Being Amber Rhea

Check it out… PoleLaTeaz, the studio where I’ve been taking classes for the past two years, is featured on CNN today, complete with a video! Awesome!! These ladies rock!

Meant to post this stuff sooner, but that is the eternal blogger’s refrain, isn’t it?

First, a must-read from Monica at the $pread blog:

Douglas had some pretty amazing things to say, starting with an explanation of the Max Hardcore charges that highlighted the wrongdoing of his distributors, Jaded Video. Basically, Jaded sold a “Euro” version of a Hardcore film to a US Federal Agent and sent the video through US mail, which was what allowed the obscenity charges to be brought against Hardcore. Of course, the real guilty party here is Jaded, not Max Hardcore, just as if a 7-11 sells beer to minors, 7-11 is guilty, not the good makers of Nattie Light. Jaded was granted immunity from prosecution.

As if all of those details weren’t scary enough, the jurors were exempt from watching the entire DVD, and instead the prosecution selected scenes for viewing. This is the most distressing aspect of the case, because it violates the “taken as a whole” stipulation of the Miller test. The jurors didn’t see behind the scenes footage demonstrating affection between performers, female performers smiling and able-bodied after the shoot, how scenes are edited, etc; they just saw excerpts selected for maximum shock value. Max Hardcore will appeal, but while he’s waiting for his follow up trial, by estimate of his lawyer, he’ll spend at least 30 months in federal prison. FEDERAL. PRISON. For, according to the DOJ: “anal penetration, urination, insertion of an entire hand into a vagina or anus, vomiting, and severe violence.” Ok, so severe violence sounds bad (although that’s a vague term which has no meaning without an actual description of what went on) but as far as pissplay, anal sex, and fisting go…? That merits federal prison? It sounds like an average weekend at my house. (I’m kidding. Maybe)

So this brings me to the point of why anyone besides those in the porn business should care about the Max Hardcore conviction. There are obvious reasons: the jaw-droppingly brazen trampling of the legal system, the tax payer money spent on these sort of trials, the possible disruption in supply of porn, if you’re an avid porn consumer. But sex workers of all walks should be especially alarmed, because when any type of sexual material or right is successfully attacked, it’s like another block laid in the wall separating us from the rest of the world. And the sad fact is, I feel like it’s pretty rare to see any sex worker solidarity in these situations.

Ren has an excellent (as usual) post on the matter as well. And at Pro-Porn Activism, Anthony wonders what the effect will be on the rest of the adult industry.

Ren has touched on this before; just look at the terrible things that happen when prostitution is decriminalized…

The number of sex workers in New Zealand does not appear to have increased since legislation decriminalising prostitution became law, according to a new report.

The Prostitution Law Review Committee was set up to report on the Prostitution Reform Act 2003 three to five years after the Act came into force.

…

The committee said a Christchurch School of Medicine survey of sex workers found that more than 90 per cent felt they had legal rights under the Act.

More than 60 per cent felt they were more able to refuse to provide commercial sexual services to a particular client since the enactment of the law.

Prior to the Act, the illicit status of the sex industry meant sex workers were open to coercion and exploitation by managers, pimps and clients.

Research indicated there had been “some improvement” in employment conditions “but this is by no means universal”.

…

Associate justice minister Lianne Dalziel said the report showed the Act had had a positive effect on the health and safety of sex workers and had not led to an increase in numbers of sex workers as predicted by critics of the law reform.

Normalize it? Legitimize it? Perish the thought! We care about women, after all!

-Oh wait. Yeah, for all you would-be “allies?” See, if you actually cared, you would be in favor of decrim. It’s really not that complicated.

(Via Cunning Minx.)

Be sure to stop by Caroline’s first:

• UK Criminal Justice Bill Clause 63 - but what is “extreme”? - A Beginners Guide - Seriously, if you read no other post, read this one.
• Kink

Ren also has several posts:

• It’s late, I can’t sleep, and I am obsessing over this new UK porn law…
• Head,desk…headdeskheaddeskheaddesk!!!!!
• Content Regulation and Porn Laws

A few from SnowdropExplodes:

• “Honk if you like kinky pictures!”
• The Day They Came To Arrest The Book
• If the government could read my mind, they’d ban it.

A hodgepodge of others:

• Polyamorphous Perversity: On the UK’s new pornography law
• Sex, Life & Frilly Bits: Return to 1959 & ‘Obscenity in the UK’, or How to Create a Blackmarket
• Pro-Porn Activism: “Extreme Porn” Banned in U.K.
• Aiken Area Progressive: Blatant display of censorship in the United Kingdom
• The Strangest Alchemy: On Graham Coutts , and why the UK anti-porn law was not the answer

Via Bound, Not Gagged

I’m feeling emotionally exhausted, and I haven’t done even a tiny fraction of what Dacia, Ren, Amanda, all the BNG folks, and more have been handling with grace for the past two days. I can’t imagine the constant interviews, last-minutes radio spots with angry callers, TV crews showing up at your apartment… well, okay, I can imagine it, and the thought leaves me feeling drained!

And now, we see that the NY Times has exposed the escort previously known as Kristen.

Real smart move there, credible, authentic, trustworthy, high-and-mighty MSM.

All the news that’s fit to print, right? You fucking assholes.

Look, it’s not that I’m surprised. I’m not surprised in the least; this is what sells papers, air time, ad space… duh. And yet MSM people continue to look us in the face and declare that it’s bloggers who are unconcerned with actual discussion, presenting facts, equal time… how can they say that with a straight face?? Meanwhile this shit could actually destroy this young woman’s life. You know that, right, NY Times? But you don’t give a shit. You want to break a good story. You won’t give a second thought to this actual person whose life you have put in real danger. You’ll forget about her by next week.

And like I said, I’m not surprised. All media outlets want to break a good story… sensational is good… I get it. You don’t have to tell me. They don’t care… no shock there.

But I wish it weren’t this way. Maybe this is the nasty side of capitalism (which I generally think isn’t so bad)? Or maybe it has nothing to do with capitalism - it’s just the way media works. I’m inclined to go with the latter, but as an eternal optimist (often at my peril), I have to believe that it doesn’t have to work that way. It can change. Everything can.

Right?

Edit: Or, as Amanda succinctly put it, “Notice how there doesn’t seem to be a single ethical quibble in outing this young woman who obviously has another career in the works.”

So everybody knows about this Eliot Spitzer bullshit by now. Of course, I have plenty to say about it.

There’s the obvious point that the problem in the Spitzer situation is not “OMG he paid for sex!!1!1″ but the utter hypocrisy of it, given his history of prosecuting prostitution cases. There’s also the fact that he’ll get off with a ruined political career (if even that), while the women whose services he paid for will possibly be arrested on felony charges, jailed, and for any who are not U.S. citizens, deported; and the real-life hardships of these women will go unacknowledged by the media except as objects to be used for moral grandstanding or sophomoric titillation.

But for now, I want to talk about language. Because, as I’ve mentioned before, words matter.

Yesterday on the way home from work, Rusty and I were discussing the terminology the mainstream media - hell, pretty much all media - uses when discussing sex work. In particular, we were dissecting the terms “high-class hooker” and “high-priced” hooker. Both of those terms carry a mountain of assumptions and implications.

“High-class hooker” automatically sets up the person in question as an exception. Jen said that she doesn’t think describing someone as high-class necessarily implies that everyone else is low-class, but rather “just average.” Well, of course it doesn’t imply that everyone else is low-class, but it does set up the need for a low-class corollary. And more importantly, it sets up a hierarchy of high, average, low - and who defines what constitutes criteria for each class? It’s a nasty, divisive, insidious tactic. It’s classic classism… because of course no one would ever want to be considered “low class.” (Queer Dewd has written about this phenomenon much more extensively/intelligently, so check her blog for more.)

Making a point to designate a particular sex worker as “high-class” serves to differentiate her from most people’s idea of what a prostitute is: a street worker. Street workers may in fact be the most visible element of prostitution - often because they are associated with other problems such as drug use, violence, and more - and the media certainly does nothing to dispel the popular impression of “prostitute” as analogous to “street prostitute.” However, street workers constitute only about 20% of all prostitutes. So yet again, the media reinforces a stereotype and popular assumption that is false.

Rusty said that while “high-class hooker” is total bullshit, he could see how someone could make a case for “high-priced hooker” being apt. I can see how someone could make a case for it - but the case would be faulty and laden with unquestioned societal assumptions.

First of all, the hooker herself is not for sale, as is implied by applying the adjective “high-priced” to her. Using the term “high-priced hooker” reinforces the rhetoric about sex workers “selling their bodies,” which is so often used by both conservatives and radical feminists. The fact that so many people simply accept this idea of sex workers selling their bodies is indicative of a deeper sexual more in our society: for a woman, having sex with a man constitutes at transfer of ownership. (Look at Purity Balls for a particularly creepy example of this belief in action.)

It’s bullshit, of course. A prostitute is no more selling her body than is a seamstress, a massage therapist, a professional athlete, a mechanic, a pianist… you get the point. A sex worker provides a service. (We do live in a service economy, after all.) Clients pay for that service. They do not own the worker. They do not, to use an analogy Ren has used, buy her like you’d buy a car and then drive her home and park her in their garage. That is ownership. Exchanging money for sexual services is nowhere close.

Finally, “high-priced hooker” carries the assumption that the worker in question is somehow over-charging, or charging more than most other workers. I don’t really know what’s going on with that assumption… should she charge less? Is she slightly more respectable because she charges more? But the bottom line is, it’s bullshit anyway, because nine times out of ten the people described as “high-priced hookers” aren’t charging rates out of the ordinary; they’re charging a competitive market rate. It makes me wonder, what the hell do people expect to pay?

More later, when I get time.

From Rootietoot:

Just because a person has a mental illness, does not automatically make them capable of doing horrible things. Most mentally ill people, just like most not mentally ill people, would not cause harm to someone. I daresay there are plenty of murderers, rapists, and child molesters who aren’t suffering from egregious mental disorders like manic-depression, schizophrenia, OCD or any of the other life-altering disorders.

And? If you’re going to write an article about someone who has - ZOMG!!1!!!eleven - a mental illness, try to at least pretend that you know what you’re talking about. Saying that a person has bipolar disorder and manic depression is a depth of stupidity at which I’d ordinarily be shocked, but then again, the story was on the Fox News web site, so I guess the bar continues to dip ever lower.

Okay, I’m just reposting here what I wrote to the Google group… because why the hell not?

—

Holy crap y’all… the PodCamp Atlanta AP story was picked up by freakin’ USA Today, Fox News, Newsday, Forbes, the Washington Post… the list goes on and on! Somehow*, it’s everywhere! See for yourselves!

WTF?? I am blown away!!

This is awesome but on the other hand I’m like… wow… someone at a news desk at the Washington Post FFS thought this was newsworthy… but not our Atlanta paper? Weird!!! I mean, I think it’s newsworthy, but WP newsworthy? Forbes newsworthy? But, hey, I’ll take it - oh hell yes I’ll take it! Excuse me - WE’LL take it!! :D

Please pardon all my exclamation points. I know they’re excessive.

Feel free to post this info far and wide.

—

And, a big “thank you” to AP reporter Daniel Yee. Want a beer, dude?

*This is what happens when the AP’s national desk picks up a story in their “TechBits” section, apparently.

[Cross-posted on the PodCamp Atlanta blog]

Technorati: podcampatlanta

Holy crap - Dacia is going to be on Geraldo at Large tonight! It airs at 8:00 p.m. on Fox News. (Yes, I will willingly be watching Fox News! Stranger things have happened.) I assume they’ll be discussing her book Naked on the Internet. If Geraldo is mean to her I’m going to fly to wherever he is and personally kick his ass - so consider yourself warned, Mr. Moustache.

I will Tivo it, of course. I wonder if there’s a way to get it from there to YouTube?

Update: Actually it won’t be on tonight. See comment for details.

A bunch of people have written about that story on the BBC web site, about a family with a severely disabled daughter who they are “keeping small” by means of surgery and other treatments. (Lots of links here.) The only thing I have to say about it is that I don’t think anyone has a right to say what these parents should or shouldn’t do. It smacks of a really awful sense of entitlement, and frankly I felt disgusted reading all the blog posts about it. Yes, even those from people who are supposedly sympathetic or whatever. Until you’ve been in that situation, you have no idea, so don’t sit around talking about what they should or shouldn’t do.

This is currently the top headline on BBC News: US Iran report branded dishonest.

The UN nuclear watchdog has protested to the US government over a report on Iran’s nuclear programme, calling it “erroneous” and “misleading”.

In a leaked letter, the IAEA said a congressional report contained serious distortions of the agency’s own findings on Iran’s nuclear activity.

The IAEA also took “strong exception” to claims made over the removal of a senior safeguards inspector.

The IAEA said the letter was sent to “set the record straight on the facts”.

That story is, currently, nowhere to be found on the New York Times, CNN, or MSNBC.

Sure, people… lecture me again about the “liberal media.” Believe whatever you read/hear/see. The terrorists hate our freedom, etc.

A Western diplomat called it “deja vu of the pre-Iraq war period”.

*Sigh*

[Via Jenny the Blogless One]

I guess I’ve been under a rock all morning (a rock called work), because I just now heard that the same-sex marriage ban didn’t get the 2/3 majority needed in the Senate (Sam Brownback’s craziness not withstanding). w00t! This is heartening news, especially during a week that was turning into one of those “getting disheartened by all the bullshit” weeks.

Speaking of Sam Brownback, I think he and Rick Santorum may have a new competitor for level of craziness. What about this fucking guy:

“We’re going to continue to press this issue,” Colorado Republican Sen. Wayne Allard said. “If it’s up to me, we’ll have a vote on this issue every year.”

Fantastic idea, Senator Allard. Colorado could use another Democrat!

Looks like I’m not the only one who owes the IRS money… so does our esteemed governor.

Tax returns reviewed by the newspaper for the past four years show Perdue got a refund in 2002 and 2003, but owed $95,000 in state and federal taxes in 2004 and $138,000 in 2005. Perdue’s net worth is more than $6 million, according to the financial disclosure report he filed Monday. … Before becoming governor in 2003, he incurred penalties for seven consecutive years for underpaying federal taxes and penalties for underpaying state taxes for six of the previous seven years.

I don’t feel quite so bad now, since I only owe in the triple digits, and I’m not an elected official.