NoPornNorthampton

Springfield Republican Reports on Strippers Lawsuit Against Strip Clubs

NPNAdmin — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 21:54:00 GMT

The February 5 Springfield Republican reports on a class-action suit filed by exotic dancers against area strip clubs:

A class-action suit filed by exotic dancers over what they say are unfair labor practices at the Mardi Gras and four other area strip clubs parallels a similar suit filed by dancers earlier this year against a club in the city of Chelsea, the lawyer for the Springfield area dancers said Friday...

In August, Suffolk Superior Court Justice Frances A. McIntyre ruled the management of King Arthur’s erroneously classified the dancers as independent contractors. The ruling allows the class action suit to proceed and opened the door for as many as 70 women who danced at the club to seek thousands in damages for lost wages.

Since then, numerous similar suits have been filed against strip clubs across the state...

In Massachusetts, a worker is considered an employee unless three conditions are met. The worker must be free from control and direction in the performance of a service, the service is done outside the usual course of business of the employer, and the worker is engaged in an independently established trade that is the same as the service performed...

See also:

Springfield Republican: "Strippers sue 5 Western Mass. nightclubs saying they denied them standard worker benefits" (2/4/10)
A group of exotic dancers has filed an unfair wages lawsuit in Hampden Superior Court against officers of five area strip clubs, arguing owners paid them no salaries, expected $40 to $100 kickbacks per shift and otherwise denied them standard worker benefits...

[The clubs are:] the Mardi Gras, Lace, Fifth Alarm and Center Stage, all in Springfield, and Anthony's Dance Club in South Hadley...

Cochran said “the girls” at the five area clubs had to agree not to perform anywhere else, had to conform to owners’ standards of wardrobe and music and follow other rules – all of which discount them from the contractor category.

Springfield Republican: "Strip clubs need Sarno ultimatum" (11/19/09)
After two murders and countless testosterone and booze-laced disturbances, Springfield’s strip clubs have presented the city’s License Commission with a plan to bolster security...

We have said in the past that the city should shut the clubs down because of the trouble they attract.

Sarno himself has said the clubs have given Springfield a black eye, and state police have called them a disgrace to the city.

Springfield Republican Reports on Strip Clubs and the Mafia (7/8/07)

Strip Clubs: Dancers Pay to Work There
...the girls who work there, the dancers...pay $150 to $200 a shift for the privilege of working... I asked one guy in the business, "What's the biggest risk to your business model?" He said if the government stops immigration from Eastern Europe.

Profitable Exploits: Lap Dancing in the UK
The private dance is the only legitimate way for the dancers to make money in the clubs. The intermittent ‘cabaret’, and individual pole dances by selected dancers that take place in the main club area, serve only to advertise the dancers and entertain customers. The dancers are not paid for these activities... There is no guarantee, even on busy nights, that the dancers will earn enough to cover their costs, let alone generate income...

None of the dancers interviewed in the Glasgow clubs were satisfied with their working conditions... There were no water coolers or fridges in which to keep drinks, even though this is a condition of the license for Seventh Heaven, Diamond Dolls and The Truffle Club. As a result, the dancers have to purchase drinks from the bar at full price...

All dancers in lap-dance clubs are self-employed, relying on tips and income from private dances. Dancers pay between £35 and £100 per night to the club management for ‘rent’ of the facilities[40], such as the poles, cabaret areas, private dance booths and VIP suites. Weekend rates are higher... All of the women interviewed reported that they had often lost money by working at the club when their earnings failed to cover rent, clothing, travel, drinks and childcare. Some club owners allow debt to accumulate, which can leave the dancers desperate to ‘catch up’...

In addition to daily expenses, dancers at the four Glasgow clubs, and Spearmint Rhino, London, are advised to purchase specialist clothing from an individual visiting the club who runs her own business[41]. In at least one club, the women are explicitly told that they should not buy clothes from anywhere else or make their own, in case they do not fit the ‘house style’. Most clubs also specify particular shoes that several of the women refer to as ‘porn shoes’. They are tall platforms with spiked heels that are apparently ‘very uncomfortable’ to dance in...

Two of the dancers stated that management regularly chose their outfits, and that they were given no choice about wearing them. “I have two children, who I have to support by doing this. I feel really yucky prancing around in a school uniform, because I feel I’m encouraging perverts who come to the club to abuse children”...

...This study has revealed the complex process and set of conditions in which dancers become more susceptible to requests or suggestions to sell sex. The lack of employment rights, for some women the experience of accumulating debt, expectations of the customers, fierce competition, and a link in public perceptions between lap dancer and stripper/prostitute, create an overall climate where the selling and buying of sex on the premises becomes more likely...

...club owners tend to absolve themselves of any responsibility if sexual services are found to be on occurring or being arranged on the premises, yet at the same time there is some indication that they encourage the dancers to project an air of sexual availability to customers. By making it difficult for the dancers to earn an adequate living legitimately, through requiring the payment of ‘rent’ for each shift worked in the clubs, and by hiring excess numbers of dancers at any one time, club owners and managers also create a series of structural conditions that can lead some dancers to offer sexual services in order to survive financially. This is not to say that there is evidence of significant numbers of dancers engaging in prostitution activities, but that the clubs are run in a way that both implicitly encourages the customers to seek sexual services from the dancers, and means that some dancers will offer them...

Strip Club Tips: How to Savor an Exquisite Blend of Fantasies, Lies, Exploitation and Despair (explicit language)

Bulletin from Stop Porn Culture: June 12-13 Conference in Boston

NPNAdmin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:25:00 GMT

We are pleased to share this bulletin from Stop Porn Culture:

Hello everyone,

We have a lot of exciting news here at Stop Porn Culture.

Our new website is up and running. Take a look at www.stoppornculture.org. We have an "Anti-porn News" feature to keep everyone updated on pornography in the news. You can send us news articles for possible inclusion, including news about activism against pornography.

We had a wonderful slideshow training in Bellingham this month, with 30 committed and amazing participants. It looks like our first local chapter has formed--SPC Bellingham. We encourage you all to try something similar where you live. None of us can do this work alone. Guidelines for local chapters will be up on our website soon.

We are also planning our next conference, which will take place in June.

Stop Porn Culture: An International Feminist Anti-Pornography Conference
June 12-13, 2010
Wheelock College, Boston MA

Our second national conference will bring together activists, researchers, survivors, parents, and other concerned community members to continue developing our anti-pornography analysis and building our resistance movement. Come and join us for two days of keynotes, workshops, and discussion. Speakers include Wendy Maltz, Gail Dines, Chyng Sun, Rebecca Whisnant, Jane Caputi, Sharon Cooper, Robert Jensen, and Carolyn West.

Presentations and workshops include:

The pornification of our culture
Racism in pop culture and pornography
Local, national, and international organizing
Porn and capitalism
Legal strategies against porn
The sexualization of children
Compulsive pornography use
Hooking up: the porn culture on campus
For more information, or to register, go to http://stoppornculture.org/conference/. Feel free to post this announcement anywhere that you go on the web.

As ever, we're happy to bring the slideshow training to anyone who can host us. Drop me a line here and I'll tell you what's involved.

We hope to see you all in June!

Lierre for SPC

The Case for Marriage, Gay and Straight

NPNAdmin — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 02:31:00 GMT

Reprinted by kind permission of JendiReiter.com:

Ted Olson Makes the Conservative Case for Gay Marriage

Prominent trial lawyers David Boies and Theodore Olson are arguing the unconstitutionality of Proposition 8 in California federal court this week, in the case of Perry v. Schwarzenegger. Day-by-day trial coverage is available on the Firedoglake blog and the Courage Campaign website. Meanwhile, Newsweek recently interviewed both the liberal Boies and the conservative Olson to explain why their support for gays' civil rights transcends left-right politics. Olson's comments represent the best of that libertarian tradition that has sadly been drowned out by theocratic social conservatives during the past decade of GOP ascendancy. An excerpt:

...The United States Supreme Court has repeatedly held that marriage is one of the most fundamental rights that we have as Americans under our Constitution. It is an expression of our desire to create a social partnership, to live and share life's joys and burdens with the person we love, and to form a lasting bond and a social identity. The Supreme Court has said that marriage is a part of the Constitution's protections of liberty, privacy, freedom of association, and spiritual identification. In short, the right to marry helps us to define ourselves and our place in a community. Without it, there can be no true equality under the law.

It is true that marriage in this nation traditionally has been regarded as a relationship exclusively between a man and a woman, and many of our nation's multiple religions define marriage in precisely those terms. But while the Supreme Court has always previously considered marriage in that context, the underlying rights and liberties that marriage embodies are not in any way confined to heterosexuals.

Marriage is a civil bond in this country as well as, in some (but hardly all) cases, a religious sacrament. It is a relationship recognized by governments as providing a privileged and respected status, entitled to the state's support and benefits. The California Supreme Court described marriage as a "union unreservedly approved and favored by the community." Where the state has accorded official sanction to a relationship and provided special benefits to those who enter into that relationship, our courts have insisted that withholding that status requires powerful justifications and may not be arbitrarily denied.

What, then, are the justifications for California's decision in Proposition 8 to withdraw access to the institution of marriage for some of its citizens on the basis of their sexual orientation? The reasons I have heard are not very persuasive.

The explanation mentioned most often is tradition. But simply because something has always been done a certain way does not mean that it must always remain that way. Otherwise we would still have segregated schools and debtors' prisons. Gays and lesbians have always been among us, forming a part of our society, and they have lived as couples in our neighborhoods and communities. For a long time, they have experienced discrimination and even persecution; but we, as a society, are starting to become more tolerant, accepting, and understanding. California and many other states have allowed gays and lesbians to form domestic partnerships (or civil unions) with most of the rights of married heterosexuals. Thus, gay and lesbian individuals are now permitted to live together in state-sanctioned relationships. It therefore seems anomalous to cite "tradition" as a justification for withholding the status of marriage and thus to continue to label those relationships as less worthy, less sanctioned, or less legitimate.

The second argument I often hear is that traditional marriage furthers the state's interest in procreation—and that opening marriage to same-sex couples would dilute, diminish, and devalue this goal. But that is plainly not the case. Preventing lesbians and gays from marrying does not cause more heterosexuals to marry and conceive more children. Likewise, allowing gays and lesbians to marry someone of the same sex will not discourage heterosexuals from marrying a person of the opposite sex. How, then, would allowing same-sex marriages reduce the number of children that heterosexual couples conceive?

This procreation argument cannot be taken seriously. We do not inquire whether heterosexual couples intend to bear children, or have the capacity to have children, before we allow them to marry. We permit marriage by the elderly, by prison inmates, and by persons who have no intention of having children. What's more, it is pernicious to think marriage should be limited to heterosexuals because of the state's desire to promote procreation. We would surely not accept as constitutional a ban on marriage if a state were to decide, as China has done, to discourage procreation.

Another argument, vaguer and even less persuasive, is that gay marriage somehow does harm to heterosexual marriage. I have yet to meet anyone who can explain to me what this means. In what way would allowing same-sex partners to marry diminish the marriages of heterosexual couples? Tellingly, when the judge in our case asked our opponent to identify the ways in which same-sex marriage would harm heterosexual marriage, to his credit he answered honestly: he could not think of any.

The simple fact is that there is no good reason why we should deny marriage to same-sex partners. On the other hand, there are many reasons why we should formally recognize these relationships and embrace the rights of gays and lesbians to marry and become full and equal members of our society.

No matter what you think of homosexuality, it is a fact that gays and lesbians are members of our families, clubs, and workplaces. They are our doctors, our teachers, our soldiers (whether we admit it or not), and our friends. They yearn for acceptance, stable relationships, and success in their lives, just like the rest of us.

Conservatives and liberals alike need to come together on principles that surely unite us. Certainly, we can agree on the value of strong families, lasting domestic relationships, and communities populated by persons with recognized and sanctioned bonds to one another. Confining some of our neighbors and friends who share these same values to an outlaw or second-class status undermines their sense of belonging and weakens their ties with the rest of us and what should be our common aspirations. Even those whose religious convictions preclude endorsement of what they may perceive as an unacceptable "lifestyle" should recognize that disapproval should not warrant stigmatization and unequal treatment.

When we refuse to accord this status to gays and lesbians, we discourage them from forming the same relationships we encourage for others. And we are also telling them, those who love them, and society as a whole that their relationships are less worthy, less legitimate, less permanent, and less valued. We demean their relationships and we demean them as individuals. I cannot imagine how we benefit as a society by doing so.

I understand, but reject, certain religious teachings that denounce homosexuality as morally wrong, illegitimate, or unnatural; and I take strong exception to those who argue that same-sex relationships should be discouraged by society and law. Science has taught us, even if history has not, that gays and lesbians do not choose to be homosexual any more than the rest of us choose to be heterosexual. To a very large extent, these characteristics are immutable, like being left-handed. And, while our Constitution guarantees the freedom to exercise our individual religious convictions, it equally prohibits us from forcing our beliefs on others. I do not believe that our society can ever live up to the promise of equality, and the fundamental rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, until we stop invidious discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

If we are born heterosexual, it is not unusual for us to perceive those who are born homosexual as aberrational and threatening. Many religions and much of our social culture have reinforced those impulses. Too often, that has led to prejudice, hostility, and discrimination. The antidote is understanding, and reason. We once tolerated laws throughout this nation that prohibited marriage between persons of different races. California's Supreme Court was the first to find that discrimination unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously agreed 20 years later, in 1967, in a case called Loving v. Virginia. It seems inconceivable today that only 40 years ago there were places in this country where a black woman could not legally marry a white man. And it was only 50 years ago that 17 states mandated segregated public education—until the Supreme Court unanimously struck down that practice in Brown v. Board of Education. Most Americans are proud of these decisions and the fact that the discriminatory state laws that spawned them have been discredited. I am convinced that Americans will be equally proud when we no longer discriminate against gays and lesbians and welcome them into our society....

I can almost forgive the guy for helping George W. Bush get elected...

Read more of Newsweek's trial coverage here. Offering another good sign that the Right is splintering on this issue, Cindy and Meghan McCain, the wife and daughter of 2008 Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R, Ariz.), posed for promotional photos for the NO H8 website--despite the fact that the senator himself opposes gay marriage. Score one for feminism.

See also:

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann Speaks Out Against Prop 8
You want to sanctify marriage? You want to honor your God and the universal love you believe he represents? Then Spread happiness--this tiny, symbolic, semantical grain of happiness--share it with all those who seek it.

Press Release: "NoPornNorthampton Offers 500,000+ Words of Innovative Porn-Fighting Power" (11/25/07)
NoPornNorthampton does not support increased government censorship of media. It promotes the concept of "green sexuality". This sustainable sexuality is characterized by durable, mutually respectful relationships that enhance the lives of the lovers and the wider world. Green sexuality is a union between two equals, embracing both heterosexual and homosexual bonds but excluding polygamy, adult-child sexual relations and bestiality.

Steve and Cokie Roberts Report on Marriage: A Good Idea that Refuses to Die

Wall Street Journal: "What's at the Heart of Happiness?"
"Marriage provides two sources of happiness," says Andrew Oswald, an economics professor at England's Warwick University. "One is sex and the other is friendship. Marriage has one of the largest impacts on human well-being..."

Marriage is Undersold in America

A Response to "marriage is an outdated practice"

The Impact of Internet Pornography on Marriage and the Family: A Review of the Research
...according to data from the General Social Survey in 2000 (N = 531), people who report being happily married are 61 percent less likely to report using Internet pornography compared to those who also used the Internet and who had completed the General Social Survey in 2000...

...the following observations were made by [the 350 attendees of the November 2002 meeting of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers] polled with regard to why the Internet had played a role in divorces that year...56 percent of the divorce cases involved one party having an obsessive interest in pornographic websites...

Whitty (2003) also found that both men and women perceive online sexual activity as an act of betrayal that is as authentic and real as offline acts and that Internet pornography use correlated significantly with emotional infidelity (N = 1,117; 468 males and 649 females)...

A New Category Debuts: Love and Beauty
Our new category, Love and Beauty, will show how sex, love, relationships and people can be so much more than the narrow, blinkered version that porn offers. Watching porn instead of seeking a loving relationship with a real person is like being given a gorgeous race car that can go 200 miles per hour, only to drive it backwards down the highway at a crawl and scrape it against railings and bridge abutments.

Guardian: "Why men use prostitutes"

NPNAdmin — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 12:08:00 GMT

From the January 15 Guardian, Julie Bindel continues her outstanding coverage of this subject. This article is based on an international study of 700 men who buy sex:

Why men use prostitutes

Research published in 2005 found that the numbers of men who pay for sex had doubled in a decade...

... most of them told the researchers that they would be easily deterred if the current laws were implemented. Fines, public exposure, employers being informed, being issued with an Asbo [Anti-Social Behaviour Order] or the risk of a criminal record would stop most of the men from continuing to pay for sex. Discovering the women were trafficked, pimped or otherwise coerced would appear not to be so effective. Almost half said they believed that most women in prostitution are victims of pimps ("the pimp does the psychological raping of the woman," explained one). But they still continued to visit them...

Half of the interviewees had bought sex outside of the UK, mostly in Amsterdam, and visiting an area where prostitution is legal or openly advertised had given them a renewed dedication to buying sex when they returned to the UK...

Only 6% of the men we spoke to had been arrested for soliciting prostitutes.

See also:

Sweden's Prostitution Solution: Why Hasn't Anyone Tried This Before?
In the fog of clichés despairing that "prostitution will always be with us", one country's success stands out as a beacon lighting the way. In just five years Sweden has dramatically reduced the number of women in prostitution. In the capital city of Stockholm, the number of women in street prostitution has been reduced by two thirds, and the number of "johns" has been reduced by 80%...

In 1999, after years of research and study, Sweden passed legislation that a) criminalizes the buying of sex, and b) decriminalizes the selling of sex...

In the state of Victoria, Australia, where a system of legalized, regulated brothels was established, there was such an explosion in the number of brothels that it immediately overwhelmed the system's ability to regulate them, and just as quickly these brothels became mired in organized crime, corruption, and related crimes. In addition, surveys of the prostitutes working under systems of legalization and regulation find that the prostitutes themselves continue to feel coerced, forced, and unsafe in the business.

A survey of legal prostitutes working under the conditions of the Netherlands legalization policy finds that 79% say they want to get out of the sex business. And though each of the legalization/regulation programs promised help for prostitutes who want to leave prostitution, that help never materialized to any meaningful degree. In contrast, in Sweden, the government followed through with ample social service funds to help those prostitutes who wanted to get out. Sixty percent of the prostitutes in Sweden took advantage of the well-funded programs and succeeded in exiting prostitution.

Abolishing Prostitution: The Swedish Solution - An Interview with Gunilla Ekberg by the Rain and Thunder Collective

Hunt Alternatives Fund: Demand Abolition

Not For Sale Media Project; Downloadable Posters

Why Do Johns Buy Sex?

Dorchen Leidholdt, "Demand and the Debate"
Unlike prostituted women and girls, prostitution customers do have choices to make. And when they see that choosing to buy women devastates lives and threatens their own freedom and social standing, they make different choices...

CNN.com: "'John schools' try to change attitudes about paid sex"
Some evidence suggests that John Schools are working. A study released in 2008 by Abt Associates Inc. for the federal government looked at the John School program in San Francisco, California. It's one of the largest programs in the country; more than 7,000 johns have attended since 1995.

According to the study, the re-arrest rate fell sharply after the school was launched, and stayed more than 30 percent lower for 10 years afterward...

A recent study by the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation conducted among johns in Chicago, Illinois, found that 41 percent of them said John School would deter them from buying sex, compared with 92 percent who said being placed on a sex offender registry would scare them from re-offending...

Newsweek: "A School for Johns"

PBS: "John Schools" (5/30/08)

Media Watch: "Censored Truth"

How to Deter Johns from Buying Sex
...some 89% would stop using prostitutes if "named and shamed" on the sex offenders' register.

The Guardian, "Ending a trade in misery"

The Guardian, "Eradicate the oldest profession"

National Human Trafficking Awareness Day

NPNAdmin — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 21:01:00 GMT

January 11 is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day. 80% of transnational victims of human trafficking are women and girls. Visit the Polaris Project's page on Change.org to get informed and help pass anti-trafficking legislation.

The Reverend Elizabeth Kaeton, an Episcopal priest in New Jersey, blogs at Telling Secrets about social justice and feminist issues in the church. Her Jan. 8 post, "The Unholy War Against Women", calls on religious leaders to devote more resources to protecting women's human rights:

The stories are horrific. Difficult to imagine. Impossible to understand.

Consider: A report from Amnesty International finds that rape and other forms of sexual violence in Darfur are being used as a weapon of war in order to humiliate, punish, control, inflict fear and displace women and their communities.

These rapes and other acts of sexual violence constitute grave violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, including war crimes and crimes against humanity. The report also examines the consequences of rape which have immediate and long-term effects on women beyond the actual physical violence.

The weapons of sexual violence are, by no means, limited to use in Darfur. You'll find reports of "rape camps" in Bosnia. Congo. Sierra Leon. Iraq. Afghanistan. China. Japan. Cambodia.

Name a war-torn country and you will find places where rape is the norm and its victims - some as young as 3 years old - are dying a slow death of the physical, psychological and social effects of the aftermath of this violence.

Some of them have been genitally mutilated. Some raped with broken bottles or sticks or guns. Some now have permanent colostomies.

Others have permanent fistulas which seep fecal matter through their torn vaginal vaults, causing a stench that isolates them socially. They await a doctor's surgical repair - which may take years for one to come near her village - or for the woman to find the strength to walk the many, many miles to the clinic to see a doctor.

They eke out a living after their husbands leave them. They try to love the child who came into being as a result of the rape. There are other "gifts" left by their rapists: STDs and TB, HIV infection and AIDS.

Some of them simply "stop living" and walk as "the living dead."

On June 20, 2008 the UN Security Council unanimously approved a resolution classifying rape as a weapon of war. Human rights groups hailed the vote as historic, but it is no legal remedy. Tens of thousands of victims of sexual violence still do not have the status of victims of the war.

Consider: Hundreds of girls, some as young as nine, and young women in the UK are forced into marriage each year, according to the report published by the Ministry of Justice into the first year of the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Act of 2007.

The report says the women and girls come under physical, psychological, sexual, financial and emotional pressure.

“A woman who is forced into marriage is likely to be raped and may be raped repeatedly until she becomes pregnant,” the report says.

Consider: The New Canaan camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Kenya is named to sound like a promised land, but for many of the women living inside, it is anything but paradise.

That's because increasingly, women living in this and other refugee camps in Kenya and throughout Africa are faced with a terrible choice: feed themselves and their families via prostitution or risk starvation and death.

Consider: While South Africa invests billions to prepare its infrastructure for the half-million visitors expected to attend the World Cup games, tens of thousands of children have become ensnared in sexual slavery, and those who profit from their abuse are also preparing for the tournament.

During a three-week investigation by a Times reporter into human-trafficking syndicates operating near two stadiums, a lucrative trade in child sex was easily discovered. The children, sold for as little as $45, can earn more than $600 per night for their captors. "I'm really looking forward to doing more business during the World Cup," said a trafficker.

I'm willing to bet that this man, like the other pimps and soldiers and rapists, has a mother. He may have sisters. He may even have a wife.

What happened to the boy who was nursed by his mother? The brother who played with his siblings? The husband and father of his family?

A 'trafficker' sounds like a blue collar job. A 'soldier' has always meant a person of honor. A rapist? Well, the name has always carried its own dishonor.

How did the transformation from human being to monster begin?

We have new, political terms for what is happening to women, world-wide:

Human Trafficking.

The New Slave Trade.

New Weapons of War.

I call it The Unholy War Against Women.

Nothing new about it.

It's as old as sin.

And, becoming a world-wide pandemic, infecting the soul of the cosmos.

This quote from the Times article illustrates that this war is a multinational business operation:

Although its 1996 constitution expressly forbids slavery, South Africa has no stand-alone law against human trafficking in all its forms.

Aid groups estimate that some 38,000 children are trapped in the sex trade there. More than 500 mostly small-scale trafficking syndicates — Nigerian, Chinese, Indian and Russian, among others — collude with South African partners, including recruiters and corrupt police officials, to enslave local victims.

The country's estimated 1.4 million AIDS orphans are especially vulnerable. South Africa has more HIV cases than any other nation, and a child sold into its sex industry will often face an early grave.

On a related note, in January 9's New York Times, Nicholas Kristof wrote about The Elders, a council of retired leaders headed by Nelson Mandela, who are targeting the ways in which religion is used to bolster discrimination against women:

Religions derive their power and popularity in part from the ethical compass they offer. So why do so many faiths help perpetuate something that most of us regard as profoundly unethical: the oppression of women?

It is not that warlords in Congo cite Scripture to justify their mass rapes (although the last warlord I met there called himself a pastor and wore a button reading “rebels for Christ”). It’s not that brides are burned in India as part of a Hindu ritual. And there’s no verse in the Koran that instructs Afghan thugs to throw acid in the faces of girls who dare to go to school.

Yet these kinds of abuses — along with more banal injustices, like slapping a girlfriend or paying women less for their work — arise out of a social context in which women are, often, second-class citizens. That’s a context that religions have helped shape, and not pushed hard to change.

“Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths, creating an environment in which violations against women are justified,” former President Jimmy Carter noted in a speech last month to the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Australia.

“The belief that women are inferior human beings in the eyes of God,” Mr. Carter continued, “gives excuses to the brutal husband who beats his wife, the soldier who rapes a woman, the employer who has a lower pay scale for women employees, or parents who decide to abort a female embryo.”

Mr. Carter, who sees religion as one of the “basic causes of the violation of women’s rights,” is a member of The Elders, a small council of retired leaders brought together by Nelson Mandela. The Elders are focusing on the role of religion in oppressing women, and they have issued a joint statement calling on religious leaders to “change all discriminatory practices within their own religions and traditions.”

The Elders are neither irreligious nor rabble-rousers. They include Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and they begin their meetings with a moment for silent prayer.

“The Elders are not attacking religion as such,” noted Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and United Nations high commissioner for human rights. But she added, “We all recognized that if there’s one overarching issue for women it’s the way that religion can be manipulated to subjugate women.”

Read the whole article here.

See also:

Breaking Free Press Release: National Human Trafficking Awareness Day (1/11/10)

The UN estimates that at least 27 million poeple are enslaved in the world today. This is more than at ANY other time in history.
80% of humans sold as slaves today are women and girls
50% are children
Human Trafficking is the fastest growing black market trade on the planet.

National Human Trafficking Resource Center

Columbus Dispatch: "Horror of Teen Sex Slavery Not Foreign Woe; It's Here" (1/25/09)
"I can't describe to you the feeling of terror. No child should ever have to know that kind of fear. I didn't know what I was going to have to endure that night, for how long, or if I was going to come back home."

What started innocently with Flores' infatuation with an older male classmate turned to date rape caught on film by some of the rapist's friends. They used the photos to blackmail the girl into sexual slavery that lasted two years and involved hundreds of men.

Testimony in Minneapolis: Prostitutes Blackmailed with Porn

Escort Prostitution: A Response to Tom Vannah, Editor of the Valley Advocate
Mr. Vannah concedes that "there is some percentage of people who are not willing participants in the sex industry", but believes that if the Advocate refuses to accept Massage/Escort ads, this will unacceptably crimp "artistic freedom". He mentions Mapplethorpe pictures as an example. How dropping ads for commercial sex enterprises will compel the Advocate to turn away Mapplethorpe pictures is not clear to us...

Letter to Gazette: "Urges Valley Advocate to stop running escort ads"
In an interview on WHMP radio in March 2008, Valley Advocate editor Tom Vannah argued that most prostituted women freely choose their "job," but the reality is that most feel trapped by poverty, abuse, addiction and coercion. The harm, trauma and despair are all too evident. It's time for the Advocate to exit the escort business.

Our Poster to the Valley Advocate: "Stand up for women! Drop your Massage/Escort ads"

MSNBC Investigates Human Trafficking and Prostitution in the US; Valley Advocate Advertises "Foreign Fantasies" Where "Everything Goes"

Not For Sale Media Project; Downloadable Posters

Polaris Project: "The Washington Post: A Paper Pimp?" (Part One)
The women are often offered legitimate jobs, but then forced into prostitution. Many are unable to leave the location and moved between brothels by transporters within the trafficking network. There have several who were threatened with gang violence, harm to family members at home, and abduction of children if they tried to leave. Some women were in debt bondage. Most had experienced some type of sexual violence or coercion from customers frequenting the brothels. All desired to escape their circumstances if they had adequate opportunities.

Polaris Project: "The Washington Post: A Paper Pim? (Part Two)"

Prostitution: Factsheet on Human Rights Violations (explicit language)
In one study, 75% of women in escort prostitution had attempted suicide. Prostituted women comprised 15% of all completed suicides reported by hospitals...

Pornography Trains and Indoctrinates Prostitutes
In a study of 475 people in prostitution (including women, men, and the transgendered) from five countries (South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, USA, and Zambia)...92% stated that they wanted to escape prostitution immediately...

S.M. Berg: Hey, progressives! Cathouse got your tongue?

"Trade - A Film Brings Sex Trafficking Home"
Trade makes it clear that traffickers do not operate in a vacuum. Theirs is a complex and determined industry, enslaving both women and children through coercion, violence, and drugs. It is painfully apparent in the film that there are often moments when everyday people could intervene - but choose not to...

New York Times: "The Girls Next Door"; Worldwide Sex Trafficking; Role of Porn
Kevin Bales of Free the Slaves says: ''The physical path of a person being trafficked includes stages of degradation of a person's mental state. A victim gets deprived of food, gets hungry, a little dizzy and sleep-deprived. She begins to break down; she can't think for herself. Then take away her travel documents, and you've made her stateless. Then layer on physical violence, and she begins to follow orders. Then add a foreign culture and language, and she's trapped...''

New York Times: "For Runaways, Sex Buys Survival" (10/27/09)

Gloria Steinem at Smith: Cooperation, Not Domination
...there are more slaves in proportion to the world’s population--more people held by force or coercion without benefit from their work--more now than there were in the 1800s. Sex trafficking, labor trafficking, children and adults forced into armies: they all add up to a global human-trafficking industry that is more profitable than the arms trade, and second only to the drug trade. The big difference now from the 1800s is that the United Nations estimates that 80% of those who are enslaved are women and children...

Hunt Alternatives Fund: Demand Abolition
Demand Abolition supports the modern-day slavery movement by combating the demand for sex trafficking. By conducting and disseminating research, convening key stakeholders to share best practices, and educating policymakers, Demand Abolition catalyzes systemic social change to reflect the dignity of all people.

Polaris Project Launches TraffickingResourceCenter.org

Press Release: Action Network to use RNC and Minnesota State Fair to Bring Attention to Problem of Sex Trafficking

Sweden's Prostitution Solution: Why Hasn't Anyone Tried This Before?

Abolishing Prostitution: The Swedish Solution - An Interview with Gunilla Ekberg by the Rain and Thunder Collective

Partners In Health Helps Give Prostituted Women Real Choices in Malawi

Dear Abby: "Explicit photos send words of warning"

NPNAdmin — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 17:36:00 GMT

"NAMELESS in Georgia" writes to Dear Abby (1/5/10):

Dear Abby:

Shortly after college and a bad breakup, I met someone I thought was a “nice” guy. I allowed him to take sexually explicit photos of me. I realize now that I did it because I had very low self-esteem then.

The moment he snapped the pictures I regretted it and asked for them back. He refused, and even tried to extort money from me with threats of sending copies to my workplace. I was working for a Fortune 500 company at the time and was scared to death. Fortunately, he didn't follow through on his threat.

Fast forward 20 years...I do wonder what happened to the pictures. With today's technology, they could be anywhere now...

Abby, please warn young girls and boys to think before doing something that can possibly follow them through a lifetime.

See also:

Now Showing at Amazing.net: The War on Privacy and Consent (explicit)
Ex Boyfriends Revenge
Dedicated to exposing real ex-girlfriends.

Real Hidden Coed Girls #1
The college coed cummundrum continues! In other words college chicks are getting filmed naked! Without their permission! Naked while they change dress shower get ready for bed or take communal showers with other girls at the...

Porn Past Haunts Women Long After Pictures Taken
For the last half hour Belinda and I have been consoling a crying girl who showed up at our house this evening. She begged and pleaded for us to have her photos removed from the internet. Her life, in her own words, has “become a living hell”.

She lost a good job because, according to her boss, she “has too much drama in her life right now”. What is that supposed to mean? It means the boss grew weary of her co-workers talking about the “porn star” in their midst. She was made aware that her presence disrupted the company.

Her boyfriend will leave her if the photos can’t be removed from the internet. He can’t bear having friends teasing him about his “porn star” girlfriend exposing everything for all the world to see.

She told me, “I never thought anyone I knew would see these. There are thousands of websites out there. I just didn’t think they’d be found.”

She begged and pleaded to return the money she was paid in exchange for her photos being removed from the sites for which she’d posed. I had to let her know there is nothing I can do for her. There are hundreds of producers around the world, all of whom have models that change their minds and want to reverse their decision to work in the adult industry. The companies to whom we sell our content generally ignore all requests for removal...

If, in the future, this model applies for a position that requires a morality clause be signed (a practice that is becoming more popular all the time, by the way) this girl will not qualify. I know this from experience, as another of my models lost a position due to such a clause. This girl’s entire future was changed for the worst when she posed for us on June 26th, 2006.

Porn Stories: Another Email from a Former Model (7/28/08)
"Life’s been kind of hard since I took those pics with you 7-8 years back. I had to drop out of a class because the instructor was giving me his opinion about the photos that he just happened to stumble upon, the love of my life broke up with me cause of the pics, got back together with me but will never marry me, I’ve had people I work with get together behind closed doors and share those pictures with each other (had to quit), people recognize me when I’m out about town, I’ve lost my sense of security."

Testimony in Minneapolis: Prostitutes Blackmailed with Porn
...on many occasions, my clients are multi-, many-, rape victims. These rapes are often either taped or have photographs taken of the event. The young woman, when she tries to escape or leaves, is told that either she continues her involvement in prostitution or those pictures will be sent to her parents, will be sent to the juvenile court, will be used against her. And out of fear, she will continue her involvement in prostitution.

On several occasions, not many but on several occasions, these young women have found that later that their pictures have been published in pornographic magazines without their knowledge and consent. This is very traumatic, especially when I have been working hard with this young woman to make things in her life better. She is involved in the straight lifestyle and finds out there are published pictures of her engaged in various sex acts.

Testimony in Los Angeles: Peter Bogdanovich on Porn and Hollywood
Since Dorothy [Stratten] was killed, a lot of women have written to me or told me what Playboy has done to them [Stratten, who appeared in Playboy, was murdered by her pimp husband]. Even if they manage to avoid personal liaison within the sex factories, they spend the rest of their lives trying to forget it, or live it down, or cover it up, or get away from it. Other young women have been tricked, pressured, blackmailed into pornography, and they have trouble, there's trouble getting them out. Actresses who have consented to some nudity in legitimate films, pictures of this have been put into pornography without their consent. Cybill Shepherd had that happen to her when, from a picture we did together--and believe me, if I had that scene to do over again, we'd just as soon not do it naked, because it wasn't really necessary.

There are lucky ones who won lawsuits. They could afford lawsuits, but didn't repair what happened to them. Since my last testimony, I've been in touch with many people in the entertainment field... They, along with the people that I'm mentioning, the silent people, they're all afraid to come down here and tell you exactly about their experiences... Women who were in pornography are afraid to speak out because it will call attention to their past, which will destroy the margin of legitimacy that they have been able to establish for themselves. These women live in fear of exposure, and there are a lot of them.

Pornoland's unwritten law: "if we tell the truth about what's really going on here, the fan will get turned off"
Bill Margold, a veteran porn star who now counsels young people entering the business, says 18-year-olds are too young to make the potentially life-altering decision to go into porn. "I get 18-, 19-year-old girls who just don't understand that once you do this, you are sociologically damned forever," he said.

YouTube Video: "Quotes on Porn & Sex for Sale"

NPNAdmin — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 11:48:00 GMT

We recommend this 5-minute presentation from JoinPornBusters:

See also anti-pornography videos and more as compiled by AntiPornographyBlog.

Center for Public Integrity Report: Sexual Assault on Campus

NPNAdmin — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 20:07:00 GMT

The Center for Public Integrity published a valuable report on campus sexual assault on December 1. In an email to members they write:

Students who have been the victim of sexual assaults on college campuses face a depressing litany of barriers that often either assure their silence or leave them feeling victimized a second time, according to the Center for Public Integrity’s nine-month investigation Sexual Assault on Campus: A Frustrating Search for Justice...

This important project was informed by interviews with 48 experts familiar with the college disciplinary process—student affairs administrators, conduct hearing officers, assault services directors, and victim advocates—as well as 33 students who reported being raped.

Nearly half the students interviewed by the Center for this project reported they unsuccessfully sought criminal charges; district attorneys often shy away from such cases, because they are “he said, she said” disputes sometimes clouded by drugs or alcohol. That often leaves students to deal with a campus judiciary system shrouded in secrecy. Those who do come forward can encounter mysterious disciplinary proceedings, closed-mouth school administrations and off-the-record negotiations. At times, official school policies lead to dropped complaints and, in some cases, gag orders later found to be illegal. College administrators believe the existing processes provide a fair and effective way to deal with ultra-sensitive allegations, but alleged victims say these processes have little transparency or accountability, and regularly result in little or no punishment for alleged assailants.

Accompanied by multimedia features including interviews with student survivors and a toolkit to help students, parents, educators and administrators explore this issue in their own campus communities, these first reports in an ongoing series tell a powerful story about the need for transparency and accountability in classic Center fashion.

Read about the project here...

See also:

Pictures from The Clothesline Project at Smith College

Assault and Abuse Against Women Epidemic
Most intimate partner victimizations are not reported to the police. Only approximately one-fifth of all rapes, one-quarter of all physical assaults, and one-half of all stalkings perpetrated against female respondents by intimates were reported to the police. Even fewer rapes, physical assaults, and stalkings perpetrated against male respondents by intimates were reported. The majority of victims who did not report their victimization to the police thought the police would not or could not do anything on their behalf.

National Center for PTSD Fact Sheet on Domestic Violence
It is estimated that, regarding violent behavior toward females within the context of an intimate relationship, only 20% of all rapes, 25% of all physical assaults, and 50% of all stalking are ever reported to the police [Tjaden & Thoennes study]. Victims may be reluctant to come forward for a variety of reasons. First, they may fear retaliation from their partner. They may have been directly threatened that if they tell anyone they will be killed, or they may just fear the worst. Second, there is shame associated with choosing a partner who could be violent, and there is shame associated with staying with a violent partner. Finally, some victims may have tried to seek help from the police, the courts, or others and been dissatisfied with the help they received.

StandardNET: "Pornography at root of more and more domestic violence incidents"
One in four women have experienced or are in a violent domestic relationship...

Testimony in Massachusetts: Porn Confuses Young Men about How to Behave
There's a professor of psychology at UMass Boston who has done his doctoral dissertation and subsequent research on sexual aggression among young college males, and he's found that in dozens and dozens of interviews that young guys will sit there in a room with him, and they'll admit to or talk matter-of-factly about, "I did this to her, I did that, and we did this and that," and they never once refer to themselves as rapists, of course, and they never once refer to the behavior that they've engaged in as raping behavior, or in any way criminal. But this psychologist will tell you that he knows that if they were under oath in the court of law, they would be admitting to first degree felonies, but they think it's normal, perfectly natural herterosexual relations.

Porn and a Hostile Learning Environment at M.I.T.
One example is in the dorms, where despite requests by women students that pornographic films not be shown in common living rooms, some male students insisted on their right to show the films. In two cases, a male student insisted on showing Deep Throat, a film which presents Linda "Lovelace" Marchiano, who we talked about earlier today, despite women students in the dorm telling this particular man that it was offensive to show Deep Throat since it has been documented in her books--Ordeal and Out of Bondage--that she was tortured and terrorized into [making it]. Secondly, they told him that at least one of the students who was a resident of that dormitory had been throat-raped in that particular way, and she felt particularly traumatized by the showing of that film. Despite her efforts and other women's trying to talk to him about showing the film, he showed it anyway to a whole group of students from the dorm. As a result, she and other students lost sleep, she lost a lot of school time. The one student was a doctoral student, and felt extremely harassed. She tried to address this through the M.I.T. administration and go nowhere because they refuse to take an active stance around pornography. And then she was further harassed in that dormintory through threatening notes, etc., for trying to stop the showing of that film...

Testimony in Massachusetts: Porn and a Hostile Living Environment at M.I.T.
I was one of the few women who spoke out and attempted to explain to men and women why pornography hurt me. Rumors spread quickly throughout the dorm about me, and people I once considered friends gave me nasty looks. While visiting a friend, I was verbally harassed by three men. The same graduate resident who had been present at the pornography showing silently watched me being driven to tears, reaffirming the men's stance and their abusive treatment of me. A friend of mine was threatened by the house president that she would have the lab partner from hell if she did not quiet down and silence me. For about two weeks, I was followed around the dorm by one of the men. He would be at most two steps behind me, encroaching upon my feeling of personal space and my sense of safety. He would wait for me outside of people's bedrooms trying to listen to conversations, in places he was not known to frequent. When the housemaster was made aware of the situation by a friend, all of the proposed actions seemed unreasonable. It felt as if I was only setting myself up for retaliation. After feeling the anger from people while speaking out against pornography, I did not feel strong enough to face more intimidation and harassment from my peers.

Behind the Scenes of Deep Throat with Linda Lovelace
[Explicit language:] "Marchiano traveled to campuses to speak out about her two and a half year imprisonment by her husband/manager Chuck Traynor. Linda's speech encouraged women on the campus to protest outside the fraternity-sponsored showing of Deep Throat. She said that in this movie there are visible bruises all over her body that attest to part of her torture. The fraternity brothers' response, was to shout out during Deep Throat: 'Fuck her, hurt her, rip her.' Toward the other females on the screen they screamed comments such as 'Ugly bitch and whore.' They chanted, 'Bruises, Bruises, Bruises!' continually during the film."

Porn Use Correlates with Infidelity, Prostitution, Aggression, Rape-Supportive Beliefs
In 1995, Human Communication Research reported on a meta-analysis of 33 different studies. Researchers found that "Exposure to pornography increases behavioral aggression. While there are many factors that influence this effect (for example, the content of the pornography viewed), the researchers conclude that a connection between exposure to pornography and subsequent behavioral aggression exists."

In 2000, researchers reported in Annual Review of Sex Research that "A relationship exists between frequent pornography consumption and sexually aggressive behavior. This relationship is especially strong for those with the highest "predisposing" risk level for sexual aggression. Those who are at high risk for sexual aggression and who frequently consume pornography have sexual aggression levels that are four times higher than those who do not consume pornography frequently."

Evidence Assessment: The Role of Pornography in the Physical Abuse of Women
The REA [Rapid Evidence Assessment] identified three studies involving such women. Sommers and Check (1987) surveyed 21 battered women from a shelter and a comparison group of 21 women from the university to investigate the role of pornography in the physical abuse of women. They found the partners of the battered women read or viewed significantly greater amounts of pornographic materials than the partners of the comparison group, and the ‘battered women experienced significantly more sexual aggression at the hands of their partners than did women in the comparison group’ (p 189).

American Association of University Women
According to the report ["Hostile Hallways: Bullying, Teasing, and Sexual Harassment in School (2001)"], based on a national survey of 2,064 public school students in 8th through 11th grades conducted by Harris Interactive:

83% of girls and 79% of boys report having ever experienced harassment.
- The number of boys reporting experiences with harassment often or occasionally has increased since 1993 (56% vs. 49%), although girls are still somewhat more likely to experience it.
- For many students sexual harassment is an ongoing experience: over 1 in 4 students experience it "often."

Hugo Schwyzer: "A Note on Homosociality and Strip Clubs"

NPNAdmin — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:39:00 GMT

We recommend Hugo Schwyzer's 12/1/09 article, "Bonding through revulsion and desire: a note on homosociality and strip clubs". A few excerpts:

Homosociality is the notion that for American men in particular, the approval of other males is of paramount concern, even more sought after than validation from women...

Men in our society, as countless scholars of gender have pointed out, are socialized to find particular delight and meaning in activities from which women are excluded, or which most women find repugnant and objectionable...

The effectiveness of strip clubs as a homosocial bonding strategy is thus linked to two things: the shared sense the male patrons have that their wives and mothers disapprove of their being there, and the opportunity to establish their credentials as “red-blooded, straight American guys” by sharing the experience of objectifying women’s bodies...

See also:

Ad in the 12/3/09 Valley Advocate:

Valley Advocate Website Announces 2008's "Best" Adult Entertainment Club; Holsopple's Inside Report on Stripping (explicit language)
Rather than expose this industry for what it is, the Advocate has decided to party with the exploiters and the abusers. Let editor Tom Vannah know how you feel about this.

Strip Poker Men's Club: Women's Lib to Blame for Men's Going to Strip Clubs
On June 24, the Strip Poker Men's Club [explicit link] straight-out blamed women's lib for men's going to strip clubs. We quote:

Man's Perfect Excuse for Visiting Strip Clubs

...Over the past 30 years women have encroached on just about every professional field that was considered previously a mans domain. In past times man used to be able to come home to a lovely, devoted and sweet wife that looked after his needs, realizing that the man earned the crust, and was laboring tirelessly 6 days per week. He returned home from a hard days work, his food was on the table, the house clean, the children patiently and obediently waiting his return and swept off to bed in the early hours of the evening, allowing the man to enjoy some of the remaining moonlight hours with his indulging wife.

But something changed…

Women became tired of waiting at home, cleaning the baby’s nappies and ironing her husband’s clothes day-in and day-out, and for young women joining the workforce in the mid 1980’s their course had already been set, they were determined not to tread in the same steps as their battling mums had done before them.

Men lost all control, and life, as we knew it; was under-going an irreversible change.

These days for men that are married, come home to an un-kept and generally empty home, their wife or partner is also out at work and often returns home later than the average male, pursues the corporate ladder and excuse the pun, like a bitch on heat. The male picks up the children from day-care, cooks the meal, does the laundry and patiently waits for his partner to return and in some sick twist of fate still somehow falls into to some outdated statistical category that says that men still do little around the home!

Well it didn’t take long for men (married, single or repeatedly divorced) to realize that they now truly are holding the short end of the stick.

What was man going to do?

There is something about the atmosphere of a Strip Club, the way in which women strut their stuff on stage and not breaking eye contact is almost an animalistic approach that not only attracts men sexually but because of the eye contact that most women have mastered to enable to do their job well, it seems to offer men what they are so desperately in need off and they haven’t been able to get from today’s modern woman, “attention”...

So there you have it, no need to feel guilty, it's one of life's small escapes, the last bastion of the male domain, enjoy it!

As Andrew Sullivan notes, there are valid reasons why some men feel dissatisfied with today's society. Adult entertainment, however, is a poor way to respond to this, is a distraction from seeking better solutions, and creates new problems.

Sullivan: [A]s our economy becomes less physical and more cerebral, as women slowly supplant men in many industries, as income inequalities grow and more highly testosteroned blue-collar men find themselves shunted to one side, we will have to find new ways of channeling what nature has bequeathed us. I don't think it's an accident that in the last decade there has been a growing focus on a muscular male physique in our popular culture, a boom in crass men's magazines, an explosion in violent computer games or a professional wrestler who has become governor. These are indications of a cultural displacement, of a world in which the power of testosterone is ignored or attacked, with the result that it re-emerges in cruder and less social forms. Our main task in the gender wars of the new century may not be how to bring women fully into our society, but how to keep men from seceding from it, how to reroute testosterone for constructive ends, rather than ignore it for political point-making.

"Waitressing, I cleaned the floors and I own a box of men's wedding rings that I found on the floor."
I went back to the strip bars to make money. I cannot tell you the lie and the fantasy that it is for men. Waitressing, I cleaned the floors and I own a box of men's wedding rings that I found on the floor...

The degradation and inferiority and humiliation of being presented as two tits and a hole for entertainment was not as bad as the sexual harassment I received from the management of these places. Customers are not allowed to touch you, but management can and does. You cannot complain to the Labor Board because they say you put yourself there willingly, and usually it's under the table. I felt worthless...

The Science Behind Pornography Addiction (explicit language)
[Performers in the sex industry] have high rates of substance abuse, typically alcohol and cocaine, depression, borderline personality disorder which is a particularly serious disorder and dissociative identity disorder which used to be called multiple personality disorder. The experience I find most common among the performers is that they have to be drunk, high or dissociated in order to go to work. Their work environment is particularly toxic. One study on strippers indicated that they were likely to be punched, slapped, grabbed, called cunt and whore and to be followed home or stalked. Not surprisingly, these women often work with bodyguards. This live form of pornography causes violence and the customers receiving these Permission-Giving Beliefs become carriers of these beliefs back to their homes, onto their jobs, into the street, onto the school yard. There they encounter women and children who do not have bodyguards.

January 15-17: Stop Porn Culture Slideshow Training, Bellingham, WA

NPNAdmin — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 22:35:00 GMT

We are pleased to share this announcement from Stop Porn Culture:

Our next slideshow training will be January 15-17, 2010, in Bellingham, WA. Come and get the experience, knowledge, and confidence to talk publicly against pornography in your community. The training will include in-depth presentations on topics such as:

the links between pornography and violence against women
background on the economic industry that is pornography
First Amendment and other free speech issues
women in the industry
the sexualization of children
the question of “alternate” images
how to organize in your community
We will also have a long session of practicing Q & As in small groups.

The training will end with a session on self-care for presenters and activists since, as many of you know, this work can be grueling. For more info and to register, go to http://stoppornculture.org/training/

We are also planning our next international feminist anti-pornography conference next June in Boston. We're not ready for registration just yet, but you can mark your calendars. It will be June 12-13, 2010.