Posts by Emma Hart
-
how can I have the ability to say no unless I also have a meaningful ability to say yes?
I don't see that this follows at all.
I initially made this a statement, then rephrased it as a question, because it's an idea I'm still playing with.
Let's take the idea that a person under sixteen can't consent to sex. (I know that's a flawed idea, and thank you Graeme for pointing that out in a thread the other day, but it's one a lot of people believe.) Ergo, all sex with minors is rape.
Now, I had sex at fifteen. I consented to it, and it wasn't rape. But if you believe that a fifteen year old can't say Yes, that sex becomes rape regardless of how I felt about it. Whether or not I said yes or no becomes irrelevant, my feelings become irrelevant.
Some female Guardian columnists believe that prostitution is inherently rape. So whether or not a particular prostitute consented to a particular act with a particular client becomes irrelevant. All clients are abusive, therefore they cannot distinguish between 'nice' clients, and the kind the Swedish prostitution model leaves you with - guys who don't care if they get arrested.
Just like the opposite view - prostitutes can't possibly be raped because they're selling sex - this takes the importance away from where it should be, IMO, the yes or no.
-
Prime is the home of vampires, werewolves and ghosts: season one of Being Human screens this year
Oo, promise? Cause I could do with some bandwidth back.
-
Ok, so I used a little artistic licence, but the salient points, as you will see, are entirely true. Whatthe?
Well, right now, I just want to read my book.
-
Don't fuck with the Janeites -- they eat Trekkies for afternoon tea.
You obviously haven't seen my Spock/Darcy slash-fic.
This has been a bit of a bumper month for high-temperature PAS threads, no?
I played the last time Paul got his hate on for sci fi. I get a pass this time round.
-
I believe someone upthread mentioned a visit by Pratchett to NZ in the early 90s; this was probably related to DisContinuity, a convention up in Auckland in 92, which I attended as a callow youth specifically to meet the man in question.
Pratchett came for a con hosted at Canterbury Uni in the early nineties. My memory is quite vague but I'd peg it as 94, after I graduated but before I had children. I might well be wrong.
The genre conversation is giving me Work-Headache, please stop it.
-
Bindel really does come off as a dreadful piece of work in that comments exchange. Patronising, immature and arrogant.
There are smart, smart British sex workers blogging on teh interwebz. Any one of them would be more deserving of Bindel and Gold's column space than they are. IMO, of course.
And now I've finished it, let me re-recommend that second link too, as a good summary of what's wrong both with the paper and the whole debate in Britain.
-
Julie Bindel has a day job -- and, I think, an important one: researching the sex industry.
And this is why what she and Tanya Gold are making up about the NZ sex industry concerns me so much - because there's debate in England right now about changing the law on prostitution.
This may be of interest: a blog by a sex worker who attended a panel discussion on sex work which included Julie Bindel. Bindel then joins in in the comments. And their response to the Bindel-Farley paper. (Farley? Worse than Bindel when in comes to prostitution.)
Also... if a British man wants to come to New Zealand and pay a willing sex worker for sex... what's wrong with that, exactly?
-
And then we realise it's nearly 10pm and the other guy still believes China is about to invade and we are never going to convince them otherwise.
(Okay, that may just be me.)
-
individual states might choose to break off (Texas)
I don't know much in this crazy world, but I know that is *very* unlikely to happen.
Yeah, Texas is quite firmly attached. I'd look at that wobbly bit on the bottom of Florida.
-
There is a general assumption that Victorians were prudes, which simply is not supported by the variety of art works they produced.
I used to work (oh wait, I still do, that was embarrassing) in the history section at Bardic Web, and I did a couple of Cliff Notes style articles trying to counter the "Victorians as hypocrits" idea, which largely comes from viewing a whole bunch of different individual opinions and a span of at least sixty years as an undifferentiated mass.
I think we're getting better at separating nudity from sex, but we're a hell of a long way off.