Oh, but it would figure that the Feminist Sex Wars would blow up again in my absense…but I never thought that it would get this crazy.  But then again, you should never underestimate the ability of the GenderBorg Hive Collective to ramp up the slut-shaming and McCarthyite bashing to new heights of pig crap.

And leave it to the reigning Free Soil Party candidate for President of the United States, Cheryl Lynn Seelhoff (aka Heart) of the blogs Women’s Spaces: The Margins and Fight The Lies to lead the lynch mob…..errrrrrrrrr, the charge of passionate antiporn/antiprostitution radical feminists to and now beyond the frontier of lunacy.

(And no, Clones, I am not linking their sites, since I have no need for any future drama. Do the Google thing.)

The latest episode took place in a elongated thread at Heart’s place Women’s Spaces, in which the original subject happened to be on respecting the voices of women in the sex industry.  Only thing was, the only voices that Heart wanted to be respected were those that perfectly matched her basic fundamentalist ideology of “Prostituted women are mere victims of men, and thusly, all prostitution is forced sex by men over women”. It seemed that women who happen to BE sex workers who did not agree in perfect lockstep with Heart’s abolitionist philosophy were basically rendered invisible, if not baited as the enemy….and much, much worse.

All the usual parrots took part in this “debate”: Sam Berg, Maggie Hays, and “Rebecca” (Mott??) all took part in cheerleading for the greatness of “radical feminism”.

But the real excitement came in the thread comments, when some infidel apostates decided to attempt to bring their own views into the mix which didn’t quite march in perfect goosestep with the GenderBorg hive mind.  The result was some convenient and quite masterful engineering by Heart (in her capacity as admin for the blog) in not only suppressing their attempts at opposition, but flat out altering their views to support her strawarguments to be knocked down.  Naturally, those who got altered did not get their actual views aired uncensored (that is normal policy at Heart’s place)….but apparantly outright censorship wasn’t good enough; Heart also felt free to post commentary on the posts that she refused to unmoderate and allow to be shown.

A few example of Heart’s mad moderation skills follow anon.

First, this example applied to Renegade Evolution, who had the audacity to attempt to answer a direct smear by Maggie Hays. Ren has posted an extended archive of the thread, complete with redacted and modded comment, over at her blog.

on 26 Aug 2008 at 10:13 am16 Renegade Evolution
Right then Heart, let’s speak on context…and I’ll try this again and amend a few things to be accurate and less openly hostile…yes, I do realize you support the Swedish Model, oversight on my part. Noted. I lived out west, where gal is far less demeaning than girl, or ma;am or lady, or Miss. Just as men are called guys or dudes, women, often, are refered to as “gals” and in my experiece it is not meant to be demeaning. It’s a term other than woman or girl. The stories I posted, well, gee, Mariko and Amanda’s Nevada Brothel tales would be right up your alley. They are horrible in their own right, in every way. Tricked by a female brothel owner and subjected to very shady conditions in a place they felt unsafe and could not wait to get out of, Mariko went there because she literally needed the money. Not exactly shiny, happy stories. And Robyn Few, as much as she is hated by many, mentions flat out entering the sex industry at the age of 13 to survive. I’ve not in my posts ignored the unpleasant aspects of the business, and to assume (when I still have five or so days left of blogging there) that I would not post MORE on the less pleasant aspects and horrible parts of sex work/prostitution for various people involved in it is somewhat putting the cart before the horse. I mention both sex workers AND prostituted women, but that has been omitted by various folks throughout this conversation. Why? There are both: sex workers and prostituted people. Denying one group or the other does no good, because both kinds are out there and have different needs/wants. I don’t see the horror in recognizing that. Even I have had shit times in my business, which you said you were oh so sorry for…yet…when I make an effort to discuss sex work/ prostitution in a place where people might learn something they don’t already know, I get slammed for it. Why hasn’t Feministe invited others to blog there? I don’t know. That question has to be asked of them, not me. I have no say in who they invite to guest blog. I’d be happy to suggest a woman like R.Mott or V be invited to guest blog there, hell, I will. Would they do it? I don’t know. Would those women accept the invite? I don’t know that either. And V- listen, yes, I am a libertarian, people do not have to like it- and sure enough- they don’t. Not even many of my allies. No, I am not anti-capitalist, but is more in depth than that. I’ve never said capitalism is fantastic and great and we should never look at other systems or modify the ones currently in place. For instance, would I support a more socialist form of medical care? Yes, I would….because all people should be able to see doctors and not go around injured or sick because they can’t afford medical care. And why yes, I’ve said such things before.
As for the feminist critics blog, no, I was not a founding member. I became disillusioned with a lot of feminism and feminists and was then, after the blog have been around for awhile, invited to blog there. Some months ago, I quit that blog and have not posted there in quite some time. A self-identified radical feminist has also blogged there once or twice as well. I found conversations there to be useless and frusterating, so I quit.

Heart’s initial response seems actually human:

on 26 Aug 2008 at 10:48 am17 admin
Ren, I’m going to approve your comment in a minute, but without the last sentence. My post here wasn’t addressed to you specifically. Your and others’ recent writings about the language around sex work are among a couple of things that got me blogging about this. Another was the arrest of Frank Colacurcio and another was having spent some time on the Sex Trade Survivors site after reading about it on the DIGNITY listserv. Another is e-mail conversations I’ve been having with survivors of the sex trade. And another is, I have a difficult piece of writing I’ve been working on about the arrest of Radovan Karadzic that is kicking my butt so I’m writing something different because I’m procrastinating. :-p
Another thing that factors in for me: how can I stand for sustainability, for life, the earth, forests, skies, oceans, how can I embrace Deep Green iow, which is where my life and my feminism have taken me, without being as concerned about sustainability and life so far as women’s lives and bodies are concerned? I have to stand politically with the indigenous tribes all over the world for many reasons, one of which is, once the megacorporations have used up all of the trees in the rainforest and all of the oil in the Arctic, once the profits have been realized and spent, all of us will suffer for it, most of all everything and everyone who is gone and dead and devastated because of what the corporations have taken and sold. How much more is this true with respect to the bodies of women?

Never mind that numerous commentators before then openly referenced Ren’s guest appearance at the Feministe blog for their criticisms of her beliefs…it’s still not all about Ren. Or so we think.

The thread then dissolves into a virtual jill-off…oh, so sorry, bad analogy since masturbation is so against the GenderBorg edict as a selfish male-imposed, compulsive woman-hating act….discussion go-round between Heart, Maggie, Satsuma, and a few others agreeing on the basic harms of prostitution and how only those who want out and want it banned should matter.

And then, all of a sudden, Heart strikes with her first moderation moratorium, against Ren:

(Ren, I’m not going to approve all of the grandstanding you want me to approve here wrt Satsuma or anyone else. You and those you hang out with online appear to lie awake nights strategizing attempts to publicly shame, attack, and demonize any woman who stands up to ya’all. A quick perusal of your blog will reveal many straight up attacks on women– entire posts dedicated to that project. Own and deal with your own crap and then maybe I’ll reconsider. I also won’t be participating in anything remotely likely to even smell like blogwar stuff. You’ll have to do that elsewhere and on your own. – Heart)

This was the “grandstanding” from Ren that prompted that banishment:

Satsuma:
“Everytime I hear some woman justify this sexualizing pornified world, I think to myself “There stands an unaided incest survivor, an abuse victim, a child rape survivor.” Everytime I hear women supporting this stuff, I know that underneath this is a survivor of some attrocity that might be a suppressed memory. I see very mentally ill lesbians out there into S & M because no one gives a damn about them, or cares to foot the therapy and hospital bills. I’ve seen this first hand, I’ve heard the S &M crowd with my own ears, and I know what these women have been through.”

Well, thank you for assuming to know the lives and history of every single woman involved in any aspect of the sex industry or who does not constantly cry out against the modern world or who happens to like BDSM, and writing them all off as damaged and incapable of rendering decisions due to the vast damage you assume they all have suffered, slapping on a heaping does of ablism and superiority, and making yourself an authority on the lives and experiences of other women. Well done. Your arrogance astounds me.

“All I can say is pro-porn people, show us your financial interest in all of this, because we know your are profiting and selling women too. You don’t want to lose out on your womanhating selling gravey train, you don’t want to admit that you are aiding and abetting child rape and seasoning either, no you support free speech only for the abusers and profiteers and you know it. Shame on you!! Shame and more shame!”

Woo, look, shaming and demonization ALL at once! You know, between the hate and arrogance I’ve seen you throw at people like sex workers, heterosexual women, mothers, and well, a bunch of other people who do not follow the Satsuma path, I have to wonder about your agenda. You speak often about money and for strong, smart, warrior women jobs, Satsuma. What do you do? Nice profit margin in that? What makes you think you are so much better than so many other people? What’s the trauma that led to this sort of absolutism and megalomania?

Goddess I hate these sleaze bag and their internet lies! This is the very heart of darkness.”

Nice….just lovely, really.

Rebecca- I want to do a post at Feministe which links to the blogs of sex workers/prostituted people, current and past, and I’d like to link yours, because I do think what you say is important, but I want to ASK first if that’s okay with you. If it isn’t, I totally understand. Context would merely be “here are some blogs by people who are now or were formerly involved in the sex industry”.

Maggie: No “E”, noted. No, actually, most sex work advocates are for decriminalization, not outright full on legalization. And I’m sorry, yes, I am sure that Heart wasn’t merely thinking of me when she wrote this, however, the timing was just too perfect, the criticism of a word I use often “gal”, the discussion on language? Well, a lot of people all around found the timing just a little too convenient for this to merely be random and, oh gee, not at all about what I happened to be posting on at Feministe. I hadn’t even noted the post here until a transblogger dropped me a note saying “How can people be upset with you for writing about Harm Reduction?” Which, you know, is a good question? And once again, the piling on and attacks are a two way street. You get angry at sex worker advocates and the term sex work? Well, I get angry and people who mischaracterize sex worker advocates and refuse to realize, why yes, there is such thing as a sex worker. Oh, and the constant refrain (like in your response to V there) that we’re full of fallacies and deluded? Do you have ANY idea how damaging that is? People will take that kind of attitude and use it to say, “all those people are liars and stupid”. Not helpful, at all.

In the very next post, Heart decides to latch her jaws on Nina Hartley (WARNING: link to possibly NFSW material) — porn actress, sexual rights activist, and pro-sex feminist — for being such a threat to Heart’s brand of “radical feminism”…and she she adds a nice McCarthyite-like smear of Nina’s husband Ernest Greene using his advocacy for safe and consensual BDSM play, his editorship of the sex zine TABOO, his employ at the empire of HUSTLER magazine,   and his and Nina’s stances on condom usage in porn as a hammer against them both:

on 27 Aug 2008 at 10:47 am40 admin
You know, Ren, re working to lessen harm to women in the sex trade, I can completely get behind that project. But there’s something else that got me writing this post, in addition to all the other stuff I’ve already mentioned. Someone I like and go back a ways with recently interviewed Nina Hartley, who with her husband, Ernest Green, is part of your circle of people apparently concerned about harm and sex worker rights and so on. (For those who do not know, Ernest Green [sic] publishes the SM/Fetish mag “Taboo” which is owned by Hustler. )
I was fairly discouraged about this interview and was then told Hartley doesn’t advocate for condom use in porn anymore which I found hard to believe. I went poking around and found this to be true. NOTE, MAY TRIGGER.
So much for harm reduction. Even if it’s true that condoms might increase the chances for transmission of STDs in some instances and acts in pornography, not using condoms while performing in pornography, on film, films distributed widely, models an incredibly destructive message to those who watch porn, including young people, including young women who get into the sex trade. The fact that porn performers are tested monthly does nothing to mitigate or lessen that particular harm or the ongoing, cascading harm that inevitably will result from young women having sex with random men without condoms.
This stuff somehow doesn’t get talked about much on the pro-porn/pro-prostitution blogs.

SNA-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-PPPPPPPPPP!!!!

That is the sound of a ‘Dog blowing up in rage after reading that particular post. (Warning: The following rant may be triggering .)

Hey, Heart(less), you un-fucking, no-account, lying, slandering bit….ahhh, woman: If you ever managed to get your head out of your ass and actually read up on Nina Hartley and her particular stands on condom usage, you’d see that she doesn’t even come close to advocating what you say she does.  She and Ernest are NOT opposed to condom usage in porn; she only opposes government attempts to IMPOSE MANDATORY condom use on the industry, mainly due to the fact that such regulations are, in their view, totally ineffective, mostly unenforcable, and basically counterproductive in that they will more than likely succeed in driving performers away from mandatory STD/HIV testing….not to mention the fact that there is no mandate against popular condom usage in porn to begin with, since most porn studios already have a standard “condom-optional” policy. (And some studios, like Vivid, actually have a mandatory condom policy in place already. Or, at least, they did last time I checked.)

And as for the “having sex with random men without condoms” smear: Gee, Heart, why not just come out and say outright that all women in porn are nothing more than voracious sluts who can’t stop bending over or kneeling down to every man they see?? Last time I checked, it was mostly the responsibility of health professionals and sex educators, not the porn industry, to educate the populace about safer sex techniques….and while it would be a very good thing for people who work in the sex media to promote voluntary safer sex techniques whenever possible, simply mandating that any performer who doesn’t use condoms or who doesn’t insist in using condoms is inevitably a disease carrying menace preying on impressionable young women is simply beneath contempt. for anyone calling herself a feminist. Also…I guess that she doesn’t see men who get infected with STDs to be as much victims needing protection as women apparently do?? So, Lara Roxx is a victim because she contracted HIV from a tainted double-anal scene, but Darren James is a sex predator and murderer because he contracted the virus as well???

Oh…and young women don’t have to be in porn to be having sex with random men without condoms; and the overwhelming majority of them actually survive intact without contracting any disease altogether.  How about giving them some credit for protecting themselves from STDs, Heart??  Oh, I forgot….that would really fuck with the “women don’t choose to have sex with men; that’s the PATRIARCHY’S brainwashing kicking in!!” meme. When truth meets GenderBorg ideology, the latter will always win in Heart’s mind.

Oh, but there’s more of Heart trashing Nina and Ernest later on in the thread…but let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.

After some more exchanges where Ren attempts to defend herself against Maggie and the rest of the hive, Heart lays down the law concerning future posts in moderation:

on 29 Aug 2008 at 12:10 pm75 admin
So, yes, I have comments in my moderation queue.
My problems are several and among them are these:
* If I approve some of the comments, I will be approving mean-spirited, undeserved, unproductive attacks on fine women;
* If I edit the comments, deleting the mean-spirited, undeserved, unproductive attacks and snarks, then the commenters appear to have been reasonable, polite and respectful when they were not. But only I know this because I’m the only one who saw the comments before they were edited;
* If I do not approve the comments, the suggestion is that I cannot or will not respond to the issues the comments raise.
* If I do approve the comments, many who read here, survivors of the sex trade, in particular, but others of us who are survivors as well, will be triggered in ways which are very hard to deal with. The comments I’ve already approved have been severely triggering to some of my regular commenters.
I will be approving comments soon, but I wanted to preface my approvals with the above. I don’t like approving ugliness, self-congratulatory bullshit, disingenous grandstanding, and comments mostly intended to inflict distress, or comments which — intentionally or unintentionally — trigger good women. In the end, I think the interests of women will be better served if I do approve the comments in their entirety than if I don’t.
I might change my mind about that at any moment after approving and responding to the comments in my moderation queue. I will be watching the responses carefully. If you want your comment to be approved, don’t attack anyone, don’t be dismissive, don’t be a jerk, participate honestly and decently in the discussion.
Heart

Translation for those of you not learned in GenderBorg speak: “Any attempt by ‘pro-porn’ sellouts or infidels to rain on our parade of bashing pornstitution as the Devil will be dealt with severely through alteration or outright censorship. Only good, strong, antiporn radical feminist thought will be allowed through uncensored…in fact, we encourage true ‘feminists’ to rise up and drown these dirty attempts by traitors and porn addicts to infiltrate our beloved space.”

It gets so bad that Maggie actually resorts to responding to comments that were still in moderation, as in this case:

Ion 29 Aug 2008 at 12:41 am74Maggie Hays
I don’t speak for Ren, and I wouldn’t bloody dare try to!
Hexy, as I’ve already said *twice* (look) above:
1/”I mean of course I know you’re NOT trying to speak for her. Sorry (my bad).”
2/”NO ONE speaks for me, but me.
Yes, I know that. (I said Sorry to Hexy above…”
Ren had (sort of) replied to my comment but I could not see it (as it had been somehow stuck in moderation). I could only see you replying to my comment, which had given me a mistaken impression for a number of minutes, sorry. Then I did notice, Hexy, which is why I then wrote “I mean of course I know you’re NOT trying to speak for her. Sorry (my bad)” 40 minutes later. Sorry for the *misunderstanding*.

And this was Hexy’s response….unfortunately, it didn’t make it past Heart’s censors for some particular reason (reposted at Hexy’s blog Hexpletive):

76hexy
Your comment is awaiting moderation.

Maggie, in regards to this:
Hexy, as I’ve already said *twice* (look) above:
My comment has been stuck in mod for a while, and from what i can see still is (which confuses me, as you’ve replied to it).
When I made that comment, those comments from you weren’t visible.

Interesting that Maggie’s response to Hexy’s original comment gets posted, but Hexy’s response doesn’t.

Fast forward a bit to another section, where Heart decides to mine an unnamed “contact” — apparently, a sex worker — to support her viewpoint:

on 01 Sep 2008 at 9:25 pm79 admin
[...]

As one formerly prostituted woman wrote to me (about this thread) via e-mail, calling prostituted women “sex workers” and using terms like “harm reduction” and “non-forced prostitution” is deeply insulting to her because it makes johns invisible, it makes the reality of a lifetime of having been groomed for prostitution invisible, and it places the responsibility to “reduce harm” or work for “harm reduction” on the prostituted women, as though it is up to them to make sure they are not raped or beaten. It also, again, erases the salient, central fact that it is MEN who are buying and WOMEN who are working. Sort of like the way the media says that a woman “was raped” or “was murdered,” but often avoids saying that a man raped a woman or a man murdered a woman. The misogyny that is central to prostitution, to rape, to battering, to violence against women gets erased and prostituted women are left without language to describe their reality.

This warrants this response from Hexy, which, suprisingly enough, immediately gets through the filters:

on 01 Sep 2008 at 11:08 pm80hexy
Heart:
I’ve never seen the term “harm reduction” used to imply that the onus to reduce harm is on the prostituted woman or sex worker, and I’ve been involved in several harm reduction movements covering everything from sex work to drug use/abuse. The sex industry harm reduction model covers things like decriminalisation and legal protection, free provision of barrier contraception and access to medical treatment and support services as determined by the needs and wants of the people in the industry.
While I certainly empathise with your contact-via-email’s concerns about being labelled with language that isn’t hers (see, oh, everything I’ve posted) her objection to harm reduction as phrased here is based on a miscomprehension.

Which become the fuel for Heart to slander Nina one more time, and grant a passing shot at another convert to “harm reductiion, Jill Brenneman of SWOP-East (uncited here, but assumed; emphasis on special smears added by me):

on 01 Sep 2008 at 11:56 pm81 admin
Hexy, I don’t think my contact suffers form a “miscomprehension.” I think she is talking about her lived reality in which there is all of this lofty speech from sex workers about all kinds of harm reduction– everything, of course, but the kind of “harm reduction” that would have actually benefitted her and 90 percent of the women and girls in the world who are prostituted, i.e., NOT HAVING TO BE PROSTITUTED AT ALL, not having to be raped, not having to be battered, not having to disocciate, not having to self-medicate, not living in fear, not being treated like so much trash. When the focus is on the rights of those who identify as sex workers and when theirs is the public agenda, the 90 percent of those who are prostituted and do not identify as “sex workers”, who want out, become invisible– to everybody. Because patriarchy wants very badly to focus ON the sex workers, and on all of this great harm reduction, and on the fact that sex work can be made “safe” or “safer”, *that way the 90 percent of women and girls who are involuntarily prostituted and can never be made safe can be ignored*. Prostituted women do not think of themselves as “people in an ‘industry’” working for their “wants and needs.” They are prostituted, used and abused like kleenex, and they want OUT before someone kills them or they kill themselves. God, hexy, you SO talk out of both sides of your mouth. On the one hand you make this huge distinction between SEX WORKERS and PROSTITUTES and insist the two categories not be confused. On the other hand you talk about harm reduction, decriminalization, etc., as though ALL prostituted women are in fact “sex workers,” referring to them as people in the “industry” who are organizing around “needs and wants”. It’s exhibit A of what my contact is talking about. She didn’t care about harm reduction, she didn’t want to be called a sex worker, she wasn’t organizing around needs and wants, she just wanted to get OUT, as by far most prostituted women DO. You speak for a tiny minority internationally of women who say they have chosen. When you do that you *erase the realities of those who do not choose* and especially *in the eyes of the men who create and perpetuate the demand in whose best interests it is to view all prostitutes as “sex workers” and to pat themselves on the back for supporting “harm reduction.”
Right here in this thread we’ve got Ren defending a pornmaker/star/prostituted woman, Nina Hartley, who is an icon, who publicly rejects the use of condoms in het porn because it’s “boring” and inefficient. (Hartley is also a nurse!) When I challenge what that models to basically the entire porn-watching population (who begin at a young age these days), Ren’s answer is that she wrote a blog post once about what bad sex ed porn is, like that’s some answer. I don’t care how many condoms get handed out in the Third World somewhere (as someone commented proudly in a post I haven’t approved yet), what about fracking highly privileged sex workers married to publishers of Hustler’s fetish porn modeling random, highly dangerous, het sex practices with many partners, without condoms? How is handing out condoms in Chile addressing the tremendous harm that particular modeling does, in terms not only of what is imitated by young people, but what is demanded (and taken) from prostituted women by johns? Hell, Nina Hartley does it without condoms, everybody in porn does it without condoms, why shouldn’t he be able to go without condoms?
Maybe the onus is not on prostituted women to prevent harm yet, but if the prostituting of women is framed as an “industry” where those in the “industry” are working towards getting their “needs and wants” met, then ultimately, the onus WILL be on prostituted women, because if all of these “sex workers” are doing all of this great stuff for themselves, what’s prostituted women’s problem? Shouldn’t they get off the dime and organize for harm reduction between getting raped and beaten by johns, pimps and who knows who all? These women’s struggle to just live through another day is being ERASED by a few very privileged people who on the one hand other them relentlessly and on the other hand presume to speak for them.

Yup…so many delusions wrapped in one comment.  So, if we are to believe Ms. Seelhoff, Nina Hartley (your friendly neighborhood “prostituted woman”…never mind the fact that she has never even been a prostitute) and Ernest Greene (male sadist and the official flack for HUSTLER magazine and that daughter-raping, child-molester enabling, ripping-women-through-a-meat-grinder supporting Larry Flynt), are solely responsible through their lack of support of mandatory condom usage for the abuse of every freakin’ woman involved in the making of porn.
Yet, in the end, condom usage won’t even matter, because it simply creates a ruse for defending and maintaining the sexual slavery that prostitution and pornography inevitably come to. Sweet, Heart(less)….real sweet.  And a nice racist touch with the “third world countries like Chile” smack, too.

And she even manages to get Nina’s history wrong AGAIN.  Nina did earn a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing from San Francisco State University in 1985 (Magna cum Laude, to be exact), but she never actually became an active nurse. Porn and teaching the world about sex became her true calling.

Naturally, Hexy had a response to all this cracked bullshit….and naturally, it was never posted (at least, not at Heart’s place; it was posted at Hexy’s though):

Heart:
God, hexy, you SO talk out of both sides of your mouth. On the one hand you make this huge distinction between SEX WORKERS and PROSTITUTES and insist the two categories not be confused. On the other hand you talk about harm reduction, decriminalization, etc., as though ALL prostituted women are in fact “sex workers,” referring to them as people in the “industry” who are organizing around “needs and wants”.

I’m afraid I don’t see the contradiction. I do think the needs of sex workers and prostituted people are wildly different, and I think you just affirmed that by stating that the things I mentioned (all of which are clamoured for by sex workers around the world) do no good for prostituted people. I’m agreeing with you! Sex worker’s rights are rubbish for people who don’t want to be sex workers in the first place, and I’ve never said otherwise.

But I’m not going to say that women like me, sex workers, women in the sex industry who don’t consider themselves to be prostituted people, should therefore NOT have human and industrial rights. We want to be able to do our work safely and legally. That’s important. Prostituted women want out of the industry, they want support to be safe from those victimising them, and they want other options. That’s important too. Since when does feminism require that we choose some women to have rights and options and others to not matter enough?

It’s exhibit A of what my contact is talking about. She didn’t care about harm reduction, she didn’t want to be called a sex worker, she wasn’t organizing around needs and wants, she just wanted to get OUT, as by far most prostituted women DO.

And she is equally as important as women who say we DO want to be called sex workers and given safe working conditions, no more and no less! Her “needs and wants”, be they exit strategies or anything else, are important. Why is this so hard to grasp? If sex workers can pour so much of our incredibly limited resources and activism into helping women who don’t want to be sex workers, why can we not even get a nod and the right to name ourselves from those who devote their entire activism to these ends?

You speak for a tiny minority internationally of women who say they have chosen.

No, I don’t. I speak for myself. I happen to agree with a hell of a lot of women who stand behind sex worker’s rights, across the world, in a huge variety of privilege and economic conditions.

I don’t care how many condoms get handed out in the Third World somewhere (as someone commented proudly in a post I haven’t approved yet), what about fracking highly privileged sex workers married to publishers of Hustler’s fetish porn modeling random, highly dangerous, het sex practices with many partners, without condoms?

Heart, I’m completely stunned that you just posted that. Are you honestly saying that you think Nina Hartley not using condoms in a commercial pornography context is more important than the fact that women are DYING because they can’t get their hands on a life saving piece of latex? You honestly feel that the message sent to Western porn consumers by Nina Hartley’s work is more deserving of attention than impoverished third world sex workers not being able to access the condoms they have demanded from international health support services?

How is handing out condoms in Chile addressing the tremendous harm that particular modeling does, in terms not only of what is imitated by young people, but what is demanded (and taken) from prostituted women by johns?

It’s not. Women in third world countries aren’t getting HIV because “johns” have seen condom free sex in porn, they’re getting HIV because they don’t have access to the condoms they want and need. It’s not all one issue.

Maybe the onus is not on prostituted women to prevent harm yet, but if the prostituting of women is framed as an “industry” where those in the “industry” are working towards getting their “needs and wants”

Exit strategies ARE a want and need that has been addressed by sex worker’s rights groups, amongst other groups. This has been pointed out repeatedly. You continue to ignore it.

These women’s struggle to just live through another day is being ERASED by a few very privileged people who on the one hand other them relentlessly and on the other hand presume to speak for them.

You know, I’m pretty sure that this comment already won’t be published, as not only have my previous comments been moderated out, but I’ve well and truly lost my temper a few paragraphs ago. So to hell with being polite for this bit: Heart, you do NOT get to talk to me about privilege. There are a hell of a lot of women in worse circumstances than me, and I try to do the best with what limited privilege I have, but I am DONE with having heterosexual, able-mind-and-bodied, white American non-whores try to tell me that I’M the one with unchecked privilege in a conversation because I have the audacity to insist that disability, race, and past trauma doesn’t completely negate my agency, and to have the crazy idea that ALL women involved in any way in commercial sex and prostitution have the right to decide for themselves (OURselves) what will make our individual and group situations better.

I’ve always thought you’re an important feminist voice, Heart, even when I’ve personally disagreed with particular politics of yours. This isn’t a political disagreement. This is you, personally, telling women in the sex industry to STFU and insisting that women with far fewer options than yourself are too privileged to be part of a discussion.

Oh, but wait…it gets even better.

Unfortunately, it is getting late, and my eyes are rolling backwards.  We will continue this on the morrow.

NOTE: Ren resets the whole episode here; and check out the awesome two part video blog she made concerning the whole issue here. (Warning: definitely NSFW!!!!) Hexy gives her perspective on the matter here, and Caroline (who’s fast becoming my all time favorite headbussin’ Brit (just call her the anti-Witchy-Woo) gets her whacks in at Uncool here.

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.

All right, let us continue with our detailed fisking of Maggie Hays’ latest jousting of windmills. First part was here.

Porn Apologist: Advocating censorship is not a good thing. Pornography is free speech.

Rad Fem: Who’s talking about censorship here? You, not me. I’m talking of harms. Pro-porners often use the inaccurate word “censorship” to stigmatize any feminist work against pornography and to try to shut us up. Censorship or banning would never address the demand for pornography. Educating people on the harms and asking for an end to men’s demand for an industry that is predicated upon and produces sex-based exploitation and widespread aggression has nothing in common with censorship. Pornography is not free speech, it is hatred of women. The only freedom in pornography is the one for men to abuse women. In a male-supremacist, capitalist society, the First Amendment protects only those who can exercise the rights it protects. Where is women’s freedom of speech in all of this? Pornography keeps women and other people who have been harmed from exercising their rights to free speech.

Ahhhh…nice try there, Maggie…but I’d say that openly pushing for legislation that would effectively regulate sexual material and sexual media out of business by forcing them to endure impossible bookkeeping requirements (see the 2257 regulations), or force clients of sex work or consumers of porn to endure the threat of jail or “john schools” to humiliate or shame them for even having normal sexual thoughts, or even allow any woman under the guise of “civil rights” to sue anyone selling an adult video for triple damages for the thought crime of “degrading and harming women” for treble damages….that pretty much counts to most thinking people as censorship.

And I’d say that the First Amendment seems to be a bit different from your interpretation of it….since when did women become exempt from its protections?? Especially women who happen to disagree with your interpretation of what porn is and if it really does as much harm as you say??

Oh….and enough already with the “We are being CENSORED!!!!!!11ONE11!!” nonsense, Mags….when the government (or Blogger or WordPress) comes in and totally shuts down your blog, then you can make a case about being “censored”. Challenging the nonsense that you put out as untrue, biased, and slanderous is not censoring you; nor is saying that you should be held to the same standards of accuracy and decency as everyone else.

One more time: simply substitute “the homosexual lobby” ; the “homosexual agenda”, and “radical gays” in the proper places, and think about how this apes the Radical Right to a perfectly crossed T.

Porn Apologist: Feminists are often man-haters. That’s why they criticize porn.

Rad Fem: In a patriarchal society where misogyny is the norm, whenever you point out to the fact of male violence against women you’re accused of being a “man-hater”, while whenever a man says a misogynist comment or laughs at misogynist jokes he’s never accused of being a “woman-hater”. Feminists aren’t man-haters and they criticize porn because it is harmful and it is strongly linked to violence against women.

Now, let me see, Maggie…why on earth would we even think that you or some of your allies would be considered “man-haters”?? Gee, I don’t know…would it be because of rants like this???

I do not consider the “consent” I gave while under patriarchal delusions to have been legitimate. I believe that the males who took advantage of my training have as much responsibility to ensure that a woman is not submitting out of culturally instilled obligation as they do to ensure that she isn’t drunk or otherwise unable to give meaningful consent. But I understand that males will never behave in a manner that reduces the pool of “willing” women.

This is what makes men rapists. They will use any pretense as sufficient proof of consent, when the truth is that consent is impossible under patriarchy. That men and male-identified women continue to harp on the unverified existence of a few women on the planet who would seek out penile intercourse (which puts them at higher risk of STD’s than men, while simultaneously putting them at risk for pregnancy) in the absence of any training toward an obligation to engage in heterosexual PIV intercourse, is ridiculous to me. It’s not as if the men fucking those famed and fabled born-to-let-men-masturbate-into-them women aren’t also fucking a lot of women who’d reject them out of hand if not for the brainwashing.

A man’s not being a rapist in one highly unlikely circumstance (fucking a woman whose consent is not mitigated by social/individual coercion) doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not he’s a rapist in other more likely circumstances (that the woman he’s fucking is “consenting” to it out of obligation - to social norms or to economic interests). Because I believe the number of women not affected by socialization when making the decision to fuck men is very low, and because I believe that the men who are fucking those rare women are also likely to be fucking or to have fucked women who undeniably *are* affected by social training, I feel quite safe in saying that all men are rapists.

All men are rapists.

Now granted, not all radicalfeminists are quite as extreme as Justicewalks was there (well, there is Luckynkl)…but maybe a person reading this might have the slightest impression that there was at least a little bit of male bashing involved in indicting men for having erections and sexual thoughts?? As opposed to, like, violently assaulting women against their will?? But, I guess that even the latter is given a benefit of a doubt if the perpetrator confesses his sin and accepts St. Andrea and the Right Reverend Maggie and Bishop Bob as their personal savior and promptly reports to the proper authorities for castration and reeducation??? Even if he goes on to continue to violate women under the guise of “defending” them??

(Oh, Memo to Kyle Payne: to quote Bill Goldberg, your ass is next…right after I finish this fisk; you just don’t get to get away from your acts, fool.)

There is still a decisive difference between hating men who do abuse and violate women (and anyone else who violates and abuses anyone else, for that matter); and tainting ALL men with the lash of “rapist” merely because they have working dicks and fantasies in their brains. Just as there is a decisive difference between authentic radical feminists who actually believe in their theories and are willing to promote them with all respect for civility and debate; and unctuous, obnoxious, arrogant, vicious, and self-important cranks stealing the “radical feminist” label and using it as a crutch for their own personal myopias. You can guess which side I believe Maggie Hays to be on.

Porn Apologist: Isn’t it natural for men to watch porn? Pornography expresses sexual freedom and all men use porn.

Rad Fem: If it is natural for men to use porn, then how come some men have given up on their porn consumption and haven’t died? Not all men use porn. And pornography is not freedom; it is a mechanical, mindless, plasticized, inhuman, cruel and disconnected form of sexual imagery made by big corporations who only want to make big bucks. Besides, if pornography was so “natural” for men, why would it be so relentlessly misogynistic? Men have usually been socialized so differently from women that we can hardly claim anything about their nature. From an early age, males are typically trained to repress their feelings of sensitivity, care and empathy. It doesn’t have to be that way but gender roles both uphold and are maintained by male supremacist social order. And pornography typically reinforces gender, i.e. what it means to be “masculine” and what it means to be “feminine”.

Ahhh, Maggie, haven’t you said that nonsense about “Porn isn’t free speech; it’s violence against women” like about 50 times before?? Trust me, we get your point.

And…let’s look at the divergence here: “male supremacist social order” is so pervasive that it literally forces all men to be induced to wank to THE EVOL PORN that socializes them to commit such horrors on women….but it’s not so pervasive that men can kick their porn habits and convert to the good side?? Ahhh, it can’t be both at the same time, Maggie: either it’s insurmountable, or it’s beatable.

Oh..and people have been making sexually explicit media long before porn became a billion (or even a multi-million) dollar industry; and people have even been making such content for free. How exactly does that jive with porn as an evil capitalist corporate plot, Mags??

Porn Apologist: But, I don’t look at the bad and extreme stuff. Misogyny is not really inherent in pornography. And pornography is neither violent nor racist.

Rad Fem: Violence is pervasive in pornography; it is normalized because it is made to look like “just sex”. Any proper and clear-headed study of the content of the best-selling porn titles will reveal that violence and contempt for women are pervasive in mainstream pornography, as a comprehensive 2007 media research based on top-selling porn titles listed in Adult Video news (results of the research are revealed in this video here) has proven. As for the racism, pornography typically portrays black women as subhuman, dirty, primitive “ebony hoes”, black men as savage, animalistic beasts, Asian women as slavishly obedient, and Hispanic women as “hot-blooded Latinas”. If you don’t recognize these stereotypes as horrifyingly racist, then I’m afraid I can’t help you. .

Now…not even the most diehard proponent of sexual expression or sexual speech has denied that there is an subsegment of porn that does play into a darker side of racism and violence and even outright contempt of women. Contrary to the rants of Gail Dines; most of us “pro-porners” — especially the more progressive wing — are well aware of how porn can be used to promote reactionary ideas and beliefs. That, however, is a cosmic leap from Maggie’s notion that violence and racism and degradation is not only inherent in porn, but that the sole purpose of porn is to promote violence and rape and degradation in the guise of sexual pleasure. To put is simply, that is sheer bullshit….and no quoting of the Top 50 list of titles from AVN will justify this bogus claim any more.

And here’s a question for you, Maggie: ever bothered to actually ask the porn actors and actresses of color whether they believe that the porn they produce ever promotes the stereotypes you claim that they promote?? I mean, is Angel Kelly or Ebony Ayes or Heather Hunter or Midori or Vanessa del Rio lying through their collective teeth when they say that they are into porn to dispell and break through such stereotypes?? And as for the myth of “Asian submissiveness”, two words in response: Ava. Devine. Enough said.

Porn Apologist: Look, women are objectified everywhere, even in the media. How is pornography different? I simply cannot imagine a world without the objectification of the female body.

Rad Fem: While mainstream media has clearly been invaded by soft-core objectifying pornography and that’s certainly not a good thing, hard-core mainstream pornography is worse. Women are not human beings in pornography, just things. . . Dare imagine a world that would not rely on the objectification of women, dare ask for justice and real sexual freedom within a new world where women would have the right to their own bodies without having to force themselves to have sex with men, where we would have true intimacy and mutuality, and where our lives wouldn’t be invaded and controlled by pornography.

First off, Maggie; you get the theory all ass backwards: the idea is not that ALL objectification is OK; just that sexual “objectification” is legitimate and natural in some aspect….as long as the person being subjected is still treated as a full human being. I know that that is an alien concept to you, Mags, but for most normal people not quite as trapped in anti-sex microcode as you are, it does make some sense.

And secondly….I thought that softcore porn was in fact just as obscene and degrading as hardcore; there’s not supposed to be any difference at all between the two (other than the degree of naughty bits being shown explicitly, that is).

And how nice of you to show us your favored vision of sex after the Revolution….so freed of “objectification” and violence and racism and all those bad things….and also freed of individual choice, of mutual pleasure, of full autonomy, and of any vestiges of real life. In short, even more objectifying and inhuman than even the “porno-iarchy” you claim to oppose.

Porn Apologist: Women look at porn too.

Rad Fem: While women’s use of porn has somehow increased since the Internet, the VAST majority of pornography users are men and the industry knows it (but they’re not gonna tell you). Porn producers, when interviewed at the Las Vegas porn convention, said most of the consumers of their materials are men. That is why porn is so endlessly misogynistic and degrading.

Oh, I get it….because the majority of consumers of porn happen to be men, and we all know that men are innately violent and evil and only want to rape and abuse women with impunity (because Dr. Hays SAID SO), then it would be right to assume that porn for men is inherently “misogynoustic” and “degrading”. (Not to mention, violent.)

Once again, note the biased linkage to one of Bob Jensen’s rant columns, where he does his usual out-of-context quotes from porn producers and columnists. I’m surprised that Maggie didn’t go directly to Gail Dines’s ambush of Nina Hartley and the AbbyWinters girls at this year’s AVN convention…but then again, she probably didn’t want the threat of a slander suit.

Porn Apologist: Hey, do you know that there’s also feminist porn available out there, that is to say porn for women?

Rad Fem: Women-made porn is a smokescreen to protect the largely (mostly) male-run, male-led pornography industry. It is only a small portion of the industry. The solution to ending the harms of pornography is not to create “feminist porn”. As I said before, “[m]isogynistic porn (which is the type of sexual material that most men want to see and masturbate to) isn’t going to go away so easily, and women and children will continue to be harmed. There are so many more urgent things and so many more struggles to overcome before we are able to live in a non-patriarchal society and maybe think about such things as any “egalitarian forms of erotic arts”!!! Indeed, thinking about such things before the overthrow of the whole patriarchy itself happens, is nothing other than capitulation! And it is insane! Considering and confronting the harms of pornography and prostitution to women and children, and working toward the building of a new non-patriarchal world, are paramount causes!!! As Gail Dines pointed out at the 2007 feminist anti-porn conference, we live in an “image based culture” (i.e. any thing, to be valuable, has to be made into an image) and the answer to stopping porn culture is not more images. Personally, I feel A LOT MORE FREE without having images or so-called “art” control my life and/or sexuality!”

Translation here for you non-zealots: “We gotta break some eggs in order to make a perfect omlett, and before we can even consider making “erotic material” that isn’t merely an apeing or the evil male-centered porn industry, we must eliminate porn FIRST…and that includes this phony “feminist porn” for women that is nothing more than a Trojan horse for men to justify raping and degrading women. Sex will just have to wait until after the revolution happens….so sorry.”

But don’t worry…after the Revolution comes and goes and women are freed of their patreiarchial and porno-iarchial chains (and their autonomy) and are allowed to have sex the way the Goddess intended them to, then mutual pleasure will abound and freedom will ring and we will be welcomed with parades and flowers!!! And of course, men will benefit as well from their freedom, too. (Mostly because those who don’t comply will be either “re-educated” or jailed or…what?? Dead??) I believe that your Maoist slip is showing here, Maggie.

Porn Apologist: If you don’t like porn, just don’t watch it.

Rad Fem: If this could only be that easy! Women have to interact with men who use pornography every day without knowing about the harms. I walk in the street and see soft-core porn on billboards. I cannot watch T.V. without stumbling upon a show or a film within which a joke on pornography is being laughed about. I cannot go to a party without seeing a bunch of guys laughing at the porn pics on their phones they’re showing to each others. The list goes on. . . Pornography is everywhere. What you’re saying sounds so much like saying “If you don’t like the president, then forget he is the president!” or “If you don’t like pollution, then forget it also comes from cars”.

Never mind the conflation (again) confusing soft-core billboards and mainstream TV shows talking about men and porn with viewing hardcore; or how any man downloading porn on their iPhones would even allow someone like Maggie Hays to become the House Voyeur and sneak in on their viewing habits (and BTW, Maggie, you do know that certain jurisdictions do actually make it a crime to show adult material in public venues using iPhones). Also, most opponents of pollution from cars don’t call for banning autos; just making them more pollution free; why can’t porn be made less violent and degrading?? Oh, I forgot…that wouldn’t jibe too kindly with Maggie’s vision of porn being wiped off the earth.

And I now post the final argument in Maggie’s arsenal of idiocy:

Porn Apologist: Porn was the only sex education I had. I can’t give it up.

Rad Fem: Then you have been sexually “educated” by what is the mainstream sex miseducation for men, a form of media within which women are stripped of their own humanity and portrayed as sexual objects, as things to be penetrated. How original! Wouldn’t you be more free without having the corporate pimps mapping out your sex life? Besides, even if you’re not causing harm to women you know, by not giving up on pornography, you believe that there are acceptable losses, “necessary victims” in order to satisfy your self-centered orgasm to the sexuality of cruelty, the sexuality of disconnection from truly meaningful feelings toward another human being. By creating the demand for pornography, you generate, maintain or condone the harms it causes as well as submit to the self-objectification it creates when it controls you, shapes your sexual thoughts into a twisted manner and when you become addicted to it. So, why not giving up and have your own dreams for yourself? Why not accepting that your sex (mis)education did not involve sexual justice and equality between sexes?. . .

Yeah…why the hell not??? Why not admit that your personal, private orgasms are not really your own, that rather than reflecting your own fantasies and personal autonomy, they are just inventions of the “porno-iarchy” developed to imprison you to the evil of male oppression and rape?? Why not just give up those selfish and “self-centered” physical pleasures and join the real movement for group “intimacy” and fulfillment that only “radicalfeminism” (radicallesbianism???) can provide?? Why not just give up all that baggage of “male power” and “submission” to cruelty and disconnection from “meaningful feelings” (True LOVE?!?!?!) that authentic intimacy stripped of all that bad lust and power can bring???

Oh, now I finally get it. Maggie Hays is simply a combination of John “Men from Mars; Women from Venus” Gray and Pat Robertson wearing a “radicalfeminst” cloak.

Thanks, but no thanks, Ms. Hays…I and most sane and less whacked out men and women would rather remain on good old Earth, with all its diversity and color and freedom. Ban sexism…not sex.

Don’t worry…I still plan to put the fisk on Maggie Hays, and that will be forthcoming…but I just saw a story that really does piss me off.

This courtesy of Elizabeth Wood at Sex In The Public Square:

Question: Your town has a million dollars in its reserve fund. The plan is to spend it on paying off a bond that financed the town’s water treatment plant. Suddenly, the plan changes. The mayor has learned that a strip club in the area has come up for sale and he wants to buy it and shut it down. He arranges the financing through an anonymous third party because he knows that the club owners would never agree to sell to the town. According to the local newspaper the city manager describes it like this:

“We knew they would never sell it to us, but a third party, who does not want to be identified, offered to buy it for us. Just before noon (Tuesday) we closed on the property, and the keys were turned over to us. They (former Cafe Risque owners) won’t find out until (today) who really bought it.”

The mayor announces this radical change in spending priorities at a standing-room-only meeting at City Hall. Which of the following do you think happened at the meeting:

Answer: If you guessed C you get a gold star.

From the north Georgia paper the Independent Mail we have this description of what happened in Lavonia, a small town off of I-85 in the northeast corner of the state. :

The news resulted in cheers and a standing ovation from the crowd, who then followed the mayor out to the Cafe Risque site. There, all of the signage was removed from the building by a tractor, dragged to the center of the parking lot and burned in a large bonfire as more onlookers clapped and cheered.

It is appalling that a town would spend its money shutting down a sexually-oriented business rather than spending on infrastructure. The town spent just shy of one million dollars. In the original plan, spending that money would have saved over a million dollars in future interest payments on a bond that had been issued to pay for upgrading a water treatment plant. Instead it spent the money to destroy a business that no doubt paid taxes into the towns revenue stream.

It is even more appalling that the townspeople would react in manner of the villagers-with-pitchforks-and-torches ritual of burning the businesses signs. What does it mean when a group of people is so morally outraged by the thought of men paying to look at naked women, or of women dancing naked for money, or of men and women interacting erotically outside of the proverbial marriage bed that they will build themselves up into a frenzy and burn parts of a building?

The backwards priorities of the town of Lavonia are shocking and the pleasure taken by the townspeople is evidence that this is not a matter of a single-mindedly misguided politician. The “protect the children/family values” rhetoric juxtaposed against the irresponsible spending of taxpayer dollars could not be more obvious.

I’m curious. Are there citizens of Lavonia who are as outraged by this as I am? Or do the townspeople in this Independent Mail photo represent all of you? I suspect they don’t. I suspect that there are more reasonable voices in your town. I’d love to hear them.

Oh, but this is soooooo beautiful…..who cares about investing on cleaner water (and in the process, lowering the taxes of the citizens of that town by decreasing the level of debt); oh hell to the noooooooooez, we’ve got to get rid of them damn SLUTS and dem QUEERS and all that nasty UNGODLY SEXSEXSEXSEXSEX!!!!!!111111ONE11!!! I know…let’s buy up that damn place and burn that sucka DOWN!!!!

But what’s that….the owners won’t sell??  Forget ‘ em; we can use third parties to buy their property out from under them!!  Or claim “eminent domain” and take what we want anyway!!

Now…I wonder what the rest of the townfolk will say when they realize that the entire reserve fund which would have been used to upgrade their water treatment plant has been pissed away on a crusade against a business which had been generating revenue for the town??

And…what will happen when the original owners of the strip club see what has happened and promptly files their lawsuit against the sale of their club against their will….not to mention the damages done to their facility??  Will the Lavonia witchhunters be willing to pay that out of the reserve fund, too??

Talk about your EF5 tornado hitting the sewage plant moment when that happens…..the recall petitions should already be flying.

BTW…Kochanie over at Figleaf’s Real Adult Sex has a detailed follow-up which includes all the financial background on this “sale”….and ponders this question:

After looking at this information, I have to ask this question. What was so abhorrent about the Cafe Risque, its employees and patrons? Why would the public officials of Lavonia, a town with a very low crime rate and a small tax base, spend the money to file five lawsuits in the span of seven years and then jeopardize their town’s bond rating just to get rid of a strip club?

I believe we can guess the answer, now can we???

Update 7-28-08: ManEegee over at Latino Politico has a full list of blog reaction and protest on Jon Justice here.

Update #2: Ahhh, lookee here….seems that Jon Just-an-ASS isn’t quite as good at taking shit as he is as giving it out…and he’s getting plenty of it….hot, fresh, and consistent. From the Feathered Bastard blog at the Phoenix New Times site today:

In fact, in a recent blog post, Justice sounds like a whiny little bitch served with his own medicine.

“Welcome to the hypocrisy as Isabels Garcias [sic] group DERECHOS HUMANOS has launched a campaign against me!” he kvetches. “Do I work for the government? Does the taxpayer pay my salary? What what [sic] about my 1st Amendment rights? No one ever said that Isabel and Derechos never had the “right” to protest. It was and is still about a lawyer and public servant acting inappropriate per the AZ State Bar Rules and Pima County Policy.”

What a pant-load! Garcia didn’t threaten Arpaio with violence, which is what Just-An-Ass is referring to when he mentions Pima County policy. All she did was pick up a frickin’ pinata head. Even the piñata-beating itself is protected, symbolic speech. You may not like it, but that’s what the First Amendment’s there for, to protect the speech you don’t like.

I don’t really think Justice should be driven off the air, any more than Garcia should be fired from her position. But Justice drew first blood, and Derechos Humanos is counterattacking in defense of their gal Garcia. Justice brought this on himself. And if he can’t cowboy-up and take it, he should consider a new career as an Avon Lady.

Just like a right-wingnut bully, ehhh?? Attempt to shift the blame to the victim. I’m surprised that Just-an-ASS didn’t go to the “She’s a hot mamacita slut who got what she deserved” card.

So now, he’s trying to get Mrs. Garcia fired from her Public Defender’s job for “inappropriate behavior” (i.e., leading the protest against Sheriff Joe)?? Gee..and Arapio’s running around at taxpayer expense (unlike Just-an-ASS, last time I recall, Arapio is still Sheriff of Maricopa County and thusly a PUBLIC official) is appropriate??

As appropriate, even, as faking a drowning of a dog on air?? Which, BTW, was the stunt that got Just-an-ASS booted from his old radio gig in Michigan. I guess that the brain cells weren’t clicking then, either.

What a man. Really. May he burn in 500 pits of Hell.

Update #3: Oh, good Goddess Almighthy……just when you think it couldn’t get any better; I just caught the second video that Jon Just-an-ASS made regarding Isabel Garcia. WOW…this dewd is sicker and more racist than I ever imagined. Just try and get through this shit without either laughing yourself silly…or throwing up.

Make that 1,000 pits of fire in Hell for you, you racist dumbass.

Update #4:Oh, now he’s really gone and done it….he even got Blackamazon to come out of retirement to whack his sorry ass……way to go, bastard. Betwen the Latin@ Posse and BA’s machete, I’d strongly consider taking a permanant vacation…in Chile.

Oh…and even freakin’ Trinity over at The Strangest Alrhemy is bashing Just-an-ASS…with a transcript (pdf file, requires Adobe Reader to view) of Video #2 above. You not very bright, Jonny boy.

——————————————————————

Original Post:

I’m sure that you’ve seen this video going around the blogosphere:

The man featured in this video is a right-wing radio shock jock wannabe named “Jon Justice”, working out a station in Tuscon, Arizona.

The woman that he is slandering in pinata effigy is a Latin@ activist and public defender named Isabel Garcia, whose main offense in “Justice”’s mind is that she dares to see her people as a bit more than just human pinatas for tighty Whitey Righties like “Justice” to use and throw away as “illegal aliens”.

And what prompted this little lovefest?? Well, Mrs. Garcia led a protest against a book signing by Maricopa County (where the greater Pheonix metro area is centered) Sheriff Joe Arapio, the famed “Tough Justice” advocate known for his slightly unorthodox means of humiliating those unlucky enough to violate his laws. Arapio was pushing his latest book attempting to slander “illegal aliens” (read that to mean, Latin@s not “smart” enough to know their place and stay there, or rich enough to vote for Republicans like Arapio and glorify him on FOX News Channel) for creating all sorts of evil and sin on decent, law-abiding (White) America. The protest happened to include a pinata party featuring a likeness of Arapio (including the trademark pink undies that he regularly imposes on his inmates).

Of course, you can say that having young kids beat down a pinata image of an authority figure like Arapio is a bit suggestive. On the other hand, creating a similar pinata image of an older woman of color with all the usual “Mexican” stereotypes; making all sorts of snark about wanting to “take her home with me”, and then using the image to mock the real person’s heritage, language, and gender….I would guess that that would be considered to be a bit beyond suggestive. ‘ya think??

Uh-huh. Try excessively stupid. Fundamentally racist. Physically threatening. And without a freakin’ clue, either.

Dewd…you do know that those people are THE MAJORITY over there, right?? And that if you persist in pissing them off enough, they can unify themselves and wipe your sorry ass off the face of the earth?? And reclaim the land that YOUR ancestors actually STOLE from them?? (Yes, Mr. Justice, that land you assume to be your own was actually stolen from them, not the other way around.)

But then again, given the state of political education in the age of Limbaugh, Boortz, the Savage Weiner, and Tancredo, it hardly surprises me about how privileged right-wingnuts like “Justice” get free airplay.

This fool needs a serious neurological workup….and a swift ass-kicking to boot.

My fellow and sister Headbussas Nezua and Brownfemipower have so much more on this developing story; see also Belledame. Info on the good deeds of Mrs. Garcia can be found here; she deserves the support of all decent progressive people.

Well…I’m behind the crunch again….had to go offline a bit due to the same old issues.

I’m doing my best to get back online ASAP..so bear with me.

In the meantime, I couldn’t help but comment on the Cat 5 blogstorm currently ongoing in the feminist blogosphere over the legend of Kyle Payne: self-identified male feminist, hardcore antiporn activist…..and convicted sex predator.

Renegade Evolution, as usual, has been the point woman for exposing Mr. Payne’s dual life and hypocrisy (starting here and moving on to here, here, here, and here; although Belledame should get first credit for initially discovering this slimeball).

It seems, though, that Payne has managed to do what two years of Porn Sex Wars couldn’t do: unite antiporn radfems and sex poxxies together in shared mutual outrage. (See Ren’s blogroll of posts on the matter.)

All I will say for now is this: if the GenderBorg is so willing to accept this sleazoid so easily into their midst due to his “activism”, while slandering people like moi who use porn and still manage to treat women with respect and humanity, then they are so much worse and closer to the Radical Right than I ever, ever feared.

I’ll probably have more to say on this when I’m able to get back online regularly.

Oh….and show some love to the God Emperor, too, when you visit there: getting burnt really does suck. Seriously. Ouch.

UPDATE #2: 8 PM:  Barack Obama’s officially clinched. It’s done. Deal with it, haters.

Oh…and McCain’s already in Kenner (suburb of New Orleans), attempting the same old tired right-wing talking points to bash Obama in. Really.

UPDATE (6-3-08):

Well…it’s almost over. Obama as of 7 PM tonight (Lafayette, LA time) is now only 5 delegates short of clinching the nomination; and he will possibly clinch that even before the results from South Dakota and Montana come in….and the superdelegates and Hillary Clinton delegates switch over.

Hillary may not concede now (more than likely, she’ll admit the math while giving a good face for her supporters tonight)…but my guess is that she will officially concede either tomorrow or later this week.

Now….the real game begins: and the bottom line question remains as it will ever be.

Is the popular hatred of Bush/Reagan/McCain policies and the desire to kick the GOP out on its collective asses deeper than the desire not to see a Black man occupy the White House?

Can McCain do the unenviable task of both separating himself from the Bush policies while simultaneously relying on Bush’s core electoral base and his abundant funding machine and dirty tricksters (read, Karl Rove and the Swift Boaters and Fixed Noise)?

Can Obama heal and bridge the rift between himself and working-class White and female voters estranged from him due to all the drama about Hillary?? And who will his Veep be?? Richardson?? Webb?? Hillary??

Will Bob Barr and/or Cynthia McKinney (or Ralph Nader) — or even Ron Paul — have any say in the matter??

Most of all….will the economy and the war remain steady enough for McCain to survive, or will there be further meltdowns?

These questions make all the difference between a too-close-to-call election where Diebold and dirty tricks combine with the usual White racism to keep McCain alive (except that this time, the Democrats control the House, which is fundamentally different from 2000); and a historic rout of Reagan-Mondale (or possibly Bush41-Dukakis) proportions where the GOP gets its collective heads smashed in.

Either way…the game will be officially on after tonight. Grab your chairs and some popcorn; it’s gonna get….interesting.

ORIGINAL POST:

Well…after all that noise and fireworks, the Democratic primary season will come to an end tomorrow with the final two primaries in South Dakota and Montana.

And then beginning the next day, the remaining superdelegates will team up and rally around Barack Obama, putting the final touches on his delegate majority and sending a clear message to Hillary Clinton that it’s time to step aside and make way for the general election.

What Hillary does after that will be pretty much significant.

Will she see the reality that she just can’t win, and gracefully pull out, with promises of a Cabinet seat or a more substansial Senate role??

Will she stand her ground and take her fight for delegates all the way to the Dem convention in Denver, and then wait until she’s shut out then before she gives in??

Or…will she, powered by the anger and rage of some of her most strident and vocal supporters, decide that she has to destroy the Dems and trash Obama and work behind the scenes (or, even, publically as an Independent) to undercut Obama and give the Presidency to John McCain on a silver platter??

The optimist in me believes that Hillary is not that removed from reality to see the writing on the wall; and will begrudgingly accept a graceful withdrawal.

The pessimist, on the other hand, sees that Hillary is so caught up in her ambition, and the supposed entitlement of being handed the Presidency, that she is more than willing to torpedo Obama and allow McCain in so that she can claim the mantle in 2012. Not to mention, the absolute rage of a few of her supporters, who are so intense in their racism that they would even vote for McCain so that that evil Black man not contaminate their “White House”. (And NO, I am not saying that all or even a majority of Hillary’s supporters are stone cold racists; but you can’t deny that she has attracted a sizable lot of ‘em who want to stick it to Obama merely because he’s Black.)

And it doesn’t help matters when the likes of Larry Johnson of NoQuarters.com (one of the more strident Clintonoid Obama haters) attempts to unleash thinly veiled agitprop, directed towards Senator Obama’s (fully) Black wife, Michelle, as an anti-White bigot. (Note: he’s now reversed himself: he promised to release the offending “video” of Michelle spouting “anti-Whitey” smack today at 9 AM, but is now saying that the Repubs will hold on to it until October. Yeah, right….just another smear.)

But Larry Johnson is but one example of this newly minted Obama hating: witness this nice rant by a “Manhattanite” named Harriet Christian after she was thrown out of the infamous Democratic National Committee meeting attempting to resolve the delegate count mess in Florida and Michigan:

Harriet Christian (Clinton supporter/Obama opponent) ranting on DNC decision not to seat more delegates for Hillary (from YouTube; hat tip to Raw Story)

And, of course, there is all this smack from the agrieved parties that they will cross over to McCain in the fall as a protest to Obama getting nominated (or Hillary getting “screwed” out of the nomination; as witnessed by this article from another disgruntled Clintonoid (reprinted from here, via here):

Here’s just a few reasons why:

The claim that anyone who won’t vote for Obama is a racist.

The claim that anyone who won’t vote for Obama is stupid. So stupid, in fact, despite record turn out in Florida the smart people stayed home because they knew their votes wouldn’t count. So if we count Florida’s results in total we are disenfranchising the brilliant people who disenfranchised themselves.

The claim that Michigan shouldn’t get a full ride because Senator Obama (like his smart Florida supporters) disenfranchised himself by taking his name off the ballot and denying his supporters the opportunity to show their love. By the way, can I just say that again? HE TOOK HIS NAME OFF THE BALLOT. THERE WERE NO RULES THAT SAID HE HAD TO. WHY DIDN’T HE TAKE HIS NAME OFF FLORIDA’S BALLOT AS WELL?

[Note from Anthony: Actually, that's not quite true; under Florida's rules, Obama couldn't take his name off the ballot in Florida because he wouldn't be able to be placed on the general election ballot, either. That particular fact has been noted and corrected in the original post.]


The claim that the popular vote doesn’t matter; it’s all about super delegates. Hello? Were you just not alive in 2000? Did you never refer to President Bush as illegitimate because he lost the popular vote but won the because of the Supreme Court and the Electoral College?

Here’s a new one I adore. Puerto Rico doesn’t matter because they can’t vote in the General. I actually went over to the dreaded Huffington Post last night - I showered immediatly - and the mocking of Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans was over the top. Memo to the Obamanation: there are more Puerto Ricans living in the US than in Puerto Rico. Way to help your man get in with the Latinos!

Holding the Supreme Court over my head as a reason to vote for Obama. You know what? Let them overturn Roe vs. Wade. Let it go to the states. Let politicians no longer have the excuse that it’s the law and they can’t do anything. Make them accountable. Make the young women who have always had a choice fight for it like we did.

Ahhh, OK….never mind that no one in the Obama camp has ever even claimed that all Hillary supporters were being racist, or that they were stupid (any more than the majority on the Clinton side complaints that Obama supporters were a “cult”, and that he was an anti-White, anti-American Muslim hiding his true pro-terrorist agenda behind his super secret madrassa upbringing and his evil White-hating Christian church. (Gee, he’s now both a radical Muslim AND a radical Christian….at the same time???? WTF?!?!?)

And you just gotta love a supposed liberal who claims that Hillary is being screwed because she’s a woman and a feminist….then in the next breath suggests that voting for the antifeminist McCain and allowing him to torpedo Roe vs. Wade and allow states to banish abortion (and other forms of reproductive rights for women) would be quite a suitable means of revenge for the evil Black man standing in her way.

Liza Sabatier brought up the perfect word for what these fools are under the influence of: “Archibunkocaine”. Emphasis on BUNKKK.

As you all know, I’m not a fan of Obama, either, for the fact that he panders to the Right a bit too much himself (and the recent incident of him breaking off his former church because of the remarks of one of its pastors doesn’t give me much hope, either). My vote’s still going for Cynthia McKinney and the Green Party; I’m basically through with the Democrats forever. But….that doesn’t mean that I can’t express my utter disgust at the open and explicit pandering to vile White racism that the Clinton campaign has been perfecting for the past two months in desperation to save themselves from their own mistakes.

Face it, Clintonistas: Barack Obama simply out campaigned you, out fundraised you, and just plain ran a better campaign than you did….and you had all the advantages of incumbency and a popular President in Bubba behind you. Whether you like it or not, he played and won by the rules; it’s time to face reality and accept the facts.

Now, if you want to destroy yourselves and cross over to McCain and allow your own spite get in the way of defeating the Republicans…well, that for you to decide. But, you can’t blame anyone but yourselves for the results….not even Ralph Nader.

Well….Nina Hartley’s website Nina.com is now officially back on line, after two weeks of being shut down after the hacking by those Islamic cyberterrorists. (Warning, Link NSFW)

As promised by Ernest, the free forums was a casualty of the upgrade; they will not be brought back. Ernest and Nina are currently working on creating an alternative means of interaction with her fans.

In the meantime, there’s been some flare up from some sources over the targeting of adult websites by these Islamic fundamentalist hackers. When Ernest posted over at BPPA his reflections on the motives of the hackings and how Nina is a target of a variety of ideologically diverse groups (from the antiporn radfems to Islamic fundies to the Christian Right) for her sex-positive feminist beliefs; a commentor from the right-wing libertarian blog Ace of Spades decided to lay into Ernest for apparantly slandering Christians while ignoring the real threat of “Islamacists”. Quoting a comment from the original BPPA thread:

“As usual, those on the left — here, the sexual left — can only spend a bit of time criticizing jihadists before rushing headlong to criticize those they really hate, “right wing Christian fundamentalists.” It really makes no goddamn sense. You’ve just been unlawfully harassed and cyber-attacked by Turkish jihadists, so of course you want to direct as much of your fire as possible towards people who didn’t do anything to you, besides criticize you, which is also their right as Americans.

“I find the left to be wearying and childish on this point. Their efforts to be even-handed against “all extremists” is not even-handed at all. They wind up classing those who haven’t done anything particular untoward with those who are actually illegally attacking them… which merely spares the culpable parties their proper measure of blame by dividing the load among the blameless.”

In other words, I guess that “the sexual left” should cease attacking Christian fundamentalists and focus their fire exclusively on wiping out “the Islamacists” who are the true source of all evil and the root of sexual bigotry. In short, they should wipe “Islamacists” — fundamentalist or not — from the face of the earth.

Never mind the slander on all who practice Islam — the same slander from whence the Iraq War and atrocities like the Fallujah massacre and the Abu Gharib prison, never mind the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the Occupied Territories) are born; or the arroganct attitude that cultural progressives should somehow accept “second class” citizenship behind their Christian “superiors” who basically “tolerate” them….

Of course, Ernest dispatches such bullshit with his usual clarity and depth:

For your information, our site had previously been attacked, trolled, hacked and harassed by a variety of right-wing religious extremists prior to the most recent incident. You can take whatever pride you like in having been at the head of the line when it came to trying to shout us down.

It is also your side that does its level best to put us in jail on obscenity charges, pressures government and private businesses to use all possible means toward the aim of making what we do impossible, supports “regulations” that would prohibit constitutionally protected expression by circumventing the First Amendment under the guise of mitigating so-called “secondary effects,” and on and on and on. You don’t just criticize us, which wouldn’t bother me in the slightest. Your side does whatever it can to silence us just like those you claim to oppose.

For you to come here and lecture any of us on the superiority of your way of thinking and operating to that of the other enemies of freedom would be funny if it weren’t so utterly nauseating, especially under the present circumstances.

Go back and tell your friend Ace that if I associate him, you and others like you with those you detest, it is because of the similarity of your behavior, as you have demonstrated it here once again.

Just to make this perfectly clear, I am not a moral relativist. I loathe those who oppose personal liberty regardless of their reasons or their methods.

As a Jew, I suggest you go shtup yourself.

Turns out that Ace of Spades is about as down on porn as it is with “Jihadism”: a few snippets from some comments about Nina from that site (and, my policy on linking hate sites standing, just Google for yourself):

Nina Hartley? Sounds like a rejected SNL skit. — eman

Pathetic stunt. This broad would, and has, done anything to get a little attention. I know. – “Ron Jeremy” (probably not the real one)

All these stars, ruining their entertainment with their politics. Shut up and [fuck]! I don’t know how I’ll ever watch her films again. And this DVD box set has to go! – Z Ryan [Of course, if Nina shared his right-wing politics, would he be so dismissive of her??]

More pearls of wisdom from Nina: “Christian evangelicals support the militant settlers on the West Bank, and the Likudniks accept that support without a blink, even though they know full well that these wonderful, new allies of theirs embrace religious teachings that require all Jews to ultimately convert or be damned. ” Maybe the Turks will quit bugging her now that she’s throwing the Jews under the