Late, as always: International Sex Workers Rights...

h/t Cara

I'm several days late on this, but, then, I didn't even realize that it was Sex Worker's Rights day on the 3rd. Until I read Cara's post, I didn't even know that there was an International Sex Worker's Rights day. I am woefully out of touch, I think.

Anyway.

I've written about my complicated feelings on pornography before. Part of the problem is that the arguments about how porn is harmful can be quite compelling, relying, as many of them do, on emotional reactions to the statistics about the types of violence that people involved in sex-work face. It's hard not to be moved by stories about "sex tourism", or the violence that sex-workers sometimes face at the hands of Johns.

But then I remember that I dislike violence against women precisely because it's violence, regardless of what occupation the woman has. I remember that I'm opposed to the sex tourism industry because raping children is wrong, regardless of what motivates you to do so.

A commenter- Betty Boondoggle- raises a good point, over at Cara's:

Aren’t our efforts better employe in improving the conditions so that all the workers are safer? I would like to assume that this is the “official” position. I’m getting the feeling though, that I might be wrong.

I certainly don't think that the sex-industry is perfect. It's pretty obvious that there are some serious problems. But, it occurs to me that pushing the industry underground isn't necessarily the best way to help the women working in it. If my boss is treating me unfairly, I have legal means to pursue justice. If I'm not paid fairly, I can get compensation. If someone is working illegally as a prostitute, and has been wronged in some way- cheated out of money, forced to work in unsafe conditions... whatever- what recourse is there? None. You can't go to the police, or else they'll likely arrest you. You can't take your employer to court... what would you say?

And, no: I don't think that men have some kind of "right" to women's bodies. I think that all of us have a right to have sex, so long as we don't attempt to infringe on another person's right to personal autonomy. My right to sex ends where another person's body begins. And, I think that all of us have a right to safe working conditions, and fair wages- to enjoy the fruits of our labors.

I also don't think that prostitution or stripping or whatever are somehow empowering to women. They might be personally empowering, but empowering in the broad sense? No. Why should that matter, though? Most jobs aren't particularly empowering. Pointing out that sex work isn't empowering isn't an argument against sex work. It's an argument against most work. Or not really an argument at all, I suppose.

My point, in-so-far as I actually have one, is that criminalizing and denigrating women for being involved in sex work is the opposite of helpful. Talk about how women are brainwashed into sex work strikes me as dehumanizing and offensive. The problems that sex workers face aren't solved by sweeping them under the rug or by further alienating them by insulting them or by criminalizing their behavior. The problems they face are much better solved by actually engaging in dialogue with sex workers to find out what kinds of support they want and need. The problems are solved by helping change the ways that we view sex and sex workers.

I'd be remiss if I didn't suggest checking out Renegade Evolution and Being Amber Rhea (also at the GA Podcast Network, since I can't read Being Amber Rhea at work!). Oh, and $pread Magazine.

And, I also wanted to take a moment to link to SWIMW: Sex Workers' International Media Watch. They've got a lot of really great information there, even if the organization is "currently inactive", and I've found a lot of interesting information and essays- including Addressing Sex Work as Labor, by Melissa Ditmore (for the Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery), and Sex Worker's Rights and Media Ethics:
Notes for Journalists, by Jo Weldon.

Shorter McCullough: I've never played video games and here's why we should ban them...

I don't read Townhall.com, and I don't really know that much about Kevin McCullough, but this story makes me glad that I'm not a regular reader, for sure.

To save you the pain of reading it- McCullough is outraged- Outraged, I say!- about Mass Effect. It's pretty obvious that he's never played the game. He's got a great list of claims about it, everything from claiming that game-players are universally male (fyi- the only people I personally know who've played the game are actually women), to claiming that it allows players to engage in "the most realistic sex acts ever conceived" and that they can "hump in every form, format, multiple, gender-oriented possibility they can think of." (Conceived! Get it? That's funny! And "hump"? Really?) *ahem* Anyway- It's got a very realistic relationship, but the most realistic sex ever conceived? It's less than a minute long, and less explicit than half the stuff you see on network television.

I also love that McCullough thinks that character creation is a "disgusting idea" that "tends to objectify women, sex, and human relationships". Nevermind that the only customization you can do is in a limited area, and that the ability to create custom characters is actually a beneficial gameplay aspect that allows players from diverse backgrounds and physical types to create avatars that they can personally identify with. And ignore that the sex only happens as a result of multiple hours of relationship building. Showing people (and aliens, I suppose) as having complicated relationships- relationships that, yes, involve sex- isn't objectifying. The argument seems to be that any depiction of sex must necessarily be objectifying.

The criticisms just go downhill from there, ending up with the claim that Mass Effect:

can be customized to sodomize whatever, whoever, however, the gameplayer wishes.

With it's "over the net" capabilities virtual orgasmic rape is just the push of a button away.

It's worth noting, here, that Mass Effect isn't an online game.

I know I've talked about this before, but this is just another example of someone taking an issue that's important and should be discussed- the sexism that exists within games and gaming culture- and completely missing the mark by not knowing what sie is talking about. There are games that allow the player to, yes, rape with the push of a button. And there are games that go to great lengths to objectify women or that push unrealisitic and unhealthy attitudes about sex, or gender, or relationships. But, spreading lies or untruths about games and gaming culture doesn't do anything to address those problems. Instead, it makes the conversation harder to have. It obfuscates the real issues, and puts gamers into a defensive mindset. It destroys the credibility of your argument when you can't even be bothered to find out what level of customization you have over a game, or whether it has online play.

The silver lining here is that a lot of McCullough's readers have called him out on this article. The comments (over 500 of them right now), are filled with plenty of people pointing out "Wow, you've clearly never played this game."

This headline pisses me off... -or- Porn stars are people, too.

So, I was browsing the local paper, and I came across this headline: Missing college student led a double life as online porn star. The story is about Emily Sander, a woman who went missing last weekend, and is, at this point, assumed dead. Police are searching for a man named Israel Mireles, since he was the last person seen with her. They searched his hotel, and found "a large quantity of blood".

Now, read the first line of that article: "A missing Kansas college student believed to be the victim of foul play apparently led a double life as an Internet porn star by the name of Zoey Zane."

What, exactly, does this have to do with anything?

At this point? Nothing. The police are looking into it, but so far there's no reason to believe that her posting pictures on the internet had anything to do with whatever happened to her. According to a close friend of the missing woman, Sander had just recently signed a contract for the work, and had told her parents, but didn't want people to know. So what does ABC news do?

Oh, they go and ask her grandparents about it. Nice.

Ultimately, this sort of thing pisses me off. It's not enough that this woman is missing and presumed dead, or that the primary suspect is likely making a run for the border with his pregnant 16 year-old girlfriend? They have to publicize her private activities? They have to confront her grandmother with this?

And the comments are worse. The very first comment to the article? "So where are the photo's Freep?" Lovely. Because, yeah, that's classy- this woman is probably dead, and you want to ogle her naked pictures. Ass. Over on this story the comments aren't any better:

"Missing Student May Have Been Porn Star"...That headline is taken from an abcnews.com headline...Does anyone know if it is true? If it is true, it would represent and sad and disgusting turn in this case. Therefore, we may all have been wrong thinking that this missing person story was as tragic as the other stories listed the ABC news site because there is no evidence they engaged in reckless and dangerous activities.

I know that other blogs have covered this before, in relation to judges treating sex-workers like shit, but, Christ on a cracker, this woman is missing and presumed dead, and the fact that she posted some pornographic pictures on the web represents a sad and disgusting turn in the case? Really? It wasn't sad and disgusting when it was thought that a random guy murdered her? And the story is less tragic because she may have done porn? Posting pictures of herself was a reckless and dangerous activity? Fuck you.

It doesn't matter what her professional occupation was- she's still a human being, and still deserving of respect and sympathy. Why does the fact that she's done some internet porn matter one iota? Why should it be less tragic? That she did internet porn doesn't make her more deserving of violence. That she did internet porn doesn't make the fact that she's missing and presumed dead less painful to her family and friends. If it turns out that she has been murdered, it doesn't make the murderer less sick, or the crime less heinous and deplorable.

The attitude that women who work in porn are less valuable as human beings or that terrible things that happen to them aren't as bad as if they happened to someone else is what is really disgusting here. I left a comment to that article saying as much. It's not enough to be angry and say these things on my own space, where the asshole who made the statement isn't likely to see it.

More on Sex(ism) in Video Games

Back when I worked at Ye Olde Book Shoppe, we used to stock a full assortment of Adult Magazines, most of which seemed to be aimed at either straight or gay men. Despite having to deal with the sale, ordering, and placement of magazines like Playboy for several years, I'd pretty much forgotten about this (nsfw) intersection of pornography and games). I had completely forgotten that Playboy runs an issue every year that features the "girls of gaming".

Who, exactly, thinks that something like this is a good idea?

I'm sure that all of the people who were slamming Jade Raymond and Ubisoft are all over this story, right? Right?

Alright, maybe not. Sure, there are a couple of comments along the lines of "Wow, this is pretty blatant" but there are a lot of comments more along the lines of "Why didn't they get hotter characters that we know?"

And then there's this wonderful piece of advertising criticism.

Now, as the comments there show, this sort of advertising is really transparent. We're not stupid- we know when you're trying to use nudity to get us to buy your game, and if it's a shitty game, we're not going to fall for it. And yet, we keep seeing crap like this. From Kane and Lynch's Playboy contest, to that Need For Speed ad, to the Playboy pictorials, to promo material for the new Soul Calibur game, there's a sense that gamers only care about one thing as much or more than games... breasts. Of course, recent events have done little to counteract that impression.

These are instances are a company that is exploiting women for the sake a few dollars. When they do things like this, they contribute to the generally culture of sexism that gaming is currently saturated with. These sorts of things encourage pretty shitty attitudes towards women, and are one of the things that lead to gamers treating women who game like their sole purpose is to expose themselves for male gratification. Ads like this display the attitude that gaming is a male hobby, and encourage "men's club" attitudes. After all, gamers can say, "video gaming is a guy thing, if women want to get invovled, they need to expect it."

Prior to the Playboy debacle, I was interested in Kane and Lynch, so this doesn't really change my feelings there. But, I was interested in Conan, Tabula Rasa sounded interesting, and Jericho has been getting decent reviews. Now, I'll be putting my money elsewhere.

Marketing a violent shooting game? Call Playboy!

(Thanks to Cara for forwarding this my way)

Kane & Lynch: Dead Men was a game that I was sort of interested in. I'm sort of a sucker for games that offer co-op play or that have interesting multiplayer options. That the multiplayer has you teaming up to complete objectives with the possibility that one or more of your team members (including you) might turn on the rest was interesting, and adds what I think sounds like an interesting element of paranoia to teaming up with people. The fact that death in multiplayer switches you to the other side, with the goal of stopping the rest of the team also struck me as a pretty cool aspect.

The story mode (single player and co-op) sounded interesting too- one character is a former mercenary opposed to harming innocent people who is fighting to save his family, while the other is a psychopath who experiences visual halucinations during gameplay. Combine all of these things with a story and gameplay that pays tribute to gangster films like Heat and the Departed, and, yeah, I'm interested.

And then the promotional campaign started.

*sigh*

This is exactly the sort of thing that I'm talking about when I talk about how gaming culture is steeped in sexism. It's not just the characters in games, it's the way that gamers, creators, and marketing teams treat women, too. This contest isn't about including women in the game- it's about using women's bodies to increase interest in their product.

This seems like such an obviously bad idea, that it's hard to know exactly where to begin. I find the use of women's nude bodies to promote the "hotness" of a really violent shooter really disturbing. Why not do a promotion that involves people generally trying to look like they belong in Kane & Lynch? Why try to tie it to looking hot and sexy? It doesn't even make sense. And, seriously, way to alienate a huge section of the population there, folks. Nothing says you respect women gamers like taking a game where the only prominant woman is a hostage, and use Playboy as a major part of your promotion. Nothing screams "We respect women gamers" like trying to use their naked bodies to advertise your product.

I'm glad to see that at least some major gaming media have expressed some reservations about this kind of promotion, too.

Also: A note to google searchers...

Please, please stop searching for "Sex with sleeping girls". I can only assume that you're looking for porn, but you're finding my site. And I strongly suspect that you're not really going to find what you're looking for here.

I think I've got a much more accurate search for you, if that's the case.

How a Post About Iran Punishing Porn Prompted an Epiphany...

This is my fourth post over at feministe

I wasn't going to write about it.

I really wasn't.

When I wrote about children, I wasn't aware of the can of worms I was opening, but there are some things that I know are Big Messy Issues. Some things that I know people get upset about. I'm not sure that I'm equiped to comment on and deal with some of those issues- to not step in the shit, so to speak. Then, I'm looking over at Belledame222's post about Iran's parliament passing an anti-porn bill that could, if it becomes law, punish producers, directors, cameramen and actors with death. I'm reading that, and I'm reading belledame's post, and I realize... I don't see this anywhere else... Did I miss it?

And then I realize...

I don't even really know where to begin talking about a story like this.

So, my first instinct was to let it sit. To be horrified that people could be put to death over pornography, but leave it at that. After all, I don't want to say the wrong thing or step on more toes or... well... step in the shit. It's a minefield, and maybe I'm not informed enough or delicate enough to traverse this terrain without stepping on a mine. But, I'm thinking...

... if not now, then when?