Top Tweets for #Prostituted

I walked through the red light district in Brussels today and it was one of the most horrible things I’ve ever seen. Young women standing behind glass while groups of men banged on the windows and haggled over them like products. Most of the women appeared to be Asian or Eastern European. The men crowding around them were overwhelmingly African or Muslim men, many still dressed in Islamic clothes. Anyone who looks at that and sees “empowerment” is sick in the head. I don’t know the circumstances of every woman there, but it was impossible to witness it and not wonder how many were there through coercion, desperation, trafficking, or poverty. Nothing about it looked liberating. Putting it lightly it was dehumanising. The women treated like livestock by the most depraved men I’d ever seen. This is Brussels. The capital of the European Union. The place where leaders gather, policies are written, and grand speeches about progress are made. Yet just outside the conference halls and beneath the glass towers, this is happening in plain sight. I only hope Ireland never comes to resemble it.