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~ Feverish ravings of a middle-aged mind

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Category Archives: News

The Dangerous Self-Delusions of Some Hillary Supporters

06 Tuesday Sep 2016

Posted by dougom in News, Opinion

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

government, Hillary Clinton, politics, POTUS

image
Like these here folks

As we’re in the home stretch (fucking finally) of the 2016 election cycle, and Hillary Clinton is now the official nominee, there are some trends that I’ve been seeing for a long while that, in the big picture, are kinda scary, and I wanted to talk about.

First the obvious:  In the abstract, it is absolutely amazing we finally have a woman at the top of a Presidential ticket.  Women are woefully, absurdly under-represented in the public sector (outside of folks working as administrative assistants, I would imagine), and it is far past time we had a woman at the top of the ballot.  And I think the excitement among many women generated by her candidacy is pretty damn understandable.

Still in abstract mode:  It’s good we have a qualified candidate on our ticket.  No matter what you think of her, Clinton has been involved in politics for a long, long time, had an intimate look at how a Presidential administration works, and has accumulated some good legislative and diplomatic experience since Bill left office.  No matter what the right-wing nut jobs (RWNJ) say, this lady is qualified.

Unfortunately, for a number of reasons, Hillary Clinton is a terribly-flawed candidate, something that caused me to vote for someone else in 2008, and made me lament this election season, “Does it have to be this woman?”  Even more unfortunately, expressing that kind of thought has been, if not exactly dangerous, a good path to get inundated with charges of sexism and misogyny.  Pointing out her very real non-progressive policy problems doesn’t seem to help; if you were for Bernie against Hillary, you must be a sexist, patriarchical pig (in some quarters).

But now I’m seeing some genuine delusional thinking among Hillary supporters, and it’s kind of scaring me.  It’s scaring me for Hillary, because she might actually lose to Trump and, despite my dislike of her as a candidate, she is so much better than him it’s scarcely worth talking about why.  But I’m also worried that by allowing themselves (and this includes the folks inside the campaign) to continue on with these delusions, they’re going to endanger a very real chance of taking over the Senate or House.

There are two main delusions working here:

She is being unfairly treated by the press, but once people “really” get to know her (or “once she gets her message out”) they’ll see she’s great.

And the response to this is a simple negative: No.  No they won’t.  Hillary has been in the national public eye for more than a quarter-century, and a plethora of polls show that people have made up their mind about her.  Another huge set of polls show her negatives are higher than her positives; ignoring Trump, she is the most widely disliked candidate to ever run for President since polling started.

Lots of people hate Hillary, everyone has made up their minds, and that’s not going to change for many people, if any.

And the dangerous delusion is that this will change.  That people will actually give a shit about her “official policies”, or listen to her speeches, or be convinced by the endless articles about how unfairly treated she is by the press.  Or by going to her rallies.  Or by anything.  People’s minds are made up, and the best thing her folks can do is work hard to get people to the polls.  Not just to save us from Trump, but for the down-ballot folks who can benefit from a higher turnout.  Higher turnout, Dems win.  It’s that simple.  And this leads us to the second, even scarier delusion:

There’s no ‘enthusiasm gap’.

Again, a simple response is available: Yeah, there is.  It’s very real, and there’s been a ton of polls and articles that support this.

This delusion was displayed in stark terms today with dueling columns in the New York Times, where Paul Krugman pooh-poohed the idea there’s an enthusiasm gap (with a pointer to an article by Michelle Goldberg from April, aeons ago in political time), and another article talking about how Millenial black women are indeed very unenthusiastic about Hillary’s candidacy.

I’m a very leftist Progressive, one who has advocated for GLBT equal rights for decades, who believes we need single-payer healthcare, who thinks the government needs to stop financing monogamy, etc. etc.  Hillary is a New Democrat Apparatchik who is a war hawk (Henry Kissinger, FFS!), has close ties to Wall St., and has followed her husband’s trailblazing path by not just ignoring her base, but (with encouragement from the Beltway press) actively and publicly scorning them and their policies.  That she has now paid us lip service by including some of our policies in the party platform is nothing but window dressing, given no one really pays attention to the party platform after an election.  (Note none of this has anything to do with her gender.)

One might argue I’m an outlier.  But in addition to the Bernie folks, you’ve got plenty of Progressives who distrust Hillary because of her defense policies, her Wall St. ties, and other issues where previously (as a Senator or Secretary of State or even early in the campaign) she said and did one thing, and then (mostly after leftward pressure from Bernie) she changed her tune, or seemed to.

There are also more than a few people with Clinton Fatigue.  Almost all these folks  are well aware she is treated unfairly by the press, that her reputation for lying/sneakiness/whatever is something the RWNJ press has been hammering into the public consciousness for decades.  And they don’t care.  They’re sick of hearing about Benghazi, emails, Vince Foster, lame jokes about Monica, and on and on and on.  And the only way they’re going to be relieved of that fatigue is by the Clintons stepping away from public life.  So you can imagine that looking forward to another 4-8 years of Clinton nonsense feels these folks (and yes, I’m one of them) not with excitement, but a fatal combination of dread and ennui.  These are the people who saw her lose in 2008 and breathed a sigh of relief.  One that was premature, as it turned out.

This is a group that includes people like my mom, whose feminist cred dates to the early 70s and indoctrinating her son with Ms. Magazine and Our Bodies, Our Selves.  My good bi friend who actually worked with Hillary in the mid-90s.  My wildly progressive friend in Portland.  My ex-gf, who applied to be a Bernie delegate at the convention.  And on and on.  This is anecdotal, of course it is, but it’s backed up by plenty of polling data.

But Paul Krugman and other Hillary boosters seem to want to deny this is an issue.  They have a double-barreled strategy:  1) There is no enthusiasm problem, and 2) Even if there were, what are those whiny progressives going to do about it anyway?  Vote Trump!  Ha ha ha ha ha!

It’s a problem.  And not just for Hillary, but for the down-ballot folks so important to getting any of the progressive agenda into the conversation.

Personally I don’t understand Hillary’s whole candidacy.  We found out from the whole DNC/Debbie Wasserman-Schulz debacle that what most progressives suspected was true: “The Establishment” had put their thumbs on the scale in favor of Hillary.  But why?  Aside from her high negatives, she has a terrible relationship with the press, is a desperately boring (or annoying, depending on who you ask) speaker, scorns her base, and has negative numbers that strongly suggest winning would be a very difficult, uphill battle.  Why did everyone decide she needed what amounted to a coronation rather than a primary season?  Why did so many other, very qualified women (Elizabeth Warren leaps to mind) decide to stay out of the race?  Hell, why did so many men decide to stay out?  WtF kind of party decides even before the primary season that there’s basically only going to be one candidate?  What the hell?

And The Democratic Establishment wonders why so many of the “rank and file”, so many of the progressives, so many of the millennials, so many African-Americans, so many college-educated men, weren’t all immediately sold on the Hillary narrative.  Why people keep saying their out of touch.  Well, duh!

So I hope to God the Hillary boosters’ delusions are either popped (though I see no evidence that’s going to happen any time soon), or it ends up not making a difference because Trump is so awful he drives people away and into voting for Hillary and the other Democrats.

I hope.

Link

A Virtual Secession

17 Sunday Apr 2016

Posted by dougom in News, Opinion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

business, GLBT, hypocrisy, politics, religious freedom, transgender

image
They will defend your right to discriminate to their dying breath!

Recently there have been a raft of “religious freedom” bills throughout the South (and elsewhere, unfortunately). Most of these seem directly targeted against the Surpreme Court’s recent recognition of marriage equality, although now (e.g. in North Carolina) they seem to be targeting trans citizens.  In my opinion, these bills have fuck-all to do with religious freedom and are simply a method in which bigotry can be re-enshrined in places where the courts have outlawed it.  (To try to tell whether they’re really about “religious freedom”, look at a law and ask, “If this applied to blacks/Jews/Catholics/Asians/whatever, would it be discrimination?” and that should do it.)

I find this cynical and reprehensible, wildly hypocritical (“It’s all about religious freedom!”; no it ain’t, it’s all about being able to be prejudiced without being called on it), and quite frankly unChristian.  How is it in line with the Golden Rule to want to discriminate against your neighbors?  Obviously, it isn’t.  But that’s not what I want to talk about.

Unsurprisingly, most of these bigoted laws have come out of the South, primarily states that were part of the former Confederacy.  There have been laws in Mississippi, Tennessee, and North Carolina to force trans citizens to use the bathroom of their birth sex rather than their gender.  And usually people shake their heads at this stuff, say, “Yeah, that’s the South,” and move on.  But something surprising is happening this time:

A bunch of businesses, organizations, and artists are saying they’re done.

In case you haven’t seen, the draconian North Carolina law has caused businesses like PayPal and Deutsche Bank and performers such as Bruce Springsteen and Cirque d’ Soliel to pull out of performing there.  The NBA is also threatening to pull next year’s All Star game from there as well.  As you may imagine, hard-right folks are calling the companies and performers everything from “bullies” to “child molester supporters”, and trying to pretend their happy Springsteen et. alia aren’t coming to their state.  (Which wee all know is BS, but never mind.)

And it made me wonder.

It seems like we’ve been relighting the Civil war over various areas of bigotry and discrimination multiple times over the last 150 years.  (I’m hardly the first to point this out.)  There was the Civil Rights/anti-Jim Crow fights of the 60s; the battle over women’s rights and the Equal Rights Amendment in the 70s; the “Southern Strategy” of Richard Nixon; and the recent battle over marriage equality.  A (depressingly) huge number of folks in the South seem to want to keep their region firmly in the 19th Century, and get angry and resentful any time they’re forced to confront their bigotry and prejudice.  And now they’re actually being punished for it.

So I wondered if this isn’t sort of like a slow-moving, virtual secession.  I mean, I don’t anticipate the South actually breaking off from the rest of the country legally, but what if the region were slowly but steadily to suffer the same fate staring North Carolina in the face?  (A fate that caused the right-wingers to back down in Arizona and Indiana, by the way.)  What if these states stood by their “principles”, and were cut off by banks, job-rich high tech firms, entertainers, sports leagues, and the like?  What if the Titans were removed from the NFL, and the Predators from Nashville, the Hornets from Charlotte?  No more visits from Taylor Swift or big rock acts or what RedState insists are “has beens”?  What if the Federal government started denying Title IX funds because these states were breaking anti-discrimination laws?  What if the amount of tax dollars that flow into these states?  (“Red” states receive far more tax money than they contribute to the Federal government, while “blue” states pay in far more than they get back.)

Maybe “the South” wouldn’t be legally cut off from the rest of the U.S., but they kinda would be, wouldn’t they?

No, I don’t think it would actually happen.  And if it did, I doubt the right-wingers would be particularly happy to finally get what they want (and they would blame the Left for their poverty, lack of jobs, increased infant mortality and teen pregnancy rates, etc.).  But it seemed an interesting thing to think about.  And I have to think it was fear of something like this—or at least a portion of it—that caused Jan Brewer of Arizona and Mike Pence of Indiana to step back from the brink.

I used to wonder how far to the right the right would have to go before the left finally got off their lazy butts and pushed back hard.  Now we know.  And it’s kind of satisfying, don’t you think?

Republicans Can’t Do Math

10 Sunday Apr 2016

Posted by dougom in News, Opinion, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

boneheaded Republicans, Budget, G.O.P., illegal immigrants, math, Republicans, Trump

math
So why do we keep voting them into office?

Recently I got into a . . . discussion . . . on Twitter.  (You can’t really have discussions on Twitter.  For one, you’re limited to 140 characters.  And for another, most people don’t want to discuss, they just want to bludgeon you.  Sometime, if I’m okay with being sued, I might relay some of my conversations with Cathy Brennan, an extremely unpleasant radical feminist who is one of the most abrasive, obnoxious, litigious, angry people I’ve ever seen online.  And I’ve been online a really long time.  I mean, since Reagan was President.  To say this woman is “transphobic” is to understate things so massively I can’t even express it.  See, what happened was…Wait, where was I?  Oh, right; Republicans and math.)

Anyway, this person––who was not a bad or unreasonable guy––insisted to me that “both sides” had problems with math, citing the amount that the debt has doubled under Obama, just like it did under Bush. I didn’t bother telling him it was a genuinely idiotic comparison, as Bush had been handed an economy running at a surplus and quickly destroyed it with two obscene tax cuts, two unbudgeted wars, a huge new (also unbudgeted) federal drug program, and some phenomenal mis-management, while Obama was handed an economy in free-fall with a skyrocketing deficit, which he turned around and now has the deficit coming down.  But when you’re “debating” with someone who reiterates that absurd right-wing canard about the government giving away “free stuff”, you’re not speaking to a person well-acquainted with actual facts.

But it reminded me of a very basic fact: Republicans just can’t seem to do math.  And I mean simple math, like addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.  You know:  K-6 math.

Let’s take immigration.  The Tea Party, the Trumpsters, and of course the Republican Party as a whole want to get rid of every last illegal immigrant in the country.  All of them.  And what I wonder is:  Can’t the G.O.P. do simple math?

(“Obviously not,” I hear you cry.  Yes, you’re right:  they think cutting taxes will increase government revenue; they think giving ACORN a few million dollars will bankrupt us, but fighting trillion dollar wars won’t; etc.  Bear with me anyway.)

If figures are right, there are approximately 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States.

That’s a lot of people.  I mean, a lot a lot.  It’s basically the entirety of the L.A. metro area.  I mean, it’s a lot.

So let’s assume that you can snap your fingers and gather all those people up with no effort at all.  None.  SNAP!  11 million people appear, ready to be deported.  Now what?

math-hard
A Republican politician when confronted w/ this question

Where are you going to put them?  Empty all of L.A. and house them there?  Put them in a corner of Texas or New Mexico where they can wait to be processed?  Better be a damn big corner.  And what would you do with them?  Hand them shovels and seeds and tell them, “Good luck!  You’re number 2,459,345–we should get to you by August of 2019; better start tilling and sowing!” and hope it doesn’t turn into an environmental disaster?

But let’s say you figure it out.  You won’t; but let’s say you do.  (“We’ll make them stay right where we find them while we process them, then when we’re ready we’ll do the finger-snapping thing!  Yeah!  That’s the ticket!”)   So now you have 11 million people handy.  How are you going to get them home?  Bus?  Let’s do a little math:

A typical school bus–you know, the yellow kind without air conditioning or seat belts–seats between 75-90 folks.  Let’s go with 100, just to be conservative.  If you want to transport 11 million people to Mexico, you’re talking about 110,000 school bus trips.   How much diesel fuel is that going to take?  How many bus drivers?  How many hours of travel?

Or put them on a train.  The CalTrain double-decker “baby bullet” trains seat about 150 folks per car.  For 11 million people, that works out to around 74,000 cars.  I’ve seen multi-locomotive trains hauling 75-100 cars on ocassion–not often–so that would work out to 740 100-car train, full-loaded.

(And we haven’t even considered issues such as luggage, children, sanitation for longer trips, the processing speed of the U.S. and Mexican governments, and other related issues.)

Bear in mind that the government couldn’t even get ice to New Orleans after a single hurricane while you contemplate the above–and remember too that New Orleans had only about a third of a million folks in it.  So your problem is to move the entire population of 33 New Orleans’ from wherever they are to Mexico.  I’m not too sanguine about the possibility, personally, even if they’re all right there in Brownsville or Laredo.

This is just the simple math of logistics, too.  I’m not an expert in this stuff—I’m sure it’s way more complicated.  And if the simple math shows it to be this bad, what’s the more complicated situation going to look like?  (Answer:  Ugly as hell.)

Not to mention what would happen when all the Orlandos, Carloses, Jesuses, and all the other folks who work the jobs nobody else wants to do (Picking strawberries?  Cleaning out office buildings?  Laying sewer pipe?) up an leave, all 11 million of them.  Imagine all of New York City—not just the adults, but the whole friggin’ city—plus the whole of Newark, Nassau county, and most of Connecticut just pulling up stakes and leaving.  I mean, seriously:  think about it.  Don’t you think it wouldn’t have some kind of massive effect for everyone else?  What happens to the Northeast power grid?  The trains?  The airports?  Imagine New York City being blacked out, but forever, instead of for a few hours as sometimes happens, usually to chaotic effect.  It’s mind-boggling.

So it’s clear:  Republicans can’t do math.  Remind me again why they are ever put in charge?

How to Talk to Politicians

07 Monday Mar 2016

Posted by dougom in News, Opinion, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Huffington Post, lies, politics

family_circus_notme21
Politicians basically do this when asked questions
Copyright the Bil Keane estate, all rights reserved, I’m sure

As a guy who grew up watching Ron Ziegler dance around Nixon’s lies, and has observed (usually with horror) how people like Scott McClellan, Dana Perino, and their ilk dissemble and outright lie to the press, it occurred to me that there is a one way to demand answers from politicians:

Treat them like children.

I have two kids.  Kids are past-masters at lying, deception, and attempts to change the subject.  The only way that I personally have found to consistently get information is to not allow myself to be distracted.  Like this:

“Who left this crap in the living room?”
“I haven’t been in the living room today.”
“That’s not what I asked.  Did you leave this crap in the living room?”
“That’s not my stuff; it’s [other kid’s] stuff.”
“That’s not what I asked, either.  Did you leave this crap in the living room?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“It doesn’t matter.  Did you leave this crap in the living room?”

And so on.  It’s a pain in the ass, yes, but eventually you find the culprit (granting that you are more stubborn than your kids which, in my case, is a good bet).

This is exactly how spokespeople, politicians, and their ilk should be treated.  They don’t want to answer the questions they are asked in a straight-forward way?  Fine; treat them like a 9 year-old.  Keep asking the same question.  Demand an answer to your first question.  And if the spokesperson or politician won’t answer?  Well, after 7 or 8 iterations of this, it will be obvious to all involved that they are dodging and lying, and their credibility will go down regardless.  Either they answer or they look like idiots; either one is fine by me.

Consider the issue of torture.  Just once, I wish a reporter had the balls to press and press and press Cheney:

“Mr. Vice-President, do we torture?”
“We have instructed our interregators to remain within the law at all times.”
“That’s not what I asked, sir.  I asked you, do we torture?”
“As I said, we remain within the law.”
“Sir, water-boarding is considered torture by all civilized people.  Do we torture?”
“I believe I have already answered that question.”
“No, sir, you haven’t; do we torture?”
“I cannot talk about sources and methods.”
“That wasn’t my question, sir.  Do we torture?”

And so on.  If these bozos want to act like 9 year-olds attempting to cover up the fact that they have been lighting fires in the back yard, then they should be treated the same way.  Heck, I would even put them “in their room” (and cut off all external access) until they admit what they’ve done.  It’ll be even funnier than those times politicians (and other jerk-wads, like Martin “let’s gouge people for AIDS medicine” Shkreli) keep repeating the same answer over and over, no matter the question.

I dunno; I guess I’m just feeling vindictive.  I’m pretty tired of the Cavalcade of Clowns we’re stuck with on the Republican side, any one of which would be a disaster if President, and any one of which may actually end up President.  As much as that horrifies and frightens me, it’s true.  As true as the fact that the Republicans—despite having a “brand” so eroded that no voters will actually admit they are Republican—are in control of the House and Senate.  (Go ahead; ask a random right-wing bloviator on Twitter or Tumblr or wherever if they’re a Republican.  It’s always “No.”  They’re “Libertarian”, or “Independent”, or whatever, even if they’ve never voted for anyone other than a Republican in their lives.) Which is plenty scary, too.

I’m not too thrilled with triangulation artist & “realist” Hillary Clinton, either, except that I know she’ll be better than anything the Republicans finally throw out there.

But for now, I’d settle for Meghan Kelly pinning down Trump or Rubio or Cruz and refusing to let up until she has an actual answer.  Say, on wars.

“Senator, given the disastrous results of the Iraq War, why is it your foreign policy seems to only advocate more war?”
“Well, I don’t know as I’d agree with the premise.”
“Almost all Americans agree it was a disaster, so why do you advocate more war?”
“Meghan, the question is whether or not America is strong and a leader.”
“Actually sir, the question is why do you advocate more war?”
and so on.

I’m not holding my breath, though.

We’ll Never See Eye-to-Eye

30 Monday Nov 2015

Posted by dougom in News, Opinion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

abortion, Colorado, Planned Parenthood

robert-dear-mugshot-colorado-springs-planned-parenthood-shooter-exlarge-169
Photo of psychotic shooter courtesy of CNN

Recent events in Colorado, where a deranged lunatic decided it was his duty to shoot up a Planned Parenthood clinic, has brought back up to a boil the perpetually-simmering “conversation” about abortion in this country.  Only it’s not a conversation; it’s two people on totally different planets, speaking at each other.  The following is a post I wrote in 2012 after an attempt by anti-abortion absolutists in Mississippi to pass a “personhood” law, to make any newly-fertilized egg a “person”.  Mississippi voted it down, but that hasn’t stopped folks, as you can see.  Here’s what I wrote then, and it depresses me it’s still applicable:

With the recent defeat of the “Personhood” amendment in Mississippi, along with the continued support that the “personhood” idea has in Republican party and, most depressingly, in the Republican Presidential candidates, I’ve been thinking about abortion a lot over the past few months.  I don’t want to; it’s a depressing topic.  But there it is.   And what I’ve come to is that anti-abortion folks will never see eye-to-eye with pro-choice folks.

For a long time, I totally didn’t understand the anti-abortion folks.  Yes, they believe a fetus is a person, but the underlying assumption that women can’t be trusted to make this decision, or that women cavilierly just walk into a clinic and use abortion as birth control, just sickened me, honestly.  How could a rational person actually believe that.

And then I realized that it’s because they believe a fetus is a person. I know you know that, but let me break it down a bit.

I think pro-choice people make a big mistake in how they frame the issue.  “It’s about women’s health!” they say.  “The health of the mother!  Do you want to force a woman to bear the child of a rape, or incest, or that might kill her?”  All those arguments make perfect sense to me, but they’re falling on deaf ears.   Because from the moment it is created, the fetus is a person.  Don’t you see?  It a human being, with rights and privileges.  And an abortion is, literally, murder.

So arguing that they shouldn’t force their beliefs on you strikes these folks as absurd; this is murder.   Surely murder is one of the few areas where the rights of the state to enforce laws over-rides everything else?  This is not (as Rachel Maddow puts it) “Wanting the government to regulate every woman’s uterus;” this is merely a logical extension of the government acting against a heinous crime, i.e. murder.

In this context, Roe v. Wade is immaterial; this is murder.  Murder shouldn’t be allowed, period.  Saying that if you support capital punishment but are against abortion is immaterial to these folks; capital punishment is the rightous punishment of the state for committed crimes.  Abortion is murder, and shouldn’t be allowed.  And any danger to the mother, or forcing her to carry the child of rape, or incest?  It’s completely beside the point; killing that fetus is murder, so if a woman has to suffer to save that life, so be it.  If the woman’s life is at risk to carry that pregnancy to term, that’s a risk they should be willing to take to save a life.  That microscopic multi-celled creature is a person to these people, and aborting it is murder, and murder is evil.  Period, end of discussion.  Do you see?

And when you toss in that a good percentage of these folks believe that any sex not focused on procreation, any sex that is engaged in for pleasure only, is genuinely evil, well, it’s an easy call for them.  (And clearly if non-procreative sex is evil, any woman who engages in it is clearly a whore, and deserves what she gets.  I don’t think all anti-abortion folks think that, but I bet plenty of them do.)

Now as we saw in Mississippi, these folks are not even a majority of the population in one of the reddest states in the country, so they’re clearly a minority.  But they’re a loud minority, and one which is never going to change their point of view, and which is (as we seen with the heinous murders of abortion doctors) very dangerous.  I don’t know how to fix the problem, but I do know two things:  we’ll never see eye-to-eye with them, and arguing about “women’s health” as a way to change their minds is simply going to fall on deaf ears.

The conversation post-shooting has been a perfect example of this.  While not exactly condoning the shooter, the right-wing has been screaming about “baby parts” and Planned Parenthood “making a profit out of selling them”, something which is absolute errant nonsense, but which they believe.  Some of these folks state publicly that all the other healthcare services provided by Planned Parenthood—i.e. the 97% of their services that aren’t abortion—are just a smokescreen to cover up their highly-profitable abortion-and-baby-parts-sale scam.  And yes, I’m serious.  And yes, it’s goddamn scary.

Arguing rationally with such folks seems to be a total waste of time.  So what can we do?  Support groups like Planned Parenthood, women’s health services, vote in politicians who don’t have their heads up their shorts on these issues, and do our best.  Because these people, we’re just never going to convince them.

P.S.: I know I haven’t been posting much lately.  Aside from selling our house and moving earlier in the year, I changed jobs about a month ago, so it’s been kind of a busy time for the ol’ family here.  I’ll try to do better.  Not that there’s been a huge outcry or anything.

Sexism, Comic Book Movies, and Executive Stupidity

13 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by dougom in News, Opinion, Uncategorized

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

avengers, black widow, comics, film, Marvel, MCU, movies, Scarlett Johansson, sexism

Scarlett Johansson
Scarlett Johansson, prepared to kick ass (Photo courtesy of The Daily Mail)

Despite the fact that right-wingers firmly believe that Hollywood is controlled by socialist/communist gay and lesbian pornographers, the truth is that, like most rich folks, rich Hollywood execs tend to be pretty conservative.  Sure, some directors, actors, etc. are liberal, absolutely; but do you think the (American) folks in charge of Sony or Disney or other big multimedia companies are liberals? Ha, it is to laugh!

I mention this as a prelude to my main theme here:  The fact that these conservative, hide-bound, and almost-certainly sexist media execs refuse to green-light big summer movie projects starring women.  My particular peeve is with the huge increase in comic-book super-hero movies, which are getting the biggest bucks and most attention right now and where the problem is especially acute, but feel free to extend it to basically every other movie genre.

This topic has come up in the media (finally!) in the wake of the release of Joss Whedon’s “Avengers: Age of Ultron”, a huge hit (apparently).  For those who don’t know, Whedon is very vocal about being a feminist, and is widely regarded as a writer of strong female characters, and is generally the go-to person for nerds to point at as an example of a man who is bucking the sexist trend in the nerd (comic books, sci-fi, and the movies based thereon) culture.  While this is perhaps true in broad outline, I think Leah Schnelbach does a great job deconstructing this claim (on the Tor.com site), without being at all unfair or doctrinaire as so many folks can get on this topic.

However, Whedon is taking some flack on this particular film because of his treatment of the character of Black Widow, played by Scarlett Johansson.  For just a quick recap of the arguments:  There have been 11 “Marvel Cinematic Universe” (MCU) comic-book films, of which all have starred men, often multiple men.  These films rarely pass the Bechdel test (if ever); the presentation of the women in group/team posters is significantly different from that for men; women characters are often treated as plot devices or standard tropes (the damsel in distress, for example); and on and on.  It’s pretty ridiculous.

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Gee, what do you think they’re trying to draw your attention to?
(Photo courtesy of Zimbio)

(I will here make a brief nod to the TV end of things, where there are a few more solid characters: Peggy Carter (with remarkably her own show); Karen Page, Claire Temple, and Vanessa Marianna in Daredevil; Skye, May, & Bobby in Agents of SHIELD.  And DC has the wonderful Felicity Smoak in Arrow, a character so awesome they keep having her show up in their other series, The Flash.)

Specifically to the most recent MCU film “Avengers: Age of Ultron”, the one true strong female character is Black Widow, played by Scarlett Johansson.  And as Leah Schnelbach points out in the post referenced above, while Black Widow has now been in four MCU films, hers is the only character who takes time out of a film to lament how she can never be a parent.  Thor doesn’t whine about whether or not to be a daddy, nor does Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury, Tony Stark, or anyone else (though Captain America laments not getting to dance with Peggy Carter during World War II).  She is the only Avenger whose character is defined—and only in this film!—in terms of her sexuality and gender.

Now, if there were as lot of interesting female characters in the MCU, maybe we could give this one a pass.  Or if Black Widow was about to get her own film, as nearly every other Avenger has (hell, Ant Man is getting his own film before he becomes one!).  I mean, geez, Hulk has had, what, two (really bad) films?  Captain America has had two with another one coming.  Thor has had two; Iron Man three.  Black Widow?  None.  With none on the horizon.  And if that isn’t bad enough, there isn’t even a female-starring MCU film planned until 2018 . . . eight more films down the line.  A second film about the Guardians of the Galaxy, a property that hardly anyone gave a damn about, sure (which, to be fair, was a film I enjoyed a lot); another Captain America film, another Avengers film, yet another reboot of the Spider-man franchise, even.  But a film about Black Widow?  Heavens, no; that’s a terrible idea!

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Do we really need another one? (Photo courtesy of Wibblyspider on DeviantArt)

One could argue, and some do, that female-led super-hero movies don’t make money.  But if you take a gander at the hacked emails by the studio execs, who complain about “Supergirl”, a bomb from 30 years ago, it’s pretty clear we’re dealing with nothing but blatant sexism here.  After all, way more male-centered super-hero movies have bombed than female-centered ones.  That’s sexism, kids.

And not only is it sexist, in the case of Black Widow—a well-established character played by a bankable actress that the public is actually asking for—it’s downright stupid.  Let me just run a few facts by you, here:

  • Black Widow has now been in four MCU movies and has actually established a considerable fan-base; there are fan sites, a twitter hash tag, a Change.org petition, etc. etc.
  • The Motley Fool does a good job pointing out the factual basis for expecting a positive result from a Black Widow film.
  • There have been far more giant flops in big Super Hero films starring men than those starring women.  Seven vs. three, if memory serves.  And it’s important to note that films like “Catwoman” genuinely stunk.
  • Scarlett Johansson is almost ridiculously bankable.

Let me throw you some numbers on that last point.  And this is where it connects to my opening about folks on the right, which is:  The right-wing simply can’t do math.  (I did several posts about this on Salon which I will re-post here at some point but in the meantime, take my word for it.  Two words:  Laffer curve.)

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They just can’t do math; don’t blame me! (photo courtesy of Democratic Underground)

  • Luc Besson is a director with a lengthy Hollywood career, and whose biggest film up until last year was “The Fifth Element”, starring Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman, Milla Jovovich, and (God save us) Chris Tucker.  On a budget of $93 million it made $263.9 million, or $170.9 million.  His newest biggest film?  “Lucy”, starring Scarlett Johansson; on a budget of $40 million it made $458.9 million, or $418.9 million.
  • Films with Scarlett Johansson have made a total of $2.393 billion dollars domestically, and a brain-melting $5.844 billion world-wide. “Well, okay,” I hear you say; “But she hasn’t starred in all those, some are ensemble films that made tons of money.  How does that compare to male stars?”  I’m glad you asked! Let’s look at the money with regard to those who have been in big budget films themselves.  (Figures from Box Office Mojo)
    • Chris Hemsworth (Thor): $1.622 billion
    • Andrew Garfield (Spider-man):  $587 million
    • Tobey Maguire (also Spider-man): $1.535 billion
    • Chris Pratt (“Star-lord”): $848 million
    • Chris Evans (Captain America): $1.909 billion
    • Paul Rudd: $1.143 billion
    • Ahnuld: $1.794 billion (!)
    • Harrison Ford: $3.925 billion
    • Bruce Willis: $3.186 billion
    • Brad Pitt: $2.610 billion
  • And those comparisons are apples to apples—lifetime totals of all films made by folks who have starred in blockbusters.  (I could do it in dollars adjusted for ticket price inflation but trust me, other than with Ahnuld, it doesn’t make a lot of difference in demonstrating the basic point.)  When you look at those comparisons, also consider this:  Bruce Willis is 60, Schwarzenegger is 67, Harrison Ford is 72, heck even Brad Pitt is 51.  Johansson is 30.  30!  You’ve got to think she’s going to blow those other guys out of the water by the time she gets to 40, let alone 60.
  • Speaking of “well known”; I like Paul Rudd as much as the next guy, but he’s not exactly Bruce Willis or Ahnuld or even Brad Pitt when it comes to big, summer, “tent-pole” action/adventure extravaganzas, is he?  Had anyone heard of Chris Hemsworth before they handed him “Thor”?  Eric Bana before he made “Hulk”?  While Chris Evans was not exactly unknown, he wasn’t a household name either when they made him Captain America.  And what about those total unknowns they handed Superman’s cape to?  On the other hand, Johansson is well know, with a huge built-in fan base.  How is a film starring her as a (now) well-known character more of a risk than “Guardians of the Galaxy” starring Chris Pratt or “Ant-Man” starring Paul Rudd?  I mean, c’mon!

So honestly, given all this, ask yourself two things:  Can the lack of female-starring big-budget movies be anything other than sexism, and can the lack of a big-budget, Johansson-starring Black Widow movie be anything other than profoundly stupid sexism?

I think you all know what my answer is.

the-black-widow
Yeah, you got it (Poster courtesy of LemonPunch on Tumblr)

So there it is, you dim-witted, right-wing, major studio honchos (and you, Kevin Feige, you bonehead):  Women can make you tons of money.  It’s only your backwards attitudes that’re stopping it.  Get a grip and start making those movies!

The Stupidity of Workplace Discrimination

10 Sunday May 2015

Posted by dougom in News, Opinion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

business, discrimination, transgender, work

Blindfolded man with "prejudice" text on the blindfold
Image courtesy of Ackerson Law Offices

Recently one of the transgender Twitter accounts I follow pointed me to a post by NPR about the discrimination that trans folks face in the workplace.  The gist of the post (and associated NPR audio piece) is that it really helps, especially when transitioning (i.e., transitioning from one gender to another), to have allies at your workplace.  And there’s some information as well about the discrimination trans folks face on a regular basis.  (As well as some pretty scary statistics about suicide rates for trans folks—statistics that I believe should shut up any transgender-exclusionary radical feminists, that is radical feminists who believe that it’s okay to exclude trans men/women from men/women-only spaces, but I’m sure won’t.  But that’s a topic for another day.)

It got me thinking that while trans folks face a terrible burden, there are other discriminations in the workplace (some of which I’ve written about), all of which are blatantly and profoundly stupid.

See, here’s the thing:  In high tech, it’s hard to find the right people for the job.  Really hard, honestly.  Yes, there are plenty of good programmers out there, plenty of good QA people, marketing people, technical writers, etc.  Sure.  But it’s not just a matter of people having the right raw materials for the job; they also need to have the right level of experience—sometimes you want that person with 25 years of experience, and sometimes you want someone fresh out of college—the right set of skills, an ability to work in the types of groups you have at your company, a track record of accomplishments in the appropriate areas, etc. etc. etc.  Not to mention someone who can add to your group’s dynamic; for example, if you have a bunch of really shy people on your team, maybe you need someone more extroverted.  Or maybe you work at a company where everyone is expected to work very independently, and so that experience you’ve had as a manager is important.  Whatever.

(Yes, I acknowledge that this can lead you straight down that slippery slope of only hiring white folks because you only “feel comfortable” with your “type of people”.  That’s not where I’m going with this.  In fact, I’m going in the completely opposite direction.  I just want to note that there are other factors besides raw experience that come into the hiring mix.  And so no, I tell you three times and what I tell you three times is true:  It is NOT okay to use “they have to fit in with the group” to excuse bigotry.  Not okay, not okay, not okay!)

So in this situation, I am constantly puzzled by people discriminating against potential hires because they are transgender.  Or women.  Or Asian or of African descent or from South America.  Or who speak English with (to my ear) funny accents.  Or who are gay or lesbian or bi.  It’s hard enough to find good people; ruling people out just because they sleep with people of the same gender or hail from Kerala instead of Colorado strikes me as self-defeating.

And specifically when it comes to transgender folks who transition while they’re in the job, it makes even less sense.  This is a person you’ve worked with, established a relationship with, whose strengths and “areas for development” (corporate-speak for “weaknesses”) you’re familiar with;  why should you give a damn if you find out that, “oh my heavens, his father is actually a black guy!”?  What does it matter if they worship God on Saturday morning in Hebrew rather than Sunday morning in Latin or English?  Who cares if Adam sleeps with Steve, as long as Adam continues to deliver code?  Does it make a difference that Ashok is sometimes hard to understand (when my wife has trouble understanding my Aunt Maureen from Boston) when he’s completing projects like a madman?  Why should you give a crap that you report to Deanna instead of Douglas as long as Deanna is a good boss?  What the heck difference does it make if Mark transitions to Margaret so long as they continue to crank out work?  I find it insane.

I will say this in defense of high tech:  I’ve met many, many, many bigoted people over the years who suck it up and deal and get along just fine with folks they’re bigoted against, when those folks are delivering.  (When they don’t, yes, it can get ugly.)  I can’t relay to you how many times I’ve had conversations with people along these lines:

“Man, I get so tired of working with [minority group] sometimes.”
“But [name] is a [minority group].”
“Oh, [name] is cool; I’m talking about in general.”

Yes, we have to move to a place where this conversation doesn’t even happen because CoWorker realizes, like I state above, it doesn’t matter.

A couple of other points to consider when thinking about this stuff:  As the world grows more interconnected (especially in high tech), you’re going to find yourself working for people who are not native Americans, or not white, or not straight, or not Christian, or not cisgender, or not [enter minority here].  And when (not “if”!) you do, how well do you think your bigotry is going to fly with them, hm?

Something else to consider is the extension of the workspace from “everyone come into the office” (which I’ll post about soon) to “distributed teams”, i.e. teams where people are spread out all over the country, or the world.  On such a team, are you going to discriminate against Yung just because she’s in Taiwan, or Ivanov because he’s in Ukraine?  Not only would that be self-defeating, it’s genuinely silly.

In movies (and sometimes real life), people say, “It’s only business”.  Now I personally don’t like this saying; too often it’s used by someone who just has, is about to, royally screw someone (or groups of someones) over.  (“Yes, we’re laying you all off, but it’s only business.”  Yeah, tell that to my mortgage company, you jerkweed.)  This is the corollary; if it’s only business, then the only thing that matters is what happens on the clock for the company, and if they’re getting the job done who cares if someone was hired wearing slacks and T-shirts and is now coming to work in heels and a skirt-and-blouse combo?

So stop discriminating, people; you’re not just hurting other folks, you’re hurting yourself and your business.  Knock it off!

 

Election “Year” “Reporting”

21 Saturday Mar 2015

Posted by dougom in News, Opinion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

election, government, media, politics

mcgovern_wide-366a38df2ba8951f1079a4176502abec076be77a-s1100-c15
“The boys on the bus”, image courtesy of NPR

Yes, I put both “Year” and “Reporting” in scare quotes.  Know why?  Because something that starts two years (at least) before election day is not a “year”, and because the “reporting” the reporters do from the campaign trail doesn’t qualify as true reporting, in my opinion.  Maybe “election season gossip” would be closer to the mark. 

Which is the main fact behind my whole point.

There are a couple of really irritating aspects to election reporting that I think about often, especially during election season (and especially during Presidential election season).  The first irritating thing, the reasons behind which are easy to understand, is that the vast majority of election reporting are “reports” on “the horse race”, i.e. who is up, who is down, who is moving up, etc. in the polls.  Nothing about people’s positions, who might actually make a better office-holder, what a given candidate might do in a particular situation or facing a certain vote based on their past behavior (or past votes), or hell even what their past behavior has been.  No, it’s all breathless discussions of “the polling”.  (And equally breathless discussion about how shallow modern political discourse has become in that we only discuss “the horse race”.  Which is kinda absurd, since my memory goes back to the Nixon years, and I don’t remember a whole lot of reporting on the issues back then, either.)

The reason for this is simple:  That kind of writing is easy.  I can sit here, right now, make up some poll numbers and write a story about it.  Seriously.  It’s absurdly simple, the only research it requires is looking up poll numbers, and it can easily fulfill your word quota (or minute quota) of the day.  And everything is reported in this box. It’s not “How would Candidate Jones’ statement on Israel effect his future Israel policies”; no, it’s “How does Candidate Jones’ gaffe about Israel effect his polling?”  Writing all your stories according to a pre-existing narrative is way easier than coming up with something original.  It’s like writing a new fantasy story based in Middle Earth or Westeros instead of coming up with your own fantasy world.  It’s lame, reductionist, a cop-out of your responsibilities, but it’s easy and understandable.

What I don’t understand is:  Why is there a pool of reporters traveling with each candidate at all?

If there’s one thing I’ve noticed in the last, oh, say 20 years of Presidential elections, it’s that reporters and commentators are constantly talking about how useless and news-less campaign events and speeches are, how little access they have to candidates, what a pointless exercise campaign reporting seems to be.  Expect these stories to start flooding in soon; New York Magazine got off an early salvo–the proximate cause for this blog post–just last week (20 months before election day!).  And as I read all the whining in this post, and anticipated all the whining to come in the next 20 months, I kept thinking, as John Oliver would say, “Why is this still a thing?”

One would think that reason enough to do something about campaign reporting.  But we have been hearing about–and observing–for nearly two decades now the vast shrinkage in “traditional media”.  Newspapers folding or being “consolidated”, network TV ratings dropping like rocks (along with their budgets), magazines going out of business or migrating to the Web, etc.  Money is tight in media.  They’re closing overseas bureaus all the time.  And so I get back to my John Oliver question:

Why is campaign pool reporting still a thing?

Cover campaigns, absolutely.  And I can understand why the Washington Post, New York Times, and a few other papers and TV organizations with national reach cover them.  But do CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox, ABC, Bloomberg, and God alone only knows how many other networks really all need individual reporters on the ground for every candidate for every event?  Do we need reporters from the Des Moines paper going to New Hampshire in December of 2015?  You get the picture.

What I don’t understand is, with every network and paper crying pauper, why are they still doing this?  Why don’t they designate one or two people to follow these people around–particularly the right-wing nitwits who have absolutely no chance of winning–and leave it at that?  They can share their “news” with the other outlets, and write their feather-weight “news” pieces from that.  Or they can just stay home, look at the poll numbers, and write the exact same stories.  But either way, sending dozens of reporters howling after this election season’s Herman Caine is absolutely idiotic.

That’s what I think, anyway.  How about you?

Support Sex Workers on Sex Worker Rights Day (repost from Facebook)

05 Thursday Mar 2015

Posted by dougom in News, Opinion

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

civil rights, labor, politics, sex work, work

sex-workers-rights
Photo courtesy of Julia Laite at notchesblog

First posted on my Facebook feed.

I know this will be controversial with some folks who follow me, but: Today is Sex Worker Rights day. This is NOT about the approx. 22% of all human trafficking victims who are trafficked for sex work. (The majority of trafficking victims are for the agriculture, garment, and construction industries.) No. This is about people–men, women, and trans folks–who for whatever reason choose sex work in which to make money. By choice. I just want to be clear.

I absolutely, unequivocally support sex worker’s rights, their right to have their work treated as work rather than stigma; their right to have their industry decriminalized; their right to be safe in their work; their rights in general. Sex workers–particularly those who are people of color or transgender (or both)–deserve respect and safety, rather than being subjected to harassment, assault, and stings by police whose primary motivation is (this is true, I promise) money.

Look: I’m not stupid. I know we live in a fairly Puritan/Napoleonic Code-based social framework, which looks askance (to put it mildly) at anything of a sexual nature. But I ask you to look beyond that and realize that sex workers (for the most part) are just doing a job. “How can you do a job so demeaning?” 1) It doesn’t have to be demeaning just because it’s sexual, and 2) There are plenty of other jobs that are plenty demeaning that aren’t sex work. I have laid sod and landscaped hillsides during a heatwave; worked graveyard shift as a security guard; cleaned restaurant toilets and floors as a janitor after hours; and plenty others. These were demeaning.

And I’d like you to consider the positive aspects of sex work you might not have thought of, or dismissed as silly or absurd. What if you are a man with some kind of mental disability who has never had sex before because your disability makes you unattractive to potential partners? What if you are physically disabled and your partner can’t deal and needs help? What if your partner simply lose interest in sex but you don’t? What if what excites you changes completely over time but doesn’t for your partner? These and many other areas are places where sex workers help, not only individuals but entire relationships.

Sex work is work. They deserve respect. Please give it to them.

Sex Work is Work, and Prohibition Doesn’t Work

14 Saturday Feb 2015

Posted by dougom in News, Opinion

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

politics, prohibition, sex work

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Photo courtesy of caans.org

In many ways I feel incredibly lucky to have attended UC Santa Cruz.  For one, it’s simply a good university; high quality, good instructors, wonderful campus, good facilities, etc.  I received a damn fine education there at a quite reasonable price.  (It’s not particularly reasonable now, but that’s a post for another time.)  I met some–hell, most–of my lifelong friends there.  All good things.

But in many ways the most important thing was living in Santa Cruz, and being absolutely immersed in a social matrix that was wildly, spectacularly, incredibly left-wing.  A place where the majority of the town council was, like Bernie Sanders, openly Socialist–That was their party affiliation, not just their political philosophy–and given this was spang in the middle of the Reagan era, that tells you just how leftist it was.   A place that was doing “take back the night!” marches in the early 80s, that occupied the campus library in 1985 to protest Apartheid and demand divestment of UC assets from South Africa; a place that was my introduction (as a Freshman) to loud, emotional protests (for tenure for a professor name Nancy Shaw, in I believe Women’s Studies); a place that had a class called “Birth of a Poet”, where you were required to write down your dreams every morning.

That kind of place.

And I’m glad, so very glad, I went there, because even though my parents were quite liberal (and my dad amazingly so for a Naval officer born during the Depression), growing up as a military brat narrows your view of the world pretty considerably.  Middle class all my life, rarely exposed to many minorities, almost totally unfamiliar with religions other than Catholicism, it was a major eye-opener, to put it mildly.  And a time I absolutely cherish.

Which brings me, in my time-honored style of burying the lede, to sex work.

It is a cliche to call sex work “the world’s oldest profession”.  But the fact is, we all know about the existence of sex work, and like any teen I was familiar with the bold outlines when I started college.  Indeed, I probably had a somewhat different view than most, as I had read a lot of science fiction in which sex work was either a normalized part of life, or even societies where it was an honored and exalted profession (viz. how it is treated in “Firefly”).  But like everyone else, I had imbibed by osmosis the Madonna/whore dichotomy, along with the usual john/pimp/ho’ cliches.  I probably wasn’t as bad as some, but I was still a pretty ignorant middle-class, white, teen male.

But it was at UC Santa Cruz where I was first exposed to the actual concept of sex work as it collides with the real world.  It was there that I first encountered the term “sex work”; there that I was first exposed to actual sex workers; there I saw sex workers supported by non sex workers, advocating for their rights, the organization COYOTE setting up tables and giving out info on campus, students writing papers and articles in support of sex work and sex workers rights, and so on.

And to be perfectly frank, all that in combination to the already-fertile, science fiction-tilled ground of my brain, radicalized me.  The arguments of sex workers seemed so logical and reasonable when weighed against the almost-hysterical inveigling the anti-sex work crowd engaged in.  Sex workers wanted their victimless, consensual, non-coercive work to be treated as exactly that:  Work.  Difficult work deserving of dignity, recognition, and a lack of persecution.  Work that they had chosen, and that they believed was deserving of treatment equal to a schmuck like me toiling away in a cafeteria dishroom to put himself through college.

Seemed pretty reasonable to me.

By contrast, the anti-sex work crowd had many, many arguments against it but, not unlike arguments against marriage equality boiling down to “I think butt sex is yucky and no one should do it”, it always seemed at base to rest on “It’s against my moral code”.

Now, it didn’t matter that we separate church and state in the country.  It didn’t matter that it didn’t match the moral code of plenty of other people.  It didn’t matter that many of the people espousing draconian punishment against these Evil Whores used their services themselves (think David Vitter).  And it certainly didn’t matter that the “oppressed” providers were themselves saying, “Hey, no; I’m not oppressed!  I want to be paid a fair wage for my difficult and involved work and not be at risk of harassment and arrest just for my work!”  Or as they put it now:  Sex work is work.

I am bringing all this up for two reasons:  There have been a raft of laws proposed or passed recently (like #C36 in Canada, or the law in Alaska) in an effort to eliminate sex work, and today is Speak Up for Sex Workers Day (h/t Maggie McNeill).

Now, like every other political effort nowadays, this isn’t what the proponents of these new and draconian laws say.  The efforts in favor of what is called “the Swedish model” or “the Nordic model” say that by following this model will “end demand”–i.e. they target the clients rather than the sex workers–and thus give the oppressed sex workers the incentive to find “legitimate” work.

That “end demand” hasn’t worked with alcohol, cocaine, crack cocaine, crystal meth, marijuana, or any other thing we’ve tried to “end demand” on, doesn’t detract these social warriors.  That prohibition doesn’t work is something they don’t acknowledge.  Hell, they outlawed absinthe, and people are drinking it again.  And we’re talking about sex here, not drugs.  Do they really think putting laws in place will cause people to stop?  They know this is nicknamed “the oldest profession”, right?

They are convinced it will work, and refuse to listen to the sex workers who keep telling them a) It makes their work more dangerous and b) They don’t want rescuing, thank you very much.  They are convinced they have The Solution, a solution that literally has eluded every single society since the beginning of history.  I mean, seriously, think about that.

After much reading on the topic it’s pretty clear that the advocates both on the far right (religious folks) and far left (radical feminists) both just think sex work is eeeeeeeevil, and this is one way to try to eliminate it.  I’ll leave as an exercise for the student the weirdness of radical feminists and fire-and-brimstone Christian fundamentalists being in bed together on this (and yes, that was deliberate).  But their purported reasons don’t hold up; they want to remove the choice of work from the sex workers.  They know better.  The sex workers to these people are “fallen women”, victims, deluded; they only think they want to be engaged in sex work.  Once they realize the error of their ways–either that it’s immoral, or an oppressive continuation of the patriarchy, depending on who is arguing about it–these sex workers will be happy to be church secretaries or telephone sales people or whatever.  They’re just deluded and need to be educated, or victims needing to be saved.

I’ll let you go ahead and think about the epic level of condescension required for the point of view.  Me, I am immediately suspicious when Person A purports to be doing something for Person B’s “own good”.  “It’s for your own good” is generally a smokescreen behind which lays “I think what you’re doing is icky and wrong”.

One of the big ways anti-sex worker activists (and their name is legion) push their agenda is by intentionally blurring and obscuring the line between human trafficking and sex work. (Not to mention continually repeating the same exploded myths and statistics about sex work, like “the average age of entry is 13”, which is just flagrantly untrue.)  Let me be crystal-effin’-clear here:

Human trafficking is evil.  I tell you three times and what I tell you three times is true:  Human trafficking is evil; human trafficking is evil; human trafficking is evil.

But here’s the thing:  The majority–the vast majority–of human trafficking is not for sex work.  Nope.  22%.  Yes, that’s still terrible; but why are we harassing sex workers who are in that business by choice (i.e. they are by definition not trafficked) and their clients over that 22%?  Further, since the vast majority of sex workers being abused by the police and courts are in that job by choice, we are not even helping that 22%!  And why are we so focused on that 22% that we are basically ignoring the other 78%, who are stuck in garment factories in lower Manhattan, or out on farms living in hovels in essential slavery in the Southwest, or doing dangerous construction work all around the world?  Aren’t those people deserving of our attention?  And why are we wasting money and effort on sex workers who aren’t trafficked and are doing their work by choice when that effort could be spent helping all those other trafficked people?  Where’s the logic?

And the answer is, the unholy left-right anti-sex worker alliance isn’t using logic; they think sex work is icky and should be ended, and there’s no evidence to support the idea that they give a rip about the other trafficking victims.

So what can we do, here on this particular day during this particularly time when seemingly every small hamlet and big city wants to “crack down on those prostitution rings”?  Glad you asked!

First, you should read up a bit and not swallow the anti-sex worker propaganda whole.  Here.

You can’t argue against someone who has religious convictions; like in the anti-abortion fights, the best you can do is fight against them.  And the folks who believe that sex for pleasure is evil are living in a completely different universe than the one I occupy.  Frankly, I think they need clinical help.  If God gave you the ability to get pleasure from sexual stimulation, doesn’t it make you more godly to seek that pleasure?  Where in the Torah does it say self-pleasure, or pleasure with a partner, is evil?  (Pro Tip: It doesn’t.  But boy, you should read some of the rationalizations some folks try to use to justify their “no masturbation!” perspective!)

But you can shine a bright light on government agencies (police departments, prosecutors offices, etc.) who waste enormous amounts of money running “sting” operations on “crimes” that have no victims.  Is that what we want them doing, rescuing “fallen” women who haven’t asked to be “rescued”, and busting men who are just seeking pleasure and are willing to pay for it?  Wouldn’t public monies be better spent, oh, hey, I dunno:  Serving and protecting?  (And this isn’t even going into the profound, astonishing, ridiculous hypocrisy where the same police officers who expect to use a sex worker’s services for free later turn around and bust the same sex workers.  And yes, it happens all the time.)

But most importantly, you yourself should start treating sex workers–in your own mind, and by your behavior–as workers, just as deserving of respect as tech writers, or computer programmers, or electricians, or police officers, or soldiers.  Sex work is work.  Like with any work, sex workers are doing it to pay the bills (though many enjoy their work), and how many of us love our work?  I mean, I do, but I’m well aware I’m in the minority.  Sex work is work.  Keep telling yourself that.

And then go out and tell others.  Cuz that’s the only way the word will get out.

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