A lot of public attention is given to the gender relations between men and women in normal daily interactions, in the corporate world, and in gender inequalities. However, sometimes we forget about the darker side to gender relations, such as the sex trafficking that occurs right under our noses. From time to time we hear of stories of child abductions turned sex trafficking on shows like 20/20, Lifetime movies, and through movies like Taken, but even these seem far removed from our daily lives. In this NY Times Op-ed (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/19/opinion/kristof-not-quite-a-teen-yet-sold-for-sex.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&ref=global-home&adxnnlx=1334895006-/rBrZT7lrIjbw7bxGTes1Q), I learned that one of the US's biggest sex trafficking websites is owned by a media company backed by Goldman Sachs, among a few other financial groups. Not that I ever thought Goldman Sachs was the pinnacle of all things moral, but this surprised me.

On a personal level, on a recent trip to Las Vegas my boyfriend and I witnessed what he thought was an exchange between a pimp, a prostitute, and a "taker," for lack of better vocabulary on the matter. The girl was crying and looked heartbroken and pained. I thought I was just witnessing a boyfriend-girlfriend fight. However, in a place like Las Vegas, one can never be too sure of these things and no matter what the actual situation was, it definitely made me uncomfortable to believe that such a disturbing thing was happening right before my eyes. Without insight and knowledge of sex trafficking, we can never be sure of what we're looking at, even in our daily lives. Surprisingly, we may be closer than we think to the darker side of gender studies.