Still No Internet

…and it’s driving me batty. I’m going to have to come up with a workaround soon or things may get ugly.

Be that as it may, I’m going to try to have a couple things up this weekend. Sorry for the long blank period.

Humans: We Kill Everything, Even Ourselves!

Still no consistent internet, as I’m sure you can surmise. My goal is to have access back by monday afternoon. We’ll see how that works out for me.

Until then, here’s an article for discussion: High Levels of Household Chemicals Found in Pets, which is a bit of an understatement if you read the article. It should be “Killing Puppies and Babies are Bad, Except When Du Pont Does it for Us” or something.

You, friendly adult human, have a certain level of environmental toxins running through your bloodstream. Things like chemicals leached into your soda pop from the plastic bottle it’s contained in (“Forever In A Landfill, Forever In Your Urine”), growth hormones from your beef, fecal coliform in your oysters, flame retardants from your carpets, and whatever the hell that stuff is in perfume that makes it stick to the little hairs inside your nostrils for an hour after you’ve left Bath and Body Works being just a few examples. They all cause cancer, illness, reproductive nonsense, and lots of other happy fun things. Let’s say this level is X.

Your dog, and any other household pet or family member that spends most of its time on the floor putting random objects into its mouth, has a level of toxins that is roughly equivalent to 20X. Give or take.

Lovely, isn’t it? Do we even bother to think a little bit ahead, as humans? I mean, fuck, how long had Teflon been around before we found out it was deadly? And I don’t have time to find the citation yet, but we’ve been using cell phones for how long before we finally admitted they cause cancer? One technician was quoted as saying something like the red blinking light on top of the tower is more stringently regulated than the radiation from the tower itself.

Congratulations, Humanity in general and the Masculine Drive Towards Ever-Increasing Scientific Pogress that we Don’t Want to Wait and Test and Make Sure it’s Safe Before we Inject it Into the Environment in Vast Quantities, specifically. You’re succeeding in the most convoluted long-range suicide attempt in the history of the universe. Which wouldn’t be an issue, really, if you weren’t so hell bent on taking everything else down with you.

Why Lie?

…the patriarchy wants us to believe it’s because women are cunningly evil and yet dumb as posts.*

Evil, first, because only a truly evil person would try to frame some wonderful, upstanding, flawless example of a perfect citizen of our society for a heinous crime. Stupid, second, because it doesn’t seem to actually do anything positive from a woman’s perspective, and in fact, does a lot of negative things. Let’s examine:

Patriarchy expects us to believe:

1. In spite of the fact that “women lie” and “it was her own damn fault” are the most common themes expressed in the opening remarks of nearly everyone, male and female, who hears about a rape, somehow men are convicted just by the accusation alone.
2. In spite of the fact that every single action and thought that is even remotely sexual that this woman has ever had will be revealed, dissected, and examined by a lawyer more ruthless than the most cold-hearted and sadistic dentist in front of the entire nation, it’s men’s lives that are ruined forever before they even get a verdict.
3. In spite of the fact that accused rapists never have to take the stand and present their side of the story, or in any way defend their actions, and who never have to worry about any past accusations or even convictions coming back to haunt them during a trial, rape shield laws make the process unfair against them.
4. In spite of the fact that one 6% of rapists ever see a day in jail, rape accusations are an effective revenge tool for jilted or otherwise angered women.
5. In spite of the fact that men are making lots of money from having been accused of brutal rapes, a man will forever be a community pariah even if accquitted, and will forever be socially and professionally crippled by the whole boondoggle.

Someone tell me how reality and popular conception can differ so radically from one another to the point that they’re actually diametric opposites?

And I have to leave it at that, since I only get 30 minutes of computer time at the library until my internet is back up. This is a bit frustrating.

Until tomorrow!

-a birch tree

*[I point, once again, to psychological projection.]

On a Pervaisve Myth

Apparently, I’m supposed to believe that the vast majority of rape cases are actually not rape cases, but regretful women trying to salvage their reputation, or spiteful women trying to get back at a man who wronged them by the slightest measure, or hedonistic pleasure-seeking sluts who get so drunk they don’t remember what happened but know they secretly hate men so much (in spite of being sluts) that they’ll just assume they were raped. Oh, or confused or emotionally damaged women who send mixed signals and seem to want it but flummox the poor dudely later when she says he raped her.

This seems to be the going idea in this country today. The fact that 94% of rape cases end without a conviction is supposed to be evidence that 94% of women are liars.

I’m confused, though. How can we say the above, and really believe that as a society, while still claiming we don’t hate women? How can we accuse an entire gender of being so inherently untrustworthy and still claim not to be misogynist?

When a man reports a crime, he’s believed. Nobody tells a carjacking victim that he probably just loaned his car to his buddy and regretted it the next morning. Nobody instantly assumes that a robbery victim is just trying to frame a guy who scuffed his Pumas. And certainly nobody who was injured by a drunk driver is accused of being at equal or greater fault because he was also drunk at the time! 

But that’s men, and men are held to different standards. We belive men. We empathize with men. We love men. Women are our shadow selves, our opposites, the repository for our psychological projection of every dark, nasty, undesireable truth about ourselves. Men lie all the time, espcially about women, in all contexts, but we say women are horrible, fickle liars and we’re poorly equipped to handle it, poor us. We say that women are emotional, and prone to extreme reactions about petty things, even though AFAIK no woman has ever stomped anyone to death in an argument over a video game. Men claim that women are illogical and incapable of rational thought while simultaneously putting Male Logic(tm) on a pedestal. If you’re not familiar with Male Logic(tm), it’s the kind of thinking that says men are evolutionarily hard-wired to lust after big breasts because of some ancient child-bearing advantage that big breasts actually embody the opposite of (since they can be more difficult for infants to latch onto), that dumping trillions upon trillions of tons of heat-trapping gas into the atmosphere over two hundred years can’t possibly have any negative effect on the planet or its temperatures whatsoever, and that women will lie about a crime to frame men even though men get away scott free 9 out of 10 times and only after their lawyers completely ruin the lives of said women.

In a world where men still rape women, women are not free or equal. Period. This is the year 2008, and we as humans, simply by virtue of having ten-thousand-odd years of moral development between our ears, should be some nine-thousand, nine-hundred, and ninety-two years past this shit, at worst.

Men rape women. Lots of men are raping lots of women every single day. What are the statistics now? Something like one out of three American women and one out of four British women will be raped in their lifetime? With women of color suffering disproportionately more? And yet Male Logic(tm) spins itself into a tizzy as men try to convince themselves, and their victims, that rape is rare, not so bad, or entirely nonexistent, while, at the same time, encouraging a whole host of behaviors meant to enable them to get into the pants of unwilling women and calling them “shady” or “being a player” but not “rape”.

I’ll definitely have more on this subject tomorrow, but due to circumstances beyond my control I’m limited for computer time for a few days. Sorry I couldn’t post something a bit less “duh” and a bit more hard-hitting, but between my ankle and some other frustrating factors I had to put out what I had before I was actually ready.  I’ll see if I can’t fix that pretty quick and be back on my ball here by friday or so.

Ow.

Today’s informative and enlightening post has been replaced with, well, this one, where I whine out exucuses as to why posting today will be problematic.

I have apparently overdrawn my karma balance today, and the universe decided to even it up for me. I’ve got the sprained ankle from hell. The doc says it’s a “mild sprain”, in spite of the fact that within fifteen minutes it had swelled up to about twice its normal size and the whole foot was bright red, moving into purple.

Hooyah, Navy doctors!

You’re guessing I’m going to say that I’m on such great pain medicine that I can’t post straight, but the truth is, I’m just on such distracting pain that I can’t post straight. Motrin is my med, and Motrin does jack-all for me even on the best of days.

Depending on how my night goes, I may or may not have a post up, but the one I was planning to do was on a fresh subject, requiring fresh research, so it’d take a bit more focus than I can imagine acquiring tonight.

Sorry.

-a birch tree

Fact Dump – Pornography and the Sex Industry

[Updated on 25May08 - Prostitution: Working Environment and Prostitution: Effects on Prostitutes]

Ok, so I lied. One more post about pornography and the sex industry.

I figured, since I’d been gathering so many links, lots of facts weren’t finding their way into my posts, and the ones that were, well, they were getting scattered amongst several posts.

So I’m going to take a moment to compile a bunch of research on the topic of the sex industry. Hopefully someone might find this helpful, in some context. Information can be a powerful tool.

Also, I need a bit of help locating a quotation I can no longer find. I read somewhere that at least one group of researchers was so successful in demonstrating the harmful effects of pornography that many univerisy ethics boards will no longer approve studies that expose subjects to pornography. I really need a source for that claim before I start trying to use it, however, so if anyone has heard the quotation I’m talking about, I’d really appreciate a link to it!

Effects of the Sex Industry on Women Employed Therein:

Prostitution: Entry Factors

• More than 90% of prostitutes suffered childhood sexual abuse.¹
• At least two-thirds of prostitutes began before their 16th birthday; the average age of entry into prostitution in the USA is 14.^{1 2}
• 96% of child prostitutes surveyed were runaways, and said they had no other way to make money.¹
• Two thirds of prostitutes were sexually abused as children, with the average age of first victimization being 10 years old. More than 65% of those were sexually abused by either natural, step-, or foster fathers. 90% of prostitutes surveyed reported that they lost their virginity through sexual assault. 70% cited those events as influencing their entry into sex work.^{1 2}
• Approximately 400,000 women are trafficked across international borders for the purposes of forced sexual exploitation yearly. 50,000 of those are brought into the USA. ^{4 5 6}

Prostitution: Working Environment

• 82% of prostitutes reported being physically assaulted while on the job. 83% were threatened with a weapon.^{1 2 3}
• 68% reported being raped while working. In 27% of rape cases, there were multiple assailants (4 being the average).^{1 2 3}
• Two-thirds of prostitutes report being beaten by pimps. Half were kidnapped by pimps.¹
• Hunter, 1994, found that prostitutes in Portland, Oregon were being raped approximately once a week.²
• 84% reported being homeless.^{1 3}
• 80% stated that customers used pornography and photographs to demonstrate which activities they wanted the prostitutes to perform.^{1 2 3}
• At least 90% of prostitution is controlled by pimps. Pimps routinely employ rape, physical abuse, and torture to maintain control of prostitutes, and many hire “catchers”; thugs tasked with patrolling the edges of the pimp’s territory to apprehend prostitutes who attempt to escape.²
• [Update: 25May08]The workplace homicide rate for prostitutes as of 2004 was 201 per 100,000. Compare to the “Most Dangerous Profession” as of May 2008: Mining, with an occupational death rate of only 30.1 per 100,000.^{16 17}

Prostitution: Effects on Prostitutes

• 75% of prostitutes have attempted suicide.¹
• 15% of all suicide victims are prostitutes.¹
• Baldwin, 1992, reported that women and girls involved in prostitution had a mortality rate forty (40) times higher than the Canadian national average.²
• As many as 84% of prostitutes suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. ²
• Of those prostitutes suffering from PTSD, the average severity rating was higher than that of Vietnam War veterans who requested treatment. ³
• 88% of prostitutes in the USA report wanting to leave prostitution. ³
• [Update: 25May08] The average age of death for a woman in prostitution is 34 years old.¹⁶

Some quotations from the studies:

Any distinction between prostitution of children and prostitution of adults is arbitrary, and obscures this lengthy history of trauma. The 15-year-old in prostitution eventually turns 18, but she has not suddenly made a new vocational choice. She simply continues to be exploited by customers and pimps.¹

A number of authors (e.g. Barry, 1995; Hoigard and Finstad, 1992; Leidholdt, 1993; Ross et al., 1990; Vanwesenbeeck, 1994) have described the psychological defenses which are necessitated by the experience of prostitution, and which frequently persist: splitting off certain kinds of awareness and memories, disembodiment, dissociation, amnesia, hiding one’s real self (often until the nonprostituted self begins to blur), depersonalization, denial.¹

Traffickers sell the women into the prostitution network for $4000 – 5000 for short-term contracted work. The women are then forced to pay off the fee for their “owners” by free “servicing” of up to 500 men, in 12-plus hour shifts, seven days a week, before earning a low fee for sexual services. ⁵

Pornography: Entry Factors

• Entry factors into pornography are essentially identical to prostitution. ⁷
• Pornographers often use fraudulent job advertisements for “models” or “actresses” and then are coerced into sexual acts at their “interview”. ⁷

Pornography: Effects on Actresses and Working Environment

• The PTSD rates affecting porn actresses are similar to the rates affecting prostitutes. Further, prostitutes who were forced by their customers or pimps to perform in pornography had significantly more PTSD symptoms than prostitutes who did not have pornography made of them. ⁷
• The use of condoms in the American porn industry is less than 20%. ⁷
• The average pay for a single porn scene, which includes oral, anal, and vaginal penetration, is $500, which must be stretched between periods of no work. Actresses in amature productions are rarely paid at all. ⁷

Pornography: Effects on Viewers

• Donnerstein, 1983, discovered that after only 10 minutes of exposure to agressive pornography, males were significantly more likely to report the believe that an average of 25% of the women they know enjoy being raped.⁸
• Malamuth and Check, 1981, showed that exposure to sexually violent movies increased male’s acceptance of violence against women. ⁸
• “Zillmann and Bryant found that the male subjects who were exposed to the massive amounts of pornography considered rape a less serious crime than they did before they were exposed to it; they thought that prison sentences for rape should be shorter; and they perceived sexual aggression and abuse as causing less suffering for the victims, even in the case of an adult male having sexual intercourse with a 12-year-old girl (1984, p. 132). They concluded that “heavy exposure to common non-violent pornography trivialized rape as a criminal offense” (1984, p. 117).” ⁸
• In the same study, males in the massive exposure group were more likely to agree with statements such as “a woman doesn’t mean ‘no’ until she slaps you” and “if they are old enough to bleed, they are old enough to butcher”.^{8 15}
• Donnerstein and Linz, 1985, conducted a study which found that subjects exposed to sexually violent material judged rape victims to be more worthless, her injury as less severe, and assigned more bame to her for being raped, than the subjects in the control groups. Malamuth reproduced these results in 1984 and 1986^{8 13}
• Donnersein, 1983, showed that while only 25%-30% of male students admitted they might rape a woman if they could get away with it increased to 57% after exposure to sexually violent images depicting women enjoying rape.⁹
• Malamuth and Check, 1985, found a positive correlation between the amount of sexually explicit material a group of male students were exposed to and their beliefs that women enjoy forced sex. ⁹
• 67% of the males who admitted that they had wanted to rape a woman reported reading pornographic magazines, compared to only 19% of those who said that they had never wanted to rape a woman.⁹
• 53% of incarcerated child molestors reported intentionally using pornography to prepare for their crimes. ⁹
• Regular users of pornography are less likely to convict for a rape, and less likely to give a harsh sentence to a rapist if in fact convicted. Conversely, individuals who do not use pornography are more likely to convict an accused rapist.^{10 11}
• Pornographic images create chemically encoded messages on the brain that can remain through adulthood. Human memory is formed in part by the release of the chemical epinephrine which, upon emotional arousal, leaves behind an imprint on the brain. ¹²

Some quotations from the studies and surveys:

“Girls have a shelf life of nine months to two years, unless you are different. Like me, I am Asian, so it helps. Men stay forever. It is different for a man. If he can perform, he can stay in. There are guys that have been in the business ten or fifteen years.”⁷

“The relationship between particularly sexually violent images in the media and subsequent aggression…is much stronger statistically than the relationship between smoking and lung cancer.” ⁹

“Regular users of pornography are more likely to think of women as socially non-discriminating, as hysterically euphoric in response to just about any sexual or pseudosexual stimulation, and as eager to accommodate seemingly any and every sexual request.” -Zillman and Bryant, 1984. ¹⁰

“The puzzling refrain I’d begun hearing from porn outsiders: “There are plenty of people with histories of sexual abuse who didn’t grow up to be porn stars.” That’s missing the point: The ones who did become sex workers were abused. All of them, that’s my guess.”¹⁴

Some studies, in detail:

Malamuth (1978)
The experiment: male subjects were divided into 3 groups

Group One: read aggressive pornography depicting a rape

Group Two: read non-aggressive pornography depicting consensual sex

Group Three: read neutral National Geographic articles

Afterwards, all subjects were insulted by a female assistant and then allowed to ‘retaliate’ against her with electric shocks.

However, half of the group was told they could be as aggressive as they wished (disinhibited group); the other half were given a message to make them reluctant to use aggression (inhibited group).

Results:

Inhibited group members were most reluctant to retaliate.

In the disinhibited group, the most shocks were given by those exposed to the aggressive pornography.¹⁵

Silbert and Pines, 1981
The experiment: Researchers interviewed 200 San Francisco prostitutes. The interviews touched on history of sexual abuse, including rape and child sexual abuse.

The results:

178 of 200 prostitutes reported child sexual abuse.

193 of 200 prostitutes reported being raped as adults.

In other words, only 7 of these 200 prostitutes had never been raped or molested.

Without being asked about porn, 24% of the rape survivors spontaneously added that their attacker had specifically cited his porn use during the crime.

This was also true of 22% of the child sexual abuse survivors. ¹⁵

Zillmann and Bryant (1982)

The question: what are the consequences of continued exposure to pornography on beliefs about sexuality in general and on attitudes towards women?

The experiment:

Part One:

80 male and 80 female participants are divided into four subgroups

Massive Exposure Group: saw 36 short, non-violent porn films (about 5 hours of film) over six weeks.
Intermediate Exposure Group: saw 18 short, non-violent porn films and 18 regular films over six weeks.
No Exposure Group: saw 36 regular films.
Control Group: saw no films, not brought in till the second phase.

Part Two:

Participants read about a rape case and were asked to recommend a the length of the prison sentence for the rapist.

They were also asked to indicate their support for the women’s rights movement on a 0 to 100 scale.

Finally, they were asked to estimate the popularity of various sexual acts among the general population.

Results:

In recommending a prison term for a rapist, folks in the Massive Exposure Group chose, on average, prison terms that were half as long as terms recommended by the people in the No Exposure Group. (A five-year sentence versus a ten-year sentence)

When asked to rate their support for women’s rights, men and women in the Massive Exposure Group indicated about half as much support as participants in the No Exposure Group. (38% versus 76%)

Finally, men and women in the Massive Exposure Group rated anal sex, group sex, and bestiality at least twice as common as did the No Exposure Group. (For example, the Massive Exposure Group estimated that 30% of Americans had group sex, while the No Exposure Group estimated only 11% did. The Massive Exposure Group also estimated that 12% of Americans were having sex with animals.)

Conclusion: Zillmann and Bryant conclude that massive exposure to pornography made rape appear a more trivial offense, which seemed also to parallel a drop in support for women’s rights. Also, intensive porn-viewing led to beliefs that unusual sexual acts are far more common than they really are.¹⁵

---

Bibliography
1: ICASA Study

2: Prostitution in 5 Countries

3: Prostitution Tables and Charts

4: Trafficking Women for Sexual Exploitation

5: Globalized Female Slavery

6: International Trafficking of Women Into the United States (CIA)

7: Things to Know About the Sex Industry and the Women in it (Scroll down for primary sources)

8: The Role of Pornography in Undermining Some Males’ Internal Inhibitions Against Acting Out the Desire to Rape

9: Further Empirical Findings on the Causative Role of Pornography in Rape

10: Zillman, D., & Bryant, J. (1984). Effects of massive exposure to pornography. In N. M. Malamuth, & E. Donnerstein (Eds), Pornography and Sexual Aggression (pp. 115-142). Orlando, FL: Academic Press

11: Garcia, L.T. (1986). Exposures to pornography and attitude about women and rape: A correlative study. AG 22 (1853) 382-383.

12: McGaugh, J.L. (1983, February). Preserving the presence of the past. American Psychologist, 161

13: Sexual Offenders and Pornography: A Causal Connection?

14: Ian Glitter Excerpt

15: Studies on Pornography and Rape

16: Mortality in a Long Term Open Cohort of Prostitute Women

17: NYT: Miners Found to Have Highest Death Rate On the Job

Supplemental Resources
Reclaiming Their Lives and Breaking Free: An Afrocentric Approach to Recovery From Prostitution
Prostitution and Trafficking in Nine Countries: An Update on Violence and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
A Comparison of Pimps and Batterers
The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico
Anti-Porn Web Sites
Should Pornography be Banned as a Threat to Women?
Just Harmless Fun? Understanding the Impact of Pornography

Stitch! For Great Justice!

Hooyah!!

I’m amazingly excited. I found something simply wonderful. I wasn’t actually looking for it, but I found it anyway and it’s so freaking cool.

Radical Cross Stitch

I’m kicking myself for not having thought of it on my own.

The gallery has tons of great ideas, and she has links to tools that help you make your own charts!

“What is this?” you may be asking. “Radical cross stitch? I mean, I knew the guy was pro-feminist, but.. cross-stitch? What dude likes cross-stitch??”

This dude, that’s who! And now I can do it radically! And now anyone else who cross-stitches can do it radically, too! Spread the word, my cross-stitching bretheren!

Crying Wolf

[Disclaimer: This blog post is an unedited, unfiltered 100% Pure Finch Rant. I, your birch tree host, had no opportunity to clean it up or sanitize it, or even proofread it, before the finches overwhelmed me with their furious chirping and forced me to take immediate dictation, verbatum. Which is kind of odd, as I didn't think finches even liked wolves all that much.]

I had planned to do an environmental article today, but I hadn’t intended to find one that enflamed me. I’m not on one of my “high energy binges”, so I figured I’d be lucky if I could coax myself out to bed long enough to post a link to a little global warming blurb.

Instead, I found this NY Times article. It talks about the current controversy surrounding wolves now that they’re off the endangered species list.

I really want to like humanity, but white dudes in the midwest seriously seem to be trying to scuttle that desire. And yeah, I’m calling out white dudes, because, by and large, white dudes are the ones who seem to have this little gnome that crawled up their asses some five-hundred-odd years ago that pulls the “kill things needlessly to establish my superiority over all creation” lever buried somewhere in the equipment room of their prefrontal cortex.

So the very, very, VERY first day Bush makes it legal to kill wolves, what does some dumbass white dude with a bloodlust do? He goes out and shoots the most famous wolf in the country, Wolf 253M. Why? Apparently, just to be a dick.

In fact, pretty much all of the wolf murder that’s currently occuring is because of white dudes who like to spill blood to make their penises bigger. It certainly doesn’t have anything to do with protecting livestock, since wolf predation is entirely negligable as a factor in livestock loss. Vultures killed twice as many cattle as wolves did in 2005, and domestic dogs killed five times as many.

The article talks about establishing trophy hunts, and keeping the population to a total of 450 wolves. I think I threw up a little in my mouth when I read that. Just the phrase “trophy hunt” makes me want to bash someone in the face with a tire iron. What kind of sick fucker gets pleasure and fun out of watching blood drain from a mortal wound onto the ground from a formerly living creature? If it whines a little, or if its tail is struck by a nervous system spasm that makes it appear to wag, do these assholes cream their camo coveralls? It ain’t like you’re gonna eat it; humans don’t really eat carnivores much. They just kill them, wholesale, take their pelts, heads, tails, or whatever else they want to use to decorate the “My Penis Is Fucking Enormous” room in their hunting lodge.

I suppose a case might be made for deer hunting, or elk hunting, if you’re too poor to afford meat at the supermarket and still need to feed your family. Of course, for the money you spend on hunting licenses, gun licenses, high-powered rifles, scopes, ammo, camoflauged gear, drycleaning the camoflauged gear after you spooge in it, bright orange vests, big trucks, alcohol, and various cheats like doe urine, perpetually-baited treestands, and anything else that virtually ensures Mr. Dudely can walk out of the forest dragging dead animal, it’s more expensive to hunt a deer than just go to Wal-Mart and buy a shitload of ground chuck. So nevermind. It is, in fact, all about having ultimate and total control over another life form, to hold its life in your hands like Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, and to then pull that trigger and end that life, to watch the blood spray on the snow and hear the startled sound of an animal surprised to find death, to watch that life drain from their eyes until only death looks up at you, and to stand, towering, over the remaining flesh of the creature whose spirit has so recently departed, and shout “PWND, BITCH!” [Finch, I've cut the rest of the paragraph as it was really nothing more than a long string of frothing, rabid, unecessary, and unproductive profanity. I didn't even know birds could get rabies. Can we get back on track here? -birch tree]

Thanks to the Male Logic(tm) that ignores actual facts and says wolves kill everything in sight just because they are onery and have teeth (projection, much?), Wolf will be back on the Endangered List in six months or less, at this rate, assuming that the EPA can act on the rapidly-declining populations before they go completely extinct in North America.

Until then, a point of information to the asshats from the midwest: They’re not attacking you. They’re not attacking your livestock. Leave them the fuck alone!

Cleaning up the Industry

So some of you might be asking “Damn, man, what the hell is up with your porn and sex industry fixation?” I know I am, as I look over my notepad of post ideas and realize that three-fifths of the things the chirping finches want me to write about involve some aspect of that brand of fuckery. Well, fear not; I have one last porn-related post to do before I move onto other things. I hope to have at least one environmental post this weekend, two if I’m really motivated and really lucky, and I hope to shift my laser-like focus off of the sex industry and begin to burn away at some other pressing topic of feminism.

So bear with me; I just have to get this last thought out.

As you probably know, I’ve been involved in a bit of a debate recently on-line about legalizing prostitution and the alleged empowering effects of pornography and stripping. I wrote a little bit yesterday afternoon about the idea that legalization promotes safety and good health and generally speaking, happy fluffy bunny feelings for everyone.

It occurred to me, as I talked about it on the phone to my wife, Ari (I’m coming home soon, my love!), that the PPFs are not, in fact, fighting to make the sex industry safer by legalizing it. In order to make it safer and remove the abuses, you can’t just say “Alright, pimps, open season! Have fun!”. You actually have to have, you know, rules and shit. Because porn is as legal as it gets in the USA, and we still have tons of nasty shit going on inside that industry.

Nobody’s made any “clean up the industry” proposals, just “don’t call them whores” proposals. In fact, I suspect that any attempt to write laws or in any way legislate a more woman-friendly sex industry would be met with howls of outrage. In fact, I further suspect that due to the seedy nature of the industry, any actions taken to ensure women are safe would actually destroy the industry, because the industry makes most of its money from putting women into painful and dangerous situations.

Now, of course, certain industry pundits with a conflict of interest assert that such problems are rare, exaggerated, and possibly made up out of whole cloth.

Well that’s great news! If those problems don’t exist, then they should have no qualms whatsoever with actually writing up some legislation to regulate the industry! If there are no problems, we’ll waste some government money for a few years, but we’ll be able to say “Well, shit, guess we were wrong, there really are no widespread abuses here.”

So here are some ideas, in phases, that I think it would be a good idea to pass into law to make the pornography and strip club industries safer. If they work there, we could even apply them to some kind of legalized prostition. Then everyone will be happy.

Right? Somehow, I doubt it. Let’s find out.

Basic Proposals

These are the root of everything; it all starts here. These are the basic, less-radical, mostly administration-related laws. Surely nobody would ever have a problem with these.

• Define the Sex Industry and Sexually Oriented Businesses as being under federal legislative jurisdiction under the Marshall Doctrine of interstate commerce. States can regulate their own businesses in supplement to the federal government, but cannot pass legislation that conflicts with or diminishes federal sex industry regulations.
• Create an executive-branch law enforcement agency, the Sex Industry Regulation Enforcement Agency. This agency is given federal jurisdiction over all sexually-oriented businesses, from adult bookstores to strip clubs to porn production studios. Their job is to enforce all of the following regulations and investigate claims of violations. It will be necessary to hire not only experienced investigative and law enforcement personnel, but also counselors and victims’ advocates. The sensitive nature of this government agency will require that all internal departments be staffed with an equal number of qualified men and women.
• Create a congressional oversite committee. A bipartisan committee comprised of equal numbers of Democrats, Republicans, men, and women will oversee the actions, progress, and efficiency of the SIREA. They’ll control the budget, set internal policies, and make sure all departments are in compliance with both active legislation and said policies.
• Require all sexually oriented businesses to be properly licensed. A license will be issued to a business only after it can demonstrate compliance will all of the following regulations. No business may operate without said license; penalties for doing so will include prohibition from ever obtaining a license, heavy fines, and jail terms as appropriate, depending on how well the business was established before its discovery. Opertating without a license will be considered prima facie evidence of abuse of performers and other protected employees. A branch of the SIREA will be devoted to tracking down unlicensed businesses and shutting them down, particularly internet-based businesses.
• Government inspectors from the SIREA will make random, undercover inspections during business hours to ensure all regulations are being followed and that no women are being abused in any way. Any establishment found to be actively abusing, tolerating abuse, or neglecting to address abusive conditions will be put on probationary status, at which point SIREA agents will be on-site at all times. Further violations will result in loss of license, prohibition from applying for a new license for a number of years, and jail terms.
• Mandatory drug testing for all participants. Random drug testing that hits every employee at least biannually. Actresses, strippers, bouncers, directors, producers, janitors, everyone. There will be no one involved in the sex industry who is under the influence of any mind-altering substance. Alcohol on-set, or being drunk while on-set, will be similarly illegal. Anyone testing positive for a mind-altering substance will be barred from the industry for a period of at least three years, and anyone who hires such a person during the time of their prohibition loses their license.
• As mentioned above, there will be no alcohol on-set at any time.
• All relevant laws shall be made applicable to these establishments. For example, assault is a crime. No one can consent to having a crime committed upon them. Therefore, any instance of a person being slapped, punched (including “donkey punched”), pinched, hit, or otherwise assaulted, regardless of whether or not a claim of consent is made, will be treated as assault per local, state, and federal penal codes.
• Mandatory and thorough background checks. All participants in the industry will be subject to thorough background checks by either the SIREA or an independant third-party contractor. No one with any felony convictions, sex-related convictions, or drug-related offenses will be hired or licensed. Furthermore, any underage people attempting to obtain employment in the sex industry will be barred from doing such for a period of at least three years, and any business or establishment who, in spite of the background check, either through intent to committ fraud or through negligence, hires an underage performer will have their license immediately revoked and responsible parties will be subject to arrest on federal felony charges of attempted or completed sexual abuse of a minor. All participants in the sex industry will be legally consenting adults.
• All performers will own their performances. All performers in pornography who are in any way recorded or photographed during a strip performance, burlesque performance, or any other performance in a sexually oriented context, including bachelor party performances, will be granted sole and total ownership of all copyrights and other rights to such performances. The master copies will be their sole property, and no reproduction, in whole or in part, will be produced without their express notarized written permission, and such permission can be withdrawn at any time. No contract will ever include the stipulation that a performer give up these rights, nor can such rights be sold to any person until the performer has been out of the industry for a period of at least three years.
• Out-of-state hiring regulations. If a sexually oriented business hires a performer for a performance to be given out of state, travel arrangements will be made through the SIREA. Any attempt to engage in contract negotiation after the performer has arrived on-site are illegal and will result in immediate license review, and any attempt to withhold return travel accomodations as part of an on-site contract renegotiation, legal or otherwise, in state or out, will be prosecuted under federal kidnapping laws.
• All sex will be safe sex. Condoms will be clearly and prominantly used in every scene and act of sexual interaction. Furthermore, all unhygenic or dangerous sexual practices (ie: Ass 2 Mouth, in which a performer is penetrated anally and then orally in quick succession by a single penis, or bukkake, in which a large number of men deposit great amounts of ejacuulate onto the face and nearby mucus membranes of another participant) are illegal, and presence of such acts in a performance will be grounds for license review or revokation.

Societal Protections

Numerous studies have linked the sex industry to violence and other antisocial behaviors among its veiwers. So, to try to reduce or eliminate that, here’s a few suggestions:

• Alcohol consumption cannot be shown as in any way related to the sexual act.
• Simulated rape scenes are prohibited. Scenes involving unconcious people, or people who say “no” at the beginning of a scene but submit and/or pretend enjoyment at another point in the scene are classified as rape scenes.
• Infantilizing indicators will be prohibited. This includes all infantilizing behavior or attempting to bestow the markers of immaturity or childishness onto any performer. Primary school uniforms, hairstyles associated with underage persons (pigtails, bowl cuts), lack of pubic hair, spanking themes, school and schoolteacher themes, and other underage themes will be prohibited. Any theme that states or suggests the character, if not the actor or actress, in a scene is underage are also illegal.
• All actors in pornography will have at least 2/3rds of their body in frame during all sex scenes, unless the face is also visible. This prevents objectification via disassociating body parts from the essential humanity of the performer. All performers will be portrayed as fully human.
• Removal of Dominance Indicators. As one of the contributing facors in the studies of pornography and violent antisocial behavior is the abundant presence of dominance indicators, in which one party is portrayed as subliminally dominant over the other. As pornography is about sex and sexual pleasure, not reinforcing patriarchal dominant pardigms (at least, in the words of its proponents), these indicators are unecessary and harmful, as well as easily eliminated without destroying the flavor of the performance (if the above claims are true). These indicators are hereby prohibited. They include, but are not limited to:
• One performer kneeling while the other towers over.
• Facial cumshots
• Physical violence, such as hair pulling, scratching, or the use of a penis or penis-like appendage or object as a bludgeouning instrument.
• Verbal violence, such as name calling, vulgar sexual instructions (ie: “take it all, you cunt”), or quasi-rapist phrases (ie: “You know you want it, bitch” or “I know you like it rough!”)
• Men of less than average appearance as judged by societal consensus (expressed through media, et al) being paired with women of great culturally-defined beauty, unless the reverse is present in equal quantities.
• Scenes of racial dominance, especially when coupled with racist language or themes.
• Clothing dominance, such as scenes in which one party is fully clothed while being serviced by another party, who is completely naked.
• Performing or simulating unhygenic acts such as urination or defecation onto another party (see also “all sex is safe sex” and the ban on dangerous or unhygenic practices).

There. That should be enough to really get started cleaning things up. Or at the very least, getting a lot of people pissed off over things that, if pornography is really just about sex and not dominance, and/or is not making most of its money through exploitative and unethical business practices, should be pretty much universally agreeable.

Feel free to add your own in the comments section! I’d be really interested to hear them!

The Number 18

In a recent discussion on the dubious merits of legalizing prostitution in America, the same old canard kept coming up, that being the idea that legalization will somehow magically ensure that all the victims participants are willing, of age, well compensated, well treated, sexually empowered and if not deliriously happy, at least no more exploited than a librarian or janitor. The hyptohesis (oft debunked) is that all or most of the abuses and horrors are a direct result of the profession’s underground status imparting an attitude of “this is already illegal, so I may as well go ahead and rape her, punch her in the face, and make her have sex with a donkey, too”, rather than to the fact that the entire career field is based on women (humans, for anyone who might have been confused about their status) becoming market products, and therefore objects to buy and sell, that make money for men.

Even if I give creedence to that load of codswallop, I can’t get over the fact that the argument only ever seems to apply to prostitution. Obviously, ending Prohibition did not end alcoholism, DUI, domestic violence, date rape, or any of the other downsides to allowing a predatory overclass to imbibe inhibition-lowering chemicals to their black little hearts’ content. It doesn’t appear that legalizing pornography has removed the dark side of coercion, rape, violence, and human commodification. Legalizing speeding in Montana didn’t eliminate deaths from reckless driving. Legalizing sexually oriented businesses in South Australia didn’t reduce sexually oriented crimes:

“For example, in two Australian states between 1964 and 1977, when South Australia liberalized its laws on pornography and Queensland maintained its conservative policy . . . over the 13-year period, the number of rapes in Queensland remained at the same low level while South Australia’s showed a six-fold increase.” – Court, John. Criminal Neglect: Why Sex Offenders Go Free. Toronto: Doubleday, p.141

In fact, lots of things that are now illegal were at one time legal and had to be outlawed precisely because of the abuses inherent in them! Nobody in their right mind suggests that legalizing the hunting of elephants for ivory will help ensure the survival of elephants by reducing poaching, and nobody suggests that making it legal (again) to beat your wife will help curb the nation’s domestic violence problem and eliminate marital rape. Did making child labor illegal in the USA create a black market of dangerous pre-pubescent employment scams in back alleys? No, that was happening when it was legal! Hell, nobody sane even claims that legalizing drugs will drop addiction rates or addiction-based crimes!

Trying to apply this pornsick brand of illogic to any other crime or illegal practice would be patently absurd. Make it legal for big industries to dump pollutants into the waterways, because by keeping it illegal we’re simply encouraging the practice to go on unchecked in an underground, unregulated fashion! Legalize dumping to protect the environment! Legalize cockfighting to protect roosters! Legalize and regulate theft to protect property! Legalize child porn to protect children! Because right now, we’ve just pushed these practices underground and we get the worst of the worst, because we can’t regulate or monitor them! If we made them legal and brought them out into the light of day, all of the downsides to these activities would vanish in a puff of magical pink smoke!

Child porn is a great example, by the way. The idea that prostitutes are only abused because prostitution is already illegal should theoretically apply in exactly the same way to child porn; we’re talking the same kinds of abuses in the same industry, but apparently the reasons kids get raped and abused must be entirely different from the reasons adult women get raped and abused, because somehow, the same logic never seems to apply. Keeping child porn illegal does not, in fact, create the abuses in child porn; abuse is inherent in child porn. But for some strange reason, what is abuse of a minor at 2359 becomes empowerment of an adult at 0000 on theit 18th birthday.

PPFs, at this point, always fall back on “Well, kids are kids and can’t consent, so it’s bad.” This can only mean one of two things:

• The issue is legal consent, and whatever is legal is moral and safe. Therefore, countries in which it is legal for 15 year olds to be prostitutes cannot be condemned, because the girls are considered consenting adults and the legalization of their status ensures they will not be abused, just like it would for 18 year old girls in America. Everything between consenting adults is ok, because they are legally considered to be consenting adults.
• There is something amazingly spiritually magical about the number 18, such that all a woman’s mental and emotional faculties are delivered to her via some form of maturational Fed Ex Overnight, and from that moment foward is a fully capabale adult. Any country with an age of legal consent below 18 is abusive, and any country with an age of legal consent above 18 is prudish. The number must be 18, because that’s America’s number.

Nobody tries to take this tack with smoking; we know it’s just as likely to fuck up your lungs at 22 as it was at 15. Nobody says that legalized smoking is safe for 18 year olds but dangerous, abusive, and harmful for 17 year olds. That’d just be stupid. It’s dangerous no matter how old you are. We just pulled an arbitrary number our of our asses and said “Fine, when you hit that number, go fuck yourself up, because you’re not our responsibility anymore.”

But the pro-prostitution advocates aren’t saying that. They aren’t saying “Fine, kid, when you hit 18, go get yourself fucked up by entering a dangerous and exploitative profession, because you’re not our responsibility anymore.” They’re actually saying the sex industry becomes magically safe once a woman celebrates her 18th birthday.

At no point does anyone stop to think “Hey… if this is harmful and inherently abusive to minors to the point that we won’t even allow them to see it, maybe it’s just as harmful and inherently abusive to legal adults, too? Especially when an abused minor and consenting adult can be separated by a completely insignificant amount of time?”

No, of course not. Instead, we pulled an arbitrary number out of our asses, and set it on a pedestal as the age at which all decisions are now considered moral, well-thought-out, and proper. The idea that an act or profession is exploitative and abusive to a 17 year old but the same acts are perfectly safe for an 18 year old is never closely examined, and is not allevated by simply changing where the line is. If it’s abusive and exploitative for a 16 year old, can the exact same scenario be empowering for a 17 year old? How about between 15 and 16? 14 and 15? The incremntal change in emotional maturity is so gradual that trying to draw such a line (abusive on one side, safe on the other) is always going to be an arbitary process best left to apologists for an industry that is inherently abusive and inherently exploitative by its very nature regardless of the age of the participants.

The intellectual dishonesty of the “consenting adults” version of special pleading that goes into this argument is made abundantly clear by the complete lack of any attempt to bring the age of consent in line with the developmental phase scientists have repeatedly shown as the age range at which the brain reaches
full maturity in its decision-making and cognitive processes in the prefrontal cortex: 25-30.

Making the age of consent 25 to 30 would just be… be… PRUDISH! Because then men couldn’t go around ogling SexxxyHott Teens anymore, and that’s just wrong. Who gives a shit if their brains aren’t fully developed yet, and they’d be making much different decisions at 25 than at 18?

But no, that’s not exploitative at all. Just because they aren’t capable enough decision makers to even rent a car doesn’t mean they’re not ready to rent out their bodies to scuzzy dudes, right? No resemblance whatsoever to taking advantage of an already oppressed population’s age-related biological impairment to sexually titillate males and put money in pimps’ pockets. Because the sex industry becomes safe when a girl turns 18, especially if we make it completely legal.

Point is, you can see just how specious the pro-prostitution camp’s arguments are when you put them in the context of any other crime, but especially when you put it in the context of child pornography and age of consent. By saying an age of consent is necessary, and legalizing chid porn wil not make it safe for chidren, they are implicitly admitting that there’s something there that people need to be protected from until they can make their own legal choice to fuck themselves up by getting involved with it, after which point they’re fair game for whatever exploitation scam some dude wants to pull. They are also admitting that the abuses in the sex industry are not caused by any kind of “underground” status, but as an essential part of its nature. None of them will say that lowering the age of consent to 15 would make it safe for 15 year olds to be prostitutes and eliminate the abuses in the illegal child sex industry, because that’s stupid; none of them believe that, and I imagine very few could even keep a straight face while making such a statement. So why does it apply at 18? The brain is only incrementally more developed, and won’t fully mature for at least another 7 years, so where’s the major difference other than in the squick factor?

Hint: there is no difference. It’s just a hollow, empty, pre-rehearsed set of statements that speak volumes about the mindsets of the people using them to defend their favorite form of institutionalized misogyny and human commodification. But to our soundbite culture, it sure does sound sparkly, and that’s pretty much all that counts: if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.