Monday, April 30, 2007

Johns Gone Wild: The DC Madam’s Gift to Sexual Health


filed under: Strange Bedfellows by Melissa Gira | 3 Comments

The cats and all their dirty politics and money are scrambling out of the bag after this weekend, with the Big Reveal of the alleged “D.C. Madam” — alleged, in that, on an unstated sex industry technicality, one can only be thought of as a madam if one is involved in prostitution, and we’re not saying, and she’s saying she’s not, and so let’s help a sister out.

Deborah Jeane Palfrey (nice roundup at DCist, who names her a Feminist, Security Expert, and Freedom Fighter) is the former proprietor of Pamela Martin & Associates, and her celebrated forty seven pounds of telephone records and the journalists at ABC now data mining them have now netted their first “casualty”, Randall Tobias, former Deputy Secretary of State, the first United States Global AIDS Coordinator, and administrator of the controversial United States Agency for International Development (Google cache of his position description, now removed). Under his direction, USAID cut off all funds to organizations that did not sign a pledge to the US government that they opposed prostitution. Tobias is likely the choicest john offered up from any black book, period, and especially so for those who truly have the most to lose politically in this suit. By that I don’t mean the other abstinence-preaching Bush appointees and their hypocritical brethren, but sex workers.

Sex workers have been organizing against this policy since its inception, stating that sex workers themselves are the most effective network of people and organizations in reducing HIV/AIDS, violence, and forced labor in the sex industry. By contrast, the US is leading a global strategy around sex work founded on telling people to abstain from sex, to be faithful, and barring that, use condoms (but don’t you dare ask the US to fund those, or education around how to use them properly, or to be tested for HIV if one needs to).

To have the man in charge, literally, fall prey to his own inability to follow his own policy — oh, of course he tells us that he only ever called Ms. Martin’s service so “a few gals could come over to the condo to give him massages” (ABC video), and he tells us this, yes, on his way out the door — is sweet, yes, but it isn’t so much the “sex scandal” the Left (see: Talking Points Memo Muckraker, Daily Kos, et. al.) is looking for to further skewer the Bush administration. No one should have to go down politically because they’ve hired a prostitute, and, newsflash, it’s not like johns don’t exist in Blue States, too. What’s frustrating is that sex workers have been going down, politically and literally, on these guys and their goons for aeons. If we can stop and remember what sex workers know from experience, that money and politics are so deeply embedded in sex as to be impossible to do one without doing the whole team, this moment could be a potential wake-up call for progressives to take on the promotion of sexual health as an agenda item every day, and not just when Ms. Palfrey Goes to Washington.

Monday, April 16, 2007

Abstinence Education Not So Smart


filed under: Strange Bedfellows, State of Sex Ed by Lux Nightmare | Leave a Comment

It should come as no surprise that we at Sexerati aren’t big fans of abstinence only education (it’s hard to fit statements like ‘touching another person’s genitals “can result in pregnancy”‘ and “half the gay male teenagers in the United States have tested positive for the AIDS virus” under the banner of smart sex) — so it was nice to see the Associated Press reporting that a new study has shown that abstinence-only education doesn’t work.

Which is to say: students who attended abstinence-only education classes were just as likely to have sex as their peers who didn’t attend the classes. And have about the same number of partners. And lose their virginity at about the same age.

Not surprisingly, supporters of abstinence-only education (like, say, the Bush administration) aren’t willing to abandon ship in the face of this study, pointing out that the four programs involved in the study were early, unrefined examples of abstinence-only education, and that later programs have perfected the strategy of, uh, scaring kids out of having sex by lying to them.

Well, maybe. Or maybe we should just throw our money to programs that have actually been scientifically proven to work.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Lazysexweb: What Is The History of NSFW?


filed under: Strange Bedfellows, Retrosexual, Lazysexweb by Melissa Gira | 1 Comment

Apropos of Susie Bright’s questioning of the overuse of NSFW…

NSFW is unmandated, unlegislated censorship — there’s no ballot to punch, no senator to harangue.

The great majority of NSFW warnings are the result of unconscious class bias, with the conceit of American ethnocentrism. It’s made a mockery of out of journalism and the First Amendment.

NSFW and its slippery slope of “assumptions” leads to stories and ideas of all kinds being banned, firewalled, off the grid in places from universities to major wire services.

… and doing a bit of research…

I have searched for a history of this term but can find nothing. Interestingly enough though it seems as though every page on the web, that I have encountered, which purports to explain the history of NSFW is actually search engine SPAM designed to raise the Google juice for gambling and viagra sites.

… and of course, consulting the usual suspects, I’m still not any more clear on the origins of NSFW. Tips, pointers, remedy for our gaps in web history? Lux and I were reminiscing just this morning on our days online back when nary a banner ad had popped, but for the life of us, we can’t put a finger[1] on when NSFW was first deployed.

[1] Jokes for old sex nerds.

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Stephen Colbert vs. Female Chauvinist Pigs


filed under: Strange Bedfellows, We Are The Sex Media by Melissa Gira | 1 Comment

How, how, how did I miss Ariel Levy on The Colbert Report?

(That’s right — by just getting my teevee from the Internet.)

Remember, kids: the reason that women are losing the war on sex? Because strippers hate our freedom.

(Video from Colbert OnDemand; more: nofactzone.net, ColbertNation)

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