To understand the slave, one has to understand two separate concepts; cognitive dissonance, and spirituality—cognitive dissonance as described as the ability to hold two contradictory ideas at once and spirituality as described as the belief in spirit in accordance with the individual human’s Ego. Humankind is one of very few creatures with intellect, culture, and language, and therefore, the individual human Ego has often come to the conclusion that this gift of discernment was bestowed in order to command what that Ego deems as lesser.

When a person is handed power and money—imaginary, human conceived concepts with real world consequences—that person often allows the Ego to believe that these things were earned fairly or are even divinely protected when it is only lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, pride, and envy of men that have created and bestowed any and all money and power currently. To “be God all the way,” (Iceberg Slim, 1969) is to decide for oneself, to oneself, and by oneself that one has the authority to lord power. Egos decided that other unique souls are lesser, which is not work of an Ego to do.

The conversation of sex trafficking in the United States must include a conversation of intersectionality. In 2023, an American movie called the Sound of Freedom released which grossed about $248 million worldwide by December 27 of 2023. This movie gave a wildly inaccurate portrayal of the demographic of people who are being trapped and traded as slaves into sex work and/or labor in and from the US.

The Sound of Freedom (2023) is a fictitious world where one must protect middle-class, white babies from being stolen out of carriages when the unfortunate reality is pure evil of another kind; the most likely targets for human trafficking are teenage girls who belong to an oppressed group; namely colored, queer, homeless or impoverished (~40% of the US homeless population are disowned, queer teenagers).

In 1969, a pimp by the name of Iceberg Slim published a book called Pimp: the Story of My Life, a book filled with violence, malice, and disrespect towards the black women he owned in which he refers to only as ‘hoes’ and ‘bitches’. Critics today call Iceberg Slim a ‘cultural icon’ and a ‘literary legend’ because he is a product of systemic racism mixed with a cunning intellect misused for a life of exploitation of the women his Ego believes are lesser; black women.

Soon after the publication of Iceberg Slim’s book in 1973, Black players: the secret world of black pimps by Christina and Richard Milner was published. As a tool of extensive and comprehensive local fieldwork, we can immerse ourselves literarily with these pimps of 1970 who often hated women like Iceberg Slim (pp. 159), and attempting to cast off the shackles of slavery (pp. 224) through becoming the slave owner. To pimps, Manhood is dominance (pp. 223), otherwise known online as the hot buzzword: “Toxic Masculinity.”