August 2008 – Page 4

We take a brief moment to rant on about terminology with regards to sex work…

The terms, when speaking of sex workers, “selling their bodies”/ “selling themselves” need to die in a fire. Rather than write about it yet again, I am just going to hack a few bits from previous posts over from that dive I call a blog so perhaps some perspective can be gained and I won’t have to see those terms in any more comment threads! Hey, a gal can dream, right?

“…I got to thinking about the terminology used by folks when discussing the business of sex work, namely the assertion that sex workers are “selling themselves”. I have decided not only do I dislike this phrasing, but it is inaccurate.

When something is bought or sold, it implies direct ownership. You buy a car, you own it. You buy a pair of shoes, you own them. Yes, in some unfortunate cases, some sex workers are owned, literally, but by in large, that is not truly the case. What ever other reasons, conditions or motivations rest behind a woman or mans involvement in sex work, be it stripping or erotic massage or porn or nude modeling or prostitution, they are not owned. They are not bought. They are not selling themselves. They are providing a service, which does not result in ownership. I also think often, whether intentional or not, when people use such terminology “you are selling yourself”, there is a level of shock tactics involved. Such terms imply slavery…that the sex worker, regardless of his or her conditions, level of autonomy, or choices is, merely via the terminology, property. A slave. The whole of their being a commodity, which is bought and sold. And that is demeaning. Truth is, sex workers are not property, or slaves, or the whole of their being a commodity. They are not bought or owned, and they are not selling themselves, they are selling a service. They are not even truly selling their bodies or sexuality. If anything, they are renting them out for a fee. The majority of them are not ‘kept’ by their customers. They are not put away somewhere after they have served their purpose like a car or a pair of shoes. They are people who then go their own way, do their own thing, and live their lives. They have not been sold. They have provided a service, conducted business, and remain people rather than goods. I may sell sexuality, but I am not owned. No one has a deed or receipt for me as a person. I am not selling myself, nor being sold. I am providing a service and perhaps renting my sexuality. That is what a sex worker does. I go home to my own house and my own life; I am not ‘used then put in my owners garage’. I am not a slave or someone’s property, and terminology such as “you’re selling yourself” implies just that, and it is demeaning, shaming, and inaccurate. So please think of that the next time you decide to talk about sex workers selling themselves, because doing so objectifies them, boils them down to merely their sexuality just as much the worse of consumers might. It implies that the whole of their being is what they are selling; when in truth they are renting a fantasy, a body, their sexual or erotic organs and movement skills. Which is not all they are, it is not ‘themselves’. Get it now?”

“…Then there are those who “sell their bodies”…and even amongst them there is a caste system. Super Models and professional athletes are often highly paid celebrities, even though they are selling their bodies. Many manual laborers, while not respected like doctors or comedians, are often seen as honest, work-a-day folk who make hard work and sweat noble in a blue-collar way…then there are those others, you know, them…the whores and hustlers and strippers who are selling nude bodies, or gasp, even more dreadful than that…what’s between their legs! Which automatically equates in the minds of many to their dignity, their intimacy, their self-respect, their souls…

Which also makes it in the minds of many the only sort of profession where the whole of your worth as human is what’s for sale…and am I the only one who finds it mildly ironic that so many people seem to equate genitalia to the physical and spiritual representation of the sole source and whole worth of a human? Especially atheists and pagans and feminists and who ever else who are trying to buck the patriarchal/religious chastity/purity/virginity thing? You can sell your mind, and your social skills, even parts of your body…but once genitalia is involved…suddenly, the rules change, because genitals=the whole of your being because they are such intimate, sacred bits.

Also, it seems that selling, and I mean literally selling, some parts of the body are okay…so long as it is not T&A. Women can sell eggs. They can sell a kidney. They can sell their hair. They can sell blood and plasma. They can rent out their wombs as a surrogate…but law, heaven, and feminism forbid they rent out their c— (sigh, edit of the C word-RE) or sell a nude display of that body of theirs…”

Okay, rant over…I shall continue with activism tomorrow evening…

Toward a Liberationist Feminism (Or, I Hope Pro-Capitalist Feminism Is an Oxymoron)

We’re all well aware that online discourse around feminism/s lately has heated up around varying definitions of what feminism is and should be. One of the most persistent areas of debate has been whether “intersectionality,” or a multi-issue politic, is spreading feminism too thin. I don’t want to repeat the many and strong arguments that have already been made against the premise that a singular focus on women’s oppression would make for a more effective feminism—a premise I think is not merely flawed, but blatantly racist/classist/heteronormative/ableist and otherwise absurd. But, after reading the comments in several threads here about capitalism and individualism over the past week or so, I do want to spend some words on what a feminism of liberation might look like.

I see a lot of people who say they believe in “intersectionality” talk about it kind of like this: Since some women are people of color, and some women are poor, and some women are queer, it’s important for feminism to take an intersectional approach that recognizes the way some women experience sexism and racism, or sexism and economic exploitation, or sexism and homophobia, or other such combinations. And then maybe they’ll go a step further, and say something about how, for women of color, sexism and racism aren’t just two separate forms of oppression experienced simultaneously, but are intertwined in really complicated ways. So, a lot of self-identified supporters of intersectionality will say, if feminism is going to be a movement by and for all women, it needs to look at how all forms of oppression, not just sexism, play out in different women’s lives. And I think that’s all true and good.

But I think a feminist politic of intersectionality goes deeper than that. To me, the really key thing about intersectionality is connecting the above analysis around individuals’ lived experiences to the insight that all systems of power are interconnected. So it’s not just that some individual people experience multiple forms of oppression, or even that all people have some kind of personal relationship with all systems of oppression (for instance, as a white woman, I experience sexism on the oppressed side, and white supremacy on the side of privilege), but also that the systems of power themselves—racism, economic hierarchy, sexism, heteronormativity, ableism, etc.—are working together.

Take, for instance, violence against women. While self-identified feminists earnestly question whether this or that is or should be or isn’t really a feminist issue, I don’t think anyone would really question that violence against women is properly, unequivocally, a feminist concern. I also don’t know how we could even try to understand, let alone resist and transform, a culture of widespread violence against women without looking at a culture of general violence, a culture that uses violence to maintain hierarchies of all forms. How could we think about, let alone challenge and offer alternatives to, violence of any kind without looking at how violence (of all forms and against women specifically) is connected to militarism and colonialism, which are connected to the spread and global imposition of both white supremacy and neoliberal capitalism, which … I could go in a slew of different directions with this.

Which is why I believe we must simultaneously challenge all forms of unjust power to achieve any kind of liberation. Which is why I’d like to believe pro-capitalist feminism is an oxymoron.

Capitalism is a huge part of how/why the world has been colonized. Antiracist feminism must be anticolonial feminism must be a feminism that resists capitalism — not just because the effects of capitalism are damaging to individual women, but because capitalism, as a system of power, is connected to sexism, to racism, to …

Dear Rush Limbaugh

Go fuck yourself:

LIMBAUGH: He’s — it’s — to me, it is striking how unqualified Obama is and how this whole thing came about with, within the Democrat Party. I think it really goes back to the fact that nobody had the guts to stand up and say no to a black guy. They just — they were — liberal policies are always going to end up strangling liberals, too.

And I think, I think this is a classic illustration here where affirmative action has reared its ugly head against them. It’s the reverse of it. They’ve, they’ve ended up nominating and placing at the top of their ticket somebody who’s not qualified, who has not earned it.

you racist piece of shit:

LIMBAUGH: Obama’s patriotism is not being attacked in an ad. McCain’s just out there saying he’s putting his own personal political ambition ahead of the country’s. It’s — you know, it’s just — it’s just we can’t hit the girl. I don’t care how far feminism’s saying, you can’t hit the girl, and you can’t — you can’t criticize the little black man-child. You just can’t do it, ’cause it’s just not right. It’s not fair. He’s such a victim.

Love,
Cara

Sex Work Activism- Three: The Problem with Creating a Monolith

If I’ve said it once, I’ve probably said it 123,675.2 times: The Sex Industry is not a monolith. People will often argue this point with me endlessly, but that does not actually make it a monolith, and when one is looking at the topic from a harm reduction based realm of activism, making it a monolith is actually very counter productive for one very simple reason: If the assumption is the industry is a monolith, and the problems therein are also monolithic, well, you’re not really going to be able to help much of anyone, because needs and concerns vary wildly.

The point, you see, is it is not all the same, and treating it as if it were fixes absolutely nothing. Decriminalization (within the US) is a good example. Strippers, pro-Dom/Subs and pornography performers/pornographers do not have the pressing issue of their jobs being illegal like prostitutes do. And that is the mere tip of the iceberg as it were. While all aspects of the Sex Industry might be sex based, the many layers of the industry are very different, and the people involved? They do not want or need the same things. How do I know this? Well, I ask, and I listen…which is what anyone interested in actually helping should do. Oh, wait, there is one thing almost all sex workers can agree on: safety. They’d like their jobs to be safer. Safer working conditions, safer ways in which to deal with clients/customers, safer sex practices, more recourse with law enforcement, and yep, sure enough, safer from the judgments and hate thrown at them by society in general. That seems to be something everyone wants.

After that, it gets pretty diversified. Needs are different. A contract porn performer is not going to need the same things a street based worker is going to need. A stripper will have different concerns than a male escort. There is no one plan, one course of action, one set of needs that can be applied in a monolithic fashion to people in the sex industry, because they do very different things for very different reasons in very different settings and with varied levels of acceptance, autonomy and legal standing. You can’t help with anything until you determine what actual wants and needs are, and making the sex industry a monolith does not assist in that.

Hence, my repeated mantra of not a monolith.

Just something to ponder…

Bush Officially Proposes Anti-Abortion DHHS Rule

Oh shit.

You know that potential DHHS rule that pro-choice organizations and feminists have been going on about for a month now? The one that says organizations which receive government funding cannot discriminate against those who choose to exercise their “conscience” on matters of abortion — and redefines “abortion” to cover hormonal contraception?

Well, yesterday the Bush Administration officially proposed the rule. (emphasis mine)

Leavitt said the regulation was intended to protect practitioners who have moral objections to abortion and sterilization, and would not interfere with patients’ ability to get birth control or any legal medical procedure.

“Nothing in the new regulation in any way changes a patient’s right to any legal procedure,” he said, noting that a patient could go to another provider.

“This regulation is not about contraception,” Leavitt added. “It’s about abortion and conscience. It is very closely focused on abortion and physician’s conscience.”

The 42-page rule seeks to set up a system for enforcing conscience protections in three separate federal laws, the earliest of which dates to the 1970s. In some cases, the laws aim to protect both providers who refuse to take part in abortions and those who do.

The regulation is written to apply to a broad swath of the health care work force, not doctors alone. Accordingly, an employee whose task it is to clean the instruments used in a particular procedure would be covered. Also covered would be volunteers and trainees.

The underlying laws deal mainly with abortion and sterilization, but both the laws and the language of the rule seem to recognize that objections on conscience grounds could involve other types of services.

“This regulation does not limit patient access to health care, but rather protects any individual health care provider or institution from being compelled to participate in, or from being punished for refusal to participate in, a service that, for example, violates their conscience,” the rule said.

Reading this, there are two key things that you need to understand. The first is that despite Leavitt and other anti-choice puppet’s proclamations, this will limit women’s access to reproductive health care. The denials reek of classism. You see, barring some unforeseen circumstances, I’ll be fine. Those of us who happen to have insurance and private doctors, this will rarely affect us. But those of us who lack insurance? Many who are low-income? These are the people who generally use services that are government funded, and they are the ones who will be affected. The only people who will have less access to health care as a result of this rule the are people who already have the least access to health care. Despite Leavitt’s disgusting rationalizations, not everyone has the access to transportation, child care, money and time to “go to another provider.” That is, in fact, quite a privilege.

The second thing is that many, many, if not most reproductive health centers in the U.S. receive government funding. That includes many organizations which provide abortions, which may be the only abortion provider in a given area, and already work on a strict budget. And under this rule, these organizations would not be able to fire a person for refusing to do their job.

The regulation now faces a 30-day “public comment period.” In other words, there is now 30 days to fight it. Planned Parenthood Federation of America is sending out a mass request for donations to help them fight the rule. Their email is actually how I heard the news. Now, I know that it’s an election year, that people are therefore facing donation fatigue and that the economy is in the shitter. Lord knows that I can’t afford to give anything to anyone at the moment. But if you are able to give, do consider it.

UPDATE: If you have not already, you can also write to your legislator letting them know you oppose the rule and encouraging them to help fight it. I’m as of yet unsure where the general public can comment about the proposal — if you find that info, let me know and I’ll add it.

UPDATE 2: To comment on the regulation, write to consciencecomment@hhs.gov. Specify the subject as “provider conscience regulation.” Know that all comments will be available for public viewing in their entirety. Here is the full content of the proposed regulation (pdf) — for other methods of comment, see page 2. (Thank you, MB!)

Abortion does NOT hurt Women

In my previous post I mentioned the recent 8th Circuit Court ruling requiring ridiculous changes to South Dakota’s already ridiculous “informed consent.” Doctors are now forced to – among other things – tell women that by having an abortion they are increasing their risks of depression and suicide.

The other side has always clung to the “abortion hurts women” argument. But, just recently, we have proof that this is just not the case. Last week, the American Psychological Association released a task force report examining the relationship between women’s mental health and abortion. The task force evaluated all empirical studies published in English-language peer-reviewed journals since 1989 comparing the mental health of women ho had an induced abortion to the mental healthy of comparison groups of women. It also included studies that examined factors that predict mental health among women who have had an elective abortion.

What the task force found is that women who have an unplanned pregnancy have NO GREATER RISK of mental health problems from a single first-trimester abortion than from delivering that pregnancy.

This proves what we have known all along. An unintended pregnancy is a stressful life situation for any woman, no matter what the outcome of that pregnancy. These women are faced with a profoundly difficult decision. They spend much time soul-searching and weighing their information and their options. That’s why it’s so critical they have ACCURATE and FULL information. Only then can she and her family make the best decision possible.

And, the only ones who should be involved in that complex personal decision is the woman, her family, her doctor and God. This is not a place for inaccurate information. This is not a place for Big Government Intrusion.

Woman With Muscular Dystrophy Had to Crawl Off Plane

This is outrageous and angered me to my very core:

On July 20th, Julianna’s (delayed) Delta flight landed in Atlanta at 7:30pm, with a connecting flight scheduled for 8:05pm. Julianna, who has muscular dystrophy, missed the connecting flight because nobody came with a wheelchair until 8:05—the same time the connecting flight took off. To make matters worse, the plane crew told Julianna she might make the flight anyway if she stopped waiting for help and got off the plane right now, so she crawled down the stairs on her own. When the wheelchair came she was “wheeled into a back room and advised” that her plane had taken off. But that was just the first half of her ordeal, and the next eight hours only got worse.

The rest of the Consumerist post contains Julianna’s letter to Delta, describing what she went through for the next several hours, including: the continued struggle to find someone to help her travel to her new gate, pleading with the employee pushing her to allow her to have a bathroom break, and being unable to obtain water or food for hours, because no one would help her and she was unable to transport herself with the manual wheelchair provided by the airline. When she finally arrived at her destination airport at 3:15AM, she again had to crawl onto the shuttle service in order to get home.

Handicapped Sex Lives?

Hey y’all. I’m bint alshamsa from over at My Private Casbah and I’m really excited to be guest-blogging at Feministe this week. I just realized that i forgot to introduce myself before I posted my first entry. Sorry about that! Well, let’s just jump right into this, shall we? I have a dirty little secret: I’m disabled and I really love sex, especially with other people who have disabilities. Not only do I love sex, I’m even capable of having sex.

The frenzy surrounding John Edwards extra-marital affair has provided the media with a perfect chance to explore the complexities of sexual relationships involving people with disabilities. As usual, this opportunity looks like it is going to be completely squandered, so I figured maybe I could do something to change that. Besides, I just really like talking about sex whenever I get the chance to.

My first college sweetheart and I were together for three years before breaking up. I was physically disabled but undiagnosed when we first started dating. We had the nice sort of (vanilla) sex life that I think was fairly typical for two non-disabled people beginning their adult lives. However, once I was diagnosed with Systemic Lupus, the whole relationship went south. Well, actually, it went west because he decided that he just wasn’t cut out to be anyone’s caretaker yet, so he left New Orleans and moved back to his hometown in California for a while.

I’m fortunate. That was the first and last time I was dumped because of my disability. The next relationship I entered into was with my best friend (The German) and we’ve now been involved with each other for ten years. I came into this relationship as a self-identified PWD (person with disabilities). I’d like to say that he knew what he was getting himself into but how things start are rarely how they end up.

A few years after we got involved with each other, I was diagnosed as having a rare bone cancer in my chest. Then, three years ago, he was attacked by a German Shepard and knocked unconscious when his head slammed into the side of a truck. This left him with damage to his spine and brain. At that time, I was still going through treatment for my cancer and in need of a lot of caretaker assistance. Suddenly, instead of one PWD being cared for by a non-disabled partner, we were two people with disabilities trying to take care of each other. It was a rough transition.

If you saw how difficult our lives became, you might have concluded that we wouldn’t have the time or energy to even think about sex, but that wasn’t the case. In fact, we started having even more sex. Yeah, that’s right. I said it. Our sex life got even better than it was before.

Having cancer is extremely stressful and physically traumatizing. After the rigors of rounds of treatment, sex helped me reaffirm my sense of ownership over my body. Though the radiation and surgeries brought me to the very edges of what the human body could withstand, none of it made me want to stop having sex. Picture spending months (and then years) of your life, being pressed and twisted and turned, under, behind and between machines. Now try to imagine how you’d gather up the strength to keep going even though you’ve already been told that, no matter what you are willing to endure, none of it is going to cure your body. Being able come home and have that same body kissed, caressed, and worshipped kept me going.

My doctors warned us that there wasn’t any reason to believe that I was going to live much longer. Surprisingly, this also improved our sex life. Hey, if you’re going to die soon, screw visiting the Eiffel Tower! Instead, why not enjoy as many orgasms as you can during the interim?

Also, the knowledge that your time to enjoy experiences is quite limited can be powerful motivation to try out all of those things you’ve considered trying but never got around to doing in bed…or other locations. We stopped waiting for perfect opportunities to come along and started making the most of each moment, regardless of back-aches, soreness, sleepiness, or less than ideal locations.

Oh, I know this must all seem like too much information to some but there’s a reason behind it. I’m really fed up with people assuming that people with disabilities aren’t sexual beings, capable of having fulfilling physical relationships with others. Furthermore, a lot of us are having great sex lives with each other. In other words, don’t assume that we are all desperate to find some non-disabled person willing to get us off. Some of us actually prefer to share our bodies with those who can understand what it means to live in a society as a person who is seen as non-sexual, abnormal, and only worthy of pity, simply because our bodies don’t match up with society’s ablist norms.

Just so you know, I’m not the only PWD who sees disability as a catalyst for all sorts of sexual possibilities. In case you’ve never heard of it, check out this video on Sins Invalid:

Sex Work Activism: Two- Decriminalization

Okay, so, here we are. Decriminalization. That is what I support. Not full out legalization (at this point), and certainly not keeping any form of sex work illegal. This is also probably the one of the things I feel most strongly about, and yep, I will tell you why.

Sex workers who are involved in illegal aspects of the business get treated like utter shit by law enforcement and the court system, and actually fear what will happen to them with law enforcement should they be victimized. They get raped, beaten, robbed, stabbed, sodomized, so on, and because they are involved in an illegal industry, very rarely do they get the justice they deserve…if they even bother to report it out of fear for what they might be charged with. Women workers get told they deserved it (Theft of Services, anyone?), Men workers get told they should have defended themselves or they should just “take it like a man”. Transworkers get told both. A person can take someone to court and get justice if another person kicks their dog these days, but if you sell sex illegally, you get less consideration. After all, the dog wasn’t fucking for money!

So long as certain areas of sex work are illegal, those in those aspects of the sex industry, willingly or not, have very little legal recourse at all. They do not have the same avenues via the law that every other person out there has. And guess what? That pisses me off. When I hear about a worker who got knifed in the face and the police laughed at her? Yeah, that shit makes me real angry. When I hear that she got beat down & robbed some weeks later and did not even bother because she figured she’d just get laughed at and brushed off again? It pisses me right the fuck off.

And just setting aside this absolute attrocity with the legal system for a moment, there are other reasons I fully support decriminalization, and here they are…

If one leaves an illegal aspect of the sex industry and goes to get a straight job, having a prostitution bust on your record makes that a hell of a lot harder. And having to explain why you have no work history or references can also be a real field day.

If one leaves an illegal aspect of the sex industry, or while even still working in it, and attempts to get into an educational institution or job training program, having a prostitution bust on your record makes that a hell of a lot harder.

If one involved in an illegal aspect of the sex industry wishes to rent or buy a place to live, or a car, or get a credit card, well, that can be a real goat rodeo. After all, people will look at you oddly and decline your applications if you write “Hooker” on the line designated “Occupation”.

Being a sex worker of any type comes with a whole lot of social stigma. Being a sex worker who is also considered a low-life criminal by a great section of society comes with even more.

Most sex workers involved in illegal aspects of the industry are generally considered to be unfit parents, and surprise surprise, many of them do have children.

And once again, do I think decrim would solve every problem there is with the business? No. And it does lead to questions of then how then would one regulate the industry? Would all work have to be done in brothels? Would health checks for the workers be required? Would any of these potential requirements actually discourage illegal activity at all? Those are questions I don’t have answers to. I don’t like the idea of all work having to be done in brothels. I don’t like the idea of required health inspections. I don’t know if it would discourage illegal activity…I don’t even think that it would, in the minds of many, give sex workers any sort of “real human” status.

But I do think it would go a long way in forcing law enforcement and the courts to treat sex workers currently involved in illegal aspects of the industry like people with, oh, legal rights and recourses, and that’s a damn sight better than the way things are now.

And because I know someone will bring up trafficking… yes, trafficking is a very real and horrific problem. Germany will be mentioned, and countered with New Zealand (which I think has the right idea). Stats and studies may very well be thrown around. I suspect the Swedish Model might be mentioned (Sweden will probably get it’s own post at some point), and yep, everything will refute or counter everything else.

My theory is really rather simple, actually. If prostitution is fully decriminalized, well, then how much more time, money, and effort could law enforcement then allot for going after traffickers? How much easier will it be for people to help sex workers/prostituted people in the ways that they need? Vice stings on the local stroll or busting brothels does very little to stop traffickers or help sex workers…so which would be far better time and money spent?

Well, you can probably guess where I stand on that one.

Feel free to discuss, of course.

School District Delivering Anti-Choice Message?

Man I’m fired up today. I totally had a different sort of post for today. But, something else has distracted me to no end today.

I live in Sioux Falls. It’s the largest city in South Dakota and school just started a couple of days ago. Every year, the district puts together a “district directory” of sorts. It contains information on the services of the district, the schools, the principals, calendars and all that useful stuff.

It also has some advertisements included. This year, it includes a full page color ad from a crisis pregnancy in town. It includes quotes like “No one ever told me I would live with this decision for the rest of my life. It’s been several year, but my grief continues.” And, front and center in large red print: “Abortion Hurts Women!”

I was appalled to see this strong of a political message coming out of a school district publication that is give to every household who has a child in the district.

There is no way Planned Parenthood would be allowed to purchase ad space saying “Let’s prevent abortion through comprehensive sex education and birth control.” We’d be crucified.

Thanks for listening to me blow off steam. I feel much better now.