Being Amber Rhea

Duly noted: the AJC will print “drinking game material for bloggers” tripe like this in their Opinion section, but they won’t print that fresh! new! (gag) content they claim to crave so badly. Anyway, I thought today would be an appropriate day to repost the op-ed I wrote several months ago. Here it is:

Shaming tactics not effective against prostitution

Currently, the Atlanta Police Department’s Web site includes mug shots of women convicted of prostitution and escorting without a permit (”City adviser: ‘Johns’ get too little scrutiny,” Metro, May 21). This tactic is dangerous and ignorant.

Sex workers are disproportionately the victims of violent crime, especially rape and sexual assault. The concept of shame perpetuates the widespread view of sex workers as disposable. Further, the illegality of their profession prevents sex workers from reporting violence perpetrated against them.

How does posting their mug shots benefit women arrested for prostitution? Even if we assume that a woman may be successfully “shamed” out of sex work by having her photo posted, she is still an open target for potential harm by anyone who sees her photo, since the mug shots remain on the Web site for 3 to 6 months.

The current debate, however, does not address the dangers of women’s mug shots being publicly displayed, nor does it advocate for the photos’ removal. Instead, the conversation is centered on the question of why there aren’t any photos of johns on the Web site.

Some cities have adapted a tactic of “shaming” johns by posting their photos online, on television, or on billboards. Stephanie Davis, the mayor’s policy adviser on women’s issues, believes this would be a good solution in Atlanta. But will it work?

In 2005, Oakland, California launched a campaign called Operation Shame, with the same goal as that which Davis suggests for Atlanta. The Oakland campaign displayed johns’ photos on 10 by 22 feet billboards.

After eight months, the billboards disappeared amid protests from constitutional rights activists. The prostitution rate in Oakland did not fluctuate.

Proponents of “end demand” programs claim that these campaigns reduce prostitution without harm to sex workers, deterring men from purchasing sexual services. According to Norma Hotaling of SAGE (Standing Against Global Exploitation), the developer of San Francisco’s John School program, 98% of men going through the program were “rehabilitated.” However, a 2002 study published in the Canadian Journal of Criminology found that such programs have little or no long-term deterrent effect.

In many cases, these programs exemplify misplaced good intentions fraught with paternalism. In the late 1990s, Vancouver stopped arresting street prostitutes and began focusing on johns. The rationale behind the change was that the johns were predators, and the prostitutes were victims. But Andrew Sorfleet, a sex worker and founder of SWAV (Sex Workers’ Alliance of Vancouver), disagrees. He points out that the real predators are men who pretend to be clients in order to rape, beat, or rob sex workers, and adds that the campaign was motivated by “the misconception that sex workers need to be ‘rescued’ - with or without our consent.”

Besides, the idea that shame will discourage a non-desirable behavior isn’t realistic. This is the fundamental flaw behind Davis’s proposal. She believes that posting johns’ photos online “would contribute to the shame that any man who buys sex should feel.”

Adults paying for sexual services from other adults should not be a crime. As the Oakland example shows, shaming does not deter people from paying for or accepting payment for sex. It just makes people stealthier and drives activity further underground, thereby elevating the risk to all involved.

The double standard is at work here - the concept that women who sell sexual services are worthy of public contempt, but the men who pay for those services are not. Davis seeks to address this inequity, but her motivations are based on an assumption that any participation in the sex industry - whether as client or service provider - is contemptible.

In all of this, though, there is one very important set of voices that is missing: the voices of actual sex workers. Policy advisers, APD officials, and op-ed writers can talk ad infinitum about what should or shouldn’t happen. But the people we most need to hear from are the ones whom these policies actually affect on a day to day basis.

From Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Novels, via Rachel Kramer-Bussel; and I’ll tell you up front, they were riffing off the AJC’s “Woman to Woman” column, which should prep you for exactly what kind of stupidity they were dealing with.

The funny thing is, the sorts of people who love to blame romance novels for the breakdown of the family are usually the ones who go on ad nauseam about the importance of personal responsibility, especially when it comes to social issues. Pregnant with an unwanted child? Gay? Brown and po’? SUCK IT UP, BECAUSE IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT TO BEGIN WITH, AND IF YOU TRIED HARD ENOUGH, YOU WOULDN’T BE ANY OF THESE THINGS. But once something like, say, violence in video games or the manly (but sensitive! Don’t forget they’re so sensitive!) heroes in romance novels rear their heads, they’re all for warning people off lest the poor, unsuspecting victims shatter their fragile psyches against the ramparts of oiled man-titty. As soon as blame can be attached to something that directly affects them, you won’t see a group of people so eager to pass on the buck. God forbid that the kids do awful things because they had shitty parents or because they’re being, y’know, kids, or that the woman left her husband because he’s a terrible spouse.

The rebuttal didn’t get my dander up quite as much as it did Sarah, but the derailment into Pornolandia made me raise my brow. I tend to question studies that claim violent porn increases propensities towards sexual violence–my gut feeling is that people who voluntarily seek out violent porn (not kinky BDSM stuff–I’m talking snuff porn and rape porn) on a regular basis probably are inclined in that direction to begin with. Linking causality for this sort of thing is incredibly tricky.

And all this clucking and flapping over female porn always makes me wonder: are female orgasms so terrifying? Seriously, why are people so damn worked up over women getting turned on and rubbin’ one out? Every time a woman masturbates, are TWO kittens killed instead of just one? I want to know, because I’d like to know how many kittens I’ve killed last week.

Sarah and Candy win at life.

What Grayson said, about the Creative Loafing “five shining swallowed pennies in the overflowing toilet bowl that is the Atlanta blogosphere” story:

This piece was just wrong on so many levels, Andy. But essentially, you missed the ENTIRE story. To single out a few blogs (and they’re all great blogs… that’s not the issue here) and give the readership the impression that those five blogs are somehow BLOG FUCKING ATLANTA is such a slap in the face to the entire social media community here.

The many bloggers, academics in citizen media like Leonard Witt at PJNET.com, podcasters, the techno entrepreneurs, videobloggers like Amani Channel for instance, who have worked long and hard, and those who have helped organized social media events and conferences like PodCamp Atlanta and SoCon07 were reduced to five blogs you want to make a teen style, MySpace style list over. You and Ken should be ashamed of yourselves for trivializing and reducing an entire new direction in media to five blogs with this “starter piece” on social media.

It’s just lazy, uninspired journalism really. Just look to the state of the music industry to see how long you have to “get it.”

While we’re on the subject of traditional media, I should mention that Rusty, Grayson, and I went to the Social Media Club event last night where a guy from the AJC and a guy from WSB were there to, ostensibly, converse about how they’re embracing social media. (Har har.) You can listen to our podcast review of the thing, if you’re so inclined.

And I didn’t even mention all the sexism. We tried to keep it to about a half hour. This was after the full-on rant session at Central City Tavern… be glad you got the “toned down” version. (Yes, it’s all relative.)

It’s hard to say what my favorite part of the night was, but I think I’ll have to go with WSB’s Steve Riley saying to me, “What you’re doing seems more… artistic.”

…

*blank stare*

Obvious notes: 1) he has no idea what I’m doing; and 2) artistic? the hell?

Clue Phone ringing… it’s for you, Mr. Riley!

On a completely unrelated note, the next time I hear some asshole ask plaintively, “What crime is not a hate crime?” I’m going to verbally eviscerate them while assuring them that no, don’t worry, this is not a hate crime.

A couple days ago, I wrote an op-ed in response to this AJC article. Since I haven’t heard back from them and it’s almost Friday, I’m guessing they’re not going to run it. So, I’ll just post it here.

Note: if you feel like there are points and angles I didn’t address - you’re right. That’s what sucks about having to stay within a certain word count. In order to get it under 700 words, I had to cut out an entire section about economic need, for example.

—

Shaming tactics not effective against prostitution

Currently, the Atlanta Police Department’s Web site includes mug shots of women convicted of prostitution and escorting without a permit (”City adviser: ‘Johns’ get too little scrutiny,” Metro, May 21). This tactic is dangerous and ignorant.

Sex workers are disproportionately the victims of violent crime, especially rape and sexual assault. The concept of shame perpetuates the widespread view of sex workers as disposable. Further, the illegality of their profession prevents sex workers from reporting violence perpetrated against them.

How does posting their mug shots benefit women arrested for prostitution? Even if we assume that a woman may be successfully “shamed” out of sex work by having her photo posted, she is still an open target for potential harm by anyone who sees her photo, since the mug shots remain on the Web site for 3 to 6 months.

The current debate, however, does not address the dangers of women’s mug shots being publicly displayed, nor does it advocate for the photos’ removal. Instead, the conversation is centered on the question of why there aren’t any photos of johns on the Web site.

Some cities have adapted a tactic of “shaming” johns by posting their photos online, on television, or on billboards. Stephanie Davis, the mayor’s policy adviser on women’s issues, believes this would be a good solution in Atlanta. But will it work?

In 2005, Oakland, California launched a campaign called Operation Shame, with the same goal as that which Davis suggests for Atlanta. The Oakland campaign displayed johns’ photos on 10 by 22 feet billboards.

After eight months, the billboards disappeared amid protests from constitutional rights activists. The prostitution rate in Oakland did not fluctuate.

Proponents of “end demand” programs claim that these campaigns reduce prostitution without harm to sex workers, deterring men from purchasing sexual services. According to Norma Hotaling of SAGE (Standing Against Global Exploitation), the developer of San Francisco’s John School program, 98% of men going through the program were “rehabilitated.” However, a 2002 study published in the Canadian Journal of Criminology found that such programs have little or no long-term deterrent effect.

In many cases, these programs exemplify misplaced good intentions fraught with paternalism. In the late 1990s, Vancouver stopped arresting street prostitutes and began focusing on johns. The rationale behind the change was that the johns were predators, and the prostitutes were victims. But Andrew Sorfleet, a sex worker and founder of SWAV (Sex Workers’ Alliance of Vancouver), disagrees. He points out that the real predators are men who pretend to be clients in order to rape, beat, or rob sex workers, and adds that the campaign was motivated by “the misconception that sex workers need to be ‘rescued’ - with or without our consent.”

Besides, the idea that shame will discourage a non-desirable behavior isn’t realistic. This is the fundamental flaw behind Davis’s proposal. She believes that posting johns’ photos online “would contribute to the shame that any man who buys sex should feel.”

Adults paying for sexual services from other adults should not be a crime. As the Oakland example shows, shaming does not deter people from paying for or accepting payment for sex. It just makes people stealthier and drives activity further underground, thereby elevating the risk to all involved.

The double standard is at work here - the concept that women who sell sexual services are worthy of public contempt, but the men who pay for those services are not. Davis seeks to address this inequity, but her motivations are based on an assumption that any participation in the sex industry - whether as client or service provider - is contemptible.

In all of this, though, there is one very important set of voices that is missing: the voices of actual sex workers. Policy advisers, APD officials, and op-ed writers can talk ad infinitum about what should or shouldn’t happen. But the people we most need to hear from are the ones whom these policies actually affect on a day to day basis.

Hope it’s not too late for this… those of y’all who can, should go downtown and check it out.
—

WHAT: ATLANTA Save the Book Review READ-IN! Bring a book (or many books!) you love, and let’s create a critical mass of readers to put the pressure on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution to reverse its
terrible decision to “reorganize” its book review out of existence! They got rid of the book review editor, and without an official champion for books within the paper, the quality of books coverage is endangered! It will become disorganized and sporadic, if not simply perfunctory, until, worse, it’s no longer there.

TIME: 10:00 AM until…you decide!

DATE: TODAY, *rain or shine

LOCATION: Converge in front of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution at 72 Marietta Street. Hold open your book and read aloud or to yourself. Trust me, you won’t be the only one. Picture hundreds of people doing the same thing! [*directions below]

WHO: Open to any and all readers and lovers of books, newspapers and literary discussion. Come one, come all Atlantans (or ATLiens), Georgians, and maybe even some of you hardcore out-of-staters. On hand to say a few words: Atlanta novelists Joshilyn Jackson and Joseph Skibell, bookseller Philip Rafshoon of Outwrite Books, George Weinstein of Atlanta Writers Club, and Shannon Byrne of Little, Brown.

WHY: Because the city of Atlanta wants a robust, reader-friendly, intelligent book review, not just a section run on auto-pilot from above. Teresa Weaver has created and run exactly this kind of section for almost ten years now and we want the AJC to reward her expertise, not eliminate her job. Again, if you haven’t signed the ‘Protect Atlanta’s Book Review’ petition yet, here’s the link to it: ‘Protect Atlanta’s Book Review’

DIRECTIONS: MARTA: The MARTA stop is Five Points. Exit onto Marietta St., the AJC building is less than two blocks west (left). For an online Citysearch map, look here.

—
Originally posted at Bookslut; thanks to Rachel for letting me know. Between her and Dacia, it seems like I’m far too often finding out about local happenings from people who live in New York.

Check it out: Literally, A Weblog was featured in the AJC yesterday. December 2, 2006, page D-1, “@issue” opinion section, subsection “Noted.” Pat has a color-adjusted hi-res scan of the page on Flickr.

Why is mass transit mentioned nowhere in this article?

Dumbasses.

Abstinence wasn’t good enough for me, so two days ago, I got the first round of the new HPV vaccine. (Gotta go back in 2 and 6 months for the second and third shot.)

AJC article via Pandagon - go read Amanda’s post.

The AJC’s Woman-to-Woman column is a steaming pile of shit. I’ve known this for several months, yet I admit I still sometimes visit it for the trainwreck factor. The latest debate* debacle, “Does what women wear contribute to sexual assault?”, is no exception.

I’m not going to waste my time or yours picking apart the asinine and disturbing blame-the-victim attitude the “right-leaning” columnist takes. Instead, I decided to have a go at one comment (by a person named Wiley) that I plucked from among its 500+ mostly-useless peers:

The focus needs to be on raising boys correctly. Not suppressing our daughters.

It starts with manners. Teach your boys early that it is NOT ok to verbally harrass a female you do not know. It is not OK to approach a female & comment on her body parts. It’s not ok to sleep with muliple women at the same time. It’s not ok to hire a women to dance naked at a college party, it does not make you a man. It makes you look like a fool.

First of all, let me say that from what I can tell, Wiley is one of the few commenters to leave truly thoughtful and sensible comments. So I’m not picking at him/her specifically (how could I, since I don’t even know who s/he is). From his/her comments I believe that s/he pretty much has the right idea, but I only point this out because I think there are plenty of people out there who have mostly the right idea.

Obviously the first sentence is spot-on. Recently I was reading a blog (unfortunately I don’t remember where, or I’d post a link) where a guy wrote about talking with some friends of his who were all relatively new fathers. Some of them were saying stuff like, they’re not going to let their daughters leave the house til they’re 30, because they don’t want them getting raped. The guy said, “If you don’t want your daughters to be raped, you should teach your sons not to rape” - and slowly watched the lightbulbs go on over their heads. So, in summation: yeah.

Now, as to the rest. Let me repeat, s/he has the right idea in general. But a few things stuck out at me.

[I]t is NOT ok to verbally harrass a female you do not know.

Probably just a typo, but that had me asking, “So, it’s okay to verbally harass a female as long as you know her?” I know, that one’s kind of nit-picky. Moving on.

It is not OK to approach a female & comment on her body parts.

No quarrel with this one. Obviously in terms of certain relationships, it’s a different story, but it’s pretty clear here that she’s not talking about those circumstances. E.g., you are not entitled to go up to any random woman and say shit like, “Hey, nice tits.”

It’s not ok to sleep with muliple women at the same time.

And that is where I put the brakes on. Reading along, and then… whoa! What? Which of these things is not like the others?

It bothers me that a lot of well-intentioned people conflate obviously abusive behavior such as verbal harassment with, well, having multiple sex partners. To me, it’s apples and oranges, the two don’t even come close to being in the same realm for comparison. But I understand that for a lot of people they are, because their ideas are based on a lot of underlying, unquestioned assumptions - ones that I held myself for a while, until I was in my late teens and began to really question and examine all that stuff.

The major difference here, of course, is agency. If a man verbally harasses a woman, she has had no choice in the matter. She didn’t invite him to harass her; he imposed his sense of entitlement on her. But as for having multiple sex partners? By that same logic, the women in the scenario are denied any agency - and that is the definition of objectification. (So yes, I am saying that Wiley’s statement objectifies women.) What is the assumption here? That the women in the scenario don’t want to have multiple partners? Or maybe, that they don’t want to have sex with this hypothetical man who has multiple partners? (That, of course, would be rape.) Now, if Wiley meant, “It’s not okay to be in a supposedly monogamous relationship and run around on your partner behind her back,” then I can get behind that. But the issue there is dishonesty, not sex.

Well, now I’ve expended a bunch of energy writing about all that, and I don’t feel like writing about the last sentence, about hiring a dancer. The multiple sex partners statement was the main issue that was a red flag for me, anyway.

Maybe Wiley hasn’t given a lot of thought to why s/he holds those views about sex; maybe it was a knee-jerk reaction. Or, maybe she honestly believes that having multiple sex partners is wrong. Whatever the case, let me also point out that a disagreement such as this one isn’t something that would prevent me from standing in solidarity with such a person to oppose violence against women, restriction of rights, objectification, and so on. But it’s something that bugs me because I don’t think enough people question these commonly accepted assumptions or acknowledge the potential they have to do harm (see Bitch | Lab for more).

* Ed. note: If this is 10th grade debate class, Diane and Shaunti get a B- and a C-, respectively

Yes, the title is playing on Jmac’s “Real Work Conversations” theme. Anyway…

Me: oh fer fuck’s sake. it just keeps getting worse in this piece of crap.

Me: i would be drunk if i did a shot for every talking point

GDBF: you should do that and we should make a podcast out of it

Me: actually, i’d die of alcohol poisoning

GDBF: well, a light shot

GDBF: that could be a whole segment

GDBF: sentence-by-sentence, do a shot for eachy talking point in wooten’s column

Me: heh. you do wooten, i’ll do woman to woman, we’ll see who ends up shittier

GDBF: I think that should be our next podcast

A letter in today’s AJC (login), by one Karen Brown of Scarietta, reads:

Opinions not for children to see

As the mother of four children, Denise Grier should understand exactly why she was cited: She has every right to voice her political opinions, but not to display foul language where young children can read it. There is no attempt made to disguise the word since the BU is one color and the SH– is another.

A couple of years ago, my now 7-year-old saw an identical sticker, read it aloud and promptly asked what the expletive meant. I explained that some adults were never taught manners. They act like children, use inappropriate words and call people names that shouldn’t be said out loud.

Grier needs to pay the fine and remove the bumper sticker. Actually, she should be fined for every day it remains on her car.

Huh? Children have to be protected from opinions now? (I know, the paper stuck that headline on, but still - it’s a good summation of what she wrote.)

The best part is how she laments the flaunting of dirty words in children’s innocent faces, and then goes on to explain to her son that adults use such language because they act like children.

Um. Okay.

Anyway, she didn’t even answer her son’s actual question, but I guess children are just too fragile and dumb to be able to handle simple explanations of what words mean. Instead, it’s better to bring out the soapbox and get all theoretical on a 5-year-old’s ass.

And just to emphasize that fabulous last sentence:

Actually, she should be fined for every day it remains on her car.

What. The. FUCK. (There’s a dirty word for ya, Karen. I hope your son doesn’t use the internets!)

Spurred to action by the response Thomas received from Senator Eric Johnson regarding SB 123, I sent the following letter to the AJC. (I know the wording kind of sucks, but the AJC’s online submission form limits you to 150 words.)

Eric Johnson is one of the sponsors of SB 123, which would allow pharmacists to decline filling prescriptions for drugs which are “believed by the pharmacist” to terminate a pregnancy. However, Senator Johnson has demonstrated an alarming lack of basic information.

The article “Abortion foes target use of pill” states, “‘The bill is not intended to prevent pharmacists from providing contraception, only from participating in an abortion,’ said Johnson, who acknowledged he was not clear on precisely how either drug worked.”

Senator Johnson appears not to know the difference between Plan B (the “morning-after pill”), which prevents pregnancy, and RU-486, which induces abortion. Yet Plan B is the drug for which pharmacists have refused to fill prescriptions, in Georgia and other states.

Until the public, and more importantly, the sponsors of SB 123, understand the fundamental difference between contraceptives and abortifacients, any policy changes will be based on ignorance.

You see that? Take a good, long look at the people who are running this state.