ihoby wog

This is a very complex issue – one that needs thorough examination.

What I see going on now are multiple trends happening in unison, most of which are ultimately bad for children. Whether or not there is in fact a boom in pedophilia or even child molestation, it is certainly something that has become a “hot button” topic with a large portion of money and time spent on the issue that could really be better spent on breaking the cycle of abuse and neglect that leads to these crimes. Instead, it is spent on the following:

On one hand we have for the first time, special and extreme attention aimed at pedophilia and sex crimes. We have a situation where it’s being sensationalized beyond the scope of reality. We have tv shows and special police forces who are not only aiming to catch actual pedophiles but actually luring people into being far bolder than they would have been in order to permanently ruin their public life.

This is bad for children because for the most part, they aren’t stopping 90% of child abuse and molestation.. they’re just making examples out of the fringe cases from internet chat rooms, most of whom would never have strayed beyond their keyboards.. so they go to jail and have their info posted on the sex offenders list, while the real sex offenders.. the people who take photos of the kids they abuse, they walk free.

Another ingredient: commercialism. Corporate advertising is becoming increasingly aimed at sexualizing younger and younger kids, girls especially. All for the sake of profit, companies in all kinds of industries (clothes/fashion, pop music, magazines, movies, tv, toys) are targeting our children with laser beams of overtly sexualized media. This message attached to any product (a person, a wearable, a consumable, etc.) says the same thing to girls: “You will not be liked/loved/noticed unless you dress like a slutty adult, act flirty, and fit in to the culture we’re trying to manufacture with this marketing campaign. Buying our product will help you to do those things and attain the recognition you desire.” A similar but decidedly less oppressive message applies to boys.

This kind of commercialism is probably one of the most influential drivers of producing new predators and victims.. and it’s only getting worse. Psychologists and criminal lawyers alike report that sexualized and explicit media are one of the tools that convicted child molesters use to influence their victims into thinking that their sexual advances are okay, acceptable, and even desirable.. and that’s exactly what the world of business is providing.

Another bad thing is how “the scare” is being presented, yet again. 90% or so (maybe more) of even reported cases of child molestation occur between a child and adult who already know each other.. family or family friends. This boogyman of the lone stranger pedophile molester is largely a myth.. and a particularly damaging one for our children because once again, it focuses on the fringe cases while most of the men (most child molesters are men) who are exploiting kids are free to keep molesting.

So in light of all this.. I think that if a person is caught with abuse photos they didn’t take – they should be given a stern warning and be periodically monitored somehow.. if they paid for the photos then maybe include a fine. It’s the people that are actually molesting the children, the ones taking the photos that people should be more concerned about.. and that includes corporate america. They need to be held accountable for what they’re doing.

Well, ICANN doesn’t listen to public suggestion. More than 6 years ago I submitted a couple of letters to them suggesting among other domain choices, that .xxx be used as a new top level domain. I wrote that the best course of action would be if .xxx were made available and provided free switch overs from their com/net/org based domains to xxx.

Back then, it would have worked. The web was different then, the porn sites operated differently and didn’t build markets by relying on the tricks they do now (spam, domain typo, unrelated domains, etc.). The hubs, portals, and outlets didn’t exist in the same complexity. Less was centralized, indexed and organized. All the .com domains were rapidly being snatched up.

Adult sites would have welcomed both the exposure (to their audience) and freedom (from groups of the offended) that this top level domain can provide. As long as the non-switch price stayed affordable, .xxx tld could even be used for individual objects of content.. for instance, sites that have some adult material mixed with much that is not, simply have that content linked from their .xxx domain – automatic child-safe exclusion. All groups involved would have benefitted from the line in the sand drawn by the tld.

But much time has passed.

Now it seems to me that it’s too late. Especially if they’re going to charge more for it than other domains. With methods changed and price not attractive, there is little incentive now for porn sites (or any sites with some amount of adult oriented contents) to purchase or consider switching to .xxx anymore. I still foresee there being some usage of this better-late-than-never tld but I don’t expect it to match level of success that it would have so many years ago. Too bad, really.

I completely agree with her. True that my opinion in this matter doesn’t mean as much since I’m a man, but I would also like to add a couple more points:

Concerning photos of abortions, EVERY surgical proceedure looks horrifying. Doesn’t matter whether it’s an abortion, a heart transplant or a root canal. They’re all bloody, messy operations that show parts of us we don’t like to see. Even natural birth looks horrific. Using photos of abortion procedures in this way is a dim-witted scare tactic that only plays off of our reflexive reaction to a disturbing image.

In a similar way, how would you pro-lifers react to giant photos of neglected, starving, abused, malformed children that were forced to be born unwanted as a result of poverty, inscest, rape, assault, pollution, or anything else that would make them come out alive but unwell. Perhaps we could show pictures of the assault and rape as well. We have quite a few children born this way in our country already, pro-life laws will only make the number of those children rise from thousands to millions.

So should the government do what she offered, send all these forced-birth children to live at your house?

(replying to some postings where people were blaming both the women in some random news report where a married man was caught with a prostitute)

I don’t think it’s not the wife’s ‘fault’ at that point either. It’s the husband that is not only being unfaithful, but doing so in a way that is devoid of what you’re saying the wife is supposed to do… be attractive and a good lover. All the guy has to have to hire a prostitute is money. He could be a horrible, nasty, rude, smelly, fat, repulsive, murderous bastard.. and if he had enough money, he could screw the most beautiful prostitute in all the land. So saying that the wife needs to do a better job is a moot point, since the only person that does have to do a good job in this situation is the prostitute.

Also, on this level, it’s the same as the drug problem. You can fight the war on drugs all you want, but it’s never really going to change anything. They will ALWAYS find a way to get the product to the buyer. But if there was no demand, there would be no supply. So it’s stupid to prosecute whores any worse than the men that use them. The average street hooker is there because she can’t do much else besides be attractive and undiscriminant. Her need for money is the driving force, she needs it to survive. Just about EVERY ‘john’ on the other hand, is there because they choose to be. They don’t have to do this to survive. They do it because they’re either too ugly, selfish, careless, or clueless to seduce a woman… probably their own wife most of all. They just want to get off at the emotional expense of others. I mean, it would be different if the husband were going to the hooker for the purpose of self-improvement or therapy. Or if the prostitute were hired by both the husband and the wife for sexual enrichment of the marrige.. But in most cases, it very much is not. If it were, I would then also see even less reason for it to be illegal…which kind of brings up a larger point.

Why is sex for hire even illegal? Why are illegal drugs illegal? In both cases, it doesn’t appear to be doing much good. Both problems are rampant in our and other societies, and the illegality creates harbors for violent criminal behavior. Why? Because they’re the most profitable things to be illegal. Making them illegal really doesn’t solve anything, it just makes them more dangerous. Think if prostitution could become legal to the point of organizations forming for the purpose of training, certifying, sanctioning and unionizing the industry. Pimps would become rapidly extinct, replaced by trained security. Gone would be the abuse and danger in the prostitute’s profession. At this point they could be seen and hired in the same way as doctors and psychologists (or, well..psychiatrists). I think that would be a healthy improvement for both all the people involved and the society that contains them. They would have a recognized purpose, and be regular productive members of society.. In other words: paying taxes, keeping the place of business up to code, and providing a range of other jobs maintaining the day to day operations of the establishment. Also for all the girls that fall into this world because they have no other place to go, this could provide (if they chose to continue with it) actually, a good place to go. Instead of wandering the street and dealing daily with the possibility of being killed, raped, robbed, or any number of other things; they could be getting student loans or scholorships to study to become certified in the field of sex. I mean, if it’s the best thing they know how to do or enjoy the most, they should be able to get the proper training to be as successful as they can be in order to pay back the (government or institutional) subsidies that gave them the leg up. Good for the people, good for the economy. More money in circulation and less homeless on the streets. No need for the mixture by location of sex and crime.

Being secretive and criminal about providing sex (or drugs) for hire only encourages other forms of crime, because of the mind-set that surrounds most things of a criminal nature. Gangs wouldn’t grow as large or have as many reasons to shoot eachother if you could buy drugs at the drug store. Pimps and street hookers would be out of a job if you could hire sex specialists at the sex clinic. Organized crime, really can’t be a very powerful force if it can’t traffic something that is both illegal and highly in demand. If drugs and sex for hire became legally providable by everyone else, the price would go down, the danger level would disappear, and the government could actually DO something about the problems that do exist with addictive behaviours. Just think if all the money that currently goes into manpower and weaponry for fighting the ‘wars’ on drugs and prostitution could instead be spent on programs to provide aid to the people that are destructively addicted to one or the other (or something else entirely). That would take care of the problem at the source, not by trying to fight the supplier..which is pointless. And why would this be easier? Because there would be no need for secrecy by either of these businesses. Their records by law would be as open as any other business, and their clientel could be easily referred to or found by these programs. With disclosure comes the ability to track down problems..and track them, to the very place they begin.

Where would the organized crime lords go in all this? The only illegal things they could make a profit with then would be assassinations, selling stolen objects and selling stolen people..and all that, is a lot harder to do. With their bread and butter gone, they’d have to either change their operation to meet government standards, or change their damn industry. They just couldn’t make a profit otherwise.

So with the danger of the supply problem out of the way, what about the demanding masses of ‘johns’? Well which would you rather hire the services of:

1. A trained, certified, accountable Sex Specialist

or

2. An uneducated and possibly diseased hooker operating without a business license/permit, who could cost you trouble with the law and/or your health

I think most people would choose number one. Why take needless risks when the service provided will in all likelyhood, be better than the illegal alternative? Also with an open market, the rights to referral (to other specialists or self-help programs), refusal (rules of the establishment that have the backing of the law) can be things posted and available to the owners/employees and the clients of the sex for hire businesses.

Maybe then, the word prostitute will incur a new meaning, or be replaced by a new one.. devoid of the old one’s stigma.

But going back to the main question of this section (with the law as it is, not as it should be), the only difference in treatment I feel the police should enforce between prostitutes and ‘johns’ is that the prostitutes could have to serve more jail time, and the johns could be heavily fined. If the prostitutes don’t have anywhere or anything better to do with their lives, they should be given a place to stay and opportunities in that environment to aquire the training to do something else for a living. If the ‘johns’ have enough extra cash to be spending on illegal, non-consented extra-marital sex.. then they evidently have money to spare.

Anyway, I’d better stop before I make a tome of this.. at least here anyway. I guess I just needed to read someone’s brainless opinion to spur me into writing my immediate thoughts on this and related matters. Hopefully I’ve expressed my points clearly, and with the totality that this subject deserves.