Go, Pack, Go in 2009!

It's official: I am now REALLY excited about the Green Bay Packers' chances in the 2009 NFL season!

The third preseason game is apparently always theone that the Packers head coach Mike mcCarthy likes to trea as the "dress rehearsal", and as the above link showed, the starting line-up, on the field for the first half, made absolute mincemeat of the opposition, as they had done every time they were on the field the previous two warm-up games.

The biggest amount of talk about the Packers in the off-season was about the change from the more traditional 4-3 defensive strategy to the more innovative 3-4 strategy, introduced by Dom Capers, the new guy in charge of coaching Defense. Every time I listen or watch the playback of their games, I feel as though the D is giving up a lot of yards, but there is no arguing with the number of times they win the ball back for the Offense, and that is really exciting. There is also no arguing with the very low number of points that have been scored against the starting line-up in the three preseason games so far.

I'm always a little bit sceptical when a new coach comes in and there's a sudden leap in performance, because I have seen the "thrill of something new" factor come and go a number of times with other sports teams (for example, when the England soccer team appointed Sven Göran-Eriksson as Manager). But I believe that last year's performance was the "blip", and that this is just a return to winning ways after 2007's 13-3 regular season record (Wins-Losses, for those unfamiliar with US sports recording). The initial excitement that is generated by the aggressive playing style may wear off, but I think if these players are serious competitors (and the Packers seem to look for that a lot in the players they pick) then the thrill of making big plays won't.

Apart from a couple of high-profile draft picks this year, B.J. Raji and Clay Matthews III, there isn't a big change in the defensive line-up in terms of personnel, and although there were concerns about how various members of the first-choice players would cope with the shift (notably, the cornerbacks adjusting to a different style, and Defensive End Aaron Kampman adjusting to play Linebacker). I think that all the players concerned have shown that they have the tools to do the job.

***

But what REALLY excites me is the Green Bay Offense. Despite the Packers having a losing record last season, they had looked good when they had the ball a lot of the time. They now look even better. It is now QB Aaron Rodgers' second season as the on-field leader of the team, and the experience shows compared to last year. The players around him also have a much better idea of how he plays and what he aims to do, and he's got a much better idea of what they aim to do. His years as understudy to Brett Favre have paid dividends as well, so this is a guy who can read the game and respond. As the article linked at the head of this post describes, he can throw the ball a long way with a lot of accuracy, and he can also run with the ball when he has to. Last season, Head Coach McCarthy said that they wanted him to be "a scrambling QB, not a running QB", so that Rodgers uses his running ability firstly just to stay on his feet long enough for a receiver to get open, but that if there is no one open, then he can pick up good distance carrying the ball himself. This is so effective that it seems each year that the comment-makers forget how good his legs are, and are surprised anew to find that Rodgers has this ability. But having watched the Packers over the past few seasons, I find myself quite familiar with how Rodgers likes to run around a bit!

Speaking of running, the other carry-over story from the 2007 season is Ryan Grant, the running back (he's the guy who usually carries the ball running, if Rodgers isn't throwing it). He had a poor 2008 season, partly affected by injury, but is coming roaring back now. Recently on the Packers website, there was some talk about how he's recovering the skills needed to make defenders miss and win an extra few yards every so often, that would make a big difference oevr a whole season to the distance he gains.

If that's not enough, there are a number of other talented guys challenging for the back-up running back spots. As well as previous draftees DeShawn Wynn and Brandon Jackson, two players who were signed as undrafted free agents (that is, they're guys nobody picked, but then the Pakers thought they might be worthwhile additions after all) have been doing really well. Kregg Lumpkin won a spot last year after being undrafted, by playing really well in preseason games. This year, Tyrell Sutton is doing the same thing. I liked Lumpkin just for his name (although his performances also helped!). Sutton, I like because as American Football players go, he's a real shortarse at just 5'8" tall! (He's also technically obese according to his official height/weight figures, with a BMI of over 32 and "obese" being over 30, which just goes to show how stupid such calculations are!) Sutton has already made some big plays, and one or two comments have been made that he gets them because he's small enough to run between the legs of defenders (he isn't really, of course, but his lack of height means that tacklers have that much further to bend in order to catch him).

***

It's been too long since Packers players had their hands on a trophy that is, after all, named after a Packers Head Coach - but I dare to believe that that will change this year!

Britannic Bold Sex (game)

I have a new game, via Figleaf, and created by Dr. Debby Herbenick of "MySexProfessor.com"

The rules:

...a sort of reverse fortune cookie game. You know, the game where whatever someone’s fortune is, you then tag on the phrase “in bed” at the end as in “You will have great success (in bed)”.

Except here you do it in reverse: Place the font style word/phrase in front of your word. Soon enough you get things like “Berlin Sans Sex” (which - if you remember your high school French class - means “Berlin without sex”, a sad state of affairs indeed), Century Gothic Sex and even Elephant Sex.

Now switch out the word “sex” and replace it with another sex word such as penis or vagina. Now what have you? Well, for starters a Poor Richard Penis, a Wide Latin Penis (or Vagina), and an Arial Narrow Vagina (a la Little Mermaid?). Enjoy.

Here's what I produced:


Andale Mono Sex, I guess, is a form of masturbation. Baskerville Old Face Sex is sexy senior citizens' oral, I imagine. Obviously, as a BDSMer, I couldn't resist Impact Sex, Maestro Percussion Sex or "Marker Felt Sex", which in my mind at least implies a good caning (cos, I mark 'er, and she surely felt it!) Tengwar Sindarin Sex is Tolkienian porn (Tengwar being the Elvish alphabet that Tolkien created, the Sindarin being one of the tribe of elves).

I also had "Plantagenet Cherokee Sex", which is an interesting theory about the royal descent of the English crown...

I had to go with "Britannic Bold Sex", because British is Best, always ;-)

"Do you have an Academy Engraved Penis"? A Copperplate Penis? If you've got a Cracked Penis, maybe you should see a doctor... On the other hand, a Maestro Penis might be what every (het) woman wishes her hubby/bf had! I kind of had "Mshtakan" as a slurred "Mistaken Penis", which could be a transphobia thing, or a "not tonight, darling, I've got a headache" situation. An Onyx Penis would, I guess, be a dildo made of black stone!

After doing "Sex" and "Penis", I decided to get creative and come up with my own words to use. i chose "Nipples" and (because I love anal play) "Arse"




I think Britannic Bold Nipples are what stand out about our national symbol.

I cheated a bit on "Arse", and sometimes moved the word to the beginning instead of the end:


Arse Impact - what my hand makes on a partner...

Arse Jazz - a euphemism for farting? (A Jazz Arse is, of course, one of those people who doesn't realise you honestly don't CARE about Deep Vein Trombonist's cunning use of the augmented 4th...)

Arse Maestro - a high-class male prostitute?

Britannic Bold Arse - Probably as Bold as Brass (couldn't resist the rhyme)

Cracked Arse - an invitation to buggery?

Herculanum Arse - what you never ever (according to popular belief) tell your girlfriend she has when she says "does my bum look big in this?"

...

Over to you!

If you play this game on your own blog, be sure to credit the creator, Dr Debby

Ted Kennedy to pay?

[Title adapted from the "Amendment To Be" spoof of "They Call Me Bill" that the Simpsons did; the intended implication is "to pay in Hell", a suggestion linked by commenter white rabbit at DaisyDeadhead's blog post]

[ETA here's the Guardian obituary]

Ted Kennedy has died.

I can plead, I hope, some justification for being ignorant about some of the facts that follow, because of being born a) in the wrong country, and b) too early, to have ever seen the news at the time of the events in question. I hope I would have had the decency to remember them now if I had known of them before, and added a post like this unprompted.

Ted Kennedy, in the news coverage that I've seen has been a progressive campaigner in the US Senate, fighting for such worthy causes as a decent (and necessary) increase in the US minimum wage; for various human rights issues; and challenging the abuses by the rightwing in America.

That is the basis, it seems, for the various hagiographies of Senator Kennedy that have cropped up in the feminist blog land.

But for every sainthood to be considered (the origin of the word hagiography, darlings - the entry in the "Lives of the Saints" that each saint receives!), there must also be the Devil's Advocate, whose job it is to find all the reasons why a person should not be confirmed as a saint.

Step forward, DaisyDeadhead.

There are some seriously shitty things, and I think that Ted will not be getting his sainthood any time soon if people listen to what Daisy has to say (backed up by good sources). Indeed, Daisy and her commenters suggest that he might even be going down instead of up...

Daisy depicts how Senator Ted Kennedy managed to destroy (literally in the first case, figuratively in the second) a number of women's lives:

First up, she offers the not-so-mysterious case of Mary Jo Kopechne: a woman left to drown in an upturned car stranded in a tidal channel. As near as may be established, Senator Kennedy was drink-driving and was responsible for driving the car off a bridge and into the water. He got out. He never called for help but instead when the car was discovered the next morning, his victim was found drowned, pressed up where the last air pocket would have been. The only explanation for the failure to call for help appears to be that Kennedy didn't want to turn up drunk at someone's house.

If that is not enough to bar him from sainthood, then what about his first wife, Joan Bennett Kennedy? The wikipedia article about her tells the tale, it seems to me, of a woman betrayed and abandoned. Daisy's verdict is more damning still: "So, he fucked up Joan, wiped his ass with her like toilet paper, moves on to woman 22 years younger, and yes! He's much happier now!"

Oh yes, and since I mentioned the origins of hagiography above, let's be clear here: "verdict" comes from the Latin for "speaking truth". I use the word with a mind to that origin...

The best that can be said of Kennedy seems to be that he was a bad man who tried to do some good (Joyce Carol Oates adds a similar opinion @ the Guardian website). But there are still plenty who have every right to feel betrayed by the Senator: not just the poor woman he left to drown; not just the wife whom he abandoned to her alcoholism.

Afghanistan takes on the world - at cricket

Well, maybe not the world exactly, but at least the Netherlands!

The Afghan team didn't look very strong to start with, in a 4-day match scoring just 107 in their first innings.

However, they managed to turn it around on the 3rd day:

The day commenced with Afghanistan requiring 168 runs to win, with eight wickets to spare, on a pitch that had troubled all the batsmen, but Noor Ali and Nowroz Mangal set about the task well.

...

By lunch, the match was hanging in the balance with Afghanistan needing a further 64 with four wickets remaining, having battled back into contention.

The contest continued, and came down to a classic close finish:

With Afghanistan edging nearer their target, Netherlands found the breakthrough they were after, as Ashraf was finally removed by a diving catch by Mudassar Bukhari off Schiferli for 31. This left Shenwari and Shapoor Zadran with the nerve-wracking task of scoring the remaining ten runs, facing the aggressive bowling of a pumped-up Schiferli.

Another wicket fell, leaving Afghanistan with no further chances: if anyone else got out, that was it...

But, in the next over, Shenwari threw his hands at a Bukhari delivery, the ball slashing over the slips for four as Afghanistan snatched an unlikely victory, their first in the Intercontinental Cup, and another significant achievement for a country so new to the international fold.

Afghanistan are dependent upon aid from the Marylebone Cricket Club for their training equipment, so this win is a huge achievement for them.

However, I can't help but feel that the real cause for celebration will come only when the Afghanistan women's cricket team can do the same. (And, no, as yet Afghanistan do not even have a women's cricket team).

I noticed (in searching for the above link) that Jo Christie-Smith has called for a boycott of Afghan cricket to protest the abuse of women's rights in Afghanistan. Also searching for information of Afghan women and cricket, I found a report on the India under-21 women's cricket tour of Pakistan which served to promote women's rights in hardline Muslim provinces of Pakistan (though reading that article, you can see that they didn't move things all that far, and it reveals just how far such efforts have still to go). I'm hopeful that more can be done by engaging than by boycotting - but things MUST be done SOMEHOW.

I started this post just because cricket excites me, and seeing a nation new to the sport do so well excites me too. But Afghanistan is right now not a fun place, and if you're a woman, it's very evil; so I couldn't just leave it at the "squee" factor.

Taking the Epistle: Philippians

In the study notes at the beginning, the NIV Study Bible tells us that Philippians was written specifically to thank the Christians of Philippi for the gifts that they had sent while he was in captivity in Rome. He uses the opportunity of writing to express a couple of other points, essentially just to remind the Faithful of what Paul finds good about their behaviour and to encourage them to keep it up.

The notes promise a reminder not to listen to the legalist Judaisers, or the libertine antinomians, but these are both really short, throwaway lines and don't add much to the theological understanding of Paul's point of view about it. The passage about the Judaisers (3:2-4), though, seems particularly apt considering the latest attempt to "prove" that Barack Obama is not a legitimate President of the USA:

Watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh. For it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus and who put no faith in the flesh

Meaning, those who look to the law of circumcision are to be considered "evil". If this stuff continues, someone should start inserting "Philippians 3:2-4" into the conversations the wingnuts have about it and see what happens...

Paul has his usual tendency towards a "oh, poor me!" attitude, veiled beneath a declaration of his willingness and faith; but perhaps now that it really is harder for him, it seems to be less so than, for example, the impression I get in 2 Corinthians. It comes across at various points in the letter that he seems to regard the church in Philippi as his greatest success: they do not need correction, just reminders; they have (in Paul's words) been the ones who volunteered material help in the past as well, even though he did not ask for it; they have, he asserts, remained true and faithful.

The background of Philippi is explained in the study notes as being a Roman colony, and its inhabitants were officially Roman citizens (and, reading between the lines, may have been a bit snobbish about it). Apparently, the custom of giving land to retired veterans of the Roman army meant that a lot of the Romans in Philippi were ex-military, and I would hazard a guess based on the conclusions I've drawn about Paul's personality from previous books that that kind of orderly mindset may be partly why he likes them so much!

Paul writes that the example he gives, even while "in chains" is having an influence on the guards who watch over him. He also writes that his ability to bear up under captivity has had the effect of encouraging others to preach more openly about Christ - the exact opposite, we might imagine, from what the authorities would have wanted.

We are then reminded that Paul had rivals in preaching, who did so "out of selfish ambition". The accusations against which he defended himself in 2 Corinthians, one imagines, might have been circulated again, trying to discredit Paul as a genuine preacher of God's Word. But Paul's attitude now is much more relaxed: "The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this, I rejoice."

Next comes a slightly uncharacteristic "To be or not to be?" moment for Paul, in which he muses in his own way "whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" (Paul is considering the pleasure of dying and meeting Christ in heaven) "or take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them" (here he considers the alternative course of serving God through continuing to preach the Gospel on Earth). He comes down firmly on the side of living and teaching the Word to others (1:25 - "Convinced of this, I know that I will remain, and I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith") The passage that began with a description of Paul's imprisonment, and his thanks for the aid sent to him in prison, ends with a more general reminder of the spirit in which Paul has accepted his captivity and in which he calls Christians to be firm in troubled times: "Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ... without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you. This will be a sign to them that they will be destroyed but you will be saved - and that by God." Paul states that suffering in this way is a part of faith, just as believing in Christ is.

Chapter 2 of Philippians is largely taken up with a poetic rendition of what Christian "humility" is like. Paul once again calls forth the virtues of love, tenderness and compassion for one another, and "being one in spirit and purpose", and "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others." (2:3-4) These virtues seem to be mentioned at some point in all of Paul's letters, with minor variations.

The "hymn" of 2:6-11 to Christ's humility in descending from God and taking human form, is as profound a statement of the divinity of Christ, and the importance that it has that God, the all-powerful, should become humble and a servant to us. While non-Christians don't accept that this is true, I believe that the passage is in itself beautiful, even though you might reject the meaning of it.

If 2:6-11 is a hymn to Christ's humility, then 2:12-18 is a hymn to the faithfulness of Christians:

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed - not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence - continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.

Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life - in order that I may boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labour for nothing. But even if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you. So you too should be glad and rejoice with me.

Such passages when sent to other churches (at least as far as I've read to date) have always been of what Paul wished, but in the context of this letter it feels as though Paul truly believes that the church in Philippi is just being reminded rather than cajoled to have this attitude - Paul really seems to think of Philippi as his favourite.

But, oh, how familiar is this image of being beacons of light ("shining like stars in the universe") in a generation of depravity and filth! Every generation, it seems - especially as it grows older - has groups of people who believe themselves to be such islands against the sea of squalor and immorality. And yet, somehow, civilisation fails to collapse on schedule... Given, once again, the ex-military contingent of Philippi, who we may assume would have been of fairly advanced years and of a mindset opposed in general to disorderly conduct, we can see that "Col(Rtd) Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" might very well have an ideological ancestor in "Centurion(Rtd) Disgusted of Philippi" - who would have absolutely shared Paul's ideals in that regard.

Paul then talks of sending to them the preacher Timothy, and the messenger who came from Philippi - Epaphroditus. Timothy, a young man who Paul regards as like a son, is given a glowing reference. Epaphroditus on the other hand is sent with words concerning how bravely he has battled against illness (that Paul says had him at death's door!) and how he longs to see home again.

I've already mentioned how Paul scorns those who put "confidence in the flesh" - the Law, especially the law of circumcision. Paul expands on the theme, talking of giving up material goods and putting faith in Jesus. He again repeats that righteousness does not come from the law (which Paul had once believed, before his conversion - a belief that had him pursuing and persecuting the Christian faith) but only through faith in Christ.

In a rather maudlin way, he then goes on to say, "I want to know the Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead." (3:10-11) Again, the sense of Paul's personality that I have suggests that this may be a part of that "to be or not to be" passage mentioned earlier, this time wavering more towards "suffer the slings and arrows".

The study notes talk about how frequently the word "joy" is used in Philippians, and it is true that there are passages that wax lyrical about the joy that Paul believes comes with serving Christ. But to characterise the book in that sense seems to me to be misguided because these passages where Paul contemplates his own death, for all that he cloaks it in wanting to be with Christ, or serve God, come across as very melancholy to me.

Paul's next point is that none are perfect, but must "press on" towards it. Perhaps the most amusing verse concludes this passage: "All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you." (3:15) What do I find amusing about it? only that it is so extremely human and, in its way, petty - it is just another formulation of "if you stop to think about it, you'll see..." which really means, "if you agree with me..." And, of course, the speaker is always correct! While I think it is, in fact, true that nobody is perfect, but that we should "live up to what we have already attained" (3:16) and strive to do better, to me it is very funny to see Paul be so obviously human. He didn't say "How can you doubt...?" but baldly states, effectively, "only those who agree with me are mature enough to be worth listening to". Again, the point about maturity I think suggests that Paul felt a particular affinity with the older, ex-military, members of the church.

Now we come to the bit about the libertines - as noted, it's not much of a theological development, but maybe goes back to the discussion in 1 Corinthians of "food for the belly and the belly for food:

For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live their lives as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ

Personally, I feel that Paul's contrast between heavenly thoughts and earthly pleasures is a false dichotomy, as I explained in previous instalments of this series. Are there some who raise material pleasures above all else, to the exclusion of the spiritual? Certainly, and it is easy to argue that it is those people (and not those who are both spiritual and enjoy material pleasures) that are Paul's target here. But having read several of Paul's letters now, that's not the way he normally comes across!

The closing verse of Chapter 3 is a curious one, because it sheds some light on the myth of the rapture, and it actually represents a passage that I had originally believed to be the imaginings of the US Christian Right:

Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body

The bolded part is what I had believed had been invented by the wingnuts who talk about the Rapture. This still does not in any way have much to do with the Rapture myth as those nutters frame it; my understanding of Paul's meaning is much more that the believers, having died, will be housed in new, spiritual, bodies. The idea that it will happen to people still living is just not supported here or anywhere else.

Chapter 4 is essentially the closing for the letter: most of it is taken up with a repeat of the thanks for the gifts that Philippi sent him (and a remembrance of the gifts they sent in past times), and in the closing (it is interesting that greetings are sent not just from Paul, but also from others in Rome, "especially those who belong to Caesar's household." It took me a moment to remember that that didn't mean the Emperor's family members necessarily, but (as the footnotes explain) the slaves and others employed there, who were believers.

However, one point more is worthy of mention (especially on a feminist blog!):

4:2-3 I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to agree with one another in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you, loyal yoke-fellow, help these women who have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel

Why is that worthy of special mention? Well, for all Paul's other misogynistic writings, here it is clear that two women have been key preachers with Paul of the gospel; and that they have a disagreement of faith serious enough to be a matter for a public letter to the church. That implies that these women are still viewed highly, and are high participants in debate concerning the faith. Paul has chosen not to intervene, not knowing the details of the argument, but instead asks those at hand to help mediate and find a way for the difference to be resolved. The footnotes go so far as to say this proves that Paul viewed women who preached the gospel to be his equals, but I do not find that to be supported by the actual words (possibly the text in the original language makes it clearer, I don't know).

Blogroll policy

I've noticed in the past week or so through statcounter that several new people (well, new to me anyway) have added me to their blogrolls and that I've had visitors from their blogs as a result of that.

This is very gratifying, and thank you kindly to all those who have so added me.

However, please don't be offended if I don't add you all back straight away.

I have a pretty strict policy concerning who does or does not get onto my blogroll, and it is in some ways (disgustingly so, some might say) Darwinian in nature. Or maybe, since we're in the world of memetic transfer rather than genetic transfer, "Dawkinsian".

The policy is this: I will only add the blogs that I find myself reading regularly. A less strict element is that I tend to want a blog that I add on this blogroll to be one that in some way identifies as feminist. This becomes "I only add those blogs that I would feel comfortable personally recommending to those who visit my site".

Maybe this isn't the way all these social-networking things are supposed to work, but it suits my natural-introvert mentality to approach it this way and I'm not going to change it (the extrovert part of my nature is very happy with spouting out opinions left, extreme left and left-of-centre, regardless of whether anyone actually reads them or not...!)

So, to all those who have added me recently, or whom I have recently discovered have added me, to their blogrolls - I have bookmarked your blogs and if you write scintillating stuff regularly over the next few weeks I may decide that your blog qualifies for my blogroll and add you, but it won't happen yet. It doesn't mean I don't like you, and I'm not meaning to be rude, if I don't add you now! (If I don't add you at all, it's also not meant to be rude but it does suggest that I don't personally get a lot out of what you write, which I feel bad about saying but there's no "nice" way of saying it, really.)

Germaine Greer doesn't get it: Semenya, trans-hate and feminism

I was in two minds whether or not to respond to this piece by Germaine Greer in today's Guardian.

Thankfully, I don't need to because other people already said it for me:

Penny Red

and

Laura Woodhouse @ The F-Word.

Bristol sex worker successes

Via the F-Word Blog, I want to highlight quickly this story:

In the last year One25 has seen 134 violent attacks against women involved in street-based sex work, and the level of brutality involved is horrific. Rape conviction rates for this group are extremely low nationally, with only 1% of rapes against sex-workers in the UK ending in a conviction. It takes courage to come forward after such a traumatic event, and it’s important that the victims of violence have the support they need.

We’ve seen an unprecedented number of women finding the courage to report such attacks in the last six months, and this has led to convictions. In the last two months alone one attacker was sentenced to a nine year prison term, and four attackers have been arrested, with two already charged and remanded in prison. This is a fantastic result for the women involved, for One25 and for all the local agencies that have supported them.

We feel that the improvements we have seen in the last six months are worth celebrating, but also hope they will raise awareness of the problem of violence in our city.

This is a tremendous success, but sadly it is all too little. With the law being much less able to protect sex workers while sex workers have reason to fear or avoid the law, getting the convictions up to a level where they will act as a realistic deterrent against attackers will be close to impossible. If you do the sums, then assuming that the attack rate is more or less constant, in the same 2 months (over which 7 people were arrested and/or charged), it seems that there must have been at least 20 attacks.

The One25 programme should be hailed as an unprecedented success; however, I think it would be remiss if we did not say that, at a national level, in legislation, much much more needs to be done.

On Caster Semenya - because gender ain't that simple...

South African athlete Caster Semenya won the Women's 800m Gold medal at the athletics world championship yesterday.

Ever since, it seems that there has been controversy over whether she is, in fact, a woman.

My first exposure to this story was the headline on the Daily Mail: "Did a man win the women's 800m?" screamed the headline. So I was expecting this to be a transphobia story of some kind.

I don't actually know what it really is, going only on the Guardian article linked above. [EDIT: The F-Word Blog has a piece about it with a little more detail]

The article mentions a number of intersex persons who have, following surgery to identify as female physically, competed in women's athletics, but Semenya is described as "a human being who was born as a woman and who has grown up all her life as a woman" [ETA: according to the F-Word article, Semenya's mother says she was born female, too], so it's not clear to me what the claims about her actually are - that she's a trans woman, intersexed or what.

Indeed, it may just be because she has some facial features commonly associated with masculinity, and a well-developed body in general, so (in the same way that other women have been accused of being men for not conforming to mainstream beauty standards) people have made an unwarranted assumption about her. It is, in that way, sad that Semenya is now being subjected to all manner of medical tests (gynaecologist and endocrinologist - quite why a psychologist is included in the medical experts assessing the case is another issue entirely, and also troubling!) to assuage the trans-hate and/or misogyny that surely lies behind all this.

It occurs to me as well, that there may also be a touch of racism as an undercurrent in all this. I forget where I saw it discussed most recently, but someone observed that the facial features associated with certain races can become codified as representing gendered qualities as well; it is not impossible that Semenya's racial features may be being interpreted as gendered features in a racist way as well as a sexist way.

The IAAF statement from their Director of Communications is slightly more encouraging:

It's not an issue of cheating. We're more concerned for the person not to make this something which is humiliating for her and something which is going to affect her in a negative way.

However, I do think that it's a bit late for it not to be "humiliating" or "affect her in a negative way".

The story that Semenya's coach tells I suspect may have a certain amount of familiarity for those who do not conform to mainstream gender (I heard a similar story from a woman who gender-identifies as "ice butch", for example):

Semenya's coach, Michael Seme, says he is well used to the commotion. He recalls stopping to use the facilities at a petrol station in Cape Town recently and as Semenya tried to enter the women's toilets, she was stopped by the petrol attendants. "Caster just laughed and asked if they would like her to take off her pants to show them she was a woman," he said.

I'll leave it there - no conclusions, no "this is what they should do"; just the observations I've made so far.

Favre from the madding crowd

I'm going to run out of puns if this goes on much longer...

After announcing that he was done for good at the end of July, Brett Favre has suddenly thrown his hat into the ring once more, and signed up to be a Viking in Minnesota. It appears as though the Vikes' organisation made a decision that they'd sound him out one more time, and this time Favre said "yes!", and within 24hrs he was on a plane with the owner and president of the Vikings, a deal already done, and he was heading to training camp.

It appears from Favre's press conference at the Vikings' training camp that at least in part it was his daughter who talking him into it. He said to the reporters that when she saw his announcement that he was done appear on television, she told him that she'd really wanted him to "go and try to win another Superbowl". At the time, Favre said, he thought he'd burnt his bridges and couldn't go back on his decision. Then the Vikings called him up and said, "Wanna try it now?"

With pressure like that, who could resist when the opportunity called!?

FOr all that I think Favre has been a bit childish over the past couple of seasons about this stuff,, I simply cannot resent him choosing to play professionally for another season. I am sure that if I had his talent, I would want to keep going until my arms dropped off! I don't care who he plays for, as long as he's enjoying it.

That said, when he plays against the Packers I want to see him get pounded heavily. But equally, that goes for any QB who's playing against the Packers on a given day!

I have a dream, brothers and sisters: and that dream is that the NFC Conference championship will feature Favre returning once again to Lambeau Field as the Pack and the Vikes vie for a spot in the Superbowl...

I won't tell you the result in my dream, but if I tell you that my other dream is to see Aaron Rodgers lifting the Lombardi Trophy, it should be fairly obvious!

Survey into discrimination on alternative sexuality

The Consenting Adults Action Network (CAAN) organisation in the UK has the following appeal for responses at their website:

CAAN - UK SURVEY ON DISCRIMINATION AND MARGINALISED CONSENSUAL ADULT SEXUALITY / INTERESTS

Do you have a story of being discriminated against or abused due to your sexuality (or sexual interests)? Do you have a story of being afraid because of your sexuality, please tell us that too. Please fill in this survey!

PLEASE SHARE THIS UK SURVEY WIDELY

As part of Consenting Adult Action Network's ongoing discussions with the Equality and Human Rights Commission, one fair point was raised - we do not have properly documented evidence of instances of human rights abuse and discrimination against consenting adults on the basis of interest or private practice of BDSM/fetish and other sexualities which are not already protected under the law. They want evidence of people being denied human rights afforded to others. So CAAN is putting together a handbook about discrimination and human rights abuse. We need your evidence.

There are several areas where we feel that such discrimination is worth documenting:

- in your personal life: friends, relatives and colleagues simply dismissing you as a “perve”, or being afraid to come out, or worse, attacks against you because of your interests;

- in your work life: being warned that your private sex life may be conduct that brings your company into disrepute, or being sacked because of your sexuality or interests;

- in your legal relationships: the threat of your private sex life being introduced into divorce proceedings, or losing contact with children because of it.

- you may have experiences in other areas, please still submit your story.

SURVEY ON DISCRIMINATION AND MARGINALISED CONSENSUAL ADULT SEXUALITY / INTERESTS

Please give as much information as possible. You can use this survey structure if you wish, but you don't have to and please feel free to write as much as you like.

YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION WILL NEVER BE SHARED WITHOUT YOUR PERMISSION, BUT PLEASE BEAR IN MIND THE STORIES ARE FOR PUBLICATION

1. Contact details (email address or other). If you really don't wish to be contacted we will respect that, but may not be able to use your story if you cannot verify certain things which may arise in followup.*

2. Who are you (real names will not be released without your permission,but we do need to verify you are a real person)*

a. name

b. pseudonym

c. role, if relevant (eg Freda Bloggs, primary school teacher)?

3. Who has discriminated against you or denied your human rights on the grounds of your sexuality and sexual interests? Or who do you fear will do so?

4. Describe the discrimination or abuse you have experienced, or that you fear you will experience.

5. Where did this happen, or where do you fear it will happen? If it has or could occur in more than one location, please let us know. eg in the workplace, and at a work social event).

6. When did it happen, or do you think it will happen? If it happened more than once, please state for each incident.

7. Why do you think it happened? what things have made this discrimination possible, what is the cause? Is the cause just your sexuality or sexual interests, or is the cause things such as discriminatory regulations, prejudice, isolation, lack of information, misinformation, exclusive policies, etc.

8. What details may we use? Let us know what details maybe used and what not. eg your name, name of employer, etc.

*You do not have to give contact details or real names, but bear in mind that this work may be called into question by critics who are far less positive towards BDSM than we are and therefore the more information we can have the better and followups may be necessary.

WHERE TO SEND IT

Please send your response to info@caan.org.uk

Background reading:

i. Our proposal to the EHRC - just to be clear, we have not proposed that BDSM be recognised as an orientation, we have asked that EHRC support us to fight for all consenting adults to have sexual rights and equality, whatever their sexuality:

A Case for Sexual Rights: CAAN - The Case for Sexual Rights

ii. CAAN have sent three letters to EHRC and had three replies, if you wish to see these letters, please contact us asking for this at info@caan.org.uk

iii. CAAN's website is here: www.caan.org.uk

iiii. CAAN's statement of principles:

"We believe in the right of consenting adults to make their own sexual choices, in respect of what they do, see and enjoy alone or with other consenting adults, unhindered and unfettered by government."

"We believe that it is not the business of government to intrude into the sex lives of consenting adults."

It is worth noting that it is an appeal at the moment for UKian responses only, but if US-based bloggers would promote and pass on the details to any of their British readers, that would be helpful.

Book Review: "Fool's Gold" by Gillian Tett

This was given to me for my birthday about 6 weeks ago, and the guy who gave it to me described it as being "the best account of the financial crisis". The subtitle on the cover is "How the Bold Dream of a Small Tribe at J.P. Morgan Was Corrupted by Wall Street Greed and Unleashed a Catastrophe". The book lives up to its billing.

The author, Gillian Tett, draws on her background in social anthropology (in which she holds a PhD) to understand what went on in the rarified world of high finance to bring about the "Credit Crunch" that plunged the world into recession. I suspect that it is this background that also helps to make this book into such a compelling narrative.

Tett draws on a huge amount of primary sources for her information, having in the course of her career as a top journalist for the Financial Times interviewed several of the key participants. These sources give her narrative an immediacy and personal impact that draws the reader in and makes me feel a real connection with the people and their fortunes (in the sense of successes and failures, not in the sense of how much money they had!)

It all starts at a getaway party-cum-brainstorming session, at which the young derivatives traders of the J.P. Morgan bank knocked around some ideas of what could be done next with derivatives. Derivatives are explained as being essentially a way of trading risk: for example, Tett tells of a number of systems, such as Chicago Board of Trade, in which a derivative of grain might be bought and sold so that the buyer takes on the risk that the coming grain harvest might not be as plentiful as hoped, while the farmer is thereby covered so that he won't lose too much if the same thing happens. If the grain harvest is better than expected, then the buyer makes a profit. She also mentions a famous market-crash in Holland in the 17th Century that wa sbased on tulip derivatives, and wool derivatives being traded by English monasteries in the 1100s. The terms are put into an easy to understand context so that when we get some of the details later about what traders were doing, it's possible to follow about as closely as anyone else was able to at the time!

The original innovation of using derivatives to trade credit risk stemmed to this 1994 meeting and over the next few months they worked out how credit derivatives could be made to work.

This group saw credit derivatives as being an excellent way to reduce the risk involved in lending money and as a way to spread the risk so that a business going bust wouldn't necessarily bring anyone else down with it. The aim also, was specifically to make this about credit extended to businesses, not to the general public.

Over the next decade, however, a lot of other banks first started using credit derivatives to increase risk (and thereby increase the returns from selling the derivatives) and then some bright spark came up with the idea of using mortgage debt as the basis for derivatives.

The original team couldn't see how you could do that profitably with mortgages because there just wasn't enough data on how mortgage defaults happened to make the risk manageable: as Tett observes, their culture of risk-management meant they couldn't conceive of people choosing to ignore the risk altogether!

This review isn't supposed to retell the story as Tett tells it (what would be the point in that?) so I'll stop there.

Suffice to say that the narrative rapidly develops the quality of a Greek tragedy in which the disaster is so obviously approaching, and it's clearly avoidable - but, because of human nature, it is at the same time utterly inevitable. From the realisation that the risk-concentrations being created by the return-hungry bankers and investors are building up into a ticking timebomb of financial ruin, to the point when the first quakes start to shake the financial world and nobody does anything because they don't want it to be true that the gravy-train is coming to an end - and they also know that if anyone says anything, then suddenly everyone will realise that the Emperor has no clothes and then everybody is screwed. The reader, knowing the outcome in advance, can see even more clearly than the horrified observers among that original J.P. Morgan team (who by the end of the story are scattered across many different areas of the banking world) just what must follow. It is only the people directly involved who seem oblivious to the chasm opening up in front of them.

Since this is a feminist blog, one character I think deserves special mention. Blythe Masters was a key figure, a British woman who was hired very much against the grain in the banking world:

She ... became pregnant at twenty-three, and married. Some colleagues expected her to leave the bank, but she insisted she was committed to her career. Years later, when she had become a prominent spokesperson for the J.P.Morgan derivatives group, interviewed regularly by journalists, she was reluctant to discuss the events. "Nobody ever asks men about their families or their decision to have children!" she pointed out to colleagues. "Why should anyone care about mine?"

She knew only too well, though, that she would need to demonstrate extraordinary devotion to her job is she were to be taken seriously. When she went to the hospital to have her baby, she slipped a tiny device to track market prices into her handbag, though she ende dup barely using it. "Funnily enough," she told a reporter, wth British sarcasm, "it turned out that being a mother was somewhat more time-consuming than I thought."

In other areas of banking, or at other banks, her career might have been hobbled before she had really started.

Blythe Masters was joined on the team by other women, but as the most visible and high-ranked female member of the team it had effects on her later.

Masters drew up the first credit derivative deal (which turned out not to be the model used later for the corporate loan derivatives or for the mortgage derivatives), and was the main drive behind launching the format that eventually the later deals did take. This also led to her being associated prominently with the idea at the beginning. She rose quickly through the ranks of her profession and became one of the most senior women on Wall Street.

She had also become a beacon for other women at J.P. Morgan. By 2006 there were still precious few senior female executives on Wall Street, let alone with a teenage child. masters felt almost as evangelical about promoting diversity as about propagating the derivatives creed. "In the world I operate in, I stand out for being a woman," she admitted to workingwomen2000.com I believe that the onus falls on people like myself to help women get into the top positions - finding a mentor in in her field is one of the most valuable things any young woman can do," she added, noting that she always advised other women to "take yourself out of your comfort zone ... women have to be more assertive than men are accustomed to them being!"

(I researched the link for the article in which Masters said these things and have included it in the quoted passage)

When the shit hit the fan, however, it was Masters who ended up being the target for a lot of the vitriol that was hurled. She received hate mail, was targeted by bloggers blaming her as "who to blame" for the crash, and described in a British newspaper as the creator of "Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction". Partly, it would have been because when the idea of a credit derivative was first sold, it was Masters who was at the centre of the drive to sell the new product and new idea to potential investors. However, her former colleagues who had been there at the start saw it a different way:

"They are picking on her because she is a woman, because she stands out," one observed. "It's a travesty of 'justice'. Not a single one of us was involved in the transactions that later caused so much damage ... all of this group are decent human beings." Masters herself, though, tried to shrug it off. As she grew older, she had developed a sense of humor about the irony - and unpredictability - of life.

The story tells that, indeed, when the original members of the J.P. Morgan team realised what everyone else was doing, they saw that it could only end in disaster and they worked as best they could to mitigate the effects of others' hubris. I, like the unnamed colleague quoted by Tett, feel convinced that Masters was targeted not for her involvement in the business but because she was different and a threat to male power. While she herself was powerful and successful, they tolerated her because she made those around her look good too; but once there was an excuse to hate her, they did.

The joke about "if it had been Lehman Sisters, this would never have happened" resurfaced this month when Harriet Harman shot herself and feminism in the foot with her talk about not being able to trust men to have control of the reins of power. I wouldn't like to point to Masters as evidence either for or against that case. However, I would say that the story Tett tells is one of human nature and its flaws, not of masculine culture (except inasmuch as all of our society is shaped by masculine culture and Patriarchy, of course!)

I strongly recommend this book to people not just from the political and financial importance of the events it describes, but also as a very human and very compelling story in its own right. As with the best stories, even though you know how it ends, it is still exciting and gripping!

In defence of feminists' weddings

Renee has a post at Global Comment decrying 'feminist wedding' as an oxymoron. I feel compelled to challenge some of the points raised.

At this point, I should declare interests. As regular readers know, I identify as a BDSM Dominant; any woman I might end up wanting to marry would conversely identify as a BDSM Submissive or "slave". Our relationship would be based on fully informed and consensual power exchange; therefore, the wedding ceremony would very likely involve self-penned vows written to be asymmetrical in nature. The very symbolism that Renee decries would not be rejected but embraced consciously and consentingly as symbols of ownership to represent the relationship that she and I would have chosen to live together irrespective of (and indeed, in some ways in defiance of) social norms. So I have no real vested interest in the points I'm about to make, except to say that because of them the choices I and the putative future Mrs. Explodes might make will indeed be choices and not forced upon us.

Renee starts by talking about the activism role of a wedding:

It begins with a moment of apologizing for not waiting until all could legally marry, but hey, it is possible to use this archaic patriarchal ceremony to advance same sex marriage. Just use rainbow flag napkins or some cool fauxgressive symbol and your lack of solidarity will hopefully be forgotten.

I have heard about the campaign movement to ask people to forgo marriage until same-sex marriage is legal, but I honestly don't see what good it will do. Indeed, to me it sounds rather like class privilege to be able to say "we will forgo the financial and legal benefits that come from being recognised in law as a family unit".

I therefore don't see any "lack of solidarity" in choosing to go with getting married. This isn't like standing on the picket lines or anything! I don't know: maybe if there were picket lines formed outside all the major wedding venues in the US, personnel-ed 7 days a week, 52 days a year, then I might see some point in it. With my leftwing socialist upbringing, I will not cross a picket line. That's solidarity, and if brothers and sisters in the US were to form picket lines to stop weddings taking place until marriage equality existed there, then I would say that was pretty potent. But of course, that's not going to happen - too many churches, not enough progressives to picket them all, I'm guessing.

Seems to me that maybe there are better ways of going about same-sex marriage activism.

Make sure you use your wedding as an opportunity for activism and awareness, even as you participate in a ceremony that legitimizes heterosexuality and male headship. Don’t worry about wearing that glass slipper instead of Birkenstocks on your big day, perhaps if you forgo shaving your legs you can still display some sort of coded resistance. Remember, the personal is political and the more you can convince others that this is your great stand for justice, the less silly you will look when you fall into stereotypical gender roles.

You know what? Personal may be political, but sometimes I think it's fair to tell politics to just butt out! Why should everything be seen as a "great stand for justice", surely the point of a wedding is to celebrate personal happiness, and unity with one's life-partner? I think most people having weddings (whether they're feminist or not) would argue that it is a "great stand to say 'I deserve to be happy'".

Self-centred? Maybe. but every once in a while it's not merely okay to be self-centred, it's a positive good. And you know what? Women (whom us feminists are constantly reminding people are taught by society to be self-effacing and other-centred all the time) maybe need even a few MORE excuses to be self-centred and have it be socially acceptable, rather than fewer - no?

So, politics be damned - a feminist's wedding can be a great party and fun, instead of frightfully earnest!

Somehow, your man above all others managed to avoid internalizing patriarchal values,

Ah, the "nigels" of this world, so sweet! Of course, it's entirely impossible that a man might have absorbed patriarchal values (*ahem*just as much as everyone else has, including feminists*ahem*) but actually see that he, also, has a vested interest in getting rid of them - or just see that maybe equality isn't so bad after all and just want to help out. In other words, a man who has also absorbed at least a little bit of what it means to be feminist. Nah, such a creature doesn't exist (and if he did, he wouldn't get married, Or something).

so the cursory interest he is displaying in wedding invitations and seating charts, is because he is more concerned with ensuring that his attendants (notice I didn’t say groomsmen), are busy planning a feminist-geared bachelor party for him

Well, gee, is it possible that if the mythical feminist man exists, that he might have a friend who is also a feminist man? Who might therefore be expected without supervision to plan a bachelor party or stag night that was not offensive to feminist values? Regardless of my BDSM leanings, in this point I do have a vested interest. I guarantee you, I would not trust the planning of such an event for me to someone whom I was not convinced would share my values, or at least, respect them.

(Of course, when my brother got married, his "best man" was actually my sister, so how's that for subversion?)

Not to worry, you’ll get all the fancy underwear and pots and pans you will need at the other traditionally feminist event – your bridal shower

Okay, the "bridal shower" as far as I know is not a part of British wedding customs, so I can't talk about this to any great detail. But as I understand it the origin of the tradition was to provide gifts that would help the bride set up her new home? This sounds like the tradition of wedding gifts given at the wedding reception in British culture. So, in my experience, the "pots and pans" are presented equally to bride and groom alike. Fancy underwear, not so much making an appearance in British wedding gift lists. Indeed, if they did, it would most likely be joked that they were for the groom to wear anyway! This custom, of course, allows for the possibility that the groom will become the "house husband" while the bride is the main wage-earner.

If your father gets upset about being asked to forgo the tradition of “giving away” the bride, just ask your mother to join you on your jaunt down the aisle. Now you will have two people confirming that you are property that can be given away.

Or how about: explain why it's offensive to you, and that it would mar your special day. How about have the groom's father (or mother) present to give him away to you, too?

Then again, this may be something that's more of a problem for US culture than British - or it may just be I have a progressive family and friends in general. As near as I can recall, it's about a 50-50 split on weddings I've attended that involved the "giving away the bride" custom, and in each case it has been the bride's decision to include or reject it. I haven't asked my sister whether she'll be "given away" at her wedding, but I know for sure that it will b entirely her free choice whether to follow that custom.

The prevalence of registry office weddings in the UK (in 2007 two-thirds of all weddings were civil ceremonies rather than religious) may suggest that it is less of an issue here than in the USA (where in 2006 53% took place at a church); the customs of civil marriage do not conform in quite the same way to patriarchal norms, unless the couple choose to have them do so.

When you order your closest friends into hideous dresses that they will never wear again, be sure to refer to them as attendants and not bridesmaids, we would not want to give credence to the idea that all women are secretly waiting their turn to be princess for a day.

Then again, what's wrong with wanting to be princess for a day? Inasmuch as being princess for a day is simply code for "being made to feel special, the centre of attention and having the chance to be self-centred in a socially-acceptable way" I think perhaps women need more opportunities to enjoy such self-centredness: after all, we are well aware as feminists that women in patriarchal society are brought up to be self-effacing and other-centred, often to the point of harm to themselves by ignoring their own needs.

Oh yeah, and who doesn't enjoy dressing up for a special occasion? Maybe at heart I'm too much of a girlie-girl to get this, but someone wants to put me in a fancy dress to parade about and be photographed? I'm there, baby, no matter matter how "hideous" it might be! And believe me, if someone put me in a fancy dress, chances are it will be hideous with me inside it!

Perhaps, you’ll be really radical and decide to keep your own name, ...

Maybe your "nigel" will take yours too! Or maybe you'll both take some form of compound name. My best friend chose to become a hyphenated double-barrel name combining both his and her surname. Maybe you'll just invent a new surname that you both like!

But none of that has anything to do with being "radical", it's just to do with a) symbolising unity and b) choosing a new way to be that suits both partners. Honestly, this particular moment of snark seems rather pathetic.

...and we’ll all just ignore the symbol of ownership, or should I say wedding band, that goes along with this little ceremony.

At 100% of weddings that I have attended, the bride and the groom have exchanged rings. Does that, therefore, mean that the bride is symbolising her ownership of the groom also?

The Battle for Rhode Island(s sex life)

Renegade Evolution has put out a call to arms in response to the "Citizens Against Trafficking" hatchet-job composed by well-known whore-hater Donna Hughes and one Margaret Brooks who has no record of academic research involving sex work at all. Their verbal vitriol is targeted on a number of renowned sex worker allies including Elizabeth Wood, with some particularly vicious and vile implications. Being a fully enlisted footsoldier in Ren's army of the night, I'm going to have a go at fisking their abominable outpourings.

We'll start by looking at the organisation's name. It says clearly, "Citizens Against Trafficking". Is that what they're really about?

Their website's About page says:

Citizens Against Trafficking is a broad based coalition formed to combat all forms of human trafficking in 2009.

CAT recognizes the inherent harm of prostitution. CAT knows prostitution is linked to sex trafficking. CAT believes decriminalized prostitution indoors has enabled the expansion of the sex industry, an industry vulnerable to sex trafficking.

The first sentence is good (and it does mention "forced labor" in a brief aside at the very end), but we can see that this really isn't about trafficking as such - "trafficking" is in CAT-talk code for "prostitution". Trafficking is just the excuse that they've found for hating on hookers who want to be allowed to go about their business unmolested by the Law. (And if anyone is in any doubt, there is plenty of evidence from around the world that, wherever there are laws against prostitution, there are policemen who exploit and abuse prostitutes - in fact, their real name should be "Citizens in Support of Policemen Rapists", to follow the style that appears in Ms Hughes' and Ms Brooks' letter).

Their claims also ignore the fact that changes in prostitution laws do not have any real effect on trafficking, they just push it elsewhere. While the Swedish Model is sometimes trumpeted as a success in reducing the number of trafficked women in Sweden, a more holistic view reveals that although the traffickers have indeed reduced their efforts to bring women into Sweden, they haven't reduced the number of women they are taking from the sources in Eastern Europe: they are simply going to other European countries where the profit margins are higher. There is no reason to believe that if every European country had the same laws as Sweden that the actual volume of trafficking would be reduced. In fact, to make the same profits overall, the gangsters and rapists doing the trafficking would need to increase the volume. Criminalising prostitution is most definitely not an answer to the crime of trafficking. Indeed, from the information sources presented by CAT's website, the picture in Rhode Island does not seem very different from that in the rest of the USA, or indeed the Western world in general. Yes, trafficking and forced sexual labour is a major problem; however, the wider legality or otherwise of sex work seems not to have any appreciable effect upon the criminals' behaviour. Incidentally, I couldn't find any references to independent sex workers in the literature on the CAT website, only to "Korean spa-brothels" that in some cases have been shown to have connections to East Asian organised crime (and thereby, to sex trafficking from East Asia).

So, what about that letter by Donna Hughes and Margaret Brooks? Let's look specifically at that...

On July 31, 2009, a letter co-authored by Ronald Weitzer and Elizabeth Anne Wood and signed by 48 other “members of the academic community” was sent to the Rhode Island General Assembly opposing any bill banning prostitution indoors.

Citizens Against Trafficking has learned that their letter is not an isolated action, but part of a larger “Rhode Island Campaign.”

...

We will describe how members of this group are using sophisticated communications technologies to rapidly mobilize other sex radicals from around the world and how they are targeting Rhode Island legislators and media.

Well, gee, welcome to the Internet Age, darlings, in which people from around the world are able to share matters of concern. Consider this: we in the West use the internet to express concern about feminist issues in the Middle East, Asia and elsewhere, right? So this is just the same thing happening, and you don't like it because for once it's people who have concerns about you and your behaviour, instead of some foreign brown people's.

The leading signers of the letter call themselves “sex radicals,” meaning they oppose any limits on any sexual behavior as long as it has the superficial appearance of being consensual.

False. It means "...as long as it actually IS consensual." After all, sex-positive folks, or in this terminology, "sex-radicals" are cool with BDSM (as indeed Ms Hughes and Ms Brooks note later in their letter). often BDSM has the superficial appearance of non-consensuality, but in fact is fully consensual (with communication of a change in consent levels being arranged in detail beforehand). On the other hand, many things that appear consensual but aren't are specifically opposed by the sex-positive movement. In short, Donna, Margaret, you are lying.

The first co-author is Ronald Weitzer, Professor of Sociology at George Washington University, a well known advocate of allowing prostitution indoors supposedly because indoor prostitutes are happier and healthier.[1] We will show the fallacies of his statements in more detail in a later Bulletin, but just briefly we’d like to point out that most victims of trafficking are kept indoors, where they are controlled by pimps or enforcers.

Can you say "category error"? Mr Weitzner writes about "prostitutes", but Hughes and Brooks write "victims of trafficking". The two are NOT synonymous. Yes, victims of trafficking are treated that way, but not all prostitutes are victims of trafficking - even if all trafficking victims are made to work as prostitutes, it does not mean that all, or even the majority, of prostitutes are victims of trafficking. And for those who are not, being able to work indoors offers a great deal of protection.

When it comes to Elizabeth Wood, however, they get really nasty: in short order, by cherry-picked quotations taken out of context, she is accused of bestiality, child-molesting and being a flasher. The first because Ms Wood refuses to condemn zoophilia (in fact, she says outright it is not something she is interested in herself; but she confronts her distaste and taboo rather than accepting the standard view). The second because she allowed commenters (i.e. not even her own words quoted here!) to consider openly that maybe sex education could start younger and be more open than is currently considered acceptable - and in fact that our current "protectionist" approach to children's sexual development may be harmful. The last because of this post, and a discussion of attending exhibitionist events while on a sabbatical. Quoth Hughes and Brooks:

The exhibitionist’s intention is to shock and force unsuspecting people to view their nudity. Citizens Against Trafficking wonders if the administration at SUNY is aware that one of their faculty members is crossing the line into sex offender territory.

That's a definition of "flashing", not "exhibitionism". The events that Ms Wood described attending were clearly consensual, where all those present and able to witness nudity were in fact not only consenting and aware, but participating. For her little skinny-dipping event, furthermore, she was not advocating "exhibitionism" (neither the real definition nor the "flasher" definition put forward by our intrepid CAT gals). If there's a distinction between "flasher" and "exhibitionist" (and there is), then there's a much bigger distinction between either of those and "nudist". The latter is simply someone who feels that nudity is natural and should not be proscribed. Ms Wood, in her skinny-dipping episode, was making precisely that point (and indeed, makes it clear what her point was in the post!)

The most disturbing thing about this, though, is the clear threat implied by Donna Hughes and Margaret Brooks: "Citizens Against Trafficking wonders if the administration at SUNY is aware that one of their faculty members is crossing the line into sex offender territory." That is, conform with our view of sexual morality, or we will attempt to destroy your career by outing you.

They also note, as though this in itself is a telling condemnation of someone's morals, that Ms Wood blogs about practising BDSM.

Having carried their ad hominem attacks to their conclusion, the CAT gals move on to question the motives of the decriminalisation movement.

First up, "They're not even from Rhode Island!":

None of the letter signers lives or works in Rhode Island. They live in other states in the U.S. and other countries, including Canada, New Zealand, the Netherlands and Finland.

Well, gee, let's have a look at those places. The Netherlands and New Zealand might actually have something valuable to say about decriminalising prostitution because they have two different models of having ACTUALLY DONE SO, so it might be wise to listen to what they say? Finland has a law concerning sex trafficking that seems to be the model n which current UK law is being based, in which the buyer can be prosecuted if it turns out that the person from whom he purchased sexual services turns out to be a trafficking victim. Again, probably a perspective that would be relevant to the CAT cause and to the situation in Rhode Island. And yes, we in other parts of the world have a vested interest in the outcome of this debate:

This explains why sex radicals from all over the U.S. and beyond are so concerned about our debate and likely passage of a law against prostitution. We have become the battle front for the sexual radicals and their agenda.

Yes, indeed. In fact, any country or administration that proposes changes in its sex work laws automatically becomes a battleground for the international movement for sex workers' rights. Why? Well, because a) it has an impact on the campaigns elsewhere and b) because it has in impact on sex workers in that region! You're damn right we think that makes you a battle front, both in terms of the "decrim agenda" and in terms of the lives of people we care about. For the same reasons that feminists campaign about feminist issues around the world; for the same reasons that any movement operates on an international scale, so does the sex workers' rights movement. As I said before, "Welcome to the Age of the Internet!"

Incidentally, although there is some overlap between "sex radicals" (as Hughes and Brooks call us) and sex workers' rights activism, the two are NOT synonymous. The continued conflation of the two in this CAT rebuttal is disingenuous and of course designed to paint everyone who is against them as "freaks" and "perverts" etc.

Finally, the CAT rebuttal goes for the "slippery slope fallacy":

They say their letter from 50 academics is just the first phase of their “Rhode Island Campaign.” For now, they are satisfied with defending decriminalized prostitution indoors, but co-author Wood explains their future goal decriminalizing outdoor prostitution as well.

...

These prostitution advocates are apparently seeking to make the entire state of Rhode Island a red-light district.

While it is true that sex workers' rights advocates want all sex work, including outdoors prostitution, decriminalised (because that means street sex workers can actually enjoy the protection of the law instead of having to hide from it!) that is just an extension of the campaign to keep indoor sex work legal as well. Shock! Horror! Sex workers' Rights Advocates are pursuing a sex workers' rights platform!

So, how does that lead to making "the entire state of Rhode Island a red-light district."?

Well, apparently it's because Elizabeth Wood takes an evidence-based approach to sex venue zoning laws. The quote that is taken by Hughes and Brooks (out of context again), is, "Hosting sexually oriented businesses on busy main streets in our own towns would be healthy for our communities and for the businesses." ZOMG!!! It's Trooooo! She totally wants every street to be chockablock with sex dens brothels and strib clubs!!!

Oh, wait a minute, she actually said something else...

...clubs that are operating in violation of the controversial zoning rules that the city has been defending for several years tend not to be associated with crime problems...

...

Not all strip clubs are associated with crime. Studies by researcher Daniel Linz and his colleagues have demonstrated no greater number of criminal complaints around strip clubs than around demographically and economically matched areas surrounding non-strip night clubs.

...

Clubs that cannot operate within the law ought to be shut down as a result of their violations. But the law itself should not create a situation where crime is likely to occur. That is what NYCs current zoning rules would do if enforced.

Oh. Right. Not so much "red light district" as "just the occasional and law-abiding business" then.

To sum up:

The Campaign Against Trafficking is actually the "Campaign To Throw Shit at People Whose Sexuality Is Different From Ours, Try to Get Them Sacked From Their Job, Ignore The Experiences of Sex Workers and Force Our Morality on Everyone Else". Ho hum, where have I heard THAT shit before?

Just one final note: every sex-positive, "sex radical" or sex workers' rights advocate I've ever encountered has a huge hate-on for traffickers and sex-trafficking. The concerns we have are very much about the safety and protection of their victims, and finding ways that will actually help (instead of just hurting a lot of other people who weren't victims before).

Legislators and law-enforcement agencies don't want to take the traffickers on because they are frequently linked with organised crime (as indeed, the CAT website info alleges). That means doing so would cost a shitload of cash, tons of person-hours and quite possibly some lives. Rather than make a concerted effort to put an end to their operations, it is much more attractive to go for just the occasional "big bust" that involves shutting down a few brothels here and there but actually has no effect on the crimes being committed.

That is the same whether or not indoor prostitution is legal: the evidence is conclusive from watching how these news headline-grabbing raids are done.

Taking the Epistle: Ephesians

Continuing my series writing up my impressions as I read through the Letters of the New Testament, I have reached Ephesians. This is one of the most troublesome texts for a feminist and sex-positive Christian to deal with.

The NIV study notes explain that Ephesians was not written with a specific lesson or lessons (as with 1 Corinthians, Galatians etc) but rather to "expand understanding" of Christ's gospel. They also suggest that the most likely date and place of writing were around 60CE and while Paul was under house arrest in Rome. While the translators and compilers note that there are some who are sceptical about Paul's supposed authorship of the letter, their attempts to prove that it must have been him really, or to dismiss the concerns of the sceptics, seem to me to be clutching at straws rather than a rational approach to the question.

I have heard that some people believe that the awkward passages have been added later by other Christian writers who wanted support for their own views. I don't find that opinion all that credible either, because I've already seen enough evidence of Paul's mindset from his other letters to say that actually they aren't all that inconsistent with his character and beliefs. If pushed I would become resolutely agnostic concerning the authorship of Ephesians, but it is at least consistent with being all Paul's words, and it doesn't seem like it's written by more than one person in terms of the "voice" of the words. That could be an effect of the translation, of course, but while it's possible that it was someone else, I don't think it makes sense to suggest a "cut-and-paste" job by later clerics.

For the sake of continuity, though, I will accept the conventional/traditional Christian view in what follows and assume that Paul is indeed the author of the letter.

The opening chapters (ch. 1-2) place an emphasis on unity in Christ through life in Christ, and Paul elaborates on what this means later in the letter. But he opens discussing that we are all one in Christ through being saved from sin. Developing his theme, Paul then focuses specifically on unity of Jews and Gentiles, and Gentiles sharing in the Spirit (ch. 2-3). During these passages, Paul refers to himself as "the prisoner of Jesus Christ" and "a prisoner for the Lord". This is essentially pleading his case as a prisoner of conscience. Paul's tendency to self-pity probably explains why he would say it so often, and in contexts where it doesn't actally carry a lot of meaning for the text.

Oe interesting linguistic note that the NIV makes is on 3:14-15 "For this reason, I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family derives its name." the notes say that in Greek, "Father" and "family" are similar words. Paul uses this to build a theme of the chruch as God's family. He returns to this theme in an infamous passage to be discussed later...

One other theologically intriguing passage in Ch. 3 comes with 3:16-21, in which Paul prays for people being "rooted and established in love", in Christ's deep love. He also prays for people to "know this love that surpasses knowledge". There are two ways to read this, and I suspect Paul (from his other writings I've read so far) might have meant both of them. Firstly, he has a common theme that it is beyond human knowledge and wisdom to fathom the ways in which God loved humanity - only through accepting it and letting God reveal His love can we hope to understand it. The other possble meaning is that the love we find through Christ is such that it is a surer source of knowledge than human intellect. This possible meaning intrigues me because it is not the Spirit but love that becomes identified as the source of a purer knowledge - and that ties back in to the famous passage from 1 Corinthians about what love is. That, in turn, is something of a riposte to the rightwing "fundamentalist" Christians.

Chapters 4 and 5 deal more with what it means to be a part of the body of Christ, or God's family:

4:2 introduces the theme of the Peace of the Spirit: "Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love." The theme continues in 4:4-6 "There is one body and one Spirit - just as you were called to one hope when you were called - one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all."

4:8-10 introduces the concept of Christ descending to Hell to bring the Gospel even to those who had been condemned. This is an element in some of the later Creeds, emphasising that Christ came to save everyone, including those who had died before he came. However, the NIV translators take issue with this interpretation and insist that the same passage refers only to Christ's descending to Earth, and not to his later descent to Hell. I prefer the more poetic version that Christ's Word reached those who died before, because only thus could it truly be said to be universal; however, the NIV note makes a good case against this interpretation for this particular passage.

Paul moves on then to the wisdom that comes from being included in the body of Christ. 4:11-13 talks of Christ calling various types of teachers, "to prepare God's people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up". Just as in 1 Corinthians, Paul emphasies that the different types of calling are all important, leading to "we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fulness of Christ."

As Paul develops this theme, there comes a curious crossover with the ideas of Karl Marx: 4:14 says,

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming.

Which finds echoes in the way that Marx and Engels believed that the materialist dialectical approach to understanding human history could set people free from the tyranny of historical forces (e.g. market forces). Engels especially believed that the work of Marx would set us free in this way, and he used very similar language of being "infants" who are "tossed back and forth by the waves".

Paul now moves on to discussing how we should behave, and this starts to be more revealing of what Paul thinks about sexuality. 4:17-19 talks of "hardened" Gentiles (whom we should not imitate) who, "Having lost all sensitivity", have "given themselves over to sensuality, so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with continual lust for more." This cats Paul's other injunctions against "sexual immorality" and so on in a new light, because now we understand more clearly what Paul sees as the problem of such acts. It is not the acts themselves, perhaps, that are the problem, but the shallow "sensuality" chosen at the expense of spiritual and emotional connection (hence, "having lost all sensitivity" and "the hardening of their hearts"). The "continual lust for more", in Paul's mind, must surely distract from the proper mindfulness towards God, and the proper, Spirit-filled, respect for one another. My only answer to this is once again the Renegade Evolution Doctrine: "Intimacy lives in the head and the heart, not the crotch". Lived experience proves to me that it is possible to be both kinky and sensual and yet still have a proper and deep respect for God, and for our brothers and sisters in Christ. Not just my life, but the lives of many other Christians prove this to me.

One interesting thing about this passage is it explains where idiocy like the idea that focusing on the beauty of nature could be a cure for homosexuality (or for that matter, sadomasochism); this concept of "Having lost all sensitivity", and "separated from the life of God", and contrasted with, "You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires" (4:22) makes it sound as though the "fluffy", "natural" things will just displace the sexual things "and then you will be better". Real life doesn't work that way.

Paul moves on to talk about what the Spirit-filled qualities are: speaking truthfully; forgiveness ("Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry"); a man should live by not stealing but working for a living "that he may have something to share with those in need"; "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs". Paul calls on people to abandon bitterness, rage, and malice. As I said, I have seen these qualities in abundance in kinky folks and gay folks.

As he moves on, the next key passage reminds me very forcefully of Daisy Deadhead's observation on my last "Epistles" post that it's "Jewish hyperbole: Lots of Paul comments were more like, OY! WILL YOU JUST LOOK AT THIS DUMP!? GROW UP! ACH, YOU PEOPLE DISGUST ME!" Reading 5:3-5 in that light makes a lot of sense...

But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person - such a man as an idolater - has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.

Honestly, to my modern ear, this sounds exactly like the sort of language used about the "Great Unwashed", the working classes, and so on, to dismiss them and belittle them. Hey, it's not even anything new: the same themes of coarseness and "obscenity" have been used to dismiss the poorer classes for centuries! We already know that Paul was a bit of a control freak, and came from a relatively well-to-do (in modern terms, comfortable middle-class) Jewish background. Honestly, this to me just reads like Paul indulging in a little moment of pearl-clutching! As Daisy said, it translates most neatly as "OY! WILL YOU JUST LOOK AT THIS DUMP!? GROW UP! ACH, YOU PEOPLE DISGUST ME!" Daisy also notes that it's "more like a thoughtless outburst from your granddad." By 60CE, Paul must surely have been in his 60s given his background prior to becoming an apostle of Christ, so the analogy seems particularly apt here. The same thought also crossed my mind concerning 4:17-19.

***

Now we come to the infamous passage (5:22-33) that opens, "Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the saviour." There is no doubt at all that this is an incredibly Patriarchal and sexist passage. I won't call it misogynistic, because Paul calls for a reciprocal "love" and "respect" for one's wife. However, it completely affirms an infantilising gender role for women, casting the wife as helpless without her husband, needing him to care for her and feed her (provide food for her, I think, rather than cook for her).

I was hoping that when I came to this part of the Bible, I would be able to find a way to cast Paul's words in a better light than they often appear in, especially in modern (Western) society where the concept (if not the reality) of gender equality is common. There is no such light to be cast upon it in terms of Paul's words and their connection with his other teachings. While apologists for Paul point to 5:25-28 (5:28 concludes "In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.") But this is still a fundamentally debasing role for women to be cast into: Paul denies a woman her own mind and her own agency but instead makes her an appendage to her husband. Just because Paul calls husbands to labour for the benefit of his wife, it does not make Paul's model of the family into an equal or fair one. While the whole passage can (and sometimes is) taken as an expression of the ideal for a consensual D/s relationship (where "wife" is replaced with gender-non-specific "Submissive partner" and "husband" with gender-non-specific "Dominant partner"), for it to be cast (as Paul does) as the ideal template for all relationships is to my mind inappropriate. That a cult of "Christian Discipline" has used this passage to create an apologia for a particular formulation of male-dominant/female-submissive D/s relationships is also troubling (check it out at SM-Feminists). Paul certainly has caused a lot of trouble with this passage, and no mistake.

However, we don't have to leave it there. I am always saying that you can't read the Bible literally or at face value all the time. There's something deeper to understanding Paul's words here.

Paul, we know, came from a strong Jewish background. The analogy that is used in 5:22-33 is that, as a wife is to her husband, so the church is to the saviour. This imagery is not new to St Paul. It recurs often in the Old Testament Prophets (most notably in the book of Hosea, in which Hosea's actual wife and her adultery are represented as symbolic of the Jewish people and their rebelliousness against God's commandments), and is used by some to explain away the appearance of what would otherwise have to be interpreted as a book of porn in the Bible: the Song of Solomon. In casting his analogy, Paul is calling on an ancient tradition of using marriage as a means of illustrating the relationship of God and humanity. But Paul, ratehr typically of him it seems from the way he uses Jewish traditional texts throughout the other letters, goes a step further - indeed, possibly a step too far. Because now he has cast his analogy he then inverts it to say, effectively, "Therefore, the husband-wife relationship should be made as close as possible to that of God and church".

The NIV footnotes bear out this interpretation of what Paul is doing. In the note to 5:32 (which sums up the analogy and how it reveals a "mystery" at the heart of Christ's relationship to the church), the compilers and translators record:

The profound truth of the union between Christ and his 'bride', the church, is beyond unaided human understanding. It is not that the relationship of husband and wife provides an illustration of the union of Christ and the church, but that the basic reality is the latter, with marriage a human echo of that relationship.

Again, this has the effect minimising and infantilising a woman's intelligence and capacity to understand. But it gives us a clue as to where Paul is coming from, and what sense we can make of what would otherwise be an intolerable passage (dehumanising, as it does, half of humanity!)

It is important to note that this version of married life does not come from Christ - in the Gospels, the equivalent relationship analogy is depicted using a Centurion and his men (Luke 7:1-10, my preferred justification over Ephesians 5:22-33 in Scripture for the D/s relationship). It comes from Paul and the Jewish tradition.

The NIV footnotes explain also that in 5:22, "Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord." the verb "submit" here in Greek does not carry the connotation of "obey", but rather concerns "yielding of rights"; one might also infer from the later passage that it stands for allowing oneself to be cared for rather than trying to care for oneself (this makes even more sense in light of the relationship analogy that Paul uses - because Christ teaches us to surrender our cares to God because we cannot bear them all ourselves). Further, it explains that "as to" should not be seen as "in the same way" but rather should be understood as "because". Thus the intended meaning is given as "Wives, submit to your husbands because you submit to the Lord" (and not "Wives, submit to your husbands in the same way as you would to the Lord").

There is no escaping from the problems of Ephesians 5:22-33; Paul was too deeply embedded and immersed in a heavily Patriarchal society. We can, however, understand it in terms of a) Paul's Jewish tradition, drawing on the analogy used by the Prophets of the OT, and the Song of Solomon; b) Paul's own tendency to seek and orderly world, and therefore his wish to make the analogy closer to perfect by reordering the marriage relationship more exactly in line with the image he wants it to present in his analogy; and c) in our minds erasing the gendered terms and seeking not the temporal commandments that Paul gives but rather the "basic reality" or truth that his analogy is supposed to reveal, about humanity's relationship to God. Namely, that we cannot and should not seek to stand on our own but should submit ourselves to Christ's care.

The theme of relationshps and how they should play out, is continued in the next short passages. The same basic principles apply: Paul does nothing to address the basic inequality of the relationship as it exists (and indeed seems to embrace that inequality) but instead is sure to place a burden of responsibility and kindness upon the powerful side:

6:1-4 deals with the parent-child relationship. Paul calls for the obedience of children, pointing out that the 5th Commandment (and, says Paul, the first that comes with a promise) is "Honour your father and mother." In return, Paul also commands, "Fathers, do not exasperate your children" - the NIV footnotes explain that this was an injunction against any unreasonable behaviour or demands. the parent is supposed to respond to the obedience of a child with a caring and giving attitude, just as the husband is supposed to care for and love his submitting wife. In a similar way, 6:5-9 outlines a slaves' obedience (to be performed not as service to their masters, but "as if you were serving the Lord."), but also lays responsibilities and commandments on the masters: "...treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favouritism with him." In other words, if you treat your slave as a slave and as lower than oneself, then you will be judged for it by Christ in heaven, because to Christ that slave is your equal.

If any passage speaks to this being Paul's authorship then it is probably the final major passage of the Letter: 6:10-20, also known as "The Armour of Heaven". It is wonderfully poetic in exactly the same way as 1 Corinthians ch 13. It is also full of that Jewish hyperbole that Daisy mentioned! The shorter version is "In hard times, your faith, the Spirit, and God's Word will be a source of strength to you through prayer." But that would be too simple. Paul just has to wax lyrical on the theme for a whole paragraph!