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Rikki de la Vega is a writer and activist in Boston. She has written 17 books of erotica and erotic science fiction through Sizzler Editions. Her nonfiction book Prudery and the War on Sex (from which this is excerpted) is due for publication by Digital Parchment Services sometime in April 2023.

Among the indictments included in the Declaration of Sentiments, issued in 1848 from the Seneca Falls Convention on women’s rights, was this condemnation of male privilege:  “He has created a false public sentiment by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated but deemed of little account in man.”  We still face this gendered double standard today, where men suffer far fewer consequences for sexual license, and women much more.  Many first-wave feminists, as they were strongly influenced by the religious attitudes of the time, believed that the answer was to insist on male chastity.  But another branch of the movement was convinced that a radically different approach was needed, that of empowering women to insist on equal partnerships based on mutual choice, affection and pleasure.  This was the Free Love movement.

Most people these days associate the phrase “free love” with the hippies of the 1960s and their unbridled approach to sexuality.  The original movement, however, was focused more on the legal, religious and social strictures that went hand in hand with marriage at the time.  Marriage in the nineteenth century meant women were subsumed under their husbands, with no legal identity or rights; divorce was also difficult to obtain, and virtually impossible for women even in cases of abuse by the husband.  Free Love advocates proposed the alternative of “free unions” of consenting partners, without the need for any legal or religious sanction, and likewise dissolved by mutual agreement.  The freedom they were calling for was freedom from archaic and oppressive laws and attitudes which kept women in bondage, as well as perpetuating the link between marriage and social or financial status.  Free Love advocates also affirmed women’s right to sexual pleasure, and of decoupling sex from reproduction by promoting the use and availability of contraception.  This was controversial primarily because it went against the Cult of True Womanhood’s view that women were (or ought to be) only interested in sex as a means of fulfilling the goal of becoming mothers, but also because birth control was seen as obstructing God’s design.  While the movement to promote birth control availability was separate from the Free Love movement, there was considerable overlap between the two, due to their commonly shared belief that women should have more choice and independence around sex and procreation.

Two other movements that intersected with Free Love, and one another, were the political Left and the freethinkers.  Utopian socialists such as the followers of Robert Owen, as well as various stripes of anarchists, often saw the oppressive marriage and divorce laws of their day as part of capitalist and state oppression, and many Free Love advocates embraced radical political views.  The freethought movement’s rejection and critique of religious beliefs and institutions, and their devotion to free and rational inquiry, led to at least an open discussion of Free Love ideals, and acceptance of them in practice as well as theory by many of their leaders.  One of the earliest and most vocal advocate for all three of these was Frances “Fanny” Wright, a Scottish-born intellectual, writer and activist who had established one of the first utopian socialist communities in Nashoba, Tennessee, and gave public lectures on labor rights, freethought, Free Love and women’s equality at a time when it was considered taboo for women to speak in public at all.  The Free Love movement’s overlap with both anticlerical freethought and political radicalism was one reason why so many feminist leaders regarded them as something of a liability.  But more pronounced was the entrenchment of Social Purity advocates within the drive for women’s suffrage and their mischaracterization of the Free Love agenda.  British feminist Elizabeth Wolstenholme had scandalized more conservative women’s rights activists with her free union with Benjamin Elmy, a freethinker and feminist like herself.  While she was initially recognized for her tireless efforts, British historian Laura Schwartz of the University of Warwick notes: “Wolstenholme became the subject of an orchestrated campaign against her continuing public association with feminist organisations.”  In the United States, mainstream feminist leaders turned against Victoria Woodhull for openly stating in a public address in 1871:  “Yes, I am a Free Lover. I have an inalienable, constitutional and natural right to love whom I may, to love as long or as short a period as I can; to change that love every day if I please, and with that right neither you nor any law you can frame have any right to interfere.”

While it may be argued that the Free Love movement did influence other feminists of their time to demand substantive reforms in marriage and divorce laws, the influence of the Social Purity wing still predominated well into the twentieth century.  This is exemplified by British suffragist Christabel Pankhurst’s 1913 book on sexually transmitted disease, The Great Scourge and How to End It, which insisted that votes for women be linked to the imposition of “chastity” for men and the ending of prostitution, dismissing questions about the role of poverty in pushing women into commercial sex, and not once mentioning the use of condoms (which were not only available at the time but often distributed by various armies to their soldiers).  To her, the spread of syphilis and gonorrhea was the result of a male conspiracy, and women needed political power to rein in men’s sexual appetites.

This division within first-wave feminism over responding to the sexual double standard runs along a continuum between two poles which I’ll call restrictive (as in restricting options for sexual expression, especially for men) and expansive (as in favoring an expansion of such options, especially for women).  It goes on into the second wave and beyond, fueling conflicts over how feminists respond to sexual imagery and literature, sex work, transgender issues, and the inclusion of men in the movement.  This is not to say that every feminist neatly fits on one pole or another, but their place on a spectrum depends upon a number of attitudes and approaches.  The first is the attitude towards gender, and especially men.  There is a tendency for those leaning towards the restrictive pole to uphold the gender binary, to describe gender in collective or even essentialist terms, and especially to view men with skepticism at best and outright hostility at worst (sometimes even ignoring the contributions of men to early feminism, such as John Neal, Marquis de Condorcet, Frederick Douglass, and John Stuart Mill).  When you consider the focus on sexuality issues, it would seem that the restrictive tendency has embraced the old-fashioned stereotype that: “Men only want one thing from women, so watch out!”  But it is more specific than that; the restrictive attitude is that men are likely to link sexuality with dominance, aggression and even violence.  Hence Robin Morgan’s maxim: “Pornography is the theory, and rape is the practice” – even when careful studies show no link between viewing porn and acceptance of sexual violence.  In contrast, the expansive view embraces a more fluid, nuanced and individualistic view of gender, affirming transgender and nonbinary people, as well as seeing that men’s attitudes and behaviors fall on a continuum and can change with education.

The second pair of tendencies is based on how each group tries to achieve their goals.  The restrictive side tends to seek to protect women from real or perceived harms, often through laws that prohibit or punish; the expansive side tends to favor efforts that empower women to find the solutions that would work best for their individual situations.  This difference also shows how the two sides tend to analyze and understand a problem.  The restrictive side takes a more simplistic approach; they see something as bad, they want to do away with it, so they embrace a single approach (such as the Dworkin-MacKinnon model ordinance on pornography, or the Swedish model for dealing with prostitution) and hang onto it for dear life.  By contrast, the expansive side tends to take a more nuanced and pluralistic approach; they will look at the issue, the factors behind it, and the consequences of various approaches, sometimes advocating a more multifaceted strategy that addresses the matter more holistically, such as providing nonjudgmental harm reduction for street-based sex workers, including changing the law towards decriminalization so that sex workers have better tools to deal with the issues in their lives.

The irony that seems lost on members of the restrictive group is how easily political and religious conservatives appropriate their tactics and language.  It should come as no surprise, considering the conservative tendency to adapt in order to gain and maintain their hold on politics, not to mention the tendency of both conservatives and restrictive feminists to see women in almost infantilized terms.  By contrast, the expansive feminist group’s dedication to individual autonomy puts them more in the position of critics to any political administration regardless of ideological label.  Indeed, it would seem that the expansive group is the one which is ultimately more skeptical of government, and thus less likely to be co-opted as their restrictive counterparts appear to have been.

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Please don’t kill my husband.  –  Shameka Smith

Grace suggested this video to commemorate the passing of guitar legend Jeff Beck; I was unfamiliar with it, but less than 60 seconds in I knew it was the right choice.  The inks above the video were provided by Dan Savage, Mama Tush, Clarissa (x2), Mike Siegel, and Cop Crisis (x2), in that order.

From the Archives

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

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They’re trying to kill me, they’re trying to kill me.  –  Akeem Terrell

I’m sure most of y’all are already very familiar with most of The Pointer Sisters’ hits, but were you aware that they had recorded this one for Sesame Street?  The links above the video were provided by Jesse Walker (x3), Cop Crisis (x3), and Mike Siegel, in that order.

From the Archives

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

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I wanted him to have a positive view of police…we ended up going to [the] emergency room.  –  Shelia Jackson

I hadn’t realized that classical Greece had an early form of pipe organ, the hydraulis; thanks to Genya for drawing my attention to this recording of a reconstructed example of the instrument.  The links above the video were provided by Mike Siegel, Amy Alkon, Cop Crisis (x3), Dan Savage, and Lenore Skenazy, in that order.

From the Archives

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

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Is anybody out there?  –  “Metaverse gala” attendee

Not an especially seasonal selection, but it seemed the appropriate one for the death of its composer.  The links above the video were provided by Ed Krayewski; Amy Alkon; Radley Balko; Cop Crisis (x2); Jesse Walker, Mike Siegel, and Ally Fogg; and Clarissa, in that order.

From the Archives

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

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Soft Fascism

I’ve often said the popular belief that WW2 ended in the victory of “democracy” over fascism is wrong; it was actually a triumph of “soft” maternal fascism over “hard” paternal fascism.  But since the fall of Soviet communism, the prevailing Western post WW2 fascism has hardened.  Fascism is a system built on three legs: the political, the corporate, and the military/paramilitary.  Corporations support politicians and political machines, and the politicians make laws advantageous to their sponsors.  They also use the corporations to achieve social controls they are forbidden by their constitutions or practical considerations (such as censorship and surveillance).  The cops and/or soldiers enforce the diktats of the politicians and protect corporate interests (which is why tax money is used to fund pursuit an punishment of petty shoplifters), and in turn their forces are increasingly funded and given privileges no other group has (like getting away with rape, robbery, mayhem and even murder).  Natty uniforms and ugly racist rhetoric are window-dressing for fascism, not its defining characteristics; the reason these often show up is that they appeal to the kind of undeveloped, morally-primitive mind that make up large enough fractions of the human population to vote the fascists in and support their schemes.

 

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

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Venereal disease was primarily an excuse to police women and reduce sexual opportunities for soldiers.  –  Eric Rogers

Bad Girls

Did they really think they’d get away with this?

An ex-Playboy model…has reportedly reached a plea deal despite maintaining her innocence in the [bludgeoning death of her sugar daddy]…California psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Burchard…[was] paying numerous bills [for]…Kelsey Turner…[to the tune of] over…$300,000…[yet] Judy Earp – the [victim’s conventional] girlfriend…[is in deep denial about] that…In March 2019, Burchard drove to Turner’s Las Vegas apartment – for which he had been paying the rent…[with the] inten[t] to break off the relationship…[then] on March 7, 2019, Burchard’s bludgeoned body was found stuffed in the trunk of [Turner’s Mercedes] near Lake Mead…Turner and her…boyfriend Jon “Logan” Kennison…[lived in the apartment with] Diana Pena…who pleaded guilty to being an accessory to murder in 2019…[and] testified that she witnessed Kennison viciously beat Burchard to death with a baseball bat…In June, Kennison pleaded guilty to second-degree murder with a deadly weapon and conspiracy to commit murder.  He was sentenced to between 18 and 45 years in prison…

License to Rape

“Search” is the most common government euphemism for “molest”:

Two Georgia women…were exposed to strangers…[during sexual molestation under the pretext of “]strip searches[“]…Dee Dee Estes [molested one]…woman…on the night of July 23, 2020…in plain view of the public after deputies [decid]ed [it would be fun to belch out the word]…drugs during a traffic stop.  “And she’s putting her fingers like inside me in the front, and then like up the backside of me”[besides penetrating the victim]’s private areas [without her consent, the rapist cop also forced] her [to] expose her breasts in front of male [pig]s and onlookers at a truck stop…

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

Extra-amusing given that Northern Ireland lives under the Swedish model:

A [cop was] arrested on suspicion of paying for sexual services [after his fellow cops ratted him out for] using his PSNI computer to contact escorts…His…identity is [being hidden by his superiors, unlike the identities of non-cops arrested for the same “crime”]…

The Face of Trafficking

Note that cases of actual coercion don’t look much like the myths:

Three [Louisiana] children were forced to bake and sell brownies by their stepfather[,] who…[also] sexually abus[ed] them and us[ed] violence, including waterboarding, to keep them working seven days a week…instead of going to school…for three years…Darnell Fulton…also…sexually abus[ed] the children and [apparently pimped] them to other[s]…Fulton…agreed to a 35-year prison term and to pay more than $700,000 to his victims…the…younge[st of whom]…was [under]…12…at…the…[time]He…us[ed] “violence, sexual abuse, withholding of food, degradation and intimidation” to [forc]e the children…[to] keep up with his daily sales quotas…the [abuse]…included…[forcing] them “get on their hands and knees on rice and stay in a push up or plank position for hours”…and…[beating] them with a belt [when they could no longer hold the position]…

Red Lamp

Modern military leaders like to pretend soldiers can be ordered to be asexual; those of a century ago tried to exploit soldiers’ frustrated libido:

The United States Government sought to sexually stimulate then frustrate its soldiers to prepare them for an unpopular conflict in Europe [by]…recruiting attractive canteen staff; inviting female civilians to closely supervised dances; disseminating alluring propaganda; pressurising troops to write to women back home; and detaining allegedly promiscuous women to prevent soldiers [“]wasting[“] energy…At the heart of this experiment was the Commission on Training Camp Activities (CTCA), a War Department-directed umbrella agency…[which] sought to control soldiers’ and women’s sex lives to prevent venereal infection and protect social morality in the US.  The CTCA has been portrayed as one of the last stands of an older generation of moral reformers against the onrush of a liberalizing sexual culture.  But Cambridge historian Eric Wycoff Rogers shows that the agency was far more interested in sexuality as a weapon…

The Cop Myth (#1052)

Cop cultists continue to deny reality no matter how much police violence and corruption is revealed:

…in 2020, Ricky Jones, a [typical and representative cop], jumped to his death from the Prince of Wales Bridge spanning the River Severn…He spent 26 years as a [violent thug for hire, so it’s no surprise]…he subjected his family to decades of domestic abuse.  After his death, Jones’s eldest daughter looked through his iPhone, hoping to get some insight into her father’s cruelty…WhatsApp and Facebook messages show Gwent police officers openly discussing the sexual harassment of junior female colleagues; racist, homophobic and misogynistic abuse; the leaking of sensitive police material; and corruption…Jones shared regular messages with his friend Clarke Joslyn, who [has a]…26 year…[history] of domineering, controlling and physically abusive behaviour…

The End of the Beginning (#1139) 

Let’s hope many more challenges to these medieval laws succeed:

…the state of Idaho [has] settled Doe v. Wasden, an ACLU lawsuit challenging enforcement of the state’s “Crime Against Nature” law.  The state required three men to register as sex offenders in Idaho for engaging in consensual oral and anal sex…The settlement…requires the state to remove the three men from the Idaho Sex Offender Registry and to create a policy for removing other individuals who may have similar claims…

 

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

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Armistice Day 2022

The best way to actually honor deceased veterans is to stop making so damned many of them.  –  Maggie McNeill

The time is long overdue to end the war machine, before it ends all of us.

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I’ve always been dedicated to the idea of this as the time of year for spooky fun.  So every year I collect all the spooky, creepy or scary content from the previous year into one place just before Halloween.  If you’ve come to my blog in the past year, or don’t remember previous editions, they are “Trick or Treat”, “More Trick or Treat“, “Tricks and Treats“, “This Trick’s a Treat”, “Tricky Treats“, “A Trickle of Treats”, “Tricking and Treating“, and “Tricks for the Treat“.  Oddly, though there were enough spooky or Halloweeny links to justify collecting them, the only horror, death or Halloween-themed column of the past year was “Books of the Dead“, and the only creepy or spooky-fun video appeared in Links #591.  Here’s hoping for a better collection next year!

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

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Why?  –  Erik Cantu

I’ve always been fond of this song, and given that the story it references was originally a werewolf tale, it seems seasonally appropriate.  The links above the video were provided by Mike Siegel, Cop Crisis, Scott Greenfield, Mike Siegel again, Cop Crisis again, Thaddeus Russell, and Elizabeth N. Brown, in that order.

From the Archives

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

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