The MacKinnon Patriarch

If you’ve got a beef with Catharine MacKinnon then you’ve come to the right place. Watch my latest from youtube:   

The Feminist Fault Line

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So, if Martin Luther King Jr. visited prostitutes, would that make him some sort of rapist asshole woman-hater, or does it mean that somebody is telling a dirty vicious lie? Or does it mean that men who visit prostitutes are sometimes, if not often or usually, good and decent men with value in our society?  I know, I left one out: Was he merely unaware of how many of those women were forced into prostitution against their will and/or had no other choice due to economic desperation?
  

My Problem

Know what my problem is? I read too much, I pop open the internet, and first thing I read pisses me off (maybe I’m too easily pissed off?). I don’t know what I expected starting off with feministing, which I’ve decided not to go to anymore, but it’s still in my feeds so, ugh, I saw this piece about Uganda.

Now I’ve got the feministing piece opened in a tab, the piece from Edwin Okong’o that feministing references, a Tom Coburn page, the Fed Funding tracker thing page, and the Fed Funding page for polaris project, and the “how to donate” page for the polaris project. And my own wordpress tab too, and a blank tab for just-in-case. And 3 openOffice documents, and my image program where there are 2 screenshots saved.

Yeah, and somehow I’m trying to fit all of that into one post, and explain how it’s all connected. And also somehow I want to point out the bad usage of the phrase “inferiority complex” and how westerners fall for that shit too when it’s worded as “women especially are vulnerable”…

Ugh. And that latest video down there is involved too…

Yeah… read too much… a problem….

Interesting. Timely.

And a bit of deja vu too. Katie Roiphe, Mary Daly – what do these two women have in common BESIDES both being mentioned one atop the other on several blogs over the past couple days?

Here’s a clue:

Know Your Enemy

I hadn’t seen the official video of this song yet, I dig the immigration/surveillance angle, because like – yeah.

 

I Made A Video

It’s very angry and ranty, or it turned out very angry and ranty because I had to cut it down to under 10 minutes length, and all the angry stuff ended up being where the points were. Took forever. Anyway. It’s over there in my little video thing, “Questioning Authority”. I’m already embarrassed by it.  Ugh.

Picking On Religion Again

Quick thoughts.

Why do so many people use the “can you cite that?” crap when it’s already been expressly explained in derailing for dummies that such simple research is something people should do for themselves.

That so many people were unaware of Mary Daly’s transhate is shameful. I didn’t read her books, but I fucking went and searched out parts of it to read, and I found RIGHT AWAY that there was a problem. It wasn’t hidden, all it takes is googling ”Mary Daly”.

Short Answers

Ok, I got a thought-provoking comment the other day, well a couple of them actually, but this particular comment had some questions I’ve attempted to answer, here’s question 1:

How does one effect change in the organizations that perpetuate the problem that you are describing? (to paraphrase: the problem of conflating trafficking with prostitution and prostitution with being an inherent victim of rape-culture type systemic oppression)

Short answers are (yes omg, this IS the short version!) –

I Suspected As Much!

Check this out, I found it on Democracy Now the other day, it’s about a year old. This, I think, is good ammunition to use against those who push the “Swedish Model” for ending demand of “commercial sex”.  People who aren’t really informed about the “swedish model” probably don’t realize that the Sweden today isn’t the same swingin’ cool Sweden we saw depicted in late 70′s softcore porn. It’s the Sweden that loves Bush and Rove. I mean I’ve got a category called “the ASTM and the NeoCons” because if anyone bothers to look it’s sort of obvious – but this little interview from democracy now really sums it up better than my long rambling posts do:  (and oh yeah, I made a blog thing on salon, and posted about this interview and some other general sex workers’ rights vs. moralizing prick type stuff if you want to check it out, i just figured that maybe some people would see it there and start noticing the swedish model problem)  (– also, yeah, some stuff in this interview might be of interest to non-prostitutes’-rights-obsessed people too) and there is video of the interview thru the headline link:

Bush, Rove Tied to Effort to Dismantle Sweden’s Social Welfare Program

Anti-Sex-Trafficking Dude Calls Prostitutes “Nasty, Immoral” – Prostitute Not Shocked

It seems sort of important to me that dudes from the Bush administration are now in charge of the anti-sex trafficking movement, and pimping it hard. The Ambassador has a blog post on the Polaris Project Blog:

Reverse the Stigma
by Ambassador Mark P. Lagon

And calling women in general “hos” is reprehensible.

Ignorant? or Spreading Misinformation? What do you think?

Really? Are you fucking kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me? Has this woman never heard about PEPFAR watch? Are you fucking kidding me? DOES SHE FUCKING HAVE GOOGLE? I guess maybe she can’t bothered to research anything, what with all the pearl-clutching and fainting she’ll have to do.

Yeah, it’s a couple weeks old, but I try not to subject myself to things like this too frequently:

Feminist Law Professors‘ Ann Bartow:

  And how much do rape, pornography and prostitution contribute to the spread of AIDS? Wish there was some data on that, but not holding my breath. From the HuffPo:

 In its first study of women’s health around the globe, the World Health Organization said Monday that the AIDS virus is the leading cause of death and disease among women between the ages of 15 and 44.

 Unsafe sex is the leading risk factor in developing countries for these women of childbearing age, with others including lack of access to contraceptives and iron deficiency, the WHO said. Throughout the world, one in five deaths among women in this age group is linked to unsafe sex, according to the U.N. agency.

 “Women who do not know how to protect themselves from such infections, or who are unable to do so, face increased risks of death or illness,” WHO said in a 91-page report. “So do those who cannot protect themselves from unwanted pregnancy or control their fertility because of lack of access to contraception.” …

If prostitution actually was voluntary and consensual, if pornographers actually respected the wishes and bodily integrity of performers, if contraceptives actually were freely available, how different the world would be for women.

–Ann Bartow

-right, she’s concerned with human rights, my fat ass.

Maybe she could check out this 259 page WHO pdf. full of suggestions on how to be a better researcher -  (they spent a decade writing it so you know it’s good) – because she has certainly already mastered the CATW’s guidelines for the media on how to report on the issues of sex-workers:   “How News-Men Can Better Shame Whores”  – ‘course that’s just my little pet title for it.

Sexy Sex And Stuff! Giggle! Except It’s More About Structural Libertarianism Actually

You might already know that I am enraged by the whole “whores are damaged and stupid, but it’s not their fault they’re too stupid to even know” shtick, and today I happened upon a thread over at Tiger Beatdown which was actually one of those pop-culture-feminism-conversation things that I HATE – anyway here is the part that literally flipped my lid (for realz i spilled my pot cuz I was so upset!):

SADY: [...] i think the only people who think it is empowering are people who don’t get structure, and are kind of libertariany and weird.

AMANDA: yeah. “i do something, and i am a woman, so that thing is empowering for women” doesn’t really make sense

here is my comment, which might still be stuck in the moderation queue:

It doesn’t make sense because you are trapped in the twisted glorification of women’s sexuality. It’s about libertarianism, because it’s about freedom. Sexual freedom and reproductive freedom. All at once, together, forever.- (big surprise)

 
So, ok, sure there’s the anti-sex freedom stuff that bugs me – but the anti- libertarian stuff just makes me extra extra stabby. It has for months too, well for more than a year since before the election last year when all of a sudden there was all this anti libertarian hate everywhere. I’ve been a libertarian since – like forever – since jesus gotta think now… 1991? Since before I voted for Bill Clinton, I mean I was registered as a Libertarian when I voted for him, so whenever the fuck that was… – . Anyway, when all the libertarian hate started I endeavored to find out where it was coming from – and well I didn’t have to endeavor much because alla sudden BLAM here comes the far-right Randian whack-jobs – and ta-da yeah, not a surprise that everybody hates them. 

But ok, here we have two worthy feminists, 2 smart women who write great stuff, and I understand that this is a conversation I’m reading but to have the “libertariany and weird” thing thrown out there, and then have it followed by the “doesn’t really make sense” stuff …. I mean HAVE YOU TRIED TO FIGURE IT OUT? Cause it ain’t that hard, as my unneeded endeavoring shows. Libertarianism is a big big big ummmm spectrum of beliefs and nuances and all sorts of stuff… the ONLY thing that it holds true across the spectrum is that Libertarianism is NOT Authoritarianism. Full Stop.

As an example, here is my “political compass” (and take yours, I bet that you’re a libertariany weirdo somewhere near the Dalai Lama too!)

But, Women Are Made For Penises, Right?

I mean, why should I pay for sex when women are for sex? That’s why God made them, so we could have sex with them! It’s like God already paid for the sex, and then he gave it to us by creating women. That’s God’s plan! Paying for it is like saying women weren’t specifically put here for a man to put his penis into in the first place, and that’s just plain crazy talk!

And you know, if you make me pay, then there is no chance that I will fall in love with you, and isn’t that what you really want? For me to fall in love with you? Sorry, it doesn’t work that way, that’s only in the movies honey, This Ain’t Pretty Woman, you know. Here in the real world men who pay for sex know that you are trash, and they won’t ever love you. So come on, you know I can’t pay because I actually kind of like you. I might love you if you let me fuck that hot cunt right now, don’t you want that? That’s what women want, I know it is, women want love and someone to care about them. You need to decide if you want love or if you want people to think you’re trash, it’s a decision only you can make.

This is so sad. So sad that you never learned the pleasure that comes from only having a dick inside you instead of the sinful deviant perverted pleasure of having a dick inside you and 300 dollars. You only think it’s ok because you don’t know any better, who taught you this nonsense?!  They robbed you of the ability to love my cock, and the opportunity to earn a chance at me loving you. It’s quite tragic, actually. You just really haven’t got a clue what love is really like, do you?

Oh you say that you have people who care about you, and that you have love… but come on, do you really? How could you? You charge men for sex, and I already explained to you that nobody will ever love that, it’s against the rule that says Women Are Made For Fucking. There is no rule that says women are made for paying, you know. In fact there are rules against it!

 Besides those good reasons, don’t you know that if you make me pay for it, you’re gonna make it harder for me to take other women seriously when they tell me that they don’t want sex WITHOUT love?  Don’t be ridiculous and say that I should respect what those women say! How can I respect other women’s wishes when YOU –  a WOMAN  – have already told me that you – a WOMAN – are fine with being fucked without the bonus of me possibly loving you? You know that what goes for one woman goes for all, and how can you speak for all those decent women and say my precious love doesn’t matter? You might not care about the possibility of experiencing the wonder of my love – but what about other women? Do you want to deny them the chance? Do you really think it’s wise to send the message that it’s ok to fuck for money and NOT love?! Why oh why would you want to deny them the opportunity of worshipping my dick out of the kindness of thier hearts?

I just can’t believe that you are fine with being trash, with being a – yeah I’ll say it – you’re just a whore. I’m not gonna fancy it up with “escort” or “call-girl” because you’re no better than a common whore. I’m sorry, maybe that was out of line… you’re not that bad, you are smart and funny and you seem so normal – it just breaks my heart that you think men will love you when you refuse to even try riding their dicks without money. It’s like you don’t even consider that the feeling of my dick up in you will be worth it without money. You might enjoy it, you know. Ever think of that?  

You don’t realize it, but if I give you money for something that I technically already have a right to, it automatically makes you unable to appreciate my dick on its own merits. Maybe it’s too late - even if you didn’t make me pay, you wouldn’t be able to appreciate it. You’ve gotten so used to dicks coming along with money attached to them, that any dick without money won’t even interest you! No, you might say it’s just MY dick that you don’t want without money, but I know that’s impossible, because My Dick is the greatest Dick and no sane woman would turn down the chance to have it.

You act like I’m hassling you! HA! I actually care about you. I’m probably the only person who actually does.  These people who give you money – they really don’t care, you know. Oh sure, they are giving you money, and that lets you feed your children and pay your rent and save for a rainy day – but is that really evidence that someone cares, really CARES, about you? That they feed and shelter you and your children? Really, that’s all it takes? So sad, so sad.

I mean, sure, it sounds good, but only if you think of it like just another job  - but it’s YOUR VAGINA!!!! it’s not your feet or your hands or your muscles or your mind or your talent or your opinions they are paying for - it’s your vagina! God gave you that vagina, and he gave it to you for a purpose. It’s your only purpose, really – to be the keeper of that vagina – that part of you that takes my seed and loves it, nourishes it, and gives that seed a place to safely grow into my children – that is more important than anything else. If you don’t realize that, it’s just…  so so  sad.

And you know, you should be really glad that I don’t just call the cops on you, or rape you for that matter. Anyone else would, you know. other than these men who degrade you by feeding and sheltering you, anyway. They are just as sick as you are, maybe worse. Yep, gotta be something wrong with a guy who doesn’t have enough self-esteem to know that his dick is for worshipping. I don’t know who I feel worse for, them or you. Or maybe it’s our fucked up culture, and this attitude we have that women can just go around being sexual for the sake of being sexual. I mean really, when did that become acceptable? Even feminists can see the problem with that – a woman’s sexuality isn’t for public consumption. It’s private, and precious, and should be kept safe and cared for and out of sight.

There was time when men just took sex, didn’t ask or anything, and feminism taught us how wrong that was. We learned about asking, learned that women should be asked first, but this is just too much. Expecting me to pay is just going too far. I’m asking like I was taught – and you can say no, but you’re not even saying no! You’re saying no, unless I pay - then it’s yes! What does that say about all those lessons telling me I had to ask? Why didn’t they teach us that all it really takes is money, and we don’t even really have to ask at all? They teach us that no means no, and yet you don’t really mean no when you say no – you mean no “not for free” and yes “for money”. How are men supposed to keep all of that straight?! How are we supposed to understand that no means no, but sometimes it’s ok if you pay?! You are practically teaching men that it’s ok to rape women, don’t you care about that- about the women?!   

Don’t even try telling me that YOU are a feminist! Feminists understand the worth of a woman, you sure as hell don’t. You think a woman is worth only a few hundred dollars, but I know you’re worth more than that, you are worth so much that you have no wor… er umm, I mean you are priceless, umm, you know what I mean… Women just can’t be thought of in that way – because the worth is in what they do, in how they behave, in the things they accomplish – there is no worth in just being a woman, you have to have something to offer. Ugh. NO! You CAN’T offer me your vagina, aren’t you listening? That part of you is special — in fact anywhere I decide to put my dick is special — your mouth, your hand, your ass, between your tits, … it’s wrong to expect me to pay to put my dick into any of those. It’s just wrong to expect me to pay to put my dick where I decided I wanted to put it. My God. You really are a stupid whore if you don’t understand that by now.

Ok, fine. It’s your lucky day then. I’ll pay.

Oh that is rich….. you’re a fucking hypocrite! Now you say you won’t even fuck me for money! Because I was rude?! Are you out of your mind?! You can’t actually say NO! You’re a whore!

Oh Ok, Yes, you can say No… , ok then, yes I understand that is a pretty big gun, ok I’ll just find my own way out, no disrespect ma’am, really I was just kidding… sorry, sorry…

Feminist Whore Critique of A Critique of Ann Coulter

I was over on ChangingMinds.org earlier, and came across this analysis of Ann Coulter’s body language in her infamous “Perfected Jews” appearance.  I was struck by the gendered assumptions on the part of the analyzer. I only quoted the applicable sections:

Raising Awareness About The Anti-Sex Trafficking Movement

I submitted this post to Feministing.com’s community page, it was not approved.

See Also:

Women and Children, Especially - Part 1 and Part 2 

I’ve decided to join the efforts to expose the motivations of the “anti-sex trafficking” movement which uses an “end the demand” approach to the sex-work industry. They say that as long as prostitution is seen as “acceptable” there will be women and children victimized by it. Because it’s too difficult (they say) to combat the actual abuses that may happen in a decriminalized or regulated industry, it’s more sensible to “end the demand” (which we all know has worked wonders for the Drug War). The practice of “ending demand” means shaming and imprisoning those who do not conform.

Today I’m writing about Linda Smith, former Republican Congresswoman, a social conservative who founded Shared Hope International, an “anti-sex trafficking” organization that now makes policy recommendations on how governments should legislate the sexuality of women. A couple weeks ago Ms. Smith spoke in front of the  U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs pushing her “women are natural victims” and “nobody normal chooses to be a dirty whore” and “dirty women make men want to fuck kids” bullshit. The text of what she said is linked further down, but first you should read the bold parts of this excerpted description of her time in congress:

I Feel Quite Rude Doing This

Apparently the UK is embroiled in a massive sex worker battle of some sort. Yes, I admit I’m a US centric asshole, so I don’t know all of the details, but it seems that in at least some areas across the pond prostitution is ok in certain situations and under certain regulations. Currently there seems to be a lot of effort to start restricting the types of prostitution allowed. So, I’m assuming this is why the Guardian has had so many prostitution articles lately. Or maybe they have always had that many. The one I’m talking about today was published on the 28^th and it irritated me.

 So, the Headline reads:

Exit strategy
A former prostitute is challenging the idea that only some sex workers are forced into the industry

That seems like an interesting use of words. I get the idea though: All sex workers are forced. This is supposed to counter the myth that some aren’t forced. I wonder though, exactly how prevalent is this alleged “idea” that it requires “challenges” at all? Maybe it’s the cultural divide, but my perception has always been that the general public already assumes that all prostitutes are forced. Either way, what the fuck sort of shady sentence construction is that?

I click over and read the first bit of text:

By the age of six, Beverly Carter was being sexually abused by immediate members of her family, who then used her to provide paid-for sex to outsiders – leading to a 30-year stretch of prostitution. Despite eventually reporting the abuse to doctors, she says she wasn’t helped and began to use alcohol and drugs – including slimming pills, cannabis and crack cocaine – to fill the painful void.

Oh great. What sort of evil bitch would criticize this? Me apparently, and I’m pretty pissed off about it. First of all – I personally, and a couple of people I know, were used in a series of articles similar to this one. What we said was taken out of context and it was blatantly misused to advance an agenda with which we didn’t agree. Because of that experience I can’t assume that this article truthfully represents what the subject believes or advocates. So I leave open the possibility that Ms. Carter was not accurately represented in this article, as well as the possibility that she was. I do not doubt her story, I do not doubt her motivation is born of personal experience, her own perceptions, self-reflection, and faith that she is doing the right thing – what I do question is the way in which this article uses her story and personal activism to argue the needs for stricter prostitution laws.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING

Before there were social contracts or sexual contracts there were biological contracts. Biological contracts have always been and always will be, unless we as a species learn to asexually reproduce, and even then there will be a contract between parent and offspring.

Hey, Look At This

From The Guardian :
20 Oct 09

There is something familiar about the tide of misinformation which has swept through the subject of sex trafficking in the UK: it flows through exactly the same channels as the now notorious torrent about Saddam Hussein’s weapons.

In the case of sex trafficking, the role of the neo-conservatives and Iraqi exiles has been played by an unlikely union of evangelical Christians with feminist campaigners, who pursued the trafficking tale to secure their greater goal, not of regime change, but of legal change to abolish all prostitution. The sex trafficking story is a model of misinformation. It began to take shape in the mid 1990s, when the collapse of economies in the old Warsaw Pact countries saw the working flats of London flooded with young women from eastern Europe. Soon, there were rumours and media reports that attached a new word to these women. They had been “trafficked”.

[...]

The evidence was left even further behind as politicians took up the issue as a rallying call for feminists. They were led by the Labour MP for Rotherham and former Foreign Office minister Denis MacShane, who took to describing London as “Europe’s capital for under-aged trafficked sex slaves”. In a debate in the Commons in November 2007, MacShane announced that “according to Home Office estimates, 25,000 sex slaves currently work in the massage parlours and brothels of Britain.”

There is simply no Home Office source for that figure, although it has been reproduced repeatedly in media stories.

[...]

Repeatedly, prostitutes groups have argued that the proposal is as wrong as the trafficking estimates on which it is based, and that it will aggravate every form of jeopardy which they face in their work, whether by encouraging them to work alone in an attempt to show that they are free of control or by pressurising them to have sex without condoms to hold on to worried customers. Thus far, their voices remain largely ignored by news media and politicians who, once more, have been swept away on a tide of misinformation.