UN Commission Report on Online Violence Against Women

Like any space on this planet, the internet contains violence, including violence against females.  So the report CYBER VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND GIRLS (shouty ALL CAPS from original) certainly has a valid subject.

The report itself is steeped in sex-negative assumptions that are not made explicit.
For example:

•  Referring to "revenge porn" (posting explicit material about a woman without her permission) simply as "porn" as if these are interchangeable things. 
• Sexting is discussed only as a risk, not a positive and deliberate expression of sexuality between competent and consenting individuals. 
• "Mainstreaming" of the pornography is treated only as a problem.
• Pornography is characterized as inherently abusive in content and damaging to male viewers.
• Non-heterosexual content and female consumers of pornography are not acknowledged to exist.

Many women I know have been effected by threats, stalking and various kind of online harassment (including group attacks) that were gender-based. And I do think the overall goals of this report to increase women's' access to online opportunities is a good one.  But the implicit assumption that this will not include any kind of sex-positive material (a.k.a "pornography") is self-defeating.

The report has a pervasive assumption that sex work and pornography of any kind is only damaging, and not a realm in which opportunity can also exist.  The very choice to refer to pornography as "porn" strikes me as telling. As it the choice to cite alarming statistics about how most porn depicts abuse and turns men into abusers without ever defining what is being counted as porn (in a document where almost every other repeatedly used term is explicitly define, porn is still "I know it when I see it"?).

What I think is missing is that online opportunities for women include the ability to explore and express their sexuality and take part in creative activities and exchanges about sexuality. Fostering, as much as possible, a safe environment online does not meant rendering the online space neuter and completely asexual. (Indeed, even the exploration of asexual identity requires being able to explore responses to sexualized material and discuss sexuality and asexuality freely).

In summary: Addressing the problem of cyber-violence against women requires that women's sexual and gender identities must be addressed positively. Sexuality cannot be framed only as a danger to women from which they must be protected, and never as a trait to be celebrated and expressed. This sex-negative approach effectively silences women on an important subject, one of the core subjects that is being used to restrict and victimize them.

Thank you, Agmo & Ellingsen

Over the years I have heard the data repeated many times.  Based on a surveys men have more lifetime heterosexual sex partners than women.  For the United States it is reported as 12:3, for Norway 13:5 and for Britain 10:3.

Whenever this data is quote we are reminded that man are meant to want to spread their 'genome' as widely as possible, females are meant to try and bond a longer-term partner to get them to help raise the kids.

The only problem is that this data doesn't make sense.  As Agmo & Ellingsen (2003) writes "Under the condition that the population consists of 50% of each sex..." (which they established is largely the case) "...the number of partners must inevitably be exactly the same for men and women."

So we don't need 'just so' theories about why men have more sex (with women) than women have (with men)--because that flat out cannot have happened.

Of course there are lots of theories to be made about how they misremember, differently categorise and flat out lie about it... but that's a whole 'nother thing.

Hopped Up on Sex

It seems that the world's so-called experts have trouble with the message that people, so long as nobody is being harmed should do what they want--what they enjoy.  I imagine this has something to do with the fact that if this simple message was widely accepted, we wouldn't never quite so many "experts". I read a of  I noticed the subtle and not so subtle statement, that women should not enjoy books more than sex, that women who don't want  lot of sex should somehow learn to want it. ("Hoppe ... offers numerous ways women can boost their desire for sexual intimacy.")Healthy Sex Drive, Healthy You: What Your Libido Reveals About Your Lifereview

No matter how liberated or accepting of diversity our society becomes, we cannot seem to get away from the constant conflicting condemnations.  A woman must not be a slut. A woman must not be frigid.  A woman cannot just have as much sex as she wants, she must determine how much she is meant to want, and somehow achieve that frequency. A woman must not prioritise other things above having just the right amount of sex.  A woman is important to the extent that she is providing and receiving sex ("Physical intimacy with your partners is important because it is a barometer of your whole life").

To be fair it is entirely possible that the book focuses on women who want a higher libido, rather than prescribing it, if you will excuse the phrase, willy-nilly. But all of the surrounding materials seem to ring with echoes of my collection of Victorian sexual non-fiction. "Women's lives are fuller and richer than ever, but often at the expense of sexual intimacy." (Working women are de-sexed). "[A] woman s libido is a reflection of her overall health" (if you don't want sex--or 'enough' sex--you are abnormal and sick).  Hoppe's book, for all its professed 'holism' seems to exist in a world devoid of healthy celibates, asexuals, single people or--as far as I can tell, lesbians. A world that would be strangely familiar to the bearded sexual experts of one hundred years ago.

The Plight of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani

Today the Iran government magnanimously said they won't stone a woman to death.

They haven't said they won't execute this 43-year old woman. They haven't said they regrect having her flogged, 99 lashes while her then teenaged son watched. They see no problem with convicting her to death in 2007 for a consensual sex act, namely adultery. They just said that it wasn't true that they planned to bury her up to her neck in the ground and stone her to death this weekend.

Don't get me wrong, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani  is not a saint.  The reports that repeatedly refer to her as a widow remind me somewhat of the old joke about thea man who killed his parents and then turned to the judge and said: "take pity on a poor orphan".

She was in a marriage that was, by all accounts, abusive. A man she knew killed her husband and she was deemed to be an accomplice, and they are both serving ten years. But that is not where the death sentence came in.  But she was sentenced to death because three of the five judges deemed that she had committed adultery.

A woman does not need to be perfect to deserve being saved from the horrible fate of being killed by stones carefully measured to ensure they will not kill her too quickly--not because of her involvement in a murder, but because of who she allegedly (in the absence of any real evidence) chose to have sex with.

For each person who comments on this post I will donate $1 to Amnesty Internation, up to a maximum of $50.

Amount raised so far: $5

AM Crenshaw is matching my donations dollar for dollar!

Please also visit:

• Save Sakineh [A Writer's House]
• Nausea. [Sharon Maas]

What you can do:
Send an email
Donate to Amnesty International

See also:
Document - Iran: Fears for prisoners on death row in Iran
Iran stonings are a legal nightmare

Would you like some food with that sex?

I am pro-sex; let me be clear about that. Sex is a good thing, or at least is can be. I also don't have a problem with using sex and sexual innuendo to sell products. For me the issue is not whether you use sex in advertising, but how.

Take for, for example, this Singaporean Burger King ad (source). Comparing a seven inch sandwich to male genitalia is overly obvious and not terribly clever, but, whatever. What make me more uncomfortable is the heavily made up and photoshopped women looking rather like a doll, a frightened doll. That's just, um, not nice.

Or is she just meant to look... surprised?

See also:
Blowing A Seven Inch…Sandwich

The Arizona Strip Search Case

It is a clash of the great moral panics of our time. Is suspicion of drug possession ground for strip searching a 13-year-old girl?

I find it interesting that Justice David Souter clearly knows which bogeyman scares him more. He compares the alleged possession of ibuprofen to a "dead kid" and strip search a girl in a way that was humiliating enough to cause her to drop out of that school despite being a conscientious honor student as just a little "embarrassment". So that's okay then.

Meanwhile another girl caught with a terrifying drug, the birth control pill, was suspended and threatened with expulsion. I can't help but wonder if this is partly due to the powers that be and their attitudes about schoolgirls and the pill? (In an area where 1/4 to 1/2 of students are sexually active).

Or is it just that in both cases a zero tolerance policy is the next best thing to a lobotomy? Because the fear of any and all objects in pill form seems to be far more important than a girl's dignity, control over her own body, and access to education.

Who would have thunk it....

Behold! It is possible to write a page that includes the words "erotic", "attracted", "craving", "sex", "pathological" and "loveliness" and still be so boring it is hard to even focus on the page. Not paragraphing helps. Bonus points if you know which famous author wrote this. (Click to enlarge)