“The Price of Pleasure”

Published
by
Chris
on August 31, 2008
in Sex and prudes
. 2 Comments

A new anti-porn documentary, The Price of Pleasure, has just been released and is being promoted via a few small showings across the country. There’s been some buzz on this one for a while; Chyng Sun, the director, has written about the work in progress in left-wing outlets such as Counterpunch for several years, and I’ve seen allusions to it by both Robert Jensen and Gail Dines. For those of you who have either seen or heard about Noam Chomsky’s recent anti-porn statements, that video apparently comes from this scene.

As iamcuriousblue points out, there seems to be a huge divide in how the film is presented in its press package and the tone set by the trailer and clips on the website. The press synopsis explicitly makes the film out to be one that looks at porn through a filter of calm, unbiased rationality:

Honest and nonjudgmental, the film paints both a nuanced and complex portrait of how pleasure and pain, commerce and power, and liberty and responsibility are intertwined in the most intimate aspects of human relations. At the same time, the film examines the unprecedented role that commercial pornography now occupies in U.S. popular culture. Going beyond the debate of liberal versus conservative so common in the culture, The Price of Pleasure provides a holistic understanding of pornography as it debunks common myths about the genre. Continue reading ‘“The Price of Pleasure”’

Media Necrophilia on the Body of a ‘One-Legged Hooker’

Published
by
Chris
on August 27, 2008
in Sex Work
. 2 Comments

I’m going to give a mixed response to Reneé at Womanist Musings today. On the one hand, props on her masterful, passionate analysis of the media coverage of the murder of Elizabeth Acevedo, a 38-year-old disabled woman who worked as a prostitute. Avecedo was fatally struck on the head in the hallway of her apartment building, possibly by a client. And like I say, I have to give props to Reneé for her post, but part of me is pissed at her for ruining my otherwise excellent mood. Acevedo’s death is tragic enough in itself, but the coverage of her death is just damn ugly. In particular, the gossip site Bossip describes her death as “comedy gold.” Acevedo lost a leg in a train accident several years ago; therein lies the humor of her too-early death, and it seems that newswriters can’t use the phrase “one-legged hooker” quite enough, as though 38 years can be summed up in those three words.

Acevedo’s treatment by the papers that Reneé links to makes me think of her as a modern-day version of Mrs. Hutchinson, the woman who is selected by chance and stoned to death by her family and friends as a sacrifice to insure prosperity for their village in Shirley Jackson’s classic story “The Lottery.” Only the analogy isn’t quite accurate. In Jackson’s story, the villagers saw the ritual murder of their neighbor as a grim duty. It was unpleasant, but had to be done for the common good. The delight that the newswriters  take in Acevedo’s life and death exhibits a deeper, uglier sadism than I’ve ever seen in any porno or dungeon. I know that I’m going to be thinking of Acevedo when this year’s International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers comes around, because the naked contempt for her death says so much about who our society considers disposable. In the end, she’s not a tragedy. Just a one-liner. In “The Lottery,” the village got flourishing crops from the annual murder of one of their own. What is it about Elizabeth Acevedo’s death that’s supposed to enrich and ennoble us?

On “Bonnie’s Blog of Crime,” there is a comment about Elizabeth from someone who signs themself only as “A Relative.” In some ways it’s also ambivalent about her life, but it’s a more humane eulogy than anything the media seems willing to grant her:

Although Elizabeth choose to live that lifestyle she did not deserve to die the way she did. I pray that who ever is responsible for her murder would get the maximum penalty. Inspite of her difficult life there was a side of her that everyone loved. She was a caring & friendly, idividual. She may have been the way she was but she still touched the heart to those that were around her.I know that she is now in a better place May she rest in peace

Toddler on the “Highway to Hell.”

Published
by
Chris
on May 13, 2008
in Etc.
. 0 Comments

Even Jack Chick would have to admit that this is pretty adorable.  Well, okay — Maybe not Jack. But anyone else would. This girl rocks out to Black Sabbath pretty amazingly. I can’t wait to see what she’s up to at 17 or so, when she has her own grrrrl-oriented techno-punk-metal band. The band is pretty cool, too.

A Goodbye to Deborah Jeane Palfrey

Published
by
Chris
on May 6, 2008
in Politics and Sex Work
. 0 Comments

As is true of a lot of people in the sex-positive community, I’ve been thinking a lot about Deborah Jean Palfrey’s death this past week. I didn’t know her personally, and never met her in person, so I can’t speak of her death in terms of personal tragedy or grief. But grief and anger are what I’m feeling, because Deborah Jeane Palfrey’s fate could have been written onto the lives of so many women and men. And the anger comes from the fact that it has, and it will be.

The real tragedy of her death, from where I’m standing, is not anything extraordinary about her story, but how common and familiar it is, to the point of being cliché. If the story of Deborah Jean Palfrey had been laid out in a novel or play or screenplay, I would be angry at having my time wasted by a writer who was unable or unwilling to rise above cheap hackery that was old and worn out in the days of the Victorian penny dreadfuls. But Palfrey was a real person, and it makes me sick and angry to think how often the lives of people who should live peaceful, untroubled lives are forced into old patterns.

Continue reading ‘A Goodbye to Deborah Jeane Palfrey’

Carol Queen Interview

Published
by
Chris
on April 2, 2008
in Queer Politics, Smart Pervs and Writing
. 1 Comment

I highly recommend that you check out the interview with Carol Queen that we’ve just put up at Sex in the Public Square. Carol is one of the most fascinating, intellectually alive people I’ve ever known, and although this interview was done in 2005, it’s an excellent look at her ideas and her history and if you haven’t read her already, it gives you a sense of her voice. Props to Sabrina Chapadjiev, who conducted the interview and published it originally in her ‘zine Cliterati. Below is a short excerpt from the interview to whet your appetite:

Continue reading ‘Carol Queen Interview’

To Go Where No One Should Venture

Published
by
Chris
on April 2, 2008
in Etc. and Film
. 0 Comments

There are the good kinds of masochism and the bad kinds. The good kinds involve getting tied up in a barely-lit dungeon while someone torments the hell out of you with floggers, needles, or Wartenburg wheels. The bad kind includes reading anti-porn blogs and watching fundie preachers on TV out of some misbegotten urge to “inform yourself.” Or, apparently, going to see the new movie, 10,000 B.C. While I have engaged in the first two, I will not be engaging in the third, especially since Adam Lipscomb has already done so and blogged about the experience in painful detail. The poor lad sounds traumatized.

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex Work….

Published
by
Chris
on April 1, 2008
in Sex Work and feminism
. 0 Comments

It’s no wonder it’s so hard to get a rational discussion going about sex workers. Even for genuinely interested, well-meaning people, it’s hard to get any solid information. Before you can even start talking about solutions to the problems that sex workers face, you have to first have to correct the ideas of what sex workers are. Any conversation in the mainstream media about sex workers starts out with icons forged from sensationalism and half-truths, as we’ve seen from the coverage of the Spitzer scandal lately. The images of trafficked junkies who need to be rescued or decadent young women who have had their souls twisted by their lives of deception sell papers and television time better than a nuanced picture full of shades of gray does.

I wrote earlier about Sex Work Awareness, the new activist group founded by members of $pread, SWANK, and PONY to address this very sort of issue in the public consciousness. They’ve just launched a new blog called Sex Work 101 devoted to answering the questions that most people have when they’re just starting to look past the surface. Audacia Ray writes that the idea of Sex Work 101 occurred to her at this year’s Women Action and Media conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts: Continue reading ‘Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex Work….’

Good News: That Bear Stearns Stock Isn’t TOTALLY Useless

Published
by
Chris
on April 1, 2008
in Blogging, Politics, Sex Work and Smart Pervs
. 0 Comments

I think I have a crush on Miss Victoria X. It’s true that I don’t patronize pro-dommes, partly because of a budget that, in a particularly profitable month, might allow me to purchase the privilege of a scornfully lifted eyebrow from one as she passes me in midtown Manhattan on the way to beat the hell out of some corporate lackey at the Plaza. However, were I in the market, I think that Miss Victoria X would be on my list.

I found Miss Victoria via another tip from Sarah Jenny. Miss Victoria’s heart, it seems, has been melted by the plight of the poor employees at Bear Stearns, and she’s providing a special offer to employees, ex-employees, and soon-to-be-exes: if you buy a session with Miss Victoria, she’ll give a discount equal to the price of one share of Bear Stearns stock. When she first made her offer, BS stock was at two dollars, which wouldn’t buy you a latté at Starbucks; the discount has risen with the price of the stock, and now stands at $10.85. Miss Victoria, in her utter benevolence, has already come up with several potential scenarios for her clients:

-domestic service training (useful in preparing for future job as a janitor at Goldman Sachs)
-spanking combined with verbal chastising (”Caused!” -whack- “Sub-prime!” -whack- “Crisis!” -whack- “Very!” -whack- “Very!” -whack- “Naughty!” -whack whack whack-)
-78 cane strokes (number chosen to represent the difference between Bear Stearns’ $80 per share book value and the actual current share price of $2)
-interrogation roleplay (I am Coughlin Stoia and you are Bear Stearns. Helpful in preparing for upcoming deposition)
-master/slave roleplay (I am JP Morgan and you are Bear Stearns. Now I own you)

Potential clients will be asked to arrive with $300 cash. The discount will be given in ten one-dollar bills, three quarters, one nickel, and four pennies. The client will receive them one at a time, and will thank Miss Victoria for her generosity after each.

This is great marketing, yes, but it’s also great satire. After looking over Miss Victoria’s blog as a whole, it got an immediate spot on my blogroll and on my daily feed. She has a really wry, sharp sense of humor about sex work and it never takes the snark into the smug self-satisfaction that characterizes a lot of blogs.

The New York Times Sets It Straight

Published
by
Chris
on March 31, 2008
in media
. 0 Comments

Sarah Jenny Bleviss brought this Editors’ Note in the New York Times to our attention, in which the paper admits to serious reporting errors in its coverage of sex workers. An entire two-thirds of the original article has been deleted from the article, which supposedly profiled three “high class call girls” in New York. It turns out, though, that two of the women were sex workers but not prostitutes:

Continue reading ‘The New York Times Sets It Straight’

Christian Gene Isolated by Homosexual Scientists

Published
by
Chris
on March 31, 2008
in Humor and Queer Politics
. 0 Comments

Christians are a pain in the ass. Truly. I love seeing the roles flipped in this short videocast below. It’s from the 2002-2003 Australian satire show “The Chaser Non-Stop News Network.” Kudos to the Pink Tiger Institute. I fully support their work.