transported in a bag to Borgial, an isolated village near Turin. The 20-year-old’s captor allegedly wanted to auction her as a sex slave online but released her after six days and took her to the British consulate in Milan.
I was also particularly 'HUH?' when I read that 'because she was a mother of two, which was against the group’s rules.' Because international gangs involved in kidnapping sex slaves totes revere Motherhood, right?
It is now suggested that the actual kidnapper, described as 'dangerous person with traces of mythomania', who keeps changing his story, is a fantasist and there is no international Black Death gang.
I'm not saying that the woman in question didn't have a very scary experience, I just think that the story she was given was drawn from the wells of urban myth.
Was also put in mind of this long-ago spam received from INTERNATIONAL ASSASSINS AND WORLD SECURITY ORGANIZATION [sic]
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In other news, further to my Diva Strop at journal editor the other week, have been working on the copy-edited mss, and note with amusement that the icon that appears on my comments just happens to be My Shelfie of books what I wrote or contributed to. No, I don't think I will change it to Bamiyan Buddha, springtime in the Rockies or Nevelson sculpture. This entry was originally posted at http://oursin.dreamwidth.org/2641768.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View
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