Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

Fran Langum of Blue Gal says

Several bloggers including Echidne have pointed out the stupidity of the Freakonomics piece on prostitution. Working up outrage (over their utilitarian arguments re paying for sex) is difficult when faced with the Total Asperger Blinders of the authors: borderline autistic economists who don’t insert “humanity” into their equations don’t deserve a lot of ‘analysis.’ (Next up: the economy is down, so why aren’t more parents eating their babies?)

Read the quote in context here.

Note: lest you think she’s joking check out the highlighted sentences of this 2002 article in Slate.com by Steven Landsburg (emphasis mine.)

I am privileged to teach in one of the world’s most respected economics departments. We’re on pretty much everyone’s top-15 list, and by a lot of measures, we’re considered top-five. I mention this by way of pointing out that this is not some bunch of bozos we’re talking about here.

And yet somehow last summer, we managed to spend a week in a state of collective befuddlement, obsessing over a seemingly impenetrable conundrum that came up over lunch: If people stand still on escalators, then why don’t they stand still on stairs?

It was observed early on that if you stand still on stairs, you’ll never get anywhere. But for reasons I can no longer entirely reconstruct, that explanation was dismissed as overly simplistic.

He said it here.

Of course if I was too hard on them I’d have to explain how managed to hang on to a seven year old memory of an article about economists and escalators. And I remember the smell of simmering brain cells during a numbers-theory midterm I took in combined computability and cognition (a cheerful exploration of the limits of rationality) where one of the two questions was “prove that two plus two equals four.” Which, if you can’t use arithmetic or what you learned in pre-school, is tougher than it sounds.

And it’s not like imponderably obvious questions don’t deserve scrutiny. My favorite cautionary example about gender as a social construct instead of objective reality is the case of Joan of Arc, for whom wearing men’s clothing was so obviously a crime against God and nature that her English captors used that as the legal reason to burn her at the stake! Rather than than, say, leading a peasant army against her English captors, which she also did. Point being that what seems obvious isn’t always.

But I digress. The rest of Fran’s post turns an paragraph from the Freakonomics essay and turns it into an also fascinating and fundamental question about what constitutes the essence of prostitution: what exactly does it mean when a businessman in Texas phones a sex-worker in Chicago who charges him to fly down and do… something or other involving non-sexual devices and activities that “most people wouldn’t even recognize as sex per se.” Oh, that and she’s got a funny section about how if someone who’s paid to simulate having sex on film is an “actor” and someone else who’s paid to do non-sexual things is a “prostitute” then what happens if a “prostitute” buys a camera…

No, seriously, go read Fran’s whole, entirely work-safe post, and site, here.

Pam Spaulding of Pandagon has a nifty writeup of yet another “family values” Republican, this time Tennessee State Senator Paul Stanley, who a) pursued a typical evangelical religious social-conservative legislative agenda, including some anti-porn legislation, while b) conducting an affair with a much younger employee that included c) taking “compromising” photos of the intern at his apartment.

Instead of just handwringing or tisk-tisking I’m going to try for a different interpretation. But first here are the specifics…

The boyfriend, Joel Palmer Watts. 28, discovered a computer memory disc with sexually explicit photographs of [the intern, Mackenzie Morrison] that appeared to have been taken in Stanley’s apartment. Watts then blackmailed Stanley, demanding $10,000 in return for keeping quiet.

“Releasing the photographs to individuals or the media would cause embarrassment, both professionally and personally, to Stanley,” according to the court affidavit, as if we needed an explanation for why this might pose a small problem for our family values champion.

While this sounds like a garden-variety Republican Sexual Hypocrite, Stanley takes it up a notch with his legislative CV: 1) he campaigned against the right of gays and lesbians to adopt (“When you’re married, there’s a commitment there,” Stanley said last year, while discussing legislation to prohibit gay people from adopting children); and….drum roll…2) he introduced a bill prohibiting viewing porn while driving (WTF!? Is this some kind of rampant problem in Tennessee?)

...

BTW, this hypocrite Stanley told NewsChannel 5 that he will continue his social conservative legislative agenda.

Read the rest of Spaulding’s post, and follow her additional links, here.

It being Half-Nekkid Thursday and all I’m going to see if I can cobble together some way for Paul Stanley to look somewhat like less of a hypocrite… though not less of a jerk… for legislating against porn while taking his own erotic photos. Here’s how something like that might work:

a) A lot of anti-porn people seem to define porn as the depiction of unwilling, disadvantaged victims performing unwanted sexual acts that leave them feeling degraded and abused. Depending on the degree to which one believes women have any sexual agency beyond the limited right to say no before marriage this may include believing that all persons, or at least all women, who appear in porn are by-definition coerced, degraded, and performing unwanted acts. Although it might not.

b) Sen. Stanley, and possibly Ms. Morrison, may have regarded the images found by the boyfriend as mere mementos of a sexual relationship where no one was coerced or degraded and where no unwilling or undesired acts were performed.

Therefore

c) There might be no contradiction and therefore no hypocrisy if the Senator was opposed to a) porn-as-bad-by-definition and b) provocative and/or explicit images taken with only the intention to arouse the parties involved and, possibly, anyone else the participating parties chose to share those images with. Which evidently would not include the would-be blackmailer, Mr. Watts. Nor, obviously, would the “certain members of the media” Mr. Watts proposed to share those photos with without the consent of Sen. Stanley and Ms. Morrison.

d) Which, of course, creates the distinction most right-minded people need to judge publication of so-called “revenge porn.” Revenge porn is often ordinary erotica taken by consenting parties for their personal enjoyment which is then discovered by or shared with third parties without the consent of all the original participants. Often with the intention of humiliating or degrading one or more of the original participants against their will. Thus, if one prefers the “it’s only porn if it’s bad, it’s only bad if its porn” definition then that’s the point at which ordinary, self-taken images can become porn.

Therefore, if that was Sen. Stanley’s position, it would not be hypocritical to legislate against porn while taking personal photos. I’m not buying it, but I could see someone trying to make that case.

Oh, and e) Bonus supporting point: When confronted by Watt’s blackmail attempt Stanley went straight to the cops who in turn set up a sting and arrested Watts. It’s actually kind of remarkable that a married evangelical ‘winger legislator would be so straightforward, but it’s actually the exactly correct thing to do when someone like, oh, say, the average HNT participant or anyone who’s own images are misappropriated. Because whatever social consequences one might run into (remember, even in socially conservative Tennessee Stanley appears to still be married and still be a Senator) the legal consequences to the blackmailer are way harsher. Anyway, Stanley’s behavior would be consistent with my attempted he’s-a-jerk-but-not-a-hypocrite interpretation of what came down.

Now.

That being all said and done there’s a rather prominent loose end I can now address — the bit about Ms. Morrison being an intern and Sen. Stanley being at least her nominal employer and supervisor. Such relationships may or may not be an issue for evangelical tub-thumpers but they’re considered actionable under employment law. Remember I’ve been attempting to be generous here so while not forgiving or forgetting, for purposes of the first part of this post I’m treating it as a separate offense. (For which, to keep things tidy, he probably ought to be investigated, and sanctioned, under any and all rules, regulations, and statutes.)

Happy HNT (or Half-nekkid Thursday!)

Responding to a knee-squeezing podcast from ZDNet about technology at Sex 2.0 Sabrina Morgan of Sabrina in Stockings left a pretty brilliant comment

Thanks for mentioning my session, although I’m not sure what was behind the case of the giggles as soon as the term “sex” came up. I’m sure you share my understanding that CRM software is a set of useful tools; CRM itself is a mindset and a way of running your business. Sex work as a personalized service industry is no different.

Some of the first and longest-running podcasts were sex podcasts (Open Source Sex, Bedroom Radio, and Whorecast come to mind). At a conference focused on the intersection of sex, technology and feminism, Ellie and Nobilis’s Podcasting 101 panel was a perfect fit.

As far as getting free attendance as an analyst – good luck with that one. Most of the attendees were sex/tech/culture analysts and paid regardless. The conference was inexpensive to begin with ($40 for last-minute tickets); if you were interested in attending the event for free, volunteer refunds and scholarship tickets were available.

Read the quote in context here.

Taking it to their professionalism rather than taking it personally isn’t just a good idea in general, it’s got to have hurt. “I’m sure you share my understanding of CRM...?” Ouch! Reminding commercial podcasters that they weren’t there first? Ouch again. And suggesting that if the $40 for “analysts” (who hadn’t bothered to analyze the conference $30 early registration fee) was too pricey they could volunteer or request scholarships? That too.

Even better twist? In Twitter she twisted the knife with just 132 razor-sharp characters.

I can’t be offended. They managed to get my name right, promote #sex20, make us sound interesting and make themselves look immature.

Nice work!

As of a couple moments ago both Leslea Newman’s Heather Has Two Mommies: 10th Anniversary Edition (Alyson Wonderland) and Heather Corinna’s S.E.X.: The All-You-Need-To-Know Progressive Sexuality Guide to Get You Through High School and College have had their Sales Rankings restored at Amazon.com. I haven’t checked any of the other books that were delisted over the weekend but, since I’m pretty sure this really was a language-based rather than a prejudice-based error I’m pretty confident it’s a general rollback.

I’d say “click those links, confirm the ranking is still there, and then help drive their sales ranks even higher… and help make up for sales losses over the weekend… by buying copies.” Except I’d have to add that as an Amazon Affiliate I’d be getting a (fractional) cut. (I’m not saying don’t buy from Amazon in general, at all. I am reluctant to appear eager to benefit financially.)

You can just support the authors and Powell’s Books, instead of the authors and me, if you buy Heather Has Two Mommies here and S.E.X. here. Or you can support the authors and Barnes & Noble, instead of the authors and me, if you buy Heather Has Two Mommies here and S.E.X. here. Or you could check Indiebound.com for an independent bookseller near you and support the authors and a local business.