Ashton Kutcher is engaged in a little twitter war with the Village Voice over their adult-oriented personals section, backpage.com. Ashton is criticizing The Voice for allegedly providing a forum for underage prostitution and human trafficking, which is his cause celebre through his recently formed DNA Foundation. This all sounds very important and laudable, only The Voice just ran a piece that sheds light onto the issue of human trafficking and questions whether it’s as widespread and as ignored as Ashton and his wife Demi’s foundation make it out to be. Both Ashton and The Voice have vested interests in this very hot button issue.
Don’t mess with Ashton Kutcher! That’s the message he and his seven million Twitter followers have made very clear after he became embroiled in a bitter war with Village Voice, which he claims is profiting from victims of child prostitution.
The actor began his quest to bring down the paper after it published an article about he and his wife, Demi Moore. Village Voice claimed the pair had used exaggerated numbers when campaigning against sex-trafficking.
Ashton then used his Twitter social networking page to contact huge businesses such as American Airlines, Disney and Domino’s Pizza to get them to drop their advertising from the site.
“Hey @disney @dominos are you aware that you are advertising on a site that owns and operates a digital brothel?” he tweeted.
Now despite stating he is ready to put his battle ‘to bed’ he has launched another scathing attack on his blog.
Kutcher writes that Village Voice has a vested interest in downplaying the problem of sex trafficking. The paper and its website end with a huge section called backpage.com that advertises jobs, cars for sale and apartments for rent, and also escort services, “body rubs” and “adult jobs.”
“The Village Voice has repeatedly attempted to reduce sex trafficking to an ‘under-age’ issue,” Ashton wrote.
“And while they claim to spend millions of dollars fighting underage sex trafficking, they fail to address the countless number of girls that are over the age of 18 and being forced by their pimps and traffickers to post ads on Backpage.com. I have personally had conversations with many of these victims and have heard horror stories confirming this.”
Kutcher launched a campaign called ‘Real Men Don’t Buy Girls’ but was angered by the article published by the Voice called, ‘Real Men Get Their Facts Straight’.
In his latest blog he suggests is selling victims next to couches and bicycles and claims they are trying to ‘discredit’ his fight against the cause.
He signs off with a warning: “As for advertisers, it’s my intention to continue to make them aware of who you are and what happens on your platform. They can do with that what they choose.”
[From Radar Online]
I get that Ashton and Demi want to protect kids and women from human trafficking and that’s admirable. Whether it’s 200,000, 800 or 8 kids that are being exploited yearly, it’s one too many. It’s good that this guy has a cause and that he’s raising awareness of it, even if it may be slightly misguided. (And I’m not saying it is, although I found the Voice article convincing.) However, he’s now going after the Village Voice and their advertisers hard right after they posted a negative article questioning his knowledge of the issue he claims to hold dear. This is a guy who blogs Internet hoaxes without checking snopes and has admitted he’s prepared for armageddon. The ad compaign for this charity was ridiculous. I don’t find Ashton an authority on much and it doesn’t help his argument that he’s striking out at the Voice right after they ran a well researched article questioning his cause.
However, Ashton did post some letters to his website from the Seattle Police department asking the Village Voice to help combat underage prostitution by running an age verification ID check for the classifieds in their “backpage” section. This seems completely reasonable and like something the Voice should institute. It just strikes me that there’s a better way to ensure that happens.
Ashton is shown on 5/18/11. Credit: WENN.com
i do hate to find myself defending him, because i don’t think i’ve ever admired him, but when his twatterfewd started a few days ago i clicked some links on the internet to look at what the real numbers were-and it seems that not only does no one know what they are, there’s no hope of their ever knowing because of interest and money and laziness? so the village voice is using numbers from arrested, and ashton is using numbers from clinics and other social institutions that provide aid to these victims while they’re in prostitution and after. the FBI head of the prostitution investigation estimated the numbers closer to the 300,000 ashton likes to use.
what i wonder though, and maybe someone can enlighten me here, is why would the village voice care to fudge the numbers toward the lowball end? what’s in it?
Kutcher is showing his age (immaturity) with his war against the VV. Perhaps he should take on every other city publication that has a similar back page section if he is so damn concerned. What about Craigslist? Seems to me a little odd that after a story about the two of them, he is going like gangbusters on VV.
The city where I reside has it’s own type of VV with back page ads like VV, and the same advertisers. If you are going to crusade, do it to every paper.
credit where its due, I’m really happy that he’s using twitter to bring the focus on this issue.
human trafficking and underage prostitution are two of the worst aspects of human race and are more widespread than we’d like to know.
EDIT: about the numbers, any number is an estimation, there are no exact numbers. Who accounts for all the sexual underage tourism to poor countries that is never reported??
I agree that any number of girls, women being sold into sexual slavery and who are sexually abused is one number too many. However, I question whether Ashton Kutcher is the right person to deliver the message. This is a guy who admits to knocking girls up and leaving them, who is highly suspected of sleeping with a total stranger on his couch just over a year or so ago, and who twitters pictures of his plastic wife’s Barmaid Barbie ass. Also, one of his best friends was on Patty Stanger’s show on Bravo and that dude completely objectified women. I know Kutcher shouldn’t be judged by the people he hangs out with but it does say a lot about the kind of “man” he is. In short, I think Kutcher has very little respect for women and I imagine that is “foundation” is actually a tax shelter.
There is a lot of information out there for anyone to read. My thoughts on child abductions are that many of those children are trafficked, even here in the US
I didn’t like the ad campaign. I get the slogan.. “Real Men Don’t buy girls” but the campaign was not for me. It didn’t feel serious.
I think he and Demi wanted to get involved. They are getting advice from a well known man that is involved in Celebrity Causes. Ashton and Demi seem serious about it and I applaud that. I think maybe he is using the VV to show that this issue transcends International issues but can have an impact on your own neighborhoods and communities too.
I don’t know how sincere Ashton is about stopping sex trafficking and sex slavery, but it is happening all over the world and the US.
Runaways, girls kidnapped like Natalee Holloway, slaves in the middle east, children in Thailand and India, ‘domestic workers’, and scores more are an ugly reality. I applaud ANYONE who sheds light on this blight, even callow Ashton, and shame on Village Voice for ‘minimizing’ the scourge of sex slavery.
The sex pages of any paper should have, at the very least, age verification.
Hate to say it but Ashton has the moral highground here, not sure about the exact accuracy of his stats but what exactly is the Voice’s interest in picking apart what is unquestionably happening around the world, especially in poverty stricken smaller countries in Eastern Europe? What do they have to gain by detracting attention from the oppression of sex slavery? Yuck, and seriously all of those ads are no doubt skeeze infested and I would be more surprised if there weren’t underage/desperate girls employed by most of the ads. Shame on the Voice for not knowing what it is they sell in their own paper.
Kutcher would do better to not respond and just keep working on raising awareness. Good works speak for themselves. This ‘feud’ is making both parties look ridiculous.
Er, anyone actually READ the Voice’s article? It doesn’t discuss international trafficing. It speaks to the complete lack of factual support for the numbers in the US and that the estimates are based on a very non-specific definition of “at risk” in the US.
Typical Hollywood-good intent. Crappy follow through. I agree with the idea that PS announcements do less than funding shelters for these kids and funding task forces. John Walsh did a pretty good job.
ita sapphire
also, I’ve been following this on Twitter and honestly this Celebitchy page has more info than I could figure out with what’s-his-name was tweeting about. (off the subject, but fwiw, if you want to follow someone hilarious on Twitter, follow Blake Shelton)
@Mememe:
I read up on this debate because I was sort of like WTF, why would anyone not want to help exploited people!
I read the Village Voice article, and the point they made with it was that there are several charities, organizations, and government funded task forces that have received millions of tax dollars to help combat child trafficking in the US. Of all the time and money spent, very few kids have been rescued and rehabilitated.
It seems that while the 300,000 figure (number of children in the US that are being trafficked each year) that many of these people use to garner support may be a ruse to get donations and other federal monies.
I don’t know what Kutcher’s motives are in making this his fight. I really hope that all of those who champion this cause genuinely want to help these kids get their lives back. But when the government and politicians get involved, you kind of have to wonder.
Here’s the article if anyone wants to read it: http://www.villagevoice.com/content/printVersion/2651144/
@sapphire I did READ the article and yes it makes the point OVER and OVER that no one knows the exact number of US underage prostitutes and/or sex slaves. Fine.
What I don’t understand is the whole tone of the article, starting with the headline. They clearly shot the messengers, Kutcher and Moore, and took every opportunity for cheap shots at them (i.e.”Sex trafficking is a grim problem, and not one actors know a lot about—even if Moore played a stripper in a movie…”) Let me say before I continue – I am a major NON-fan of Kutcher and Moore. An anti-fan.
But if Kutcher and others are exaggerating the problem, it seemed as if the VV was trying everything it could to minimize the problem. Morally, that just seems off.
Even if it is just “a few hundred” kids involved in underage prostitution as their personally contracted expert surmises, isn’t that too many? Why call the concern a “sex trafficking panic”? Wouldn’t you panic if your kid got involved in prostitution?
At what point, or in this case what number of humans, do we need to reach for a cause to matter or be ok for people/celebrities to bring to the public consciousness? Do you know that According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration an estimated 10,839 people died in alcohol-impaired driving crashes in 2009. Think about ALL the focus on drunk driving, does that 11K is deaths justify it – or by VV terms, are we just in a panic?
According to the FBI, in 2009, only 8 people died as a result from Hate Crimes in the U.S. http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2009/data/table_02.html About 5,000 people are victims of hate crimes. There are many concerted efforts and legislation trying to combat Hate Crimes… however, the VV might say, based on these figures, there is a Hate Crimes “panic” (if they apply the same logic of this article).
OK, so , the VV is not wrong on the facts, but is so busy trying to cut down others in the article that they entirely miss the point: One of anything can be one too many. VV – major fail.
Ashton Kutcher is so full of himself it is embarrassing. That he has taken on such a serious issue with the intellect of a 2 year old makes it even more so.
What I get from this is VV wrote an article not agreeing with trafficking but just to provide a more accurate number. Which was not done at all. They used police reported of those busted. Which means if they weren’t caught then there is no record. Some people are better at not getting caught than others. Their number is just as inaccurate as Ashton’s. But everyone knows people are more responsive to larger numbers. To get people to rally behind a cause you need numbers plain and simple.
It is quite immature of him to respond that way. Its not like they were saying its not an issue at all or there is nothing wrong with it. All they said is where are people getting this number from. I cant be the only one who thinks that’s a huge range if they had accurate information it wouldn’t be 100,000-300,000 it’d be something like 100-150 thousand or something. I would never trust a statistic as broad as the one that is being thrown around.
Also I feel his little campaigns are not helping the issue at all. I agree with some who says it takes away from the seriousness of the issue. The thing is he is getting more people talking about the nonsensical ads than the issue at hand. They are distractions. Most people do not like to sit and think about all the bad things going on in the world. If we did we would all be depressed all the time. And the silly ads distract to the point that we find ourselves criticizing them for not making sense than talking about the cause they were suppose to bring awareness to.
Bottom line if he wants to be taken seriously he needs to start behaving in a more mature manner. Instead of acting like a child when someone criticizes him. He should take it and use it to help himself improve. And VV needs to not focus on the superfluous number and try focusing on the issue.
I can’t believe I’m defending Ashton but he definitely has the moral high ground. The Village Voice seems more concerned with making money then standing up for a worthy cause or owning up to making mistakes on this “backpage” of theirs that offers booty calls and body massage. Didn’t VV used to be an alternative magazine that would have brought attention to human trafficking rather than trying to downplay it? Sad that they are now on the wrong side of this fight. Ashton is always a clown and can be immature, but I think he is smarter than a lot of people give him credit for. He can use social media to bring in attention, dollars, and support for nearly anything. I’m glad that despite his image he is doing something commendable in the area of women and children’s rights. Good for him.
I dont know. Celebrities using their fame to do good is always good if its for real. I wonder and I sure this does happen if celebrities attach themselves to causes for their image more so then to make any change. I just can’t dislike Kelso on this and human traficking and underage prostitution shoud be made aware of no matter how poorly done. At least those words get out there.
i think anything that brings awareness and discussion to such a topic can only be a good thing. while i generally find kutcher harmless, i think he makes a great point by saying that it’s not only underage sex trafficking that needs to be looked at. there are plenty of adult victims involved too, and i do think that these victims are probably exploited all the time via websites like craigslist and backpage.
Maybe you guys should get Kim Kardashian involved, that would just top it off…
@Pyewacket: The paper in your city may be owned by the Village Voice. I worked for a local paper that was bought by them at one time.
As long as they’re running advertisements for prostitution and not verifying the age of the sex worker, they’re a part of the problem. There’s often a difference between editorial’s opinion and the opinion of the sales people.
If the best defense the Village Voice has for itself is that Ashton’s numbers are wrong and to launch personal attacks against him, then obviously, the Village Voice is wrong. How about some proof that those ads of theirs are not used to traffic minors sexually…
Kutcher acts like a petulant child, who has no problem dishing it out but ooooh boy the little man-child cannot take one ounce of criticism.
He looks absolutely ridiculous everytime he responds to criticism this way…like…”How dare you question me? Do you know who I am?” Self-important tool, the head on that hammer is too big to fit in the tool box” Talking ego here, with the litte boy body.
Kutcher (whom I am no fan of) may be a “tool.” But he may actually shed some light on a very serious problem. If this “tool” can save just one child then I might support more of his endeavors.
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