Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones. – Bertrand Russell
Maybe it should be called the “Stupor Bowl”, because it so often seems to induce a sort of catatonic state in Americans which renders them susceptible to astonishingly stupid suggestions. I first noticed this in the early ‘90s, when advertisers began a massive campaign to convince American women that having a dozen of your husband’s loud, rowdy friends over for the game so you could prepare them elaborate football-themed snacks they would inhale without even noticing, then stay up past midnight cleaning up after them, was some sort of reason to celebrate. But that paled into insignificance beside the “Abuse Bowl” hysteria of 1993, which claimed that the Super Bowl turned otherwise-normal men into slavering brutes who beat up their wives; neofeminists and their lap dogs ate up the story like Doritos and the somnambulistic US media obediently spread the propaganda without any fact-checking whatsoever. And NBC, the network which carried the event that year, piously broadcast a commercial before the game to remind men that beating their wives was illegal (because obviously it being just plain wrong pales into insignificance behind the vastly more important fact that politicians have made laws against it).
Alas, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose; this year the equally-ridiculous hysteria is that the Super Bowl turns otherwise-normal men into slavering ephebophiles who purposefully and maliciously seek out underage, enslaved prostitutes. Neofeminists and their lap dogs have eaten up the story like Doritos and the somnambulistic US media has obediently spread the propaganda without any fact-checking whatsoever. And a coalition of Christian groups calling themselves “Traffick911” has produced commercials before the game to remind men that statutory rape doesn’t become legal when combined with prostitution (because obviously they think the general public believes that it works the same way that multiplying two negative numbers makes a positive one). And lest you believe that this campaign is based on a sincere desire to stop enslavement specifically rather than on a moral crusade against all prostitution, I call your attention to this “40-Day Prayer Guide” and “Faith-based awareness tool kit” tucked unobtrusively away at the bottom of the page where lazy reporters aren’t likely to find it. It makes interesting reading, especially the special prayer for Interstate 35 and the linking of “child sex trafficking” with porn.
I wonder if all the commenters on Jezebel bothered to read as far as the secret Puritan religious agenda before opening wide and taking the big scam all the way down their throats? Probably not. One tellingly ignorant aspect of the commercial featured here is the claim that “real men don’t buy sex”; since there is no such thing as free pussy, the only kind of man who doesn’t pay for it is one who takes it by force. That makes the commercial’s claim actually “only rapists are real men”, which I somehow think is not the message they were trying to send. Perhaps they meant “real men commit to buying stuff without reading the fine print”, which is essentially the same as “real men are gullible”. Somehow I doubt that’s what they intended either.
But I digress. My initial point is that the Super Bowl seems particularly effective at inducing the “buy whatever we sell you” trance; I’ve even seen sex-positive feminists and a number of escorts repeating the “Super Bowl is a sex trafficking Mecca” catechism. And then there’s this guy, who not only believes the hype but thinks each gypsy whore needs to be paired with a gypsy stripper. Obviously this isn’t going to happen, and what a nightmare for the girls if it did! Nobody wants to split her pie with a bunch of itinerant carpetbaggers. Is it wrong of me to question the City of Arlington’s 300,000 visitor estimate? Admittedly I don’t understand football, but since as I pointed out before Cowboys Stadium only seats 80,000 people, what will the other 220,000 people will be doing there? Trafficking the 10,000-100,000 whores, I guess.
Seriously, though, it isn’t just the Super Bowl; the Olympics and World Cup generate similar hypersuggestibility in human populations. Here’s a detailed examination of the 2006 “World Cup sex trafficking” hysteria in Germany, which you will notice closely resembles our current Super Bowl hysteria in development and degree of exaggeration; the scare can be traced to the soi-disant “Coalition Against Trafficking in Women”, whose hysterical and fallacious propaganda we have discussed before. Luckily, prostitution is legal in Germany, so it was easy to research and publish an expose of the myth like this one. And just for good measure, here’s a report by the Sex Industry Worker Safety Action Group which conclusively shows that there is absolutely no correlation between mega sports events and either sex trafficking or a dramatic increase in prostitution. Also, the Swedish government funded a separate study which also demonstrated the falsity of the World Cup sex trafficking claims.
In 2006 the German authorities uncovered only five cases of “human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation” instead of the imaginary 40,000; in Tampa two years ago there were NO arrests for prostitution during Super Bowl week, and according to this report from the Vancouver Sun:
After the last four [Olympic] Games (Turin 2006, Athens 2004, Salt Lake City 2002, and Sydney 2000), there were almost no confirmed reports on the numbers of sex workers, level of violence or other associated factors. Notably, almost all anecdotal reports suggested no obvious change in level of activity. During the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, where sex work is legal, only a marginal increase in prostitution was reported. In Salt Lake City, one confirmed report indicated that city licenses for escort services increased by only 12 per cent in the period leading up to the Winter Games.
In short, there is literally no evidence whatsoever for any measurable rise in prostitution during such events, much less thousands of trafficked sex slaves. But neither fanatics nor neofeminists nor cops and politicians looking for excuses to further repress citizens ever let the facts get in the way of their agenda, and since major sporting events appear to render the population even more gullible than usual they are the perfect occasions for the dissemination of this kind of propaganda and fear-mongering.
Looking back on all the people I’ve known in my life, I am slowly coming to the conclusion that genetics control what people believe. There is probably a liberal gene and a conservative gene. Maybe a gullible gene and a skeptical gene. A gene that determines whether you tend toward individualism or being a joiner, leader or follower. People don’t seek out perspectives that challenge their beliefs, they seek out perspectives that reinforce and reward their already existing beliefs.
There are a few that can be swayed by a convincing argument, but they are rare.
This topic seems to be one of those topics that resists persuasion and is determined by genes. Many people oppose prostitution simply because they are immediately and mindlessly repulsed by it. It’s not a matter of intelligence. It’s an inherited trait like hair color.
A good part of the public is going to swallow the numbers and believe the paranoia without question because their stance on this topic has already been decided by their genes.
Even if you say, they’ve been brainwashed by moral crusaders at their church, then I would simply say they have a gene that makes them susceptible to that brainwashing.
And before you blurt out how arrogant it is for me to say that about other people, note that I am not referring just to other people. I apparently have a libertarian gene, but most people think libertarians are idiots. They are just as sure of themselves as I am of myself.
I’m beginning to wonder whether all the ranting we do is futile.
I like how you point out
“One tellingly ignorant aspect of the commercial featured here is the claim that “real men don’t buy sex”; since there is no such thing as free pussy, the only kind of man who doesn’t pay for it is one who takes it by force. That makes the commercial’s claim actually “only rapists are real men”, which I somehow think is not the message they were trying to send. Perhaps they meant “real men commit to buying stuff without reading the fine print”, which is essentially the same as “real men are gullible”. Somehow I doubt that’s what they intended either.”
In my experience, the realest of men do indeed buy sex. They just prefer it from real women, not real children.
XX
From what I’ve read on here, it’s OK to make off-topic posts. If this has changed, please let me know. An FYI: the questions I got asked about having sex only friendships I’ve now answered. The answers are on the “Harm Reduction” topic.
I generally have sex after my Superbowl parties, whether with my wife or with another woman of legal age. Never once have I had the desire after devouring snacks and alcohol and cheering for or groaning about what happens in the Superbowl to bang some net-yet-developed preteen girl impressed into sexual slavery. Given the fact that the girls working for me received calls asking for their companionship after last year’s Superbowl, I’m willing to bet most other guys looking to roll in the sheets with females haven’t either.
I like to find a woman who hates football and have sex with her instead of watching the Superbowl. There are a lot of unattended women around that particular Sunday.
Actually, I’ve got a sweetie who doesn’t care for football, so I don’t spend much time looking for some football widow, but I thought… oh I don’t know what I thought. That the image of me skulking around and screwing random women while their hubbies are too absorbed in the game to notice was too cute for words, I guess.
When it comes to the Olympics, the athletes at least have each other.
http://www.tmz.com/2008/08/24/olympic-village-more-sex-than-woodstock/
I didn’t even realize that the Super Bowl led to more domestic violence, but now that I know, I made a note on my calendar for February 6th to “Beat the wife”.
My husband doesn’t much care for watching football or any other spectator sport; his opinion is “I’ve got better things to do that watch a bunch of millionaires play a kids’ game.” 🙂
Actually, I don’t watch any sports which is bad news for someone in Alabama. I find that the rivalry between Alabama university football fans extremely annoying. Down here, if you don’t have a favorite team, everyone gets kind of uncomfortable, as if you just asked for help with your colostomy bag.
Thank you for having something sane to say on this subject.
I work teaching college students about consent and trying to connect them with related causes (like child abuse & trafficking) and these kinds of irresponsible, hysterical campaigns just steam-roll over their (sometimes limited) critical thinking skills – NOT helpful!
You’re very welcome, Samantha; I’m always happy to hear from rational people! Tomorrow I’ll link an article which appeared in this week’s Dallas Observer on the subject; when I read some of the comments on that article I was reminded of the old saw about leading a horse to water…
Don’t know if you’re aware of this, but it seems MSNBC has a marathon of trafficking documentaries on tonight:
Sex Slaves in America
Sex Slaves: The Teen Trade
Sex Slaves in the Suburbs
Sex Slaves: Texas
Sex Slaves: Minh’s Story
and culminating in the premier of… Trafficked: Slavery in America
I didn’t know, but I can’t say I’m surprised; today is the “Rape Bowl” as one trafficking fanatic called it, and MSNBC couldn’t let itself be outdone by CNN in moral panic ratings, after all.
Clearly society has always had problems with too much masculine enthusiasm together. In olden days they were afraid this might start a revolt, a pogrom; now they think in terms of social ills. There’s something about a purely masculine, testosterone-laden environment that apparently scares even men.
To say nothing of the fact that such Super Bowl (or in my case World Cup) events almost never really play as advertised. Often enough they’re more similar to Movie Night than to Destruction Derbies.
People who think they’ve figured out how society really works to the point of making predictions (‘Super Bowl must mean more violence! I mean, look at the British hooligans! Of course we’re in danger in our own homes, too!’) often seem peculiarly untroubled by their predictions’ tendency not to come true.
It never affected this guy‘s popularity…
Indeed. Remember the South Park episode about John Edwards? 🙂
I have always wondered how these people manage to keep calm when confronted with evidence that they have made wrong predictions.
Obfuscation, prevarication and denial.
One of the most popular ways of dealing with a prophecy’s failing to come true is to redefine failure as a form of success, as with supply-side economics.
Does that fall under “prevarication” or “denial”?
A related form of fudging is to define the terms of someone else’s prediction for them, as when people shoveling through the worst snowstorm in living memory say, “It isn’t warm and sunny today, so obviously the climate isn’t changing a bit!”
I’d have to call that prevarication.
This fits…
http://lesswrong.com/lw/lr/evaporative_cooling_of_group_beliefs/
I also remember reading somewhere (maybe in one of your blog posts, Maggie?) that conferences are better than sports events for prostitutes. I’m wondering if someone — religious rights, neo/radfems — will ever think of spreading anti-prostitution materials at most conferences… Should make for interesting table talk at the next meeting of the LSA! 🙂
Conventions are vastly better, for reasons that should be obvious to those without axes to grind. Men attend them without wives in tow, and their companies pay for lodging and usually even food so they have money to spend. And if a man manipulates his expense reports a bit, he might even get the companies to pay for the girl!
Yes, I’ve noticed cases of this happening even in linguistics conferences. 🙂
Academics were always among my favorite clients. 🙂
I just discovered your blog, via the post on debunking statistics on trafficking. Politically, I’m a libertarian second amendment supporter. In reading your recent posts, it is surprising and a bit disturbing how similar the tactics of our respective oppositions are–an expanded definition of ‘child’, implausible or flat impossible statistics taken as gospel, misleading definitions, and hiring polling companies dedicated to finding the desired results rather than the actual ones.
Disturbing, yes, but I don’t really find it surprising. In a recent post I mentioned a university boyfriend who taught me that “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch”; he also taught me that the so-called “political right” and “political left” are illusions because they BOTH want to control everyone and force the individual to submit to the collective. The so-called “left” wants to do it by taking your money and the fundamental right to self-defense and the so-called “right” wants to do it by telling you what you can say and who you can sleep with, but neither one just wants to let you alone. They both base their arguments on lies just as parents lie to children for a soi-disant “good cause”, ad the expanded definition of “childhood” lets them control a larger segment of the population by fiat.
You know when I finally realized in my gut the total lack of difference between the “right” and “left”? When “feminists” started cooperating with “religious fundamentalists” to oppose women’s sexual choices and the fundies started using feminist “demeaning to women” rhetoric. 🙁
Don’t know if Traffick911 were behind this video (It’s definitely made by some Christian Nutters)
http://tinyurl.com/6j3cehy
You’ve got to watch it to believe it
I’m glad they reveal themselves that way; their conflation of premarital sex and watching porn with stuff like sex trafficking warns normal, well-meaning but misguided people about their agenda. Stuff like that is the worm which will eat this moral panic away from within; unfortunately they never eat fast enough!
That website is called “imnotbuyingit.” And indeed, I’m not buying it.
Isn’t a big part of the problem the perception that men as a whole are just looking to pounce on underage pussy?
I don’t know about any of the other men who post here, but I am always insulted by the claims of groups like Traffik911. The insult me, they insult my father, all my male friends, my female friends, my sister, my mother, my wife, every former girlfriend, and if I look hard enough, I’ll bet these self-rightous fucks have found a way to insult my dogs.
Their view of humanity is patently ridiculous. The fact that ANYONE believes the shit they spew is incredibly disheartening to me.
As an atheist and a humanist I tend to see the best in humanity first. Having just gone thru one of the biggest blizzards in my life and seeing strangers helping strangers with whatever is needed regardless of any barrier that might normally divide the two, then the lies, distortions and hatred that Traffik911 vomits onto the scene is just pathetic.
I have long thought that all their “concern” for these “child prostitutes” is nothing more than a sick desire to control. Nothing but wanna be tyrants who believe that humanity’s natural state is some kind of cannibal caveman.
Perhaps someday once I’m wormfood we’ll figure it out as a society. I think we’ll eventually get there. Just frustrating we’re stuck here now.
Their view is an inherently Christian one of “original sin” and temptation, Man as an inherently evil creature who must be “saved” from without by Jesus. The sickest thing about them IMHO is their equation of things like sex and nudity with torture and mutilation. And the neofeminists with their twisted ides about men are possibly worse; do you remember the “all men are potential rapists” catechism of the ’80s? I sure do; it was one of the first things that showed me how sick their view of men is.
“Isn’t a big part of the problem the perception that men as a whole are just looking to pounce on underage pussy?”
Answer: Yes.
Much as a big part of the problem with homophobia is the belief that large numbers of heterosexual men have to be carefully talked out of (shamed out of, browbeaten out of) their desire for sex with men. No, Reverend, a man who has a powerful desire for sex with men is not actually an exclusive heterosexual….
I fully agree with you, kaiju0 (do you like kaiju eiga? :). There is something deeply insulting in this assumption. The “all men are potential rapists” (traceable, if I’m not mistaken, to Brownmiller’s book Against Our Will) is such a clear propaganda item!… Those who claim that it is true (which in a sense it is) are often confused when they are faced with the similarly true (in the same sense) statement “all men are potential heroes”. In fact, when comparing these statements, we see their effect is much more in what they imply, in their pragmatics, than in what they actually say, their semantics. It’s all propaganda war.
Not that people shouldn’t worry about sexual stereotypes and the problems of our culture. But to create new stereotypes to replace the old ones (or even, more simply, to simply rewrite some old stereotypes in new terms but keeping their spirit) is not really going to help anything.
I got into an argument about the “all men are potential rapists” thing in university. I pointed out that the only way in which it is true is in the sense that, when a woman walks in an isolated area, she has to presume any man she sees might be a rapist. So what? Men have to presume that strangers might be potential muggers. That’s simply the nature of caution. If you want to proclaim that “all men are potential rapists” in the larger sense due to the predatory nature of male sexuality, you also have to agree that “all women are potential whores and extortionists” due to the opportunistic nature of female sexuality. If one is true, so must be the other.
> One tellingly ignorant aspect of the commercial featured here is the claim that “real men don’t buy sex”; since there is no such thing as free pussy, the only kind of man who doesn’t pay for it is one who takes it by force.
I know where you’re coming from with this, and it was clever the first time, but it’s tiresome to use it in this way. You’re using ‘buy’ to mean something quite different than they do, and their meaning is not wrong, so you’re straw-manning them. Also, by treating it this way, you’re failing to address a claim I suspect you want to make: yes, real men can very well plop down cash for sex, duh!