Image: Courtesy of CuteOverload.com

While it may not be the best place to meet with your elected representative, the men’s restroom provided a safe haven for this flock of flamingos at the Gladys Porter Zoo in Bronzeville, Texas during the recent hurricane-force winds.

See. There is a reason why women go to the restroom in groups.

Photo “Scorpion Sucker” by Flickr user voteprime. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Brady Swenson of RHRealityCheck.org says

I’m sure you know the story by now… the Bush administration’s department of Health and Human Services leaked a proposed rule two weeks ago that would limit women’s access to contraception by redefining popular birth control methods as abortion and legally empowering medical practitioners to deny dispensing birth control to women with a prescription.  The regulation would also remove all federal funding from subsidized birth control that millions of low income women depend on.
Read the quote in context here.

I can’t remember the term at the moment but there’s a word for when you create a really big stink (that you might not even really care that much about) in hopes of letting a smaller stink slip past unnoticed. Or at least unnoticed till too late.

You see it a lot, of course, in things like service contracts, and before people were required to release A.P.Rs you’d see something like that with various kinds of loans. And of course in politics there’s the “Fireman First” procedure where you say “well, to meet this budget crisis we’ll have to lay off 10% of our fire fighers… and the mayor’s office remodel… so we need that budget increase.” In each case you wind up so distracted by a big plum that the perhaps costlier, or less essential, or otherwise more outrageous item passes unnoticed.

Anyway, I wonder if that’s what’s happened with the big “contraception is abortion” buzz from last week that seems to have completely distracted everyone from the complete defunding of low-income contraceptives!

And by the way no, I’m not giving the “Mayberry Machiavellis” credit for thinking this up. It’s just as likely that, just like me, the redefinition story was so disruptively absurd proposal we all just dropped the ball on the outrageous act.

@!&##

Well, one of my summer projects is painting my old office. The light through my otherwise too-small windows seemed very nice, especially with the new, darker wall colors so…

More like this here.

Photo by Flickr user lrice. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Amber Rhea of Being Amber Rhea calls out a seriously backwards notion about the meaning of “sex positive.”

She quotes a Emilie Dice as saying, in comments on a different site, that

Because men are already “sex positive” by cultural default. It’s not an issue for them. Of course they want women making the right choice to cater to their sexist demands. It’s a given.

Amber’s reply is actually pretty important!

That really annoys me because it is so NOT what being sex-positive is about. It reminds me of non-sex-positive feminists who say, “I like sex! So how can I be sex-negative?” Because it’s not about whether you personally like sex. It’s about so much more than that. And the traditional patriarchal construct of how male and female heteronormative sexuality is played out is NOT sex-positive. So a guy not being afraid to say he likes to fuck isn’t necessarily sex-positive, either. Does he subscribe to the virgin/whore dichotomy? How does he view women who are openly, actively, unabashedly sexual? Does he speak in denigrating terms about some women and/or some types of consensual sex? Does he think “gay” is an insult? Does he use gendered insults? On and on and on. And of course, anything that is sexist (see Emilie’s comment) is by definition NOT sex-positive.
She said it here.

Yup. In common use “sex positive” is about as misunderstood as one can possibly get. For instance inside the created-by-men paradigm of women as the “no-sex” class it’s exactly not true that by default men are sex-positive. The same paradigm, by the way, casts women, particularly feminist women, as sex-negative by default (instead quite a few feminists, including even alleged “man-haters” like Andrea Dworkin who against huge opposition established the core sex-positive principle of affirmative consent, have been in the vanguard of sex-positive culture.)

So! Last spring I listed the generally agreed upon core sex-positive principles, and in that post I pointed out that “sex positive” isn’t at all the same thing as “pro sex.” I think I gave a couple of examples there but here’s a way to clear up whether men are “sex positive by cultural default.”

Anybody who says “with prostitutes you’re not paying for sex, you’re paying them to go away afterwards?” Opposite of sex positive, m’kay? Not to say you can’t be sex positive and pro-sex-work. But in this culture anyway you can’t say anyone’s sex-positive by default.

Image: Detail from “The Hunt by Night” by Paolo Uccello, courtesy of The Yorck Project, Wikimedia Commons

I know the truth — give up all other truths!
No need for people anywhere on earth to struggle.
Look — it is evening, look, it is nearly night:
what do you speak of, poets, lovers, generals?

The wind is level now, the earth is wet with dew,
the storm of stars in the sky will turn to quiet.
And soon all of us will sleep under the earth, we
who never let each other sleep above it.

1915 by Marina Tsvetaeva

For the members of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church.
For those who share their beliefs.
For those who oppose their beliefs.

Petra Boynton takes a look at the recent story about Viagra possibly working for women on anti-depressants. I actually thought the press handled the press release relatively well compared to earlier stories that semen alleviates depression or this not-even-meant-as-a-prank fellatio/breast-cancer-prevention story from last year. That’s actually not a vote of confidence though. While most of the articles have been surprisingly clear that the viagra thing worked for only a very small subset of women with sexual side-effects from anti-depressants Boynton has other concerns.

The media coverage has been predictably uncritical. It has tended to suggest that Viagra is a wonder drug that will save depressed women, and as a subtext suggested it could also help the sex lives who weren’t depressed too.

If you are a woman or the partner of a woman with depression there are several things you need to know about this research before you go asking your doctor for a Viagra script.

The study does rightly state that some anti depressants can lead to sexual problems (usually the inability to have an orgasm through intercourse or masturbation, taking longer than usual to reach orgasm, and/or a lack of lubrication). In order to be an issue, however, women can’t just have these symptoms – they have to be bothered by them too. Meaning if a woman finds it difficult to reach orgasm but isn’t distressed by this then it is not an issue requiring clinical intervention. It’s worth noting that depression can lead to women finding it difficult to reach orgasm or have any desire for sex. It can be worrying for a depressive patient who recieves pharmacological treatment and expects to feel better to discover their sex life hasn’t returned in the way they wanted.

Read Boynton’s full analysis here.

While research subjects were chosen from women who didn’t have orgasmic difficulty until they began taking anti-depressants Boynton points out that care givers nor patients (nor, perhaps, patient’s partners) might not be so discriminating.

[T]his is not always just down to the side-effects of medication – the underlying causes of the depression may not have gone away and could easily still be contributing to a woman’s sexual problems. For example problems within a relationship, family difficulties, work problems, economic or housing difficulties, issues with childcare, isolation or a lack of support could all be contributing to a woman’s sexual difficulties.

And that gets to a point I think about a lot when I think about men and Viagra. And depression. And consent.

I don’t have erectile dysfunction, or at least not yet — I’m only in my 50s — but I do have mild bouts of… I’ll call it “physical” depression because while I still feel optimistic, cheerful, even playful mood-wise I get loss of energy, shyness or withdrawal, sleeping a lot more than usual, oh, and two other symptoms that I think of a sure-fire indicators: resumption of nicotine cravings (even though I quit years ago) and diminished libido. I’m in the middle of one of those slumps this summer, which partly explains my slow posting rate, my horrible personal-correspondence rate. (This doesn’t count as the apology to everyone who’s map I’ve seemingly dropped myself off of.) As in Boynton’s last paragraph external factors such as having children and partner home for the summer, a busy travel season, various elderly but fairly distant relatives passing away, a ton of projects around the house, and an extended allergy season are seriously contributing factors.

I actually think I’m starting to come out of the slump a bit — as is often the case we only notice these things when things start to improve, and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have posted about it in the first place if I wasn’t perking up a bit. But I digress… if only slightly.

Anyway, I was already sort of thinking about in my earlier pink-is-for-girls/blue-is-for-boys pill post but it seems like some of the consequences of the Viagra for Women story illuminates similar problems for men.

For instance while my partner and I are pretty compatible when it comes to conflict resolution in the past I’ve been involved with people who loved both to argue and to then have make-up sex. I’m not sure if I’m just sensitive (I once slept, literally slept slept, on a mattress made entirely of sacks of dried peas so I can’t be too sensitive) but after an argument all I want is a lot of time, alone, to process. The last think I want is physical contact, let alone sexual contact! Which with one partner in particular was cause for further acrimony as she was pretty insistent that make-up sex was important in relationships.

Had Viagra been available at the time I might have felt it was a good solution to “my problem” with sexual interest after arguments. Instead the solution I eventually found was to end our relationship — which was probably for the best for both of us considering our, well, other considerable incompatibilities.

Anyway, just to be clear this isn’t a “what about the menz, we getz pressher too” post. Instead it’s just an observation that some of the concerns anticipated in the event a “female libido” pill is developed might be examined among depressed or alienated Viagra users.

Because (as I mentioned in that pink/blue post) while Viagra has certainly been trumpeted as a “get back the feeling” drug for men it’s also been an “it’s about time” drug for their partners. Who, after all, are often healthy and generally younger humans and therefore as likely to desire sex and intimacy as… men in similar situations who despair of their partner’s libido.

So… I’m a little rattled today (believe me that didn’t help although a lot of unbidden tears throughout the day hasn’t hurt either!) Anyway, I’m not sure any of this makes sense.

I’m just saying that from my own situational, post-argument disinterest in sex, and my experience of pressure to meet a partner’s expectations in those situations, I’m just saying that an enterprising young student of psychology or relationship therapy might get a nice paper out of studying some of the perhaps less obvious reasons men might take Viagra… with it’s possible insights into potential consequences of “Viagra for women.”

Photo of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church sanctuary by Flickr user notsofresh.

I just read via David Neiwert of Firedoglake that

In Tennessee this weekend, the chickens came home to roost when a gunman named James David Adkisson walked into a [Unitarian Universalist] Church and began shooting. So far, two people are dead, and seven more were wounded. He was saying “hateful things,” according to all the news reports.
Read the quote in context here.

Although it’s been many years since I was a member I grew up in that church. My youngest brother’s ashes are there. The last time I went, last year, my father introduced me around, so proud that I’d come back. I don’t know everyone who was injured but Greg McKendry, an usher, who died trying to push the gunman out of the way was a good friend of my father.

Teen calls foster father ‘hero’

Because he had family visiting from out of town and because things usually are pretty quiet in the summer my dad decided for the first time, he says, in years not to attend, nor were my mom, sister, or brother or any of their families.

The church has been a bit of a lightning rod in town ever since it’s foundation in the 1950s, from their sex education and comparative-religion Sunday school programs, their anti-war stances, their provision of sanctuary for refugees, their tolerance for the divorced, for feminists, for paganism and wikkans, for alienated or expelled members of a panoply of faiths, and more and more since the 1980s, for the LGBT community.

Unitarians in the south are kind of goofy, a little hokey (and often more than a little honkey), and often clumsy when it comes to all the nuances of progressive language. But in the regional sea of intolerance (in which local conservatives like Glenn Reynolds are sunk so deep they think their hands are dry) they’ve been a small, scrappy island of progressivism and a religious refuge for people those who aren’t welcome anywhere else.

My dad told me today that local right-wing and evangelical radio have lately been blasting the church over the “pro-homosexual agenda” embedded in “coded words” on the rainbow sign out front. The coded words? “We Welcome Everyone.” My dad said not everyone in the congregation had been enthusiastic, some were (rightly it turns out) fearful and some merely reluctant to “go that far,” and so the discussion to put up the sign was long.

[Update: After conversation with other family members it sounds like there had been an even more recent, contentious vote to put up a second sign saying that LGBT people were specifically welcome, which to some congregants would be seen as divisive for suggesting, at the least, that some of society’s “outcasts” are more welcome than others. It was evidently this recent, not-at-all-coded sign that had all the ‘wingers screaming, um, bloody murder. —fl]

In the end they voted for it as they have for so many controversial stands, and they stood for it, and now some have paid for their sweet, sometimes reluctant but always sincere faith and tolerance. I’m so sad and so proud of them.

My thoughts and tears go out to Greg and Linda who died, and for Joe and Jack, Betty, Linda, John, Tammy, and Allison, some of whom are still gravely wounded, and for their families, their friends, and for Jim Adkisson and his wife and family, and finally for Bill O’Reilly, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity who’s books and broadcasts Adkisson immersed himself in but in whom he evidently found no solace.

Yes, it’s a small surprise that erstwhile presidential candidate John Edwards had a (rumored) affair with a woman not his wife, and a somewhat larger surprise that they decided to carry a (rumored) resulting pregnancy to term. Knowing nothing else but what I hear in the meta-tabloids it’s actually pretty of cool that Edwards cared enough about his (rumored) partner and child to visit them despite, evidently, knowing that members of the yellow press (Mickey Kaus, National Enquirer, Matt Drudge) were stalking him. It’s even cool that Edward’s primary partner Elizabeth (rumor has it) may have known and/or been supportive, though whether before or after the (rumored) fact is even less clear than all the other (rumors.)

Oh yeah, and it’s even cool that despite this being the 21st Century and all and palm-sized high-definition video cameras work even better than the old tabloid-style flashbulb film cameras, the Enquirer reporters on the Edwards stakeout, didn’t even manage to catch a cell-phone photo… which more than anything else to me suggests the whole thing really is a rumor.

What’s not so cool? That in the 21s Century anyone’s using the term “love child” to describe another human being, another person, a fellow citizen, and, y’know, a little baby! I mean… love child?

I mean, if you still precede your conceptual exclamation points with “dash it all” and “zounds” then maybe you get a pass on “love child.” But sweet mother of pearl it’s inappropriate otherwise.

Oh yeah, and if any enterprising students have been or plan to dig into the cultural concepts behind the term, especially in light of the traditions of, well, real “traditional marriages” as tactical or strategic economic arrangements between families rather than romantic unions between individuals, and the sneering implication that children born out of non-arranged unions, unlike “legitimate” heirs, are dismissed as products of mere love, I’d be delighted to link to their work here.

—-

Note also the common construction got her pregnant. That too works with the agrarian pre-scientific reproductive metaphors that gave us terms like “seed,” “fertile,” “husband(!),” and perhaps even “sex(!!!)” wherein “impregnation” is entirely a male-partner activity that merely happens to the perhaps otherwise passive female partner.

Heather Corinna, writing at RHRealityCheck.org continues to demonstrate by example that when people say “gray area” they usually mean “poorly lit.” She illuminates the “gray area” of “asking for it.” (Even better, she does it with a food analogy.)

I’m a very talented cook, and my friends love it when I cook for them. Some crave my meals intensely. If I have a friend over, and I have them smell some fresh basil I picked up at the market, show them a beautiful tomato from my garden, does my doing that oblige me to cook something for them with those ingredients? Have I promised, committed or consented to doing so? Could we reasonably say that if, after showing them those things, they forced me to cook against my will with the rationalization that I “teased” them with those ingredients, that they’d be in the right and that forcing me to do something I didn’t want to do was anything but an exploitation and an abuse? Even if I did at some point say I was going to cook, and then decided that I just wasn’t in the mood, would it be okay for them to force me to, anyway, because I “made” them hungry, and thus, am somehow obligated to sate them? She said it here.

Look ma, no gray!

Photo by Flickr user tuis. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Quick question for anti-prostitution types all bent on upping detection and arrest rates for sex workers (remembering that most anti’s assume all sex workers are coerced.) How does the justice system and social services in your area deal with the current load of sex workers?

I ask because the more I read of “Who Pays the Price? Youth Involvement in Prostitution in Seattle” (pdf), a report produced by Debra Boyer, PhD, for Seattle’s Human Services Department, Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Prevention Division, the more aggravated I become.

The report is on children in prostitution — for those keeping track at home one clue that sex workers start very young is that police and social service agencies report that the mean age for children arrested for prostitution in 2007 was 15.5. (50% of those arrested were either 14 or 15.)

The clue for why so many young prostitutes come from abusive families? Because a) their customers may be the same age as their fathers but at least they’re not their fathers!; b) they leave to escape from home, discover there’s no, zero, none safety net beyond, maybe, foster homes, and either turn to prostitution based on input from street peers or else wind up “taken care of” by pimps; c) they grow up that way at home and don’t necessarily see any other lifestyle as possible for them.

Disturbing quote from the report?

Youth with prostitution arrests are developing their identity based on their life in prostitution. They need more focused prostitution and trauma recovery services.

So! You want them to get picked up more quickly and more often. Hey, so do I! (Seriously! I’m more sanguine than a lot of folks about affirmatively voluntary sex work but I’m dead set against child sex work whether or not it’s conscripted or coerced.)

But as the report makes clear their ain’t a lot of places for them to go assuming they are intercepted.

Youth cycling through the juvenile justice system are more likely to be involved with a pimp or gang, and will need safe and secure housing when they are released. It is within this group that youth whose lives are in danger from pimps and gang affiliation are most likely to emerge. Youth with prostitution arrests are developing their identity based on their life in prostitution. They need more focused prostitution and trauma recovery services.

Youth are not released from detention if they do not have a place to go. Since there is seldom family to pick them up, youth, with the assistance of a probation counselor or case manager, may go to a DCFS group home, back to foster care, or to shelters if there are any of the few beds available such as YouthCare Shelter, Dove House, or Teen Hope. None of these are permanent placements; the only transitional independent living program for youth under age 18 is YouthCare’s eight-bed [emphasis mine —fl] Pathways programs.

“Their families are just not there.” (Social Worker)

“I believed I had to accept this life; this is what was dealt me. Someone would have to prove I could go somewhere he couldn’t get at me. Do you really have somewhere I could go?” (Prostitution Survivor)

“Girls with pimps or with gangs need out of here!” (Prostitution Survivor)

“There is nowhere to send them.” (Interview responses from juvenile probation officers, attorneys, and social service providers)

Oh yeah, and speaking of intercepted, you know how cheerleaders for hijacking enforcement of international sex and labor trafficking in favor of cracking down on pure anti-domestic-prostitution by instructing prosecutors and police officers to treat every prostitution arrest as a Federal trafficking incident?

How about putting a little effort into investigating, or arresting, let alone bringing prostitution charges in the first place? As Boyer’s report says

“Often they have come in under other charges such as drug offenses or a stolen car and have previous arrests. If they
are brought into detention, we would only learn about prostitution from their social history if it came up.” (Social Worker)

...

Youth may be arrested but referred for charges other than prostitution, which is up to the discretion of officers if multiple crimes are involved. Youth who are involved in prostitution are often referred on drug or theft charges, for example. These arrests are not included in the prostitution category, and their involvement may or may not surface as a part of their social history. We do know that King County police agencies identified at least 82 youth in 2007. Surely, the 82 youth identified in 2007 more realistically reflect the local problem than arrest data from prior years suggest.

...

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention has supported studies to increase statistical and research information on the prostitution of juveniles. David Finkelhor and Richard Ormrod have analyzed data from 76 agencies in thirteen states on juvenile prostitution based on the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS).v

Finkelhor and Ormrod found that prostitution offenses are scarce in police reports. The investigators reviewed 14,230 prostitution incidents recorded in NIBRS data from 1997 through 2000, which represents only 0.17 percent of all crime incidents known to police (2 out of every 1,000 incidents known to police involved prostitution). The NIBRS data for 1997-2000 identify only 241 prostitution incidents with juvenile offenders, juvenile victims, or both (five percent of incidents). Of these incidents, 229 individuals are identified as juvenile offenders and 61 as juvenile victims. Analyses of the small data set are complicated because prostitution arrest categories may combine categories including patronizing and promoting with offering and agreeing to prostitution. It can be concluded that police reports are not reliable indicators of the scope of juvenile involvement in prostitution. The scarcity of juvenile prostitution reports suggests it is a low-priority crime. [emphasis mine —fl]

So! We should be not just enforcing laws but crafting policies that, say, make it safe and non-complex for underage victims to give evidence while minimizing stigmatization by jurors and minimizing interference from family members. Because laws just say what we think we ought to do. Policies say how we’re going to do it.

And whether we’re really serious.

Final quote from Boyer’s report?

Washington state data are similar to national data regarding the low number of prostitution arrests involving juveniles.

Sounds to me like it’s not just Seattle, or Washington State then. And what’s the solution? Just pass another law, double the penalties, clap the dust off your hands and go look for some other good deed to do? I don’t think so.

Recommendations in the report? #1: Safe housing. #2: Dedicated local housing. #3: Training for service and law-enforcement agencies. #4: Deal with the contradictory legal status of youth prostitutes (if they’re under 18 — Washington’s statutory age of consent — they should be considered victims of sex offenders rather than arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced to juvenile detention.) #5: Get real about charges against customers of child prostitutes. Current penalty for sex with a child? Life on the sex-offender registry. Current penalty for sex with a child prostitute?!?!?! Average $500, maximum $1,000!

Seriously, if you’re pro-prostitution what are you doing about the deplorable situation of children in prostitution in your vicinity? Because you know as well as I that there’d be way less opposition, and maybe even a little more support for your cause if everybody’s age of entry (that’s “age” not “average age”) was 18 or higher.

Even more seriously, though, if you’re anti-prostitution what are you doing about the deplorable situation of children in prostitution, in your communities, in spite of the coverage already extended to minors under the current Trafficking Victim’s Protection Act? Because guess what? Extending that coverage to adults isn’t going to do what you think it’s going to do you can’t even get authorities excited about or even interested in digging into child prostitution, m’kay?

!@*#!$!!

[** “Conscripted” for my purposes here include those who wind up sex workers due to the TVPA’s force or fraud provisions as well as the more frequently understood and recognized direct coercion. —fl]