Anything with “sex” in the vicinity will gather news crews like pyros to a dumpster fire. – Tim Cushing
It’s probably almost impossible for anyone under the age of 30 or so to conceive of how different the United States I grew up in was from the US of today. That’s true in many ways and on many levels, but for right now I just want to look at one of them: the way Americans have lost so many of the gains made in the so-called Sexual Revolution, and returned to a Puritanism more vicious and repressive than we’ve experienced in centuries. Because while it’s absolutely true that sexual variation is recognized and tolerated to a much greater degree than it has been for most of this country’s history, it is equally true that the moralists and censors now have far more terrifying tools of surveillance and a greater capacity to inflict violence than those possessed by any of their spiritual ancestors since the Dawn of Man. And while people who were shamed or persecuted for their sexual behavior in the past might be able to pull up stakes and start a new life somewhere else where nobody knew them, in the Information Age every transgression is eternal and indelible; furthermore, self-appointed guardians of the public morals are always looking for new ways to ensure that absolutely no one can escape their snooping or whatever scarlet letters they’ve been branded with.
Fortunately, a growing number of journalists have begun to awaken to the presence of the black pall that has descended over what was once described as “The Land of the Free”, and while it’s much too late for those who have already joined the obscenely-long roll call of victims of the Anti-Sex police state, recognition of a problem is the first step toward solving it. The pendulum must eventually swing the other way, and perhaps articles like this one from The Week are among the first signs that we’re reaching the top of the arc:
…It is…remarkable how deranged so many of us seem to become as soon as sex is invoked in a public dispute…moralistic grandstanding drives public argument and policymaking when it comes to sex. The porn panic...is a prominent example. But it’s hardly the only one…
We’ll come back to that article presently, but let’s look for a minute at what The Atlantic had to say about the most egregious example of that porn panic, Utah’s recent embrace of Gail Dines’ crypto-moralistic scheme to disguise a Puritanical censorship regime in “public health” rhetoric:
…Gail Dines…wrote a column that spread widely: “Is Porn Immoral? That Doesn’t Matter: It’s a Public-Health Crisis”. The divisive proclamation was occasioned by a bill passed last month in Utah…[which itself solipsistically] traces back to Dines…In 2013, Dines traveled to Reykjavik, where she met with Iceland’s Ministers of health and welfare amid [the] country’s campaign to ban pornography. The move would have put the liberal state…in the company of Saudi Arabia and the countries where gender disparities are greatest. But it made sense to many as a matter of public health…
Regular readers will recognize this sentence as the product of a mind befuddled by the “left-right” fallacy; a totalitarian state is a totalitarian state, and Iceland’s carceral “feminism” is as much a religion as Saudi Arabia’s Islam. But I digress:
…In 2015, [Dines] returned her focus to the U.S., relaunching an advocacy group based in Boston with the new mission to “eradicate porn’s harms because porn has quickly escalated into an overlooked public health crisis”…at an anti-pornography summit…she reached an unlikely confederate, a Republican state senator from Utah named Todd Weiler…[who’s in league with] a Utah-based group called Fight the New Drug…The group denies a formal affiliation with the Mormon church, though…its founders are all Mormon, and its facts rely on claims from Mormon author Donald Hilton’s He Restoreth My Soul…
Again, there’s absolutely nothing “unlikely” about an alliance between two anti-sex, pro-censorship ideologues who prefer to hide their moralism under bogus studies and cargo-cult “science”; it would be exceedingly unlikely for these two not to team up. But for some reason many people are wedded to the ahistorical notion that evangelical feminists and evangelical Christians are “opposed” to one another, and they keep professing shock when the world fails to conform to their fantasies. Anyhow, let’s return to that article from The Week:
…sexual assaults are being handled on college campuses…by establishing offices to oversee the creation and enforcement of regulations…covering every imaginable form of sexual or quasi-sexual conduct, ensuring that in all cases such conduct conforms to legalistic norms of consent…The result is a supremely creepy combination of liberalism, Puritanism, and the infrastructure of a police state. In addition to stifling free speech and the free exchange of ideas on campus, such regulations go well beyond punishing bad behavior to require a transformation in the way people relate to one another at an individual level. Ruling common forms of flirtation and seduction out of bounds, they aim to remake romantic and sexual interactions on the model of contractual negotiations among business partners…
If you think he’s exaggerating there, take a look at this article from Reason:
Colorado State University-Pueblo [expelled] a male athlete…after he was [declared] responsible for sexually assaulting a female trainer…[who] never accused him of wrongdoing, and said repeatedly that their relationship was consensual. She even stated, unambiguously, “I’m fine and I wasn’t raped”…The athlete’s lawsuit against CSUP…argues that the university not only deprived him of fundamental due process rights, but also denied sexual agency to an adult woman…The student-athlete, Grant Neal, has named the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights as a co-defendant. OCR’s Title IX guidance…”encourages male gender bias and violation of due process right during sexual misconduct investigations”…Neal’s expulsion…stemmed from his…relationship with a female student and athletic trainer, Jane Doe…Sexual relationships between athletes and trainers are frowned upon…Neal [gave]…Doe a hickey…[which] was…noticed by another trainer, described as the “Complainant” in the lawsuit. When confronted, Doe confessed to the Complainant that she and Dean had engaged in sex. According to the lawsuit, the Complainant “presumed” this sex was nonconsensual, and reported it to the director of the athletic training program…Doe told another administrator, “Our stories are the same and he’s a good guy. He’s not a rapist, he’s not a criminal, it’s not even worth any of this hoopla!”…[but] the predetermined outcome for Neal was a guilty verdict…
As I and other sex worker activists have repeatedly pointed out, a society which does not respect a woman’s “yes” cannot be trusted to respect her no either; the latter is demonstrated about twice a week in this blog, and the former is at the heart of the War on Whores:
The criminal justice system theoretically operates on a presumption of innocence. An arrest booking is hardly an indicator of guilt, but try telling that to millions of people who believe being accused is no different than being found guilty by a jury. Everyone knows this presumption of guilt exists, despite it being wholly contrary to the basis of our justice system. Cops know this best. A high-profile bust is as good as a guilty verdict. So it’s no surprise that they’ve increasingly turned to the greatest shaming mechanism known to man: the internet. In a long, detailed and disturbing piece for the New Republic, Suzy Khimm examines law enforcement’s infatuation with harnessing the internet to prey upon the public’s continual presumption of guilt…Prostitution stings are a favorite. You can easily tell it’s a victimless crime because none of the parties involved receive any privacy protections from law enforcement. Being swept up in one of these stings means seeing your name and face splashed across a variety of news outlets while the fine print (“all arrestees are innocent until proven guilty”) is relegated to the end of the coverage, if it’s mentioned at all…This country’s Puritanical approach to sex has long been the focus of law enforcement shaming efforts. It’s not enough to simply arrest and charge customers and sex workers. An effort must be made to uphold the stigma…
In the US, government at all levels has always been at war with human nature, including sex. But as I said at the beginning, “authorities” now wield weapons beyond the wildest wanking fantasies of their Puritan forebears. And if they aren’t stopped, those weapons will not be restricted to use against male sexuality of which “feminists” disapprove, nor even to just women who cater to or enjoy that sexuality; they will be turned to use against everyone, and by the time useful idiots like Gail Dines realize that means her as well, it will be much too late.
I searched this blog to see if I’d written anything on this issue, but I can’t find it and so I’ll say it now: the fact that clients of sex workers are not free to speak is a huge disadvantage to decriminalization. I know through my advocacy for decrim that many a sex worker is thankful for the SWOP outlets in the major cities because it helps overcome the isolation they feel.
But the same can only be true for clients, and maybe even more so, but the point isn’t to compare, or to minimize how isolating sex work can be. It’s to raise a point, promote discussion, and look for possible angles to solve this conundrum in the effort to decrim this most important service.
One result of such an implicitly imposed silence is that prohibitionists/abolitionists can step into that void and make untrue claims, and we know what those are. Among them are that men only prefer young women, but of course a brief look at the mature section of some of the online escort guides shows this not to be true.
I haven’t yet figured how to organize such a viable and potentially strong group of advocates, but I’d bet it would be very helpful.
“they aim to remake romantic and sexual interactions on the model of contractual negotiations among business partners”
I wonder if any of them know anything about business partnerships.
If you have to fall back on the contractual relationship when doing business with somebody, the business relationship usually has failed. Contracts are blunt and limited tools, useful mostly in the fantasies of lawyers (and, of course making them rich, “cui bono?” as usual).
In actual healthy business relationships both sides are willing to compromise and to follow the spirit of the contract, not the letter, because that is what a good service requires in actual reality. Between people acting in good faith, an informal agreement is already enough.
Now, having sex in bad faith is not a good idea, and hence as soon as sex requires a contract, you better not have it at all. But that may be just what these people want: No sex until marriage, no sex for fun.
I do fully agree that “sex” is just a first battle here. Eventually, this is about controlling everybody not fully on-board with the state-ideology, like in any self-respecting fascism.
A contract IS an agreement. What we put on paper is an attempt to cover all possible behaviors where things could go wrong so that responsibility can be more easily assigned, and taken. The problem, as you guys point out and as Maggie noted above using the article from The Week, is that there’s way too much nuance in each and every human relationship for a piece of paper to cover.
All that said, the Colo State incident is stupid and scary.
Folks, the anti-prostitution/human trafficking movement in the U.S. and around the World, is for the most part a false flag operation, designed to invade our right to privacy, and not deal with human trafficking, sexual and otherwise. Like most of the attempts by the government to prohibit “vice”–drinking, drugs, gambling, sex, etc.–it is more about controlling a segment of the population than it is promoting morality. They are liars about their true motive, and what their final goal is, I do not care to find out.
Really? I’d actually like to know who ‘they’ are and what their ‘final goal’ is. How else can we devise a plan to finally squelch it without knowing what it is or that it even exists to begin with?
Sorry for the delay, I’ve been ill.
The “they” is the oligarchy and those who are helping them to destroy the middle class, our manufacturing sector, and our Constitution. They are doing this by giving rights to corporations, and taking them from the individual. The attacks on drugs and prostitution are the cost of keeping churches on their side, to prevent them from siding with the poor and working class, who are often those most adversely affected by these “crimes.” It is the criminalization itself that causes most of the problems in our society.
“sex work” is relegated to people that can afford it – i.e., The Establishment. It is therefore inherently unequal and is inimical to free sex or even free masturbation. Hence, the problems that arise from it are not my problems because I’m poor and can’t afford it. So my sex positive tag is not the same as sex workers pro sex tag because the latter places in a preferred position, money and the workers receipt thereof. Any aspect of sex positive is only tangentially involved – i.e., do not hinder my ability to collect money for putting out as opposed to people merely want to enjoy each other and have fun for free. Moreover, this position of sex workers likewise places The Establishment in a preferred position over any kind of political change which is identical to the situation with elected officials – viz., 100% of their spending money comes from The Profit Class
I let this idiotic BS through because it’s a perfect example of why sex workers and others who support actual civil rights cannot trust socialists. This male fuckhead is only concerned with his OWN GOOD – “people merely want to enjoy each other and have fun for free” = “I get my dick sucked without having to work for it”. And since the work of keeping households running tends to fall on women in ANY economic system, he conveniently can avoid paying for that because “equality”. Fuck you, Tommy, and fuck every one of your piggish co-“thinkers” who wants female household & emotional labor for free. Try that in an all-male community & we’ll see how long your BS idea of “free love” lasts. People like this don’t care about individual rights; they want the “right” of everyone to wallow in the mud along with their lazy arses as long as we’re all “equal” to their ambitionless selves.
‘“sex work” is relegated to people that can afford it – i.e., The Establishment.’
False. “Sex work” is done by people who need or want income generation. Since the majority of sex workers’ clients tend to be heterosexual males, the majority of those who provide such services are women.
I believe what you are saying is that it’s difficult for lower-income males to afford sexual services. This is true. But it’s not impossible, provided that you save enough money to afford a particular woman’s service. And since beggars can’t be choosers, that means you’ll have to broaden your perception of what you think is beautiful to include women of all ages, shapes, sizes, and colors.
Good luck in your search.
You sound like you read this reply directly out of the pages of Karl Marx. Or perhaps V.I. Lenin.
While many prostitutes come out of the ranks of the poor, working, and middle class, very few are coerced, and a large portion service the workers and middle class, even the poor.
Not everyone has the option of free sex, nor is everyone who partakes members of the profit class. Nor is visiting a prostitute solely for sex: sometimes a man just needs a good cuddle and someone to talk to.
I am not sure which is worse: your arrogance or your ignorance.
Just playing devil’s advocate here, but is this fellow arguing for, or against, decriminalization? I can’t tell from this post; indeed it took me two readings to even figure out what he was trying to say in the first place.
“This male … is only concerned with his OWN GOOD”
Well, isn’t that what we all should be concerned about, instead of having to suffer under those who think they know our own good better than we do ourselves? It would seem to me ideally he’s free to pursue this misguided philosophy. Doesn’t mean he has a chance of it actually working out for him, because any woman he meets would be out for their own good too, and I doubt they’d find his attitude very appealing, as Maggie has clearly demonstrated.
so kind of you to remark
Tommy the fact you are poor and want free sex does not prohibit you from seeking out free sex to anyone stupid enough to lay with you. Nevertheless it does not give you the right to determine whether someone else wants to charge for that privilege. Your wants and desires do not trump their right to do as they wish with their bodies, their time, and their bank accounts.