This law is decidedly UNfeminist. One can’t watch this video and think the Swedes are progressive. It is so regressive! Imagine substituting “sex work” for “acting”. Or any other job. How dehumanizing and infantilizing. Is the answer really to shut women up? Honestly. Does anyone still believe that?
“We want to save you! And if you dont appreciate it you will be punished!”
This is amazing. I never acquired the pole skill displayed here because I always had too many bruises on my thighs from trying. I did master the art of undulation, however, and maybe one day I will post a video of that here. But anyone who can watch this and deny that these women have amazing strength and athletic ability, not to mention pure artistic talent, is in denial. Amazing.
Partially cross-posted at community.feministing.com
I was appalled to read Donna Hughes’s opinion piece in the Providence Journal entitled “R.I.’s Carnival of Prostitution ,” where she resorts to ad hominem attacks on women who speak for themselves about their experiences in the sex industry. She is an endowed chair at the University of Rhode Island’s Women’s Studies Program, and I am forced to wonder what her students are learning. She condescendingly refers to one woman as “tattooed,” and derides another (while constantly mentioning her ethnicity) for referring to her profession as “it.” As one commenter pointed out,
That never ever ever happens with other professions, right? I mean who, when asked if they enjoyed teaching women’s studies for example, would say “oh yes, I love IT.”
It has been a long-standing issue with sex workers that we are silenced by the media and others; spoken for and about but never with . People even caution others to not listen to us, as we are under “false consciousness” about what we choose to do with our bodies. Now we are being derided by the very people who proclaim to wish to “rescue” us.
Sadly, both the RI house and senate have decided that it is a good thing to criminalize sex workers.
Someday, folks will realize that sex workers are people too, and that we have a voice. And they may just one day begin to listen to us.
I was prompted to write by Jess Wakeman’s excellent piece on coming to grips with her own bottoming, and the discussion at Feministing.
I can say from personal experience that there are lots of women in the world who top, though not all of them identify as tops or dommes or what-have-you. And there are plenty of men who bottom. Both are nearly unrepresented in the feminist blogosphere — not entirely, but mostly.
I have a hypothesis about why men who bottom are tough to find around the feminist blogosphere: Not a large male population to start with, a general reticence about men admitting that they like to bottom because of masculinity issues, and the amplified if-you’re-a-feminist-dude-you-must-be-a-wuss factor.
Where are the women tops? I don’t know. In part, I think the most vocal women who top butt heads with some feminists and may not particularly want to hang around feminist spaces. But I suspect there are a lot of women topping who just don’t talk about it, even pseudonymously. Not that there’s none, and not that I’m sure my gut is right … but that’s what I think.
For reasons I won’t explain, I’m raw and angry from Tiller’s death. Obama’s statements about abortion before Tiller seemed entirely too mealy-mouthed, the statements of a politician who refused to spend any political capital on an issue that I care a lot about. Now it is clear that our dormant domestic terrorist problem has resurfaced. The terrorists hate our freedoms. They will use violence to achieve the goal that our Constitution denies them.
None of us should think that the way to deal with terrorism is to give in. None of us should think that the way to handle people who hate us for our freedom is to give up our freedom. But Obama’s mealy-mouthedness has continued after this terrorist slaying, and I will not moderate my disgust and anger. Obama sounds like he wants to compromise with these people. The right churned up silly outrage that Obama would be soft on Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, but I think we are in much greater danger that Obama will be soft of Christian fundamentalist terrorism.
Six thousand acts of violence. We have our domestic Christian fringe to thank for the Oklahoma City bombing, the killing of eight physicians including in their homes and churches, a shooting spree at a Unitarian church; and Rudolph’s bombing spree, which included two women’s health clinics, a gay bar and Centennial Olympic Park.
We have terror cells operating in our suburbs, living among us, egged on by radical clerics who then deny connection to the violence and its perpetrators. These extremists are trying to change our politics by killing civilians. How will our President respond? He should go on national television and tell the nation that we do not give in and we will not negotiate with terrorists. He should, but he won’t. He won’t do it next time, either. And there will be a next time.
Over at her blog, Clarisse Thorn writes about her sex-positive documentary series. They just had a masculinity night, and she said the hardest thing was to find work that even addressed male sexuality and the construction of masculinity. She has a lot to say. I have more to say than I can fit in this post, but what I’m getting around to is a specific question that is one of many, but one that cis het men don’t talk much about; and which I’m throwing out there not because it’s particularly the one important question, but because it’s an example of conversations that don’t happen.
I think cissexual het men have largely ceded the field of talking about male sexuality. I think there’s a huge unstated assumption that to even address the question, for men, is to mark one’s self as “other.” Trans men and queer men have always had to deal with their masculinity being contested territory, and cis het men are brought up to fear that their masculinity could ever be called into question. By even opening up a dialog, I think some folks fear that they are conceding that their sexuality is not uncontroversial. (Though I have not read it, one book on teen male sexuality is titled “Dude, You’re A Fag.” Further to my point about cis het men ceding the field, the author, C.J. Pascoe, is a woman.)
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To fuck, to get fucked, fucked up, fucked and fuck it. It’s among the most common slang we use. I’ve been known to use fuck as more than one part of speech in the same sentence. And it’s ubiquitous. We all know that if you go into a meeting and you get fucked, you’re not as happy coming out as you were going in, and if you say, “fuck him!” you mean him no good.
And that’s a fucking problem. We treat fucking as a problem, and I have no problem with fucking. I like fucking. I like getting fucked. If I actually went into a meeting and got fucked, I’d probably be a lot happier coming out than I was going in, and if I want to “fuck her” I mean her no harm and I mean a whole lot of pleasure for both of us.
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This is a parenting rant; this is more conceptual than particular, and directed to more than one person.
“But she doesn’t know about that yet” is not an answer. That’s when she needs to know it: before she needs to know it. If she already knew it, she wouldn’t need you to tell her. So tell her now, when she doesn’t need to know it.
The time to tell her is when it’s a strange rumor about someone’s friend’s cousin at another school. She’s fishing for information. If you dodge the question, she’ll let you. And she’ll know not to ask again. “You can talk to me about anything” is a platitude. She’s not stupid; she knows it’s a platitude. She knows it’s a platitude because she sees that you don’t want to deal with the questions when she raises them. When you dodge, she knows she can’t talk to you about anything; only things you’re ready to talk about. That’s why you shouldn’t dodge it.
Even in what passes for comprehensive sex ed, they won’t cover it. Popular culture won’t teach her, they just pitch jokes that assume knowledge. So that leaves her friends, who are all 14. I didn’t have much access to accurate information then and neither did you. Do you think they are much better?
If you wait long enough, you can avoid the conversation entirely. She’ll get inaccurate half-assed information from somewhere else. This is not the best outcome, though it may be the least embarrassing.
Nobody will do your job for you. If you don’t do your job, it won’t get done. Not the way it ought to be, anyway.
I’m sure the irony escapes him.
In my YMY essay, Towards A Performance Model of Sex, I said that pro-abstinence moralism and patriarchal objectification are simply two sides of the same coin, both proceeding from the notion that a woman’s sexuality is a commodity. I think this rapist is that belief system made manifest. What he’s done is in a sense hypocrisy, but there is a core consistency. He’s urging young women to say no. He’ll keep telling them to say no, while he sexually molests them. He may even see nothing wrong with his behavior (commodity model thinking, though, is that he’s committed basically a property crime by taking something — not her autonomy or human rights, but her “virtue” — and in the most patriarchal incarnations, taken something from her father or future husband — pardon my while I scrub my brain); and he is probably very upset by any woman’s display of actual sexual agency.
Say no; get raped. As long as women have no voice in how their bodies are sexual, he’s happy.
h/t Abyss2hope in comments here.
“It’s not like I went up to a schoolteacher and shot her in the head or … killed a law-abiding straight citizen.”
Allen Andrade said it here.
And yesterday a jury of his fellow Coloradans replied as follows:
Incorrect. It is exactly the same.
