OK….enough dilly dallying around; time to shake the trees and rake the leaves; mow the grass and kick some…..ahhhh, I mean, debunk some Maggie Hays lies.

You may remember that I commented that Maggie’s bombast about the “porno-iarchy” was only the SECOND whackiest post she had done on the subject.

As long winded and long that essay was, it doesn’t compare in sheer lunacy to an earlier essay that the Grand Sage of Antipornography Feminists had posted which supported to debunk what she perceived as “Bullshit Pro-Porn Arguments,” which she proposed that antiporn feminists could dispatch “With Confidence”.

Problem is, though, that most of Maggie’s inventive straw arguments that she claims to overthrow are simply inventions of her own cracked mind, pretty much used for the usual buttressing up of her standard boilerplate agitprop about porn’s capital offenses against “women and children”.

I will use the same methods and syntax as Ren Ev did in her debunking of the “Porno-iarchy” blast; but the words spoken by me are mine alone.

And no, I did not ask permission to paste this from Maggie’s blog; unlike her, I know what Fair Use is.

And a-waaaaaaaaay we go:

Begin with a photo of a broken record; then Maggie starts up:

See this? Yeah, that’s a broken record. I chose this image for this post because I sincerely believe that all the pro-porners, pro-prostitutionists, pro-sexploitation folks, pro-hate speech & pro-”sex work” activists (or whatever you rad fems wanna call them) sound like a fucking broken record with all their “same old shit” reactionary arguments that do nothing whatsoever to help women as a class, arguments that, on the contrary, bolster the patriarchal anti-woman status quo. Thus, I have decided to write a a list of the porn apologists’ bullshit arguments.

Ahhh, Maggie, dear…bad analogy; most of us now use CD’s and DVDs and iPods and mp3 players, now. Get with the program, please.

I’ll get to the delicious irony of Maggie Hays calling anyone out as “reactionary” and talking about “women as a class” soon enough.

I know these are all parts of the same broken record we hear every day; I know that some people (especially some men) are so stupid and stubborn in defending such a widespread violation of women’s bodies in order to maintain their own selfish sexual pleasure, I know all this. I also know that the pro-pornstitution folks are not only folks we meet online. The pro-porners we meet online are so easy to avoid or dismiss when we want to ignore them (thank fuck for that) while the pro-porners we meet offline are most often our co-workers, classmates, friends, even sometimes partners and so on. These offline people who defend porn aren’t so easy to avoid and, more or less often, we find ourselves in a conversation on pornography with them at some point.

It usually happens like this: They suddenly bring up pornography or prostitution for whatever reason, as part of a “joke” that we don’t find funny at all (but rather sad — as we do know that there’s a terrible sexual slavery going on out there and people keep on denying it) or simply because they’ve been influenced by pornified pop culture. Then we feel like we cannot tolerate these pro-porn arguments any longer so we start informing them on what we know about the sexual slavery industry. But, unfortunately, we’re feeling so upset that we just stop talking. There is just so much to say and we don’t know where to start. And, on top of that, there they go! Talking the same old reactionary bullshit arguments we’ve heard ten thousand times again and again, sounding like the same old broken record. . . And we start losing our confidence. . . so we stop talking.

Therefore I prepared this handy “Porn Apologists’ Bullshit Arguments List and How to Respond to Them with Confidence” collection in order to help myself and other rad fems to challenge those apologies confidently IRL. I constructed it as a dialog:

Just call it “The Official Maggie Hays Talking Points for Shouting Down Critics of Their Ideology” list, I guess. Perfect for witnessing those on the fence.

The list then starts rolling: I shall debunk each one as they come. “Porn Apologist” is the role played by the hypothetical “pro-porn” strawman argument; “Rad Fem” refers to Maggie’s response. (I’m also keeping all the links they use to their biases sources alive, just to prove the point.)

Porn Apologist: Women freely choose to sell their bodies in pornography and in prostitution. How can you criticize the women’s consent to be in porn?

Rad Fem: Contrary to myths, radical feminists have never criticized women’s involvement in the pornography industry as performers. Instead, we focus on the difficulties within which they make their choice to participate. Documentaries and articles on pornography in the mainstream media (which generally pick a very small number of performers out of the so much larger number of porn performers out there) typically show pornography performers as “happy women who have made a totally free choice”. However, the reality of the circumstances within which the vast majority of those women entered the porn industry are very much different from this whole mainstream media glamorization crap. A lot of thorough research on prostitution (based on interviewing hundreds and hundreds of prostituting women) has shown that child sexual or physical abuse or neglect, poverty, economic hardship, past experience of battery or rape, trafficking, socialization to the sexist and racist pornified culture, etc. are key factors for women who enter the ’sex’ industry. Feminists do not condemn the women who are in the industry, but we empathize with them. We understand that they are terribly exploited and harmed in this industry. As one woman who used to prostitute said that, while she was in prostitution, she would have yelled from the roof-tops how wonderful being a prostitute was, but that, while now she’s still healing from her prostitution experience, she has “found that the worse thing of exiting prostitution is seeing the real reasons [she] became a prostitute. Seeing it could of never been a choice. It was just a way to self-destruct.”[sic]

Hmmmmm, never criticized women’s involvement in porn, Maggie??? Really?? So this wouldn’t be considered criticism of women performers, in your mind:

“Look at the industry’s biggest star, Jenna Jameson, who appears to control her business life. However in her book [How To Make Love Like A Porn Star] she reports that she was raped as a teenager and describes the ways in which men in her life pimped her. Her desperation for money also comes through when she tried to get a job as a stripper but looked too young — she went into a bathroom and pulled off her braces with pliers. She also describes drug abuse and laments the many friends in the industry she lost to drugs. And this is the woman said to have the most power in the pornography industry.” — Gail Dines and Robert Jensen, Article Pornography is a Left Issue (2005).

[transcribed from "Jenna Jameson: Porn Star Myth" from AgainstPornography.org]

Who cares that Jenna has publically in the same biography that Bob and Gail quoted so lovingly made clear that she has never been coerced by anyone within the porn industry, and that all the choices she made within the industry — including the bouts with drug abuse — were solely her responsibility, not the industry’s?? In the mind of the antiporn “feminists”, it’s all the same.

Oh….and how can Jenna’s career in porn directly be related to her rape as a teenager?? Osmosis?? Karma?? The notion that only women who suffer such traumas as rape are the ones ending up in porn, if not becoming successful?? OK, then what does that say for women like Nina Hartley, who has, by my last recollection, never been raped?? Or women like Vicky Vette, who only started out in porn in her late 30s…and whom has also never been raped as a teen or young adult??

And no, Maggie…simply quoting a former prostitute-turned-radical antiporn antiprostitution activist (however her personal experiences should be respected and acknowledged) as if she represents ALL porn performers (never mind that Rebecca Mott never did porn to begin with, BTW) just won’t wash either.

But then again, when you are as much of an ideological zealot as Maggie is, nuances like the diversity of experiences and respect for individuals don’t tend to enter the picture.

And once again, notice the way that Maggie conflates porn and prostitution as the same entity. For the last time (today), Mags: Prostitution is when you pay someone to have sex with them; Porn is where you pay to SEE someone have sex WITH OTHERS or WITH THEMSELVES. There is a difference.

Porn Apologist: Women in porn make a lot of money anyway.

Rad Fem: Some research and testimonies have suggested that most strippers, prostitutes and pornography performers do not make a lot of money. Although some do, the idea that all of them make a lot of money is another part of the pornographers’ and the mainstream media’s propaganda. Most female porn performers do not get rich, particularly due to their brief “shelf lives” — male consumers often want to see new women being exploited — so even if pornstituted females initially command a high rate per scene or per movie, their market value as “fresh meat” declines rapidly. Thus, even if there are a few really famous porn “actresses”, the vast majority of the women in pornography leave that business feeling exploited, pained and ashamed by this terrible experience or after being considered “overexposed” by the consumers and producers. So, the pornography industry keeps using and discarding female bodies after having used those human beings as if they were pieces of meat. There have been words coming from people who have been involved in the industry to testify of this brutal reality. Besides, even if these women get paid for performing in porn, does it mean that it should excuse the extensive physical, psychological and emotional harms done to them? So, once a woman has been paid, the torture committed against her body is expiated, huh? Well, that’s an incredibly cruel and unfair way of reasoning! No amount of money whatsoever should excuse any harm done to a woman’s body.

Well…let’s see. Now, there are the few contract girls and former Playmates/Pets/Honeys who can make a ton of money through websites and feature dancing as well as porn performing, and some, with decent financial planning and a sense of what they want to do, can even thrive enough to get rich. And then there are the many in the majority who get in, get their hits in for enough to supplant their middle-class lifestyles, and then get out to do less strenuous and more mundane tasks for a living. How they actually leave the business, though, is mostly a reflection of how they entered the business and what attitudes and objectives and goals they went into the business with. Obviously, some experiences are more traumatic than others; but to say that “torture” and “physical, psychological, and emotional harm” should be considered the default experience for ALL porn performers is nothing short of libelous to the many performers who don’t share Maggie’s ideological bias.

And what a bias she does show, too. The one source that she cites to prove her position that porn is innately evil: An article from AgainstPornography.com citing quotes from Traci Lords (and remember, SHE lied about her age to get into adult videos), to the antiporn documentary Not For Sale, to even Shelley Lubben’s blog. (That would be Shelley Lubben, the former starlet turned born-again Christian. You were saying, Maggie, about your movement rejecting Christian Rightists???)

Also….see Ernest Greene’s breakdown of the typical porn pay structure taken from here:

In het porn, female players can and do charge by the specific act. A few make big bucks, but most have pretty standard rates. Lesbian porn, as distinct from girl-girl material made for male audiences, is mostly pro-am for small production companies and it commands the dead-lowest rate, somewhere south of five hundred dollars per scene.

I can’t resist wondering aloud if the poster here who suggested that straight guys who don’t like their rates should just bend over and spread for other men would make a similar suggestion to lesbians. Somehow I very much doubt it.

Pro GG with no extras (vanilla licky-licky with fingers and a small toy or two) brings in anywhere from six hundred bucks to a grand, depending on the performer’s current popularity. Use of an anal toy kicks that up another couple of hundred.

A BJ-only boy-girl is rarely more than five hundred for the girl.

A vage-only boy-girl for a female performer is typically around seven hundred, with a few players being able to command a thousand. Twelve hundred is the going rate for anal with one male partner, though fifteen hundred isn’t outrageous for someone with an established name. A first anal or a first BG might run up to five thousand dollars, but that trick only works once and only for a fortunate few who come in as former Penthouse Pets or whatever and can command a premium for existing name value.

Stunt sex – DPs, ATMs, ATOGMs, double anals, double vages, cream pies, gang bangs and so on obviously escalate the price, sometimes into the thousands, but there are plenty of female players who do stunt sex for a lot less. However, you can bet that whatever they’re making, they’re making more than the guys they’re doing it with.

This is not because, as someone on this thread has suggested in a display of breath-taking ignorance, there is such a glut of male talent just clamoring to get in here they’re practically a dime a dozen. That would be good for a laugh if it weren’t such a blatant insult to the few men who actually do try to make the cut. In fact, the reason you see the same dudes over and over and over and over in video after video is because they are the ones who not only will have sex for the camera, but can do so with predictable results. That is a very small group of men. Sure, lots of horny dudes think they’d make great porn studs. About one male civilian under thirty in every ten I meet asks me if I thought he could be then next John Holmes. It takes me two questions to sort them out. Does he have a dick that’s at least ten inches long fully erect? Can he get it fully erect, keep it that way for an hour and then have a visible ejaculation in front of a room full bored men with no other source of stimulation, visual or otherwise? If the answer to either is negative, he has no chance.

In other words, Maggie, it isn’t just a matter of Average Man with HYOOGE Dick reporting to the studios with his dick hard and having a woman picked off the streets to plow into. And it’s just a bit more than just evil looking men in trenchcoats riding along in SUV’s and Hummers tracking down young women and locking them up in dungeons to have their way with them. There are still consent forms and procedures and HIV/STD tests and pre-shoot preparations before anything even begins to happen.

Let’s continue:

Porn Apologist: Pornography is not prostitution.

Rad Fem: The fact is that pornography IS prostitution, plus a camera.

See the last paragraph responding to point #1 above. Plus….if porn is prostitution with the camera, then would married couples having sex for free but taping their “sexcapades” for their own pleasure be considered prostitution, or porn?? Or both??

Porn Apologist: Look, prostitution is the world’s oldest profession. It should be legalized and regulated. That would make it safer.

Rad Fem: Prostitution is NOT the oldest profession, pimping is! Countries where prostitution has been legalized have become Number One destinations for traffickers. There is no evidence that legalization in any way benefits women in prostitution — indeed it simply legalizes the harm caused to women. Prostitution is inherently a form of violence against women and a violation of women’s human rights and dignity as persons. The belief that prostitution is “sex work” is being a direct cause for the widespread international and domestic trafficking of women and children for prostitution. The Netherlands (where prostitution is regarded as “just a job like another”) remains one of the primary destinations for victims of human trafficking (as again recently reported in the article “Home Office goes to Amsterdam for prostitution ideas” in politics.co.uk) and half the window brothels over there have been closed since 2006 because of an exponential rise in organized crime and money laundering and also the trafficking of women and children. Legalization is, in effect, a failed experiment.

Oh, this be prime bullshit here….let’s break this one down, shall we??

Never mind that “trafficking of women” is far more likely to occur in areas where prostitution is expressly criminalized (ever heard of Thailand, Maggie?? Indonesia??? The Cayman Islands???) and where attitudes about porn and women and sexuality are the most conservative and reactionary and explicitly “antifeminist”….and nearly as zealous about “protecting women from pornography and prostitution” as Maggie is. And forget about the basic fact that the same people who are most likely to support criminalization of sex work and sexual media tend to be the biggest consumers of porn and the ones most likely to be busted doing the same damn activities they would put others in jail for…or worse. See Senator Larry Craig, Senator David Vitter, former Governor Eliot Spitzer, Jimmy Swaggart, et.al.

Now, it should be noted that Amsterdam does have currently a more conservative government that is now in the process of questioning their more liberal stance towards sex in general….but that in no way justifies Maggie’s view that legalization is so failed and that her beloved “Swedish Model” is the only solution to the problem. (And also note that New Zealand has its own experiment with legalization that is five years old; the book is still out on that one, I’d think.)

And of course, the idea that legalized brothels in Amsterdam have anything whatsoever to do with the lives and professions of porn performers and sex workers in the United States — most of which operate out of their homes in private with their own websites and mom-and-pop productions, is a mystery that only Maggie can solve in her own special fashion. Not even the legalized brothels in Nevada, all of Melissa Fairley’s and Bob Herbert’s slanders notwithstanding.

Porn Apologist: Sexuality is good. Why are you anti-sex?

Rad Fem: Being against pornography and prostitution does not equate being against sex, FFS. Sexuality is just a part of being human and may involve a lot of strong feelings of affection and connection to another person when a sense of genuine care is involved. But pornography is stripped of any empathy and it fuses sexual desire with the degradation and abuse of women. Being against pornography does not mean being against sex, it simply means having recognized that there is a sexual world of imagination based on equality & respect and that goes beyond sexuality as simple “domination/subordination”.

This be another good one: the old “We’re not prudes, we really do LOVE sex…just OUR kind of sex” meme that is thrown up constantly in the “You’re victimizing us!!” frame. As porn literally speaking simply means the depiction of sex acts between human beings, the question certainly can be asked of Maggie and her allies: Is there any explicit depiction of sex involving a man and a woman together that you wouldn’t consider to be “degrading” and “abusive” to women?? I mean, loving couples can indeed have anal sex, or oral sex, or pretend to play dominant/submissive roles or role play, and single women can indeed masturbate using dildos and vibrators for their own pleasure. But being against that doesn’t make you any more of a prudish, anti-sex bigot…now doesn’t it???

If the shoe fits comfortably, Maggie, why not just wear it with pride??

Porn Apologist: Only conservative right wingers criticize porn. Are you a religious zealot?

Rad Fem: Radical feminists have, for a long time, opposed Christianity by recognizing it as patriarchal religion. Mary Daly, for example, is a prominent radical feminist writer of the feminist critique of Christianity. Radical feminists usually see Christianity as patriarchal and oppressive to women. So, no, I’m certainly not religious and I’m very much of an atheist. Perpetuating the myth that radical feminists “are siding with religious zealots” just because we oppose pornography has always been one of the favorite pro-porn tactics of the so-called “sex poz” lobby.

Oh, Maggie, just stop it!! We are well aware that there has always been a grand tradition of Puritanism amongst not only the Left, but of secularists and atheists; no one group is immune to anti-sexual discourse and ideology. And just because “radfems” may reject the explicit piousness of organized religion and the specific rhetoric of direct slut-blaming of women (particularly “feminists” who defy the supposedly Christian role of the woman as wife and mother) for the social ills of society, doesn’t mean that they aren’t capable of confiscating antiporn and anti-sex rhetoric for their own purposes.

And as for the alliance between radicalfeminists and Christian/Islamic Rightists: well that is so well known to be dismissed; from the passage of Catherine MacKinnon’s famous Indianapolis antiporn ordinance in the mid 1980’s through a Republican majority council; to the Meese Commisioner’s Pornography report which basically appropriated the Dworkin-MacKinnon doctrine of “porn degrades women by reducing them to sex objects” (while rejecting their methods of attacking porn through “civil rights” ordinances, preferring the old school form of obscenity enforcement and jail sentences); to the Bush Administration’s funding of “anti-trafficking” activists like Fairley (with the full approval of leading antiporn feminist activists like Donna Hughes, who even called Dubya a positive force, regardless of his overall antifeminism).

Porn Apologist: If there weren’t any porn, there’d be more rape.

Rad Fem: Do we ever suggest that the availability of loads of films showing children being beaten up would reduce child physical abuse? Of course not, because we know it’s not the case. So why would it be different with pornography? Few rapes get reported to the police and correlational studies only based on reported rapes have limits. While a few studies have shown a decrease in reported rapes, many other correlational studies, as shown here, have shown dramatic increases in sexual violence with the availability of pornography. Pornography has no “catharthic” effect whatsoever. Also, this “catharthic effect” porn apologist excuse quite sounds like a threat: “We need pornography or we will rape more!” Blah-the-fucking-blah. . .

By the numbers here:

1) Aside from the lunacy of comparing depictions of children being beaten with images of consenting adults having sex, there is this nagging fact that actually taping the act of children being beaten is evidence of a crime (corporal punishment aside). Besides, no one has seriously argued that actively censoring depictions of children being beaten would in any way reduce the rate of child physical abuse (as opposed to, I don’t know, prosecuting the abusers themselves, maybe???)….so why should porn be held to that standard??

2) “Correlational studies”, Maggie?? Yeah, right….you think that we wouldn’t notice that your “correlational studies” are all tainted by bias towards your position….and all of them have been thoroughly debunked by more reputable research?? (No wonder you attack them as “anti-woman”, ehhh??)

3) And of this “carthartic effect”: the only such theory that I’ve heard from is that porn induces men to sexual arousal (Ahhh..duuuh!!!!), which is quickly relieved through masturbation (which, in case you haven’t heard, Maggie, rapes no one but the offending hand); thusly, porn offers a safe relief valve for sexual arousal that would otherwise be resolved in less safe ways (through the next door neighbor or the nearest alter boy or simply whomever’s availaable at the moment). But of course, masturbation is nothing more than a male-centered means of imprisoning women to the patriarchy/”porno-iarchy”..so that’s gotta go, too!!

And once again…consider the source that Maggie uses….which includes some activists once again from the Religious Right.

Porn Apologist: Pornography has no effect whatsoever. It’s only a fantasy.

Rad Fem: So why do corporations spend billions of dollars each year on mass-mediated advertising if not precisely because they know ads have effects on people? Why would it be different with pornography? Pornography HAS effects, negative ones! Besides, as I said before, “an industry which relies on the suffering of half the population in order to keep catering to its ever-expanding demand is not fantasy!” Fantasy is in the head. Pornography is mediated and mass-marketed. I feel a lot more free not having my fantasies being controlled by pornography. . . Freud argued that the sexual abuse that his female patients had been experiencing in childhood (and had been telling him about) was just a fantasy. Freud knew that child sexual abuse was pervasive in his time, but he kept on denying it as “fantasy” (Source: Testimony of Jeffrey Masson, author of The Assault on Truth, in “The Los Angeles Hearing, Los Angeles County Commission for Women, April 22, 1985″; in Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin Eds., In Harm’s way: The pornography Civil Rights Hearings; 1997.)

Ahhh, Maggie, but you forget that fantasy only becomes known when it leaves the head and is expressed through media, whether written, celluloid, video, or pixels. And why should porn take the hit for what advertising does in general: exploit general fantasies and emotions for the purpose of selling products. The only difference with porn is that sex IS the product they are selling as fantasy. Actually, porn is much closer to mainstream media in that it attempts to play on emotions that human beings already have. Comedy makes us laugh; drama makes us cry; action movies make us rise to the end of our seats in anticipation of what happens next (or what will blow up next; and so on. Why are the typical fantasies of getting filthy rich, or powerful enough to blow whole groups of people up considered less hazardous and damaging than porn?? Could it be because of all that SEX?!?!?!

And on the point of bashing Freud for denying the existence of sexual abuse of children: Aren’t there people a bit more qualified than Jeffery Masson (who happened to be Andrea Dworkin’s life partner and a former playboy himself prior to being converted to an antiporn activist) to
analyze Freud’s take on child abuse?? Does that mean that ALL accusations of child abuse (of girls, of course…Maggie could care less about boys being abused, except when it serves her cause) should be taken as proven as true, in absence of any evidence??

Porn Apologist: Where is the harm in porn?

Rad Fem: The first people who are harmed are the prostituted women constantly used, abused and discarded by the industry. Then, the harms extend to the women outside of the industry. The easiest way of making violence invisible is by sexualizing it, making it appear as “just sex” to the viewer. Pornography makes rape, sexism and racism sexy. It makes force look like a thrilling sexual experience to men. Pornography desensitizes its users to female degradation, it makes them believe that women enjoy all sorts of pain and humiliation. Pornography increases the belief in rape myths. Pornography is pure woman-hating propaganda! Many women are coerced by their boyfriends and husbands into sexual acts they do not want because of those men’s pornography use. Pornography also increases the violence perpetrated against prostituted women. As reported by former prostitute J.W. in Massachusetts, for instance, she “considered the men who were into pornography to be the most dangerous and potentially violent since that is what aroused them”.

This mighty rant assumes a variety of myths: 1) that women who perform in porn are innately forced into it against their stated will; 2) that the depiction of people having sex automatically in itself promotes rape, racism, and misogyny independent of the influences of the overall outside culture, the State, the church, and other social and cultural institutions; 3) that penetration of a woman’s vagina by anything resembling a penis or a penis itself not directly motivated by “intimacy” or procreation amounts to prima facie rape, and that any sex act not motivated by the same emotions preapproved by Maggie’s ideology automatically counts as “degrading”, “humiliating”, and “violent” in and of itself; and 4) that the very act of persuading women to even engage in sex with men (even trustworthy boyfriends, husbands, and significant others) is in itself an invitation to rape; as if otherwise, women would have no need for sex in the first place. And you still say that you are not fundamentally anti-sex, Mags???

The idea that watching a woman willingly engage in sex increases the belief that she “enjoys” being sexually assaulted against her will is a figment only in Maggie’s imagination….and the most hateful antifeminist, woman-hating man as well. Only those who would hate sexually assertive women enough to want to punish them for inciting such desires would even come close to believing that consensual porn amounts to “woman-hating propaganda”.

And…we all know that women and girls are certainly not capable of exercising power sexually against men…now don’t we???

OK….that’s enough fisking for now….we will continue this tommorow.

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.

Update (4-27-08):

Ahhh, so Stormy just can’t stop herself, now can she??  More smack from her, this tiime courtesy of Maggie Hays’ blog, where she resets the charge that Ren Ev lied about those pole-dancing photos being her…because Stormy KNOWS that they can’t be.  Different skin tones prove it, you know.

Oh, but Ren bursts Stormy’s bubble real quick….and in only one paragraph.

(psst, and this just in on the stormy stupid watch… read her comments…did ya know having a tan sometimes, but other times being pale is all one needs in order to determine one’s ethnic background? Does that mean there are no blonde Spanish people, no blue-eyed Arabic people, no red-haired Jews, no pale Greeks & no Koreans with freckles…or that sometimes I look pale, sometimes I look inbetween, and sometimes I look tan, and woo, even dye my hair different colors? Oh, also nevermind what Sam says, I still tried to infiltrate G’berg, never mind the other Miriam is, oh, talking, and I changed X-whosis name to “stormy” on my blog…nice try for set up, but wtf? Take off the tinfoil hat, lady. Sheesh, next thing you know, my tits will be real! OH, and you know what? I leave ya alone when you stop lying.)

Considering Stormy’s penchant for lying whenever her lips move, this may take a long while.

Original post:

Oh, now isn’t this sweet: good old Stormcloud has come out of retirement to attempt to lay the smack down on us “pro-pornies” — and especially Renegade Evolution and moi — for “libeling” her on her continuing vendetta against Ren for simply existing…and me for….well, defending her???

This is a comment that Stormy just posted to Witchy’s blog today:

[....]

Because as I’ve always said, RenEv is self-outing, and self-tangled in the web of fabrication.

Yeah, we kind of figured out who ‘Miriam’ was, the Miriam who tried to gain membership to Genderberg under false pretenses. And when called on this, she moans of ‘outing’.

The thing of it was, I had no idea if Miriam was her actual name or not, only an identity, when I threw it about on the infamous Witchy-megathread. She fell for it, mainly because it was she who was trying to do something dishonest/misrepresentative. It was she who actually confessed that it was her middle name.

All the ‘outing’ of RenEv has come from RenEv herself.

All she needs is a little nudge, and she takes the bait.

But of course she twisted it to suit her purpose. Gosh, let’s recap. RenEv uses ‘Miriam’ to register at Genderberg and is rejected due to lack of substance/authenticity. Stormy throws out the word ‘Miriam’ to try and shut up a way-out-of-control person and see what sticks. RenEv cries of victimisation and outing, and calls in bestest buds like Kennerson to fight her corner, whilst revealing way MORE personal info that I/we have ever known about her (or really, ever wanted to know about her).

I was more amused than anything else. Oh yeah, and libelled by the gazillion blogs that Kennerson has under different aliases.

Oh, but let me throw in, how honest has RenEv ever been, when a year ago, posting pictures that she insinuated were of herself (take the pole one for example) then compare with her very own video diary stuff? It really does not take a rocket scientist on this.

The only stuff I ever had on RenEv was stuff that would expose her as a fraud and dishonest, but shit, she does a mighty fine job of that herself without any help from me. Anyone with basic observation skills can see the personae that RenEv projects, and can fall like a house of cards at the merest puff of wind.

Well done RenEv, you do a fantastic job of self-exposure as a fraud. Really, don’t expect anyone to take you seriously. Except your groupies.

Ahh..first off, Stormy….I only own ONE SmackChron blog, which I update under different versions (Blogger WordPress.com, and WordPress.org; and all of them use my real name. Not exactly an alias, right???

And oh, please, please. oh for Goddess’ sake, please do continue to run your mouth to your hive friends about me “libeling” you; the only things I have written about you are your own damn words, which do more to indict and convict you than anything I would say.

Oh, and thank you so very much, Stormy, for proving my point exactly: you were and still are today so intent to believe that Ren Ev WAS INDEED the “Miriam” that you claim hacked your forum and then founded the “Radical Feminist Terrorist” blog in protest, that you and Sam were willing to libel an innocent woman who may have had NOT A DAMN THING to do with either Ren or the other person who did found that particular blog. (BTW…that apology to “the other Miriam” would be nice to have right about now, ‘ya think???)

Now, as for those “pictures” that Ren “insinuated that they were herself”: you don’t by chance mean the pics in this post, do you???? Probably not, because NOWHERE IN THAT POST does Ren even come close to even “insinuating” that any the women working the poles were her. In fact, the only comment Ren personally made about her and strippers was that she had a pole in her basement. Nothing more or less.

But hey, keep on with your attempts to dig up more dirt on Ren Ev…and I’m sure that the “Kennerson” file is already filling up with plenty of juicy shit that you will be throwing at me real soon.

There is a saying, dearie: Don’t sing it; bring it. You better bring your best, Stormcloud, because it will be bounced right back at ‘ya. I don’t do treaties with those who want to smack me down.

As one of my former inspirational softcore sex goddesses, Shauna O’Brien, once said after she disposed of a hater in a chat once: “When someone annoys you….annoy them back.” Suffice it to say, Stormy and the rest of the GenderBorg Collective: You’re really starting to annoy me. Back down before you really get smacked down….figuratively speaking, of course.

BTW….Ren has offered the usual rebuttal here.

Oh…and side memo to Stormy, because I know she’ll be reading this blog entry and adding it to her “Kennerson” files: Being called a “moron” by you is kinda like being called an idiot by….well, David Duke. Or, being called a ideologue by…..well, Ann Coulter. In other words, it just bounces off my back like a cooked egg off a Teflon-coated skillet. Sticks and stones, you know.

Well…the debate went off, according to Ren, without much of a hitch. Karla Mantilla ended up occupying the slot that Sam Berg and John Probert abandoned; and from the looks of things, all was civil and polite, and there was even some — gasp — actual back-and-forth discussion about real and serious issues. Ren is promising a review, complete with picture, later today.

Meanwhile, back at the Womyn’s Warrior Cult Asylum, a few of Sam’s allies decided to add their nickels in solidarity with her for her act of craven chickenhawkedness refusal to be bullied around. For example, this from the still official Free Soil Party candidate for President of the United States of America, Cheryl Lynn Seelhoff (aka, “Heart”):

Sam Berg ultimately accepted an invitation to appear on this panel. However, she will not be attending. I fully and completely support her in her decision. Her statement follows. I have a few comments.

Sam Berg will be far from the the only feminist who will reject public debates with people she has encountered online. These rejections will have nothing to do with being intimidated by proposed opponents’ superior arguments or debating skills or with lacking confidence in one’s own. I would not expect any committed, woman-centered, feminist with an established internet presence to make herself available for debates with others on the internet who have demonstrated that they are willing to play fast and loose with the truth, who lie outright, who are malicious and hateful, who seem unstable or unbalanced, or who have dedicated themselves to harming the reputations, credibility or lives of committed feminist women. I likewise would not expect any woman to present for debate with those who cannot be depended upon to report events honestly or to act in good faith and with good will. Those of us who stand for girls and women, for the lives of girls and women, who stand against pornography, the prostituting of women, sex trafficking, and objectification of women’s bodies have been and continue to be the recipients of rape threats, death threats, and threats to harm us in every conceivable way. Given the risks already inherent in the work that we do, it would be foolhardy for us to present for public debate with those who have demonstrated that they do not care about our work or the risks that we take, or who have actively, publicly caused us specific harm, or attempted to cause us specific harm.

I have emphasized some of the more totally whack statements of Heart for sake of revealing the hypocrisy of it all. So….Ren has actually physically threatened Sam Berg???? Really??? Not even the original “Fall under a truck and choke on your own blood” remark that has fueled all this controversy was even directed at Sam (or anyone else) directly….but was a general statement made in rage. And when did Ren or Jill Brenneman EVER even come close to threatening Sam or any other antiporn activist with rape or death threats??? Yeah, really…thought so. And last time I checked, a debate at a university tends to have its own security, which would probably mitigate against any form of violence occurring.

But, I guess that antiporn activists -whether they call themselves “feminists” or fundamentalists - simply can’t be “comfortable” sitting on the opposite side of the table with women who totally destroy their well-crafted agitprop and world view, so if they can’t control the debate to fit their terms, they just take their marbles and go home and do the bitch-and-moan about being “victimized” and “threatened”.

But even Heart screeds rank as mere amateur as compared to the grand champion of antiporn agitprop, Maggie Hays, who unleashed her own sterling defense of Sam Berg, and in the process, reset all the old saws and libels about how the “pro-pornies” are out to pillage and destroy her and her movement:

IMHO, what happened was absolutely dishonest, cruel and unfair. And I’m glad to have exposed Sam’s side of the story as it is clear that Sam in no way deserved such a treatment and massive online misrepresenting and bashing of her all over the pro-porn blogosphere! And I’m not the only one to expose it. There’s also Laurelin, Witchy-Woo and Heart, so far.

I read about all the bad things pro-porners have done to us and all the lies they’re spreading about us rad fems on their blogosphere. I’ve read this thread at Witchy’s and two very well-written posts from Stormy, Bumblebees and It’s a Bug’s Life, so I know all this nasty targeting and online bullying of rad fems has been going on for some time and a while before I came to the rad fem blogosphere and sometimes I feel like saying we mustn’t take all this shit they throw at us passively anymore but I believe that ignoring them when they stupidly trash us on their blogs is best. I used to find it hard to ignore them but we have to.

[...]

I’ve seen those pro-porn blogs before and you know what? They’re all so unbelievably pathetic! All the nonsense these pro-porners talk and the name-calling they use clearly show pornography’s negative effects on them. They aren’t worth paying attention to, which is why I gave up caring about what they say about me as I made it clear in this post here, I don’t give a shit about what they say about me and I believe the best thing to do for someone who’s targeted is not to give a flying fuck about what they say about oneself, which is why the next post I’ll make on this blog will not be about the same subject. I’ll go back to doing my patriarchy-bashing and exposing the harms of pornography and prostitution.

[...]

But now the fact that they’ve done this to Sam clearly shows that they’ve now gone way way way too far. Sam Berg just wanted something fair as a pornography discussion forum, not the pro-porn side of the panel being changed merely a few days before the event without even letting her, one of the anti-porn panelists, know about the change. The way Sam found out about it via an anti-porn radfem friend telling her she’d seen Ren posting about it on her blog (instead of her being contacted by the organizers about it) wasn’t the way she was supposed to get to know about it. And the way Ren was rejoicing at the anticipating of the event on her blog was utterly inappropriate. The words Ren was using were inappropriate.

There is a complete understanding in why Sam would never want to debate a woman who has once wished a gruesomely vivid death to women who want to stop the exploitation of women that is currently happening on a massive scale (never mind the apologies and so-called “context” for that sentence that Ren had said, if she really was so sorry about what she’d said that day, she would have deleted that “Hate hardline” post from her blog altogether). I wouldn’t want to debate somebody like that and I know Sam has very good personal reasons not to want to debate her.

Of course, if Ren had went ahead and deleted that “Hate, hardline” post, it still would not have been enough, since Maggie and her allies would have simply accused Ren of masking her innate hate of “feminists” and her ultimate goal of “destroying” them. Nope, nothing short than a full retraction, a total conversion to their antiporn worldview, and a confessional in front of the Church of Saint Dworkin of Asissi (combined with a purge of “pro-porn” spokespeople) would have sufficed for the Womyn’s Warrior Antiporn Cult…..and even that would be questioned by some of the more rabid members.

But, that’s really not the real issue, now, isn’t it??? The main issue is that Sam Berg (and Maggie Hays and the rest of the cult) reserves the right only to debate other women on HER terms: meaning that they had damn well better know their place and stick to the strawwoman role, so that Sam can so easily cut them down to size to support her ideology. A “pro-porn male”, on the other hand, is perfectly acceptable debate antagonist…..only because he can then be deciphered in the usual antiporn boilerplate as a typical “Dick” who only uses his penis as a tool to degrade and demean and kill women. A woman who happens not to follow the microcode, on the other hand, is the most cosmic threat to the cult groupthink, because it would really mess with all their finely-crafted house of card foundation of thought control….and we just can’t have independent women deviating from the herd, now can we??

Oh, well….to each his or her own, I guess.

Side memo to Maggie, BTW, based on this quote, which I assumed is addressed to moi:

I’ve had pro-porners on their blogs stealing way too large quotes (like sometimes nearly whole articles) from my work on this blog without them even asking for copyright permissions. If they’re angry at Sam for once using a short enough quote from Ren as a sigfile, then perhaps I should be angry at *them* for stealing parts of my work by providing way too long quotes on their blogs without asking for my consent, which is very unfair and dishonest BTW?

Ahhh, Maggie….you do realize that in a public blog setting, you do not need consent to pick quotes from other blogs, right?? And that as long as you give proper acclamation and credit to the original poster and don’t claim the quotes as your own, your words are fair game…..right??? If I don’t feel the need to contribute to your bandwidth through direct quotes and cititations (and I don’t see you quoting the people you distort and slander, either), then that’s my perogative as a blogger. Besides, people will ultimately find it through Google, anyway. If you don’t want your words to be seen in the public realm, then go ahead and put the blog behind a firewall and rant to your heart’s content; but as long as your blog is public and smears and attacks people without cause, I reserve my right to call your bullshit out and clear the record. My blog is public and “copylefted”, and I own and defend my words here. Like it or not, just deal with it, and as Belledame would say, “Own your shit.”

———————————–

Oh, lookee here….I guess that it wouldn’t be a complete throwdown without Witchy-Woo entering the fray in defense of Sam, now wouldn’t it?? Her latest entry at her blog simply reprints Sam’s fax on chickening out of the debate; the only original addition by Witchy being the title: “The Prime of Miss Sammi Berg”. Simply…WOW.

Thankfully, Iamcuriousblue caught the joke in the title, and wins for the day for this thought (posted as a comment at the Blog of Pro-Porn Activism)

And the title that Sam chose for the post couldn’t be more telling:

“The Prime of Miss Sammi Berg”

This, of course, being taken from the novel, “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie“. The Jean Brodie character being the inspiring, energizing girls’ school teacher, who instills in her charges a love for Mussolini, Hitler, and Franco.

Yeah, Sam, fitting analogy, that.

Fitting, in-freakin’-deed.

Ahhhh, lookee here….just as I predicted.

Since Sam Berg’s attempt to intimidate the folks at William and Mary College into disinviting Renegade Evolution from their planned porn debate fell flat, they’ve decided to do the typical thing for them: take their marbles and go home.

And what a great spin job they weave to justify their craven act of cowardice, following up on their attempted act of bullying: Apparantly, contrary to actual facts; THEY, not Ren, were being set up by the debate planners; and that Ren was apparently not suitable for their kind of debate.

Sam did a guest post over at Laurelin’s blog today explaining away her decision to bail out….and it’s an instant classic that would shame Bill O’Reilly on spinning lemonade out of piss.

First, she goes to the “We wuz set up” card:

Constance [Silk, one of the main planners of the W&M debate] told me April 2nd that they moved the panel date to the 21st and the rest of April slid by without communication until April 16th when an anti-porn friend informed me that Jill Brenneman and RenEv blogged they would be on the panel. I had received no word from Constance of this and was dumbfounded that wholesale changes were being made to the panel just five days before the event without informing me. I had agreed to do the panel with John and Amanda, and I hadn’t gotten any emails saying she couldn’t attend or that they were looking for a replacement.

So, apparently, the debate planners pulled a switcheroo on Sam, originally saying that she and John Foulbert (another particularly rabid antiporn “feminist” man who makes Bob Jensen look like a humanitarian by comparison) would be able to double-team Amanda Brooks (and then, later, Jill Brenneman); only to surprise her later on by inviting Ren in as a ringer to balance the debate.  And, they didn’t give Sam the privilege of notifying her until late of the change in panel.

OK…..that might be a fair objection; but Sam can’t let it ride; she believes herself the right to actually dictate to the organizers of the debate whom she should debate.

If they had told me Amanda couldn’t make it I would have suggested that pornographers and strip club owners are very easy to find through legal channels so they could have been asked to appear on the panel. I would have also suggested that the number of porn-using men on campus should have been able to produce just one pornsturbator willing to defend his porn consumption. Because I was under the impression that Constance & Co. were being honest with me about their intentions, I chalked up the lack of a pornographer or porn-using man on the panel to inept organizing and the extreme amount of publicity given recently to sex work advocacy at William and Mary.

In other words, Clones…what Sam wanted to do was to have a nice strawperson (a supposed “pro-porn male” or a “pornographer” (I assume, also a male) on the other side to rationalize and justify and project her fundamental myopic agitprop about men who use porn being innate rapists and misogynists…and having to debate actual women would have broken away from her planned template.  Especially a woman like Ren, who would have definitely mopped the floor, cleaned the carpet, and wiped the windows with Sam by dissecting all of her arguments and stereotypes. Being actually exposed to sunshine and light would melt away all the foundations of Sam’s ideological mindset.

Of course, if you are going to beat a hasty retreat, you have to cover your asses with a distracting counterattack…and Chickenhawk Sam is more than worthy to the task.  First, she fires off this blast at Constance as being biased against her (yeah, right, which is why she invited Sam and John Probert there in the first place):

How much sex work advocacy has been given a voice there can be answered with the name Constance. I spoke with John Foubert for the first time Thursday and he told me that Constance is a big pro-sex work advocate on campus and she brought the sex worker show to campus the past three years. A woman named Audrey invited John to the panel because Constance didn’t think he would agree if she asked him. Constance was a guest on Jill’s radio show a few weeks ago, and Jill did a pro-sex work chat with William and Mary college folks a few weeks ago, but in her emails Constance claimed ignorance of the lengthy pro-porn and radical blogosphere debates on this contentious subject.

Constance. Constance said she was excited to have me coming and offered to let me spend Monday night at her place, where she planned on cooking dinner for a group of people post-panel. How do you think it would feel if a pro-choice feminist were invited to a predominantly pro-life campus by a predominantly pro-life group and the pro-life organizer did everything Constance did without revealing her pro-life politics to her pro-choice panelist and house guest?

Gee, I don’t know, Sam….I mean, if the pro-lifers really were respectful enough of opposing views and the debate sponsors were so willing to pay the bills for the pro-choicers to come and debate, then why question their sincerity for balance??  Unless, of course, you were expecting to control the debate yourself and basically eliminate the competition from the beginning??

And besides, we all know that the antiporn radicalfeminist side has a sterling reputation for allowing critics of their views freedom to express themselves…now do we???

And, of course, it’s all a setup by the evol pro-porn Ren to threaten to kill antipornradfems, anyway, according to Sam….hell, Ren all but admitted it!!! She quotes profusely from Ren’s blog about her (Ren’s) expectations about the debate, and then extrapolates:

I agreed to do the panel with John and Amanda three weeks ago. Though it was unethical to make major lineup changes at the last minute like that without telling me and things started feeling really fishy due to the lack of notification about the event anywhere besides pro-john blogs (it’s not listed on W&M’s events calendar or advertised around campus), I agreed to debate Jill. I could not agree to debate Ren, and I don’t suppose I have to tell most of you reading this why but I’ll touch upon it a tad anyway.

Here are Ren’s thoughts on sharing a panel discussion table with me:

“So serious I am taking it very seriously. And looking forward to it in my uniquely grim and serious way. Planning and preparing with a very serious, serious sneer on my face.

And also laughing like a super villain the whole time. Why?

Once upon a time, I had a wish, a dream, a surely wank worthy fantasy of some anti-porn sex work types having to face down, in a forum, and debate those from the other side. And I wanted to be there.”

“And, yes, oh yes, I am seriously looking forward to it. I have so lusted for such an opportunity. Very seriously. And yes, if possible, I will have the whole thing on video. Get your cerebral wanking tissues ready.”

Serious serious sneers, super villain mocking laughter, wank worthy fantasies, whole thing on video, get your tissues ready.

Those are the words of a malicious person licking their chops in anticipation of a messy, humiliation-inducing scene they will relish. Those are the words of a person trying to waste my time with personal attacks when my time is best used educating audiences about the facts of human trafficking, prostitution, and pornography. The trash talk began within hours of being surreptitiously offered the spot on the panel, and that sort of smug pugnaciousness and disrespectful engagement was instrumental in prompting John to cancel his appearance on the panel and he suggested to me that I do the same. I believe we were right to cancel. I refuse to pose for the pornographically spiteful scene being painted.

What to do when a woman who says she’s happy in prostitution says, “Take me, for example” when you know if you actually do take her as her own example by quoting her own words and deeds she will complain, “How dare you make an example of me?” Say you’ll speak with her about prostitution as a global system and of all women’s oppression as the core problem but you don’t want to talk about her personally and she’ll reply, “You refuse to hear my truth.” If you talk about her personally like she insists then you’re the baddie radfem who makes it personal. It’s a lose-lose ruse.

Of course, Ren is really talking about actual sex workers actually having a chance to defend themselves and speak their experiences without the likes of Sam Berg claiming to speak for them…..but it’s never been Sam’s way to respect opposing views; it’s all about witnessing and pushing the ideology for her. Women like Ren tend to get in the way of proper APRF groupthink, you see.

Therefore, it’s so much easier to grab on the only anchor you can grasp on and attempt to use it as a club to beat Ren over her head with; thusly, the reliance on the “She threatened to KILL radical feminists!!!” card using the infamous “Fall under a truck and choke on your old blood” curse. As if, as others have well documented, they aren’t capable of doing so much worse.

But never fear, because Sam informs us that if she had been allowed the right to control the terms of the debate, she would have definitely kicked serious ass…at least, she so believes herself to be such a deep thinker and debater:

I’d love to debate a porn-user, and there are tens of millions of them. I’d love to debate a pornographer and there’s no lack of those either. I’d love to debate a john. They don’t want to debate anti-pornography and anti-prostitution feminists. They want women in the prostitute supply pool to subjectively defend them against the objective mounds of testimony and undeniable data that anti-pornstitution feminists can produce proving pornography and prostitution violate women and girls human rights immensely. Most of you have seen how deftly I wield the wealth of information I’ve collected in my noodle to make the case against men’s right to economically coerce sex from others. Some of you have seen me do it before with Ren.

She then manages to pull out of her….brain…..links to two PunkAssBlog threads where she crosses swords with Ren (of course, that still wonders why she still couldn’t show herself to actually debate Ren in an more neutral venue where she wouldn’t be as able to drop her stinkbombs).  Turns out, those threads just so happen to be the ones where good old R. Mildred (now with Kuntensquirten) dropped her inevitable bombs where she called yours truly “Ren’s pimp”; and where most of the APRF Peanut Gallery (including gayle, delphyne, Stormy, Witchy-Woo, and their man in waiting Jimmy Ho)  spent most of their bandwidth  labeling Ren and other defenders of sex workers as  beyond-the-pale deviant sex perverts.  Ahhh, yeah….a sterling example of honest, tempered debate.

Probably better for everyone that Sam chickened out in the end, though….at least Ren and Jill will be able to make their case without the noise and clucking of such crackpot bullshit artists.