You know you live in America when the victim of a virtual hate crime gets the punishment….and the perpetrator gets off scot free.

Apparently, the racist and misogynist antics of Phoenix right-wing shock jock Jon Justice isn’t enough to get him fired from his job at “The Truth”….but the actions of his targeted victim, Latina public defender Isabel Garcia, might be enough to cost her hers.

The update from ProfBW over at WOC PhD:

While Jon Justice continues to enjoy full privileges as a radio host after posting mock sexual assault videos in which he made racist comments about Latinas and immigrants while assaulting a piñata with public defender Isabel Garcia’s face pasted to it (see my original post for more), his efforts to have Garcia dismissed from her job as a public defender in Arizona have gone forward. Garcia is currently under investigation by the AZ state bar for participating in a protest against a book signing for a book that supports active discrimination against immigrants and subversion of their rights. “Justice” and others, have misrepresented the events to say that Garcia’s “toting of a severed piñata head of a police officer” constitutes violation of the bar’s code of conduct. Garcia was actually picking up the head after protesters split the piñata open in traditional form. She and others actively protested the incitement of anti-immigrant sentiment and abuse of immigrants and the Latin@ community in AZ which they felt were being exacerbated by the event and the author. Should the review board decide that Garcia is guilty of violating codes of conduct, she could lose her license to practice law in the state of Arizona and would also lose her job as a public defender.

The “police officer”, as I previously stated, happened to be Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arapio, who was in town pushing his latest anti-immigration book.

The message that a decision against Garcia sends, while Jon Justice continues to be on the air, is ultimately detrimental to everyone. What it says about the rights of brown people in Arizona and brown women in particular is clear: racism and sexism are not only irrelevant in Arizona they are supported by the state. No one benefits from living in a state where this is how outsiders and insiders alike view the legal apparatus. John Justice can simulate sexual assault on two separate occasions while making derogatory comments about Latinas, immigrants, and Chican@ culture, post them on his workplace website, and defend his actions through his workplace - radio show and workplace owned blog without consequence. Garcia loses her license and her job for participating in a protest and picking up the remains of a piñata.

The conflict has already encouraged hate groups to target woc bloggers defending Garcia as well as to circulate her picture on their sites. (you can do a google image search for evidence as I am not linking to them.) This targeting makes it clear that John’s [sic] behavior encouraged listeners to lash out against both Garcia herself and women of color in general and that is part of the social definition of hate speech.

ProfBW give out some addresses where you can send some real messages in Ms. Garcia’s behalf…I’ll just link you to her for the details.

This almost makes up for the passing of that bad-ass motherfucker George Carlin this morning….

I’m sure that you have heard of the Showtime original show Penn and Teller: BULLSHIT!, in which the legendary comedic/magic duo of Penn Gillette and Teller (don’t know his surname) basically exposes what they see as urban myths, rumors, and other assorted fictions.

Well…for the beginning of their sixth season, they decided to train their BS meters on The War on Porn, and all the myths from both Christian Right and radicalfeminist “Left” about the innate evil thereof. And lookee here….one of the skewered antiporn “experts” just so happened to be our dear friend Dr. Gail Dines; professor at Wheelock College and promoter of the usual “porn is racist/sexist/promotes degradation of women” meme.

Now, as you plainly know, Dr. Dines is well known for her habit of intimidating and refusing to debate women who don’t march in perfect step with her ideology; she has steadfastly refused to share even the hint of a microphone with the likes of Nina Hartley (except in venues where Dines could, in the typical Bill O’Reilly fashion, ambush and entrap women like Nina and distort their responses to their “inquiries”). Plus, she is legendary for her use of porn material without the permission of the actual models or performers featured to sell her beliefs about the innate evil of said expression. And, she is quite vocal about how she believes antiporn “feminist” voices are basically “shut out” and “censored” by the evol Male Liberal Patriarchial Media who simply doesn’t want to admit their sin of masturbating to the “death and destruction” of women and children.

Problem is, though, for someone who is so disgusted with the “male media,” Professor Dines also craves the media spotlight like any other demogague….which is why she agreed to appear on the aformentioned episode of P&T: BS! concerning porn.

Now, you would have guessed that knowing how Penn and Teller can be when it comes to driving their points home and being as agggressive as pit bulls when it comes to debunking their favored topics, Dines would have probably thought better of appearing knowing that their audience would probably not be accomodating to their views. And indeed, it wasn’t: the show basically debunked and smashed all of her mythologies about the dangers of porn and its impact on women and men….to the point that Dines and the other antiporn panelists who appeared were reduced to sputtering in anger when their talking points fell on deaf ears.

Funny how it feels to be on the other side of the rout…right, Professor Dines??

But, oh, Gail Dines is nothing if not perseverent…..she decided to take her case against Penn and Teller directly to the people, using an essay posted directly to CounterPunch this morning titled “Penn, Porn, and Me”…with the suggestive subtitle of: “How Some Men React When They Think You Want To Take Away Their Porn”. (As if Penn and Teller were themselves porn addicts for not totally buying into Dines’ ideology.)

Mostly, Dines’ rant is that Penn and Teller totally misinterpreted her stance about porn…namely, the kind of porn that men supposedly truely want to see; mistaking the soft core that is Showtime’s/Vivid’s fare for the real “Shock-n-Awe” gonzo that really rings up the registers and drives the degradation complex. Mostly, though, Penn’s just an angry, bitter man who just wants to keep on wanking to porn that damages women, according to Ms. Gail:

I have seen a lot of upset men, but few get close to the level of rage Penn exhibited on the show. As he yelled and screamed into the camera, I thought he was going to have a stroke. He was especially upset with me for suggesting that mainstream porn, which is increasingly cruel and degrading, has a real effect on the men who use it.

The interesting part of this story is not Penn’s out-of-control anger, but the way the show framed the story on porn. As was expected, the producers used the topic as an excuse to show lots of porn; a quick and cheap way to pull in the audience. But the porn they showed was the soft core kind that is mainly girl-on-girl sex, the type that is not the main moneymaker for the industry.

The porn that makes most of the money for the industry is actually the gonzo, body-punishing variety that shows women’s bodies being physically stretched to the limit, humiliated and degraded. Even porn industry people commented in a recent article in Adult Video News, that gonzo porn is taking its toll on the women, and the turnover is high because they can’t stand the brutal acts on the body for very long.

OK….so the fact that it’s mostly girl/girl sex and solo masturbation scenes and mostly “vanilla” hetero scenes found in most porn sites and movies which make up nearly 80 to 90 percent of the porn being viewed in the US means absolutely nothing to Professor Dines; it’s that nasty-ass gonzo and the circus-sex acts of facials and anals and gangbangs that really count…..and of course, we all know that women are leaving in droves due to the “abuse” of such acts. Ahhhh, Gail….would it be just a little effort to actually ask some female performers who have left the industry — well, at least those not already integrated with antiporn ideology like Shelley Lubben — if they felt “degraded” or “humiliated” by the experience of doing porn?? But oh, nooooos….that would mean actually accepting the social agency of such women as actual human beings rather than just plain suckers for Teh Patriarchy, or just mindless sluts needing reeducation or redemption for their sin of liking cock or twat..or both at the same time. We “leftist” feminists can’t be having that, can’t we???

Ahh, but Professor Dines has more to bitch about….

While I doubt that Penn is any stranger to this type of porn, I know for sure that the lead producer is aware of it. In preparation for the show, he spent several hours with me as I carefully explained the different genres of porn, and he also came to one of my lectures, where he saw in clear and sharp focus just what happens to women in the industry. He himself expressed shock and anger as we talked, yet when it came down to it, he ended up just like the rest of media producers: cowardly and untruthful. The story they told about soft-core porn is only part of the story, as what really needs to be explained is why men are, according to the industry, seeking out harder and harder porn.

Oh, yeah…..”according to the industry”….not according to her biased opinions, you see.

I initially declined to do the show, as I had no faith in Penn and Teller doing anything that remotely looked like serious journalism. In the end I agreed because they promised to give me some serious time to talk about porn. They also promised not to edit me to look like a fool. They kept their first promise and reneged on the second. They introduced the three anti-porn activists as the “Three Stooges”, setting us up as idiots before we had said a word. Of course, every time one of us said anything, they cut back to some soft porn and Penn, who was at times having a hysterical fit. It was both scary and comical, his red face contorted with rage as he yelled at the camera that porn doesn’t cause men to be violent!

Now..the fact that maybe the reason why Penn was going off on Dr. Dines and the other antiporn panelists (no doubt including a more traditional Christian Rightist, I’ll bet) might have something to do with countering her own beliefs that men who jerk off to porn inevitably move on to doing all sort of nasty things like bestiality and rape and pissing on women and pedophilia and all other such depravities..but then again, I’m not a regular view of that particular show. But never mind that, it just proves Dines’ point that porn must be censored for the good of all men!

Yeah. Right. Really,

The show is scheduled to air as a repeat tonight at midnight Eastern Time (check your local listings for exact time in your area); so you can see for yourself whether Gail was indeed ambushed or whether she just got owned by superior talent. Given her history, I’m vouching for the latter.

P.S.: The Renegade Henchwoman (aka Maximus Sexeeemus AssKickumus, Grand Emperess of Modern Rome) is a HUGE P&T fan, and she had a word or five hundred to say about Gail Dines and the show today at her blog, too.

Well, now….guess who finally came out and gave her accounting of the whole matter??

Yup, that would be “The Other Miriam”…the one that Sam Berg THOUGH was the one who hacked the Genderberg forums a year ago..the one whom Sam sent that nasty email calling her a “lying shitbag” and accusing her of being Renegade Evolution, who also used to go by the handle of “Miriam”….the one who was threatened with everything from legal action to revenge hacking…for something she didn’t do.  All because of her name.

Well…”The Other Miriam” allowed her friend Kim (over at Bastante Already) permission to post a message publically recounting her role in the matter.  It turns out that it was Kim who wrote the email to Sam Berg in response to the skullduggery….and it was Kim that got the flip of the hand response of “If you are not the Miriam I was talking about, then I apologize; warmest wishes”. (Gee, Sam, could you have actually read the freakin’ header and known whom you were talking to??)

Out of respect of Miriam and Kim, I will simply offer the link. Just go there and read it in full, and feel what it really feels to be victimized. As opposed to using “victimization” as an excuse to bully others.

Both Ren Ev and Jill Brenneman have now posted their own reviews of the debate….and I can’t decide which one is better.

Ren’s reset includes nice pictures of the debators and a nice review of what went down.

Jill’s reset, though, contains a detailed and complete rebuttal and refutation of all the crackpot charges against the debate organizers for “rigging” and setting Sam Berg up.

Oh, well…..read them both and catch the truth behind the noise.

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Update: Karla Mantilla, who was the fill-in  replacement for Sam Berg at the W&M debate, has posted her own accounting of the debate at the official website for the event: pornographypanel.blogspot.com She has also released a statement expressing her support for Sam and her positions, that was read by Heart as a comment to Heart’s blog entry piece in “solidarity” with Sam.  And as usual, the usual GenderBorg Collective were in full force: Arxanta, Luckynkl, Satsuma, and Maggie Hays, among others, give their hosannas to Karla and Sam for representing the good fight against the evol of Jill and Ren Ev.

Well….it’s early Sunday morning, and Brownfemipower’s blog is now officially passed (Goddess’ speed and much love, mujer)….but I do bring good news.

I had seen that mosts of the posts throughout the blogosphere is referencing my reposting of the excerpts of BfP’s final essay documenting her reaction to Amanda/”X” and her perfidity (is that the correct word???). I was so sorry that I could not have captured a screen shot of either the entire blog entry there or the previous one where she gives the context of her WAM! speech.

However….what I can’t do, Google can, through their Cache feature….and I just so happened to find the cached version of BfP’s final post in its entirity. Just click on the following link to read it:

Brownfemipower (La Chola/Women of Color Blog): Intellectual Integrity (via Google Cache)

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a cache of the blog post with BfP’s original speech; that must have not been cached in time.

Also; here’s a mass linkage to the many comments now running on the entire controversy; both pro and con:

Xicano Power
Natalia Antonova
Belledame
Ren Ev
Daisy’s Dead Air
Kevin Andre Elliot
Plain(s)feminist
High on Rebellion
Sudy (here, here, and here)
Blackamazon
Sylvia/M (here and ESPECIALLY HERE)
Feministe (which also includes a long comments thread where Amanda attempts to defend herself, and brings some of her allies)

In fairness, I should include as well:
Hugo Schwyzer (who strongly defends Amanda)

Also, the usual drive-by shots at feminism and “victimization” from Soulhuntre. (Quick memo: Butt out of what you know not a damn thing about, fool.)

Any other blogs heavy on the current issue that you find, just let me know.

Remember when myself and the former Bitchlab/Quare Dewd (now Shag over at Wear Clean Draws) attempted to organize a sex-positive blog carnival??  Remember how it ultimately failed because both of us weren’t able to invest the time into it??

Well, Lina over at Uncool managed to do what we couldn’t…and the results are simply incredible to see.

Along with the usual gang of sex poxxies — including Amber Rhea, Iamcuriousblue, Belledame, the Bound, Not Gagged collective, and, of course, Renegade Evolution — the list of contributors include everyone from active and inactive sex workers to philosophers to deep thinkers to anyone with an interest in sex positivity and feminism joining forces.

And, yes, there’s even a contribution by a certain handsome Black male essayist, too.

Highlights include:

– Renegade Evolution’s instant classic Young, Dumb and Full of Cum

– Belledame’s two part series defining sex positive feminism

– BNG’s rolling coverage of the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal and its aftereffects

– Audacia Ray on the lack of representation and misrepresentation of sex workers in the media

And those are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg….Lina has lined up a virtual smoregasboard of bloggers, writers and intellectuals from a variety of venues to come together (no pun, Clones) in service to defending sexual freedom as a feminist value.

Don’t take my word for it….just get your booty over there and check it for yourself.