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Posts Tagged ‘neofeminism’

Dr Victoria Bateman is a Fellow in Economics at the University of Cambridge, England, and author of the new book Naked Feminism: Breaking the Cult of Female Modesty.  You can see more at www.NakedFeminism.com.

What determines a woman’s worth?  Is it her conscientiousness, her open-mindedness, how kind and generous she is to others?  Or is it what she shows, or doesn’t show, of her body that somehow determines whether a woman is valued and respected by society?  I pose this question not only as a woman but as someone who has, among other things, delivered public lectures, attended a Royal Economic Society gala, and appeared on national television, all while wearing no more than shoes and a smile (albeit accompanied by my trusty handbag).  While you might imagine that women today would be free to do what they want with their own body, the reality, as I have seen for myself, is otherwise.  Women who refuse to “cover up”, and who embrace sexiness, femininity and beauty, are seen as the maidens of patriarchy, and certainly not as “real” feminists.  Since using my naked body in art and protest, I have been called a “whore”, “common”, “trashy” and “stupid”, and have been cast out by many of my fellow feminists, some of whom like to hold me personally responsible for womankind being treated like “sex objects”.  It seems that immodest women are not only expected to face the forces of patriarchy, we are also expected to face the judgement of the sisterhood.

I am just one in a long line of “naked feminists” who have had to stand up to those who (in the name of feminism) would prefer to censor our bodies rather than address the way they – and the rest of society – choose to judge women.  In 1975, the artist Hannah Wilke was invited to submit a piece of work for the “What is Feminist Art?” exhibition.  Her submission, subtitled “Beware of Fascist Feminism“, contained at its centre the artist posing provocatively, her shirt wide open to her low-cut jeans, with a tie hanging between her breasts, and her largely topless torso covered in miniature vulva formed from chewing gum.  It was a direct response to the “chorus of critical voices” she faced in relation to her previous sexually suggestive performances.  As Jeanette Kohl noted, “ideological feminism did not approve of the double game of a self-aware Venus who was both a Muse and an artist, a beauty and a feminist, subject and manipulator of (male) desire”.  Wilke was accused of objectifying herself and of reinforcing, rather than subverting, traditional depictions of women.  Her artistic submission, part of a wider series, highlights the way in which  “women who are beautiful, witty, and successful are usually accused of conspiring with men against other women” and “that a feminism that prescribes how a woman should look or behave is as harmful as the objectifying values that feminism seeks to redress“.  She “warned of the dangers of feminist puritanism that militated against women themselves, their sensuality and the pleasure of their own bodies“.  More recently, in 2011, during the Arab Spring, Aliaa Elmahdy, an Egyptian art student, “launched her nude body into the blogosphere”, bringing “sex to Tahir Square“, by uploading a nude photo of herself to her blog, A Rebel’s Diary.  It was an act that challenged the “dualisms of secular and religious, erotic and sacred, real and virtual“.  And, since her full frontal nude was accompanied by stockings, red shoes and a flower in her hair, it was sexually charged.  Within the first week, her blog had received 1.5 million hits, and “incited discourse and rage”.  Many feminists jumped to criticise Elmahdy for claiming that her nudity was liberation.  She was, instead, told that she was playing to the ideal of women as ornamental and sexual creatures, reinforcing the “pernicious toxic Western aesthetic codes of man as surveyor/subject and woman as surveyed/object of the gaze“.

Nakedness is, however, certainly not a Western invention.  In 1929, thousands of Igbo Nigerian women used their bodies in a show of resistance to colonial authority, in what became known as “the Women’s War“.  Alongside attacking symbols of colonization, such as cutting telegraph wires and attacking post offices, they used “lewd gestures”, and they danced and they sang.  On numerous other occasions, African women have used naked protest to fight violence, corruption and multinational oil companies, facing criticism well before any modern-day naked protesters.  As Tricia Twasiima writes:

Nudity as a form of protest upsets the very ideas of what respectable womyn should be…The belief that womyn’s bodies must be clothed, until decided otherwise, is why womyn’s nudity as a form of resistance is exceptionally remarkable. The reclaiming of our bodies, and the self-determination of what they will be used for, undermines the patriarchal narrative which makes it even more powerful…By freeing ourselves from the limits of what is acceptable, we give room to new ways of resisting and ultimately new ways of liberation…This of course is difficult considering the consequences dealt to those who reject the set standards, but perhaps we can begin by unlearning our own biases and internalisations about our bodies. Questioning ourselves, and pushing back against the narratives that take self-determination away from us is a good place to start.

Nevertheless, Gabby Aossey argues that while “women who wear hijab have freed themselves from a man’s and a society’s judgemental gaze; the Free the Nipplers have not…they have fallen deep into the man’s world”.  Following a series of my own naked protests, a member of a Radical Feminist group tweeted: “Does it not even make you pause for thought when you realise that men overwhelmingly support your feminism”.  Many women offer a comment along these same lines: aren’t you just giving men precisely what they want?  But to resist naked protesting so as to avoid the male gaze is, to my mind, allowing the male gaze to dictate what I do or do not do with my own body.  I am perfectly capable of respecting myself and confident enough to pursue my goals, irrespective of what men might think or feel.  For women to live their lives in a way that is limited by the male gaze as a means of escaping the male gaze is a pyrrhic victory.  As I argue in my new book, Naked Feminism: Breaking the Cult of Female Modesty, a puritanical strain of thought runs deep within feminism.  This feminist puritanism is not only bodyphobic, whorephobic and femmephobic, it is intellectually elitist, hypocritical and unfair.  Implicit is a view that while it is perfectly acceptable, even to be encouraged, for a woman to “show off” and monetise her brain, it is not acceptable for her to do the same with her body.  And by holding immodest women responsible for womankind being treated like sex objects, women themselves are expected to shoulder the sins of men.  Our bodies become “the problem”, rather than what goes on in other people’s heads – how they choose to judge (and thereby treat) their fellow human beings.

Explicitly or implicitly, and inside as well as outside feminism, a woman’s worth and respect still hangs on her bodily modesty – on the degree to which her body is “unseen” and “untouched”.  As a result, crimes and inappropriate behaviour committed against what society judges to be “immodest” women are trivialised, with women who “show off” their bodies, along with those who are deemed “promiscuous”, being seen as “fair game”, and deserving of punishment.  The consequences affect all women; from virginity testing and honour killings to revenge porn and female genital cutting.  No woman is left unscathed – from sex workers and strippers to schoolgirls.  Feminists need to stop problematising what they see as immodest women and instead switch their focus to challenging, rather than reinforcing, the belief that a woman’s worth and respect hangs on her bodily modesty.  Challenge that belief and you challenge the whole set of policies and practices that constrain women’s lives across the globe.

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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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We cannot set the house on fire to roast the pig.
–  Justice S. Ravindra Bhat, after Frankfurter

Imaginary Victims 

The state’s pretended sympathy for “sex trafficking victims” applies only to imaginary “perfect” ones; real ones are treated as hardened criminals:

A teenage [runaway] who was initially charged with first-degree murder after she stabbed her…rapist to death was sentenced…in an Iowa court to five years of closely supervised probation and ordered to pay $150,000 restitution to the man’s family.  Pieper Lewis, 17…pleaded last year to involuntary manslaughter and willful injury in the June 2020 killing of…Zachary Brooks of Des Moines.  Both charges were punishable by up to 10 years in prison…judge David M. Porter…deferred those prison sentences, meaning that if Lewis violates [even the most arbitrary or trivial condition] of her probation, she could be sent to prison to serve that 20-year term.  As for being required to pay the estate of her rapist, “this court is presented with no other option,” Porter said, noting the restitution is mandatory under Iowa law…Lewis was [a] 15 [year old]…runaway who was seeking to escape an abusive life with her adopted mother…when a 28-year-old man took her in [and started] forcibly [pimp]ing her…Brooks…had [paid her pimp to] rape…her multiple times in the weeks before his death…after Brooks had raped her yet again, she grabbed a knife from a bedside table and stabbed [him] in a fit of rage.  Police and prosecutors…took issue with Lewis [correctly] calling herself a victim…and [were eager to make it look like she was at fault for being coerced and raped]…

Maggie in the Media

Cathy Reisenwitz interviews me on her podcast:

The Day of the Dead (#44) 

In Taiwan, strippers are a traditional part of funerals and autumn festivals.  This is no more “raunchy” than having performers in Halloween costumes would be in the West, and any pretense to the contrary is due to the influence of more puritanical cultures such as China and the US:

The Taoyuan Veterans Home, a state-run facility for retired army personnel in Taiwan, paid [a stripper to perform for] for a…celebrat[ion of the] Mid-Autumn Festival — an important holiday in [several Asian] culture[s]…the…performance…[was branded “raunchy” by bluenosed busybodies who were not present, but saw a video] filmed by an attendee…[which] went viral…nursing home residents clapped along enthusiastically…relish[ing] the…show.  But [people uncomfortable with the idea that the elderly are stil sexual beings attacked the]…facility…[whic] subsequently released a statement saying: “The intention of the event was to entertain residents and make them happy.  We are very sorry for the offense that was caused”…

If Men Were Angels

It’s getting harder to tell the preachers from the cops:

Five woman are suing an international megachurch and its leader, convicted felon Naasón Joaquín García, in California state court over decades of…child sexual abuse…earlier this year…[Garcia] was…sentenced to nearly 17 years in prison…[but] his church, which claims more than 5 million members worldwide, has stood b[ehind him the whole time]…Now, in a 49-page complaint, the church, García, and several affiliated businesses and individuals are being sued for various damages to a class that is expected to include well over 500 alleged victims as plaintiffs.  The introductory lines of the complaint do not mince words and stake out shocking allegations that criticize the church…as an enterprise that intentionally existed for the purpose of finding and providing children to be raped by the leader…The five principal plaintiffs are Jane Doe women [now] aged 20-28…who were originally cited in the criminal complaint…

The Pro-Rape Coalition (#1089) 

India protects rights the West now seems determined to destroy:

The Supreme Court of India has rejected a petition seeking to codify a…[pretend]ed link between viewing internet pornography and committing crimes such as rape and child sexual abuse…the…court…stated that “child sex abuse is a crime by itself” and [said]…“What you are advocating may be surveillance and collection of data”…The court expressed concern about where the type of Internet surveillance being proposed might lead…

Permanent Record (#1099)

If prohibitionists really want to “rescue” sex workers, why do they keep trying to shut us out of other jobs?

An OnlyFans content creator…was [fired] from her nursing position because other nurses were watching her adult videos on the clock…Jaelyn says she was called into the office of a woman she’s never met, who told her she knew about the OnlyFans.  The woman allegedly claimed that the nurses at this particular nursing home have been looking at her socials and OnlyFans while [she] is with patients…Jaelyn adds that her co-workers would have to be paying for her OnlyFans in order to be watching her videos on the clock…This isn’t the first time someone found out their co-worker was watching their OnlyFans videos, as one creator claimed their manager subscribed to their account.  Similarly, another Only Fans creator…was forced out of her nursing job due to her adult content in August…

The Implosion Begins (#1265)

The hysteria is imploding so hard, it’s falling all the way back to its roots:

…in…a spate of recent examples…individuals have been targeted with accusations of Satanism or so-called ritualistic abuse, marking…a [recrudescence] of the moral panic of the 1980s, when hysteria and hypervigilance over protecting children led to [wildly-]false allegations, wrongful imprisonments, decimated communities and wasted resources…While the current obsession with Satan was boosted in part by the QAnon community, partisan media and…politicians have been instrumental in spreading newfound fears over the so-called ritualistic abuse of children that the devil supposedly inspires, sometimes weaving the allegations together with other culture war issues such as LGBTQ rights…which are amplified on social media and by [yellow journalism], and can mobilize mobs to seek vigilante justice…Online accusers can bypass police, therapists and the traditional media and out their alleged accusers straight to audiences of millions…

It’s rather funny to see the expression “partisan media” used pejoratively by NBC News, considering the stark partisanism of its offspring MSNBC.

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The viewpoints…individuals and businesses hold are real, even if they differ from the views of…government officials.  –  Judge Aleta A. Trauger

Surplus Women

The BBC feeds stigma just as much as the Russian media this story criticizes:

On the day she was murdered, 20 July 2020, Olga had a profile on an online escort site where she went by the name Margo.  A 53-year-old former convict, Oleg Tochilkin – who had been released on parole after serving part of a 20-year prison sentence for crimes including murder…b[eat] and strangled Olga…then [dump]ed her naked body…at the entrance to [his apartment] building…One headline read, “Do you feel sorry for this kind of victim of violence?”  Another was, “The bloody details of how a prostitute from Bryansk was killed”.  And there was the one that called Olga a “whore” and referred to her killer as “grandpa”…

Instant Criminal

This guy is lucky his evil wife wasn’t smarter:

…on April 18…Angel Moore [told cops in]…Wynnewood [Oklahoma that]…she’d [somehow] seen a man using his phone to download child [porn.  She claimed]…the man’s wife, Lacey Hucks, managed to get the phone away from her husband and gave it to Moore so she could alert police.  The man was swiftly arrested, and…over 800 child sex abuse images [were found] on that phone…[but] deputies noticed that the phone that the husband had on him at the time of his arrest didn’t have any content similar to what was on the phone Moore had given them.  They only kept the husband in jail overnight, and got a warrant for Hucks’ phone—which showed that she and Moore had been discussing plans to make the police report before April 18…Moore quickly folded under questioning…an[d]…told a deputy that Hucks had…coached her…to deliver the false report against her husband…in hopes of winning a child custody battle…Hucks and Moore…were arrested on charges of conspiracy and knowingly reporting a false crime.  Hucks faces an additional charge of aggravated possession of child sex abuse material; if convicted on that charge, she faces up to life in prison…

Buttons, Bags & Banknotes (#770)

I’m not sure who Bindel thinks she’s convincing with this tedious claptrap, but I’ve got to hand it to Liz Brown for being far more patient with her than I could possibly manage.

I Spy (#1015)

Are there really sane adults gullible enough to swallow this?

The NSA — which has undermined encryption standards in the past — says it won’t undermine the next strain of encryption, one being built to withstand the inevitable arrival of quantum computing…“There are no backdoors,” said Rob Joyce, the NSA’s director of cybersecurity…Pardon my cynicism, but that’s exactly the sort of thing someone planning to backdoor encryption would say…While it’s true the NSA has spent less time agitating (at least publicly) for encryption backdoors than, say, the FBI, its troubling past strongly suggests it should not be taken at its word this time around…Quantum computing has the capacity to be the pipe wrench that makes security efforts mostly irrelevant.  The sooner a new standard can be put in place, the better.  If the NSA can help achieve this more quickly, it should.  But it should never be assumed the NSA’s intentions are pure…

The Last Shall Be First (#1140)

One small victory against a rising tide of bigotry:

A federal judge struck down a Tennessee law…that would have [forced] businesses in the state to post warning notices on their public restrooms if they have policies allowing transgender patrons to use the facilities that match their gender identities…Judge Aleta A. Trauger…wrote…that the law violates the First Amendment of the Constitution because it compels speech that is controversial and with which the plaintiffs disagree.  “It would do a disservice to the First Amendment to judge the Act for anything other than what it is: a brazen attempt to single out trans-inclusive establishments and force them to parrot a message that they reasonably believe would sow fear and misunderstanding about the very transgender Tennesseans whom those establishments are trying to provide with some semblance of a safe and welcoming environment,” Trauger wrote…

Out of Control (#1173)

The next level beyond spooge-based sexual assault:

An Arby’s manager…urinated in the milkshake mix…for his own “sexual gratification” on at least two occasions…Stephen Sharp, who was being investigated for child pornography, admitted to police that he enjoyed relieving himself in the restaurant’s milkshake mix while working as a night manager at a Vancouver, Washington, location…[cops found] dozens of [child porn] photos and videos…as well as the urine video on his digital devices…Investigators are looking for any unlucky customers who bought and drank the urine-contaminated shakes…

To Molest and Rape (#1230)

So many rapist cops, so many underage victims:

A Dallas [cop who was] arrested last summer [for] sexual assault of a child is now facing a second charge after more victims came forward…Tyrone William Jr….[h]as [been on paid vacation since…June [of last year]…

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Here I stand, I can do no other.  –  Rikki de la Vega

A Broker in Pillage

Unlike other government departments, the IRS doesn’t even bother to accuse people of actual crimes before robbing them blind:

…Institute for Justice client Lyndon McLellan saw the…IRS…reach…into his bank account [to steal] his life savings without warning or cause in 2014.  McLellan [owned] a small convenience store…in Fairmont, North Carolina…he…worked long hours and rarely took vacations…Yet federal agents accused him of violating so-called structuring laws because his business frequently made bank deposits in amounts under $10,000…the[y stole] more than $107,000…”It took me 13 years to save that much money,” he says.  “And it took fewer than 13 seconds for the government to take it away”…

All-Purpose Excuse

“Sex trafficking” is a convenient excuse for any tyranny:

The Manitoba government is tabling a bill…[which] would require hotels and people operating on online accommodation platforms, such as Airbnb, to keep a record of guests’ information, including their names and addresses…and…to hand over that information to police…on…demand…without a warrant…[politician Rochelle Squires tried to justify this incredible violation of civil rights by vomiting out the words] “human trafficking”…and “children”…

Feminists and Other Puritans

It’s nice to see someone whose name isn’t Maggie McNeill writing about this:

…the worst form of prudery and repression is that which comes from those who also claim to be feminists…Women’s rights activists have been divided about sex from the beginning.  In the nineteenth century, the “free love” movement, which promoted birth control and sought to replace traditional male-dominated marriage with consensual unions of equal partners, butted heads with the “social purity” movement obsessed with controlling men’s lust as a way of eradicating such “evils” of prostitution and venereal disease…Those leaning towards the equality pole welcomed and worked with men who agreed with their goals, like Frederick Douglass and John Stuart Mill.  Those on the protectionist side, however, viewed men with skepticism, and demanded that they prove their worth by swearing to be chaste and “chivalrous” towards women…Not far off from contemporary pledges to not use porn or “end demand for sex trafficking”!  If the women who worked for social purity back then sounded like religious zealots, it’s because they were…

The Puritan Recrudescence

Politicians are increasingly convinced that they’re allowed to redefine legal concepts as they wish:

A strange new bill introduced by Oklahoma [politician] Rob Standridge would make it illegal to knowingly give “obscene material” to a “vulnerable person,” explicitly including unhoused people…SB 1522 [also includes] an unconstitutional redefinition of…“obscene material” as “any description, exhibition, presentation or representation, in whatever form, of nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement or sadomasochistic abuse”…Such supposedly obscene materials would include “book, magazine, newspaper, pamphlet, poster, print, picture, figure, image, description, motion picture film, record, recording tape, CD-ROM disk, magnetic disk memory [sic], magnetic tape memory, videotape, computer software, video game,” and other unspecified media to be determined by the authorities.  Despite his seeming concern for the moral hygiene of the unhoused, Standridge recently opposed a new homeless shelter, making statements conflating Oklahoma’s unhoused population with “sex offenders” and calling them “a public safety risk”…

Stalkers in Blue (#987)

Another cop demonstrates what he is:

A Bay Area [cop] has been charged with masturbating in front of a family that called police during a fraught domestic violence call…Matthew Dominguez…“milled around the home…keep[ing] the daughter in view of his Body Worn Camera”…Dominguez [later]…unzipped his pants and began rubbing his crotch…[in full view of the mother and] daughter…Dominguez [kept] follow[ing the daughter]…around…The mother and daughter then went to find…the father…who…[also] “saw…Dominguez…with his erect penis in his left hand”…

Blunt Instrument (#1012)

This would be a much better article if it didn’t pretend that prohibitionism is a solely a phenomenon of the “right wing”:

For the past year, low-income Asian women in Newmarket [Ontario] have been engaged in a fierce battle with [politicians]…working to close down their massage businesses by claiming that the workers are both disreputable criminals and sex trafficking victims…in January…the town council imposed a set of regulations requiring massage businesses to get a new type of licence…[under] threat…[of] fines of $4,000 to $5,000 per day…the town…[is] using a fake anti-trafficking campaign…with zealous support from [the usual suspects]…thanks to centuries of racism and employment segregation in North America, body rubs are associated with crime, sex work, and people of colour…Newmarket town council declared their intention to create new rules that would drive out the businesses that they defined as “appeal[ing] to sexual appetites,” and the “brothels” that town councillors claimed were “hosts for human trafficking.”  Their…plan was to get rid of suspected sex work by tightening the rules so that only businesses whose workers have formal educational certifications from Canada could get the newly [inven]ted Personal Wellness Establishment Licence…[such] certifications can take years…and tuition can cost thousands of dollars…

Repeatedly claiming that prohibition in Canada is “right wing” when Trudeau and his party eagerly promote it is tantamount to pissing on the readers’ legs and telling them it’s raining.

Torture Chamber (#1182)

The government needs to be buried in lawsuits before this will stop:

[Young men] at a South Carolina…[prison are locked in cages] with feces on the floor, mold on the walls, and cockroaches in their food, according to a new lawsuit…the kids — who range in age from 13 to 19 – are [also] subjected to routine violence by [screws and] other [prisoners]…[screws also] use solitary confinement — in cells with no natural light — as a way to “protect” them from violence…some[times for]…months [at a stretch], and there [are] no meaningful educational or mental health services for the[m]…the…[prisoners] are disproportionately Black and from families that live below the federal poverty line…

Once again: it does not help young victims of governmental brutality to infantilize them as “children”.

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The pursuit of sex buyers…functions…[by] targeting people in the sex trade and result[s] in forced evictions, deportations and police harassment.  –  Niina Vuolajärvi

Maggie in the Media

Bound By the Cloak is a new-ish podcast whose tagline is, “Candid conversations about the unspoken”.  Episode 6 is entitled “Grande Horizontale”, so you can probably guess who is interviewed in it.  Give it a listen; I think you’ll enjoy it even if you’ve heard me talk about these topics before.

Sales Pitch

If the Swedish model is so successful, why are they threatening to increase the penalties?

The European Sex Worker Alliance (ESWA) is circulating a petition in solidarity with Swedish sex worker activists fighting a politically motivated attempt to require mandatory jail time for their clients…the…threat…has been Trojan-Horsed into…a series of legal reforms [driven]…by various sex panics fostered by the press…

Smoke and Mirrors

Another of those cases whose reported details don’t add up:

On April 8, a [man] and his teenage daughter were at a Dallas Mavericks basketball game…in Dallas.  Just before halftime, the daughter left her seat to use the restroom.  After she didn’t return, the father went to look for her and notified arena security, staff, and Dallas police of her being missing…lawyer Zeke Fortenberry…[claims] the family repeatedly called Dallas police to help find their daughter…[but] Dallas police…didn’t make any efforts to locate the girl…[so] the family reached out to a [rescueindustry group called] the Texas Counter-Trafficking Initiative…[which claims it] found [her pictures] on a[n escort] website…in Oklahoma City…and…Oklahoma City police…[found her] at an Extended Stay America…on April 18 and several people were arrested…Fortenberry [was quick to point fingers at]…the Dallas Mavericks…the [stadium, and the hotel, using the required “]failed to protect the victim[” language indicating he plans to sue them and]…Dallas police [using the novel legal construction of vicarious liability which has become popular among ambulance-chasers]…

If Men Were Angels

“Pastors” are as bad as cops:

A pastor [named]…John William Lovelace…in Ayden, North Carolina, was charged…with [various crimes of rape and sexual assault, and]…is also facing two counts of statutory [rape of] a child under the age of 15…

Winding Down (#1179)

It’s too bad Washington only supports self-ownership where drugs are concerned, not sex:

Drug-reform advocates, doctors, and politicians have initiated a ballot measure, Initiative 1922, to remove the penalties for possessing drugs of any kind in the state of Washington, including cocaine, heroin, and hallucinogenic mushrooms.  Led by a coalition group called Commit to Change WA, the proposed [measure would also]…dedicat[e] $141 million…each year to substance use treatment and prevention…the funds…would come from cannabis taxes the state is already receiving…Sponsors of the initiative have until July 8 to collect almost 325,000 valid signatures of registered Washington voters to qualify for a spot on the statewide ballot in November…

Creepy Coppers

Your “leaders” apparently also want you to refer to spreading child porn as “correction”:

Tennessee [screw]…Michael Vernon White, has been charged with possession of “hundreds of items” of child porn…[discovered] after an Internet service provider detected and reported multiple uploads of sexual images and videos depicting young girls.  The number associated with the uploads was linked back to White…

The Cop Myth (#1205)

Why are people shocked when men paid and encouraged to behave violently, behave violently?

An…NYPD [cop named]…Kevin Marcial…was suspended…following…his [attempt to shoot his] girlfriend’s husband [after he saw the latter behind him in traffic]…Marcial turned around and fired a shot at the [husband, but missed]…The outraged husband showed up later at a nearby police station and reported the [attack], as well as Marcial and the love triangle.  Cops at first [refused to] believe him, but the husband gave [them] the…license plate number, which they traced back to Marcial.  A shell casing was also found at the scene…police reached out to Marcial, who, with his lawyer, [later] surrendered…An NYPD spokeswoman s[pun this as] Marcial “self-report[ing]” the shooting…

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The number of arrests for human trafficking is zero.  –  Gary Edinger

Above the Law (#136)

Well, this is different:

A female [cop] has been jailed for six months after getting caught with a convicted rapist under her supervision.  Rachel Beale…was caught by her boyfriend…in bed with…Marc Few…with whom she was having an intimate affair.  Beale f[irst]…brought [Few] home to her country cottage to do odd jobs for her…[the boyfriend] became suspicious when he woke up one morning to find Beale missing…[so] he went to [Few’s] address…and caught him naked in bed with…Beale…wh[o]…also used her [cop perks]…to make hotel bookings…for…purposes [other than maliciously tricking people]…

Bullies With Badges (#977)

Everyone harmed by “trafficking investigations” needs to keep suing over them:

Many of Jacksonville’s biggest strip clubs have a new deal with city attorneys that is years in the making…[the city is] paying the businesses and dancers [a paltry] $60,000, [but] police also have new restrictions on how they can in[terfere with the normal operations of] these venues…owners filed a lawsuit in 2018…[due to] the city…violating the businesses’ constitutional rights in a number of ways…Wacko’s [lawyer Gary]…Edinger…[fantasies] city [politicians] have [bloviated about] linking clubs with human trafficking.  “Bullshit…the City of Jacksonville has never made a human trafficking arrest in an adult entertainment system, not in the bikini bars and not in the nude clubs”…

Disaster (#1072)

This Bloomberg reporter slurps up propaganda in such a nauseating fashion, the edits were self-defense:

The U.S. government can continue enforcing a law designed to c[ensor the internet and harm sex workers]…after a federal court in Washington [pretende]d that it’s neither overly broad nor unduly vague.  The [court incorrectly claimed]…FOSTA, doesn’t violate the First Amendment because it doesn’t discriminate against speech based on its content…Woodhull Freedom Foundation, Human Rights Watch, Internet Archive, and two individuals who operate websites that…come within FOSTA sued to invalidate it…correctly interpret[ing] the law as…targeting the online promotion…of sex work [which cops, spooks, politicians, and prosecutors often misrepresent as the “sex trafficking” specifically named in the law]…

Still a Child (#1154) 

Japanese politicians appear to understand that infantilizing legally-adult women in matters of sex is nothing like feminism:

As Japan debates lowering the age of legal majority from 20 to 18, a [politician] asked the prime minister to create an exception in the new laws so that 18- and 19-year-old…[women are still considered legal minors] in the a[rea of sex work]…contract…[law]…Ayaka Shiomura…[appears to imagine this constitutes “feminism”, but to her] dismay…[other politicians] declined to create a specific “porn exception for 18- and 19-year-old women” within Japanese contract law.  The legal age for drinking, smoking and gambling, however, will remain at 20…

Creepy Coppers

This one really was a semi-“former” cop:

A former Tampa [cop] was arrested [March 30th] on 100 counts of child pornography after “disturbing evidence” was found on several of his personal devices…Paul Mumford…retired in 2015 as a sergeant and had been serving as a volunteer reserve [cop] ever since…Mumford…worked in the…Sex Crimes Unit from 2008 to 2009…[but boss cops denied] that…[Mumford] obtained any of the images from [work]…

Negative Secondary Effects (#1212)

In the current climate of oppression I’m not optimistic about the lawsuit’s chance of success:

Amidst a relentless U.K. media campaign demonizing sex work, the Edinburgh Council voted…to impose a “nil cap” on all sexual entertainment venues in the Scottish city, effectively banning all strip clubs…Virtually every prominent sex worker rights organization in the U.K. has sounded the alarm about this dangerous decision…which [left over 100 women suddenly jobless]…United Voices of the World, which also represents sex workers, will file for judicial review, according to legal caseworker Danielle Worden[, who said]…“Not only does this violate the the Equality Act 2010, it is an act of cruelty to remove the livelihoods of hundreds of workers as we enter the worst economic crisis since the 1970s”…

Thought Control (#1225)

Idaho politicians are punishing librarians for refusing to obediently submit to censorship:

Idaho [politicians] announced…that they will be forming a “working group” to study [their own propaganda about supposedly]…“explicit” or “pornographic” materials available to minors…[in] the state’s libraries…The House twice de[railed] the proposed budget for the Idaho Commission for Libraries…[with fanciful] claims that the libraries contain “pornographic material”…the library budget was eventually passed…but only after being cut by around…a third…

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Scapegoating Gen Z…belies the enduring hold of sex-negativity on our culture.  –  Asa Seresin

To Molest and Rape

It’s gradually becoming slightly less rare for reporters to describe the actions of rapist cops as rape:

A [typical and representative Kansas cop] is facing over two dozen charges…[for] raping a woman while [wearing his magical clown costume]…Jonathan Gardner…[is mostly being] charged with…official misconduct…[because he stalked potential victims using] Kansas [cop shop computer]…systems…

Disaster (#996)

A timid but possibly important challenge to FOSTA from inside Congress, take 2:

…a few members of Congress are…at least willing to consider the possibility that they messed up in passing FOSTA.  To this end, they’re backing legislation that would further study [its] effects…and of the Justice Department’s shutdown of websites—like Backpage and Rentboy—popular for sex worker advertising.  First introduced in 2019, these measures promptly flopped.  Now, their sponsors—Ro Khanna…Barbara Lee…Elizabeth Warren…and Ron Wyden…are trying again…In the findings section of the bill, the [politicians] explain (with a shocking lack of moral panic) how the government’s war on sex work advertising has caused a number of reported harms, and how FOSTA…increased it…Khanna—one of just 25 House members and two senators who voted against FOSTA—[said that]…he hoped getting more data on FOSTA’s effects would be unobjectionable—and useful for eventual repeal…Techdirt editor Mike Masnick…is skeptical. When it comes to sex trafficking, Congress just “wants to pretend to care about these issues so it can get headlines and go on TV to look serious about how it’s ‘solving’ these problems”…

I’m at least as skeptical as Masnick is, but I was pleasantly surprised to see Ron Wyden actually tweet that “Sex workers deserve equal and full labor protection and dignity under the law.

Disaster (#1151)

They’ve chased this ambulance from Austin to Washington and back:

The [US] Supreme Court declined…to settle a question presented by a[n opportunist and her lawyers] looking to [cash in on a novel theory of] Facebook’s [legal] liability in a case where she [claim]s that she was “sex trafficked as a minor” because the social media platform “[allowed her to communicate with someone she now says was] a sex trafficker.”  The case had already gone all the way up to the Texas Supreme Court, although that tribunal’s decision pointed out the issues with trying to determine Section 230 protections, particularly in a case that also invoked FOSTA-SESTA.  [Though] the Supreme Court denied the request to take up the question…Justice Clarence Thomas added a statement opining that “although the case was not appropriate for court review, Congress should revisit the scope of Section 230”…

I Spy (#1166)

It looks as though at least one court is attempting to grow a spine:

[So-called “geofence”] warrants reverse the expectations of probable cause by turning everyone in a[n]…area into a suspect before investigators work backwards from the location data to generate a list of most likely suspects…[cops] have used these for years…[but] courts are paying more attention now…cops were investigating shootings at a motel in Fairfax County [Virginia, and]…had no suspects so they asked Google to generate them a list of people who had been in the area at the time of the shooting…[including] identifying data…the court…reject[ed] this warrant…Probable cause is the baseline and geofence warrants don’t even try to approach that constitutional guideline…Law enforcement either needs to do a whole lot better crafting these so-called warrants or, better yet, go back to the basics and start looking for suspects first, rather than trying to blunder their way into them by sifting through tons of unrelated data.

Why I Wait (#1177)

Somebody whose name isn’t Maggie McNeill is actually applying critical thought to this claim:

…a widely-held belief [holds] that…Gen Z, like the porn-sceptic feminists of the 70s and 80s, is a sex-negative generation.  Evidence routinely cited to support this belief includes the so-called “sex recession”…and the annual intergenerational battles over kink at Pride.  The idea that young people are abstaining from sex has even crystalised into a neologism: the Puriteen…young people who profess to avoid sex [do so] for a number of reasons: because they find it “objectifying”, “dangerous”, “uncomfortable”, “fucked up and scary”; because they are “exceptionally concerned with trauma and consent”; because casual sex makes them feel “used”…such statements have a political history…that risks falling from view when sex-negativity is treated as if Gen Z invented it.  By invoking objectification, instrumentalization, trauma, and consent, these young people – consciously or not – are using terms handed down to them by feminism…While it might seem like a paradox that [even] some young queers are expressing sex-negative views, the historical legacy of lesbian feminism proves that it isn’t paradoxical at all…

The Cop Myth (#1178)

Another cost of America’s sick worship of state-sanctioned violence:

…more than 7,600 [cops’ violent incompetence]…has more than once led to payouts to resolve lawsuits…[the] Washington Post…collected data on nearly 40,000 payments at 25 of the nation’s largest [cop shops] within the past decade, documenting more than $3.2 billion spent to settle claims…The total amounts further confirm the broad costs associated with police misconduct, as reported last year by FiveThirtyEight and the Marshall Project…more than 1,200 off[enders]…had been the subject of at least five payments.  More than 200 had 10 or more.  The repetition is the hidden cost of [police] misconduct: [cops] whose conduct was at issue in more than one payment accounted for more than $1.5 billion, or nearly half of the money spent by the departments to [sweep reports under the rug]…

To Molest and Rape (#1209)

Another specimen of the garbage the state pays to violate kids:

A [cop paid by the state to stalk, harass, and spy on students] at Auburn High School [in New York molested]…a student…William T. Morrissey, III has been charged with first-degree sexual abuse, official misconduct and endangering the welfare of a child…Auburn [politicians found out about the molestation via]…an anonymous written complaint in the mail…

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Puritans realized long ago that nobody is buying their “sex is evil” bill of goods any longer, so they’ve broken it up into bite-sized chunks to more easily cram it down the gullets of the Great Unwashed.  These bites include “porn is evil”, “pragmatic sex is evil”, “sex between people more than a few years apart is evil”, “sex a woman later regrets is retroactively evil”, “kink is evil”, “any sex trans people desire is evil”, “any sexual thoughts occurring even one minute before the thinker turns 18 are both evil and unnatural”, “wanting more or different sex than a monogamous partner is evil”, and many others.  And as each of these was accepted into the popular consciousness, the puritans worked to expand it like driving a wedge into a log, until laws and policies nobody would’ve agreed to if presented up front are suddenly a fact, and the conversation is being dominated by people who actually think Cosmopolitan and Sports Illustrated qualify as “porn” and rather bland sex education materials qualify as “obscene”.  Paradoxically, the anti-sex mob are those most obsessed by sex; they see it even where normal people do not.  Moreover, they reveal their specific fantasies & kinks the second they open their mouths, because as those of us who have studied the psychology of human sexuality understand, taboos, either societal or personal, are the biggest turn-ons.  So when Joe Arpaio goes on and on about bestiality with dogs, and Gail Dines goes on about triple penetration, and when other “feminists” go on and on about semen despite the existence of condoms, what they’re actually doing is revealing the specific nature of the fantasies which simultaneously obsess and bedevil them.

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