Courts have ruled that the First Amendment protects speech, literature, film, clothing choices and now, video games. Yes, video games--and whether you’re an avid PC gamer, occasional Angry Birds tosser or someone who last picked up a controller in the 1970s to play Pong, this is an important victory for everyone who cares about freedom of expression. Just this morning, the US Supreme court struck down California’s ban on the sale of "violent" video games to children, in a 7-2 decision. Essentially, the court held that games qualify as a form of expression protected by the First Amendment, and that there was insufficient evidence that they cause harm to minors. You can read all of the details of the decision (and read the majority and minority opinions) here. It can be difficult to understand that finding if you are unfamiliar with video games, especially given the kind of media frenzy--around violent or sexual content particularly--that has accompanied the release of certain high profile games in the past. If you’re to believe certain cable news anchors, video games are the drug of choice for maladjusted, antisocial teenaged boys with raging hormones. However, like film, novels, theater or music, video games encompass a wide variety of genres, formats and intended purposes. The IGDA (International Game Developers Association) and the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences (AIAS) filed a wonderfullyreadable, nearly "legalese-free" Amicus brief for the California case, highlighting the myriad ways in which games qualify as a valid, culturally relevant form of expression, worthy of First Amendment protection. From the brief: "At one end of the spectrum are games that are primarily 'serious,'--written to teach or to persuade, although they are naturally intended to be enjoyed as well. Like nonfiction literature, newspaper editorials, and documentary films, however, these games inform or argue directly. At the other end of the spectrum are games written primarily to entertain--but often also having important expressive components. Indeed, as this Court wrote in Winters v. New York, 'the line between the informing and the entertaining is too elusive' to serve as a distinguishing factor in First Amendment analysis." Many specific games, including several from former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s "iCivics.org" educational games portal, are highlighted as specific examples. The IGDA certainly did their homework. Even if you don’t care much for video games one way or another, this represents an important victory for civil liberties in an age of ever-evolving technology. What we have here is essentially a new form of speech enabled by technology--and like many new formats, it expands upon some of our older definitions and challenges us to seek out new ways to protect our freedoms in a changing environment. So, whether you’re a developer with something to say, a true blue gamer, or somebody who doesn’t know Mario from Luigi, everyone benefits from the major power-up free speech received today.
The author is solely responsible for the content.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Your right to play and the First Amendment
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
TSA Makes the Friendly Skies Friendlier
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Untitled
The NCSF is committed to creating a political, legal and social environment in the U.S. that advances equal rights for consenting adults who engage in alternative sexual and relationship expressions. The NCSF aims to advance the rights of, and advocate for consenting adults in the BDSM-Leather-Fetish, Swing, and Polyamory Communities. We pursue our vision through direct services, education, advocacy, and outreach, in conjunction with our partners, to directly benefit these communities. In existence since 1997, NCSF is the only organization in the U.S. with a specific mission and focus to work for the BDSM, poly and swing communities. NCSF's core programs include:
Thursday, June 9, 2011
SEXUAL FREEDOM: Why It Is Feared
By: ROBERT ANTON WILSON
from mattachette REVIEW, Vol. 8, No. 8, August 1962
THOSE WHO BELIEVE IN, and seriously advocate and practice, sexual freedom are, and always have been, a minority. If there is one generalization that truly applies to themajority of men and women in all civilizations, everywhere, it is that they fear sexual freedom more than anything else, more then death itself, even. This is the crucial mystery of human nature and, quite properly, it has been the area of most intense investigation by depth psychologists from Freud and Reich to Marcuse and Brown.
A. S. Neill, the founder of the Summerhill school, was once asked where in the civilized world a man could practice homosexuality without fear of legal persecution. Neill replied that he knew of no such place, adding that he didn't even know of a place where a man could practice heterosexuality without being persecuted for it. Homosexuals, Dr. Albert Ellis wrote, think that they suffer because they live in an anti-homosexual culture, but the truth is, he added, we all suffer because we live in an anti-sexual culture.
Eschewing depth psychology for the moment and taking a deliberately superficial view, why does the "man in the street" fear sexual freedom? That is, what reason would he himself give for the irrational taboos to which he submits and tries to inflict upon others? The answer is a truism. "Sexual freedom," the man in the street will tell you, "leads to anarchy and the collapse of Order."
Instead of automatically denying this (as most advocates of sexual freedom do), let us consider it for a moment. The architect of modern anarchism, Michael Bakunin, wrote in hisGod and the State that without "God," the State is impossible. He instances as proof the Republics of France and the United States, both of which were founded by free-thinkers and atheists, but which both embraced the "God" idea very rapidly when the practical details of governing had to be faced. Wilhelm Reich's Sexual Revolution and Mass Psychology of Fascism document that pro-State attitudes and authoritarianism are usually joined with dogmatic religion and anti-sex fears, whereas anti-State and libertarian attitudes are generally coupled with free thought and pro-sex affirmation. Adorno's classic Authoritarian Personality gives reams of statistical proof of the Reichian thesis. A governor, we can safely say, has less problems in enforcing obedience if his subjects are mystical, religious and frightened of sex.
The reason for this is easy to understand. Sex denial is very close to being absolutely impossible, and - as the subtle Jesuits knew long before Freud - even when the would-be ascetic thinks he has "triumphed" over the flesh, it sneaks up on him from a new direction and takes him by surprise. Thus, the inevitable consequence of sex denial is guilt: that special guilt which comes of continual failure to accomplish that which you consider "good." (This continual failure is the "dark night of the soul" lamented by medieval monks). Now, a guilt-ridden man is an easy man to manipulate and force to your own will, because self-respect is the prerequisite of independence and rebellion, and the guilt-ridden person can have no self-respect. Modern advertising revolves around this central fact as a great safe lock pivots on a single jewel: from "B.O." and "97 pound weakling" to the soap that makes you feel" clean all over,"advertising has inculcated self-doubts and guilts in order to persuade that the sponsor's panacea will cure these very doubts which the sponsor himself through his ad agency has created!
What does "government" mean, after all? Control of Mr. A by Mr. B - or, in other words, the subordination of me man's will to another's. We have been taught that society cannot exist without government and that this subordination of wills is existentially necessary and unchangeable; hence, we accept it. But anthropology presents a different picture. As the anthropologist Kathleen Gough has written, "The State as a social form has existed for about one-two-hundredth part of man's history... it may be one of the shortest-lived forms of human society."* What we call anarchy –i.e., voluntary association-has been man's dominant pattern for 199/200ths of his history. It should be no surprise that, as Rattray Taylor shows in Sex in History,these pre-State societies were not sexually repressed and did not fear sexual freedom to the utmost extent.
Enforced conformity of human beings - the subjugation of society to the will of the State - leads to generalized stress upon the total organism of each. Modern psychosomatic medicine makes abundantly clear that all life (protoplasm) consists of electro-colloidal equilibrium between gel (total dispersion) and sol (total contraction), and every stress produces contraction, as is seen in exaggerated form in the typical withdrawal of the snail and turtle, a human infant visibly cringing with fear, etc. It is this (usually microscopic) contraction of the physical body that we experience psychically as "anxiety." When it becomes chronic, this contraction effects the large muscles and creates that "hunched, bowed" look which actors employ when portraying a timid and beaten man. The tendency toward this "posture of defeat" is visible in all State-dominated societies, as it was conspicuously absent in the bold carriage of the State-less Polynesians and American Indians when first contacted.
But the chronic anxiety which is the subjective aspect of this physical "shrinking biopathy" leads to a defensive attitude and a philosophy of control. Government per se consists of this compulsion to control in its most highly developed form, and war represents the most coercive and ultimate form of control. No government lasts more than a generation without plunging its subjects into war; even the government founded by the pacifist Gandhi has plunged its subjects into war eight times in the generation since his death. Four wars per century is the average ratio for a long-lasting government.
Geldings, any farmer will tell you, are easier to control than stallions. The first governments, which were frankly slave-states, inculcated sexual repression for precisely this reason. Besides creating loads of guilt and self-doubt in the slaves, thus making them easier to intimidate for the reasons previously explained, sexual repression is itself a contraction of the large muscles. You cannot banish a wish from consciousness, as Groddeck demonstrates in The Book of the It, without contracting your abdominal muscles. Sexual repression in particular means what Neill calls "the stiff stomach disease," because the only way the genitals can be stopped from lively activity is by deadening them through abdominal armoring. It is Wilhelm Reich who deserves credit for seeing the ultimate implications of this. Reich pointed out that loosening of the chronic muscle contractions which characterize submissive "civilized" man must be a process of physical pain and psychic anxiety. We are now able to understand the two great mysteries of social behavior: why sexual repression is accepted and why government is accepted, when the first diminishes joy and the second is leading obviously to the destruction of the species. Submissiveness is anchored in the body. The anti-sexual training of infants, children and adolescents creates muscular tensions which cause pain whenever rebellion is attempted. This is why homosexuals and sexually free heterosexuals are so conspicuously "neurotic": besides the condemnation of society, they suffer also the "condemnation" of their own muscles pushing them toward conformity and submission.
Freud's famous pessimism is rooted in understanding of the psychic side of this process which I have described physically. "Man is his own prisoner," was Freud's final, gloomy conclusion. But recent thinkers have been less sure of this. Reich's Sexual Revolution, Brown's Life Against Death and Marcuse's Eros and Civilization all look forward toward a "civilization without repression," and all three tend to recognize that this would have to be a State-less civilization.
Before the murder of Mangus Colorado and the betrayal of Cochise, Apache society represented an approximation of such a free culture. Until marriage, all were sexually free to enjoy themselves as they wished (the same freedom returned when a marriage was dissolved) and if the chief's wishes were not acceptable to anyone he was at liberty to enter another Apache tribe or start one of his own if he had enough followers. (Geronimo did just this when Cochise made his treaty with the U.S. government.) The tribe, thus, was held together by what anarchists call voluntary association and did not contain an authoritarian State apparatus.
In a technologically more advanced society the same principle can be carried out. Proudhon's famous formula for anarchism, "the dissolution of the State into the economic organism," means, basically, the substitution of voluntary contractual organizations for the involuntary coercive authority of the State. In such a system, whatever voluntary associations a man joined would be truly an expression of his will (otherwise, he would not join them). Such a State-less civilization could be as sexually free as the State-less bands, tribes and chiefdoms of pre-history; repression would have no social function, as there would be no need of creating guilt and submissiveness in the population.
Such a picture is not as "utopian" as it may seem – and "utopianism" is not something to despise nowadays, when the very survival of mankind is, as Norman Brown has noted, a "utopian dream." Cybernation has created, as Norbert Weiner predicted it would, and as writers like Kathleen Gough and Henry Marcuse are beginning to note with mixed joy and fear - the possibility of a society of abundance in which there will be very little need for work. Traditional humanity is at the end of its tether, due to the two great achievements of modern science, nuclear energy and cybernation. If we as individuals manage to survive the first, our culture certainly cannot survive the second. When it is no longer necessary for the masses of men to toil "by the sweat of their brows" for bread, one of the chief props for social repression will fall. Large-scale unemployment up to the level of massive starvation has, it is true, occurred in the past, and the ruling class has managed to remain in their saddles; but the large-scale unemployment to which we are now heading will make all previous "depressions" seem minor by comparison, and there will be no hope of relief ever coming - there will be no way to create new jobs. Undoubtedly, the ruling classes will allow the starvation to reach epic proportions; and, undoubtedly, the muscularly repressed masses, conditioned to submission and self-denial, will accept it except for a few rebels, as always; but, eventually, perhaps when cannibalism sets in, the whole edifice of culture based on repression will come tumbling down and, like Humpty Dumpty, nobody will be able to put it together again. Those now alive may live to see this.
The unrepressed man of the future - if there is a future - will look back at our age and wonder how we survived without all landing in the madhouse. That so many of us do land in madhouses will be accepted as the natural consequence of repressed civilization.
* Tbe Decline of the State, by Kathleen Gough. Correspondence Publishing Company. 1962.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Indoor Sex Workers Are Isolated and Fear Violence
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Escort Client Screening
you should screen new clients or not.
The answer is: Absolutely. Every single time.
Screening is crucial for your safety and also for your
client's safety as well.
By showing that you never skip the screening process, you
are letting your clients know you take your business
seriously.
The good news is, screening doesn't have to be a headache.
However, it does take a bit of work and some creativity on
your part.
Here are the five pieces of information you should be
getting, at minimum, from every potential client:
1. Real name
You want a full legal name and preferably with at least
their middle initial. You can check this against their ID at
the beginning of your session.
2. Phone number
At least one phone number, but preferably a cell and then
either home or work phone.
3. Email address
Preferably you want their primary email address.
4. Where they got your information from
How did they find you, e.g., Eros Guide, P411, your
website?
5. Two references
You'll want to know when and where these visits took place.
You might also ask them to give you some unique details
about their appearance, and some innocent but memorable
details about their sessions. For instance, "it was pouring
rain that day". These kinds of details can help when you
are checking the references. More on this later.
Ok, you've got all this information. Great. Now what?
Now it's time to put on your detective hat.
You want to search for clues to verify your potential client
is, in fact, who they are claiming to be.
1. Google.com (http://www.google.com)
First step, head on over to Google. Take their real name,
email address, and phone number, go to Google and run
searches on this information.
Look for older forum posts, business websites, comments in
blogs, etc.
2. White Pages (http://www.whitepages.com)
Next, check out the online White Pages. Type in their real
first and last name and see what comes up.
Also do a "Reverse Phone" search there, with their phone
number.
3. Amazon People Search
(http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/search)
Another site where people frequently have their information
stored is Amazon.com. Go over to Amazon People Search and
try a search on their name and email address.
You can learn a LOT about a new potential client by what
they have on their Amazon wishlist!
4. LinkedIn search (http://www.linkedin.com/)
A lot of business professionals use Linkedin to connect with
colleagues.
Finding a potential client on Linkedin with contact
information that matches what they submitted to you can be a
good sign that your client is who they say they are.
5. Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/search/)
Practically everyone is one Facebook these days! Try a
Facebook search for their email address first. Then try
their full name.
6. eBay Find a Member Search
(http://shop.ebay.com/ebayadvsearch/_W0QQ_sofindtypeZ25)
eBay is another great place to find information about your
potential client. Head over to eBay Find a Member Search and
search for their email address (you may need to be a member
of eBay to do this).
If you find your client on eBay, you can see how long they
have been a member for and where they are located.
Click on their User ID to check out the kinds of things they
like to bid on. Anything creepy?
7. Follow up with references
Last but certainly not least, it's important that you get
in touch with the references your potential new client
provided.
You can either call or write these references.
Try to jog their memory with the extra details you
requested.
It's one thing to write "Hey Sally, do you remember John
Smith from Atlanta?"
And quite another to write, "Sally, do you remember John
Smith from Atlanta that you met in April of last year at the
Sundial restaurant? He said it was pouring rain when you
left. I looked up information on him and he has a bunch of
computer books on his Amazon wish-list so I am thinking he
is an engineer of some sort. Thanks Sally."
Once you hear back from both of the references you should
have uncovered enough information about your potential
client to make an informed decision on whether or not it is
safe to see them.
An indication that you MAY be dealing with a potential
scammer:
* There is absolutely nothing about their name or email
address online, anywhere.
* Everything you find was just created recently in the last
few weeks.
PLEASE NOTE: Just because you cannot find anything about
your new client online, doesn't mean he is a scammer or LE.
But it can be a red flag to screen more carefully. In this
case you will really want to double check his references.
Also, just because you DO find information online about your
new client does not mean your client is NOT a scammer or LE.
Really, the bottom line when it comes to screening is, do
your homework and always trust your instincts.
If you get a weird feeling about a new potential client,
even if all his information checks out, it's better to be
safe and just skip this one.
OK, but where is my FREE SURPRISE, Erin?!
Haha, I'm getting to it! Thanks for asking. :)
As you can see, proper screening can be a lot of work.
Well, I've been creating a free tool to help make screening
a little bit easier.
Here is the link to my free "Escort Screening Tool":
http://www.myhoneysuckle.com/escort-screening-tool/
The way it works is, you simply enter the contact
information for the clients that you want to screen and
click "Search".
This tool will automatically search:
* White Pages
* Amazon People Search
And it will show you the results right on that page.
So basically it automatically does steps 1 through 4 in the
screening process for you.
Unfortunately, due to some technical issues with the way
Facebook and Ebay searches work, I could not include those
in the tool, at least not right now. So you will still have
to do screening steps 5-7 on your own.
But this tool can still definitely save you some time in
your screening process.
Check it out, and like I said, this is brand new, so please
let me know what you think!
Especially let me know if anything breaks or if you have any
ideas on how this tool could be improved. Here is the link
again:
http://www.myhoneysuckle.com/escort-screening-tool/
Your safety is deeply important to me.
Be safe and take care,
Erin
PS - Please feel free to share the link to this tool with
your friends. And if you have any ideas on how it could be
improved, please let me know. I am always trying to think of
new ways to help keep you girls safe!
http://www.myhoneysuckle.com/escort-screening-tool/
