BDSM ~ Random Stories in Current News
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Clothes ties
Clothes ties
A former exotic dancer launches a clothing label steeped in her Cambodian roots
The San Francisco Bay Guardian
By Christina Dillmann and Kristina Peterson
On display in one corner of Elizabeth Sy's Oakland apartment and work studio is a suitcase that symbolizes her life's journey. A few years ago, Sy, a stylish Cambodian American with splashes of electric color at the tips of her dark hair, made a bold career transition from sex worker to fashion designer.
Sy is the youngest of 10 children from a Cambodian family that immigrated, in 1981, to the United States shortly before she was born.
The hidden strength of Sy's burgeoning fashion label, Lush Orchid, could lie in her strong family bond and cultural history. The Oakland-based designer shares her line of handbags and T-shirts with her mother, Eang, and her sister Teang, cofounders of the ETE design label (the letters are the first initials of each of their names). The label also includes Lotus Seed, Teang's maternity line.
Lush Orchid's mission is to be a socially conscious company that sells affordably priced merchandise without supporting sweatshop labor. The label's silk-screened T-shirts include empowering phrases such as "Our voices come together and shatter the once deafening roar." Bright and elegant clutches showcase a pride in Cambodia's shimmering silks.
Until recently, Sy was working as an exotic dancer and apprenticing as a dominatrix. She also taught a female sexuality class at UC Berkeley and continues to work at a nonprofit providing outreach to sex workers. When Sy's mother discovered her daughter was working in the sex industry, she offered to help start Sy's fashion label, allowing Sy to stop dancing and keep afloat financially.
The clothing and accessories line began to materialize when Sy, accompanied by her sister and mother, took a trip to Cambodia to acquaint themselves with their cultural roots and to purchase their inventory. While there, Sy hunted down cotton fabrics for the T-shirts and traditional Khmer silks for the handbags. Determined to pay international fair-trade prices, they had thousands of shirts and bags made by Cambodian seamstresses working out of their own shops.
Realizing that many find socially responsible shopping prohibitively expensive, Sy has made it a goal to keep her prices low. "I just think it would be a shame to buy this stuff for $40," she says, explaining her reluctance to sell the clothes and bags to high-end boutiques. Instead, she avoids huge retail markups by selling her clothes at a discount to the artists' collective Rock Paper Scissors and directly to customers. Shirts run from $15 to $25, while bags go for $20 to $30.
Sy also sells her wares at craft fairs, such as the Belle Bizarre, put on by the Center for Sex and Culture in early December. As profiled in the New York Times, the event sold goods like pasties and garter belts to holiday shoppers in order to raise money for the nonprofit, which runs sex education programs for adults.
Sy's former career remained on the legal end of sex work and hasn't interfered with starting a business. However, according to Robyn Few, executive director of the Sex Workers Outreach Program (SWOP), many former sex workers face obstacles when looking for new jobs. Often sex workers have five or ten unaccountable years on their résumé they cannot explain to potential employers. And if they've been arrested, they must often disclose their criminal history on state applications for professional licenses; the city does not ask for criminal history on the business tax certificate application.
Happy with her new career, which she documents in a blog on Lush Orchid's Web site, Sy is trying to employ former Cambodian sex workers as her seamstresses, though organizing this has been difficult in the current Cambodian political climate.
Of her mission to help other sex workers transition to new careers, she says, "I've had to go back to the thing I was trying to get away from." Given the young designer's habit of maintaining close ties to her past, it makes sense that she keeps that suitcase from her first trip to Cambodia around. The slogan printed on its side could easily be transferred onto one of her T-shirts: "Today I woke up and realized that I had been sleeping for twenty years."
LUSH ORCHID
www.lushorchid.com
Clothes ties
A former exotic dancer launches a clothing label steeped in her Cambodian roots
The San Francisco Bay Guardian
By Christina Dillmann and Kristina Peterson
On display in one corner of Elizabeth Sy's Oakland apartment and work studio is a suitcase that symbolizes her life's journey. A few years ago, Sy, a stylish Cambodian American with splashes of electric color at the tips of her dark hair, made a bold career transition from sex worker to fashion designer.
Sy is the youngest of 10 children from a Cambodian family that immigrated, in 1981, to the United States shortly before she was born.
The hidden strength of Sy's burgeoning fashion label, Lush Orchid, could lie in her strong family bond and cultural history. The Oakland-based designer shares her line of handbags and T-shirts with her mother, Eang, and her sister Teang, cofounders of the ETE design label (the letters are the first initials of each of their names). The label also includes Lotus Seed, Teang's maternity line.
Lush Orchid's mission is to be a socially conscious company that sells affordably priced merchandise without supporting sweatshop labor. The label's silk-screened T-shirts include empowering phrases such as "Our voices come together and shatter the once deafening roar." Bright and elegant clutches showcase a pride in Cambodia's shimmering silks.
Until recently, Sy was working as an exotic dancer and apprenticing as a dominatrix. She also taught a female sexuality class at UC Berkeley and continues to work at a nonprofit providing outreach to sex workers. When Sy's mother discovered her daughter was working in the sex industry, she offered to help start Sy's fashion label, allowing Sy to stop dancing and keep afloat financially.
The clothing and accessories line began to materialize when Sy, accompanied by her sister and mother, took a trip to Cambodia to acquaint themselves with their cultural roots and to purchase their inventory. While there, Sy hunted down cotton fabrics for the T-shirts and traditional Khmer silks for the handbags. Determined to pay international fair-trade prices, they had thousands of shirts and bags made by Cambodian seamstresses working out of their own shops.
Realizing that many find socially responsible shopping prohibitively expensive, Sy has made it a goal to keep her prices low. "I just think it would be a shame to buy this stuff for $40," she says, explaining her reluctance to sell the clothes and bags to high-end boutiques. Instead, she avoids huge retail markups by selling her clothes at a discount to the artists' collective Rock Paper Scissors and directly to customers. Shirts run from $15 to $25, while bags go for $20 to $30.
Sy also sells her wares at craft fairs, such as the Belle Bizarre, put on by the Center for Sex and Culture in early December. As profiled in the New York Times, the event sold goods like pasties and garter belts to holiday shoppers in order to raise money for the nonprofit, which runs sex education programs for adults.
Sy's former career remained on the legal end of sex work and hasn't interfered with starting a business. However, according to Robyn Few, executive director of the Sex Workers Outreach Program (SWOP), many former sex workers face obstacles when looking for new jobs. Often sex workers have five or ten unaccountable years on their résumé they cannot explain to potential employers. And if they've been arrested, they must often disclose their criminal history on state applications for professional licenses; the city does not ask for criminal history on the business tax certificate application.
Happy with her new career, which she documents in a blog on Lush Orchid's Web site, Sy is trying to employ former Cambodian sex workers as her seamstresses, though organizing this has been difficult in the current Cambodian political climate.
Of her mission to help other sex workers transition to new careers, she says, "I've had to go back to the thing I was trying to get away from." Given the young designer's habit of maintaining close ties to her past, it makes sense that she keeps that suitcase from her first trip to Cambodia around. The slogan printed on its side could easily be transferred onto one of her T-shirts: "Today I woke up and realized that I had been sleeping for twenty years."
LUSH ORCHID
www.lushorchid.com
@}-}rebecca----
not enough discipline ...
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2005
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Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend explores the power of brotherly bondage
MAIN FEATURE | www.houstonvoice.com
Bonding time
Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend explores the power of brotherly bondage
By GREG MARZULLO
Jan. 13, 2006
NOW AND THEN a lot of people get tied up. No, not at work or in traffic. People are tied to bed posts, each other or, sometimes, anything that’s nailed down. People get handcuffed, knotted up with ties and placed in restraints. For those leather fans out there, getting bound takes on all kinds of meanings and involves all sorts of props.
This year’s theme for the Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend, “Bound in Brotherhood,” encompasses meanings from kinky to spiritual. From Friday, Jan. 13, through Sunday, Jan. 15, when the country’s second largest leather convention takes over Washington, D.C., leather aficionados, admirers and the curious can delve into the practice of bondage.
Leather folk will descend on the Washington Plaza hotel for the weekend, transforming the lobby into a de facto gay bar. The famed Mr. Mid-Atlantic Leather competition, the highlight of the weekend, takes place Sunday afternoon.
Frank Nowicki, 49, won the title in 1993, and he’s been emceeing the event for more than 10 years. According to this leather veteran, this year’s theme is about much more than tying up your significant other.
“It’s about camaraderie, the friendships, the different components of the leather community,” he says. “[The weekend] is to touch base with each other and reaffirm our feelings about leather.”
Each year’s topic is chosen by an organizing committee, and themes have ranged from men in uniform to a leather spoof of HBO’s “Sex and the City.”
“We want to emphasize the importance of leather and motorcycle clubs in the leather community,” says Larry Barat, 45, co-chair of the weekend party and the current vice president of the Centaur Motorcycle club, which stages the event. “That notion of brotherhood is linked very strongly to the idea of how leather clubs work together.”
The event’s website and postcard image reflects the community’s thematic ideals. A group of men in leather vests, emblazoned with the various leather clubs’ images, are being lassoed together by a cowhide-clad stud. The picture is a representation of the D.C. area’s leather organizations’ ability to come together despite their different identities.
“We have lots of labels within the leather community, but we seem to all get along fairly well,” says Mike Dembski, the event’s publicity chair.
While the title of the weekend might seem to exclude women, Schelli Dittman, manager of the D.C. Eagle, says that “brotherhood” transcends gender.
“I’m a member of the [local leather club] Highwaymen, which is a brotherhood fraternity, but we have women members,” Dittman says. “We use ‘brotherhood’ meaning a bond.”
SOME MAY THINK the party line about the weekend’s call for unity and a gathering of the tribes might be a hollow cover for a weekend of Bacchanalian pleasures. While bondage seems to be a fairly common practice in the leather community, many people view the experience as deeply spiritual, and there are other leather devotees who aren’t interested at all.
“[Bondage] ranges from people who just like to wear leather and are quite vanilla in bed to serious SM [sado-masochism] players,” says Barat. “With some people, this is very spiritual for them. There are others that it’s more about power exchange.”
Bondage can take many forms, from light to heavy, with or without adding the S/M components to it.
“Bondage is immobilizing another person physically,” says Justin Sox, Colonel of D.C.’s Men of Discipline, a BDSM leather alternative club. The group dubs its leader a “colonel” even though its members — who presumably ask and tell — don’t necessarily have any military affiliation.
Bondage includes tying someone up with plain old rope and “mummification,” wrapping someone in cloth, or that handy kitchen staple, Saran Wrap. Sox has become a fan of Japanese rope bondage.
“It’s a very specific manner of tying a rope on another person,” says Sox. “[It has] sensuality as well as physical beauty.”
Sox came to the practice of BDSM through a personal study in Buddhism and its central teachings about life and the inherent nature of suffering. In a way, the Buddhist mindset of simply noticing the sensations and mental patterns of anger, misery and love became synonymous with Sox’s understanding of this particular sexual practice.
“It’s sensation, but it’s not painful,” he says. “What is the physical suffering and mental suffering in our daily lives? How can we reconcile all those things with the gay and leather community? The questions are somewhat intertwined.”
THE SEDUCTIVE INTOXICATION of control is also part of bondage’s erotic appeal.
“A lot of it has to do with the idea of being able to trust someone else enough to make yourself vulnerable,” says Barat. “At the same time, for the person who’s doing the tying, [he or she] has the responsibility of taking someone as far as they can go — but no further.”
Dittman, who’s 37 and identifies as queer, jokes about the differences in intensity between the gay male and lesbian bondage scenes.
“We scare the shit out of the men,” she laughs. “We play pretty hard and rough.” Among the leather lesbians, Dittman says, they joke that the gay man’s version of SM is “standing and modeling.”
Leather Cocktails takes place on the Saturday night of the weekend and features attendees dressed in their formal leather finest. (Photo by Mike Dempski)
WHILE THE SUBGROUPS of women, bears, BDSM folks and others tend to get along, the leather community as a whole can have a tenuous relationship with other gays. The celebratory nature of the leather culture’s sensuality and overt veneration of masculinity doesn’t always gel with the projected image of gay Tupperware-toting friends and dog-walking neighbors.
Leather-loving gays and lesbians cite their contributions to civil rights and to fighting the AIDS epidemic as proof of their having an equal place at the gay table.
“The leather community is in some ways a foundation of the gay and lesbian community,” says Barat. “If you look back 20 years ago to the time of Stonewall and the early AIDS epidemic, the leather community was one of the parts of the gay and lesbian community that actually stepped up and took leadership.”
Barat acknowledges that the weekend’s sexual experiences don’t get swept under the rug, but people are cognizant of the nature of their personal practices. He says the weekend is more about creating a space for people to socialize together. Afterwards they can return to their hotel rooms, play spaces or dungeons for whatever they like.
“We don’t advertise our big parties as sex parties,” Sox says. “There might be some legal aspect to advertising a sex party. There seems to be some reticence in the leather community to tie together BDSM and sex as in any way synonymous.”
Dempski is quick to point out, however, that the sexual aspects of the leather scene are only part and parcel of the larger package.
“[The sex] does define us just like being gay and having sex with men defines yourself,” says Dempski. “By the same token, if you walk around the Eagle on a Friday night, you’d be amazed about how people are not talking about sex, but about decorating their homes or going for a drive somewhere to the beach.”
MAIN FEATURE | www.houstonvoice.com
Bonding time
Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend explores the power of brotherly bondage
By GREG MARZULLO
Jan. 13, 2006
NOW AND THEN a lot of people get tied up. No, not at work or in traffic. People are tied to bed posts, each other or, sometimes, anything that’s nailed down. People get handcuffed, knotted up with ties and placed in restraints. For those leather fans out there, getting bound takes on all kinds of meanings and involves all sorts of props.
This year’s theme for the Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend, “Bound in Brotherhood,” encompasses meanings from kinky to spiritual. From Friday, Jan. 13, through Sunday, Jan. 15, when the country’s second largest leather convention takes over Washington, D.C., leather aficionados, admirers and the curious can delve into the practice of bondage.
Leather folk will descend on the Washington Plaza hotel for the weekend, transforming the lobby into a de facto gay bar. The famed Mr. Mid-Atlantic Leather competition, the highlight of the weekend, takes place Sunday afternoon.
Frank Nowicki, 49, won the title in 1993, and he’s been emceeing the event for more than 10 years. According to this leather veteran, this year’s theme is about much more than tying up your significant other.
“It’s about camaraderie, the friendships, the different components of the leather community,” he says. “[The weekend] is to touch base with each other and reaffirm our feelings about leather.”
Each year’s topic is chosen by an organizing committee, and themes have ranged from men in uniform to a leather spoof of HBO’s “Sex and the City.”
“We want to emphasize the importance of leather and motorcycle clubs in the leather community,” says Larry Barat, 45, co-chair of the weekend party and the current vice president of the Centaur Motorcycle club, which stages the event. “That notion of brotherhood is linked very strongly to the idea of how leather clubs work together.”
The event’s website and postcard image reflects the community’s thematic ideals. A group of men in leather vests, emblazoned with the various leather clubs’ images, are being lassoed together by a cowhide-clad stud. The picture is a representation of the D.C. area’s leather organizations’ ability to come together despite their different identities.
“We have lots of labels within the leather community, but we seem to all get along fairly well,” says Mike Dembski, the event’s publicity chair.
While the title of the weekend might seem to exclude women, Schelli Dittman, manager of the D.C. Eagle, says that “brotherhood” transcends gender.
“I’m a member of the [local leather club] Highwaymen, which is a brotherhood fraternity, but we have women members,” Dittman says. “We use ‘brotherhood’ meaning a bond.”
SOME MAY THINK the party line about the weekend’s call for unity and a gathering of the tribes might be a hollow cover for a weekend of Bacchanalian pleasures. While bondage seems to be a fairly common practice in the leather community, many people view the experience as deeply spiritual, and there are other leather devotees who aren’t interested at all.
“[Bondage] ranges from people who just like to wear leather and are quite vanilla in bed to serious SM [sado-masochism] players,” says Barat. “With some people, this is very spiritual for them. There are others that it’s more about power exchange.”
Bondage can take many forms, from light to heavy, with or without adding the S/M components to it.
“Bondage is immobilizing another person physically,” says Justin Sox, Colonel of D.C.’s Men of Discipline, a BDSM leather alternative club. The group dubs its leader a “colonel” even though its members — who presumably ask and tell — don’t necessarily have any military affiliation.
Bondage includes tying someone up with plain old rope and “mummification,” wrapping someone in cloth, or that handy kitchen staple, Saran Wrap. Sox has become a fan of Japanese rope bondage.
“It’s a very specific manner of tying a rope on another person,” says Sox. “[It has] sensuality as well as physical beauty.”
Sox came to the practice of BDSM through a personal study in Buddhism and its central teachings about life and the inherent nature of suffering. In a way, the Buddhist mindset of simply noticing the sensations and mental patterns of anger, misery and love became synonymous with Sox’s understanding of this particular sexual practice.
“It’s sensation, but it’s not painful,” he says. “What is the physical suffering and mental suffering in our daily lives? How can we reconcile all those things with the gay and leather community? The questions are somewhat intertwined.”
THE SEDUCTIVE INTOXICATION of control is also part of bondage’s erotic appeal.
“A lot of it has to do with the idea of being able to trust someone else enough to make yourself vulnerable,” says Barat. “At the same time, for the person who’s doing the tying, [he or she] has the responsibility of taking someone as far as they can go — but no further.”
Dittman, who’s 37 and identifies as queer, jokes about the differences in intensity between the gay male and lesbian bondage scenes.
“We scare the shit out of the men,” she laughs. “We play pretty hard and rough.” Among the leather lesbians, Dittman says, they joke that the gay man’s version of SM is “standing and modeling.”
Leather Cocktails takes place on the Saturday night of the weekend and features attendees dressed in their formal leather finest. (Photo by Mike Dempski)
WHILE THE SUBGROUPS of women, bears, BDSM folks and others tend to get along, the leather community as a whole can have a tenuous relationship with other gays. The celebratory nature of the leather culture’s sensuality and overt veneration of masculinity doesn’t always gel with the projected image of gay Tupperware-toting friends and dog-walking neighbors.
Leather-loving gays and lesbians cite their contributions to civil rights and to fighting the AIDS epidemic as proof of their having an equal place at the gay table.
“The leather community is in some ways a foundation of the gay and lesbian community,” says Barat. “If you look back 20 years ago to the time of Stonewall and the early AIDS epidemic, the leather community was one of the parts of the gay and lesbian community that actually stepped up and took leadership.”
Barat acknowledges that the weekend’s sexual experiences don’t get swept under the rug, but people are cognizant of the nature of their personal practices. He says the weekend is more about creating a space for people to socialize together. Afterwards they can return to their hotel rooms, play spaces or dungeons for whatever they like.
“We don’t advertise our big parties as sex parties,” Sox says. “There might be some legal aspect to advertising a sex party. There seems to be some reticence in the leather community to tie together BDSM and sex as in any way synonymous.”
Dempski is quick to point out, however, that the sexual aspects of the leather scene are only part and parcel of the larger package.
“[The sex] does define us just like being gay and having sex with men defines yourself,” says Dempski. “By the same token, if you walk around the Eagle on a Friday night, you’d be amazed about how people are not talking about sex, but about decorating their homes or going for a drive somewhere to the beach.”
@}-}rebecca----
not enough discipline ...
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2 shows take on difficult themes as gallery year starts with a bang
2 shows take on difficult themes as gallery year starts with a bang
January 2006
Dan Tranberg
Special to The Plain Dealer
As far as the visual arts are concerned, the new year starts with a bang this weekend at area galleries. Two shows in particular, opening today and Saturday, deal with hard-hitting themes such as bondage and domination, political corruption and war. Both are complemented by panel discussions, extending conversations sparked by the work.
A group exhibition titled "trans_fix" opens with a reception from 6 to 9 p.m. today at the Fawick Art Gallery at Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea. Curated by Alicia Ross, who graduated from Baldwin-Wallace in 2003, the show features works by 18 current graduate students in the "Imaging Arts" program at the Rochester Institute of Technology in upstate New York.
Ross, who grew up in Northeast Ohio and is currently working on her master of fine arts degree, explains that Imaging Arts evolved from what was originally a traditional photography program. The name change reflects recent transformations in the way many artists work with photography, often using it as one step in a more elaborate process that employs other media.
For instance, Ross starts with digital photographic images that she pulls from the Internet. Interested in the seemingly opposing roles of nurturer and object of sexual desire, she addresses the topic of bondage and domination, ultimately producing quilts covered with imagery based on photos.
Ross said that other artists in the show deal with less racy subjects than she does. The primary themes running through the exhibition include "the gaze, be it male or female, and the notion of a sense of self," she said.
A panel discussion from 5 to 6 p.m. will precede the reception. It's set to address topics ranging from the relationship between traditional and digital photographic work to how graduate school affects an artist's creative output.
The show is up through Friday, Feb. 10. The gallery is located in the Kleist Center for Art and Drama, 95 E. Bagley Road in Berea. Call 440-826-2152 or go to www.bw.edu/academics/art/gallery.
Opening Saturday with a reception from 7 to 10 p.m. at the B.K. Smith Gallery at Lake Erie College is the group show "War: What Is It Good For?" Featuring local, regional and several nationally prominent artists working in a variety of media, the exhibition will address the war in Iraq as well as broader topics of political power and corruption.
Among the local artists included are Robert Banks, Kristen Cliffel, Peggy Kwong-Gordon, Michelle Murphy, Abe Olvido and Daiv Whaley.
The exhibition is up through Saturday, March 18. B.K. Smith Gallery is on the east side of the Lake Erie College campus, on Gillett Street in Painesville. Call 440-375-7461.
In addition to "War," mark your calendars for a panel discussion titled "Challenging War, Defying Power: A Forum on Conflict, Peace and Activism," which will take place on Saturday, Feb. 25, at Spaces gallery, 2220 Superior Viaduct, Cleveland.
Tranberg is an artist and writer living in Cleveland. Art Matters is a column that runs weekly in Friday covering the area art scene. To be considered for publication, items about shows or openings must be received three weeks in advance. Mail to Plain Dealer Art Critic, 1801 Superior Ave., Cleveland, OH 44114. Fax to 216-999-6269.
To reach Dan Tranberg:
trandan@core.com
2 shows take on difficult themes as gallery year starts with a bang
January 2006
Dan Tranberg
Special to The Plain Dealer
As far as the visual arts are concerned, the new year starts with a bang this weekend at area galleries. Two shows in particular, opening today and Saturday, deal with hard-hitting themes such as bondage and domination, political corruption and war. Both are complemented by panel discussions, extending conversations sparked by the work.
A group exhibition titled "trans_fix" opens with a reception from 6 to 9 p.m. today at the Fawick Art Gallery at Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea. Curated by Alicia Ross, who graduated from Baldwin-Wallace in 2003, the show features works by 18 current graduate students in the "Imaging Arts" program at the Rochester Institute of Technology in upstate New York.
Ross, who grew up in Northeast Ohio and is currently working on her master of fine arts degree, explains that Imaging Arts evolved from what was originally a traditional photography program. The name change reflects recent transformations in the way many artists work with photography, often using it as one step in a more elaborate process that employs other media.
For instance, Ross starts with digital photographic images that she pulls from the Internet. Interested in the seemingly opposing roles of nurturer and object of sexual desire, she addresses the topic of bondage and domination, ultimately producing quilts covered with imagery based on photos.
Ross said that other artists in the show deal with less racy subjects than she does. The primary themes running through the exhibition include "the gaze, be it male or female, and the notion of a sense of self," she said.
A panel discussion from 5 to 6 p.m. will precede the reception. It's set to address topics ranging from the relationship between traditional and digital photographic work to how graduate school affects an artist's creative output.
The show is up through Friday, Feb. 10. The gallery is located in the Kleist Center for Art and Drama, 95 E. Bagley Road in Berea. Call 440-826-2152 or go to www.bw.edu/academics/art/gallery.
Opening Saturday with a reception from 7 to 10 p.m. at the B.K. Smith Gallery at Lake Erie College is the group show "War: What Is It Good For?" Featuring local, regional and several nationally prominent artists working in a variety of media, the exhibition will address the war in Iraq as well as broader topics of political power and corruption.
Among the local artists included are Robert Banks, Kristen Cliffel, Peggy Kwong-Gordon, Michelle Murphy, Abe Olvido and Daiv Whaley.
The exhibition is up through Saturday, March 18. B.K. Smith Gallery is on the east side of the Lake Erie College campus, on Gillett Street in Painesville. Call 440-375-7461.
In addition to "War," mark your calendars for a panel discussion titled "Challenging War, Defying Power: A Forum on Conflict, Peace and Activism," which will take place on Saturday, Feb. 25, at Spaces gallery, 2220 Superior Viaduct, Cleveland.
Tranberg is an artist and writer living in Cleveland. Art Matters is a column that runs weekly in Friday covering the area art scene. To be considered for publication, items about shows or openings must be received three weeks in advance. Mail to Plain Dealer Art Critic, 1801 Superior Ave., Cleveland, OH 44114. Fax to 216-999-6269.
To reach Dan Tranberg:
trandan@core.com
@}-}rebecca----
not enough discipline ...
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- Oct 31, 2005
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Suspect denies keeping 4 women in dog collars, bondage
Suspect denies keeping 4 women in dog collars, bondage
The Asahi Shimbun
Japan
A man accused of keeping four women captive by yoking them in dog collars, binding them with chains and beating them senseless denied the allegations Monday at the Tokyo District Court. He said the women had been free to leave whenever they wanted.
"I was with the women, but I did not confine them illegally," said Yasuyoshi Ishijima, 25, during the first hearing of his trial. "They were in a situation where they could leave the hotels or apartments anytime."
The suspect, who is unemployed, was arrested earlier last year on suspicion of confining and assaulting the women between 2003 and 2004 in hotels or in his apartments.
Ishijima gave the family name Kobayashi when he was arrested.
The women say they have post-traumatic stress disorder due to the confinements.
According to the indictment, Ishijima is accused of confining a 17-year-old girl in hotels in the cities of Goshogawara and Aomori in Aomori Prefecture for four days in December 2003.
It also says he held an 18-year-old girl from Hyogo Prefecture captive for three months, starting in March 2004, in his apartment in Tokyo's Adachi Ward.
The indictment also says that from August through December 2004, the suspect kept a 22-year-old woman captive in an apartment in Adachi Ward and forced her to cut her own arms with a knife.
Finally, the indictment says Ishijima confined a 23-year-old woman last year from November to December in his apartment in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward.
"I never attempted to confine the women," Ishijima said. "I never asked them to hotels. They came at their own volition."
Ishijima also denied charges that he hit the women in the face or abdomen or that he threatened them by saying, "There is a guard outside."
The suspect said in court: "I never did that," and "I never said that."
In their opening statement, prosecutors said the suspect met his victims through Internet chat sites or costume party events.
According to prosecutors, Ishijima forced the victims to call him, "Goshujin-sama" (master) and that he would beat them in the name of "discipline" until they lost consciousness.
Prosecutors said Ishijima used dog collars and chains to constrain the victims, who were only allowed to wear their underclothes indoors.
When the suspect took the victims shopping, prosecutors say, he made them hold his hand and cuddle up to him.
The cases came to light after the girl from Hyogo Prefecture escaped in June 2004 and sought help in a Catholic church in Kisarazu, Chiba Prefecture.
The girl said she had met Ishijima through an Internet chat site. She says Ishijima lured her to a hotel in Tokyo and started confining her at his apartment in early March. After the girl was helped at the church, she filed a report on the incident with police.
Prosecutors say Ishijima was on probation from a previous conviction when the four confinements occurred. In August 2003, the Sapporo District Court had given Ishijima a three-year prison term, suspended for five years, for assaulting women under similar circumstances.
Suspect denies keeping 4 women in dog collars, bondage
The Asahi Shimbun
Japan
A man accused of keeping four women captive by yoking them in dog collars, binding them with chains and beating them senseless denied the allegations Monday at the Tokyo District Court. He said the women had been free to leave whenever they wanted.
"I was with the women, but I did not confine them illegally," said Yasuyoshi Ishijima, 25, during the first hearing of his trial. "They were in a situation where they could leave the hotels or apartments anytime."
The suspect, who is unemployed, was arrested earlier last year on suspicion of confining and assaulting the women between 2003 and 2004 in hotels or in his apartments.
Ishijima gave the family name Kobayashi when he was arrested.
The women say they have post-traumatic stress disorder due to the confinements.
According to the indictment, Ishijima is accused of confining a 17-year-old girl in hotels in the cities of Goshogawara and Aomori in Aomori Prefecture for four days in December 2003.
It also says he held an 18-year-old girl from Hyogo Prefecture captive for three months, starting in March 2004, in his apartment in Tokyo's Adachi Ward.
The indictment also says that from August through December 2004, the suspect kept a 22-year-old woman captive in an apartment in Adachi Ward and forced her to cut her own arms with a knife.
Finally, the indictment says Ishijima confined a 23-year-old woman last year from November to December in his apartment in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward.
"I never attempted to confine the women," Ishijima said. "I never asked them to hotels. They came at their own volition."
Ishijima also denied charges that he hit the women in the face or abdomen or that he threatened them by saying, "There is a guard outside."
The suspect said in court: "I never did that," and "I never said that."
In their opening statement, prosecutors said the suspect met his victims through Internet chat sites or costume party events.
According to prosecutors, Ishijima forced the victims to call him, "Goshujin-sama" (master) and that he would beat them in the name of "discipline" until they lost consciousness.
Prosecutors said Ishijima used dog collars and chains to constrain the victims, who were only allowed to wear their underclothes indoors.
When the suspect took the victims shopping, prosecutors say, he made them hold his hand and cuddle up to him.
The cases came to light after the girl from Hyogo Prefecture escaped in June 2004 and sought help in a Catholic church in Kisarazu, Chiba Prefecture.
The girl said she had met Ishijima through an Internet chat site. She says Ishijima lured her to a hotel in Tokyo and started confining her at his apartment in early March. After the girl was helped at the church, she filed a report on the incident with police.
Prosecutors say Ishijima was on probation from a previous conviction when the four confinements occurred. In August 2003, the Sapporo District Court had given Ishijima a three-year prison term, suspended for five years, for assaulting women under similar circumstances.
@}-}rebecca----
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Porn Fiesta
Porn Fiesta
By Remya Mohan
January, 2006
Indian Woman Online
The rampant proliferation of pornography has a definite role to play in the numerous cases of internet and camera-phone sex-scandals unearthed periodically across India. The convergence of technology has made it easy to distribute pornography while enabling peddlers and users to maintain their privacy and dodge the law.
There is an undeniable link between media-images consumed and human cognitive make-up. Just as bloodshed and violence in movies and videogames have a positive correlation with anti-social behavior, pornography has subliminal implications and promotes a brand of sex devoid of respect and intimacy which must permeate real life.
Curiosity among teenagers who have unlimited access to pornography can escalate in to dependency which determines the personality of the subsequent adult individual. Boys who are constantly exposed to pornography glean their ideas of a woman’s sexual behaviour from these images and his mind becomes a cul-de-sac picturing girls as sluts with voracious sexual appetites and abnormally proportioned bodies. Girls too feel that such behaviour validates their sex-appeal, pushing them in to experimentation without analyzing the consequences. This is compounded by a new set of pseudo-liberal values endorsing casual sex and unrealistic libidinal standards. There are cases of people forcing their partners to undergo plastic surgery to attain X-rated norms.
Defenders claim that pornography is a harmless fantasy and a cathartic safety-valve which releases sexual tension, thus preventing sexual crime. The truth is that there is no positive correlation between higher pornography use and reduction in sex-crimes anywhere in the world. On the contrary, it has led to a decadent popular culture where sex is completely delinked from relationships and is linked with child abuse, violence against women and breakdown of families.
Women who are part of the industry are not ‘fantasy’ phantoms, but exist in ‘real’ flesh and blood. Pornography is a thankless short-term career, where inspite of being desired, a porn-actress does not receive respect or appreciation, only ignominy. Girls must not be lured by a misplaced sense of glamour or riches and end up dealing with pregnancy, disease, rape, drugs, emotional issues and isolation.
Many individuals from countries freely permitting pornography admit that it was their primary source of sex education. Just like alcohol and drugs, it is used by men as a refuge from problems like loneliness, broken homes or low self-esteem. Governments which allowed uninhibited pornography in the name of freedom and profits are now spending money on researching its harmful impact on society and are setting up help-lines and de-addiction centres for addicts and their families. Many sex offenders have admitted to being motivated by pornography to commit heinous crimes.
In India, the line between subtle erotica and pornography in mainstream media is becoming hazier by the day. Music videos and item numbers are an understated version of pornography. It is time that the government introduces a certification system for the entertainment industry so that viewers can judiciously choose what they consume.
These trends are a ticking time bomb which can explode in to a social menace. The short-term solution is astute regulation and legally channelising distribution sources. A complete ban will spawn a black market and lack of regulation can turn society in to a virtual sexual phantasmagoria. Dehumanizing material which portrays rape, abuse or sadomasochism must be banned. The legal environment must be modified on a continual basis to deal with cyber-crimes.
The long term solution lies in phased sex-education at school wherein non-oppressive, mutual and relationship-based sexuality is discussed. Publishers and schools must introduce interesting reading material which can help adolescents develop the maturity to evaluate and accept their own sexuality in a healthy manner.
Porn Fiesta
By Remya Mohan
January, 2006
Indian Woman Online
The rampant proliferation of pornography has a definite role to play in the numerous cases of internet and camera-phone sex-scandals unearthed periodically across India. The convergence of technology has made it easy to distribute pornography while enabling peddlers and users to maintain their privacy and dodge the law.
There is an undeniable link between media-images consumed and human cognitive make-up. Just as bloodshed and violence in movies and videogames have a positive correlation with anti-social behavior, pornography has subliminal implications and promotes a brand of sex devoid of respect and intimacy which must permeate real life.
Curiosity among teenagers who have unlimited access to pornography can escalate in to dependency which determines the personality of the subsequent adult individual. Boys who are constantly exposed to pornography glean their ideas of a woman’s sexual behaviour from these images and his mind becomes a cul-de-sac picturing girls as sluts with voracious sexual appetites and abnormally proportioned bodies. Girls too feel that such behaviour validates their sex-appeal, pushing them in to experimentation without analyzing the consequences. This is compounded by a new set of pseudo-liberal values endorsing casual sex and unrealistic libidinal standards. There are cases of people forcing their partners to undergo plastic surgery to attain X-rated norms.
Defenders claim that pornography is a harmless fantasy and a cathartic safety-valve which releases sexual tension, thus preventing sexual crime. The truth is that there is no positive correlation between higher pornography use and reduction in sex-crimes anywhere in the world. On the contrary, it has led to a decadent popular culture where sex is completely delinked from relationships and is linked with child abuse, violence against women and breakdown of families.
Women who are part of the industry are not ‘fantasy’ phantoms, but exist in ‘real’ flesh and blood. Pornography is a thankless short-term career, where inspite of being desired, a porn-actress does not receive respect or appreciation, only ignominy. Girls must not be lured by a misplaced sense of glamour or riches and end up dealing with pregnancy, disease, rape, drugs, emotional issues and isolation.
Many individuals from countries freely permitting pornography admit that it was their primary source of sex education. Just like alcohol and drugs, it is used by men as a refuge from problems like loneliness, broken homes or low self-esteem. Governments which allowed uninhibited pornography in the name of freedom and profits are now spending money on researching its harmful impact on society and are setting up help-lines and de-addiction centres for addicts and their families. Many sex offenders have admitted to being motivated by pornography to commit heinous crimes.
In India, the line between subtle erotica and pornography in mainstream media is becoming hazier by the day. Music videos and item numbers are an understated version of pornography. It is time that the government introduces a certification system for the entertainment industry so that viewers can judiciously choose what they consume.
These trends are a ticking time bomb which can explode in to a social menace. The short-term solution is astute regulation and legally channelising distribution sources. A complete ban will spawn a black market and lack of regulation can turn society in to a virtual sexual phantasmagoria. Dehumanizing material which portrays rape, abuse or sadomasochism must be banned. The legal environment must be modified on a continual basis to deal with cyber-crimes.
The long term solution lies in phased sex-education at school wherein non-oppressive, mutual and relationship-based sexuality is discussed. Publishers and schools must introduce interesting reading material which can help adolescents develop the maturity to evaluate and accept their own sexuality in a healthy manner.
@}-}rebecca----
not enough discipline ...
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2005
- Posts
- 13,063
Pole Dancing Is the Hot Class at UBC
Pole Dancing Is the Hot Class at UBC
Published: 2006
By Jessalynn Keller
TheTyee.ca
Or is that 'pole fitness'?
Eight tall brass poles dot the activities room on the second floor of the Student Union Building on the University of British Columbia campus. It's not a standard university classroom. But this isn't a standard university class. This is where students take Pole Dancing 101 - where spinning, dancing and hip swaying are the main curriculum.
Sure, the pole dancing fitness craze has been raging in North American cities for several years now. In Vancouver, enthusiasts can take classes at local gyms, specialized "studios" like Aradia Fitness, or at nightclubs like Skybar. But UBC is the first and only North American university to offer students an opportunity to learn the art of the pole. The fitness trend, which is promoted as "a new, fun way to get in shape and enjoy a new dancing experience," has drawn an equally large share of fans and critics.
The classes are offered through the UBC student union's minischool program, where students pay a small fee to take a six-week, non-credit extracurricular course. The pole dance program edged out other well-established minischool classes such as yoga, guitar and photography to be the most sought after minischool class on campus.
"The pole dance classes are the most popular program we have," confirms Letlotlo Coco Lefoka, minischool coordinator. "Last term, both of the beginner classes filled up within two or three days." The classes are offered again this term, starting in a few weeks, and are expected to be just as popular.
Degrading?
But young, educated women's interests in pole dancing don't come without controversy. Strippers began using the pole as an exotic dance prop in strip clubs during the 1970s. Because of this connotation, many people view pole dancing as a form of entertainment that is degrading to women. Offering pole dance classes on the campus of a large, prestigious Canadian university raises questions about how a new, post-feminist generation of women is seeking empowerment and dealing with shifting ideas about sexuality.
But is it even about sexuality?
"I call it pole fitness now, instead of pole dance," explains Tammy Morris. Morris, a certified fitness instructor, is teaching the pole dance classes at UBC and also operates her own pole dance studio in Vancouver. A former exotic dancer with such credentials as Miss Nude Entertainer of the Year and Miss Nude BC, Morris teaches pole dance using her ten years of experience in the exotic dance industry.
Morris is quick to differentiate between what strippers do and the pole dancing her students practice. "I really want to take it away from the stripper connotation." Her goal, she says, is to help women get in shape, build confidence and have fun.
But Morris also recognizes the inherent sensual aspect of pole dance, even when used for fitness. She enthusiastically describes a young woman who came to her first class shy and self-conscious, but left the last class proud, and full of self-esteem.
"The classes helped build her confidence and self-esteem: not because of knowing that she could swing around a pole or move sexy, but just by becoming in touch with herself and her sensuality as a woman, and realizing that she is beautiful," Morris says.
'Lap dance techniques'
However, on the minischool webpage the "exotic pole dance classes" promise to help students "learn sultry lap dance techniques to impress that certain someone."
So, are these classes really for women, or are they still all about pleasing men?
Dr. Becki Ross, a sociology professor at UBC, has been studying the history of stripping and burlesque in Vancouver for several years.. She says that the new pole dance trend collides and conflicts with mainstream messages about sexuality in general and women's sexuality, in particular.
Ross suggests that pole dancing classes have the potential to expand understandings of female sexuality beyond the "good girl/ bad girl" images that often saturate the media. When a woman who is assumed to be a "good girl" goes to a pole dancing class or sets up a brass pole up in her living room, she is suggesting that her sexuality need not be limited to a simple "good girl/bad girl" understanding. She is challenging norms and subverting mainstream notions of how a woman should act.
'Dream girl'
However, Ross cautions that pole dancing can also reproduce the divides that the "good girl/ bead girl" images are built upon if women do not understand the history of pole dance and continue to stigmatize strippers.
Ross points out the irony in this. "I've seen these pole dancing classes as being advertised to… a certain kind of clientele - an upper-class strata of women - who would usually have nothing positive to say, for the most part, about professional [exotic] dancers who use the pole," Ross says.
She mentions that all of this is happening during a time of increased debate about sexuality and increased options for women's expression of it.
"It is a massive upheaval, and I think that there is very little agreement in general about sexuality anymore," Ross laments. She cites the popularity of S&M or "sadomasochism" seminars, and sex toy parties as indicators of evolving views about sexuality.
Morris also sees changing views about sexuality in society through her pole dance classes. She says that women are opening up and accepting their sexuality more than past generations.
"I think that all along women have been very curious about strippers," Morris comments. She reports that women of all different ages have told her that they have fantasized about being a stripper.
"What woman doesn't want to be the dream girl - the object of the men's fantasy? What woman wouldn't want to play that role?" Morris asks.
Upper body strength
But shouldn't true sexual empowerment be about women being sexual subjects instead of sexual objects?
That is the crux of the argument both for and against the popularity of pole dance classes - are women presenting themselves as sexual subjects or sexual objects when participating in the classes?
In order for pole dancing classes to really be a liberating form of expression, Ross explains that the reasons why women are taking the classes must extend beyond merely wanting to please one's boyfriend.
"For me, if all these women are doing it only to arouse men, then it's not that interesting," Ross explains.
At UBC, the second semester of school has begun and pole dance students are eager to reflect on what they learned in the first term pole dance classes. Most are pleased about their experience.
"It is a great way to develop upper body strength… I feel like I've only touched the surface [of pole dance] and want to learn more," says Stella Lee, a 20-year-old UBC student who tried pole dancing for the first time last semester after hearing about the UBC classes from her sister.
In an email interview, Lee says that the classes were a lot of fun and made her realize that there is more to pole dancing than just looking pretty or sexy on the pole.
Pam Anderson's hobby
Lee says that her family and friends were shocked when they found out she was taking pole dance classes because she is shy and academic. She not only challenged others' ideas about herself and pole dance as an activity, but she challenged her own ideas as well.
"Before taking the classes, I thought pole dancing focused on nudity and would encourage that as female sexuality," Lee comments, "but I ended up becoming more confident in myself and learned that confidence is what's sexy."
Lee thinks that it is positive for universities to offer pole dance classes because it shows an openness and acceptance of new and different ideas.
Morris echoes this idea and says that offering the classes at a prestigious university is a "huge" step in the right direction for the pole dance fitness industry. She has received no complaints about offering the classes at UBC and says that several American schools interested in offering the classes in the future have recently contacted her.
Morris, nonetheless, recognizes the continuing concern that universities have in offering their students the opportunity to take up a hobby favored by Pamela Anderson.
"Students are begging for it, but I think a lot of universities are hesitant," Morris grins, "What university wants to have stripper classes?"
But many students say pole dancing is right at home within the sacred halls of progressive learning. They say it is a trend that sparks debate: and isn't that what a university education is all about?
Jessalynn Keller is a Vancouver writer.
Pole Dancing Is the Hot Class at UBC
Published: 2006
By Jessalynn Keller
TheTyee.ca
Or is that 'pole fitness'?
Eight tall brass poles dot the activities room on the second floor of the Student Union Building on the University of British Columbia campus. It's not a standard university classroom. But this isn't a standard university class. This is where students take Pole Dancing 101 - where spinning, dancing and hip swaying are the main curriculum.
Sure, the pole dancing fitness craze has been raging in North American cities for several years now. In Vancouver, enthusiasts can take classes at local gyms, specialized "studios" like Aradia Fitness, or at nightclubs like Skybar. But UBC is the first and only North American university to offer students an opportunity to learn the art of the pole. The fitness trend, which is promoted as "a new, fun way to get in shape and enjoy a new dancing experience," has drawn an equally large share of fans and critics.
The classes are offered through the UBC student union's minischool program, where students pay a small fee to take a six-week, non-credit extracurricular course. The pole dance program edged out other well-established minischool classes such as yoga, guitar and photography to be the most sought after minischool class on campus.
"The pole dance classes are the most popular program we have," confirms Letlotlo Coco Lefoka, minischool coordinator. "Last term, both of the beginner classes filled up within two or three days." The classes are offered again this term, starting in a few weeks, and are expected to be just as popular.
Degrading?
But young, educated women's interests in pole dancing don't come without controversy. Strippers began using the pole as an exotic dance prop in strip clubs during the 1970s. Because of this connotation, many people view pole dancing as a form of entertainment that is degrading to women. Offering pole dance classes on the campus of a large, prestigious Canadian university raises questions about how a new, post-feminist generation of women is seeking empowerment and dealing with shifting ideas about sexuality.
But is it even about sexuality?
"I call it pole fitness now, instead of pole dance," explains Tammy Morris. Morris, a certified fitness instructor, is teaching the pole dance classes at UBC and also operates her own pole dance studio in Vancouver. A former exotic dancer with such credentials as Miss Nude Entertainer of the Year and Miss Nude BC, Morris teaches pole dance using her ten years of experience in the exotic dance industry.
Morris is quick to differentiate between what strippers do and the pole dancing her students practice. "I really want to take it away from the stripper connotation." Her goal, she says, is to help women get in shape, build confidence and have fun.
But Morris also recognizes the inherent sensual aspect of pole dance, even when used for fitness. She enthusiastically describes a young woman who came to her first class shy and self-conscious, but left the last class proud, and full of self-esteem.
"The classes helped build her confidence and self-esteem: not because of knowing that she could swing around a pole or move sexy, but just by becoming in touch with herself and her sensuality as a woman, and realizing that she is beautiful," Morris says.
'Lap dance techniques'
However, on the minischool webpage the "exotic pole dance classes" promise to help students "learn sultry lap dance techniques to impress that certain someone."
So, are these classes really for women, or are they still all about pleasing men?
Dr. Becki Ross, a sociology professor at UBC, has been studying the history of stripping and burlesque in Vancouver for several years.. She says that the new pole dance trend collides and conflicts with mainstream messages about sexuality in general and women's sexuality, in particular.
Ross suggests that pole dancing classes have the potential to expand understandings of female sexuality beyond the "good girl/ bad girl" images that often saturate the media. When a woman who is assumed to be a "good girl" goes to a pole dancing class or sets up a brass pole up in her living room, she is suggesting that her sexuality need not be limited to a simple "good girl/bad girl" understanding. She is challenging norms and subverting mainstream notions of how a woman should act.
'Dream girl'
However, Ross cautions that pole dancing can also reproduce the divides that the "good girl/ bead girl" images are built upon if women do not understand the history of pole dance and continue to stigmatize strippers.
Ross points out the irony in this. "I've seen these pole dancing classes as being advertised to… a certain kind of clientele - an upper-class strata of women - who would usually have nothing positive to say, for the most part, about professional [exotic] dancers who use the pole," Ross says.
She mentions that all of this is happening during a time of increased debate about sexuality and increased options for women's expression of it.
"It is a massive upheaval, and I think that there is very little agreement in general about sexuality anymore," Ross laments. She cites the popularity of S&M or "sadomasochism" seminars, and sex toy parties as indicators of evolving views about sexuality.
Morris also sees changing views about sexuality in society through her pole dance classes. She says that women are opening up and accepting their sexuality more than past generations.
"I think that all along women have been very curious about strippers," Morris comments. She reports that women of all different ages have told her that they have fantasized about being a stripper.
"What woman doesn't want to be the dream girl - the object of the men's fantasy? What woman wouldn't want to play that role?" Morris asks.
Upper body strength
But shouldn't true sexual empowerment be about women being sexual subjects instead of sexual objects?
That is the crux of the argument both for and against the popularity of pole dance classes - are women presenting themselves as sexual subjects or sexual objects when participating in the classes?
In order for pole dancing classes to really be a liberating form of expression, Ross explains that the reasons why women are taking the classes must extend beyond merely wanting to please one's boyfriend.
"For me, if all these women are doing it only to arouse men, then it's not that interesting," Ross explains.
At UBC, the second semester of school has begun and pole dance students are eager to reflect on what they learned in the first term pole dance classes. Most are pleased about their experience.
"It is a great way to develop upper body strength… I feel like I've only touched the surface [of pole dance] and want to learn more," says Stella Lee, a 20-year-old UBC student who tried pole dancing for the first time last semester after hearing about the UBC classes from her sister.
In an email interview, Lee says that the classes were a lot of fun and made her realize that there is more to pole dancing than just looking pretty or sexy on the pole.
Pam Anderson's hobby
Lee says that her family and friends were shocked when they found out she was taking pole dance classes because she is shy and academic. She not only challenged others' ideas about herself and pole dance as an activity, but she challenged her own ideas as well.
"Before taking the classes, I thought pole dancing focused on nudity and would encourage that as female sexuality," Lee comments, "but I ended up becoming more confident in myself and learned that confidence is what's sexy."
Lee thinks that it is positive for universities to offer pole dance classes because it shows an openness and acceptance of new and different ideas.
Morris echoes this idea and says that offering the classes at a prestigious university is a "huge" step in the right direction for the pole dance fitness industry. She has received no complaints about offering the classes at UBC and says that several American schools interested in offering the classes in the future have recently contacted her.
Morris, nonetheless, recognizes the continuing concern that universities have in offering their students the opportunity to take up a hobby favored by Pamela Anderson.
"Students are begging for it, but I think a lot of universities are hesitant," Morris grins, "What university wants to have stripper classes?"
But many students say pole dancing is right at home within the sacred halls of progressive learning. They say it is a trend that sparks debate: and isn't that what a university education is all about?
Jessalynn Keller is a Vancouver writer.
@}-}rebecca----
not enough discipline ...
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2005
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Mapplethorpe Travels to a Laid-Back Cuba
Mapplethorpe Travels to a Laid-Back Cuba
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times
HAVANA, Jan. (AP) - The Cuban government has not exactly been tolerant of homosexuality. In the late 1960's, for example, gay Cubans were sent to labor camps and homosexuality was derided as an illness of the capitalist past.
Even today, transvestites are sometimes detained and threatened with prison.
But a new tolerance over the last decade has led to what many believed they would never see on the island: the work of Robert Mapplethorpe, the American photographer known for his homoerotic images.
The "Sacred and Profane" exhibition, which opened last month at a recently restored gallery in the heart of Old Havana, features 48 photographs spanning Mapplethorpe's career. It runs through Feb. 15.
"I never thought I would have this experience in Cuba, to see Mapplethorpe's work firsthand," said Ricardo Rodriguez, a 35-year-old photographer. "When people told me this exhibit was coming, I didn't believe them."
Mr. Rodriguez said his surprise stemmed from the fact that Mapplethorpe was gay, American and highly controversial even in his own country.
In 1990 the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati and its director were charged with obscenity for exhibiting Mapplethorpe's photographs. Both were acquitted, but the case prompted a national debate over using government funds for the arts. Conservative lawmakers and religious fundamentalists attacked the National Endowment for the Arts for subsidizing Mapplethorpe shows.
"It's incredible to see him here," Mr. Rodriguez said.
As for the images themselves, most agreed they were more serene than shocking.
"Pure sensuality," Farah Gomez, a 26-year-old art historian, said of the black-and-white images portraying flowers, female body parts and nude black men.
Ricardo Alarcón, president of the Cuban National Assembly and one of the country's highest-ranking officials, agreed, saying Mapplethorpe "achieves the transmission of a purely artistic message and sense."
"Frankly, this really doesn't strike me as a sexual exposition," he said in an interview. "Nudity is found in cultures dating much further back than the United States or Cuba. Classicism is full of the nude human body."
Mild hints of sadomasochism pepper the exposition, which also features images of two men kissing, the actress Susan Sarandon holding a child and a young Arnold Schwarzenegger in his bodybuilding days.
Another photograph shows the profiles of an albino man and a black man with a shaved head. The eyes of the albino are open, his gaze drifting off the photograph; the black man's eyes are closed.
Mapplethorpe's self-portraits express some sadness, showing the deterioration in his health before he died of AIDS at 42 in 1989.
The turning point in what seems to be the government's new tolerance toward homosexuality, which came with the limited economic and social liberalization of the mid-1990's, is often linked to the release of the 1994 hit film "Strawberry and Chocolate." The movie explores the friendship between a naïve young Communist and a highly educated gay Cuban who is in love with his country but at odds with his government.
Several Cuban artists have started tackling some of Mapplethorpe's themes in the last decade, including René Peña and Eduardo Hernández Santos.
The Mapplethorpe exhibition, which does not include his roughest images, embraces the photographer's internal contradictions, said Philip Larratt-Smith, a New York-based Canadian, who organized the show with the help of Pamela Ruiz, who is based in Cuba.
"His work toys with the polarities of masculine and feminine, insider and outsider, personal and political, subjective and objective, black and white . . . and of course, sacred and profane," Mr. Larratt-Smith said.
Mapplethorpe Travels to a Laid-Back Cuba
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times
HAVANA, Jan. (AP) - The Cuban government has not exactly been tolerant of homosexuality. In the late 1960's, for example, gay Cubans were sent to labor camps and homosexuality was derided as an illness of the capitalist past.
Even today, transvestites are sometimes detained and threatened with prison.
But a new tolerance over the last decade has led to what many believed they would never see on the island: the work of Robert Mapplethorpe, the American photographer known for his homoerotic images.
The "Sacred and Profane" exhibition, which opened last month at a recently restored gallery in the heart of Old Havana, features 48 photographs spanning Mapplethorpe's career. It runs through Feb. 15.
"I never thought I would have this experience in Cuba, to see Mapplethorpe's work firsthand," said Ricardo Rodriguez, a 35-year-old photographer. "When people told me this exhibit was coming, I didn't believe them."
Mr. Rodriguez said his surprise stemmed from the fact that Mapplethorpe was gay, American and highly controversial even in his own country.
In 1990 the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati and its director were charged with obscenity for exhibiting Mapplethorpe's photographs. Both were acquitted, but the case prompted a national debate over using government funds for the arts. Conservative lawmakers and religious fundamentalists attacked the National Endowment for the Arts for subsidizing Mapplethorpe shows.
"It's incredible to see him here," Mr. Rodriguez said.
As for the images themselves, most agreed they were more serene than shocking.
"Pure sensuality," Farah Gomez, a 26-year-old art historian, said of the black-and-white images portraying flowers, female body parts and nude black men.
Ricardo Alarcón, president of the Cuban National Assembly and one of the country's highest-ranking officials, agreed, saying Mapplethorpe "achieves the transmission of a purely artistic message and sense."
"Frankly, this really doesn't strike me as a sexual exposition," he said in an interview. "Nudity is found in cultures dating much further back than the United States or Cuba. Classicism is full of the nude human body."
Mild hints of sadomasochism pepper the exposition, which also features images of two men kissing, the actress Susan Sarandon holding a child and a young Arnold Schwarzenegger in his bodybuilding days.
Another photograph shows the profiles of an albino man and a black man with a shaved head. The eyes of the albino are open, his gaze drifting off the photograph; the black man's eyes are closed.
Mapplethorpe's self-portraits express some sadness, showing the deterioration in his health before he died of AIDS at 42 in 1989.
The turning point in what seems to be the government's new tolerance toward homosexuality, which came with the limited economic and social liberalization of the mid-1990's, is often linked to the release of the 1994 hit film "Strawberry and Chocolate." The movie explores the friendship between a naïve young Communist and a highly educated gay Cuban who is in love with his country but at odds with his government.
Several Cuban artists have started tackling some of Mapplethorpe's themes in the last decade, including René Peña and Eduardo Hernández Santos.
The Mapplethorpe exhibition, which does not include his roughest images, embraces the photographer's internal contradictions, said Philip Larratt-Smith, a New York-based Canadian, who organized the show with the help of Pamela Ruiz, who is based in Cuba.
"His work toys with the polarities of masculine and feminine, insider and outsider, personal and political, subjective and objective, black and white . . . and of course, sacred and profane," Mr. Larratt-Smith said.
@}-}rebecca----
not enough discipline ...
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2005
- Posts
- 13,063
Slasher movies most scary for what they say about audience
Commentary:
Slasher movies most scary for what they say about audience
News Leader
Howard Simmons
Last week, with tub of popcorn in tow, I entered a darkened theater to see the latest horror release, "Wolf Creek." What I sat through rattled me thoroughly, but not because of any scares or new ground covered.
Continuing the trend of sadistic violence masquerading as entertainment, "Wolf Creek" is an Australian import loosely based on real-life events.
Three backpackers, traveling across the Outback, find their car dead after stopping at Wolf Creek crater and eventually accept help from a seemingly friendly native whose actual intentions are far from admirable. I sat, horrified and sickened, as he tortured, molested and toyed with his victims.
"Wolf Creek" isn't based on one event in particular. Instead it is inspired by a few different cases in Australia. The particulars of the story are speculation and imagination, but it makes the finished product no less disturbing.
Since moviegoers are apparently too jaded for old-fashioned scares, filmmakers have resorted to using torture and sexual assault to frighten us. They hold the camera up and ask moviegoers how much suffering we can stand to watch.
The success of "Saw" and its sequel, Rob Zombie's depraved "House of 1000 Corpses" and "The Devil's Rejects" and yes, "The Passion of the Christ," and the newest release, "Hostel," show audiences have an unquenchable blood lust.
There isn't anything new being shown. Most of these films owe a lot to the shock cinema of the '70s, which gave us Wes Craven's early films "The Last House on the Left" (in which a mother revenges her daughter's rapist) and "The Hills Have Eyes" (a family hunted down and savagely murdered); and the still appalling "I Spit On Your Grave" (about a woman's brutal gang rape and her grisly revenge on her attackers).
What is new is the popularity of this particular genre, one that gleefully wrings every ounce of pain from its characters while we sit in the audience slightly horrified but still enjoying ourselves.
Director Rob Zombie made full use of our voyeuristic sadomasochism by turning the tables on the audience during "The Devil's Rejects." The main characters aren't the victims, but rather the psychopaths. When they are eventually cornered by Sheriff Wydell, are we to cheer or cringe as he tortures them just as mercilessly as they did their victims?
Some moviegoers say this is just entertainment.
That is my biggest problem.
When working mothers are eagerly awaiting the release of a movie whose sole premise is the torture of its main characters, I have to wonder what it says about our culture.
I am not proposing censorship. I'm a proponent of free speech. Nor do I necessarily object to violence in cinema. I'm a big fan of the bloody "Kill Bill" films and the nauseating-if-it-weren't-so-absurd early films of Peter Jackson, such as "Dead Alive" and the perfectly named "Bad Taste." When movies dealing with disturbing material are done in an artistic vein or tongue-in-cheek, I have no problem with it.
But am I the only one who finds it disturbing that movies such as "Wolf Creek" are becoming so prevalent and profitable?
Perhaps it's a slippery slope. Does our acceptance of cartoonish, escapist violence numb us to more realistic forms?
I, too, find myself sometimes drawn to these films, but out of curiosity and not the promise of scares, because they rarely deliver.
I find the most frightening thing about this genre is what it reveals of the audience: our ability to watch the torture of characters — whether based on real or fictional people — and consider it entertainment.
Commentary:
Slasher movies most scary for what they say about audience
News Leader
Howard Simmons
Last week, with tub of popcorn in tow, I entered a darkened theater to see the latest horror release, "Wolf Creek." What I sat through rattled me thoroughly, but not because of any scares or new ground covered.
Continuing the trend of sadistic violence masquerading as entertainment, "Wolf Creek" is an Australian import loosely based on real-life events.
Three backpackers, traveling across the Outback, find their car dead after stopping at Wolf Creek crater and eventually accept help from a seemingly friendly native whose actual intentions are far from admirable. I sat, horrified and sickened, as he tortured, molested and toyed with his victims.
"Wolf Creek" isn't based on one event in particular. Instead it is inspired by a few different cases in Australia. The particulars of the story are speculation and imagination, but it makes the finished product no less disturbing.
Since moviegoers are apparently too jaded for old-fashioned scares, filmmakers have resorted to using torture and sexual assault to frighten us. They hold the camera up and ask moviegoers how much suffering we can stand to watch.
The success of "Saw" and its sequel, Rob Zombie's depraved "House of 1000 Corpses" and "The Devil's Rejects" and yes, "The Passion of the Christ," and the newest release, "Hostel," show audiences have an unquenchable blood lust.
There isn't anything new being shown. Most of these films owe a lot to the shock cinema of the '70s, which gave us Wes Craven's early films "The Last House on the Left" (in which a mother revenges her daughter's rapist) and "The Hills Have Eyes" (a family hunted down and savagely murdered); and the still appalling "I Spit On Your Grave" (about a woman's brutal gang rape and her grisly revenge on her attackers).
What is new is the popularity of this particular genre, one that gleefully wrings every ounce of pain from its characters while we sit in the audience slightly horrified but still enjoying ourselves.
Director Rob Zombie made full use of our voyeuristic sadomasochism by turning the tables on the audience during "The Devil's Rejects." The main characters aren't the victims, but rather the psychopaths. When they are eventually cornered by Sheriff Wydell, are we to cheer or cringe as he tortures them just as mercilessly as they did their victims?
Some moviegoers say this is just entertainment.
That is my biggest problem.
When working mothers are eagerly awaiting the release of a movie whose sole premise is the torture of its main characters, I have to wonder what it says about our culture.
I am not proposing censorship. I'm a proponent of free speech. Nor do I necessarily object to violence in cinema. I'm a big fan of the bloody "Kill Bill" films and the nauseating-if-it-weren't-so-absurd early films of Peter Jackson, such as "Dead Alive" and the perfectly named "Bad Taste." When movies dealing with disturbing material are done in an artistic vein or tongue-in-cheek, I have no problem with it.
But am I the only one who finds it disturbing that movies such as "Wolf Creek" are becoming so prevalent and profitable?
Perhaps it's a slippery slope. Does our acceptance of cartoonish, escapist violence numb us to more realistic forms?
I, too, find myself sometimes drawn to these films, but out of curiosity and not the promise of scares, because they rarely deliver.
I find the most frightening thing about this genre is what it reveals of the audience: our ability to watch the torture of characters — whether based on real or fictional people — and consider it entertainment.
@}-}rebecca----
not enough discipline ...
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2005
- Posts
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Move over, Gisele! Rio prostitutes strut their stuff
Move over, Gisele! Rio prostitutes strut their stuff
REUTERS
MONDAY , 16 JANUARY 2006
RIO DE JANEIRO: As Rio de Janeiro's biannual fashion show moved into high gear on Friday, a group of prostitutes strutted bright garments they designed, stealing some limelight from top models like Gisele Bundchen.
In an open-air show in the centre of the city famous for Carnival jamborees, prostitutes from Davida – a non-governmental organisation that defends the rights of sex service workers – presented their brand of clothing to cheers from hundreds of onlookers and camera flashes.
"We managed to get recognised. Our working clothes exploit sensuality and fetish," said Doroth de Castro, a self-described veteran prostitute and co-founder of Davida.
The line's brand name, Daspu, is a play on "Daslu," the name of Brazil's most expensive boutique.
Even spectators from the upscale Fashion Rio events cut away to catch the Davida show on a purple-carpeted, narrow street in central Rio, off a square where prostitutes typically solicit customers.
"We're thin, fat, old and young. Not like those models that are all thin," de Castro said. "We have flesh that men like."
Apart from dresses designed to lure clients, the Davida group also makes casual wear for activist work, such as Aids prevention.
It is not illegal to offer sexual services in Brazil, but pandering is a crime.
With its sun, sea, mountains and sultry lifestyle, Rio is a popular tourist destination. But prostitution is also rife, and the United Nations and other groups have expressed concern that it is growing as a magnet for foreigners seeking cheap sex, especially during Carnival, which starts on February 24.
The Brazilian government launched a campaign in March to stop the sexual exploitation of minors by tourists.
Fashion Rio, where mainly Brazilian designers present their collections, has recently gained fame in the fashion world. Bundchen was a main attraction on Friday night.
Move over, Gisele! Rio prostitutes strut their stuff
REUTERS
MONDAY , 16 JANUARY 2006
RIO DE JANEIRO: As Rio de Janeiro's biannual fashion show moved into high gear on Friday, a group of prostitutes strutted bright garments they designed, stealing some limelight from top models like Gisele Bundchen.
In an open-air show in the centre of the city famous for Carnival jamborees, prostitutes from Davida – a non-governmental organisation that defends the rights of sex service workers – presented their brand of clothing to cheers from hundreds of onlookers and camera flashes.
"We managed to get recognised. Our working clothes exploit sensuality and fetish," said Doroth de Castro, a self-described veteran prostitute and co-founder of Davida.
The line's brand name, Daspu, is a play on "Daslu," the name of Brazil's most expensive boutique.
Even spectators from the upscale Fashion Rio events cut away to catch the Davida show on a purple-carpeted, narrow street in central Rio, off a square where prostitutes typically solicit customers.
"We're thin, fat, old and young. Not like those models that are all thin," de Castro said. "We have flesh that men like."
Apart from dresses designed to lure clients, the Davida group also makes casual wear for activist work, such as Aids prevention.
It is not illegal to offer sexual services in Brazil, but pandering is a crime.
With its sun, sea, mountains and sultry lifestyle, Rio is a popular tourist destination. But prostitution is also rife, and the United Nations and other groups have expressed concern that it is growing as a magnet for foreigners seeking cheap sex, especially during Carnival, which starts on February 24.
The Brazilian government launched a campaign in March to stop the sexual exploitation of minors by tourists.
Fashion Rio, where mainly Brazilian designers present their collections, has recently gained fame in the fashion world. Bundchen was a main attraction on Friday night.
@}-}rebecca----
not enough discipline ...
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2005
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Natural Born Killers: Kamikaze Girls puts a twist on the buddy flick
Natural Born Killers: Kamikaze Girls puts a twist on the buddy flick
Articles / Film
Jan 11, 2006
By Michael David Toth
IN CASE YOU HADN’T NOTICED, modern Japanese culture can be pretty weird. Sofia Coppola’s Lost In Translation presented Japan’s surreal, alien qualities from an outside, American perspective. Kamikaze Girls instead explores subculture pockets that strike even its native Japanese audiences as eccentric.
A cult hit in Japan, this comedy documents the unlikely friendship between two girls in two incompatible examples of such subcultures. For all its colorful strangeness, Japan strongly values and enforces conformity, and the two main characters in Kamikaze Girls are misfit teenagers in tension with their homogenized culture in a rural town just outside Tokyo. In that sense, Kamikaze Girls offers a Japanese twist on cult teen outsider-buddy fare like Daria, Ghostworld or Napoleon Dynamite.
The film prominently features a real-life Tokyo designer boutique called Baby the Stars Shine Bright. The pricey shop specializes in lolita fashions — overly cute, frilly pastel dresses with childlike bonnet and parasol accessories. The “lolita” branding and the idea of postpubescent females dressed like Little Bo Peep implies perhaps some kind of bizarre sexual fetish-wear, but the ama-lolita (“sweet Lolita”) fashion scene is instead rooted in a sincere, nostalgic idealism for feminine elegance and childhood innocence. Momoko (played by Japanese pop idol Kyôko Fukada) is a loner in the ama-lolita scene. Momoko adopts this pretty lifestyle in rebellious reaction to her loser, drunken father and her financially humble, ordinary, provincial existence. With the money she scrapes together, Momoko makes escapist clothes-shopping pilgrimages to Tokyo, since Jusco, the local Wal-Mart equivalent, is too horrible for her. These trips are made slowly on foot and public transportation, since a bicycle would lack in feminine grace.
Eventually, Momoko crosses paths with biker bad-girl Ichigo (played by Anna Tsuchiya, also front woman for the punk-rock band Spin Aqua). Unlike American biker gangs ominously dressed in black, Japanese bikers are a garish, flamboyant lot in brightly colored, embroidered robe-like jackets. Loud, crude, aggressive and tremendously tacky, Ichigo is the antithesis of Momoko’s saccharine little-girlishness. The pack mentality of Ichigo’s outcast, all-girl biker gang is comparatively less antisocial and more conformist than the friendless Momoko. Yet even though it manifests itself differently, each girl’s rebellion is a shared societal reaction. That commonality, alongside the girls’ contrasting temperaments, relational issues and fashion tastes, provides the foundation of their friendship.
While much more lighthearted in tone, the film borrows heavily from the progressive edges of commercial American cinema, (Quentin Tarantino, Fight Club and Natural Born Killers.) Kamikaze Girls is laced with oddball transitions, freeze frames, graphic overlays, animation sequences, quirky flashbacks and visibly different film stocks. (It’s worth observing that Tarantino’s love of Japanese pop cinema in Kill Bill has not gone unrequited.) Sometimes, however, the hip stylishness comes off as too self-conscious and forced and distracts from the narrative flow. But when everything gels, particularly within the film’s opening sequence, it’s quite wonderful and mesmerizing. Fortunately, the film finds its own identity within its derived stylistic influences.
Perhaps this kind of humor works better within its native culture, but the film’s periodic moments of contrived slapstick and fart-joke juvenility are more annoying than funny. The film’s comedic strengths lie in its subtler, more sophisticated humor, such as Momoko’s obsession with Rococo or Ichigo’s timid pre-biker life. Some of the film’s foreshadowing is unfortunately so heavy-handed that some key plot events feel overdue and predictable. Conversely, a subplot of Ichigo’s romantic interest with a guy they meet in a pachinko parlor is so underdeveloped that its resolution feels unearned and flat. The film loses some momentum in the second half before the final climax kicks in. Still, the ending is sufficiently satisfying, the cultural curiosities are fascinating, the cinematography is eye-popping, and the lead girls are cute and delightful. Those engaging aspects are more than enough to overcome the film’s shortcomings.
This article is from The Cleveland Free Times
Natural Born Killers: Kamikaze Girls puts a twist on the buddy flick
Articles / Film
Jan 11, 2006
By Michael David Toth
IN CASE YOU HADN’T NOTICED, modern Japanese culture can be pretty weird. Sofia Coppola’s Lost In Translation presented Japan’s surreal, alien qualities from an outside, American perspective. Kamikaze Girls instead explores subculture pockets that strike even its native Japanese audiences as eccentric.
A cult hit in Japan, this comedy documents the unlikely friendship between two girls in two incompatible examples of such subcultures. For all its colorful strangeness, Japan strongly values and enforces conformity, and the two main characters in Kamikaze Girls are misfit teenagers in tension with their homogenized culture in a rural town just outside Tokyo. In that sense, Kamikaze Girls offers a Japanese twist on cult teen outsider-buddy fare like Daria, Ghostworld or Napoleon Dynamite.
The film prominently features a real-life Tokyo designer boutique called Baby the Stars Shine Bright. The pricey shop specializes in lolita fashions — overly cute, frilly pastel dresses with childlike bonnet and parasol accessories. The “lolita” branding and the idea of postpubescent females dressed like Little Bo Peep implies perhaps some kind of bizarre sexual fetish-wear, but the ama-lolita (“sweet Lolita”) fashion scene is instead rooted in a sincere, nostalgic idealism for feminine elegance and childhood innocence. Momoko (played by Japanese pop idol Kyôko Fukada) is a loner in the ama-lolita scene. Momoko adopts this pretty lifestyle in rebellious reaction to her loser, drunken father and her financially humble, ordinary, provincial existence. With the money she scrapes together, Momoko makes escapist clothes-shopping pilgrimages to Tokyo, since Jusco, the local Wal-Mart equivalent, is too horrible for her. These trips are made slowly on foot and public transportation, since a bicycle would lack in feminine grace.
Eventually, Momoko crosses paths with biker bad-girl Ichigo (played by Anna Tsuchiya, also front woman for the punk-rock band Spin Aqua). Unlike American biker gangs ominously dressed in black, Japanese bikers are a garish, flamboyant lot in brightly colored, embroidered robe-like jackets. Loud, crude, aggressive and tremendously tacky, Ichigo is the antithesis of Momoko’s saccharine little-girlishness. The pack mentality of Ichigo’s outcast, all-girl biker gang is comparatively less antisocial and more conformist than the friendless Momoko. Yet even though it manifests itself differently, each girl’s rebellion is a shared societal reaction. That commonality, alongside the girls’ contrasting temperaments, relational issues and fashion tastes, provides the foundation of their friendship.
While much more lighthearted in tone, the film borrows heavily from the progressive edges of commercial American cinema, (Quentin Tarantino, Fight Club and Natural Born Killers.) Kamikaze Girls is laced with oddball transitions, freeze frames, graphic overlays, animation sequences, quirky flashbacks and visibly different film stocks. (It’s worth observing that Tarantino’s love of Japanese pop cinema in Kill Bill has not gone unrequited.) Sometimes, however, the hip stylishness comes off as too self-conscious and forced and distracts from the narrative flow. But when everything gels, particularly within the film’s opening sequence, it’s quite wonderful and mesmerizing. Fortunately, the film finds its own identity within its derived stylistic influences.
Perhaps this kind of humor works better within its native culture, but the film’s periodic moments of contrived slapstick and fart-joke juvenility are more annoying than funny. The film’s comedic strengths lie in its subtler, more sophisticated humor, such as Momoko’s obsession with Rococo or Ichigo’s timid pre-biker life. Some of the film’s foreshadowing is unfortunately so heavy-handed that some key plot events feel overdue and predictable. Conversely, a subplot of Ichigo’s romantic interest with a guy they meet in a pachinko parlor is so underdeveloped that its resolution feels unearned and flat. The film loses some momentum in the second half before the final climax kicks in. Still, the ending is sufficiently satisfying, the cultural curiosities are fascinating, the cinematography is eye-popping, and the lead girls are cute and delightful. Those engaging aspects are more than enough to overcome the film’s shortcomings.
This article is from The Cleveland Free Times
@}-}rebecca----
not enough discipline ...
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'Shoe man' faces an additionalcharge
'Shoe man' faces an additionalcharge
By Lisa Medendorp
CHRONICLE STAFF WRITER
Norton Shores police plan to seek a second warrant against a Benzonia man who investigators say was stealing gym shoes from Mona Shores High School, allegedly for sexual gratification.
Roger Harper Weil, 58, who has a prison record and a history of shoe theft from schools, already is charged with stealing a pair of tennis shoes Monday at the school.
He was detained by a school security guard.
Detective Lt. Timothy LaVigne said this morning that a warrant for larceny in a building with regard to a Nov. 7 shoe theft at the high school also is being sought.
Authorities say Weil uses the shoes for sexual gratification and that he has done the same thing in other West Michigan counties over a number of years.
Based on information received about other cases, LaVigne said authorities will seek to label Weil as a "sexually delinquent person," which means any prison sentence he receives if convicted of the latest offense could be increased.
LaVigne indicated that for Weil, shoes are a sexual fetish. "That's been his history, his fetish, through his own past admissions," he said.
A fetish is defined as a nonsexual item that abnormally excites erotic feelings.
Weil is currently on parole and has prior convictions for larceny in a building from Mason, Manistee and Antrim counties.
In January 2002, Weil was arrested for stealing shoes from student lockers at Ludington High School after a school resource officer identified him from photographs taken by a hallway camera, according to a published report in the Traverse City Record-Eagle.
After posting bond in the Ludington case, Weil was arrested by the Antrim County Sheriff's Department for taking items from lockers at a Mancelona school.
At the time, Ludington Police Chief Mark Barnett told the newspaper that authorities were concerned about Weil because, based on statements Weil made, "he's been in a number of schools along the western shore from about the middle of the state up possibly to the Mackinac Bridge."
LaVigne said this morning that police obtained a search warrant for Weil's vehicle, which was parked in the school lot.
"The back seat is full of groceries," he said, adding that several pairs of tennis shoes as well as hiking shoes were found inside.
The shoes are of various sizes, LaVigne said.
"It's obvious he's been to other schools. Whether we identify those remains to be seen," he said.
In November, a man was caught on a video surveillance camera at Mona Shores High School carrying a gym bag. A pair of tennis shoes and $20 were stolen that day.
On Monday, Athletic Director Walter Gawkowski recognized the same man at the school again, as did security officer Jose Gutierrez, a retired Norton Shores police officer. Gutierrez detained Weil for Norton Shores police and tennis shoes that had been stolen Monday were recovered, reports said.
Weil was arraigned in 60th District Court Tuesday on a charge of larceny in a building and awaits preliminary examination.
'Shoe man' faces an additionalcharge
By Lisa Medendorp
CHRONICLE STAFF WRITER
Norton Shores police plan to seek a second warrant against a Benzonia man who investigators say was stealing gym shoes from Mona Shores High School, allegedly for sexual gratification.
Roger Harper Weil, 58, who has a prison record and a history of shoe theft from schools, already is charged with stealing a pair of tennis shoes Monday at the school.
He was detained by a school security guard.
Detective Lt. Timothy LaVigne said this morning that a warrant for larceny in a building with regard to a Nov. 7 shoe theft at the high school also is being sought.
Authorities say Weil uses the shoes for sexual gratification and that he has done the same thing in other West Michigan counties over a number of years.
Based on information received about other cases, LaVigne said authorities will seek to label Weil as a "sexually delinquent person," which means any prison sentence he receives if convicted of the latest offense could be increased.
LaVigne indicated that for Weil, shoes are a sexual fetish. "That's been his history, his fetish, through his own past admissions," he said.
A fetish is defined as a nonsexual item that abnormally excites erotic feelings.
Weil is currently on parole and has prior convictions for larceny in a building from Mason, Manistee and Antrim counties.
In January 2002, Weil was arrested for stealing shoes from student lockers at Ludington High School after a school resource officer identified him from photographs taken by a hallway camera, according to a published report in the Traverse City Record-Eagle.
After posting bond in the Ludington case, Weil was arrested by the Antrim County Sheriff's Department for taking items from lockers at a Mancelona school.
At the time, Ludington Police Chief Mark Barnett told the newspaper that authorities were concerned about Weil because, based on statements Weil made, "he's been in a number of schools along the western shore from about the middle of the state up possibly to the Mackinac Bridge."
LaVigne said this morning that police obtained a search warrant for Weil's vehicle, which was parked in the school lot.
"The back seat is full of groceries," he said, adding that several pairs of tennis shoes as well as hiking shoes were found inside.
The shoes are of various sizes, LaVigne said.
"It's obvious he's been to other schools. Whether we identify those remains to be seen," he said.
In November, a man was caught on a video surveillance camera at Mona Shores High School carrying a gym bag. A pair of tennis shoes and $20 were stolen that day.
On Monday, Athletic Director Walter Gawkowski recognized the same man at the school again, as did security officer Jose Gutierrez, a retired Norton Shores police officer. Gutierrez detained Weil for Norton Shores police and tennis shoes that had been stolen Monday were recovered, reports said.
Weil was arraigned in 60th District Court Tuesday on a charge of larceny in a building and awaits preliminary examination.
@}-}rebecca----
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- Oct 31, 2005
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Masters and Slaves Together ~ Washington
ORGANIZATIONAL MISSION: Founded in 1999, Masters And slaves Together (MAsT), Washington, exists as a support group for men -- gay, straight or bisexual -- involved in or interested in the Master/slave lifestyle.
MEMBERSHIP: Approximately 20. No membership criteria; any regular attendee may be considered a member.
ACTIVITIES: MAsT holds regular meetings, open to the public, to discuss issues pertaining to dominant-submissive relationships.
BACKGROUND: Despite a haunted history of slavery that's left America with wounds that have yet to heal, some say that the terms ''master'' and ''slave'' can actually be liberating within a relationship dynamic. ''Master Taino'' is among them.
''What happens in America is that when we talk about 'master' and 'slave,' what comes to mind is the slave of African-American history, which was non-consensual,'' says Master Taino, countering that what MAsT offers is something purely consensual. ''There are people who are born to serve, and they enjoy it. And there are people who crave authority. It can be used in healthy and productive ways. If someone has what we call a 'master heart' or a 'slave heart,' this comes from the inside. We call discovering it a second coming-out.
''Even though a lot of people think a lot of what we do is sex or BDSM, the master-slave relationship is a whole different dynamic. It's a matter of the master taking responsibility for the slave, for guidance, protection, safety. And the slaves want to surrender. A lot of people in both the gay and straight world who've been practicing BDSM are realizing they need to live a dominant/submissive lifestyle in a more 24/7 way. They need this as a lifestyle.''
To that end, Master Taino says the main purpose of MAsT, as well as his own Master Taino-branded training academy, is education. For just as he says the master-slave relationship of the 21st century may be a healthy thing, he grants that the dynamic may be abused. ''This is not something that you learn in one day,'' he cautions. ''There is no substitute for education.''
CONTACT/SITE: E-mail info@mastwashington.org or visit www.mastwashington.org.
ORGANIZATIONAL MISSION: Founded in 1999, Masters And slaves Together (MAsT), Washington, exists as a support group for men -- gay, straight or bisexual -- involved in or interested in the Master/slave lifestyle.
MEMBERSHIP: Approximately 20. No membership criteria; any regular attendee may be considered a member.
ACTIVITIES: MAsT holds regular meetings, open to the public, to discuss issues pertaining to dominant-submissive relationships.
BACKGROUND: Despite a haunted history of slavery that's left America with wounds that have yet to heal, some say that the terms ''master'' and ''slave'' can actually be liberating within a relationship dynamic. ''Master Taino'' is among them.
''What happens in America is that when we talk about 'master' and 'slave,' what comes to mind is the slave of African-American history, which was non-consensual,'' says Master Taino, countering that what MAsT offers is something purely consensual. ''There are people who are born to serve, and they enjoy it. And there are people who crave authority. It can be used in healthy and productive ways. If someone has what we call a 'master heart' or a 'slave heart,' this comes from the inside. We call discovering it a second coming-out.
''Even though a lot of people think a lot of what we do is sex or BDSM, the master-slave relationship is a whole different dynamic. It's a matter of the master taking responsibility for the slave, for guidance, protection, safety. And the slaves want to surrender. A lot of people in both the gay and straight world who've been practicing BDSM are realizing they need to live a dominant/submissive lifestyle in a more 24/7 way. They need this as a lifestyle.''
To that end, Master Taino says the main purpose of MAsT, as well as his own Master Taino-branded training academy, is education. For just as he says the master-slave relationship of the 21st century may be a healthy thing, he grants that the dynamic may be abused. ''This is not something that you learn in one day,'' he cautions. ''There is no substitute for education.''
CONTACT/SITE: E-mail info@mastwashington.org or visit www.mastwashington.org.
@}-}rebecca----
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Anarchy in the UK - more like God save the Queen
Anarchy in the UK - more like God save the Queen
PROFILE Vivienne Westwood
::nobreak::Vivienne Westwood is a great admirer of the Queen. No, honestly. It was a misguided folly of the times, says the godmother of punk, that led her to stick safety pins through Her Majesty’s nose on T-shirts designed for the Sex Pistols during the silver jubilee in 1977.
The former scourge of the Establishment has expressed regret, too, at the memory of her visit to Buckingham Palace in 1992, when she twirled for the cameras to celebrate her OBE and revealed she was not wearing any knickers. A genuine oversight, she insisted.
At the age of 64 the brazen fashion designer now wants to save the monarchy, declaring that it was a mistake of the 20th century “to think that because some traditional things should be done away with, you have to throw them all out”.
Just as well, since the new year honours list has put Westwood on notice to revisit the palace for her investiture as a dame of the British Empire. Almost single-handedly she reinvented the female form, dragging sex out of the closet to give women the glamour and confidence often denied to them by the tyrannies of fashion. “Fashion is about sex,” she declared bluntly.
In the flesh Westwood is as disconcerting as her designs. Beneath a shock of stiff, hennaed hair, her porcelain skin and delicate wrists make her seem a frail figure from a Toulouse-Lautrec painting, an impression at odds with layers of riotous clothing that reminded one uncharitable interviewer of a small girl emerging from the bedroom, “proudly wearing all her clothes at once and expecting a round of applause”.
Her polite and ladylike voice betrays a Derbyshire accent as thick as a dry-stone wall. The self-taught daughter of a sausage maker has come a long way since she dispensed sedition and sexual fetish gear to a generation of pimpled rebels from the emporium she ran with Malcolm McLaren, the Sex Pistols’ manager, in London’s King’s Road more than 30 years ago.
Some views seem borrowed from the lofty circles she once despised. “I would describe myself as an elitist — if there was an elite to belong to,” she once observed. She is also a self-proclaimed intellectual: “I think nobody could understand the world we are living in if they don’t read the essays of (Bertrand) Russell and (TH) Huxley.” She despairs of our lowbrow culture: “I don’t think we have any culture, not really.”
To cap it all, she has declared that the punk era was not much fun, that she is not too keen on the 20th century and that she disdains consumerism. This heretical mix of pretension and hypocrisy has prompted mockery of her folie de grandeur, but such criticism misses the point.
Westwood is an awesome figure in the fashion world. She has been rated one of the six most important designers of the 20th century by Women’s Wear Daily, and is credited with changing public opinion about what is acceptable for women to wear. She was the first British designer ever to be honoured by an enormous retrospective exhibition at the Victoria and Albert museum in 2004.
Shrewdness tempers her eccentricities. Her greatest skill is the reinterpretation of historical dress with a playful idea of Britishness. She liberated the corset from a symbol of repression to one of power and sexual freedom. Her curvaceous designs make women feel sexy and adult rather than the hapless prey of the big brands. “Above all, I am proud that I’ve always made real clothes,” she says.
Westwood’s days of challenging fashion’s rules may be behind her, but she remains a force to be reckoned with as a prolific designer and head of a business empire. Masterminded from her Battersea headquarters in southwest London, this stretches from her flagship shop in Conduit Street, London, to stores in Manchester and Leeds. She has launched a perfume, Boudoir, and has tie-ins with firms that market her designs. Her platform shoes and bold juxtapositions of traditionalism are still copied avidly by high street stores.
It has not been a seamless run, for she has skirted bankruptcy more than once. Eleven years ago she hit a bad patch. She had just married her third (and current) husband, Andreas Kronthaler, a man 25 years her junior whom she met when she was teaching in Vienna to pay the bills. The business was struggling, and she recalls him saying to her: “I can see you’re not happy. Either do the job and enjoy it, or go off and do something else.” Since then, she’s had a ball.
She brought Kronthaler to England, contemptuous of the sniggers over her toy boy infatuation and talk of a mother-son relationship. “We were attracted to each other like magnets,” she told The Sunday Times in 2004. He proved to be an imaginative interpreter of Westwood’s work and now designs most of her menswear, leaving the women’s clothes to his wife. They live in south London with Alexandra, their fox terrier and inspiration for Westwood’s marketed dogwear.
She was born on April 8, 1941, in Glossop, Derbyshire, the daughter of George Swire, who worked at the local Wall’s factory and came from a line of cobblers, and Dora, a greengrocer’s assistant. It was an entrepreneurial family, “always looking for ways to make extra money, even if it was just breeding dogs”, instilling in her a need to make money for self-esteem. Otherwise, she reasoned, “I’d just be a stupid northern girl surrounded by people who can make money”.
By her account, she was a clever, popular child, a leader with a nose for mischief. When she was 16 the family moved to better prospects in Harrow, Middlesex, where her parents ran a sub-post office. She attended Harrow School of Art, but left after a term for a teacher-training college, where she met and married Derek Westwood, an airline steward. They had a baby, Ben, who now does glamour photography (“a euphemism for porn photography”, Westwood once elaborated).
She was teaching at a primary school three years later when she met her Svengali, Malcolm Edwards (aka Malcolm McLaren). “I thought Malcolm was some sort of oracle,” she said. “I considered myself very stupid, which I was, terribly, with no culture.” In exchange for his liberation of her mind, she liberated him of his virginity, despite not really fancying him at that stage. Their son, Joe, owns Agent Provocateur, the saucy lingerie chain.
In 1971 the couple opened their first shop, Let it Rock, at the end of the King’s Road, where it metamorphosed over the years into Too Fast to Live Too Young to Die, Sex and then Seditionaries.
The classic badge of punk, a spiky hairstyle, came about by accident. McLaren, who had refashioned Westwood from a blonde dollybird to a short-haired brunette in school dresses, urged her to have a crew cut, but her hair was too fine. “So I bleached it, and that made it stand on end and it interested me to let it keep on growing. So the crew cut became the punk rock hairstyle.”
Punks’ obligatory zips, bondage gear, safety pins, razor blades, bicycle chains and spiked dog collars had a more bizarre origin. “Even before the Sex Pistols, it was (McLaren’s) idea that England was the home of the flasher and we had to confront it. We were going to be flashers.” When the Sex Pistols wore the shop’s clobber on their early outings in 1976, punk was born and Westwood became its seamstress.
The thrill of being a flasher didn’t last. “I wasn’t happy in those days. I didn’t find punk very exciting, and I certainly wasn’t happy in my relationship with Malcolm. After we split, I realised how far I had moved away from him.”
With McLaren, it was all pointless polemics, she believed. She needed ideas. “And that’s when the richness of fashion began to overwhelm me.” Her brilliantly original Pirate collection in 1981 established her stature as an exuberant originator who, by creating a new language for clothes, paved the way for designers such as John Galliano and Alexander McQueen to reinterpret fashion.
Three months ago Westwood joined forces with Liberty, the British civil rights group, to launch T-shirts and babywear bearing the slogan “I am not a terrorist, please don’t arrest me”. Nice to know that the grand dame of fashion has not sold out completely to the Establishment.
Footnote : I added this out of respect for Viv and Malcom and their mad contribution to fetish wear thats still very much enjoyed today . Google Bondage Pants I dare you..........laughs xxxx @}-}rebecca-----
Anarchy in the UK - more like God save the Queen
PROFILE Vivienne Westwood
::nobreak::Vivienne Westwood is a great admirer of the Queen. No, honestly. It was a misguided folly of the times, says the godmother of punk, that led her to stick safety pins through Her Majesty’s nose on T-shirts designed for the Sex Pistols during the silver jubilee in 1977.
The former scourge of the Establishment has expressed regret, too, at the memory of her visit to Buckingham Palace in 1992, when she twirled for the cameras to celebrate her OBE and revealed she was not wearing any knickers. A genuine oversight, she insisted.
At the age of 64 the brazen fashion designer now wants to save the monarchy, declaring that it was a mistake of the 20th century “to think that because some traditional things should be done away with, you have to throw them all out”.
Just as well, since the new year honours list has put Westwood on notice to revisit the palace for her investiture as a dame of the British Empire. Almost single-handedly she reinvented the female form, dragging sex out of the closet to give women the glamour and confidence often denied to them by the tyrannies of fashion. “Fashion is about sex,” she declared bluntly.
In the flesh Westwood is as disconcerting as her designs. Beneath a shock of stiff, hennaed hair, her porcelain skin and delicate wrists make her seem a frail figure from a Toulouse-Lautrec painting, an impression at odds with layers of riotous clothing that reminded one uncharitable interviewer of a small girl emerging from the bedroom, “proudly wearing all her clothes at once and expecting a round of applause”.
Her polite and ladylike voice betrays a Derbyshire accent as thick as a dry-stone wall. The self-taught daughter of a sausage maker has come a long way since she dispensed sedition and sexual fetish gear to a generation of pimpled rebels from the emporium she ran with Malcolm McLaren, the Sex Pistols’ manager, in London’s King’s Road more than 30 years ago.
Some views seem borrowed from the lofty circles she once despised. “I would describe myself as an elitist — if there was an elite to belong to,” she once observed. She is also a self-proclaimed intellectual: “I think nobody could understand the world we are living in if they don’t read the essays of (Bertrand) Russell and (TH) Huxley.” She despairs of our lowbrow culture: “I don’t think we have any culture, not really.”
To cap it all, she has declared that the punk era was not much fun, that she is not too keen on the 20th century and that she disdains consumerism. This heretical mix of pretension and hypocrisy has prompted mockery of her folie de grandeur, but such criticism misses the point.
Westwood is an awesome figure in the fashion world. She has been rated one of the six most important designers of the 20th century by Women’s Wear Daily, and is credited with changing public opinion about what is acceptable for women to wear. She was the first British designer ever to be honoured by an enormous retrospective exhibition at the Victoria and Albert museum in 2004.
Shrewdness tempers her eccentricities. Her greatest skill is the reinterpretation of historical dress with a playful idea of Britishness. She liberated the corset from a symbol of repression to one of power and sexual freedom. Her curvaceous designs make women feel sexy and adult rather than the hapless prey of the big brands. “Above all, I am proud that I’ve always made real clothes,” she says.
Westwood’s days of challenging fashion’s rules may be behind her, but she remains a force to be reckoned with as a prolific designer and head of a business empire. Masterminded from her Battersea headquarters in southwest London, this stretches from her flagship shop in Conduit Street, London, to stores in Manchester and Leeds. She has launched a perfume, Boudoir, and has tie-ins with firms that market her designs. Her platform shoes and bold juxtapositions of traditionalism are still copied avidly by high street stores.
It has not been a seamless run, for she has skirted bankruptcy more than once. Eleven years ago she hit a bad patch. She had just married her third (and current) husband, Andreas Kronthaler, a man 25 years her junior whom she met when she was teaching in Vienna to pay the bills. The business was struggling, and she recalls him saying to her: “I can see you’re not happy. Either do the job and enjoy it, or go off and do something else.” Since then, she’s had a ball.
She brought Kronthaler to England, contemptuous of the sniggers over her toy boy infatuation and talk of a mother-son relationship. “We were attracted to each other like magnets,” she told The Sunday Times in 2004. He proved to be an imaginative interpreter of Westwood’s work and now designs most of her menswear, leaving the women’s clothes to his wife. They live in south London with Alexandra, their fox terrier and inspiration for Westwood’s marketed dogwear.
She was born on April 8, 1941, in Glossop, Derbyshire, the daughter of George Swire, who worked at the local Wall’s factory and came from a line of cobblers, and Dora, a greengrocer’s assistant. It was an entrepreneurial family, “always looking for ways to make extra money, even if it was just breeding dogs”, instilling in her a need to make money for self-esteem. Otherwise, she reasoned, “I’d just be a stupid northern girl surrounded by people who can make money”.
By her account, she was a clever, popular child, a leader with a nose for mischief. When she was 16 the family moved to better prospects in Harrow, Middlesex, where her parents ran a sub-post office. She attended Harrow School of Art, but left after a term for a teacher-training college, where she met and married Derek Westwood, an airline steward. They had a baby, Ben, who now does glamour photography (“a euphemism for porn photography”, Westwood once elaborated).
She was teaching at a primary school three years later when she met her Svengali, Malcolm Edwards (aka Malcolm McLaren). “I thought Malcolm was some sort of oracle,” she said. “I considered myself very stupid, which I was, terribly, with no culture.” In exchange for his liberation of her mind, she liberated him of his virginity, despite not really fancying him at that stage. Their son, Joe, owns Agent Provocateur, the saucy lingerie chain.
In 1971 the couple opened their first shop, Let it Rock, at the end of the King’s Road, where it metamorphosed over the years into Too Fast to Live Too Young to Die, Sex and then Seditionaries.
The classic badge of punk, a spiky hairstyle, came about by accident. McLaren, who had refashioned Westwood from a blonde dollybird to a short-haired brunette in school dresses, urged her to have a crew cut, but her hair was too fine. “So I bleached it, and that made it stand on end and it interested me to let it keep on growing. So the crew cut became the punk rock hairstyle.”
Punks’ obligatory zips, bondage gear, safety pins, razor blades, bicycle chains and spiked dog collars had a more bizarre origin. “Even before the Sex Pistols, it was (McLaren’s) idea that England was the home of the flasher and we had to confront it. We were going to be flashers.” When the Sex Pistols wore the shop’s clobber on their early outings in 1976, punk was born and Westwood became its seamstress.
The thrill of being a flasher didn’t last. “I wasn’t happy in those days. I didn’t find punk very exciting, and I certainly wasn’t happy in my relationship with Malcolm. After we split, I realised how far I had moved away from him.”
With McLaren, it was all pointless polemics, she believed. She needed ideas. “And that’s when the richness of fashion began to overwhelm me.” Her brilliantly original Pirate collection in 1981 established her stature as an exuberant originator who, by creating a new language for clothes, paved the way for designers such as John Galliano and Alexander McQueen to reinterpret fashion.
Three months ago Westwood joined forces with Liberty, the British civil rights group, to launch T-shirts and babywear bearing the slogan “I am not a terrorist, please don’t arrest me”. Nice to know that the grand dame of fashion has not sold out completely to the Establishment.
Footnote : I added this out of respect for Viv and Malcom and their mad contribution to fetish wear thats still very much enjoyed today . Google Bondage Pants I dare you..........laughs xxxx @}-}rebecca-----
@}-}rebecca----
not enough discipline ...
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2005
- Posts
- 13,063
Ensnared: Internet Creates New Group of Sexual Addicts
From the Los Angeles Times
Ensnared: Internet Creates New Group of Sexual Addicts
Adding 200 sites a day, Internet pornography seduces with never-ending variety.
By Marianne Szegedy-Maszak
FOR many people, a peek at an "adult" site offers merely a titillating glimpse into an illicit world.
For others, a peek becomes a moment of respite, a brief vacation from the demands of the real world. Then it becomes a habit. Soon, it is a compulsion that occupies hours and hours every day, shattering careers, marriages and lives.
The addictive nature of cruising the Internet and the obsessive allure of pornography combine to take over their existence. And although many who become addicted have had a history of acting out sexually with prostitutes, phone sex or pornographic magazines and movies, others are pulled in from outside such an orbit.
The Internet, more than any other type of mass medium, seems to be creating a new group of people engaged in compulsive sexual behavior, say psychologists and clinicians. The accessibility, anonymity and affordability — what one researcher calls the "triple A engine" — are reeling in people who would otherwise have never engaged in such behavior.
"I tried to figure out why it was that these images, or why it was that seeing this act, was so powerful, and I haven't been able to," says Phil, a married 28-year-old in Washington state. Like others interviewed for this story, he agreed only to the use of his first name. "But the obsession just ruled, and once I got into that world, it just took over."
Phil's story — with infinite variations but the same grisly narrative — is repeated by many whose lives are consumed by cyber porn. Whether gay or straight, married or single, those interviewed describe the intense feelings of guilt and excitement when entering this intoxicating universe, far away from the less thrilling one in which they live.
"As cyber sex has become more and more of a problem, what has shifted for me is the realization that many people who were into cyber sex didn't fit the classic profile of sex addicts," says Patrick Carnes, author of "In the Shadows of the Net: Breaking Free of Compulsive Online Sexual Behavior." He has spent 30 years studying and establishing sex addiction as a field of psychological dysfunction.
"For most people this is not an issue," says John Bancroft, the former director of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction. "But others have always had a problem keeping any kind of sexual stimuli under control and they have never had opportunities to go over the top as they do now."
Sex addiction is not recognized as a legitimate psychiatric disorder. But psychologists, psychiatrists and other clinicians are reporting increasing numbers of cases in which men — and researchers estimate that about 72% of visitors to pornographic sites are men — are showing all the signs of having an addictive disorder. They spend hours a day cruising the Net for explicit sexual sites. They become utterly dependent on the stimulus, making normal life — especially intimate life — no longer possible. When the material isn't there, they become obsessively preoccupied with it. And they ultimately crave even more time on the Web with even more graphic, lurid or outrageous stimuli.
It's the Internet's potential for escalation that has created such an increase in compulsive sexual behavior, says Rob Weiss, clinical director of the Sexual Recovery Institute in Los Angeles, an outpatient treatment center for people with sexual behavior problems. In the past, someone could buy videos or magazines, each with a clear beginning, middle and end. "But now you can sit in the den and it never ends," he says. "There is a much better opportunity for someone with addictive tendencies to just get lost."
Some people who are lured into this world begin to act out in their three-dimensional existence, visiting prostitutes, for example, or engaging in phone sex. But most do not. The Internet offers an endless variety of stimulation, but it also leads to what psychologists refer to as a "dissociated state." Staring at the screen, feeling increasingly stimulated, clicking the mouse, all become almost a form of hypnosis, a state impossible to sustain in the real world.
Typically only a real crisis — a lost job, a confrontation by a spouse, police at the door because illegal pornography has been downloaded — can lead the addict to treatment. An assortment of 12-step programs have emerged to support recovery, and psychotherapists are reporting a surge in their practices of people seeking some way to rid themselves of this problem.
The strain of addiction
Night after night he sat at the computer, eyes scratchy with fatigue, back aching and tense, his right hand sometimes cramping from clicking the mouse from site to site to site.
Phil considers himself a sex addict.
When he was most out of control, he would wake up, kiss his wife goodbye, go to an adult bookstore and watch a movie while masturbating. Then, at work and when completing his undergraduate degree, he would check in at various Internet sites and try to recapture the images he saw in the film.
Most evenings he would visit nearly 200 pornographic sites and masturbate two or three times. Some of the sites were chat rooms and he conversed with young women he fantasized were teenage girls and suspected were older men pretending they were teenage girls.
He flirted with women, or girls, on the sites, looked at pictures, watched pornographic video streaming — and found that the novel variations of what could be considered a pretty basic act were seemingly endless. After all, more than 4.2 million websites and more than 372 million pages are devoted to pornography, according to the Internet security service Internet Filter Review. Even if he had maintained this rate of consumption, it would have taken him almost two and half years to see everything.
But he could never see everything, because the pornographic universe, more rapaciously than Einstein's universe, is constantly expanding. Industry figures estimate that about 200 new sex-related sites are added each day.
"You keep yourself in a state of arousal for anywhere from half an hour to two or three hours," Phil says. "It's degrading and humiliating and very, very frustrating and confusing. A lot of it is based on the need to escape and get away from everything."
Those interviewed who are attempting to kick their Internet pornographic habit describe feelings of dissociation, and the way that the graphic sexual images on the Web intrude in their daily lives. Given the range of erotica they are exposed to, their own intimate lives pale in comparison, as partners, spouses and girlfriends recede in importance.
If there is one psychological element that unites them, clinicians who work with these addicts say, it is a basic fear of real intimacy. And for many, the sexual and illicit charge they receive from cruising the Internet is a way to cope with depression or anxiety that rules the rest of their lives. Web porn becomes a kind of self-administered shock therapy.
Among clinicians, they are seen as suffering from "problematic online sexual behavior." They range in age from pre-pubertal to geriatric.
In one study of 9,265 general Internet users, about 6% scored in a way that suggested cyber sex compulsivity, while an additional 10% of the entire sample was considered "at risk." That research, conducted in 2000 by Al Cooper, a psychologist at Stanford University, was published in the journal Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity. Extrapolating from this research, experts estimate that Internet sex has taken over the lives of possibly 8.9 million people in this country.
They do not fit any neat or coherent profile.
In his early book on sex addiction, "Don't Call It Love: Recovery From Sexual Addiction," Carnes described sex addicts as people who shared a number of characteristics. Overwhelmingly, they had a history of emotional, physical or sexual abuse in their childhoods. They often had suicidal thoughts or feelings and strong feelings of loneliness, and most came from families where there was abuse of drugs or alcohol.
Not so for the person addicted to cyber sex. Many are men, but women are increasingly showing up at 12-step programs, addicted less to graphic sex but much more to Internet "relationships" and Internet dating.
The brain's response
Masters and Johnson, the eminent duo of sex research, divided the human sexual response into four distinct phases: excitement, plateau, orgasm and resolution. Though these phases differ for each individual, it is generally understood that most people with both a healthy libido and a satisfying intimate relationship fully experience all of them. Perhaps not reliably, perhaps not all the time, but frequently enough to maintain a certain emotional and sexual equilibrium.
These behavioral phases, neuroscientists have learned, are generated by an exquisite interplay between two competing systems in the brain: the excitatory system and the inhibitory system. Experts in the human sexual response, like former Kinsey Institute director John Bancroft, caution that at this point "we can only speculate and conceptualize how the brain functions in an inhibitory way."
Nonetheless, when there is sexual dysfunction, when someone is uninterested in sex — called a sexual anorexic by some clinicians — or obsessively masturbating, it is safe to say that either the inhibitory system or the excitatory system is out of whack.
The final ingredient in the inner workings of our sexual responses is what sex researchers call an arousal template. As individual as a fingerprint, an arousal template is, Carnes writes, "the total constellation of thoughts, images, behaviors, sounds, smells, sights fantasies and objects that arouse us sexually." The template can be as elaborate as an opera or as innocent as a particular perfume, but the images and feelings that it contains set in motion all the other elements of our sexual responses.
But with the variety and intensity of images, the Internet can throw this arousal template and all that follows into chaos.
"It can tap into an arousal template or fetish behavior that we don't even know we have," says David Delmonico, a professor of psychology at Duquesne University and co-director of Internet Behavior Consulting. The counseling group helps people who have problems controlling their use of the Internet, such as preteens addicted to instant messaging and adults unable to control cyber sex.
On the Internet, fairly standard pornography can lead very quickly into the darker world of teenagers or even younger children. "A lot of guys will say that they didn't start with the teen stuff or the little kid stuff," Delmonico says. "But it became more and more enticing for reasons that they simply were unable to explain."
Bondage sites and bestiality sites. Diapering sites and foot fetish sites. Young teens, hermaphrodites, dirty socks and excessively large organs. Anyone cruising the Internet can find more and more vehicles for arousal.
"People build up a tolerance, it doesn't give them the same high that it did before," Carnes says. So the process from excitement to resolution is thwarted. They need more to get excited and, for those who are compulsively hooked on cyber sex, the gratification of resolution never occurs.
Drew is nearly 40 years old, a married father who lives in Virginia. He is also a recovering sex addict who says he has been helped by Sexual Compulsives Anonymous. When he went online, he says, he was seeking escape from the tedium of daily life, from the depression that haunted him for as long as he could remember.
In one of the few studies of sexual compulsivity, published in 2004 in the Journal of Sex Research, a small sample of 31 self-identified sex addicts received questionnaires and were interviewed, then compared with an age-matched control group.
Although a symptom of depression for most people is decreased interest in sex, the study found that for a small number, including those who consider themselves sex addicts, their interest in sex increased with their depression.
In another study, published in 2003 in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, 9.4% of those who saw themselves as sex addicts reported increased interest in sex when depressed and more than 20% were more interested in sex when they were anxious. In addition, 45% of the self-identified sex addicts described feeling dissociated from their activities, an experience that was often repeated anecdotally.
The findings, though preliminary, have led some clinicians to augment their treatment of sexual compulsion with treatment for depression. And given the fact that one of the side effects of many antidepressants is decreased libido, some clinicians have found that antidepressant medication can also help.
When the emotions overwhelmed Drew, he would click on an Internet icon on his desktop and seek out teenage girls.
"When you are out there and in chat rooms or discussion boards and others are all discussing this as not a big deal, it lowers your resistance to it," he says. "So you are more open to doing other things."
In fact, so desensitized have people become to explicit sexual images from the Internet, that many law enforcement officials or forensic psychologists specializing in sex offender programs have reported that the Internet has created a new dilemma in the field. Phallometric testing had long been a reliable way to measure arousal patterns among sex offenders by showing them erotic images of varying degrees.
But the images no longer have the power to arouse because the offenders are so desensitized by the far more graphic and lurid images that are available on the Internet. "One of the most stunning clinical shifts I have seen is how quickly cyber sex exploration alters arousal," Carnes says.
Intimate disconnect
Like many behavioral addictions — eating disorders, gambling — cyber sex obsession does not occur in a vacuum. The partner or spouse of someone who is obsessed with Internet sex suffers immeasurable humiliation and anguish.
Phil's wife was shattered by his fascination with the world of online pornography. Initially she thought that his enthrallment with pornography and Internet sex was simply the experimentation of a young and healthy man. But over the years she felt her own self-esteem shrivel as she realized that she could never compete with the Internet.
"I always felt like I was some doll, acting out his fantasies but without any real connection between the two of us," she says.
Weiss of L.A.'s Sexual Recovery Institute says that treatment for people who are sexual compulsives must also include treating an unhealthy relationship.
"A healthy partner would say, 'I'm not sitting around here while you are doing that, I am outta here.' " But instead, many of these partners, in textbook versions of codependence, shield their children from their father's activities "by making sure they ring the bell when coming home, so daddy knows we are here and will stop masturbating in front of the computer," Weiss says.
Therapy and support
As Internet sex problems have increased, so have treatments.
An alphabet soup of 12-step programs — Sex Addicts Anonymous, Codependents of Sex Addicts, Sexual Compulsives Anonymous — have sprung up to meet the exploding needs. Some preach complete abstinence unless in a married relationship, others chart areas of acceptable and unacceptable behavior.
Clinicians have turned to cognitive behavior therapy, as well as drugs, because there is a long established link between aberrant sexual behavior and depression, anxiety and other emotional disorders.
"We look at our clients who are sex addicts like it is an eating disorder," says Weiss. "Sexual recovery is not not having sex. It is about healthy sexuality and staying within those boundaries."
Four years ago, Phil's wife threatened to leave if he did not get his behavior under control. She then took him to a meeting of Sexual Compulsives Anonymous. He looked around the room and heard stories that made him shudder, both because those who recited them seemed to be such losers, and because he recognized himself.
They are now struggling to pull their lives back together as a couple, going to 12-step meetings of Codependents of Sex Addicts and Sexual Compulsives Anonymous.
Phil cannot access the computer at home, and the television is locked and only his wife has the key. They go to meetings frequently and struggle to claim a normal intimate life. Phil has recently been diagnosed as suffering from bipolar disorder, and acknowledges having struggled with depression, like so many who act out sexually.
Phil's marriage is the most powerful incentive to change that exists. "
If I lose my wife, I won't have anything left to live for," he says, his voice thick with emotion. "My hope is just to make it through the day. Hour to hour. Minute to minute. It's 9 o'clock in the morning and I haven't acted out. There was a time when I would have acted three or four times already. So that gives me hope."
Because of his wife, Phil is one of the very lucky ones. For those who lack such a sustaining or intimate connection, hope will forever compete with a click of a mouse.
Where to turn for support
A number of resources and support groups are available for people who believe that they or their partners might be addicted to cyber sex.
Although support groups and 12-step programs are the treatments of choice, there are fundamental differences between their basic philosophies.
S-Anon and Sex Addicts Anonymous believe that the only way to recover is through sexual abstinence and an exclusive marital relationship.
But these programs often do not feel manageable for people who are unmarried or gay.
Other groups, such as Sexual Recovery and Sexual Compulsives Anonymous, contend that recovery needs to be structured by integrating normal and healthy sexual activity into daily life.
Here are some of the main support groups:
• Codependents (or Co-Addicts) of Sex Addicts (COSA): http://www.cosa-recovery.org.• ; Counseling Affiliates Sexual Addiction Treatment Program, including tests: http://www.sexaddictionhelp.com .
• Recovering Couples Anonymous: http://www.recovering-couples.org .
• S-Anon: (800) 210-8141, (615) 833-3152 or http://www.sanon.org .
• Sex Addicts Anonymous: (800) 477-8191, (713) 869-4902 or http://www.sexaa.org .
• Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, for those who are also involved in compulsive emotional relationships online: http://www.slaafws.org .
• Sexual addiction resources, by Patrick Carnes: http://www.sexhelp.com .
• Sexual Compulsives Anonymous: (310) 859-5585 or http://www.sca-recovery.org .
• Sexual Recovery Institute, Los Angeles: (310) 360-0130 or http://www.sexualrecovery.com .
• Sexual Recovery Anonymous, sexualrecovery.org.
How to know if you need help
A number of tests are available on the Web to determine if you have a problem with sex addiction or Internet sex addiction.
A positive answer to one of these three basic questions suggests that someone has a sex addiction, according to the Society for the Advancement of Sexual Health:
• Do I have a sense that I have lost control over my specific sexual behavior?
• Am I experiencing significant consequences because of my specific out-of-control sexual behavior?
• Do I feel like I am constantly thinking about my specific out-of-control sexual behavior, even when I don't want to?
Questions about Internet sex addiction can be found at http://www.sexhelp.com or http://www.sexaddictionhelp.com .
In his book, "In the Shadows of the Net," Patrick Carnes writes that a positive answer to any of the statements below could indicate a problem.
Have you ever done any of the following:
• Kept sexual activity on the Internet a secret from family members.
• Carried out sexual activities on the Net at work.
• Frequently found yourself erasing your computer history files in an effort to conceal your activity on the Net.
• Felt ashamed at the thought that someone you love might discover your Internet use.
• Found that your time on the Net takes away from or prevents you from doing other tasks and activities.
• Found yourself in a kind of online trance or time warp during which the hours just slipped by.
• Frequently visited chat rooms that are focused on sexual conversation.
• Looked forward to your sexual activities on the Net and felt frustrated and anxious when you couldn't get on when you planned.
• Found yourself masturbating while on the Net.
• Had sexual chat room friends who became more important than the family and friends in your life.
• Regularly visited porn sites.
• Downloaded pornography from a newsgroup on more than one occasion.
• Had favorite porn sites.
• Visited fetish porn sites on more than one occasion.
• Viewed child pornography online.
• Taken part in the CUseeMe sexual video rooms.
From the Los Angeles Times
Ensnared: Internet Creates New Group of Sexual Addicts
Adding 200 sites a day, Internet pornography seduces with never-ending variety.
By Marianne Szegedy-Maszak
FOR many people, a peek at an "adult" site offers merely a titillating glimpse into an illicit world.
For others, a peek becomes a moment of respite, a brief vacation from the demands of the real world. Then it becomes a habit. Soon, it is a compulsion that occupies hours and hours every day, shattering careers, marriages and lives.
The addictive nature of cruising the Internet and the obsessive allure of pornography combine to take over their existence. And although many who become addicted have had a history of acting out sexually with prostitutes, phone sex or pornographic magazines and movies, others are pulled in from outside such an orbit.
The Internet, more than any other type of mass medium, seems to be creating a new group of people engaged in compulsive sexual behavior, say psychologists and clinicians. The accessibility, anonymity and affordability — what one researcher calls the "triple A engine" — are reeling in people who would otherwise have never engaged in such behavior.
"I tried to figure out why it was that these images, or why it was that seeing this act, was so powerful, and I haven't been able to," says Phil, a married 28-year-old in Washington state. Like others interviewed for this story, he agreed only to the use of his first name. "But the obsession just ruled, and once I got into that world, it just took over."
Phil's story — with infinite variations but the same grisly narrative — is repeated by many whose lives are consumed by cyber porn. Whether gay or straight, married or single, those interviewed describe the intense feelings of guilt and excitement when entering this intoxicating universe, far away from the less thrilling one in which they live.
"As cyber sex has become more and more of a problem, what has shifted for me is the realization that many people who were into cyber sex didn't fit the classic profile of sex addicts," says Patrick Carnes, author of "In the Shadows of the Net: Breaking Free of Compulsive Online Sexual Behavior." He has spent 30 years studying and establishing sex addiction as a field of psychological dysfunction.
"For most people this is not an issue," says John Bancroft, the former director of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction. "But others have always had a problem keeping any kind of sexual stimuli under control and they have never had opportunities to go over the top as they do now."
Sex addiction is not recognized as a legitimate psychiatric disorder. But psychologists, psychiatrists and other clinicians are reporting increasing numbers of cases in which men — and researchers estimate that about 72% of visitors to pornographic sites are men — are showing all the signs of having an addictive disorder. They spend hours a day cruising the Net for explicit sexual sites. They become utterly dependent on the stimulus, making normal life — especially intimate life — no longer possible. When the material isn't there, they become obsessively preoccupied with it. And they ultimately crave even more time on the Web with even more graphic, lurid or outrageous stimuli.
It's the Internet's potential for escalation that has created such an increase in compulsive sexual behavior, says Rob Weiss, clinical director of the Sexual Recovery Institute in Los Angeles, an outpatient treatment center for people with sexual behavior problems. In the past, someone could buy videos or magazines, each with a clear beginning, middle and end. "But now you can sit in the den and it never ends," he says. "There is a much better opportunity for someone with addictive tendencies to just get lost."
Some people who are lured into this world begin to act out in their three-dimensional existence, visiting prostitutes, for example, or engaging in phone sex. But most do not. The Internet offers an endless variety of stimulation, but it also leads to what psychologists refer to as a "dissociated state." Staring at the screen, feeling increasingly stimulated, clicking the mouse, all become almost a form of hypnosis, a state impossible to sustain in the real world.
Typically only a real crisis — a lost job, a confrontation by a spouse, police at the door because illegal pornography has been downloaded — can lead the addict to treatment. An assortment of 12-step programs have emerged to support recovery, and psychotherapists are reporting a surge in their practices of people seeking some way to rid themselves of this problem.
The strain of addiction
Night after night he sat at the computer, eyes scratchy with fatigue, back aching and tense, his right hand sometimes cramping from clicking the mouse from site to site to site.
Phil considers himself a sex addict.
When he was most out of control, he would wake up, kiss his wife goodbye, go to an adult bookstore and watch a movie while masturbating. Then, at work and when completing his undergraduate degree, he would check in at various Internet sites and try to recapture the images he saw in the film.
Most evenings he would visit nearly 200 pornographic sites and masturbate two or three times. Some of the sites were chat rooms and he conversed with young women he fantasized were teenage girls and suspected were older men pretending they were teenage girls.
He flirted with women, or girls, on the sites, looked at pictures, watched pornographic video streaming — and found that the novel variations of what could be considered a pretty basic act were seemingly endless. After all, more than 4.2 million websites and more than 372 million pages are devoted to pornography, according to the Internet security service Internet Filter Review. Even if he had maintained this rate of consumption, it would have taken him almost two and half years to see everything.
But he could never see everything, because the pornographic universe, more rapaciously than Einstein's universe, is constantly expanding. Industry figures estimate that about 200 new sex-related sites are added each day.
"You keep yourself in a state of arousal for anywhere from half an hour to two or three hours," Phil says. "It's degrading and humiliating and very, very frustrating and confusing. A lot of it is based on the need to escape and get away from everything."
Those interviewed who are attempting to kick their Internet pornographic habit describe feelings of dissociation, and the way that the graphic sexual images on the Web intrude in their daily lives. Given the range of erotica they are exposed to, their own intimate lives pale in comparison, as partners, spouses and girlfriends recede in importance.
If there is one psychological element that unites them, clinicians who work with these addicts say, it is a basic fear of real intimacy. And for many, the sexual and illicit charge they receive from cruising the Internet is a way to cope with depression or anxiety that rules the rest of their lives. Web porn becomes a kind of self-administered shock therapy.
Among clinicians, they are seen as suffering from "problematic online sexual behavior." They range in age from pre-pubertal to geriatric.
In one study of 9,265 general Internet users, about 6% scored in a way that suggested cyber sex compulsivity, while an additional 10% of the entire sample was considered "at risk." That research, conducted in 2000 by Al Cooper, a psychologist at Stanford University, was published in the journal Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity. Extrapolating from this research, experts estimate that Internet sex has taken over the lives of possibly 8.9 million people in this country.
They do not fit any neat or coherent profile.
In his early book on sex addiction, "Don't Call It Love: Recovery From Sexual Addiction," Carnes described sex addicts as people who shared a number of characteristics. Overwhelmingly, they had a history of emotional, physical or sexual abuse in their childhoods. They often had suicidal thoughts or feelings and strong feelings of loneliness, and most came from families where there was abuse of drugs or alcohol.
Not so for the person addicted to cyber sex. Many are men, but women are increasingly showing up at 12-step programs, addicted less to graphic sex but much more to Internet "relationships" and Internet dating.
The brain's response
Masters and Johnson, the eminent duo of sex research, divided the human sexual response into four distinct phases: excitement, plateau, orgasm and resolution. Though these phases differ for each individual, it is generally understood that most people with both a healthy libido and a satisfying intimate relationship fully experience all of them. Perhaps not reliably, perhaps not all the time, but frequently enough to maintain a certain emotional and sexual equilibrium.
These behavioral phases, neuroscientists have learned, are generated by an exquisite interplay between two competing systems in the brain: the excitatory system and the inhibitory system. Experts in the human sexual response, like former Kinsey Institute director John Bancroft, caution that at this point "we can only speculate and conceptualize how the brain functions in an inhibitory way."
Nonetheless, when there is sexual dysfunction, when someone is uninterested in sex — called a sexual anorexic by some clinicians — or obsessively masturbating, it is safe to say that either the inhibitory system or the excitatory system is out of whack.
The final ingredient in the inner workings of our sexual responses is what sex researchers call an arousal template. As individual as a fingerprint, an arousal template is, Carnes writes, "the total constellation of thoughts, images, behaviors, sounds, smells, sights fantasies and objects that arouse us sexually." The template can be as elaborate as an opera or as innocent as a particular perfume, but the images and feelings that it contains set in motion all the other elements of our sexual responses.
But with the variety and intensity of images, the Internet can throw this arousal template and all that follows into chaos.
"It can tap into an arousal template or fetish behavior that we don't even know we have," says David Delmonico, a professor of psychology at Duquesne University and co-director of Internet Behavior Consulting. The counseling group helps people who have problems controlling their use of the Internet, such as preteens addicted to instant messaging and adults unable to control cyber sex.
On the Internet, fairly standard pornography can lead very quickly into the darker world of teenagers or even younger children. "A lot of guys will say that they didn't start with the teen stuff or the little kid stuff," Delmonico says. "But it became more and more enticing for reasons that they simply were unable to explain."
Bondage sites and bestiality sites. Diapering sites and foot fetish sites. Young teens, hermaphrodites, dirty socks and excessively large organs. Anyone cruising the Internet can find more and more vehicles for arousal.
"People build up a tolerance, it doesn't give them the same high that it did before," Carnes says. So the process from excitement to resolution is thwarted. They need more to get excited and, for those who are compulsively hooked on cyber sex, the gratification of resolution never occurs.
Drew is nearly 40 years old, a married father who lives in Virginia. He is also a recovering sex addict who says he has been helped by Sexual Compulsives Anonymous. When he went online, he says, he was seeking escape from the tedium of daily life, from the depression that haunted him for as long as he could remember.
In one of the few studies of sexual compulsivity, published in 2004 in the Journal of Sex Research, a small sample of 31 self-identified sex addicts received questionnaires and were interviewed, then compared with an age-matched control group.
Although a symptom of depression for most people is decreased interest in sex, the study found that for a small number, including those who consider themselves sex addicts, their interest in sex increased with their depression.
In another study, published in 2003 in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, 9.4% of those who saw themselves as sex addicts reported increased interest in sex when depressed and more than 20% were more interested in sex when they were anxious. In addition, 45% of the self-identified sex addicts described feeling dissociated from their activities, an experience that was often repeated anecdotally.
The findings, though preliminary, have led some clinicians to augment their treatment of sexual compulsion with treatment for depression. And given the fact that one of the side effects of many antidepressants is decreased libido, some clinicians have found that antidepressant medication can also help.
When the emotions overwhelmed Drew, he would click on an Internet icon on his desktop and seek out teenage girls.
"When you are out there and in chat rooms or discussion boards and others are all discussing this as not a big deal, it lowers your resistance to it," he says. "So you are more open to doing other things."
In fact, so desensitized have people become to explicit sexual images from the Internet, that many law enforcement officials or forensic psychologists specializing in sex offender programs have reported that the Internet has created a new dilemma in the field. Phallometric testing had long been a reliable way to measure arousal patterns among sex offenders by showing them erotic images of varying degrees.
But the images no longer have the power to arouse because the offenders are so desensitized by the far more graphic and lurid images that are available on the Internet. "One of the most stunning clinical shifts I have seen is how quickly cyber sex exploration alters arousal," Carnes says.
Intimate disconnect
Like many behavioral addictions — eating disorders, gambling — cyber sex obsession does not occur in a vacuum. The partner or spouse of someone who is obsessed with Internet sex suffers immeasurable humiliation and anguish.
Phil's wife was shattered by his fascination with the world of online pornography. Initially she thought that his enthrallment with pornography and Internet sex was simply the experimentation of a young and healthy man. But over the years she felt her own self-esteem shrivel as she realized that she could never compete with the Internet.
"I always felt like I was some doll, acting out his fantasies but without any real connection between the two of us," she says.
Weiss of L.A.'s Sexual Recovery Institute says that treatment for people who are sexual compulsives must also include treating an unhealthy relationship.
"A healthy partner would say, 'I'm not sitting around here while you are doing that, I am outta here.' " But instead, many of these partners, in textbook versions of codependence, shield their children from their father's activities "by making sure they ring the bell when coming home, so daddy knows we are here and will stop masturbating in front of the computer," Weiss says.
Therapy and support
As Internet sex problems have increased, so have treatments.
An alphabet soup of 12-step programs — Sex Addicts Anonymous, Codependents of Sex Addicts, Sexual Compulsives Anonymous — have sprung up to meet the exploding needs. Some preach complete abstinence unless in a married relationship, others chart areas of acceptable and unacceptable behavior.
Clinicians have turned to cognitive behavior therapy, as well as drugs, because there is a long established link between aberrant sexual behavior and depression, anxiety and other emotional disorders.
"We look at our clients who are sex addicts like it is an eating disorder," says Weiss. "Sexual recovery is not not having sex. It is about healthy sexuality and staying within those boundaries."
Four years ago, Phil's wife threatened to leave if he did not get his behavior under control. She then took him to a meeting of Sexual Compulsives Anonymous. He looked around the room and heard stories that made him shudder, both because those who recited them seemed to be such losers, and because he recognized himself.
They are now struggling to pull their lives back together as a couple, going to 12-step meetings of Codependents of Sex Addicts and Sexual Compulsives Anonymous.
Phil cannot access the computer at home, and the television is locked and only his wife has the key. They go to meetings frequently and struggle to claim a normal intimate life. Phil has recently been diagnosed as suffering from bipolar disorder, and acknowledges having struggled with depression, like so many who act out sexually.
Phil's marriage is the most powerful incentive to change that exists. "
If I lose my wife, I won't have anything left to live for," he says, his voice thick with emotion. "My hope is just to make it through the day. Hour to hour. Minute to minute. It's 9 o'clock in the morning and I haven't acted out. There was a time when I would have acted three or four times already. So that gives me hope."
Because of his wife, Phil is one of the very lucky ones. For those who lack such a sustaining or intimate connection, hope will forever compete with a click of a mouse.
Where to turn for support
A number of resources and support groups are available for people who believe that they or their partners might be addicted to cyber sex.
Although support groups and 12-step programs are the treatments of choice, there are fundamental differences between their basic philosophies.
S-Anon and Sex Addicts Anonymous believe that the only way to recover is through sexual abstinence and an exclusive marital relationship.
But these programs often do not feel manageable for people who are unmarried or gay.
Other groups, such as Sexual Recovery and Sexual Compulsives Anonymous, contend that recovery needs to be structured by integrating normal and healthy sexual activity into daily life.
Here are some of the main support groups:
• Codependents (or Co-Addicts) of Sex Addicts (COSA): http://www.cosa-recovery.org.• ; Counseling Affiliates Sexual Addiction Treatment Program, including tests: http://www.sexaddictionhelp.com .
• Recovering Couples Anonymous: http://www.recovering-couples.org .
• S-Anon: (800) 210-8141, (615) 833-3152 or http://www.sanon.org .
• Sex Addicts Anonymous: (800) 477-8191, (713) 869-4902 or http://www.sexaa.org .
• Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, for those who are also involved in compulsive emotional relationships online: http://www.slaafws.org .
• Sexual addiction resources, by Patrick Carnes: http://www.sexhelp.com .
• Sexual Compulsives Anonymous: (310) 859-5585 or http://www.sca-recovery.org .
• Sexual Recovery Institute, Los Angeles: (310) 360-0130 or http://www.sexualrecovery.com .
• Sexual Recovery Anonymous, sexualrecovery.org.
How to know if you need help
A number of tests are available on the Web to determine if you have a problem with sex addiction or Internet sex addiction.
A positive answer to one of these three basic questions suggests that someone has a sex addiction, according to the Society for the Advancement of Sexual Health:
• Do I have a sense that I have lost control over my specific sexual behavior?
• Am I experiencing significant consequences because of my specific out-of-control sexual behavior?
• Do I feel like I am constantly thinking about my specific out-of-control sexual behavior, even when I don't want to?
Questions about Internet sex addiction can be found at http://www.sexhelp.com or http://www.sexaddictionhelp.com .
In his book, "In the Shadows of the Net," Patrick Carnes writes that a positive answer to any of the statements below could indicate a problem.
Have you ever done any of the following:
• Kept sexual activity on the Internet a secret from family members.
• Carried out sexual activities on the Net at work.
• Frequently found yourself erasing your computer history files in an effort to conceal your activity on the Net.
• Felt ashamed at the thought that someone you love might discover your Internet use.
• Found that your time on the Net takes away from or prevents you from doing other tasks and activities.
• Found yourself in a kind of online trance or time warp during which the hours just slipped by.
• Frequently visited chat rooms that are focused on sexual conversation.
• Looked forward to your sexual activities on the Net and felt frustrated and anxious when you couldn't get on when you planned.
• Found yourself masturbating while on the Net.
• Had sexual chat room friends who became more important than the family and friends in your life.
• Regularly visited porn sites.
• Downloaded pornography from a newsgroup on more than one occasion.
• Had favorite porn sites.
• Visited fetish porn sites on more than one occasion.
• Viewed child pornography online.
• Taken part in the CUseeMe sexual video rooms.
@}-}rebecca----
not enough discipline ...
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2005
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- 13,063
Man Seeking Woman
Control Tower & Kink Calendar
BY MISTRESS MATISSE
Control Tower
Man Seeking Woman
“It’s 2006,” he said earnestly. “And this year, I’m gonna put up a personal ad so I can meet some kinky girls!”
I’ve heard this from several different guys lately, and I think it’s a grand idea. Not only have I used personal ads myself, I have also been privy to many conversations with kinky women who cruise the personal ads. So, let me give you some tips on how to impress the ladies of the fetish community.
Be honest and don’t attempt to use insider lingo if you’re new to kink. You will invariably get part of it wrong, which will brand you as a foolish poser. Or it’ll set you up for a date with someone you think is a really big Louis Armstrong fan… only to find that they mean the other kind of scat.
If you’re 23-years-old, you do not have 10 years of experience in kink. No, no, you really don’t. Throwing lit matches at your bunkmates at summer camp does not count as a BDSM relationship.
On the other hand, a man over 50 who states that he is seeking women between 18–26 is courting ridicule and gold diggers.
Everyone is looking for “someone who is serious” and “not into game playing.” Using these phrases is tantamount to saying you like to go for long walks on the beach. Another phrase to avoid: “…the gift of your/my submission.” I know you mean well, but it’s become such an eye-rolling cliché that she’ll be hitting the back button as soon as she reads it.
To he who would be Master: I’ve heard a number of submissive women put forth the theory that there is an inverse ratio between a man’s skill as a dominant and how early in the communication cycle he mentions using blowjobs as a tool for “training” a submissive. Consider your approach here carefully.
Also, addressing all female submissives, generically, as “little one” or “little girl” is about as suave as calling vanilla women “sexy mama.” You might as well wear a bad hairpiece.
To those seeking a Mistress: announcing you like to do “pussy worship” does not strongly differentiate you from 98 percent of the ads on the vanilla dating sites, let alone other male submissives. If you really want to jump off the page, let us know you’re willing to do “dirty dishes worship.”
Poetry in your ad? Usually a really bad idea. Especially if you’ve written it yourself, and most especially if you try to rhyme “bondage” with “homage.”
Having, or being, a caged and naked sex slave is fine—for a weekend. If you write an ad seriously stating that you’re looking for a relationship in which one of you lives in a dog crate indefinitely, you might as well entitle your profile “Whack Job Seeks Same!”
Speaking of whack jobs: Anyone who starts talking about relocation in the first e-mail exchange is not someone to whom I’d give my home address. Ever.
Now, a word about pictures—although not a thousand of them. Guys, I’m a very sex-positive girl, and even I don’t want to see a close-up of your crankshaft before I’ve decided if I like you or not. So ix-nay on the nothing-but-dick pix, please. I’ve seen some attractive full-length nude shots, but generally, a head and (clothed) torso is best. I know some of you don’t want to put your face in the shot, so I’ll grudgingly permit you some creative camera angles or cropping. But no silly face-hiding techniques. Those executioner masks, for example? No. The kindest possible interpretation would be that you’re going for Quentin Tarantino–style irony. But, really—no.
And be careful of props. A motorcycle, for example, is a good prop. Pictures of you with your Ren faire sword are borderline, but no Captain Jack Sparrow hats. Pictures of you with your dog would probably be fine on a vanilla dating site, but it might raise niggling doubts on a kink site if you seem a little too affectionate.
The crucial thing to bring to the whole experience is a sense of humor about it. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, love—and the search for it—is much too important to be taken seriously.
matisse@thestranger.com
Control Tower & Kink Calendar
BY MISTRESS MATISSE
Control Tower
Man Seeking Woman
“It’s 2006,” he said earnestly. “And this year, I’m gonna put up a personal ad so I can meet some kinky girls!”
I’ve heard this from several different guys lately, and I think it’s a grand idea. Not only have I used personal ads myself, I have also been privy to many conversations with kinky women who cruise the personal ads. So, let me give you some tips on how to impress the ladies of the fetish community.
Be honest and don’t attempt to use insider lingo if you’re new to kink. You will invariably get part of it wrong, which will brand you as a foolish poser. Or it’ll set you up for a date with someone you think is a really big Louis Armstrong fan… only to find that they mean the other kind of scat.
If you’re 23-years-old, you do not have 10 years of experience in kink. No, no, you really don’t. Throwing lit matches at your bunkmates at summer camp does not count as a BDSM relationship.
On the other hand, a man over 50 who states that he is seeking women between 18–26 is courting ridicule and gold diggers.
Everyone is looking for “someone who is serious” and “not into game playing.” Using these phrases is tantamount to saying you like to go for long walks on the beach. Another phrase to avoid: “…the gift of your/my submission.” I know you mean well, but it’s become such an eye-rolling cliché that she’ll be hitting the back button as soon as she reads it.
To he who would be Master: I’ve heard a number of submissive women put forth the theory that there is an inverse ratio between a man’s skill as a dominant and how early in the communication cycle he mentions using blowjobs as a tool for “training” a submissive. Consider your approach here carefully.
Also, addressing all female submissives, generically, as “little one” or “little girl” is about as suave as calling vanilla women “sexy mama.” You might as well wear a bad hairpiece.
To those seeking a Mistress: announcing you like to do “pussy worship” does not strongly differentiate you from 98 percent of the ads on the vanilla dating sites, let alone other male submissives. If you really want to jump off the page, let us know you’re willing to do “dirty dishes worship.”
Poetry in your ad? Usually a really bad idea. Especially if you’ve written it yourself, and most especially if you try to rhyme “bondage” with “homage.”
Having, or being, a caged and naked sex slave is fine—for a weekend. If you write an ad seriously stating that you’re looking for a relationship in which one of you lives in a dog crate indefinitely, you might as well entitle your profile “Whack Job Seeks Same!”
Speaking of whack jobs: Anyone who starts talking about relocation in the first e-mail exchange is not someone to whom I’d give my home address. Ever.
Now, a word about pictures—although not a thousand of them. Guys, I’m a very sex-positive girl, and even I don’t want to see a close-up of your crankshaft before I’ve decided if I like you or not. So ix-nay on the nothing-but-dick pix, please. I’ve seen some attractive full-length nude shots, but generally, a head and (clothed) torso is best. I know some of you don’t want to put your face in the shot, so I’ll grudgingly permit you some creative camera angles or cropping. But no silly face-hiding techniques. Those executioner masks, for example? No. The kindest possible interpretation would be that you’re going for Quentin Tarantino–style irony. But, really—no.
And be careful of props. A motorcycle, for example, is a good prop. Pictures of you with your Ren faire sword are borderline, but no Captain Jack Sparrow hats. Pictures of you with your dog would probably be fine on a vanilla dating site, but it might raise niggling doubts on a kink site if you seem a little too affectionate.
The crucial thing to bring to the whole experience is a sense of humor about it. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, love—and the search for it—is much too important to be taken seriously.
matisse@thestranger.com
@}-}rebecca----
not enough discipline ...
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2005
- Posts
- 13,063
Leather community debates trans exclusion at upcoming contest
Leather community debates trans exclusion at upcoming contest
By by Zak Szymanski
z.szymanski@ebar.com
"These are really good guys, and they are people of good standing in this community," is the first thing that longtime leather community member and activist Peter Fiske said of the local producers of the International LeatherSIR/Leatherboy competition. "I honestly do not believe that they think they are discriminating."
Resurrected where the San Francisco-born International Drummer contest left off, the LeatherSIR/Leatherboy will hold a regional feeder contest in San Francisco in July. The contest has a worldwide policy requiring its competitors to be "born male," thus excluding transgender men from competing.
Local leathermen Jay Hemphill and Michael Holeman are producing the city's LeatherSIR/Leatherboy, and both men also happen to be the leaders of the leather contingent for the San Francisco LGBT Pride Parade, which takes place at the end of June. Fiske, who served as male leather marshal of last year's parade, said he may have to march in a different contingent this year, because the leather leadership is now associated with LeatherSIR/Leatherboy, "and I don't want it to appear that the leather community in San Francisco supports discrimination...the community should not have to be put in that position."
Recognizing that local contest producers don't have sole influence over the competition's policy, Fiske is asking that Hemphill and Holeman voluntarily step down as leaders of the leather Pride contingent. Otherwise, he is calling for the matter to be brought up at the Pride leather contingent meeting on January 28.
"The reason I am going public is not to shame anyone, but to draw attention to this policy. Not everybody knows that we are now welcoming a new discrimination to San Francisco," said Fiske, adding that all the male clubs he knows in the city simply require male identification and do not ask people to otherwise discuss or prove their birth gender. "Certainly, everyone is entitled to their privacy."
On Monday, January 16, Hemphill told the Bay Area Reporter that his comments would have to be limited to local concerns, as the transgender policy is an international rule and not something on which he could express his personal views.
"As far as the parade goes, it went so smoothly last year and I think everybody was happy," Hemphill said of his contingent leadership. The local controversy, he said, "is causing division in the leather community, which is not good. I'm surprised it's coming up now since it has always been the policy, even when it was Drummer before."
Although the same born male policy was adopted by the International Drummer contest upon its founding 29 years ago, community members say that such an exclusion is the exception, not the rule in San Francisco leather circles.
With the contest's reincarnation in San Francisco this year after a five-year absence, Fiske and others said it's time to take a stand, and a variety of community leaders are speaking out or refusing to be a part of any event that supports transgender discrimination. A letter drafted by Fiske and signed by local LGBT community members appears in this week's B.A.R. Additionally, some leather community members said they will refuse invitations to judge or help organize any competition that discriminates against transgenders.
"My official position is that I will not be involved in a contest that discriminates against my transgender brothers and sisters," said Jorge Vieto, a member of the S.F. Boys of Leather who said he was approached by local organizers of LeatherSIR and he respectfully declined to be involved. His own club welcomes transmen, he said, and "I just don't really see it as a problem. Discrimination based on sexual and gender identity is against our beliefs."
Some community members with a variety of viewpoints said they were not ready to make public statements on the record. One gay man who identified himself as the lover of a transman emphasized that it wasn't just transgenders who were affected by the policy. Others pointed out that such a policy is a rarity for the usually inclusive San Francisco leather community.
"The exclusionary policy of the LeatherSIR and boy contest is the exception. Nationwide, most of the men's leather clubs and events are inclusive at a policy level. Most of the rest have no specific policy, but are inclusive in practice. Only a very few have a written policy that excludes transmen, and in San Francisco, there are no men's leather clubs that discriminate," said Jordy Jones, a leather community member and scholar with a long history of involvement in human rights issues. "The men's community in general has been welcoming. This has mainly been accomplished quietly, man-to-man, without the painful struggles that unfortunately too often continue to mark the exclusion of transwomen from women's events and businesses. If people haven't heard about exclusionary policies in the men's leather community, that is because they are so rare as to be practically a non-issue. And that, of course, is how it should be; most clubs welcome all men."
Gender divide
Two themes consistently emerge during debates about trans inclusion in gender-segregated spaces. One is physicality, or the idea that a trans person will present with anatomy that is uncomfortably different from the majority of the crowd. The other is socialization, or the idea that a trans person has not been adequately indoctrinated into their gender's culture. Oftentimes, each of those themes influences or is confused with the other.
Socially, some familiar with male-space debates say that the highly visible and vocal emerging female-to-male and genderqueer populations in women's communities have made it difficult for well-blended FTMs to be out and taken seriously as men. It's a conflict that can be fueled by some events that claim to be women's events but which "welcome FTMs," furthering the false notion that transgender males are another version of women.
"FTM-inclusive women's space" is increasingly being challenged by its own community members – by women who want their women's space back, as well as by some female-partnered FTMs who say that their invitation to women's events invalidates their male identities. Others have advocated that the terminology of such events at least be changed to accurately reflect the genders of who is welcomed. In the meantime the new prevalence of FTM-identified folks in women's circles has actually led some FTM men to redefine themselves, choosing the label of "transman" instead, or forgoing trans identities altogether to recognize that they live first as men.
But despite what seems confusing from the outside, many people from within all of these communities agree that it is a very different transgender male who lives in gay men's leather circles than one who primarily socializes with women. Thus, the idea of some kind of lesbian-tinged contest in gay male space is not actually very likely, they say.
"Gay transmen – who sleep with and are accepted as men – would be entirely out of place in my own gender-specific communities," Andy Julian, a self-described boi and a member of many online BDSM communities, told the B.A.R. "These are men first, and not usually trans-identified or visibly trans in the same way that plays out in women's spaces. Same goes for transmen who date women who are not lesbians. It's important for everyone's identity – including mine – that these distinctions be made."
Marcus Arana, a discrimination investigator with San Francisco's Human Rights Commission, said he finds many assumptions about transgenders to be based in sexism, regardless of whether those assumptions are coming from men or women.
"There is this funny idea that an FTM is somehow a frog to a butch lesbian pollywog. But we hardly ever hear that an MTF is on 'the gay male spectrum.' Once she cuts off her penis she is considered a woman," said Arana, who agreed that transmale exclusion is "an anomaly in the inclusive San Francisco leather community."
Like some national women's events that prohibit MTF transwomen from attending, the exclusion of transmen contestants in LeatherSIR/Leatherboy seems to revolve around the presence – or absence – of a penis.
"It is a sexual competition," explained Mike Zuhl, president of DCI Productions, which is based in Pittsburgh, which runs International LeatherSIR/Leatherboy. "The contest is about male sexuality. There's a jock strap competition, and a lot of skin showing along that line, and the people who compete should all be on the same fair footing."
Yet assumptions that transmen do not have penises are not necessarily based in fact, said Arana. While recent improvements in bottom surgeries have made the procedures more sought after and perhaps more common, even testosterone alone causes transmen to grow an organ referred to in medical texts as a "micropenis."
"I know lots of gay male FTMs who were never lesbians. Their queer identity is tied up in being men. So to suddenly tell this gay man he can't participate because his penis is two-inches long is a bit ironic," said Arana.
Creating an exclusion based upon penis size, he said, "may mean that a higher standard of masculinity is expected of FTMs than from other guys, which could be an area where the courts and case law could be explored."
Gray area
Legally, the LeatherSIR/boy policy falls into a gray area, said Arana. On one hand, he said, the group is an international organization and a private club that can set its own rules, but on the other hand San Francisco's local nondiscrimination ordinance may mean that the Human Rights Commission may have jurisdiction to look into the group's contests when they are held in the city's public spaces.
A statement on the group's Web site says, "Contestants are judged in four categories: Interview; Formal Speech; Physique; and, a Leather Sex Fantasy based on the region's assigned theme for the year. The interview is a private meeting in the afternoon with the judges; the other categories take place on stage during the contest. The fantasy portions of the contest are a fun celebration of leather-sex and one of the key elements that sets LeatherSIR/Leatherboy contests apart for those styled after the International Mr. Leather and Mid-Atlantic Leather formats."
Winners of smaller competitions like those held in San Francisco go on to compete in regionals, and the international competition is held in Atlanta in October, though Zuhl said he would like to bring the big event back to San Francisco for its 30th anniversary.
Zuhl said that he brought up community concerns about the born male policy with his board at the last international competition in Atlanta, and the vote was unanimous – 25-0 – that the policy remain the same.
"I don't see it ever being brought up again," he said. "As far as we're concerned, it's a dead issue."
Zuhl – emphasizing that his organization represents many regional communities which all have different standards – said he doesn't quite understand what is behind the San Francisco controversy. He noted that some leather clubs across the country have also made rules specifying they are "for males only, not transgenders." But Zuhl added that he is very familiar with transgenders, well versed in the issues, and has even helped pay for some of his friends' surgeries.
"We all have rules and regulations, and that's what makes each one of our contests different. If we all catered to the same needs there would be no reason to have different contests. The reason we stay with male sexuality is because that's what we're about. I'm just the keeper of that tradition. I can't enter a woman's contest. I can't, as a foreigner, go enter a Canadian contest," said Zuhl. "If transgender men want to compete in a leather contest there are vehicles in which they can do that. I totally empower the trans people. I support them and do not have any issue with it. We're there to support, help, and empower them and give them anything they need to support their cause. But we're not going to change our rules. And it's not discrimination."
In fact the same contest rule that keeps transgender men out of LeatherSIR/Leatherboy is also the same one that recently allowed someone female identified to hold the title, said Zuhl.
"He was male identified when he entered the contest," Zuhl explained. "Then he came out as a transgender woman, with six weeks of his title left. He was very nervous, but I said, 'This man deserves to be who he needs to be, and we need to empower him.' Nobody was going to take his title away, because they'd also be stripping down his dignity. As a human being with compassion there was no way I could strip that from him."
Zuhl added that if the MTF titleholder had known her identity prior to the contest, and disclosed that on the application, "it would have been a whole different story."
Fiske said that while he believes in a group's right to set their own rules, "it was the connection that did it for me," he said of the leather Pride contingent. "I'm asking the contingent to separate itself from the leadership and take a stance in the men's and leather community."
Zuhl said that his competition should not affect Hemphill and Holeman's local role as leather contingent leaders.
"These are stellar pillars of the community. They are also leathermen. They are heading a committee because people think they can do the job," said Zuhl. "Their affiliation with me should have no bearing on what they do in the San Francisco community."
"We are staying true to our roots that the old guard established 29 years ago right here in San Francisco," Zuhl summarized about the competition's position. "There are enough contest systems out there, and there's nothing wrong with having one that is for men who were biologically male at birth."
How such policies would be enforced is another question. Transmen are already leaders in many men's leather communities; while some are visible or have chosen to be out, others say that disclosing their status would simply mean inappropriately disclosing a piece of their medical history, and would only result in detracting energy and respect from leather traditions and competitions.
One leather community member, who asked that his name not be used, said he doesn't always disclose his transsexual experience before he plays in leather space "because it is far from the most important thing about me – but they might feel otherwise. That is not fair to either me or them – I am not seen for who I am, and they don't get to meet me, but only their stereotypes. If I wanted to be seen as not-me, I could have stayed a woman."
He added, "There is still so much advertising that FTMs are another type of woman, that I cannot both overcome that and make a real connection in the short time allowed at a run or event... I play, pretty bravely, I think, getting naked in the dungeon to bottom, and wearing what I need to, to top. Anything else isn't why I am in leather."
Leather community debates trans exclusion at upcoming contest
By by Zak Szymanski
z.szymanski@ebar.com
"These are really good guys, and they are people of good standing in this community," is the first thing that longtime leather community member and activist Peter Fiske said of the local producers of the International LeatherSIR/Leatherboy competition. "I honestly do not believe that they think they are discriminating."
Resurrected where the San Francisco-born International Drummer contest left off, the LeatherSIR/Leatherboy will hold a regional feeder contest in San Francisco in July. The contest has a worldwide policy requiring its competitors to be "born male," thus excluding transgender men from competing.
Local leathermen Jay Hemphill and Michael Holeman are producing the city's LeatherSIR/Leatherboy, and both men also happen to be the leaders of the leather contingent for the San Francisco LGBT Pride Parade, which takes place at the end of June. Fiske, who served as male leather marshal of last year's parade, said he may have to march in a different contingent this year, because the leather leadership is now associated with LeatherSIR/Leatherboy, "and I don't want it to appear that the leather community in San Francisco supports discrimination...the community should not have to be put in that position."
Recognizing that local contest producers don't have sole influence over the competition's policy, Fiske is asking that Hemphill and Holeman voluntarily step down as leaders of the leather Pride contingent. Otherwise, he is calling for the matter to be brought up at the Pride leather contingent meeting on January 28.
"The reason I am going public is not to shame anyone, but to draw attention to this policy. Not everybody knows that we are now welcoming a new discrimination to San Francisco," said Fiske, adding that all the male clubs he knows in the city simply require male identification and do not ask people to otherwise discuss or prove their birth gender. "Certainly, everyone is entitled to their privacy."
On Monday, January 16, Hemphill told the Bay Area Reporter that his comments would have to be limited to local concerns, as the transgender policy is an international rule and not something on which he could express his personal views.
"As far as the parade goes, it went so smoothly last year and I think everybody was happy," Hemphill said of his contingent leadership. The local controversy, he said, "is causing division in the leather community, which is not good. I'm surprised it's coming up now since it has always been the policy, even when it was Drummer before."
Although the same born male policy was adopted by the International Drummer contest upon its founding 29 years ago, community members say that such an exclusion is the exception, not the rule in San Francisco leather circles.
With the contest's reincarnation in San Francisco this year after a five-year absence, Fiske and others said it's time to take a stand, and a variety of community leaders are speaking out or refusing to be a part of any event that supports transgender discrimination. A letter drafted by Fiske and signed by local LGBT community members appears in this week's B.A.R. Additionally, some leather community members said they will refuse invitations to judge or help organize any competition that discriminates against transgenders.
"My official position is that I will not be involved in a contest that discriminates against my transgender brothers and sisters," said Jorge Vieto, a member of the S.F. Boys of Leather who said he was approached by local organizers of LeatherSIR and he respectfully declined to be involved. His own club welcomes transmen, he said, and "I just don't really see it as a problem. Discrimination based on sexual and gender identity is against our beliefs."
Some community members with a variety of viewpoints said they were not ready to make public statements on the record. One gay man who identified himself as the lover of a transman emphasized that it wasn't just transgenders who were affected by the policy. Others pointed out that such a policy is a rarity for the usually inclusive San Francisco leather community.
"The exclusionary policy of the LeatherSIR and boy contest is the exception. Nationwide, most of the men's leather clubs and events are inclusive at a policy level. Most of the rest have no specific policy, but are inclusive in practice. Only a very few have a written policy that excludes transmen, and in San Francisco, there are no men's leather clubs that discriminate," said Jordy Jones, a leather community member and scholar with a long history of involvement in human rights issues. "The men's community in general has been welcoming. This has mainly been accomplished quietly, man-to-man, without the painful struggles that unfortunately too often continue to mark the exclusion of transwomen from women's events and businesses. If people haven't heard about exclusionary policies in the men's leather community, that is because they are so rare as to be practically a non-issue. And that, of course, is how it should be; most clubs welcome all men."
Gender divide
Two themes consistently emerge during debates about trans inclusion in gender-segregated spaces. One is physicality, or the idea that a trans person will present with anatomy that is uncomfortably different from the majority of the crowd. The other is socialization, or the idea that a trans person has not been adequately indoctrinated into their gender's culture. Oftentimes, each of those themes influences or is confused with the other.
Socially, some familiar with male-space debates say that the highly visible and vocal emerging female-to-male and genderqueer populations in women's communities have made it difficult for well-blended FTMs to be out and taken seriously as men. It's a conflict that can be fueled by some events that claim to be women's events but which "welcome FTMs," furthering the false notion that transgender males are another version of women.
"FTM-inclusive women's space" is increasingly being challenged by its own community members – by women who want their women's space back, as well as by some female-partnered FTMs who say that their invitation to women's events invalidates their male identities. Others have advocated that the terminology of such events at least be changed to accurately reflect the genders of who is welcomed. In the meantime the new prevalence of FTM-identified folks in women's circles has actually led some FTM men to redefine themselves, choosing the label of "transman" instead, or forgoing trans identities altogether to recognize that they live first as men.
But despite what seems confusing from the outside, many people from within all of these communities agree that it is a very different transgender male who lives in gay men's leather circles than one who primarily socializes with women. Thus, the idea of some kind of lesbian-tinged contest in gay male space is not actually very likely, they say.
"Gay transmen – who sleep with and are accepted as men – would be entirely out of place in my own gender-specific communities," Andy Julian, a self-described boi and a member of many online BDSM communities, told the B.A.R. "These are men first, and not usually trans-identified or visibly trans in the same way that plays out in women's spaces. Same goes for transmen who date women who are not lesbians. It's important for everyone's identity – including mine – that these distinctions be made."
Marcus Arana, a discrimination investigator with San Francisco's Human Rights Commission, said he finds many assumptions about transgenders to be based in sexism, regardless of whether those assumptions are coming from men or women.
"There is this funny idea that an FTM is somehow a frog to a butch lesbian pollywog. But we hardly ever hear that an MTF is on 'the gay male spectrum.' Once she cuts off her penis she is considered a woman," said Arana, who agreed that transmale exclusion is "an anomaly in the inclusive San Francisco leather community."
Like some national women's events that prohibit MTF transwomen from attending, the exclusion of transmen contestants in LeatherSIR/Leatherboy seems to revolve around the presence – or absence – of a penis.
"It is a sexual competition," explained Mike Zuhl, president of DCI Productions, which is based in Pittsburgh, which runs International LeatherSIR/Leatherboy. "The contest is about male sexuality. There's a jock strap competition, and a lot of skin showing along that line, and the people who compete should all be on the same fair footing."
Yet assumptions that transmen do not have penises are not necessarily based in fact, said Arana. While recent improvements in bottom surgeries have made the procedures more sought after and perhaps more common, even testosterone alone causes transmen to grow an organ referred to in medical texts as a "micropenis."
"I know lots of gay male FTMs who were never lesbians. Their queer identity is tied up in being men. So to suddenly tell this gay man he can't participate because his penis is two-inches long is a bit ironic," said Arana.
Creating an exclusion based upon penis size, he said, "may mean that a higher standard of masculinity is expected of FTMs than from other guys, which could be an area where the courts and case law could be explored."
Gray area
Legally, the LeatherSIR/boy policy falls into a gray area, said Arana. On one hand, he said, the group is an international organization and a private club that can set its own rules, but on the other hand San Francisco's local nondiscrimination ordinance may mean that the Human Rights Commission may have jurisdiction to look into the group's contests when they are held in the city's public spaces.
A statement on the group's Web site says, "Contestants are judged in four categories: Interview; Formal Speech; Physique; and, a Leather Sex Fantasy based on the region's assigned theme for the year. The interview is a private meeting in the afternoon with the judges; the other categories take place on stage during the contest. The fantasy portions of the contest are a fun celebration of leather-sex and one of the key elements that sets LeatherSIR/Leatherboy contests apart for those styled after the International Mr. Leather and Mid-Atlantic Leather formats."
Winners of smaller competitions like those held in San Francisco go on to compete in regionals, and the international competition is held in Atlanta in October, though Zuhl said he would like to bring the big event back to San Francisco for its 30th anniversary.
Zuhl said that he brought up community concerns about the born male policy with his board at the last international competition in Atlanta, and the vote was unanimous – 25-0 – that the policy remain the same.
"I don't see it ever being brought up again," he said. "As far as we're concerned, it's a dead issue."
Zuhl – emphasizing that his organization represents many regional communities which all have different standards – said he doesn't quite understand what is behind the San Francisco controversy. He noted that some leather clubs across the country have also made rules specifying they are "for males only, not transgenders." But Zuhl added that he is very familiar with transgenders, well versed in the issues, and has even helped pay for some of his friends' surgeries.
"We all have rules and regulations, and that's what makes each one of our contests different. If we all catered to the same needs there would be no reason to have different contests. The reason we stay with male sexuality is because that's what we're about. I'm just the keeper of that tradition. I can't enter a woman's contest. I can't, as a foreigner, go enter a Canadian contest," said Zuhl. "If transgender men want to compete in a leather contest there are vehicles in which they can do that. I totally empower the trans people. I support them and do not have any issue with it. We're there to support, help, and empower them and give them anything they need to support their cause. But we're not going to change our rules. And it's not discrimination."
In fact the same contest rule that keeps transgender men out of LeatherSIR/Leatherboy is also the same one that recently allowed someone female identified to hold the title, said Zuhl.
"He was male identified when he entered the contest," Zuhl explained. "Then he came out as a transgender woman, with six weeks of his title left. He was very nervous, but I said, 'This man deserves to be who he needs to be, and we need to empower him.' Nobody was going to take his title away, because they'd also be stripping down his dignity. As a human being with compassion there was no way I could strip that from him."
Zuhl added that if the MTF titleholder had known her identity prior to the contest, and disclosed that on the application, "it would have been a whole different story."
Fiske said that while he believes in a group's right to set their own rules, "it was the connection that did it for me," he said of the leather Pride contingent. "I'm asking the contingent to separate itself from the leadership and take a stance in the men's and leather community."
Zuhl said that his competition should not affect Hemphill and Holeman's local role as leather contingent leaders.
"These are stellar pillars of the community. They are also leathermen. They are heading a committee because people think they can do the job," said Zuhl. "Their affiliation with me should have no bearing on what they do in the San Francisco community."
"We are staying true to our roots that the old guard established 29 years ago right here in San Francisco," Zuhl summarized about the competition's position. "There are enough contest systems out there, and there's nothing wrong with having one that is for men who were biologically male at birth."
How such policies would be enforced is another question. Transmen are already leaders in many men's leather communities; while some are visible or have chosen to be out, others say that disclosing their status would simply mean inappropriately disclosing a piece of their medical history, and would only result in detracting energy and respect from leather traditions and competitions.
One leather community member, who asked that his name not be used, said he doesn't always disclose his transsexual experience before he plays in leather space "because it is far from the most important thing about me – but they might feel otherwise. That is not fair to either me or them – I am not seen for who I am, and they don't get to meet me, but only their stereotypes. If I wanted to be seen as not-me, I could have stayed a woman."
He added, "There is still so much advertising that FTMs are another type of woman, that I cannot both overcome that and make a real connection in the short time allowed at a run or event... I play, pretty bravely, I think, getting naked in the dungeon to bottom, and wearing what I need to, to top. Anything else isn't why I am in leather."
@}-}rebecca----
not enough discipline ...
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2005
- Posts
- 13,063
SFisting: Spank Me With A Weekly
SFisting: Spank Me With A Weekly
Last week we got ourselves all worked into a lather about the SF Weekly's bizarrely incorrect Harmon Leon Infiltrator piece, though sadly it wasn't the kind of lather we usually like, with all the whipped cream and clothespins. A week(ly) later, we notice that the online version of the article has been quietly changed (though you gotta love the forgotten AVN reference in the right-hand corner), and the writer quietly fired.
Why are we still so latherly? Lots of reasons. Take a look at one of the letters to the editor that was so not run in the Weekly:
Photo of 2006 AVN Awards co-host Jesse Jane via Fleshbot's 2006 AVN Awards: Red Carpet Flickr set.
In light of the recent unmaking of best-selling writers as fakers (JT Leroy, James Frey), as well as less-recent revelations of journalists making up stories (Jayson Blair, Stephen Glass), I would expect your editorial staff to spend at least a few minutes fact-checking the stories you print.
After reading Harmon Leon's most recent installment of "Infiltrator", ("Dieter Gone Wild"), we can only assume -- thanks to numerous and blatant factual errors -- that this is a complete work of fiction and should have been been presented to your readers as such. Its clear that the only "infiltration" that Mr. Leon is succeeding in doing is infiltrating your masthead.
The 2006 AVN Awards took place at the Grand Ballroom of the Venetian Hotel, Las Vegas, on January 7, 2006. The awards have never, in their 23 year history, taken place at "a large nightclub in Los Angeles", as Mr. Leon purports. They've been at the Venetian since 2000, and before that in other hotels -- but always in Las Vegas.
Mr. Leon goes on to describe the host of the event as "an MC who looks like an out-of-shape social studies teacher" -- another dubious claim since this year's awards were co-hosted by comedian Greg Fitzsimmons and adult star Jesse Jane. He goes on to say that "The Mistresses of Ceremonies announce the first award, Male Favorite." Male Favorite has never been a category at the AVN Awards.
Full names are lacking in this article, but one person he does mention by name is T. T. Boy, a straight male performer. Mr. Leon says, "The next winner is T.T. Boy." However, T. T. Boy hasn't won an AVN Award since 1997, when he was awarded "Male Performer of the Year" (in 2003, he was inducted into AVN's Hall of Fame). He continues, "The most important award, Video Vixen ..." Again, Video Vixen is not -- nor has it ever -- been an award category at the AVN awards.
(For more errors, compare the NY Times' account of the event with his.)
Beyond the incredibly obvious factual errors in this story, as two people who (proudly) work in the adult industry, we found the mocking tone to be patronizing and offensive. Even fiction writers do more research on their subject matter.
The real insult, however, is not some perceived disrespect for the adult industry in particular -- Leon treats Christian rockers, right-wing punditry, Amber Frey and male models (in both the Weekly and other publications) -- it's Leon's relentless reliance on Conventional Wisdom. He makes up facts that support a story everyone is far too ready to believe.
But truth is stranger than fiction, and more interesting too. The adult industry often seedier than he imagined, but also more normalized andin many ways progressive and healthy. But rather than examine the knotty pine of realism, Leon resorts to cliche and caricature -- producing a column limper than either Bill O'Reilly's Talking Points Memo or Jerry Springer's Final Thought.
When the Bush administration itself crosses the Orwellian lines between fact and fiction, we are vigilant because we disagree. When editors and readers cease to challenge the presumptions of a cultural Armstrong Williams paid in sensationalist glory, we have become as complacent in our ideas as they have. That Leon pulls the wool over readers eyes is one issue, but the failure of an alternative weekly -- no matter how short staffed -- to fact check even the most salient facts of his piece is irresponsible journalism.
Sincerely,
Jack J. Shamama
Michael Stabile
Editors, gaypornblog.com
Writers/Creators, Wet Palms
Yes Virginina, it's true -- San Francisco may not be as filthy with pornstars as Silicone Valley, but we happen to be home to the most thriving and articulate (and widely-read) sex writers, sex workers, porn filmmakers and pro-sex pundits in America (not to mention some of the most-trafficked porn sites in the world). So in a local paper running Good Vibrations ads, it's quite curious that a piece with a flaw like that could've made it across the desktops of SF Weekly staff without a question being raised... unless they were so busy flagellating themselves with their attack ad on the Guardian (PDF) in penance like little monks in the SF Weekly cave. This, we understand, the self-flagellation with local weeklies -- why, we do it every week. But firing Harmon makes the whole thing reek of soiled leather, lube past its "use by" date and soggy edible underwear. Perhaps they should take a few lessons from local doms (and bloggers) about corrections; he deserved a mean whipping for his tone, for sure, but not castration for mistakes that should've been caught by the higher-ups.
Local luminary, Good Vibrations General Manager board president (and owner), and Center for Sex and Culture founder Dr. Carol Queen sums it up perfectly:
You know, there's plenty of porn in San Francisco, and plenty of porn stories. What strikes me as especially amateur about this (besides the fact that I really wish "alternative" papers bothered to be more trustworthy and sex-positive than the New York Times) is that there are so many interesting things to say about sex that are both current and local. What the Weekly printed is neither, and it's pretty clueless to boot. The folks at FOXE probably rolled their eyes after "Dieter" came through the room and said, "Well, *that* guy was high." And if the porn crowd weren't so nice to their fans, they would've said he was an idiot. If you're going to infiltrate, it's nice to know something about where you're going, and that sure doesn't shine through here.
And as for the Weekly running it? Hey, April 1st isn't for another two and a half months. Do they think their readers are complete fools? It's just disrespectful.
Meanwhile, we're dreaming of the day Carol swats us with a rolled-up SF Weekly, telling us just how naughty we've been...
Posted by violet in SFisting
SFisting: Spank Me With A Weekly
Last week we got ourselves all worked into a lather about the SF Weekly's bizarrely incorrect Harmon Leon Infiltrator piece, though sadly it wasn't the kind of lather we usually like, with all the whipped cream and clothespins. A week(ly) later, we notice that the online version of the article has been quietly changed (though you gotta love the forgotten AVN reference in the right-hand corner), and the writer quietly fired.
Why are we still so latherly? Lots of reasons. Take a look at one of the letters to the editor that was so not run in the Weekly:
Photo of 2006 AVN Awards co-host Jesse Jane via Fleshbot's 2006 AVN Awards: Red Carpet Flickr set.
In light of the recent unmaking of best-selling writers as fakers (JT Leroy, James Frey), as well as less-recent revelations of journalists making up stories (Jayson Blair, Stephen Glass), I would expect your editorial staff to spend at least a few minutes fact-checking the stories you print.
After reading Harmon Leon's most recent installment of "Infiltrator", ("Dieter Gone Wild"), we can only assume -- thanks to numerous and blatant factual errors -- that this is a complete work of fiction and should have been been presented to your readers as such. Its clear that the only "infiltration" that Mr. Leon is succeeding in doing is infiltrating your masthead.
The 2006 AVN Awards took place at the Grand Ballroom of the Venetian Hotel, Las Vegas, on January 7, 2006. The awards have never, in their 23 year history, taken place at "a large nightclub in Los Angeles", as Mr. Leon purports. They've been at the Venetian since 2000, and before that in other hotels -- but always in Las Vegas.
Mr. Leon goes on to describe the host of the event as "an MC who looks like an out-of-shape social studies teacher" -- another dubious claim since this year's awards were co-hosted by comedian Greg Fitzsimmons and adult star Jesse Jane. He goes on to say that "The Mistresses of Ceremonies announce the first award, Male Favorite." Male Favorite has never been a category at the AVN Awards.
Full names are lacking in this article, but one person he does mention by name is T. T. Boy, a straight male performer. Mr. Leon says, "The next winner is T.T. Boy." However, T. T. Boy hasn't won an AVN Award since 1997, when he was awarded "Male Performer of the Year" (in 2003, he was inducted into AVN's Hall of Fame). He continues, "The most important award, Video Vixen ..." Again, Video Vixen is not -- nor has it ever -- been an award category at the AVN awards.
(For more errors, compare the NY Times' account of the event with his.)
Beyond the incredibly obvious factual errors in this story, as two people who (proudly) work in the adult industry, we found the mocking tone to be patronizing and offensive. Even fiction writers do more research on their subject matter.
The real insult, however, is not some perceived disrespect for the adult industry in particular -- Leon treats Christian rockers, right-wing punditry, Amber Frey and male models (in both the Weekly and other publications) -- it's Leon's relentless reliance on Conventional Wisdom. He makes up facts that support a story everyone is far too ready to believe.
But truth is stranger than fiction, and more interesting too. The adult industry often seedier than he imagined, but also more normalized andin many ways progressive and healthy. But rather than examine the knotty pine of realism, Leon resorts to cliche and caricature -- producing a column limper than either Bill O'Reilly's Talking Points Memo or Jerry Springer's Final Thought.
When the Bush administration itself crosses the Orwellian lines between fact and fiction, we are vigilant because we disagree. When editors and readers cease to challenge the presumptions of a cultural Armstrong Williams paid in sensationalist glory, we have become as complacent in our ideas as they have. That Leon pulls the wool over readers eyes is one issue, but the failure of an alternative weekly -- no matter how short staffed -- to fact check even the most salient facts of his piece is irresponsible journalism.
Sincerely,
Jack J. Shamama
Michael Stabile
Editors, gaypornblog.com
Writers/Creators, Wet Palms
Yes Virginina, it's true -- San Francisco may not be as filthy with pornstars as Silicone Valley, but we happen to be home to the most thriving and articulate (and widely-read) sex writers, sex workers, porn filmmakers and pro-sex pundits in America (not to mention some of the most-trafficked porn sites in the world). So in a local paper running Good Vibrations ads, it's quite curious that a piece with a flaw like that could've made it across the desktops of SF Weekly staff without a question being raised... unless they were so busy flagellating themselves with their attack ad on the Guardian (PDF) in penance like little monks in the SF Weekly cave. This, we understand, the self-flagellation with local weeklies -- why, we do it every week. But firing Harmon makes the whole thing reek of soiled leather, lube past its "use by" date and soggy edible underwear. Perhaps they should take a few lessons from local doms (and bloggers) about corrections; he deserved a mean whipping for his tone, for sure, but not castration for mistakes that should've been caught by the higher-ups.
Local luminary, Good Vibrations General Manager board president (and owner), and Center for Sex and Culture founder Dr. Carol Queen sums it up perfectly:
You know, there's plenty of porn in San Francisco, and plenty of porn stories. What strikes me as especially amateur about this (besides the fact that I really wish "alternative" papers bothered to be more trustworthy and sex-positive than the New York Times) is that there are so many interesting things to say about sex that are both current and local. What the Weekly printed is neither, and it's pretty clueless to boot. The folks at FOXE probably rolled their eyes after "Dieter" came through the room and said, "Well, *that* guy was high." And if the porn crowd weren't so nice to their fans, they would've said he was an idiot. If you're going to infiltrate, it's nice to know something about where you're going, and that sure doesn't shine through here.
And as for the Weekly running it? Hey, April 1st isn't for another two and a half months. Do they think their readers are complete fools? It's just disrespectful.
Meanwhile, we're dreaming of the day Carol swats us with a rolled-up SF Weekly, telling us just how naughty we've been...
Posted by violet in SFisting
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Ricky Martin: 'Living La Vida Loca' Includes Golden Showers
The Post Chronicle™
Tittle-Tattle
Ricky Martin: 'Living La Vida Loca' Includes Golden Showers
By Jack Ryan
Jan 2006
According to an account in Blender Magazine, Ricky Martin appreciates showers of a golden type. The interview the other day now has a foundation for which he's the ambassador wanting him to step down.
"The backlash stems from an interview published last month, in which Ricky told Blender, "I love giving the 'golden shower.' I've done it before in the shower. It's like, so sexy, you know, the temperature of your body and the shower water is very different." Ricky went on to say, "I'm open to everything. There are moments for soft, gentle sex. And there are moments for a good spank in the butt."
Ricky is a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF, and UNICEF is simply not happy with Martin peeing on, or being pee'ed on, by anyone.
Since, Ricky has fired back.
Ricky Martin has struck back at critics who have attacked his ability to run his humanitarian foundation because of controversial statements the pop star made about his sex life in Blender magazine. In a letter in Spanish posted on Univision.com, Ricky said, "At the time I granted the interview, never did it cross my mind that my comments would spark this absurd and sensationalist public discussion. I cannot avoid speculation about my career and life, but I cannot allow those for whom my foundation works to be affected because I am a public figure."
Superficial's take probably matches ours fairly closely:
"I'm not sure they should beat up on the guy for the world's worst kept secret. And notice, he didn't say, "spank on the butt." He said, "spank in the butt." Holy Smokes! Go buy stock in Tylenol PM, because I guarantee an epidemic of insomnia to hit within the week. Unless, of course, the thought of Ricky Martin peeing on people and getting spanked in the butt doesn't keep you up at nights. In which case, forget about it."
The Post Chronicle™
Tittle-Tattle
Ricky Martin: 'Living La Vida Loca' Includes Golden Showers
By Jack Ryan
Jan 2006
According to an account in Blender Magazine, Ricky Martin appreciates showers of a golden type. The interview the other day now has a foundation for which he's the ambassador wanting him to step down.
"The backlash stems from an interview published last month, in which Ricky told Blender, "I love giving the 'golden shower.' I've done it before in the shower. It's like, so sexy, you know, the temperature of your body and the shower water is very different." Ricky went on to say, "I'm open to everything. There are moments for soft, gentle sex. And there are moments for a good spank in the butt."
Ricky is a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF, and UNICEF is simply not happy with Martin peeing on, or being pee'ed on, by anyone.
Since, Ricky has fired back.
Ricky Martin has struck back at critics who have attacked his ability to run his humanitarian foundation because of controversial statements the pop star made about his sex life in Blender magazine. In a letter in Spanish posted on Univision.com, Ricky said, "At the time I granted the interview, never did it cross my mind that my comments would spark this absurd and sensationalist public discussion. I cannot avoid speculation about my career and life, but I cannot allow those for whom my foundation works to be affected because I am a public figure."
Superficial's take probably matches ours fairly closely:
"I'm not sure they should beat up on the guy for the world's worst kept secret. And notice, he didn't say, "spank on the butt." He said, "spank in the butt." Holy Smokes! Go buy stock in Tylenol PM, because I guarantee an epidemic of insomnia to hit within the week. Unless, of course, the thought of Ricky Martin peeing on people and getting spanked in the butt doesn't keep you up at nights. In which case, forget about it."
@}-}rebecca----
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Judge Orders School to Reinstate Spanking Supporter
Judge Orders School to Reinstate Spanking Supporter
By Nathan Burchfiel
Jan 2006
(CNSNews.com) - A New York State appeals court on Wednesday ruled that Le Moyne College was wrong to dismiss a student who wrote a paper in support of corporal punishment in elementary school classrooms.
Scott McConnell was dismissed from the graduate education program in January 2005 because of a paper he wrote two months earlier that advocated "corporal punishment," including spanking, as an effective means to create an ideal learning environment.
McConnell earned an 'A-' on the paper but the program's director, Dr. Cathy Leogrande, dismissed McConnell on the grounds that she had "grave concerns regarding the mismatch between [his] personal beliefs regarding teaching and learning and the Le Moyne College program goals."
After the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education unsuccessfully attempted to reverse the school's decision with public pressure, McConnell sued the college for wrongful dismissal because it did not grant him an opportunity to appeal.
Le Moyne argued that it had the right to dismiss McConnell without giving him a chance to appeal because he had been accepted into the program on the condition that he complete all admission requirements, including a review of his first semester performance. It argued that he had never been fully accepted and therefore could be dismissed without an appeal.
But Judge Edward Carni of the Supreme Court of the State of New York's Appellate Division ruled that "neither the Catalog nor the conditional acceptance letter states that personal goals are a criterion for admission."
Carni wrote that McConnell is "entitled to the due process procedures set forth in the College's rules and regulations before he could properly be dismissed," and ordered that Le Moyne reinstate McConnell.
FIRE Interim President Greg Lukianoff wrote in a press release that the ruling marked "a great day for all those who believe college should keep their promises to students. Le Moyne College has learned that it cannot promise freedom and fairness but deliver repression and injustice."
Lukianoff said the college's president, Charles Beirne, "should be ashamed that his administration ignored its own rules, spent students' tuition money fighting litigation it invited, and cost one of its students a year of education simply because it did not like what he said in a theoretical paper."
In a prepared statement, Le Moyne College announced that it would abide by the court's decision and reinstate McConnell for the Spring semester. The school also announced that it has begun the process of appealing the decision to a higher court. A spokesman declined to provide additional comments "due to the on-going nature of the litigation."
Judge Orders School to Reinstate Spanking Supporter
By Nathan Burchfiel
Jan 2006
(CNSNews.com) - A New York State appeals court on Wednesday ruled that Le Moyne College was wrong to dismiss a student who wrote a paper in support of corporal punishment in elementary school classrooms.
Scott McConnell was dismissed from the graduate education program in January 2005 because of a paper he wrote two months earlier that advocated "corporal punishment," including spanking, as an effective means to create an ideal learning environment.
McConnell earned an 'A-' on the paper but the program's director, Dr. Cathy Leogrande, dismissed McConnell on the grounds that she had "grave concerns regarding the mismatch between [his] personal beliefs regarding teaching and learning and the Le Moyne College program goals."
After the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education unsuccessfully attempted to reverse the school's decision with public pressure, McConnell sued the college for wrongful dismissal because it did not grant him an opportunity to appeal.
Le Moyne argued that it had the right to dismiss McConnell without giving him a chance to appeal because he had been accepted into the program on the condition that he complete all admission requirements, including a review of his first semester performance. It argued that he had never been fully accepted and therefore could be dismissed without an appeal.
But Judge Edward Carni of the Supreme Court of the State of New York's Appellate Division ruled that "neither the Catalog nor the conditional acceptance letter states that personal goals are a criterion for admission."
Carni wrote that McConnell is "entitled to the due process procedures set forth in the College's rules and regulations before he could properly be dismissed," and ordered that Le Moyne reinstate McConnell.
FIRE Interim President Greg Lukianoff wrote in a press release that the ruling marked "a great day for all those who believe college should keep their promises to students. Le Moyne College has learned that it cannot promise freedom and fairness but deliver repression and injustice."
Lukianoff said the college's president, Charles Beirne, "should be ashamed that his administration ignored its own rules, spent students' tuition money fighting litigation it invited, and cost one of its students a year of education simply because it did not like what he said in a theoretical paper."
In a prepared statement, Le Moyne College announced that it would abide by the court's decision and reinstate McConnell for the Spring semester. The school also announced that it has begun the process of appealing the decision to a higher court. A spokesman declined to provide additional comments "due to the on-going nature of the litigation."
@}-}rebecca----
not enough discipline ...
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2005
- Posts
- 13,063
Ladies of pleasure or sex slaves?
Ladies of pleasure or sex slaves?
Dutch prostitution policy is meant to free female sex workers from parasitic pimps and turn them into empowered self-employed entrepreneurs. But the authorities are now asking their clients for help to tackle the problem of women being trafficked for sex.
The Netherlands is known internationally for certain clichés: red wheels of Edam cheese, clogs, dikes and prostitutes.
Everyone knows about how the Dutch decriminalised prostitution and think it is normal for scantily clad women of all ages to flaunt themselves in windows just metres from the Damrak, the city's main thorough fair.
While the authorities in other countries spend a lot of time and resources rounding up and prosecuting women sex workers, the Netherlands tolerates and taxes them.
Prostitutes must be at least 18 and their clients must be at least 16. The women who sell their bodies in brothels or the 12 red light districts with windows in the Netherlands are assumed to be self-employed.
The windows, with a red light hanging above, are rented out by companies to the women for eight-hour shifts for some EUR 60 to 150. The prostitutes work when they want and decide what services to offer and how much to charge.
The argument underpinning the policy is that allowing sex workers to operate openly will free them from the middle men, the pimps. The only person exploiting the talents of the sex worker is the woman herself. So the theory goes.
Dark side of the street
There are indications, however, that not everyone working in the industry is doing so willingly.
The only person exploiting the talents of the sex worker is the woman herself. So the theory goes.
A report by the national detective service in 2002 suggested a quarter of the prostitutes in the Netherlands were the victims of human trafficking. The expansion of the European Union, it said, had led to a flood of women from the east. Trafficking gangs confiscate their passports and put them to work as prostitutes.
The police conducted 42 successful investigations into human trafficking in 2003, down in the 55 cases the year before. A provisional estimate for 2004 showed an increase once more.
The most common nationalities among the 148 people arrested for human smuggling in 2003 were Dutch, Romanian and Bulgarian. But the percentage for different nationalities fluctuates widely every year. Twenty-two of the detainees in 2003 were owners of sex businesses.
Hooked
The crime prevention agency Stichting M launched a campaign with the police in January 2006 to encourage members of the public to report instances of human trafficking.
The focus of the campaign is the exploitation of trafficked women in the sex industry. The police are circulating posters and stickers to alert the public and to get people to report instances of forced prostitution.
The signs a woman is being forced to sell her body, the police say, include little responsiveness to the client, bruising and fearfulness.
Who best to detect these signs? Their clients, of course. And there is no better way to do this, Stichting M. thinks, than through hookers.nl - an internet forum where clients swap stories and reviews of their visits to the red light district.
Starting in January, visitors to the site - and there are thousands every day - have been greeted by an advert that leads to animation contrasting the erotic delights with the violent reality of forced prostitution. It is not explicit in a sexual way but it is striking. And as is often the case in reality, it is the woman who is struck when she refuses to do her master's bidding.
Dilemma
The decision to post the advert on hookers.nl is controversial. Amsterdam Labour Party representative Karina Schaapman, for instance, notes the website contains may dubious tips, such as where a man might find a prostitute willing to have sex without a condom - as cheaply as possible.
The sum of EUR 1,200 is a piece of change compared with what is normally paid for such an advert
Schaapman is being polite: a quick scan reveals some of the readers have a wide range of interests, including finding virgins willing to have sex for money; pregnant prostitutes; gang-bangs and more.
Schaapman says the government needs reliable partners in the campaign. "In Belgium cards are circulated in every cafe to alert people to human trafficking. You can also reach your target group through television and public campaigns".
"I believe this site gets EUR 1,200 to run the ad. I find that objectionable," says Schaapman.
As the owner of hookers.nl also runs an adult webcam site, the councillor says the government is working with the porn industry. In general, however, Schaapman is very pleased a campaign has been established to highlight the problem of human trafficking.
Stichting M. is not surprised about her criticism. "We expected this sort of reaction, but ultimately we decided to go ahead as this site has an enormous reach - about 40,000 visitors a day," a spokesperson said.
"The sum of EUR 1,200 is a piece of change compared with what is normally paid for such an advert," the organisation argues.
Prostitution in the Netherlands has undergone fundamental change. It is no longer the sole responsibility of the sex worker to ensure her client is being looked after; the client must wait out for her.
Ladies of pleasure or sex slaves?
Dutch prostitution policy is meant to free female sex workers from parasitic pimps and turn them into empowered self-employed entrepreneurs. But the authorities are now asking their clients for help to tackle the problem of women being trafficked for sex.
The Netherlands is known internationally for certain clichés: red wheels of Edam cheese, clogs, dikes and prostitutes.
Everyone knows about how the Dutch decriminalised prostitution and think it is normal for scantily clad women of all ages to flaunt themselves in windows just metres from the Damrak, the city's main thorough fair.
While the authorities in other countries spend a lot of time and resources rounding up and prosecuting women sex workers, the Netherlands tolerates and taxes them.
Prostitutes must be at least 18 and their clients must be at least 16. The women who sell their bodies in brothels or the 12 red light districts with windows in the Netherlands are assumed to be self-employed.
The windows, with a red light hanging above, are rented out by companies to the women for eight-hour shifts for some EUR 60 to 150. The prostitutes work when they want and decide what services to offer and how much to charge.
The argument underpinning the policy is that allowing sex workers to operate openly will free them from the middle men, the pimps. The only person exploiting the talents of the sex worker is the woman herself. So the theory goes.
Dark side of the street
There are indications, however, that not everyone working in the industry is doing so willingly.
The only person exploiting the talents of the sex worker is the woman herself. So the theory goes.
A report by the national detective service in 2002 suggested a quarter of the prostitutes in the Netherlands were the victims of human trafficking. The expansion of the European Union, it said, had led to a flood of women from the east. Trafficking gangs confiscate their passports and put them to work as prostitutes.
The police conducted 42 successful investigations into human trafficking in 2003, down in the 55 cases the year before. A provisional estimate for 2004 showed an increase once more.
The most common nationalities among the 148 people arrested for human smuggling in 2003 were Dutch, Romanian and Bulgarian. But the percentage for different nationalities fluctuates widely every year. Twenty-two of the detainees in 2003 were owners of sex businesses.
Hooked
The crime prevention agency Stichting M launched a campaign with the police in January 2006 to encourage members of the public to report instances of human trafficking.
The focus of the campaign is the exploitation of trafficked women in the sex industry. The police are circulating posters and stickers to alert the public and to get people to report instances of forced prostitution.
The signs a woman is being forced to sell her body, the police say, include little responsiveness to the client, bruising and fearfulness.
Who best to detect these signs? Their clients, of course. And there is no better way to do this, Stichting M. thinks, than through hookers.nl - an internet forum where clients swap stories and reviews of their visits to the red light district.
Starting in January, visitors to the site - and there are thousands every day - have been greeted by an advert that leads to animation contrasting the erotic delights with the violent reality of forced prostitution. It is not explicit in a sexual way but it is striking. And as is often the case in reality, it is the woman who is struck when she refuses to do her master's bidding.
Dilemma
The decision to post the advert on hookers.nl is controversial. Amsterdam Labour Party representative Karina Schaapman, for instance, notes the website contains may dubious tips, such as where a man might find a prostitute willing to have sex without a condom - as cheaply as possible.
The sum of EUR 1,200 is a piece of change compared with what is normally paid for such an advert
Schaapman is being polite: a quick scan reveals some of the readers have a wide range of interests, including finding virgins willing to have sex for money; pregnant prostitutes; gang-bangs and more.
Schaapman says the government needs reliable partners in the campaign. "In Belgium cards are circulated in every cafe to alert people to human trafficking. You can also reach your target group through television and public campaigns".
"I believe this site gets EUR 1,200 to run the ad. I find that objectionable," says Schaapman.
As the owner of hookers.nl also runs an adult webcam site, the councillor says the government is working with the porn industry. In general, however, Schaapman is very pleased a campaign has been established to highlight the problem of human trafficking.
Stichting M. is not surprised about her criticism. "We expected this sort of reaction, but ultimately we decided to go ahead as this site has an enormous reach - about 40,000 visitors a day," a spokesperson said.
"The sum of EUR 1,200 is a piece of change compared with what is normally paid for such an advert," the organisation argues.
Prostitution in the Netherlands has undergone fundamental change. It is no longer the sole responsibility of the sex worker to ensure her client is being looked after; the client must wait out for her.
@}-}rebecca----
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- Joined
- Oct 31, 2005
- Posts
- 13,063
Expert witness says sadist label wrong for Last
Expert witness says sadist label wrong for Last
By PETER GEIGEN-MILLER, FREE PRESS REPORTER
Gregory Last's attacks on two London women were brutal but do not mean he is a sexual sadist, an expert witness testified yesterday.
The testimony by John Arrowood, a forensic psychologist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, contradicted earlier expert testimony that Last meets the test for being labelled a sexual sadist and is psychopathic.
Arrowood was called as a defence witness at a Superior Court hearing to determine if Last should be declared a dangerous offender, a designation that would result in an indeterminate prison sentence.
The psychologist said his findings that Last is not psychopathic were based in part on the convicted man's co-operative attitude during psychological testing and because he avoided trouble while at Mental Health Centre Penetanguishene for an assessment.
"Basically, he kept his nose clean at Penetanguishene," said Arrowood. "He was not put in restraints."
Arrowood said his conclusion that Last does not meet the criteria for sexual sadism is based on a lack of sexual violence with prior sexual partners.
He explained he'd expect a consistent pattern of sexual violence in prior relationships in someone who is a sexual sadist.
Last had four convictions for assault prior to his brutal sexual attacks on the two London women, but none involved sexual violence.
The attacks on Michelle Austin and Shannon Mitchell of London occurred a month apart in the fall of 2003.
In March, a jury convicted Last of aggravated sexual assault, sexual assault with a weapon and four other counts.
During cross-examination by assistant Crown attorney Lynn Robinson, Arrowood said sexual sadism is marked by violence in excess of what's needed to subdue a victim.
He described the attack on Mitchell as a brutal rape but conceded, after reading a summary
Expert witness says sadist label wrong for Last
By PETER GEIGEN-MILLER, FREE PRESS REPORTER
Gregory Last's attacks on two London women were brutal but do not mean he is a sexual sadist, an expert witness testified yesterday.
The testimony by John Arrowood, a forensic psychologist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, contradicted earlier expert testimony that Last meets the test for being labelled a sexual sadist and is psychopathic.
Arrowood was called as a defence witness at a Superior Court hearing to determine if Last should be declared a dangerous offender, a designation that would result in an indeterminate prison sentence.
The psychologist said his findings that Last is not psychopathic were based in part on the convicted man's co-operative attitude during psychological testing and because he avoided trouble while at Mental Health Centre Penetanguishene for an assessment.
"Basically, he kept his nose clean at Penetanguishene," said Arrowood. "He was not put in restraints."
Arrowood said his conclusion that Last does not meet the criteria for sexual sadism is based on a lack of sexual violence with prior sexual partners.
He explained he'd expect a consistent pattern of sexual violence in prior relationships in someone who is a sexual sadist.
Last had four convictions for assault prior to his brutal sexual attacks on the two London women, but none involved sexual violence.
The attacks on Michelle Austin and Shannon Mitchell of London occurred a month apart in the fall of 2003.
In March, a jury convicted Last of aggravated sexual assault, sexual assault with a weapon and four other counts.
During cross-examination by assistant Crown attorney Lynn Robinson, Arrowood said sexual sadism is marked by violence in excess of what's needed to subdue a victim.
He described the attack on Mitchell as a brutal rape but conceded, after reading a summary
@}-}rebecca----
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- Oct 31, 2005
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Full 'Bucket' ~ POST-DISPATCH VISUAL ARTS CRITIC
Full 'Bucket'
By David Bonetti
POST-DISPATCH VISUAL ARTS CRITIC
Sunday, Jan. 22 2006
Set your watches, pack your bags, get ready for the trip of a lifetime: The
Ship of Fools is setting sail from the Philip Slein Gallery every day for
Potosi, Mo., the hometown of local printmaker Tom Huck. Potosi is probably
taking a fatwa out against Huck at this very moment for all the nasty things he
is imputing about it in "The Bloody Bucket," the scabrous series of prints he
has set there.
What a place Potosi is, at least in Huck's perfervid imagination! A town where
World War II veterans - "the greatest generation" - hold a Memorial Day parade
with members of the Klan, giant balloons of Hitler, Tojo and Sambo floating
overhead. Where a pregnant bride dances on a tabletop, a bouquet in one hand, a
pistol in the other, while a stocking-capped fiddler plays an orgiastic tune
and everyone else swills liquor. Where two well-fed natives dive into a cow
skull with their forks during the weekly beef-brain buffet. Where a homegrown
sadist tortures and kills a sailor while a couple make out in a convertible and
another local boozer gets his head smashed in with a baseball bat. Where an
armless lowlife with hooked prostheses and a floozy - both high on crack -
fornicate in an outhouse while an excited dog looks on. Where demented
fundamentalists talk in tongues and handle snakes, their leaders wearing
crucifix-topped sculptures made of twisted balloons on their heads.
"The Bloody Bucket," a series of 10 large (52-by-38-inch) woodcuts made from
2000 to just a few months ago, is the result of oral history. Huck has
explained that the Bloody Bucket was a bar that flourished for three years on
the outskirts of Potosi until it burned down in 1951 - 20 years before he was
born. It attracted veterans who had nothing better to do than carouse, and it
became a local legend. His father, the town chiropractor, told him the stories,
but Huck admits that when he was a kid he himself witnessed the pregnant bride
dancing on the table of the local VFW hall.
Huck's work, which is superbly and laboriously made (see accompanying story),
belongs to a rich and ancient tradition. Imagery that made fun of people by
showing them doing undignified things, often involving the lower organs, or
behaving badly dates back to pre-history. When such salacious imagery features
ordinary people, the subject is morality. When it is about the rich and
powerful, it is morality laced with politics.
Although the Memorial Day parade with the veterans indistinguishable from
members of the KKK has political content, Huck for the most part tilts toward
ordinary people gone wild. In the series, you can see people turning to
alcohol, drugs, gluttony, sex, violence and the false promises of religion and
right-wing politics to avoid facing life's hard truths.
Huck admits to being a moralist, and, as such, he belongs to another rich
graphic tradition. Artists from Bosch and Breugel, to Hogarth and Goya, to
Daumier and James Cruikshank, to James Ensor and Jose Guadalupe Posada, to Max
Beckmann and Philip Guston, to R. Crumb and Art Spiegelman have turned to paper
to make their most critical observations about humanity, alone and in groups.
As a satirist, Huck has a unique vision. His extraordinary woodblock printing
technique has roots in Albrecht Durer, his main man, and you can find
individual stylistic influences - a little Crumb, a lot of S. Clay Wilson, some
Beckmann (mostly in his composition) - but Huck puts it together in a manner
you can't confuse with anyone else.
His prints are huge and his compositions are dense, so dense that at first you
don't know where to enter them, but once you get past that obstacle, you find
that they open up to tell shocking - and hilarious - stories about human nature
at its worst. The information piles up from bottom to top, zigzagging from edge
to edge and from front to back, but you can jump in at any spot - and at
virtually any spot there is something going on. You might be focusing on the
pimpled and bruised butt of the crack addict in "Anatomy of a Crack Shack," but
then the little dog gets your attention and won't let it go. Huck knows how to
employ passages of solid black to prevent the compositions from becoming
indecipherable. It can be the black coat of a snarling dog, the black chassis
of a convertible, the black sheen of a pair of knee-high boots or the black
spaces between the action.
Huck isn't forgiving of any human vice, but he acknowledges that he too is
human and isn't immune from bad behavior. A humanist as well as a moralist, he
shows people at their worst, but they're seldom unredeemable - well, the sadist
killing the sailor might be beyond redemption. Despite his surface disdain,
there is a love, sometimes barely discernible, as well. After all, if you truly
hate humanity, why would you spend five years of hard work trying to save it?
'Tom Huck: The Bloody Bucket'
Where: Philip Slein Gallery, 1319 Washington Avenue
When: Through Jan. 28, from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday
Cost: Free
Info: 314-621-4634 or
www.philipsleingallery.com
Full 'Bucket'
By David Bonetti
POST-DISPATCH VISUAL ARTS CRITIC
Sunday, Jan. 22 2006
Set your watches, pack your bags, get ready for the trip of a lifetime: The
Ship of Fools is setting sail from the Philip Slein Gallery every day for
Potosi, Mo., the hometown of local printmaker Tom Huck. Potosi is probably
taking a fatwa out against Huck at this very moment for all the nasty things he
is imputing about it in "The Bloody Bucket," the scabrous series of prints he
has set there.
What a place Potosi is, at least in Huck's perfervid imagination! A town where
World War II veterans - "the greatest generation" - hold a Memorial Day parade
with members of the Klan, giant balloons of Hitler, Tojo and Sambo floating
overhead. Where a pregnant bride dances on a tabletop, a bouquet in one hand, a
pistol in the other, while a stocking-capped fiddler plays an orgiastic tune
and everyone else swills liquor. Where two well-fed natives dive into a cow
skull with their forks during the weekly beef-brain buffet. Where a homegrown
sadist tortures and kills a sailor while a couple make out in a convertible and
another local boozer gets his head smashed in with a baseball bat. Where an
armless lowlife with hooked prostheses and a floozy - both high on crack -
fornicate in an outhouse while an excited dog looks on. Where demented
fundamentalists talk in tongues and handle snakes, their leaders wearing
crucifix-topped sculptures made of twisted balloons on their heads.
"The Bloody Bucket," a series of 10 large (52-by-38-inch) woodcuts made from
2000 to just a few months ago, is the result of oral history. Huck has
explained that the Bloody Bucket was a bar that flourished for three years on
the outskirts of Potosi until it burned down in 1951 - 20 years before he was
born. It attracted veterans who had nothing better to do than carouse, and it
became a local legend. His father, the town chiropractor, told him the stories,
but Huck admits that when he was a kid he himself witnessed the pregnant bride
dancing on the table of the local VFW hall.
Huck's work, which is superbly and laboriously made (see accompanying story),
belongs to a rich and ancient tradition. Imagery that made fun of people by
showing them doing undignified things, often involving the lower organs, or
behaving badly dates back to pre-history. When such salacious imagery features
ordinary people, the subject is morality. When it is about the rich and
powerful, it is morality laced with politics.
Although the Memorial Day parade with the veterans indistinguishable from
members of the KKK has political content, Huck for the most part tilts toward
ordinary people gone wild. In the series, you can see people turning to
alcohol, drugs, gluttony, sex, violence and the false promises of religion and
right-wing politics to avoid facing life's hard truths.
Huck admits to being a moralist, and, as such, he belongs to another rich
graphic tradition. Artists from Bosch and Breugel, to Hogarth and Goya, to
Daumier and James Cruikshank, to James Ensor and Jose Guadalupe Posada, to Max
Beckmann and Philip Guston, to R. Crumb and Art Spiegelman have turned to paper
to make their most critical observations about humanity, alone and in groups.
As a satirist, Huck has a unique vision. His extraordinary woodblock printing
technique has roots in Albrecht Durer, his main man, and you can find
individual stylistic influences - a little Crumb, a lot of S. Clay Wilson, some
Beckmann (mostly in his composition) - but Huck puts it together in a manner
you can't confuse with anyone else.
His prints are huge and his compositions are dense, so dense that at first you
don't know where to enter them, but once you get past that obstacle, you find
that they open up to tell shocking - and hilarious - stories about human nature
at its worst. The information piles up from bottom to top, zigzagging from edge
to edge and from front to back, but you can jump in at any spot - and at
virtually any spot there is something going on. You might be focusing on the
pimpled and bruised butt of the crack addict in "Anatomy of a Crack Shack," but
then the little dog gets your attention and won't let it go. Huck knows how to
employ passages of solid black to prevent the compositions from becoming
indecipherable. It can be the black coat of a snarling dog, the black chassis
of a convertible, the black sheen of a pair of knee-high boots or the black
spaces between the action.
Huck isn't forgiving of any human vice, but he acknowledges that he too is
human and isn't immune from bad behavior. A humanist as well as a moralist, he
shows people at their worst, but they're seldom unredeemable - well, the sadist
killing the sailor might be beyond redemption. Despite his surface disdain,
there is a love, sometimes barely discernible, as well. After all, if you truly
hate humanity, why would you spend five years of hard work trying to save it?
'Tom Huck: The Bloody Bucket'
Where: Philip Slein Gallery, 1319 Washington Avenue
When: Through Jan. 28, from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday
Cost: Free
Info: 314-621-4634 or
www.philipsleingallery.com
@}-}rebecca----
not enough discipline ...
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2005
- Posts
- 13,063
Memoirs of a Geisha
Cultural forum to take cool look at hot topic
By Nadine Kam
Honolulu Star-Bulletin
nkam@starbulletin.com
The swirl of controversy that greeted the film "Memoirs of a Geisha" provides the fuel for the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii's latest panel discussion, "Shadows of a Geisha," taking place Tuesday.
The event opens discussion on racial and gender stereotypes associated with the geisha and what, if any, impact stereotypes based on that iconic figure have had on Asian women in contemporary society.
"Because of all the hype and publicity, (the film) brings back, to a certain degree, potential stereotypes of Japanese women as sensual, exotic, subservient women," said JCCH programs director Brandon Hayashi.
The discussion is the fourth in the JCCH's Japanese American Social Issues Series in Hawaii. Hayashi said, "We have no set program throughout the year, but it's a vehicle for us to discuss contemporary issues affecting the Japanese community, positively or negatively.
"In one sense you can interpret 'shadow' as something that moves along with you, that you can't get rid of," Hayashi said. "A shadow is also not a real thing, and are the stereotypes really a problem, or a problem as a shadow of someone's imagination?"
The panel, moderated by Chris Yano, will feature former journalists Jade Moon and Barbara Tanabe, and actresses Kati Kuroda and Alicia Michioka-Jones. Audience members are invited to participate, and seeing the movie is not a prerequisite for speaking up.
Tanabe, a former reporter and anchor at KHON, now is an owner and partner of Ho'akea Communications, a public affairs company, counseling clients in Asia and the United States in areas of cross-cultural communications and crisis management. She said some of the criticism aimed at "Memoirs of a Geisha" is a result of a misunderstanding of the geisha role in Japanese society.
"I read some reviews by critics who described them as prostitutes because we have nothing else in Western culture to compare them to, but it's totally wrong to call a geisha a prostitute. My father calls them preservers of the culture," she said, in light of their devotion to keeping traditional artforms of music, musicianship and dance alive.
"I didn't think the geisha as portrayed in this film were weak women. They were very strong to have survived under extreme hardship."
To see only the pretty packaging in refined makeup and colorful kimono is to miss the big picture of women's strength, intellect, work ethic and resilience.
"The stereotype we're talking about is of this lovely, sensual, subservient creature, and that's not us," Tanabe said. "(The stereotypes are) a reflection on size more than anything else. Because we're small, we're seen as less powerful and less able to fend for ourselves. That impression doesn't last long.
"To assume we're all going to play that role because we look the same is unfair."
However, the appearance of being less than intimidating might have helped Tanabe's career when she started in 1970, long before Asian-American women became fixtures on local news.
"Perhaps in a way the stereotype allowed me an opportunity to enter a field where men didn't feel threatened.
"Stereotypes have probably been more helpful to Asian women than Asian men, but stereotypes are bad, whether they're positive or negative. It's just a bad way to judge people."
She hopes that those going to see the movie will see it for what it is, an escapist Hollywood love story with cultural dressing.
Although the filmmakers got some details wrong, Tanabe said, "If I wanted historical accuracies I would go to the library or watch a documentary."
More important to her was feeling a sense of the filmmakers' reverence for Japanese culture, and she hopes that will register with viewers.
"They should think of Japanese culture as one that's very old, refined and get a sense of its values. That would be important. But to try to transpose a Western stereotype of Asian women to real Asian women would be a stretch."
Before TALking about the film, Moon qualifies her observations by saying they come from a thoroughly Western perspective.
"It is true that in the past Asian women were portrayed as dragon ladies or shy, passive, sexual, submissive people, but I really think the world has come a long way. I think people are smarter today and more global.
"It's important to keep a cool head and have some common sense about it and realize this isn't the most egregious example or most offensive movie about Japan," she said. "It's just a movie, and not a very good movie. It's a Hollywood fantasy directed through Western eyes and written by a Western man. And if it's Hollywood, of course they're gonna make the geisha look like ideal women."
Moon said she encountered few incidences of stereotyping in the news business, where "if you're competent, people treat you accordingly."
Prior to entering journalism, though, she worked as a model and said she was deemed "a type." "So I've seen both sides and wasn't scarred horribly, though once you're stuck in a type, the next step is to break out of it, because the type will hold you back.
"It's an interesting discussion to have. If it weren't for similar dialogs all along, we wouldn't be where we are today."
She said Hollywood, and filmmakers in general, have been some of the best advocates for breaking down barriers, offering up diverse voices and stories. "Look at Sandra Oh. She's someone who's gotten roles that are not ethnic-specific. We need more of that."
Cultural forum to take cool look at hot topic
By Nadine Kam
Honolulu Star-Bulletin
nkam@starbulletin.com
The swirl of controversy that greeted the film "Memoirs of a Geisha" provides the fuel for the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii's latest panel discussion, "Shadows of a Geisha," taking place Tuesday.
The event opens discussion on racial and gender stereotypes associated with the geisha and what, if any, impact stereotypes based on that iconic figure have had on Asian women in contemporary society.
"Because of all the hype and publicity, (the film) brings back, to a certain degree, potential stereotypes of Japanese women as sensual, exotic, subservient women," said JCCH programs director Brandon Hayashi.
The discussion is the fourth in the JCCH's Japanese American Social Issues Series in Hawaii. Hayashi said, "We have no set program throughout the year, but it's a vehicle for us to discuss contemporary issues affecting the Japanese community, positively or negatively.
"In one sense you can interpret 'shadow' as something that moves along with you, that you can't get rid of," Hayashi said. "A shadow is also not a real thing, and are the stereotypes really a problem, or a problem as a shadow of someone's imagination?"
The panel, moderated by Chris Yano, will feature former journalists Jade Moon and Barbara Tanabe, and actresses Kati Kuroda and Alicia Michioka-Jones. Audience members are invited to participate, and seeing the movie is not a prerequisite for speaking up.
Tanabe, a former reporter and anchor at KHON, now is an owner and partner of Ho'akea Communications, a public affairs company, counseling clients in Asia and the United States in areas of cross-cultural communications and crisis management. She said some of the criticism aimed at "Memoirs of a Geisha" is a result of a misunderstanding of the geisha role in Japanese society.
"I read some reviews by critics who described them as prostitutes because we have nothing else in Western culture to compare them to, but it's totally wrong to call a geisha a prostitute. My father calls them preservers of the culture," she said, in light of their devotion to keeping traditional artforms of music, musicianship and dance alive.
"I didn't think the geisha as portrayed in this film were weak women. They were very strong to have survived under extreme hardship."
To see only the pretty packaging in refined makeup and colorful kimono is to miss the big picture of women's strength, intellect, work ethic and resilience.
"The stereotype we're talking about is of this lovely, sensual, subservient creature, and that's not us," Tanabe said. "(The stereotypes are) a reflection on size more than anything else. Because we're small, we're seen as less powerful and less able to fend for ourselves. That impression doesn't last long.
"To assume we're all going to play that role because we look the same is unfair."
However, the appearance of being less than intimidating might have helped Tanabe's career when she started in 1970, long before Asian-American women became fixtures on local news.
"Perhaps in a way the stereotype allowed me an opportunity to enter a field where men didn't feel threatened.
"Stereotypes have probably been more helpful to Asian women than Asian men, but stereotypes are bad, whether they're positive or negative. It's just a bad way to judge people."
She hopes that those going to see the movie will see it for what it is, an escapist Hollywood love story with cultural dressing.
Although the filmmakers got some details wrong, Tanabe said, "If I wanted historical accuracies I would go to the library or watch a documentary."
More important to her was feeling a sense of the filmmakers' reverence for Japanese culture, and she hopes that will register with viewers.
"They should think of Japanese culture as one that's very old, refined and get a sense of its values. That would be important. But to try to transpose a Western stereotype of Asian women to real Asian women would be a stretch."
Before TALking about the film, Moon qualifies her observations by saying they come from a thoroughly Western perspective.
"It is true that in the past Asian women were portrayed as dragon ladies or shy, passive, sexual, submissive people, but I really think the world has come a long way. I think people are smarter today and more global.
"It's important to keep a cool head and have some common sense about it and realize this isn't the most egregious example or most offensive movie about Japan," she said. "It's just a movie, and not a very good movie. It's a Hollywood fantasy directed through Western eyes and written by a Western man. And if it's Hollywood, of course they're gonna make the geisha look like ideal women."
Moon said she encountered few incidences of stereotyping in the news business, where "if you're competent, people treat you accordingly."
Prior to entering journalism, though, she worked as a model and said she was deemed "a type." "So I've seen both sides and wasn't scarred horribly, though once you're stuck in a type, the next step is to break out of it, because the type will hold you back.
"It's an interesting discussion to have. If it weren't for similar dialogs all along, we wouldn't be where we are today."
She said Hollywood, and filmmakers in general, have been some of the best advocates for breaking down barriers, offering up diverse voices and stories. "Look at Sandra Oh. She's someone who's gotten roles that are not ethnic-specific. We need more of that."
@}-}rebecca----
not enough discipline ...
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2005
- Posts
- 13,063
The Notorious Betty Page ~ Show Some Restraint
The Notorious Betty Page ~ Show Some Restraint
by JoBlo
If you were just asking yourself where that "chick from ROUNDERS" (aka Gretchen Mol) had been keeping herself for the past few years, ask no further as she is about to come out with a bang, starring in THE NOTORIOUS BETTIE PAGE, a bio-pic based on the real-life of 50's pin-up girl Bettie Page, who eventually stirred controversy with some bondage pics -- not that there's anything wrong with that! We just received the film's nifty poster below, and added a few provocative stills from the movie to our PREVIEW PAGE as well. It's an indie flick, so it also co-stars Lili Taylor. Natch. The film is set for limited release on April 14th, 2006. I'm there with a condom on!
Directed by: Mary Harron
Written by: Mary Harron, Guinevere Turner
Cast: Gretchen Mol, Lili Taylor, David Strathairn
Studio: HBO Films
Genre: Drama
Official Site: www.thenotoriousbettiepage.com
Release Date: April 14, 2006 (limited)
The Notorious Betty Page ~ Show Some Restraint
by JoBlo
If you were just asking yourself where that "chick from ROUNDERS" (aka Gretchen Mol) had been keeping herself for the past few years, ask no further as she is about to come out with a bang, starring in THE NOTORIOUS BETTIE PAGE, a bio-pic based on the real-life of 50's pin-up girl Bettie Page, who eventually stirred controversy with some bondage pics -- not that there's anything wrong with that! We just received the film's nifty poster below, and added a few provocative stills from the movie to our PREVIEW PAGE as well. It's an indie flick, so it also co-stars Lili Taylor. Natch. The film is set for limited release on April 14th, 2006. I'm there with a condom on!
Directed by: Mary Harron
Written by: Mary Harron, Guinevere Turner
Cast: Gretchen Mol, Lili Taylor, David Strathairn
Studio: HBO Films
Genre: Drama
Official Site: www.thenotoriousbettiepage.com
Release Date: April 14, 2006 (limited)
