Need to tell the truth

Before I get into it I just have to say that all over the blogosphere people are crying "censorship" and saying that sex workers are being silenced. Bull. Sam was the only one not in attendance at the conference. The women that were put on the panel at the last minute, one of which is a sex worker, were *at* the panel, not Sam. The whole "silencing" thing is bull. Sam's was the only voice that was silenced.

The following is written by Ms. Sam Berg, anti-pornstitution activist and speaker.

On March 19th I was invited to a panel debate on pornography at William and Mary College. My contact for the organizing group was Constance Sisk, who told me funding assistance could likely be found to fly me 3,000 miles across the country so I agreed to be penciled in until enough money could be raised. A call for donations among anti-pornography feminist colleagues covered airfare, and I had just enough vacation days earned at work to take off.

On March 24th I confirmed that I would gladly join the two other two confirmed panelists, on the anti-pornography side, John D. Foubert, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Higher Education at the College of William and Mary, and on the pro-pornography side Amanda Brooks, a former escort and sex work advocate.

Constance told me April 2nd that they moved the panel date to the 21st and the rest of April slid by without communication until April 16th when an anti-porn friend informed me that Jill Brenneman and RenEv blogged they would be on the panel. I had received no word from Constance of this and was dumbfounded that wholesale changes were being made to the panel just five days before the event without informing me. I had agreed to do the panel with John and Amanda, and I hadn’t gotten any emails saying she couldn’t attend or that they were looking for a replacement.

If they had told me Amanda couldn’t make it I would have suggested that pornographers and strip club owners are very easy to find through legal channels so they could have been asked to appear on the panel. I would have also suggested that the number of porn-using men on campus should have been able to produce just one pornsturbator willing to defend his porn consumption. Because I was under the impression that Constance & Co. were being honest with me about their intentions, I chalked up the lack of a pornographer or porn-using man on the panel to inept organizing and the extreme amount of publicity given recently to sex work advocacy at William and Mary.

How much sex work advocacy has been given a voice there can be answered with the name Constance. I spoke with John Foubert for the first time Thursday and he told me that Constance is a big pro-sex work advocate on campus and she brought the sex worker show to campus the past three years. A woman named Audrey invited John to the panel because Constance didn’t think he would agree if she asked him. Constance was a guest on Jill's radio show a few weeks ago, and Jill did a pro-sex work chat with William and Mary college folks a few weeks ago, but in her emails Constance claimed ignorance of the lengthy pro-porn and radical blogosphere debates on this contentious subject.

Constance. Constance said she was excited to have me coming and offered to let me spend Monday night at her place, where she planned on cooking dinner for a group of people post-panel. How do you think it would feel if a pro-choice feminist were invited to a predominantly pro-life campus by a predominantly pro-life group and the pro-life organizer did everything Constance did without revealing her pro-life politics to her pro-choice panelist and house guest?

Little story: Heading home from presenting at a prostitution conference I was in the airport shuttle with a middle-aged black social worker with her name tag still pinned to her blouse. I’m a young, white, tattoo-bearing woman and at the time I think my hair was blue. We exchanged delicate pleasantries and danced around how we talked about the conference until she sat up earnestly and cut to the chase, “So, are you for or against?” When I replied, “Against,” she slouched down and sighed and we grooved on the same anti-prostitution track until we got to the airport.

I agreed to do the panel with John and Amanda three weeks ago. Though it was unethical to make major lineup changes at the last minute like that without telling me and things started feeling really fishy due to the lack of notification about the event anywhere besides pro-john blogs (it’s not listed on W&M’s events calendar or advertised around campus), I agreed to debate Jill. I could not agree to debate Ren, and I don’t suppose I have to tell most of you reading this why but I’ll touch upon it a tad anyway.

Here are Ren’s thoughts on sharing a panel discussion table with me:

“So serious I am taking it very seriously. And looking forward to it in my uniquely grim and serious way. Planning and preparing with a very serious, serious sneer on my face.

And also laughing like a super villain the whole time. Why?

Once upon a time, I had a wish, a dream, a surely wank worthy fantasy of some anti-porn sex work types having to face down, in a forum, and debate those from the other side. And I wanted to be there.”

“And, yes, oh yes, I am seriously looking forward to it. I have so lusted for such an opportunity. Very seriously. And yes, if possible, I will have the whole thing on video. Get your cerebral wanking tissues ready.”

Serious serious sneers, super villain mocking laughter, wank worthy fantasies, whole thing on video, get your tissues ready.

Those are the words of a malicious person licking their chops in anticipation of a messy, humiliation-inducing scene they will relish. Those are the words of a person trying to waste my time with personal attacks when my time is best used educating audiences about the facts of human trafficking, prostitution, and pornography. The trash talk began within hours of being surreptitiously offered the spot on the panel, and that sort of smug pugnaciousness and disrespectful engagement was instrumental in prompting John to cancel his appearance on the panel and he suggested to me that I do the same. I believe we were right to cancel. I refuse to pose for the pornographically spiteful scene being painted.

What to do when a woman who says she’s happy in prostitution says, "Take me, for example” when you know if you actually do take her as her own example by quoting her own words and deeds she will complain, "How dare you make an example of me?" Say you’ll speak with her about prostitution as a global system and of all women’s oppression as the core problem but you don't want to talk about her personally and she'll reply, "You refuse to hear my truth." If you talk about her personally like she insists then you're the baddie radfem who makes it personal. It’s a lose-lose ruse.

I’d love to debate a porn-user, and there are tens of millions of them. I’d love to debate a pornographer and there’s no lack of those either. I’d love to debate a john. They don’t want to debate anti-pornography and anti-prostitution feminists. They want women in the prostitute supply pool to subjectively defend them against the objective mounds of testimony and undeniable data that anti-pornstitution feminists can produce proving pornography and prostitution violate women and girls human rights immensely. Most of you have seen how deftly I wield the wealth of information I’ve collected in my noodle to make the case against men’s right to economically coerce sex from others. Some of you have seen me do it before with Ren.

Saturday morning I woke up to an email from a professor asking if I can come speak to a few women’s studies classes of hers in May. It turns out I can make the date. Life skedaddles on and so do I.

Sam

Sit down, shut up, and behave

EDIT: I have been calling people reminding them to go vote tomorrow and to go vote for Hillary. You should too.

Now back to your regularly scheduled post.

In the past several days, two distinct things have happened that, while I should not be surprised, are disheartening nonetheless.

I belong to a (kick ass) knitting website Ravelry, and there are of course topic boards for people to come together and talk. Someone came onto ours and made a comment and then went back to the Obama board and made a comment about someone "being off her meds." As a disability/mental health rights activist I had something to say about this.

OK, I don’t know or care who you are talking about, but making fun and using a mental health issue/disability as a slur is deeply offensive. It is just as bad as using a sexist or homophobic slur.

It implies that what someone who has mental health issue or disability has to say is somehow unimportant or not as important as “normal” folks. It is offensive to me personally as a mental health/disability rights activist.

I know that most people do not think of this, and I ask you to please not use mental health as a way to insult people as it is offensive and demeaning to people with disabilities.

I was replied to with this:

Sigh. Ok. First of all: I realize you do not know me at all, and therefore have no way of understanding the irony of the charges you have leveled against me, but seriously…you’re way out of line. There is such a thing as being overly sensitive.

But more importantly: I was not referring to you.
....
But that said, I will remove the offending post, although I do want to make it clear (since the post will be removed) that I did not actually mention anyone by name or make any sort of indication who I was referring to. (unless more can be deduced from this post, which is possible.)

Apparently because it was not directed at me and because it was a "harmless" ableist slur I should just shut up and sit down. I was also accused of making a stink about this oppressive remark because it was made by an Obama supporter and told that if I knew anything about the person making it then I would know that I was out of line. So I should not speak up when she does this? How about sexist or racist or homophobic slurs? Should I just let those lie as well since I support a different candidate which apparently makes it impossible for me to want to end oppressive and marginalizing behaviour? I would also like to add that Obama supporters on her own forum were chiming in saying that they agreed that those sorts of comments were out of line.

Apparently I should, because in another forum on the same site someone pointed to this Salon article called Hey Obama boys: Back off already! (A preview, for those who haven't read it:)

I am a loud feminist and a longtime Clinton skeptic who was suddenly feeling that I needed to rationalize, apologize for, or even just stay quiet about my increasing unease with the way Clinton was being discussed. Meanwhile, I was getting e-mails from men I didn't know well who approached me as a go-to feminist to whom they could express their hatred of Hillary and their anger at her staying in the race -- an anger that seemed to build with every one of her victories. One of my closest girlfriends, an Obama voter, told me of a drink she'd had with a politically progressive man who made a series of legitimate complaints about Clinton's policies before adding that when he hears the senator's voice, he's overcome by an urge to punch her in the face.

The discussion turned to the rampant sexism of the campaign and someone brought up Obama's comment “I understand that Senator Clinton, periodically when she’s feeling down, launches attacks as a way of trying to boost her appeal.” So the discussion turned into how any sign of emotion in President Senator Clinton is seen as a weakness because women are painted as being too emotional, especially too emotional to do anything as silly as run a country *cough*Thatcher*cough*.

Some *ahem* argued that it was a harmless statement to which I pointed out that it is loaded with sexism when used to talk about women. To which I was told to "stop it right the hell now" and that I have "no critical thinking skills" am "regurgitating what the patriarchy and media tells me" (since I had said that if we had no critical thinking skills that's what we would be doing and we weren't, natch) and "playing the victim." Because there is no logical or factual basis for our response that the "feeling down" comment was sexist. Then same person, and this is were it gets really good said "If feminists can’t allow for more than one interpretation of a comment..." HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA Because I guess that only applies to you, eh? The plethora of people who disagree, Clinton AND Obama supporters alike, are not allowed their own interpretation? We're just dumb people who can't think for ourselves and must be told what to do! I see! (Sound familiar to anyone else? Now I really want to move out of this country. These people fucking scare me.)

So lets recap shall we?
1) No matter how many oppressive slurs people use, especially against the differently abled and women, as long as they are Obama fans they are somehow above reproach. We should just lie back and think of England, because apparently if you ignore (dis)ableism and sexism they will just go away. (But not racism. We must call everyone on everything that can be considered racist, which I agree with, but it MUST ALSO be applied to all other oppressions. Including heterosexism *cough* Obama equal marriage rights *cough*)

2) If you do dare to see sexism (which is punching you in the face every time you turn on the TV or open a paper) you are somehow wrong. Just sit back and let the Obama people tell you how you are supposed to interpret these things. Remember, sexism is not a big-T Truth, but a little-t truth and can only be correctly interpreted by people smart enough to love Obama.

3) Any comments about oppressive remarks made to an Obama supporter are not valid if made by a Clinton supporter. EVER. Even when an Obama supporter agrees, if a Clinton supporter ever says something about an oppressive remark it somehow overrules what the Obama supporter says and thus invalidates the objection.

Everyone clear? If we all just sit back and behave (i.e. let them tell us what to do), maybe we'll get a cookie.

Did you know?

There could have been like 4 elections in Canada (at least) in the time since the primary season began? Seriously. (Though if you are not familiar, you are voting for the parties and they pick the candidate. I hope people who vote Liberal are doing so for reasons other then Gordon Campbell because I hate that asshole.)

Well, and then there's real choices on the national stage. You have an actual left party (not as left as I would like, but much more left then in the states) the NDP, the dems and repubs, Liberals and Conservatives, respectively (I think, it's so hard to tell these days), and Bloc Québécois (who, unfortunately, you can only vote for in Québéc). Locally in BC is even more fun (Alarm Clocks Kill Dreams! Vote Work Less Party!), but we're talking national here.

Bah. I think I'm angrier now then I was when we got Campbell and Sullivan. Ugh.

Did you know

that Winston Churchill was agnostic?

And most Americans wouldn't vote for an atheist/agnostic.