Interesting article. I think a key thing about the three brands highlighted is that they are all by designers who are explicitly queer, which is a huge differentiator from the majority of lingerie brands out there.
There Are 939 Active Hate Groups in the United States. Here’s Where They Live.
You don’t have to go far to find racism.
Overt racism may be stigmatized, but covert racism is alive and well. The key to being an effective racist today is to conceal one’s deeper prejudices under the guise of a seemingly non-racial cause.
And don’t mistake number of hate groups as the only indicator how LARGE they are. Oregon and Montana are both full of white supremacists, even if there’s only a few groups listed on the map.;
I promised a number of brief news items the other day after a week or two with a whole bunch of stuff happening. After a bit more time for further thought and updating, some of what follows is not that brief but I do believe it is all worthy of our attention. So, enjoy! – or endure: either way, it’s rather compelling stuff.
ABUSE ENQUIRY: THIRD TIME LUCKY?
The British government’s ill-fated attempt to set up an over-arching enquiry into all sorts of sex abuse going right back (well almost) to the biblical Lot* drunkenly shagging his daughter, saw the appointment of its third chair, the first two having fallen victim to victimisation by historic “victims”.
At least the appointee, New Zealand High Court judge Lowell Goddard cannot reasonably be accused of being too close and cosy with the British legal and political Establishment. Anyone acceptable to the victim lobby must of course be viscerally anti-paedophile, so this quote from her in a Guardian profile comes as no surprise: “There have been very few people throughout my career that I have not been able to relate to in any way. These were the paedophiles and the psychopaths. Usually I could relate in a professional way to anyone, no matter what they’d done.” On the other hand, the Guardian tells us, she kept the name of a convicted paedophile secret in a case where presumably “the victims” (and the media) wanted it otherwise.
Ben Emmerson QC welcomed Goddard’s appointment, saying she is “one of the most respected and experienced judges in the Commonwealth” and much more, in fact pretty much the greatest thing since sliced abusers. Or was he thinking of sliced victims? As legal counsel to the enquiry, Emmerson firmly put Sharon Evans, one of the victims’ lobby representatives on the enquiry panel, in her place, saying she could not tell the difference between truth and error and had “done no service to the survivor community”.
That took balls. Emmerson is clearly a man not afraid to speak his mind. He nearly started World War III the other day, calling Vladimir Putin a “common criminal dressed up as a head of state” who ordered the murder of Alexander Litvinenko to stop him exposing Putin’s corrupt “mafia” regime. Emmerson had been representing the former spy’s family at the enquiry into his death by polonium poisoning. Very soon after this, in an incident some see as linked to Emmerson’s insults, Russian bombers were intercepted by the RAF flying provocatively close to British airspace over the English Channel.
I am digressing a bit here, but it gets even more interesting, I promise, so never mind. In another plot turn, Litvinenko had accused Putin of being a paedophile, after mad, bad Vlad publicly lifted up a five-year-old boy’s tee-shirt and kissed him on the stomach. The Daily Mail carried the story, complete with the boys’ name, Nikita Konkin, back in 2006. There is also a photo of the deed on Google images so we can judge for ourselves. Verdict, anyone?
Anyway, back to Judge Lowell Goddard. I asked my friend in New Zealand who blogs as “peterhoo” if he had any lowdown on her. After a bit of digging he came up with some fascinating information totally at odds with Emmerson’s high opinion. As you will see from links on his interesting latest blog, “Still breaking rules, but that’s okay”, a survey of New Zealand judges has given her the lowest rating of the lot: 63rd out of 63. The comment says:
“Low marks across the board. Much criticism of Goddard J’s obsession with self-image, which this judge understands can only be maintained by kowtowing to powerful special interests. Said to be as committed to law as she is at marriage (several times), Goddard is regarded by some as a human rights hypocrite, her judgement disconnected with her diligent efforts to be portrayed as a human rights advocate. “Puppet” came up more than once to describe this judge who is as white as any Irishman yet routinely describes herself as a disadvantaged Maori.”
Ouch! Not sure about that last jab. Yes, she definitely looks quite pale in her photos. Does this firmly establish that she has very little Maori “blood”? I know skin colour depends on lots of genes so a simple recessive gene explanation is presumably not available, but… But I digress again!
* First off, I mistakenly said Abraham. Sorry about that and thanks to Kit Marlowe for correction. See comments below.
COUNCIL ‘IN DENIAL’ OVER GROOMING
The Daily Telegraph, among other mainstream sources, told us:
“Rotherham Council is an organisation still ‘in denial’ about its total failure to protect 1,400 girls from child sexual exploitation, a devastating government report said. Louise Casey, who was asked to carry out an inspection of the council by the Department for Communities and Local Government, found that staff did not accept the findings of an independent inquiry carried out by Professor Alexis Jay last year.”
Casey’s report may have been right, but what I found most shocking was a report of one of the BBC’s main current affairs programmes, Radio 4’s The World At One. At a time when Rotherham Council was telling the BBC they would need time to digest the report, and that they would issue a statement later, presenter Edward Stourton interviewed Casey. BBC correspondent Michael Buchanan had reported that 70% of council members disputed the findings, especially about the figure of 1,400 victims. “We keep hearing about all these victims, but where are they?” was reportedly a widespread response by council members.
That sounds like a pretty good question to me. Why have very few of these alleged “victims” come forward and said they are victims?
But it didn’t stop Stourton from simply assuming the truth of the Casey report and interpreting the councillors’ response merely as proof of them being “in denial”. Likewise Casey herself, who was given an easy ride by Stourton, said some councillors had “questioned the methodology” of the report, as though that too was proof of their guilt rather than legitimate scepticism.
If even a town’s elected representatives can be gang-raped like this by the national government and the premier national broadcaster, what chance do we have as individual heretics?
COVERING UP THE COVERER UP?
The “very private” funeral of British former home secretary Leon Brittan was reported this week following his death last month. His burial comes amidst persistent rumours that he had done some burying of his own in his time, covering up a dossier of evidence that supposedly incriminated senior politicians in “the sexual abuse of boys in the 1980s”.
I have no idea whether there was any truth in this, but I think we can discount the wildest allegations made against him, the most recent of which have been far more shocking than any cover-up. According to the Daily Mail, Labour MP Tom Watson said Brittan stood accused of “multiple child rape”. The “evidence”, such as it is, comes from an anonymous witness dubbed “Nick”, who claims he was raped “more than a dozen times”. He is quoted as saying Lord Brittan “would treat me like I was not even human”, adding that the peer was “nasty, cruel, sadistic and hateful”.
Other witnesses, who appear to be former rent boys – who would go back time and again to be “raped” by politicians and other VIPs – have even attested to the murder of several boys as part of this scandal, but we are not told about any bodies being found, nor any names of missing persons who might have been the victims.
Another factor that makes me doubt the credibility of these rent-boy witnesses is that one of them, “Darren”, made similarly lurid allegations against my old friends Charles Napier and Peter Righton, accusing them of callous and sadistic abuse. I am absolutely certain these were outright lies.
GARY GLITTER: GUILTY AGAIN
Garry Glitter, 1970s rock star, faces possible life imprisonment after being convicted of “historic” sex offences involving three young girls. His chances of avoiding a long sentence look slim given his earlier convictions for similar offences in Vietnam, and also child porn possession.
In a vintage week for show trials, Glitter was far from alone. Also in the dock was TV weatherman Fred Talbot, facing historic offences involving boys, dating from his earlier career in teaching. This trial almost out-glittered Glitter, as one of the accusers, former Stone Roses frontman Ian Brown, used to be a star himself. A one-time pupil of Talbot’s at Altrincham grammar school, near Manchester, Brown interestingly let slip that Talbot was different from most of the other teachers because he “wasn’t violent”. Will this help Talbot? Nah! Not being properly hard is a sure sign of a nonce!
Any star case would usually be big, but here’s one that might slip under your radar in such an incredible time for such cases: folk-rock singer/songwriter Roy Harper could face a re-trial on five charges of historical sexual abuse involving young girls after a jury failed to reach verdicts. Harper’s influence has been acknowledged by many musicians including Jimmy Page and Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, who named the song “Hats Off to (Roy) Harper” after him.
PROSECUTOR MUTILATES A GOOD CAUSE
Even those of us who feel that male genital mutilation in infancy or childhood is a serious form of abuse would probably agree that female genital mutilation (FGM) is often far worse, especially in its more radical forms. So many of us welcomed the news last year that prosecutions directed against this practice were reportedly in the pipeline in Britain, after decades of official foot-dragging on the issue.
What we did not know is that the first case to reach a conclusion would be an utterly idiotic one to bring, resulting in a rapid and obviously correct jury decision to acquit. There now has to be some suspicion that this crazy case was brought simply in order to undermine public pressure for further prosecutions against FGM, the fear in official circles being that they will serve only to stoke the flames of religious and cultural tension.
The problem is, there is something in it: in France, where there have been many FGM prosecutions, and also attempts to ensure acceptance of French culture by such means as the banning of head-scarves, such tensions are far more strongly pronounced. It is a real dilemma, which Heretic TOC has been meaning for some time to address.
WALTER LEE WILLIAMS
News has reached Heretic TOC of a nightmarish situation in which distinguished anthropologist Walter Lee Williams finds himself in an American prison, having been forced through complicated circumstances to submit to a plea bargain on child sex charges. This is a story I hope to take up in more detail in due course. It is far too complex to be dealt with briefly but readers can catch up with Williams’ extensive work in anthropology and queer activism (“gay rights” doesn’t really hack it) at the links here and here.
“5 WAYS WE MISUNDERSTAND PEDOPHILIA”
A sensational start, with around a million views in the first 24 hours, for a public education article. That ought to be excellent news, but as this is one of those VP efforts, in league with their favoured abuse industry professionals, the word “education” here really needs to come with scare quotes. My view? It’s slick, with eye-catching graphics and user-friendly language. There’s a lot of good information too. In the end it’s just the moralising that sticks in the craw.
BOY KIDNAPPED BY OWN FAMILY
More than any other story I have seen recently, this one captures the craziness of our times. A family staged the kidnapping of their own six-year-old boy, abusing him horribly in the process, to teach him it’s dangerous to be nice to strangers – and thereby neatly demonstrating that paranoid parenting is what should really scare us.
Not since the halcyon days of Benedict Cumberbatch has there been a man more committed to giving you your red carpet entertainment. “Weird Al” Yankovic was at the Grammys this past weekend, and noticed singer and The Voice judge Gwen Stefani giving an interview. From there, he simply did what comes naturally. It lasts all of four seconds, but it’s a rare moment of spontaneous delight amid the endless droning of media-coached celebrities. Let’s hope all subsequent awards shows find an excuse to invite Yankovic, because—as with most stuff—he makes everything better.
Kitty Stryker and Ned Would for Ban This Sick Filth, TROUBLEfilms
Before we get started, I want to be vulnerable with you, and share something personal.
I have had erotic fantasies about rape, fatally sacrificing myself for a lover, being completely subservient to a male Dominant figure who beats me because he can (not in like, a caring way, but in a actual property and abuse way), being fucked after I’m dead, being kidnapped and placed on a breeding farm, all sorts of pretty dark shit that’s taboo in society at large. Most of these fantasies developed when I was very young, long before I had even kissed a boy, much less had sex with one. One of the first things I ever jerked off to a piece where a woman zookeeper got raped by a gorilla (even though that’s ridiculous, gorillas have smaller penises than humans, but nevermind).
So when I say I totally understand why people have these fantasies, I’m not joking. I really do understand.
But these fantasies did not occur in a vacuum. Fantasies rarely do.
Let’s break this down as it pertains to one of the most popular fantasies for women- rape fantasies. Somewhere between a third and half of women, depending on the study, fantasize about being raped. One study suggests that as many women find rape fantasies both erotic and aversive as ones who just find it erotic. We are compelled by it even as it terrifies us. That makes sense, when rape is a possibility for 1 in 5 women… perhaps more, if we consider how many go unreported, and how few that are reported end up in court. You’re more likely to get raped than get breast cancer. Perhaps that fear is morbidly fascinating?
I remember talking to a friend of mine about Grindr, just to open this up from heteronormativity. He was pointing out to me that it was a world of bottoms and no tops when it comes to rape fantasies. “It’s ok to want to be taken,” he said, “but to admit that you want to be the rapist? Who would do that? That’s creepy.” Indeed, this is often the case with heterosexuals too- while it’s more and more normalized for women to admit to having fantasies where they are forced into sex, we are understandably wary of men who speak glibly about their desire to enact such fantasies. Maybe it’s because these fantasies can go horribly wrong, and when playing with consensual nonconsent, it feels frighteningly easy to cross the line between pleasing your partner through role play and actually being a rapist.
And let’s talk for a moment about what these rape fantasies tend to look like in these reports. In these fantasies, like in hentai or in at least half of romance novels, a sexually desirable man is overcome with lust for a woman, so much so he just HAS to have her. She protests, often because of modesty, but deep down she really wants it, wants him, and becomes overwhelmed with pleasure and sometimes love during the “rape”. The act being fantasized about, then, is not rape. Rape is an act of violence or coercion, often by someone known to the victim. I don’t believe that the fact we often call these rape fantasies, when it isn’t actually rape but perhaps ravishment, is harmless. It links the idea that rape is an act of sexual desire, and that women might actually want it or feel complimented by it. We live in a world where young girls who are raped are slutshamed until they commit suicide. How can we possibly say that these things are completely unrelated?
Why, then, is media like 50 Shades of Grey so popular? It’s reflective of years of subconscious training of women that admitting sexual desire is shameful and being “taken” allows you to avoid the blame, that the ideal partner is one who “just knows what’s best for you”, that “I’m yours, forever” is a romantic thing to say and not a terrifying admission of codependency. It’s because people are trained that catcalling is a compliment that says you’re pretty rather than a power play, or that loving someone hard enough can transform them into someone better.
Tell me again how these things are just fantasies, and not conditioning under patriarchy to help us deal with microaggressions and major trauma?
But I still think it needs to happen. Sorry not sorry.
50 Shades of Grey, and similar media that deifies abusive relationships (“Beauty and the Beast”, say, or “Twilight”, or Spike/Buffy or Angel/Buffy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer), is not simply harmless fun. It distresses me to see people I admire in the sex positive world, like Erika Moen or Lux Alptraum, say that they have faith people will know better than to mimic what they read when the fact every sex store is doing 50 Shades workshops and selling 50 Shades tat. We know damn well people are using this book to jumpstart their education in BDSM, and BDSM has done a shit poor job of dealing with abuse. I mean shit, we’re a country who has to repeatedly say “do not try this at home” for obviously dangerous stuff (Jackass, WWE, viral Youtube videos) and people still do it. I think you’re putting too much faith in common sense.
No. Just no. It’s not just fantasy. Maybe in a better educated world it would be, but here, it is reinforcement of norms and it has a real life impact.
We are beginning to realize that a joke is not just a joke, that it has a social impact, and we should expand that to other interactions. While I don’t believe that violent porn causes rape or that violent video games cause school shootings, I do believe that they act as reinforcement of behavior that is not socially acceptable, but is coded as secretly desirable. I believe that the lack of safer sex in most erotica and porn does reinforce the message that condomless sex is sexier/better/more intimate. I believe that the fact we are more likely to see explicit sex in film if it’s nonconsensual than if it is reinforces sexual shame, especially for women. I believe that when blowjobs are less censored than cunnilingus, it reinforces male pleasure over female. I believe that when there’s multiple examples of erotic male dominance and female submission, but female domination and male submission is always portrayed as either dangerous or hilarious, that reinforces patriarchal norms.
These things add up to a toxic society- to blindfold yourself to that is to condone it through your chosen ignorance.
All this said, I don’t think it should be banned or censored. I just think it needs to be seriously analyzed. I know it’s uncomfortable and not fun to delve deeper into where these fantasies come from, but in my opinion, it’s an ethical necessity. And I feel that by doing so, we don’t have to fight our fantasies, or be defensive of them, or hide from them in shame. We need to contextualize them and weave them into the rich fabric that is our lives. It’s only by actually understanding and critiquing our darker taboos, rather than treating them as inexplicable, that we can keep them firmly on the shelf where they belong… in fantasy.
For who-knows-how-many years, the Drug Enforcement Administration has been using Automatic License Plate Recognition software to create a national database … Read More →
Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Sunday declared that all slavery in the world had been eradicated thanks to the Christian faith.
At the National Prayer Breakfast last week, conservatives accused President Barack Obama of comparing Christianity to the Islamic terrorist group ISIS when he observed that many religions had been used to justify violence throughout history.
“So we’re responsible for the Crusades a thousand years ago?” Carlson complained. “Who’s ‘us’ anyway? And by the way, who ended slavery and Jim Crow? Christians. The Rev. Martin Luther King. Christians.”
“Christianity is the reason we don’t have slavery in the world today,” he added. “I mean, talk about ahistorical.”
While countless Union soldiers and northern civilians depended on theological narratives to sustain them, a providential view of history particularly influenced how Southerners reacted to and interpreted the events of the war. After all, the preamble to the Confederate constitution, unlike the federal one it replaced, explicitly invoked “the favor and guidance of Almighty God.” They were, Southerners believed, a people chosen by God to manifest His will on earth. “We are working out a great thought of God,” declared the South Carolina Episcopal theologian James Warley Miles, “namely the higher development of Humanity in its capacity for Constitutional Liberty.”
Miles held, though, that divine mandate extended beyond simply the Confederate interpretation of states’ rights, and that Southerners were bound by the Bible to seek more than merely “a selfish independence.” The Confederacy must “exhibit to the world that supremest effort of humanity” in creating and defending a society built upon obedience to biblical prescriptions regarding slavery, a society “sanctified by the divine spirit of Christianity.” In short, as the Episcopal Church in Virginia stated soon after the war began, Southerners were fighting “a Revolution, ecclesiastical as well as civil.” This would be a revolution that aimed to establish nothing less than, in the words of one Georgia woman, “the final and universal spread of Gospel civilization.”
This “Gospel civilization,” many believed, didn’t just permit slavery — it required it. Christians across the Confederacy were convinced that they were called not only to perpetuate slavery but also to “perfect” it. And they understood the Bible to provide clear moral guidelines on how to properly practice it. The Old Testament patriarchs owned slaves, Jewish law clearly assumed its permissibility and the Apostle Paul’s New Testament letters repeatedly compelled slaves to be obedient and loyal to their masters. Above all, as Southerners never tired of pointing out to their abolitionist foes, the Gospels fail to record any condemnation of the practice by Jesus Christ.
There is consequently a fascinating, if unsettling, paradox in the efforts of slaveholders to fulfill what they considered divinely imposed duties toward their slaves. Southern Christians believed that the Bible imposed on masters a host of obligations to their slaves. Most fundamentally, masters were to view slaves as fully members of their own households and as fellow brothers and sisters in the Lord. Therefore, as the South Carolina Methodist Conference declared before the war, masters sinned against their slaves by “excessive labor, extreme punishment, withholding necessary food and clothing, neglect in sickness or old age, and the like.”
Of course, like everything else in Christianity, slaveowners decided for themselves to what extent they would adhere to this ideology, so throwing an old slave out into the swamps to die or beating a slave to death, well, these things just happen. Praise Jesus.
Listen, when you use a word of hate ironically — like, and your defense is “I’m not racist, how could you ever think I’m racist??” I want you to imagine owning a gun, but never buying live ammunition. You only purchase blanks. Ok?
And say sometimes when you hang out with your close friends, you take out your gun, which they know contains no live ammunition, and you shoot it at stuff, and you think it’s funny. And maybe the first time you do it, they’re like “Shit. I mean, I know those are blanks, but that’s kind of fucked up,” but your argument is, “But I can’t really hurt anyone! They’re just blanks!” And over time they just get used to it and find it kind of funny. “Oh, that Cliff, sometimes he takes his gun out and shoots some blanks, but he doesn’t really mean anything. It’s just funny! You know how it goes.”
Now, imagine that over time, having received the acceptance for your actions from your friends, you decide you can start firing blanks around people you’ve never met. In mixed company. You’re at a dinner party one night, you’ve had a few, so you go “Hey, wanna see something cool?!” and those who are your friends at the party know what’s coming, so they’re prepared, but then the people who don’t know you, they see you whip out a piece and go “Oh shit, I’m going to die, it’s everything I feared,” but your friends explain to them it’s not a big deal, there’s nothing to be afraid of, “Cliff wouldn’t hurt a fly,” so they eventually, begrudgingly, don’t say anything about it, don’t call you, Cliff, a fucking asshole. “Fine, it’s kind of ridiculous, but whatever.” Something like that.
And then you are at a large public place. A concert, an open mic, where you and your friends are outnumbered by the rest of the audience. And maybe someone pushes you or gives you a hard time, so you decide, just to give the guy a taste of his own medicine, to pull out your gun, and fire some blanks. Give him a real, real visceral jump. And everyone around you feels threatened, unsafe, about to be part of something they were always on some subconscious level afraid would happen, but at the same time hopeful it would never happen because our society’s getting smarter and more considerate of those around them. And then some other people, who after seeing it happen, feel relieved that you were firing blanks, but also feel empowered by your choice to fire a weapon in a public place, and choose to do the same thing.
Do you get it yet?
The fact is that derogatory remarks, whether used sincerely or ironically, and ammunition, whether blank or live, still creates the same environment of discomfort and fear every time it is used. So cut the shit.
- Junot Diaz
And that’s not even counting what your funny little joke might do to someone who has been shot at, or actually shot, with live ammunition.
“People wonder why women don’t “fight back,” but they don’t wonder about it when women back down in arguments, are interrupted, purposefully lower and modulate their voices to express less emotion, […] They don’t wonder about all those daily social interactions in which women are quieter, ignored, or invisible, because those social interactions seem normal.”
Ifixit’s Kyle Wiens writes about the state of modern farm equipment, “black boxes outfitted with harvesting blades,” whose diagnostic modes are jealously guarded, legally protected trade secrets, meaning that the baling-wire spirit of the American farm has been made subservient to the needs of…
Super Opinionated.
