Books not Bars

Hola Everybody,
Well, my Mets lost last night and their season has ended. Still, this is a team that overcame tremendous challenges to persevere so, as I see it, it was a memorable and successful season. Until next year.

Keeping to my commitment to publish at least one blog post per day for the whole of 2016 very challenging because I don’t have access to my books and my notes and all the research I’ve done over the years -- decades, actually. For example, a couple of years ago, I did some research on the history of policing in United States. I would love to do a post on that, but I would have to recreate research I have already conducted. Almost everything I own, including two computers and two drives full of my work is in storage. 

Oh well.

Bibliophilia and Freedom

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
 -- Jorge Luis Borges

I still remember the day clearly. It was early spring and it was bright, if somewhat chilly, morning. The man in the cell next to mine was calling out my name. “Eddie, here, you have to read this,” he said. I could see his beaming face through the mirrors we used to communicate with one another. When I began to ask a question, he stopped me and said, “Just read it, Eddie.”

It was a book of four novellas, Different Seasons, written by Stephen King, each novella representing one of the four seasons. The novella for spring, which begins with the epitaph, “Hope springs eternal,” was called Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, which would be made into an award-winning film many years later. The novella shares several plot points with a short story by Leo Tolstoy called God Sees the Truth, But Waits. Both are about men sent to prison for murders they didn’t commit. One of the more moving passages in the book at the time was, “Remember that hope is a good thing, Red, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” 

I have never forgotten that experience -- the experience of reading something so validating and transcending while incarcerated in an environment of dehumanization. 

I bring this up because I recently came upon an item that, considering my personal experiences, is deeply concerning. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which incarcerates almost 150,000 people, bans nearly 15,000 books. First, what is astounding right off the bat is that Texas incarcerates so many people. That alone should shock you. And yes, Stephen King is one of the banned authors. Also banned are such literary luminaries as Langston Hughes, Sojourner Truth, Shakespeare, James Baldwin, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Tom Clancy, John Grisham, James Patterson, Noam Chomsky, and countless others.

If you desire to read The Color Purple or Dante's Inferno? Tough shit. However, Hitler's Mein Kampf or fans of former KKK leader and white supremacist, David Duke, you are good to go.

I do a lot of public speaking and sometimes my topic is how I was able, with a lot of help from many, many people, to turn my life around. I always point out that art -- sublime beauty of an intricate Faulkner paragraph, Monet’s lilies, the magical realism Latinx prose -- all that beauty saved my life. Literally. Whenever I felt that life was too ugly, too cruel, all these great artists showed me that in the midst of all the ugliness, there was something worth living for. 

On the more practical side, numerous studies show that more education reduces the likelihood of a person returning to prison. And it shouldn’t have to be said that reading in general opens a mind, increases the capacity for empathy, and an appreciation for life in general -- all things we as a society should be encouraging in all our people, not just those who are incarcerated.

I actually do understand why criminal justice institutions would ban books or resist educating the many men and women who are locked up in cages, wasting away. They do so because we have created an industry based on the subjugation (enslavement) of mostly black and brown people. There are jobs connected prisons (mostly jobs for disaffected whites) and profits to be made from neo-slavery. And I am not being hyperbolic here. Slavery was never fully abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment -- it exempts those who have convicted of a crime. In fact, right after the Civil War, new laws targeting black people were passed and immediately prisons overflowed with the caged bodies of black men. Many scholars and advocates, myself included, see mass incarceration as a logical progression of slavery -- neo-slavery.

But I digress. I see no reason why great books should be banned from prisons. We should be adding books, not taking them away. I’ve rambled here, so please excuse me. I will leave you with one last excerpt from Shawshank:

Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

The Friday Sex Blog [Feminism, Pornographies, Censorship]

¡Hola mi Gente!
Note: the following is an abbreviated version of a full article. There’s just too much to plumb on this subject matter and I was having a hard time keeping to my self-imposed limit of my blogs being no longer than a one-page (single-spaced) Word document. As it is this comes in at two MS Word pages

* * *

Feminism and Pornography

Since the 1980s feminism has grown conflicted about the importance of pornography as an issue, about strategies and tactics to deal with the issue and even about the meaning of pornographies -- or pornographies, for there are many different forms.

My belief is that this conflict is important. I am also concerned that ill-informed political alliances have been formed based on simplistic and gut reactions to what are complex issues. While I believe that anti-pornography feminists have made important contributions to the cause, they have also had the unintended consequence of allying themselves on the side of censorship and a neo-Puritanism that is, in my estimation, in opposition to core feminist principles as I have understood and embraced them.

In the late 1970s various grassroots feminist groups resisting violence against women emerged, and began building on the growth of earlier antirape work. These groups included Women Against Pornography (WAP), Women Against Violence Against Women, Feminists Fighting Against Pornography, and the Women’s Alliance Against Pornography. They led large, “Take Back the Night” marches, which were (and I still think still are) held annually across the country to protest rape and promote women’s safety. They also provided an opportunity for consciousness-raising, arousing condemnation, and enlisting feminists who were willing to leaflet, picket, show slide shows, and commit acts of civil disobedience.

Beginning in the 1980s, however, the focus of the marches shifted from being against sexual violence (rape, sexual abuse of children, and incest) to first including protests against pornography and prostitution, and then to being almost exclusively against pornography. Spurred in large part by the rhetoric of author Andrea Dworkin, a longtime feminist activist, the antiviolence campaign made an unfortunate turn into an antipornography campaign. Dworkin asserted in her first book, Woman Hating, that was needed was a global “movement [committed] to ending male dominance as the fundamental, psychological, political, and cultural reality of earth-lived life.” The book contained a section on pornography that suggested, as in advertising and fairy tales, pornography teaches women to be submissive and defined by others. As an aside, it’s illustrative that Dworkin didn’t find anything wrong with the European porn mag, Suck. She pointed out that “the emphasis on sucking cunt serves to demystify cunt in a spectacular way -- cunt is not dirty, not terrifying, not smelly and foul. It is a source of pleasure, a beautiful part of the female physiology to be seen, touched tasted.”

In her later writings even this distinction was abandoned. Dworkin eventually saw porn in stark terms: “Male power is the raison d’être of porn; the degradation of the female is the means of achieving this power.” By the early 1980s she was saying that “One cannot be a feminist and support pornography… [Any defense of it is] anti-feminist contempt for women.”

In combination with another other leading figure in this phase, Catherine MacKinnon, the feminist movement’s central issue was defined by sexuality. Not the sexuality discussed during the 1960s and 1970s, where the positive focus on getting equal pleasure in bed and equal rights in society was a central issue for feminism, but a new, critical focus locating women’s oppression in the reality and ideology of sexuality. Mackinnon turned the 1970s formulation, Rape is violence, not sex,” to “Rape is sex, not violence.”

It’s was only a logical consequence that both authors would get together and begin a different tact: that of legal activism and they began drafting anti-pornography legislation in novel ways. They combined already existing human rights ordinances with anti-pornography legislation. Essentially, Dworkin and Mackinnon started what would become a censorship campaign adopted (and repealed) by many cities across the nation. Their legal efforts were eventually defeated at the Supreme Court level, where it was struck down as unconstitutional without hearing any arguments.

In my estimation, there is an essential contradiction at the core of antipornography feminism, one that’s extremely hard to justify. In fact there are many contradictions, the first one being that anti-sex crusades have for centuries been at the heart of violence and oppression against women. In my estimation, the fear of women’s sexuality is the basis for much of the sexism in society.

Secondly, not all pornography is violent and degrading, and it is difficult to even agree on what measures up to those terms. Most pornography, as any review will show, consists of sexual activities between consenting adults, emphasizing intercourse, oral sex, and lots of genital close-ups. Sadomasochistic (S&M) materials, which appear violent to those shocked or disgusted by the images, are actually a form of elaborate ritual to the participants rather than being literally violent or the cause of actual harm. In addition, S&M materials are not as common as some puritanical feminists would have us believe.

If the target of the feminist campaign is violence against women, the question that most comes to my mind is whether pornography is really the best place to start to make headway against such violence. Mainstream movies and TV are notorious for their violent imagery, and the claim that sexuality is the central location for violence against women ignores these genres entirely.

As a feminists (yes, I consider myself a feminist, and yes I am aware that I say this as a male living in a sexist society) we might ask why sexuality and pornography need to be included at all. If what we are interested in is in eliminating the subordination of women, why does it have to be sexually explicit material that we target? Servility, injury, enjoying pain -- why do they get banned only if they involve sex?

The honest political answer is that no one is about to ban violent images in this country -- they are too mainstream. Only explicitly sexual images are sufficiently offensive to large diverse groups, and targeting seemingly violent sexual images would be the only way for feminists to get widespread public support. But the consequence of the persecution of sexual images is that sexuality itself becomes the target. The unintended consequence is a major setback for those within the feminist movement whose goal is to de-repress or liberate women’s sexuality.

Dworkin’s and Mackinnon’s claim that sexuality is the prime and fundamental location for male power and female oppression is unproven. There are stronger associations, as other feminists have uncovered, with female oppression situated mostly around family structure and kinship systems, government and the rule of law, the division of labor, private property, and organized religion. The assertion that pornography is the cause rather than the symptom is a dangerous intellectual dishonesty that takes away attention from other possibly more important causes.

It is at best simple-minded to assume that one can know the meaning conveyed by an image merely from looking at it. How can we say that such images are degrading or humiliating? There can be (and are) many woman-made and pro-woman images like this. Do all such images serve to boost men’s self image by subjugating women? It seems to me to be dangerously culturally biased to ascribe universal meanings of empowerment or subjugation from images. The relationship between personal, subjective fantasy and imagery is subtle and idiosyncratic. In addition, one has to take into consideration the relationship between photographer, the person photographed, and the voyeur. As we know from our own lives, from art, and from psychology, there relationships are fluid and based on personal experiences and social contexts. What each of us makes of those images is hardly generalizable.

Finally, women who are photographed or filmed in the making of pornography do not report that their work is ultimately or inevitably harmful. Sex workers and their advocates have repeatedly called for the decriminalization of sex work in order so that working conditions and safety can be increased. They categorically reject any approach that stigmatizes them further.

And herein lies the irony: that the work of some prominent radical feminists has resulted in anti-sex campaigns that resemble Salem witch hunts and that have conservatives, with their tendency toward sexual repression and authoritarian (read patriarchal) salivating at the mouth. What I have seen is that anti-sex and anti-pornography campaigns are in actuality campaigns targeting sexual freedom and empowerment cannot exist without freedom.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

The Friday Sex Blog [Censorship]

¡Hola! Everybody...
Every summer, I live (and often die) on the performance of my beloved Mets. I will say that these are a tenacious bunch; we need more hitting, however, if we’re going to make any noise this year…

* * *

-=[ Unnatural Acts]=-
Censorship in America

There’s nothing more natural than the urge to express our sexuality. Almost as reliable as that urge is the societal urge to censor these expressions. I have written before about the more than 2,000-year Christian war against sexuality. I believe sexual censorship is mostly founded on the fear of the power of sexuality to liberate us. At the risk of being slammed let me add, while I'm at it, that some of the most repressed individuals in this regard are often Christianized people of color.

In any case, who reading this can honestly say they have never had a deeply moving experience during sex (any kind of sex)?

Let me start off by noting that numerous sexual activities between consenting adults are restricted and carry extreme legal punishments. Until 1961, all fifty states had criminal laws against various forms of consensual sex between unmarried adults. While it is true that many laws were repealed during the seventies, as recent as 1997, twenty five states -- half the states in the union -- still had laws on the books criminalizing unmarried cohabitation. Fornication, defined as sex between unmarried couples, and “sodomy,” defined as oral and/ or anal intercourse, were (and some cases still are) illegal.

What does this really mean? In eleven states around the country, married couples who engage in oral or anal sex in the privacy of their own homes are committing a criminal act, usually a felony. In Rhode Island, an unmarried man and woman engaging in anal sex can receive anywhere from seven to twenty years in prison. In Michigan, two women were sent to prison for enjoying oral sex in the privacy of their tent in a state park. In South Carolina, “the abominable crime of buggery” (not defined in the statute) is punishable by five years in prison. You might think that these are old laws that remain on the books because they haven’t been questioned and you would be wrong. In 1986 the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples engaging in “sodomy” don’t have a constitutional right to privacy, upholding Georgia state laws in which consensual oral or anal sex between same-sex couples is a felony.

Today many sex educators are leaving the educational system because they are under a tremendous amount of pressure not to talk about sex. Imagine that: not being able to talk about the very subject in which you hold expertise.

For the most part, “sodomy” laws are used to discriminate against gays and lesbians in housing, employment, and child custody cases, but they can be used to discriminate against straight unmarried couples as well. Considering the Supreme Courts resistance to upholding sexual privacy at the federal level, the best tactic for fighting oppressive sodomy laws is at the state level.

Sexual expression becomes a crime when the materials produced are legally classified as “obscene.” Obscene materials are exempt from First Amendment guarantees of free speech. The legal definition of obscenity and the manner in which this definition is interpreted, determines what sexual materials we have access to and what materials we can create.

The Supreme Court’s definition of obscenity, the de jure law since their Miller v. California ruling, allows states to regulate sexual materials according to their own community standards. These regulations must be restricted to works that “taken as a whole, appeal to the prurient interest in sex,” that portray sexual conduct in “a patently offensive way,” and that “taken as a whole, do not have serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” Only materials found by judges or jurors to meet each of three standards of obscenity may be deemed obscene.

Yeah, I’m shaking my head too…

These criteria are astonishingly vague. For example, the dictionary defines “prurience” as “an inordinate interest in matters of sex.” Wow! That’s very specific! Who or how one determines if a photograph has serious scientific value, versus merely scientific value is a road map for First Amendment violations.

If you think this doesn’t affect you adversely, then you’re probably doing a good imitation of an ostrich defensive measure (burying its head in the sand). Sexual censorship is used as a wedge for the sexually repressed to create intolerance and disinformation. One good example is the dismantling of sex Ed courses. “Abstinence-only” sex Ed, courses that teach only sexual abstinence, actually put teens at risk sexually. Teens attending abstinence only sex Ed calluses have been shown to engage in high risk sexual behavior at higher rates than their peers and are more prone to STDs and out-of-wedlock pregnancy.

In addition, any writing or material depicting sex in an honest manner can be censored, not because of the sexual content, but because perhaps the ideas in the material are dangerous to the status quo.

Yes, Virginia, this is the 21^st century and we’re still acting like juveniles.

Love,

Eddie

Resources

American Civil Liberties Union - Non-profit offering educational and legal services to defend First Amendment rights.

National Coalition Against Censorship - grassroots anti-censorship group fighting for freedom of expression.

Electronic Frontier Foundation - Nonprofit protecting civil liberties online.

Feminists for Free Expression - Anti-censorship organization

The Spectrum Institute - Nonprofit membership organization dedicated to protecting the rights of single adults and domestic partners with or without children.

The Sex Blog [Censorship]

¡Hola! Everybody...
First things first: Today, both Eva and Choosing Life For Me~ Eternally celebrate birthdays.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LADIES!!

OK! WTF is up with buying bed sheets?!! Freakin' thread counts, duvet sets, shams, blah blah blah! Is there really that much difference between a 300 and 500 thread-count sheet? I mean, I do want you to be comfortable, hun, but you ain’t wetting my $120 Ralph Lauren white shadow striped bed sheet set! LMAO! They have bed sheet sets that cost almost $200!!! WTF?!! Comforters that go for the same!!! And… WTF is a sham?!! All I want is something to cover myself when I go to sleep.

At the rate I’m spending money, I won’t be able to visit you, sweetie! LOL!

* * *

-=[ “Unnatural Acts”]=-
Censorship in America

There’s very little more certain than the natural urge to express our sexuality. Almost as reliable as that urge is the societal urge to censor these expressions. I have written before about the more than 2,000-year Christian war against sexuality. I believe sexual censorship is founded on the fear that it is in our sexuality that we find the strongest ally toward true freedom.

Who reading this can honestly say they have never had a deeply moving experience during sex (any kind of sex)?

Let me start off by noting that sexual activities between consenting adults are restricted and carry extreme legal punishments. Until 1961, all fifty states had criminal laws against various forms of consensual sex between unmarried adults. While it is true that many laws were repealed during the seventies, as recent as 1997, twenty five states -- half the states in the union – still have laws on the books criminalizing unmarried cohabitation. Fornication, defined as sex between unmarried couples, and “sodomy,” defined as oral and/ or anal intercourse, are illegal.

What do these really mean? In eleven states around the country, married couples who engage in oral or anal sex in the privacy of their own homes are committing a criminal act, usually a felony. In Rhode Island, an unmarried man and woman engaging in anal sex can receive anywhere from seven to twenty years in prison. In Michigan, two women were sent to prison for enjoying oral sex in the privacy of their tent in a state park. In South Carolina, “the abominable crime of buggery” (not defined in the statute) is punishable by five years in prison. You might think that these are old laws that remain on the books because they haven’t been questioned and you would be wrong. In 1986 the Supreme Court ruled that same sex couples engaging in “sodomy” don’t have a constitutional right to privacy, upholding Georgia state laws in which consensual oral or anal sex between same-sex couples is a felony.

Today many sex educators are leaving the educational system because they are under a tremendous amount of pressure not to talk about sex. Imagine that: not being able to talk about the very subject in which you hold expertise.

::blank stare::

For the most part, “sodomy” laws are used to discriminate against gays and lesbians in housing, employment, and child custody cases, but they can be used to discriminate against straight unmarried couples as well. Considering the Supreme Courts resistance to upholding sexual privacy at the federal level, the best tactic for fighting oppressive sodomy laws is at the state level.

Sexual expression becomes a crime when the materials produced are legally classified as “obscene.” Obscene materials are exempt from First Amendment guarantees of free speech. The legal definition of obscenity and the manner in which this definition is interpreted, determines what sexual materials we have access to and what materials we can create.

The Supreme Court’s definition of obscenity, in effect since their Miller v. California ruling, allows states to regulate sexual materials according to their own community standards. These regulations must be restricted to works that “taken as a whole, appeal to the prurient interest in sex,” that portray sexual conduct in “a patently offensive way,” and that “taken as a whole, do not have serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” Only materials found by judges or jurors to meet each of three standards of obscenity may be deemed obscene.

Huh?!!

These criteria are astonishingly vague. For example, the dictionary defines “prurience” as “an inordinate interest in matters of sex.” Wow! That’s very specific! Who or how does one determines if a photograph serious scientific value, versus merely scientific value is a road map for First Amendment violations.

If you think this doesn’t affect you adversely, then you’re probably doing a good imitation of an ostrich burying its head in the sand. Sexual censorship is used as a wedge for the sexually repressed to create intolerance and disinformation. One good example is the dismantling of sex ed courses. “Abstinence-only” sex ed, courses that teach only sexual abstinence, actually put teens at risk sexually. Teens attending abstinence only sex ed calluses have been shown to engage in high risk sexual behavior and are more prone to STDs and pregnancy.

In addition, any writing or material depicting sex in an honest manner can be censored, not because of the sexual content, but because perhaps the ideas in the material are dangerous to the status quo.

Wake the fuck up, people!

Love,

Eddie

Resources

American Civil Liberties Union: Non-profit offering educational and legal services to defend First Amendment rights.

National Coalition Against Censorship: grassroots anti-censorship group fighting for freedom of expression.

Electronic Frontier Foundation: Nonprofit protecting civil liberties online.

Feminists for Free Expression: Anti-censorship organization

The Spectrum Institute: Nonprofit membership organization dedicated to protecting the rights of single adults and domestic partners with or without children.