Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right, Here I am

image is from here

It should come as no surprise that I'm no fan of Democrats or Republicans, white neoliberals or white neoconservatives. They're all a bunch of corrupted, pro-corporate greed, pro-procurement, pro-rape, pro-racism apologists and enablers. In part because of past incorrect allegations made against the likes of Dworkin and MacKinnon, that they were, somehow, "in bed with the Right"--a lie that won't die--I want to make it very, very clear: I support and agree with the work of Dworkin and MacKinnon and don't agree AT ALL with neoconservatives. AT ALL. Now, if they were "in bed with the Right", how could that be? I support the Dworkin-MacKinnon anti-pornography ordinance becoming the law of the land in the U.S. and elsewhere. And I despise the politics and values of the Religious Republican Right. How could that be?
 

The reason people think that Dworkin and MacKinnon were allied with the Right is because, back then, as now, if you're not pro-neoLiberal you were, by default, pro-neoConservative. Because according to dominant media, there really are no other choices. I was friends with someone for years--he was a white conservative man. He knew I opposed rape, racism, and genocide. He knew where I stood on most issues and came to the conclusion that I was a liberal. He was quite surprised to know I was as anti-Democrat as anti-Republican. Surely it's not because the Democrats are anti-rape, anti-racism, and anti-genocide.

I told him that in the U.S. the political spectrum runs from far Right, to not so far Right, to moderate Right, to Right-wing liberals, to liberal liberals, to progressive liberals. I explained that the dominant media and dominant culture as a whole will not care to comprehend the views of anyone else. And that this "if you're not one you must be the other" mentality and worldview is absurdly narrow, he sort of scratched his head, but agreed. He's not stupid and he's not a jerk. He's just a white conservative het guy, who isn't homophobic or very misogynistic, btw.

Corruption is part of U.S. politics in the same way that voting and racism, classism, heterosexism, and misogyny is. Hypocrisy, including the protection of criminals who are never arrested while criminalising and permanently imprisoning people who don't do harm, is here, it's fearful, and we're asked to get used to it. Terrorism in the form of men battering women and men raping women and girls, and some boys too, is not going to be regarded as "terrorism" the way finding packages with possible explosives on planes will be. Because that "terrorism" is committed--allegedly, by people "out there" who "aren't us". But incest perpetrators, child molesters, and serial batterers and rapists are "us" and are "here, fearful, and they want us to get used to it. It's all part of The U.S. American Way.

What follows is from Mother Jones and may be linked back to by clicking on the title just below.

Tom Marino's Free Pass

— GOP congressional candidate Tom Marino. | MarinoForUSCongress.com.

Can reported ethics shenanigans and alleged mob ties keep a GOPer out of Congress? Fuggedaboutit.

— By Nick Baumann

 

Fri Oct. 29, 2010 4:10 AM PDT

How big of a scandal does it take to make a congressional candidate unelectable? This year, if you're a Republican, it has to be pretty darn big.

Take GOP House candidate Tom Marino in Pennsylvania's Tenth District, located in the northeast corner of the state. As a US attorney, Marino gave a reference to his "close friend" Louis DeNaples, a convicted felon his office investigated for potential mob ties. When the Department of Justice reportedly launched an investigation into the reference, Marino resigned, and got a job working as DeNaples' in-house lawyer.

Since then, Marino has offered several different stories about whether he was authorized to give DeNaples the reference in the first place. (He wasn't.) But the scandal, which Marino's Dem opponent, Rep. Chris Carney, has harped upon in ads and speeches, seems to have had little impact on Marino's chances of ousting the two-term incumbent Blue Dog Dem. Nate Silver, the New York Times' polling guru, gives Marino a stunning 74 percent chance of winning on Tuesday.

DeNaples, who was convicted of defrauding the government of more than half a million dollars in the 1970s, needed a reference so he could obtain a license from the state gaming commission to operate slot machines at the Mount Airy Lodge, a resort he owns in Eastern Pennsylvania. In 2005, Marino provided that reference.

According to reporting by the Allentown Morning Call's Matt Birkbeck, Marino's assistants learned about the reference in 2006, after they had launched a perjury investigation into DeNaples' statements about his relationship to the Scranton-based Bufalino crime family. Marino's assistants reported the conflict of interest to the Justice Department, which recused Marino's entire office from the case and transferred it to another district. Then the DOJ launched an internal investigation into Marino's conduct. The probe was closed when Marino resigned in 2007 to work for DeNaples.

On at least two occasions—in an interview with a local newspaper reporter last September and a radio appearance this April—Marino claimed that he had provided the reference only after receiving permission from his superiors at the Justice Department. That wasn't true—at least according to the DOJ.

On September 28, Marino conceded that he never received permission to give the reference, and told the Sudbury Daily Item that he was allowed to give such references provide he "didn't use his job title or attempt to promote individuals on his staff." That meshes a bit with Justice Department guidelines, which say US attorneys shouldn't use their "position or title" to "coerce; to endorse any product, service or enterprise; or to give the appearance of governmental sanction."

Unfortunately for Marino, it is highly possible that he did in fact use his job title to provide the reference to DeNaples. The Pennsylvania State Gaming Commission has not released DeNaples application for the slots license. But blank license applications clearly indicate that references must include their occupations and business addresses. So if Marino filled out the form correctly, he also revealed his occupation when he provided the reference for DeNaples.

There's also little doubt that Marino's recusal from the DeNaples investigation constitutes an admission that there was a potential ethics issue involved in providing the reference. Justice Department rules mandate recusal "only where a conflict of interest exists or there is an appearance of a conflict of interest or loss of impartiality." Deborah Rhode, a legal ethics expert at Stanford University Law School, says "it suggests that there is a relationship there that may be compromised by a conflict of interest," cautioning that some of the details of the case remain confidential and she is only familiar with what has been reported publicly.

It's clear that Marino feels the DeNaples story is damaging to his campaign. In mid-October, he told the Scranton Times-Tribune he didn't want to take any more questions on the controversy. His spokesman did not return a call requesting comment. (Carney's office also did not respond to interview requests.) Not taking questions "looks bad on multiple levels," says Rhode. "This kind of conduct by a candidate is deeply problematic."

I also asked Kent Kauffman, a legal and business ethics expert at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, to analyze the situation. Here's part of what he wrote:

If the allegations made against Mr. Marino are accurate, at least three, and perhaps up to five federal regulations on Department of Justice employee ethics are at issue.5 CFR 2635.702(b) (on Misuse of Position) allows a DOJ employee to "sign a letter of recommendation using his official title only in response to a request for an employment recommendation or character reference based upon personal knowledge of the character of an individual with whom he has dealt in the course of Federal employment or whom he is recommending for Federal employment."

If the gaming license reference doesn’t qualify as a ‘letter of recommendation’ under the Code of Federal Regulations, then this rule might not apply. However, if the reference document required the listing of the referent’s business position, then a question could be raised that Mr. Marino used his official title, which would seem to show that the reference was based on the underlying DOJ investigation. That rule’s focus is on the recommender’s knowledge of the recommended party coming from DOJ employment.

If Mr. Marino were to claim that the reference he gave to Mr. DeNaples was purely personal in nature and not official, that would seem to fly in the face of the purpose of a reference made to support someone’s business activities. When seeking such a reference, it would seem to be implicit that the title of the reference provider is more important than his or her name and address.

Kauffmann also cited other Justice Department rules on misuse of position, impartiality, and personal relationships as potentially problematic for Marino.

Even right-wing activists have had their doubts about Marino. In March, during the primary, Zach Oldham, a RedState.com contributor, wrote a post calling Marino the "GOP’s Giannoulias"—a reference to Illinois Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias, whom Republicans have accused of being a "mob banker." (RedState chief Erick Erickson promoted the post to the site's front page.) Here's how Oldham wrapped up:

One of the keys to a Republican resurgence is not only ensuring we have credibly conservative candidates running for office, but also candidates with a personal and professional record we can be proud of and defend. Tom Marino doesn’t fit the bill.

I recently asked Oldham if he still feels the same way about Marino. He responded via Twitter:

... to be honest, I haven't paid attn to that race post-primary, but I'm sure he's better than Carney.

According to the polls, a lot of the voters in the district feel the same way. Marino may have a pretty big scandal to deal with. But at least he's not a Democrat.

Charlie Sheen was caught with his procuring PANTS ON THE GROUND and his racist mouth wide open: How Much Will Hollywood Pay this WHM Who Yells N**ger, N**ger, N**ger! Answer: $2 Million for a 1/2 Hour of Broadcast Time a Week, in "Two and a Half Men"

this "black and white" image of the criminal spewer of hate speech, exploiter of women, and addict dad, Charlie Sheen, is from here

Q: What should you do when you find a white guy screaming the n word repeatedly?
A: Throw a white sheet over him.

You think I'm joking. (Read on, ARPers, read on.)

Charlie Sheen is the highest paid crack/coke addict in Hollywood, and not even him yelling the n word

repeatedly is likely to get him tossed off his hit program. And why is that? Because Hollywood values money more than it values sobriety and ending white male supremacy. That's why. And because serial procurers of prostitutes don't count as predators, as exploiters, as rapists. They're just "normal guys" who "man up" by paying women for sexist sex. And because he has Hollywood-rich white het male privileges and entitlements to do whatever the fuck he wants to do, however destructive, however self-destructive, and get away with it.

How many poor Black men get caught with crack and are put in jail? How much time in prison is Charlie Sheen going to see for having cocaine all over his face, high out of his mind? This isn't a crime in what sense? Either it's a crime for poor Black men AND rich white men or it's not a crime for anyone. Isn't that what the U.S. allegedly stands for: equality for all and such? Or if you're rich, white, het, male, and famous, is there a very, very different standard of justice for you than for everyone else? According to dominant media and dominant society, if you're Black you're a no-good criminal; if you're white you're a poor addict. Got it.

If a woman of color is poor, is a cocaine addict, is found naked in hotels with people engaged in systems of prostitution, and has coke all over her face, is she regarded as "a good mother"? Why is Charlie Sheen regarded as "a good father"? What about him being a procurer of trafficked women and women who are rape survivors, and a rampant drug addict, and a spewer of racist epithets makes him "a good father"?

Quintuple standards, not double standards, are operative here: fame, class, race, sex, and gender.

[Please also see this A.R.P. post titled "Two and a Half Misogynist Men", about Charlie Sheen's sexist TV show.]

From the Huffington Post. Please click on the title below to link back.

Charlie Sheen Found Nude In Restaurant, Screaming
N-Word: Report

Posted: 10-29-10 10:12 AM

Radaronline.com is reporting some lurid details about Charlie Sheen's wild Monday night in NYC.

Before police were called to his suite in the Plaza, Charlie was out to dinner at Daniel with a group of friends and their escorts including porn star Capri Anderson, who charged him $12,000 for the night, according to Radar.

"At one point he convinced Capri to go to the bathroom with him. When they got into the bathroom he started snorting cocaine and then took off his pants," a source told the website. "Charlie wanted to have sex with Capri and tried but she stopped him and demanded her $12,000. He didn't have the money on him so she left him in the bathroom!"

When Charlie failed to return to the table, his assistant went into the bathroom looking for him.

"When the assistant opened the door, there was Charlie standing there naked with cocaine all over his face!" the source said. "He was delusional and just completely lost. Totally out of it."

The assistant reportedly helped Sheen get dressed and got him out of the restaurant and back to the hotel. This likely happened after Denise Richards stopped by and posed for a photo with Capri.

Back at the Plaza, a delusional and high Charlie went off his rocker and started spewing the n-word, Radar reports.

"He was punching the walls of the hotel room and going crazy and shouting 'n**ger, n**ger, n**ger for no reason at all," a source said. "It was absolutely bizarre."

Charlie reportedly tried once more to have sex with Capri, but she demanded her money first. When he couldn't find his wallet he began throwing furniture around and screaming violently and she locked herself in the bathroom. Police were called, and when they arrived Charlie was nude, disoriented and screaming the n-word. They threw a sheet over him and tackled him, the source said.

While Breast Cancers Needs a Cure, Western Media Makes Aryan Whiteness into Middle Eastern Experience

image of book cover is from Amazon.com, here

What do we see when we look into media and literature through the lenses of children? How do children register messages--subtle and overt--that whitenes and lightness is good and blackness and darkness is bad. Do we assume it makes lighter-skinned people feel better than darker-skinned people? We do know, from decades-apart studies using "white" dolls and "black" dolls that African American girls, regardless of what shade of brown their skin was, would prefer to have a white doll over any browner-skinned doll. Where do you think girls get those messages? From genes? From God? Or from society? My hunch is the messages come from society.



Breast cancer is a particularly prevalent and deadly disease in some regions in the Middle East. I hope that various struggles to assist with finding a cure for breast cancer succeed. And maybe along the way, other life threatening conditions--like patriarchy, like warfare, like racism, like white het male supremacy--find ways out of our lives as well.

Please note that the story above takes place in the Middle East, where, not surprisingly, many Middle Eastern women live: and unless they've relocated from Europe, most women there are far from fair-skinned and blond-haired, while also thin and young. There is a kind of female person the Western media loves to "show off" in exploitive and also in racist ways--the hidden messages are that this is what women ought to look like; whiteness and lightness is good; darkness is not so good or even bad. This Western culturally imperialistic and genocidal narrative finds its way into a story about breast cancer in a place where very, very few people of the region have very blond hair, pale skin, and non-brown eyes. Wouldn't you know, though: NBC News finds one such woman to focus their story on, even while noting that breast cancer impacts the lives of so many women in the region of different religions and ethnicities. Because, well, a darker-skinned Palestinian woman's story just wouldn't have given white heterosexist male supremacy the same media boost it routinely requires. And the U.S. has a financial and military stake in maintaining white heteropatriarchal standards and practices there in Israel. For one thing, the more lighter people there are there--sort of Christian European-looking, the more likely anti-Semitic and racist U.S.ers are to feel supportive of Israel.

I wouldn't necessarily make the claim that Western news media specifically close this woman who is a whiter-shade-of-pale. I would make the claim that in the white supremacist West, and in countries that are increasingly white dominated, such as Israel, the media will "naturally" gravitate to telling the stories of the women they most want to see survive. The oppressive mistreatment and terroristic mass murder of women of color across the globe by white men, including women of color in the West and in the Middle East, is one sign that white men don't hold much regard for women who aren't light. They don't hold white women in very high regard so you know white men's behavior is going to be especially ugly when it comes to invading places where darker people to live: hence we invade darker people's countries, displace the citizens, harass them, relocate the residents, rape them, and  murder them not so much with suicide bombers, but with military jet bombers and other weapons of mass destruction, so "our" people don't necessarily have to die in the process.

There was a Bounty paper towel ad with white-gloved hands showing us that those curiously brown spills are presented as nasty and also get cleaned up nicely with bleached white paper towels. And, Brian Williams also informed/warned/alarmed the U.S. public with this report, noting that for the first time, the most common newborn boys' name in England is one of several spellings of Mohammed. Xenophobia and racism find their way into practically every story.

Dakota Activist Waziyatawin, PhD will speak on Indigenous Peoples and Global Collapse, Nov. 2, 2010 @ Univ. of Victoria

media still featuring Waziyatawin is from here

What follows is from Culturite. Please click on the title just below to link back.

Indigenous Peoples and Global Collapse: Waziyatawin

October 27th, 2010

Waziyatawin, an incredible Dakota scholar, activist and one of my Indigenous Governance professors, will be speaking at the University of Victoria on Tuesday, November 2, 2010. The talk is being presented as part of the UVic Native Students Union Speaker Series and will be held from 11:30am – 1:30pm in the First Peoples House Ceremonial Hall at UVic. The presentation will be tailored for an Indigenous audience. The event is free and no registration is required.

Waziyatawin’s recent work builds on her own research and writing, as well as existing literature on peak oil and the impending collapse of Western Civilization, as framed by Derrick Jensen (Endgame) and the END:CIV project.



To my Indigenous brothers and sisters: if you haven’t yet had the chance to hear Waziyatawin speak, I urge you to come out and listen. She will rock your world,  shatter your assumptions about peak oil, and compel you to take action to defend yourself, your people, and your homeland!

Indigenous Governance will also be hosting Endgame: An Evening with Derrick Jensen at UVic on November 17th.

The Most and Least Corrupt Countries in the World... by what standards?

Transparency International

The stats and map are posted. Sunny piss-yellow, golden places are "good" or, rather "very clean". Menstrually bloody red places are "bad". Darker bloody red places are VERY bad, or "highly corrupt" according to this report. Men piss on things to mark them. When women bleed "down there" they are said to be dirty.

How much you wanna bet that if a bunch of white men are deciding what countries are most corrupt, the ones white men patriarchally, racistly, militarily, and economically destroy will be red while the countries where white men live will be yellow or golden? For the really big version of this map, that has more detail and information, please see *here*.

We can note in the top left corner how "corruption perceptions index measures the perceived levels of public-sector corruption  in 178 countries around the world."

What is clear is that whoever is deciding the criteria for what constitutes "most corrupt" and "least corrupt" has some major biases against what might be termed "global-impact corruption". A definition is posited which disallows factors which would have the U.S. ranked as most corrupt. It goes a bit like this: "We're not talking about corruption in the sense of breaking the law," she said. "We're talking about a sense that the system is corrupted by these practices. There's an integrity deficit."

What if we were going by breaking the law? Breaking international laws of human rights, for example? Breaking the law in terms of starting and continuing illegal, corrupt wars in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, where the U.S. has been militarily ruling for years. Note how Iraq and Afghanistan make the "most corrupt" list but the U.S. is at the other end of the spectrum, in the "least corrupt 25".

What if we were making determinations based on countries that make and reinforce laws that allow corruption to occur but appear to be "free trade"?

What if we were going by breaking our own laws against raping children in our homes, nationally, regionally, and internationally?

Which countries claim that men raping women is a crime and his awful but allow it to flourish and protect rapes that are filmed as "free speech"?

Which countries pride themselves on being anti-racist white practicing white supremacy?

Isn't "hypocrisy" a sign of corruption?

Which countries in the Global North hoard the most wealth and resources, at the expense of the rest of the Global South? Which countries have been committing genocide unabated for the longest periods of time? The U.S. has been at it since before it became an allegedly more perfect union. And it shows no signs of stopping as it strives for even greater "perfection".

What if we were basing this on this criterium: which country most supports the most wage slavery and sexual slavery while also having the material and military means to stop it?

Which country claims to be most egalitarian, most fair, most just, most free, while participating in activities that are torture, criminal, barbaric, genocidal, and gynocidal?

Which countries are most responsible for working at polluting and killing the Earth. Where's England on the list with their BP corruption? Where's does the U.S. with ExxonMobil, Halliburton, and many other evil-doing corporations rank?

Which countries funnel the most armaments to poorer countries so that poor people can kill each other in ways that would be utterly impossible were it not for those weapons of mass destruction?

The countries that are most corrupt according to the above and other measurable atrocities would be some of these golden yellow areas: the U.S. and Western Europe. There are countries where rape is endemic in ways it is not in the U.S., but the U.S. claims to respect women and calls itself post-feminist, while making rape inevitable, and while it and European countries socially, politically, economically, and naturally destablising every country where rape is at alarmingly atrocious levels.

The map above and the rest below are from Transparency International. Please click on the title below to link back.

Most (And Least) Corrupt Countries

Categories: National News, Foreign News

07:36 am

October 26, 2010

 

by JJ Sutherland

Transparency International

Corruption seems endemic. It follows war and chaos like an unwelcome cousin. Transparency International has just released its annual report ranking corruption across the world.

At the bottom of the list, the most corrupt, are countries hit by warfare and strife, unsurprisingly. Somalia is the worst, followed by Burma, then Afghanistan and Iraq. The least corrupt countires are Denmark, New Zealand, and Singapore, unchanged from last year.

In a press release, the organization said, “Notable among decliners are some of the countries most affected by a financial crisis precipitated by transparency and integrity deficits.” Greece fell from 71 to 78 and Italy from 63 to 67. The US also fell, from the 19th spot to the 22nd. From Reuters:

Nancy Boswell, president of TI in the United States, said lending practices in the subprime crisis, the disclosure of Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme and rows over political funding had all rattled public faith about prevailing ethics in America.

"We're not talking about corruption in the sense of breaking the law," she said. "We're talking about a sense that the system is corrupted by these practices. There's an integrity deficit."

Various financial scandals at state and city level had encouraged the impression that the regulatory oversight was weak and that influence could be bought, she added.

Corruption is something that just becomes ingrained in a society and once it's there it's hard to stop. It becomes a habit of mind, a sense that this is simply how things done. An official pamphlet given to Iraqi refugees who are heading to the States advises them not to bribe police officers. After working in Iraq for years I came home from one trip and had to go to the DMV. I'm waiting in line, as one does, and all I can think is, "Who can I bribe to make this go away?" To address corruption you have to change a society's whole way of thinking about what the cultural norms are, which is not easy, to say the least.

Why an Intersectional Anti-Rape Movement is Necessary, along with a link to Feminsm, Marxism, Method, and the State: An Agenda for Theory, by Catharine A. MacKinnon

poster image is from here

If the following link works for you, please read any or all of the material and let me know what you think of it. You can also find this work in MacKinnon's 1989 book, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State. In the journal, Signs, the content appears on pages 515 and 516. I found it on a website called Racism and National Consciousness Resources.
http://racismandnationalconsciousnessresources.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/catherine-mackinnon-feminism-marxism-method-and-the-state-an-agenda-for-theory1.pdf

I've discussed the beginning of this essay earlier this year, *here [2 Feb. 2010 post]*.

Race, like gender, like sexuality, like economic class, all exist as socially real phenomena, lived complexly while organised and politically constructed to appear to be predominantly and irredeemably natural and inevitable. There is, in my view, increasingly less and less recognition that each category necessarily includes all the behaviors which manifest each. And that among these political behaviors are some which might seem relatively benign, but are linked to those others which are more overtly unjust and inhumane. To see how the apparently benign behaviors are tied to those that are terroristic ought to lead us perpetually and perennially toward developing approaches and strategies for stopping the madness. Perspectives which clarify rather than cloud the foundational, destructive dimensions of each hierarchical caste system, must congeal through the process of arresting, obstructing, and halting the forces used to maintain each system of power: white supremacy, male supremacy, and heterosexism. The theories are borne and honed in the practice of the resistance and rebellion, not prior to it.

Post-modernism, in the wrong hands, becomes a tool for obfuscating the political and terroristic social nature of each of the aforementioned hierarchies. Social norms and roles work to make it appear these play as they should. Whether through media propaganda or military might, we are routinely led back to the fundamental belief that whites ought to be positioned over and against people of color structurally, so that white supremacist ideology and its practice of oppression keeps whites better off, living off the bodies of those who are not white. What liberals misunderstand is that hateful ideologies alone don't oppression make. Hate, or callousness, or cruelty, or selfishness, must be institutionalised and backed by major systems of force in order to be collectively dangerous. The force of ideology isn't found primarily in ideas, but in terroristic and brutal actions. The idea of Black Power, for example, offers no significant threat to white power as long as whiteness rides a history and present of anti-Black slavery, lynchings, apartheid policies, and gross discrimination. The same with gender, sexuality, and economic class. The idea of feminism isn't substantively threatening to male supremacist power as long as misogyny is normative and rape is inevitable. Men who disparage feminists do so not because feminists will harm men, but because men want to ensure they can continue to harm women, for profit, pleasure, and significant privilege.

When the suffering of women who are terrorised and otherwise harmed by male supremacists is seen as psychological and personal, not structurally political and social, it may be diagnosed as a dysfunctional aspect of the oppressed not adjusting properly to positions of mandatory servitude. Refusal to agree to the terms of one's own subjugation is cause not only for being harmed, but also incarcerated and institutionalised. Denial of the level of threat, displacement of rage onto those similarly oppressed are among two strategies for surviving while the cattle cars make their way to the gates of Auschwitz. Assimilation into or acquiescence within systems of destruction can only enable more destruction. And those with the most structural power are the most responsible for stopping the trains on their tracks, then dismantling the tracks and the train cars, as well as concentration camps and the SS.

Post-modern theories were developed in Europe, mostly by anti-status quo white men, to assist in toppling oppressive regimes--in thought and beyond thought in the very bloody social world. They were not intended to be used to reinforce and maintain the status quo. But, as with most theories exposing the vulnerabilities of the most powerful, or the lies that prop the leaders up, post-modernism, largely, has been misappropriated by the Academy, along with post-structuralism, to confuse the issues at hand. Where "woman" was, for a time, defined by some feminists as the category of people assigned female at birth, raised as girls, and treated as women as adults, post-modernism in sexuality and gender studies assumes that there is no such discrete category. This effectively invisibilises the force and terror used to create it as such. People who are initially indentified as female, are raised to be feminised because that is seen to be appropriate-while-compulsory, and who are treated as feminised adults by men, sexually and socially, are a particular oppressed group in a male supremacist system. To pretend that group isn't specific while diverse, is to ignore social-political reality.

Once we stray from the idea that gender is political into the belief that gender is fluid, flexible, and malleable, we drift away from the urgency to radically challenge gender's right to exist in the first place. To make race only into "ethnic difference" is to pretend white supremacy doesn't construct "race", including especially the white one.

We are living in dangerous times. Theories that once held value in communities of resistance to the status quo are threatened by other theories which effectively mess with the project of dismantling and radically transforming corporate racist atrocious patriarchy (CRAP) by back-burnering actions aimed at exposing and eliminating the terror and force necessary for CRAP to exist.

If race or gender is re-naturalised as one of many differences in the human species, seen only as too constrictive due to their not being enough categories, we are left with white and male supremacy as ruling systema of oppression. The same is true of sexuality and economic class. More presence of more races, genders, sexualities, and classes inside CRAP effectively avoids dealing with the issue that one of them, "non-white" or "woman" or "non-heterosexual" or "poor" is required to be submissive and subservient to another group of people, called "white people", "men", "heterosexuals", and "the wealthy".

One of the reasons I have, in some posts, questioned why bisexuality is contained in the acronym of the social group working to end heterosexism is because it doesn't come with a political agenda other than to fight for its right to sit at the table that dead lesbian and gay youth rot under. I support a bisexual agenda to dismantle heteropatriarchy. I simply haven't seen one materialise.

I question the usefulness, even, of perpetuating the term "gay" if all it means politically is a category of feminised men striving to not be seen and treated as if feminised while allowing or encouraging women to be treated as such. Better I call myself pro-feminist, to locate my relationship to opposition to masculinist/patriarchal force and terrorism, including that aimed at gay men. But what I call myself matters less that two other things: how I am treated--statused or stigmatised, why that is the case, and what I am doing in concert with other oppressed people to end these conditions of some groups being privileged while others are persecuted.
 
If we accept, without organised resistance and as inevitable, the systems which necessarily destroy some of us, we insure the tally of traumatised and murdered oppressed people will go higher and higher.

The way to stop deaths by warfare is to end the wars. We don't collectively work to stop warfare if we are socialised to consider it heroic, erotic, or profitable on any level. There are many wars being waged. Let's not forget about these: men's against women; whites against people of color; straights against lesbians and gays; and the rich against the poor. The oppressed seeking membership in the clubs of the oppressor don't accomplish the dismantling necessary to end the bloodshed. Nor do efforts of the oppressor seeking to join the ranks of the oppressed.

We either collectively challenge and end the terrorism or we don't. To turn it into entertainment such as via video games, into sex such as via pornography, into increasingly complex sociology via an academic version of postmodern theory, or or into official status by honoring and celebrating those who murder people abroad, such as in the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, we allow the terrorism to thrive. We make the trauma and horror that comes with this terrorism into something we need to figure out how to endure endlessly, not end by any means necessary. Once the degradation and subjugation of the oppressed is revered as normal by the systemically privileged controlling groups, we are left with the illusion that hierarchies are merely differences, not expressions of  dominance.

When I challenge men to take up the project of ending the rape of women by men, or the incesting of girls by men and boys, what I get back is either resignation that such a project is doomed to fail, a complaint that I'm ignoring the ways boys and men are also hurt in society, or the argument that it isn't a worthwhile project relative to others that are seemingly more important. To understand how rape is tied not only to patriarchy, but also to white supremacy, heterosexism, and capitalism, is to begin to make the case that de-prioritising an agenda and organised practice of ending rape is keeping all those other systems of force in place.

Once you see who is raped in society and care about the experiences and feelings of raped people as much as those of anyone else, you might also see how white supremacy, male supremacy, heterosexism, and capitalism operate together terroristically.

The Alleged and Actual "Bad Parenting" That Results in Children Living Out On Streets that are Not Home

photograph of Ruchira Gupta of Apne Aap is from here

It annoys the shit out of me when non-Third World and non-impoverished people propose that the solution to things like prostitution abuse is "better parenting" as if incest and battery of children, and lesbophobia, homophobia, and transphobia in families, aren't big ol' glaring factors in why many children in the West/North run away from home. And as if poor parents anywhere in the world are, intrinsically, bad parents. As if pimps, procurers, war-mongers, drug-dealers, corporate polluters, capitalistic greedy bastards, selfish, callous, and inhumane jerks, and other predators aren't THE problem with regard to children being out in the street. There are so many obnoxious "First World" assumptions about life and complete ignorance about realities that some of us in the U.S. and the Global Northwest simply do not face--and that some of us in North America, for example, DO face but are not reported about because the rich white het male-controlled media doesn't give a flying fuck about poor children and women of color on or beyond this continent.

For those of us living in great denial with equally great arrogance and significant structural and social supports, we assume that everyone has the same options, the same freedoms, and the same levels of privilege and entitlement, to do what we want, including to work in sexxxism industries, or not. So the line between "choosing to work there" and "being enslaved there" is made blurry only by those who have enough privilege and/or denial to believe everyone "chooses to work there".

So let's be clear: if you're not living in abject poverty, earning less than three dollars a day income, shut the fuck up about what bad parents some parents are for letting their children out into the street to be picked up by pimps. Because, really, you have no fucking idea what's going on. None at all. You have no idea how pimps are, necessarily, smooth operators, lying bastards, who approach poor parents sometimes and pretend to represent educational institutions in the West/North and propose that their child will actually thrive in the Global North/West if only they can get to a good academic institution located in that far off place.

Maybe a parent (inside or beyond North America, South Asia, Eastern Europe, or Central America) wants something likes this for their child, something other than abject poverty and hunger. Maybe the pimp is very good at what he does: lying and stealing, including stealing children from parents through deception and the manipulation of powerful love so many parents have for their own children--a love so strong one would be willing to not see one's own child for years just to know s/he has a better life as defined and delineated by the pimp. And, then, most tragically, the pimp brings the child into a life far worse than any imagined hell. And the parents are betrayed and may not get to know this for some time. So, that's not bad parenting, to be clear. That's called "effective pimping and trafficking and slaving". Just for the record.

Please click on the title of the article to link back to the source website and watch the short video that goes with the text if it doesn't play below.

Promise of better life: tricked into India’s sex-slave trade

Campaigners in India are demanding that authorities step-up efforts to battle what has become a real plague for the country - sex-trafficking.

With little value placed on girls from poor families, it is thought more than a quarter of a million women are trafficked in India each year. Some are as young as nine, and come from the rural areas of neighboring Nepal.

The parents of the victims do not always realize what the world outside their home is like, says Ruchira Gupta, the president of an anti-trafficking NGO called Apne Aap (which means self-help in Hindi).

”The parents may know a little bit about what Bombay [Mumbai] is if there is television in the village. To them Bombay represents a lifestyle rather than a brothel, and the difference between hunger and food and a job,” she explains.

It is easy to cross the border between India and Nepal. There are well established routes for trafficking.

“India is the epicenter of the sex trafficking industry right now in the world. The reason is that there is low enforcement of laws against traffickers, pimps and johns,” says Ruchira Gupta.

In the northern state of Bihar, rescue groups keep an eye on the trains passing through.

”It's not easy,” confesses Sita, one of the social workers. “When we ask youngsters where they are going, they say they are going to study. If a girl is traveling with a boy, she says he is her brother. But when we demand their identity cards, we see they aren't related.”

“We have no work in our village. I have two young children and when I was promised a job in Mumbai, I decided to take up the offer,” one of the rescued women says.

It is an easy to convince young girls in a village hundreds of kilometers away that they can make it big in Mumbai.

“Girls are misled by people offering them jobs in big cities,” says Bihar Police Inspector A.K. Gupta. “Some are convinced that they can be a part of a dance group, and are conned into coming to India.”

Taking into account the gravity and the sheer size of the problem, campaigners want to see villagers in Nepal given more warnings of the dangers, and the police more active in clamping down on traffickers.