Posts tagged Rape

The Double Standard of What Gender-specific Quotes Mean and Represent: The Endless Parade of Anti-Feminist Quotes Continues by Julian Real, at A Radical Profeminist 10:04 pm / 22 August 2010

image of Dwaine Tinsley: cartoonist (creator of "Chester the Molester" published in Hustler magazine for years), good friend of Larry Flynt, and incest perpetrator of his daughter, is from here

From this blog website: http://heartlessriot.com/post/990641874/misandry-is-not-feminism. My reply to it follows.

Misandry is not feminism!

This (content warning) disturbs me a little as a believer that all people should have equal rights and not seek domination over another sex, ethnic background (I refuse the term “race”), or orientation. To me and many others; this is what feminism is about.

“I feel that ‘man-hating’ is an honorable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them.”
- Robin Morgan: civil rights, antiwar and radical feminist activist, writer, poet, and editor of Ms. Magazine

Nothing has ever been accomplished anywhere with hate. In fact I think that “man hating” pushes women and man further away from the ultimate goal of equality because it then places the sexes at “war” with each other as well as reinforcing the misconceptions about females.

“When a woman reaches orgasm with a man she is only collaborating with the patriarchal system, eroticizing her own oppression.”
- Sheila Jeffreys: professor, political activist and author

This is plain BS. People are supposed to enjoy sex and having an orgasm isn’t making you a slave to the patriarchal system. Not having one is because that means your man only cares about his pleasure rather than yours as well. This lady is backwards and this statement is utterly ridiculous. To me it seems that she is stating you cannot be a feminist and enjoy sex or to be a feminist you must be a lesbian.

“To call a man an animal is to flatter him; he’s a machine, a walking dildo.”
- Valerie Solanas (1936-1988): Author of the SCUM Manifesto, attempted murderer of Andy Warhol

This is what I call role reversal and it isn’t okay. Just because females have been treated as the proverbial slab of meat does not make it okay to treat men the same way. This comment is sickening…

“I want to see a man beaten to a bloody pulp with a high-heel shoved in his mouth, like an apple in the mouth of a pig.”
- Andrea Dworkin (1946-2005): writer, antipornography activist

Physical abuse or assault is never okay no matter what sex it is EVER. I don’t think I need to say any more than that.

“We are, as a sex, infinitely superior to men.”
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902): social activist, abolitionist, women’s suffrage movement leader

Again, this is just pitting the sexes together in a power struggle which is self defeating to the movement as a whole.

The bottom line is that these women weren’t feminists and women who think like this are not feminists. Just like misogyny; misandry is dangerous to the concept of equality and attitudes like this should be refused by the feminist movement.

Julian Real's reply:

Feminism isn't "misandry" and those tired old quotes don't make it so. They are trotted across the internet more often than the "important" news of which female celebrity was caught in the paparazzi's photographs not wearing any make-up. You're really misleading people here with this post, and it's sad to see--again.

Feminism has always been anti-rape (against anyone), against violence (against anyone), and for equality and dignity and human rights, for raising boys to be humane, for raising girls with self-esteem and confidence.

The people who most promote the hatred of men are MEN, not women. Haven't you noticed that? It is men, after all, not women, who start and maintain wars, right?

The people who do hate women most dangerously are men, and too many of them demonstrate it in ugly and lethal ways, as we all got to witness when recently hearing Mel Gibson be verbally threatening and insulting and degrading to Oksana Gregorieva, or with Phil Spector's murder of Lana Clarkson. We have story after story of male serial rapists and serial killers in the news, which also seems like a storyline prime-time programs like CSI, NCIS, and Law and Order cannot do without. How many more times do we have to see a young, thin, white woman appearing to be dead, bloody, wrapped in plastic, to "entertain" mass U.S. audiences? Those shows, every week, don't show bloody, naked, young pale men in plastic, do they? Who writes those story lines: women or men?

Lies are spread about feminists being "man-haters" by reproducing five or seven or a dozen quotes, as you do above, as if we couldn't do precisely the same thing with just quotes that have left the lips of male actors, or that were composed by "great" male novelists, essayists, or playwrights. Shall we conclude then, that those men's quotes are representative of how most or all male actors, novelists, essayists, and playwrights feel about women? Why do men's rights activists regularly, online, promote this the double standard:

A few hateful comments by men towards or about women are indicative that some men are bitter about women because sometime in their lives a woman probably hurt them very badly; but a few quotes by some feminists, often from works of fiction or as noted in statements that have been made up completely (evidence linked to below), mean that feminists who disrespect or disregard men in some way are speaking the one truth that all feminists believe--or that even the feminist being quoted believes?

Is that fair? Is what you do above fair to feminism?

Why the very selective quoting? You could promote feminism with the quotes listed below. Feminists were and still are trying to achieve: an end of male violence against women and an end to rape. Feminists work to achieve equal rights, including equal pay for the same work done by men, and feminists note that "housework" is hard work.

See this for more on how your blog post dovetails with what anti-feminist men's rights activists spread across the web:

http://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2010/08/catharine-mackinnon-is-not-proponent-of.html

http://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2010/06/those-mratrolls-and-their-list-of.html

Why don't you put up the quotes below, by radical feminists? I'd recommend that you at least balance out the post you have above by also posting these (not just in a comment by me) to show how even more feminists, including the one's selectively (like Dworkin's and Morgan's) or quoted out of context (like Stanton's) by you above, really feel about men's humanity.

"The strongest lesson I can teach my son is the same lesson I teach my daughter: how to be who he wishes to be for himself." -- radical feminist Audre Lorde

"People can find eroticism in relations with people whom they respect and whom they see as equals." -- radical feminist Catharine MacKinnon

"In the long run, Women's Liberation will of course free men -- but in the short run it's going to COST men a lot of privilege, which no one gives up willingly or easily." -- radical feminist Robin Morgan

"[A] legitimate revolution must be led by, made by those who have been most oppressed: black, brown, yellow, red, and white women —- with men relating to that the best they can." -- radical feminist Robin Morgan

One of the most spuriously quoted lines by Marilyn French is one from her novel, The Women's Room. It reads, "all men are rapists, and that's all they are. They rape us with their eyes, their laws and their codes."

What is next was quoted from her in 2007 and is NOT from her fictional characters:

"Most men are on our side. They like their lives better than their fathers' lives. They like being involved with their children. They like having a better relationship with their women." -- radical feminist Marilyn French

"I believe that all human beings are equal. I believe that no one has the right to authority over anyone else." -- radical feminist Marilyn French

"For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?" -- radical feminist bell hooks

"No one deserves brutality because of what they are, there condition of birth." -- radical feminist Andrea Dworkin

"Truth is harder to bear than ignorance, and so ignorance is valued more--also because the status quo depends on it; but love depends on self-knowledge and self-knowledge depends on being able to bear the truth." -- radical feminist Andrea Dworkin

"Love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust." -- radical feminist bell hooks (Communion: The Female Search for Love)

"As all advocates of feminist politics know most people do not understand sexism or if they do they think it is not a problem. Masses of people think that feminism is always and only about women seeking to be equal to men. And a huge majority of these folks think feminism is anti-male. Their misunderstanding of feminist politics reflects the reality that most folks learn about feminism from patriarchal mass media." -- radical feminist bell hooks

Why do you quote Dworkin from a work of fiction? Does a misogynistic quote by Norman Mailer or Ernest Hemingway mean all male novelists hate women? And, noted above here, there are plenty of quotes you could cite by Dworkin that demonstrate she believed in the humanity of men. She was no man-hater, which is obvious if you read her work carefully and know anything at all about her life.

The Stanton quote was obviously written in response to the predominant and prevailing view that white men are superior to all women, of any ethnicity.

Let's visit a few of the quotes by men, throughout history. Because given what follows, you ought to conclude what you do about "feminists": that a few carefully chosen misogynistic quotes from men who say hateful things about women are representative of how men feel, generally, as a group. Is there or isn't there a double standard about what quotes mean when compiled in curiously biased ways?

Below are just a tiny sampling demonstrating that men's institutionalised hatred of women is centuries old and exists across many societies. These are men, who, unlike anyone you cited above, occupied positions of significant political leadership and social influence with actual power to control institutions and societies that radical feminists, as yet, have never had.

Jack Holland details the ways in which both the Greeks and Hesiod viewed the figure of Pandora.

‘The Greek phrase used to describe her, kalon kakon, means ‘the beautiful evil’.’

In Hesiod’s words...
‘From her comes all the race of womankind
The deadly female race and tribe of wives
Who live with mortal men and do them harm.’

Tertullion, one of the founding fathers of the Catholic Church, famously harangued the archetypal feminine thus...
‘And do you know that you are Eve? God’s sentence hangs over all your sex and His punishment weighs down upon you. You are the devil’s gateway, it was you who first violated the forbidden tree and broke God’s law. You coaxed your way around man whom the devil had not the force to attack. With what ease you shattered that image of God: man!’

‘Woman is a stupid vessel over whom man must always hold power, for the man is higher and better than she is.’ Martin Luther, Protestant Reformationist. (NOT Martin Luther King!)

‘A man with a hundred tongues who lived for a century would still not be able to complete the task of describing the vices and defects of a woman.’ Mahabharata, Hindu.

Georg Hegel, wrote in his ‘Philosophy of Right’...
‘Women are certainly capable of learning, but they are not made for the higher forms of science, such as philosophy...Women acquire learning – we know not how – almost as if by breathing ideas, more by living really than by actually taking hold of knowledge.’

Friedrich Nietzsche said that...
‘When a woman inclines to learning, there is usually something wrong with her sex apparatus.’

And it lurches into the twentieth century with the words of Otto Weininger on the absolute nothingness of women...

‘Women have no existence and no essence, they are not, they are nothing, Mankind occurs as male or female, as something or nothing...the meaning of woman is to be meaningless. She represents negation, the opposite pole from the Godhead, the other possibility of humanity....A woman cannot grasp that one must act from principle; as she has no continuity she does not experience the necessity for logical support of her mental processes...she may be regarded as ‘logically insane’. From ‘Sex and Character’, 1906.

Dr. Max Baff, Professor of Psychology, in 1910:
‘All women are fundamentally savage, and the suffragist movement is simply an outbreak of emotional insanity.’

‘Women who say no do not always mean no. It is not just a question of saying no, it is a question of how she says it, how she shows and makes it clear. If she doesn’t want it she only has to keep her legs shut and she would not get it without force.’ Judge David Wild, 1982.

And here's another bit of "brilliance" by Martin Luther:
‘Men have broad shoulders and narrow hips, and accordingly they possess intelligence. Women have narrow shoulders and broad hips. Women ought to stay at home; the way they were created indicates this, for they have broad hips and a wide fundament to sit upon, keep house and bed and raise children.’

‘The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shown by man attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than woman can attain – whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the use of senses and hands...’ Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man.

I haven't even tapped the vast body of "great" literature, exposing all the quotes from those famous misogynists Norman Mailer and Ernest Hemingway. I haven't even shown images of woman-hating mass produced by pimps like Larry Flynt of Hustler, who thought monthly cartoons created by a convicted incest perpetrator of his daughter, Dwaine Tinsley, and good friend of Larry's, about how funny it was to be a child molester. I've shown no images by Bob Guccione of Penthouse, such as his "classic" photographs, in his magazine, of East Asian women wrapped in white sheets appearing to have been dropped off a cliff onto rocks, as if dead--in a pornography magazine for men's entertainment (according to men and the fact that they said they enjoy the images). I haven't begun to quote what all those men have to say about women and especially feminists that is disgustingly pro-rape and virulently woman-hating.

So will you correct the perception you leave readers with above about what feminists generally believe, and please also clearly indicate what men, historically, have done to subordinate women, that far too many men still do?

Tagged with: accountability, Andrea Dworkin, Antifeminism, criminal custody, herstory, incest, logical phallusy, male supremacy/misogyny/sexism, proWomanism/profeminism, radical feminists, Rape

TIME F’ing LIES: The Truth Behind TIME’s Cover-Up Of the U.S.’s War Against Women in Afghanistan by Julian Real, at A Radical Profeminist 9:05 pm / 21 August 2010

image is from here

TIME fucking lies.

I've already discussed how TIME refuses to print what's truthful, in favor of a propagandistic, pro-Empire war version of reality that suits rich white men. Men who profit from our wars across the globe: economic, political, and military wars, including domestic wars, using domestic violence as a primary form of terrorism--against women and children, by men who supposedly love those they maim and murder.

TIME magazine would like you to believe that U.S. men don't do things like cut the features off of women's faces. But we do. There's nothing done to women anywhere in the world that U.S. men don't do to women somewhere. Below is that exploitative cover, grossly misusing the photograph of a young woman maimed by an abusive man in her life under circumstances that the U.S. government and military not only could not have stopped, but is working to ensure happens a whole lot more. That's something TIME won't tell you.

All patriarchal war is war against women even when it is publicly determined to be men fighting men, and even when it is also men killing men. And so in every war, women are raped, blown up, murdered, by men. This is necessarily and strategically part of any war game that men play with one another off the video-screen. And in most places--but not everywhere, men who are with women intimately commit criminal acts against them: degrading them, disfiguring them; dominating and subordinating them; acting out various emotional-political lethal potions of misogyny and projected self-hatred--which is the only functionally, institutionally existent form of misandry that exists anywhere. Men do horrid things to women, and when women complain about it, women are, yet again, called horrible names by men, or are beaten, cut, and killed. I abhor TIME magazine's cover choice; if you haven't seen it, you won't see it here--if you haven't seen it and want to, click on the linked phrase "Time Magazine Cover" in the article below, which is where the image appears on the RAWA website. TIME owes every Afghan woman an apology, but needs to follow up that apology by demanding in every issue, on their cover, that the U.S. must stop its atrocities against women domestically and internationally, not by exploiting that violence with images, but by naming it accurately, in politically unambiguous text. Everything that follows is from that RAWA website, which you can link back to by clicking on the title just below.

The real story behind Time’s Afghan woman cover: American complicity

Now they (warlords) have posts in the new government, or if they do not, soon might.

By Ralph Lopez

The repressive and misogynistic forces the picture depicts are the very ones that were bolstered by U.S. policy in the early 1980s, and again now. The head of Jobs for Afghans proposes an answer to 'warlordism' and its medieval attitude toward women.

Time Magazine's cover

There has been much discussion, as well as misunderstanding, of the Time magazine cover photo of the Afghan woman who had her nose cut off by the Taliban. The purported object lesson is clear: If we leave Afghanistan now, this is what will happen. The woman had tried to run away from her abusive husband, and this was her punishment. Despite the torrent of bad news about the war, Time would have us believe this is the choice we face. But that is a comic-book version of Afghanistan.

The reality is even more disturbing: The repressive and misogynistic forces the picture depicts are the very ones now being bolstered by U.S. policy.

How could this be? To understand Afghanistan, it is necessary to understand that the key fissure in the society's slow evolution towards modernity is not tribal, nor ethnic, but country versus city. And here, America’s historical role in the region has had a disastrous effect on Afghanistan’s women.

In 1979, the CIA started secretly aiding opponents of the pro-Soviet government in Kabul, increasing the likelihood that the Soviet Union would be drawn into what Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski hoped would be "their own Vietnam." The young socialist government, which had overthrown a centuries-old monarchy, was cosmopolitan, outward-looking, and stressed the education of women as well as men. This was a time when women in Kabul could wear mini-skirts. In its search for proxies to attack the Kabul regime, Brzezinski and the Cold Warriors turned to the conservative warlord elements in the countryside. They were of all ethnicities; Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek. What they had in common was their ability to raise and organize fighters – and their Medieval attitudes toward women.

These Mujehadeen were natural enemies of any central government that sought to consolidate power and force change. The CIA supplied them with billions of dollars in weapons and ammunition, including surface-to-air missiles that could bring down Russian jets and helicopters. The rest is history. The Russians left, Afghans were abandoned by the U.S. to deal with bombed-out rubble and millions of landmines which remain to this day, and the country devolved into brutal civil war among the factions we had armed, from which the Pakistan-based Taliban emerged victorious.

After the American offensive in 2001, Afghans woke up from their Taliban nightmare, which had imposed law and order by reducing the number of punishments for nearly all crimes to one: death. But when they looked around at their new government, to see who was now running the country, to their dismay they saw the same conservative, mountain village warlords who had made life so hellish they made the Taliban look good by comparison.

Many of these warlords had played key roles in Brzezinski's game of bogging down and enfeebling the Russian military. Now they have posts in the new government, or if they do not, soon might. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a notorious warlord and war criminal, started his career throwing acid in women's faces back in his college days in Kabul. These days, he fights alongside the Taliban, but is not one of them – and the U.S. and Karzai are considering bringing him into the government, because he commands 10,000 men and can help keep order.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar a notorious warlord in Afghanistan

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a notorious warlord and war criminal, started his career throwing acid in women's faces back in his college days in Kabul. These days, he fights alongside the Taliban, but is not one of them – and the U.S. and Karzai are considering bringing him into the government, because he commands 10,000 men and can help keep order.

The Tierney Report, issued this summer by the House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, chaired by Rep. Tierney (D-MA), shows that we are in the process of strengthening exactly these conservative, misogynistic elements. This is the result of massive and systematic protection payments to warlords and their insurgent allies, for safe passage of military supply convoys to American bases. Without the payments, there is no way to get supplies through. The report, "Warlord, Inc.: Extortion and Corruption Along the U.S. Supply Chain in Afghanistan", shows we are working at terrible cross-purposes in Afghanistan.

Rural marriage traditions which allow girls to be essentially given away as early as age 10 are at the root of much of the abuse which women endure. Dr. Soraya Sobhrang, commissioner of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, is at the center of attempts to change the legal age of marriage for women to 18, which is the age for men. But enforcement of such a law would require government structures that can rival the power of the rural warlords. Sobhrang told a reporter in 2007: "The international community made a mistake empowering the mujahedeen who are now stronger in the provinces. They make and follow their own laws there."

For going on 10 years now, U.S. policy on Afghanistan has allowed traditional enemies of any central government to grow unchecked, unbalanced by any real effort to improve the lives of ordinary Afghans. When their power is diluted with jobs programs, community infrastructure projects, and opportunities in the cities, then warlords of all stripes lose. But keep everyone in a perpetual state of semi-starvation and hopelessness, and the warlords (including the Taliban ones) remain the only employers in town. Usually those jobs involve fighting someone or other.

The answer to the warlords -- and more importantly to what Afghans, especially the young, call "warlordism" -- is the economic strengthening of the popular base. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently unveiled a program to lure the economic Taliban, that is, fighters who fight mainly for the wage, away from the insurgency with the lure of jobs. In this she has heeded the words of Karl Eikenberry, now the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, but formerly the commander of U.S. forces there, who told the House Armed Services Committee in 2007: "Much of the enemy force is drawn from the ranks of unemployed men looking for wages to support their families."

But Clinton's proposal threatens to fail by not going far enough. If jobs, preferably involving the construction of basic infrastructure, are politicized and given only to those who quit the Taliban, then those ex-combatants and their families will become targets for retaliation. This would add yet further impetus for violence. For far less than the cost of one month of military operations -- about $5 billion -- a widespread cash-for-work program could be implemented for everyone.

Some Americans will say this is ridiculous when there are not enough jobs right here in the U.S. But Americans don't work for $5 a day, and Afghans are happy to. It's not the $5 billion we spend on a civilian solution in Afghanistan that will break the bank and take away jobs from Americans. It's the $250 billion and counting that we have spent on counterproductive military operations and hardware.

General David Petraeus says frequently and correctly that the "center of gravity is the Afghan people" -- not Afghan combatants, nor former combatants, but all the people. Despite his interpretation, that’s an excellent argument for abandoning so-called "counter-insurgency" operations, preparing for U.S. troop withdrawal, and placing bets on an economic strategy that weakens the warlords. All our military presence has done so far is alienate a people who were not alienated before. After the Taliban was overthrown in 2001, the oppressive and rather spooky characters who had terrorized Afghans for 7 years were suddenly gone. Afghans began listening to music again, shaved their beards if they felt like it, flew kites, and engaged in countless other long-deferred Afghan pleasures. Wedding palaces went up in all their gaudy, flashing neon-light glory, and one of the first public entertainments to re-open in Kabul was the movie theater. The longest running blockbuster by a wide margin? Rambo III.

Now self-immolation and the suicide rate among Afghan women are at an all time high. With the warlords of all sides still strong and getting stronger, nothing has changed for them. The constant state of war only strengthens the Taliban by placing them in the position, as disliked as they are, of national liberators.

Strengthening the "center of gravity" by going big on jobs and development in a country where unemployment is 40 percent will weaken the warlords -- those who sit in the Karzai government and those who fight against it. By changing the dynamic, Afghans might someday resume their experiment in empowering women, so suddenly aborted by Brzezinski's eagerness to give the Russians "their own Vietnam."

Ralph Lopez is co-founder and Director of Jobs for Afghans, a citizens' peace organization. He led a fact-finding mission to Afghanistan in the summer of 2009.

Tagged with: accountability, all war is war against women, battery, crimes against womanity, Gynocide, male supremacy/misogyny/sexism, Media, Racism, Rape, U.S. terrorism, War, Western CRAPitalism, WHM supremacy

Abortion in Film: The Shame of Patty Smith by Sarah, at Feminists For Choice 11:23 am / 19 August 2010

To quote Gloria Feldt, “Media portrayals, real or fictional, don’t merely inform us — they form us.” In this series, I will be examining five films – classic, mainstream, independent, foreign, and pre-Roe – and five television shows – daytime soap, drama, pre-Roe, critically lauded, and teen-oriented – that address unexpected pregnancy, to examine how [...]

Tagged with: 1962, abortion in film, death, Doctors, exploitation flick, Laws, legalization, Los Angeles, patty smith, Rape

Pro-Porn Patriarchs, Pimps, and their Protectors’ Logical Phallusy: They insist Radical Feminists are out-of-touch when speaking and writing about the pornogaphy industry: What will they say about THIS INTERVIEW with a Black woman director in the industry? by Julian Real, at A Radical Profeminist 9:20 pm / 18 August 2010

image of Gail Dines' new book's cover is from here

VB: How do I say this nicely? Most of the guys behind the camera don’t like women.

DX: Really? As in homosexuals or misogynist or…
VB: Both, all of the above. There’s a very famous porn star who does all big booty product now and probably out of 100 girls, 80 of us have a story about him attacking us behind closed doors. Physically, like ripping our clothes off. So no, when you have personalities like that, how on earth can it be good?

DX: How do these guys stay working with everything going on off camera?
VB: What do you mean?

DX: As far as attitudes and attacking actresses?
VB: The girls deal with it. It’s very unfortunate, but the girls… they deal with it. They’re just adjusted to being run over. The industry has expanded and grown into something so toxic. Whenever a girl tells me she wants to do porn, I will spend hours trying to talk her out of it. -- Vanessa Blue, a director in the pornography industry

This post begins with the cover of a new book, an important book, on how pornography--corporate industry pornography, is influencing and has invaded our sexual and social lives. The book is by a white feminist anti-pornography activist, Gail Dines, who has done extensive research and interviews, and has spoken with countless women and men of all colors inside and outside the pornography industry to arrive at her conclusions presented clearly in her new book.

When feminist books come out on the subject of pornography, and they aren't kind to the pimps and profiteers, the pimp-protecting public comes out to declare that the author is an academic and doesn't know what she's talking about. They claim she's out-of-touch, lost in an Ivory Tower, unwilling to get dirty by being on the streets where women who work know what's really going on. Women of all colors work everywhere that work happens: they are probably the only demographic about whom this can be said. From historically and currently caring for the children of wealthy white people, to working in their own homes, to working in every industry, in every corporation, and in every field of intellectual investigation, women of color, collectively, more than any other demographic, are fully aware of what is going on in the world and who benefits and who doesn't.

So what would happen if a Black woman director of her own "adult" films, who has worked in the pornography industry for years, speaks out about that very same industry that (a very few) white academic feminists critique as being thoroughly racist and misogynistic, run by white male supremacist woman-haters who profit at the expense of women's humanity? Does she get written off because she works in the industry?

All that follows my introduction is conversation happening on Byron Hurt's Facebook page. Thank you, Byron. For those of you who don't know, Byron Hurt made an excellent documentary looking into the misogyny inside what has become the hip hop industry, run by white men to most profit white men who benefit from promoting heterosexist, racist, and misogynistic stereotypes. For more on that film, Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, here: http://www.bhurt.com/beyondBeatsAndRhymes.php.

Byron has an active Facebook page and started a conversation by promoting Gail Dines' new book, pictured above. Enlarged text and text put in bold was done by me, to draw attention to the hypocrisy and dishonesty of what Anthony Springer. Below you will see, yet again, how easily and effortlessly men do not listen to feminist women or take what they say to heart. Men across race and class get defensive and what they are defending is their male privileges and entitlements to not listen to women or regard their speech, points of view, analysis, and insights as just as valuable as their own. I could hypothetically ask, "I wonder what Anthony would do with the information given to him about the pornography industry from a woman who works inside it." Except we get to know the answer. We can know what he was told, if not what he heard. But what was communicated directly to him and was written up by him is forgotten by the time he types up his remarks on Byron's page going after a radical feminist, a Black woman named Aganju Axe who is against the racist and misogynistic harm of the pornography industry.

And I'll close my introductory comments by noting there's a VERY similar conversation going on at Ms. Magazine online. I've posted most of the content that I present below to that website as well, and am not sure if they'll accept it. Here is the link: http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2010/08/06/porn-pleasure-or-profit-ms-interviews-gail-dines-part-iii/

* * *

Byron Hurt
In light of Montana Fishbourne's announcement that she's decided to become a porn star, here is insightful analysis from Gail Dines on race and porn, excerpted from Dines' new book, "Pornland." Gail Dines, a friend and colleague, has written extensively on the pornography industries' impact on men and women. Check ou...t Racy Sex, Sexy Racism: Porn from the Dark Side at http://www.scribd.com/doc/31889259/An-excerpt-from-Pornland-Racy-Sex-Sexy-Racism-Porn-from-the-Dark-Side. Her book, "Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality" is now available at www.amazon.com.

Montana Fishburne: I'm A Role Model
www.huffingtonpost.com

Laurence Fishburne's budding porn star daughter Montana has taken to Twitter (via Dlisted) to call herself a role model for a future generation, to mock college degrees, to call the 'Jersey Shore' people trash and more. A few of her tweets from Thursday are photoshopped... together below, including "Ta...[the rest was cut off at Byron's Facebook page]
10 hours ago · Comment · LikeUnlike
Aganju Axe and Sarah Bryant like this.

Anthony SinSity Σ Springer
Interesting analysis. Unfortunately, it lacks any actual quotes from women who actually perform the work (unless my quick read missed something). Seems that'd be easier and a bit more conclusive than watching/reading descriptions and forming ones own conclusions. As one whose interviewed a handful of black porn stars, including some black female directors, I've never heard anybody say the industry doesn't have some racist elements. However, I think performer conclusions--which should have some weight in this discussion--deserve a fair hearing. But Dines never lets the facts get in the way of a good story.
9 hours ago · LikeUnlike

Suzy Wright
I believe that her tweets have been debunked and it is not really her. But thank you for bringing this up, Byron. :)
9 hours ago · LikeUnlike

Chei Dutch
GAIL DINES!!! I Luv her! She was my professor at Wheelock College in Boston!..I feel so special..But this girl is walkin down the path of self distruction. She is clearly brainwashed into thinking money and sex will lead her to happiness. These men and some women in the pron industry r explointin her and its sad how they r gettin them at such a yough age now. its Sick! I feel sad for her father bcas i know his is embarassed, concerned and angry.
8 hours ago · LikeUnlike

Aganju Axe
‎"But Dines never lets the facts get in the way of a good story."

And men, academics and porn users never let their agendas get in the way of their so-called facts either.

As if being a man, an academic and supporter of porn use makes someone... qualified to know the facts. As if women's oppression can be understood even with male privilege, porn use and so-called academic objectivity.

Porn doesn't just effect the so-called actresses or women doing the "work" as sex pozi academics call it. It affects all women who live in a pornified rape culture. That means that porn like MacDonald's porn is everywhere and you don't have a choice whether you will be exposed to it. When I worked as a public librarian I've learned that I can't tell some asshole looking at porn on a public library computer to stop whether or not I have to pass by his PC and look at that sick hateful crap! When pornographers and their sex pozi supports position porn as harmless and about women's empowerment that's exactly how other capitalist industries allow their far reaching influence to go unchecked!

So questioning/quoting women in the actual industry who have decided to make money doing what sex pozi academics conveniently call "work" is only one side, and it’s a side they are pressed to remind us of because it supports their unoriginal BS thesis that some porn is good, some porn is bad but how dare you imagine a world without men buying womenh for sex? Because I use it and/or that's how some women make their and/or because it's my Phd thesis.

That's like questioning rappers and asking them how they feel about the capitalist music industry. But the difference is while people want to position rappers dripping in diamonds and throwing dollars at strippers as exploited by the music industry, women in porn are forced to appear empowered by getting fucked on camera. But that's how Patriarchy works! Conveniently sexist logic. Cherry pick a few women to represent the sex industry and deflect away from THE FACT that those at the top of the food chain are still rich, white and male. If we did that with any of other industry bedsides the sex industry Leftists would see right through the white male capitalist smoke and mirrors! But not with porn! Thanks to sex pozi academics!

Porn is hate speech. But people do make their living off of peddling hate including people at which the hate is directed. Just look at hip hop. But whereas we are told not to listen to what black men say about their ice and power as rappers, porn actresses should be heard as the only truly objective voice on the industry. Why? Because it's their bread and butter so they defend it. Why? Because porn, like any industry that pollutes (cigarettes don't just affect smokers) doesn't want anyone who isn't gaining from it's success to be heard. That means women like me should shut up and listen to the experts: The academics (who've done their so-called objective research). The porn actresses (who collect a check). The guy jerking off to gang bang MILS at the public library (because all women really want to get gang banged! That's what porn tells us! Lies about women. The truth about men…ALL MEN. Even the ones in the Ivory Tower! A phallic symbol BTW!).

Porn is everywhere and porn wants to be sex just like MacDonald's wants to be food. It's nauseating that these sex pozi academics are defending a capitalist industry as having only a few racist and even sexist elements in order to boost their Phd thesis, defend their porn use and exercise their male privilege.
8 hours ago · LikeUnlike · 5 people

Emir Lewis wow that lyrical beatdown that Ms. Axe put on Mr. Springer was almost as bad as what Lauryn did to Clef...

6 hours ago · LikeUnlike

Anthony SinSity Σ Springer Is that what that was?
6 hours ago · LikeUnlike

Linda Jean Russom
Hi Byron! Our girl Shira wrote a great article on Jezebel via Ms. about the book. Check it out here: http://jezebel.com/5614102/is-pornography-sexy-racism
6 hours ago · LikeUnlike

Aganju Axe
Dr. Springer's response proves my point: He only listens women who tell him what he wants to hear.
6 hours ago · LikeUnlike · 1 person

Anthony SinSity Σ Springer Negative. You've already proven yourself incapable or uninterested in reasoned and sound debate. I'm not going to hijack Byron's page by going back and forth with you though.
6 hours ago · LikeUnlike · 1 person

Sarah Bryant
I don't feel that Ms. Axe is uninterested in reasoned & sound debate. That's exactly what she's offering. She simply disagrees w/ you. You need not be threatened by it. If she agreed w/ you, it wouldn't be a "debate".
6 hours ago · LikeUnlike

Aganju Axe
I already knew you'd say that Dr. Springer PhD. Men and academics, especially pro-porn men and academics like yourself are the sole arbiters of "sound and reasoned debate" on the issue of the sex industry. If you respond as if your life and... dignity is on the line when it comes to the influence of porn culture and it is because you're a woman and we are talking or should be talking about and keeping the focus on women's dignity and experience, ALL women's dignity and experience not just the ones you agree with Dr. Springer to reinforce your thesis then you are incapable of "sound and reasoned debate."

My bad. Maybe I should go back to school. Then I'd be on your level of intellectual rigor and objectivity. The Miseducation of Aganju Axe. LOL.
6 hours ago · LikeUnlike

Emir Lewis ‎@ Aganju - maybe if you were a performer commenting on how uplifting your "acting" experience was, that would count that as sound & reasoned???
6 hours ago · LikeUnlike · 1 personAganju Axe likes this.

Aganju Axe ‎^^^Word up. No doubt.^^^
6 hours ago · LikeUnlike

Aganju Axe
Must be nice: Having a penis and a Phd? Male privilege AND academic authority on an area of study (the sex industry) that primarily oppresses women? It's like having a SWORD and a SHIELD to defend against any criticism by a woman you don't ...want to hear because it challenges your entitlements as a man.

Privilege is about being able to tune out any challenge to your entitlement. Being a male pro-porn scholar means you have the best of both worlds! Bravo @ such an awesome gig!
5 hours ago · LikeUnlike

Julian Real
To Anthony Springer - "As one whose interviewed a handful of black porn stars, including some black female directors, I've never heard anybody say the industry doesn't have some racist elements."

First, on racist-misogynist elements here. As... Pearl Cleage says, on matters of sexism and racism, it is for men/whites to maintain a posture of listening rather than a posture of defence. I recommend you reread Aganju's comments and analysis again, as it is damned sharp and on point, imo. And she's lived as a Black woman in this racist-misogynist society so soaked in pornography and other racist-misogynistic media that I believe you'd be wise to listen to her as much as you seem to listen to (if not fully hear) the women actors and directors you've interviewed in the pornography industry.

On the matter of racism and misogyny and the pornography industry:

Can you tell me what percentage of the 53 billion dollars annually earned by corporate pimps through the production and marketing of pornography is directed by Black women? I'll go out on a limb and say less than one thousandth of one percent. So whatever you heard from the people who you picked to speak to about a white male dominated globalised industry, doesn't speak much to the reality of most women in it. It'd be like you stating that you've interviewed some Black actors and directors in the non-pornographic film industry, and some reported to you that there's no much racism. So what? What does that have to do with all the racism that everyone else experiences?

Can you tell me you've seen one website or genre of industry/corporate-produced pornography--I'm not speaking here of some fringe site operated by Black women that is about as representative of the industry as Barack Obama is of the color of our presidents historically--that is neither overtly racist or overtly sexist? I'm not asking you to post it here, or to post it anywhere. I'm asking if you know of any. A simple yes or no will suffice: corporate-produced and mass-distributed pornography?

I know plenty of survivors of pornography and prostitution and you interviewing a few people tells me not a whole lot about them or their stories and experiences. That's what academics and social scientists call "anecdotal evidence". In this case it is being mediated through a man who has not been forthcoming in owning what his own levels of investment are in having visual access to images of exploited and raped women.

I know nothing about what you asked those people, how you asked it, and how free the women you spoke with were/are to really speak their minds. Do you get that trauma survivors don't just sit down for an interview and speak about the matters about which we hold the most shame and self-contempt? About which women of color have been told, repeatedly, ought to be a source of their shame and self-contempt? Do you know if they spoke the whole truth to you what the consequence to them might be? Do you know if they'd get beaten for saying anything negative to you? Do you know if word would get around in their circles to not hire them? If you say "I know they wouldn't be beaten for speaking the whole truth and I know there would be no negative economic impact to them", how do you know that?

As an ex-prostitute and close female friend of mine said: "Don't ask a girl or woman on the street [or in pornography] what she thinks of the business. Ask her twenty years after she's gotten out."

Because part of doing that work requires such intense levels of dissociation and denial about the impact of the trauma, physically and psychically, that she may not be able to give you a very complete answer while she's doing the work. In exactly the same way that anyone in any traumatic environment who is required, economically or interpersonally--such as by a pimp, to be there, will not be able to tell you the whole truth of their experience. That you assume otherwise about women in prostitution-pornography only tells me you are going to hear what you want to hear and not factor in what those women won't tell you directly. And that those silences may be saying more than what they express in words to you. And if you think they're being "completely honest" with you, how would you possibly know that? Through what means of apprehension? I'm not calling any woman you've spoken to a liar. I'm saying you're in no position to tell me when someone is able to tell you the whole truth about an industry that profits off of rape and pays women more to be serially sexually assaulted, or, at the very least, grossly exploited, in front of a camera than to do anything else in society.

Now, given that we're talking about a globalised political and economic phenomenon which necessarily involves trafficked and enslaved children and women, what case are you making for the industry's existence as something that might only be a little bit racist? Given that most females who are in either/both begin at age fourteen-- in the West, what are you saying about the health and welfare of and for those in it? Given that 1.3 million South Asian Indian children alone are enslaved and being used/abused by men, many from the West, and that one in three Indigenous North American women is raped in her lifetime, and that population of raped and sexually exploited people is disproportionately poor and homeless, and/or pimped and procured, what are you here to say about how unracist and non-misogynistic and non-classist the pornography industry is?

And might it likely be the case that Gail Dines, who has been speaking with women about this, women in and out of these industries, for decades, might know a good deal more about who is harmed and how and why, than do you?

For more see here:
http://www.apneaap.org/

and
http://www.awanbc.ca/

From the second website, above, a statement, by women of color who have escaped systems of sexist/racist/classist exploitation and abuse. I'll close with their words and will ask you, Anthony, what do you have to say to them about how your position on this matter helps achieve for them meaningful justice and freedom from rape and other gross sexual assault? And what do you have to say to the women and girls in India, whose bodies are being pimped, procured, trafficked, and enslaved, and photographed and distributed to male "consumers" right this minute? You want to make a case to me that those phenomena are unrelated? I welcome hearing you try to do so. I'd argue that to be humane, as a man, is to be fully accountable to Aganju, to the girls and women working in Apne Aap, and to the women of AWAN-Canada, and to every other woman who is negatively impacted by pornography and other systems of racist-sexist harm and exploitation. Here's a portion of their statement. Please let me know what you think and feel about this. (See next comment.)
4 hours ago · LikeUnlike · 1 person

Julian Real

Aboriginal Women's Statement on Legal Prostitution, Canada

We, the Aboriginal Women's Action Network, speak especially in the interests of the most vulnerable women - street prostitutes, of which a significant number are young Aboriginal wom...en and girls. We have a long, multi-generational history of colonization, marginalization, and displacement from our Homelands, and rampant abuses that has forced many of our sisters into prostitution. Aboriginal women are often either forced into prostitution, trafficked into prostitution or are facing that possibility. Given that the average age at which girls enter prostitution is fourteen, the majority with a history of unspeakable abuses, we are also speaking out for the Aboriginal children who are targeted by johns and pimps. Aboriginal girls are hunted down and prostituted, and the perpetrators go uncharged with child sexual assault and child rape. These predators, pervasive in our society, roam with impunity in our streets and take advantage of those Aboriginal children with the least protection. While we are speaking out for the women in the downtown eastside of Vancouver, we include women from First Nations Reserves, and other Aboriginal communities, most of whom have few resources and limited choices. We include them because AWAN members also originate from those communities, and AWAN members interact regularly with Native women from these communities.

The Aboriginal Women's Action Network opposes the legalization of prostitution, and any state regulation of prostitution that entrenches Aboriginal women and children in the so-called "sex trade." We hold that legalizing prostitution in Vancouver will not make it safer for those prostituted, but will merely increase their numbers. Contrary to current media coverage of the issue, the available evidence suggests that it would in fact be harmful, would expand prostitution and would promote trafficking, and would only serve to make prostitution safer and more profitable for the men who exploit and harm prostituted women and children. Although many well-meaning people think that decriminalization simply means protecting prostituted women from arrest, it also refers, dangerously, to the decriminalization of johns and pimps. In this way prostitution is normalized, johns multiply, and pimps and traffickers become legitimated entrepreneurs. Say "No" to this lack of concern for marginalized women and children, who in this industry are expected to serve simply as objects of consumption! The Aboriginal Women's Action Network opposes the legalization of brothels for the 2010 Olympics. We refuse to be commodities in the so-called "sex industry" or offer up our sisters and daughters to be used as disposable objects for sex tourists.

A harm-reduction model that claims to help prostituted women by moving them indoors to legal brothels, not only would not reduce the harm to them, but would disguise the real issues. There is no evidence that indoor prostitution is safer for the women involved. Rather, it is just as violent and traumatic. Prostitution is inherently violent, merely an extension of the violence that most prostituted women experience as children. We should aim not merely to reduce this harm, as if it is a necessary evil and/or inescapable, but strive to eliminate it altogether. Those promoting prostitution rarely address class, race, or ethnicity as factors that make women even more vulnerable. A treatise can be written about Aboriginal women's vulnerability based on race, socio-economic status and gender but suffice it to say that we are very over-represented in street-level prostitution. There may even be a class bias behind the belief that street prostitution is far worse than indoor forms. It is not the street per se or the laws for that matter, which are the source of the problem, but prostitution itself which depends on a sub-class of women or a degraded caste to be exploited. A major factor contributing to the absence of attention given to the women who have gone missing women in Vancouver is the lack of police response, and the insidious societal belief that these women were not worthy of protection, a message that is explicitly conveyed to the johns, giving them the go-ahead to act toward these women with impunity. If we want to protect the most vulnerable women, we could start by decriminalizing prostituted women, not the men who harm them. Although it is not mentioned in the local news, the Swedish model of dealing with prostitution provides an example we should seriously consider. It criminalizes only the buying of sex, not the selling, targeting the customer, pimp, procurer, and trafficker, rather than the prostituted woman, and provides an array of social services to aid women to leave prostitution. Given that the vast majority of prostituted women wish to leave prostitution, we should focus on finding ways to help them to do that rather than entrenching them further into prostitution by legalizing and institutionalizing it. Here in Vancouver, if we are to help those most in need, young Aboriginal women, it would help to think more long-term, to focus on healing and prevention. Let's not get tricked into a supposed fix which is not even a band-aid, but only deepens the wounds.
4 hours ago · LikeUnlike · 1 person

Anthony SinSity Σ Springer ‎@ Sarah,
Ms. Axe and I have already had this conversation. My statement comes from some experience speaking with her in the past. No more and no less. I don't mind debate, I welcome it. I stand by my statement and she knows why.
4 hours ago · LikeUnlike

Marion I. Lipshutz
Why would a woman who has more opportunities than most (even considering the reality of ongoing U.S. racism) do this? I'm not a psychologist, but I think there are lots of psychological issues here.
3 hours ago · LikeUnlike

Marion I. Lipshutz I'm either going to get Gail Dine's book when it's in paperback or on my Kindle. Very important issue and I'm glad that the book blurb that I saw implies that she is not advocating censorship, but rather critique and analysis, because I don't think censorship would work or even get to the roots of the problem.
3 hours ago · LikeUnlike

Aganju Axe
Of course you stand by your statement. Like most sexist males you are in awe of yourself and fancy your views original, objective and rigorous. Combine male ego, gender entitlement and academic authority and you really are The Man! This pas...t conversation

You refer to involved me telling you your views on porn were same shit different smell and textbook sex pozi BS and you acting like a typical sexist male about it because you "don't like labels". In Dr. Springer's mind he told me something brand new. Me calling it repackaged BS Id heard before meant I wasn't really listening or couldn't be getting it. Dr. Springer said he doesn't like labels. He claims he is not sex pozi although he makes the same arguments they do. He is not pro-porn. He just goes after any feminist that is anti-porn. His rigorous analysis? "Some porn is good, some is bad. The end." Wow. Now cant you see why I couldn't wrap my silly lil'feminist head around such unmatched intellectual genius? So original and compelling. If I wasn't impressed I must not be of sound mind. If I called it like I see it couldn't possibly because you were wrong. Never that. I know you don't like labels Dr Springer. People who get labeled SPOT ON usually don't.
2 hours ago · LikeUnlike

Julian Real
This same conversation is happening over at Ms. Magazine, with the pro-pornographer/pimp defenders in full gear.

Aganju, if Anthony cared enough about women to listen carefully to what you have been saying to him about himself, without defe...nding his ego, he might grow as a human being. The choice is his. He doesn't like labels except when he gets to use them: typical sexist male entitlement showing. If he doesn't want labels like "sexist male" it would do him a whole lot of good to start listening to you and other women who call him out on his sexism.

Anthony, the capacity to listen non-defensively is yours. What will you do with it? Continue spinning inside your close-minded male supremacist logic system, or break through and really hear and respect Aganju? Including here, publicly. I await your replies.
about an hour ago · LikeUnlike ·

Julian Real
To Marion - Gail doesn't promote censorship and in fact has people look at pornography so that they really know what the content is. What the content is, is this: sexxxualised racism and misogyny. "Industrial strength sex" as Gail puts it. ...And when has a globalised corporate entity earning billions annually ever shown one bit of concern for people over profits? What makes anyone thing the pornography industry would be the first? Particularly when it makes the psychic and emotional degradation of women into foreplay and the physical and sexual assault of women into a hot commodity that is orgasmic for consumers?
about an hour ago · LikeUnlike ·

Aganju Axe
Thanks for trying to reach Dr. Springer Julian but he has already and predictably blocked me. Welcoming debate my black azz. LOL. The only sound Dr. Springer wants to here is praise and awe at his views on porn which is really no voice of dissent at all. In other words, like the porn he supports Anthony Springer likes to see women gagged unless they consent to the greatness of his PhD, Pretty Huge....EGO!
about an hour ago · LikeUnlike

Julian Real
To Aganju, Byron, and everyone else reading this thread:

I want to repost part of what Anthony says above, and link that with what Anthony and a woman who calls herself Vanessa Blue says below, and note the disconnect.

Anthony's writing, from above:
As one whose interviewed a handful of black porn stars, including some black female directors, I've never heard anybody say the industry doesn't have some racist elements. However, I think performer conclusions--which should have some weight in this discussion--deserve a fair hearing.

I just found what follows from Anthony Springer online. It's an interview Anthony conducted. The story it tells is of a woman who knows everything anyone knows who has been dealing with the pornography industry and is honest, about exactly how dangerous it is for all women and how thoroughly soaked in misogyny it is, because the men who run it are woman-haters.

She speaks very clearly and repeatedly of various deep levels of the racism that is a foundational and ever-present aspect of the industry. How he concludes from listening to her that there are, sometimes, "some racist elements" in the industry is beyond me. She sure doesn't put it that way!

She also got incestuously dangerous advice from her grandfather on what to do with her life. She notes that she grew up watching porn. I'd ask her from what age? Because every child I know who was exposed to industry pornography at an early age has had their sexuality and sense of self harmed by the experience.

I am impressed by Vanessa Blue's capacity to endure, to leave environments that are overtly hostile to her, and how she has forged her own place, learning as she goes what she needs to know to have more control over her life. I wish she had had more options earlier on, wasn't exposed to pornography when young, didn't have a grandfather who loved pornography, and that displaced and disenfranchised women weren't sexually and economically coerced, by pimps, to accept abuse because the money is good. We may note the pimp always makes more than any woman performer or trafficked [and/or enslaved] person does.

From this website:
http://www.hiphopdx.com/index/interviews/id.999/title.vanessa-blue-my-blue-heaven-part-1

Interviews > Vanessa Blue: My Blue Heaven Part 1
by Anthony Springer Jr

posted January 21, 2008 12:00:00 AM CST | 0 comments

Anthony Springer wrote:

The adult entertainment industry is America’s nearly $100 billion dollar a year dirty little secret. Each year, established stars and novices earn their pay checks entertaining our most intimate fantasies and carnal desires. While the industry can be kind to guys who consistently perform—and perform well—the starlets that make the industry so profitable often end up battered, bruised and out of work faster than you can say “one minute man.”

In spite of all that, there are some ladies that have aspirations that go beyond performing in front of the camera. This is where Vanessa Blue comes in. After becoming fed up with the misogyny of the industry, she took matters into her own hands and began directing movies and building websites, namely her exclusive homepage [...].

Ms. Blue sat down with DX to talk about her grandparents influence on her career, why she discourages girls from getting into the game and how the industry isn’t as safe as many may think.

HipHopDX: Tell me a little about life before the industry.
Vanessa Blue: Life before the industry, wow. There was none. [Laughs] Life before the industry I was a regular girl. I was a dancer and I went to school to be an emergency medical te...chnician. From dancing, I met a girl named Persephone who became a very famous dominatrix and glamor model and she introduced me to fetish modeling. From there, I met another girl in the same club by the name of Kitten and she and I became very close. She creatively suggested that I try porn.

DX: What was your reaction at first?
VB: No. My reaction was no. I like doing fetish work, I was never really looking to do anything more than that. But one girl-girl scene I figured wouldn’t hurt anything and then came [director and producer] Ed Powers. Ed Powers was offering us a crazy amount of money. I did my research and I was like, “Alright, he’s never put a sista on the box cover in sixty series.” He’s never put one.

DX: Wow.
VB: So I hoped [that] he’s racist enough that he won’t put us on the cover… I was wrong. So we did the scene and he put us on the cover. After that, I figured I might as well finish what I started.

DX: How many movies followed?
VB: After that I did about 16 scenes. I didn’t like the way things were going, I didn’t like the way people were talking to me, I didn’t like the business… and I quit. I moved away to Nebraska for a few years. I danced at the only nudie bar in the whole state and I was the only black girl, so I did well. I stayed there for a few years and my grandparents kept talking to talking to me about it like, “What are you going to do with your life, you’re not really gonna sit here while people make money off your naked ass are you? You’re not gonna strip, this isn’t the end, don’t stop here.”

My grandparents are big into watching porn. My grandfather’s always talking about how much it made and what products sell and [he said] if you know so much, you’re a nerd already, you love computers, why don’t you go back and see what else you can do. Doesn’t mean you have to f**k but just go back and see what you can do. I came back and was roommates with Kitten for a while and I got back into the business again. I did maybe 50 scenes and I quit, again and I moved away to Las Vegas

When I don’t like a situation, I get out of it. I don’t wait for shit to get better, I go. So I came here and danced for a while at Cheetah’s until 9/11. Right after 9/11, there was no work. Literally, there was no work, nothing was happening. So I said, “Okay, I have a little bit of money saved up, just a little, and I’m gonna buy all the books I want cause I know I want a website, I know I’m a nerd.” There’s books on anything I want to know, I’m going to buy all the books I think I need. I’m going to lock myself in the house and I’m going to do nothing until I figure out how to build a website." I locked myself in the house for about three weeks, I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep, I was really wild… but I figured it out.

DX: Going back a minute, you mentioned before that there were things happening on the set that you didn’t like, what was going on?
VB: I didn’t like the way the owners of the company would talk to you. Everybody in California believes there’s a certain body image that a woman needs to display in order to be viable or be on a box cover. We know now with all of today’s niches, that’s not true. Back then every thing was about being skinny, being lighter, not being so dark, not being so ghetto. Being a black girl, if you don’t have the immediate connections when you walk in, you’ll be relegated to ghetto product. You’ll never get out of it because you won’t know how to get out of it. You’ll get half your rate, you’ll get crappy work, you’ll get crappy sets. No one will care about anything. Literally, it’s a situation where there’s a mattress in the corner. The director comes in, tells the camera guy what to shoot, how many positions, and the director leaves the room. He goes out and smokes a blunt or talks on the phone or whatever he’s doing and the camera man is left to run the scene. How on earth can anybody care?

I didn’t like it. I said, “Okay, a monkey could direct better than half the people I see and they’re making more than me and I’m the one giving up my body.”

DX: Doing all the work
VB: Right. If I get sick and catch HIV, there’s nothing on the back end for me, nobody here is going to take care of me. So with that, I quit [laughs] and I said I’m not coming back unless it’s the way I want it.

[...]

DX: What made you want to get into directing movies?
VB: I always wanted to, from the first movie I ever saw. There was so much lacking and I love sex but if somebody’s literally counting down minutes when you screw to make you change positions, that’s not sex, it’s all mechanical.

I grew up watching porn. My favorite older actress is Georgina Spelvin. Everybody’s like Vanessa Del Rio, I’m like “unh uh”. This crazy white woman who looks like she’s channeling the devil when she f**ks and the only woman by comparison to this day who works, f**ks and is as hot and brings as much passion is Monique. An unsung hero… shero, who never gets the praise she deserves. But when you watch her perform it looks like she’s channeling the devil.

DX: It looks more realistic.
VB: Yeah. She’s really into what’s happening and I know that, you feel it. And you don’t feel that in today’s porn.

DX: Why do you think that is?
VB: How do I say this nicely? Most of the guys behind the camera don’t like women.

DX: Really? As in homosexuals or misogynist or…
VB: Both, all of the above. There’s a very famous porn star who does all big booty product now and probably out of 100 girls, 80 of us have a story about him attacking us behind closed doors. Physically, like ripping our clothes off. So no, when you have personalities like that, how on earth can it be good?

DX: How do these guys stay working with everything going on off camera?
VB: What do you mean?

DX: As far as attitudes and attacking actresses?
VB: The girls deal with it. It’s very unfortunate, but the girls… they deal with it. They’re just adjusted to being run over. The industry has expanded and grown into something so toxic. Whenever a girl tells me she wants to do porn, I will spend hours trying to talk her out of it.

DX: Why?
VB: Because it’s not what you think it is. Everybody comes in thinking Jenna [Jameson]. Jenna’s not who you think she is. Its like, how do you say you love Magic Johnson when you’ve never met him? You love an image. All you love is an image. He could be the greatest jerk you ever met in your life. And I guess once I got to California it was so many stars I looked up to, so many black celebrities and I met those cats at the club and they were like [in mock man voice] “What’s up biiiiit**? You trying to f**k? You wanna f**k me and my boys?” I’m like, “Oh my God I used to love you!” The girls get very disillusioned once they get here. But once you get here you can’t say no to the money, so you’ll take the abuse for the check.
24 minutes ago · LikeUnlike ·

Tagged with: Black experience, logical phallusy, male supremacy/misogyny/sexism, Pornography, Prostitution, Racism, radical feminists, Rape, Western CRAPitalism, women demand justice and accountability

Why Is Facebook Pro-RAPE? And What Is Mark Zuckerberg’s Defence of Pro-Rape Facebook Pages and Groups? by Julian Real, at A Radical Profeminist 9:13 am / 18 August 2010

image of Founder and CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, is from here

My own awareness of this matter was due to the following Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=418952528982#!/event.php?eid=106807292708162

I want to thank the organiser of that page and all its members for supporting this effort to hold Facebook accountable to its own policies and stated values and practices.

What appears next is a cross post from the blog Jezebel (to link back, please click on the title just below). Following that, are comments from me and others calling for direct action to various Facebook email addresses.

Facebook Allows "Pro-Rape, Anti-Consent" Group To Stay On The Site For Months

A group of students, both past and present, of the all-male St. Paul's College at Sydney University, decided to create a pro-rape Facebook page called "Define Statutory" that reportedly was allowed to stay up on the site for several months.

The site, which went up in August, was shut down recently, but Reverend David Russell, an outgoing master at Wesley College, tells the Sydney Morning Herald that the Facebook page is simply an encapsulation of the rape culture that has pervaded the campus for some time. "This is a story that has to be told," Russell says, "there is no question in my mind, women are seen as meat. That is the awful, ugly truth of it.''

The site has already been condemned by the University, the New South Wales Police sex crimes unit, and the New South Wales Rape Crisis Centre, and New South Wales Minister for Women, Linda Burney, rightly tells ABC Australia that "The idea that a group of young men that are going to become leaders within our community - leaders in the law, leaders in medicine, leaders in business - studying at an elite college, at an elite university, think it's OK to post information like this encouraging rape on a website is absolutely abhorrent.

The question that remains, however, is why Facebook allowed a pro-rape group to exist on the service to begin with. This is a social networking site that refuses to let women post pictures of themselves breastfeeding, mind you, but it's okay to make a "hilarious" pro-rape group in the "Sports and Recreation" category? The group was public, by the way, accessible to anyone and visible to all. Interesting, isn't it, that in the eyes of Facebook, a woman shouldn't be allowed to show her breasts while feeding her child, but it's perfectly acceptable for men to make a highly public "sport" out of rape.

Detective Superintendent John Kerlatec of the New South Wales Police sex crimes squad tells the Herald that "this is the first occasion I have heard of a Facebook site being set up to promote, or publicise ... sexual assault or any other behaviour that is criminal behaviour.'' Something tells me that it won't be the last, unless Facebook starts paying as much attention to the rape culture brewing on the boards as they do to pictures of new mothers just trying to feed their kids.

Pro-Rape Facebook Group Condemned [The Australian Broadcasting Corporation]
Facebook And Sexual Violence, Assault [Sydney Morning Herald]
Facebook's Breastfeeding Ban [LATimes]

My attention was brought to this matter because of this webpage calling for a protest of pro-rape Facebook pages and groups:
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=418952528982#!/event.php?eid=106807292708162

* * *

I recommend sending letters/emails to Facebook with similar messages as the one below, to the following addresses:

privacy@facebook.com
abuse@facebook.com
appeal@facebook.com
legal@facebook.com

To all Facebook rule and code enforcers, policy setters, and assessors of abuse and threats,

According to your own stated policies, this page and many other active pages on Facebook like it, violate your terms and policies.

This page: It isn't r.a.p.e.... It's SURPRISE SEX. (:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=131902836844892&v=info#!/pages/It-isnt-rape-Its-SURPRISE-SEX-/106823992684587?ref=ts

has been up since March 31, 2010. If that doesn't strike you as pro-rape, how about these comments by users on Facebook?

"i prefer rape with machetes"
"sneak attack rape is the way to go"
"hands up if you like rape".
raping and pillaging
raping bitches
it's not R A P E if you yell "surprise!"
It's not R A P E if you like it ;)
Its not ràpe if you yell surprise!

I am writing to ask you to take these and related pro-rape comments and pages down because they violate the terms of service, and you clearly stated policies.

Rape isn't a joke, it's a trauma, and for all the many survivors on Facebook, it is triggering to see their own trauma joked about in a social community.

You have trail-blazed a new way for people to be in contact, to stay in contact, to disseminate information no matter how banal, brilliant, or brutal.

Fortunately, you have expressed and reinforced a responsibility to maintain a safe and friendly environment that doesn't overtly infringe upon any of the rights of Facebook's staggering five hundred million users.

Within Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, within the Safety sub-category, you have listed three relevant responsibilities or statements:

You will not post content that: is hateful, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence;

You will not use Facebook to do anything unlawful, misleading, malicious, or discriminatory;

You will not facilitate or encourage any violations of this Statement.

Moreover, in order to report a page, group, image or person, etc, it must meet a list of criteria which includes Racist/Hate speech, direct call for violence and/or excessive gore or violent content.

Many community members have borne witness to a series of pages, groups, etc, that are egregiously breaking these policies and in general, promoting reprehensible agendas that are threatening the proposed safe & friendly community that Facebook is supposed to be, including white supremacist groups, pro-racism groups, and pro-misogyny groups.

With particular attention to the Facebook group: It isn't r.a.p.e.... It's SURPRISE SEX. (: I offer additional information:

Within that group exists a number of comments I will also bring to your attention in order to properly demonstrate the hostile and aggressive content within this group:

"i prefer the term struggle cuddle"

"Is surprise buttsecks in this same category?"

"IT'S SURPRISE SEX TIME! :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D", "I actually prefer rape." These comments go on and on.

"Rape" is another group, with the following comments littered throughout the wall, "i prefer rape with machetes", "sneak attack rape is the way to go", "hands up if you like rape".

The following groups or pages should be moved by nature of their titles alone:
raping and pillaging
raping b*tches
it's not R A P E if you
yell "surprise!"
It's not R A P E if you like it ;)
Its not ràpe if
you yell surprise!
it isnt rape, its suprise sex :O.

Among those groups, pages, and public comments are thousands of callous, pro-hostility/sexual aggression Facebook users who find the promotion of rape and violence against women to be a course of humor primarily.

The reality, prevalence, and consequences of rape make it about as funny as genocide and mass starvation.

Here are some numbers and facts that aren't funny:

One in four women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime in the U.S.

One in THREE Native American women are raped primarily by white men who don't live where they live. White men come onto reservation land, or procure Native American women living on the street in urban areas.

One in four traditional college-age students will be sexually assaulted, with a female student's first year in college being the year she is most
vulnerable.

Every three minutes someone in the U.S is sexually assaulted.

At least 80% of sexual assaults are not reported to the police.

Only 6% of rapists will ever spend a day in jail, and with our classist and racist judicial system, that means
white wealthy men rarely get time for raping anyone.

Over 80% of women with disabilities will be sexually assaulted during their lifetime.

Assuming you welcome and appreciate these populations of people being part of the Facebook community, why would you wish to support and endorse--by leaving up--Facebook pages which mock their assault and trauma and and create a grossly callous and contemptuous social environment, especially towards women generally?

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I appreciate you attending to this matter.

Tagged with: ableism, heterosexism, male supremacy/misogyny/sexism, profeminism, Racism, Rape, rapism, sexual harassment, Western CRAPitalism, WHM supremacy, women demand justice and accountability

Did Dallas Police Chief Suggest That Women Were “Asking for It?” by Amy, at Feminists For Choice 8:29 am / 17 August 2010

I think I’m the only FFC blogger living in Texas, and I couldn’t have been more outraged when current Chief of Police David Brown made comments that seemed to blame drunk women for rapes, and their friends for not protecting them. Not, you know, the rapists. This Jezebel article should give some context, and you [...]

Tagged with: Bethany Anderson, Chief of Police, Dallas, David Brown, Feminist Conversations, Rape

2010 August Archives: Revisiting September of 2008: on whiteness and racism, manhood and sexism, heterosexism and radical social change by Julian Real, at A Radical Profeminist 1:26 pm / 15 August 2010

This image/poster is from here

In the autumn of 2008, I began to lay out some of the major themes of this blog: challenging profeminists and antifeminists who purport to be acting on behalf of justice and freedom; identifying the dangers of white privilege and white supremacy; and offering up perspectives on radicalism, rape, and white men's ageist sexism and misogynist racism in media.

I have been deeply dismayed and disheartened to learn that Ward Churchill, who I regard as a white man with a strongly pro-Indigenist politic and perspective, has since been identified as a batterer of at least one American Indian woman. This raises the on-going question of who we look to for leadership on matters of liberation from oppressive systems of dehumanisation and degradation. In my own experience, one definitive answer is "not white men". I find white men, on both structural and experiential levels (the two being intimately related) ill-prepared to lead anyone out of white male supremacist ways of being and systems which benefit them. The investment in them is too great, and white men believe themselves too great to not be leaders.

Here are some excerpts:

“[...] it is obvious to most of us that under socialism, and certainly under communism, social relations will be ruptured and go through lots of changes, in line with the necessities of building a new society.” [a comment from another website's discussion on socialism, by Linda D.]

The question, of course, is whose new society, and is there just one? If just one, is it based and constructed on the political philosophies and practices of white europeans and their descendants? If so, this is deeply problematic, which is to say, white supremacist. See, Yurugu: An African-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior (1994), by Marimba Ani for much more on this matter.

Although not strictly on the topic of LGBT community and its future, Ward Churchill does tackle this matter rather impressively. I shall first pull the passage from the above discussion I am responding to, posted by Dave:

The issue is a line that says that it is an open question whether or not a certain group of people will “cease to exist” under socialism or communism. This is wrong, and worthy of derision and scorn.

What follows is from the book Acts of Rebellion: The Ward Churchill Reader (2003), page 260. I believe it can apply to some degrees to many marginalised and oppressed ethnic/cultural groups, but here he is discussing Indigenous populations/nations. I will note that I consider Ward Churchill to be a U.S. white man, as am I, but in the passage below he speaks of himself as someone directly descended from American Indian nationalities. This is beside the point, in terms of accepting his analysis of marxism-leninism, however. His work is thoroughly researched, and not only academically.

Our very right to exist in a national sense, and usually as distinct cultures as well, has instead been denied as such. Always and everywhere, marxism-leninism has assigned itself a practical priority leading directly to the incorporation, subordination, and dissolution of native societies as such. This is quite revealing, considering that the term “genocide” was coined to describe not only policies leading to the outright physical liquidation of “ethnical, racial, religious or national” aggregates, but also policies designed to bring about the dissolution, destruction, and disappearance of these “identified human groups as such,” by other means. [see note 113 in the book] Viewed this way, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that marxism-leninism is and always has been a genocidal doctrine, wherever indigenous nationalities/cultures are concerned. [see note 114 in the book]

I also want to recommend two other books to the readers and commenters here on the matter Linda D. specifically raises. One is titled Black Sexual Politics, by Patricia Hill Collins (2004) and the other is called Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism (expanded edition, 1997), by Suzanne Pharr. With those two books, and Churchill’s and Ani’s, I strongly agree with Linda D. that Dworkin’s analysis, too, is needed in this discussion.

Related concerns:

Whose LGBT culture are we talking about? Is our understanding of this culture u.s./eurocentric? Does it place the experiences of Two Spirited people and Womanist woman-centered women at the center of its theories on heterosexuality and queerness? What is our analysis of heterosexuality and its causes? Heterosexuality, not having an asocial or cross-cultural history, nor a future that is eternal, is infused with political ideology, is it not? (It sure seems that way to gay ole me!)

Do those who discuss "the LGBT community" mean white people in the middle class or those who are part of the bourgeoisie? If so, this is but a small piece of the whole of Queer experience and culture.

On Roger Ebert's sexism and ageism (and if you read the whole post, we can note how this also includes racism and heterosexism):

What irks me even more is this comment by Roger: "What a pleasure this movie is, showcasing actresses I've admired for a long time, all at the top of their form. Yes, they're older now, as are we all, but they look great, and know what they're doing." Well, we're not all "older now", as the film stars one actor who is all of thirteen; let's hope she's not yet hit the top of her acting game. And I doubt he's been admiring her for a long time, or, well, I hope he hasn't.

So, getting to the most sexist portion of his review: why do men ALWAYS say things about women's appearances like "they're older now, BUT they look great"? What, exactly, does "great" mean: not old? That they've had enough cosmetic facial surgery, but not too much? First, older women are older than younger women AND they look great. Age doesn't take away beauty; it adds more dimensions to it. And what's with the obsession about how great older or younger women appear, particularly to white heterosexual men who write movie reviews? This film's actors are whatever various ages they are (and they are various ages: a teenager performing in a film with women in their thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, and at least one woman in her eighties). And whether or not they are still lookin' great really ought to be entirely irrelevant. It would appear looks don't matter when we're dealing with white male actors who are "older." There's plenty of unattractive older male actors, and plenty of ugly-as-f*ck younger ones as well.

* * *

On September 2, I published another piece on the sexual assaulter and former profeminist activist Kyle Payne, who I'd dealt with in several posts already and who I regard as a dangerous man, psychologically and politically capable of sexually assaulting women again. I regard him as such because he has demonstrated no appreciable empathy for his victim, nor a willingness to be accountable to feminists, or, even this one profeminist. He has refused to answer basic questions about his crime and his awareness of what he did that was destructive to another human life. He has remained utterly preoccupied with how his life was harmed by being caught.

On whiteness, white privilege, and white supremacy, there was a posted video promoting the work of Tim Wise, who, increasingly, I find to be in need of a deeper immersion in radical feminism, particularly that radical feminism which firmly embraces intersectionality as a core theoretical practice, based in the reality that most women, intersex people, men, and transgender people, occupy multiple locations socially and politically such that focusing on just one--say racism/white supremacy--insufficiently deals with the complex of oppressions ALL oppressed people endure, resist, and challenge. There is not one single human being who is only located as oppressed by color or race.

I also noted a few personal-political observations about white folks like me, the content of which is reproduced below:

1. We know best. When we fight for justice, for, say, animal rights, we are quick to condemn those other human cultures (you know, the ones we have colonized and are exploiting and destroying) because they, allegedly, "don't get it" that animals are not inferior to us. Never mind that this view doesn't inhere in Western Philosophy, in our Civilizations at all. Our religions, laws, and customs place men above women, (some) humans above animals, (some) men above the Earth, as a ruler, as a dominator. Never mind that most white folks, disproportionately men, are or have been barbarians and savages (currently often by proxy). Never mind that any notions of animals being like us, not being inferior, being spirited and sentient, comes from the cultures we oppress, not from our own.

2. We behave, without acknowledging it as reprehensible and wrong, as if white folks were adults, and people of color are children. We will actually argue (not in so many words, necessarily) that because some people of color participate in the systems which disproportionately harm them and benefit us, that they are not equipped to lead a struggle against oppression.

3. We actually believe that because not all Indigenous cultures were/are [fill in the blank: respectful of women, respectful of animals, peaceful, sustainable] that we ought to decide who owns the land, as if it is ethically ours to begin with. (It isn't: we stole it, and ought to give it back "without reservation.")

4. We think we are the experts on everything that isn't about us, while being profoundly ignorant about how and what we do that is so harmful and oppressive to others. We call our oppression of others "good", "moral", and "right".

5. We don't think we are raced: we actually believe that "those people" are a race of some kind, and we are, well, just people. We refuse to acknowledge that in any social space, we are white supremacists. Whether we behave like white supremacists has a lot to do with what we recognize in ourselves as racist actions. There are exceptions to this belief: white liberals think we are white, but that race should just be invisible, meaning we should all act like white people. White Nationalists do believe in a white race, and that it is in danger, or must be "pure" as if that was ever the case, or as if creating "purity" involves anything other than bigotry and violence against people of color. White Nationalists, the ones I've heard speak out, believe that race is natural, inevitable, not political and cultural. White Nationalists believe in genocide against non-white people, even if they don't promote it publicly. Such white folks, it may be concluded, aim to be purely evil.

6. We argue there is such as thing as "reverse racism" and reverse ethnic bigotry. We carry around a ridiculous belief that we either have been living in, do live in, or will soon be living in, an Indigenist Supremacist, Asian Supremacist, Latina/o Supremacist, Arab Supremacist, Jewish Supremacist, Muslim Supremacist, or Black Supremacist society. Never mind who still controls every political institution and economy in this country and other white-dominated countries. (The answer is white Christian men.)

Tagged with: accountability, Ageism, archives, battery, Communism, heterosexism, Indigenism, male supremacy/misogyny/sexism, manhood, Media, Queer Politics, Racism, Rape, White Supremacy, whiteness, WHM supremacy

Dr. Laura, Dr. Oz, and Dr. Phil: one of the three "get it" about White Het Male Supremacist Abuse and Terrorism: can you guess which one? by Julian Real, at A Radical Profeminist 7:42 pm / 13 August 2010

photo of Dr. Mehmet Oz is from here

photo of Dr. Phil McGraw is from here

These are two white het male doctors who owe their fame and great financial success to Oprah Winfrey: Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz. (We get to Dr. Laura shortly.)

The first man, who has a PhD in Clinical Psychology, supported her during a trial the commercial/atrocity-protecting meat industry put her through for simply stating her own point of view on the subject of burgers. The second is am M.D. who is a heart surgeon and is a proponent of complimentary medicine, to promote several less invasive methods of treating heart disease. He's also more infamously known for showing Oprah's audiences deceased humans' diseased organs and talking about healthy pooping. He's got some very good things to say--generally I like him and his style, and he's got a good bed-side manner, unless you're a battered woman in a hospital bed, that is. I also sometimes like Dr. Phil, when he isn't using his television series to exploit conditions and people and instead sincerely tries to alleviate human suffering, usually in the context of personal relationships. While I've seen Dr. Phil hold men accountable for the violence they do to women, I've never seen Dr. Oz do this.

I realise he didn't study sociology, social psychology, or the sexual politics of psychopathology, but Dr. Oz couldn't be more clueless about the reality and dynamics of men's war against women. He actually discusses inner brain structure to explain why it may be that some women kill their terrorist husbands or battering boyfriends. He doesn't seem to get that women who are terrorised and sadistically abused do not usually kill anyone, while the terrorists often kill a whole lot of people: most commonly the women in their lives, the women who leave them, and their children, in disgustingly horrid ways. But Dr. Oz's brain structure discussion isn't about THE TERRORISTS. He's concerned about the brain structures of the TERRORISED WOMEN who [usually don't] kill. What are the sexual politics of THAT?

In a case linked to below, he tries to explain to the audience why a woman guest may have killed the male terrorist in her life. He is wrong at every turn, and fortunately he has another "expert" guest on to set the audience clear on what is really going on. Unfortunately, it is yet another white man. (To be clear: Dr. Oz's family's background is Eastern European and Turkish. Dr. Phil is all white.) How it is that white and light-skinned het men have become the people women should turn to for expert advice on anything and everything, is a trick of the trades called WHM supremacist media and education. What undermines feminist knowledge and activists, scholars and doctors, is the owners and producers of mass media talk shows refusing to make women of any color the experts in matters that impact women--and men.

Well, there IS Dr. Laura, who has a PhD in physiology--which is not at all why she's on the air. At least Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil are discussing matters that usually fall within their own educational areas of study. She gives anti-woman, overtly racist, anti-gay relationship advice. She's way more WHM supremacist than Dr. Phil or Dr. Oz in her public advice. She should be removed from the airwaves. Immediately, as she should have been years ago for calling "homosexuals" deviant.

photo of Dr. Laura Schlessinger is from here

She is in the news this week for her arrogantly privileged racist-misogynist assault against a Black woman caller who wanted wise counsel on how to deal with a white husband who, along with his friends, makes racist remarks in front of her. He obviously enjoys trying to humiliate her. Would Dr. Laura pick up on that? Well...

Dr. Laura used the question--while berating and abusing the questioner--as an opportunity to pretend that THE ISSUE is African Americans who are the problem population who uses the n-word and COMPLAIN when whites do the same. Dr. Laura managed to work the word into her radio show eleven times in way fewer minutes than that. The caller, understandably, was totally taken aback and very respectfully attempted to call Dr. Laura's attention to the problem of turning this problem back on a Black woman, which only led Dr. Laura to intensify her own vitriolic volume, utterly silencing the woman seeking wise counsel. Dr. Laura understood the caller's predicament about as well as Dr. Oz understands why [very few] women kill terroristic men. NOT. AT. ALL.

While I think Dr. Phil makes mistakes many times with regard to appropriate forms of advocacy for women-in-patriarchy, too often presuming a kind of level playing field that patriarchal societies will never let exist, I'll say this: he's way ahead of where Dr. Oz and Dr. Laura will probably ever be on the matter of understanding that far too many men terrorise and grotesquely abuse women--and that men's use of physical violence is NEVER the women's fault! Proof of this difference between the two male doctors is in very intense (and potentially very triggering) programs each recently did about the subject of domestic violence leading to murder.

Dr. Oz's show wasn't about patriarchal abuse. It was about how the brain sometimes doesn't work right so some people cannot moderate their violent impulses. And he means women's violent impusles, not men's!

Dr. Phil's program was a VERY good program, if also deeply disturbing and triggering, about the FAILURE of FAMILY COURTS across the U.S. when it comes to adequately protecting children and women from adult male terrorists. His show centered around one case, in which a woman's baby was murdered by her ex- and the baby's father, after she repeatedly went to the court for orders of protection for herself and the baby--each time she was told by the white het male misogynistic judge that she was lying and had no evidence, even when she brought evidence. But there was another interview he did with a teenaged young woman who is a survivor of incest and witnessed a court give custody of her little sister to the incest perpetrator, after she testified about his abuse of her. Yes. It happened. The audience was also filled with women who had similar stories to tell, which appeared to have a VERY supportive effect on anyone who spoke out on this horrendous issue of VIRULENT PATRIARCHAL PREDATION PROTECTIONISM in family courts across the country.

What gets revealed is that the terrorists and their attorneys, along with generally misogynistic society, have effectively convinced the courts to not believe mothers if they raise "domestic violence" as a factor in why those mothers should get custody of their children, not the fathers. Even the women's attorneys are counseling women to not bring up the fact that the ex-husband is a batterer or incest perpetrator because too many judges hear that as a big ol' lie--an allegedly sure sign that the woman is trying to manipulate the court against the interests of the fathers' "right" to have more access to their children. When it comes to court manipulation, however, look no further than the battering, raping, incesting men and their attorneys, who convince the courts that the lack of evidence presented means they aren't sadistic brutes. In this case, the rule "presumed innocent until proven guilty" cannot apply, because no one's attorney will let the proof into the courtroom to begin with.

This is the case across the white het male supremacist globe, from the U.S., to the UK, to Australia. That there are WHM organising to undermine women's credibility in the courtroom even more is despicable and evil. There's nothing loving or just about such efforts by these misogynazis (fascistic, terrorising woman-haters) at all.

To note how this impacts U.S. women, compare these two episodes of programs that, one would hope, are supporting both physical/emotional health and human rights:

Dr. Oz: http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/tuesday-dr-oz

vs.

Dr. Phil: http://www.drphil.com/shows/show/1442/

But I cannot write about Dr. Phil without noting this CLEAR FORM OF MISOGYNY he regularly engages in. HE REFUSES TO STOP SAYING THE B WORD WHEN REFERRING TO WOMEN, and as an adjective (b-word with a y at the end). He a conservative guy, socially-politically, in many ways, and doesn't welcome cursing on his show, generally. I'm not sure you can get away with saying ASS on his show without it being bleeped! But he says the b word like it's going out of style, which of course it won't while he and other major media personalities keep legitimising it on TV. Please write to him and ask him why that's the only derogatory curse term he allows on his show.

And visit *here* for more on the Dr. Laura story of the week. TRIGGER WARNING for OVERTLY RACIST LANGUAGE AND GROSS MISTREATMENT OF A BLACK WOMAN BY A WHITE WOMAN.

Tagged with: accountability, battery, criminal custody, Father's Wrongs, incest, male supremacy/misogyny/sexism, Media, Men's Wrongs, misopedia, parental abuse of children, PPP, Rape, U.S. terrorism, WHM supremacy

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Posts tagged Rape

Suggested Sunday reading (8/29/10) by RosieRed23, at Spare Candy 9:41 am / 29 August 2010

The Double Standard of What Gender-specific Quotes Mean and Represent: The Endless Parade of Anti-Feminist Quotes Continues by Julian Real, at A Radical Profeminist 10:04 pm / 22 August 2010

Misandry is not feminism!

Suggested Sunday reading (8/22/10) by RosieRed23, at Spare Candy 9:31 am / 22 August 2010

TIME F’ing LIES: The Truth Behind TIME’s Cover-Up Of the U.S.’s War Against Women in Afghanistan by Julian Real, at A Radical Profeminist 9:05 pm / 21 August 2010

The real story behind Time’s Afghan woman cover: American complicity

Now they (warlords) have posts in the new government, or if they do not, soon might.

Abortion in Film: The Shame of Patty Smith by Sarah, at Feminists For Choice 11:23 am / 19 August 2010

Why Is Facebook Pro-RAPE? And What Is Mark Zuckerberg’s Defence of Pro-Rape Facebook Pages and Groups? by Julian Real, at A Radical Profeminist 9:13 am / 18 August 2010

Facebook Allows "Pro-Rape, Anti-Consent" Group To Stay On The Site For Months

With particular attention to the Facebook group: It isn't r.a.p.e.... It's SURPRISE SEX. (: I offer additional information:

Within that group exists a number of comments I will also bring to your attention in order to properly demonstrate the hostile and aggressive content within this group:

"i prefer the term struggle cuddle"

"Is surprise buttsecks in this same category?"

Did Dallas Police Chief Suggest That Women Were “Asking for It?” by Amy, at Feminists For Choice 8:29 am / 17 August 2010

2010 August Archives: Revisiting September of 2008: on whiteness and racism, manhood and sexism, heterosexism and radical social change by Julian Real, at A Radical Profeminist 1:26 pm / 15 August 2010

Dr. Laura, Dr. Oz, and Dr. Phil: one of the three "get it" about White Het Male Supremacist Abuse and Terrorism: can you guess which one? by Julian Real, at A Radical Profeminist 7:42 pm / 13 August 2010

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