…and I know I’m not alone.

This week professional controversialist Marilyn Manson, (formerly known as Brian) has run into some well-deserved controversy following the  release of his latest music video: Running to the Edge of the World.

Why controversial? Because towards the end of the video Brian can be seen beating a young woman to a bloody pulp. In fact, he goes even further than that, so by the end of the video he’s actually beaten the woman to death. That’s Marilyn Manson, aka Brian, killing a woman. In a music video. For our entertainment.

Here, watch it if you can, but be warned, this is seriously disturbing stuff, and potentially triggering:

Actually, no. Fuck it. I’m not embedding the video here. Click on this link instead if you want to see what I’m talking about.

Do you know what? I’m really sick of this shit. I mean, really really sick of this shit.

I’m sick of opening the papers or logging on to the Internet and reading about the horrendous abuses women are subjected to on a daily basis. I’m sick of hearing about men like Steve Wright or Anthony Sowell or countless others the fucking world over, men who seem to be running some kind of macabre competition among themselves to see who can get the record and notch up the highest number of femicides ever. I’m sick of the rapes, of the beatings, of the day to day misogyny.  And I’m sick and fucking tired of seeing all that abuse, all that undisguised contempt, all that rampant woman hatred, being served back to us all in the guise of popular entertainment.

Because do you know what? It’s not.

It’s not entertaining in the slightest.

Hat-tip to Lady McScamp for drawing my attention to this. And for being slightly more articulate about the shittiness of this video than I’m managing to be at the moment.

Just in case anyone hasn’t heard the good news, last night the House of Lords voted in favour of clause 14 (formerly 13) of the Policing and Crime Bill.

Here’s the announcement from the Demand Change Campaign:

Victory as Peers vote for women, not pimps and punters!

The Demand Change! Campaign is delighted to announce a major victory for women exploited by the sex industry, as last night the House of Lords voted in favour of Clause 14 (formerly 13) of the Policing & Crime Bill, putting the rights of exploited women over those of pimps and punters.

In focusing on the demand for sexual services, Clause 14 shifts criminal liability away from people exploited through prostitution and places responsibility firmly on the shoulders of those who contribute to commercial sexual exploitation by choosing to purchase girls, boys, women and men for sexual use.

This is a huge achievement for the 67 women’s and human rights organisations which supported this bill, and which campaigned tirelessly to obtain justice for the women, children and men who have for so long been exploited by the sex industry.  Many of these organisations along with Demand Change! activists attended our successful mass support rally in Parliament Square just before the vote, calling on Peers to ‘Vote for Women, not Pimps and Punters!’.

A massive well done and thank you to all of you who wrote letters to MPs and Peers, who signed the joint statement of support, who protested outside the Houses of Parliament, who gave testimony and were part of or helped make the film of video testimony that was screened in the House of Commons on the eve of the debate (mentioned in the debate) and who have been working for years to raise awareness about the reality of prostitution and the need to tackle demand for commercial sexual exploitation.

This is a huge victory in the fight against commercial sexual exploitation.

Indeed it is.

You can read the Lords debate here. And here’s Baroness Scotland’s contribution to it:

We should not cloak ourselves in the impression that what we are talking about are the civil liberties of the purchaser. What we are talking about is the abuse, degradation, humiliation and pain caused to women who engage in this activity, not because they desire it but because they are compelled, coerced and manacled in a way that no human being should be….

We are faced with a choice tonight: do we speak for the victims, do we stand up for those who have no voice for themselves, do we stand in the breach for them—or do we provide a cloak of anonymity and protection for those who do not wish to face what they do when they purchase sex from a woman or a man, quite often of tender years, who has been coerced or forced into that position?…… I need to be clear that the Government’s view is that those who purchase sex from people in that position commit a wrong. They enable a situation that is avoidable to continue. We have a choice tonight to decide on which stand we will set our mark. Who will we support, and who will we defend?

(Edit 5th November) You can also watch the debate here (fast forward to 1:07.15):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/hi/house_of_lords/newsid_8339000/8339070.stm

Well, I’ll give the Men’s Rights Activists one thing: they’re certainly catching ‘em young these days.

As an example, here’s a recently published interview that 16 year old MRA wannabe Reece Wilkes carried out with Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague.

Particular highlights for me in this report include:

(On being asked why there couldn’t be a minister for equality who could deal with both men’s and women’s issues instead of there just being a minister for women) “Mr Hague looked baffled and did not have an answer to this.”

Ermm. Note to both Reece Wilkes and William Hague: Harriet Harman is currently Minister for Women and Equality and heads up the Government Equalities Office, you know, the department that deals with equalities issues. She doesn’t head up the Government Women’s Office, because, surprise surprise! No such office exists.

“Reece replied to this that he believes that there is a bias/favouritism within the media towards women”

ROFLMAO!

“Mr Hague said he had sent a number of letters to Harriet Harman, and had not received anything back. He actually described Harriet Harman as “incompetent”. Reece agreed in full and added that he thought Harriet Harman was “pathetic”.”

and then they both laughed, slapped each other on the back, and talked about what back-biting bitchez women could be….

Seriously though, young Reece’s questions are so boringly predictable I could have compiled them for him in my sleep:

• Ask about a minister for men: check

• Talk about men’s health issues being ignored: check

• Circumcision v FGM: check

• And whatever you do don’t forget to mention the family Courts and father’s rights: check

There’s only one thing missing from all this, one crucial MRA issue Reece forgot to bring up, one part of the MRA script he’s quite shockingly left out.

He forgot to ask Hague what the Tories are planning to do about all the false rape accusations!

Ah well, maybe off the back of his new found fame as an MRA poster boy he’ll get a second interview, and a chance to rectify this glaring omission.

According to “sex therapist” Tracey Cox, the minute a woman gets that ring on her finger her rights to bodily autonomy go flying out the window.

In her response to a woman who asks:

“Do you believe you should have sex with your husband just because they want to? I’m going through a period where I’ve just gone off sex.

It’s only been six months and I’m sure I’ll come out of it soon but I resent my husband hassling me. I don’t think it’s right to have sex unless I really feel like it.”

Cox says:

“I totally disagree with you – and so do a fair majority of reputable sex therapists. Two people will never have the same desire or timing, even if their sex drives are reasonably matched. But when you said ‘I do’ you said ‘I do’ to sex as well. Sex is part of the bargain if you expect your partner to remain married to you and faithful to you.

Six months is a long time without sex without a good reason not to do it. Your husband has a right to expect regular sex and ‘duty shags’, I’m afraid, are all part of the ‘working at the relationship’ that experts rattle on about.”

Well here’s a short history lesson for Ms Cox, courtesy of Joanna Bourke:

“In Britain, America and Australia until the last decade of the twentieth century, a married woman was legally assumed to have consented to each and every act of vaginal intercourse with her husband. As in ‘Gone with the Wind‘, a husband who forced his wife to have sex was not considered to have ‘raped’ her – even if considerable violence was used. By definition a husband could not rape his wife.

This ‘marital rape exemption’ was commonly attributed to a ruling by Sir Matthew Hale in 1736. According to Hale, a wife gave lifelong consent to sexual intercourse with her husband. Under marriage vows husband and wife became ‘one person under the law’. It was a contract that ’she cannot retract’. Thereafter, as A Treatise on the Law of Domestic Relations (1870) put it, ‘wilfully declining matrimonial intimacy and companionship’ was nothing short of a ‘breach of duty, tending to subvert the true ends of marriage’.

From Joanna Bourke’s: Rape. A History from 1860 to the Present. Chapter 11: The Home

Perhaps Tracey Cox is unaware that the marital rape exemption was done away with in this country in 1992, and that to assert “I do” when reciting the marriage vows no longer equates in law to signing a contract that says “I hereby grant my husband lifelong access to and total control over my vagina”

To quote Susan Brownmiller:

“In the cool judgement of right-thinking women, compulsory sexual intercourse is not a husband’s right in marriage, for such a ‘right’ gives the lie to any concept of equality and human dignity. Consent is better arrived at by husband and wife afresh each time, for if women are to be what we believe we are – equal partners – then intercourse must be construed as an act of mutual desire and not as a wifely ‘duty,’ enforced by the permissible threat of bodily harm or of economic sanctions”

Susan Brownmiller: Against our Will. Men, Women and Rape. Chapter 12: Women Fight Back

Unwanted sex (Cox’s duty shag) = coerced sex = rape, and it has damaging consequences for its victims. Here’s Professor Robin West:

“The will of the married woman who learns to accept routinized rape is no longer ruled by or even connected to her desires. Eventually, her desires are no longer a product of what she enjoys or what she has learned to enjoy. What the victim of routinized rape within marriage does, sexually, is a product not of what the victim wills but of what her attacker demands. As an immediate consequence, her will becomes a function not of her desires but of his desires. Eventually her desires become a function not of her pleasures, but of his pleasures; she wants literally to please him rather than herself because to please herself is too dangerous. The victim of marital rape gains survival, but she sacrifices self-sovereignty. In other words, she sacrifices the ability to control her own will and to determine her own actions, pleasures, and desires, free from external influence. In short, she sacrifices selfhood.”

Robin West: Equality Theory, Marital Rape, and the Promise of the Fourteenth Amendment. (Quoted in Sex Equality: Rape Law by Catharine A. MacKinnon)

Now unlike Tracey Cox I make no pretence to being a “sex therapist”, but for what it’s worth my response to the original letter writer would be:

“If your husband is hassling you for sex when you’ve made it quite clear that you don’t want it, he obviously has no respect whatsoever for your feelings. He does not have a right to expect sex from you, and no right to demand it of you against your own wishes and desires. And if he’s unable to wait until you’re ready for it, or to respect your rights as an individual to have sex on your own terms, then I’d question his suitability to be your life partner. Seriously, you deserve better than this”

Hat-tip to Jennie Rigg for spotting this nonsense.

According to Geoffrey Lean in the Telegraph they are, and here’s why:

Why boys are turning into girls

Here’s something rather rotten from the State of Denmark. Its government yesterday unveiled official research showing that two-year-old children are at risk from a bewildering array of gender-bending chemicals in such everyday items as waterproof clothes, rubber boots, bed linen, food, nappies, sunscreen lotion and moisturising cream.

The 326-page report, published by the environment protection agency, is the latest piece in an increasingly alarming jigsaw. A picture is emerging of ubiquitous chemical contamination driving down sperm counts and feminising male children all over the developed world. And anti-pollution measures and regulations are falling far short of getting to grips with it.

Sperm counts are falling so fast that young men are less fertile than their fathers and produce only a third as much, proportionately, as hamsters. And gender-bending chemicals are increasingly being blamed for the mystery of the “lost boys”: babies who should normally be male who have been born as girls instead.

The Danish government set out to find out how much contamination from gender-bending chemicals a two-year-old child was exposed to every day. It concluded that a child could be “at critical risk” from just a few exposures to high levels of the substances, such as from rubber clogs, and imperilled by the amount it absorbed from sources ranging from food to sunscreens.

The results build on earlier studies showing that British children have higher levels of gender-bending chemicals in their blood than their parents or grandparents. Indeed WWF (formerly the World Wildlife Fund), which commissioned the older research, warned that the chemicals were so widespread that “there is very little, if anything, individuals can do to prevent contamination of themselves and their families.” Prominent among them are dioxins, PVC, flame retardants, phthalates (extensively used to soften plastics) and the now largely banned PCBs, one and a half million tons of which were used in countless products from paints to electrical equipment.

Young boys, like those in the Danish study, could end up producing less sperm and developing feminised behaviour. Research at Rotterdam’s Erasmus University found that boys whose mothers were exposed to PCBs and dioxins were more likely to play with dolls and tea sets and dress up in female clothes.

And it is in the womb that babies are most vulnerable; a study of umbilical cords from British mothers found that every one contained hazardous chemicals. Scientists at the University of Rochester in New York discovered that boys born to women exposed to phthalates had smaller penises and other feminisation of the genitals…….(click here for the rest of the article)

Disturbing stuff isn’t it? But I bet you can guess which bit of this article disturbed me the most….

Just in case you missed it, here it is again:

“Research at Rotterdam’s Erasmus University found that boys whose mothers were exposed to PCBs and dioxins were more likely to play with dolls and tea sets and dress up in female clothes.”

Now I’m prepared to accept that chemical contamination may well be effecting some physical/biological changes in both animals and humans, including the reduction in men’s sperm count that Lean cites here, but hello, massive and ridiculous gender stereotype alert anyone?

Even if the contamination Lean talks about is having an adverse impact on the size of men’s genitals and their levels of fertility, what the fucking fuckety fuck has any of that got to do with influencing the toys they play with or the clothes they wear? Wtf has biology got to do with socially constructed gender roles?

Well, I’ve had a couple of days now to try and absorb the implications of Lean’s assertion that boys playing with tea sets and dolls amounts to some kind of proof positive that “gender-bending” chemicals (by which he means endocrine disruptors) are actually turning boys into girls. I’ve also had a couple of days to do some research into it: and here’s what I’ve found.

One of the first mentions of the Erasmus University study linking exposure to PCBs with children’s play was in an article in the Independent on Sunday published on October 20th 2002 (no link I’m afraid as it doesn’t appear to be available online). Entitled Gender-bending risk to children, the article states:

Minute amounts of “gender bender” chemicals found in food and the environment are affecting the behaviour of pre-school children, new research shows.

The Environment minister Michael Meacher said yesterday the research was very disturbing and he would ask his officials to “urgently” examine its implications tomorrow morning.

The study – carried out by doctors and scientists at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam – is the first in the world to show that normal levels of the chemicals affect humans. It follows a host of studies showing that gender-benders can turn wildlife species, from gulls and alligators to fish and turtles, into hermaphrodites. In the case of the children in the study, the chemicals caused girls to play with guns and pretend to be soldiers, and boys to play with dolls and tea sets and dress up in female clothes.

The research, published in the scientific journal Environmental Health Perspectives, is part of a long-term study into the effects of PCBs and dioxins on children. The researchers measured levels of the chemicals in the blood of 207 mothers in their final month of pregnancy, in umbilical blood at birth, and in breast milk two weeks after birth, to determine exposure in the womb.

They later asked the parents of the children, now aged seven, to record their patterns of play.

The girls exposed to higher levels of PCBs were more likely to engage in masculine play, while similarly exposed boys were more likely to enjoy feminine play. Dioxins produced more feminine play in boys and girls.

And the author of the piece?

Geoffrey Lean.

A few days later the story was picked up by the U.N. Wire:

“Gender-Benders” In Small Amounts Said To Alter Child Behavior
Tuesday, October 22, 2002

New research indicates even small amounts of so-called “gender bender” chemicals can cause preschool children to switch their traditional gender roles.

In a long-term study, Erasmus University Rotterdam researchers measured the levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the blood and breast milk of 207 mothers during various phases of maternity, then asked the parents involved to report on their children’s behavior seven years later.  The findings indicate that girls whose mothers had higher PCB levels were more likely to play with guns and pretend to be soldiers, while boys were more likely to play with dolls and wear female clothing (Geoffrey Lean, London Independent, Oct. 20).

And once more Lean’s name crops up.

Now fast forward a couple of years. Here’s a piece that appeared in the New Zealand Herald in August 2005:

Gender-bending toxins exempt from tough new laws

Gender-bending chemicals are to be exempted from tough new Europe-wide safety controls despite increasing concern that they are causing bizarre sex changes in children and wildlife, leaked documents reveal.

Confidential proposals show that the chemicals will be treated much less strictly than other dangerous substances in a European Commission directive to be finalised in coming months. Many are likely to escape control altogether.

The proposals – drawn up by the British Government as part of its EC presidency – will create a storm of protest, not least because they fly in the face of a formal warning given by more than 125 of the leading scientists in the field three months ago.

The scientists, who had carried out research on the chemicals for the EU, said they were “concerned about the high level of male reproductive disorders” in European countries and called for urgent action.

Sperm levels have been dropping across the industrialised world, and the chemicals – found in toys, plastics, cosmetics, pesticides, flame retardants and many other common products – are thought to be responsible.

Research published in May showed that boys born to mothers exposed to phthalates, used to make plastics more pliable, had smaller penises and other signs of genital feminisation.

Three years ago, a Dutch study showed that boys exposed to other gender-bending chemicals in the womb grew up preferring to play with dolls and tea sets.

The author this time?

Why look, it’s none other than Geoffrey Lean!

Are you starting to see a pattern emerging?

Here’s an extract from an article in the Daily Mail from February 27th 2008 entitled (rather long-windedly) Singing starlings and why thousands of babies who should have been boys are being born as girls:

…..Increasingly the sperm crisis is being blamed on a whole host of chemicals, not just synthetic oestrogen, but a wide variety of substances that have become ubiquitous in daily life.

They include the common plastic PVC; dioxins, the notorious pollutants found almost everywhere; PCBs, one-and-a-half million tons of which have been used in countless products from paints to plastics; and phthalates, universally used to make plastics more flexible.

Recent tests by WWF (formerly the World Wildlife Fund) on 14 basic foodstuffs taken from supermarket shelves found that every single one contained PCBs, and most were contaminated by phthalates.

Both substances have been shown to have deeply worrying effects on babies and children.

Scientists at Rotterdam’s Erasmus University have found that boys born to mothers exposed to PCBs grew up wanting to play with dolls and tea-sets.

Author?

Seriously, do I even need to bother answering that?

And from the Independent, December 7th 2008:

It’s official: men really are the weaker sex

Professor Lou Gillette of Florida University, one of the most respected academics in the field, warned that the report waved “a large red flag” at humanity. He said: “If we are seeing problems in wildlife, we can be concerned that something similar is happening to a proportion of human males”

Indeed, new research at the University of Rochester in New York state shows that boys born to mothers with raised levels of phthalates were more likely to have smaller penises and undescended testicles. They also had a shorter distance between their anus and genitalia, a classic sign of feminisation. And a study at Rotterdam’s Erasmus University showed that boys whose mothers had been exposed to PCBs grew up wanting to play with dolls and tea sets rather than with traditionally male toys.

Written by? Well who do you think?

To cut a long story short, what my extensive research has revealed is that virtually any mention online or in the mainstream media of the Erasmus University study, or to be more specific, virtually any mention anywhere of a link between a mother being exposed to PCBs and her son’s subsequent desire to don a frock and play at being the hostess with the mostest, is either written by, or makes a reference back to, Geoffrey Lean.

But what about the original research study, surely that backs up his almost obsessive repetition of the fact that boys whose mothers had been exposed to PCBs grew up wanting to play with dolls and tea sets rather than with traditionally male toys?

Well no, not really.

In fact, here, here’s the study itself: Effects of Perinatal Exposure to PCBs and Dioxins on Play Behavior in Dutch Children at School Age, in which the authors conclude that “higher prenatal exposure to PCBs was associated with less masculinized play behavior in boys and with more masculinized play behavior in girls” and where they “suggest that these results may indicate behavioral effects of steroid hormone imbalances early in development related to prenatal exposure to PCBs and dioxins, their metabolites, and/or related compounds.”

And more importantly, here’s an extract from the text an interview with Dr. Nynke Weisglas-Kuperus, a developmental pediatrician at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, and one of the authors of the study:

Interviewer: What do levels of exposure mean here? In typical toxicology, you figure the more that somebody’s exposed to a particular chemical, the bigger the impact. What happened in this case?

WEISGLAS-KUPERUS: I think that is very difficult to say because these are very subtle findings and very low levels. But, of course, what I think is important to mention and to realize that it’s not–we cannot establish a causality with the kind of studies we do. You work with a population in a certain country with an environmental mixtures of PCBs and dioxins. And yeah, you find what you find.

Interviewer: Parents listening to us right now might be–well, they might become quite concerned about what their children are being exposed to. What’s the message you want to convey here?

WEISGLAS-KUPERUS: Well, I think, the first message is that what we did is an exploratory study. And we found subtle differences in play behavior. So, it’s subtle differences in the normal range of play behavior. I think that’s very important to realize for parents. And you should realize that we measured play behavior at a certain age. And that, in my opinion, we don’t suggest that it should have something to do with childhood gender non-conformity later on. I mean, it’s very subtle, we found.

In other words, the study did not find that boys whose mothers were exposed to PCBs grew up wanting to play with tea sets and dolls or to dress in women’s clothes: it found that at the age of 7 there were very subtle differences in the normal range of play behaviour which might suggest a link between higher pre-natal exposure to PCBs and less masculinised behaviour. But there was nothing to prove that link definitively, and absolutely no indication or evidence to suggest that this very subtle change in behaviour would have any impact on, or continue into, the boys’ later years.

And what about the Danish study that Lean refers to in his most recent article. Does that one back up his mantra that so-called gender-bending pollutants are turning boys into cross-dressers?

Again, it’s a no.

Here’s the study: Survey and Health Assessment of the exposure of 2 year-olds to chemical substances in Consumer Products, in which the authors very helpfully list the potential risks associated with endocrine disruptors:

Endocrine disruptors are thought to be the reason for a:

• Sperm quality below the level set as normal by WHO in one in five Danish men between the ages of 18 and 20.

• Large increase in testicular cancer over the last 60 years in Denmark, and a higher incidence than any other country in Europe. Almost 1% of Danish men are at risk of developing testicular cancer.

• 9% incidence of cryptorchidism (testicles not fully descended into the scrotum) in Danish boys. This is significantly higher than in the 1960s. Cryptorchidism is associated with an increased risk of low sperm quality and testicular cancer.

• Decrease in the testosterone levels in the blood of Danish men. Men born after the 1930s-1940s have lower testosterone levels than their fathers and grandfathers had at the same age. A 30-40 year-old man today has the same level as a 70 year-old did at that time.

There is, however, no conclusive proof that the above symptoms can be attributed to endocrine disruptors in our environment. There may be many other causes, such as lifestyle, including changes in diet, smoking habits and alcohol intake.

326 pages, and not a single mention of a tea set to be found!

The numerous studies that have been done into endocrine disruptors and the chemicals and pollutants we’re constantly exposed to provide us with significant cause for concern. But the feminisation of boys, in the context of chemicals causing boys to adopt more girlified behaviour like playing with dolls and monopolising the home corner in the nursery quite clearly isn’t one of them.

Maybe that’s because the toys children play with and the clothes children wear have absolutely nothing to do with biological sex, and everything to do with socially constructed gender roles. But hey, that’s just a theory mind; I could be wrong. After all, what would I know: I’m just a girl right, and girls don’t do science do they Geoffrey Lean?

Following on from this comment from damagedoor which I’ve copied here from the last thread:

“This is, I know, totally the wrong place to post this, so Cath, please feel free to delete, move or ignore as appropriate, but I was wondering if you saw The Force last night?

It’s a series of three documentaries following real-life police investigations. The first was a murder investigation. Last night’s was about rape. Both have been very good, in their way, but last night’s concerned me a little overall. It (very roughly) followed three investigations. Again roughly, ten minutes were devoted to a clear-cut case that was charged, ten minutes to a case that was dropped (but appeared genuine), and forty minutes to a claim that turned out, in the end, to be malicious and false.

I’m someone who might question statistics but has no doubt that false rape claims are a tiny fraction of the whole. So I’m not posting this ‘mischieviously’. I thought it was – to say the least – oddly balanced as a programme. Did you catch it, and, if so, what did you think? Genuinely interested.”

I’ve just watched the programme he’s referring to.

And yes, I agree it was very oddly balanced, with most of the programme being devoted to the investigation of what turned out to be a false claim, and only a passing mention of the other two cases. I was also interested to see how despite the success of Portsmouth’s Crystal Unit, the first dedicated specialist rape unit outside of London, there seemed to be a distinct lack of will from senior managers and others within the force to keep the unit going beyond its 6 month trial period.

Anyway, here’s the link to last night’s programme. It’s just short of an hour long, so if you’ve got time to watch it I’d be really interested to hear your views:

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-force/4od#3006746

I’ve posted a question over at Charlotte Gore’s blog today, under a guest post there by Dr Belinda Brooks-Gordon:

Stop press!

Fascist Nazi bastard calls left-wing feminist women “gorgons” and “monstrosities” on live TV.

Left-wing feminist women are currently formulating a response to this outrageous slur. They’ll have it soon. Honestly. Once they’ve stopped laughing…..

(If you don’t want to listen to all the shite spewing forth from Griffin’s gob, the relevant bit’s at around 4 minutes 20)

Hat-tip to Polly for this one.

If you landed on this blog looking for any of this:

Search Engine Terms: These are terms people used to find your blog.

• women; this shit isnt gonna fold itself

• big tit boobs and fuck and pregnant

• Lets rape the fat slut

• pictures of sexy dead bodies

• rape fat sluts

• animal do women

• pregnant bitchez fight

• pictures of womens corpses

• rape enemy wife

• menstrual porn

• this bitch didn’t know when to shut up

• torturing fat women with food

• strangling fuck

• fat sluts raped

• tortured fat slut

• sexy dead women bodies

• women with speculums in them

You may as well just fuck off now. ‘Cos you’ve definitely come to the wrong place

According to a recent piece in the LA Times, the porn business is in all but free-fall. Apparently this decline in paid-for porn isn’t just down to the recession, it’s due in large part to the massive increase in free online content. As the Times says: “insiders estimate that revenue at most adult entertainment production and distribution companies has fallen 30% to 50% over the past few years.”

If this is true, I know I for one won’t be shedding any tears over it, and I doubt many readers of this blog will be either.

But anyway, in light of these figures Brian Donohue of Ledger Live, the video webcast of the New-Jersey based Star-Ledger newspaper, decided to do some investigating. So he went along to the Exxxotica Convention in Edison, and for reasons known only to himself decided to see if he could draw any parallels between what’s happening to the porn industry, and what’s happening to newspapers. Yeah okay, I can see at a push how he makes the connection, what with both industries facing a threat from free online competitors, but to be honest I think any analogy between the two is pretty weak and that Donohue was just after an excuse to go to the convention.

Here’s the video webcast. If you watch it through to the end you’ll see why I thought this one was worth drawing attention to:

Did you see that? That virtual smack in the face Donohue gets at 5 minutes 40?

At the beginning of the video Donohue goes around acting like a kid in a sweetshop. He’s surrounded by half-naked women; it’s his Xmas and birthday all rolled into one. It’s all pretty lighthearted, and then, at around 4.5 minutes into the film, he gets talking to Shelley Lubben of the Pink Cross Foundation, and suddenly the subject matter’s not quite so funny anymore. In fact grim is the word he uses to describe it.

It’s interesting how people’s attitudes suddenly change when they’re confronted by the reality of what goes on in the porn industry. Instead of the usual sanitised crap the industry itself tries to present to the world, and that we can see in this video with all the smiley clean-cut blokes trying to come off as respectable businessmen, Donohue comes face to face with an industry insider who’s prepared to tell the truth about what it’s all about. And it’s about shitty crappy parents trying to push their daughters into porn so they can make some money off their backs; it’s about girls and women being increasingly expected to do more and more extreme acts in return for less and less money; it’s about, as Shelley says, girls and women being expected to carry out acts with up to 75 men at a time.

It’s no wonder Donohue felt the need to go and splash cold water on his face. Grim doesn’t even begin to describe it.