This story, and how it is being reported, has left my mouth literally hanging open.
Wow. Just wow.
So, some newbie traffickers scouted and groomed vulnerable girls on social media sites, lured them to a rough part of town, stripped them naked, took nude photos and then blackmailed the young victims into working as escorts. And then took their money.
The girls who resisted were physically beaten.
The traffickers? Two fifteen year old girls, and one sixteen year old girl.
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Teen+girls+accused+pimping+plead+guilty/8211871/story.html
The story has been reported in a number of places, and I would like to focus on three aspects of the coverage in particular.
The first question is obviously How the hell does something like this happen?, and Who can we blame?
Patrick McGuire, writing for vice.com, claims that “The basic mechanics of pimping culture are easy to learn about.”
http://www.vice.com/read/three-teen-girls-in-ottawa-have-plead-not-guilty-to-pimping
Really, Patrick? And what ARE the basics of pimping culture, pray tell?
http://www.thenewblackmagazine.com/view.aspx?index=537
Looks like it begins and ends with black men.
It also appears, from tweets gathered by the Ottawa Citizen, that these girls were unabashedly styled by gangsta-pimping culture. Tweets like “Ain’t no problem like a hoe problem” speak to the chilling level of distance the accused put up against their victims who they were absolutely terrible toward.
It doesn’t appear that any men, let alone black men, were involved on the pimping side of the equation in Ottawa, but that hasn’t stopped the media from trying to associate any instance of pimping with black men. If they weren’t actually, physically part of the whole rotten mess, well, they can still be held responsible, because HIP-HOP.
Yeah, popular culture doesn’t glamorize conspicuous consumption and exploitation except through the lens of black culture and music.
And hip-hop is a monolith art form representing one unified point of view with absolutely no nuance or alternate perspectives at all. It’s all just hos and bitches and pimps and guns and drugs and power and control, right? And hell, there are no WHITE hip-hop artists, or WOMEN either.
I’m a nice, middle-class white lady who happens to be a big fan of hip-hop and rap music. I absolutely love the emotional intensity and anger and defiance and authenticity of hip-hop music. It’s also hella fun to dance to! I feel like such a bad-ass mutha down in the laundry room folding my kid’s clothes singing along to We Still In This Bitch.
I’m in my zone I’m feeling it
Stop blowing my buzz quit killing it
So buy another round
They tried to shut us down
About an hour ago
But we still in this bitch
Turn this shit up loud
And buy another round
They tried to shut us down
About an hour ago
But we still in this bitch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1AABgXnPBqk
Is there misogyny and a glorification of violence and negative stereotypes of various social groups in hip-hop music? Yep. Not all of it, but definitely there. So what? Do we really want a culture completely washed of any and all negativity? Nothing but Smurfs and sunshine and rainbows and cupcakes?
No thanks.
Every genre of music has elements of misogyny and violence and negative stereotyping. And plenty of them have misandry, too. Hello, Carrie Underwood, murdering your lover without a shred of remorse because he cheated on you!
Singling out black culture and black music as being particularly egregious, and then trying to link it to a case of human sex trafficking is just straight up racism. The traffickers were teenage girls. Two of them were white girls. There were no black men involved in this case, on the pimping side, period.
http://changefromwithin.org/2011/01/26/its-not-just-rap-misogyny-in-music/
This brings me to the second aspect of media coverage I would like to address. Who stepped in to help the girls being victimized? Who took a stand and put a stop to what was going on? Who was confronted with the fact that the victims were being coerced and knew that it was just wrong, wrong, wrong?
Yeah, that would be the johns. Men called up an escort service, looking for sex in exchange for money, and when they realized the girls were desperately underage and deeply emotionally upset, they intervened.
In one case, the john drove the young girl home.
In another case, the john lied to the pimps and said they DID have sex, when they really didn’t, and that girl was taken home, too.
In a third case, the john flat out refused to have sexual contact with someone who was clearly a minor.
Men who want sex without all the bullshit that typically comes along with a relationship with a woman are demonized and treated like sub-human scum in our culture. The typical portrayal is to paint the women as innocent dupes of the patriarchy and the men as evil exploiters who care nothing for the person they are paying for sex.
Overall, the attitudes and habits of sex buyers reveal them as men who dehumanize and commodify women, view them with anger and contempt, lack empathy for their suffering, and relish their own ability to inflict pain and degradation.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/07/17/the-growing-demand-for-prostitution.html
That attitude completely dehumanizes women who work in the sex trade, and it dehumanizes the men who hire women for sex work. The johns in Ottawa had the perfect opportunity to treat the young prostitutes with anger and contempt, to show no empathy for their suffering, to relish the ability to inflict pain and degradation.
Guess what? They didn’t. They responded as decent, loving, caring men and took steps to protect and help the girls.
One of the older victims, who was seventeen, reported that she was in fact, raped by a john, who dressed her in a pink bikini and then paid her $180 for two hours of her time. Since we know absolutely no details of how that encounter went down, why the hell isn’t the transaction being reported as an alleged rape?
Well, that’s because everybody knows johns are evil scum who relish degrading and hurting the women they are paying for sex, right? This is in a story about johns who did EXACTLY the opposite of degrading and hurting. They protected and assisted.
And now for the third point in how the media is reporting this case: THE EVIL SCUM WERE TEENAGE GIRLS. And the media is desperate to find some way to give them a pass. Gangsta culture! Lack of adult supervision! Jezebel wants to just straight up blame MEN for how the girls behaved:
Although the media is no stranger to “mean girl antics,” there is something especially chilling about the thought that three teenaged girls could have internalized misogynistic values to the extent that they’d brutally assault their own peers and treat them as chattel.
Why, the poor little ducks might have been victims themselves!
http://jezebel.com/three-teen-girls-begin-trial-for-human-trafficking-char-472172863
This is the same group of women who gleefully called fifth grade boys “psychopaths” for conspiring to murder a classmate. There was no effort to understand how the boys might have been victimized themselves, resulting in a desire to kill a classmate they found unpleasant and mean.
http://jezebel.com/5993282/precocious-fifth-graders-conspire-to-rape-and-murder-female-classmate
While I do think the parents of these girls, both the victims and the perpetrators deserve a giant slap for not being more involved in their daughter’s lives, the responsibility and accountability lies with the teenage girls who decided to assault, blackmail and forcibly prostitute their vulnerable peers.
This is my favorite part from the Ottawa Magazine coverage of the case:
Of the 12 teenage girls I spoke to at the beach that day, eight were Facebook friends with at least one of the suspects. Five said they had been invited to their parties. Among those was Anna*, a Grade 9 girl with long dark hair pulled back in a messy braid. She said she had known L.N. since Grade 1. Every Wednesday for a period of about two months, she would get several texts from L.N., inviting her to hang out on the weekend. “I actually really wanted to go, but my mom wouldn’t let me.”
My mom wouldn’t let me. Thank god for that mom. She did her job. See? It is possible to set limits and boundaries and face down opposition from your teenage daughter and make the right call when she clearly would NOT have.
The reality is this: evil lurks among us. And sometimes evil comes in the form of pleasant white girls who excel at school and babysitting. When we try to pass off responsibility onto black culture or johns or misogyny or anything other than the evil itself, we make it easy for that evil to flourish.
The idea that teenage girls are exempt from being understood as just straight up evil is part of a larger cultural narrative to promote the interests of girls over boys, to define the feminine as better than the masculine, to hold men accountable and treat women as victims, to deny the basic decency and kindness of men who refuse to behave in ways that women define as acceptable, to blame everything violent and ugly and exploitative in white culture on black men.
When a couple of long-haired, pretty girl psychopaths decided to abuse and batter and exploit other girls, it defies our beliefs about women and kindness and their supposed superiority. If only women ran the world, it would be a much kinder place?
Not if these young women ran it, it wouldn’t.
The only decent people in this story were the johns. Let’s let them run the world.
Lots of love,
JB
judgybitch 
I’m really proud of those men.
Sadly, I won’t be surprised when I hear about one or more of those johns being brought up on charges of soliciting prostitution.
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Doesn’t seem very plausible that they could control the girls on out-calls. If the girls aren’t lying, they are as dumb and passive as cows. Probably a result of “girl power” training that involves suspending thought, obeying, and waiting for the government to take care of everything.
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or if they were that young, beaten and under altered states, they could have just been shit scared.
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Now that would be bad, but not surprising. What is surprising is why journalist are so surprised at girl pimps? I mean so what, women can only be equal at
the nice stuff?
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Ginger did everything Fred did, just backwards and in heels….so why should this not apply to pimping, gun running and drug dealing? or do we twee things
just know how to waltz for our money…
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Agree with JB. These are young girls that were drunk and/or high, likely for the first time. They were then beaten, stripped, photographed, and told to do what the accused said or they’d be beaten and have the pictures sent out.
These poor girls were had by the balls physically and emotionally. They didn’t have a chance as soom as they were out of their parents sight
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Meant agree with PPP. Fingers dont always listen to my brain
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Borepatch sent me your way a few days back and I’ve got to say “wow!”
Your posts cut to the meat of the situation far better than I could ever. I’m not worthy.
Love the realistic take on this stuff and your ability to identify and wash away the absurd feminist rhetoric attached to these issues.
As if women can do no evil. Anyone who believes that has never met a woman.
I also like how you pointed out the imposter see in the Carrie Underwood
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Autocorrect or fat fingers. Sorry.
“The hypocrisy in the popularity of the Carrie Underwood songs. Imagine if the genders were reversed in any one of them, and the shitstorm such a song would surely stir up. But since its a woman committing violence against a man, its empowerment, not abuse.”
Is what I meant to say…
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As for women running the world, very little would get done, because my experience has been that women are more likely to build consensus than execute decisions.
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Blaiming hip-hop for this episode is one the most stupid thing I ever heard. Two thing are worth adressing:
1. I live in Eastern Europe and 80-90% of the cases I hear involving kidnapping and forcing prostitution are done by women.
2. I get the victims could have escaped if they really tried. This is what you get when you coddle your children and not teaching them what real life is. Here people teach their children to know how to make their own decisions by the time they’re teenagers. ”My mom wouldn’t let me” isn’t a phrase you hear very often. Being ”shit scared” is not an excuse. They should have known how to get themselves out of bad situations without relying on authorities (parents, police, government etc.).
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There’s an argument for legalizing prostitution. If a man knows that under age girls/boys/dogs/etc are being used, he is less likely to report it if he could be prosecuted for being in the brothel. This fact makes these men even more heroic IMHO.
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Surprisingly, in 30% of the countries which provided information on the gender of traffickers, women make up the largest proportion of traffickers. In some parts of the world, women trafficking women is the norm.
http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/global-report-on-trafficking-in-persons.html
The United Nations agrees with you, Vlad.
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I agree. Can you imagine telling that girl’s parents what happened?
They took an enormous risk, when they could have just walked away.
I think that deserves some recognition.
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as well as control freaks. see quite a bit about women gaining a leadership position (whether it be manager or politician), and making everyone conform to their preconceived idea of how it should look, run, etc
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I hear what you are saying, but I do think being drugged & beaten are reasons that minors didn’t know how to escape from their situation. How exactly would you prepare young girls to escape (other than avoid) that? Getting kidnapped,beaten, drugged can really throw a person off..
I wonder if those girls that pimped would have been caught out in a bigger city?
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Women are particularly good at exploiting other women and justifying it after the fact. When you watch old Western films you always see the brothels run by the Madam who is always portrayed as looking out for her girls. Nowadays you occasionally hear about women like Heidi Fleiss who is pretty frank about her role in running a prostitution ring and, I don’t think, has any remorse for her past. I’m not making an anti-prostitution argument (I say legalize it) I’m just saying that women are just as involved in the business of sex as men and I’m not sure they ‘look out’ for the best interest of the women in their employ than the men do. In this case it’s clear the little shits behind this atrocity are nothing more than evil little sociopaths. The open attempt to lay blame elsewhere is repugnant.
And if women ran the world- shit would never get done.
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I have to say, I hate rap and hip hop for a whole host of reasons, and wouldn’t defend the genre or people who make the music or their ridiculous names fro anything.
But “misogynistic culture” made these girls do it? Two words every idiot feminist should learn: reverse causality. Kind of like with violent videogames, the (faulty) assumption made is that being exposed to the violent game made the person violent.
The truth is that, in fact, it is usually the other way around. It is people who are already violent, people who have sociopathic or psychopathic tendencies, who are drawn to violent media. Of Ted Bundy had been raised in the era of videogames, what do you think he would’ve played all day as a kid, Mario Kart? No, he’d be playing Grand Theft Auto or Manhunt.
Same goes for music. Hip hop didn’t make them dehumanizes their victims; rather, they were probably drawn to the dehumanizing aspects of the genre because that was the way they already felt. It makes a lot more sense, after all. It doesn’t seem farfetched to claim that a sadistic murderer will prefer violent music; it is awfully more farfetched to claim that violent music makes one drawn to sadistic murder.
This McGuire guy is just spewing poop out of his mouth. Forgive me, but I must quote Ronald Reagan in response here: “We must reject the idea that every time a law is broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.”
“I’m a nice, middle-class white lady who happens to be a big fan of hip-hop and rap music.”
I’m a nice middle class white man who happens like classical music. You’d think I’d be in the clear, but wait… guess what Beethoven’s 9th was really about?…………Rape!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_McClary#The_Beethoven_and_rape_controversy
I like Beethoven’s 9th. I guess that makes me a rape apologist just like Lil Wang and Jizzy (I’m sorry, I mean Wayne an “Jeezy” whatever that means; you have to admit though, with such stupid names, they’re asking to be mocked).
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Oops, lots of typos. fro=for; of=if; dehumanizes, lose the s.
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OT, but I’m so happy you called out the Carrie Underwood song (missed the original when it was posted). I’ve long wondered why no other country star wrote a follow-up song where the man is observing the trial of the woman who trashed his car, musing that she mistook him entertaining a cousin visiting from out of town, teaching her to shoot pool etc., and how it all could have been avoided if she just talked to him. You could call it “Before She Goes Batshit Crazy”.
And then Carrie Underwood could follow up with another hit in which a woman laments about how she’ll miss her dying mother and her three-legged dog since she’s on her way to prison–in the rain–for felony destruction of property. You could call it “Before I Forget to Take My Meds.”
They’d both be perfect country songs.
Of course, country is a musical genre that is fertile ground for murderous female revenge fantasies. The Dixie Chicks had a hit with “Goobye Earl” in which two women who were friends in high school get away with poisoning one’s abusive husband. And there’s Martina Mcbride’s “Independence Day,” wherein a daughter recounts the time (complete with references to the Resurrection and Jesus–it is a country song after all) her mother burned down their house with her abusive husband in it; actually the whole town was complicit in that murder. Others include Miranda Lambert’s “Gunpowder and Lead” (His fist is big, but my gun’s bigger/He’ll find out when I pull the trigger)
Now that Underwood has escalated to murder herself, perhaps a follow up song could be sung from the perspective of a woman strapped down, arms wide, in the execution chamber awaiting that injection, comparing her martyrdom to the suffering of Jesus, only to be met by Jesus who reminds her that he really did mean that stuff about not killing. You could call it “Before I Spend Eternity in Hell.”
Nah, who am I kidding. She’d never write that song…
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Ah. Should have read the comments on the linked post. I see you have already covered the murderous nature of female country music stars.
Carry on…
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Not everyone will click through…
So good job!
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And of course the idea fails due to the fact that men (who presumably ‘run the world’) have been getting shit done for thousands of years. Nobody says it hasn’t been a bumpy ride, but if feminists truly forsook everything men had created or done for them, they may as well be living in caves, using wheat-grass as medicine instead of penicillin, and using leaves as toilet paper.
I don’t presume to know what life would be like if women ruled the world, but one can’t in honesty blame all the evil on men without acknowledging the so many great things men have done. Nor do I understand why anyone would think women would be any better or more merciful or more peaceful leaders than men. Oh, how great things would’ve been if Jiang Qing (Mao’s wife) had ruled China instead of Mao. You know, notwithstanding that whereas Mao was ruthless, she was just plain psychotic, and she got the chance to show it after Mao’s death, before a few of the top men in Chinese government thankfully managed to topple her.
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Somehow I doubt that the movies and TV shows will ever portray human-traffickers as largely women though.
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I wonder if you could switch genders these days… I remember when Guns N’ Roses came out with “I Used to Love Her (But I Had to Kill Her)” back in 1988 and I don’t think there was a big outcry. I’m sure I could shake loose a few other songs like that if I were think about it, but I bet they’d all be older…
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Right out of Taxi Driver.
I think this is one major reason why Prostitution should be regulated (legal, but with laws guiding it). Age of Majority, STD testing, and most importantly, safe work environments will help reduce (but not eliminate) abuse.
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I love this… that those johns helped those girls. This goes back to the whole… most men are wired to protect women, not harm them. And girls can be mean, evil bitches. Why do you think so many people (both men and women) would prefer to work for a male boss than a female boss? It’s not “misogyny” or “the patriarchy”.
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That’s a good point I hadn’t thought of.
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Like the CEO of Yahoo who ended (or is in the process of ending) working from home at her company… which was helpful to a lot of mothers who wanted to stay home and be near their children. Meanwhile… said CEO has her office turned into a mini-daycare for HER baby. What a bitch. Nobody else’s babies are going to be allowed to crawl around the mommy’s feet while she’s on the phone with a client. Oh, and she’s pregnant AGAIN.
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If women ruled the world… or more what they actually want… if men were simply eliminated we’d have no electricity because they couldn’t/wouldn’t maintain the power grid. We wouldn’t have new roads or buildings. Oil rigs would shut down. Fires would consume houses because there would be nobody to fight them. Nobody would mine for coal. Everything would just grind to a halt. And yes, we’d be back in caves, hiding from the animal predators that would unsurprisingly suddenly become a problem for us again.
We’ve already had tastes of power hungry women… Elizabeth Bathory anybody? It’s not pretty.
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Women are trained to trust other women. Even IF a man is heading the ring, usually a woman will be used as a lure. But we never hear this side of things. Maybe the lure woman is some abused flower terrified SHE’LL be prostituted if she doesn’t do what the guy says… but I doubt it… because of all the cases where there IS NO man to blame as the “head of the organization”.
But of course… it’s the patriarchy!!!
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This is funny because me and Mr. Z were just talking about this. I was telling him about this situation and was talking about “Girl pimps” and he’s like “That would be Madams, dear.” And I said: “But that always makes me think of the nice brothel where the Madam is looking out for her girls”… SAME phrasing haha. And of course he pointed out this probably never really happened in real life, which I have to agree with. I mean, what do I know about brothels besides what I’ve seen on TV?
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I’m sure there ARE wonderful, respectful madams out there who DO protect their girls.
These girls were not madams.
Sociopaths, more like it.
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Susan McClary needs to up her meds.
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I’m sure you’re right. But I doubt they’re, on average, better or more conscientious than a man would be.
You know, I’m a better more empathetic person because of the man I married. My mom didn’t teach me much about being nice to other people. Everything she taught me was for appearance’s sake. My husband, on the other hand, genuinely cares for other people. He’s the kind of guy who’ll jump in to help someone without thinking twice.
And that’s generally been my experience with men. I remember when my car broke down in the middle of the road once. I barely had time to react before I had two men pushing my car out of traffic.
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What I don’t get is why haven’t the feminists jumped on legalizing prostitution? After all, isn’t saying you can’t sell your body the same as saying it’s not your body to sell? hmmm Weird how they are never consistent about ANYTHING.
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True. Mr. Z’s point, I think, was that I was allowing TV/movies to influence something I didn’t know anything about. Whether or not there are “nice brothels” with “Madams who watch out for their girls”, I just assumed this was “the world of brothels” because of a glamorized notion, which is probably inaccurate. But you’re probably also right that there ARE some women who are watching out for their girls. But I don’t know either way because I don’t know anything of any substance about brothels outside of fictional TV/movie ones.
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I really don’t know. I remember watching an interview with Sidney Biddle Barrows (The Mayflower Madam) and she definitely had a businesslike approach to the whole thing. I think she would have looked out for her girls because it was good business to do so. But I’m not sure her motives would have had anything to do with compassion. I think she wrote a book- that could be some interesting reading.
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If feminism were to somehow succeed tomorrow and the world became a martriarchy, I disagree we’d be back in caves. But I would bet we’d all (well, women and whatever number of men were allowed to live) would be back in grass huts within very few generations…
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I lived in Australia, where brothels are legal, and a brothel security guard lived across the street from us.
My! The stories he had.
Suffice to say, those girls are PROTECTED!
He also had “fuck off” tattooed across his chest. Bit of a strange guy. I’m thinking he might regret that when he has a heart attack at 50.
Better hope the paramedics don’t take that literally!
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I owned a taxi for five years and worked for an escort service for a while. Some of the guys paid for the girls to go on a date, nothing else. Some paid for them to come over and watch videos and fall asleep. Some just wanted to talk. Then there were the guys who couldn’t get a girl at all because of physical deformities so they had to pay for them
An old retired judge told me the city used to police the girls, take them to the health department once a month, beat up guys who abused them. Now there are pimps. The old days were better.
BTW, whores are mercenary and most of the guys were better than they were. Hooker with a Heart of Gold/Pretty Woman my butt.
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Yeah, she’s supposedly one of the first recorded serial killers, right?
I think the record of successful female leaders is telling; women who manage to lead a country for a decent length of time while maintaining or improving its standing generally tend to lead more or less the same way successful male leaders do. Examples that come to minds are of course Thatcher, Merkel, or Elizabeth I and Catherine the Great in earlier days. Some of them led in peace, others in war. All were or are pretty stoic. And while such examples do demonstrate the capacity of some women to lead, they also demonstrate that female leadership is not inherently different from male leadership; when it works, it looks pretty much the same actually, with all the bloodshed and moral ambiguity of male leadership. It’s no panacea to society’s ills.
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And of course there’s the other side of things for men too. A guy working in these organizations, aside from possibly trying to avoid destitution, is probably worried about getting bumped off and replaced. After all, the Hudson River is has been filled (not literally, of course) with the bodies of men, not women, who didn’t do their ‘jobs’ right.
Everyone, male or female, has reasons to be afraid, that’s life. It shouldn’t abnegate responsibility. A woman in trouble shouldn’t be allowed to just pass the buck up to someone else no matter what. It’s like some people just can’t sleep at night if the proverbial ‘buck’ doesn’t always stop at a man.
Sorry for making excessive use of that tired American expression; the phrase to ‘pass the buck’ isn’t used in the UK, is it?
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I think for the same reason they oppose male birth control: it would lessen the power women hold over male sexuality; if men could utilize prostitutes, (non-prostitute) women would have less ability to hold sex over men to influence or control them. In other words, it’s not about principle, it’s about strategy; like so much else in the world, the position (the whole movement, dare I say) only purports to be about principles and fairness, but in reality, is about power.
As for the justification, I think it’d probably just be a version of the feminist argument against male sexuality (that is, all heterosexual sex is rape), a la Catherine MacKinnon: she thinks that women are essentially incapable of giving consent to sex. Because of how marginalized women are in today’s world, every woman lives under the constant threat of danger from men, so a woman consenting to sex for money (or for MacKinnon, for any reason) is really only giving consent under the duress of “the patriarchy.”
Basically, women are not individual human beings with rights or choices, and therefore cannot give consent; only the female collective (embodied by feminism) can give consent. If feminists consensus does not consent on your behalf, then you cannot consent. Just read a little of what MacKinnon has said; this isn’t much of an exaggeration of her views. And what’s sad is, she’s not a radical on the fringe; on the contrary, she is the preeminent feminist legal expert in America. She is a leading crusader against the legality of pornography, and her work has been the primary influence of numerous decisions by the Canadian Supreme Court.
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This is a bit off-point, but I thought you’d like it. It seems like fodder for one of your excellent posts:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-484929/Dame-Helen-Mirren-Women-blame-size-zero-problem.html
Constructive criticism, not complaining: As for your titles: they don’t always quite reflect what you’re writing about. You were on the subject for a split second, and then just kinda wandered to talking about women in general.
As for the issue itself: with sexual violence where I live (Houston), we’ve always had a nasty racial element to things here: it’s where the first “white girl grooming” articles were penned by impeccably liberal authors who tiptoed around the reality of it, basically excusing what was essentially slavery of a very debasing sort, complete with extreme violence and degradation.
Houston may not be the norm, but here in the Gulf Coast the issue of black pimp violence is pretty endemic as well as epidemic, and quite racist as well: we have a strictly color stratified pimpocracy here and it’s a nasty race situation that’s been getting worse for years. I don’t think it’s all evil white racist writers for Vice who are bringing this up to oppress poor brothers (as you half-implied: actually, I take that back: I never really got around to figuring out what you said: you weren’t terribly clear*).
I think you’re probably right about race not having anything to do with the Ottawa pimps (I do agree with a lot you say in the article, and the other part about the female pimps is worth its own article), but….but…but…racial and sexual violence from all-black race gangs is pretty prevalent where I live, and it’s ongoing. There are also black gangs slaving hispanic girls in other parts of Houston too, so it’s not all just black and white: and now the Latin gangs are doing the same thing- oddly, however, both of them are choosing only white girls to do it to. I’m not rejecting everything you say, but there does seem to be real racism and violence here, and it’s pretty color specific. I’m not being racist pointing out that someone seems to be nasty and racist.
*- and I mean that, btw: I might have misinterpreted what you wrote about race. You didn’t talk much about it after the title, and what you wrote was unclear. If I got it wrong, just rephrase.
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Potato Potahto. lol. Maybe some people would be in caves and some would be in huts. I guess it would depend on where they were at. Point is… there would be no more HDTV or Twitter.
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At the risk of sounding like a hater of my own gender, I think those successful women leaders had more “male-patterned brains”. i.e. they were not gender-typical. I don’t think gender-typical females make very good leaders.
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I’m in America so I’m not sure what the UK uses or doesn’t use.
And agreed.
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That’s great to know! I think also, the legalization of brothels makes a big difference, so it can be regulated.
HAHA!
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Well, being the “slut hater”, I don’t have quite the same feeling about prostitutes as I do about sluts. Mainly because a transaction IS taking place. It’s not just “Hey, free vagina!” making it impossible for women to gain actual commitment and love. Paying for sex all the time gets a little bit price-y. Whether by commitment or prostitution… both require some form of payment/security to the other party.
Catherine MacKinnon isn’t the only one with those kinds of views. Andrea Dworkin and Susan Brownmiller also led the charge. Honestly much of what Dworkin wrote about the inherent evils and violence and subjugation of heterosexual sex sounded much to me like a rape fantasy. I imagine had she been prettier and able to secure a man to act out her sex games with her, we would never have had to hear her screeching on the topic.
These women need to shut up. I LIKE the patriarchy. Or what little of it is left. IMO “the patriarchy” was about protecting the women and children, not hurting them. Though some women had bad experiences (abusers/rapists), that is NOT the majority way men and women interact together. To say it is is just creating a war and battle where there doesn’t need to be one.
Feminists can bite me… and shriek about my sad, “rape-y” life. That would very much amuse me.
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Jezebel had an article the other day on a teenage girl who got kicked out of school because she sexted her classmates. Naturally they defended her and felt she was being “shamed”. Hell, I would have had her arrested. It doesn’t occur to any of these feminists that any underage girl who sexts herself is creating child porn and is encouraging the sexual abuse of minors..
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I’ve always seen the argument as pretty obviously in favour of legal, regulated prostitution. I mean, if I can have sex with whoever I want, and get paid by someone to have sex with someone else on camera, and I can have sex with someone when they buy me a nice dinner, how exactly does it follow that I am not allowed to directly sell the services of my body?
As for feminist objections, if it’s really ‘my body, my choice’, how about allowing me the choice?
Those not willingly involved can be better helped without the unnecessary illegality.
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Sex may be pretty much two separate areas, but skills are not gendered so far as to be two categories that don’t blend. On any skill, you could create a graph of ability – one for men, and one for women. On many things, the man graph and the woman graph would be different, but there would be an area of overlap.
The number of men skilled in leadership is much higher, but a few women have that skill despite it not being typical of their gender, and that’s not freakish or wrong or unacceptable – just a few standard deviations from the norm.
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Really? You used the phrase ‘pear shaped’ in a comment once I believe, and I thought, “I’ve only ever heard that phrase used in Jason Statham movies; she must be British.” Who could argue with that kind of reasoning, lol.
Is that phrase really used in the states and I never noticed? Apparently I live under a rock.
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This thread needs ONE MORE picture to be complete:
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Not to mention, legalization of prostitution would be absolutely nuts, given HIV. There is a SIX MONTH lag from becoming infected (and able to infect other sex partners) with HIV, and when it starts to show up on the blood tests for it. That is, after ONE episode of a person having commercial sex, they would need to wait six months before they could safely do it again (getting cleared by testing). As that will never happen, prostitution needs to be discouraged.
Obviously, having a monogamous mistress does not have the same STD-based objectionableness. However, that is also still undesirable for a society. It’s effectively another form of polygamy, which concentrates sexual access to women in a small group of men, depriving many other men who are younger and less economically successful of access to sex and getting to have children. The result is that the latter men are commonly converted from being peaceful, economically productive husbands and fathers to (at best) unmotivated and (at worst) criminals prone to violent insurrection, having no stake in this total winner-take-all society. Polygamy or a peaceful First-World civilization; pick one — you can’t have both.
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I think JB misunderstood me when I was referring to her ass.
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Prostitution is already happening. It is having all of the negative effects that you discuss. However, it is worse, because it is not being exposed. Legalizing and regulating it would allow for better health protection for both the user and the prostitute, provide safer environments, and keep some of the undesirable elements out.
As you mentioned, some of the testing will not be able to stop all STIs from getting passed. However, the idea here is minimizing harm, not stopping it. HIV is no where near the largest or easiest to transfer STI. There are other STIs that can be minimized. Additionally, mandatory condom use and such would help minimize the issues.
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I didn’t see anything wrong with McGuire’s article, myself. Your link isn’t current now, JB I found the actual text here: http://www.vice.com/read/three-teen-girls-in-ottawa-have-plead-not-guilty-to-pimping
She mentions the fact that female pimps are the majority in certain countries, she doesn’t downplay women’s part in this, nor does she blame black men. She also mentioned an episode of 90210 as particularly influential in this case (rich spoiled white kids). The culprits styled themselves after gangsta-pimping culture and tweeted vernacular like “Ain’t no problem like a hoe problem”. I see no reason to ignore the obvious. If they’d styled themselves after hick culture, wrapped themselves in rebel flags and tweeted “This hyar prosteetootes is causin’ us large problems” they’d have pointed to something else.
I thought you’d already established that appearances and behaviors matter, many many times before? The words of Jay-Z, per his own song’s lyrics, “Some [lyrics] become really profound when you see them in writing. Not “Big Pimpin.” That’s the exception. It was like, I can’t believe I said that. And kept saying it. What kind of animal would say this sort of thing? Reading it is really harsh.” If you say you’re a pimp, act like a pimp, walk and talk like a pimp people might just think you’re a pimp.
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“Mandatory STI testing”, “mandatory condom use” – I bet all those dumb, dirty whores are glad you’re around to give them tips. I mean, it’s not like the vast, vast majority of sex workers are aware of (and protect themselves from) the health hazards of their profession or anything. It’s not like a phenominally massive portion of all STIs are spread by the good, non-whore population. And it’s not like sex workers use condoms as a matter of course (and with more reliability than your average non sex-worker), right?
I’m just going to leave this excerpt here, and suggest that anyone who actually wants to know (pretty much anything) about prostitution might be well advised to use Maggie McNeill’s blog and infohub (http://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com) as a good jumping-off point.
“Busybody moralists still profess that their efforts to infantilize whores, rob us of agency, hunt us down and destroy our livelihoods are “for our own good”; amateur women are still victimized by laws designed to “get” prostitutes, sex workers still face the prospect of our children being abducted and our goods pillaged by the State, crypto-moralists still believe that puritanical eating regimens and disinfection of everything are the keys to health, and the “dirty whore” stereotype is as popular as ever. Though the incidence of venereal disease is twice as high in the promiscuous segment of the general population as among streetwalkers and only 3 to 5% of venereal disease in the United States is related to prostitution (compared to 35% from adolescents), the myth doggedly persists that whores spread disease. When one further considers that some studies have shown STD rates up to 80x higher in streetwalkers than in other types of prostitutes, this means that the incidence of STDs in promiscuous non-prostitutes is up to 160x that in escorts, and that escorts and brothel workers together account for only about 0.4% of the sexually transmitted disease in the United States. Yet every legalization regime includes mandatory (and often invasive) “health checks”, while 95-97% of STDs are spread by the good, “clean” members of the general population who can legally screw anybody they like without even the most cursory or sporadic health checks and face neither stigma nor revocation of their professional credentials should they turn up infected.”
Full article: http://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2011/06/24/dirty-whores/
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Isn’t this the point then? By regulating, but legalizing the industry, would would reduce the number of street walkers? As you mentioned, escorting is already happening. The concerns are about the abuse in the system. Hiding the system in deep, dark shadows only encourages abuse.
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No. Again, I’m going to refer you to Maggie McNeill here for a more “in depth” explanation, because she’s spent more time studying, and has more experience of, sex work and he issues around it than I do. Basically, you presume that all of the street walkers will leave the industry, rather than be pushed further underground to work for less money with more dangerous clients. And you presume that placing “the authorities” in a position of power over a sex worker’s right to work is a good thing (when, if you ask most sex workers, abuse of them by law enforcement officers and other ‘authority’ figures is endemic). Fear of law enforcement is regularly cited by sex workers the world over as their number one concern. They are far more afraid of interference from law enforcement than they are clients or (in cases where they have them) pimps.
You might be interested in this infographic that shows “who victimises sex workers” (concentrated in Cambodia and India, but the briefest period of research bears out the general picture elsewhere). https://tacticaltech.org/sites/dev.tacticaltech.org/files/Who%20victimises%20copy17.png
Anyway:
http://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2011/03/22/march-miscellanea/
(The section entitled “For Those Who Think Legalization is a Good Idea”)
Here’s a PDF (don’t worry – it’s safe (says the random chick on the internet you don’t know)) that explains the reasons for decriminalisation (as opposed to legalisation) quite well:
Click to access 10-reasons-to-decriminalize-sex-work.pdf
And much, much more here, tagged “legalization a good idea” (thankfully, Maggie is an ex-librarian, so it’s easy to find info on her site about pretty much ANY prostitution-related subject.)
http://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/tag/legalization-a-good-idea/
You’ll find plenty of links to other sources and studies within Maggie’s work.
Again, I’d politely suggest that some more extensive reading would be of benefit.
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I used to think as you do. I now think prostitution should be decriminalized, but not legalized. This after observing real world examples. Even Amsterdam seems to now think the legalized brothel idea a failure (there are numerous links, but I’ve seen and heard it first hand, just google legal prostitution failure amsterdam).
In the US, being a state issue only and not federally mandated, prostitution is legal throughout most of Nevada with the exception of Las Vegas. Yet you will see prostitutes throughout Las Vegas in “illegal areas”, far more than elsewhere in the “legal” environment. Both they and their johns seem to prefer the unregulated market for exchange of services.
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Lol.
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Right, I agree. But that’s what I mean by saying “not gender-typical”. I mean, I’m not gender-typical on the procreation issue. I don’t feel this makes me “less of a woman”, it just means that I am not the average woman on the street on this issue. To me the same is true of leadership.
I should qualify that though with what sphere we’re talking about. A very feminine woman can “rule the roost”, but in highly-competitive testosterone-filled work environments… the effective female leaders in those situations tend to not be “gender typical”, i.e. why there are more men that can do it than women, because it’s not like it’s “impossible for women” or an actually good female leader should be discriminated against. It’s just that she’s a bit of an outlier. So we shouldn’t then circle back and pretend that having equal numbers of women CEO’s out there should really be a goal. It’s just not going to be a natural even distribution between the sexes.
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hmmm is that a Britishism? Maybe Spike said it on Buffy one time. LOL. Or maybe Giles said it. Or maybe someone on Dr. Who said it. See… here in America we DO see British people in entertainment sometimes. 😛
OOOH or Monty Python. Maybe they said it!
I’m not sure if it’s used in the states or not. It’s just a phrase I liked so I used it. I didn’t think about it’s origin much, but yeah, I probably got it from a Brit and didn’t think about it.
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HA!
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Oh, and I should clarify I know that James Marsters (Spike) is not truly British, but his character was. I’m pretty sure he talked about something going all “pear-shaped” once.
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I use the expression too (I’m American). I think I heard it from my mom and she’s a native Californian.
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English girl here. Yeah, ‘pear-shaped’ is definitely a well-used idiom over here (though I don’t know if it’s ‘ours’ originally.) And we do use ‘pass the buck’ too.
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Click to access rogers.pdf
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honestly, women are a burden. they never know what they want. everytime i see one it’s like she’s working as hard as possible (ie learning how to cook, going to the gym, liking or pretending to like things) to impress a man. its like they never know what to do with themselves. although i know they’re out there, i personally have never met a women who seems like she can properly stand on her on. every women i meet has at some point been a huge b*tch, like they think they hold some kind of power over others when they act like that. i can’t personally think of a better system then the one we have right now but if i could figure out a way to live in a just society while still being able to hit, imprison or at least exile stupid people i’d try my hardest to implement it. one might think this is how hitler probably got started, thinking of things like that…but the opposite is actually true. some think hitler based his ideologies on a very innocent concept, which is based on plato’s book, the republic. regardless, it’s so unfortunate that we live in a society where the stupid, ignorant and rude rule, simply because they are allowed to. One must ask themselves, is this really a just society?
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This is bloody brilliant!
Thank you!
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Good to know. I won’t hesitate to use that one next time I’m in the UK then.
I’m curious, do Americans (tourists maybe?) and Brits ever confuse each other over shred words with different idioms? For example, if I said to a Brit, I’m pissed (which means angry to me, as in pissed off), he might thing I was saying I’m drunk. He might say ‘then I guess you can’t drive.” It’s illegal to drive when pissed in the UK? How can tell how pissed you are? lol. I love British slang though. It amuses me to no end for some reason.
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We generally understand American idioms, even if they mean something different in English (like fanny, pissed, pants and fag). We tend to say ‘pissed off’ for angry, but I’ve noticed a trend to dropping the ‘off’ in the American style – it wouldn’t be unusual for 2 Brits to have to have the same misunderstanding. Anyway, we have a ridiculous amount of ways of saying drunk! We don’t need to use pissed. ‘Ratted’, (short for rat-arsed) treed’ (short for being out of one’s tree) and ‘wankered’ (god knows why!) all work just as well. As does ‘shit-faced’, but I have a feeling that’s another American import! In fact, we could pretty much make-up a word with slightly rude overtones and have it understood to mean drunk with minimal context. ‘I was so arsefarted last night, I don’t remember getting home’. Yep,Made that up, and the response would likely be ‘Arsefarted? Not heard that one before! How’s the hangover?’
Having said all that, I’m a fairly old git now, who rarely goes out drinking, so I’m basing this on how we spoke 10-20 years ago, which isn’t necessarily what teenagers say now.. Gimme 10 years and I’ll be in the know again when my son’s a teenager!
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Google, Michael McIntyre, posh drunk, he sums it up perfectly.
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Crap! I’m clearly posh. Who knew? 🙂
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“I’m a nice, middle-class white lady who happens to be a big fan of hip-hop and rap music. I absolutely love the emotional intensity and anger and defiance and authenticity of hip-hop music. It’s also hella fun to dance to! I feel like such a bad-ass mutha down in the laundry room folding my kid’s clothes singing along to We Still In This Bitch.”
JB, I have to keep it real with you. What exactly is it that you “love” about anger and defiance? How are those positive characteristics to cultivate?
I hate to sound redundant, but again the reason why I have more or less entirely rejected my own culture and adopted a foreign one was because I see that negatives like anger and defiance are “pimped” if you will – for their own sake, in mainstream American culture. As if anger and defiance alone have some sacred value.
You are a mom. Do you want your kids to grow up angry and defiant? Will anger and defiance make anyone a content and happy human being?
In my adopted tradition we seek to cultivate positive virtues and this entails making media choices that will enhance positive values.
Anger and defiance are negative emotions that are to be kept in check, not cultivated though the purposeful patronage of media that conveys them.
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I’d also be interested in some ideas of how we can rid this country of prostitution altogether, if at all possible.
I’ve travelled through South and Southeast Asia and some people there are under the impression that there is NO prostitution in the US because everyone here is sexually loose and having “free sex” !!!!
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Crunchy granola bullshit!
Anger is what get things done. Defiance is what moves us forward.
Note that those are typically masculine virtues.
And make no mistake: they are the virtues that have given us everything we have.
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“Crunchy granola bullshit!”
Sorry, I’m not getting the connection between what I wrote and granola or bullshit.
“Anger is what get things done.”
Anger is an emotion that if not controlled and channeled properly can result in chaos and destruction.
“Defiance is what moves us forward.”
Defiance of what exactly, and moving toward what?
Like I said, defiance is not a virtue onto itself.
There certainly are things worth defying, I’ve defied the culture I was born and raised in, but I’ve traded up for more refined ethics and values, not coarser ones. I traded up for a more evolved civilization, not a devolved one.
“Note that those are typically masculine virtues.”
Says who?
First, anger is not a “virtue” it is an emotion. It is intrinsic to the human experience and the Gita speaks as to how left uncontrolled it can spiral into madness and complete self destruction.
When one sees injustice one naturally becomes angry but if that emotion is not tempered by logic and reason, one will not be able to change the very circumstances that made one angry in the first place.
“Note that those are typically masculine virtues.
And make no mistake: they are the virtues that have given us everything we have.”
Although anger is neither a virtue nor gendered, this kind of reflects my personal experience growing up in Anglo and Anglo American cultures and my opinion formed thereof is opposite of an opinion I’ve read on many mens’ blogs – that “western culture is feminized”.
If anything, I’ve seen an increasing identification with what is thought to be “masculine” traits, by both men AND women.
You yourself are an example in that you said you love the anger and defiance of hip-hop and anger and defiance are both described by you as “masculine virtues”.
Is the conclusion that you are a “masculinized woman”?
This comports with my experience – that women in Anglo cultures identify and promote what they perceive to be masculine traits, but these traits are actually gender neutral negative traits.
Hence the negative “masculinization” of Anglo and Anglo American women.
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Building consensus and executing decisions are not mutually exclusive. You execute decisions that were arrived at via consensus.
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Goober April 11, 2013 at 18:49 #
As for women running the world, very little would get done, because my experience has been that women are more likely to build consensus than execute decisions.
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Alex April 11, 2013 at 19:33 #
as well as control freaks. see quite a bit about women gaining a leadership position (whether it be manager or politician), and making everyone conform to their preconceived idea of how it should look, run, etc
______________________________
Controllers are good at making and executing their decisions.
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Pakistan, India, Bangladesh have all had female Prime Ministers decades ago (and 2 are “Muslim countries” to boot) but that does not reflect any empowered sort of reality on the ground in those countries for common women.
Interesting though that sometimes Americans will say those countries are oppressive for women and people from there will laugh and say you people haven’t even had a female president yet.
Sri Lanka also, but it is better for women than the other 3.
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Goober April 11, 2013 at 18:47 #
Autocorrect or fat fingers. Sorry.
“The hypocrisy in the popularity of the Carrie Underwood songs. Imagine if the genders were reversed in any one of them, and the shitstorm such a song would surely stir up. But since its a woman committing violence against a man, its empowerment, not abuse.”
Is what I meant to say…
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sqt April 11, 2013 at 21:44 #
I wonder if you could switch genders these days… I remember when Guns N’ Roses came out with “I Used to Love Her (But I Had to Kill Her)” back in 1988 and I don’t think there was a big outcry. I’m sure I could shake loose a few other songs like that if I were think about it, but I bet they’d all be older…
——————————
There’s plenty of misogynistic songs out there today. It keeps getting worse and worse. Not just misogyny but other negative topics as well.
I’ve been ashamed of my so called “culture” for decades now.
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Wilson, “Doesn’t seem very plausible that they could control the girls on out-calls. If the girls aren’t lying, they are as dumb and passive as cows. Probably a result of “girl power” training that involves suspending thought, obeying, and waiting for the government to take care of everything.”
WTF? That idea salad made no sense though it seems your trying to make some sort of jumbled attempt at a point about feminism and big gubmint.
Like most people held against their will they were probably threatened with dire consequences such as “we’ll kill your family if you try and get smart”.
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Liz, “I didn’t see anything wrong with McGuire’s article, myself. Your link isn’t current now, JB I found the actual text here: http://www.vice.com/read/three-teen-girls-in-ottawa-have-plead-not-guilty-to-pimping
She mentions the fact that female pimps are the majority in certain countries, she doesn’t downplay women’s part in this, nor does she blame black men. She also mentioned an episode of 90210 as particularly influential in this case (rich spoiled white kids).”
So basically Liz, you’re saying that JB read McGuire’s article and took her talking points and used those points to argue against McGuire as if she did not write about those talking points herself?
Is this true?
“The culprits styled themselves after gangsta-pimping culture and tweeted vernacular like “Ain’t no problem like a hoe problem”. I see no reason to ignore the obvious. If they’d styled themselves after hick culture, wrapped themselves in rebel flags and tweeted “This hyar prosteetootes is causin’ us large problems” they’d have pointed to something else.
I thought you’d already established that appearances and behaviors matter, many many times before? ”
This is a good question. It appears the blog mistress here contradicts herself more than a few times and when I’ve asked her about it I get no response.
Not trying to bait. Just looking for some answers, consistency and logic.
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“The truth is that, in fact, it is usually the other way around. It is people who are already violent, people who have sociopathic or psychopathic tendencies, who are drawn to violent media. Of Ted Bundy had been raised in the era of videogames, what do you think he would’ve played all day as a kid, Mario Kart? No, he’d be playing Grand Theft Auto or Manhunt.
Same goes for music. Hip hop didn’t make them dehumanizes their victims; rather, they were probably drawn to the dehumanizing aspects of the genre because that was the way they already felt. It makes a lot more sense, after all.”
Judgy Bitch says she “loves” the “anger” and “defiance” of hip hop.
My question is – why is she so angry and what is she defying?
I was raised in the same general culture as she and I rejected it because I saw that many of the people were in fact angry and defiant for no reason. I believe this is what is also making American and British kids so depressed. They grow up surrounded by anger and defiance.
I’d like to know why Judgy Bitch holds anger and defiance in such high esteem.
As she is a self described “nice middle class white lady” – I would think she would be happy and content rather than angry and defiant.
And I’m not asking this just about her. I’m asking it about the culture in general. The culture I was born and raised in and never understood.
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“The truth is that, in fact, it is usually the other way around. It is people who are already violent, people who have sociopathic or psychopathic tendencies, who are drawn to violent media. Of Ted Bundy had been raised in the era of videogames, what do you think he would’ve played all day as a kid, Mario Kart? No, he’d be playing Grand Theft Auto or Manhunt.
Same goes for music. Hip hop didn’t make them dehumanizes their victims; rather, they were probably drawn to the dehumanizing aspects of the genre because that was the way they already felt. ”
— JB says she “loves” hip hop for its “anger” and “defiance”. Does that mean she’s angry and defiant then? Being that she self describes as a “nice middle class white lady” I’d have to ask why all the anger and defiance?
Its not just a personal question posed to her based on the information she herself provided here, its also a question for her culture in general, which is also the culture I was born and bred in, never fit in with, and never quite understood.
I never understood this gravitational pull to the negative in mainstream American culture.
So much prosperity yet so much angst.
Can someone here clue me in?
Why?
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“Even Amsterdam seems to now think the legalized brothel idea a failure ”
I just googled that and appearantly legalizing prostitution there did nothing to stop the international sex trafficking of under aged victims, and there appears to be a race component as well;
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2237170/Why-Amsterdams-legal-brothels-lesson-Britain-telling-truth-sex-gangs-race.html
Obviously pimping and hoeing are not the professions we want our own children to go into so why we be all for other peoples’ kids going into it?
The sex industry, whether prostitution or porn, is an exploitative one that preys upon the vulnerable.
I actually know a woman who admitted to me that she has just recently done some self-pimping on Craigs List. She looks like, and is, a completely normal, everyday single mother. She is health conscious in her eating, meditates daily, is involved in a socially and sexually conservative sub-culture, but due to lack of finances and housing issues considered pimping herself out to get over an economic slump.
Of course this was “her choice” but she choose it when she was at her most financially vulnerable. No pimp and no porn producer came looking for her. However, she is exactly the sort of person they would target if they were around her.
They would sniff out her financial desperation and pounce.
Its predatory.
If not, if its completely respectable and on the up and up, how come no one wants their kid to go into the business once they hit legal age?
All these “pro legalization of prostitution” talking heads, and even the pro-porn peeps have never been able to answer that in any way that sounds remotely genuine.
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“I think for the same reason they oppose male birth control”
Who opposes male birth control? The condom has been used for almost 200 years on one form or another now. Even women have taken to buying them just in case their partners don’t or forgot to.
A male birth control pill was actually already invented decades ago but when they floated the idea before men to see if it was actually bankable, the majority of men surveyed said they would not buy such a product because they feared it would mess with their reproductive system.
Other than that, there is the reversible vasectomy now too.
So who exactly are the women “opposing” male birth control of which you speak?
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Z, “What I don’t get is why haven’t the feminists jumped on legalizing prostitution?”
Already done. Decades ago.
“After all, isn’t saying you can’t sell your body the same as saying it’s not your body to sell?”
That’s one of the arguments the pro-sex work feminist lobby makes.
“hmmm Weird how they are never consistent about ANYTHING.”
I just explained how they are consistent above.
Do some research for yourself.
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Z, “What I don’t get is why haven’t the feminists jumped on legalizing prostitution?”
Here’s something you’re sure to love reading;
“A Feminist Revolution That Cruelly Backfired”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2237170/Why-Amsterdams-legal-brothels-lesson-Britain-telling-truth-sex-gangs-race.html
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“Do some research for yourself.”
Be a little less condescending when someone is making a “thinking aloud” comment. This isn’t a formal debate.
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Wow, that isn’t like the most biased article EVER. Holy crap. Okay first of all, sex slavery and prostitution are NOT the same thing. I’m not saying most girls are prostitutes because they “get off on it”, I actually don’t think most females are wired that way, but I also don’t think the vast majority of them are being lured in via sex traffickers. This kind of article focuses on this one kind of situation while ignoring the responsibility women have for their own behaviors… i.e. ALL the girls who behave in certain ways for whatever reasons they’ve concocted in their brain that have nothing to do with beating or blackmail. This is just an extension of the victimization narrative. I’m not saying situations like this aren’t real or don’t exist, but by focusing solely on it, and then trying to retroactively apply the one situation to all or most situations just because it “sounds right”… it’s just intellectually dishonest.
Also, this is a rather bizarre statement in the article: “The gangs know who to pick out: the girl with the confidence problems, with the glasses, or who looks overweight. They flatter her and seem like the “knight in shining armour”. She is drawn to her new boyfriend like a magnet.’”
The part that caught my eye was: “with the glasses”.
REALLY??? I can’t take this article seriously. I’ve worn glasses my whole life and the saying: “guys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses” is a lie.
Also… if they think the girl is so ugly… how do they think they’re going to make money off her? Unreal.
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Hell yeah! Bitches belong in kitchens, bros!
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well, I seriously doubt that prostitution will ever be abolished.
There are so many ‘seemingly good’ solutions, but none worked.
I would say instead of trying to ban something that cannot be banned, we can better persue goals that are more realistic. Like providing medical psychological healthcare f.ex.
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