feminist blogs

Gwen and I usually refrain from posting material that seems culturally marginal.  There’s a lot of disturbing stuff that pops up on the fringes, but we’re mostly interested in illustrating culturally dominate tropes with particularly influential cases (for example, lessons from music videos by artists like Eminem, Rihanna, and Kanye West).  My first instinct, when I received a link to a set of cartoon at The Oatmeal from Sully R., was to skip it for this reason.  But when I got to the end of the page, I saw this:

Nearly 2,500 diggs, 743 tweets, over 8,000 people on facebook sharing it, and nearly 8,000 stumbleupons.  What was this content that so many people had felt compelled to share?

It’s five cartoons illustrating hilarious ways to “use” a sex worker… eh em, “hooker.”  The message is: once you pay for a sex worker, you get to do anything you want with her, including demean her for your own entertainment.

I guess the point of this post is: I thought this was fringe.  I thought, “Oh sure, another set of sexist cartoons.  They’re everywhere.  Whatever.”  But then I was shocked by how many people had thought they were hilarious enough to share with their friends and strangers.  This is not fringe at all… it’s just everyday LOL.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

Sexuality is one of those topics that is simultaneously commonplace and taboo. People love to talk about sex, but only in specific contexts. This often leaves marginalized communities — such as queer people, transgender people, the elderly and people with disabilities — out of the discourse entirely. And when those communities are included, the discussion [...]

Read more global feminist posts at Gender Across Borders.

Monica C. sent along images of a pamphlet, from 1920, warning soldiers of the dangers of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). In the lower right hand corner (close up below), the text warns that “most” “prostitutes (whores) and easy women” “are diseased.” In contrast, in the upper left corner, we see imagery of the pure woman that a man’s good behavior is designed to protect (also below).  “For the sake of your family,” it reads, “learn the truth about venereal diseases.”

The contrast, between those women who give men STIs (prostitutes and easy women) and those who receive them from men (wives) is a reproduction of the virgin/whore dichotomy (women come in only two kinds: good, pure, and worthy of respect and bad, dirty, and deserving of abuse).  It also does a great job of making invisible the fact that women with an STI likely got it from a man and women who have an STI, regardless of how they got one, can give it away.  The men’s role in all this, that is, is erased in favor of demonizing “bad” girls.

See also these great examples of the demonization of the “good time Charlotte” during World War II (skull faces and all) and follow this post to a 1917 film urging Canadian soldiers to refrain from sex with prostitutes (no antibiotics back then, you know).

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

look. i am not abusive to my kid. not even close. and neither is her father.

she is a happy, healthy three year old. she speaks three languages, loves to dance middle eastern style, and explains to strangers that ‘mama is from america’ but she is from bumblebee (the name of her preschool).

but, us american society, history, government is abusive to black children.

and egyptian society and government is abusive to black children. i know this cause i worked with sub saharan african refugees in cairo. i worked with ex child soldiers and teenage sex workers from sudan, refugees from eritrea and ethiopia. they are stuck here in limbo, cairo, legally segregated from the rest of egyptian society, not allowed to attend public schools, hospitals, racially profiled by the police, making 150 dollars a month is a considered a good job, living in ghettos, and struggling to either be repatriated or moved to europe, the usa, or australia.

they have been my teachers, my students, my friends.

some of them are mothers, and many of them didn’t have a real choice in the matter.

a lot of them look like me.

a lot of them don’t have the luxury of child free spaces, because many of them are children, themselves.

i know what abuse is. i grew up with it, day after day, year after year. and there are times when i would rather have my daughter with me at a bar, than with a babysitter that i barely know.

i work really hard so that my daughter knows that she is a person. because it is rare for black girls or women to be allowed to be people, a full fledged person, in this world.

The Chinese Government has called for an end to the public shaming of prostitutes in China by police, the New York Times reports this week.  Those suspected or accused of prostitution are regularly shackled and paraded in public by law enforcement, exacting the ultimate price for their crime – public humiliation and identification. Just because [...]

Editor’s note: For a brief background on how PEPFAR [U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief] is problematic for sex workers, check out the following articles: Tell the Department of Health and Human Services How the Anti-Prostitution Loyalty Oath Harms Sex Workers (via sexworkawareness.org) U.S. Policy on Anti-Prostitution Pledge (via genderhealth.org) Reassessing Sex Work – the “Anti-Prostitution [...]

You’d think this was one of those mythical laws from one of those Puritan colonial states, but it’s not. D.C. police confirm that carrying a condom, while with another person, can contribute to cause to arrest for prostitution.

Making condoms a factor for arrest, discourages prostitutes (or anyone, really) from practicing safe sex — this is especially terrifying news for the District, which has the highest HIV infection rate in the U.S.

Sign the petition to keep condoms from being used as evidence.

Hat tip to Tyler for the link.
_____
Kate is guest blogging for the week at Feministe. She’s a part-time journalist and a full-time law student. Follow her on twitter @itscompliKATEd.

We recently posted about an ad for internet service that used the metaphor of a prostitute.  It/she was “fast” and “cheap” with “satisfaction guaranteed.”  We also recently posted about national personifications, fictional or semi-fictional people used to represent countries.  This ad campaign, submitted by Mary S. (who also blogs at shelterrific), has both.

Victoria, a city in British Columbia, is personified as “Victoria,” the sex worker.  “Victoria’s cheap,” the ad reads, “but she’ll show you a great time.”  The larger message, of course, is that places are like women and women are like places.  They are experiences to purchase and consume, preferably cheaply.

UPDATE: Some in the comments have suggested that I cropped the ad to make my point.  So here is the whole front page of the website, victoriascheap.com:

(View original at http://contexts.org/socimages)

When we think about sex trafficking, we tend to think of it as a foreign problem. Something that happens in eastern Europe, in south east Asia. Not something that happens in the American south, or on America's east coast. But we're wrong.

Last week at the No Violence Against Women conference, run by the National Council for Research on Women and UNIFEM, and hosted by Hunter College, I attended a presentation about the commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) right here in America.

The organization A Future Not a Past, has been working on this issue for over a decade. It's a problem that's growing, and quickly. In New York in February 2010 alone, 2830 girls under the age of 18 were trafficked into commercial sex. In Georgia, it was 492 girls, up from 251 in February 2007. That's 7200 men paying for sex with girls in the state of Georgia every month, and with the increased ease and anonymity of internet trafficking, those numbers are expected to rise over the next three years.

Kaffie McCullough, CSEC Program Manager at A Future, Not a Past, said that runaway populations are particularly at risk of being trafficked, and warned about the use of social networking sites to target adolescent girls (and the numbers we have available don't take into account girls who are undocumented immigrants, who are also a vulnerable population). Because prostitution is illegal, it's often the girls who end up being punished. But the girls, McCullough said, are not the problem. "We have to help legislators and law enforcement see these girls as victims and not as criminals," she said. The real problem, she said, is on the demand side. The real problem is the buyers who are fuelling the industry and not being arrested.

Alex Trouteaud, an analyst who has been doing research on the economic patterns of CSEC for several years now, said that of the thousands of men paying for sex with minors in American every year, only 10% of them are "actively and openly and directly seeking" to have sex with an adolescent. But in a study that Trouteaud and his team ran, they found that 47% of men calling an escort service will continue with the transaction after they've been informed outright that the woman whose time they're paying for is not in fact a woman, but a child.

So who are these men who pay for sex with children? Trouteaud says that in Georgia, 26% of them come from Atlanta's urban core, while over 40% live in the affluent, largely white suburbs to the north of the city. "These are men from your subdivision," he said. "These are men who, when they're done with their golf game at the country club, order up sex with an adolescent like they'd order a pizza."

While the girls are clearly not to blame, it would be foolish to attribute CSEC solely to the individual johns. "We like to think there's something wrong in the hard-wiring of these men," McCullough said. "What I've been trying to get people to understand is how sadly normal it is." It's a cultural problem, the panelists agreed, rooted in what we teach men about when it's acceptable to have sex, and in how we sexualize young girls and their bodies, and teach men and boys to do the same.

Placing all the blame on the individual men (who, granted, are breaking the law and violating human rights, and ought to be punished accordingly) obscures the origins of the idea that paying for sex with children is acceptable. In reality, this problem is criminal, but it's also cultural, and for that reason, we are all obligated to do something about it. "It's easy to say it's the men who are buying who are the problem and they need to change, said McCullough. "But I think we need to take a look at what we just accept and don't make a stink about it."

For more information about A Future Not a Past, check out their website.

When we think about sex trafficking, we tend to think of it as a foreign problem. Something that happens in eastern Europe, in south east Asia. Not something that happens in the American south, or on America's east coast. But we're wrong.

Last week at the No Violence Against Women conference, run by the National Council for Research on Women and UNIFEM, and hosted by Hunter College, I attended a presentation about the commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) right here in America.

The organization A Future Not a Past, has been working on this issue for over a decade. It's a problem that's growing, and quickly. In New York in February 2010 alone, 2830 girls under the age of 18 were trafficked into commercial sex. In Georgia, it was 492 girls, up from 251 in February 2007. That's 7200 men paying for sex with girls in the state of Georgia every month, and with the increased ease and anonymity of internet trafficking, those numbers are expected to rise over the next three years.

Kaffie McCullough, CSEC Program Manager at A Future, Not a Past, said that runaway populations are particularly at risk of being trafficked, and warned about the use of social networking sites to target adolescent girls (and the numbers we have available don't take into account girls who are undocumented immigrants, who are also a vulnerable population). Because prostitution is illegal, it's often the girls who end up being punished. But the girls, McCullough said, are not the problem. "We have to help legislators and law enforcement see these girls as victims and not as criminals," she said. The real problem, she said, is on the demand side. The real problem is the buyers who are fuelling the industry and not being arrested.

Alex Trouteaud, an analyst who has been doing research on the economic patterns of CSEC for several years now, said that of the thousands of men paying for sex with minors in American every year, only 10% of them are "actively and openly and directly seeking" to have sex with an adolescent. But in a study that Trouteaud and his team ran, they found that 47% of men calling an escort service will continue with the transaction after they've been informed outright that the woman whose time they're paying for is not in fact a woman, but a child.

So who are these men who pay for sex with children? Trouteaud says that in Georgia, 26% of them come from Atlanta's urban core, while over 40% live in the affluent, largely white suburbs to the north of the city. "These are men from your subdivision," he said. "These are men who, when they're done with their golf game at the country club, order up sex with an adolescent like they'd order a pizza."

While the girls are clearly not to blame, it would be foolish to attribute CSEC solely to the individual johns. "We like to think there's something wrong in the hard-wiring of these men," McCullough said. "What I've been trying to get people to understand is how sadly normal it is." It's a cultural problem, the panelists agreed, rooted in what we teach men about when it's acceptable to have sex, and in how we sexualize young girls and their bodies, and teach men and boys to do the same.

Placing all the blame on the individual men (who, granted, are breaking the law and violating human rights, and ought to be punished accordingly) obscures the origins of the idea that paying for sex with children is acceptable. In reality, this problem is criminal, but it's also cultural, and for that reason, we are all obligated to do something about it. "It's easy to say it's the men who are buying who are the problem and they need to change, said McCullough. "But I think we need to take a look at what we just accept and don't make a stink about it."

For more information about A Future Not a Past, check out their website.