When the bullshit gets so deep you can't help but sink. Or: Fuck you, buggle.

On this vile, offensive screed.

I really can't muster a post about it. Ren did better. So I'll just repost what I said over there.

Well, one of them finally fucking did it. I burst into tears reading that hateful screed. How fucking DARE she!

You know what? I spent a few hours in the middle of the night last week talking tearfully to a sex working friend in the US who was raped on the job. Today I find out another sex working friend has experienced sexual violence at work. The former? You know what she said?

That she feels she can not only not go to the police, but she can't even post about her experience on forums because she doesn't want to be used as a pawn by women who don't give a SHIT about her except as far as they can use her to argue against the sex industry.

But sure, tell us that we're blaming our brothers and sisters for the violence done to them by rapists and abusers. Tell us we don't spend our worklives taking so many precautions that we barely notice them anymore. Tell those of us who HAVE been raped and are STILL not anti-sex work that we don't exist. How can these people possibly not see how abusive that kind of language is?

The woman in question won't be identified, but she does read here. Please be respectful. I've checked it's OK for me to post this much, but there will be no other information about her given. (And you can ask me to pull this post at any time, alright doll?)

Adult shop in Queensland forced to remove educational promotional material from window, along with "Phallic Towers"

This is ridiculous.

To summarise, an adult shop in Queensland known to cater to the GLBTQ community has been pressured to remove posters from its front window that were deemed "offensive", "obscene" and "overtly sexual". They included men in their underwear, and these images. The latter are an ACON campaign to encourage condom use during anal sex. Totally pornographic, right? All those cartoon images in the shape of condoms.

And men in their underwear... gasp!... you never see that outside of that porn made by the dirty gays.

The advertisements in question weren't even for the man's business. They were materials meant to promote safe sex and the use of condoms. Apparently that itself is offensive to Queenslanders.

Shocking news: Accurate chemo dosage more effective than one not based on body weight!

In today's epic WTF news: a study comparing survival rates between obese and non-obese women with ovarian cancer found a rather shocking explanation for the lower survival weights of obese women. Apparently, if you adjust the chemotherapy doses to be consistent with the woman's ACTUAL, PHYSICAL WEIGHT, that statistical gap disappears entirely.

It seems this is not always the way this is done.

Three guesses as to the look on my face right now.

Fuck. I'm stunned. How many women have died because idiot doctors were given them the Skinny Chick chemo dosage?

Maria P. P. Root's Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People

Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People
By Maria P.P. Root

I HAVE THE RIGHT...
Not to justify my existence in this world.
Not to keep the races separate within me.
Not to be responsible for people's discomfort with my physical ambiguity.
Not to justify my ethnic legitimacy.

I HAVE THE RIGHT...
To identify myself differently than strangers expect me to identify.
To identify myself differently from how my parents identify me.
To identify myself differently from my brothers and sisters.
To identify myself differently in different situations.

I HAVE THE RIGHT...
To create a vocabulary to communicate about being multiracial.
To change my identity over my lifetime -- and more than once.
To have loyalties and identification with more than one group of people.
To freely choose whom I befriend and love.

Wow. This is... amazing. So simple, yet so powerful.

I need to have this nearby and read it often.

Hexy's cynical, exhausted and generally impatient take on the UK prostitution law reform/Douglas Fox/IUSW/RadFems shemozzle

On this, this, this, this and the last bunch of comments on this.

The summary of those comment threads is basically thus: anti-sex-work feminists defend upcoming shitty-for-sex-workers legislation in the UK (summarised excellently by Caroline here) by repeatedly insisting that the IUSW, which has voiced its objection to the legal changes on a sex worker rights basis, has no credibility because... Douglas Fox from the Internet is a business owner.

No, really, that seems to be the whole objection, or at least all they'll say. No discussion about how the laws will actually affect actual sex workers seems to get past the first few comments before it becomes all about Douglas Fox's role in a particular escort agency, or in one rather bizarre sub-thread, without someone posting under the name Yvette calling people Nazis and child molesters. Essentially (so the pseudo-logic goes) the IUSW has objected to the proposed legislation, therefore everyone who objects shares their credibility. Furthermore, if the IUSW membership does not consist entirely of sex workers, then they apparently have no credibility. Ergo, no one objecting to the proposed legislation should be listened to, even if they're saying "Hey, can we please stop all this shit about Douglas Fucking Fox, who seems tired of it himself, and start talking about the actual legislation and it's likely outcomes?"

I posted one comment on the F-Word thread, and I now regret even that. It's completely useless attempting to engage them, and the entire IUSW/Douglas Fox mess is a particularly disingenuous distraction attempt. The people utilising it would dismiss the advocacy and views of the IUSW whether or not Douglas Fox, or anyone else involved in the organisation, turned out to be the most evil and exploitative pimp ever to pimp. They made their decision to reject the views of the IUSW, and any sex workers it may represent, based on the mere fact that those views support decriminalisation and object to the flawed and anti-sex-worker Swedish model. The arguments as to why they made this decision were formulated afterwards.

Big claim, yeah? On what possible grounds am I making it?

Simply this: There ARE sex workers rights groups all over the world whose membership, staff, directorship, and volunteer base DOES entirely or mostly consist of sex workers. These groups ALSO support the decriminalisation model promoted by the IUSW, and oppose criminalisation of sex workers or clients in any form, include the form proposed in the UK. And these groups, their advocacy and positions, and the sex workers who are not only represented by them but are represented at every level of the organisations... even THESE are rejected wholesale and fought against by these women without the convenient excuse of Douglas Fox.

Simple.

So please, cut the crap and stop making Mr. Fox the scapegoat for the organisation that had already been marked as pro-sex-workers and pro-sex-workers-rights and hence (bizarrely enough) not appropriately aligned for these women who claim they want to help sex workers and prostituted people, yet support laws that will make our lives more difficult and dangerous.