Being Amber Rhea

So here’s the long and short of it. This coming Monday, Ren was supposed to be involved in a forum at William and Mary College about porn, sex work, and feminism. She and Jill Brenneman were going to debate John Foubert, the W&M professor who had a conniption fit about the Sex Workers Art Show coming to the campus, and renowned friend to women everywhere (seriously you guys, she loves women, now shut your stupid face about it before she sics her minions on you) Sam Berg, whose accomplishments include popularizing the portmanteau “pornstitution” and refusing to leave a beaten horse good and dead.

I was all set to write a post about it and encourage anyone within driving distance of W&M to head up there to witness the dressing down of John and Sam this historical meeting of the minds.

But now it seems, Ren has been “uninvited” to the forum. If you said “WTF??” to that, you’re not alone.

Apparently Ms. Berg is “uncomfortable” being in the same room as Ren. (She’s got the sex pox cooties, ya know!)

Seriously y’all… give me a fucking break!

So presumably, the forum will go on, and will consist of a bunch of people who are not sex workers opining loudly, vehemently, and at great length on the evils of porn (with plenty of salacious details and X-rated language, no doubt), and the ins and outs of the ritual whippings that take place on every porn set in America, and the secret chip that’s implanted in the neck of every sex worker who says she enjoys her job… and all the other various top-secret info only they have access to, being super-special Select Feminists™, of course.

God forbid Sam have to actually spew her hateful tripe directly in the face of a living, breathing sex worker. That would make things too difficult; it might threaten the One True Path! In that case, I can’t say I blame her for not wanting Ren there… you know, a sex worker who isn’t a walking embodiment of a stereotype (which, btw, the caricatures of sex workers as drug-addicted, self-loathing victims of untold travesties is totally not patriarchal, no, not at all).

Update: Ren clarifies that she hasn’t officially been uninvited yet. Apparently one of the students organizing the forum (the same group of students, btw, who brought the Sex Workers Art Show to W&M and had to deal w/ Foubert’s ensuing brouhaha) is trying to talk some sense into Sam Berg. We’ll see how that goes… I really, really hope they don’t let her walk all over everyone.

Once again, file under “Typical.”

I already posted a quote of the day, so this one will have to be for tomorrow (let’s just pretend I do these on a regular basis). Susan Mernit has written a seriously kick-ass BlogHer post, and really I should just say this is the post of the day instead of the quote of the day, because it’s hard to choose an excerpt.

I was going to write a post, at my friend Viviane’s urging, about women sex bloggers who are persecuted and their blogs shut down because their frankness offends members of their extended real world community, but I think the real issue we need to talk about is the high price women are made to pay, again and again, both for being sexual and for speaking their mind.

It’s not about the blogs, you see, it’s about the right for complete self expression. In other words, it’s about being silenced.

In my view, as much as we have strong women coming forth to share their experiences and beliefs, the culture at large is still making those who don’t fit the standard models—whether because of their sexual practices or their social mores—pay a price, and this is particularly true for women.

This kinda coincides with my latest Download Squad post (note the warning label is still intact, with irony apparently lost), but Susan is more eloquent. Read the whole thing. Oh, and she mentions Dacia and Paris Hilton one right after the other. Ha!

(But Susan, one question… Dave Winer is your friend? Really? Glad you guys get along, but geez, personally I cannot be friends with guys who say shit like, “Women are always accusing men of being sexist!” Cue tiny violin, take 5,676,372.)

How did I not see this post earlier? Oh, probably because I don’t often read Pandagon, since in general I don’t like that blog due to some shit that went down mostly last summer, and… well, never mind. I came across this post today and I’m glad I did. Filed under “reference.” Would’ve shown up in daily del.icio.us posting but that was broken again due to a 500 server not found error. :P Guess my blog was down for a while this afternoon.

Anyhow…

Let’s assume just for the sake of argument that you’re right. You aren’t. But just as a gedankenexperiment, let’s pretend you are, and that the women who are talking about the massive deadweight silence from men about the harassment they experience, and who are getting all upset and speaking in terms of “war zones” and “hate crimes” and such are just being emotional, hysterical even, and — like the people who forward that bogus email about the guy with the ropes and duct tape in his trunk in the mall parking lot — just need to be set straight with a calm, measured dose of logic and fact-checking.

In most situations, that’s a fine impulse. There really is no reason to get upset about LSD in blue star tattoos, and Bill Gates really isn’t paying people who forward a chain email.

But this situation is qualitatively different. When the topic at hand is men not taking an issue seriously, suggesting that the issue might not really be all that serious is not being dispassionate. It is, in fact, taking a side. And the people on the side you’re taking, incidentally, include the gropers, the rapists, the sexual-favor-demanding bosses.

In short, if you’re interested in quibbling with the data or suggesting alternate interpretations of what Kos really meant when he called Kathy Sierra a lying “crying blogger,” and your goal is not to be a flaming asshole, shut the fuck up.

It took serious restraint not to quote the entire post. So go read it. Seriously.