Vileness abounds: "Autism Speaks" adverts suck

Via TrinityVA:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Autistic Community Condemns Autism Speaks’ “I am Autism” Campaign

“We are the true voices of Autism,” say Autistic adults; Campaign spreads stigma, prejudice and inaccurate information; ASAN vows protest of upcoming Autism Speaks fundraisers

Washington, DC (September 23^rd, 2009) - The autism community reacted in horror today to Autism Speaks’ new “I am Autism” campaign, presenting Autistic people as kidnap victims and burdens on their family members and communities.

“I am autism. I have no interest in right or wrong. I will plot to rob you of your children and your dreams….And if you’re happily married, I will make sure that your marriage fails. Your money will fall into my hands, and I will bankrupt you for my own self-gain,” says the “I am Autism” video, released yesterday and created by Academy Award-nominated director Alfonso Cuarón and Grammy-nominated songwriter/producer Billy Mann. [Full text is available here.]

“This is the latest in a series of unethical fundraising strategies adopted by Autism Speaks,” said Ari Ne’eman, an adult on the autism spectrum and President of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN), “This type of fear mongering hurts Autistic people, by raising fear and not contributing in the slightest to accurate understanding of the needs of Autistic adults and children.” ASAN’s Columbus, Ohio chapter has already made arrangements to protest Autism Speaks’ upcoming local fundraising walk and other ASAN chapters will be making similar arrangements shortly, said Ne’eman.

In addition to relying on fear and pity mongering to raise funds, the Autism Speaks video repeats frequently referenced claims of higher than average divorce rates amongst parents of autistic children. However, a 2008 study conducted by HarrisInteractive for Easter Seals in cooperation with the Autism Society of America found divorce rates for parents of Autistic children lower than those for families with no children with disabilities. The video also relies heavily on the idea of rapidly increasing autism rates. Another new study, released the same day as the video, by the British Government’s National Health Service found that autism rates among adults are the same as amongst children, indicating that the popular “epidemic” claim of rapidly increasing autism incidence is likely false.

“This video doesn’t represent me or my child,” said Dana Commandatore, a parent of an Autistic child living in Los Angeles, California. “Whatever the challenges that autism may bring, my son deserves better than being presented as a burden on society. Autism Speaks’ misrepresentation makes my life and the life of my child more difficult.”

“Autism Speaks seems to think that parents' embarrassment at their kids' meltdowns is more important than autistic kids' pain,” writes Sarah, an Autistic blogger at the blog Cat in a Dog’s World, “Autistic people deserve better than what Autism Speaks has to offer.”

The new video is reminiscent of the December 2007 NYU Child Study Center “Ransom Notes” campaign, which consisted of faux ransom notes claiming to be from an anthropomorphized disability which had kidnapped a child. Those ads were withdrawn after two and a half weeks, due to widespread outcry from self-advocates, parents and professionals and the condemnation of twenty-two national disability rights organizations, led by the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. The Ransom Notes controversy was reported on by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Good Morning America, The Washington Post and other major media outlets. ASAN announced plans to work with the cross-disability community on a similar response to Autism Speaks’ campaign.

“The voices of real autistic people, and of families who do not subscribe to the presentation of their family members as something sinister and criminal, clearly do not matter to Autism Speaks,” said Paula Durbin-Westby, an adult on the autism spectrum in Virginia, who serves on the board of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. “Our community is furious about Autism Speaks’ continued exploitation and will be taking action.”

The press release speaks for itself, I think. The organisation being about self-advocacy, I'm not interested in adding much more, I post this just to get the word out a little bit further, and let people know that the sort of thing "Autism Speaks" are doing is utterly Not Okay.

(I've trimmed off the "selected early blog responses" section at the bottom of the release, there's a couple of really good ones, but read them at TrinityVA's if you want).

FICTION: Cyborg Sleeps: Part 5

Part 4

First up - I keep posting these segments of the story as it develops, but so far I haven't had any feedback. Come on, guys - let me know if you're interested, if you want more, what you want to happen or think might happen, what does or doesn't work well in your opinions. I'm enjoying writing this, but it would really make a difference if I knew people were actually reading along and hoping for the next instalment, you know?

Anyway, this part reveals the basics of Asira's creation story. We also learn why she got so angry with Priestess Wainwright (who has a first name, but that will be revealed much further down the line).

When I first imagined Director Gattell, I pictured him as a Black man (I haven't given much of a description of him yet, but I am sure the moment will come for that), which is why he has memories of racial discrimination from his own past to compare with Asira's experiences. Although I don't expect it to come up in the course of the story, it might be that he was given the post as Director of the cyborg facility because the powers that be expected it to be a huge failure. Its success while he's been in charge has probably earned him a respect that most others of his skin colour would not receive otherwise.

Text notes done with, let's continue the story:

Part 5

Samuel Gattell reviewed once more the extensive file for Agent Asira Y. He knew her to be an immensely professional operator, whose skills were second-to-none, which made her behaviour in the waking room and in the lobby seem out of place. As director of a controversial programme on which already a number of important organisations were beginning to depend in crises, he did not like it when integral parts of that programme seemed out of sync with the rest. Asira's menacing of Priestess Wainwright was certainly a point of friction that needed to be examined, and dealt with in a more permanent and effective way than merely warning off the cyborg agent.

Although he made a point of examining intimately the details of every one of his team's files, and refreshing that knowledge regularly, it always paid to have the documents in front of him when something like this cropped up. He started, once again, at the beginning.

Asira's parents were immigrants from Indonesia while they were still young, and had been naturalised citizens by the time she was born. A highly accomplished scholar in high school, she had surprised many by eschewing the proffered scholarships to university and instead enlisting with the army at the age of 18. Gattell remembered his own struggles in higher education due to racial prejudice, and wondered if the young Asira had faced similar troubles. The ethos of the army as a unified force where all men of equal rank were treated equally, must have seemed very attractive to her.

The file told the story of her disillusionment in the ranks. All men might be treated equally, but an Asian woman who, according to the details of her training scores, frequently showed up the inadequacies of her fellow intake, was most certainly not equal. It was this report that had led Gattell six years ago to recruit Asira to the newly-formed cyborg development project, as the programme had then been known. For two years, she had toughed it out and been determined to prove that she deserved a place in the army on an even footing with everyone else – little realising that her ever-greater efforts were a part of what made everyone else so determined to drag her down and drive her out. Sam thought back to his first interview with her, and remembered realising that unless something changed in her life, she was probably on the verge of suicide. It was her strength that made him want her. It was, unfortunately, her willingness to self-destruct that had made her an ideal candidate for the earliest conversions, when it was still not sure how well anything would work out.

A year of intensive surgery and deep magic had followed for the twenty-year-old woman, much of both involving a great deal of suffering. But at the end, she had emerged as Agent Asira Y, cyborg. Her obvious intelligence and her acquired skills in the military arts had enabled her to master her new body and powers far more quickly than anyone in the programme had dared to anticipate, and as she did so her confidence and self-image had expanded accordingly. Each successful assignment had brought her greater respect and greater ability.

The Director steepled his fingers and considered this. Had Priestess Wainwright's apparent lapse in concentration triggered a memory of those earlier times, when Pvt Asira had been close to killing herself? Seeing her as she was now, and comparing it to her willingness to die if the experiment had gone wrong, he wondered whether now that she had survived those dark times she was that much more protective of her ability to shape her own destiny. It could not be easy to surrender one's soul to the suspended animation system, and leave one's body vulnerable like that. And he did, indeed, know that cyborgs feared above all else the possibility of being caught in between. Nobody knew or could say what it would be like, but all were agreed that the psyche would be torn to shreds as the spirit world and the physical world each clung on to what it could get. The worst madness of the waking mind could surely be but a shadow of that torment.

Asira's fear was completely unfounded. Everyone knew that there was no chance of a Wakening being disturbed. Both magical and technological protections mitigated against it. But the dread was still real. He had already explained carefully to the new Priestess exactly why her conduct had been inappropriate and why Asira had been angry. The Priestess had explained that she had not been in the magical trance state of spellcasting but merely meditating in the calm and quiet of the Wakening Room to clear her mind after being a conduit for the memories of so many other people as they passed into Asira's head. The Director had considered telling this to the cyborg, but he knew that she would neither have accepted such an explanation, nor the assurance that Wainwright would know better next time. Besides, if she had a grievance with anyone, she knew that she had to discuss it with him first and not try to take matters into her own hands like this.

So, what now? He sighed, considering the possibilities. He could let things run their course and see what developed over the next few days. He could try bringing Asira and Wainwright together in a formal grievance proceeding (although that in itself would be tricky since the paperwork would require that Wainwright be described as the one bringing the grievance, since Asira hadn't reported it to him but acted on her own). He could try to engineer a meeting between the two in controlled circumstances, either with or without their prior knowledge.

The Director thought about the relationship between Asira and Priest Jacobs. He knew there was tension there, but that the two of them respected one another's professionalism. Both Asira and Wainwright were highly accomplished professionals in their field, Wainwright being one of the youngest clinical magicians ever to make it to Priestess grade. He could allow this one to play out on its own for a little while at least, he thought.

Then he looked again at some of the requisition requests coming in from the team in conference room D, and reconsidered.

FICTION: Cyborg Sleeps part 4

Part 3

A few notes on this episode.

Asira's curvaceous 5'4" 145lb figure should be read as resembling a 145lb woman's figure. Because of her cybernetic and magical add-ons, she probably weighs something different, probably slightly more, than a woman of similar appearance would.

"Warlock": I'm well aware of the derivation meaning "deceiver" or "oathbreaker", but in Asira's universe those meanings are long-forgotten, and the word is used because of the syllable "war" to mean a magician who specialises in using magic as a weapon of war - a military magician or a magician who is in the armed forces. The insignia that Asira notices denotes that the man is a magician, and shows his military rank.

The weapons Asira uses are real weapons from this world, that I looked up on Wikipedia. As noted, the Desert Eagle, although a favourite for computer game programmers, is not really useful for humans in the real world due to a small magazine and massive recoil making it hard to fire accurately several times. The comment about wild bears was drawn from the Wikipedia page. According to Wikipedia, the smaller handgun was designed for special forces - the CT stands for "Compact Tactical", but also is sometimes taken as "counter-terrorism".

I'm trying to keep the setting slightly ambiguous for the time being, so I have avoided being specific about agencies and organisations - the National Crime Squad was a British designation in the police force, but in Asira's universe it is more likely to be a parallel with the real world's FBI.

I'm not entirely sure if I've got the nutritional reasons right for Asira's love of spag bol, but it sounded plausible when I wrote it.

Part 4

Asira suppressed a sigh as she saw the men in the conference room respond to her entrance. Her dark, Asian skin coupled with a curvaceous 5'4” 145lb figure (enhanced by the enlarged breasts that hid magical properties) had a seemingly inevitable effect on human males, even when shrouded by the loose and casual clothing she'd acquired for this meeting. Her eyes changed colour again, this time showing a very bright red, and she watched them start as she used this simple trick to remind them of what she was. She knew a few of them would still have fantasies about a woman like her, but she also knew that if she actually offered to make them come true, suddenly they would lose all interest. Besides, she was here to work, not find a fucking partner. Her attractiveness came in useful on missions sometimes, of course, but it was a nuisance when men couldn't focus on the task in hand. She brushed her short-length hair behind her ears and and clapped her hands sharply once.

“Right, guys, what do you need me for?”

The gathering included intelligence experts, a psychological profiler, equipment specialists and magic analysts (she noted that one of them bore the military insignia of a warlock). These were to be her team for introducing her to what the mission involved, and then helping her make sure she had everything she needed in terms of information, weapons and sorcery to be able to carry it through. If she needed to, she would be able to requisition the services of other experts as well, but she knew that the people who set up cyborg missions were usually pretty good at foreseeing what talents a particular assignment called for. The briefing was being run by an officer from the agency that had called for a cyborg intervention, who would explain what it was all about, and had assigned the intelligence experts to the case. Although reports would undoubtedly be made back to this man by the analysts he'd selected for the job, once this meeting was over it would be down to Asira and her team to make everything happen, and he would go back to whatever he did with his time when he wasn't here. With over 50 missions in her 5 years, Asira was adept at getting every detail she needed about the mission and its objectives from the hirer at the first briefing. It helped that most of the information that he would cover was sure to be a repetition of the added memories that Asira had received when she was wakened – one part of this process was aways to check that the memories had been transferred properly.

The first session was routine, inasmuch as any of these assignments could be considered routine given that cyborgs were only ever brought in to deal with the exceptional, or exceptionally difficult, tasks. Although in many ways the cyborgs made the perfect soldier, in practice they were much too expensive to replace, meaning that front-line duties were not a practical deployment for them. Special Forces and espionage of various sorts were the most common uses for someone like Asira, although sometimes in a particularly challenging or dangerous criminal investigation the National Crime Squad would call upon the cyborg facility as well.

After a couple of hours, Asira was confident she had everything she needed from the hirer, so she and her team for the mission got down to the business of planning how she would go about achieving their objectives. After another two hours of thrashing out their first thoughts and testing them for problems, Asira dismissed her experts for lunchtime and to spend the afternoon checking that they had the necessary resources to put together the mission outline agreed so far: “7pm back here, guys. Then we'll see what wrinkles we need to sort out. Let's go eat!”

Asira was feeling more relaxed now that she was actually getting work done, and her initial synthetic anxiety was no longer bothering her as much. Instead, she was aware of being incredibly hungry. A month or so of magically suspended animation still took some food energy to sustain the body, and it was always wisest to go to sleep with an empty digestive system – other biological processes also having a tendency to carry on working regardless of her consciousness inhabiting her body or not. Consequently, once the synthetic urges were mollified, Asira always had a ravenous appetite following an awakening.

Her favourite first meal was always spaghetti bolognese: high in complex carbohydrates and protein, it stocked up her body on the key nutrients that it craved. She would have a mountain of the stuff on a vast plate and methodically chow down on it until every last strand was gone, her belly feeling as though it was visibly distended by the quantity she had ingested. The first defecation after waking was never a pleasant experience, but Asira felt on balance that this was the most satisfying way to go.

Her team being busy for the afternoon, Asira had nothing specific to do for her mission until they reported back to her later. While she still felt an urgency to get on with it, she knew that her impatience would achieve nothing, so she set about some basic useful tasks of her own, to keep herself in top condition in her skills. Exercise after such an enormous meal would, of course, be extremely unwise, not to mention uncomfortable, so Asira made her way to the firing range instead.

Although externally, Asira's arms looked and felt identical, her left arm's skin and texture were entirely artificial, and concealed a highly powerful mechanical endoskeleton integrated with her organic nervous system. As a result, she had no problem firing the massive .50 AE Desert Eagle handgun and, when on a mission where such a bulky piece could be used, it was her favourite because nobody ever got up after being hit by one of those rounds - .50 calibre rounds more often being used to stop charging wild bears than humans. The capacity of her left arm to absorb the recoil made it possible for her to fire the enormous pistol one-handed with no loss of accuracy.

In her right hand as she entered the stall, Asira held a much smaller weapon, a HK UCP45CT. Designed to be easily concealed and highly accurate, it was a much more conventional weapon in her field of work for humans, and well-suited to her needs on more conventional missions. She liked to have two weapons, and was practised in firing the conventionally-sized handguns in tandem. Her favourite trick, though, was to carry the Desert Eagle and the UCP at the same time, and using the accuracy that he enhanced eyesight afforded her, fire five shots in rapid succession marking out a tightly-bunched cross on the target, then place a single .50 AE round from the Desert Eagle smack in the middle of the cross. There weren't many parties in the world where you got to show off that particular talent, though.

After working out with her favoured handguns, Asira moved outdoors to practice with the sub-machineguns, automatic rifles and sniper rifles that were available to her. Since military operations were rare for cyborgs, the likelihood of needing any of these was small, but it still paid to have the skills ready in case they were needed. Asira believed she owed her life to her practice in the use of shoulder weapons after an espionage mission had gone bad and she had been forced to escape by any means available. She had stolen an automatic rifle from the enemy facility she had infiltrated and, using accurate fire to pick off pursuers and discourage others from following, managed to find her way back to friendly territory. Ever since, she had been adamant that a cyborg should know all forms of fighting and all forms of weaponry. Since their missions were always exceptional and difficult, the chances that a change of plans would be needed were that much higher.

Also, being adept with a sniper rifle gave her an extra dimension whenever a mission called for assassination.

Having given herself time to digest the food she'd eaten earlier, Asira finally hit the gym with about two hours before her team were due to report back. Although her left arm was entirely mechanical, the enhancements in her other limbs were much more subtle, and she still depended a great deal on basic biological muscle power to succeed. She needed plenty of both aerobic and anaerobic exercise to keep herself primed for service, and she always made sure she found time to get sessions in when she was awake. It was likely she would be back in the gym later that night when all the humans were sleeping.

At 7pm precisely, back in her sweatshirt and jogging pants, Asira arrived at conference room D towelling her hair after a shower to wash the sweat from her revitalised limbs.

This is totally fun:



Not got a lot more to say about it. I just love the silliness, and giggly sense of fun, it's the sort of time that I like to spend with people.

FICTION: Cyborg Sleeps part 3

Part 1

Part 2

I don't have many notes to add about Part 3, except to add that the "bespectacled monolith" of Director Gattell is intended to be read as tall and broad. It'd be quite scary for a human woman if he grabbed her by the arm and dragged her around! Asira is not (fully) human.

With that, here's the story:

Part 3

Director Samuel Gattell was waiting for Asira outside the conference centre of the complex. His expression was ominous. The fact that he was there at all was ominous, too – normally, a newly woken cyborg would simply ask at the reception desk which conference room he or she was scheduled to attend for her briefing and planning. For the Director himself to be anxious to meet her before she attended the briefing, meant that something was seriously wrong. Asira didn't let this observation change her stride, but she did privately wonder what it could be.

“You and I need a little talk!” growled the bespectacled monolith of a man, taking Asira by her mechanical left arm. She scowled as he did so, well aware that she could kill him in an instant with that arm if she chose, but he was doing it to emphasise his rank and importance relative to her. He was not, in Asira's opinion, an evil man, but he was a skilled manipulator and he had to be to run the facility effectively. He was not ashamed of using his skills always. He guided Asira through the sliding doors into the reception area. Asira noted that there was no receptionist – Gattell had set this up deliberately.

“That little stunt you pulled on Priestess Wainwright was absolutely NOT acceptable, Asira! Good recruits to this facility are hard to find, and I do not need you or anyone else making life difficult for the new girl. You WILL keep your attitude under control, do you understand?” His voice dropped for the last sentence, but the anger in his tone was heightened by this.

Asira turned her cold, mechanical eyes on him, colouring them a deep red as she regarded his face.

“She is NOT a good recruit. Her lack of control is not acceptable to me, and would not be acceptable to any of us. What if she had been startled in the midst of the invocation spell, instead of after it was completed? I would have been better off dead, and you know it. If my 'stunt' shakes her into getting her act together, it was well worth it!”

“Priestess Wainwright, though young, has excellent skills and is as deserving of respect as everyone else on my base. You will remember this, and you will act accordingly. Do you understand me, Agent Asira?”

“I understand you, sir!” Asira spat the last word.

Gattell released her arm, and simply said, “Conference room D.” He left the centre and Asira scowled after him, but passed through the inner door heading for conference room D and her briefing. Behind the inner door, she found the receptionist, a young man named Connell. He quailed visibly as he caught sight of Asira's expression, and scurried to attend his desk once more. Asira ignored him. She had a mission to carry out, and conference room D was where that would begin.

Meet the Meat Shield

Ren has a great post about what it's like to be the one whom people see and target on an issue, called "Meat Shield". Ren explains that the term comes from online gaming. It seems that in any MMORPG, the "meatshield" character is the one that has a ton of hitpoints and therefore can wade in ahead of the rest of the team and get all the baddies shooting or hacking at him or her, while everyone else hides behind him and picks off the baddies at will. In other words, it's the poor sap who goes over the top first, and whose body absorbs the impact of the bullets so the people behind him don't. Meatshield = mobile sandbag.

On issues like sex workers' rights, BDSM rights and such, Ren has apparently pegged me as a meatshield type. At first, I thought this version of me was a bit wonky, but thinking about it I realised that it's true. I am the big, lumbering bastard who heads in without a thought for life or limb and consequently becomes the figurative bullet-magnet. Ren talks about the meatshield sometimes being a deliberate tactic in controversial debates and issues, and wonders about volunteers but there's nothing deliberate about me. I don't volunteer for it. I'm just too dumb and pigheaded to not do it (in a way, my loyalty outlined in "My Tribe" is part and parcel of the same mentality). Even when I know what's likely to happen, poor, simple-minded Snowdrop has to stick my head above the parapet and start firing, and let the shit fly right back at me. If that sounds a little bit self-pitying, then it probably is and I make no apology for that. But I know I can't change the way I am on this and to try would be dishonest. I am a dumb, open, simple-hearted creature and as such I was more or less born to be a meatshield (it helps that I can be one almighty stubborn arsehole, too). No point getting upset over it, I am what I am. And a lot of the time, I kind of revel in meat shield-hood. Whatever else may happen, you at least know people are taking notice of you if they're hurling their vitriol at you!

Equally, though, Rootietoot's observation holds painfully true: "I think being the meatshield would wear a body out…one could only do it for so long before one had to simply back off and let another person take up the flag." As Ren says, sometimes, "being the Meat Shield can suck. There are times you end up face down with the baddies stomping all over you while the rest of the team runs for their lives." God knows there have been times when I have withdrawn from the debate because the slings and arrows of others' outrage have just become too much to bear. The Good Lord knows I have enough mental health issues to deal with thanks to my depression, that really a sensible person (which isn't me - see above re: dumb, simple, etc) would say fuck this for a game of soldiers and retire for good. I am not that person, and I guess God made me the way I am for a reason, but it's not a pretty way to be.

Ren also ponders the fate of those who are nominated as meat shields by others - the ones who end up in the role without any volition of their own (for all I have no choice in the matter, at least I know I'm doing it because of me and not because of anyone else). Daisy Deadhead's post about Norma McCorvey, the "Roe" in "Roe vs Wade", instantly sprang to mind as describing an example of a meat shield being nominated by others and then left in the dirt. Arguably, a fictional version could be found in Robin Morgan's "Dry Your Smile", in the way that Laurence Millman describes his relationship with famous feminist author Julian Travis. In the story, the relationship - predictably, given its meat shield status - ends up crashing and burning in horrible fashion. I am sure others will be able to think of better examples than these.

One other thought, which may or may not be crazy: is Barack Obama a massive meatshield in US politics?

Reply from Green Party leader and MEP Caroline Lucas

A week ago I emailed Green Party leader and my local MEP Caroline Lucas, concerning the debate that her party had held at their annual party conference on the possibility of abandoning the decriminalisation (New Zealand) model of prostitution law for the "criminalise demand" (Swedish) model.

Her reply was considered, reasonable and in-depth, and I certainly appreciate that she took the time to construct it (I am sure she had a researcher compose a good portion, but to me it has the feel of a genuine letter). however, there were more than a few problems I had with it and I have sent a reply in return (I will give the text of my reply at the end).

I was very unhappy that she adopted the "buying and selling of human beings" as a definition of all prostitution.

Her appraisal of the situation in Sweden is taken directly from the version told by the Swedish government and seems ignorant of how Swedish sex workers feel about the law.

The general way in which sexworker-by-choice is dismissed, and the assumption that sex workers' rights advocates are uninterested in the plight of street sexworkers or coerced/trafficked women.

The assumption that the difference in attitudes to sex work between men and women and the possessive attitudes of men towards their female relatives are a reason in themselves to perpetuate sex work as a special category.

Many of the same ideas and (mis)conceptions that seem to plague many progressive/left-wing thinkers on sex work issues.

Here's her email - please discuss in comments and let me know if I've missed anything:

I would like to thank you for getting in touch following the debate at Green Party conference on the issue of our current policy on prostitution.

While I fully accept the concerns that you express about the Swedish model of decriminalising supply and criminalising demand, and appreciate that these stem primarily from a desire to better protect those who work within the sex trade, I find myself disagreeing with you over the best way to achieve this aim.

Current laws firmly place the criminality of prostitution on the women. With other illegal activities such as drugs, both the supply and the demand are criminalised. These laws fail vulnerable women, especially those who have been trafficked into the UK or any woman who has been coerced or forced to some extent into prostitution. According to government statistics, 4,000 women and children have been trafficked into prostitution in the UK at any one time, but the police suggest the real figure is far higher - studies have found that at least 70% of women working in UK brothels are trafficked from places such as Africa, Asia and eastern Europe.

I agree that the overwhelming priority must be to improve access to healthcare and support services for those who work in the sex industry. But at the heart of this debate is the use of the term “consensual sex”. Consent is an incredibly complex thing. Research suggests that a very high proportion of prostitutes are drug users — 95 per cent are drug addicts according to one study, while another suggested that 87 per cent use heroin. Many have experienced abuse and extreme poverty. I have no doubt that a minority of sex workers have made a fully informed career choice to enter the industry. But the evidence suggests that these are in the minority. It does not help that media misrepresentations of commercial sex as glamorous or easy fail to show the grim realities of many. As Helen Atkins from the Poppy Project in London puts it, “for most women involved in prostitution, the reality is a cycle of violence and coercion, perpetuated by poverty and inequality.”

The Poppy Project, incidentally, has done some excellent research into brothels and sex work. They are more or less against decriminalisation, because of the brutality of conditions they have discovered in the trade. In new research on brothels in London, high risk services such as unprotected sex were available for as little as £10 in 921 venues, where there were 77 different ethnicities. Vast majority of brothel flats were in residential buildings

You might also be interested in a recent government survey, conducted by Ipsos/Mori, showed substantial disparities between men's and women's views of prostitution. While 61 per cent of women thought buying sex was unacceptable, only 42 per cent of men agreed with them. However, when men were asked if they would accept a female relative selling sex, 60 per cent said no. When you ask most men if they would accept, under any circumstances, their wife, daughter or sister entering into prostitution, how many men would say yes?

I have been presented with a number of examples from overseas where government policies to criminalise the purchase of sex have found some success, and Sweden is one of them. Sweden criminalised all buying of sex almost 10 years ago, after a feminist campaign prompted by the murder of a street prostitute. The law prohibiting the purchase of sexual services came into force as part of the larger Violence Against Women Act, with the parliament defining prostitution as a serious form of male violence against women and children - harmful not only to the individuals involved, but also to society at large.

When this law was introduced, there were an estimated 2,500 women in prostitution in Sweden. Today there are reported to be around 500. The number of women trafficked into Sweden is now between 200 and 500 a year - the lowest tally in Europe. Moreover, because sex workers are not themselves criminalised there is still the scope to put in place measures to protect them as best as is possible. I agree with you that any successful policy must go hand in hand with measures to address sex workers’ ability to leave sex work and am confident that the Green Party’s policies for a Citizens Income and on social welfare more generally can deliver in this respect.

Another country that has targeted punters is South Korea. Here, the move towards criminalisation began in 2002 after brothel fires in which 14 women died - it transpired that the brothel doors had been locked from the outside by pimps and were only ever opened to allow buyers entry. In 2004 the South Korean government criminalised the demand side of the sex trade. I am told that this has massively reduced the sex trade in a country where prostitution once brought in an estimated $21bn a year. Now the red light areas are largely deserted, and bed spaces in the many government-funded refuges for former prostitutes are usually full (the South Korean government has dedicated substantial resources to helping women leave the industry, something Britain has yet to do.)

Even the Dutch - long notorious for their legalised brothels - are moving towards increased regulation of prostitution. For years, the Dutch claimed that legalising brothels had been a solution to the myriad problems associated with the sex industry. Then last year, Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen said that legalisation had been a failure.

In light of this evidence, I support the decriminalisation of all those involved in prostitution, the wiping of criminal records for loitering and soliciting and an end to the punishment and stigmatising of those involved in this industry. But for those who have choices and freedoms, both financial and social, and choose to exploit them by turning other human beings into objects to be bought, I think freedoms should be removed. Therefore I support the Nordic model that decriminalises all those in the industry and instead criminalises punters, therefore targeting demand and aiming to reduce the demand for people in prostitution. This must go alongside heavy investment in exit and support services for those in the industry, something I know you support too. Sweden, for example, in 2008 announced £20 million to be spent on this.

The Green Party prides itself on envisaging alternatives to the status quo, whether it be an end to unsustainable capitalism, animal testing, or flagrant human rights abuses. I for one would like to imagine an alternative world in which prostitution, the buying and selling of human beings, has no place. The process of changing our current policy is a long one and members of the Party will all have the opportunity to debate and vote on the issue, and I am keen to ensure that all arguments are fully heard. Thank you for taking the time to write to me and I hope you now have a clearer insight into the thinking behind my desire for a more progressive prostitution policy.

Here is the reply I sent:

Dear Ms Lucas MEP,

Thank you for your reply to my last email. I greatly appreciate the time and effort that you put into it and I am glad to have a political representative who takes my concerns seriously in this way.

As you say, the issues surrounding sex work are very complex and the devil is very often in the detail. There are several points on which I would like to respond:

Firstly, I am curious that you mention the Ipsos/Mori poll. I was aware of this already, and my feeling is that it hints that there is still a fundamental problem in the way that society views sex and sexuality in general (and not just sex work). Attitudes are well-known to have a strong and negative double-standard so that a sexually active man will be lauded as a "stud" while a sexually active woman can be derided as a "slut". As I am sure you are aware, research shows that this is still a huge problem in terms of obtaining convictions in rape trials. But I do not think that policy should be chosen to reflect these social attitudes but instead to challenge and hopefully eventually educate people away from them. After all, the legalisation of gay sex in 1967 came well before there was any appreciable shift in British attitudes to homosexuality (and indeed, there is still some way to go on that issue). I am sure that, for example, if those same men who objected to the idea of their wife, daughter or sister being in sex work were asked about them choosing a career in the armed forces, that a similar result might be found. That does not mean that women should not serve in the armed forces, but that men's possessive attitudes towards women need to be altered. I would look for the Green Party to lead the way with progressively working to de-stigmatise sex work in general, and prostitution in particular, so that harmful attitudes towards prostitutes can be much decreased in future.

My own involvement in the debate is thanks to several of my friends and acquaintances who are or have been sex workers, and some of whom are members of the International Union of Sex Workers, the English Collective of Prostitutes, the Sex Workers Outreach Project (USA) and other sex workers' rights advocate groups. All of these groups are run by and for their members, who work in the sex industry, mostly as prostitutes or as performers in pornography. All these groups are firm in their support for full decriminalisation (as is the Sexworkers and Allies Network in Sweden - SANS). It seems that wherever sex workers are given their own voice, this is the answer that they give.

Some very useful resources for understanding how sex workers view legislation concerning their lives and livelihoods can be found at the following sources:

Harlot's Parlour (UK-based but with comment from other countries)
Bound Not Gagged (more USA-centric)

I will reference other sources at relevant points in my reply.

But at the heart of this debate is the use of the term “consensual sex”. Consent is an incredibly complex thing. Research suggests that a very high proportion of prostitutes are drug users — 95 per cent are drug addicts according to one study, while another suggested that 87 per cent use heroin. Many have experienced abuse and extreme poverty. I have no doubt that a minority of sex workers have made a fully informed career choice to enter the industry. But the evidence suggests that these are in the minority. It does not help that media misrepresentations of commercial sex as glamorous or easy fail to show the grim realities of many. As Helen Atkins from the Poppy Project in London puts it, “for most women involved in prostitution, the reality is a cycle of violence and coercion, perpetuated by poverty and inequality.”

I agree that there are problems here, especially in terms of coercion and violence. The standards by which many brothels are run are indeed appalling, and we would not tolerate such standards in any other form of workplace. Surely, therefore, it makes sense to decriminalise sex work and bring it under the auspices of employment law that already covers every other legal industry. My concern is not so much for those who, in your words, have made a "fully informed career choice" but with those who face the difficulties and conditions that the Poppy Project highlights. You may be aware that during the Ipswich serial killer murders (in which the victims were all prostitutes), Channel 4 News conducted interviews with several street sexworkers (as well as the head of the ECP) and only one woman interviewed was in favour of the Swedish model - even the women who work in the appalling situations highlighted by the types of research done by the Poppy Project appear to support full decriminalisation.

You cite the case in Sweden as an example of a success for the "criminalise demand" model, but this is not the way that Swedish sex workers view it themselves. One prominent campaigner named Isabella Lund who is herself a Swedish sex worker, has written extensively about the problems that are found. Elsewhere, videos can be found by other Swedish sex workers discussing the ways in which the Swedish prostitution laws have failed to make them safer. What is more, when you discuss the fact that there are now fewer trafficked sex slaves in Sweden, other research points out that the total number of women being trafficked out of Eastern Europe and other sources, is still the same. The women just end up elsewhere.

We are in agreement that sex trafficking is an appalling crime and must be brought to an end if possible. But the only way that can be done realistically is to target the organised criminal gangs who perpetrate these crimes. As you discussed in your email, consent is a sticky issue and it is certain that women who have been trafficked and forced into sexual slavery in this country are not consenting adults. To me, it makes sense that the full rape law should be brought into play here. This is similar to what the Labour Party proposed to do by introducing a specific law along the lines of the Finnish Model, except that the Labour Party version made it a strict liability (rather than "reasonable belief"), which many involved in sex workers' rights advocacy perceived as a way to scare clients away from buying the services of any sex worker. Obviously, it would be much better if a client who believed that a brothel or sex work establishment was employing coerced or trafficked women, would automatically report this to the police (and not commit rape by engaging in sexual contact with any of them). Under the Swedish Model, it is hard to see how this would be achieved.

You say that "I for one would like to imagine an alternative world in which prostitution, the buying and selling of human beings, has no place." Due to my involvement with sex workers' rights advocacy, I know that this definition of prostitution as "buying and selling of human beings" is considered hugely and deeply offensive to many in sex work. Sex workers provide a service, in the same way that any other craftsperson or professional does. While the consent of someone in sex work due to poverty or drug addiction can be debated, she is still providing a service in exchange for money. It is only when we look at the world of trafficking that the buying and selling of bodies can truly be said to happen. That type of trade is just as obscene as it was in the 18th Century but while Africans sold into slavery in the Americas had no rights as human beings in their new country, women arriving in Britain today are recognised as human, and can be protected by a) giving them amnesty to stay (so that the threat of deportation cannot be used by abusers to silence them) and b) giving them the same protections as workers in other industries. We can only do part b) if we put sex work on a par with other work in the eyes of the law.

Thank you again for taking the time to reply to me, and my apologies for the length of my response. Because I have your ear as a constituency voter, I feel it is my responsibility as an ally to the sex workers' rights campaign to bring the views of those groups to your attention as clearly as I can.

Tales of naan-ier

The past few days I have been experimenting with making some kind of Indian-style bread recipe. Because I basically generated this with a lot of guesswork and a little bit of prompting from the interwebz, it doesn't really follow any proper recipe for chapati, roti, naan or other recognised variant. It's just what worked based on what I have generally in the flat anyway.

Since the title says this is "Tales of..." I think I should tell you the whole saga of how this came about and how the recipe developed.

It started a few nights ago when I had planned to make my curry recipe, only then realised I didn't have any rice to go with it - after having started cooking it. So my thought process whent something like this:

1. Maybe I will have naan instead!
2. I don't have any naan.
3. Maybe I can make naan?
4. I don't know how to make naan.
5. Maybe I can figure it out all by myself!
6. That sounds like a recipe for disaster, better eat something else and save the curry for another day.
7. But I want to figure it out all by myself!
8. Alright, I'll make something else, but I'll also try making naan.
9. YES!
10. ...
    
11. Okay, what goes into naan?

I figured out that I probably wanted some milk (have), flour (have), water (in the tap - have). But maybe it needs egg as well. And maybe it's a leavened bread, in which case I was stuck because I didn't have any yeast or other raising agent. (As it happened, hidden in a different cupboard was some self-raising flour, but I forgot about it at the time because I was in hyperactive mode.)

To the Interwebz, Boy Wonder!

Interwebz quickly confirmed that naan does indeed usually have egg in it, and also that it usually has yeast in it. However, it also informed me that I would want sunflower oil (have) and several recipes had yoghurt in them (bugger - I'd just put it all in the curry sauce I was making!) One recipe - for roti bread - did NOT have egg or raising agents of any kind in, so I went with that one and it worked okay. I was satisfied that it would not have been a disaster if I had gone with this plan in the first place.

But now I had curry for the next couple of days lined up - I had a chance to EXPERIMENT! I could try some of those other ingredients to see if I could make the recipe work any better.

Yoghurt was the most interesting new ingredient to try, so I did that one first and it was a definite improvement. I was also adding a bit of sugar at this stage, although when I rang Mother Dearest she pointed out that the sugar in the naan recipe was probably there to activate the yeast and not really for flavour. Still, I remembered naan having a slightly sweet taste at Indian restaurants so I decided to stick with it.

Although it was an improvement, I wasn't really happy with the recipe, as it seemed too stiff. I opted to reduce the amount of flour the next time and see if that helped. It did a bit, but not much. I realised that the problem was that the bread was just too stodgy and flat in general: it needed a raising agent or it wasn't going to work. I would have tried the egg as well, but I don't eat eggs often enough and buying a half-dozen box just for one egg for my recipe would be very wasteful. So the recipe iI wanted to try next was not quite naan, but at least naan-ier than the previous goes (so, tales of naanier in the title, geddit!?)

Unfortunately, I had run out of curry to try it with.

Yesterday, though, the local supermarket had a special offer on ready-meal curry and I can't resist a special offer. So I thought, "Since I'm having special offer curry anyway, I may as well continue the experiments!" Quick consultation with Mother Dearest who advised buying baking powder as well (lasts longer than self-raising flour, which I don't use very often) and I was all set to head home and try again. At home I discovered the self-raising flour in the tin - which as it happens has kept very well indeed, so that was all good. the baking powder came with instructions for how to use it to replace self-raising with plain flour, so I can make the following recipe with either now. Since I use plain flour more than self-raising, I always have it in the flat, so it's worth knowing the conversion.

Anyway, so I had decided to give it a go, and this time I was very pleased with the results.

Here's what I did:

Snowdrop's Naan-ier Bread:

Ingredients

(All tablespoons were rounded measures, except the yoghurt which was just as full as the yoghurt's own cohesion would allow)

• 5 tblspns self-raising flour and 5 tblspns plain flour (or, going by the advice on the baking powder pot, 10 tblspns plain flour and approximately 2 level tspns baking powder)
• 5 tblspns yoghurt
• 2 tblspns milk
• 2 tblspns sunflower oil
• 1/2 level tspn sugar

Preheat oven to 230 degrees C (450 degrees F, Gas Mark 8). My oven was set at 225 C, but I know that it cooks quite hot and quickly compared to the instructions in most recipe books, so I've rounded up to the nearest 10 degrees C.

Put all ingredients into a bowl and mix together, first gently with a wooden spoon, then as the flour thickens the yoghurt and the dough forms, start to knead it with hands. Once thoroughly mixed, cut into pieces and roll out on a flat surface using flour to prevent sticking. Makes 2-3 large pieces or 6-8 small pieces.

Place on a (greased) baking tray or griddle and bake for 12 minutes, turning halfway through to cook both sides.

***

And this is what it looked like (this is only half of the full quantity, because I ate the othe rhalf before I thought of taking a photo - you can also see that I nibbled the bottom corner already on this piece, too!):


If anyone tries it, I'd love to know how well it works for you as well - I liked the results a lot, but I figure it's always worth having a second opinion.

My "Tribe"

The observant among my readers will have noticed I have a tag called 'join the kroo', which I tend to use for posts that talk about people or groups with whom I feel an affiliation, and on one level that 'crew' could be called a tribe, and there are some illustrious people within those bounds, amongst whom I count myself but a feeble flickering candle.

But when I think of my Tribe, the term refers to a much smaller group of people, some of whom don't know each other, and don't even know of each other's existence. But these are the people for whom I feel great loyalty, with the deepest passion and fierceness.

I'm the sort of person who'll move Heaven and Earth to help even a stranger - that's a huge part of my abiding faith in Jesus Christ and in His commandments anyway. But if I will move Heaven and Earth to help a stranger, then my Tribe are the people for whom I would flex the very fabric of space-time, change the laws of physics, alter the nature of reality.

The loyalty and effort I will put into supporting my Tribe are such that most people would consider it beyond all reason or rational behaviour. Such people, of course, don't share my depth of loyalty. An example is when Julie was sectioned under the Mental Health Act and transferred pretty much against her will to a clinic in London. I had no money to spare for a trip, but I forced there to be a way so that I could go and see her. Spending the money was, by most measures, a stupid thing to do, but she needed me there so I went, and to Hell with the knock-on costs it would have for me. This is what it means when I count someone in my Tribe.

If you're in my Tribe, I'll have your back no matter what. If you say you need my help, you've got it, regardless of whether I can actually give it or not (I'll find a way to make it possible). You don't get to tell me not to make that kind of effort - if you're in my Tribe, it means I chose to include you, and it means I choose to make that sort of sacrifice on your behalf, and you don't get to be responsible for my decisions or their consequences for me. I willingly do what looks dumb from any other standpoint, because from the standpoint that you're in my Tribe, it isn't dumb. And if I wasn't able to help, you know that I either died trying, or else I fucked up by doing the wrong thing.

There are very few people in my Tribe. Most people in my Tribe are long-time friends or family, but not all such friends or family are people I would necessarily call my Tribe. There is only one person in my Tribe whom I haven't met face-to-face, and for whom being physically there to help is beyond my means (even if I did flex space-time and all that other stuff), but I know we share the same fierce sense of loyalty to certain folks (mostly to different folks, but the feeling is the same).

A lot of the time I frame this Tribe notion interms of combat and willingness to fight for someone, but it also works (as shown by the description of Julie's need) in terms of emotional support, shoulder to lean on/cry on, and all the rest. If I can be there physically, I will be; if not, I'll be on the end of a phone or internet connection whenever needed for as long as needed.

There is, I suppose, a fringe of "Tribe-affiliates" - the groups that I would be willing to go to war for cannot be called part of my Tribe in the sense described above, I am not given to cause-loyalty in the same way that I am to real people. But these groups, the people in them, all things being equal, get my support every time:

Sex workers (and sex workers' rights activists)

Trans folks

Kinky folks

I'll stand by anyone who seems to be hated unjustly, but these groups for one reason or another, have special meaning for me (kinky folks, obviously, cos I am one!).

As I said, I'll stick up for just about anyone who needs a helping hand or a friendly voice in their favour, and go that extra mile for them if I have the effort to spare. But my Tribe, there is no question about "spare", it will be expended first and then I'll figure out where I'll get it from.

FICTION: Cyborg Sleeps part 2

This is developing on the character I created in an earlier post, and in this part I give her a name, Asira. Typically, although I thought it was just a random, feminine-ish sounding bunch of syllables, I find on Google now that Asira is a range of body care products (kind of appropriate considering the content of the story so far!), an organisation for aquarium keepers (maybe I can use that for inspiration for a later chapter?), a Palestinian place name and a pre-Islamic pagan god (male) from northern Arabia. There is also an anarchists' organisation using it as their acronym (almost certainly that will be relevant at some point to my storyline). It also appears that it is an actual women's name in a number of different cultures (I see Russian/Eastern European surnames, someone in Thailand, and someone in Indonesia in the first couple of pages of results). Ho hum: as the scholar of Ecclesiastes says, there is nothing new under the sun!

Anyway, the story.

***

PART 2:

Aware of being. Nothing else but that. She is aware, and therefore she knows she exists. No deep Cartesian reasoning, just an instinctive sense of being. It lasts for a fraction of a second, or forever – there is no objective way to tell.

Instinct also tells her to breathe in.

The first thing then, "I return". The strangest sensation made normal by familiarity, as she feels herself drawing air into her lungs and feels herself pushing her way inside her body – both inside and outside, both pulling and pushing, both inflating and injecting.

Memories flood back, memories she remembers having, memories of who she was.

Self floods back, "I am myself. I am becoming me", she thinks.

New memories, memories never before experienced. These are not her, but they seem as real as if they were.

New desires, never before felt. These are not her, but they seem as real as if they were.

A smile as she processes them. "Mission". "Task". "Purpose".

She remembers from a time before she became herself, became what she is:

If this were a movie, it would appear as words on a screen, a photograph of a target, description, role, mission – text in the visual field describing mission, like Robocop's "Protect the innocent. Uphold the law". But memory, thought, desire, do not work like that in real life. What she remembers comes directly from the memories of agents who have witnessed these things; what she knows was drawn directly from their minds so that she can use it for the purposes of her Sect.

Her sheets separate, her fingers twitch, her eyes open.

A priestess is standing over her, arms outstretched, resurrecting her, reactivating her. The priestess is young, new – not ready when the cyborg sweeps aside the top sheet and springs to her feet faster than any human could manage. She is startled, and her reverie is broken. It doesn't matter, for the spell has been performed, but the cyborg does not disguise her look of contempt for a priestess who cannot control her states properly. If she were any good, she would have emerged long before the cyborg was fully awake, because the process is entirely automatic once the soul injection has started.

Smiling, the cyborg cycles her eyes rapidly through many different colours and ends on completely black, grimly satisfied as the priestess quails from the demonic associations of this choice. The cyborg blinks once and sets her eyes back to her favoured shade of blue, before heading to the door. Her movements are smooth and efficient. As she leaves, she considers a final punishment for the incompetent priestess, and her finger hovers over the "lock" sequence when the door closes behind her. But she has a job to do. A Mission, a Task, a Purpose, and there are people she must see about it. She leaves the door unlocked and makes her way down the corridor.

The first point of call for the cyborg on waking is always the doctor. She enters the medical bay confidently.

“Good morning, Doctor McDonald!” she greets her regular physician.

“Good morning, Asira,” replies Doctor McDonald, “Did you sleep well?”

“As well as ever, Doc. Let's get this over with, I have business to attend to.”

Doctor McDonald smiles, knowing her patient will be most impatient because of the impetus that has been given to her by their bosses. She turns to collect her instruments from the table, and suddenly whips around to reveal cold steel in her hands aqnd in her grey eyes, the steel in her hands being a .20 calibre automatic pistol, which spits lead in an instant. Dr McDonald is an excellent shot.

Asira responds more quickly than any human possibly could, a combination of magic and technology giving her reflexes unequalled by any vertebrate. Her eyes are enhanced with a frame refresh rate far faster than any Mk I Human Eyeball could ever manage; her awareness is enhanced by magic spells that allow her to see a small way into the future, so that she sees the doctor's finger squeeze the trigger before it actually happens. The spell is both allowed for by and limited by quantum effects, so that she cannot see more than a few milliseconds into the future, but it is enough to give her the edge over an opponent. The bullet from the doctor's handgun slams harmlessly into the cushioned wall behind the cyborg, as she dodges it.

She is not angry with the doctor at this assault: it is a normal part of the tests that she performs on a waking cyborg, precisely to check that the reflexes of her patient are as they should be. The small calibre bullet is designed not to cause fatal damage on its own, and the doctor is well capable of treating gunshot wounds. No cyborg has yet failed the test, but there is always a first time, and Doctor McDonald figures it's better it happens in her surgery than in the field.

The other tests are mundane, and mostly standard medical tests. Asira's interfaces with her mechanical and electronic components are also tested, to make sure that nothing has degraded or malfunctioned during Asira's most recent sleep. Asira itches all the time to get on with her mission, but she knows she will not be allowed to embark on it unless she has been given a full check up and clean bill of health by the doctor. As soon as Dr McDonald has entered the results and told Asira that she is fit for service, Asira has left the medical area and is heading to her next assignment before her full briefing. She does not mean to be rude – in fact, she is very fond of Dr McDonald, whose short-trimmed red hair with ever more grey to it, and fantastic bedside manner has been a constant in her life more than most. It is just that the urge to go to work is very strong, and she doesn't want any delays. Dr McDonald is also one of the members of the staff at the base whose reactions are most normal around cyborgs. She views them as just another patient, and Asira is grateful for that. Too many others (like that damn fool priestess!) see the cyborgs as scary creatures and don't work too hard to hide their phobias.

Her next port of call is the Temple. If Dr McDonald's job is to ensure that Asira is physically fit for service, then it is Priest Jacobs' job to ensure that her magical enhancements are in full working order. Jacobs has longish greasy black hair, and a permanent sneer on his face, and is also slightly overweight. Asira doesn't like him, and anyway, she much prefers the technological over the magical. Both she and Jacobs are professionals, however, and the rituals are performed efficiently and accurately, and produce the desired effect. Once again, Asira is declared fit for service and swiftly leaves. Unlike Dr McDonald, whom she sees mostly only if she has sustained injuries in the line of duty, it is likely that Asira will be returning to the temple before she leaves base, to receive new magical additions to her armoury that are appropriate to the mission at hand. What those will be, she doesn't know yet, but she will take advice as she plans the mission ahead, and decide then what she needs.

Her final stop before the mission briefing is to the wardrobe department. Appropriate clothing for the mission will be collected later, but now that her check ups are done, she needs to clothe herself for the briefings and planning sessions to follow. Nudity is not frowned upon in the base, but the rules state that for official meetings, clothes are required. This is because people who are unfamiliar with the base are often distracted by the naked male and female cyborgs, which means that information can become distorted in the reporting. Since this affects efficiency negatively, it is considered better to cover up. Humans on the base tend to wear clothes all the time, even though they don't have to. Asira believes that this is a way of marking themselves as different from their hybrid colleagues as much as it is to do with inhibitions brought in from outside. She knows that nobody stared at her as she walked from place to place in the complex, but she also knows that she was the only one without any clothes on.

At wardrobe, Asira requisitions a loose sweatshirt and jogging pants (she doesn't see any point in underwear, her surgically enhanced breasts support themselves and she is covering up to save others' blushes, which means she does not need panties).

With long strides for her 5'4” frame, she heads for HQ.

Fictional feminism and ickiness at The Other Place

I have just posted a story outline at And You Thought I Was Sweet that is inspired by some thoughts I had about gynophagia porn writing. Starting with the gynophagia concept, my mind went on a flight of its own and came up with a story that I believe carries feminist messages (including the importance of respecting the experiences and knowledge of older women and the value of education for women in the struggle for equality). I was originally going to post it here, but given that the future society I was setting up is one that many people would find completely sick and twisted (and ZOMG HOW COULD YOU IMAGINE SUCH A THING!?!?!?) I decided to put it behind the age-protected/"adult content" warning of the Other Place.

Athough I'd been toying with this story idea for a while, I was prompted to post it today because of the shit that certain radfem bloggers have been pulling with respect to yours truly, and this feels like a good way to give a big fat FYTP to them to show that, yes, I have a dark and twisted core that can produce imaginings like this, but also, look - feminist ideals too! And, also - not going to be bullied at all!

If you think you can stomach it, the story has working title Wise Woman and the Free - I may call the Wise Woman something like "Mammah", to be like "Mother", so it could become "Mammah and the Free", but that's something for if I ever get around to actually writing any of it.

Exposé of little old me!

Yes! I'm important enough to be hated by radfems! And targeted by them! And have a whole blog dedicated to discrediting me!

I feel like such a success!

[ETA: the blog they point to has had, according to SiteMeter, zero hits from Snowdrop Exposed in the last 3 months - in fact, it's had more hits from this post than from their blog!]

According to the oh-so-wittily-titled "Snowdrop Exposed!", I am a danger to women everywhere! Even though I can't afford an air fare, and haven't even got a passport! With My black magical powers... (oh, wait, I'm a Christian, I'm not supposed to use magic...) With My evil technological genius powers... (darn it, why won't my computer work properly?) Erm... with my amazing ability to control people's minds with just typing words on the page (except how come I'm totally unable to convince people of my arguments?)... Okay, you got me - I can't affect anyone who's not in the UK, and honestly, if you're more than 10 miles from where I live, you're probably safe!

And in fact, because I am self-aware enough to have been able to write the post that has these radfems all hot under the collar, I'm probably safer than the majority of humans, despite also being rather violent in personality.

Anyway, to business! I chose to write this to debunk a few of the (being generous!) misinterpretations about a very dark and disturbing post I wrote about a real-life event. I'll quote their warning, since it is apt: "if you are triggered by rape scenarios, please do NOT read on." Or click on the following link:

A Confession -NSFW, and DO NOT READ IF TRIGGERED BY RAPE SCENARIOS

Here are the comments I left over there:

Firstly, I want to point out that your "almost raped and murdered" introduction fails to make it clear (as I did in my post) that the woman in question was never touched or harmed in any way, and indeed probably never knew and doesn't know, that she was in any danger from me. For that, let us be thankful.

Now, I would like to address a few points where I believe I may have been misunderstood:

SE’s brand of feminism is not in line with what is best for females, but always, without fail, must contain benefit for males.

This is not what I have said. It is a definition of what I call "manefism", which makes me an ally to feminism but not a feminist. I identify as a feminist because I want to see the world a better place for women. I identify as a feminist ally because I believe that the success of feminism will make the world a better place for men.

Indeed, the one of the first things apparent in The Confession above is how the whole scenario would have affected him (and his soul) forever and ever. There is nowhere any real concern, other than secondarily, of the woman’s life/feelings/family, only of his “eternal soul”."

Once again, you have misread my original post. The apparent lack of concern for others is described clearly, because that was a symptom of my depressive state. I was simply describing clearly for my reader what my mental state was at the time of the incident. It is not the way I feel about the event now (as if it was, I wouldn't see any point in sharing the experience at all). If it makes any difference, yes, I'm glad I haven't killed anyone because it means that anyone I might have killed is instead living and breathing and unharmed. Happy now?

Furthermore, his act was not a spontaneous one, it was planned and equipped for, over a period of time.

Clearly, the cathartic (therapeutic) release did NOT work at all.

This is, again, a misunderstanding. My reasoning behind claiming that having watched the death-fetish movie is as follows (incidentally, you are right to assume it was staged and not real - the website it originated on has several different videos showing the victim dying in several different ways - I think it is important to draw a distinction between "snuff", which is where the victim actually did die, and "death fetish porn" where the victim only pretends to die):

• I had masturbated to orgasm; non-violent or non-BDSM porn would not have achieved this effect for me. (Incidentally, the claim that I would have to watch a film every hour is utterly unsupported by my statements; and this line of reasoning shows that it would be much less frequent than that, unless you think that male sexual desire and performance resets much more quickly than it ever has for me!)
• Therefore I was exhausted sexually, and less interested at that time in sex than I would have been had my sexual energy not been released in that manner.
• Therefore, when I had the opportunity to carry out an attack that, as you say, I had planned for over a period of time, I did not take the opportunity. I believe that I would have done so had I not had that release.
• Therefore, a woman's life was saved by violent porn.

The "therapeutic release" argument stands as a separate issue. Since you will no doubt claim that obviously in my case it was failing over a long period of time, I will reply to that argument by pointing out that the associated guilt that modern society places on these types of release can be counter-productive. Especially when coupled with clinical depression.

From whence did these urges spring? If the pro-pornography activists argue that cathartic release is one of the main benefits of pornography, then that can only argue that urges to rape and murder are already within and need release. That really does not say a lot for the calibre of pro-pornography activist — that they are raping/murdering scum and need an outlet or else they unleash their true selves on the innocent population(!)

I explained precisely where my urge to rape came from, and I agree that, no, it does not cast me in a good light - I am a flawed human being, but I do not deny my flaws. Here is what I said: "When I feel suicidal, it takes the form of destroying the world around me rather than destroying myself... the firm belief that my depression gave me, that I could never find a willing [sexual] partner." I admit that this displays a sense of male entitlement to women's bodies, something that I have hopefully largely unlearned in recent years. I am not making a defence of myself here, I am just making my motivations clearer. To be even clearer still about what I described, I note you say, "Radical feminists (”RFs”) rarely take this view, that ‘raping/murdering scum’ need an outlet or else they turn on the innocent population. Instead they view that although there may be a tiny percentage of the population who are incapable of telling right-from-wrong..." Well, as I tried to explain in my OP, because of my depression, I was one of that tiny percentage, at the time of the incident. That is why I said in my OP that, had I described any of this to a medical practitioner, then I would have been locked up under the Mental Health Act (1984) for the protection of myself and others!

Bringing this back around to BDSM, a self-confessed practitioner of BDSM (”a Dom”) who maintains he is not his normal self (in severe depression) merely attempts to act out a further of his BDSM “play” or games. Not less, not opposite, but further along the continuum.

Now, I searched in vain for any point where I claimed that my desire to rape and murder were a "continuation" of BDSM play or "games". That is because I never said it. And I never said it, because it just isn't true. Which makes the rest of your argument somewhat of a canard. BDSM is different from rape, because BDSM is CONSENSUAL, and ENJOYED BY BOTH PARTIES. Describing it as "subjugation of another person to satisfy one’s own needs" is completely mendacious and misguided. There is no continuum between BDSM and rape or murder. There just isn't.

***

Oh yes, a couple more points:

You seem offended that I posted with the intention of helping to stop others from committing murder and rape. Apparently it slipped your attention that that meant I posted hoping to make sure that women don't get raped and murdered!

Secondly, you might want to read a follow-up post, prompted by someone who approached these issues with a lot more respect than you have.

Interview with a sadist (link NSFW)

Finally, there is zero chance that I will ever remove the post in question (What? Did you think I would act like a coward and hide from the truth, because you seek to use it to discredit me?) The post will stand because I hope and believe it can help reduce the number of rapes and murders committed by desperate and emotionally disturbed young men.

The funny and infuriating - more titbits from UK news

The funny:

The founder of the International Church of Jediism has apparently claimed that a Tesco superstore persecuted him on the basis of religion by asking him not to wear his hood in their store.

To me, this is one of those stories that just has so many layers of pointless to it that it's not worth trying to figure out who's "right" or "wrong" on the basis of who's being the most daft - I'm just going to stick a pin in the chart and say that people should be allowed to wear what they want (or indeed, if nudist or naturist, what they don't want!) and say that it is Tesco who should stop being silly.

The infuriating:

A 12 year old trans girl turned up at school after summer break during which she transitioned to live as her true gender. The school responded when she was made a target of bullying by holding an assembly to make clear that she's a girl and not to be made a target (probably not the wisest move ever, and it seems that at least some of the anger from other parents is because of that, but at least we can assume their hearts are in the right place).

Unfortunately, the vast majority of press reporters seem not to have been at that assembly. Almost universally, they are using the wrong (i.e. male) pronoun to refer to her. (I see that Pink News has dodged the issue entirely, playing the pronoun "game" instead.)

I haven't checked through all the articles that came up on the Google news search I linked there, because frankly wading through that much shite is beyond my capabilities - the little snippets are plenty to get me enraged.

Incidentally, in the Daily Mail piece, I noted that they reported "Experts have said it is highly unusual for a child of that age to be sure about such a huge change in their lives." To which I want to say, what fucking experts are these, then? From the evidence I've seen, trans folks are often very sure of their gender dysphoria even from the age of 4 or 5. I suspect what they really mean is that the experts are rarely convinced of a trans person's identity when the trans person is at such an early age.

This girl seems to have been fortunate enough to have parents who tolerated her difference, allowing her to wear female swimming costume and display other gendered traits associated with her true (as opposed to physical) gender, and so on. Maybe that's how come she is ABLE to be so sure about what she wants!

All I have left to say on this is that today the British "free press" has really outdone themselves in utter boorish pigheaded insensitivity and STUPIDITY. I am now officially Cross With Them.

New Scientist "100 years from now" challenge: "A Little School"

This is just a short post, to direct people's attention to Ian McDonald's response to Kim Stanley Robinson's call for British SF writers to write a piece of "flash" fiction (no, that's FLASH, not SLASH!) about the world 100 years from now.

He called it A Little School, and it is strongly feminist. I would say that it has a wonderful concept at the base, but at the same time, it is dreadful to think that 100 years from now there would still be a need for such a concept.

Anyway, comments are open there, I encourage readers to pop along and have your say.

Green Party Sex Work Policy Debate

It took me a while to get my arse in gear on this one, but I did in the end manage it!

Last week, Caroline Lucas MEP, leader of the UK's Green Party, urged her party to consider changing from a full decriminalisation approach to prostitution and instead adopt the Swedish Model. As regular readers will know, I am not a fan of the Swedish model, and my understanding is that very few women actually invovled ins ex work consider it to be a positive step for them. Since Caroline Lucas is actually directly accountable to me as my elected representative in the European Parliament, and since I already wrote to her about sex work, pornography and alternative sexualities (e.g. BDSM) when she was up for election earlier this year, I figured I should sit down and write to her again to express my views on the matter. As I say, it's taken me a week to get around to doing it, but anyway...!

Here is the email that I sent to Caroline Lucas MEP, leader of the Green Party:

I am writing to you because you are my local MEP, and during the election process this year I wrote to you asking about your policies on sex work, pornography and alternative sexualities.

A number of sources have recently reported that you are urging the Green party to consider moving away from the decriminalised model favoured by New Zealand or Holland (your reply earlier this year mentioned the Dutch version, but other sources suggest that the current policy is closer to the New Zealand version), and instead adopting the policy currently used by Sweden.

The experience of sex workers in Sweden has been that the new laws in Sweden have put them at much greater risk than before.

The concerns surrounding sex work are:

• Violence committed against sex workers by clients and/or serial killers
• Trafficked or enslaved women being abused sexually by pimps/brothel owners and clients
• Difficulty of leaving sex work for other forms of work (which becomes a form of coerced sexual existence)

While ever any form of criminalisation is in place, women engaged in sex work (whether willingly or unwillingly) will be forced to hide their activities in order to maintain their custom. In the Morning Star report, it says that you read out a letter claiming that, "poverty and patriarchy drive prostitution"; it follows from this that criminalising the buyer will drive prices down, forcing women to accept more, and more dangerous, clients in order to make ends meet (or, in order to earn enough to satisfy their pimps). This both exposes them to greater risk from violence committed by clients, and greater abuse from pimps/brothel owners.

The fact that sex workers have to hide their activities from the police means that the law cannot offer them the same protection as it offers to other people. Only decriminalisation can offer the full protection of the law to sex workers, who are in many ways the most vulnerable adults in our society.

If the Green Party is truly concerned about the wellbeing of sex workers, and is concerned about freedom of choice, then the most important area to address has to be the issue of sex workers' ability to leave sex work for other work. Again, since prostitution is often driven by poverty, this means first and foremost ensuring that every human being in this country has the means to live well; only when there is a viable alternative to sex work will those who are in it by necessity be able to leave it, and until then making laws against it (whether they criminalise the sex worker or the client) will do little to change conditions for the sex worker.

Secondly, work must be done to end the stigma surrounding sex work; this stigma means that working (or having worked) in sex work often results in precluding people (especially women) from gaining other employment. Making laws against sex work serves only to perpetuate the prejudice against sex workers, even if those laws target the clients instead. Instead, it must be made as easy as possible for sex workers to find alternative employment when they wish to leave sex work.

I am certain that some policies can be agreed upon by both sides of this debate: for instance, education programmes to help under-qualified sex workers obtain the qualifications necessary to find other work; rehab programmes to help deal with drug addiction where that is a driving force for sex work; debt relief programmes; programmes to provide employment references for people leaving sex work so that employers do not have to be told about past involvement; and any other schemes that simply smooth the path from sex work into other work.

I am fully convinced, after reading and hearing the testimony of Swedish sex workers, that the Swedish model is harmful to the women it is supposed to protect. I am equally convinced from the evidence presented to the New Zealand government after the first 3 years of New Zealand's decriminalisation, and from the testimony of sex workers in other parts of the world, that full decriminalisation is the only way to protect the lives and interests of those involved in sex work.

For that reason, I would find it hard to support any party that supported continued criminalisation of sex work, whether by the standard laws, or by the Swedish model. I therefore urge you to reconsider your support of the Swedish model and continue to lead your party on the policy of full decriminalisation.

FICTION: Cyborg Sleeps

The following is basically drawn from the way I have felt sometimes when going to bed, often during periods of severe depression. Except that instead of feeling it happening, I have wished that I could just sleep the way this cyborg sleeps.

At only about 200 words, and given the way I've phrased it, I almost want to call it a poem rather than a story, except that it is still laid out as prose. Make your own minds up!

It could arguably be said to derive something from the concept of Dollhouse, but I would go in my own directions (and let this cyborg keep some memories).

Reading some of Ren's recent muses over the past month or so, I think this is a wish I have for her somehow (and the cyborg thing comes from that a bit - Ren being self-identified as such!)

Anyway, Ren and anyone else - here is Cyborg Sleeps


She slipped between the sheets, glad at last of the chance to rest. Another demanding task completed, another role played to completion. It was time to sleep.

Sleep for the cyborg was not like the concept as it is known to men. More complete, deeper, darker. Stronger.

She slid between the sheets – not the silk, not the softness of the humans' beds, but infinitely sweeter to her than those. Sucking, clinging, protecting her body from the ravages of time, they wrap her for safekeeping.

She lies back in her new cocoon.

Exhales.

Feels as she does so, her consciousness ebbing away.

“To die, to sleep – perchance to dream” but no dreams in this sleep, so close to dying.

She exhales.

Feels as she does so relief from life.

No more demands. No more tasks. No more doing for others. No more pain. No more dreams.

Just knowledge, as the last moments of awareness drift away with the last whispers of breath, that she has succeeded in all she has to do.

To sleep. Suspended. Knowing nothing, needing to know nothing. Time passing in the utter peace of death. Relaxed as only a machine can be.

Until again she is needed. Wanted. Programmed.

And performs.

***

There may or may not be more of this to come. I imagine this to be more of a techno-magic concept than an out-and-out SF cyborg robot thing (so when she exhales, it's actually her soul leaving her body for a while, for example) - I like the concept, "Any sufficiently advanced form of magic is indistinguishable from technology". The tricky part for me will be thinking of missions to send her on, but maybe I can make the story purely about her relationships at the base.

Anyway, if you'd like to see more, please let me know in comments!