Well I’ll Go To The Foot Of My Stairs…

The following is written by Sam Berg.

There are a lot of lies being told about me right now. I’m used to that because it comes with the pro-woman activism that kooky kid called life dropped into my lap like an unexploded bomb, but it’s rather concentrated at the moment. Most of it is nonsense, like that I’m trying to get the pro-sex work group kicked off campus (I’m not) or that I’m afraid to debate sex workers (I’m not) or that I said RenEv made threats personally to me (she didn’t and I didn’t say she did), but there is one very serious bit of business tucked into the ever-heaping distortions that I feel must be addressed.

Renegade Evolution is saying that I sent her threatening private emails. I have never emailed RenEv. Not once. What would be the point?

So where did the supposed emailed “threat” come from? I think I know, and I think you’re all going to want to learn what I know, because the pieces are fitting together for me very clearly for the first time.

Remember that shitbag who committed fraud by lying to one of Genderberg’s moderators about being anti-pornography and anti-prostitution so they could spy on our private forums and then release words from there publicly? If you need or want a recap about the violation of women’s safe space that happened one year ago today in April 2007 you can read here.

Caught up? Good.

Also in April 2007, the aforementioned lying shitbag started a hate blog called “Radical Feminist Terrorism” where the person who stole private writings from GB spewed her vituperative guts out with such psychotic absurdities as:

“You can’t really understand the hatred that is embodied in many of the posts on Genderberg. Many members of that forum simply do not see other women as human at all.“

“I am not sure why the belief that women should be free to live as they wish is so dangerous. I do know that to many in the Genderberg this belief in women’s freedom is utterly inexcusable. They will do anything to destroy it.”

“While many will claim that Genderberg is a “safe space” my belief is that there should be no safe space for those who work to destroy women. There should be no dark corner where ANYONE can get together and plot against or foster hatred of women.”

“There is no evil that these haters of women will not stoop to. There is no vile act of malice they cannot justify. They will do anything in their power to destroy or silence anyone they disagree with. In their hate they are trying to destroy her. In their blood lust for a purge they are trying to force Renegade Evolution to reveal who I am. They want to close the hole so they can go back to plotting against women in the dark.”

“In my time on Genderberg I read more hatred of women than I ever read or saw in pornography.”

Seeing how loony the anonymous Radfem Terrorism blogger clearly is, I brushed off replying substantively because the raging dementia speaks for itself.

Throughout May and June the moderators at Genderberg worked like demons to try and figure out which of the 100 or so members was the leak. We ask every member a series of questions before approving them and we were going member by member to try and restore some of the lost sense of security that made one prostituted woman feel she had to leave GB. By early July we pooled our research and figured out that the leak was someone who registered as “Miriam” with a bunch of hooey about being anti-pornography and caring about prostituted women. I deleted “Miriam” from the memberlist and sent her the following email on July 5, 2007:

“I feel bad for you because you’ve obviously been seriously fucked up by people in your life, but if you don’t back off slagging on radfems you’re going to force my hand.I can prove you committed fraud when you lied to moderator deedle about your gb membership, and I can prove you were the one who leaked Pony’s words. Because you’re a pathological liar, you’re probably thinking you can lie your way out of this just like you’ve done other times.

You can’t.

I didn’t out you before because I have a soft spot for seriously fucked up women like yourself, but I’m not above initiating legal action to show the ex-sex workers in my little community that their privacy and continued peace of mind is something I take very seriously. If you cared about sex workers one tenth as much as you manipulatively tell people you do then you would not have violated a sex worker-heavy community like you did.

Stop telling lies, Miriam. You’re not as good at it as you think you are.”

Now ask yourself why RenEv thinks my email to Miriam threatening to reveal that I know Miriam wrote the Radical Feminist Terrorism blog was somehow a threat to reveal personal information about RenEv.

Drumroll, please!

ahem

On March 19th I was invited to a panel debate on pornography at William and Mary College. My contact for the organizing group was Constance Sisk, who told me funding assistance could likely be found to fly me 3,000 miles across the country so I agreed to be penciled in until enough money could be raised. A call for donations among anti-pornography feminist colleagues covered airfare, and I had just enough vacation days earned at work to take off.

On March 24th I confirmed that I would gladly join the two other two confirmed panelists, on the anti-pornography side, John D. Foubert, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Higher Education at the College of William and Mary, and on the pro-pornography side Amanda Brooks, a former escort and sex work advocate.

Constance told me April 2nd that they moved the panel date to the 21st and the rest of April slid by without communication until April 16th when an anti-porn friend informed me that Jill Brenneman and RenEv blogged they would be on the panel. I had received no word from Constance of this and was dumbfounded that wholesale changes were being made to the panel just five days before the event without informing me. I had agreed to do the panel with John and Amanda, and I hadn’t gotten any emails saying she couldn’t attend or that they were looking for a replacement.

If they had told me Amanda couldn’t make it I would have suggested that pornographers and strip club owners are very easy to find through legal channels so they could have been asked to appear on the panel. I would have also suggested that the number of porn-using men on campus should have been able to produce just one pornsturbator willing to defend his porn consumption. Because I was under the impression that Constance & Co. were being honest with me about their intentions, I chalked up the lack of a pornographer or porn-using man on the panel to inept organizing and the extreme amount of publicity given recently to sex work advocacy at William and Mary.

How much sex work advocacy has been given a voice there can be answered with the name Constance. I spoke with John Foubert for the first time Thursday and he told me that Constance is a big pro-sex work advocate on campus and she brought the sex worker show to campus the past three years. A woman named Audrey invited John to the panel because Constance didn’t think he would agree if she asked him. Constance was a guest on Jill’s radio show a few weeks ago, and Jill did a pro-sex work chat with William and Mary college folks a few weeks ago, but in her emails Constance claimed ignorance of the lengthy pro-porn and radical blogosphere debates on this contentious subject.

Constance. Constance said she was excited to have me coming and offered to let me spend Monday night at her place, where she planned on cooking dinner for a group of people post-panel. How do you think it would feel if a pro-choice feminist were invited to a predominantly pro-life campus by a predominantly pro-life group and the pro-life organizer did everything Constance did without revealing her pro-life politics to her pro-choice panelist and house guest?

Little story: Heading home from presenting at a prostitution conference I was in the airport shuttle with a middle-aged black social worker with her name tag still pinned to her blouse. I’m a young, white, tattoo-bearing woman and at the time I think my hair was blue. We exchanged delicate pleasantries and danced around how we talked about the conference until she sat up earnestly and cut to the chase, “So, are you for or against?” When I replied, “Against,” she slouched down and sighed and we grooved on the same anti-prostitution track until we got to the airport.

I agreed to do the panel with John and Amanda three weeks ago. Though it was unethical to make major lineup changes at the last minute like that without telling me and things started feeling really fishy due to the lack of notification about the event anywhere besides pro-john blogs (it’s not listed on W&M’s events calendar or advertised around campus), I agreed to debate Jill. I could not agree to debate Ren, and I don’t suppose I have to tell most of you reading this why but I’ll touch upon it a tad anyway.

Here are Ren’s thoughts on sharing a panel discussion table with me:

“So serious I am taking it very seriously. And looking forward to it in my uniquely grim and serious way. Planning and preparing with a very serious, serious sneer on my face.

And also laughing like a super villain the whole time. Why?

Once upon a time, I had a wish, a dream, a surely wank worthy fantasy of some anti-porn sex work types having to face down, in a forum, and debate those from the other side. And I wanted to be there.”

“And, yes, oh yes, I am seriously looking forward to it. I have so lusted for such an opportunity. Very seriously. And yes, if possible, I will have the whole thing on video. Get your cerebral wanking tissues ready.”

Serious serious sneers, super villain mocking laughter, wank worthy fantasies, whole thing on video, get your tissues ready.

Those are the words of a malicious person licking their chops in anticipation of a messy, humiliation-inducing scene they will relish. Those are the words of a person trying to waste my time with personal attacks when my time is best used educating audiences about the facts of human trafficking, prostitution, and pornography. The trash talk began within hours of being surreptitiously offered the spot on the panel, and that sort of smug pugnaciousness and disrespectful engagement was instrumental in prompting John to cancel his appearance on the panel and he suggested to me that I do the same. I believe we were right to cancel. I refuse to pose for the pornographically spiteful scene being painted.

What to do when a woman who says she’s happy in prostitution says, “Take me, for example” when you know if you actually do take her as her own example by quoting her own words and deeds she will complain, “How dare you make an example of me?” Say you’ll speak with her about prostitution as a global system and of all women’s oppression as the core problem but you don’t want to talk about her personally and she’ll reply, “You refuse to hear my truth.” If you talk about her personally like she insists then you’re the baddie radfem who makes it personal. It’s a lose-lose ruse.

I’d love to debate a porn-user, and there are tens of millions of them. I’d love to debate a pornographer and there’s no lack of those either. I’d love to debate a john. They don’t want to debate anti-pornography and anti-prostitution feminists. They want women in the prostitute supply pool to subjectively defend them against the objective mounds of testimony and undeniable data that anti-pornstitution feminists can produce proving pornography and prostitution violate women and girls human rights immensely. Most of you have seen how deftly I wield the wealth of information I’ve collected in my noodle to make the case against men’s right to economically coerce sex from others. Some of you have seen me do it before with Ren.

Link Link

Saturday morning I woke up to an email from a professor asking if I can come speak to a few women’s studies classes of hers in May. It turns out I can make the date. Life skedaddles on and so do I.

Sam

…woo.

As a radical feminist who’s “out there” I’m often called upon to speak groups of various kinds - small women’s groups, larger professional groups and even bigger conference groups. It’s no big deal. I’m told that I type the way I talk (or vice versa) so what you see is always what you get any way you look at it. I make people laugh, I make them think, I’m challenging and honest. So I’m told. Like most radical feminists, I’m not afraid to lay my wares on the table and have the audience pick what they need at the time from what I offer. I, like most radical feminists, acknowledge the difficulties the patriarchy imposes on our selves, our interactions with others not of our “status” (including our children), our human relationships, our sexuality, our environment, ad nausesm. The list of patriarchially defined heirarchies is fucking endless, isn’t it? Just so’s *someone* will find themselves at the bottom of it. A human person, just like you and me, whlist certain ‘feminists’ seems to be scrabbling to get to the top. The top of what?

The shitheap, that’s what.

I’m sorry, but, as a feminist, I’ve removed myself from the shitheap. It’s not of my design nor making and I don’t belong there. People who’re happy scrabbling about in the shitheap? Fine. They can stay there as long as they can defend it. And they try to. But all their scrabbling about never removes the stench of the shit from them, does it, even if they sometimes, on a whim, decide to define themselves ‘feminist’.

So I tend not to go there these days; to the shitheap. I’m so past shitheap performers trying to argue the *real* with me like their privileged 10% stacks up in any meaningful way against the 90%. Yes, they argue that. Liars. They lie. They negate the lives of those suffering for the choices they make and then have the audacity to promote themselves as the ‘one true voice’ in the well of silence centred in the poverty of those they argue they represent.

And then they get booked to speak at the last minute in discussions about how what they do impacts upon the rest of us (women). And they agree! And then they start posting about “laughing like a super villain” and their “wank worthy fantasy” of debating “some anti-porn sex work types”. To me, the language used is the same language that rapists use (I’m a rape crisis counsellor, I’ve heard it a million times) - it has nothing to do with where women are in this ‘debate’ at all. To be honest, their views are more concommitant with right wing fundamentalists than with feminism…

If I’d been invited to a speaking event where the panel members were changed within the week prior, I’d pull out on principle - whether I wanted to debate them or not. I will not be subject to the vagaries of some random group with a point to ‘prove’ - an agenda to firm, Local Council or House of Commons - I simply wouldn’t do it. You see, I am not a performer - I’m an activist. And I’m a feminist activist, to boot. I’m not looking to ’score points’ for us in the shitheap. As a radical feminist, I’m looking to get us all out of the shitheap.

Now that’s professional.

For Ray:

For Susie:

Two 0f the most significant people in my entire life gone within 4 days of one another. Please bear with me while I grieve. I am in a totally poo place right now but friends always kinda put you back on track, don’t they? Ray’s exit song says it all…

I love them both. I’ve lost them both.. Truth be known, I’m a bit lost without them both. The two people in this fucked up world who accepted me as the oddball that I am. The two people who undertood me, understood who I am. Didn’t agree with me, necessarily, but understood me. And they never judged me and they always loved me anyway.

I refuse to grow old without my friends.

Someone said to me recently, in amongst all this loss I’m experiencing, they said “this is hell - there’s no way out of here but better”. I don’t know that I agree. We only get one go at ‘life’ - it isn’t a rehearsal. Life, ultimately, isn’t something that we’re ‘paving the way’ for others - we’re doing it for ourselves. We might make a difference. We might not. All that we can try for is to ensure that others experience the love, respect, dignity and humanity that we have. And that means treating others with love, respect, dignity and humanity…..but then, you know that dont you.

Loss sucks.

…ever heard of him? I don’t expect you have - unless you live in Canada - but this man has been a fearless promoter of women’s right to our bodily autonomy and reproductive choice. He’s an iconic figure in Canada. He’s been jailed for having the courage of his convictions. In 1967 he presented a brief to the House of Commons health and welfare committee in which he urged that Canada’s restrictive abortion law be repealed. In 1968 he performed his first abortion and then, in 1969, he defied the law by opening a private abortion clinic. In 1970, he was arrested and acquitted, but the acquittal was overturned and he served 10 months of an 18-month sentence in prison.

So that women had the right to safe, legal abortion.

In 1988, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down Canada’s abortion law, ruling that Parliament had a legitimate interest in protecting human fetuses but that “the existing prohibition on abortion was disproportionate in its means and failed to protect women’s right to security of the person”.

This man deserves an award, wouldn’t you agree? He’s been nominated three times for the Order of Canada award. First in the early 1990’s by the Humanist Association of Canada, then in 2002 by Marilyn Wilson, president of the Canadian Abortion Rights Action League and again in 2005 by the Ontario Coalition for Abortion Clinics whose nomination was written by John Irving. Each nomination has been unsuccessful because the Chancellery “does not want to be seen as taking sides in the abortion debate”.

Andrea Mrozek, founding director of ProWomanProLife (draw your own conclusions from the title of that organisation) says “Yes, he is a public figure, but this honour should be reserved for people who make a positive contribution. It would create a terrible precedent if a controversial figure who has done women irreparable harm gains a place in the hall of honour.”

Personally, I believe safe, legal abortion to be a totally positive contribution to women’s lives and I have no idea where she gets the notion of “irreparable harm” to women, do you?

Interestingly, “while it inflames passions, Dr. Morgentaler’s case is not unique. In fact, it is similar to that of Dr. Elizabeth Bagshaw, who founded Canada’s first family-planning clinic in 1932 in Hamilton. Denounced as a heretic for her promotion of birth control (which was illegal in Canada until 1969), she was one of the first nominees for the Order of Canada and was rejected several times. Dr. Bagshaw was finally invested in 1972 at the age of 90.”

Birth control was illegal in Canada until 1969?!

Dr Morgentaler is now 84.

Do you detect a theme here? Something like ‘put it off as long as you can in the hope that they’ll die’?

Vote ‘yes’ (repeatedly) - Dr Morgentaler Should bloody be awarded the Order of Canada - if only to show the world that women’s reproductive right do matter.

The people who decide these things need our guidance because even Neil Young with his huge back catalogue of consistent excellence has never been invested into the Order of Canada, but Bobby Gimby, whose one hit was the Expo-era Ca-na-da, is among the illustrious honorees.

It only requires a couple of clicks to make your views known - Canadian or not.

Source: an online sister and here

…grrrr. I’ve been referred to as a ‘lady’ twice this week and once even as a ‘girl’ - at my age ffs! The guy who referred to me as a girl did it, I think, because he knew it’d piss me off - and he was right - and he won’t be doing that again.

Why do they do this? Why do they diminish us with their language? I’m not asking because I don’t know; I’m simply making an opportunity for us to share our grrrr’s about it and to see if there’s any way we can change things.

My dear sisterfriend v has tagged me with this meme and these are the rules:

Give eight random facts/habits about yourself then tag eight other bloggers.

Ok. Thanks, v…

1. I tore a calf muscle at the dance workshop. Fifteen minutes into the two hour session and I felt the whole thing go *pop* - it was the most sick-making feeling ever. Forty-eight hours of RICE (rest, ice, compression, elevation) and a week off work and it’s doing fairly well. I still have to be careful not to do too much with it and a mysterious bruise has appeared (on my lower shin!) but at least I can walk now and, possibly more importantly, drive.
I felt a right eejit for the remaining 1hr 45 mins of the workshop though - sitting there with my leg up on a chair only able to join in with the upper body isolations. I’m planning to go back to my regular class the week after next.

2. I spent most of today in my jimjams. I got dressed at about 5.45pm and I haven’t been outside all day. Much as I love my work, I love my weekends more.

3. I’ve grown an avocado from scratch. It’s been thriving for just over six months now and is doing really well. It’s about 18″ tall, it’s leaves are full, deep green and shiny and they just keep on coming. Unlike the leaves of the avocado my partner started at the same time - we were having a kind of competition. His is puny; the leaves are smaller, very pale and it struggles to grow. I’ve got into growing things this year. I’ve always had houseplants - well, you do, don’t you? - and, even though my kids have always told them “Yur go’n diae” (imagine bad fake southern US accent there), they’ve usually done ok. But this year I have a stack of pots in my garden that I planted with stuff and it’s all grown and is flowering and looks totally fab. If I remember, I’ll take a picture (if it ever stops raining) and post it up here.

4. Every summer I go to the Cropredy music festival. Camping in cow/sheep poo. Damp clothes. Wandering about for hours at midnight unable to find our tent because one tent looks very much like another at that time of night when one is a tad squiffy. Wandering around a field at 3am because someone moved the loos (either that or I’m too stoned to find them). Bacon and egg sandwiches and steaming hot coffee made and delivered to me by the one I love first thing in the morning. Spending time with good friends that I hardly ever see. Strangers being nice. Grooving.
I love it.

5. I love quizzes. In my maturity I’ve become able to acknowledge that I’m quite a competitive person in some respects and quizzes so bring that out in me. I also know a lot of bizarre triv.

6. I am a very lucky person. Not just because I have two fabulous offspring who mean the world to me - yes, K & J, that means you (K reads here, J will grow into it) - but my shit has always turned to roses without me having too much to do with it. I’m a “glass half full” individual, and maybe that has an influence, but when I look at my life so far I just think “bloody hell woman, you always fall on your feet”.

7. I painted my toenails purple yesterday.

8. Gods. It feels like this one should be something really profound but I’m feeling too laid back to be profound! I am an old hippy (note the ‘y’ - that denotes the ‘old’). I like beads in my hair and tiny mirrors in my clothes. I listen to Buffalo Springfield and King Crimson. I believe in free love (circa 1967) and real freedom of speech. I haven’t grown up and I don’t want to.

Ok, I tag Littoral Mermaid (when she returns), Cruella, Sarah, Christi, Amy, Hedonistic Pleasureseeker, TTB (if she has the time) and Dr Violet Socks

…when your head is buzzing with stuff you need to say but your brain is telling you ‘what’s the fucking point’?

If your mental health isn’t being questioned you’re being judged as ’sexually repressed’ or ‘right wing’ or ‘lazy’ or ‘attention seeking’ or ‘missing the big picture’ or some other crazy stuff that simply serves to illustrate that only a few of the people who look at what you write actually read it. What exactly is the point - when people seem all too willing to box off your thoughts, ideas, opinions and life experience in order to make you fit into their own neat, predesignated little categories?

Being angry and showing it doesn’t mean you’re insane, does it? Arguing that women’s bodies and our right to our own, individual sexualities aren’t commodities for purchase and exploitation doesn’t mean you’re an anti-capitalist prude, does it? Opposing libertarainism doesn’t mean you’re some kind of fundamentalist, does it? Being unable to work for health reasons doesn’t mean you’re lazy, does it? Writing about your life experience doesn’t mean you’re seeking attention, does it? Focussing on one aspect of your life - maybe the one that’s affected you most, that you care about most deeply - doesn’t mean you can’t join the dots and locate your experience in the big picture, does it?

You’re saying “no” to all these questions? Do you have a feminist blog? How long have you been blogging?

Seems to me that, whatever you say, someone will show up with “you think you’re oppressed? What about race/age/ability/sexuality/HIV status/mental health/sex workers rights…” yadda, yadda, yadda… And, yes, I get that we’re all fighting our own particular corner and that every single one of those corners matters. None of them ‘trumps’ another - any feminist worth her salt will have examined and come to understand the system of oppression within which we all live, how it works, how it sustains itself - and our own place within that system.

Racism, sexism, ageism, sizeism, ableism (physical and mental/emotional), poverty, religion, even language ffs - all of these and more have to be included in a feminist analysis of our oppression, surely? I mean, if you’re looking at the big picture, you can’t help but see how it all joins up, can you?

With so many pre-formed judgements about what you say, it’d be nice - once in a while - if someone just actually read it; left their own agenda at the foot of the stairs (so to speak) - and just read it with no ‘trumps’ involved.

Just saying.

…this seems to be doing the rounds at the moment with no particular tagging involved so, wayhay, I’m there…

1) I fucking love my sense of loyalty. And I hate it at the same time.

2) I love my uterus. I love that it had the strength and capacity to nurture and expell two of the finest human beings that exist in this world and the unfashionably fantastic experiences it gave me in the doing of that.

3) I love my innocence. Gods know why but I am hopeful. I love that I have hope.

4) I love my eyes. Not only do they see past shitey veneers but they can kill with just a look. I’ve reduced people to tears with just a ‘look’.

You’ve never seen my eyes in action, have you? Read Dune? I have eyes like that….

5) I love my commitment. It helps that I love what I’m committed to, but I love that I’m a person with an aim in my life.

You read this?

Your turn.

…and yes, thanks, I had a totally, totally fabby time.

But crikey, what, exactly, am I coming back to?

Seems a lot happens in 20 days. I’ve only skimmed recent posts on the blogs I read but wtf has been going on? Can I ask - what, exactly, are we feminist bloggers fighting? Each other? Oh… good plan… that’ll ensure maintenance of the status quo. And that’s exactly what we want, right?[/sarcasm]

So much fucking unpleasantness - lies, misrepresentations, finger pointing, name-calling, silencing even- and me, now feeling so chilled and calm in myself.

*shakes head*

Seems to me that some of us are only blogging in order to be able to pick fights. In the name of feminism?? Why?

*tuts*

Women, I bring you this for 2007. We may not all agree with one another, but just let’s do our research and be polite to one another when we post, huh?

Anyway, I’m back.