“Pro-Porn Activism”: It’s Our Time Now!!!

Ahhh, lookee here…guess who got really fed up with being misinterpreted and distorted??

And look what she has created in response??

And who in the hell is that whom she invited to guest host there?? Gee….who’d thunk it?? 😉

YeaPornies of the world, go there and unite!!!!  You have nothing to lose but your inhibitions…..and a foe of those heavy chains.

Renegade Evolution: Pro-Porn Activism

While RadRightFems Pontificate, Nina Educates

The following is a passage excerpted from the Introduction of Nina Hartley's latest book, Nina Hartley's Guide to Total Sex. Although the book as a whole is more of an "how to" guide on manuevering through the maze of roses and thorns and ultimate pain and pleasure that is human sexuality; this particular excerpt is where Nina lays out her basic philosophy of sexual freedom from a definite progressive, sex-positive feminist, and sexual liberationist perspective. I post this as a response to all those who continue to insist that those of us who call ourselves "sex-positive" are simply the negation of those we call "sex-negative".

Sexual Liberation: In and Out of Fashion but Always in Style (pp. 5-9)

If there is one thing we've all found out during the past half-century, it's that sex doesn't exist in a political vacuum.  As a woman and a feminist, I developed my own sexual politics from the ideas of others and my own life experiences.  They're simple in theory but not always easily applied.  They require rigorous honesty and a willingness to learn.  I believe the body's innate capacity to experience sexual pleasure is an inherent good, requiring no validation by external authority, but I also understand its power commands respect.  My core position is that, between consenting adults, nothing short of physical harm is forbidden, no form of sexual activity inherently immoral.  For that to be true, consent has to be real.  Consent is not the absence of "no." It is a statement of shared intent that must be continually renewed.  Every party to an act must fully understand and wilingly choose to participate.  Within these parameters, all choices should be honored.  That's been my message for more than twenty years, and I'm sticking to it.

These beliefs have broad implications from which I don't shy away.  I believe that all womnen must have complete access to the full spectrum of reproductive choice.  Without control over fertility, women cannot be equal partners in sexual self-realization, as nature makes the stakes so much higher for us.  I believe all consenting adults have the right to private pleasure without fear of government intrusion or hostile social scrutiny.  As you would expect, I consider the viewing of erotic materials part of that sacrosanct zone of private pleasure.  I do not believe that all sexual relationships are, or should be, struggles for political power.  We all have a say in how political we allow the personal to be.

Sexual liberation requires that we take full responsibility for our actions and that no outside agency or church, state, or social organization should be allowed to do that for us.   I believe that sexual jealousy is not "natural" but learned and that it can also be unlearned. I believe that we each have within us all the love and joy we need (with plenty left over to share with others), and that only fear and conditioning prevent us from accessing those feelings.  I believe that our bodies and our feelings, if honored and trusted, can lead us to our best lives, despite our diverse backgrounds.  I realize that these ideas have been vigorously challenged from many quarters.  Though I've submitted my own thinking to the test of daily life and the ongoing examination of what Zen calls "the beginner's mind," I remain an unabashed sexual liberationist in the broadest sense.  My agenda is not hidden.

Sex, in its purely physical expression, has no intristic meaning.  We, as adults, must give it meaning each and every time we choose to be intimate with one another.  The beauty of the body is that it has its own wisdom, its own language, and its own timetable.  Physiology has no "right" or "wrong."  Friction on the flesh produces the release of neurotransmitters that, in turn, stimulate regions of the brain.  Our skin is our largest organ.  Not only does it keep our insides in and pathogens out; it also transmits sensations….and some square inches are more sensitive to attention than others.  Caring touch keeps infants healthy, and lack of touch will create a condition called "failure to thrive," a potentially life-threatening syndrome most commonly seen in institutionalized children….though it can occur in any child lacking adequate care.

Only though touch do we learn at the most basic, nonverbal level that we are loved, safe, and important to our caregivers.  How we are touched in infancy and early childhood directly affects the development of our brains, particularly the ability to form healthy attachments in later life.  It's not just essential in childhood; we need it all through life.  In adulthood, one form that need takes is erotic desire.  It's inevitable, eternal, purposeful, and precious.  It's also anarchic, distracting, subversive, and frequently quite selfish.

Every culture has rules and limitations surrounding sexual behavior, though we often fail to take that into account when our own choices are in question.  In our search for personally satisfying erotic lives, we must understand how the culture of our childhood affects us today.  Was it particularly modest? Free and open about nudity? Judgmental of unconventional sexualities? Shame based? Fear based? Did it stress comformity or encourage individuality?

All through life, emotional connection starts with physical contact, through the dominant "romantic" conception of relationships as constructed by our culture insists otherwise.  When we open up our exploration of sex, we find it infinitely more complex and nuanced than we ever imagined.  Many forces are in play when we allow ourselves to be sexual, and we need to be aware of their influences.  While sex itself may be "natural," in humans, all sexual behavior is learned.

In order to be whole, we can and must learn what kind of sexual expression is authentic for us and own it, choose for ourselves what restraints to put on it, and ultimately make peace with it.  I believe that this happens anyway, whether conscious or not….which is why consciousness is so important.  Human beings  have proven miraculously resistant to ferocious external pressures on their sexuality.  Western civilization has inveighed against the sinful excesses of sexuality for centuries and seen no reduction in them whatsoever.  Clearly, like it or not, individual sexual choice will always be in individual hands….and that's exactly where I think it belongs.  I put my faith in the basic good intentions and good sense of human beings when it comes to sex.

It's worth every tear, every struggle, and every heartache to make peace with our sexual selves, even if we never choose to share our bodies.  When we are truly centered in this way, we no longer fear the opinions of others or need to judge what others do.  Our first and most important relationship is that with ourselves, and coming to terms with our bodies is the cornerstone of that relationship.  Grounded in self-acceptance, we can build healthy relationships based on love and respect instead of desperation and deceit.  There is so much more on the line than momentary pleasure.  When total sex is a legitimate end to itself, its most important function is as a strong foundation for emotional intiimacy.  That is its ultimate satisfaction.

When I talk about "total sex," I don't just mean "totally hot sex" or "totally rockin' sex," though these are certainly desirable goals in themselves.  I mean sex that involves us totally, encompassing all the biological and emotional forces at work inside that remarkably sensitive envelope through which we feel the physical world. 

That's the kind of sex I've learned to have….and you can, too.

[Slight varations in syntax by me, but the words are all Nina's, posted with her permission.
Copyright 2006 Avery Press, with addition permission from Nina Hartley/Ira S. Levine]

And they say that all we care about are our erections and "moist pussies"?? Ahhhh…yeah.

 

“Blogging For Sex-Ed (Post) Day”: My Penny’s Worth

As is the usual for me, I tend to catch things a bit too late…so I will apologize to Renegade Evolution if my contribution to her mighty and well-timed carnival isn’t so well-timed. 

Most of my thoughts are reflected all so well by other contributors, to which you can check their links over there at Ren’s…so my contribution will be a bit more brief. Mostly, it will be an expansion on a comment I sent there today.

Personally, I do happen to believe that sex education is pretty much FUBAR..mostly because of the natural monopoly that the Christian Right has established over the dominant ideology with their "abstinence only" policy of denial combined with their meme of "Sex is a privilege given only to married couples for the direct purpose of procreating God’s/Allah’s, Yahweh’s/whatever deity is king of the moment’s childen; anything else is sin and heresy and a direct threat to homeland security worse than ‘Islamofascism’". I’m not so sure, though, that using the schools as a vehicle for an alternative would be an effective counter solution.

The problem I see is that all the political and social institutions in this culture are driven by a lot of sex negativity and sexual denial to begin with; and it doesn’t necessarily come exclusively from the Christian Right. Even the most supposedly liberal and hip and cool parents are just as capable of passing extreme judgements on adolescents about their sexuality and their sexual development, even as they pay begrudging respect to the incessant growth and popularity of sexual imagery driven by both the improvements in technology (especially the Internet) and the natural thirst for information previously hidden from young adolescents and young adults. Of course, there is much to be concerned about when it comes to teenage sexuality….STD’s, reproductive issues such as unwanted pregnancy and abortion, proper health care, and simply negotiating sexual desire with others who might not have their better interests in mind.  But simply firing stats about how many women get infected with the variant strains of herpes or other STDs or moaning about how many young girls are dressing like the Pussycat Dolls and reading Jenna Jameson’s bio without wanting to burn it afterwards is no more effective than merely throwing condoms at young men and telling them, "Just do it, as long as you wrap up." (Not that the latter shouldn’t be part of the message, mind you."

The main issue here for me is that most young adults don’t have the resources or the access to non-judgmental, accurate, and humane information about their personal sexuality, and that the alternatives (either watching porn or relying on the usual misinformation and disinformation) simply don’t meet their needs adquately enough.  The fact that the overwhelming majority of these adolescents happen to be working class who often rely on material designed basically for the more economically privileged might be a factor that has been lost on a lot of sex-ed activists.  For these people, it isn’t enough merely to offer condoms at the local clinic; there has to be a complete system of health care available and accessible to them. So, it is as much a class and economic issue as it is a cultural issue…indeed, the two simply cannot be seperated.

My own personal solution to this dilemma is to combine progressive peer- and community-based structures of role modeling and mentoring where adults and the more mature adolescents can do the bulk of the shoe leather and educating work on demystifying sexuality and providing the accurate and non-judgmental information and resources needed; with an overall assault on economic inequality overall.  A focus on a radical, sex-positive, humane, and egalitarian approach to sex education that doesn’t rely on imposition from above, but rather on reform and even revolution from the masses and from those most affected would do much good, in my view.  This is NOT the libertarian Right "if it feels good to you, it’s OK, and damn the consequenses for everyone else" approach that is far too commonly pushed as an opposite to the "faith-based abstinence only" lies; it simply acknowleges that adolescents are, no less than adults are, sexual beings who do deserve both support, respect, and the full array of choices and responsibilities for exercising their right to explore that aspect of their being. If, after some time, the educational establishment decides to catch up and adopt this approach, that would be fine by me….but until then, I wouldn’t trust them to teach my nephews and nieces about the facts of life any more than I’d trust Playboy or Penthouse or the next Vivid feature.

And yet…..even they would be totally preferable to the numbnuts who currently populate the White House and who are channelling the worst of sexual Puritanism to impose sexual ignorance on the rest of us.

OK…that should be enough for now, I guess.  I’d say more..but I gotta go earn my paycheck.

 

 

Where “Reefer Madness” Meets “Raunch Culture” (Or, Radfems Gone Wild…Again)

Dig, if you will, this picture:

A putatively "liberal feminist" writer for a neoliberal website writes an essay for the website of the not-so-liberal Wall Street Journal Op-Ed section decrying the antics of Girls Gone Wild creator Joe Francis (who is still, in my book, a grand insult to assholes everywhere for using young women for his profits)….and, as a means of granting protection to young adult women from such sexual predators, calls for legislation raising the legal age for consenting to perform in adult sexual media from 18 to 21….for their own protection, of course.

It is true that teenagers become legal adults at the age of 18, right around the time they graduate from high school. The age of consent to serve in the armed forces is also 18 (17 with parental consent), as is the minimum voting age since 1971, when an amendment to the Constitution lowered it from 21. But the federal government is already happy to bar legal adults from engaging in certain activities. Most notably, the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 raised the drinking age to 21 (by threatening to withhold highway funds from states that did not go along). In practice, the age limit is flouted on college campuses and in private homes. But it has still had a positive effect, not least by driving down fatalities from drunk driving.

A new legal age for participating in the making of erotic imagery–that is, for participating in pornography–would most likely operate in the same way, sometimes honored in the breach more than the observance. But a 21-year-old barrier would save a lot of young women from being manipulated into an indelible error, while burdening the world’s next Joe Francis with an aptly limited supply of "talent." And it would surely have a tonic cultural effect. We are so numb to the coarse imagery around us that we have come to accept not just pornography itself–long since routinized–but its "barely legal" category. "Girls Gone Wild"–like its counterparts on the Web–is treated as a kind of joke. It isn’t. There ought to be a law.

— excerpt from Garance Franke-Ruta: Age Of Innocence Revisited (OpinionJournal.com)

Never mind that most of the regulations on alcohol she cites deal not with private consumption or even age limits, but with blood-alcohol level and purchasing of alcoholic beverages, or that the law she quoted did not legislatively raise the age but simply threatened to pull highway spending to those states who refused to go along. But that’s moving away from the main topic here…

Anyways….said writer gets deservedly whacked for her proposal as a infantilization of otherwise legal adult women who are simply not to be trusted with their own judgement and free will on such matters; as a gross paternalism that dictates that young women old enough to be drafted to die in war and old enough to be executed as adults for capital crimes simply can’t be allowed to make basic decisions about their sexuality; and as an ineffective solution that ignores the modern technology that allows such "hostile" and "damaging" imagery to show up without the aid of GGW cameras.

How does said writer respond to such criticisms??  By breaking out the old "my critics are evil liberal men who care more about their dicks than the damage of raunch culture to women" card:

If I had intentionally set out to write an article intended to provoke a backlash that made liberals look like a bunch of leering louts eager to ogle 18-year-old girls and transform society into a deregulated libertarian paradise where low-income women are routinely exploited, I think I could scarcely have come up with a better approach than the Wall Street Journal piece I published on May 4 arguing for raising the age of consent for appearing in pornography to 21. Such a backlash was, perhaps, entirely fitting, given that the topic was a soft-core porn company that has cut deals with major Democratic Party donors and preys mainly on young women in red states But it was also disappointing in the extreme.

Critics of my article have raised some good points, but by and large the responses were disturbingly marked by a far greater concern for access to pornographic depictions of teenagers than for the exploitation of young women. “I Want My Barely Legal Porn!” Matthew Yglesias trumpeted at his eponymous blog, boasting his argument “befits a man whose blog was once featured in Playboy‘s ‘Girls of the Pac Ten’ issue (really!).”

[…]

Other[s] liberals, finding the present raunch culture wanting, posited a need for an even more sex-saturated media environment. “If the brain-damaged idea of sex as explotation [sic] is the problem, I say let us militate against that idea,” wrote thespian Roy Edroso at Alicublog. “Let us have wide and unapologetic dissemination of sexual imagery.” And yet others called for a loosening of existing laws intended to prevent the exploitation of the young. Avedon Carol, a UK-based founder of Feminists Against Censorship, argues that existing child porn laws go more than far enough. “As if being treated ‘like a child’ when you are a child – and therefore not recognized as owning your own sexuality – were not bad enough, Garance wants to treat us as children when we are well past childhood,” she objected.

[…]

Sadly, in the rush to defend raunch culture, neither Yglesias nor the other critics closely examined the record of “opportunities” provided by Joe Francis’ firm (or others in its genre), the cases against them, and the long history of failed legal attempts to prosecute firms like his for abusive treatment of 16-21 year olds under existing laws. Nor did they look at the major Democratic donors who have helped Francis expand his reach and normalize his approach of creating “gratuitous nudity, end to end,” even though such efforts have helped fuel the backlash against “Hollywood liberals” that has been so successfully used against would-be Democratic office-holders.

— excerpted from Garance Franke-Ruta: Porn Again (CampusProgress.com)

…and recruiting a well known antipornradicalfeminist to her side.  Entree’ vous, Ann Bartow:

Can the harms that attend our new raunch culture be resolved, as some suggest, by amending the consent waiver process? Or will it require something more?

The proposal — first suggested to me by Ann Bartow, author of the Feminist Law Professor blog and a professor at the University of South Carolina Law School — to build a waiting period into the consent to participate in pornography is an intriguing one, and would do much to mitigate the impact of alcohol on the burgeoning porn-star for a day phenomenon. Yglesias also suggests this, as a counter-offer to my proposal that the age of consent to participate in porn be raised to 21. It’s a fine idea as far as it goes.

Revising the consent process, unfortunately, does not get to the heart of the problem, which is about the right to privacy and the costs to young women of the cultural and technological changes of the past decade.

And in the next paragraph, Franke-Ruta gives the game away….it’s really all about protecting young women’s privacy and "intimacy", regardless of whether they want such protection or not…..and mostly, it’s about wiping out "rauch culture":

The issue is only partially about consent, or even impaired consent. The issue is also that over the past decade and a half there has been a massive decline in the space of life that is private in the sense of being undocumented for all posterity, even if publicly conducted — and that there has been a simultaneous increase in media outlets, distribution channels, and commercial interest in the “scandal” of young female nudity.

Yglesias pretends that a young woman’s “decision” to have nude pictures of herself floating about without her consent is no different than picking a college major or “getting tattoos.” But he’s wrong. People don’t lose their jobs – or become permanent public spectacles – over “buying lottery tickets” or choosing to major in chemistry rather than physics. The difference is that there is an active harm being done to young women when pornographers take control of their images, without their consent (but with the consent of the courts), and that what people are choosing to do when they pose for pictures and what ultimately becomes of the images they choose to be in are often very different things. Miss Nevada Katie Rees lost her crown after pictures of her, bare-chested and kissing other girls, surfaced on the internet. She was 19 when they were taken, grown in form, but clearly not yet a mature individual. Or look at the case of the friends of American Idol contestant Antonella Barba, 20. Semi-nude pictures of her surfaced soon after she joined the show, leading her to say, “The pictures that were released of me – the ones that are of me – they are very personal and that is not how I intended to portray myself nor do I intend to portray myself that way in the future.” And it wasn’t just pictures of her, either. There were plenty of shots that exposed her young friends, too — women who were not looking to become famous or trade on their figures, and whose momentary goofing around at a beach outing is now public for all posterity.

Should such women have the right to control their own images? And do young women have an interest in not being manipulated, whether through drink or through peer pressure, into situations where they sign away what rights they do have? Those are the real questions at stake. The laws, as they currently stand, err too greatly on the side of protecting pornographers’ rights to transform unwitting or intoxicated young women into sexual commodities, and favor men like Francis, who reportedly earns $29 million a year, over the impecunious 18-year-olds off whom they have become rich. Raising the age to consent to be in porn to 21 may seem like an overly broad solution; alternative proposals that would address the issue of involuntary distribution and publication of private images, in addition to the questions of drunken consent, may ultimately prove superior. So far, however, I haven’t heard them.

Now, I could go into the basic fact that Franke-Ruta completely mistates and distorts Avedon Carol’s objection to her proposal as "loosening existing laws designed to protect the exploitation of the young", even as she herself further down decries those existing laws as woefully insufficient (she does the same to Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon by quoting her in support..ignoring the fact that she goes on to state her ultimate opposition later on); or that she completely takes out of context various male liberal commentator’s glib snarkiness as tolerance for kiddie porn predators….not to mention that she doesn’t even bother to post links to Lance Mannion (who has a nice rebuttal to GF-R’s lunacy here) or Roy Edroso to show what they really said (or didn’t say) about her proposal); or that she basically uses the old APRF slam of "(male) liberal Democrats" as essentially sexual slavers and child traffickers (she quotes several Democratic politicos who recieved money from Joe Francis’s enterprise as proof that liberal men are covering up his rape and pillarging..perhaps that explains why the WSJ Op-Ed site managers were so quick to promote her column.

But it’s Ann Bartow’s entry into this that fascinates me most of all. Of course, you’d expect her to rise to the defense of wiping out porn and all things "raunchy", but really, Ann….how in the hell does soft-core kissing and panty flashing and boob flashing lead directly to "trafficking in women" or double anal or other "degrading" activity??  And how would limiting the rights of 18- to 20-year old women to willfully engage in such behavior help protect the rest of womenhood, anyway?? And what would prevent you from moving the goalposts further and saying that 22 year olds aren’t mature enough to make such decisions, either, and thusly the age of consent should be moved up even further to "protect" women from their own actions?  After all, they don’t need GGW to get them drunk or even to flash their goodies; anyone with a decent digital camphone and access to the Internet can put out compromising photos on the ‘Net…and for free, no less. 

After all, if Jessica Valenti’s bare midriff book cover for Full Frontal Feminism and Teri Hatcher’s "see my panties" cover for her feature article last year at Vanity Fair was enough to raise Bartow’s pressure about "raunch" images, why should we think that she would rise to the occasion and diss pictures of young inebrieated women flashing and kissing as "damaging" to their future career?

Fascinating how sexual conservatism makes for strange bedfellows, ehhh??

(For the ultimate defense of the girls who do such dastardly deeds of posing for porn or such; see Greta Christina’s seminal article here.

Rot In Hell, Jerry Falwell; Presente!, Joe Levine

It’s not just the fact that he was a blatant segregationist in the 60s.

It’s not just the fact that his church was the primer behind the "Moral Majority".

It’s not just the fact that he was the pioneer spokesman for the Religious Right, the forrunner to the likes of Pat Robertson.

It’s not just the fact that he called feminists "witches", called Tinky Winky gay, and Jewish folk "Satanist".

No…if you want to know everything about the man who passed from this earth yesterday, this legendary quote just after September 11, 2001, will suffice just fine:

"I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say you helped this happen"

Ernest Greene’s dad, who passed away pretty much the same day as "Rev. Falwell", gets far more love and sympathy from me than Falwell ever will. Nina’s notation from her site diary:

Sadly, Ernest’s father passed away yesterday, so we’re on a plane to Denver on Tuesday.
[…]

Joe was 91 years old on the 12th of this month and was healthy and living life to the fullest until the
very end. He had business property in town and even worked some that day!

He didn’t feel so well when he woke up Sunday and, while in the hospital room waiting for a CAT scan, his aortic aneurysm, which he’d had for over five years, burst, and he died quietly and without pain, his girlfriend of twenty years holding his hand.

While we’re understandably quite sad, it was good to know he didn’t suffer and that he was living his
life the way he wanted to, full of work, travel and friends.

May Aphrodite and the rest of the Goddesses comfort and guide you on your journey, Mr. Joe…you lived well and did good….and raised one hell of a son to boot.  Even if he did turn out to be slightly perverted…in the best way.

And may the same Goddesses rain down lightning bolts on Falwell’s ass on his journey…in the opposite direction.

 

“Bound, Not Gagged”: Where Sex Workers Defend Themselves

It seems like some people are finally getting tired of being beaten down.

Please go over to the new blog Bound, Not Gagged, which is run by sex workers and their supporters who are simply fed up with being silenced, distorted, and intimidated for standing up for their rights to be heard and accepted for their profession.

The contributing authors list includes such heavy hitters as Jill Brenneman, Scarlot Harlot (nee’ Carol Leigh), Robin Few, Melissa Gira, and Karly Kirchner; and they even got Annalee Newitz as a liveblog contirbutor.

Already, they’ve posted some righteous and thoughtful missives on the DC Madam case and the future of sex work.

And just as already, the usual love letters of support from the radfem caucus has been rolling in, too.

Just go there and give your support.

…And Speaking of Sexy Sex Intellectuals…

Significant salutations and congratulations are in order to “Waking Vixen” Audacia Ray….for pulling off the major trifecta of earning her Masters degree from Columbia University; having big success with her nice little alt-porn production The Bi-Apple, and pulling off a successful opening day debut of her Sex Workers ‘ Vision II exhibition in New York City. All at the same time…while she’s still editing the sex worker e-zine print publication $pread and her upcoming book Naked on the Internet, too.

Well freakin’ done, Dacia….and you still manage to look like this:

I could say something about how she looks even better with her clothes off…but that’s not for this blog. 😉

Way to go, Dacia….good things do happen to those who deserve them.

[Slightly edited to reflect corrections by Dacia in comments….]

The DC Madam Scandal: Linkage To Some Sex-Poz/”Whore’s Eye” Perspectives

I could write a great deal more on the fallout from this :"DC Madam" scandal that’s doing such a cock-block on Capitol Hill….but I know of some very deep sex intellectuals (some of whom also happen to be quite sexy, even) who can do the job better than I ever could.  So, here’s some linkage to articles you should be reading:

Dr. Susan Block:
Strangelove Hookergate II
(the original from Doc Suzy’s "Bloggamy"; the reprint from Counterpunch)

Dr. Carol Queen:
Hip-Hip-Hypocrisy!! With A Paean To Prostitutes (from her own blog)

Melissa Gira (from Sexerati) [with h/t’s to Ren and Jill B]:
Johns Gone Wild: The DC Madam’s Gift To Sexual Health

Elizabeth Wood (Sex In The Public Square):
Will The "Washington Madam" Case Destigmatize Sex Work? 

If you know of any other articles out there from a sex-poz perspective, just holla ’em back at me.

 

Jill. Freakin’. Brenneman. Original. Headbussa.

Not in the literal sense, of course….but she’s been on a freakin’ roll of late with some righteous takes on everything from the DC Madam case to the defense of sex workers from APRF distortions.

But it’s this long overdue pixellized ass-whopping of The Troll Better Known As Der Gregor that puts her over the top and earns her the Fighting 101st PHB (Sex Workers Defense Regiment) stripes.

This is what happens when you push someone a bit too far with bullcrap, parroted boilerplate, and out-and-out lies.

"Beatriz" is a reference to a female Latina who, in an earlier thread, posted an English translation of an original statement released by an Argentinian male antiprostitution feminist group; which Der Gregor attempted to mistranslate and twist to fit his ideological lunacy.  When called out correctly by Beatriz, he suceeded to mock her Latina ancestry (calling her "Beatrice"), even claiming that she was an invention of Jill used to smear "radical feminists" and promote Jill’s alleged "pro-porn" and "pro-prostitution" positions.

Ultimately, Jill reached her limits of tolerance, and belted out this comment in response to Gregor’s nonsense.

Originally found here; scroll down to 10th comment, or read the whole thread for background and context.

Gregor’s excerpts in quotations [For this reprint, also in italics]

“ What in the World are you talking about/ you are a maniac, I am cuban, a man of color an activist for 25 years,”

Gregor

[Jill’s response]
Well that changes everything. What are you kidding? Peron was Argentinean, Pinochet Chilean, both sharing your Latino ancestry. And? They were both murdering fascists who claimed to be doing what they were doing as part of some war against evil. Your ethnicity means nothing because you demonstrate having learned nothing from being in a minority class. You figure because you are Cuban and a man of color that you are entitled to judge, to grossly violate the human rights of others, to make absurd allegations and to hide from any accountability? By the way, I thought you were a male person not a man. It seems now you are a man when it suits you.

You’re an activist in what for 25 years? Radical feminism? Now you prove it. Der Gregor is obviously a pseudonym. Who exactly are you? Who are you connected with? Who in radical feminism knows you? Because I know many of the radical feminist players in the last 11 years. Do you dare come out from hiding behind the screen name? If you have the connections to activism you claim, I will have at least heard of you or someone in the radical feminist circles that I know will know you and be able to validate your activism.

Your actions define you Gregor.

“"Beatriz" or whoever is behind that quick profile, came offf the gate insulting and ridiculing , “

No she didn’t. She wrote a response to the Manifesto and gave authorization for it to be posted. You took it upon yourself to translate that manifesto with artistic license and present it as authentic and got caught. You tried to play off as being a native Spanish speaker when it’s obvious you aren’t. What happened is you got in over your head. You stuck the manifesto into translator software, used a peripheral knowledge of Spanish and tried to call it an authentic translation. All Beatriz did was translate the Manifesto accurately and note your alterations.

You on the other hand wrote a document that misrepresented the Spanish and was virtually incomprehensible in English.

You took it upon yourself to ridicule and insult her. Worse you attempted to lower her to non human status. Here is a piece of information about prostitution. Do you know how the San Diego Police and other police departments refer to violence against prostitutes? No Humans Involved. Which you should know this being the great radical feminist. You should know the authors of No Humans Involved number 1 and number 2. I know them both and have worked with both of them. One closely for an extended time period.

You feel it is feminist to throw baseless accusations out challenging that Beatriz is either non human, male, a predator? You as a Latino try to denigrate her Latina ancestry by anglicizing her name? And then you claim to be feminist, a man of color, an activist………… Actions define you. Anyone can cut and paste.

“thinking she was insulting and ridiculing me but as you and her and the rest of you pro prostitution people here have no moral capital to use,”

Your actions here define your moral capital? I rest my case.

“Anyone sitting back and loking at your arguments sees the clear facts. you are a *proponent* of prostitution and porn. “

Ok, Mouth. Prove this. State your facts. I am a proponent of prostitution and porn how?

If "Beatrice" was not also a propnent of porn and prostitution she would not be esconced there next tou you in your pitch post, would she.”

This name in quotes thing is disgusting. Like somehow you have discovered a conspiracy and are showing you aren’t fooled. You are the fool.

Your bullshit calling her Beatrice. I don’t know anyone named Beatrice. There is no Beatrice. Beatrice is the creation of a pathetic misogynist racist who masquerades as a feminist. You believe that your Cuban ethnicity protects you from being the standard Gringo? It doesn’t. You are the classic loudmouth from the United States that gives the US such a poor reputation worldwide.

“so, what are you trying to say, that this Phantom person who has no picture of themselves and no profile to speak of, and is foursquare on your side is *not* pro porn and pro prostitution? “

There is no phantom person. Thus your point it moot.

”BS, and PS…. That dog don’t hunt.”

Great, you are quoting my quotes now. How amazing is that?

Last topic. We’re going to talk about feminism, oppression and reality. Who do you figure you’re dealing with? You want to sit and lecture me from your pulpit about what it is like for women victimized by clients and pimps in the sex industry. You save the rhetoric that you have read in books. Your knowledge is from books. What you know about what it feels like to be harmed by men in the sex industry is what you read and what you pretend to live vicariously through the suffering of others.

Let me clue you in. I know exactly what it is like to be harmed by men in prostitution. Pimps and clients. I know exactly what it feels like. Because I was victimized. It isn’t theoretical, isn’t some mantra that I memorized from various women’s writing. Most of which being women who’s claim to their knowledge is from having interviewed women in prostitution. Not even first hand experience. Who exactly are you as a male to lecture a woman who was in prostitution and was harmed in it on what that harm is? On what it feels like? On what oppression is? Or what she needs to recover from it?

I know exactly what it feels like. And when I needed help to get out of it, there wasn’t any. When I needed medical attention, I got stigmatization from health care providers. When I needed help from the justice system after being victimized by criminal predators, I instead faced all the lack of rights and resources afforded by a society that has no respect for prostitutes, for sex workers.

You believe your war against porn and prostitution mattered? Not a bit. Since you were an activist when this was happening to me, what exactly did your activism do to help me or anyone else? Nothing.

You believe I would have needed you to explain my oppression, explain the violence, explain what the oppression is and who was committing it? Please. What an arrogant presumption on your part to believe you know better than women in the sex industry what that oppression is, what it feels like and what they need to end their oppression. You can save your theoretical, misogynist first world feminist bullshit for someone else. There is a world of difference between theory and reality and reality wins. I needed human rights, real world resources and compassion. Not some theory with vague promises of my liberation as a class. If you had any idea what you were talking about you would already know this and it wouldn’t have to be explained to you. You want to learn about prostitution and about the victimization of women in prostitution then shut your mouth and listen instead. Because your actions demonstrate that you know nothing but empty theoretical rhetoric that you try to force feed to impose your dominance and to fill the holes in your credibility.

Your actions are disgusting. Take your statements, your actions and your “proof” about Beatriz and try to sell them . Because your inept racist misogyny won’t fly well with women in general much less feminists including most radical feminists. When you try to make that sale and they realize that Beatriz is exactly who she states she is, they are going to recognize the salesman sold them nothing but disingenuous feminism attempting to cloak hatred, cultural imperialism and patriarchal misogyny. There is a reason why your best ally in your fight on this blog is xyradicalfeminist who at best is intellectually about 14 years old if not that in actual age.

Jousting is over. I’ve had enough of your allegations, absurd conspiracies and empty rhetoric. If you want to keep going we are going to match reality vs. theory. Real life experiences as a woman in prostitution vs. your male perceptions and assumptions. You want to talk about violence against women in prostitution? Violence by men? We can play that. Let’s match your theory with reality.

While we are on the subject of violence. Understand this. Your actions and words directed at Beatriz, Ren, myself and others, are emotional violence perpetrated by a man of color, male person,………… whatever you call yourself.

I do believe that a standing ovation — or five — is in order here.

While Jill can stand on her own, it’s nice to have backup when dealing with asshats like DG….earlier in the same thread, yours truly and Renegade Evolution gave him the reading he deserved as well (both consolidated in one comment by me due to some issues with MySpace’s commenting system):

[Reprinting Ren’s comment…hopefully with the code stripped for brevity]

Jill, you’ll have to excuse my bile here for a moment…but….

FOR FUCK SAKE

This man [Note: reference to Randall Tobias, the official who was outed as using the "DC Madam’s" services] was the driving force in policy that denied monies to any countries and programs that did not openly, publicly, and legally condemn prostitution. Not the johns, Gregor, the whole business. Money was cut from programs that saw to the health and education of women in the business RIGHT NOW. RIGHT NOW, not in this magical future that is…what? Just going to appear one day? After the revolution? What? Yeah, anyway, cut funding from those things for those women- Who, you know, maybe if they HAD better educations and more opportunities they, you know, might not stay in prostitution? They might find ways out and into other jobs? Something like that?

Now, I realize you think if men would just stop using porn and seeing prostitutes everything would be all better…so great…get on that…though I am not sure if you and some other radical feminist men closing your eyes and wishing hard enough is going to make that happen or not, but in the mean time, there are people in this business, and they matter, and frankly, you are a shitty humanist and feminist if all you can do is sit around and attack and insult some women who, you know, actually give a shit about and try to help women in the sex industry in the here and now…those who cannot sit around and wait for your glorious revolution, or don’t want your glorious revolution, but still matter because they are humans and all.

And finally…WHAT about the MEN? You know, some feminists, caring about WOMEN and all…don’t necessarily think EVERYTHING AND ANYTHING always has to be…you know…about the goddamn men!

Now, why don’t you sit down, shut up, and ponder that for a moment? You want to get the men to stop? Ally with like minded men? Post your manifestos where men with read them, spread the word, so on…but WHY you are constantly harassing and attacking a woman who is trying to HELP women is just beyond me. It certainly isn’t doing ANYTHING to stop men from adding the demand part to the supply and demand part of sex work, is it?
[/Ren]

Oh, but Henchwoman, you so forget….you might as will be pissing into a Cat 5 hurricane eyewall as far as Gregor is concerned. This isn’t even about the hypocrisy of an antiprostitution activist engaging in the very same behavior that he would prosecute and demonize others for doing.

Nah….for Gregor, this is about castrating MEN as a class for the sins of having erections and thinking about women as free and equal sexual beings…which, in the eyes of the microcoded implanted endless loop computer chip program that substitutes for Gregor’s brain, directly leads to rape and abuse and "degradation" and all sorts of damage and destruction.  No, for him, it’s all about the SEX that must be totally purged and the men who must be "retrained" to reject their "base sexual desires" so that "men" like him can feel superior and offer himself to his extremist mentors as worthy.

And it’s that much harder to sell his "eternal victimhood" castration fantasies with all that sexual imagery in the way, and all those women who do happen to — horrors of all horrors — LIKE having sex outside of radfem standards, not to mention women like Jill who dare to defend these women as actual human beings rather than the foolish sluts and sexbots and brainwashed victims of "patriarchy" that need his "protection" from the evil male penis.  Thusly, she must be attacked with special fury as a "sellout", an enabler of rape, and a paid agent of Teh Male Enemy.

Well….too bad if I don’t happen to want to be castrated for crimes I don’t commit, or for having a working penis and the brains to respect a woman’s choices.  And too bad for Ren and Jill that they would rather risk being continuously harrassed by you so that they can stand their ground for actual justice for these women.

Somebody [better] change this broken record….please.

Anthony

His response to that??  To call me "phalleocentric".

My response to him from henceforth?? To simply ignore him as a dickhead and an asshat.  But, given Jill’s blast, I do believe that we’ve probably seen the last of him there for a while. 

 

On APRF “Terrorism”, Bullying and Projection: My Final Memo to StormCloud

OK, Stormcloud….you have finally spoken.

You say that you are fully justified in your campaign against Renegade Evolution and others who allegedly want to bash and trash "radical feminists", and that you still hold personal information against Ren (revealed by others, of course) that would damage her "among her peers" that you reserve the right to reveal if she (and her "YAYporn posse")doesn’t immediately cease and desist their "attacks".

You write this long and windy comment about the evil threat of bullying….as if you were the victim of such rather than the main perpetrator. But….you reserve to yourself and your allies the exclusive right of responding affirmatively to such attacks; and you reserve to yourself the same right to declare the "blogwarz" to be over.

But let’s review the facts here, Stormy:

1) Last time I checked, it wasn’t Bitch|Lab or Belledame or Amber Rhea or even Ren who dropped the "bees" and "wasps" and "honeybees" analogy in condemning the vile threat that folks like "Belledodo", "Ambutt", and "PorniePrincess" are to the pristine wholesome beauty of antipornradicalfeminist theory and practice.

2) It wasn’t Bitch|Lab who openly threatened to "out" Ann Bartow for hiding behiind a pseudonym while attacking the good name of Catherine MacKinnon.

3) It wasn’t Andrea or Antiprincess who loudly opposed applauded and cheered on [thanks, Belle!!] the consistent inclusion in Heart’s blog of some of the most vile anti-transsexual rhetoric this side of Janice Raymond, not to mention the incisive wisdom of Luckynkl on the evil threat of trannies using women’s restrooms as rape rooms.

4) It wasn’t Ren or any other "YAYporn activist" who decided to post pictures conflating a consensual BDSM scene with real, actual torture (Kink.com = Abu Ghraib), then exploiting such an extreme analogy for political and personal gain.

5) It wasn’t Ren who, when faced with a factual critique of APRF fallacies about porn from someone who has been in the industry and built her career to improve it from a sex-positive feminist standpoint, unleashed a fuselage of invective about such an activist being a "tool" for the industry, if not an active participant in rape and murder herself. (Remember the Stan Goff posts, Sam??  I certainly do.)

6) It wasn’t Ren or Belledame who made their living sending hate emails to various female sex bloggers castigating them on how their personal sex lives enable men to rape and abuse women. (Sam, meet Rachel Kramer Bussel.)

7) It certainly wasn’t Ren or Robin Few who defended and applauded the Canadian Supreme Court decision to allow a feminist rape crisis center to deny services to a rape victim…merely because she happens to be trannsexual.

7) And…I’m damn sure that it wasn’t Ren who decided to express their heroic and consistent opposition to the evil images of porn and its effects on women and children…through marketing their slideshow into a CD and making a profit off it…thus doing the same identical thing that they accuse their opponents of doing.

Oh…but in the otherworld that counts for APRF cultthink, only Stormy is the real victim here…not the women she has slandered, distorted, and shamed into silence.

Why else would Witchy-Woo allow Stormy to close debate in "the thread" with such a zinger of a comment [excerpt follows]:

OBJECT LESSON

The moral to this story is that eventually targets get fed up, and will fight back. This is not an even blogwar, as the proof can be easily found in the respective blogs – when radfems quote other bloggers it is usually in praise and to build upon the work – when YAYporn quote (radfem) bloggers, it is to discredit, humiliate, and (personally) attack. There have only been a few posts criticising the behaviour of the nonradfems, two of those I wrote, but also deleted.

There is a huge difference between a critique of radical feminism, and constant attacks on the feminists themselves. Worlds apart.

Radfems are actually a moral and tolerant bunch, and therefore make easy targets for bullying. Yes, I wanted to scare the bejeezes out of RE and the posse, however the attack planned would have been to discredit her with information (by her own blogging) among her peers. This is the most damaging type of ‘outing’, for to ‘out’ her personal stuff would just enable her to whine on and on about being a victim. The threats, were off the mark of what I was planning, but I also needed to show that I had actually done a bit of investigation (which I have). The information that I have shown can be found by anybody who wants to waste a few hours of their life, with the aid of a few glasses of sanity-preserving red wine. Note that I did not reveal the link to the photos, nor reveal my methods in discovering them. I revealed that I have seen them, which I have.

Yes, bullying tactics by me were used, but mere ‘talking it out’ would not end this campaign against radfem bloggers. I had had enough, and I also used misleading strategy to get it. I am also experienced in dealing with sociopaths, and to bring about their downfall by their own weaknesses of narcissism, boasting, lying, and of course, arrogance. Yes, I played dirty, but what did I have to lose? I had already been discredited and ridiculed by a campaign that lasted nearly two months. So the object lessons for bullies is perhaps, know what your targets are capable of when they have been pushed to the limits, for eventually, most will fight back.

Trust me RE, you do not want to reneg on your promise, because discrediting you among your peers will hit you the hardest, that is still on the table. The radfems already know you are a bullshitter. Don’t think you can just go after ’some’ select targets either, because quite a number of people have ‘taken interest’ in studying you, and the most damning bits were not found by me.

My message to the radfems is that you do need to let the past injuries go, mainly because you will never get a sincere apology out of this lot, nor will they cease voluntarily to stop what they are doing unless cornered. Pony has been the most hurt by the leaks, and I wish to apologise that I have not shown her the depth of my support. I realise that my ‘let it go’ sentiments will wound you the most Pony, I am sorry. No apology from them will ever be sincere, all I can do is help find the culprits and expose them if need be. Ending this war is the only way to stop this happening again, but I cannot undo what others have done to you, any of you.

To the posse, including “Deep Feminist”, you may wish to take away the object lessons (after all DF, I actually have not exposed what I know, nor is it a betrayal of a private space, or betrayal of someone I have pretended to be allies with). If the current posse continue to harass and stalk, yes you lot were the original stalkers, then perhaps ‘another stormy’ will arise from the ashes and go after you. So stop your bullying behaviour now. Don’t even try to justify it with “…but they started it”, that shit comes from two year olds. This entire ‘war’ ends here and now. I fucking mean it.

Again the spirit of the agreement: not to bitch about other bloggers. It goes further than that, not to talk about ‘the others’ and to just ignore them. There are plenty of ‘feminists’ in the world, and these two camps just do not mix, and will NEVER get along. Anybody who thinks they are ‘helping’ by straddling the divide, is only maintaining hostilities and connection between the two groups.

Postscript

Ultimatum n
1. A final statement of terms made by one party to another.
2. A statement, especially in diplomatic negotiations, that expresses or implies the threat of serious penalties if the terms are not accepted.

Blackmail n
1a. Extortion of money or something else of value from a person by the threat of exposing a criminal act or discreditable information.
1b. Something of value extorted in this manner.
2. Tribute formerly paid to freebooters along the Scottish border for protection from pillage.

I fail to see the financial (or strictly personal) gain in what I have done (in fact, I stood to lose from this) – which more accurately fits the definition of ultimatum rather than blackmail. The other thing is, blackmail is NEVER done out in the open, but always private dealings. So for the idiots who bandied around the word blackmail, just more proof that you will take any opportunity to discredit radfems.

And if attacking half a dozen to a dozen radfem bloggers by a group backed up by the entire pornified world isn’t bullying – I don’t know what is.

Yes, indeed…"a group backed by the entire pornified world".

Which happens to include three distinctly ANTI-porn activists, one Latina who happens to be not too cool with porn herself, and two women whose views are more antipatetic than pro-anything. But that doesn’t matter to Stormy; all the better to smear them all as handmaidens of the Patriarchy and justify her "truth" campaign as self-defense.

George Orwell or Karl Rove or Jim Jones couldn’t have built a better example of Newsspeak than this.

—————————————————————

If my reaction through all this seems like I’m more than a bit obsessed with this group, well, it’s because I’ve seen throughout the years how their tactics and groupthink and cult mentality has damaged and destroyed countless innocent women and active feminists whose only crime was to object in part or in full to their lunacy. My first impression of how low these people would go to attack their critics came with the assault on feminst women through the Banard College Feminist IX Conference (from which Carol Vance’s original anthology Pleasure and Danger: Exploriing Female Sexuality was created). The smearing of some of the conference participants as advocates of "deviant sex" and "patriarchial power sex" (read, BDSM), and the handmaidens of male rapists made an indelible impression on me about how deeply fascistic this movement was then..and how they twisted the legacy of "radical feminism" to sell their poison of shame, hatred, and loathing.

From then, I’ve managed to witness the direct complicity of so many of their leaders with the Christian Right (with all the diversions and disclaimers about being bashed as "prudes" and "puritans") on actively targeting consensual sexual behavior that harms no one but offends their principles.  From the complicit alliances with the Meese Commision, to Catherine MacKinnon’s open support for Clarence Thomas (until Anita Hill’s story of sexual harrassment made it a bit less tenable for her), to today’s open support for the Bush Administration’santi-prostitution "loyalty oaths"; the consistent alliance between the antipornfeminist "left" and the openly fascist Right has been quite obvious..regardless of how much activists like Nikki Craft or Bob Jensen would want to cover it with a "leftist" gloss.

But mostly, my impressions of these people have been influenced by actually listening to and befriending real people who actually work in the dreaded industry whom the APRFs readily bait and bemoan.  None of these people are perfect by any means; they have their own histories and their own personal stories about their lives.  But what strikes me about them most is their utter humanity, their compassion, their willingness to actually break through boundaries and challenge their prejudices and beliefs and open their minds to new ideas…..something that is most alien to cultthink and groupthink.  These people fight the battle on the ground every day with their lives, their sweat, their blood, and their orgasms; they know more than any radfem on the outside looking in what their experiences are. Yet, because their lives don’t fit into the master script of the Radfem Borg collective, they are simply dismissed and disrespected and denied even the most basic decency of respect….or worse, they are demonized for the alleged sin of being "tools" of The Evil Male Dick.

Most likely, though, the real issue is that the women and men who are the main targets of people like Stormcloud, Heart, Witchy-Woo, and Sam (and let’s not forget Jensen, Der Gregor, Stoltenberg, Goff and the Male APRF posse, too) are targeted so loudly for abuse and elimination simply because their existence on this planet as independent sexual beings with minds and thoughts of their own is such a cosmic threat to the unisexual "Gender-Borg" collective that would assimilate them for their own good….even if they don’t need it.

——————————————————————————————–

Finally…I will make no apologies for being who I am and for whom I defend; all I will do is to take full and exclusive ownership for everything I do and write, both here and elsewhere. If I really did have anything to hide, then I would not post my real name (and for those of you with asperations of apeing Stormcloud and attempting to reveal any "smoking guns" about moi, the Google is wide open), or even be as upfront about my views on porn or sex or politics.  If I decide to defend Renegade Evolution from all the slanderous abuse she has taken, it is NOT because I am a man with a penis who simply wants to fuck her, or because I am her secret "pimp" or "john"  (trust me on this one, I don’t make enough money in my day job to even meet her personally….and besides, I don’t believe in breaking up good relationships, and she already has a fiancee which does the job quite adequately).  It is because i openly admire this woman’s willingness to be upfront and honest with herself, her profession, and her personal life as a sex worker, a sexual entertainer, and a feminist. (And hell fucking yes, Stormy, in spite of all that has happened, I still consider her to be  a feminist in good standing…in fact, way more of a feminist in the best sense of the term and philosophy than you or your allies would ever think of being.) I may only know her from her posts to her blogs, but I know enough about her to deeply respect her as a woman, a human being, and a sexual being.

So…just go ahead and continue with your campaign against Ren and other such "YAYporners"; and by all means, put out all the manifestos and threats and blackmails you wish from your friends and allies.  All that will do is prove beyond doubt who the real bullies are….and it definitely isn’t Ren or Antiprincess or any other "pro-pornstitute" woman….or man.

Oh….and one last thing, Stormcloud, before I finally close this:  I really, really, really do invite you to please, please, oh for Goddess’s sake, do please bring whatever dirt or shit you want to throw on me to this domain. Because if you push me really, really hard enough, lady, I can hit back with equal fury.  I have as little respect for you and your posse as you do for me; and I am not afraid to lay it on the line and speak freely. 

I will just simply quote one of my all time favorite human sex goddesses/full-time badass women — retired Penthouse Pet/softcore erotica actress Shauna O’Brien — on her (and my) philosophy on countering haters and ignorant people who trash you for no reason:

"When someone annoys me, I annoy them back."

If you want a respectful debate, I’ll be here.  If you want to go nuclear…well, I’ll still be here…and I fight to the finish. If you want to continue to bash and trash innocent people who did you no harm, I will continue to reserve my right to expose and criticize you and call your bullshit out.  That’s not a threat or a promise, lady….that’s called freedom of speech….and justice.

You’ve said your piece, Stormcloud…and now I’ve said mine.  Let our paths not cross again.