Friday, August 19, 2011

Breastfeedinggate Update: Maggie Mayhem FTW!!

Maggie Mayhem just posted at her blog a comprehensive and powerful rebuttal to Furry Girl's vicious smear of Madison Young for the crime of using her breastfeeding of her child as a "porn prop". The entire piece is worthy of a read because it gives the important background for the event in which Madison was maligned for, and a complete analysis of why it's not just a matter of she said/she said.

I will simply requote the final paragraphs of Maggie's blog entry, because they say what needs to be said about this matter far better than I ever could say them.


If we want to be totally logical about it, someone with a sexual attraction to pre-pubescent children isn’t hanging out on an adult porn star’s twitter stream hoping for the golden chance that they might see a glimpse of a child. Pedophiles are going to be hanging out in the family friendly spaces like playgrounds, swimming pools, child beauty pageants, churches, etc. It’s an odds game. If you are into children you’re going to go where there are a lot of children. Pedophiles aren’t heading out to the strip clubs to kidnap victims, they’re going to Chuck E. Cheese. People aren’t suddenly converted into dangerous pedophiles lusting after infants from watching a woman breastfeed or shall we go arrest the romantic partners of breast feeding women for watching a breast feeding and fucking immediately after? Human beings are perfectly capable of holding these concepts together without children being harmed for it. It is not “pedophile courting” behavior to share these pictures on personal blogging and micro-blogging services outside of a XXX porn site. Boogeymen don’t advance the argument, credible threats do.

The number of people fighting back are listening to those words, recognizing their significance, and unwilling to allow them to be used as synonyms for “my opinion is that this person is annoying.” I am deeply concerned about the sex worker revolution and that is why I’m not going to perpetuate the myth that the children of sex workers are in constant and unending danger of sexual exploitation and should be governed under a special set of laws about what they can and cannot depict when the set is closed, safe, and protected and no harm came to the child.
This has nothing to do with anyone’s affiliation or non-affiliation with feminism, it isn’t because Madison Young is getting a special pass, this doesn’t even have anything to do with San Francisco other than that it was largely people from the Bay Area who were present at these events and can speak up about their context and non-sexual nature. We have to respond. If we do not, then we are allowing an allegation that we are sexualizing an infant to go unchallenged and be accepted as truth. Speaking as though there were people openly masturbating to this infant is not a matter of opinion or perspective. You can’t state and imply that it is or does and act baffled when people correct the record. Putting that infant at risk of being taken away by police and subjected to that process to express a personal distaste of someone’s politics or PR is a far, far greater expression of child exploitation than posing for that photograph ever had any reasonable potential to be.

Say what you mean and mean what you say. Don’t put that child in danger to express your opinion about the mother. It’s not just the hypocrisy of using the machinations of a system you are trying to erode to hurt someone standing beside you in the battle. It’s the fact that it carries on to someone who didn’t get a say and chills a group of people into hiding for no good reason. Don’t throw another sex worker under the bus as a lesson of the power of the system posed against sex workers. This is not a claim that you should not disagree or challenge people’s beliefs. Pedophilia means more than Gail Dines writing a shitty article in the Guardian. Accusing Madison Young of hosting erotic breast feedings is not merely “pissing off the mommy bloggers.” It is suggesting that a child is being molested and that compels action. It’s like fighting for a sensible drug policy and planting crack cocaine and a machete on another activist but worse. I can’t sit back and let an accusation that extreme stand without correction. I cannot.
It's one thing to say that you don't like a performer using breastfeeding a child to promote her website. It's another thing altogether, though, to throw the charge of "pedophile" at her and explicitly throw her under the bus and call on the very same authorities who would no sooner go after you as well next to sacrifice her merely to fit your personal pique. But to sacrifice  the innocent child and separate her from her mother based on an obviously false charge?? That is the lowest form of viciousness you can go...and anyone worthy of those depths does not deserve to be called a progressive sexual rights activist or a sex worker advocate. In fact, it is one degree of separation from  Melissa Farley....or Laura Schlessenger.



Thursday, August 18, 2011

Memo to Furry GirlL Breastfeeding Is NOT A Sexual Fetish; It Is Nourishing A Child!! A Definse of Madison Young

[Note: this is a mirror of a post I originally published on Saturday to my Red Garter Club blog, expressing my personal opinion on the controversy between sex worker activist blogger Furry Girl (of Feminisnt and SWAAY.org) and alt.porn performer/feminist Madison Young. The issue that has FG bunching her panties was that Madison had posted a picture of herself breastfeeding her young infant daughter that was used for an art exibit.

I am reposting it here because my original blog is now temporarily inaccessible for viewing due to a lapsed subscription with my webhost (my bad), so in order to make the post accessible, I am reposting it here. 

Since the time I originally posted this, Furry Girl has responded with a post of her own defending her opinions, and I have posted a rebuttal thereof. -- Anthony] 

It’s never easy when you have to be critical of someone you respect and admire…but so sorry, Furry Girl, but you are waaaaaaaaaay out to lunch here.

The background, for those not knowing: Furry Girl  — of Feminisnt and SWAAY.org — has several burrs up her butt because alt.porn starlet Madison Young had the termidity to promote her pregnancy and her birth of her daughter, Emma, as a means of supporting the somehow still radical idea that porn performers were human beings and not just sperm receptacles or sex dolls.  Madison had been including pics of her pregnancy and of her daughter at her site (in vastly asexual.htm” class=”sspg term” title=”Look up this term.”>asexual positions, of course), and even included  her in an art exhibit…which also had a photo of Madison breast-feeding Emma.

Apparently, that is too much for FurryGirl to handle, because according to her, using a child anywhere near a porn scene is essentially the equivalent of kiddie porn…or at the very least, an enabler and trigger for pedophiles and other “creeps”.

Now, FG hasn’t yet posted anything at Feminisnt on this little smack war yet…but oh, has she been using up her Twitter stream to lambast Madison Young for her heresy. Some examples:


Am I the only one in the perv community who is creeped out by those who fetishize breast feeding? Since when is an infant a sexy accessory? (Aug. 11th,)

I am so happy I don’t live in San Francisco. I would hate to have to pretend that borderline pedophilia is transgressive and revolutionary. (Aug. 11th)

@nuwishas_tail Adult women who breast feed their infants for the sexual gratification of other adults. That’s fucking creepy. (Aug. 11th)

@madisonyoung That’s funny coming from a semi-pedophile like you. Infants aren’t butt plugs or a kink accessory. (Aug 12th, response to this)

I’m so glad I live in conservative uptight small-town Seattle where the kink community doesn’t involve small children in their turn-ons. (Aug. 12th)

I am SO PROUD of being a prude when it comes to the issue of involving non-consenting babies in one’s kinks. BIG TIME PRUDE. Loud and proud. (Aug. 12th)



Some other sexpro celebs and limelights have rallied to Madison’s defense, including Maggie Mayhem (whom has used her own Twitter stream to rebuke FG), and Epiphora, who today linked this blog post from an unrelated site defending Young as a pioneering sex+ artist.

I’m not going to speak for them, or for Madison, whom has spoken quite eloquently and defended herself well.

All I’m going to ask is this to you, FG:

If a pic of a woman breastfeeding her child in a non-sexual format at a non-sexual art show is enough to get your panties bunched up like Bill O’Reilly at a Playboy Club dinner, then how in the hell can you call yourself a sexual rebel??

Even if someone may get sexually aroused by the sight of a woman nursing her child, as long as (s)he manages to treat the nurser with enough respect to respect her space, there is NO issue. Most pedophiles aren’t going to go after 2 year old kids, you know.Besides, it’s not the kid they are sexualizing, FG..it’s the WOMAN’s BREASTS and NIPPLES. You have got it totally bassackwards.

And this “San Francisco kink values” crapola?? Gee, like they don’t make porn in Seattle?? Like, women don’t breast feed there, too? And, how the hell would you know if men looking at women nursing their children are walking around with instant boners going after them?? As if there aren’t enough legitimate sexual triggers there to begin with??

And, really, Furry Girl…we get it that you don’t like feminism. Fair enough. There are plenty of women who call themselves feminists who aren’t so likeable. But, who the HELL are you to smear everyone you don’t like as pedophile enablers and “feminists” merely because they get under your skin?? Spoken like a true MRA enabler.

You can squawk all you want about “consent” and “using a baby as a sex prop” until the cows come home….but I don’t think that Madison’s child will suffer any bit of damage foe wanting to get her dose of mother’s milk off her mom.  Actually,, I really don’t think that Emma, not being ol enough to even comprehend anything than “Feed me, Mommy”, is the least concerned about much of anything. I mean, do you ask your vibrator for its consent when you shove it up your orfices??

I’m sure that right-wing fundamentalist sex fascists around the world will be praising you, FG, for doing their dirty work for them in slamming women who breastfeed their children as mindless sluts deserving of being treated as less than human. Well freakin’ done.

Another example of how sex workers need to put aside petty bullshit and work together.

And understand that a woman’s breast is more than just the sum of her nipple and her cleavage.

Why Breastfeeding Is STIILL NOT A Sexual Fetish: My Rebuttal to Furry Girl Re: Madison Young

[Note: This a mirror of a post I did over at my Red Garter Club blog involving a rebuttal to sex worker activist blogger Furry Girl (from Feminisnt), who laid what I consider to be a highly wrongheaded and outright libelous attack on porn performer/sexual rights artist Madison Young over a photo of the latter breastfeeding her daughter. As you will read, I got pretty heated up at the end, because I find FG's response to be simply unconscious nonsense.
My original post was kinda nuked because my webhosting account is currently under suspension (I let my sub lapse too long, go figure), so I am reposting it here thanks to Google Cache. --  Anthony ]


Well…Furry Girl has finally seem fit to respond over at her Feminisnt blog to the firestorm of criticism raining upon her for busting Madison Young for allegedly using her young child as a porn prop. I will go ahead and break down her rebuttal line for line.

To her credit, I guess, FG’s not backing down one bit from her fundamental beef of Madison that she is dead wrong to use her baby in that way.


The big take-home point that some people are missing: It’s all about context.  I am against breast feeding in places where people go to masturbate.  Madison’s posting of breast feeding photos and videos in her Twitter stream and on other sex-themed web sites is appalling to me.  It’s no different than breast feeding on stage at a strip club.  Madison has spent her career making everything she does about sex.  There’s nothing wrong with that, of course.  I’m a sex-loving pornographer myself!  But you can’t spend most of a decade purposefully building an environment where people come to masturbate and then feign confusion when someone like me “mistakes” that environment for being sexual.


Now, that would be a legit critique if Madison Young was using her child as part of her live sex shows, or making explicit content including her child. Problem is, that;n not what Madison has been doing. The only time she has even featured her child was in the explicitly non-sexual context of an art show, or in non-sexual general posts about her life.  That hardly counts as exploiting her child to sustain her career…unless you happen to think that no mother should ever even be in porn to begin with. Or, they should keep their life as a mother totally separated and private from their porn personas.

Funny, but I really don’t think that people going to Madison’s website or blog to get off on her nude pics are going there to gawk after her child.


It’s hard to plead “there is absolutely nothing sexual about these photos/videos” when they are posted in sexualized spaces and/or crafted to look sexy.  The most famous image shows Madison as a Marilyn Monroe knockoff.  I’ve seen photos of other women breast feeding, and none of them bothered to put on a sexy dress and get their hair and makeup done first.  For most moms with breast feeding photos, I bet they’re probably wearing yesterday’s sweatpants and looking exhausted, not trying to liken themselves to a famous sex icon.


So, an art gallery where no sex is happening automatically becomes a sex space now??  Merely because a porn starlet decided to breastfeed her child there?? Or, she decides to emphasize a fundamental aspect of her life as a woman outside of her sexual persona?? I guess that according to FG, if you are a porn star, you must BECOME a porn star 24/7, and any other aspect of your life must either be shunted aside, hidden in private and apparently in shame, or completely segregated to a point that no porn fan ever finds out.

And…so funny that Furry Girl  goes straight to the  “Marilyn Monroe knockoff” card as a knock on Madison. Goodness..she’s doing a freakin’ ART EXHIBIT. What does FG expect her to dress up as…Dorothy of The Wizard of Oz??? I reckon that you just can’t look sexy when you are with your child, then, because people will say stuff..and impressionable newborns might get infected with…THE SLUT GENE!!!!

Oh…I’m guessing that real live porn starlet mothers like Holly Halston or Cindy Taylor (aka Jesse Jane) or Stormy Daniels would probably want to have a word or five with Furry Girl on the realities of being sexy and still managing to raise a child while doing porn. Considering that FG is in fact still single, and is NOT an active porn performer, she’d probably learn a thing or two.

I’ve been told that it’s beyond Madison’s control if sick people are aroused by her sexy breast feeding images.  But if she would never want to encourage people to jerk off to photos of her baby, she should stop posting them in a place where she typically posts porn.  Aside from all the innocent masturbators who clicked a blind link because they thought it was going to be kinky sex pics, who wants to see sexy breast feeding?  Most of us would call them pedophiles.  Best case scenario, Madison’s sexy breast feeding schtick is an attention-getting ploy to sell her persona’s “realness” so people will buy her “real” porn.  Worst case scenario, Madison is knowingly creating masturbation material for pedophiles.  Either way, it’s revolting.  (At what point does one cross over from sexualizing having a baby to sexualizing the baby?)


Uhhhh….Furry Girl?? You do know that children are usually made through sex, right?? Therefore, it’s kinda hard to say that Madison is “sexualizing” her daughter any more than anyone else.

But here’s the stupid part: a person who masturbates to the image of a newborn baby being nourished by her mother naturally most certainly has some personal issues. In nearly all the cases, though, the sexualization is NOT of the baby; but rather of the WOMAN nursing her. It is the nipple, the breast, of the woman doing the feeding, that is the real sexual stimulant, and the desire to suck on the nipple of the woman, which is the center of arousal.

And, I’m pretty damn sure that Madison’s website is clearly marked so that those who are expecting to see the usual kinky sex pics and videos will be gracefully sent to the appropriate place,  Those who merely surf through to see other aspects of Madison’s life as a mother who happens to be porn as a side hobby, will be able to tell the difference between adult sex play and respect for a mother caring for her child. Or….does Furry Girl always treat her own paying clients with as much disrespect as how she assumes Madison treats hers??


This issue is also about consent.  The baby is not consenting to being used as a marketing gimmick for her mother’s porn persona.  There is a huge difference between consenting adults engaging in exhibitionism, and forcing creepy, pedophile-courting public voyeurism on a non-consenting baby.  I am an exhibitionist myself, but I would never drag anyone into my kinks who isn’t consenting to be a part of a scene.  For all anyone knows, Madison’s kid will be traumatized by her upbringing in public, and end up feeling extremely violated by the sexual attention Madison subjected her to as a child.  Would you have wanted your mother breast feeding you for attention from horny adults, and for evidence of that to be online and linked to you forever?


OK, so it squicks the hell out of Furry Girl to see a porn performer “use her baby” to promote herself and her website. Fair enough…and actually, there is an honest concern here abuut the welfare of the child being served…or at least there would be IF the child was used in any explicit sexual nature. But, since the only confirmed use of Madison’s daughter was for the art exhibit, in an mostly nonsexual context, I’d say that FG was seriously overdoing her concerns. As far as I know, Madison has NEVER used her daughter as part of any sex scene, so that argument is simply bogus on its face.

And as for the concern about the emotional well being of the child: well, newborn children probably aren’t that interested in anything other than eating, sleeping, and dirtying their diapers for the first year of their lives, so I’m guessing that unless the sounds of live sex is that disturbing to her, she’ll probably make it out OK. Most of those who subscribe to Madison’s site are there to see her first, not her child.


I am against people using their children as props to serve an agenda.  Madison’s use of her daughter to push her politics is no different than when anti-abortion protesters or the Westboro Baptist Church uses their own unwitting small children as props.  Kids aren’t political tools to leverage for shock value, they’re actual human beings who will one day be adults with their own set of opinions.  To assume that Madison’s baby will grow up and be thrilled that her mother used her to get attention for her porn persona is offensive and sad to me.  Several have pointed out that I’m “no different,” since I tweet photos of my cat.  But, here’s the key nuance they can’t grasp: my cat will never be a sentient adult human with his own beliefs and a non-interest in being caught up in my pervy internet trail.


Oh, really??? You mean that breastfeeding your daughter at an art exhibit is the full equivalent of rounding up your kids and going to a protest sponsored by Westboro Baptist Church protesting  that God really hates homosexuals that much that even good people who do no harm deserve to die and should not be celebrated for their life on earth?? Or, having your kids carry placards saying “Get A Brain, MORANS” in order to defend troops who are paid to kill others in battle?? Now, kids can be persuaded or even brainwashed into some very nasty political groups and causes…but other than learning through osmosis that sex can be pretty damn neat, just how in the HELL is a toddler harmed by being exposed to the IDEA of nudity? (Note: I said IDEA of nudity.)

I can’t predict what will happen to Madison’s child when she grows up to be a talking, breathing sentinent being, but I will assume that Madison is enough of a responsible adult that she will teach her basic fundamental morality and critical thinking skills so that she will be able to make informed decisions and avoid harm. That’s what being a parent is all about.Again, I’m not sure why Furry Girl, who is single and has not raised a child (or, at least, she hasn’t publically said so), thinks she can lecture anyone else on that effect.

Having dispatched Madison, FG now goes after those whom have defended her.


The sexy mommy mob doesn’t like these “anti-sex worker” and “sexist” arguments, so they’ve turned it into a matter of rebutting things I never said.

I never said that no woman should be allowed to breast feed.  I am not against breast feeding in public or private, I am against doing it in sexualized contexts.  I would feel the same way if someone whipped out a baby at a swinger’s club, so it’s not just about the internet or porn.

I never said that sex workers (or kinksters) should not be allowed to have children, or that mothers can’t be sexy.  I have a number of kinky and sex working friends who are parents, and I know some sexy moms.  They, however, possess good sense and boundaries and don’t force their offspring to be a part of their exhibitionism and work.  The kinky and sex working parents I know create separation between their lives, they definitely don’t seek to combine them at every turn to prove how transgressive they can be.  Not because my friends are prudes, but because they understand that it’s deeply inappropriate to mix small children and horny adults.

I never said that no one should be allowed to photograph their kids or photograph breast feeding.  I didn’t comb through the Flickr pages of strangers until I found a random mother to criticize.  I’m specifically talking about a porn star who is using her baby as an attention-getting prop in sexualized contexts.


Riiight…the “I’m not really a racist, since I have lots and lots of Black friends, BUT….” card. Some people might then think that this is merely a slightly more personal grudge due to prior dealings between you and Madison, since you give many of your “friends” the benefit of the doubt that you simply won’t give Madison…but I’ll leave that thought for others to decide on their own. (And NO, FG, I use the racism analogy only in a figurative way here, I KNOW that you are not a racist.)

I hate what stuff like this does to the credibility of sex workers and pornographers as a whole.  People like me try to tell regular folk that porn and sex work is about consenting adults, not weird stuff with kids and/or the non-consenting.  To the sexy mommy mob, Madison is the greatest hero of her generation, but what about the other 99.999999% of America, the majority we need to get on our side in order to make any advancements for sex workers?  If you seal yourself in the safe bubble of San Francisco, surrounded by adoring fans, then of course you’re not going to care how you might be damaging the movement for acceptance of sex workers and porn.

So now Furry Girl switches over the the issue of credibility of sex workers in public, because Madison’s actions, if not her very existence, is such a cosmic threat to the makings of sex worker/porn activism that she must be ostracized, stigmatized as a dirty slut and pedophile enabler, if not a pedophile herself, in order that the other “normal” sex workers (like, I assume, Furry Girl) can get on with the business of destigmatizing sex workers alike. Yet, why should it be the need for sex workers to justify their existence to the other 99.999% of society…many of which will never be convinced of the full humanity of porn performers or sex workers even if they performed acts of super human strength or cured all diseases?? Indeed, the very goal of what Madison Young is doing is as much a part of the destigmatization process as any billboard or protest; by showing that porn performers and sex workers are capable of being far more than the sum of their sexual personas.

You would think that a devout activist and libertarian like Furry Girl would understand that and give at least some bit of respect to Madison for being upfront about attempting to balance the scales between being a mother AND being an active and activist sex worker. Alas, it seems that FG is either more concerned with imposing her own narrow constrictions about what sex workers should be..or this is just a continuation of a personal vendetta.

But, it’s this concluding graph that has me climbing the walls with stunned open-mouthed astonishment:


I’m surprised that people like Gail Dines and Melissa Farley haven’t seized upon Madison’s baby fetish as yet another way to attack all of us.  This is exactly the sort of thing they live to hold up as a non-representative example of how we’re all horrible people.  Anti-sex work activist Donna Hughes threw a fit a year ago when a small sexuality conference apparently allowed in a high school senior.  For this, the organizer was branded, basically, a dangerous predator going after America’s helpless children.  If letting a consenting 17-year-old hear about sexuality is enough for the antis to launch a campaign that says kink bloggers are basically child molesters, I wonder what they would think of a porn star sexualizing the breast feeding of a baby?  But of course, if the antis get wind of the controversy that Madison and her fans are so desperately trying to publicize, she will not be the one addressing the hard questions.  She has her feminist porn “revolution” to worry about, and the rest of us – especially her baby girl – can go eat cake.


WOW…just plain freakin’…WOW.

Here we have a supposed “sex-positive activist” and sex worker advocate, someone well respected and prolific and supporting to back to the hilt the fundamental freedom of women to explore their own sexuality, openly and deliberately throwing another sex worker under the bus and offering her to the most bitter reactionary fascist enemies of her own values….merely out of personal pique and pettiness out of merely prejudging minor offenses. And all that on the basis of…a two year old child.

Damn, Furry Girl, what fucking GALL have you to say that another woman should have to give up her right to tell another grown woman that she must live her life to your narrow standards just to keep her livelihood??  Who the FUCK made you the judge, jury, and executioner of how another sex worker should care for her child? And, most importantly.. HOW FUCKING DARE you invoke the words of Gail Dines and Melissa Farley (hell, FG, why not go for the gold and invoke Michelle Bachmann or Anita Bryant or Maggie Gallagher or Laura Schlessenger??) .to shame Madison Young for the mere crime of choosing to express herself as a full woman and a human being??

That “feminist porn revolution” that you so decry happens to be the legitimate right of women to be seen and respected as complete and full human beings, and not to have their personal sexual lives and experiences used against them to deny them their full human rights. Yes, yes, FG, we know how much you hate and despise feminism; that’s why you named your blog “Feminismt”, and I can see why you pit your home base of Seattle against the supposedly “leftist” insanity of San Francisco (and that in and of itself is a whole other issue); but that is still no excuse to demonize a woman or her infant daughter and project your own myopic fantasies on her out of personal vitriol.

I do not know Madison Young that intimately, except as an prolific alt.porn starlet, a progressive feminist, and an eloquent spokesperson for the erotic genre. I do know, though, that she does not and did not deserve the kind of absolute slanderous, hate-filled, and fundamentally untrue nonsense that Furry Girl unleashed on her Twitter stream…and this attempted reply has only reenforced my view that if anyone represents the true positive nature of sex work activism, its Madison Young, not the pretender and chameleonic double agent known as Furry Girl.

Friday, May 27, 2011

He's BAAAACCCCK!!!!!


Countdown with Keith Olbermann (Online Edition): Worst Persons of the Day for 5/27/11 (via Current's official Countdown website)
.

And some have said that the move from MSNBC has mellowed and humbled him.

Yeah, right. 

June 20th can come too soon for this 'Dog.