There is one long main street in Draganesti, a paved two-lane road that is filled with beat-up cars, horse-drawn carts and stray dogs. On either side of the street are buildings painted a rainbow of different colors, with sturdy metal gates forming one continuous wall along the sidewalk. I live in a white house with a green gate near the Roma section of town.
Across the street is a row of enormous, gray concrete houses with tall windows. They look like glass castles. These houses have intricate roofs like a temple, tiered blue shingles and silver accoutrements, all behind a red metal gate and yellow concrete wall. These are the houses owned by the rich Roma.
In a small town with an unemployment rate hovering around 60%, the houses are surprising. As I walked past them every day to ministry, I would try to snatch glimpses inside the big windows or through an open gate. But even though there are no curtains, I couldn’t see in.
When my friend Jami asked one of our contacts, George, how anyone could afford such large houses in Draganesti, he shrugged and said, “Trafficking.”
She asked him to explain and he said, “They take girls from the surrounding villages and sell them into prostitution in Bucharest.”
“Take- as in kidnap?”
“Da.” Yes.
According to the U.S. State Department, one third of Romania’s trafficking victims are underage girls. There are whole villages in Romania with no girls over the age 18. They are all gone, disappeared behind a pane of glass in Bucharest.
Bucharest. Even as obviously American as I am, I felt a prickle of fear as I passed the entrances to “massage parlors” near our hostel. The red light district in Old Town Bucharest comes alive around midnight. There are crowds of people entering and exiting bars, and narrow walkways between outdoor cafes. A blur of neon lights. Naked women dancing in windows. I was grateful that my friend Caleb was behind me as I pushed through a group of men huddled outside of a glorified brothel, leering.
These are the places the girls are sold to, places with windows meant to turn them into meat, lit with neon and dark enough so the men won’t remember the humanity of the body they are buying.
I haven’t met any of these women like my friend Jami did. I have only seen the profits from their abuse, standing across the street with equally impenetrable windows.
It makes me wonder about the Roma women I see on the sidewalk. I know they are Roma from their long skirts and hair, their heavy gold earrings and head coverings. The women walk with children, holding them on their hips and clinging to their hands as their daughters take tiny steps beside them.
The women living in these homes, the ones looking out from the tall, sunlit windows- what do they see? Do the windows frame the crimes so they don’t have to look at the families losing their daughters outside? Are they simply grateful its not them, or their own daughters? Or do the windows make it bearable, provide enough protection so the women don’t have to think about the disgrace of it?
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But these questions aren’t entirely fair. It isn’t only the Roma’s fault for living in the houses built on slave labor. The root of the problem, the thing that traps girls behind windows at brothels and Roma women in glass castles, is patriarchy.
The patriarchy is the dominant framework in our society that gives men power and excludes women, saying they are lesser. It says women can be sold like cattle, can be taken from their homes, can “ask for it” by the clothes that they wear. The patriarchy creates shame around the women forced into sex trafficking. It says that they should be ashamed of being impure, “damaged goods.” The patriarchy makes pornography something sneaky and shameful, while perpetuating powerful images that tell men that women exist for their pleasure. It says that paying a prostitute for sex can be a consensual relationship, and masquerades as freedom.
Ultimately, the patriarchy says that women aren’t people like men are people.
Make no mistake: Jesus does not uphold the patriarchy.
This is what gives me a glimmer of hope, when I want to throw stones at the Roma women who won’t protest their lifestyle, or at the men with predatory eyes outside the brothel, or at the people who would judge a prostitute rather than love her: Jesus does not uphold the patriarchy, and he operates out of the deepest of mercies. The ultimate grace.
So the stones in my hands, the ones I want to hurl at people, I will instead aim at windows.
The panes of glass keeping girls in brothels and massage parlors.
The tall, cold windows in the Romani houses, shutting out the pain and suffering of the women outside.
And at the windows of my own society, the frosted glass of patriarchy that keeps me from seeing and fighting against suffering. Because I am no better than the Roma women, if I don’t look unflinchingly at the way my life has profited off the exploitation of others.
Jesus didn’t come to throw stones at people, but to restore holiness to the structures humanity corrupted, including the deepest recesses of our hearts. And he flipped a few tables in the process.
So when I throw stones, I will shatter the things Jesus never meant for creation and I will reach through to the other side, ask if we can walk forward together, and look for grace.
