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Syndicate
The most important issue is to protect the majority of prostitutes who are women and children forced into sexual slavery.
The second most important issue is to protect the tiny minority of willing sex workers whose competition is increased due to decriminalization which results in lower income and being forced to perform more dangerous sex acts such as not using condoms.
I don't think your intervention qualifies as moderating a discussion. You are biased and cheating. I would like to know where we are to protest unfair use of the moderators chair and power?
As to your opinion: I do not nor does anyone else have to accept prostitution to save men from aids or any other STD.
I do not marginalize prostituted men or women and I resent that characterization of my opinion and my work. The fact that you are in my opinion, not only wrong but patonizing and cheating with your moralistic clap trap. If you want in the debate play by the rules. If you don't I won't
I agree. I believe there are numerous examples of multiple moderators blatantly favoring one side of the discussion.
All the mods here also participate in the discussions to varying degrees. They're allowed to have opinions just like the rest of us.
Makwa was voicing his opinion, not moderating.
Heh. Formalizing consent are we now?
Since when was it claimed that the site was moderated from the perspective unbiased "objectivity"? I don't think that Smith would assert such a value was even plausible. The standpoint of any web site is established by its moderation, and the moderators. This site includes among it moderators persons who are from (to a greater or lesser extent) "marginalized" groups in this society, and only has one "white male" among four. Viewed from that perspective Rabble hardly qualifies as bastion mainstream consensus, and in fact was intended not to reflect that consenus as its mandate.
There is a little "institutional ethnography" for you.
I notice that Lakeman enters this discussion with a call to refrain from "charachter assassination" then not to much later flat out accuses Allan Young of rejecting "the notion of violence against women requiring the rule of law".
Funny this complaint about bias in the context of a debate where such stark accussations are allowed to stand, when Susan Davis is taken to task by a moderator for calling certain people liars -- the moderator even taking the highly unusual step of editing her post.
I'll go back to the beyond now....
Thanks for the note that moderatora are encourgemed to express their own opinion. I accept that but I do not accept using the authority of that position plus an authoritative voice like "what is important is" to express an unsupported opinion and in my opinion an opinion hardly supportive of a socialist conception of human relations. Since when is commercializing human relationships and basic human needs an aspiration for freedom seekers.
As to bullying I think you need to reread this thread which has yet to be allowed to get on to the topic proposed and iun which I intervened to end the character slamming of an important group of women.
This thread was about the right to speak and who has it. It has been dressed up in the garb of theoretical discourse over what is "on behalf " what is 'ally" what is "representing" etc.
All threads touching on prostitution are being brought back to what Makwa just said.
The basic premise seems to boil down to sex workers and their supporters have the right to speak and other voices will be tolerated but discouraged and discriminated against because they aren't sex workers.
The mods are ignoring my questions and refusing to protect threads from becoming a free-for-all focused on who gets to speak and on individual sex worker rights which effectively silences any attempt to focus evaluation of systems in different countries.
An attempt to post the actual words of aboriginal groups in a protected thread so they wouldn't be drowned out was prevented. Insinuations that I am responsible for the deaths of women stand unchecked by moderators and yet a moderator will deliberately misinterpret my words applying them to a group of people I was not referring to and give me a warning over it. Baiting and personal attacks against me or my right to speak are tolerated yet I am not allowed to respond in kind.
Lee Lakeman is right. If the mods will not address my concerns here then I need to know who to present my case to.
Maha. Thank you kindly Unionist for your reasonable observation. I do wish someone would at least consider the resource I suggested, which I think, gives a fair hearing to those who speak from the established environment of the sex worker. My opinion is based on reading such as this, as well as some knowledge of the lives of some sex workers I have known as friends. I am a little taken aback at the vitriol expressed here.
No it isn't. This website was established as a place for rabble readers to discuss topics from a progressive standpoint. Mods were hired to faciliate that end.
The personal political perspectives of the mods and who they are buddies with should have nothing to do with moderating decisions.
you marginalize me pretty good......thanks for all your support for the coop and once again calling me a prostitute....
Precisely the point. What constitutes a "progressive standpoint" is determined by the moderators based on their personal political standpoint: this is not contextually objective, but subjective. All institutions have an innate bias, and this web site is no exception.
As we can see the ONLY persons taken to task so far in this discussion has been Susan Davis. Your complaint simply seems to revolve around a single adminstrative decision to close a thread you started, because it was deemed to cause thread proliferation. No one at any time prevented you from saying anything that you wanted to say, and have said, but instead asked you to say it in a different place in order to focus the discussion.
Meanwhile they have even cautioned Susan Davis, and even edited her posts, explicitly to rectify a specific allegation, even before Lakeman "intervened to end the character slamming of an important group of women", as she put it, a moderator had already intervened to that effect, saying:
Where is the evident bias?
Now it seems you have moved further on, basically accusing the moderators of being biased because they are "buddies" with Susan Davis, and I guess part of some wider Rabble conspiracy of insiders, even though Davis is the only one who has been seriously cautioned. Noting of course that such allegations are pretty spurious since Davis registered her account less that two months ago, one really has to ask on what basis you accuse them of making moderating decisions based in "who they are buddies with"?
HUH!
To say I am extremely surprised that this has brought Cue out from his boycott of babble, is to understate it.
Where is the puking icon when you need it?
I have been following this debate very closely. I haven't said anything other than to point out that Infosaturated's accussations about bias in moderating, because they "closed" and then "reopened" one of Infosaturated's threads, and now indeed that they are somehow "buddies" with Susan Davis is the height of underhanded pukeworthiness. Simply put it was an obvious moderating call of the kind designed to stop single issue posters from thread spamming the TAT, every time they find some new piece of information or article that supports their position.
Nuff said.
Found one
That's it eh? No arguements? No thoughts? Just what Lakeman calls "charachter assassination", nastiness and bile.
Bye.
You can't be serious.... :rolleyes:
Cueball, I was not referring to Susan or to solely to this thread
Oh then if you don't really have any evidence that the moderators are showing bias, in this particular thread or in this particular debate, or favouring any of the persons engaged, why are you bringing the issue up at all in this particular thread and in this particular debate in discussion with the persons engaged?
Seems to me like you are engaging in generalized smear tactics aimed at the moderators, generally as a way of leveraging your position, and indeed attempting, yet again, to silence someone who speaks from the position of the "marginalized", in this case Makwa, Rabble's single First Nation's moderator, spuriously and without supporting evidence when he voiced an opinion not entirely in line with your own, even though he legitimately has a place in this discussion and speaks at least to a certain extent from the standpoint of those who you say you are defending.
I think his views should be given credit and observed, rather than simply being dismissed because of some perceived bureaucratic adminstrative norm you chose to assert, and vague accussations about "bias".
I saw a film last week named "Call & Response". It's about human trafficking and modern-day slavery. While the film does not take a position on sex work "per se", it does go out of its way to define slavery in the context of one person owning another, working for nothing and the inability of slaves to walk away from their situation. Check out the trailer.
It describes modern day slavery as a rapidly growing problem (27 million people globally) with more human trafficking taking place now than at any time in history e.g) 2.2 million girls and women sold into sex slavery every year. It calls for the development of a 21st century abolitionist movement to eradicate slavery in all its manifestations - "child soldiers, child slavery, sex slavery and labour slavery" (the film's categories). It implies the need for the development of a "slave-free" label on consumer products, not unlike, but different from "fair trade".
I highly recommend this very moving film, directed by musician Justin Dillon which is punctuated with musical performances from a number of artists who responded to the call to take a stand to highlight this scourge.
Cornel West is brilliant in making the links between US slavery and modern music bringing the film full circle. He comes up with such zingers as "Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public." If I could embed video, I would embed the second clip on the West page. He posits that we need each other to have strong voices to move our struggles forward.
Call & Response is an interesting case study of the line between speaking "in support of" and not "on behalf of" oppressed people. It is imperfect no doubt but better that the film be made with some flaws than not made at all in my opinion.
Thanks polunatic, sounds like a film actually worth supporting.
~
Also want to note that men coming into this discussion to attack women posters, even couched and obliquely, who have serious issues about this topic, understandablyl so, is unpleasant in the extreme.
Just letting folks know that I'm not any more "buddies" with anyone participating in this discussion than anyone else, and I've never met Susan Davis in my life - although I certainly do respect her from what I've seen of her on babble. I encourage her, and anyone else who is directly affected or involved in sex work, to voice their opinions, and I give those opinions great weight. I also appreciate Lee's input and that of others in this thread.
I would also like to note that Infosaturated is not my employer, nor that of any of the other babble moderator, and therefore has no authority to outline what our job description is here, or any special insight or knowledge of what we were "hired to do" here.
There are a couple of points that I would like to address that have arisen since my posting last night.
If I may quote briefly from Lee Lakeman's post (#57):
I have a number of problems with these paragraphs. While I agreed totally with the assertions in the first two sentences of the second paragraph, my agreement starts breaking down near the end of the third sentence and all of the final third paragraph.
At the risk of "speaking on another's behalf", I would point out that this discussion does not take place in isolation and in fact takes place in the aftermath of the discussion of M2F transgendered individuals in this thread and which carried over to this one. In light of this, I am both confused and concerned about the statement describing those who may be sexually assaulted as "the men who they perceive as like women". Is this a backhanded reference to transgendered women or an assertion that is it "effeminate" males who are attacked? Is something else implied -- am I reading too much into what was written?
The third paragraph might have been salvagable had the qualifier "overwhelmingly" been inserted before the word men, and the word "primarily" inserted before the word women.
I think "the basics" that we could all agree upon would be that: 1) sexual violence is highly gendered, 2) men are overwhelmingly the offenders and 3) the primary victims of this violence are (cis)gendered women and minors. That is a lot of common ground to work from. I believe we can have a worthwhile discussion without having to accept the premise that sex work is violence against women or that it is exclusively women who are "sold, rented, bought or used as sexual objects". Indeed, it is in light of the what I am interpreting as widespread acceptance of this second premise, the "exclusivity" premise, I would refer back to the links I posted in my original post (#47) and reproduce the relevant passage here:
I agree with with what I believe is implicit in a number of posts on these topics, that it is primarily (cisgendered) women and minors who suffer the negative consequences of sex work (and I hope I am not understating the case with the description "negative consequences"). At the same time there is a long way to travel between primarily and exclusively. I think it important to look at the question of proportionality. For those at the greatest risk, those who are doing street level (front line?) sex work, I think there is sufficient anecdotal evidence to contend that among those disproportionately represented are transgendered women and (primarily young) marginalized men (regardless of their actual sexual orientation). I would refer to the description offered in the second link I posted in #47:
In much the same way that posters are willing to acknowledge that there are marginalized groups of women who are disproportionately represented in street level sex work (FN women are the group most frequently identified in this thread), transgendered women and marginalized young men are disproportionately represented. It is unfortunate that their voices are not present here, but I will go back to my assertion from my first posting -- it is our responsibility to step outside of our own skins and make at least an attempt to picture the effects of how what we are proposing will impact these marginalized groups.
While I am aware that those who are opposed to decriminalization are neither speaking with a single voice, nor necessarily defending the existing body of law (indeed, I think they are pretty clear that the status quo is failing badly, particularly in reference to the responsibility to protect), I am more than a little uncomfortable with what I consider to be a failure on their part to explore the possible ramifications of their position. Speaking now from entirely within my own (middle aged, gay male and admittedly pallid) skin, I would wonder aloud how they would propose balancing their desire to see the state fulfil its responsibility to protect (under criminal law) with the regrettably obvious tendency of the same state to attempt to regulate (again under the self-same criminal law) marginalized communites. The specific example that comes to mind is the one that exists under the status quo, the bawdy house laws, purportedly in place to to ban brothels, but in practice disproportionately used to regulate and intimidate gay men for our "lewd behaviour". It is a very particular example, but I would suggest that a lot of marginalized groups would recognize the pattern, sloppy criminal law being interpreted by the enforcement arm of the state as a licence to regulate, control and manage those not part of the dominant group.
I think it refers to status as opposed to gender or biological sex. For example, from what I hear, men in prison are assigned the role of females. Once they are percieved " as like" women, even though everyone knows full well that they are man, they have female status and are rapable.
Sometimes it's important to break populations down but depending on the topic many times it's immaterial. Normally when sex doesn't matter we say "men" or "mankind" and everyone just assumes women are in there too. In the case of prostitution the default should be "women" because it is women who are prostituted almost to the exclusion of men. When speaking of street work the disproportionate number of transwomen, like aboriginal women, needs to be addressed. When speaking more globally I consider transwomen in the same basket as aboriginal women. We don't need to say women, aboriginal women and transwomen.
Discussing situations and outcomes for individual populations is impossible. We haven't even been able to explore one of the models in other countries.
In my humble opinion, "we" most definitely do need to identify those women who are systemically marginalized in different ways. For example, some sex workers experience individual and systemic racism. Some do not.
thread drfit/good to see you Cueball. How do you like the new Babble where people have agreed not to attack others? Working well, eh?/ end thread drift
Caissa, please don't enter threads to post negative snarky comments. Thank you.
When speaking more globally I consider transwomen in the same basket as aboriginal women. We don't need to say women, aboriginal women and transwomen.
I agree, I think you do need to identify who you are referring to, partly because not everyone is aware that women could be marginalized in different ways, or consider how that might be the case. Also, I think identifiying, for example, women, aboriginal women, and transwomen, highlights where their voices might be missing.
Welcome back Cueball.
I might be more likely to say, "Women, including aboriginal women and transwomen" so that people don't mistake it to mean that aboriginal women and transwomen aren't women.
In fact, I've often wondered when I've seen "women and transwomen" in announcements and such, which to my mind makes it look like transwomen aren't being included as women. Considering the (amazing and pretty unbelievable in this day and age) fact that there are some feminists and feminist groups who actually DON'T consider transwomen to be "real" women, and who discriminate against them, it always gives me a little jolt when I see it, and I wonder, if I don't know the group or the woman saying it, whether it indicates inclusion or exclusion.