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Press Release: "Nevada Attorney General Masto Announces Ninth Circuit Court Decision Limiting Brothel Advertising"

NPNAdmin — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 15:02:00 GMT

Click to download a PDF of this press release:

See also:

United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (07-16633): Coyote Publishing v. Miller (PDF, 148KB, 3/11/10)
...The State of Nevada, alone among the states, [permits] the sale of sexual services in some of its counties.1 Nevada combines partial legalization of prostitution with stringent licensing and regulation, including health screenings for sex workers, measures to protect sex workers from coercion, and — the aspect of Nevada law here challenged — restrictions on advertising by legal brothels. We must decide whether the advertising restrictions violate the First Amendment...

The state’s regulatory regime also restricts advertising by legal brothels. The principal restrictions are two: First, brothels are banned from advertising at all in counties where the sale of sexual services is prohibited by local ordinance or state statute. Nev. Rev. Stat. § 201.440.3 Second, in counties where the sale of sexual services is permitted, brothels cannot advertise “[i]n any public theater, on the public streets of any city or town, or on any public highway.” Nev. Rev. Stat. § 201.430(1)...4

On summary judgment, the district court declared the advertising restrictions unconstitutional. The court first held that in light of section 201.430(3), which defines prima facie evidence of advertising, the restrictions reach beyond pure commercial speech. The district court therefore applied strict scrutiny and determined that the state did not offer any compelling interest in support of its policy. The district court then concluded, alternatively, that even severing 201.430(3) from the rest of the statute, the restrictions still failed the standard of intermediate scrutiny applicable to commercial speech announced in Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. v. Public Service Commission, 447 U.S. 557 (1980).

Nevada appeals, arguing that (1) intermediate scrutiny (or some lesser level of scrutiny) applies; (2) at least in counties where brothels are prohibited, advertising of brothels does not relate to legal activity and is therefore not protected by the First Amendment; and (3) the substantial state interest in preventing the commodification and commercialization of sex vindicates the advertising restrictions. Taking into account the quite unique characteristics, legal and social, of prostitution, we conclude that Nevada’s regulatory scheme is consistent with the First Amendment and so reverse the ruling of the district court...

...we are not persuaded that section 201.430 burdens any significant quantum of fully protected, noncommercial speech. Importantly, section 201.430(1) prohibits only brothel owners or persons “acting on behalf of” a brothel owner from advertising. (Emphasis added.) Thus, on a plain reading of the statute, the publisher of a news account would not be liable...

...we have no difficulty concluding that Nevada’s advertising restrictions target pure commercial speech. Strict scrutiny, therefore, does not apply.10

Nevada argues, conversely, that something less than the intermediate scrutiny of Central Hudson is applicable. Pointing to Posadas, which upheld Puerto Rico’s restrictions on casino gambling advertising directed at its residents, 478 U.S. at 344, the state urges that legislatures have greater power to regulate the advertising of so-called “vice” activities, which derives from their power to prohibit the underlying activity all together. “Vice is treated differently,” the state contends, and because prostitution is particularly disfavored, the state’s power to completely ban the activity includes the ability to ban its promotion, maintains the state.

Posadas certainly provides support for this proposition: “In our view,” the Supreme Court held, “the greater power to completely ban casino gambling necessarily includes the lesser power to ban advertising of casino gambling.” 478 U.S. at 345-46. Indeed, underscoring the applicability of this logic to the present case, Posadas endorsed the presumptive validity of the very Nevada statutes at issue here: Posadas cited Nevada Revised Statute §§ 201.430 & 201.440 and noted that “[i]t would . . . surely be a strange constitutional doctrine which would concede to the legislature the authority to totally ban a product or activity, but deny to the legislature the authority to forbid the stimulation of demand for the product or activity through advertising by those who would profit from such increased demand.” 478 U.S. at 346.

Subsequent decisions, however, have cast severe doubt on the rule that restrictions on advertising of vice activity may escape the intermediate scrutiny of Central Hudson simply by virtue of the fact that they target vice...

Nevada also argues for an exception specific to prostitution. We agree that there are strong reasons why the sale of sexual services, in particular, ought to be treated differently than other advertising bans on “vice” activities.

The first derives from the degree of disfavor in which prostitution is held in our society, as reflected in law. In this respect, prostitution is sui generis. Forty-nine of the fifty states today prohibit all sales of sexual services. The federal government acknowledges the link between prostitution and trafficking in women and children, a form of modern day slavery. See U.S. Department of State, The Link Between Prostitution and Sex Trafficking (November 24, 2004). And federal law prohibits the transportation of persons in interstate or foreign commerce for the purpose of prostitution or other illegal sexual activity. White Slave Traffic Act, 36 Stat. 825, 18 U.S.C. § 2421-2124 (1910). Although Nevada has opted for partial legalization, Nevada too has taken significant steps to limit prostitution, including the total ban on the practice in by far the largest population center,11 the permission to other counties to ban the practice, and the advertising restrictions here at issue.

The social condemnation of prostitution, therefore, is vastly more widespread — and vastly more consistent — than in the case of other categories of “vice” that courts have considered, such as alcohol, tobacco products, and gambling. This condemnation may be relevant to the degree of scrutiny applicable to these advertising restrictions...

(“The commercial speech doctrine is . . . based in part on certain empirical assumptions as to the benefits of advertising.”). When the underlying service is of extremely little value, as demonstrated by near consensus within our society, the need for its efficient allocation and distribution is less compelling...

...the bedrock idea that “[t]here are, in a civilized society, some things that money cannot buy” is deeply rooted in our nation’s law and public policy...

In every state but Nevada, that boundary has been drawn so as to forbid such transactions entirely, including the proposing of such transactions through advertising. Nevada has, uniquely for this country, delineated a more nuanced boundary, but still seeks to closely confine the sale of sex acts, geographically, through restrictive licensing where legal, and through the advertising restrictions.16 We conclude that the interest in preventing the commodification of sex is substantial...

...prohibitions on prostitution reflect not a desire to discourage the underlying sexual activity itself but its sale. Prostitution without the exchange of money is simply sex, which in most manifestations is not a target of state regulators... Speech that “does no more than propose a commercial transaction,” see Virginia Bd. of Pharmacy, 425 U.S. at 762, is particularly susceptible to regulation when the state’s objection is to the commercial transaction itself...

...public disapproval of prostitution’s commodifying tendencies has an impressive historical pedigree. In the minds of early opponents, prostitution was closely bound up with slavery — the paradigmatic case of a dehumanizing market transaction...

The legal condemnation of prostitution as such did not arrive until after the Civil War, when a coalition of prominent abolitionists and feminists defeated attempts to license houses of prostitution in several states... William Lloyd Garrison lent his name to anti-licensing efforts...which often explicitly invoked slavery and the evils of commodification...

The anti-commodification orientation of the early opponents of legalized prostitution was reflected in the nature of the criminal prohibitions adopted early in the twentieth century. Criminal laws were not directed at women themselves but at those profiting from “commercialized forms of vice...”

Central Hudson specifies that if the regulated speech concerns illegal activity or is misleading, the First Amendment extends no protection and the analysis ends...

Nevada contends that the advertising at issue is unprotected, at least in those counties where prostitution is prohibited, because prostitution is not legal activity in those counties...

An advertisement that proposes the sale of a sexual act does not merely create a risk that a consumer of that message will travel in pursuit of such a transaction. Instead, an advertisement for sex itself creates the commodification harm that Nevada seeks to limit. The regulating jurisdiction thus has a different and greater interest, vis-a-vis the jurisdiction where the transaction is proposed, in the context of prostitution than in other commercial speech contexts...

...the Nevada advertising restrictions are valid — because narrowly tailored to advance the interest in limiting commodification of sex — even if we assume that the speech in question is accorded commercial speech protection, rather than ousted from any protection under the illegal transaction exception...

Increased advertising of commercial sex throughout the state of Nevada would increase the extent to which sex is presented to the public as a commodity for sale. The advertising restrictions advance the interest in limiting this commodification in two closely related ways. First, they eliminate the public’s exposure — in some areas entirely, and in others in large part — to advertisements that are in themselves an aspect of the commodifying of sex. As the harm protected against occurs in part from the proposal of the transaction, banning or restricting the advertising directly reduces the harm.

Second, the advertising restrictions directly and materially advance Nevada’s interest in limiting commodification by reducing the market demand for, and thus the incidence of, the exchange of sex acts for money, which by definition is commodifying of sex...

Coyote Publishing suggests that Nevada’s interest in limiting commodification is not materially advanced by the ban on brothel advertising in the counties where they are not legal because sexually suggestive material is already widely displayed in Nevada. The argument misses the point. Nevada seeks to limit the message that sex may be bought and sold. It does not object to sex per se, or to messages that utilize sexual innuendo to sell other products. The persistence of those other elements in Nevada society does not defeat Nevada’s interest...

In permitting some unobtrusive, non-public forms of advertising in counties where brothels are legal, Nevada has achieved “a fit that is not necessarily perfect, but reasonable.” Greater New Orleans Broad., 527 U.S. at 188. By keeping brothel advertising out of public places, see Nev. Rev. Stat. § 201.430(1)(a), where it would reach residents who do not seek it out, but permitting other forms of advertising likely to reach those already interested in patronizing the brothels, Nevada strikes a balance between its interest in maintaining economically viable, legal, regulated brothels and its interest in severely limiting the commodification of sex...

Nevada has tailored its restrictions on advertising to attain a reasonable fit between ends and means.

Orlando Weekly Drops Adult-Services Ads in Wake of Police Sting; "Operation Weekly Shame"
...Orlando Weekly Inc., which had been accused of aiding prostitution through its advertising, made the deal with prosecutors, who dropped 18 charges against the company, including a count of racketeering...

Orlando Sentinel: "3 from Orlando Weekly's staff charged with aiding prostitution" (10/20/07)
MBI Director Bill Lutz said the unusual arrests had nothing to do with the newspaper's freedom of speech.

"I don't see a First Amendment issue here," Lutz said. "This is strictly an advertising company making money off of prostitution."

Orlando Sentinel: "Weekly's publisher: Arrests are payback" (10/23/07)
"First Amendment rights do not protect anyone from committing a crime," he said.

Pasadena Weekly: "Lives for sale"
“Publications have a choice about whether to run certain ads,” said Suriyopaf. “If they have any reason to believe that businesses are conducting illicit activities, they have a social responsibility to report it to the authorities or, at the very least, not run the business’ advertisements.”

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

Letter to Gazette: "Urges Valley Advocate to stop running escort ads"(11/7/09)
The Gazette writes of past suffering in its Oct. 26 editorial, "Slavery's unfinished story," but you can find present-day exploitation in the Gazette's sister publication - the Valley Advocate - and its massage/escort advertising section. Many of these ads appear to involve prostitution...

As reported by the Chicago Tribune in April 2008, a comprehensive 2004 mortality study, conducted by the American Journal of Epidemiology, shows that workplace homicide rates for women working in prostitution are 51 times that of the next most dangerous occupation for women (which is working in a liquor store) and the average age of death of the women studied was 34.

In one study, 75 percent of women in escort prostitution had attempted suicide and prostituted women comprised 15 percent of all completed suicides reported by hospitals...

Ask the Valley Advocate's New Owner to Drop the Sex Ads

Gazette: "Hadley prostitution was linked to sprawling criminal enterprise" (2/10/10)
Now if only the Gazette would train its scrutiny on its sister publication down the hall.

"New York Press No Longer Marketing Arm for Prostitution/Trafficking"

Another Victory for NOW-NYC: New York Magazine Drops Sex Ads

Belltown Messenger: "Greed, Lust and Ink"
...the only motivation for running escort ads in the first place is unbridled greed-and these supposedly liberal publications can't have it both ways when defending the rights of society's underdogs in their editorial content.

New Book - Prostitution and Trafficking in Nevada: Making the Connections
There is only one place in the US where brothels are legal, and that's Nevada... There are at least 20 legal brothels in business now...

The brothel prostitutes often live in prison-like conditions, locked in or forbidden to leave...

The rooms all have panic buttons, but many women told her that they had experienced violent and sexual abuse from the customers and pimps...

...[a] pimp told Farley matter-of-factly that many of the women working for him had histories of sexual abuse and mental ill-health. "Most," he said, "have been sexually abused as kids. Some are bipolar, some are schizophrenic."

...The women are expected to live in the brothels and to work 12- to 14-hour shifts...

Farley found that the brothel owners typically pocket half of the women's earnings. Additionally, the women must pay tips and other fees to the staff of the brothel... One former Nevada brothel worker wrote on a website: "After your airline tickets, clothing, full-price drinks and other miscellaneous fees you leave with little. To top it off, you are ... fined for just about everything. Fall asleep on your 14-hour shift and get $100 [£50] fine...

More than 80% of those interviewed told Farley they wanted to leave prostitution...

Meanwhile, illegal brothels are on the increase in Nevada, as they are in other parts of the world where brothels are legalised. Nevada's illegal prostitution industry is already nine times greater than the state's legal brothels. "Legalising this industry does not result in the closing down of illegal sex establishments," says Farley, "it merely gives them further permission to exist."

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%. There are other major Swedish cities where street prostitution has all but disappeared. Gone too, for the most part, are the infamous Swedish brothels and massage parlors which proliferated during the last three decades of the twentieth century, when prostitution in Sweden was legal.

In addition, the number of foreign women now being trafficked into Sweden for sex work is almost nil. The Swedish government estimates that in the last few years only 200 to 400 women and girls have been annually sex trafficked into Sweden, a figure that's negligible compared to the 15,000 to 17,000 females yearly sex trafficked into neighboring Finland. No other country, nor any other social experiment, has come anywhere near Sweden's promising results...

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...

The Guardian, "Ending a trade in misery"
Not only have the Swedes decriminalised the selling of sex; the Swedish government has also made significant resources available to help women leave prostitution. Beside this radical legislation is a public education campaign to debunk the myths and lies about prostitution - for example, that it is a career choice, and an equal exchange between buyer and seller...

The Guardian, "Eradicate the oldest profession"
But why should we take away the livelihoods of women in prostitution? I hear this time and again from those who hand out condoms and clean needles to women on the street and put little effort into helping them escape. Many women support the Swedish law, because it has given them an incentive to ask for support to get out of the sex industry. If the UK, like Sweden, provided readily available drug and alcohol rehabilitation, safe housing and protection from pimps then most women would leave prostitution...

Those hoping to see the government support decriminalisation of brothels will be disappointed by the Home Office review, as will those advocating tolerance zones. Where such zones have been tried they have failed. One zone in Melbourne resulted in street prostitution increasing fourfold. In Amsterdam drug dealing, trafficking and violence towards the women and customers in the zone led to it being closed in 2003...

Norman Doidge, MD: "Acquiring Tastes and Loves: What Neuroplasticity Teaches Us About Sexual Attraction and Love"

NPNAdmin — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 12:01:00 GMT

The Witherspoon Institute has gathered a number of valuable papers together in The Social Costs of Pornography Consultation (2008). We particularly recommend a paper from Norman Doidge, MD: "Acquiring Tastes and Loves: What Neuroplasticity Teaches Us About Sexual Attraction and Love" (PDF). Some excerpts:

The current porn epidemic gives a graphic demonstration that sexual tastes can be acquired. Pornography, delivered by high-speed Internet connections, satisfies every one of the prerequisites for neuroplastic change.

Pornography seems, at first glance, to be a purely instinctual matter: sexually explicit pictures trigger instinctual responses, which are the product of millions of years of evolution. But if that were true, pornography would be unchanging. The same triggers, bodily parts and their proportions, that appealed to our ancestors would excite us. This is what pornographers would have us believe, for they claim they are battling sexual repression, taboo, and fear and that their goal is to liberate the natural, pent-up sexual instincts.

But in fact the content of pornography is a dynamic phenomenon that perfectly illustrates the progress of an acquired taste. Thirty years ago “hardcore” pornography usually meant the explicit depiction of sexual intercourse between two aroused partners, displaying their genitals. “Softcore” meant pictures of women, mostly, on a bed, at their toilette, or in some semiromantic setting, in various states of undress, breasts revealed.

Now hardcore has evolved and is increasingly dominated by the sadomasochistic themes of forced sex, ejaculations on women’s faces, and angry anal sex, all involving scripts fusing sex with hatred and humiliation. Hardcore pornography now explores the world of perversion, while softcore is now what hardcore was a few decades ago, explicit sexual intercourse between adults, now available on cable TV. The comparatively tame softcore pictures of yesteryear—women in various states of undress—now show up on mainstream media all day long, in the pornification of everything, including television, rock videos, soap operas, advertisements, and so on.

Pornography’s growth has been extraordinary; it accounts for 25 percent of video rentals and is the fourth most common reason people give for going online...

When pornographers boast that they are pushing the envelope by introducing new, harder themes, what they don’t say is that they must, because their customers are building up a tolerance to the content...

The addictiveness of Internet pornography is not a metaphor. Not all addictions are to drugs or alcohol. People can be seriously addicted to gambling, even to running. All addicts show a loss of control of the activity, compulsively seek it out despite negative consequences, develop tolerance so that they need higher and higher levels of stimulation for satisfaction, and experience withdrawal if they can’t consummate the addictive act...

Dopamine is called the reward transmitter, because when we accomplish something—run a race and win—our brain triggers its release... By hijacking our dopamine system, addictive substances give us pleasure without our having to work for it.

Dopamine, as we saw in Merzenich’s work, is also involved in plastic change. The same surge of dopamine that thrills us also consolidates the neuronal connections responsible for the behaviors that led us to accomplish our goal... An important link with porn is that dopamine is...released in sexual excitement, increasing the sex drive in both sexes, facilitating orgasm, and activating the brain’s pleasure centers. Hence the addictive power of pornography...

Pornographers promise healthy pleasure and relief from sexual tension, but what they often deliver is an addiction, tolerance, and an eventual decrease in pleasure. Paradoxically, the male patients I worked with often craved pornography but didn’t like it...

Because plasticity is competitive, the brain maps for new, exciting images increased at the expense of what had previously attracted them—the reason, I believe, they began to find their girlfriends less of a turn-on...

Because [the porn user] often develops tolerance, the pleasure of sexual discharge must be supplemented with the pleasure of an aggressive release, and sexual and aggressive images are increasingly mingled—hence the increase in sadomasochistic themes in hardcore porn...

Whereas dopamine induces excitement, puts us into high gear, and triggers sexual arousal, oxytocin induces a calm, warm mood that increases tender feelings and attachment and may lead us to lower our guard...

Oxytocin’s ability to wipe out learned behavior has led scientists to call it an amnestic hormone. Freeman proposes that oxytocin melts down existing neuronal connections that underlie existing attachments, so new attachments can be formed...

The rewiring of our pleasure systems, and the extent to which our sexual tastes can be acquired, is seen most dramatically in such perversions as sexual masochism, which turns physical pain into sexual pleasure...

Robert Stoller, M.D., a California psychoanalyst, did make important discoveries through visits to S&M and B&D (bondage and discipline) establishments in Los Angeles. He interviewed people who practiced hardcore sadomasochism, which inflicts real pain on the flesh, and discovered that masochistic participants had all had serious physical illnesses as children and had undergone regular, terrifying, painful medical treatment. “As a result,” writes Stoller, “they had to be confined severely and for long periods [in hospitals] without the chance to unload their frustration, despair and rage openly and appropriately. Hence the perversions.” As children, they consciously took their pain, their inexpressible rage, and reworked it in daydreams, in altered mental states, or in masturbation fantasies, so they could replay the story of the trauma with a happy ending and say to themselves, This time, I win. And the way they won was by erotizing their agony...

Children are born helpless and will, in the critical period of sexual plasticity, do anything to avoid abandonment and to stay attached to adults, even if they must learn to love the pain and trauma that adults inflict...

As for the patients who became involved in porn, most were able to go cold turkey once they understood the problem and how they were plastically reinforcing it. They found eventually that they were attracted once again to their mates. None of these men had addictive personalities or serious childhood traumas, and when they understood what was happening to them, they stopped using their computers for a period to weaken their problematic neuronal networks, and their appetite for porn withered away...

See also:

"Dominance, Aggression, and Violence in Male-Centered Porn"
[T]he more cellular memories (biological and physiological processes) that pornographers can link their porn to throughout the male brain and body, the greater chance they have of addicting their viewers. And the more naturally occurring drugs/hormones (especially testosterone, but also adrenaline, epinephrine, and others) flowing in the male mindbody during viewing, the more narrow will be his focus, the more intense his sexual/mindbody arousal, the more deeply the images will be imprinted in his memory, and the greater his addiction.

Pornographers achieve this combination of a high number of mindbody links and maximum drug/hormone release by mixing sexual images with male dominance, aggression and violent images intended to shock and stimulate simultaneously. Porn scenes ranging from simple "male in control" to aggression, rape, torture and murder, abound in Internet porn geared to the male viewer.

These kinds of images link sexual arousal in the male mindbody with emotions of shock, anger, confusion, violence and domination which cause the male mindbody to release enormous amounts of additional testosterone, which further increase male narrowing, loss of reason, feelings of aggression, and sexual drive and arousal.

Time to Explore the Links Between Porn, Testosterone, Sexual Behavior and Violence
...[T]estosterone is highly susceptible to environment. T levels can rise and fall depending on external circumstances--short term and long term. Testosterone is usually elevated in response to confrontational situations--a street fight, a marital spat, a presidential debate--or in highly charged sexual environments, like a strip bar or a pornographic Web site...

What Porn Is: Selections from Mainstream Porn (explicit language)
[Robert Jensen:] ...Given the ease with which video can be edited, why did the producers not edit out those expressions [pain, shame, despair]? There are two possible answers. One, they may view these kinds of expressions of pain by the women as of no consequence to the viewers’ interest, and hence of no consequence to the goal of maximizing sales; women’s pain is neutral. The second possibility is that the producers have reason to believe that viewers like the expressions of pain; women’s pain helps sales...

National Feminist Antipornography Movement
"As Jerome Tanner put it during a pornography directors’ roundtable discussion featured in Adult Video News, 'People just want it harder, harder, and harder, because like Ron said, what are you gonna do next?' Another director, Jules Jordan, was blunt about his task: '[O]ne of the things about today’s porn and the extreme market, the gonzo market, so many fans want to see so much more extreme stuff that I’m always trying to figure out ways to do something different. But it seems everybody wants to see a girl doing a d.p. [double penetration] now or a gangbang. For certain girls, that’s great, and I like to see that for certain people, but a lot of fans are becoming a lot more demanding about wanting to see the more extreme stuff. It’s definitely brought porn somewhere, but I don’t know where it’s headed from there.'

Research Paper: "Cruelty's rewards: The gratifications of perpetrators and spectators"
Deliberate infliction of pain, as with any other decisive manifestation of interpersonal power, enhances the status of the perpetrator. Accordingly, the initiation and coordination of punishment in the family-level and local group would have facilitated the emergence of a leadership figure, whose willingness to injure would have created a reputation for ferocity with significant resource access benefits for that individual... Today as in the past, aggression linked to a readiness to inflict pain is a route to prestige, leadership, and social mastery that entrains survival and reproductive benefits... Cruelty attributions may elevate status, leadership, and sexual attraction ratings more, for example, than attributions of physical strength or intelligence...

As the neurobiology of predation predicts, blood and death have erotic force. Barton (1993) writes that the raging sexuality of the arena came to a focus in the gladiator’s scarred body, and Rome’s prostitutes gathered at the arena exits, where they did a brisk trade...

Kink.com: Bondage Porn Gone Chillingly, Cheerfully Corporate (explicit language)
"Our powerless girls scream as they are tied up and forced to have sex over and over. Are they screams for help or do they really just want more?"

Rick Porras, Capital Video Executive, Would Rather You Not Know He Is a Pornographer (explicit language)
Photo Caption: "The look in her eyes tells us that she would like this bondage session to end pretty soon. Forget it, girl!"

Photo Caption: "Her Master has told her, 'Don't you dare move.' She's finding that immobility is in itself a form of torture.'"

Photo Caption: "Because her body is beginning to ache, she writhes on the carpet. It makes watching her even more arousing."

Photo Caption: "Tied to the post, Tracy takes a fearful whipping."

Childhood Spanking Linked to Coerced Sex and Risky Sex in Adulthood; Amazing.net Milks Pain for Profit (explicit)
...the porn industry embraced this 'abuse niche' some time ago, harnessing pain for profit. The industry may or may not have a conscious strategy to promote dysfunctional relationships within and between generations, but it does have a financial incentive to do so. As Jill Manning observes, happily married people consume relatively little porn: "...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 movies are on sale now at Amazing.net/Goflix.com:

Pain 25
Remember when your daddy would come home from work and beat the living shit out of you? Remember how your
flesh bruised and bled at the end of his belt? Some days you thought your worthless life was over. My how you
begged and cried. Good times. Damn good times. Well now you can relive those special moments. Take Pain #25
home today!

Herbert, Brooks and Osayande on Misogyny, Money and Power; Amazing.net's War on Women and Blacks (explicit)
Extreme Audition #6
What happens when you have a tiny little blonde walk into your studio? Well a lot of fun for Michael Kahn. This pretty little thing was in tears by the end of this video. She had no tolerance for pain and so it was great fun to beat her little ass.

Now Showing at Amazing.net: The War on Privacy and Consent (explicit)
Blame It On Daddy
Look what daddy made them do. These chicks are fucked up and they just can't get enough. Adopt these sluts today make them call you daddy and see what they won't do!

Corrines Painful Examination
Pretty 19-year-old Corrine submits to a painfully thorough very sadistic medical exam at the hands of Nurse Lolita
and the wicked "Doctor" Savage.

Medical Pain Sluts
Medical pain sluts goes behind closed doors to reveal...sex craved nurses and their helpless charges! Tender pussies are spread = clamped vibed and shocked. Heavy tits are roped groped whipped and tortured Sexy sluts cum and...

Painful Pleasures
Slave Derek Da Silva is put through an unbelievable set of pain adrenaline and endorphin pleasures that you just have to see to believe! Hard belly punching electric dildoes electrified needles and howling cumshots.

The Science Behind Pornography Addiction
Permission-Giving Beliefs are a set of beliefs that imply that my behavior is normal, acceptable, common and/or doesn’t hurt anyone so I have permission to continue to behave in the way that I am. In all types of violence and addiction, Permission-Giving Beliefs are involved. Examples would include “All men go to prostitutes”, “Women like sex mixed with violence” and “Children enjoy sex with adults”. These particular Permission-Giving Beliefs are also common in pornography...

Abusive Relationships and Porn: The Similarities (explicit language)

Video Presentation: A Content Analysis of 50 of Today's Top Selling Porn Films (explicit language)
A number of porn defenders claim that anti-porn activists harp on unusual, violent, women-hating examples of porn, and unfairly downplay the existence of 'artistic' porn on sites like Suicide Girls. anthonyjk_6319 believes that porn sites like "Gag on My Cock" and "Anal Suffering" are the "exception", and that the "overwhelming majority of porn (something like 99.8%) deals only in consenting nonviolent sex acts."

To clear up confusion about what porn is generally about, academic researchers Robert Wosnitzer, Ana Bridges, and Erica Scharrer, together with coders like Michelle Chang, analyzed 50 recent top selling porn films selected from lists compiled by Adult Video News, the leading trade journal of the porn industry...

Testimony in Massachusetts: Porn Confuses Young Men about How to Behave
I travel around the country and speak to college audiences, both male and female, and mixed audiences, and one thing I find over and over again, in frank discussions, is that pornography is extremely influential in the lives of young boys growing up today, and girls, but specifically I speak to guys. This blizzard of images of women in degrading and humiliating positions, guys just come to think of that as normal.

March 10: Professor Gail Dines Presents "Supersexed" at Holyoke Community College

NPNAdmin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:41:00 GMT

Wheelock College professor of sociology and women's studies Dr. Gail Dines makes a special visit to Holyoke Community College tomorrow (directions). The public is invited. Don't miss it!

See also:

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

Gail Dines: "Penn, Porn and Me" (7/1/08)

Gail Dines Presents: Pornography and Pop Culture (explicit)
Here are selected highlights from Dr. Dines' lecture. The complete presentation makes an excellent starting point for any discussion of feminism, media and pornography.

March 25: Modern Day Slavery - Panel and Discussion in Boston

NPNAdmin — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 20:58:00 GMT

See also:

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.

National Human Trafficking Resource Center

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

"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...

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...

March 9: Legislative Trials and Triumphs in Combating Demand for Commercial Sex

NPNAdmin — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:28:00 GMT

From 3:00-4:30pm on March 9 (US Eastern time), The Comparative Urban Studies Project of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars will ~~make available a~~ ~~live webcast~~ of conduct its second discussion in the Demand Dynamics of Sex Trafficking Speaker Series co-sponsored by Hunt Alternatives Fund. To learn more about this event or to attend in person in Washington, DC, please email cusp@wilsoncenter.org or call 202-691-4289.

This event was originally scheduled for a live webcast, but it appears the webcast slot at the Woodrow Wilson Center has been assigned to another event. We do expect to be able to make a video recording of this event available later in March.

Legislative Trials and Triumphs in Combating Demand for Commercial Sex

Taina Bien-Aime, Executive Director, Equality Now; Eleanor Gaetan, Legislative Advisor, Coalition Against Trafficking in Women; Samir Goswami, Policy Director, Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation; Ambassador Swanee Hunt, President, Hunt Alternatives Fund

The panelists in this second meeting of the Demand Dynamics of Sex Trafficking Speaker Series will discuss legislative efforts to stifle the demand for commercial sex. Taina Bien-Aime will discuss legislation in New York, including the Safe Harbour Act and action against Big Apple Tours; Samir Goswami will focus on the Illinois Predator Accountability Act and the End Demand Illinois Campaign; and Eleanor Gaetan will explore federal legislation, particularly the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Acts of 2005 and 2008.

Taina Bien-Aimé is the Executive Director of Equality Now, an international human rights advocacy organization that works to end violence and discrimination against women and girls. With offices in New York, Nairobi and London, issues of concern to Equality Now include rape, domestic violence, female genital mutilation, reproductive rights, trafficking in women and other forms of human rights abuses affecting women. Bien-Aimé was also Director of Business Affairs/Film Acquisitions at HBO and practiced international corporate law at the Wall Street firm, Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton. For close to two decades, Bien-Aimé has provided expert commentary on women’s rights, including sex trafficking, on print media, television, and radio, including the New York Times, AP, Reuters, CNN, NPR, The Glenn Beck Show, and numerous other national and international media outlets. Taina contributed essays to “Becoming Myself: Reflections on Growing Up Female,” edited by Willa Shalit (Hyperion, 2006). Bien-Aimé is also a contributor to The Huffington Post. Taina holds a Juris Doctor from NYU School of Law and a Licence in Political Science from the University of Geneva and the Graduate School of International Studies, Switzerland.

Eleanor Kennelly Gaetan, Ph.D., served for over five years, 2003-2009, as Senior Coordinator of Public Outreach for the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. She was senior editor of five Trafficking in Persons Reports and managed congressional relations, including passage of two reauthorizations of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, in 2005 and 2008. Explaining the intrinsic connection between prostitution and sex trafficking was one critical theme around which she developed public education materials at the State Department. Before joining State, she was Senior Democracy Advisr at USAID/Romania where human trafficking was in her portfolio among other democracy issues. Eleanor currently serves as legislative adviser to the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW). Eleanor holds a Ph.D. in comparative politics from University of Maryland and a BA from Yale University.

Samir has extensive organizing, media advocacy and public policy advocacy experience on the issues of criminal justice reform, workforce development, affordable housing and sexual and domestic violence prevention. He currently leads the End Demand, Illinois Campaign a grassroots effort to transform the state's response to prostitution and sex trafficking. While he was on the policy staff at the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (1999 - 2008), he founded the Prostitution Alternatives Round Table and organized survivors of prostitution, community based and social service organizations, faith based institutions and worked with corrections, city, county and state officials and law makers to advocate for policy reforms to assist persons involved in prostitution and trafficking.

Samir Goswami was a lead advocate in passage of the 2002 Cook County Residential Treatment and Transition Center for Women (ILPA 92-0806), the 2003 Criminal Record Sealing Act (ILPA 93-1084) and the 2007 First Offender Probation Act (ILPA 95-0255). Samir was also the lead lobbyist and organizer for the Predator Accountability Act, (ILPA 94-0998) and assisted in successful legislative, organizing and media advocacy towards creating the 2005 Rental Housing Support Act (ILPA 94-0118) and the 1999 Homelessness Prevention Act which have resulted in millions more state dollars for the creation of affordable housing and homelessness prevention programs in Illinois. Samir is a 2010 Chicago Community Trust Fellow, a 2010 Chicago Foundation for Women Impact Award Honoree and a recipient of BPI's 40 Who've Made a Differnce Award. Samir is a board member of Career Advancement Network and Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcerated Mothers.

Amb. Swanee Hunt, Eleanor Roosevelt Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard, chairs the Washington-based Institute for Inclusive Security, which conducts research, training, and advocacy to integrate women into peace processes worldwide. She is core faculty at the Center for Public Leadership and senior advisor to the Carr Center for Human Rights Public Policy and its Initiative to Stop Human Trafficking, both at the Kennedy School of Government. President of Hunt Alternatives Fund, author and activist, Dr. Hunt has drawn international attention to modern-day slavery. From 1993 to 1997, she served as President Clinton’s ambassador to Austria, when she hosted negotiations to end the Balkan war and led the US delegation to the EU conference on trafficking.

See also:

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

Hunt Alternatives Fund: Demand Abolition

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"

Guardian: "Why men use prostitutes" (1/15/10)
... 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...

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

June 12-13: Stop Porn Culture - An International Feminist Anti-Pornography Conference

NPNAdmin — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:43:00 GMT

We are pleased to publicize this event from Stop Porn Culture:

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

In March 2007, over 500 people gathered at a conference in Boston to help re-ignite a progressive and feminist movement against pornography. Our second national conference will once again bring together activists, academics, 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 and to register please go to: http://stoppornculture.org/conference/

See also:

A Film by Chyng Sun - The Price of Pleasure

Chyng Sun: Rejecting Porn's Hatred of Women Does Not Mean Embracing Government Repression of "Obscenity"

Video Presentation: A Content Analysis of 50 of Today's Top Selling Porn Films (explicit language)

Gail Dines Presents: Pornography and Pop Culture (explicit)

Rebecca Whisnant: "Not Your Father’s Playboy, Not Your Mother’s Feminist Movement" (explicit language)

Robert Jensen: "Just a prude? Feminism, pornography, and men's responsibility"

Gazette: "Hadley prostitution was linked to sprawling criminal enterprise"

NPNAdmin — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:37:00 GMT

The February 6 and 8 editions of the Daily Hampshire Gazette devote long articles to the cases of Jane's Spa, Hadley Massage Therapy, Chinese Massage and several other area establishments "busted and shut down for prostitution" in late 2009. Two of these articles are cited below. Now if only the Gazette would train its scrutiny on its sister publication down the hall. The ads to the right appear in the February 4 issue of the Valley Advocate.

High probability of immigration issues, human trafficking draws ICE to Hadley
Once they are smuggled in, illegal immigrants are taken to large metropolitan areas, Foucart said, and they start working off their debt.

"They maintain control over these people that way, because they are indebted to them for these charges."

Inspector John Burke of the Albany, N.Y., County Sheriff's Department - who delivered the information on the Hadley massage parlors - said he's seen illegal immigrants who are prostitutes get strung along, with the key to freedom forever out of reach.

Said Foucart: "Sometimes it takes law enforcement such as ICE to free them, and to get them away from these organizations and put them into the proper nongovernment (programs) that'll be able to help them, with clothing and with food and shelter. Generally, a lot of times it takes law enforcement intervention to have that occur."

...Experts say where there's human trafficking, there's prostitution, the sale of unlicensed tobacco, narcotics, gun running, extortion, violence and drugs.

The sex trade, they say, often finances the other crimes.

The Chinese connection: Asian organized crime finally lands in Hampshire County
Prostitution, of course, is another cash cow [for organized crime groups], said Cahillane, the assistant DA.

"What we've learned from other jurisdictions is that typically those types of operations are used to generate income, that they are a moneymaking operation to fund other activities," said Cahillane.

The typical transaction includes $40 to $60 up front for a massage, with another $40 to $60 negotiated for the so-called "happy ending, home run or release," according to law enforcement officials...

Unlike human smuggling, in which immigrants pay their way to cross a border illegally, victims of human trafficking cannot pay, or are kidnapped, and end up forced into slavery or prostitution.

"Every time I've seen it, it's been pretty crappy. A lot of times, they were in a basement. They would just put up a sheet and put a mattress on the floor, and they would just work on and off, on and off, on and off," Burke said.

Burke said that, while the women took in substantial sums, they themselves never had any.

See also:

Asian Transnational Organized Crime and its Impact on the United States (PDF, Submitted to the National Institute of Justice, November 2004)

Sweden's Prostitution Solution: Why Hasn't Anyone Tried This Before?
Sweden's law enforcement community has found that the prostitution legislation benefits them in dealing with all sex crimes, particularly in enabling them to virtually wipe out the element of organized crime that plagues other countries where prostitution has been legalized or regulated.

Letter to Gazette: "Urges Valley Advocate to stop running escort ads" (11/7/09)
The Gazette writes of past suffering in its Oct. 26 editorial, "Slavery's unfinished story," but you can find present-day exploitation in the Gazette's sister publication - the Valley Advocate - and its massage/escort advertising section. Many of these ads appear to involve prostitution...

As reported by the Chicago Tribune in April 2008, a comprehensive 2004 mortality study, conducted by the American Journal of Epidemiology, shows that workplace homicide rates for women working in prostitution are 51 times that of the next most dangerous occupation for women (which is working in a liquor store) and the average age of death of the women studied was 34.

In one study, 75 percent of women in escort prostitution had attempted suicide and prostituted women comprised 15 percent of all completed suicides reported by hospitals...

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

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

Ask the Valley Advocate's New Owner to Drop the Sex Ads

Belltown Messenger: "Greed, Lust and Ink"

Polaris Project: "The Washington Post: A Paper Pimp?" (Part One)

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

"New York Press No Longer Marketing Arm for Prostitution/Trafficking"
Today, trafficking human beings for sexual exploitation, labor, and domestic servitude is the third fastest growing illegal enterprise. The United States is the second highest destination in the world for trafficked women...

Ads provide buyers of commercial sex access to trafficked women...

Another Victory for NOW-NYC: New York Magazine Drops Sex Ads
New York Magazine agreed Tuesday to stop accepting sex ads after the local chapter of a women's rights group threatened protests outside the popular weekly publication...

[NOW-NYC] has been asking other local media to stop taking the salacious ads and said it has won agreements to do so from 14 other publications including Time Out New York and New York Press...

"Trafficking exists because there aren't enough women to do this assembly line brothel work," the president of NOW's New York City chapter, Sonia Ossorio, said. While no one knows exactly how many women are prostituted against their will, it is indisputable that some come to New York with promises of legitimate jobs only to find these don't exist and there's only one way to pay off their debts.

Cincinnati: Coalition asks CityBeat to stop allowing promotion of prostitution through advertising

Orlando Weekly Drops Adult-Services Ads in Wake of Police Sting; "Operation Weekly Shame"

Pasadena Weekly: "Lives for sale"
“They’re always a point of concern,” Pasadena Police Chief Bernard Melekian told the newspaper. “We follow up on them fairly regularly. I have always been surprised that the [Pasadena] Weekly underwrites the exploitation of women to some degree.”

...“Asian Lovers: Best Young Girls in Town,” “Asian Girl: Pretty Apples,” “Grand Opening, Young Asian Cuties,” read several ads that appeared recently in the Weekly...

Ivy Suriyopaf, an attorney with the Asian-American Defense League, said that if an ad is suspicious, newspapers shouldn’t run it.

“Publications have a choice about whether to run certain ads,” said Suriyopaf. “If they have any reason to believe that businesses are conducting illicit activities, they have a social responsibility to report it to the authorities or, at the very least, not run the business’ advertisements.”

Prostitution: Factsheet on Human Rights Violations

Prostitution Research & Education: How Prostitution Works

Valley Advocate: "Erotica: Eden's Dark Side" (9/28/06)
The mafia and its business associates understand the First Amendment, and they know how to push liberals' buttons. They've done it before in this area with dismaying success, recruiting liberal lawyers to help keep notorious Springfield mobster Al Bruno out of jail in the early '90s, to mention one example...

It's a far cry from D.H. Lawrence, from gentle line drawings of women making love with women, to a store front that sets a porn mogul with a history of mafia ties up in the middle of Northampton's Rte. 5 business district. It would be an irony, and not a happy one, for the more elevated arguments in favor of porn to shield the underside of the industry as it would touch down in Northampton, possibly drawing profits to interests quite at odds with the character of this community.

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.