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Posts Tagged ‘The Immunity Syndrome’

That Was the Week That Was (#19)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Q & A, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 12, 2012| 26 Comments »

What most men desire is a virgin who is a whore.  –  Edward Dahlberg

Nine updates and a metaupdate.

Backward, Turn Backward (March 15th, 2011)

Apparently, Zimbabwe is a colony of the Bizarro World, where whores force men to have sex with them for free:

Three sex workers accused of raping 17 men in Zimbabwe have been freed…[they] were arrested last year after…a police…search of their vehicle revealed more than 30 used condoms…men…said the women forced them to have sex while brandishing weapons.  However, DNA evidence…disproved any link between the women and [their accusers]…[there was] widespread speculation that the sex workers were collecting semen for witchcraft.

You’ve gotta love the use of the modern term “sex worker” in that last line.

The First Time (March 20th, 2011)

Victorian men used to pay big money for whores who could credibly be passed as virgins, and apparently that kink is still around:

…Sweet Girls Premium Escort…is offering a Chinese-born Melbourne high school student [for $12,000]…”She is a virgin, you can tell,” [said] a spokeswoman…”She goes to your place or hotel and you can spend two days together.  She does not have a boyfriend and she wants to do it for the money,” she said.  The escort agency recruits mostly Asian women aged 18 to 25…The website written in English and Chinese suggests working for the agency “to solve your financial problem within short time”…

The rest of the article is a chorus of “feminists” clucking a lot of nonsense about “financial desperation” (as if anyone ever worked for any other reason), “no woman should have to sell her body” (because a woman is nothing but sex so selling it is equal to selling her entire self) and “double standards” (like the one they’re upholding by suggesting a girl’s virginity is too precious to sell and should instead be pointlessly given away).  I wish I had had the sense to sell my virginity; the experience probably would’ve been a lot more interesting than being clumsily mounted by some inexperienced boy in a dark room, and I would’ve had a lot fewer money worries the first few years of university.

The Scarlet Letter (March 29th, 2011)

Greece has joined the parade of countries using extrajudicial punishment against hookers, and Cheryl Overs explains why this is a bad idea:

Greece has been in the news for prosecuting HIV positive sex workers and posting the women’s photographs on the Internet…public health prosecutions and “naming and shaming” of [HIV+] sex workers occurs…across the world, including in the UK and US.  We are also observing a general increase in mandatory HIV testing…Successful HIV prevention is known to depend on a large portion of sex workers and clients using condoms and accessing…treatment …there is sufficient research and experience to compare the results of “rights based” approaches with heavy handed tactics like those used in Greece that have been shown to drive sex industries underground…repeatedly testing a few “legal” sex workers while  alienating “illegal” sex workers from services and testing them  forcibly in the wake of sporadic raids is not good public health…

Simply put, if hookers know they’ll be shamed and prosecuted for turning up positive, they simply won’t get tested.  And if legal workers are forcibly tested, they’ll simply work illegally instead.  This isn’t rocket science, but “authorities” seem completely unable to comprehend it.

Because We Say So (June 8th, 2011)

The crusade to impose Western cultural norms on Nepal has turned low-caste people into persecuted criminals:

…[Members of] the Badi, a Hindu caste that has for centuries been associated with entertainment and prostitution…live in the western districts of Nepal but…work in…cities…including Kathmandu, Mumbai and New Delhi.  Four years ago the Nepal government banned the Badis from pursuing their traditional occupation…[and] local communities…[have] used violent methods to compel the Badis to give up their sole means of livelihood…”We didn’t want to continue with prostitution but the government has failed to fulfill its promises of rehabilitation,” says Bishal Nepali, husband of a Badi sex worker.  The government did announce a package that included housing, income generation activities and scholarships…but these were never implemented…Nepali society gives little encouragement to Badi girls to pursue other professions and those among them who enter public schools are “often severely harassed by high caste students”…Badis are not allowed to run legitimate businesses.  “People fear to buy anything from my shop because they fear the villagers,” says Dinesh Nepali, a Badi male who runs a small shop selling cigarettes, vegetables and soft drinks.  “How can we survive like this?”…In 2007, Badi activists threatened to march naked through Kathmandu to embarrass the government into implementing the court-ordered rehabilitation, but that brought nothing except more promises…

September Q & A (September 30th, 2011)

In response to a questioner who defined using every minute of a call in penetration as “getting what he paid for”, I replied:  “…the price doesn’t assume that; it’s like going into a restaurant and complaining because every square centimeter of the plate isn’t covered in food.  Though I usually gave a price break for multiple hours, I didn’t do so if I knew the client was doing cocaine because the work of attending to him was much more difficult; the same thing could be said of a client who wants 60 full minutes of pumping.  Most girls even give a price break for dinner-date type calls because they’re much easier per hour than calls spent entirely in bed.”  Well, here’s a man who apparently had the same attitude as the questioner, but was far less civilized about it:

A 58-year-old Elgin [Illinois] man…tried to strangle a prostitute in a motel room after the woman refused additional sex after more than 30 encounters over a four-day period.  Kim P. Brandmire was charged with aggravated battery…[the] woman said the two had rented a room at the motel Thursday and…when she refused to have sex Sunday…Brandmire…choked her…The woman was charged with prostitution…

The realization that it’s sick and sadistic to charge a crime victim with a crime herself never dawns in the lawhead mind.

The Immunity Syndrome (March 5th, 2012)

Back in March I mentioned in passing that gonorrhea was rapidly becoming immune to all antibiotics; here’s an article from Scientific American which goes into more detail:

…Last summer…the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…demonstrated that up to 1.4 percent of 5,900 gonorrhea bacterial samples from around the U.S. had diminished susceptibility to cephalosporins…gonorrhea…is the second-most reported infectious disease in the U.S., with more than 600,000 new cases a year…if untreated, it can cause widespread organ damage…and infertility…Gonorrhea…[can borrow] DNA from other bacteria to construct new…defenses.  It steadily gained resistance…first the penicillins in the 1960s, then the tetracyclines in the 1980s, and…fluoroquinolones…in the 1990s.  By 2000 the only class of drugs that could provide [the inexpensive, effective, single-dose cure that] public health strategies rely on…was the cephalosporins.  [But] cephalosporin resistance has been emerging in Japan, and moving east and west from there, for at least a decade…Efforts to control STDs may have inadvertently accelerated the spread of resistance.  For years standard practice has been to quickly identify an infection, dole out the appropriate treatment and then move on to the next patient.  If symptoms return, the assumption has been that the patient was reinfected.  Experts now say that such patients may in fact have harbored resistant bacteria that were never killed in the first place—bacteria that the patients possibly spread to others…so far attempts to create a vaccine against gonorrhea have failed…

Even if a vaccine is eventually developed it won’t help the US, where adolescents – the carriers of 35% of all STIs – will certainly be blocked from receiving it by the same parental insanity which already prevents their vaccination against HPV.

Much Ado About Nothing (April 18th, 2012)

Dania Suarez, the escort Agent Arthur Huntington cheated, was interviewed on the Today show in Madrid:

…the alleged escort at the center of the Secret Service scandal…  [described] the…agents…as “stupid,” “idiots”…Dania Londono Suarez told NBC that the Secret Service agents seemed accustomed to soliciting women, saying the three men who approached her were not shy, drinking vodka “like it was water”…U.S. investigators have yet to talk with the single mother after she says she fled Colombia fearing for her life.

Note the dysphemism “alleged”, as though prostitution were criminal (which it isn’t in Colombia); if you don’t understand what Suarez was afraid of, you might want to read my column on Deborah Jeane Palfrey.

Meanwhile, “Army Gen. Charles H. Jacoby…stated in a May 6 memo that troops in Chicago during the [NATO] summit that begins May 20 will not ‘solicit prostitutes or engage in conduct which is unprofessional or unbecoming of a member of the armed forces.’  One military officer called the restrictions ‘an overreaction to recent Secret Service misconduct in Colombia’.”

Hiring whores is “unbecoming” to a soldier?  Pardon me while I die laughing.

Little Boxes (April 29th, 2012)

Dr. Marty Klein published a superb essay entitled “Why Janet Jackson’s Nipple Won’t Go Away”:

You may recall that way back in 2004, Janet Jackson’s right nipple was unexpectedly exposed for exactly one-half second during the Super Bowl halftime show.  Grown men cried.  Women fainted.  Children were driven mad by the brown protuberance.  Not surprisingly, the stock market crashed only four years later, soon followed by the meltdown of Japan’s nuclear reactors.  To punish the TV network on which the travesty occurred, the…FCC levied enormous fines…Since then, the FCC and our federal courts have been going back and forth in an attempt to design a TV censorship policy that doesn’t involve, um, censorship…So why are two successive presidencies…obsessed with a half-second of nipple?  Why are millions more of your tax dollars about to be spent attempting to punish CBS for what they failed to prevent over 8 years ago?…It’s a special kind of politics:  coding certain phenomena as sexual…makes them…subject to public control.  There is virtually no private sexual behavior in America…the “public-izing” of sex is a key weapon in the War On Sex…

One has to wonder:  Do American politicians want to make the US the laughingstock of the entire world, or do they really not comprehend that’s what they’re doing?

Whorearchy (May 10th, 2012)

In a perfect example of how “authorities” draw lines to divide whores from one another, Spain continues to turn the screws on streetwalkers so as to make it increasingly harder for them to make a living, while brothels are doing fine:

Indignant prostitutes take to the streets in Barcelona, angry at the city’s plans to ban street prostitution.  Unemployment in [Spain] has reached 23 percent, and sex workers say this is the only way they can earn a living…the police make their lives difficult as it is and…tightening the law will make it even harder to feed a family.  But…[brothels have] been making bigger profits every year since the crisis hit…

Metaupdates

The Camel’s Nose in TW3 (#16) (April 21st, 2012)

Even if Obama really does keep his promise to veto CISPA, there’s already a contingency plan in the works:

The FBI is asking Internet companies not to oppose a controversial proposal that would require firms…to build in backdoors for government surveillance…FBI officials argue the dramatic shift in communication from the telephone system to the Internet has made it far more difficult for agents to wiretap Americans…The FBI [wants to force] social-networking Web sites and providers of VoIP, instant messaging, and…e-mail [to] alter their code to ensure their products are wiretap-friendly…The FBI’s proposal would amend a 1994 law, called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA, that currently applies only to telecommunications providers…there are [also] indications that the [FCC] is considering reinterpreting CALEA to demand that products that allow video or voice chat over the Internet — from Skype to Google Hangouts to Xbox Live — include surveillance backdoors to help the FBI…

One Year Ago Today

“A War for Peace” turns a critical eye on the antics of Femen, the Ukranian feminist group known for topless protests.

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That Was the Week That Was (#15)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 14, 2012| 20 Comments »

The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.  –  James Madison

Ten updates and two meta-updates.

Welcome To Our World (January 20th, 2011)

Who else besides prostitutes and drug users are abducted and caged “for their own good”?

A 17-year-old suspected rape victim is being held in a California juvenile detention facility to ensure that she’ll show up to testify against her attacker…“The last thing we ever want to do is put a victim or a witness in custody, but when you have serious crimes of violence and multiple offenses, you have to balance the protection of the community,” [said the]…assistant district attorney…

Once again:  never, ever call the cops for any reason, not even if you think you’re dying.  Because once you do, they think you are their personal property to dispose of in any way they wish.

A Manufactured War (January 23rd, 2011)

In the grand tradition of William Randolph Hearst, the New York Times doesn’t just report the news; it exaggerates, distorts and lies in order to make a “good story”.  And since it’s been on an anti-whore hobby horse for several years now, that means stuff like this:

…While the rest of Spain’s economy may be struggling, experts say that prostitution — almost all of it involving the ruthless trafficking of foreign women — is booming…powered in large part by the desires of young men…The State Department’s 2010 report on trafficking said that 200,000 to 400,000 women worked in prostitution in Spain…[and] 90 percent were trafficked…

No, “experts” say no such thing; those who promote this kind of garbage are mostly just making it up, either pulling numbers from thin air or using overly-broad definitions (such as defining any hooker who works in an area other than her native soil as “trafficked”) and then embellishing the numbers with unwarranted adjectives like “ruthless” and presenting scare stories as “fact”.  For more Times duplicity, see “Feet of Clay” below.

Neither Cold Nor Hot (April 6th, 2011)

Once in a while, Jezebel stands up for sex workers; too bad it isn’t more often:

Sex workers are anti sex-trafficking.  It seems obvious…and yet you might not know this because sex workers rights activists have not gotten any air-time from the major anti-trafficking organizations…shutting down advertising sites…means losing the ability to screen clients beforehand…SWOP and other sex worker advocacy groups have ideas around what could actually help trafficking…

Don’t Take My Word For It (September 29th, 2011)

Three German students may have discovered the secret to heterosexual male prostitution:  don’t charge anything or expect much business:

…three business students from the University of Mannheim…offer…female students uncomplicated and anonymous one-night stands…posters…promise “Good Grades through Good Sex.”  The young men claim that their project is about emancipation…and…should be recognized as more than a mere coital campaign…Female students who spend their evenings drained and fatigued in the library and are in the mood for a little closeness and intimacy are encouraged to send an email.  Then one of the three men will meet with them…[they] claim that five one-night-stands have taken place so far…

Scapegoats (January 26th, 2012)

Since this report is several years old and was not available on any mainstream news site, I suspect it’s an urban legend circulated among animal-rights types;  supposedly an orangutan named Pony was “rescued” from a rural brothel in Borneo, where she was employed as a prostitute and shaved several times a week to make her more presentable.  Unless someone manages to dig up a properly-documented article, I must point out that claiming huge numbers of men would pay for sex with an ape seems closely akin to the notion that similar numbers want sex with traumatized prepubescent girls:  both are prohibitionist myths intended to smear men in general and whores’ clients in particular.

The Immunity Syndrome (March 5th, 2012)

Here’s an unsurprising report showing that American states with “abstinence-only” sex education have the highest teen pregnancy rates:

The number of teen births in the U.S. dropped again in 2010…to about 34 per 1,000 girls… Mississippi continues to have the  highest teen birth rate, with 55 births per 1,000 girls.  New Hampshire has the lowest rate at just under 16 births per 1,000 girls.  This is the lowest national rate for teen births since…1940…Researchers…found that teenagers who received…comprehensive sex education were 60 percent less likely to get pregnant or get someone else pregnant.  And in 2007, a federal report showed that abstinence-only programs had “no impacts on rates of sexual abstinence.”  But 37 states require sex education that includes abstinence, 26 of which require that abstinence be stressed as the best method…research shows that [these] deter contraceptive use  among teenagers, thus increasing…risk of unintended pregnancy…

Above the Law (March 8th, 2012)

Naomi Wolf’s analysis of the TSA’s true motivation is much like mine:

…this week, the Supreme Court decided that anyone can be strip-searched upon arrest for any offense, however minor…Justice Anthony Kennedy explained that this ruling is necessary because [one of the 9/11 conspirators] could have been stopped for speeding.  How would strip searching him have prevented the attack?  Did Justice Kennedy imagine that plans to blow up the twin towers had been concealed in a body cavity?  In still more bizarre non-logic, his and the other justices’ decision rests on concerns about weapons and contraband in prison systems.  But people under arrest – that is, who are not yet convicted – haven’t been introduced into a prison population.  Our surveillance state shown considerable determination to intrude on citizens sexually…the use of forced nudity by a state that is descending into fascism is powerfully effective in controlling and subduing populations.  The political use of forced nudity by anti-democratic regimes is long established.  Forcing people to undress is the first step in breaking down their sense of individuality and dignity and reinforcing their powerlessness…the TSA…genital groping policy…is designed to psychologically habituate US citizens to a condition in which they are demeaned and sexually intruded upon by the state…

Useful Idiots (March 15th, 2012)

More evidence for those who still don’t accept that neofeminist propaganda denying the agency of prostitutes and other non-neofeminist women is inevitably used to classify all women as passive, infantile moral imbeciles:

[Wisconsin governor] Scott Walker…quietly signed three controversial bills on the eve of a holiday weekend…A woman seeking an abortion must [now] undergo an exam and consult with a doctor alone, away from her friends and family.  The doctor must determine whether someone is pressuring the woman into the procedure…

Mandatory prosecution laws for domestic violence and Swedish-flavored anti-prostitution laws have established the precedent that women are incompetent to make any decision which involves sex, and that if a woman makes a decision “authorities” don’t like it must be the result of coercion.  This merely follows that precedent to its next logical step; look for more like it in upcoming months.

Feet of Clay (April 5th, 2012)

Thanks to Jacob Sullum of Reason for pointing out this excellent article:

…[Nicholas] Kristof’s own newspaper profits from the sort of advertising for escort services, strip clubs, and other forms of adult entertainment that Kristof has linked to the underworld of child sex trafficking…About.com is “a wholly-owned subsidiary of the New York Times Company”…[which] accounted for 5% of all [company] revenues…in 2011, roughly $100 million…the Times also owns a 49% stake in Metro Boston…[which] also happens to make money from  adult advertising…[Kristof’s] salary partly comes from the same ads, and the same allegedly criminal activity, that he tried to pin on Goldman Sachs…Though [it] immediately divested itself of its stake in Backpage.com, that was not enough for Kristof, who told CNBC he would have preferred to see the company apply its investment towards “bringing about change” in the online advertising industry.  He added that Goldman Sachs should have sold its 16 percent stake in Village Voice Media to “an anti-trafficking organization.”  Will Kristof apply that same standard to the New York Times–and himself?  The newspaper and its shareholders must give up over $100 million in annual revenue; are they ready to contribute to the cause?  And if not, will Kristof devote his column to campaigning against his employer?  Will he appear on CNBC to report “The Times‘ Ties to Sex Trafficking?”  If not, why not?

The Notorious Badge (April 9th, 2012)

In the TV movie The Client List Jennifer Love Hewitt played a mother who becomes an erotic masseuse to make ends meet, and the movie proved so popular it is now a series.  I have been told the character and her work are portrayed positively, and this interview with the actress leads me to believe that:

Since the movie has come out and with the upcoming show, have you been approached or contacted by any women who work in the sex industry?

No, I haven’t.  I mean, I’m sure maybe once the show starts airing a bit, I might be able to meet some of those women or they might feel more comfortable to come up and say hello and have open discussions about those things…I feel like [prejudices come]…from lack of knowledge and fear and maybe not knowing the whole story…the more that you look into those industries, a lot of those women are single moms doing the best that they can or are someone’s daughter who fell on hard times…of course, some of them…just chose it because that’s what they wanted to do…I respect people doing what they have to do in order to try to live and be happy…

I sent a message to Miss Hewitt offering to answer any questions she might have, but haven’t heard back yet.  The comment thread is a story in its own right; it’s full of holier-than-thou comments from the pompous windbags who apparently infest the massage profession nowadays, as discussed in “Full of Themselves”.

Metaupdates

An Ounce of Prevention in That Was the Week That Was (#11) (March 17th, 2012)

More on Michael Weinstein’s campaign against an anti-HIV drug:

…Thanks to Weinstein’s “leadership” [AHF has] gone from a sizeable healthcare foundation with a good reputation to…a…joke…

A leading AIDS group is battling with FDA over whether the agency should approve the first drug for preventing HIV infection in gay men, and the fight has gotten nasty…the AIDS Healthcare Foundation called for Commissioner Margaret Hamburg to resign over that and other issues, perhaps including egos…Truvada cut the HIV infection in men who have sex with men by 44 percent compared to a placebo…So far, the drug has not been found to work in women…Weinstein worries that the promise of a “magic pill” could reverse progress the AIDS community has made in encouraging condom use over decades…

Mr. Weinstein is actually the only one who’s been branding Truvada as a magic pill, and he’s been citing half truths [and] his own botched survey…Nobody else…has been calling this anything other than…a drug with a promising potential that needs to be truly and thoroughly studied…Maybe it’s time for the AHF to consider whether or not the $366,046 a year they are paying Weinstein is money well spent.  Charles Lyons II at Glaser makes exactly $1023 less than Weinstein for running an organization twice the size and scope.  And he’s not wasting his group’s time and efforts trying to derail patient care…

The Leading Players in the Field, Not in That Was the Week That Was (#14) (April 6th, 2012)

Dr. Laura Agustín published two excellent articles on Gloria Steinem’s recent attempt to appoint herself an expert on “prostitution and sex trafficking” in India; her April 6th column discusses Steinem’s many errors, clichés, distortions, biases and moralistic assumptions, including her bizarre description of sex as “body invasion” (apparently a melodramatic twist on Robin Morgan’s ridiculous definition of rape).  And on April 9th, Agustín describes an absurd tabloid-style news article glorifying Steinem and other White Saviors descending upon India to “rescue” sex workers “with money and might”.

One Year Ago Today

“The Pro-Rape Coalition” demonstrates why those who call themselves “anti-porn” are in reality pro-rape.

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The Immunity Syndrome

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 5, 2012| 29 Comments »

They told me I was everything.  ‘Tis a lie, I am not ague-proof.  –  William Shakespeare, King Lear (IV, vi)

Adults in Western countries often say that teenagers think they’re immortal and invulnerable, and to some degree that’s true.  Really, how could it be otherwise?  They have the energy and optimism of youth, their bodies are generally as healthy as they’re ever going to be and very few of them have seen a peer die.  And unless they grew up in extreme poverty, they generally haven’t been ground down by the world and developed the permanent mental stoop that most adults have, the attitude Thoreau referred to as “quiet desperation”.  Young men are generally far more eager to go to war than are experienced campaigners, and young women far more likely to take the sort of risks that make their mothers cringe.  Add to that raging hormones and inexperience, and it’s not remotely surprising that teens have the highest STD rate of any demographic group (35% of all cases in the US), or that a small percentage of teenage girls end up pregnant when they absolutely did not want to be.

But does it have to be that way?  Certainly their inexperience is a major factor; people of any age who aren’t used to something (sex included) are more apt to make mistakes than those with plenty of experience.  And the fact that cognitive skills continue to develop until the mid-20s probably has something to do with it as well.  But if you look at the first paragraph above again, you’ll see that several of those factors can be summed up in a single word: ignorance.  The most important reason adolescents get in trouble over sex is that they don’t really understand that bad things can happen to them, nor how to reduce the chances of negative outcomes.  And the primary reason they don’t understand is that adults not only refuse to explain it to them, but in many cases actively block access to sex information…or even worse, actually lie to adolescents about it.  And the most egregious of these lies, such as “sex is better if neither of you knows what you’re doing on your wedding night”, are so patently false that they cause teens to doubt everything else adults are telling them – including the things that are true.

The teenage birth rate in the US is 34.3 births per 1000 girls aged 15 to 19, down from a 20th century high of 61.8 in 1991.  Proponents of “abstinence-only sex education” claim the credit for this, since that fad started in 1992 and became popular in 1996.  But when one considers that the present figure is still far greater than that of any other industrialized nation, in fact fully eight times the rate in the Netherlands, any rational person is forced to conclude that maybe keeping kids ignorant of sex isn’t exactly the best way of preparing them for life, and that perhaps we should worry more about protecting their health and futures than their imaginary “innocence”.  This becomes even more clear when one reads interviews with teen mothers in which they express shocking ignorance of the mechanics of menstruation and conception, and often state that they believed they were somehow immune to pregnancy.  The same goes for STDs; American teenagers seem completely unaware that they’re in the highest-risk group for infection and proceed as though their “love” will create a magical shield protecting them from all disease (and possibly pregnancy as well).

The reason for the drop, if you ask me, isn’t the increasing tendency of adults to try to “protect” teens by keeping them in ignorance, but rather the increasing inability of adults to keep them in ignorance, thanks to the internet (which has grown as teen pregnancy rates have dropped).  But it’s still not remotely enough; even if proper sex-education programs were implemented from coast to coast tomorrow our STD and teen pregnancy rates still probably wouldn’t drop to those of Europe due to our deep cultural weirdness about sex; we are, after all, the only Western country in which sex work is so thoroughly equated with pathology and criminality.  In other words, mere sex education isn’t enough; learning about biological mechanisms and potential problems is only half the picture.  Few of the people reading this were as thoroughly supervised and spied on as modern teens are, and governments in a number of countries (especially the US) want to increase that so as to keep them from discovering any information about sex other than what “authorities” choose to provide.  Not that this can ever be effective, any more than bans on prostitution or drugs are.  But just as drug criminalization leads inevitably to dangerously impure substances, and just as criminalization of prostitution allows sleazy characters to thrive on both the service and customer sides of the business, so does suppression of information reduce the quality of that which gets past the ban.  A recent op-ed by Michelle Griffin in the Brisbane Times proposes that we do the exact opposite and actually encourage teens to read porn (the operative word here being “read”); since they’re thinking about it anyway and can see crappy internet porn at the click of a mouse, access to non-clinical descriptions of sexuality will help to educate them just as Nancy Friday’s My Secret Garden helped to educate Griffin (and me), discovering Dad’s stash of Playboy educated many young boys and watching farm animals educated kids for the past 10,000 years.

I have absolutely no hope that this sensible attitude will catch on in the United States any time soon; if the manufactured “controversy” over birth control and abortion is any indication, this country is moving backward rather than forward.  But we’d best do something soon; though HIV may soon be preventable, gonorrhea is rapidly becoming immune to all antibiotics, and a third of all infections are in teenagers.  People used to say (and some still apparently believe) that rape was worse than death; in a world of incurable venereal diseases, American parents will soon have to decide if preserving their kids’ so-called “innocence” is more important than preserving their lives.

One Year Ago Today

“Godwin’s Law” discusses the ways people use and misuse the familiar internet principle, and argues that sometimes Nazi analogies are entirely appropriate.

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