Sophianotloren

To believe that we can eliminate sex work…without…affecting other industries…operates on the assumption that sex work happens in isolation—that what happens on the back page doesn’t affect the front, when, in fact, it’s financing the whole operation.  –  Alexandra Kimball

Think of the Children!

The Telegraph‘s headline writer obviously doesn’t know the meaning of the term “graphic novel”:

A council worker who wrote a “raunchy” novel was sacked from her job at a children’s centre after complaints from parents who compared the book to Fifty Shades of Grey.  Bettina Bunte…was…told…that her book damaged the reputation of the…centre…

Five Women in Whitechapel 

You’ve probably heard all the hubbub about Jack the Ripper being “definitely” identified by DNA testing of a shawl supposedly found next to the mutilated body of Catherine Eddowes (cue Maggie’s goose pimples).  Unfortunately, we’ll still have to put up with the endless speculation for a while yet:

…Leaving aside…the claim that the shawl was never washed or cleaned at any time during the past 126 years, the biggest problem in carrying out such sensitive DNA analysis is the question of cross contamination…When other labs have worked on the ancient DNA of important samples…they have gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid the possibility…They have also worked…“blind”…to ensure they do know which sample they are analysing in order to avoid unwitting prejudice…None of this, as far we know, has been done in this case.  Dr Louhelainen may be satisfied that he has found the culprit, but many other scientists are not, including Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys, the man who invented the DNA fingerprint technique…“An interesting but remarkable claim that needs to be subjected to peer review, with detailed analysis of the provenance of the shawl and the nature of the claimed DNA match with the perpetrator’s descendants”…Sir Alec [said, adding]…“Kosminski was long regarded as by far the most likely perpetrator.”

Do As I Say, Not As I Do 

…[Florida cop James Yacobellis, who was]…busted in a…sting of a Boca Raton Asian massage parlor…isn’t a stranger to trouble…in one instance…he…[threatened] a suspect by putting him in a bathtub, turning on the faucet, and pointing his taser…between October 2011 and February 2013, Yacobellis was on paid leave while [other] allegations were being investigated.  He was still drawing a $87,000 a year salary…In nine years, Yacobellis was involved in six …internal affairs investigations.

Perquisites

Funny how the truth doesn’t get as much press as silly lies about sports:

…So far there are about 13,000 delegates lined up to attend 18 events when the Nova Centre opens in 2016.  Local sex workers expect that will make business busier than usual.  “A lot of businessmen have an entertainment allowance”…said one Halifax-based sex worker.  “Out-of-town clients are about 60 percent of the business right now.”  Business travellers are why one local sex worker allows clients to pay by credit card—with the nature of the transaction concealed.  “A lot of them will use [their company credit card] or write it off as a business expense,” she says…

The Law of Averages 

It’s good to see this in as mainstream a publication as The Atlantic:

There is little basis for the claim that 13…is the age that most sex workers begin working in prostitution.  It’s hard to pin down where exactly the…claim originated, partly because it’s so often repeated without a citation or context…Most organizations, if they refer to a source at all, reference [the Estes & Weiner] study…Most current government and nonprofit policies on sex work define their goals as “rescue,” which makes perfect sense if the age-of-entry statistic is central to your understanding of the sex industry…But…in reality, many sex workers come into the industry as adults and without coercion…

Author Chris Hall does discuss the Silbert & Pines study, but does not mention Melissa Farley’s distortion of their data.

Presents, Presents, Presents! 

Daz sent two presents while I was on the road, so I only saw them after I got home last week!  One was Acolytes of Cthulhu, and the other Struwwelpeter (in English).  Thank you so much!

Confined and Controlled

Another idiot who doesn’t understand the bottleneck effect and thinks women are too stupid and weak to be allowed to manage our own sexuality:

A mayoral candidate says he wants Ottawa to be the “test city” for legalizing prostitution and is in favour of legalized bordellos.  Darren W. Wood…says he wants prostitution to be “tightly controlled and highly taxed” as a means of protecting sex workers and generating revenue…Under his proposal, sex workers would be…regularly checked for sexually transmitted infections, protected from pimps and johns via an onsite security system and fined or jailed if they are working without a license…

The Last Thirteen for Fourteen

Here’s another excellent column from Marijke Vonk; this one’s on how to be a good ally to sex workers:

…By vocally supporting sex workers we can challenge the  assumptions of the people around us…As professionals, academics, social workers, educators or people in a position of social power we can…even influence legislative reform…It can be scary to openly disagree with the current discourse of sex workers as either victims or dirty whores who were asking for it, but as a non-sex worker you have the privilege of staying relatively safe as you speak out about these injustices…

The Public Eye

…Pop singer Lowell spent some time as a stripper in Canada…[but while] a lot of singers might cover up that past…it became immediately obvious that she has nothing to hide…She’s been [drawing on her stripping and bisexuality]…since her brilliant 2013 EP, I Killed Sarah V. (Sarah Victoria was her name when she was a dancer).  She told Rolling Stone, “There can be something really empowering about [stripping]…by making it taboo, we alienate these girls and allow…victimization to happen.”  It’s important to bring those kinds of ideas into the mainstream…

Feminine Pragmatism (TW3 #133)

You’d almost think reporters were historical ignoramuses who didn’t know that up until a century ago, the professions of actress and whore were indistinguishable:

Shweta Prasad, one of India’s best known former Bollywood child stars, has been arrested for prostitution…she said…she and many other actresses had been lured into prostitution when Bollywood roles dried up and the money ran out.  She had not found a film role in eight years…Inspector P Murali Krishna…said…“We are treating her as a victim and she’s been sent to a rehabilitation home.  We have arrested the person who exploited her”…

A 23-year-old woman voluntarily doing productive work is an “exploited victim”, but she wasn’t at all exploited when others pimped her in movies at the age of 11.  But in India, unlike the US, some are willing to point out the truth:

…the law clearly says that the practice of selling…sexual service is…not a crime…the actress…had not been coerced, kidnapped or tricked…but had chosen this from among the options available to her…the media [should] refrain from gleefully jumping in with police stings that are unauthorised and illegal…it wasn’t the activities of the actress that were illegal but the actions of the police…

Buttons, Bags & Banknotes

Canadians feminists prove themselves just as obsessed with trivia as their sisters in the mother country:

A Vancouver catering company that offers sushi served on women’s naked bodies is sparking controversy among feminists who call the practice disgusting and degrading…“We’re not hijacked into doing this,” [said] Vancouver model Jessica Perry…Naked Sushi…offers nyotaimori— the Japanese practice of serving sashimi or sushi on a naked female body adorned with strategically-placed flowers and leaves…women’s rights activists are asking health officials to shut [it] down…the health authority does not have jurisdiction over the catering company as it serves its sushi after the food is prepared in an approved kitchen…

My First Million (TW3 #343)

I reached a total of three million page views soon after 2:30 PM CDT Thursday.  Thanks so much to all the readers who have helped make this blog a success! 

O, Canada! (TW3 #405) 

Cop gets in trouble for unofficially doing the same thing other cops do officially:

Six guilty verdicts…against an Ottawa [cop] who…repeatedly…[accessed] confidential police records for personal reasons could result in dismissal.  Sgt. Rohan Beebakhee…took it upon himself to book dates with escorts, showing up in full uniform and having what he called a “safety briefing” with sex trade workers…He would often bring along junior officers…An internal affairs investigator…ordered in 2011 that Beebakhee stop all contact with escorts.  He didn’t…Beebakhee…was charged with sexual assault…in 2007 [but the] charge was withdrawn in 2009…

Property of the State

Note that at 12 weeks abortion is totally legal:

A [Montana] woman…is now facing a felony criminal endangerment charge for putting her unborn child at risk by taking illegal drugs.  Casey Gloria Allen, 21…[tested] positive for the presence of benzodiazapines, THC, and opiates…Allen is 12 weeks pregnant…

Whither Canada? (TW3 #423) 

Excerpt from a press release by Terri-Jean Bedford:

This afternoon I testified before the Senate Committee on Justice and Constitutional Affairs.  I gave my speech and then was ejected from the question and answer session for failing to stop speaking when the Chair asked me to.  I apologize for losing my temper.  I was barely able to read my speech because I was so angry at the government for parading victims with repeated irrelevant information and then organizations who were shilling for government handouts on which they are dependent.  The shameful use of victims by the government in this process, and their disregard for life by ignoring court findings, refusing to listen to their own legal staff and refusing to answer questions from legitimate sources made me snap…

If Men Were Angels

So now joining a cult is “sex trafficking” too?

Four members of [an Israeli] messianic group have been arrested on charges of kidnapping young women and forcing them into prostitution …the group would control women with a combinations of drugs, alcohol and heavy brainwashing techniques and convince them to have sex in exchange for money…Police allege that the girls were taught that “lying with non-Jews would hasten the redemption” of the Jewish people and that by having sex with non-Jews, the girls would purify them and bring back their “holy sparks” to Israel…

Divided We Fall (TW3 #427)

Another good call for Canadian queers to oppose criminalization:

The government…[has] a…history of criminalizing consensual sex to promote the majority’s sexual morality.  Think of the ban against gay sex, lifted in 1969.  Nobody suggests that ban really changed people’s desire to engage in gay sex or reduced its incidence.  Instead, it cast a stigma and criminal status over a class of individuals [and]…impaired their ability to participate as full and equal members of society.  It also made people who had gay sex vulnerable to blackmail and less able to seek police protection when threatened…If you are a trans person…many obstacles still face you in Canada.  But if you are gay or lesbian…it’s a good place to be…[because] of political and legal struggles over past decades.  The beneficiaries of these reforms have a responsibility to fight a law that flies in the face of our experience…the commitment to sexual justice that underlay our earlier struggles entails fully decriminalizing adult sex work.

Bait and Switch

You can bet that “minor child” in this context actually means “young woman above the age of consent but below 18″:

…Timothy S. Griesemer was found guilty of attempted sex trafficking of a minor and…faces up to life in prison…he sent a text message to a female acquaintance indicating he was looking for a minor child.  The woman contacted…police who…[called] the U.S. Secret Service…

Another Fine Mess

More about the long pre-internet history of sex work advertising:

…There is no question that online advertising has transformed the sex industry, but in fact, ads for sexual services are far from endangered…While most sex workers are online…many also use free dailies and weeklies to reach markets that aren’t as amenable to the Internet…online ad sites [are also more] vulnerable to government shutdowns…and…clients who are wary of online transactions are liable to see escorts with print ads as less likely to cheat or scam them…

While I know a lot of men from my generation who love Fight Club, it was always the girls with the posters featuring Brad Pitt, half-naked and bloody. The fights throughout the film are all vaguely pornographic, too, with piles of sweaty, beautiful male bodies cheering and slamming into one another, all close up images of fist and mouth. The ubiquity of these posters among the women I went to school with always felt a little shocking to me, even though I appreciated that there was something sexy about the film.

When I learned to play Texas Hold ‘Em poker, which was incredibly popular my freshman and sophomore year of college, I was deeply intrigued by the fact that I would often be one of the only girls in the room. Even though I was welcomed to play, the world I entered always seemed to be a solidly “male” space—there would be foldout chairs and half-empty beer bottles, and cheap cigars, potato chips, dirty laundry, and dirty magazines, only partially hidden. I loved the silent, masculine energy in those games, the wide-legged posturing, the sarcastic jokes, the dares. I won a lot, mostly because the guys often took for granted that a girl wouldn’t be a very good player, but also because I was good at it. In a world where I often felt I wasn’t big enough or physically strong enough to be aggressive, poker was a psychologically aggressive sport where being quiet and unreadable didn’t make you vulnerable. It gave you tremendous edge.

When re-watching David Fincher’s Fight Club for its 15th anniversary, I thought a lot about the late ’90s and early 2000s and how little the gender landscape has changed since then. In a world where gender studies still often only relates to women’s experiences, Fight Club dares to ask questions about what maleness actually means. It doesn’t offer pat or simplistic answers to that question either. Is masculinity best represented by Tyler Durden’s [Brad Pitt] cheap fortune cookie aphorisms that often contradict, but are delivered with enough cojones to seem genuinely seductive? Does the film’s critique of consumer culture push a decidedly “men’s rights” agenda? In her essay for VICE, “15 Years Later Fight Club Still Sucks” Megan Koester makes the argument that Fight Club is an inherently sexist film, an “ode to alpha malehood.”

But Fight Club was never a fairytale. It’s a painful howl into a night that probably isn’t listening and that is more a cry of pain than a drive to hurt. When a bunch of confused, angry, and sad men bond together, first to fight one another, then to indiscriminately terrorize an entire city, we are meant to feel uncomfortable. We are also meant to feel uncomfortable by the fact that, for a little while, Tyler Durden’s diatribes did seem interesting and seductive.

In some ways, Fight Club is about having sympathy for a dying animal, and I think for some people who aren’t teenagers or young or suffering from depression or rage or deep-seated ennui, that must be hard as hell to do. After all, Tyler Durden often acts like a complete and total jerk. He is basically the poster child for young male dissatisfaction and rage. In contrast, Marla Singer [Helena Bonham Carter] is the female version of this same pervasive sense of ennui, and in true female rage fashion, her depression turns inwards. She is constantly trying to off herself. Her brand of “acting out” is more quiet and gentle than the narrator’s [Edward Norton]. She steals things and smokes and goes to places where she is obviously not wanted like the testicular cancer support group where she first meets the narrator, who hasn’t yet realized he has a multiple personality disorder.

One of the reasons I’m probably sympathetic to Fight Club is that I’ve always been intrigued by male-only spaces. Sometimes I’ve had the experience of being welcomed and included in these spaces. At other times, I have felt like an outsider, an anthropologist looking at a world I can never have complete and total access to.

Maybe it sounds like I’m exoticizing men when I say that. I’ve always hated when people try to sum up what it means to be a woman by presenting a laundry list of stereotypes. I don’t know if womanhood has made me especially kind or gentle or nurturing or maternal. Though I’ve identified as very feminine since I was a little girl, if you were to press me I’m still not sure exactly what about my nature is decidedly feminine, and how much of that is based on how I look versus who I really am. I think it’s because of this that the best explorations of gender make the audience ask a lot of questions and aren’t afraid to make the viewer or reader feel uncomfortable or unsettled. And clearly the image of masculinity presented in Fight Club is both alluring and troubling. Brad Pitt’s Tyler Durden, all hot and cocky, is everything we love and hate about machismo. And the narrator who is seduced by Tyler encompasses everything we worry about beta males, who want access to the doors that open with that kind of slick power. Who wouldn’t? Feminists can criticize machismo ’til the cows come home, but our culture still values competence over kindness, and made-up answers over genuine questions. It’s one of the reasons that Tyler’s drive to take down consumer culture is ridiculously ironic. He destroys franchises by putting up his own violent version of them. In every city where there was a McDonald’s or a Starbucks, he instates his own little sad sack fight club.

Today, male camaraderie is often depicted as violent and awful: the male party-goers who rape a teen girl, the gamers who hurl obscenities at a female player, the man who beats his wife and the men who defend him afterwards. While I think violence in “male” culture is worthy of critique, I also think this story of “maleness” in our culture is strangely one-sided and fails to consider the myriad ways that men today have embraced feminism in a way that previous generations have not.

Maybe what we need is not less Fight Club, as Koester suggests, but more varied depictions of what masculinity can and does mean in today’s world. After all, most of the men I grew up with are not reflected at all in the media images of men I’m likely to see when I watch a movie or TV show. The men of my generation may have played violent video games and listened to misogynistic songs, but I did too. Sometimes we did fail at understanding each other’s perspectives. Sometimes, we made rash judgments or got defensive or pissed off. Sometimes it still felt like we were living in different worlds, with different rules. And sometimes we really were. At times, the barriers between our experiences as men and women seemed insurmountable. The social pressures we faced were intrinsically different; the bodies we had were completely unique and sometimes unintelligible to one another. Once I asked a male friend what sex felt like for a man and he rolled his hand into a barely open fist and proceeded to move his index finger in and out of the hole.

“Like this,” he said, “Only it feels really good.”

“That’s kind of what it’s like for women, too,” I replied.

Kind of, but maybe not quite. Not only do our unique experiences of gender alienate us from understanding one another, our individual experiences of the world, and our bodies, do too. If identity politics teach us one thing, it is that we can never fully understand a person from a different group’s experience. Maybe at some fundamental level that is absolutely true—I’m never going to know what sex feels like for a man, but I’m also never going to know what exactly it feels like for other women, either. And I don’t think we need to relate completely in order to try to understand one another. I don’t think the fact that we experience the world in different ways means there is a wedge between us that can never be crossed.

In Fight Club, Tyler Durden is obsessed with annihilation, with the idea that we are not all the unique snowflakes consumer culture says we can be when we purchase some empty, meaningless products. But while the narrator spends a great deal of the film walking around clean, elegant IKEA furniture and bleeding all over everything, it’s the film’s last image that resonates strongest: when the narrator kills off Tyler and reaches for Marla’s hand instead. Their silhouettes seem small, but also hopeful, as they reach for one another, even as the world literally collapses around them.

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Well, if you’re a K–12 teacher and you believe the student is at all credible (or maybe her credibility doesn’t matter), you have very specific reporting requirements, and there are protocols for that reporting that you have to follow, and there are individuals and agencies that will–all else being equal–respond to what you report, and, if all goes well, all the different components of this protective infrastructure will work together seamlessly so that student ends up safe and sound. If you’re a college teacher like I am, however, that infrastructure is not available to you. All you can do is what I did: talk with the student, find out as much as you can, be as supportive as you can, and try to persuade her to go to the counseling center, where she can talk to people who are trained to handle, and who have access to relevant resources in, situations like this. That last part doesn’t always work, but, thankfully, this time it did, because I have every reason to believe that the threat my student’s father made was credible.

For just that reason, obviously, and for others that will become clear in a minute, I don’t want to give here any potentially identifying details, and those details I do give are at least blurred, if not changed outright. So I will just say that this student is not enrolled in any of my classes this semester and that, when she was in my class several semesters ago, she told me enough of her story for me to know that her father’s threat fit a pattern of abuse that she’d been dealing with for years. In this particular instance, the way she described it, her father became enraged because he found out she’d been (non-sexually, non-romantically, not even as part of an ongoing friendship) alone in an enclosed space with a young male acquaintance. When her father found out about this, he started beating her, and it was during that beating that he made his death threat. I have to leave the specific details of the threat unstated because they could be used to identify her, so I will simply say that this woman comes from a country where so-called “honor killings”–a misnomer if there ever was one, since there is nothing honorable about them–are all too common, and that her father made clear to her that he was perfectly willing to murder her under that pretext.

Once the student had calmed down enough that she could talk about something other than the specifics of what she had been through, I suggested she go to counseling and she agreed. I walked her over with her and then went about the rest of my day, going to meetings, teaching my classes, and somehow it all seemed not exactly trivial, but a little bit beside the point. When I got back to my office, there was a voicemail from my student. She and the counselors, she said, had figured the situation out. She thanked me for my help and hung up. That’s it. I have neither seen nor heard from her since. I hope that means she and the counselors figured out a way for her not to go back home and that it is better, therefore, for me not to know anything that might give even the slightest hint about where she is. I hope, but there’s no way I can know for sure.

This is not the first time I’ve written about students of mine in similar, or potentially similar situations. In one case, I helped a woman escape from her husband and, in another, a student confided in me that she was thinking of running away so that she wouldn’t have to marry the man, or the kind of man, her parents wanted her to marry, but she wanted to go in such a way that her parents would think she was dead. What struck me in this case, however, was the way my student’s father openly used a network of other men to try to “keep his daughter in line.” She told me about one instance from a while back when she and a young man from her neighborhood were sitting together in a nearby park. The situation was, again, according to her, absolutely non-romantic and non-sexual, but a male acquaintance of the family saw them, took a picture with his phone, and sent it to her father. When she got home, her father confronted her with it and would not let her leave the house for two weeks. On this more recent occasion, when he threatened her life, he told her there would be people watching her every move, that he would know if she did anything “inappropriate.”

Those other people, the watchers, the informants, put me in mind of these lines from Sa’di’s Golestan:

To please the king who eats a single apple
from a subject’s garden, his slaves will pull
the tree up whole to plant in the palace yard;
and if he lets five eggs be taken by force,
his army will put to the spit a thousand birds.

There’s always someone willing to ride the coattails of someone else’s power and authority, but it’s the text that precedes these lines that gives them their real significance: “When the world began, oppression was a small hut that few people entered, but as more and more people chose to go inside, they built it up, and look how high it reaches now.” People choose, in ways both big and small, to become oppressors. Next week, I want to share with you the story these lines come from and talk about what it means to make that choice, or not.

Cross-posted.

You know those “no turn on red” signs that hang from wires next to traffic signals? Some of them have holes in them. Do you know why? One theory I’ve heard is that it’s done to prevent homeless people from stealing them and using them as cover. The holes make them an ineffective blanket.

Now imagine the “no turn on red” sign at your local intersection goes missing and the cops go searching for it. It’s found in the possession of the local homeless drunk/drug addict, who sleeps on the town green and was using it to cover himself at night.

It’s theft of town property, so should he be arrested and charged? If so, what sentence should he get?

Imagine now that the police don’t find it on the town drunk, but rather it’s spotted in the bedroom of a local teenage kid, who took it as a prank late one night with some friends. Should he be arrested and charged? If so, what sentence should he get?

If your answers for both are different, explain why.

09.11.06


Five Years.

For all the now-forgotten Y2K prattle over when exactly it is that a century actually ends, there is no doubt anymore anywhere when the 21st Century began.

It began five years ago, roaring out of our nightmares and down out of the sky.

Everyone has their memories of that day. Private memories of smells and stares and sobs, and tribal, national memories that fused us all-too-briefly together in a way unlike anything I had ever experienced before.

There is no need for fancy writing to retell a story that has already become as familiar to us as the faces of our families. You saw three thousand people murdered same as me. Some of you saw it in an airport lounge. Some crowded around a television in a break room. Some at home, with three phones going.

Some of you had to sweep the ashes of the dead out of your homes, or wash it out of your hair. I can’t image what that must have been like, which is why ornate words fail.

This generation is not going off to fight a Nazi horde who have conquered Europe, or a Great Depression that has beaten us down into poverty and despair. Instead, living though these times is our destiny, and the outcome is not fixed in the stars or fated in our genes.

We can each choose to stand and fight where we can as best we can, or we can choose to lie down and let this beautiful, consensual hallucination called America die, but never doubt the choice is ours.

Five years ago the specific job of taking point on that mission -- of guiding us through our particular, bewildering tangle of culture, rage, modernity, technology, faith and globalization -- fell to George W. Bush.

And he has failed us.

He has failed this country in ways so numerous, comprehensive and catastrophic they would have been incomprehensible to us on September 10, 2001.

In a backwater era of threatened only by 11% inflation and small, faraway wars, Bush would have come and gone as another forgettable, one-term chief executive, like the whiskered what’s-their-names who pad out the 19th Century White House rolls. He would have been remembered primarily for the historical quirk of being the second man to follow his father by name and title into the White House, and he would have faded into the substrate of historical trivia, a relatively harmless nobody.

But instead he was here -- foisted on us by a minority of voters and a slim majority of judges -- in our hour of need, and for the last five years he has failed every test.

Every test of manhood and bravery.

Of competence and of compassion.

Of seriousness.

Of focus.

Of clarity.

Of leadership.

Of statecraft.

He stands tall today only among a hard core minority of hardwired acolytes and bigots and their panic-peddling media because only in the dark AntiAmerica of their imaginations does a creature like George Bush shine.

Only in their nightmare vision of a nation kept intentionally terrified and on its knees can a man like George Bush have stature.

He has -- in the space of five years -- lost American cities, treasure, credibility, armies and wars. Outside of Jefferson Davis in the last days of the Confederacy, how many American leaders can match a record of failure that spectacular?

Not since Gorbachev presided over the annihilation of Chernobyl, the bloody defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan and the collapse of his empire, has one human being been so present at the destruction of his nation’s institutions.

However the comparison with Gorbachev falls tragically short in two particulars.

First, Gorbachev inherited a decrepit system that was almost fully necroted and ready for the grave. Bush, on the other hand, inherited a nation that was prosperous, at relative peace, and which enjoyed a bottom-line of respect -- grudging or otherwise -- from most of the community of nations. Bush, on the other hand, has been instrumental in our downfall: it has been on his watch and with his wholehearted and energetic support that America was driven off the cliff and into cataclysm.

Second, I delighted in the fall of the Soviet Empire: the implosion of that stifling tyranny was all to the good. But I miss America. The America that could have been. The America whose ideals I adore. The America who, by drags and stumbles and sometimes at the point of a rifle, tried to move a little closer to a more perfect union.

George Bush is an insult to that America.

A living insult to our honored dead.

It has been an awful five years. Awful. Awful for the terrible losses of that day, and for the arrogant squandering of the rare opportunities those terrible losses bequeathed to us. And since fancy words fail, I fall back on music like I often do.

On this film of David Bowie in concert

for the words and music that most fit the way my heart feels when I see these images and think about the history of these last five years.


Pushing thru the market square,

so many mothers sighing


News had just come over,

we had five years left to cry in


News guy wept and told us,

Earth was really dying


Cried so much his face was wet,

then I knew he was not lying


I heard telephones, opera house,

favourite melodies


I saw boys, toys

electric irons and T.V.'s


My brain hurt like a warehouse,

it had no room to spare


I had to cram so many things

to store everything in there


And all the fat-skinny people,



and all the tall-short people



And all the nobody people,



and all the somebody people



I never thought I'd need so many people


A girl my age went off her head,

hit some tiny children


If the black hadn't a-pulled her off,

I think she would have killed them


A soldier with a broken arm,



fixed his stare to the wheels of a Cadillac



A cop knelt and kissed the feet of a priest,



and a queer threw up

at the sight of that


I think I saw you in an ice-cream parlour,


drinking milk shakes cold and long


Smiling and waving and looking so fine


don't think you knew

you were in this song


And it was cold and it rained

so I felt like an actor


And I thought of Ma

and I wanted to get back there



Your face, your race,

the way that you talk


I kiss you, you're beautiful,

I want you to walk



We've got five years,

stuck on my eyes


Five years,

what a surprise


We've got five years,

my brain hurts a lot


Five years,

that's all we've got

We've got five years, what a surprise

Five years, stuck on my eyes

We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot

Five years, that's all we've got

Five years
Five years
Five years
Five years

Back in January I wrote about the indictment of Dinesh D'Souza and how difficult it would be for him to defend himself based on his assertion that he was selectively prosecuted based on his political views.

D'Souza did eventually file a motion seeking discovery into the government's reasons for charging him. The government opposed the motion and the court denied it. That result is not surprising — it's incredibly difficult to make a showing that specific "similarly situated" people not sharing your protected characteristics have not been prosecuted.¹³

So D'Souza pled guilty, and now faces sentencing. The felony conviction itself is the harshest consequence he faces. The recommended sentencing range under the United States Sentencing Guidelines is between 10 and 16 months, and is in a "zone" of the sentencing chart explicitly allowing the court to split that sentence in half and make him serve half in custody and half in home detention. That's based on a very straightforward application of the Guidelines that both the government and the defense agree upon.

D'Souza's attorneys are asking the court to exercise its discretion to go below the Guidelines and impose a non-custodial sentence — not to send him to jail, in other words. That's not even a little surprising. I would do the same thing. So would any competent defense attorney. Given D'Souza's lack of record and his background, it's a reasonable and achievable goal. It's no sure thing, but many judges would do it. (If anything D'Souza's privileges work against him on this issue — the "rich and famous people shouldn't get special treatment" narrative will be powerful. With some judges he'd have a better shot at the break if he were an obscure middle manager.) The government is opposing that request and suggesting that the court should sentence D'Souza within the guideline range — in part because of things he's been saying in the media that, in the government's mind, show lack of remorse.¹⁴

As is standard with federal sentencing issues, some wrong things are being written about this. (Example: Salon says prosecutors "rejected" D'Souza's plea for lenience, which makes it sound like it's their call. They argued against his request, and the judge will decide the matter.) I'm used to that. What bothers me is the reaction to a letter written to the judge in D'Souza's favor by Michael Shermer, a prominent skeptic.

Shermer, who has debated D'Souza, says he has known him for twenty years and finds him forthright, honest, polite, and courteous. Shermer expresses his admiration and respect for D'Souza. To anyone who practices federal law, there's nothing at all remarkable about the letter. It's concise (which is good), specific about how the writer knows the defendant (also good), and combines general statements with at least one specific example (also good). It's not perfect — it's a touch too general for my armchair-quarterback tastes — but it's a fine letter, and the type of one I submit for clients all the time.

But the mild letter has provoked outrage, because of Shermer's and D'Souza's opposite ideological positions. This blogger screams "TRAITOR." Ophelia Benson characterizes it as "Important Guys gotta stick together." ""WTF?" asks P.Z. Myers. "Let D'Souza's fellow Christians and conservatives defend him. Shermer by doing this has betrayed most of the skeptical community," says someone on Twitter. "No one deserving of the title 'skeptic' could possibly believe that D'Souza is forthright and honest, or that he is an 'important voice in our national conversation,'" says skeptic Ed Brayton. I'll spare you the quotes from Twitter.

I don't know Dinesh D'Souza personally. In his public persona I find him to be totalitarian, polemical, occasionally (and probably deliberately) offensive, and frequently ridiculous. But in my experience, people are not the sum of their public statements. People who are nice in public can be awful in private, and some people who are terrifying in public can be incredibly gracious in private. It's entirely plausible to me that, despite his rather trollish stage persona, D'Souza can be kind, decent, and charitable in person. It certainly doesn't surprise me that two people of very different ideologies can respect each other. I cherish friendships with people significantly to my left and right, and have learned from them.

The reaction to Shermer's letter disappoints me. It depresses me. It doesn't make me feel that way because of how I feel about D'Souza. It makes me feel that way as a defense lawyer, and as a citizen. This scorn for appeals for mercy is an old story; I've condemned it before when someone on the opposite side of the political spectrum was sentenced. But it troubles me every time it repeats. It would be a better nation if people could recognize the good qualities of people they vehemently oppose. It would be a better nation if we were wary of the justice system no matter what the ideology of today's defendant. It would be a better nation if we didn't promote the narrative that wrongthinkers get what they deserve. Ultimately, what these critics have done is lend credence — perhaps unjustified credence — to D'Souza's claim that his prosecution is political.

The Quality of Mercy Is Not Strained, But It May Have A Litmus Test © 2007-2014 by the authors of Popehat. This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. Using this feed on any other site is a copyright violation. No scraping.

I got an acid comment I deleted.  How dare I “blither” on about my petty little life on this day of “terror and tragedy”.

Well, happy little right wing ‘patriot’ sort?  Fuck off and die, ok?  Yes, I fucking well know “what day it is”, thank you very much.

I watched my nation, over the last dozen years or so become nigh unrecognizable thanks to what damned day it is.  More than twice as many American military members are dead as died on Sept. 11, 2001, ok?  My sons are both now disabled veterans, thank you very fucking much; I know what day it is.

Here’s the thing, by 2005 I had quit flying because I thought four years of fear flogging and taking American rights away out of fear was more than bloody sufficient.  And today?  Yeah, initially I wasn’t going to write a sanctimonious 9-11 post at all.  Because, for pity’s sake, how long do we live in the shadow of hate and dread?  When did America become so crippled as to  choose nothing besides venerating victims (mind you, those innocent dead deserve sympathy and their families support) instead of remembering WHY they died and preventing more of the same by conscious choice of WHO to be as a nation?

It seems to me that America became much of what we hated in those who attacked us after that day, we gave the haters a sort of victory in so doing.  We warped our nation out of shape and purpose in fear.  In FEAR.  Those bastards wanted us to stop being America, and hey, we did in oh so many ways.  We became something else, and I am more afraid of my own government, and our own police, than I am of Al Queda OR ISIL.  And I HATE that so much that you will just HAVE to excuse me not writing up any syrupy tributes to what damned day it is.

A dead Facebook friend literally went zombie today — a mile-walking app hijacked his account and started posting how far he’d traveled and how many calories he’d burned doing so.

I would’ve been deeply saddened if I didn’t think he’d find it damn hilarious.

But it brings up an interesting question — how would you like to be memorialized online?

For the record, when I die, I encourage everyone to treat it in the spirit I would. Bad jokes aren’t merely welcomed, they’re required. Remember me at my worst best and best worst, is how I’d like it.

If y’all sit shiva and don’t swap “SEK was a world-class dumb-ass” stories, I’d be very disappointed, you know, if I wasn’t dead.

Dennis Hopper’s personal journey may have brought him to Taos. But according to my New Mexico people who know Taos well, locals are furious that Hopper was buried there because now their little cemetery where they remembered their dead now has a bunch of hippies leaving joints and booze and smoking and drinking some of that weed and booze in it. And it’s hard to blame them since from Mabel Dodge Luhan and Georgia O’Keefe to Dennis Hopper and the thousands of recent arrivals to these places today, bohemian whites have been co-opting the cultures of non-white New Mexico for their own purposes. Stories like Hopper’s never have the local people in them except as a quaint backdrop. And in the end, that’s really wrong.

Grab the kids, and run. Because there's a new king of the beach. Or should I say, Prince?

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It’s quite common for poly folk to talk about “entering an existing relationship.” I used to say that too. I don’t anymore. Here’s why I think that phrase is pretty problematic.

Whenever a new intimate relationship begins, it’s almost always that: a NEW relationship.

The context for that new relationship may include that one or more of the partners also has other pre-existing relationships, of any depth, duration, or level of commitment. Or they also may have a job, kid, health condition, or other important commitments or issues which affect how they approach a new relationship, what they can offer, and what they need — and who else might need to be considered or communicated with.

But still: That new relationship is its own thing.

…Unless it’s a situation where everyone is involved with everyone (triad, etc.). Or where there’s explicitly a heavy and mutual emphasis on family-style polyamory. (For instance, Cunning Minx, host of Polyamory Weekly, has voiced a strong preference for family-style polyamory — and she’s had a ton of experience as a non-primary partner.) And even in these situations, each dyad is its own relationship within the context of a meta-relationship, and warrants space and attention as such.

But aside from those circumstances, I don’t think anyone really ever “enters” anyone else’s existing relationship.

Networks: the real deal

In fact, what’s happening is the formation (or extension) of a network of overlapping relationships. Therefore, it usually is more accurate to say that people in a pre-existing couple are “entering” a network.

That kinda turns the tables — for the better, I think.

The network perspective becomes especially useful when one or more partners, metamours, or dyads in a relationship network has significant issues. Because that always, always happens. In life, the squeaky wheel tends to get the grease — so problems in one person or dyad tend to consume attention in a network. Everybody’s attention.

Every relationship needs its own space, to itself, to grow. Therefore, unless people make a conscious and consistent effort to see that their networks comprise separate and equally valid relationships, it’s too easy for the bandwidth for healthy relationships to get consumed by unhealthy ones — which doesn’t really help any of the relationships.

When relationship troubles “bleed”

Sometimes troubles in one relationship bleed out across the network. I’ve been in some situations where way, way too much of what my partner and I ended up talking about were his other partner’s issues, or problems in their relationship. Worse: if their relationship had been around a long time, with a lot of commitment and entanglements (like a marriage, shared home, kids, financial dependence, etc.), chances are good that whatever problems they have are pretty deep and thorny. Certainly nothing I can do much about.

But, being a caring person who generally tries to foster compassion and be supportive of partners and metamours, I’ll often lend an ear to my partners and metamours, and sometimes try to offer helpful information or context. For minor or temporary issues involving people who generally act like grownups, that’s a not a bad thing. When people have been long mired in a problem, it can be difficult to see all your options. A nudge from a new direction can help. (This is a superpower of polyamory.)

Also, sometimes genuine crises arise in a partner’s other relationship. Sometimes they’re making hard choices or big changes, and they need time and space to do that. It’s not all drama.

However, sometimes my efforts to support my partners’ other partners and relationships not only haven’t worked or weren’t appreciated — they totally backfired. Offering context or advice about your partner’s other relationships always carries that risk.

Another negative effect of “bleedover” I’ve experienced is self-squelching. When trying to respect that my partner has other pressing matters to attend to, I may start to chronically downplay (to my partner, and even to myself) my needs for attention, affection, communication and support within my own relationship. And I may start resenting metamours who are consuming most of my partners’ current bandwidth.

Now, I’m pretty damn self-sufficient. But even I have needs in my intimate relationships — regardless of what’s happening in my partners’ other relationships.

I do believe in being flexible, and in not needing to turn to any one person or relationship all the time. So when a partner is less available for awhile, for whatever reason, I’m usually able to draw on other internal and external resources. To a point. However, if I do this too much, eventually I end up running on low voltage in that relationship and become deeply dissatisfied.

It took me way too long to learn that ALL relationships in a network matter, including newer ones. They all need nourishment and space.

Also, if I too often feel it’s unsafe or unreasonable for me to voice my needs to my own partner, something’s deeply awry with the relationship I’m in. So I’ve been working hard to learn to speak up for what I need, when I need it. I can take no for an answer — but I think it’s only fair to at least give my partners the chance to be there for me. After all, they’re probably not any better at telepathy than I am.

Ultimately, there’s this: If you’re in a relationship with someone whose existing relationship has deep, persistent problems, or where metamours consistently fail to manage themselves well, you’re really much better off not “entering” those existing relationships — conceptually, linguistically or otherwise.

“Alongside” offers more room to maneuver than “inside.”

If you do happen to love someone who’s also in a troubled relationship, it may still be worth fostering an intimate relationship with them. Or not. If you’re well grounded in yourself and your own life, it’s easier to be patient, to give them time to work their own stuff out, to give them a chance to demonstrate their character and grow. That’s your choice to make — but that’s really a choice about your relationship, not theirs.

Sneaky couple privilege

Being a word geek, I also have a linguistic quibble with the phrase “entering a relationship.” It may sound nitpicky, but I think it’s important.

When someone says you’re “entering their relationship,” that wording belies some problematic assumptions about power:

1. There’s only one truly “real” or “important” relationship — and it’s not the one that just got formed. (The newer relationship is seen as a mere appendage, not its own thing.)
2. Who really holds power in that allegedly expanded existing relationship? It’s probably not the newer partner, since “the relationship” (there is only one) is “theirs” (belonging to the partners in the established relationship).

Ick. Can you spell couple privilege? Yeah, it’s insidious.

That’s OK — couple privilege is so ingrained, it happens to the best of us. Sometimes even to people with lots of experience with solo polyamory or being a non-primary partner. It took me well over a decade after I began having poly relationships to figure that out, to identify and unlearn deep assumptions which have proven toxic to me and my relationships.

Putting it in perspective

While everything I said is worth keeping in mind, it’s not absolute. There are indeed circumstances where it is correct to say someone is “entering an existing relationship.” That’s great — and in my experience, that’s true for only a very small fraction of what usually happens in poly relationship networks.

The often-unconscious presumptions that are signaled by verbal tropes like “entering an existing relationship” are a big reason why I personally prefer to have fellow solo poly people as intimate partners. However, solo-solo poly relationships tend to be less common, even for me, since most poly people are already coupled-up (or seeking to ride the relationship escalator toward couplehood).

So I don’t obsess over this. I let my heart go where it will, and I often do land in relationships with partners who also have existing, longstanding, deeply committed relationships. They may even call those relationships primary, especially if they don’t have a lot of poly experience.

However, other people’s labels don’t define my relationships. I’ve learned to be very clear with my partners and metamours, right up front, that my relationship with my partner is its own thing. I’m neither “entering” their existing relationship, nor am I “subject” to it. Even if they consider each other “primary,” I’m never “secondary” — and I won’t tolerate being treated as such. If they can roll with that, we’re cool.

It helps that I am very interested in, and skilled at, nurturing healthy relationship networks — including metamour relationships. It helps that I am secure enough to be patient. I just try to never lose sight of which relationships are mine; where I begin and my partners and metamours end. In that way we give each other room to grow.

…changes aren’t permanent, but change is.  –  Pye Dubois and Neil Peart, “Tom Sawyer”

Though I’m a creature of habit and tend to keep doing things the same way for long stretches of time, that doesn’t mean I never change; if you look back at my columns for 2010 and 2011 you’ll see that my procedures have shifted substantially since then.  Originally, days of the week had no significance, though holidays and months did; over time some features became fixed, and at the beginning of 2012 I started my first weekly feature, “That Was the Week That Was”.  After July I added the “Links” feature on Sundays, then in 2013 I fixed Q&A columns on Wednesdays and reprints of my Sunday Cliterati essays on Fridays.  Harlotographies now appear every fifth Thursday, and guest columns on the second Monday of every month (though this month was an exception due to tour-related scheduling difficulties); as of this May I started featuring my tour diaries every Tuesday.  You might think all this self-imposed structure would create more work for me, but you’d be wrong; it actually makes the Herculean task of keeping up a daily blog all by myself (even the guest columns take editing) easier because it eliminates the need for figuring out what sort of thing I’m going to write for most days.

Needless to say, this summer’s tour made it far more difficult to keep up my usual pace; though I prepublished everything but Saturday, Sunday and Tuesday columns for all of June and July (and a part of August) before I left, that still meant a lot of time sitting in hotel rooms between speaking gigs and driving.  And though I did manage it, there were a few times I didn’t hit “schedule” until just a few hours before publication time (and once when a column actually posted in an unfinished state).  Given that my travel and speaking schedule is only likely to get busier, this shows me a need to once again adjust my procedures to give myself more breathing space.  Fortunately, there’s an easy way to do it:  I discovered a couple of tricks to make writing the “TW3″ and “Links” columns quicker and more efficient, and I also found that the tour diaries were really easy and fast to write.  Given that I will be doing more outside projects, travelling, speaking and the like, I think y’all would welcome a regular Tuesday feature discussing what I’ve done and what I’m about to do, including videos, links to podcasts and all that sort of thing.  It will not only save me writing time, but will also save trouble fitting such events and features into the TW3 column; to win, that’s a win all around.  So for now, that will be the new schedule…until things change again, and I have to change with them.

I AM feeling snarky. Mind you, I like a mystery as much as the next person, but now and then I wonder where the fucking priorities are in life. Like when every fucking third yahoo in line has to solve the Jack the Ripper murders. And the media just goes NUTS every time.

Here’s the thing. Who the hell ever it was killing unfortunate women in London in the 19th century? Both HE and his victims are dead, it is bloody irrelevant, ok? People are killing and raping women here and now, hows about some solving THOSE crimes instead of chasing historical ghosts down irrelevant alleyways?

I just get genuinely fed up when people want to mentally masturbate over things in the past instead of focusing some much needed attention on current day to day atrocities. Finding Jack the Ripper is a curiosity; CSI is a fictional television show, and women in the here and now are NOT mere idle bathtub reading. I mean, Hel’s bells, it’s like people WATCHING a movie about fire while someone rolls in the grass, screaming and on fire.

George R. Lawrence, Kites used to support aerial camera equipment, 1900-1910, reproduction of photographic print image (courtesy of Chicago History Museum & Apexart)

“The hitherto impossible in photography is our specialty,” was the motto of early 20th-century photographer George R. Lawrence’s Chicago studio. Among Lawrence’s great experiments, such as the largest camera in the world built to capture the full length of a new train, was the use of kites for aerial photography.

George R. Lawrence’s camera equipment in the sky, 1900-1910, reproduction of photographic print image (courtesy of Chicago History Museum & Apexart)

A sort of pre-drone, Lawrence strung together up to 17 Conyne kites to lift a 49 pound camera 2,000 feet into the sky. Using piano wire and a battery’s current, he triggered the shutter from the ground, then allowed the contraption to descend via parachute. Most famously he launched his “Captive Airship,” as he called it, above San Francisco three weeks following the disastrous 1906 earthquake. It was such an incredibly detailed view of the flattened city that some of his contemporaries thought it was a faked composite.

That photograph, along with images of his train of kites and the camera itself, is featured in Decolonized Skies opening this week at Manhattan’s Apexart. Organized by High&Low Bureau, the exhibition won the nonprofit’s Unsolicited Proposal Program, and is focusing on a “civil-oriented visual” of aerial perspectives through both contemporary and historic practitioners.

We’re now a long way from Lawrence’s kites in terms of viewing our world from above (although kite aerial photography is still practiced by a small group), but the access to those views continues to expand with new technology. Below is the famous San Francisco earthquake shot, as well as more of Lawrence’s aerial views from the Library of Congress.

George R. Lawrence, San Francisco earthquake ruins, 1906, B&W reproduction of photographic print image (courtesy of Chicago History Museum & Apexart)

George R. Lawrence, San Francisco in ruins, from 500 feet above Hyde & Green streets (1906) (via Library of Congress)

George R. Lawrence, San Francisco in ruins (1906) (via Library of Congress)

George R. Lawrence, San Francisco in ruins from 1,500 feet, with Nob Hill in the foreground (1906) (via Library of Congress)

George R. Lawrence, Akron Works, Akron, Ohio (1907) (via Library of Congress)

George R. Lawrence, El Pizmo Beach (1906) (via Library of Congress)

George R. Lawrence, Bird’s eye view of Prospect Park, South, Brooklyn (1907) (via Library of Congress)

George R. Lawrence, San Francisco from Captive Air Ship over San Francisco Bay (with the stabilizers visible) (1908) (via Library of Congress)

George R. Lawrence, Fleet entering Golden Gate (1908) (via Library of Congress)

Decolonized Skies is at Apexart (291 Church Street, Tribeca, Manhattan) September 11 to October 25. 

Wow.  So, I want to know how many male students get this treatment.  Or is it just girls being “shamed” in this manner?

Honestly, if schools are going to be all anal asshole about what is worn to school?  Just get some damned uniforms and be the fuck done, ok?

I am a fan, and a friend, of both Amanda Hess and Heather Corinna, and it should come as no surprise that I think this piece in Slate is really useful.  However, the preface to Amanda’s interview situates it with college back-to-school season.  From a news standpoint, this makes sense.  The US media is belatedly and rightly focused on colleges mishandling sexual assault (Emma Sulkowics’s performance art activism at Columbia is the latest story to get broad coverage). But from a parenting perspective, it’s an easy, comforting and wrong way to analyze it.

Heather Corinna, who has been down this road more times than I can count with interviewers much less savvy and receptive than Hess, positions consent and bodily autonomy as a lifelong process and a part of parenting that starts in the diaper stage.  Hess had the good sense to let Heather get her ideas out.  In my own parenting, I reached the same conclusion, and I started talking about consent with my own kids as toddlers, something I wrote about in this old post that recently went back into circulation after a Facebook page picked it up.

Good News/Bad News:

• By the time kids are off to college or college aged, they may have established patterns and expectations for consent and communication that have already shaped their relationships and sexual development.
• But getting in front of that curve doesn’t have to be uncomfortable, as it’s easy to make a fairly seamless transition from the kind of broad consent-and-autonomy discussion I wrote about in If She’s Not Having Fun You Have To Stop, to the kind of more express advice teens will need to navigate their own needs.

It’s Better To Be Early Than Late

I think it’s fair to say that a lot of young people experience a lot of partnered intimacy, kissing and more, years before they finish high school (though for various reasons big, public studies focus on penetrative sex and it’s hard to find good data on how kids develop to that point).  They’re working out on their own who kisses who, who puts their hands where, and even if they are not having intercourse or oral sex, they are forming expectations and patterns.  If we let them absorb a culture that boys initiate and girls gatekeep (the heteronormativity! The penetrocentrism! Do we even have a pop-culture paradigm for same-sex adolescent partners? For nonpenetrative intimacy that is a goal in itself and not a waystation? And we definitely don’t have pop-culture paradigms for anyone too far outside the mainstream … trans, non-binary, etc.) then it’s just blind luck whether they find the wherewithal to question that.  Of course as a parent I hope my kids will keep developing and changing right into adulthood, so maybe they can make use of things that I say in their late teens and twenties even if those things might have been more useful earlier.  I hope that, but I’d rather be out in front.

I think part of the reason that some parents don’t want to talk about consent and sexuality with their kids, or about reproduction and STIs with their kids, is the view that bringing it up sends the message that the parents think they are ready.  I think that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy — to the extent it sends that message, it means I didn’t start early enough!  Kids are going to hear and see references to things like pregnancy and condoms all through their lives.  If they hear, “you don’t need to know what that’s about” until their mid-teens, and then their parents suddenly say, “okay, I guess you’re old enough to hear this now,” well, they may take that as an indication that they’re the right age to make use of the information. I understand why that becomes fraught for a lot of parents.  If these things are treated as a matter of scientific inquiry, like why the sky is blue and why some birds nest on the ground, suitable for an explanation in age-appropriate detail at any time, then it sends no such message.

Folks with a certain set of cultural leanings seem to be integrating the notion that the one “big talk” model doesn’t work with sex, biology and safety.  Well, it doesn’t work with sexuality, relationships and consent, either.  A “big talk” will never time it right.  It will always be too early, or too late, or both.  I think in the age of the internet, kids less often live in an information vacuum.  Once, if a kid didn’t get an answer from adults, the only other option was friends, who were generally clueless.  Now, there’s an opposite problem: too much information, widely varied in quality and accuracy, slant and agenda.  Parents can’t keep their kids from getting information by refusing to answer questions.  They might as well say, “go look for the answer yourself and don’t tell me what you find,” because it has exactly that effect.

The Shallower the Slope, The Smoother the Ride

The way our children integrate consent into their lives has a learning curve.  I don’t know of anyone who thinks we should start teaching our kids about consent by talking about sex.  As Heather points out in the Slate interview, the first lessons in consent are about kids, privacy, autonomy and their own bodies.  We can teach them that they don’t have to give their uncle a kiss if it makes them uncomfortable, and that they can bathe themselves alone when they’re able.

Our children’s first experiences of negotiation don’t happen in the sheets; they happen over dolls and toys.  It’s a lot better to learn what’s making your needs known and what’s bullying your partner when the question is “do we play school, or alien robot attack.”  It’s a lot better, and it’s highly transferable.  The kid who thinks, “I have to play the space game that I don’t like because the other kid wants to” is not going to suddenly act differently with a prom date, and the kid who thinks, “anything I do to make them play my game is fair, because what I want is all that’s important” will think exactly like that after prom, too.  They will, unless we step up as parents.  I don’t believe it’s “helicopter parenting” to talk to our kids about how they play with each other.  I believe it’s helicopter parenting to jump in and direct them.  That’s counterproductive.  Giving them the solution keeps them from ever developing the skills, and it’s the skills that are the point.  But neither is a “life is tough on the savannah” approach good for all kids, and talking to them and guiding them about how they interact with their peers has always worked for me.

I think the way we can teach this stuff is to think about the big picture early, and start teaching the general principles long before our kids are thinking about dating and intimacy.  It’s easy to connect it back.

Think about what I might want to say to my kids about consent as teens.  Things I want them to know:

• Yes means yes.  You should affirmatively make sure your partner is good with what you’re doing.
• You have to be able to communicate about what you and your partner want in order for everyone to be happy and have fun.
• There is no such thing as “working out a yes.”  Just because you can get someone to say, “okay, I’ll do what you want,” doesn’t mean they are into it or enjoying it, and it’s not fun unless it’s fun for everyone.

I don’t have to wait until they’re having sex to teach those values.  We don’t even have to be talking about sex for me to teach those values.  I can teach those values to kids old enough to ride bikes and play Minecraft.  I told my kids at two,  “it’s not fun unless it’s fun for everyone.”   I’ve already said,  “it’s not right to guilt-trip your friends into playing Minecraft because that’s what you want to do.” The moral principle doesn’t really change, so I’m dealing with the day-to-day of having friends over and having elementary school relationships.  But at the same time, I’m laying the groundwork for the conversations I’m going to have with them as teens:  whatever you do with your partners, it’s not okay unless it’s good for everyone.  If someone’s not having fun, you want to make space for them to say they want to stop, and you have to listen and respect that.  You have to talk to each other about what you want to do so you’re both having fun.  Just because you can get someone to say, “okay, I’ll do what you want” doesn’t mean they’re really into it.  The principles are basic life lessons about being fair to other people, and expecting that people are fair to us.  Only the details change with age.

Values Are Inherited

Our culture makes a big deal about adolescent rebellion, and by doing so convinces people it’s the norm, when in fact people generally adopt their parents’ values to a large extent.   Popular culture focuses on the exceptions mostly to give voice to parents’ fears.  But what usually happens is that your kids pay more attention to what you believe than you appreciate at the time.  They hear everything you say … including “put away your laundry” and “clean your room.”  (Getting them to do it is beyond the scope of this post.  And, sometimes, my capabilities.)  They see what you do, they hear what you say, and they integrate it so much that, whether they adopt it or reject it, it’s part of them.

And there’s the problem.  They see us more clearly sometimes than we see ourselves, and if we’re full of shit, they feel it even if they can’t articulate it.  If the way somebody thinks about sex and consent is that boys will always push for whatever they can get and girls are either the “good kind” or the “bad kind,” they are going to have a hard time communicating something different to their kids.  People who think that “some girls” are “asking for it,” raise daughters who can’t tell their parents if someone does something they didn’t agree to.  People who think that girls say no when they mean yes, at best, will teach their sons to ignore anything that is a soft refusal right up until they’re sure they’ll get in trouble.  Those attitudes pop up in the comments on anything about rape.  Those trolls are not all antisocial teens or loners living in isolation.  Some of those comments are from parents who show up at my school’s PTA meeting; that’s what they say when they don’t have to stand by it, and that’s what their kids will sense, and my kids are going to have to deal with that.

Protect Yourself At All Times

Feminists call out almost any attempt to shift a discussion of rape onto what the survivor could or should or might have done as victim blaming.  Because it is.  And feminists usually jump on every discussion about how women should restrict themselves to “prevent” themselves from getting raped, because it takes the focus off the rapists, and because it’s not effective, and because it’s not fair.  That’s correct.  And people sometimes respond by saying, “are you saying there’s nothing we can do?”  Well, I do know something we can do.  And it’s not teaching my daughter self-defense (though there are other reasons to do that, and the physical confidence that comes with it is a positive, etc.)

The most important thing to teach our kids is to respect their own boundaries as much as they respect others’, and respect others’ as much as they respect their own.  The way the culture works to create victims, the most effective way, is by gradually telling some people that they have to go along with things they don’t want.  There’s more to it, of course.  Abusers have ways of finding kids who lack supportive adults, who are cut off and vulnerable and won’t be listened to; all that is complex and not what this post is about.

This classic from Harriet J. says it best:

[W]omen are raised being told by parents, teachers, media, peers, and all surrounding social strata that:

it is not okay to set solid and distinct boundaries and reinforce them immediately and dramatically when crossed (“mean bitch”)

it is not okay to appear distraught or emotional (“crazy bitch”)

it is not okay to make personal decisions that the adults or other peers in your life do not agree with, and it is not okay to refuse to explain those decisions to others (“stuck-up bitch”)

it is not okay to refuse to agree with somebody, over and over and over again (“angry bitch”)

it is not okay to have (or express) conflicted, fluid, or experimental feelings about yourself, your body, your sexuality, your desires, and your needs (“bitch got daddy issues”)

it is not okay to use your physical strength (if you have it) to set physical boundaries (“dyke bitch”)

it is not okay to raise your voice (“shrill bitch”)

it is not okay to completely and utterly shut down somebody who obviously likes you (“mean dyke/frigid bitch”)

If we teach women that there are only certain ways they may acceptably behave, we should not be surprised when they behave in those ways.

And we should not be surprised when they behave these ways during attempted or completed rapes.

Our culture bombards our girls, especially, with lessons that they can’t set boundaries and expect them to be respected.   We shouldn’t be surprised when many rape survivors say they froze and just tried to shut down and hope it ended soon, or that afterwards they didn’t know what to call it or what to do about it – not making a fuss is the demand so much of our culture makes on girls and women.    Calling it rape, treating it like a violation, when it’s about to happen, or while it happens, or in the immediate aftermath, is an act of will that many survivors can’t just tap into.

Our culture teaches boys some terrible lessons, too, and I don’t just mean the ones about ignoring what their partners say or do.  I mean the ones boys learn about ignoring what they want, about putting the culture’s expectations about how they “should” be ahead of what they themselves want.  I mean the messages that cause people to ignore the sexual abuse of juvenile inmates when the abusers are women, the ones that allow women who molest boys to tell everyone, including probably themselves, that it’s okay because boys always “want it,” I mean the messages that make it hard for grown-ass men to say to their partners that they’re ever not in the mood.  That’s real, too, and it’s really about the same thing, when you get right down to it.  It’s about boundaries and whether we have a right to them.

We can do better with the next generation.  No matter how overwhelming the culture around us seems, there is a time in our kids’ lives when their parents are the most important people in their world and we can teach them — if we believe it, if we commit to it — that their boundaries mean something, that they don’t owe anyone access to their bodies, that if something feels wrong it’s okay to want to stop, it’s okay to need to stop, it’s okay to say stop, and it’s okay to expect to be listened to.  We can teach that.  If we tell them, and if we believe it, they’ll believe us.

The kind of self-defense I can give my kids is the belief that they have a right to set their boundaries, and that so does everyone else.  If they feel wrong, if they have the sudden urge to put their clothes back on and leave, then they should and they absolutely can — that’s real self-defense, the kind that matters.  And the great thing is that if they know that for them, they learn it for their partners, too.  I don’t have to wait until they’re packing for college to have that talk.  I started teaching that in preschool.

...

The last lie a junkie tells himself isn't "I’m not an addict."

The last lie a junkie tells himself is "My being a addict doesn't matter."

And in the Conservative Crack House of Many Doors, Ronald Reagan was that first cocktail. The first line of coke. The first needle. The first "Holy Mother of God!” WOWGASM that shotguns right through the blood/brain barrier, reformats your entire ethical hard drive, and scrimshaws a brand new Prime Directive on the inside of your skull.

Listen to any aging wingnut sighing and jerking sadly off to a tattered photo of Saint Ronnie -- despite the fact that the catastrophes we are now reaping were sown by his ruinous ideology -- and you can hear every addict who ever lived pining for that first Perfect High. The one they spend the rest of their days chasing, regardless of the size of the debts they run up or the ruined lives they leave in their wake.

Clinton? Objectively, Clinton qualifies as the greatest Center/Right President in history, and with balanced budgets, GATT, welfare reform, NAFTA, DOMA, record surpluses, foreign and domestic terrorists brought to book, and an actual military victory, he arguably delivered to the wingnuts more of everything they ever said they wanted than anyone else.

And they hated him for it.

Why?

Because Clinton was mere addiction maintenance delivered in measured doses under adult supervision: all policy-wonk that wasn’t cut with that industrial-waste-grade bigoted, psychotic bloodlust that gives Conservatism its wild, freebasing edge. Clinton was methadone, and for the hardcore lifestyle junkie, that shit is for babies.

And Dubya? Dubya was meth with a ketamine chaser delivered hammer-and-anvil directly to the lizard brain...

Fox Host On Alleged Ray Rice Video: Why Won't Obama Lead?

Fox News host Andrea Tantaros wasted no time during Monday's episode of "Outnumbered" directing anger at President Obama and the Democrats over a video reportedly showing NFL star Ray Rice punching his then-fiancee in an elevator.

"I wanna know, where is the President on this one?" Tantaros asked, after a brief throat-clearing about the NFL's obligation to react to the tape.

"My question is — and not to bring it back to politics but — this is a White House that seems to bring up a 'war on women' every other week. A White House that's very concerned about the NFL, concussions, etc., prescription drugs in locker rooms," she said.

Tantaros went on to demand action from Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL). The host also used the chance to blast Wasserman-Schultz for recently saying that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) has given women "the back of his hand," a remark for which the DNC chair later apologized.

"Debbie Wasserman-Schultz should come out and condemn this, and if she doesn't, she's an apologist for domestic violence," the Fox host said...

Does Obama Remember He's President?

More and more, Obama seems like a passive observer of events who dismisses criticism as superficial. Not a good combination.

Stuart Stevens was the chief strategist for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign...

The central atrium of the British Museum, London (photo by William Warby/Flickr)

The British Museum is a flagship cultural institution with 2013 expenditures of £115.4 million (~$186.2 million). It is also, according to a current online listing, seeking free help on its website and other “products” from experienced coders in the guise, naturally, of an unpaid internship or “student placement” with its “Digital Team.”

“This is an ideal opportunity for students or recent graduates in Computer Science, Information Technology and Web Development,” the listing writes, enumerating three of the most valuable skills in this benighted post-whatever economy. Not to worry! Trading on prestige should allow the British Museum to break down any barriers of remuneration that might normally exist between such valuable technical labor and its “key digital products and … new digital strategy.”

Bearing in mind that the digital department at the British Museum is not likely to be pedagogically valuable in the same way the institution’s curatorial or conservation departments might be, we turn our eye to the three responsibilities outlined in the ad:

• “Assisting staff developers with updating the code on the museum’s website”
• “Researching solutions for technical problems and new web and mobile products”
• “Participating in brainstorming about new digital products”

The first two are rote tasks (updating and troubleshooting) that clearly replace paid functions within the museum’s staff (which is US labor law’s standard for internship legality, and maybe the UK’s too); the last is so nebulous as to be virtually meaningless.

This isn’t the first time British arts institutions have exhibited an unreasonable penchant for unpaid peons, with the Serpentine Gallery drawing protest from an activist group called Future Interns last December. The objection was successful, however, and the Serpentine instituted a paid program in response; the group also made similar headway with the London Symphony Orchestra.

And although one might argue that the British Museum listing is geared to the British “student placement” system, the ad clearly solicits applications from graduate students and recent graduates, as well as non-EU citizens (“Non-EU citizens must arrange their own visa to stay in the UK”). Anyway, no need to belabor the point: turn your attention to this great editorial illustration from Matt Bors on the whole internship morass.

Update, 9/9 5:52pm EDT: The listing we originally linked to, at Museums and the Web, seems to have been taken down, apparently prematurely — the posting cited an end date of September 10. Here’s a PDF of the British Museum listing as it originally appeared.

Update 2, 9/10 10:26am EDT: In a message from its official Twitter account earlier this morning, the British Museum stated that the listing has been retracted: “We can confirm that this posting has now been removed. The Museum does not support unpaid internships.” (The British Museum did not respond to a direct request for comment sent yesterday, when the listing was originally taken down.) Screenshot follows below.

Update 3, 9/11 11:01am EDT: The British Museum’s Hannah Boulton has responded to Hyperallergic’s September 9 query regarding the disappearance of the listing with the following:

You are correct that the posting has been removed. The Museum has a very firm policy in this area and does not support unpaid internships.

This is a very personal post. So trust me that although I have changed certain salient details for various reasons, the essential crux of the facts are true. In fact, the full story is a bit more dramatic and unhappy than needs to be told. This week I chose to go bankrupt. Or rather, I didn’t bother defending the bankruptcy petition. This post is about how I got to here, and finding the good in it.

First, my chosen profession is legal, and specifically the conduct of civil and commercial litigation. It can be a good profession, and well paid, but it can also be and often is a demanding profession which takes a toll and it is not always well paid. Sometimes difficult cases are not valuable cases, and vice versa. Second, by inclination I am neither a risk taker nor a spendthrift. I was of the old school ‘don’t buy it until you can afford to buy it’ type. I don’t like fast cars, or need fancy goods. I don’t gamble or do drugs. In fact I had an aversion to debt born of my observations at work. Until the events described below I never had an overdraft or a credit card. There was a time when I was well off, with a gorgeous house and a flat for convenience at work during the week. Then in 1999 I sold my house, against my better judgment, and for reasons of extensive travel. I put the money in the bank and intended to save up and put a deposit on a new one. It was a strategic disaster. The next year house prices went through the roof. There is more back story to this, but it doesn’t matter.

In 2002 I suffered bereavement. I lost someone I loved very, very much. I fell apart with grief, barely able to function. So I know about grief, and it didn’t seem to shift. I have no doubt that I had a breakdown, and the fall was far and the ground was hard. There was no one to help cushion the blow. Foolishly I kept working. I should have taken a sabbatical, but there was no one to give me that advice. I don’t want to go into details, but on the personal front I was also ill-used by someone I trusted. A person got me involved in subsidising their business ventures and persuaded me of the huge benefit of what were with hindsight hugely stupid decisions which I trustingly and naively underwrote, and being locked into those is the essential cause of my present position. Soon I was cleaned out. We had a new regime at work and again I also was at the receiving end of some “Office Politics” (not my game) which saw me being marginalised on the work and income front. Add in a recession which has hit my chosen profession as badly as any other, and you have the perfect storm

I began to wake up. I remember looking at my bank statements and realising for the first time how the money had been bled away, but I still slow on the uptake. The flat had gone; sold to fund some damaging project on promises of repayment which were, as ever, not fulfilled. That person has moved on to cause more distress elsewhere. I was effectively homeless and debt ridden. In my late 40’s I was obliged to move in with my now very elderly parents, which was I suppose a blessing but not ideal. From a back study I moved on to a new place of work and started over, this time with an anchor of debt round me. I went into what is known as an Individual Voluntary Arrangement, a compact with creditors but I also had the added burden of a mortgage on a vandalised house (I did tell you, the full story is horrible) to try to keep up. It has been a dark place at times. I spent a lot of time pondering: why me? I’m a good guy, by and large. Were my sins so bad as to deserve this? I read far and wide, looking for answers. Some have come, some palatable, some not so.

I think I understand now. I think the psychological wound of the bereavement left me highly vulnerable, and desperate for some security which someone seemed to offer, and less interested in my career than I should have been. I still berate myself sometimes, and I am not trying to avoid responsibility, but I can understand it. I was very isolated – it is partly the nature of my job. I discovered diversion in the internet a diversion. By a series of coincidences I was prompted to adopt the identity of Gildas the Monk. It seemed appropriate; an isolated, monastic figure, railing at the iniquities of the world. By another series of coincidences I discovered this site, and our landlady extended a hand of friendship. I found an outlet in writing. It gave me an outlet and a challenge. Thanks, Boss. Then I was rediscovered by my friend, of whom I have often written, Dr F. We had lost contract so many years ago. She and her husband have offered me unconditional love and financial support too. I struggled on and on, paying off as much as I could. I have done quite well, but “post” recession (post??!!) is tough. In the end, I was exhausted. I thought: stuff this. More accurately, I think I was worn out. So, I stopped paying and awaiting the results.

Here’s the thing. There is a work called “A Course in Miracles” which I have mentioned before. Again as I have mentioned, it is not a course about angels intervening and people levitating; it is a work which fuses spirituality and psychology with the goal of obtaining peace of mind. In this context a “miracle” is often something like a change of perception; a change of perception about a situation which in turn can allow for a change in circumstances to take place; not deleting a problem by Celestial Intervention from on high, than allowing a change in how to think about the problem. On the other hand…

I found myself in Manchester a few weeks ago. I was particularly low and anxious, and decided I would go to lunchtime Mass at the beautiful city centre church of St Mary’s, known locally as “the Hidden Gem”. I never made it. I bumped into a kindly colleague, a chance meeting which is highly unusual. Even more unusually she had time for a coffee, and we talked. I told her about my present woes. She gave me good advice. Don’t worry, she said. This may be a good thing. Take some time off, and rest. Re-assess your career, and whether you want to do it. Don’t live for the opinions of others. Maybe take a holiday. Maybe take the time for a complete change, or find more fulfilling work. All advice I could have given myself, but needed to hear from someone else. I felt lighter. Such wisdom and common sense was what I really needed, just then. Chance? I was very down, but I feel funny now. I feel tired physically tired, but there is something else. Relief? Perhaps, but it’s weird. It’s almost…excitement? I had forgotten what that felt like. I began to see the positives in this. Free from endlessly paying. And some unpleasant people who were hounding me get to lose out; I don’t have to deal with my former colleagues who were still demanding contributions to a place where I haven’t set foot in 5 years. Screw you. You have the problem now. Another thing was I have learned who my real friends are.

Other ideas have come crowding in. Do I enjoy my job anymore? I’ve been doing it for more than 25 years. Well no, not very much. Changes to the legal system, cranky judges, greedy clients squabbling over money…I know very few of my comrades who handle the work a day drudge of legal work that are not stressed and unhappy. Do I really want to keep doing this? Maybe not. Maybe I could do something different, make a change. Maybe this was a signal to re-asses completely and make a fresh start. Maybe I could be…..happy? There is a concept developed by the psychologist Carl Jung called the wounded healer. It inspired this, which I came across on Twitter, or some such. I hope I am not being arrogant, but somehow it struck a chord with me. My needs are few. A little house to rent, a radio to listen to the news and footie, maybe some homemade wine and a few treats. Maybe for the good of my health I can do more walking? I could recharge my batteries for a while. Maybe find a job with more meaning, or fall back in love with my profession? Maybe write a novel? Maybe start a business and become a millionaire? Maybe I could have a future unlike the past? So, oddly, I feel very good. My instincts are usually good. I think good change is on the way. It is odd.

Tonight I shall head off to a little spa hotel in the part of town I used to love living in. Nothing fancy, you understand, just a gym, pool and a steam room. And from thence to the friendly old pub. Therein I shall drink some wine, and ponder the miracle there could be in this. Finally, all of you who have been kind to my various efforts over the years. Thank you. God Bless. I shall raise a glass to you.

Gildas the Monk    

And so we finally come to the end of my first – and almost certainly longest – national tour.  After leaving Kelly’s house on August 30^th I spent the night in Tallahassee so as to break up the long drive, and the next day I arrived at Denise’s house in New Orleans.  On Monday night I visited Frank and Olivia; on Tuesday I bought myself three new dresses at the flea market, then went to dinner with journalist Jillian Keenan (who had hosted an event for me in New York); and on Wednesday I visited my old friend Charlie and my cousin Alan, then had a lovely dinner with Krulac.  I managed to leave fairly early on Thursday, and resumed my normal schedule as soon as I got home.

Well, that last isn’t quite true; while I did cook dinner, put the animals in and all that stuff, it’s going to be several weeks before I’m actually back to normal.  For one thing, though I doubled the size of my “buffer” before leaving, it’s entirely gone and will take weeks to build back up to its normal one-month size.  For another thing, very few of the columns published after the first week of July were indexed, so I need to catch that back up.  Then there are bills to pay, a huge backlog of correspondence to answer, the next book to compile, and my November mini-tour to Seattle and Portland to plan; all in all, enough to keep me busy for the rest of the year.  About the mini-tour:  though I did manage to make it work, it was extremely difficult (and sometimes frustrating) to have to plan events as I went along, and I’d rather not have to do that again.  So, I’m going to start working on my plans for the Pacific Northwest immediately; I hope to have my basic dates locked in by the end of the month, so if you’d like me to speak or read someplace please email me next week with the details.  Though relaxation is not in my nature, if I can get the schedule worked out before I leave I at least won’t be quite so stressed.

Given all that, I think it would be a good idea to continue this feature for a while longer; not only will that keep y’all up to date with what’s going on, it’ll also help me to catch up since these diary posts are quick and easy to write.  On the 18^th I’ll discuss the tour in general, and on the 30^th I hope to have the firm-but-not-set-in-stone dates for Seattle & Portland.  And in the weeks after that, I can keep y’all appraised of the progress on the new book, the mini-tour and any other activities of mine that y’all might find interesting.

It looks like this blog is no longer the first term that pops up when you enter the word “Whatever” in Google — it’s been supplanted by a YouTube channel of the same name. Thus ends a decades-long domination by Whatever of the word on the world’s pre-eminent search engine. All glory is passing.

How do I feel about this? I am curiously lacking angst about it. One, it’s still the number two entry for the word, i.e., not at all difficult to find, really. Two, YouTube is a Google property, so I would not be surprised if it lends YouTube channels a little extra search engine juice. If so, that’s fine too. Three, well, you know, a decade is a good run for owning a relatively common word in the English language on a search engine.

In any event, I still have the corner locked on “Scalzi” on Google, which is, strangely enough, the word people search on most when they are looking for me. I suspect I will be fine, Google-wise.

I spend a lot of time bitching about submissive guys doing it wrong, so for a change let’s talk about somebody doing it right.

Quite some time ago now my friend some_guy27 started a thread titled “questions from a newbie” in the Submissive men and women who love them Fetlife group.

I’ll be honest, when I saw the title I cringed a little. Most of the threads I’ve seen with titles like that were either questions that could have been answered in five minutes of reading the stickies, or thinly veiled personal ads. Some_guy27, however, really surprised me. Here’s the part of his original post that I found the most interesting:

I’ve been reading through some of the stickies and did some searches and found a lot of very helpful info, but a few of my questions weren’t really answered. For instance, this whole lifestyle is very new to me, and some of the suggestions you give are a bit intimidating and what not. Personally, I’ve always been the dominant one in my relationships. (Not really because “I” needed to be, but because “she” needed me to be) I kind of want to be the submissive one for a change, but I’m really not even sure that “submissive” is the correct word. (I’ve been bombarded with a whole new vocabulary since I joined the site) The standard advice is to know your limits and be up front with them. As a nOOb, I really don’t know what they are. I mean, realistically, I might actually REALLY like something that is currently off limits in my head right? I guess what I’m trying to say is that I don’t even know what it is that I don’t know?

Did you see that? He read the goddamn stickies! For once, somebody did their own research before asking the same question a thousand other people have and boring us all to tears in the process. Not only that, but he asked an interesting question. It’s sadly rare for people new to the scene to even be willing to question whether they’ve found the right label for themselves, or to realize that they might end up liking something that they have no interest in right now.

In case you don’t understand how rare it is for someone to actually read the stickies, have a look at that thread. If you scroll most of the way down the first page of replies, you’ll see dominant women play fighting over him. Many submissive guys seem to have trouble getting a single dominant woman’s attention, given that the most common questions I’ve seen in the submissive men and women who love them group are “why is it so hard to find a dom?”, “where do I find a dom?”, and “how do I get a dom to answer my messages?”, and somehow this guy has multiple women fighting over him! All it takes to get that kind of reaction from us is putting a tiny bit of effort into doing your own research and being friendly and pleasant to people who try to answer your question. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the bar is just not that high.

Just starting a good thread is impressive enough, but another thing that some_guy27 did right was sending me an entirely adorable thank you note for responding to his post. Because he reached out, we’ve been corresponding off and on for the last couple of years. Come to think of it, that’s another point in his favour – we live in different countries, and while we both travel now and then, we may never meet in person. And he still acted like I was worth his time! I can’t tell you how many whiny posts I’ve seen by men who went to one event, one time, didn’t instantly find a hot dominatrix who shares all of their kinks, and decided in person events are a waste of time and they’re never going back. It’s a nice change to talk with someone who has an interest in you as a person, independent of your ability to directly fulfill his fantasies.

Now, I don’t expect every new submissive man to be as charming as some_guy27, because frankly that’s a pretty high bar to clear, but you absolutely can read the stickies, ask questions that haven’t been done to death, and be grateful to the people who respond to your posts. Yes, it’s a little more work than just asking “wherr all the domz at?”, but you too can have a thread full of dominant women excited about you if you just give us something to work with. We want you to be awesome, but we need you to meet us half way.

When someone says “beach” you probably think of yellow or white sand, rolling waves, bright sunlight and a beer or fruity cocktail. But beaches come in far more different shapes and colors than some of us might have expected. Here are 17 beaches that, in one way or another, might not be anything like the beaches you’re used to.

One of the most striking differences in many of these beaches are the different sand colors. Sand is generally formed out of whatever the waves happen to be banging against the shore, be they rocks, shells, corals, or glass. Rare green beaches can contain olivine, which is a remnant of volcanic eruptions, and black beaches are also generally formed by volcanic remnants. The pink beaches of Bermuda are colored by coral remnants.

If you have a photo of a unique beach out there that should be on this list, share it with us below this post!

Unique Glass Beach in California

Image credits: unknown

Image credits: digggs

The glass beach near Fort Bragg in California formed after the trash dumped there for years by local residents was pounded into sand by the surf. The dumping was eventually prohibited, but the glass sand remains.

Hidden beach in Marieta, Mexico

Image credits: dailymail.co.uk

Image credits: Miguel Naranjo

This beach in Mexico is said to have formed after the Mexican government used the uninhabited islands for target practice in the 1900s.

Maldives Beach That Looks Like Starry Night Sky

Image credits: Will Ho

Image credits: Will Ho

The lights on this beach in the Maldives are caused by microscopic bioluminescent phytoplankton, which give off light when they are agitated by the surf.

The Beach of the Cathedrals, Ribadeo, Spain

Image credits: imgur.com

The stunning cathedral-like arches and buttresses of this beach in Spain were formed by pounding water over thousands upon thousands years.

Pink Sand Beach, Bahamas

Image credits: greenglobe.travel

Image credits: luxuo.com

The idyllic pink sand of the Bahamas is pigmented by washed-up coral remnants, which are dashed and ground to tiny pieces by the surf.

Extreme Plane Landings at Maho Beach, Saint Martin

Image credits: Benny Zheng

Image credits: Kent Miller

Jokulsarlon, Iceland

Image credits: Manisha Desai

Image credits: D-P Photography

The black volcanic sand on this Icelandic beach contrasts beautifully with the white and glassy chunks of ice.

The Moeraki Boulders (Dragon Eggs) In Koekohe Beach, New Zealand

Image credits: Gerald Guerubin

Image credits: Farkul J

Image credits: arikairflight.blogspot.com

The boulders on this New Zealand beach are concretions – balls of sedimentary rock harder than the sedimentary earth that formed around them, which has long since washed away. These boulders get uncovered and smoothed by pounding waves.

Green Sand In Kourou, French Guiana

Image credits: Arria Belli

Papakōlea Green Sand Beach, Hawaii

Image credits: paradisepin.com

Image credits: Mark Ritter

The green sand on this beach in Hawaii is caused by the mineral olivine, which is formed by lava as it cools in the sea.

Giants Causeway Beach, Ireland

Image credits: Michael

Image credits: Stefan Klopp

The giant’s causeway was formed 50-60 million years ago when basalt lava rose to the surface and cooled, cracking into strange, large columns.

Punaluu Black Sand Beach, Hawaii

Image credits: hawaiitopten.com

Image credits: poco a poco

The black sand on Punaluu is formed by basalt lava, which explodes as it flows into the sea and rapidly cools.

Red Sand Beach, Rabida, Galapagos

Image credits: unknown

Image credits: Robert Peternel

The red sand at Rabida was formed due to the oxidization of iron-rich lava deposits, although it could also be due to washed-up coral sediments.

Shell Beach, Shark Bay, Australia

Image credits: australiascoralcoast.com

The water near Shell Beach in Australia is so saline that the cockle clam has been able to proliferate unchecked by its natural predators. It is this abundance of molluscs that floods the beaches with their shells.

Pfeiffer Purple Sand Beach, California

Image credits: Tom Grubbe | dfmead

Image credits: irene joy

The purple sand at this beach (which is only found in patches) is formed when manganese garnet deposits in the surrounding hills erode into the sea.

Vik Beach, Iceland

Image credits: Stephan Amm

Iceland is a land with a lot of volcanic activity, which is why black volcanic beaches are so common there.

Cave Beach in Algarve, Portugal

Image credits: Bruno Carlos

The Algarve coast consists of limestone, which is easily eroded and can form stunning sea caves like this one.

I was in my 30s before I got round to wondering why none of my relatives spoke to any of the other relatives. I just accepted it as a child. Questions were not encouraged.

As an adult, I set about trying to trace some of them, and discovered that ‘Uncle Popsy’ as he was universally known, was alive and well and living in a hospital on the South coast. I trekked the several hundred miles south to visit him. He threw his arms around my neck and covered me with rather wet and slimy kisses and then proceeded to blow his nose of the sleeve of my shirt.

This was a novel experience for me, not the nose blowing, but the welcome. I had long since learnt that visual proof of my continuing existence tended to produce an embarrassed silence, followed by an ‘ahhh’ from the other relatives I had traced. It wasn’t so much ‘who’ I was, but the fact that I, er, well, ‘was’. Existed. It didn’t fit the various narratives they had conjured up to explain the many grudges and non speaking scenarios they harboured between themselves.

Enough of that. Popsy was a grand revelation. The perfect relation. Always pleased to see you. We formed a firm friendship that eventually encompassed a permanent invitation to spend Christmas with him. You will have gathered that sharing Christmas lunch with anyone I was related to was a novel turn of events for me.

A bed in an unused side ward was always made available for me, and I discovered one of the great unspoken truths of real life. If you want to enjoy a truly memorable Christmas, make friends with the staff and patients at a home for the mentally ‘subnormal’ as the outside world refers to Popsy’s many colleagues.

There will be no family rows, carols – usually several different ones at the same time – will ring out from morning to night, everyone will be smiling, and, should your motives not be altogether altruistic, you will be party to a cornucopia of bounty.

You see, shortly before Christmas, a bevy of letters will arrive from the ‘relatives’- ‘they are sorry, it is unavoidable, but owing to family commitments/great aunt arriving from Australia/an unavoidable appointment with the chiropodist, they won’t actually be able to have David/Shauna/Paul/ home with them for the festivities this year – they will, of course, ‘drop in’ soon afterwards – but in the meantime, they have arranged for a hamper/crate of wine/bottle of excellent whisky to be delivered in grateful thanks for all the staff have done over the past year, and they are sorry they haven’t been able to visit as often as they would have liked’.

Some families maintain excellent contact, but fortunately, or at least in those years, sufficient didn’t, and felt guilty, to make Christmas a memorable occasion for all concerned. We will gloss over the year that Richard managed to trap the head of a visiting dignitary, who regularly arrived to plague us with ‘Hinge and Bracket’ style renditions of stirring hymns bashed out on an old piano, in said piano lid. Everybody was agreed that Richard had successfully dissuaded her from returning, so all’s well, etc.

Eventually those happy years came to an end one September morning with the call to say that Popsy had passed away in the night. There had been false starts before; I still remember hitch hiking down there in a snow blizzard, no transport running, after a call saying that Popsy hadn’t eaten for several days and they thought my presence might help. After some 12 hours of risking life and limb standing in piled up snow on the side of motorways hitching my way south, I arrived at 6am in the morning to find a totally unperturbed Pops tucking into his breakfast – liquidised as usual, and coloured green – he had never agreed to eat anything that didn’t resemble my grandmothers pea soup from the day she died and he had been whisked away suddenly to live amongst all these strangers – delighted to see me as always, and with no explanation for his strange 6 day ‘fast’ – had someone forgotten the food colouring? I shall never know.

When I arrived at the hospital, I was invited to see an ‘official’ – I had never met anyone other than the brilliant staff in Popsy’s unit before. This lady informed me that there had been some peculiar occurrences recently. Someone called ‘The Public Trustee’ would write to them each year, asking whether Popsy needed anything ‘over and above’ that provided by the NHS. They would dutifully reply that of course he didn’t. They had never felt it was their place before to inform me that Popsy had been left considerable sums of money by my grandparents, and the staff had felt guilty that I had arranged for a local cake shop to send him a chocolate cake each week, and had always provided the track suits and t-shirts that he preferred to the hospital clothing the NHS provided, so many years beforehand they had arranged to inform the Public Trustee that I was Popsy’s next of kin and therefore his beneficiary. Before I had time to take in this potential windfall, she went on – ‘unfortunately, my Father’s recent suicide had many repercussions, one of which was that various relatives were now aware that my Mother’s silence on the subject not only of me, but also of her brother Popsy, didn’t mean we didn’t exist, and she had retaliated by arranging for her solicitor to contact the Public Trustee and have her name inserted as next of kin; the staff had never met her in the 40 years that Pops had been with them, and were somewhat annoyed at this turn of events, so had decided that the one thing they could ‘do’ for me, was to let me organise his funeral, the bill for which was to be deducted from Popsy’s estate before it was passed on to his next of kin…..they had some unusual suggestions which I might care to approve?

Totally brilliant suggestions I might add.

It was agreed that the funeral should be held on a Wednesday, a day when they normally had a group outing to the local garden centre or some such suitable venue.

Thus it was that on the agreed Wednesday, a fleet of solemn hearses pulled up outside the unit. I use the word fleet advisedly, for every one of Popsy’s colleagues had been invited, of course, all 26 of them, each accompanied by a couple of members of staff, to ensure a modicum of approved public behaviour, or semblance thereof.

Richard was first out of the door, naturally, he always was. Every week he would bag the seat directly behind the driver and hold onto the chrome bar for dear life. This week was to be no exception. Except that there was no seat, just a set of rollers on a wooden floor and the bar appeared to be brass for a change. No matter, he clung on for dear life.

It took some time, and several members of staff to persuade him to relinquish his place of honour in favour of Popsy’s coffin; he kicked, he screamed, he was finally mollified by the gift of a ‘Wales is magic’ badge from one of the staff, and ensconced in a seat in one of the following cars. A magnificent floral display spelling out Popsy’s name was placed either side of the coffin. It was beginning to look like an old style East-end gangster’s funeral. The po-faced undertakers were looking traumatised already and the day had only just started.

Since Popsy and some of the staff had spent many years at ‘Greystokes’ institution, now closed, it had been agreed that we would start the day with a memorial service in the chapel there.

Sure it was 120 miles north of where we were, but everyone was looking forward to the day out, and liked a long drive. So we convoyed north, electric window fitments were fiddled with, some of us discovered the joys of leaning out of the window and waving to passers by, some of us sang to keep our spirits up, we may have cut a strange and noisy image swathing through the Surrey countryside, but all were agreed it had been a terrific idea.

We swung through the magnificent gates of Greystokes and made our way to the chapel. The local vicar was waiting for us outside wearing his best ‘all God’s people’ expression. His blessed each of us with the sign of the cross as we queued to enter. Richard was so overcome at this unexpected greeting that he decided to give the vicar his newest, bestest, most valued possession; his ‘Wales is Magic’ badge. Never blessed with the nimblest fingers, he plunged the pin into the vicar’s bosom, producing an instant ‘we must suffer for our faith’ pained expression. The vicar recovered manfully and led us to our seats.

He did announce the hymns, he even told us which page they were on; he seemed to have forgotten that some of his flock that day had only ever managed to memorise one song in their entire life. Thus we had ‘As shepherd’s watch’ overlaid with ‘a hard days night’, a line, or rather word or two, from ‘Satisfaction’ and some enthusiastic ‘hula hoop’ dancing from our more agile number. The undertaker’s faces were now set in stone. Botoxed to a man. Or perhaps just flummoxed.

The plan was that the vicar, having intoned his way through the prescribed words, would lead us back to our convoy, and we would speed off to the proper ceremony. He set off down the aisle swinging a glittering golden bowl of incense. Richard’s eyes gleamed. Fair exchange being no robbery, he set off, over the back of the pews in hot pursuit of his prize. They met just before the West door. The vicar was patronisingly unwilling to relinquish his bowl of office. He tried to reason with Richard as several of us dived forward to head off the inevitable struggle. We didn’t get there in time, dear reader. The vicar ended up lying on the rear pew, as Richard calmly retrieved his ‘Wales is Magic’ badge without bothering to undo the pin, and claimed part of the vicar’s surplice into the bargain.

Eyes averted, grins suppressed, we piled back into the cars and sped south again. The unfortunate contretemps meant that we were early, and besides, everyone was hungry. We stopped at the only place the undertakers knew that could accommodate some 50 people at short notice.

Which is how we came to have lunch at a most salubrious establishment on the top floor of a department store. No longer did Popsy’s magimix and bottle of food colouring have to be carried on every outing, but some of us still had some ‘unusual’ dietary requirements. Paul wanted a boiled egg. They didn’t have boiled eggs on the menu, well they didn’t until they discovered just how much Paul, really, really, wanted a boiled egg for lunch. Two minutes boiling time never passed so slowly in a crowded restaurant full of ‘ladies who lunch’.

Meanwhile, Popsy lay outside, guarded by a phalanx of undertakers and drivers. Surprisingly he didn’t get a parking ticket.

Off we went again, to Worthing cemetery, where Pops was finally laid to rest a few yards from Rocco Forte; death is a great leveller.

Tears were shed by me and the staff, but no one else was much impressed. Another Vicar was traumatised as Shirley threw her skirt over her head at a solemn moment to reveal that no one had checked to see if she had kept on the knickers she had been given that morning. She hadn’t of course.

By this time it was very hot, and some of us were becoming rather fractious, and needed to let off steam. The undertakers were given one last task. Would they please stop by the pavilion on the sea front to ‘give everyone a run in the sand’?

The only parking spot they could find for our long convoy ‘just happened’ to be right by the candy floss stand. It was a huge success.

So if you were driving along the south coast that day, and found yourself behind a convoy of hearses, full of happy smiling faces, candy floss sticks waving out of windows, dripping down the side of immaculately polished sombre black cars, feet protruding from some windows, enthusiastically waving hands from others, and a grand sing song from all, now you know why.

It was Popsy being laid to rest, in grand style. He would have loved it. Surely the mark of the perfect funeral. For the perfect relative.

I am told it was hideously expensive. The Public Trustee paid the invoice though.