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Condoms With Spikes

Posted on May 11, 2012 by BroadBlogs

South African Dr. Sonnet Ehlers was on call one night four decades ago when a devastated rape victim walked in. Her eyes were lifeless; she was like a breathing corpse. “She looked at me and said, ‘If only I had teeth down there,’” recalled Ehlers, who was a 20-year-old medical researcher at the time. “I promised her I’d do something to help people like her one day.”

Dr. Ehlers eventually created a product she calls Rape-aXe. It’s a condom women wear that is inserted like a tampon. It has jagged teeth-like hooks that attach themselves to a penis and won’t come off without a doctor. “It hurts, he cannot pee and walk when it’s on,” Ehlers explained. “If he tries to remove it, it will clasp even tighter… however, it doesn’t break the skin, and there’s no danger of fluid exposure.”

She says that South African women are already resorting to extreme measures, like hiding razor blades in sponges in their vaginas.

Those extremes are caused by living in the “Rape Capital of the World” where a 17-year-old’s gang-rape recently went viral and where 40% of women say their first sexual experience was forced. A University of South Africa study estimated that 2,777 assaults are committed per day, totaling one million a year. The South African Law Commission believes the rate is even higher at 1.69 million per year. Sixty-five percent of victims are gang-raped. Forty percent are children.

Given what the condom is responding to, some criticisms sound odd, as when likening the device to “barbarous” and “medieval” torture. Dr. Ehlers admits, “Yes, my device may be medieval, but it’s for a medieval deed that has been around for decades.” More like millennia.

On the more practical side, others worry that it would only work if the rapist didn’t know it was there, didn’t remove it, didn’t resort to oral or anal rape, and didn’t simply begin raping younger girls.

And so the gadget would likely only work with a large-scale buy-in that was not publicized so that it could be used to identify rapists (who must go to a doctor) to get them off the streets.

So far Rape-aXe has not had any widespread distribution that would indicate its potential for rape-prevention.

The biggest problem is that the condom neglects the core issue: men feeling disempowered and using rape to regain a sense of power, while also venting their rage on women.

Posted in feminism, gender, rape, sexism, violence against women, women | Tagged feminism, gender, rape, sexism, violence against women, women | 2 Comments

Ex-Hooker’s Letter to her Younger Self

Posted on May 9, 2012 by BroadBlogs

Last week I wrote about Stella Marr who had been kidnapped and forced into prostitution, but who eventually escaped. Below is a letter she wrote to her younger, enslaved self. With details changed it is good advice for anyone, especially those who have lived through trauma.

Words of wisdom from a survivor:

By Stella Marr @ Secret Life of a Manhattan Call Girl

Dear twenty-year old Stella,

Work hard on learning to ask for help. It’s the only way you’ll ever break free. No one ever does anything alone. You don’t have to.

You’ll learn how to make the men happy. The happier they are the nicer they treat you. You’ll get very good at being a hooker. But when the Johns say “baby you were born for this” that doesn’t mean it’s true.

Now when most men come near, you feel a stabbing at your eyes, your throat, and your gut that you know isn’t real. You don’t want to admit it but you’re terrified. You start, you tremble. Your hands shake. Think about it, you’re being stabbed a lot these days. This is a quite reasonable reaction to being used by man after man, day after day, in this prison of a brothel. It doesn’t mean you are so miserably flawed that you can’t do anything but be a hooker.

Being a hooker doesn’t make you subhuman. It’s not OK for your (white) pimps to smack you and tell you they’ll kill you.

You have to work up the nerve to pay a cashier for a soda. You’re too scared to ask that guy behind the deli counter to make you a sandwich. This isn’t weakness, it’s biology. Trauma changes your brain. Your hippocampus, where you form narrative memory in the brain, shrinks. This is a symptom of PTSD – a neurophysiologic response to repetitive trauma – not evidence that you deserve to be in prostitution.

In the middle of the winter in the middle of the night when that guy in the Doubletree suite invites you to sit while he pours you a seltzer trust your gut and back out of there before the five guys you can’t see who are waiting in the bedroom have a chance to get between you and the door.

Being vulnerable means you’re alive. There’s no shame in it. It doesn’t mean you’re a terrible person. You don’t have to apologize for doing what you must to survive.

When Samantha stops working for your pimp, Johnny, find her and make her get out of the city. Otherwise two weeks later Nicole, the madam who works with Johnny, will show you Samantha’s diamond initial ring and tell you Johnny murdered her. Though you’ll always hope she was lying, you doubt it.

You’ve lost all sense of the linear — time disappeared and you felt it leave. Now you’re living in the immediate and eternity. It’s scary and bewildering, but you need this — you need each moment to stretch infinitely so that you can be acutely aware of each man’s tiny movements and shifts in expression, which can reveal a threat before it happens. This hyperawareness will save your life. One day you’ll see this being untethered from time as a kind of grace.

When that shiny classical pianist you meet at Au Bon Pain says he wants to know everything about you don’t believe him.

A lot of what’s happening doesn’t make sense now but it will later. That habit you have of writing poems in your mind to the beloved you haven’t met yet as you’re riding in cabs to calls? There’s something to it.

Your ability to perceive beauty is part of your resilience and survival. When a man is on top of you watch the wind-swirled leaves out his window. Seize the gusty joy you feel as you run three blocks to a bodega to buy condoms between calls at 3 AM. When you think for a minute you see that friend, who’s death you never got over, standing in the brassy light under a weeping linden, be grateful. All this has a purpose.

Being a hooker can seem to mean you’ve lost everything you hoped to be, but that’s not true. You’ve splintered into a million pieces, but you’re still you. You’re alive. It’s in the spaces between those pieces where you learn to feel how other people are feeling. It hurts so much you’re sure it’ll kill you, but it won’t. Later when you’re out of the life it’ll be so easy to be happy. The mundane will buoy you.

When your madam sends you to the Parker Meridien at 3 AM and you meet a British professor who says he wants to help you, believe him. He will set you up in a beautiful condominium across from Lincoln Center that he deeds in your name. Of course you’ll have everything to do with this — you are so “good” at being a hooker, so “good” at fucking that you can make a guy want to buy you a condo. Shame is a hollow stone in the throat.

During the two years that this voracious man ‘keeps’ you as his private prostitute the condo will come to feel like a platinum trap. But it’s still your chance to get out and heal. Take it.

After you’ve sold the condominium and are living in a graduate dorm at Columbia University, a man with eyes like blue shattered glass will sit beside you in the cafeteria. When he begins to speak you know he’s the unmet beloved you’ve been writing poems to all these years. You’ll try to run away, but he won’t let you. Fourteen years later the two of you will be hiking through pink granite outcroppings with your Labrador retriever. You’ll feel like the freest woman in the world.

One afternoon when you’re twenty-one you’ll be at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with your best friend Gabriel, who’s a hustler, a male prostitute. When he says you ‘remind him of his death’ don’t lash back. Even though he told you the doctor said he didn’t have that rare new virus named AIDS, it would behoove you to realize he’s still coughing.

Stop thinking about your own hurt. Don’t lash back with that vicious phrase your mother’s said to you so many times – “I hope you die a slow death.” Don’t tell Gabriel you never want to see him again and storm out of the sculpture gallery. Or it will be the last time you see him. Gabriel will die of AIDS five months later. When he said you reminded him of ‘his own death’ he was trying to tell you he was dying. You’ll regret what you said for the rest of your life. But even more you’ll regret running away from his friendship.

Say forgive me.

Say I love you.

Stay connected.

Love,

Stella

This was originally posted By Stella Marr @ Secret Life of a Manhattan Call Girl and is reposted here by permission.

Posted in feminism, gender, sex, sexism, violence against women, women | Tagged feminism, gender, prostitution, sex, sex trafficking, sexism, Stella Marr, violence against women, women | 2 Comments

Sexual Desire & Sexism

Posted on May 7, 2012 by BroadBlogs

Karen Zack, Man As Object

Women typically have lower sexual desire and drive than men in our society, according to both sex surveys and statistics on sexual dysfunction. Our culture may be partly to blame. Consider this:

We are bombarded with “sexy women” but not “sexy men”

Whether on billboards, TV ads, Dancing With The Stars, Olympic ice skating, or professional football, women are half-dressed and men are fully-clothed. The camera hones in on women’s breasts and butts and ignores men. Sure, we are seeing more hot men these days thanks to Matthew McConaughey and Ryan Gosling. But the last time I checked out People’s sexiest men I saw lots of faces and loose T-shirts and few bods. Even the clothing that women and men walk around in show off women’s bodies and, more often, hide men’s.

As Amanda Marcotte at RH Reality Check points out,

Straight women don’t get nearly the provocation on a daily basis — is it any wonder that 60% of the men who answered the Consumer Reports survey (on sex) thought about sex once a day, but only 19% of women?

No part of the male is fetished

No part of the male body is fetishized, either. Men stare at breasts and butts, but what are we supposed to look at? These fetishes may seem natural for men but they are actually a cultural construction. How are they created? In part, see the section above. Or see my piece called, “Men Aren’t Hard Wired To Find Breasts Attractive.” Ever wonder why tribal men don’t get all excited about tribal women’s breasts and butts?

Porn may lead men to think we get aroused by penises, but when Anthony Weiner sexted a photo of his package, Tracy Clark-Flory over at Salon asked women if being sexed a man’s penis would “do it” for them. Most expressed repulsion. Or as one put it, “If by ‘do it (for me)’ you mean ‘send me to the toilet retching,’ then yes, it does.”

Sexy men can seem “gay”

Women are not taught to consume the male body with their eyes, as men consume theirs. To make matters worse, pics of sexy men can seem “gay.” Since sexiness is almost always meant for the male gaze, on an unconscious level women can come to see “sexy” men – perhaps posed in Speedos — through male eyes, too. Bummer!

Women don’t feel sexy

Meanwhile, we might not feel too sexy, ourselves. Surrounded by the “perfect” images our partners consume, we might not feel too hot by comparison to ladies who live on lettuce, surgery and photoshop. Do we really want to reveal our bodies and be negatively judged? The opposite of an aphrodisiac.

Good girls shouldn’t

The double standard is loosening up but sexual women may still be called: slut, whore, ho’, tramp, skank, nympho, hussy, tart, loose, trollop… the list goes on. Men possess cocky cocks while women’s privates are just “down there.” College men returning home Sunday morning may take the Walk of Fame while the women they’ve just had sex with take the Walk of Shame. And so women’s sexuality becomes more repressed.

The problem of housework

Sometimes the problem is more mundane. Women do about twice as much housework as men. After a full day at work women are more likely than men to cook dinner, clean up, and get kids ready for bed. Then they’re too tired for sex and resent their husbands. Not a way to get in the mood.

Or, maybe mom works in the home where her “invisible” work gets noticed only when it’s undone. A lack of appreciation won’t get anyone in the mood for love making.

Sexual violence

Sexual violence also takes a toll. Rape is most prevalent when women are devalued. And women who are raped often lose interest in sex. One woman I know of went numb and emotionally left her body when she had sex because a past rape had made sex seem terrifying and repugnant to her. “Desperate Housewife,” Teri Hatcher, was molested by an uncle who told her that one day she would like sex. That only made her close up more because she didn’t want to prove her disgusting uncle right.

But all women also face the prospect of getting screwed, rammed, nailed, cut, boned, banged, smacked, beaten, and f’d — in common street parlance — when they get intimate. Who wants that?

How to raise a woman’s desire

If you want women to desire sex then: help with housework, show appreciation, stop shaming women for being sexual, or for not fitting ridiculous “ideals,” desire her and let your lady know she’s beautiful.

Posted in body image, culture, feminism, gender, objectification, psychology, sex, sexism, violence against women, women | Tagged body image, culture, gender, objectification, psychology, sex, violence against women, women | 12 Comments

Child Rape: Not As Bad As Contraception

Posted on May 4, 2012 by BroadBlogs

Raping children is better than using contraception? Raping children is better than ordaining women priests? Raping children is better than using fertility treatments? Raping children is better than aborting a child to save a woman’s life? And priests raping boys is better than homosexuality and gay marriage?

It appears the Vatican thinks so, raising a furor over everything but child rape. That’s right, a nun was excommunicated for saving a woman’s life by allowing an abortion while pedophile priests were simply transferred to new parishes to abuse new children or were, at best, defrocked. Pretty sad when Vatican officials, including the future Pope Benedict, failed to defrock a priest who had molested a couple hundred deaf boys.

When the crimes of pedophile priests are investigated a nation may be rebuked for stifling church autonomy, as happened in Belgium. Or church leaders become defensive, as when Cardinal Timothy Dolan begrudged a global shaming, since only a few priests were involved in the scandal.

Most recently the Vatican admonished nuns for spending too much time caring for the poor, supporting health care reform, confronting bishops and questioning teachings on male-only priesthood — and not spending enough time fighting abortion and homosexuality.

Interesting that, as the Times’ Maureen Dowd put it, “Church leadership never recoiled in horror from pedophilia, yet it recoils in horror from outspoken nuns.”

Most anyone would find the moral priorities outrageous. Nonsensical even.

Yet one thing makes sense of it all (logically, not morally) and that is patriarchy: rule of the fathers, or here, church fathers.

In its earliest manifestation patriarchy meant the rule of old men over young men, boys, girls and women. This is the world that now stands behind Vatican walls. Old men do as they please and young boys take what they get. Old men who know little of the lives and hearts of women allow them no power over parishes, their bodies, or even their own lives should they become threatened by pregnancy. Anything that imperils the patriarchy must be battled. Anything that sustains the patriarchy is just fine.

Old men control all. And in a manner that is not very Christ-like.

Posted in gender, women, religion, reproductive rights, gay rights, sexism, feminism, rape | Tagged gender, religion, women, sexism, gay rights, reproductive rights, rape, feminism, pedophile priests | 1 Comment

Becoming A Sex Worker – The Brutal Side

Posted on May 2, 2012 by BroadBlogs

Some people get into sex work because it just seems to make sense to them, as I described last week. But more often the entry is brutal, whether poverty, drug addiction, or kidnapping force the involvement.

One prostitute writing “A Personal Refutation of the Concept of Choice” says:

Choice does not always present as balanced; it does not always offer a different-but-equal alternative. When I think of my choices they were simply these: have men on and inside you, or continue to suffer homelessness and hunger. Take your pick. Make your ‘choice.’

Another former prostitute says her grandmother unsuccessfully tried to keep her manic-depressive son from marrying his schizophrenic girlfriend. “What,” she wanted to know, “would happen to any children born into that union?”

“She was right to worry,” her granddaughter says. “It left us in state care, one after the other. And as a young teenager it left me homeless, hungry, and prostituted, in that order.”

Sometimes prostitution arises from poor choices, as one drug addict describes, “My addiction is so bad I sell my body to pay for it. I never thought I would end up like this… I wanna get clean.”

Others are promised a better life through employment, education, or marriage. Instead, they are kidnapped and thrust into international sex slavery. Nick Kristof traveled to India and found that every prostitute he encountered had been forced into it by a trafficker, her parents, or her husband. Having studied and observed trafficking over the years, Kristof says his sense is that prostitution is deeply enmeshed in coercion.

In the U.S. girls often end up walking the streets by way of pimps who “befriend” them and then enslave them. You may have heard of Sara Kruzan. Her mother was drug addicted and abusive, and she didn’t know her father. After years in foster care she became depressed and by age nine she began attempting suicide.

At age eleven, 30-year-old G.G. became a father figure, showing her affection, taking her roller skating or to the movies, and telling her she was special — “so special” that she should never give away sex for free. Pimps like G.G. know that girls like Sarah are emotionally needy, and offer a sense of love from a “father” or a “husband” figure. And, like most pimps, he added terror for good measure. He raped her repeatedly and forced her to walk the streets everyday from six in the evening until six in the morning.

Sara eventually killed her pimp. She got a life sentence.

Or, there is Stella Marr who has fortunately escaped prostitution. She grew up in a troubled home. Her mother beat her all the time for things like trying to steal her friends (when Stella was 4 years old!) or for “making noise that woke her up when I came home from school.” Sometimes abuse took a sexual turn. And she was confined to her room much of the time.

Stella eventually went to Columbia University and got good grades. But the better she did in school, the more violent her mother grew. Finally, her mom threw her out of the house.

Broke and desperate, Stella says her grief created a micro-climate around her that drew pimps. One tricked her into sexual slavery:

I met Johnny (who said) he had a friend who needed a roommate, and that her family owned a restaurant and could give me a job. When we got to the apartment Johnny and two other guys who were waiting there jumped me, beat me up and raped me. They locked me in a tiny room without a window. They broke me like you’d break a horse. It was systematic. They’d rape me, beat me up, and then they’d be ‘nice,’ and give me a tuna sandwich. Again and again and again. It was torture. They dislocated my shoulder, and gave me codeine. I didn’t know if it was day or night. I didn’t think there was anyone I could turn to.

Some wonder why she didn’t run away. But trauma affects the brain, and Stella became brainwashed into believing escape wasn’t possible. And she saw society as complicit in her slavery. Early on, her pimp took her to a party with fourteen policemen because he wanted her to know he had cops in his pocket. Stella felt there was nowhere she could turn.

Unfortunately, despite all of the brutality surrounding prostitution, we too often blame the victims instead of helping them. In future posts I’ll discuss what might be done.

Posted in feminism, gender, psychology, sexism, violence against women, women | Tagged feminism, gender, prostitution, psychology, sex trafficking, sexism, violence against women, women | 1 Comment

That’s Bitchin, But Life’s A Bitch

Posted on April 30, 2012 by BroadBlogs

If you say, “That’s bitchin!” it’s good. But if she’s bitchin, she’s annoying. If “Life’s a bitch,” things are difficult. If “She’s a bitch!” she’s difficult, she won’t give ground. (He thinks that’s bad.) If “I’m a bitch!” I stand my ground. (I think that’s baaad – but in a good way!) But if “She’s my bitch” or “He’s my bitch,” that bitch is submissive.

So which is it? Does a bitch stand her ground? Or does she submit? I guess the words “a” vs “my” make all the difference. Taking someone who stands her ground and making her succumb is, apparently, a huge triumph.

The contradictions continue. Two sitcoms, “Don’t trust the B— in Apt. 23” and “GCB” were first pitched as “Don’t Trust the Bitch in Apt. 23” and “Good Christian Bitches.” In fact, “Good Christian Bitches” was transformed to “Good Christian Belles” before finally becoming the non-descript “GCB.” So network execs shun the b-word in series titles even as actors spew those same words on air.

The networks like the hip, cool titillation the word suggests.

Titillation, as in: “bitch,” defined as a woman who will have sex with anyone – “except me.” (And earlier, defined as a female breeding dog.) Bitch being quite different from a stud (a male breeding horse).

Bitch as hip and cool? It’s cool to demean women, as in “the Bitch in Apt. 23”? Or, it’s cool that women celebrate their independence, as in “GCB”?

Women reclaim this word that has been used to debase and dominate them. But others still use it to insult and control – and then say, “Well, you women use the word yourselves.” (Blacks use the n-word themselves, yet few non-blacks think that grants them the same permission.)

This shape shifter may reflect our society’s contradictory views of women. On the one hand women are strong and amazing; on the other, women are belittled and demeaned.

Posted in culture, feminism, gender, pop culture, psychology, sexism, women | Tagged culture, feminism, gender, psychology, sexism, women | 15 Comments

Good Christians Should Abuse Gays

Posted on April 27, 2012 by BroadBlogs

By Sherrill Lawrence

The devil can cite scripture for his purpose.

- William Shakespeare from The Merchant of Venice.

I am annoyed by people who comb the bible for scriptural passages that support their personal prejudices — in this case, homophobia.

Two of their favorites are found in the laws of Leviticus (Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13) and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 17:1-24). Leviticus instructs on the proper way to make burnt offerings, lists animals we may or may not eat; instructs on how long a woman is “unclean” after giving birth; tells men how to trim their beards, plant crops, breed cattle, and so on.

I find it interesting that “Christians” pick two verses out of a couple hundred to justify their hatred. I say, if that one “law” is as legitimate now as it was then, then they all are. Not only should decent God-fearing people hate homosexuals, they should stone fortune tellers, adulterers, and children who swear at their parents — that is after trimming their beards just so and smashing the crockery that a lizard fell into.

And by the way, Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed because they broke the laws of hospitality. The ancient Hebrews were supposed to feed, shelter, and protect strangers, even if they were of a different religion, and even if they were an enemy. The men of Sodom violated that law when they demanded that Lot send out his guests to be raped. Of course, it didn’t help Sodom any that Lot’s guests were angels.

Why do “Christians” root around in the Hebrew bible — aka the Old Testament — for rules of behavior anyway? The title Christian means “a follower of Christ’s teachings.”

In Matthew, Jesus said “Love your neighbor as yourself.” In Luke, a lawyer, looking for a loophole asked, “And who is my neighbor?” Then Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan. Since Samaritans were the (insert favorite ethnic slur here) of His day, the story clearly means everyone is our neighbor whether we like them or not.

“Christians” looking for loopholes quote portions of three letters from Paul – yes, Paul — who never met Jesus or heard him speak and began his career hunting down early Christians, and who (among other questionable statements) said long hair is a disgrace to a man. Hear that Jesus? Get a haircut.

If you want Jesus’ opinion on the subject of homosexuality, read the Gospels. Jesus said “love” and “forgive” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Nowhere did he say, “Go beat a dyke to death.”

Posted in culture, feminism, gay rights, religion | Tagged culture, feminism, gay rights, gays, LGBT, religion | 12 Comments

BroadBlogs

Condoms With Spikes

Ex-Hooker’s Letter to her Younger Self

Sexual Desire & Sexism

Child Rape: Not As Bad As Contraception

Becoming A Sex Worker – The Brutal Side

That’s Bitchin, But Life’s A Bitch

Good Christians Should Abuse Gays

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