Fueling my rage about the Let Me Play Sexy Asian Woman Halloween foolishness are stories like this where, everyday, Filipinas leave home to work all over the world to send money back home to support their families. Vulnerable, powerless, and alone, these women are often trafficked across the globe and forced into modern day slavery, forced into inhuman conditions of work, abuse, and humiliation. Taken from the linked article from the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women – Asia Pacific:

Arriving in Dammam in April 2005, they were fetched and brought to an enormous house. They were not made to work for a week. When they asked the ‘caretaker’ inside the house as to what their work will be, Lina was told that they will be sex slaves. Anna and Lina were very scared and wanted to go home to the Philippines immediately but they could not leave the villa. The following day, a man referred to as the Prince or Chairman by the caretaker arrived and the women were ordered to enter his room and immediately take their clothes off. The two were shaken and begged the Prince to allow them to go home, as they cannot do what is being asked of them to do. They stated that they don’t like that kind of job, but the Prince was enraged and raped Anna first. Lina, who was sobbing uncontrollably and had difficulty breathing, was made to leave the room.

The Philippines is a nation characterized by the “brain drain,” where most professionals and the skilled, educated workers leave their homeland to earn a better wage elsewhere. However, the Philippines is also a nation that experiences a “care drain.” This phrase was adopted by Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russel Hochschild in their book, “Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy,” to describe the trend of third world women taking care of other children and leaving their own. Filipino women can be found all over the world taking domestic jobs to earn wages for their own families they leave behind. In this mass exodus of women, many Filipinas are captured in faux employment contracts and end up in foreign lands, trafficked across seas to work as sex slaves; raped and tortured for undetermined amounts of time.