22:28 It plays into what goes, why these men may perhaps been victims. Adam have you ever heard of survival sex? Survival sex... No it implies though that just to stay alive you'll do whatever it takes including having sex with people So let's hit Miss Tiffany Graham She gave a TED talk I'd always love going on the TED because she gives great information Miss Tiffany Graham on homelessness and sex survival sex. Let me tell you a story Andy which is not his real name left home when he was 14 years old He identifies as queer, which means that in his case? He does not identify with the traditional understandings of gender or sexuality the homeless
23:22 The home in which he was raised, however, was not a nurturing setting for a child whose identity was constructed in these ways. He was also physically and sexually abused in this home. The environment was so oppressive that he could not come out of the closet and at one point he attempted to commit suicide. He knew that if he did not leave, he would try again, so he did. So by the age of 14 He found himself on his own and he did not have the means to take care of himself. So he began trading sex for food, for shelter and for transportation. He did not reach out to social service providers because he feared quite reasonably that they would either send him to foster care or they would send him back to his parents just to go show you survival sex is when a person trait as you stated
24:15 when a person trades the only commodity they have, their bodies for things that they need. And this is a huge problem certainly with homeless youth everywhere This is a huge problem and clip two goes into that problem. Andy's story is not unusual, and it highlights the question that many people have raised in the wake of the Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage after spending more than 2 decades focused on gaining relationship recognition rights What will the movement for LGBTQ equality focus on next?
24:55 Many options have presented themselves, but one of the most pressing issues is the problem of teen homelessness and its particular impact on the LGBTQ community. So youth homelessness defined as homelessness affecting anyone under the age of 25 What does it look like especially for LGBTQ kids? In the two most recent studies conducted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, they reported the following information to Congress. Over 190 thousand youth and children were homeless on any given night in 2013. In 2013 over 500 thousand youth experienced a homelessness episode that lasted for longer than one week
25:43 Unaccompanied homeless children and youth, in other words those who are not with their families accounted for approximately 8% of the overall population of homeless youths. And within that group itself 86 percent of them were between the ages 18 and 24 so of course that means 14 percent of this group were under the age of eighteen Now among this group unaccompanied homeless youth Studies vary, but most suggest that between 20 and 40% of them are LGBTQ. And most of the studies have settled on a number that is closer to 40%. Wow. Some big numbers there. That's some big numbers. Yeah. And we see they brought this information to Congress
26:38 But I haven't heard this as anyone on the Democratic side talking point to address. Well, there's a couple things going on—I'll interject that—the homelessness issue is always addressed separately you don't hear much about survival sex at all and whenever they're talking, whenever they the news media politicians talk about homelessness the only thing they appear to be able to talk about in conjunction with that is affordable housing. So there's no other conversation, there's no other real descriptive talk about what it is... In fact
27:17 We've gotten to a point in our society where we can't even say homeless. You and I are touching the third rail there, you gotta say experiencing homelessness so yeah it's all taboo. Well I like unhoused! It's not funny, but it is comical. It's comical how they talk about it though. It's actually extremely disappointing now the one thing I want to say Is that one of these buck victims was 55? Was not that young but maybe you'll get to that later. Yes That's correct. But the other two were very young men? Yes, in their 20s So I'm making the point that to give context to the victims Yeah You know they've been and you know as did God say he didn't have anywhere to go yeah Ed book told him come live with me And The point i'm going to get to is there Is a certain class of people
28:20 as we see with Epstein, and now as we see with Ed Buck that prey on the low class. So you have to ask yourself is the homelessness allowed to happen because it creates a large inventory for these types of predators to prey from? Oh wow yeah Moe that's a big question I know, but let's get into clip three. Survival sex is an enormous issue too. LGBTQ youths between the ages of 10 and 25 are 70% more likely to engage in survival sex while 80% of homeless transgender youths are more likely to have engaged in survival sex than homeless cisgender youths
29:18 Now, what do we mean by survival sex in principle? Survival sex is part of the wider commercial sex trade people who engage in survival sex to do so because they literally have no other way to survive So they exchange sex for money. They exchange sex for shelter They exchanged it for food clothing or any other good which is a necessity of life Or drugs obviously or drugs. So I asked a question and i'm being serious when I ask this question that we see that a person like Epstein he was, uh I think the correct word is purveyor for people that were into the type of thing that he was providing which would be young girls yes and in this clip that we just played she said kids as young as 10
30:20 Ten years old, our participants... I talked to Alan Graham from a very successful homelessness project here in Austin and he said this is so... that with young kids is not just perpetrated by old rich guys. It is part of the homelessness experience, sadly. This happens all the time and it's actually something people really don't talk about much I'm surprised that this came on the TED Talk You can't find many clips where people will talk about that I had to dig for this Yeah, I bet And you are right So what that leads me into