An Open Letter to the Krewe of The Biting Beaver (Or: How NOT To Send The Sex Police After Bad Google Searches)

To BB, Dim, and/or Dubhe:

Iim sure that given my status as Public Enemy #1 for being an frequent critic of your basic philosophy of men being innate penis-wielding predators and women and children their eternal victims, you will probably ignore this letter (and more than likely, I won't be able to send it to your blog anyway due to your stated policy of not allowing opponents or critics of yours to enter comments)...but, since it is my blog and I really do want to elicit some kind of actual discussion across the feminist continuum, I will throw this out just for the sake of enlightenment.

You see, I'm a bit confused about a lot of things about you..but this recent notion of yours that somehow a Google search using a certain combination of words reflects not just a desire to consume child pornography (and I mean by that term explicit sexual media depicting children in obviously sexual situations), but a premonition to actually molest and abuse children..and thusly justifies reporting such interlopers to the proper authorities for prosecution.

For starters, you do understand, do you, that most Internet purveyors do not need or desire to search for the kind of material that you are so exercised about, since there is plenty of ADULT sexual material (that is, material depicting willing and able consenting ADULTS having lustful sex)...so the "sick fucks" who may be making these searches may constitute a rather small minority of Internet searches??? Oh, but I forgot...since it is your stated policy over at the Biting Beaver that the mere consumption of adult-oriented sexually explicit material and media should be prosecutable because even adult consensual porn is considered harmful due to its "degrading" and "objectifying" effects on women, and because it is a gateway to all sorts of horrible acts, up to and including sexual abuse of children....there's really no need to distinguish between adult searches and "kiddie porn", now is there??

Secondly, you are aware of the recent technological advances such as "spy bots", which are machines used by sex spammers to automatic comb through search engines and thus drive the relevant spam through unsolicited to certain customers, are you?? That would mean that many of those evil "searches" for those dirty words are in fact not done by people but by machines...and that would kinda weaken your argument a bit, now wouldn't it???

And I won't even begin to question the issue of using the power of the Federal government (one of the main tools of the PATRIARCHY, mind you) to attack people for their mere THOUGHTS, rather than their actions in actually abusing children.

But the most confusing thing about this, guys and womyns, is that you reserve yourselves the right as experts in the field, while simply dismissing genuine critics of your crusade as "pro-kiddie-porn feminists"..even going to the expense of distorting their views. Case in point: This (admittedly fervent) criticism done by my colleague K. at Bitch Lab on the nature of reporting Google searches to the authorities:

Sorry, but whatever someone may be typing in to their favorite search engine doesn’t rise to the level of investigation by some idiotic organization, asshole. Really, this kind of shit is such crypto [struck in original, replaced with] proto-fascist bullshit it makes me want to scream.

Whatever, uh, respect I may have had for this person just evaporated — not to mention she’s a fucking beanbraned tool for buying into whatever bullshit she read at some Web site. Patriarchy schmatriarchy. Fucking neo-con b.s. is what it is.

Here’s a clue [epithet struck in original] :) errrrr BeebDim, you can’t hunt down an individual on this basis, and to do so violates so many of our rights as citizens that you should be ashamed of yourself for fucking buying into it. Not to mention the number of people who can simply scam the whole system with anonymizing tools, etc.


Bitch Lab: Sick (Feb. 12, 2006 entry (excerpted)

I will just ignore the reaction and the comments that were generated there, particularly the personal attacks by your ally Ginmar, which were particularly interesting for avoiding the main issue of K's objection.

Fast forward to yesterday, when Dubhe decided to post to the BB blog an update to their crusade, refering obliquely to B|L's critique as a "feminist who is 'pro-kiddie-porn'" and adding this paragraph:

The ones involving children have all been reported to that nasty "crypto-fascist organization"* known as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

Thanks,
Dubhe
*(and yes, that's a direct quote from a feminist who is also pro-kiddie-porn)

Now...if I remember B|L's original post at her blog, there was no mention of the NCMEC anywhere at all, nor did she ever refer to anyone but Dim and BB as "crypto-fascist" (indeed, she struck down the "crypto" part and changed it to "protofascist", even). Actually, the organization that BB originally wanted to turn in the miscreants in to was a site called Cybertipline, not the NCMEC.

I guess that I should say that when another blogger named Antiprincess of the Paleofeminist blog pointed out that error, Dubhe did have the decency to print an apology and a partial "retraction" and revise that previous comment above. But even that "retraction" contained a backhanded attack on B|L that attempted to smear her almost as harshly as the original:

I also stand corrected on the point of the comments thread. Although I still wonder about what a person thinks of child porn if that person thinks reporting child porn is cryptoproto facist and the organization that would investigate it is idiotic.

(Comment in Paleofeminist thread located here)

Question for Duhle: Are you blind or what??? B|L never even mentioned child porn, just your quest to report people for their website searches. Merely going on a search using certain words is no proof whatsoever of any connection with child porn, nor should it mark the sercher as automatically a pedophile. And you haaave heard of the presumption of "innocent until proven guilty in a court of law"??? Or the idea that people should be prosecuted for their ACTIONS, not their THOUGHTS???

And you should know that while the NCMEC itself does not deal with child porn explicitly, some of their chief spokesmen have openly and enthusiastically supported efforts to censor adult-oriented sexual material and target adults who consume and posess such material as innately "exploitatve" to children. One of the NCMEC's main spokesmen, Charles Taylor, current sits atop the Justice Department's Obscenity Task Force...and he has opinly opined that even softcore depictions of simulated sex is innately prosecutable under obscenity law as "harmful to children" and leading to sexual abuse of children. So perhaps even the original remark might not be so extreme after all.

All of this is so unbecoming of you, Dubhe, since you appear to at least have some respect for opponents (unlike Dim of BB, who simply dismiss them as enablers of the evil male penis); at least you acknowledged Bitch |Lab as a feminist while you smeared her, which is more than I can say of the others.

Bottom line here, in conclusion: If you are going to attempt to ilicit a debate with others on the hot button issue of child sexual abuse, you might want to use a bit more accuracy and a tad more common sense than you have thusly portrayed....and it would be a good idea as well to think a bit before you strike down your critics. You don't have to agree with them in the end, but at least interpret them in the correct and respectful way they deserve.

Like I said, I may by blowing into the wind on this one, but never say that I didn't try.

Thanks,
Anthony

UPDATE: Here's the revised version of the above post:

*(and yes, that's a direct quote from a feminist who, while emphatically not pro-kiddie-porn, believes that reporting someone being an accessory to child rape to law enforcement is "cryptoproto facist bullshit".)

Nice "retraction" there, Dubhe...Karl Rove might have a job for you in the future.


UPDATE #2: Surprise, surprise, surprise!!!! Turns out that Dubhe is really Dim under a pseudonym. Nice going....being a shill and a sexual McCarthyite isn't enough for you?? I thought that hiding behind a pseudonym while shoveling poop at critics wasn't your style, ehhh?

($10 and a tip of the hat to antiprincess for that breakin story.)