Money is not a a substitue for consent

Update: This post originally appeared on the Radical Feminist HUB, which as of 21-02-2013 has disappeared. I am reposting it here, so it is still accessible.

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Whenever the issue of prostitution is broached, people often refer to it as a “job like any other”. “Most” or “all people hate their jobs”, is the phrase that rolls off the tongue without much consideration and they ask the person who frames prostitution as institutionalized rape “would you be doing the kind of work you do if people didn’t pay you for it?” To which I can answer without hesitation “I would and I have, and I still do when a friend or relative asks me to.” This is both because I like my job and I happily do the people I care about a favor.

This is not so with sex acts. I am only willing to have sex when I feel like it, with a person of my own choosing. You can’t pay to do it and you can’t ask it of me as a favor. This issue is non-negotiable for me. Do you know why? Because I am a privileged, childless, woman who lives by herself; I have no one who depends upon me for survival, I answer to no one in my personal life and the situation in my country is such that, though I am a student incurring more debts each month, there are systems in place that provide me with enough money to live off. I am by no means starving or in a deep financial trouble.

My situation gives me the choice the refuse work, to apply for jobs that I find interesting and to leave the jobs I hate, all of which I have done in the past many times before. I am also in the privileged position that none of the work I have done is even remotely illegal or stigmatized and I can put it all on my resume. How does my situation compare to that of the average prostitute, porn-actress or escort? Well for one thing, if any of them of them wishes to switch “industries”, and an average of 80% to 90% of them currently want to, they will end up with a nice big gap on their resumes which any prospective employer would ask about. Many of those who work as prostitutes don’t even come clean to their family or friends for fear of being judged or even being reported to the police.

When think about rape, what is it you think about? Forced sex? Sex without consent? Sexual assault? Strange men jumping out of the bushes and attacking a woman? In either case you don’t think of the woman as having said “yes” and you may even get the mental image of a woman screaming “NO”. If a woman would not have sex with you if the choice was completely free, but will “consent” to it if you paid her to, then are we still talking about consent? Can you pay someone not to say “no” to you or even to say “yes”.

The situation of women the sex-“industry” is such that the vast majority of them do it either because they are unable to pay for their own survival, because of (threat of) violence or to support a drug addiction. There doesn’t seem to be much “choice” involved for many of them when deciding to do this kind of “work”. This is of course not true for all forms of prostitution. There are women who do have other, very viable options when it comes to generating an income. Those are the prostitutes you’ll most often hear from in the media; the ones who do have a voice and often advocate the “work” as “choice” and some of which refuse to keep the “low end of the business” into mind. In all honesty I have yet to hear of a current “low-end” prostitute with her own platform. All those whose words I read and hear from about the horror of prostitution are those who have managed to exist it.

When you pay for the “services” of a prostituted woman, you are not merely removing her choices, but you are also exploiting a person in a particularly vulnerable situation. If it were easy for her to get her money elsewhere and she wasn’t living with the constant threat of violence over her head, do you think she would even feel flattered if you offered her money to be allowed to use the holes in her body? I don’t know many women who don’t, at some level, feel revulsion, when such a proposition is made. They, like I, want to matter and be respected for who they are and what they have accomplished, not for their anatomy.

When we are talking about sexual freedom, why is it that so many people merely mean the sexual freedom of men to stick their dicks into women with impunity? What about our sexual freedom to say “NO” or not even having to say “no”? What about our freedom to choose the life and work that we really care about? Why is it that people feel that it is men’s prerogative to fuck where they like regardless of whom they hurt? Regardless of what dangers they put the person they fuck in? Regardless of the fact that women may not enjoy the sexual encounter and merely fake their enjoyment. It is so often that John’s say “well she seemed to enjoy it, so I wasn’t hurting her”, without even considering the fact that if she didn’t fake that enjoyment she would most likely not get anymore clients.

It doesn’t matter which way you spin it, when money is involved in arranging for sex acts the issue of consent becomes dodgy at best and rape at worst.

Taking advantage of traffic Captain Moron is sending my way

It has happened again folks. I have been troll-link-bombed. Today I broke my own record of site hits (the current count stands at 440), all thanks to this little website called Captain Moron (not the actualy name). The site is primarily focussed on complaining about people they don’t agree with having the gall to post anything at all on the internet.

But I must say I have much more respect for this new group of trolls, than I did for the last batch, which prompted me to write my comment policy and my troll post. At least this new batch took the trouble of reading my short version of the comment policy at the top right of the screen. So far it is only a troll-link-bomb, but not a troll-comment-bomb.

I am taking advantage of my 400 hits a day, and rising, to draw attention to some older posts that people were particularly interested in, starting with my post about gynecology. As I point out in that post, I never go to a gynecologist, unless I am having a problem and women might be interested to know that pelvic exams and pap-smears are often over-used and unneccessary. I recommend reading the comment section as well. There is a lot of information available about reproductive health-care for women in the comments and a lot of great links too. I thank all of the comment contributors. It’s been a good discussion.

Women’s weight is also often fussed about and this post has also created a nice discussion. Basically you don’t have to feel like shit if you aren’t thin. You don’t have to feel bad mentally or physically, because being strong and feeling good about yourself has nothing to do with your weight and what other people think of it, your lifestyle is far more important. Dances with Fat has some great resources that show what’s really up with the “weight debate” and how much money and bullshit is really at the source of all the bullying.

Do you like sex? So do I, but on my own terms. Here is a post about “foreplay” and to continue this topic, I don’t like the word “virginity” either and here is why. The final post I wish to draw attention to on this topic is abortion. The only tragedy of abortion is not being able to get one or being ostracised for getting one.

Oh, yes! The new batch of trolls made all the same mistakes as the last one. They failed to see the point of social justice (read: feminism) and a long time ago I also created a lovely post for that too. It’s about how if you make any mistakes you seem to lose the right to fight for equality. Another frequent complaint about women is that we don ‘t know how to drive. Being an excellent driver myself, I call bullshit, especially with all the horrible accidents that are caused by irresponsible male drivers.

I also don’t agree with how the patriarchy expects women to dress these days (or in the past) and how muslim women are often treated by both men from their own cultures as well as men from wetsern cultures. You can’t tell if someone is empowered by looked a their clothes.

So there you have it folks. This is basically a link round-up. In part this is an experiment to see how usefull a link-bomb can be. Most of the current hits go directly to the main page of my blog, so this will be the first post they see. Let’s see what kind of an effect it will have.

I will keep you posted. ;)

The Importance of Intersectionality in Radical Feminism

I have a confession to make. To be perfectly honest I don’t even know why my type of feminism is referred to as radical? Radical means “root”, but why being in favor of total and complete equality for all people is such a radical idea is beyond me. To me this concept that women deserve everything that is considered a human right makes perfect sense. It is what I have been taught in school all these years. Every adult I spoke to as a kid always told me: “You deserve to be treated with respect and dignity and enjoy all human rights. To be held back on the basis of your sex is an antiquated concept that has no part in modern society.”

Oh, boy! What a lie that has been. I have since learned that to be female means not enjoying the same rights and treatment that men enjoy, not by a long shot. I have learned that first and foremost my appearance is my most important attribute and that I will get treated a little better when I am closer to the ideal standard of beauty for women, but not too much. They may like to look at you, but they don’t want to listen to you unless to hear you agree with them and “it’s a complement when they hurl obscene remarks in your direction, don’t you know? It’s a sign of desirability and you’d better be happy while you still get those.” In many cases I was not even allowed the same comfort and convenience of “dress code” that the men had.

I was expected to take action in the hopes of preventing a sexual attack on my body and if I failed it would be all my fault. I have learned that I am often ignored or ridiculed or hushed when I try to speak my mind or ask those “inconvenient” questions as to why things are not as equal as I was promised as a child. Equality was the lie I was sold all the way through my childhood.

Nowadays I don’t see many “choices” women make as free as they are portrayed. I, too, compromise a lot. I have been shaving my legs again to avoid harassment, for example, and to make it a little easier to get hired. I hide my feminism from most people I meet. I didn’t always do that, and what happened is that people stopped listening, shut me up or forced me out somehow. Dealing with outright hostility to one’s expressed opinion is an unsettling experience, especially if you were under the impression you were just having a friendly debate.

So why is it considered root feminism? Human societies are not a natural occurrence, but are man-made. The rules and laws we follow, whether official or not, are also man-made and ensure that a great many people get the short end of the stick; women in particular. Rich white men have created hierarchies among oppressed classes. It is not merely that they oppress everyone they perceive as “not like them”, they also have put hierarchies in place to make sure that the oppressed classes also oppress each other.

Many of those among oppressed classes have actively bought into the “hierarchies as natural and necessary” and work hard to oppress those over which they have slightly more privilege. Case in point: Fat-hatred. I have written about this before, and it still surprises me that even many feminists have an attitude of “what’s the big deal” or “why don’t you just lose weight then” or “well fat is rather ugly/inconvenient/unhealthy, I am merely telling you for your own good”.  It is like I haven’t heard these messages thousands or times before, and without realizing that they will chastise men for ignoring their own privileged state, but refuse to examine their own ignorance and privileges.

Another thing is the “sex-industry”; many women, including feminists, will argue that doing “sex-work” is a choice pure and simple. Would they be willing to do that kind of work? Of course not. But someone has to do it, “so they run less risk of rape”; is how the argument goes, willfully ignoring the fact that many prostituted women never got to choose their prostituted state, because many of them are trafficked or forced into it through crushing poverty. In this case the pro-porn/pro-prostitution, female advocates are perfectly willing to support the slavery of women whose faces and names they don’t even know for a false sense of security. I call it false, because wherever a sex-club opens in any given neighborhood the number of sexual assaults in that neighborhood rises. Women are perfectly capable of throwing other women to the dogs, just like men do. Should they not be called out for that?

Fighting racism, especially the quiet obsequious kind, is another important radical feminist issue. To be a white woman in a patriarchy makes for a difficult life, but for women who don’t even have white privilege, this is a whole other ball game. For every ethnic group of women in a white patriarchal society there is a different form of misogyny. Consider the stereotype of the demur, little Asian woman, or the stereotype of the angry, black woman, with an insatiable sexual appetite who is often portrayed as more animal than human. This is a type of misogyny we white women don’t deal with and even at times level at women of color. There is a hierarchy among women that some women work very hard for to keep up, cheered on by their (white) patriarchs. When considering for example the demands that are made of women of African descent to get haircuts that costs a thousand dollars a month, just to keep their jobs, and the fact that I didn’t know that until I saw that documentary “Good Hair”, I was a little shocked. It was incredibly ignorant of me to not even consider how many black women were forced to “emulate” the sleeker hair of white women. Not keeping in mind what others have to go through is another reason why intersectionaility is so important.

Simply put: Intersectionality matters. You can’t get rid of one form of oppression and leave another intact. That will do nothing to destroy the patriarchy. You’ll merely plug one of the hundreds of holes in a sinking ship. That is not an effective strategy. I am all for having different groups of people focus on different forms of oppression. Fighting forms of oppression on all sides with different people will work, but if you refuse to even see other groups of people trying to bring down that same patriarchy, then you might as well be on your own trying to dig through granite with a spade.

Gynecology: or the regular check-up of your reproductive organs

I have a confession to make. Contrary to the advice I have received all my life while I was growing up I don’t ever visit a gynecologist. I don’t get pap-smears or examinations of my reproductive organs on a regular basis, or whatever else you can get done at a gynecologist’s office.

Yet, from how I was introduced to gynecology during sex-ed in highschool you’d think that it is as normal as going to a dentist, which most people in my country do every six months. While I received sex-ed in school we were also told that when we turn 18 there would be a mandatory check-up by a gynecologist the same way you get vaccinated several times during your childhood. We were to receive a letter for such a check-up and I remember that when I was told I felt revulsion. In no way did I want some doctor poking around in my vagina and I had already decided that I would get out of it somehow. The letter never arrived and I think the government got rid of those mandatory check-ups. It is too ridiculous for words; the mandatory annual school doctor check-ups were creepy enough as it was.

About a year after I first started menstruating I ran into some health problems.  While my first few periods were light and caused hardly any trouble, the subsequent once increased in intensity. My blood flow became much heavier and at one point I had to change pads every fifteen minutes; they were thick pads, but I bled them full in just a quarter of an hour. My cramps made doing anything other than lie down impossible and my mood could be described in simply one word: “depressed”. I also had severe headaches when I wasn’t feeling lightheaded. Later it turned out that because I had anemia my menstruation got worse and worse and because I lost so much blood during menstruation my anemia got worse, it was a vicious cycle that has taken me until my twenty-fifth year to be rid of completely. It was when I finally started eating properly.

Initially however I did not know that heavy bleeding was related to anemia and I also did not know that during the first few years or even the first decade of menstruation these problems can occur and I and my family thought that there must be something seriously wrong with me.  This resulted to a trip to the doctor and a referral to a gynecologist. The gynecologist, big surprise, was a man. His idea of trying to diagnose me was to use a camera on a stick and to stick that contraption in my uterus. I immediately felt very uncomfortable about that idea. He said: “Not to worry. I get many young girls in hear who never had sex before and I stick them on that thing without much trouble.” With sex of course he meant p.i.v. I didn’t trust him and declined. After all, what would a man know about a vagina? I never pretended to know what a penile probe must feel like. I asked this guy for the pill instead, which did reduce some of the symptoms and introduced a whole other range of problems. At least my bleeding wasn’t as bad anymore and my body could recover a little.

Since that first unsettling meeting with the creepy male gynecologist, I have never gone back to see another. I got my pills from our regular doctor who was all too happy to prescribe them without prying and as I got older and finally started eating normally my menstruation regulated itself out and now it’s fairly manageable.

I am not sure how I would feel about a female gynecologist should I ever feel the need to visit one again, but I definitely do not trust men to understand the level of pain that can accompany from having anything at all in your vagina. Before I even had an idea, the creepy male gynecologist certainly showed no proof that he was even willing to consider the discomfort, and really why go for regular check-ups? I am not intending to use my reproductive organs anyway and it is by no means the only body part that can develop cancer, yet we women are expected to have regular inspections preformed on it like it is some kind of engine to be maintained.  And why are there so many male gynecologists? Why would a man even choose such a profession? My own experience has taught me that caring about the welfare of women does not necessarily have to be a motivation.

Do men go in for regular check-ups of their reproductive organs? Do they have a special doctor for those organs? And if this is the case, then how come I have never heard of it?

Assange is a filthy rapist and there’s the end of that!

As it turns out, the full allegations against Assange have been leaked, which is pretty damn ironic. If Assange wasn’t such a total hypocrite he would have leaked them himself. Why should transparency merely apply to governments and not to him?

I read the leaked allegations and they were even worse then I initially thought. Unless they can proof none of it is true, then it’s pretty damn obvious that he is a rapist and a violent one at that. I have made parts bold to show people what rape is, in case anyone’s confused.

Her account to police, which Assange disputes, stated that he began stroking her leg as they drank tea, before he pulled off her clothes and snapped a necklace that she was wearing. According to her statement she “tried to put on some articles of clothing as it was going too quickly and uncomfortably but Assange ripped them off again“. Miss A told police that she didn’t want to go any further “but that it was too late to stop Assange as she had gone along with it so far”, and so she allowed him to undress her.

According to the statement, Miss A then realised he was trying to have unprotected sex with her. She told police that she had tried a number of times to reach for a condom but Assange had stopped her by holding her arms and pinning her legs. The statement records Miss A describing how Assange then released her arms and agreed to use a condom, but she told the police that at some stage Assange had “done something” with the condom that resulted in it becoming ripped, and ejaculated without withdrawing.

On Sunday 15 August, Monica told police, Miss A told her that she thought Assange had torn the condom on purpose. According to Monica, Miss A said Assange was still staying in her flat but they were not having sex because he had “exceeded the limits of what she felt she could accept” and she did not feel safe.

Early the next morning, Miss W told police, she had gone to buy breakfast before getting back into bed and falling asleep beside Assange. She had awoken to find him having sex with her, she said, but when she asked whether he was wearing a condom he said no. “According to her statement, she said: ‘You better not have HIV’ and he answered: ‘Of course not,’ ” but “she couldn’t be bothered to tell him one more time because she had been going on about the condom all night. She had never had unprotected sex before.”

On Wednesday 18 August, according to police records, Miss A told Harold and a friend that Assange would not leave her flat and was sleeping in her bed, although she was not having sex with him and he spent most of the night sitting with his computer. Harold told police he had asked Assange why he was refusing to leave the flat and that Assange had said he was very surprised, because Miss A had not asked him to leave. Miss A says she spent Wednesday night on a mattress and then moved to a friend’s flat so she did not have to be near him. She told police that Assange had continued to make sexual advances to her every day after they slept together and on Wednesday 18 August had approached her, naked from the waist down, and rubbed himself against her.

The number of times he forced these women and the fact that he never bothered to ask for consent or to listen when they told him to stop makes it pretty fucking clear he’s a damn rapist. The CIA never needs to set any of these so called “honeytraps” for him, this guys shouldn’t be around women at all. He is freaking dangerous.

Assange has had three lawyers so far, maybe he’s already up to four, and all of them have lied. They have spread nothing but lies and have tried to divert attention from the rape allegations by constantly implying, when not directly claiming, it is a CIA plot against Wikileaks. The only “defense” they could come up with so far, towards the press, was: “Well uhm, it started out consensually…” Like that gives anyone the right to do whatever to a sex partner. Why of course, when someone agrees to have sex with you that gives you a license to rape them /snark.The lawyers have also repeated made up fake allegations that he was supposedly charged with; allegations that don’t even exist under Swedish law. It’s nice to know how responsible the international press has been and how responsible and professional his lawyers have acted. Not!

What makes me even more mad is that these women already came forward in August, but I guess the cause wasn’t “high-profile” enough for the prosecutors and they originally tossed it out. This happens so frequently and makes it pretty clear that people don’t give a shit about women’s bodies and are just there for rapists to be used any way they see fit.

The conviction rate of Swedish rapists isn’t any more impressive than the rest of Europe. Most cases won’t even get processed and in all likelihood Assange will get nothing more than a slap on the wrist and maybe five hours of community service. This case is used by both the prosecutors and the woman-haters out there to once again show us how much they don’t care about our lives and our bodily sovereignty.  We are just a bunch of fuck-holes to be used for sexual gratification, (political) backlashes, and acquisition of fame.

My heart goes out to both these women and to all victims of sexual assault. I believe you. I will never doubt the word of any woman in matters of sexual assault unless there is strong evidence to contrary and there never is. I hear that in Swedish they want to implement a law that puts the onus of proof of consent on the rapist and I will be celebrating the day this law goes into effect. That is what we need to combat this world wide rape-epidemic; we need this law everywhere.