September 14, 2011 • 19 mins
Dancing boys perform at weddings across Afghanistan, but their dances are only part of their occupation. Bacha bazi, or "boy play," is a form of sexual slavery. Join Cristen and Caroline as they explore the effects bacha bazi has on Afghan society.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From house Stop works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristen Um. Now we've
(00:20):
talked previously about child marriage and girls being taken from
their homes and families at a young age to be
married off, but we didn't really address what happens to
young boys in some of these traditional societies and tribal cultures.
So I think today we're going to talk about the
bacha bazzi of Afghanistan, the dancing boys who were taken
(00:42):
from their homes and forced to basically perform for much
wealthier men. Right because, like you said, while we were
searching the child brides, even though we focus all the
conversation on the girls, I think it's very important when
we're talking about sex trafficking, sexual slavery, early marriage, just
sexual exploitation of miners in general, Um, it is important
(01:04):
to talk about what might be happening to boys. And
bacha bazi is literally translated boy play, and this is
something that um happens in Afghanistan. We're focusing the conversation
just on Afghanistan today. Not to say that that young
boys aren't sexually exploited elsewhere, but this is a cultural
(01:26):
practice that's been going on for thousands of years and
UH in recent years there's been more media attention on
Bacha Bazi because UH, some people are concerned that there
has been a resurgence in this practice because of warfare
and um, I guess the restriction of the Taliban regime,
(01:50):
which we'll get into a little bit later, right. UM,
this practice involves boys as young as eleven being sold
by their families to entertain wealthy merchants and warlords. Um.
These men dressed the boys in women's clothing and train
them to sing and dance. But in many cases the
boys are also abused sexually. And the reason why these
(02:10):
boys will are are asked to dress that are made
to dress up like women and dances because in in
these Islamic communities, very hard line Islamic communities, women and
men who aren't married are not allowed to interact at all,
So these young boys serve as sort of like proxy
figures for for women. And in the Poshtune region in
(02:34):
UH southern Afghanistan in particular, Uh, military forces that have
gone in have observed this of you in different NGOs
have have noted that the male relationships in a lot
of these communities, because they're so gender segregated, the bonds
between the men are often extreme. There is a lot
(02:56):
of um kind of latent homosexuality that happens and all
so boschi baza and the boy play, which um, I
think you know, it's important to uh categorize away from
just homosexuality, right. UM. A lot of different articles written
about this stress that because women and men are so segregated,
(03:19):
that men often have to uh find substitutes for that
companionship that they might experience with a girlfriend or a wife. Um,
they don't get to really experience the affection of a
woman because most boys um in this region are sort
of separated from their mothers around age seven and they
become basically the the responsibility solely of their fathers. UM,
(03:43):
So they don't really get to witness uh a woman's
affection and grow up you know, experiencing women normally. Yeah,
I mean, I think we should also point out the historically,
you know, Afghanistan is not the only place where something
like this happens. For instance, uh, the Greeks had dancing
boys in the ancient days. But the Taliban has kind
(04:03):
of a tricky relationship with this Bacha Bazi practice because officially,
the Taliban, who controlled Afghanistan for a long time until
two thousand one when they were alsted by US forces,
they tried to erase pedophilia from the Pastian culture in particular.
(04:27):
But and they did that through the Ministry for the
Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. And you
can imagine this is like, I mean, the hard line Islamic,
This isn't exactly the most progressive force. But then when
the US lad THEA invasion of Afghanistan in two thousand
one and alsa the Taliban, there's this notion that since
(04:49):
that that Ministry UH for the Promotion of Virtue and
Prevention of Vice has gone, then that's led the way
and open the doors to Bacchi Bossi becoming more widespread.
But at the same time it might have just pushed
it sort of under the carpet a little bit, because
there was an l A Times article about Bashi Bazi
saying that the Taliban still carried on with these boys,
(05:14):
with this boy play, but they kept it in secret
and hid them in the madrass or the religious schools. Right,
it wasn't as out in the open. People didn't talk
about it. They weren't parading their young boys around in
the streets or anything like that. But if they're pushing it,
I mean not to I hope this doesn't sound too controversial,
but when I read that talking about pushing uh this
(05:36):
form of pedophilia and these all male um kind of
cordoned off groups in religious schools kind of reminded me
of of the Catholic Church scandals that have gone on
because there, you know, and and the main response that
came after that was, well, there need to be more
(05:57):
female There needs to be more female leadership and accountability
within the Catholic Church as a way to um possibly
prevent that kind of molestation was going on there. Seems
like that's a similar kind of case possibly in the madras.
Is right, and a lot of these um Bacha dancers
are often abused children whose families have rejected them. A
(06:20):
lot of this, you know, we talked in the Child
Bride episode about UM families who didn't really have another option.
They needed the money. They're they're in society's experiencing civil strife,
they don't have a lot of money, so they ended
up selling their daughters or you know, just receiving a
large dowry. And it's sort of a similar situation with
the Bacha dancers. Um they're usually released at age nineteen,
(06:45):
but at that point they've spent most of their childhood
performing for men um and at age nineteen they're basically
expected to go get married reclaim their status as men,
although you know, there's a lasting stigma attached to being
one of these dancers. And sometimes they'll even keep this
practice within the family, where uh say, a husband will
(07:08):
get himself a like a young beardless boy, and then
once the child grows up, he might have the Bacha
mary one of his daughters keep it in the family. Yeah,
and then the cycle just continues, right, And they some
of the boys that were interviewed when they said, okay,
you're about to grow up, get out of this practice.
(07:28):
What are you going to do? And a lot of
them said that they wanted to get their own either
bacha bossy or a whole group of them. The words
stable was tossed around a lot, like they actually wanted
to make enough money and have enough resources to have
a stable of young dancing boys that they could keep
and have at parties. Sure, because it's now become associated
(07:49):
with UM status in a lot of these groups where
they'll even have UM, say like local commanders or will
have uh their boys. Their individual boys kind of compete
to see who is the best boy, and it's a
source of pride for these for these men. Yeah, it's
very common among powerful commanders. A a former senior Muja
(08:12):
Hadeen commander said he got a boy because every commander
had one and he wanted to be able to compete.
I mean, this just sounds like they're talking about fancy
cars instead of actual people. Um. There's a sort of
a creepy, very creepy quote from a batch of Bozzi
pimp who they called the German because his mustache was blonde. Uh.
(08:33):
He said, I go to every province to have happiness
and pleasure with boys, and he points out that when
some of the boys aren't good for dancing, they'll be
used for other purposes. And it took the reporter. This
was from a front Line, a PBS documentary. Um. After
he was pressed for what these other purposes were, he said,
I mean for sodomy and other sexual activities and a
(08:56):
lot of times if they if these boys resist, they
might be killed. Right when a reporter talked with some
of the dancing boys, Um, a thirteen year old offered
that some of them are killed if they stray. He said,
if you don't please them, they will beat you and
people get killed. And in fact, a fifteen year old
was reportedly murdered after trying to escape from his master,
(09:17):
a well known drug baron and warlord. And Um it
was a police officer actually who supplied the weapon that
killed the boy. Um And while he was sentenced to
sixteen years, he got out after only a few months. Well,
and that theme comes up a lot to Caroline, where
there are these police officials who might be involved in
facilitating this UH, their government officials who are actually in
(09:41):
charge of preventing sexual exploitation who have been found at
these uh Bacha Bazi parties and UH. In a very
depressing note to this story, there was a Wiki leaks
cable from Afghanistan that was released revealing that the u
u s. Government contractor Dine Corps through a party for
(10:02):
Afghan security recruits with yeah, they brought in actually like
through a party brought in the beardless boys to dance
and entertain them. Uh. That is, and that's using taxpayer money.
That's terrifying. Yeah. Well, the UN Special Representative for Children
(10:22):
and Armed Conflict calls this whole thing a form of slavery,
rightly so. And she calls for the prosecution of the
men for participating because, you know, using using the reasoning
of we're not going to get them to stop by asking,
We're not going to get them to stop by saying, hey,
wouldn't you like to go bowling and stuff. It's you know,
it's hard to root out a practice that has been
(10:43):
in place for centuries. Um. But you know, she says
this that we need to prosecute these people, um and
really punish them. But you know, the reporter that the
PBS reporter um witnessed local police officers at an illegal
Botcha Bossi parties. So it is very widespread and part
of the culture. Yeah. And we haven't been able to
put offer any any statistics for precisely how many boys
(11:07):
Afghan boys are involved in this because it's so kind
of shrouded in secrecy. It's like people acknowledge that it happens,
but they're not going to name any names and they're
not gonna share any kinds of details even on I
mean I went on YouTube before we came in the
into the studio and they're they're public videos of the
(11:30):
boys of the boys dancing. I mean, it's nothing sexually explicit.
It's it's Afghan boys dressed up like women, dancing like women,
UM and surrounded by UH by dozens of older bearded men. Right. Yeah.
The there was an article in the Guardian UM where
one young dancer said men like women and they're not available,
so we act like women. And that just goes back
(11:52):
to the segregation of the society. And so if you
want to look at a pretty lady dancing, but that's
just not an option. UM, I guess they make their
own entertainment using children. And in seeking to explain the
roots cultural roots of this practice aside from just pure
gender segregation, UM, there was apport a report put out
(12:15):
by the of the U. S. Military's Human Terrain Team
that had gone into UM Afghanistan and was particularly focused
on the UH the Pashtun region, and it noted that
Kandahar's Kandahar Provinces a long, artistic and poetic tradition idealizes
or idolizes, I should say, the beardless boy as the
(12:37):
icon of physical beauty, and nineteenth century British authors reported
their observation of Poshtun fighters seeing poetic odes of longing
for you young boys, and it was kind of that
that does sort of echo, you know, similar kinds of
things that we see back with uh, like they said
earlier with the Greeks doing similar similar similarly exalting the
(12:59):
young uh pre pubescent boy um. And then in an
article from San Francisco Gate from two thousand ten, sociologists
and anthropologists attribute the problem to again going back to Islam,
to perverse interpretations of Islamic law. Right the I think
the Human Train Team report also kind of talked about how, um,
(13:20):
it's not Islam saying necessarily that it's okay to be
doing these things. It's it's local interpretations. And they sort
of talked about how um, much of the local populace
does not read the Quran, that it's sort of interpreted
for them by local authorities. And so you know, when
(13:40):
that stuff gets ingrained in a in a society, in
a region, it's sort of hard to um break away
from it right, and that's why I think it is
important to UM, you know, to emphasize that bascha bazi
is not an Islamic practice. And on. On the upside,
there does seem to be a greater effort by NGOs
(14:03):
UM to call more attention to this and try to
stop this sexual exploitation of young boys UM. For instance,
in January of this year, two thousand eleven, the United
Nations Assistants Mission in Afghanistan UH and their National Action
Plan addressed the recruitment of underage children into the national
(14:23):
Afghan National Security Forces and the sexual exploitation of children
by government officials, security forces, and civil society because there
this is sort of a joint effort to stop the
recruitment of child soldiers in the area and also sexual
violence against children, which would include brought you right, and
(14:45):
they sort of uh, they they talk about boys being
recruited at a very young age into the military as
part of this whole taking them away from their mothers,
taking them away from any female influence. And what it
kind of sounds like to me, Kristen, is that these
reports and these articles are sort of insinuating that a
female presence is what sort of is lacking and that
(15:08):
if there were more of a female presence, perhaps some
of these horrific things wouldn't be happening. But because women
are considered unclean, dirty, to be avoided, to be totally removed,
UM that they are actually exposed to more violence. And
boys don't get to see their mothers, their sisters being
treated like normal people. They are instead treated like dogs
(15:30):
basically right, and it only perpetuates UM that cycle. So
I think that I think that about sums it up
by It was something that I had not heard of
until UM last week when a friend of ours actually
sent us an email she listened to the Child Bride's episode,
said Hey, you guys should talk about botcha boss, right,
(15:53):
because yeah, it's not just small girls who are being
exploited all over the world's boys too. Yeah, and this
is just one UM. It's important to put this, I think,
in the in the broader context of sex trafficking and
sex slavery that is unfortunately happening all over the world,
not just in Afghanistan, not just in the East, but
also here in the United States, right, And if you
(16:13):
want to learn more about it, I really recommend going
to UM, the PBS website and looking at botch Bozzy. Um.
They have the transcript of the report. They have video
you can watch they have a conversation with the reporter
and the producer. It's all really interesting and it's something
that I had never heard of. Yeah, and I'll toss
the link up on Facebook so people can easily check
it out. And if you would like to send us
(16:36):
an email about Bacha Bozzi, our email address is mom
Stuff at how stuff works dot com and I have
just one email here to read. This is in response
to a recent episode on women in Science, and this
is from Roberto that I just listened to the Women
(16:58):
in Science episodes at I was washing dishes. I know
I'm a man's man, and although I heard a few
familiar names, I also didn't hear others. So I thought
maybe i'd share some of my own favorites in case
you happen to do some follow up installment later on.
Emily do Chatelai, who contributed the square in Einstein's E
equal MC square equation. Lies Mightner, who proved Einstein's theory
(17:24):
of matter energy equivalence. Caroline Porko, who is a planetary
scientist also known as ms MMS Saturn h Susan Greenfield,
although she's been putting her foot in her mouth recently
with her ideas about the impact of modern media on
young brains. Sarah Blaffer hardy and that's hardy without any vowel.
(17:46):
It's just hr d one not a type of anthropologists
and primatologists. And there's Lida cos Me Days. I think
I really butcher that you ever want to correct us
lead to Facebook. She's a leading evolutionary psychologists, so I
should probably know how to pronounce her name and also
be able to cite her work with since evolutionary psychology
comes up so often. And then we have Hypatia, who
(18:10):
was one of the first mathematicians in the ancient world,
and she was also killed by a riotous group of
people who threw bricks at her because they were not
too happy that one of the leading mathematicians at the
time was a woman. Don't be scared women women who
like math. It's great, it is great. You should not
(18:32):
stone them to death. And thanks Roberto for sending this
list of a female scientists and thinkers and mathematicians. Keep
them coming, folks. Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot
com is our email address, and you can always visit
us over on Facebook, Like us, follow us on Twitter
at mom Stuff Podcast, and you can head over to
(18:53):
our blog during the week, It's stuff Mom Never Told
You at how Stuff works dot com. Be sure to
check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Join how Staff Work staff as we explore the most
promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The houstef works iPhone
app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes. Brought to
(19:20):
you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready,
are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From house Stop works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristen Um. Now we've
(00:20):
talked previously about child marriage and girls being taken from
their homes and families at a young age to be
married off, but we didn't really address what happens to
young boys in some of these traditional societies and tribal cultures.
So I think today we're going to talk about the
bacha bazzi of Afghanistan, the dancing boys who were taken
(00:42):
from their homes and forced to basically perform for much
wealthier men. Right because, like you said, while we were
searching the child brides, even though we focus all the
conversation on the girls, I think it's very important when
we're talking about sex trafficking, sexual slavery, early marriage, just
sexual exploitation of miners in general, Um, it is important
(01:04):
to talk about what might be happening to boys. And
bacha bazi is literally translated boy play, and this is
something that um happens in Afghanistan. We're focusing the conversation
just on Afghanistan today. Not to say that that young
boys aren't sexually exploited elsewhere, but this is a cultural
(01:26):
practice that's been going on for thousands of years and
UH in recent years there's been more media attention on
Bacha Bazi because UH, some people are concerned that there
has been a resurgence in this practice because of warfare
and um, I guess the restriction of the Taliban regime,
(01:50):
which we'll get into a little bit later, right. UM,
this practice involves boys as young as eleven being sold
by their families to entertain wealthy merchants and warlords. Um.
These men dressed the boys in women's clothing and train
them to sing and dance. But in many cases the
boys are also abused sexually. And the reason why these
(02:10):
boys will are are asked to dress that are made
to dress up like women and dances because in in
these Islamic communities, very hard line Islamic communities, women and
men who aren't married are not allowed to interact at all,
So these young boys serve as sort of like proxy
figures for for women. And in the Poshtune region in
(02:34):
UH southern Afghanistan in particular, Uh, military forces that have
gone in have observed this of you in different NGOs
have have noted that the male relationships in a lot
of these communities, because they're so gender segregated, the bonds
between the men are often extreme. There is a lot
(02:56):
of um kind of latent homosexuality that happens and all
so boschi baza and the boy play, which um, I
think you know, it's important to uh categorize away from
just homosexuality, right. UM. A lot of different articles written
about this stress that because women and men are so segregated,
(03:19):
that men often have to uh find substitutes for that
companionship that they might experience with a girlfriend or a wife. Um,
they don't get to really experience the affection of a
woman because most boys um in this region are sort
of separated from their mothers around age seven and they
become basically the the responsibility solely of their fathers. UM,
(03:43):
So they don't really get to witness uh a woman's
affection and grow up you know, experiencing women normally. Yeah,
I mean, I think we should also point out the historically,
you know, Afghanistan is not the only place where something
like this happens. For instance, uh, the Greeks had dancing
boys in the ancient days. But the Taliban has kind
(04:03):
of a tricky relationship with this Bacha Bazi practice because officially,
the Taliban, who controlled Afghanistan for a long time until
two thousand one when they were alsted by US forces,
they tried to erase pedophilia from the Pastian culture in particular.
(04:27):
But and they did that through the Ministry for the
Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. And you
can imagine this is like, I mean, the hard line Islamic,
This isn't exactly the most progressive force. But then when
the US lad THEA invasion of Afghanistan in two thousand
one and alsa the Taliban, there's this notion that since
(04:49):
that that Ministry UH for the Promotion of Virtue and
Prevention of Vice has gone, then that's led the way
and open the doors to Bacchi Bossi becoming more widespread.
But at the same time it might have just pushed
it sort of under the carpet a little bit, because
there was an l A Times article about Bashi Bazi
saying that the Taliban still carried on with these boys,
(05:14):
with this boy play, but they kept it in secret
and hid them in the madrass or the religious schools. Right,
it wasn't as out in the open. People didn't talk
about it. They weren't parading their young boys around in
the streets or anything like that. But if they're pushing it,
I mean not to I hope this doesn't sound too controversial,
but when I read that talking about pushing uh this
(05:36):
form of pedophilia and these all male um kind of
cordoned off groups in religious schools kind of reminded me
of of the Catholic Church scandals that have gone on
because there, you know, and and the main response that
came after that was, well, there need to be more
(05:57):
female There needs to be more female leadership and accountability
within the Catholic Church as a way to um possibly
prevent that kind of molestation was going on there. Seems
like that's a similar kind of case possibly in the madras.
Is right, and a lot of these um Bacha dancers
are often abused children whose families have rejected them. A
(06:20):
lot of this, you know, we talked in the Child
Bride episode about UM families who didn't really have another option.
They needed the money. They're they're in society's experiencing civil strife,
they don't have a lot of money, so they ended
up selling their daughters or you know, just receiving a
large dowry. And it's sort of a similar situation with
the Bacha dancers. Um they're usually released at age nineteen,
(06:45):
but at that point they've spent most of their childhood
performing for men um and at age nineteen they're basically
expected to go get married reclaim their status as men,
although you know, there's a lasting stigma attached to being
one of these dancers. And sometimes they'll even keep this
practice within the family, where uh say, a husband will
(07:08):
get himself a like a young beardless boy, and then
once the child grows up, he might have the Bacha
mary one of his daughters keep it in the family. Yeah,
and then the cycle just continues, right, And they some
of the boys that were interviewed when they said, okay,
you're about to grow up, get out of this practice.
(07:28):
What are you going to do? And a lot of
them said that they wanted to get their own either
bacha bossy or a whole group of them. The words
stable was tossed around a lot, like they actually wanted
to make enough money and have enough resources to have
a stable of young dancing boys that they could keep
and have at parties. Sure, because it's now become associated
(07:49):
with UM status in a lot of these groups where
they'll even have UM, say like local commanders or will
have uh their boys. Their individual boys kind of compete
to see who is the best boy, and it's a
source of pride for these for these men. Yeah, it's
very common among powerful commanders. A a former senior Muja
(08:12):
Hadeen commander said he got a boy because every commander
had one and he wanted to be able to compete.
I mean, this just sounds like they're talking about fancy
cars instead of actual people. Um. There's a sort of
a creepy, very creepy quote from a batch of Bozzi
pimp who they called the German because his mustache was blonde. Uh.
(08:33):
He said, I go to every province to have happiness
and pleasure with boys, and he points out that when
some of the boys aren't good for dancing, they'll be
used for other purposes. And it took the reporter. This
was from a front Line, a PBS documentary. Um. After
he was pressed for what these other purposes were, he said,
I mean for sodomy and other sexual activities and a
(08:56):
lot of times if they if these boys resist, they
might be killed. Right when a reporter talked with some
of the dancing boys, Um, a thirteen year old offered
that some of them are killed if they stray. He said,
if you don't please them, they will beat you and
people get killed. And in fact, a fifteen year old
was reportedly murdered after trying to escape from his master,
(09:17):
a well known drug baron and warlord. And Um it
was a police officer actually who supplied the weapon that
killed the boy. Um And while he was sentenced to
sixteen years, he got out after only a few months. Well,
and that theme comes up a lot to Caroline, where
there are these police officials who might be involved in
facilitating this UH, their government officials who are actually in
(09:41):
charge of preventing sexual exploitation who have been found at
these uh Bacha Bazi parties and UH. In a very
depressing note to this story, there was a Wiki leaks
cable from Afghanistan that was released revealing that the u
u s. Government contractor Dine Corps through a party for
(10:02):
Afghan security recruits with yeah, they brought in actually like
through a party brought in the beardless boys to dance
and entertain them. Uh. That is, and that's using taxpayer money.
That's terrifying. Yeah. Well, the UN Special Representative for Children
(10:22):
and Armed Conflict calls this whole thing a form of slavery,
rightly so. And she calls for the prosecution of the
men for participating because, you know, using using the reasoning
of we're not going to get them to stop by asking,
We're not going to get them to stop by saying, hey,
wouldn't you like to go bowling and stuff. It's you know,
it's hard to root out a practice that has been
(10:43):
in place for centuries. Um. But you know, she says
this that we need to prosecute these people, um and
really punish them. But you know, the reporter that the
PBS reporter um witnessed local police officers at an illegal
Botcha Bossi parties. So it is very widespread and part
of the culture. Yeah. And we haven't been able to
put offer any any statistics for precisely how many boys
(11:07):
Afghan boys are involved in this because it's so kind
of shrouded in secrecy. It's like people acknowledge that it happens,
but they're not going to name any names and they're
not gonna share any kinds of details even on I
mean I went on YouTube before we came in the
into the studio and they're they're public videos of the
(11:30):
boys of the boys dancing. I mean, it's nothing sexually explicit.
It's it's Afghan boys dressed up like women, dancing like women,
UM and surrounded by UH by dozens of older bearded men. Right. Yeah.
The there was an article in the Guardian UM where
one young dancer said men like women and they're not available,
so we act like women. And that just goes back
(11:52):
to the segregation of the society. And so if you
want to look at a pretty lady dancing, but that's
just not an option. UM, I guess they make their
own entertainment using children. And in seeking to explain the
roots cultural roots of this practice aside from just pure
gender segregation, UM, there was apport a report put out
(12:15):
by the of the U. S. Military's Human Terrain Team
that had gone into UM Afghanistan and was particularly focused
on the UH the Pashtun region, and it noted that
Kandahar's Kandahar Provinces a long, artistic and poetic tradition idealizes
or idolizes, I should say, the beardless boy as the
(12:37):
icon of physical beauty, and nineteenth century British authors reported
their observation of Poshtun fighters seeing poetic odes of longing
for you young boys, and it was kind of that
that does sort of echo, you know, similar kinds of
things that we see back with uh, like they said
earlier with the Greeks doing similar similar similarly exalting the
(12:59):
young uh pre pubescent boy um. And then in an
article from San Francisco Gate from two thousand ten, sociologists
and anthropologists attribute the problem to again going back to Islam,
to perverse interpretations of Islamic law. Right the I think
the Human Train Team report also kind of talked about how, um,
(13:20):
it's not Islam saying necessarily that it's okay to be
doing these things. It's it's local interpretations. And they sort
of talked about how um, much of the local populace
does not read the Quran, that it's sort of interpreted
for them by local authorities. And so you know, when
(13:40):
that stuff gets ingrained in a in a society, in
a region, it's sort of hard to um break away
from it right, and that's why I think it is
important to UM, you know, to emphasize that bascha bazi
is not an Islamic practice. And on. On the upside,
there does seem to be a greater effort by NGOs
(14:03):
UM to call more attention to this and try to
stop this sexual exploitation of young boys UM. For instance,
in January of this year, two thousand eleven, the United
Nations Assistants Mission in Afghanistan UH and their National Action
Plan addressed the recruitment of underage children into the national
(14:23):
Afghan National Security Forces and the sexual exploitation of children
by government officials, security forces, and civil society because there
this is sort of a joint effort to stop the
recruitment of child soldiers in the area and also sexual
violence against children, which would include brought you right, and
(14:45):
they sort of uh, they they talk about boys being
recruited at a very young age into the military as
part of this whole taking them away from their mothers,
taking them away from any female influence. And what it
kind of sounds like to me, Kristen, is that these
reports and these articles are sort of insinuating that a
female presence is what sort of is lacking and that
(15:08):
if there were more of a female presence, perhaps some
of these horrific things wouldn't be happening. But because women
are considered unclean, dirty, to be avoided, to be totally removed,
UM that they are actually exposed to more violence. And
boys don't get to see their mothers, their sisters being
treated like normal people. They are instead treated like dogs
(15:30):
basically right, and it only perpetuates UM that cycle. So
I think that I think that about sums it up
by It was something that I had not heard of
until UM last week when a friend of ours actually
sent us an email she listened to the Child Bride's episode,
said Hey, you guys should talk about botcha boss, right,
(15:53):
because yeah, it's not just small girls who are being
exploited all over the world's boys too. Yeah, and this
is just one UM. It's important to put this, I think,
in the in the broader context of sex trafficking and
sex slavery that is unfortunately happening all over the world,
not just in Afghanistan, not just in the East, but
also here in the United States, right, And if you
(16:13):
want to learn more about it, I really recommend going
to UM, the PBS website and looking at botch Bozzy. Um.
They have the transcript of the report. They have video
you can watch they have a conversation with the reporter
and the producer. It's all really interesting and it's something
that I had never heard of. Yeah, and I'll toss
the link up on Facebook so people can easily check
it out. And if you would like to send us
(16:36):
an email about Bacha Bozzi, our email address is mom
Stuff at how stuff works dot com and I have
just one email here to read. This is in response
to a recent episode on women in Science, and this
is from Roberto that I just listened to the Women
(16:58):
in Science episodes at I was washing dishes. I know
I'm a man's man, and although I heard a few
familiar names, I also didn't hear others. So I thought
maybe i'd share some of my own favorites in case
you happen to do some follow up installment later on.
Emily do Chatelai, who contributed the square in Einstein's E
equal MC square equation. Lies Mightner, who proved Einstein's theory
(17:24):
of matter energy equivalence. Caroline Porko, who is a planetary
scientist also known as ms MMS Saturn h Susan Greenfield,
although she's been putting her foot in her mouth recently
with her ideas about the impact of modern media on
young brains. Sarah Blaffer hardy and that's hardy without any vowel.
(17:46):
It's just hr d one not a type of anthropologists
and primatologists. And there's Lida cos Me Days. I think
I really butcher that you ever want to correct us
lead to Facebook. She's a leading evolutionary psychologists, so I
should probably know how to pronounce her name and also
be able to cite her work with since evolutionary psychology
comes up so often. And then we have Hypatia, who
(18:10):
was one of the first mathematicians in the ancient world,
and she was also killed by a riotous group of
people who threw bricks at her because they were not
too happy that one of the leading mathematicians at the
time was a woman. Don't be scared women women who
like math. It's great, it is great. You should not
(18:32):
stone them to death. And thanks Roberto for sending this
list of a female scientists and thinkers and mathematicians. Keep
them coming, folks. Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot
com is our email address, and you can always visit
us over on Facebook, Like us, follow us on Twitter
at mom Stuff Podcast, and you can head over to
(18:53):
our blog during the week, It's stuff Mom Never Told
You at how Stuff works dot com. Be sure to
check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Join how Staff Work staff as we explore the most
promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The houstef works iPhone
app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes. Brought to
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