Fathers, it’s high time you took responsibility.

Originally posted to the Community section of MyMedia;
a bit of content added at the end.

I am personally not opposed to ethical pornography, just as I am not opposed to women choosing to be sex workers (though the legalization of sex work is a hot button, often politicized, so I’ll stop right here on that).

Ethical pornography, for those wondering, is made by people who a) want to be there*, and b) are of legal age to sign contracts to that effect.

However.

I became aware, a couple of weeks ago, of a scandal in Australia, wherein young boys–and I mean boys, as young as 13/14– mostly from expensive private schools, share pornography through online forums created and maintained exclusively for this purpose.

Which, despite the young age of the users, I would still be okay with, if–and this is a big if–the people whose images are being shared had consented to this.

Instead, it turns out, these boys are literally hunting naked images of school girls–in many cases, classmates!!!–to share with other boys across the country. And, as packs always do, the boys, and occasional young adult man, encourage each other to greater depths of immoral behaviour, by rewarding each other for ‘wins’ (aka, specific images of specific girls, targeted often at the request of someone who knows that girl).

Mind boggling?

Should be, yes.

Bro code: bros before hos

(Originally posted to the Community section of MyMedia)

Some of you reading this may know I read a lot of genre romance (that means, there’s a happy ending–and not the one that lasts a few seconds, either).

Like all other genre fiction, there are certain tropes that appear frequently in my reading. As an example, in mysteries, we’ll have the honest cop going against the corrupt powers-that-be; in science fiction, we’ll have the ragtag band of outsiders saving the universe; in fantasy, we have the naive, honorable lad of humble origins who, natch, just happens to be a king…and so on and so forth.

In romance, a recurring trope is that of the hero being in love (or falling in love) with his best friend’s little sister, which creates all sorts of issues–from repressed feelings to a rift between the erstwhile bros.

Well played

I don’t believe that any one corporation gets it right even half of the time–call me a cynic, if you must.

However, every now and again, a company does something right–and rarely, they do something right often. Google, whose efforts to track my every movement across the internet irk me no end, does something right a lot with its doodles.

To whit:

And below the search box, this quote from the Olympic Charter:

“The practice of sport is a human right. Every individual must have the possibility of practicing sport, without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.”

Indeed.

Friday the Thirteenth Again

Because I want my daughter and all the children to come to live in a world where their choices are truly theirs. Because I hate knowing that people are considered criminals for exercising sovereignty over their own bodies. Because morality is often an excuse for cruelty and hatred.

I do not have the eloquence of Ken White or Thomas, though I’ve tried to write on the topic before, and so I fall back on reblogging Maggie McNeill’s own words.

The Honest Courtesan

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.  –  Martin Luther King, Jr.

Today is the first Friday the 13^th in fourteen months, and since I’ve picked up quite a few readers since July of 2012 a number of you are probably wondering what that has to do with anything.  Well, it’s just this:  from soon after the beginning of this blog, I’ve asked those of you who aren’t sex workers yourselves to speak up for our rights on this day.  The gay rights movement didn’t really take off until the friends and families of gay people got involved, and it’s the same for us; since only about 1% of Western women ever formally work as whores, we’re going to need a lot of help to make our voices heard.  We need all the sex workers (such…

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The death of courtship, the end of men, female sexual agency

Please be aware that this post is basically a hodgepodge of thoughts that may not hold together with the clearest logic. These are the musings of 47 year old divorced woman with two adult children (20 and 25 as I type)

On March 29^th of this year, a college paper published a letter to the editor¹, in which an alumna of the college gave current female students at her alma mater advice on relationships. I find most of the text in that letter to be problematic, for a number of reasons.

For example, from one question a student asked about her 40 year long friendship with another woman, the letter writer concludes “At your core, you know that there are other things that you need that nobody is addressing. A lifelong friend is one of them. Finding the right man to marry is another.” I’m not sure about you, but going from a question about long time friends to the need for husbands, seems like an awful big jump in pseudo-logic to me.

Misogyny and whorephobia: sanctioned by law (Texas, US law, at least)

3 and a half years ago, on Christmas 2009, Ezekiel Gilbert–white male–agreed to meet with escort Lenora Ivie Frago through a Craiglist add.

Gilbert invited Frago over to his house and paid her $150. Frago declined to have sex with Gilbert and refused to refund the money–the only record of exactly how these two things came to pass comes to us through Gilbert, who as a direct consequence of them,used an AK47 to paint Frago’s car with bullets.

Frago didn’t die on the spot. Brain damaged and paralyzed, she survived for a few months.

Yesterday Last week, a jury acquitted this murderer.

What is right for YOU doesn’t have to be right for anyone else, got that?

There are very few things that apply to everyone, but that one right there? That’s one of them.

So Gabby Reese thinks that “to truly be feminine means being soft, receptive, and – look out, here it comes – submissive.” It works for her, apparently it works for her husband, more power to them.

But to fucking state that that’s The One True Way?

No.

Women this, men that.

No.

Just because you are a minor celebrity you don’t get to dictate what “women” and “men” are like.

You don’t get to dictate what makes any relationship but yours work or fail.

By all means, write about your life and your experiences, but don’t think that having lived your life makes you an authority on mine, or anyone else.

Update after the cut: