A little background: I grew up as the freakish nonreligious kid in a conservative part of the country.  I'm not one of those people who was raised in a big liberal city or whose parents taught them college-level concepts before the other kids could even read.  I grew up around people who told me that dinosaur bones were put in the ground by Satan to trick us.  I've always been drawn to nature and science, and have spent almost 14 years paying attention to the evolution wars - ever since the subject came up in biology class in seventh grade.  Sexuality activists can learn from the contemporary creationist movement's most successful strategy, and how to not play into it.  I've touched on this topic before, but wanted to write about it in more depth after watching not just anti-sex worker activists, but also supposedly "pro-porn" feminists, using this tactic over the course of this month's re-hashing of the porn wars.

To get a two-hour crash course in the modern creationist movement, I recommend watching Expelled, courtesy of The Pirate Bay, whose motto should be For When You Don't Want Your Money Supporting Something™.  The movie is a "documentary" narrated by conservative actor Ben Stein, aimed at "exposing" the horrifying "bias" within American schools to not teach Christian myths often enough in science classes.  (Unlike other countries with indoor plumbing and electricity, Americans already do have so much creationism in their schools and public life that most of them don't believe in evolution.)  The film clumsily pushes the idea that atheist radicals like biologist Richard Dawkins are taking over science and shutting down any "debate" about creationism.  Stein gives the topic the full loony treatment - which, of course, includes a stroll around Dachau to sensitively remind viewers that a belief in evolution and science invariably leads to Nazi death camps.  Stein never plainly states in the movie that he's a creationist who doesn't believe in evolution.  He argues that anyone who definitively supports evolution is trying to "silence debate about these important issues", playing like he's just a doe-eyed and confused Joe Everyman who thinks we the people have a right to hear "all opinions" on an unresolved matter.

Creationists might be intellectually-stunted to the point of hilarity when it comes to their interpretations of the world around them, but they are a very clever and well-funded bunch when it comes to getting their ideas wedged into American society.  Their most important and successful tactic is a propaganda campaign that they call amongst themselves "teaching the controversy": to not deny evolution outright, but to drum up "debate" and make the public think that the jury's still out about whether or not the world is 6000 years old.  In reality, no credible institution or researcher lends any believability to the idea that there's a "controversy" in the scientific community over whether or not Christian mythology negates everything we know about biology, geology, and physics - but that's just a minor unmentioned pesky detail, like there being no credible studies to suggest any harm in viewing porn or decriminalizing prostitution.

Creationist nutters aren't the only special interest group that is hell-bent on "teaching the controversy".  You see this sort of thing all the time with other areas where a person knows their own religious/moral beliefs have no factual basis, and that there's likely lots of solid evidence against their position, so their only hope is to cloud the issue to make their own position look more tenable.  Such as:

"Oh, I'm not against abortion!  But I do think young women should know that a lot of people have been asking questions about whether women who get abortions are more likely to end up with cancer later in life."

"Oh, I don't hate the gays!  But I think the public should know that there's all sorts of conflicting information about how unhealthy it is for children to be raised by homosexuals."

It's a sort of malicious argument from ignorance - someone posits, "I can't possibly make sense of this terribly confusing issue," - when, of course, they perfectly well do have a side - "so, we all really need to think more about what a grey area we're looking at and not make up our minds so hastily."

In the world of internet debates, this shoddy debate tactic is called concern trolling.  The concern troll is never for or against anything, they've just got "concerns" they need to keep raising.  No matter how many times you keep countering these people, they can keep popping up with some other "concern" that adds further confusion to the issue and makes it harder to discuss using facts.

"I think it's a classic hallmark of psuedoscience - which is that you just keep shifting the goalpost until you get to a hypothesis that's, frankly, untestable".

- Dr. Paul Offit, in Point of Inquiry's "The Costs of Vaccine Denialism" podcast

Lately, I've seen more sex-positive types adding to this problem by reminding everyone that "we" ought to be more respectful of anti-sex worker activist's arguments, and that the sex worker and pornographer community is failing to address these "concerns", such as:

"What about the women who feel insecure about themselves when they see sexy skinny women in porn?" The feminist answer to this is to sell a woman a book telling her that yes, she really ought to feel oppressed and ugly when she sees women's bodies in advertising and entertainment, and to whine a lot about such images being displayed.  My solution is to tell people to own up to their insecurities, and develop positive self-esteem that's not based on comparing themselves to idealized images in the media.  We all choose how we react to the world around us, and a large-chested size two model in a porno isn't forcing any woman to hate her own body.

"What about that study that shows sexually aggressive men look at a lot of pornography?" What about it?  Non-scientific and anti-porn minds take the study to mean looking at porn causes men to behave aggressively, even though such a conclusion is a classic logical fallacy.  I'd respond by telling people to read about the difference between causation and correlation, and to know that there are many more studies from all over the world that show a correlation between increased access to porn and a decrease in sex crimes.  If we're playing the correlation game, there's much more research to suggest that porn makes the world safer and less dangerous.  (Three I have bookmarked are Anthony D'Amato's 2006 study "Porn Up, Rape Down" about porn and rape in the United States, Dr. Milton Diamond's 1999 experience with studying porn and sex crimes in the US and Asia, and economist Todd Kendall's work, including "Pornography, Rape, and the Internet.")

"What about porn companies that don't treat their performers well?" None of us have any real statistics about what percentage of performers feel abused or unhappy with their jobs, and I'm not going to waste my time debating my guesses with other people who are also making guesses.  (My guess, though, is that the porn industry has a higher level of job satisfaction than most other occupations.)  Are some workers in the porn industry mistreated or miserable?  Of course, sadly, but that doesn't make the jiz biz especially evil.  There are exploited workers in every sector in every country in the world.  Further, it is pornographers and performers who are the most likely to know about adult companies that have had complaints from talent.  If you want the real scoop on a given porn company and how well they treat their workers, you don't email a women's studies academic on the other side of the country to ask for a referral.  You ask people in the porn industry.  Sex workers are pretty damn protective of each other and will gladly share if they've ever heard of a company engaging in bad business practices.

It annoys me to live in an age of public discourse where people are coddled and told that every idea is valid and just as likely to be correct as any other idea.  Ideas are not lottery tickets - each with an equal and random chance of winning.  When it's almost unheard of to unapologetically state that a given idea or person is flat-out wrong, the intellectually-lazy public believes that the truth always lies in the middle.  Not everything is a compromise.  Not everything is a debate.  Not everyone's opinion is a beautiful and unique snowflake - sometimes, it's just yellow piss-filled slush.

The sex-positive scene, and the world at large, needs to stop giving concern trolls and those who "teach the controversy" an equal platform with equal consideration.  Their goal is to dump impenetrable grey area paint all over everything so that the well-reasoned text beneath becomes unreadable.  It only encourages them to acknowledge and give legitimacy to their every little whimper and fuss.

As a younger person, I wasted a lot of time and energy line-by-line debating anti-sex worker loonies in front of small internet audiences, and I won't make that mistake again.  I'd rather just make good ethical porn, and occasionally blog about sex work politics to a wider audience.  One of the most powerful political slogans I've ever seen was a Bobby Sands quote on a mural in Belfast that read, "Our revenge will be the laughter of our children."  Well, my revenge in the porn wars will be the laughter of the performers I hire to make awesome smut with me - and there have been a lot of genuine smiles and laughs on my shoots.

I guess that's what everyone wants in a book, right?

For most people, that's not hard to find.  Take any average computer programmer, carpenter, pastry chef, archeologist, or soldier, and there will be books from authors more skilled in their field, ready to offer philosophical insights and practical information.  I don't think there's anything like that out there for me, unfortunately.

What I want is thoughtful, aggressive, non-misogynistic, and secular critique of feminism.  It doesn't really seem to exist.

Today, I went browsing around on Amazon - with its wonderful recommendation engine - in search of any anti-feminist sorts of books that I'd actually want to buy and read.  What I get are piles of books written by overgrown frat boys, religious people, and hardcore conservatives who think women should have never been allowed out of the kitchen in the first place.  I'm in earnest search of The More Awesomely Eloquent Me, and all I'm getting is stuff about Jesus, abortion, the homosexual agenda, the dangers of communism, and an out-of-date collection of essays by Phyllis Schlafly.  (Whose work I suppose I should read anyway, just for a historical perspective from someone who fought second wave feminism.)

Although I didn't find anything that was exactly what I'm looking for (criticism of feminism), I added three books to my wishlist (hint hint) that sounded interesting anyway:

* Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture by Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young.

* Venus: The Dark Side by Roy Sheppard and Mary T Cleary.

* A Promise to Ourselves: A Journey Through Fatherhood and Divorce by Alec Baldwin and Mark Tabb.  (I once saw an interview with Alec Baldwin about fathers and divorce, and I liked what he had to say.  I'm a kid from a "broken home" who had a greedy, unstable bitch of a mother, whom I haven't spoken to in many years.  When I was young, my mother argued to the court, as a malicious tactic, that because my dad liked porn magazines, he shouldn't be allowed to see me because he'd rape/molest me.)

Already in my collection, but as of yet unread, are these other two that I hope will be interesting.  Both of these authors have a bunch of books out, and I bought one of each to test the waters, and the Jesus-ness of their politics:

* The Death of Feminism: What's Next in the Struggle for Women's Freedom by Phyllis Chesler.

* Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women by Christina Hoff-Sommers.

Edited to add: I also have in my existing collection The Myth of Male Power by Warren Farrell.  I should have included this book in my original post, but my "to read" stack is embarrassingly tall, and I forgot about it until a commenter reminder me of him.  I've only read the introduction so far.  I was bracing myself, from the title, for an angry douchebag rant, but instead, I got a well-thought-out "this is what I've learned after being a professional feminist" from a former board member of the National Organization for Women.

So, what else is out there?  Where's the secular non-conservative criticism of feminism that I want to read?  I asked this on Twitter, but what I suppose I didn't make clear is that I'm not looking for feminist-identified authors criticizing other factions of feminism, or feminist-identified people who acknowledge issues they have with parts of feminism.  I am looking for something outside the echo chamber, outside of pots calling kettles black.  Things not written by feminists.  I realize that, on the left/liberal side of the political spectrum, if you fail to identify as a feminist, you're treated as though you enjoy microwaving baby kittens for amusement.  But come on, there have to be plenty of other assholes like me, right?

"You know where your kids should be?  They should not be at a church youth group retreat.  They should not be in the company of anybody with a clerical collar.  Ever.  [...]  There are millions of sharks in the ocean.  Three shark attacks in Florida, and no one will go in the water.  Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of children raped in churches, and people still send their kids to church.  It's crazy.  You should be sending your kids to gay bars.  There, they will be safe."

- Dan Savage, in Savage Love Episode 180, on thestranger.com

Two asides:

The documentary Sharkwater taught me that more people are killed every year by vending machines than sharks.

Twitter user DoctorD71 pointed me to an interesting article from down under, "Aussies safer in a strip club than a church, figures show".

DJ Grothe: "Yes, maybe Christianity was used to support the institutions of slavery, but wasn't it also really beneficial to slaves?  Or after slavery, [to] the black community in general?"

Norm Allen: "Well, the way I look at it is that you can get a positive out of a negative, but that doesn't justify the negative. For example, if I burned down your home, I don't expect you to thank me for calling the firemen."

- From a podcast interview, Science, Humanism, and the Black Community, on pointofinquiry.org.

I recently had someone reply to my anti-religion stance with "Surely we can learn to take the good and ignore the bad?"  With any other topic besides religion, this would be an offensive position to take.  It's like arguing, "Never mind the horrors of the mass genocide in Rwanda, the important part to remember is that lots of people were given free machetes.  You have to focus on the good parts!"

Back to Norm's analogy: Don't forget what's been burning down the proverbial homes of sex workers, women, queers, and sexual outsiders for a long time - religion.  Please stop thanking them for calling the firemen.

Today in long-standing annoyances: the left's schizophrenia about religion- namely, which beliefs are chic and which beliefs are deplorable.

As a whole, lefties/liberals love to point out that they're better than those normal people and the silly dogmas of the desert religions, but often embrace their own interpretations of eastern and indigenous religions.  Lefties picket Mormon churches for their support of Prop 8, but squeal at the chance to see The Dalai Lama live in person.  They'll look down their noses at those nutty Catholics taking the Eucharist, but love buying homeopathic tablets from Whole Foods for their subjective ailments.

Since every single religion has anti-woman, anti-queer, and anti-sex rhetoric as major core values, why are some religions slammed as "oppressive" and "sexist" and "made-up nonsense", and other religions are exempt from criticism?

I don't have anything particularly against eastern religions or white folks' selective appropriations of the beliefs of Native Americans, but it fascinates me that it's liberal blasphemy to refuse to create a special safe haven for the "cool" religious beliefs when you're talking about the absurdity religion as a whole. "Religion is patriarchal nonsense invented to control women and keep the poor oppressed through promises of an afterlife in exchange for obedience!... except for, you know, Buddhism, because it's about nonviolence, or karma, or something."

In my two and a half years on Twitter, nothing has elicited more angry replies than the few times I've pointed out that His Supreme Magicalness The Dalai Lama is a homophobe.  People react as though I'm stomping on kittens if I point out his own statements about how any form of non-procreative sexual behavior is wrong.  (For more of such kitten-stomping, see these bits from Wikipedia, Michael Parenti, SkepticBlog, and Q-Notes.)

One of my favorite things I've seen on the topic was a piece from "John Safran VS God", where the Australian comedian quizzed people on the street about whether certain statements on sexuality were said by the Pope or the Dalai Lama.

Does The Dalai Lama dictate dogma to Buddhists, like the Catholic Pope?  No.

So, what do other Buddhists think about sexuality?  It's not a religion with a Bible or a set of precise rules that one can refer back to, but the gist of the religion is that one achieves true happiness/peace/nirvana only though renouncing pleasures of the senses (sex) and ceasing desires.  That doesn't sound like a faith that's poised to look kindly on me starting my day with a vibrator- even if there is no official writ denouncing doing so.

Buddhism is a religion of vagueness, one whose non-commandment commandment to "avoid sexual misconduct" has been interpreted in a lot of different ways by different cultures.  I might not have a Buddhist "hell" to go to for engaging in my active/deviant sex life, but I also won't achieve enlightenment, and may well get knocked down the ladder in my reincarnations.  (It's a very passive-aggressive faith, don't you think?)

When I went to Thailand, one of the first things impressed upon me, as a woman tourist, was to never touch the Buddhist monks you see all over the place.  Ever. If I were to so much as accidentally bump into one on public transportation, my inherent sordidness as a woman was so powerful that I would cause serious damage to his sacred good karma.  I've never been admonished of my dangerous sinful lady-powers when I've been to areas populated by a lot of Muslims, Mormons, Catholics, or Baptists.

(Thailand also burst my bubble that Thai Buddhists were trans-friendly and incredibly accepting of transwomen/kathoey in their culture.  Looking into the topic more, I found that it wasn't so much that the culture accepted trans people so much as it felt sorry for them.  Apparently, in order to have been born trans, you must have screwed up really badly in your last incarnation to have such an unpleasant station in this life, so Buddhists should be compassionate towards those former sinners.  Pity is not exactly my vision of queer liberation.)

I won't claim to be an expert on Buddhism, and like the nice liberal Christians who gloss over the violent horrors of the Bible in favor of saying that Jesus loves everyone, some of you can no doubt counter me with a lot of cute platitudes about how the faith is about tolerance.  From what I can see from the outside, though, Buddhism's anti-pleasure core value neither appeals to me, nor approves of the life I - and most people I know - lead.

I don't understand why so few other people take issue with Buddhism.  (I guess they're too busy gushing in awe when The Dalai Lama utters another one of his third-grade-reading-level versions of "be nice to each other", like they're really unique insights.)  It's nice that Buddhists aren't trying to take over the world through violence, but I think that's a pretty lousy metric for deciding if a group is "good" or not.

I'd like to close with a snippet from the excellent "Holier Than Thou" episode of Bullshit!.  After the show talks a bit about the brutal theocratic rule of Tibet under the Dalai Lama, Penn produces scales of evil, with China on one side, and The Dalai Lama on the other.

"Since Mr. Lama has been run out of Tibet, the Chinese have introduced secular education, running water, and electricity.  So, maybe life is a bit better on the ground there.  Of course, the Chinese have also thrown thousands into labor camps and prisons, stomped on as much free speech as possible, and then there's that whole fucked up communism thing. But if you ask Tenzin Gyatso - DBA "Lama", what is it with these holy people and their alias? - his holiness will tell you that he must return to power for the good of his people.  In this case, "good" may translate into his people living in squalor and his government condoning slavery.  Remember: the lesser of two evils is still evil, and the enemy of my enemy is not my friend."

[After months of this blog post being out there, I'm sick of getting comments from random people who've never read my blog before and are looking for some place to fight about why they think their religion is awesome.  Go whine about it in your LiveJournal.  I will not be publishing any more comments from people who's "contribution" is to try and have the same cliche debate with me about why they love religion and/or the Dalai Lama.  I've more than addressed everything I'm going to address, but if you want to keep debating religion with me, you can pay me $180 an hour to do so on iFriends, since that's what gets you off.  It's not that I can't rip your tired old arguments to shreds, it's that it bores me to do so.]

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