Continuing Your Sex and Safety and Survival Education

 [artwork is from here]

Question: If women around the world, of all colors, are trafficked and made more vulnerable to HIV/AIDS because het men who use and abuse women don't want to use condoms; if Black women in the U.S. are dying the most from HIV/AIDS; and whites are the least infected race; and if gay men continue to be suffering with the epidemic, which demographic most benefits? 

Answer: white heterosexual men.

What follows is from *here*.

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Continuing Education For Sex Educators

San Francisco Sex Information's Continuing Education program is a series of monthly classes on topics of interest to sex educators, helping professionals, and anyone curious about the workings of human sexuality.

Admission is $5 for anyone who's volunteered with SFSI in the past six months, and $15 for the general public.

These classes do not necessarily fulfill Continuing Education requirements for professional societies. If a class counts as professional development hours for a particular profession (ie. nurses, therapists or teachers) it will be noted in the class description.

Please note that all of SFSI's classes are scent-free events. In order to make them accessible to everyone, please refrain from wearing perfume or other scented products.

Next Class: The Global AIDS Epidemic: HIV infection rates, treatments and the search for a cure

Presenter	: Mathew Stremlau, PhD
Date	: Thursday, June 3rd, 2010
Time	: Doors at 6:30, event 7:00PM - 8:30PM
Venue	: Audre Lorde room, Women's Building, SF

Class Description

SFSI is pleased to host a researcher from the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology for an informational evening focusing on the global AIDS epidemic. The class will focus on global HIV infection rates and how these rates have changed over time as well as look at how infection rates in industrialized nations differ from those in developing nations. We will also learn about current HIV/AIDS research and get a glimpse at what scientists at the Gladstone Institute hope to accomplish in the upcoming year. If you've ever wanted to learn about the biology of the HIV virus and how exactly science is working to find a cure for AIDS, this is the class for you.

Presenter Bio

Matthew Stremlau, PhD is a senior postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Warner C. Greene, MD, PhD, at the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology and the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Stremlau received a BS in chemistry from Haverford College and a PhD in biochemistry from Harvard University. He has extensive experience living and working in developing countries, including China and several African nations. He also has experience working closely with policy makers and public health experts in the United States and Africa.

In his research, Dr. Stremlau seeks to understand the genetic basis of natural resistance to HIV-1 and the ability to naturally suppress viral replication in the absence of antiretroviral therapy. As a graduate student at Harvard University, he discovered TRIM5α, the primary block to HIV-1 infection in Old World monkey cells. His current research involves an examination of rare genetic variations among host restriction factors (e.g., APOBEC3 family members, TRIMα, and Tehterin) and differences in viral susceptibility among individuals in Sub-Saharan Africa.

He was a member of the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff in the Office of the Secretary in 2008-09. He also served in the Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator in the Department of State in 2007-08. He was a visiting scientist in the Department of Molecular Biology at Peking University in Beijing, China, in 2006-07.

Purchase Admission

Tickets are $15 general admission, $5 current volunteers. Admission to continuing education classes is limited by our venue size. Purchase your ticket early to guarantee a seat. Any remaining tickets will be available at the door for cash only. If at least one member of your party has not arrived by fifteen minutes after the doors open, your seats may be resold to individuals waiting at the door. If you are an active SFSI volunteer but do not know the code for the volunteer price, contact your shift supervisor or continuing.ed@sfsi.org to get access. Please say in your email how you've volunteered for SFSI.

There are a limited number of volunteer opportunities at the class itself that are available in exchange for free admission. Contact continuing.ed@sfsi.org to volunteer.

An In-Fidelity Update: Fidelity Investment Company apparently is stubbornly and willfully invested in Maintaining Genocide

 [image is from here]

For this and other related reading and news, please see *here*. When you hear about people having large stock portfolios, day-trading, and being millionaires, what gender and race comes to mind? In my mind, and in my experience with few exceptions, the gender is man and the race is white. That is not a lucky break for white men, at all. It's entirely a function of the sexist and racist politics of corporate capitalism, "oppressive-and-lethal-not-free" trade, and globalisation.

Investors Against Genocide

Draw the line at investing in genocide

Dear friends of IAG, We are proud to let you know that our colleagues at the Unitarian Universalist Association announced on Friday that they will be moving their $178 million in retirement funds from Fidelity to TIAA-CREF as part of their commitment to genocide-free investing.  This important move is a leading example of the fact that Americans do not want their savings tied to genocide and that the market now provides clear mainstream choice for individuals and organizations that wish to be genocide-free. All of the details and news related to this announcement, including the UUA press release and a news article from Reuters are posted at this link: investorsagainstgenocide.org/UUAleavesFidelity We are very excited about this important step forward for genocide-free investing and thank you for your ongoing support. If you know of other groups that are moving, or have moved, their money to genocide-free options, please let us know.

WAYS YOU CAN HELP Consider moving your investments to American Funds or TIAA-CREF, the two mainstream investment firms that have human rights policies and have taken substantial action in support of those policies.  If you decide to do so after reviewing how the funds meet your personal financial and non-financial criteria, please write the company you are leaving as well as the company receiving your money to let management know why you have made this important decision.  Click here for details on the divestment by American Funds and TIAA-CREF. Volunteer to submit a shareholder proposal to mutual funds you've held for over a year and in which you have at least $2,000 invested.  The successes with American Funds and TIAA-CREF demonstrate that our shareholder resolutions are effectively pressuring mutual fund companies since both companies changed their policies only after receiving shareholders proposals from IAG volunteers.  Now we need more volunteers to submit our recently updated and strengthened proposal to companies like Vanguard, Fidelity, and Franklin Templeton that continue to hold large investments in problem companies.  We've made the submission process easy and confidential. Click here for details. Thanks so much all you've done and continue to do for the cause of genocide-free investing.

Eric, Susan, Bill, Mary and Shana The Investors Against Genocide Team

The True Terrorists: How WHM's Economic Corruption is a key component of Corporate Racist Atrocious Patriarchy (CRAP)

[image of book cover is from here, where you can find his other books]

This post contains some biographical information and a recent piece of writing from John Perkins, corporate insider and whistle-blower about U.S. economic terrorism, genocide, and ecocide. All of it is atrocity and terrorism. All of it. And the damage to human beings and the Earth, including the U.S. citizens and "our" land, is far worse, more lethal, more destructive, than anything the entire Taliban could possibly do to this country. Why, then, isn't the U.S. government interested in stopping--STOPPING, ENDING--this horror and terrorism? Because it's being committed primarily by U.S. white, homophobic, publicly heterosexual, Christian men, that's why. Because our country must do this to make the richest white men happy (richer). So scapegoating the Taliban (let alone Mexican "illegal aliens") as "our primary enemy" is a despicable, cowardly, grievously dishonest and diversionary tactic, make no mistake about it. Because they've done NOTHING in comparison to what WE do to ourselves... if we're going to be so callous as to ignore the horrors we visit upon other parts of the world. 

Mexicans coming to this country work harder than most U.S. white Americans with none of the job or home security, so let's have the media and government cross that group off the list of people to be irrationally, racistly, misogynistically concerned about harassing, raping, and otherwise terrorising. And, to even pretend we're pro-democracy, we might stop covertly and overtly trying to control other nations' struggles for democracy and autonomy from us!

The terrible events of that day [11 September 2001] convinced John to drop the veil of secrecy around his life as an EHM, to ignore the threats and bribes, and to write Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. He believed he had a responsibility to share his insider knowledge about the role the U.S. government, multinational “aid” organizations, and corporations have played in bringing the world to a place where such an event could occur. He wanted to expose the fact that EHM are more ubiquitous today than ever before. He felt he owed this to his country, to his daughter, to all the people around the world who suffer because of the work he and his peers have done, and to himself. In this book, he describes the dangerous path his country is taking as it moves away from the original ideals of the American republic and into a quest for global empire. [source: below]

"Fake Accounting, Greed and Oil"
While countries around the world continue to watch their economies collapse, and Goldman-Sachs leaders testify to Congress about how they manipulated both their shareholders and the American public, we are also faced with a tragic oil spill on our most fragile coastlines.

The sad truth is that oil, greed and fake accounting work hand in hand to empower those who have -- and significantly disempower those who do not.

In my book, HOODWINKED I talk about the 30,000 Ecuadorians who filed a lawsuit against Texaco (since purchased by Chevron). (See this link - http://tinyurl.com/34ovl2r ). The company destroyed vast sections of rain forest and the toxic wastes from its operations allegedly killed many people and made many more chronically sick.

It is often the indigenous people who are the ultimate losers in the greed wars. How can they with so little to start with take a stand against a huge oil company? Despite the challenges they faced, the Ecuadorians did do this and continue to battle.

Trudie Styler who visited the devastated Ecuadorian site and joined me at a public talk in Quito several years ago hosted a concert at Carnegie Hall on May 13, 2010. It featured her husband Sting, Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Lady Gaga, and Debbie Harry and was a fundraiser for the Rainforest Fund, founded by Trudie and Sting in 1989. Afterwards Trudie expressed to me feelings similar to those she often says publicly: "

You know (Trudie said) I love beaches and coastal environments. I love the ocean. I'm appalled by the terrible scenes of devastation that etched themselves forever into our consciousness after the Exxon Valdez disaster and now are haunting us once again along the Gulf Coast. I am dismayed by the continuing destruction of our delicate ecosystems -- of birds, fish, animals, and plants. This is absolutely unacceptable. We MUST protect or coastlines from such tragedies.

"However, I have also flown over thousands of miles of rain forests that have been destroyed by oil. I have been with mothers sitting at the bedsides of their children, as they lie in terrible agony, innocent victims of the most horrible deaths imaginable -- because oil drilling poisoned their water and their food sources. I have stood beside once-pristine lakes now turned into black tar. "So, I feel compelled to ask everyone to take into account the entire planet as we mourn for the Gulf Coast and seek ways to protect our beaches. Let us avoid the temptation to say "not in my back yard; take the pollution someplace else." Let us rather commit to freeing ourselves from the oil addiction that ultimately will destroy all of us."

Steve Donziger, a New York lawyer who has devoted more than a decade to the case, repeats every chance he gets, "And most of the consumers in the United States have no idea. They are oblivious to the true price of the oil they consume. And Big Oil wants to keep it that way."
These statements express a sad truth about so much of what is going on in the world today and the inadequacy of our accounting procedures to assign the true costs to products. Oil is a classic example of how those who sit on resources are inadequately compensated while those who consume them are charged prices that do not begin to cover the actual costs. In light of last week's oil spill, it seems we are seeing the same thing happen again with BP and the countless millions the oil spill will affect horribly for a decade.

Many costs are never taken into account when determining the price of the goods and services we consume. They are all too often considered "externalities." Those externalities include the social and environmental costs of the destruction of resources, the pollution, and the burdens on society of workers who become injured or ill and receive little or no health care; the indirect funding of companies that are permitted to market hazardous products, dump wastes into rivers or oceans, and pay employees less than a living wage, just to name a few.

All of these and more contribute to the current global economic crisis. Because so many resources are underpriced, they are wasted casually and depleted unnecessarily. Instead of recycling or using them more efficiently, we continue to drill, mine, extract, and manufacture with reckless abandon.

Is the "Age of Reckless Abandon" really what we want to be most remembered for in generations to come?

[source: here] About John Perkins:

John Perkins has lived four lives: as an economic hit man (EHM); as the CEO of a successful alternative energy company, who was rewarded for not disclosing his EHM past; as an expert on indigenous cultures and shamanism, a teacher and writer who used this expertise to promote ecology and sustainability while continuing to honor his vow of silence about his life as an EHM; and as a writer who, in telling the real-life story about his extraordinary dealings as an EHM, has exposed the world of international intrigue and corruption that is turning the American republic into a global empire despised by increasing numbers of people around the planet.

As an EHM, Johns job was to convince Third World countries to accept enormous loans for infrastructure development—loans that were much larger than needed—and to guarantee that the development projects were contracted to U.S. corporations like Halliburton and Bechtel. Once these countries were saddled with huge debts, the U.S. government and the international aid agencies allied with it were able to control these economies and to ensure that oil and other resources were channeled to serve the interests of building a global empire.

In his EHM capacity, John traveled all over the world—to Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East—and was either a direct participant in or witness to some of the most dramatic events in modern history, including the Saudi Arabian Money-laundering Affair, the fall of the Shah of Iran, the assassination of Panama’s President Omar Torrijos, the subsequent invasion of Panama, and events leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In 1980 Perkins founded Independent Power Systems, Inc (IPS), an alternative energy company. Under his leadership as CEO, IPS became an extremely successful firm in a high-risk business where most of his competitors failed. Many “coincidences” and favors from people in powerful positions helped make IPS an industry leader. John also served as a highly paid consultant to some of the corporations whose pockets he had previously helped to line—taking on this role partly in response to a series of not-so-veiled threats and lucrative payoffs.

After selling IPS in 1990, John became a champion for indigenous rights and environmental movements, working especially closely with Amazon tribes to help them preserve their rain forests. He wrote five books, published in many languages, about indigenous cultures, shamanism, ecology, and sustainability; taught at universities and learning centers on four continents; and founded and served on the board of directors of several leading nonprofit organizations.

One of the nonprofit organizations he founded and chaired, Dream Change Coalition (later simply Dream Change, or DC), became a model for inspiring people to attain their personal goals and, at the same time, to be more conscious of the impacts their lives have on others and on the planet, and for empowering them to transform their communities into more balanced and sustainable ones. DC has developed a following around the world and has empowered people to create organizations with similar missions in many countries.

During the 1990s and into the new millennium, John honored his vow of silence about his EHM life and continued to receive lucrative corporate consulting fees. He assuaged his guilt by applying much of the money he earned as a consultant to his nonprofit work. Arts & Entertainment television featured him in a special titled “Headhunters of the Amazon,” narrated by Leonard Nimoy. Italian Cosmopolitan ran a major article on his “Shapeshifting” workshops in Europe. TIME magazine selected Dream Change as one of the thirteen organizations in the world whose Web sites best reflected the ideals and goals of Earth Day.

Then came September 11, 2001. The terrible events of that day convinced John to drop the veil of secrecy around his life as an EHM, to ignore the threats and bribes, and to write Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. He believed he had a responsibility to share his insider knowledge about the role the U.S. government, multinational “aid” organizations, and corporations have played in bringing the world to a place where such an event could occur. He wanted to expose the fact that EHM are more ubiquitous today than ever before. He felt he owed this to his country, to his daughter, to all the people around the world who suffer because of the work he and his peers have done, and to himself. In this book, he describes the dangerous path his country is taking as it moves away from the original ideals of the American republic and into a quest for global empire.

Do the Math: End Civilisation

[image is from here]

Western Civilisation isn't 10,000 years old, but virtually all the stuff listed as patriarchal atrocities above, under the graphic image, are Western. So my conclusion is that this was made by someone white. 

However old patriarchal civilisations are, they are that many scores of centuries too many. And the last few thousand years some form of Western male supremacy has existed on Earth on some form. And the last few hundred years, white male supremacy has been destroying people of color, being sure to rape the women and girls in the process. And in the last decades, the Earth and its Life are being destroyed at an unprecedented rate by the social and industrial "creations" of white men. And lesbians and gay youth are being driven to suicide and depression due to the violence of heterosexism. In the last thirty years, HIV/AIDS has been killing only non-WHM populations en masse, with little to no activism to address and stop this by WHM. To the contrary, WHM are spreading disease around the world. As WHM are surviving all diseases, this is an effective form of mass murder, gynocide, and genocide by them.

Here's an idea: let's start by radically uprooting and composting CRAP (WHM supremacy) in all fascistic forms, racist practices, and man-infestations, and then have a meeting and assess where to go from there.

Because Patriarchy Sucks So Much, Women Shouldn't Have To Do So To Earn a Living

[image is from here]

The first part of this post will be some commentary by me on the matter of prostitution and why I basically refuse to engage in using terms like "sex work". The last part of this post is published writing by feminist Malebogo Kgalemang. (The source is linked to below).

First, no one I personally know who has been involved in various ways as "the ones pimped, bought, rented, exploited, procured by white het men"--including me, but not inside a system of prostitution strictly speaking, has ever used that term. This doesn't, in and of itself, de-legitimise the term, and this post isn't about telling women what they should or shouldn't call what they do or what other women do. This post is about what I do here, and why. As I understand it, women in systems of prostitution and sexxxism industries who are not race, class, and/or Western privileged, use many names and endure many names. These names are often regionally arrived at; they may be chosen among a group of women, derived from or in resistance to particular stigmas and understandings of the politics and social meaning and effect of men procuring women for men's heteroracist (<---new term for this blog) and anti-lesbian misogynistic sexxxual release, over whom the men necessarily structurally and institutionally, and interpersonally in varying ways, have more power. At the very least, men have sexual and economic power, privileges, and entitlements that women within the same ethnic and cultural group do not have. Men collectively and also often individually, with the means to do so in such systems, and with relative and substantive freedom, possess and exercise this power over women, however it is demonstrated in any particular interaction or "exchange".

That some het men choose to enact this power by having women exert painful force against men's bodies, such as in a BDSM scene in which the man may be hurt-for-pleasure, we must keep in mind it is his pleasure, not hers, that is required. It is always his desires, fetishes, etc., that are attended to, not hers. Should she disobey him, disregard him, refuse him, reject him, or otherwise not attend to his needs as he determines ought to be the case given the money he has paid to rent her, he is relatively free to exert force or harassment in retaliation. He may also rape and murder her.

This all means that there is not, in fact, a patriarchal political social environment free enough for women to say that any woman (let alone girl) "freely chooses" to be in those systems. As a point of comparison, I have many of the most significant forms of social-political privilege there is, yet am never free to not exist inside a corporate capitalist white het male supremacist system. My choices, which are significantly more vast than those I know who are poor, female, and/or of color, are not made "freely" in any absolute sense. The decisions and choices I have to make are all relative to the systems I exist in. Being white doesn't place one outside white supremacy, it only means one benefits from the system in ways people of color do not. Nor does being white inside a white supremacist system mean I am "oppressed" as a white person.

I was recently, and for a short time, part of a profeminist men's list serve where some members wished to argue that men, as well as women, are oppressed by patriarchy. A few of us basically said "bullshit" and I soon exited the scene, as that level of ignorant misunderstanding about what the case is for men in patriarchies is not, for me, "profeminist".

If one cannot NOT live in a society in which there is no social pressure on girls and women to meet men's sexual selfish and self-centered pseudo-needs, and if one cannot NOT live in an economic system that meets everyone's basic human needs, then political coercion exists. Period.

In the society in which I live and those I know about through friendships, that political coercion is a complex, currently sometimes termed kyriarchical, but which is, at least, white and het male supremacist, misogynistic with specifically race-based forms of woman-hating, sexxx-obsessed (while in some ways sexually repressed), influenced and dominated by globalising corporate capitalism and Western/white terroristic militarism, anti-Indigenism, MaleGodism (<---also a new term here), and environmental murder.

In my country, over the last many years, there has been an effort underway to respond academically to socially oppressive reality by pretending that if we change the terms, we change the social reality. This is to say, if we say, for example, "whites and men are also oppressed in white male supremacist systems" this means that it becomes, somehow, more socially true than if we don't.

Paralleling this is a move among some to declare that women who are oppressed in and by various male supremacist systems and strategies, to say that if women say they are making free choices, they are. And for anyone to say they are not, is to deny those women agency and power. I'd argue that patriarchy, not people who name patriarchal hegemonic harm, oppress and dehumanise women. And using language as a way out that is not matched by structural, political, institutional reality is a form of survival inside a system, not a means of transcending or existing beyond it.

I was in conversation recently with someone who has interviewed what she calls [female, non-trans] "sex workers" although the women themselves do not use that term. She, I think appropriately, notes the problem of finding a term when writing that is not derogatory or dehumanising.

To me, a liberal, dangerous, and misogynistic solution is to make one's work one's identity in name without naming the political context for the work existing in the first and last place. By "first and last place" I mean that before procurement happens, before a woman either is enslaved, trafficked, pimped, economically coerced to fuck and suck men repeatedly because that's the most meaningful (including financially profitable) work she can do, and after this activity occurs, after she has cash in hand, post-fucking and sucking, he has power that she doesn't have. She isn't imbued with male supremacist privileges and power because she holds in her hand what was, an hour or so ago, some of his cash. She doesn't become freer of male supremacy by sexually dominating him in rented/paid for sexxx scene either. That she has agency is not the issue. Whether she's experiencing a collectivist understanding of Women's Liberation from Racist Patriarchy, in a radical profeminist sense, is.

I argue that using the term "women inside systems of male supremacist and misogynistic exploitation" neither dehumanises nor condescends to any woman, but does locate systematised behavior, social practice, in the political system in which it exists, and without which it couldn't exist as it does. The term "sex worker" much like the term "domestic abuse" invisibilises the most influential forces "at work": racist patriarchy and corporate capitalism. Me calling someone a sex worker is as likely as me saying a woman being battered by men is surviving "domestic abuse". This blog exists to highlight and delineate the forces which oppress women, not obfuscate or obscure them.

One of many means of perpetuating oppressive systems is to engage in various forms of denial. Calling oneself a "sex worker" isn't necessarily engaging in patriarchy-denying. It may be a way of surviving it. What it isn't, ever, in the view of this blog, is freedom from patriarchy.

The following writing is from *here* @ Mmegi Online.

Opinion, by Malebogo Kgalemang

A Woman's Perspective On Prostitution 

Those who call for the legalisation of prostitution chart different reasons that are a reflection of a lack of deep, detailed and critical analysis of the effects of prostitution on women.

In this space, I want to respond to an already gendered aspect of prostitution as a business transaction where some women sell their bodies for sex. Some of you who have read past editions of both Monitor and the Sunday Standard will remember the different reasons propounded by some male commentators who are in support of legalising prostitution. Some of the reasons are, prostitution is "for the men who are not satisfied with their sex lives... the government will benefit from tax revenues" (Eddie Mdluli, SS, 5/2/07); "it will bring happiness and stability in families... and... curb the spread of HIV/AIDS" (Bugalo Chilume & Gobopamang Letamo cited by Joe Gaie).

Some are quick to give Thailand (a country with a flourishing sex industry) as an example of a country with low HIV/AIDS infection rates. With the example of Thailand, none of the proponents underpin the high and uncontrollable child and women trafficking nor is Sweden, a country that legalised prostitution is now convinced that the legalisation of prostitution is not working. Sweden has since passed a gendered legislation that criminalises the buying of sex (men who buy) and decriminalises the selling of sex (women are treated as victims who need help). Whether the legislation worked or not, the interested reader will have to dig for results, because they do exist.

But what is it that proponents of the legalisation of prostitution are missing? Is it possible to construct an imaginary space of how legalised prostitution will work? Is it possible to think of the different effects of legalising prostitution? What happens when we relate HIV/AIDS to prostitution, is it not a tenuous mix, where we combine our interest in sex, our fear of openly discussing our sexuality with our fear of illness and death?

By advocating for the legalisation of prostitution, proponents of prostitution are mainly requesting that prostitution be subject to government regulations and statutory laws of Botswana. The proponents are actually saying, "make it clean, see to it that the women have mandatory medical check-ups, set up brothels, and impose government control."

What this means is that the legislator will authorise everything from labour to taxation. Proponents of prostitution are requesting that prostitution be with any other profession.

But is it and would it be possible to view and equate prostitution like any other profession? What if we are to put a human face to prostitution? In a nutshell, what are the moral consequences of legalising prostitution (for there is no way we can exclude morality out of our critical and fundamental decision making)? What are the implications of legalising prostitution? What exactly are the proponents of prostitution demanding the legislator do?

To dissect the above questions, I commence from a very deep, strong and vividly and imaginary definition of prostitution. As defined by the radical feminist, and critique of prostitution, Andrea Dworkin, "prostitution is the use of a woman's body for sex by a man, he pays money, he does what he wants, and he leaves." Dworkin further elaborates this definition by accentuating that "prostitution is not an idea (or even a fantasy), it is the female vagina penetrated by the male phallus, by one man, and then another man, and then another man and then another man... That's what it is" (1995). This means prostitution is sexual exploitation, possible rape and violence against women. Women prostitutes do not have any form of power; they are subject to their client's demands.

For in prostitution, no woman stays whole. It is a social death to the woman prostitute, for she is a person without power, and honour. She is dehumanised. Her real identity and personal history are erased and are of no significance to the client since they are concealed from the client.

In a nutshell, proponents of prostitution are requesting that the legislator become a "pimp." The essential meaning of a "pimp" tends to assume an individual who controls the prostitution of one or more women. Pimping is not only about control. It is about the different dynamics at play in establishing, authorising, endorsing and enacting, flourishing, and sustaining legalised prostitution. Pimping comes in varied ways. It can be passive, active, and a direct or indirect beneficiary of parties involved in legalised prostitution.

Examples include tax payments to the government, travel agents, hotels and airlines that will benefit from sex-tourism, landlords benefiting from leasing their houses to brothels and escort services, tabloid and local newspapers which will derive an income and profit from advertisements placed by brothels, and escort agency that will mushroom once we legalise prostitution. For the above cited examples, beneficiaries will sustain prostitution by making profits from its legalisation.

Not only will the legislator be a "pimp," legalising prostitution reveals what the proponents of the legalisation of prostitution think of women. We already exist in a patriarchal and misogynist culture that narrowly views sex as an entitlement of male needs (see Chilume's Monitor opinion columns, 2005). Hence, how will we separate prostitution from the patriarchal culture, which already marginalises, stereotypes and stigmatises women? Proponents of prostitution advocate for the violation of the woman's right to dignity.

Proponents yearn and long to deny women prostitutes the right to own their bodies. Proponents desire women prostitutes to be reduced to commodities. Proponents deny women prostitutes' emotional stability. The legislator will encourage women and child trafficking, a crisis countries that have legalised prostitution are now facing.

Consequently, the legislator will institutionalise women's poverty and degradation.

Proponents of prostitution are requesting us to imagine a society in which we will socialise our daughters and sons to think of their sexuality as a commodity, and to dream of prostitution as a profession to be pursued. Since we tend to flourish on 'copy-cating,' we can either follow the example of Thailand or of Germany (a country that espouses a strong support for human rights) yet both countries are unable to control women and child trafficking. Alternatively, we can follow Sweden by criminalising the buying of sex.

For once the legislator (and the nation) creates a space where the relationship between prostitution and client takes places in a specific legal, institutional, social, political and ideological context, Batswana will become a pimp nation!! Is this what development is about? Is this what Vision 2016 envisions?

Malebogo Kgalemang
Drew University
Madison, NJ USA

From The Oppressor's Handbook, for Dummies: The Rights of the Abused Must Never Exceed or Approximate the Rights of the Abuser

[image of book cover is from here]

The reason feminists are hated by men is because feminists tell the truth about them. The reason anarchists are hated by corporate thugs is because anarchists tell the truth about them. The reason whistle-blowers are sometimes killed, or paid to be silent before whistle reaches lips, is because whistle-blowers tell the truth.

Here are a couple of very simple premises, which I hope you will consider deeply: sexist and racist violence would end if there weren't so many laws protecting the white male supremacist perpetrators. And oppressive status quo society is set up so that when people with less status, privilege, entitlements, and institutionalised power speak out accurately against the abuses of those with more power and privileges, it will be assumed that the ones with less power are lying. Of course. Children lie after all. (And adults do not?) Women are vengeful after all. (And men are not?) People of color are not to be trusted. (And white folks are?) Muslims of color can be sooooo fundamentalist! (And white Christians cannot? TERRORISTICALLY and historically so? HORRIFICALLY and systematically so?)

Cue the anti-radical libertarians, the civil liberties fundamentalists, the defenders of some bullshit notion called "free speech" and the perpetrators the ACLU defends, as well as the ACLUnatics, to get all antsy and upset. Palms may, in fact, be sweating. This is the moment for the arrogant and egotistical, the privileged and the entitled perps of the world to wonder: Where is this guy going with this post, anyway?! He's not going to mention anything I'VE done, is he??

But even if you're upset and feeling defensive, please read on and reserve judgment until you're done reading this post.

The next very few lines only are the beginning of a blog post from The Curvature, by Cara. For the rest of her post, please visit *here*. The rest is me blathering on about a little something called governmental, social, and interpersonal "accountability" or lack thereof.

England and Wales Move to Grant Anonymity to Rape Defendants

by Cara on May 21, 2010

In England and Wales, there’s a plan underway to grant anonymity to those who are accused of rape but have not been convicted.

Yes, under this plan, the name of the alleged victim would not be the only one withheld from public knowledge for reasons of safety and privacy.

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The Oppressor's Handbook


It is becoming clearer and clearer to me that in a conservative to liberal white supremacist and misogynistic country that police-protects and militarily defends the rights of oppressors over and against the rights of the oppressed, "civil liberties" is an ineffective tool to bring about radical social change, and "libertarianism" functions to shield the oppressors from challenges to their rights to privacy to perpetrate abuse while strengthening their entitlements to do harm.

When a child names their incest perpetrating parent as their rapist, they are socially castigated and made into the classic Western "bad guy". Witness so many stories, too many to mention here, but I'll direct you to the case of Mackenzie Phillips, whose own perpetrator's ex-spouse rushed to defend his memory. The message from many who had far less emotional investment in the memory of John that does Michelle, was, to put it crudely, this: "Screw [over] Mackenzie." Again. "I don't want to believe her truth. Her truth is ugly." Well, no. Her truth is beautiful. The story is ugly. There's a difference and please note it. The public doesn't like its own dirty laundry aired out. For so much of what happened to Mackenzie is happening to so many girls and young women, but, really, we'd rather just all talk about Jesse James and what a bastard he was to Sandra Bullock. And isn't that oil spill awful?! This is the deal, the plan, the way speaking out honestly in ways that make one vulnerable is made into a criminal act, effectively if not also legally. And, like any good sadistic country, any sign of vulnerability will be vultured, turned, if possible, into carrion. Pick, pick, pick until all that remains are those immobile and mute bones. Mackenzie is a strong woman. You can't live through what she lived through, face it, write it out which means facing it much more deeply, then allow it to be in the public domain, and be both alive and not strong. G-d bless her honesty, integrity, and courage.

Whenever a raped person speaks out against their rapist or rapists, the victim is immediately cast into the role of the perpetrator while the rapist is immediately seen as the one who is defamed, "destroyed", and innocent until proven guilty. Let's be clear about one thing: if he raped her, he isn't innocent, regardless of what a white male supremacist courtroom concludes. And women, often enough, if allowed to be conscious during the act by the rapist, do know when they've been raped. And it is "a presumption of innocence" which the Liberal and quasi-Libertarian State grants perps, not "innocence". A rapist is not ever "innocent until proven guilty" folks. Got it?

Whatever else they were, the white very class-privileged male students from Duke who rented or purchased one or two women of color (preferring white women but oh well, they wanted their entertainment THAT NIGHT, and whitemalesky-god forbid any normal whiteboy doesn't get what he somewhat sociopathically believes his penis or testicles are telling him he must have right away). 

I was once part of a really fucked up pyramid scheme (no, not the one my ancestors were involved in making for the King of Egypt, although that was rather fucked up too). This one was didn't involve slavery, but it did involve unethical economics and was making the rounds in various working to middle class communities a couple of decades ago or so. After speaking to my feminist mentor at the time, welcoming her to join in, she told me she wasn't interested in doing so because the whole thing seemed, to her, to be based on an ungrounded vision of hopeful [and exploitive] prosperity rather than an ethic rooted in a vision and practice of economic justice. I was annoyed she was going to let a little thing like ethics and social responsibility get in the way of "this really great opportunity!" Ah well, that's integrity for you. She didn't buy in and almost all of us who did lost a lot of money. I'd put in money for myself and a female relative who needed a car to find employment. She never got that car.

As I pondered what my mentor said, and after seeing a local news report warning people of this "scheme" (BAH! What does the press know!!, I thought), I did some math calculations and figured out in how many weeks we would need approximately a million people to be part of our local economic plan to help each other do good. I brought these calculations to one of our weekly meetings, where it was assumed that "bad energy" would ruin our chances. This was a New Age version of schemes that have been going around and around like bowl water in a broken toilet. So my news was seen as "not feeding the good energy" we all needed for this to happen. I was chided: "Who will want to join with someone like you thinking this can't work?" Yes, well, that was rather the point of me speaking out. They didn't seem to appreciate that. What I saw was the middle class folks like me who got in early got their dough--well, I didn't actually as I got in a bit too late. And the more this rippled out, a more economically desperate class of people were being told about it and coerced into joining. I'm not one to intervene much when I'm the only one being harmed--this is the legacy of being a survivor of familial or non-group sexual abuse. But when people with less privilege than me are being exploited, I'm not one to stay silent for long. As, um, you might have gathered from one or two of my blog posts. ;)

I once worked in a place where there was administrative corruption. Which is another way of saying "in a place where people were over-worked that valued having a rigidly hierarchical structure". I reported the corruption and was fired, and was made to feel by administrators as if I'd done something horribly wrong.

I once tried to get an alcoholic woman's husband to wake up and smell the alcohol on her breath; she was a surrogate mom figure in my life and I loved her and feared a very negative health impact from her daily drinking to drunkenness. She was a deeply caring person, and felt everything so much, and I think the alcohol was being used to try to wash away some of her pain. But when drunk it caused others pain, and I'm sure on some level she knew this, and it only tortured her more. For doing so he immediately told her what I'd "accused her of being"--I had, for the record, only expressed concerns about how alcohol and some of her prescription medications might be having an adverse effect on her. What I'd "accused her of being" was "possibly in danger", not "definitively a drunk". The next thing that happened was that she, not he, promptly ended our relationship and forbade either her husband or anyone else in her family from having any contact with me. Never get between an addict an their drug of choice. (I've since gone to Al-Anon meetings and have learned a thing or twelve. I stopped going when I couldn't tolerate hearing people thank a "Him" for helping them. He clearly isn't paying attention to "Us" because millions of Us are dying dreadful deaths in poverty and extreme illness; do the prayers of the most poor and the most ill go unanswered because relatively comfortable white USers get priority treatment because English is the language He believes everyone should be speaking?)

I once outed someone who harmed other people in ways he denied was harmful, and for that the harmer was said to be me. There are no whistle-blower-protection laws in social spaces outside of some workplace environments, and even then retaliation against the messenger of bad news is commonplace, hence "witness protection programs". I was the one declared guilty of committing a grievous offense, yet was without the means (sufficient social support) to adequately confront the liar on his lies, cross-examine his acts of slander, or adequately hold him to account for his grievous "mistakes" and grossly improper conduct. (To be clear, it's "a mistake" if you're doing something wrong that you had no idea was wrong. Getting drunk the first time might be a mistake. The twentieth time: not a mistake. And if you've been told by people you know have integrity that what you're doing is fucked up and wrong and harmful--explained carefully to you in terms you fully understand, and you keep on doing it, you don't get to call your continuation of the behavior "a mistake".)

This is how male and white supremacy works:

If someone who is marginalised and destatused inside a  family or social system speaks out against those who are statused and empowered and entitled and protected, the burden of proof--too often beyond a shadow of a doubt--will fall on the shoulders of the accuser, because, to be clear, we live in a society that doesn't really want anything bad to happen to abusers. Let the abused accusers drop off the Earth ASAP, but let us take precious care of our perpetrators until they die with all the people they fucked over sitting around them weeping at their passing--because, I'm sure deep down, they really were a good person. Or, well, they had some good traits. Or, at least, they were, you know, "troubled".

Consider this: we go out of our way to demonstrate how the next-door rapists, pimps, and procurers (I mean "sex addicts") are "troubled" and in need of whatever care it takes to rehabilitate them so they can be contributing members to society, but the raped and battered, the pimped and procured--well, get over being such a victim, would you? That abuse happened, what?, ten years ago? Get a life!! Note the disparity of compassion.

What the status quo (read: dominant society and its apologists and protectors) wants and needs is for the abuses to continue. The systems require the abuses, you see. They aren't extraneous mishaps. The harm, quite horrifically, is indispensable. So doing all that are necessary for these systems of harm to operate relatively smoothly, if secretly, or off the major radar screens, is precisely what MUST happen. The U.S. has a rather willful if habituated propensity for engaging in covert military operations, claiming that if the public knew what they were doing we'd call them out on being fucking genocidalists we'd put U.S. security at risk. Indeed. It's not "the people" who matter. It's the collectors of military intelligence. If "security of the citizenry" was what this government cared about, how could it come to pass that so many people are without jobs and homes? The answer is that the intelligence being collected is to protect us from something "out there" (psssst: I don't want to say this out loud, but the "intelligence" is telling me it rhymes with ooslims and possibly north sporeans). Please don't look behind the curtain at the people who are infecting collecting the intelligence, ruining running the financial industry, or profiting off of  presiding over the multinationals. They've got important work to do--ignoring your suffering and insecurity.

In the U.S. those systems include gynocidal male supremacy, genocidal white supremacy, corporate capitalism, Western imperialism, rampant military terrorism, and the unfathomably callous and violent destruction of the Earth and its non-human animal inhabitants and non-white human residents.

BP will never be held to account for the harm it has done, nor will the U.S. government which basically paved the way for this environmental disaster to happen by dropping so many regulations on oil companies (and on mega-corporations generally) who have decided its environmentally sound to drill into sea floors and plumb up the oil. This was, to dredge up the ol' catch-phrase, a disaster waiting to happen. (And that's a big ol' Thank You, to Bill Clinton.) Once disasters happen--especially if the companies aren't ours, we get to see U.S. senators and Anderson Cooper rage against the white man-chinery of corporate greed, never quite being told what role the press and government have in ensuring these cycles of economic and environmental disaster don't end until The End.

A government CAN ensure that fucked up shit like this isn't inevitable. Really, it can. But it won't in a plutocracy or a kyriarchy (my two new favorite words, so get used to seeing them). A federal government such as the military and corporate-owned one in the U.S. cannot stop atrocity as long as rich white doods rule. And atrocities cannot be stopped in a country where corporations are given the status of an individual citizen, but with many more tax write-offs and considerably more permissions and incentives to be psychopathic. See the movie The Corporation for a grim tale of what this means for us all.

The U.S. government is to blame (I know "blame" is an unkind and "emotionally incorrect" word) for virtually all of the deaths following Hurricane Katrina, and had a steady hand in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Haitians following the earthquake centered a few miles west of Port au Prince earlier this year. Why "to blame"? Because they've had a hand in destroying the environments of both places, of ruining ecosystems designed to withstand and rebound from things like hurricanes and earthquakes. You don't get mudslides unless you strip hills and mountains of their trees. And you don't get flooded cities if you leave wetlands in place to absorb the flooding waters. And if you think U.S-driven corporate greed isn't behind all that, you're either sorely mistaken or have already perished.

But rather than own up, like big grown adult boys to what the U.S. government has done, did recently, and still does that is inevitably and repeatedly catastrophic for humans, animals, plants, and other life, the mass media and its government will pretend these things are "terribly unfortunate natural disasters" or "flukes" or anything other than something they made sure COULD AND WOULD happen.

So the next time you hear a report about protecting the rights of the accused, be assured those laws aren't doing shit to help out the raped and are most certainly not ever intended to. And also be assured that harming a harmer is evil, but being harmed by a harmer is your own tough fucking luck. Oh, and shut up if you're thinking of speaking out. The corporate, militarised WHM supremacist status quo is deeply invested in not knowing what you have to say.

But you can talk about how AWFUL those "natural disasters" are. All day long and into the night. And how UNFORTUNATE it was that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time (like at home alone in her bed sleeping soundly when the "troubled" rapist climbed in through her unlocked window--you see, it really was her fault for wanting some of that predatory fresh air while she slept). Or how she's "to blame" for her own unconsciousness because she was in a bar and went to pee and came back and drank and danced and doesn't remember what happened next.

The questions I'll leave you with are these:
What if we stopped blaming the people who are preyed upon and systemically harmed? What if we didn't try and silence or discredit those who also speak out against injustice and atrocity? What if we stopped telling the oppressed folks who speak with anger and rage "to say it nicely next time and maybe they'll listen"? What if we stopped calling the whistle-blowers traitors and troublemakers, and stopped shooting the messengers? What would happen then?

Misrepresenting Malalai Joya... Again

[image is from here, at tehrantimes.com]

It is not uncommon in the West for white activists to misrepresent, misuse, and/or exploit the political views of women of color, wherever those women of color live. Lately, it seems as though few people are willing to accurately present or represent the views and politics of radical and revolutionary feminist Malalai Joya, preferring instead to promote their own political agendas as if Malalai Joya is on their side. Time magazine has done it, CNN has done it, Hillary Clinton has done it, and now a white Australian feminist has done it.

To all: please stop it. It's deeply misogynistic and racist, it is a form of Western cultural stereotyping, appropriation, and domination that is genocidal, and it is utterly disrespectful and dishonoring to a woman who is giving so much to fight for freedom for her countrywomen, and countrymen, while getting so little back in the way of support. When will whites learn to not speak for women of color, and to not exploit and misuse their work?

What follows is a cross post from *here*. You can also click on the title of the piece below.

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Friday

May212010

The veil is a 'war against women' and Australia should ban it too

Friday, May 21, 2010

It would seem there are some things in Australia we are not allowed to discuss. A ban on the burqa is clearly one of them. But the time has come to get over our fears and cultural fragilities – and grow up. The call to ban the burqa is receiving serious consideration in European parliaments. And it should here, too.

Belgian legislators voted last month to outlaw the burqa in public places. On Wednesday, a bipartisan resolution passed by the French parliament deploring the burqa – on the grounds of "dignity" and "equality of men and women" – was presented to the French cabinet, and a ban is expected later this year. Italy, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Canada are also grappling with the issue.

But in Australia, in a sign of cultural timidity and intellectual weakness, we seem intent on shunning any meaningful debate about the burqa and its place in a liberal democracy.

Virginia Haussegger in The Age, 21 May 2010

Haussenegger[sic*] quotes Malalai Joya in support of her argument, omitting to inform her readers that the Afghan politician has condemned proposals to ban the veil, on the grounds that it is "against the very basic element of democracy to restrict a human being from wearing the clothes of his/her choice".

See also "Nile vows to continue fight against the burqa ", Sydney Morning Herald, 21 May 2010
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*And to Bob Pitt, the writer of the blogpost above, please check the spellings of women's names. What you inadvertently (?) typed is really racist and is also disrespectful to Virginia Haussegger.