The Big Business of Anti-Sex Trafficking

by Jacqueline S. Homan,
author of Without Apology

Combatting the scourge of human trafficking has become the sexy, trendy newest cause for privileged opportunists in need of their newest feel-good activism fix as they seek to profit by wrapping themselves in the cloak of social justice. Of course, those whom are the very core of this cause—the sex trafficking victims (or exited women) themselves—are without real, adequate and appropriate help in terms of income support, medical care, education, job training and job placement to regain control of their destiny to rebuild their lives and live with dignity while trying to do so.

Restoring trafficked women to “normalized” status in society is an important goal, but there is an enormous resistance to that on the part of society, including many “allies” that will not stop their privilege-clinging and power-overing to actually facilitate restoration. Sadly, even most such “allies” look down on adult prostituted women who started out as trafficked under-aged girls.

The very women and girls whom this movement is supposed to be about are exploited for their stories and then discarded and thrown under the bus by most “allies”, including many well-heeled academics who’ve been enriched with chair endowments and many other social prizes and rewards after prostituted/exited women’s stories of tremendous suffering have helped pave the career paths of those who enjoy all the status, prestige and prosperity in the name of “speaking for” downtrodden, marginalized women.

After decades of throwing the poorest, most marginalized women away with misogynistic laws and policies of “benign neglect” tantamount to social Darwinism, everybody suddenly wants to cash in on the big business of helping trafficked women and girls. How odd, considering that it was this very same male supremacist society that threw away poor marginalized women and girls into the prostitute caste in the first place—first by ripping away what meager, inadequate threadbare safety net that did exist for destitute women in the name of “personal responsibility”, and second by continuing to discriminate against women for good-paying blue-collar “men’s jobs” that don’t require an expensive college education, and third by reaffirming male entitlement to women’s bodies as disposable reproductive goods and sex goods.

The Obama administration has unveiled a plan inviting public participation for helping to fight human trafficking, and part of the plan is to open funding for battered women’s shelters whose funding was recently cut by the 2010 Congress. More troubling is that most of these domestic violence shelters refuse to take prostituted women who want to exit but who are also destitute and have nowhere to go. Funding for emergency shelters that turn away trafficked women and under-aged girls is funding that won’t be given to shelters run by anti-trafficking groups that help the trafficked.

Cash-strapped survivor-run and/or secular NGO’s that are geared towards providing real material help to survivors get little to none of the funding from the US Department of Health & Human Services through its Refugee Resettlement Office. Non-profit groups that get the lion’s share of the annual grants from the Office of Refugee Resettlement are nearly all anti-abortion Christian organizations that are huge, deeply entrenched corporations with Catholic Charities and Polaris Project getting the most funds.

This is problematic because faith-based charities refuse to provide abortion care to trafficked women and leave them no choice except to be further physically and psychologically violated by their rapists-johns by forcing them to endure a full term of incapacitating pregnancy and a traumatic, grueling childbirth—thus, continuing the rape and torture. Forcing women to get/remain pregnant against their will when they don’t want to go through it has been the time-honored way that men have oppressed and continue to oppress women, using our vulnerability to pregnancy to keep us from having an equal opportunity to have the same good jobs that are automatically handed to men, denying us full citizenship and equal civil and human rights—which is what fuels the sex trade in the first place because it limits women’s opportunities and rights.

If it’s wrong for women and girls to be sexually exploited, how is it NOT also wrong for them to be reproductively exploited by their “rescuers” for the benefit of Christian adoption agencies and rich, white childless couples who are buying the “right” to further exploit those victims with forced factory-farm reproduction to provide them with babies—free grata?

How does this make them any different than the johns who bought the “right” to first use these girls’ bodies for forced sex to provide him with his precious orgasm?

There is something radically wrong with the system when the non-profit mega corporations (aka “faith-based” charities) that enjoy the backing of well-heeled patriarchal, misogynistic religious powerhouses get all the federal grant money from the US Department of Health & Human Services while cash-strapped secular and survivor-run non-profits started by impoverished exited women who are the real human trafficking experts can’t get funding to help destitute survivors and women who want to exit prostitution but can’t due to nearly insurmountable barriers.

A trafficked teen girl who has no choice becomes that 22 year old drug-addicted woman found in a dumpster with her throat cut from ear to ear because of being thrown away by a bootstrap-happy society that pushed her into the arms of traffickers in the name of “personal responsibility” while refusing to give her real equal opportunities and provide a social floor through which no one can fall.

The Exploitation Continues After Exiting

Now not all men are bad, and neither are all Christians. But the fact remains that the majority are comfortable with the status quo because it privileges them at women’s expense, or else there would NOT be a right-wing War on Women where it is women (especially POOR women) who punished with gratuitous cruelty for men’s sense of entitlement, greed, and debauchery. And there would not be a pandemic of sex trafficking fueled by male demand secured by female poverty and disenfranchisement due to discrimination backed by 6,000 years of institutionalized patriarchy.

People with privilege really don’t want to upset the status quo—it may mean having to relinquish some of their own privileges that come at the expense of the disprivileged. Even within the abolition movement, there is a LOT of privilege-clinging and power-overing.

Exploiting women as sex goods and as reproductive chattel are inseparable. It’s the same end game: objectification, reproductive enslavement, sexual terrorism and cruelty towards women to support male supremacy and male privilege to benefit men at women’s expense, suffering and misery.

Forced pregnancy/childbirth was the main linchpin that upheld the plantation slavery system in the antebellum South. African slave women were forced to breed. All for men’s sexual AND economic benefit at women’s expense and suffering. And even though not all men are porn-consuming, prostitute-abusing pigs, the fact remains that ALL men benefit from this sadistic, exploitative hierarchical system of unearned privileges in which women are kept economically, sexually, and socially oppressed in the ‘one-down’ position. And poor white women (“poor white trash”) have also been convenient throw-aways into the sex class so that men could have a free license to be sexually sadistic predators.

It’s no secret that most who are thrown away into the sex caste are those who either lack class privilege or race privilege or both. Poor men get offered helping hand up and job opportunities that are denied to women; poor women get told to take our clothes off—that being “only a whore” is the ONLY place in society for us, the only “option” if we don’t want to starve or be homeless. Or end up disabled or dead for lack of health care from jobless poverty due to discrimination. This is also how you get so many rescued trafficked women who, out of utter despair, reluctantly return to the traffickers and johns.

Traffickers tell their victims that there is no other place for them, that society won’t accept them and treat them nicely. Unfortunately, the lack of support, help, social acceptance, and a leg up for poor, marginalized exited women faced with no alternative except to return to prostitution gives this credence: Everybody (including many “allies” and “rescuers”) in society proves the traffickers right.

Almost all of the faith-based organizations that get the lion’s share of federal grant money only help a select few kids that make good photo opportunities for their charity’s fundraising PR. What kind of message does this send to trafficked teens and adult women who desperately want to exit prostitution that they were trafficked into before reaching that magical age of 18?

Meanwhile, poor adult women who either have already exited (or who want to exit but feel trapped because they’re physically and/or financially unable to exit) never get anything because there’s this idea that grown women cannot suffer and therefore don’t matter. Adult women are just discarded and written off as having made their “choice.” Almost all anti-trafficking groups focus only on children and ignore the women.

The Cost to Society of Ignoring Poor Prostituted Adult Women

Conservative estimates based on limited data collection place the percentage of sex trafficking victims with HIV at about 25%, but actual numbers may be much higher. According to the Office of the Secretariat of the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS, 63% of HIV-positive sufferers aged 15-24 are women.

A 2007 study published in JAMA showed that 38% of a study group of 287 sex trafficked Nepalese women and girls tested positive for HIV. The study also showed that the younger the trafficked girl, the higher the likelihood of being exposed to HIV since johns specifically request younger girls (under age 15) at brothels and johns often refuse to wear condoms and the prostituted women and girls realistically cannot compel them to.

Many other regions have much higher rates than that, such as Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside where 75% of prostituted women and girls are HIV-positive. Women and children who are trafficked for commercial sex experience a tenfold risk of contracting HIV compared to any other subgroup of the population. The average age of entry into the sex trade for females is 12-14 years of age. The US is one of the top three source and destination hubs for sex trafficking.

According to the US State Department, 80% of human trafficking victims are women and girls, and according to the Harvard School of Public Health study authored by Dr. Jay Silverman, the HIV infection rate exceeded 60% among girls forced into prostitution prior to age 15 from the 2007 sample of 287 Nepalese women and girls. The public health consequence, and ultimately, the devastation to society caused by male demand for commercial sex is astronomical.

“Addressing the widely accepted male demand for commercial sex is critical to ending this modern day form of female slavery,” Silverman said.

As sex trafficking survivor Lisa Bouvet, said: “Saying someone chose to become a prostitute is like saying someone chose to jump off the roof but no one mentioned that the building was on fire.”

Those who manage to exit the sex trade also face a substantial risk of being re-trafficked if they are from a country that lacks adequate social and economic support systems because of the contempt, scorn, derision, neglect and social rejection suffered by the prostituted. Many exited women and girls, out of sheer desperation, re-enter the sex trade when they’re left with nowhere else to go and no real social and economic support because of the criminalization and stigma that comes with being a prostituted woman. And when that happens, chances of being able to re-escape and survive are almost zero.

Many exited women are unable to afford proper medical care and due to total social exclusion and marginalization, they have almost zero employment opportunities and no hope of economically fending for themselves. Almost no one will hire exited women due to the social stigma alone, and finding some middle class Prince Charming to rescue her from utter destitution by marrying her and supporting her so she has a home, food, and medical care is definitely off the table.

As an aside, a study of johns showed that upwards of 60% are married men with families—they bought prostituted women so they could get away with doing to a woman what they would never be able to do to their own wives. If you torture and kill one of the “madonnas”, you will likely get prison; if you torture and kill one of the “whores”, you will likely get a free pass and a pat on the back.

Convicted Child Molesters Get More Social Acceptance and Better Economic Support For Re-entering Society Than Sex Trafficking Survivors

According to Dr. Brian Conway of the University of British Columbia, people who contract HIV—the virus that causes AIDS—can live very, very long and high quality lives without ever developing full blown AIDS as long as their CD4 (white blood cell) count remains well above 200 on medical therapy. But the vast majority of exited women struggle in abject poverty, and in countries like the US and the impoverished regions of Eastern Europe and the Balkans, destitute human trafficking survivors don’t have access to adequate medical treatment or any social income support to be able to live with dignity. Consequently, the sex trafficking survivors who contracted HIV from johns and traffickers are slapped with a cruel, torturous death sentence: slow, painful death from AIDS related complications.

Two major factors that negatively impact CD4 cell count are fatigue and stress. The stress from having to suffer in utter poverty and complete social exclusion due to stigma, compounded by the trauma levels of anyone who survived the amount of violence and torture as prostituted women have, only serves to intensify the agonizing progression of untreated HIV, which is hallmarked by ravaging and unrelenting opportunistic infections such as pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP) which causes fatal treatment-resistant pneumonia for which medical intervention does not come cheap.

Untreated HIV is a certain death sentence, but it is a very slow and torturous one that surpasses the level of torture that would be permissible at Guantanamo. Treatment of HIV requires a series of antiretroviral drug therapies, of which there are several classes—each one inhibiting the mutation and multiplication of the HIV virus at different stages of cell invasion in the HIV virus’s life cycle. Often, several classes must be combined to effectively treat this devastating retrovirus which targets CD4 cells, injects healthy CD4 cells with its genetic code (RNA) which is then used by the reverse transcriptase enzyme to build HIV DNA.

The HIV DNA is injected into the CD4 cell’s DNA by the integrase enzyme, establishing HIV infection in the CD4 cell. When the HIV-infected CD4 cell reproduces, the HIV DNA is activated. This is how a retrovirus like HIV destroys the immune system and causes full blown AIDS—by attacking the body’s white blood cells. And this is why multi-faceted therapy drug schedules are needed to treat and subdue or limit the HIV virus’s activity within the body.

None of the current medical technologies for treating HIV can protect an HIV-positive person’s sexual partner from contracting HIV no matter how well the infected person responds to the antiretroviral therapy. So an HIV-positive john with access to good medical care and who is able to improve his healthy CD4 cell count and limit the devastation of HIV in his body, who then turns around and buys rape-on-demand sex from poor prostituted women (and likely refuses to wear a condom) then infects the trafficking victim who is unable to compel him to wear a condom—never mind dictate any other terms and conditions of the sex-for-money transaction. In fact, it is usually in attempting to refuse a particular sexual act that gets prostituted women murdered—if not by the john who wanted to hurt her as part of the “services” he paid for, then by the traffickers in whose eyes a “troublesome” woman’s life isn’t even worth eight cents.

Unlike the traffickers and the johns on sex tourism “vacations” at home and abroad who paid for the “right” to get “you-do-what-I-say” sex from prostituted women and children, poor trafficked and/or exited women that contracted HIV from these self-entitled sexually sadistic men that refused to wear condoms have little to no hope at all of living a long, high quality life if they cannot get proper care due to being from a country in which women do not enjoy equal rights with men, and a country that either does not have the medical technology of antiretroviral therapy available, or that does not provide good medical care to those unable to pay for it because of that country not having universal health care.

To be sentenced to death from full blown AIDS as a direct result of first being forcibly infected with it by cruel, sexually sadistic men that are carriers of HIV and secondly by lack of access to the same quality of medical care to adequately treat HIV that their class-privileged HIV-positive rapists enjoy, meets the definition of torture and crimes against humanity.

In the US, convicted serial killers sentenced to death row get more sympathy and avenues for legal redress and concern for their rights than an adult sex trafficking victim who struggled to exit “the life” against all odds. Regardless of where one stands on the death penalty issue, the fact is that the way the state is permitted to execute a convicted serial killer is restricted by Constitutional laws against cruel and unusual punishment and torture—which is why no one is executed by being drawn and quartered or burned alive at the stake like they were in medieval Europe.

It is also why the state cannot (in theory, anyway) execute someone with biological terrorism, and neither can an individual resort to that under Stand Your Ground Laws. Bioterrorism is precisely what traffickers and johns are doing by deliberately infecting prostituted women with a fatal, incurable STD. Women and children did not enter prostitution with HIV—traffickers and johns infected them with it.

It is a crime against humanity for any other identifiable group to be targeted for death by sexual torture, destitution and bioterrorism—except women. Do the math: 95% of the prostituted are women and girls, 94% of those living below poverty suffering without basic human needs are women and girls. Women comprise 52% of the population yet women have less than 2% of all good-paying blue-collar skilled trades jobs and science careers due to institutionalized sexism and discrimination. Men comprise 88% of the government leadership and lawmaking bodies, and men comprise 98% of the top 1% of the financial elite. Although 5% of the prostituted are boys and men, nearly 100% of the sex buyers are men. Money, privilege and power are gendered. And so is the institution of prostitution.

There are upwards of about 10 million trafficked women and girls trapped in prostitution in the US and only 200 shelter beds nationwide for women and girls who desperately want to exit but cannot. So the final question remains: will destitute exited women get helped with income support to live with a little bit of human dignity while they struggle to heal and rebuild their lives, or will this new anti-trafficking plan by the Obama administration merely serve as a boon for large charity executives? If this country is serious about the sex trafficking problem, then funds for destitute trafficking victims payable to the destitute exited women whether they exited 20 minutes ago or 20 years ago must come first before anyone else’s enrichment. What is needed is: income for destitute exiting/exited women to live with dignity as they try to get on their feet and rebuild their lives, medical care, dental care, therapy, advanced educations and/or vocational training and REAL job placement—guaranteed job slots for poor marginalized exited women.

Women Who Care About Women Don’t Bat For Team Patriarchy

By Jacqueline S. Homan, Author of Classism For Dimwits and Divine Right: The Truth is a Lie

A “feminist” scolded her sisters for being righteously indignant about the capo-like behavior of patriarchy’s handmaidens and honorary men, saying that being critical of women who deliberately throw their sisters under the wheels of patriarchy’s shit train distracts from the primary focus of feminism. She says that discrediting these capos doesn’t do anything to help women as a class.

Well, I have a LOT to say about that.

Although it’s true that women didn’t initiate patriarchy, and although it’s also true that some women’s bad behavior is not the same as men’s behavior under male supremacy because of the undeniable power differential, failing to publicly discredit honorary men does a far greater disservice to feminism and to women as a class by giving these handmaidens a free pass just because “they’re women, too.”

Women who use their relative, albeit male-bequeathed, privileges to slam the glass ceiling’s trap door shut on all their other sisters, hurting disempowered and marginalized women the most, and who are NOT challenged for it by feminists, isolate and silence women whom they are consciously and deliberately helping the patriarchy to oppress and crush underfoot. It is women like that, especially if they claim to be feminists (which is supposed to be about liberating ALL women from male oppression) who are harming the feminist mission of women’s liberation — far more so than the het women and libfems who are fighting in the trenches for women’s liberation from male-imposed PIV and childbirth chattel slavery.

What would a poor, homeless teen girl think about “feminists” and feminism in general if women like Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Sharron Angle, or Kathleen Passidomo are given a free pass by feminists for using their positions of power and privilege within patriarchy to force her to give birth to her rapist’s progeny because these successful, highly educated and politically well-positioned women acting as honorary men were defended by those who claim to be all about ending women’s oppression?

Would that woman or girl who is forced to go through pregnancy and childbirth against her will, no matter the physical and psychological harm to her, feel included as part of the very same oppressed group that feminists claim to be trying to liberate?

The Rosetta Stone of women’s oppression by men as a class IS forced pregnancy/childbirth, whether a woman is het or lesbian. And just because a woman is het, does that mean that forced childbirth is something she “deserves?”

When a 13-year-old girl asked Sharron Angle, a Nevada Republican Congressional candidate and retired public school teacher, if she would bend her “pro-life” stance to make an exception for rape and asked what she would say to a 13 yr old rape victim who got pregnant, Angle told the girl that the victim should be forced to carry that pregnancy to term and “just learn how to make lemonade out of the lemons life handed her.” What kind of message about feminism and feminists is being sent to women and girls when some feminists silently defend (or excuse) women like Sharron Angle for “being a victim of patriarchy, too?”

What message does it send to the average woman or underage girl who doesn’t want to be forced to give birth against her will when the liberators of women won’t speak out against women using their administrative, judicial or legislative (or even their basic voting power) to pass laws to force childbirth on her, when the liberators don’t even pretend to fight for HER human rights — namely the right to NOT be conscripted into forced organ donation (which is what forced pregnancy/childbirth really is). The right to bodily autonomy and bodily integrity form the first pillar of bioethics, and also form the basis of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and are outlined the United Nations Convention Against Torture. In fact, the legal language in the UN Convention Against Torture defines “torture” to include “rape, sexual assault, and forced pregnancy.”

When former vice presidential candidate and Alaskan governor Sarah Palin passed a law in her state forcing rape victims to pay for their own rape kits at about $1,200 a clip and signed other laws that put access to birth control and safe legal abortion out of reach for underage girls and poor and working class women, what kind of message to the majority of women — who are far more socio-economically class-oppressed than Sarah Palin on top of being sex-oppressed — are feminists sending when they say that Sarah Palin isn’t to blame for using her office to strip the majority of our sisters of basic human rights, including her own daughter’s, just to further her political career in patriarchy?

How is defending women who are enemies of women helpful to feminism’s goal of ending male oppression of women? How many “average Janes” is it acceptable to sacrifice so as to not hurt the feelings of a few honorary men and handmaidens who sacrificed their own daughters on the patriarchal altar of this phallocracy?

Most women and girls don’t have a fraction of the privileges and power (even if it is male-assigned) that Sarah Palin, Sharron Angle, Michele Bachmann, and Kathleen Passidomo (who publicly called 11-year-old gang rape victims “prostitutes”) have. How is throwing the majority of women and girls under the bus consistent with the core tenets and principles of feminism? In order to stay focused on liberating women as a class from the oppression by men as a class, feminists cannot excuse or defend the harm inflicted by these honorary men by saying that “they are not like men.” That defeats the whole purpose of feminism. Putting it bluntly: It’s pissing up a crooked rope.

You cannot help women as a class by throwing the majority of women and girls under the bus for the sake of a few handmaidens who don’t want to be liberated (and who don’t want the rest of us to be liberated either) because they’re more than happy to serve in the ranks of patriarchy’s phalanx of Stepford capos because they’ve sold their souls for some lentil soup in exchange for doing men’s dirty work.

That “feminists can’t criticize other women” crap is precisely what helped cause the 30+ year erosion of the few hard-won rights for ALL women to have access to birth control and safe legal abortion (which are major life-savers for women) to the point where we’re at today where not only are America’s poorest women (who number in the tens of millions) without access to birth control and safe legal abortion, but rape victims are being FORCED to give birth against their will while lawmakers and others in positions or privilege and power have denied America’s poorest women food, cash support, and medical care on top of legalizing rape [e.g., Pennsylvania House Bill No. 2718] by making it practically impossible for a woman to prove she was raped — in a society that says she “asked for it”; a society that threw 300+ women in prison to date for the “crime” of having a stillbirth or miscarriage. A society that supports rapists over victims, and tells junior high and high school girls that they must share their locker room, shower and sauna with someone who has a penis in the name of “transgendered rights.” A society in which women suffering fatal pregnancy complications are left to suffer and die and “bleed out” in 1 out of 6 US hospital emergency rooms as a matter of policy because some hospital administrators’/executives’/doctors’ right to “freedom of religion” trumps pregnant women’s human rights to life, bodily autonomy, and bodily integrity — contravening the federal law that was supposed to prevent these abuses ( the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA), as well as the United Nations Convention against Torture, which the United States ratified in 1994.

The War on Women was not launched by a couple of fringe crackpots in the Republican Party without a huge groundswell of entrenched misogyny and self-centeredness of a whole society of accomplices — including women with a significant degree of political clout, and social and financial capital who, in the name of feminism, defend the enemies of feminism and in doing so, silence the very people whom feminism is supposed to be helping: the overwhelming majority of women who are stuck between the shit and the stink of having to make choiceless choices within the dictates of patriarchy just to be able to survive.

And what are these choiceless choices? Answer: Survival sex (the sex trade). Or attaching themselves to male partners and breadwinners under male terms and conditions in order to survive. Compulsory PIV sex without condoms. Mandatory childbirth (for lack of access to birth control and abortion), which even reduces what few low-paying job opportunities within the pink-collar ghetto that are available to most women which in turn forces economic dependence on abusive, selfish males or the practically non-existent and grossly inadequate welfare benefits (which poor women are begrudged).

Why defend the female enemies of women who are the willing and eager tools of patriarchy when they could have chosen NOT to be, in the name of an abstract ideology that is not being put into real down-to-earth practice to help ALL women? How does that extinguish the inferno of patriarchy when it silences the victims of it, leaving the majority of women behind to fend for themselves while telling them in so many words, “Sorry sister, you’re on your own to liberate yourself” — just because the delicate sensibilities of a few faux feminists, handmaidens and honorary men are more important than ending patriarchy by attacking the oppressor (men) AND the oppressor’s willing agents?

Women who care about women don’t bat for Team Patriarchy, or defend those who do — even though women are not like men.

UPDATE: All is Not Well In Viagraland

by Jacqueline S. Homan, author of Classism For Dimwits, Divine Right: The Truth is a Lie, and Eyes of a Monster

Well, since my previous post concerning the problems of rampant misogyny and sexism in the atheist/skeptics community, which has really become more of a haven for MRA’s/PUA’s and their misogynist male chauvinist fellow travelers, I received only one follow-up email from JREF’s Communications Director, Carrie Poppy the same day as the original post went up.

Thank you for your questions, Jacqueline.

Could you provide your deadline and outlet? Thanks so much.

Best,

Carrie Poppy

Director of Communications, James Randi Educational Foundation

www.randi.org

            (213) 293-3092       ext. 2  |              (703) 226-3785       fax

From: Jacqueline Homan <jacquelinehoman7@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 10:05 PM
Subject: These are my specific questions
To: djgrothe@randi.org
Cc: Carrie@randi.org

To which I immediately responded:

My deadline is three business days. And as to “outlet”, I believe I made it perfectly clear to DJ Grothe that I am unembedded, therefore you may submit your responses to me in the same fashion in which I asked the questions: by email.

As of midnight, June 26 2012, I have not received ANY further response. To the best of my knowledge, neither have the others who have also been inquiring.

This is not an accident or an ‘unfortunate miscommunication.’ There is something to be said when valid questions go ignored about women being threatened, harassed, and retaliated against for complaining that atheist/skeptics conferences more closely resemble Nerd Boys Gone Wild with “enlightened” men exhibiting frat boy mentalities. The Vatican and the Christian Right are not the only patriarchal powerhouses with a vested interest in perpetuating misogyny, male privilege, sexism, and discrimination against women and girls. The “freethought” community needs to own up to that and stop blaming misogyny on religion when religion has merely been one of the vehicles that legitimized it.

The dead giveaway was the conspicuous absence of all these “reasonable” men in the fight against the War on Women. Not a single loud-mouthed atheist/skeptic pontificating know-it-all gasbag male from this colossal fart convention could be found among most states’ Unite Against the War on Women rallies on 4-28 counter-protesting the misogynistic fetal idolators of popery that want everyone to forget about women’s right to life and bodily autonomy.

Sikivu Hutchinson, an African-American feminist and atheist said something to that effect at the Women in Secularism conference at the Center for Inquiry last month: where has the secular community been for poor women in the battle for reproductive rights? 

How is the fight for birth control and abortion NOT a “science interest” being threatened by patriarchal religious powerhouses when it is medical ethics and specific medical technology that is under siege precisely because it is something that saves women’s lives?

The overwhelmingly white upper-middle class ‘good ol’ boys club’ dominating the atheist/skeptic community has been trying to pressure biology professor PZ Myers to “shut Sikivu up” and chastised him for giving her a platform so her voice can be heard, so that the “freethought” community is not one more bastion of male privilege.  Many of these same “usual suspects” in the “freethought” community have also sent Taslima Nasrin vicious, threatening emails, because they’re trying to silence her, too.

If all that money that Rebecca Watson and the rest of the Skepchicks raised that ended up going into JREF’s coffers (rich white dudes’ pockets) for sending women to TAM conferences had instead gone to Planned Parenthood or the National Abortion Network Funds — that would have done far more to empower women and girls than sending women to these atheist/skeptics conferences when all that material can be found online for free anyway. Why should women further enrich these over-privileged alpha dipshits who never gave a fuck about us and who don’t want women to be liberated or even have basic human rights?

If we are going to educate women and girls on breaking the shackles of misogyny and freeing womanity from the cruel yoke of patriarchy, let’s do it right: Let’s examine suppressed history, and the wealth of knowledge unearthed by archaeologists and anthropologists that was buried under tons of patriarchal debris and demand restorative justice for women. Let us eschew ANY “enlightenment movement” , “educational foundation”, or “social justice” movement that relegates women to the margins as the  inconsequential “Other” except to provide (often unwillingly and without just compensation) expected free grata gestational “duty”  — no matter the harm and cost to us. Let us stop rewarding promoters of the rape culture.

Advancement and progress for only half of the human race but not the other is no advancement or progress at all.

All is Not Well in Viagraland: Misogyny, Sexism and Sexual Harassment in the Atheist Community

by Jacqueline S. Homan, author of Classism For Dimwits, Divine Right: The Truth is a Lie, and Eyes of a Monster

I wandered over to the Freethought Blog forum when a “little birdie” told me that I needed to do some feministing in support of my fellow atheist/skeptic “sisters” who were being blamed for TAM registration declines and who were accused by MRA/PUA drama queens of launching a “witch hunt” — to which I posted a scolding response on Jason Thibeault’s blog which he put up as a stand-alone blog piece. TAM is an annual conference that costs several hundred dollars per ticket and is connected with the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). Apparently, atheism and skepticism is dominated by Big Money (read: patriarchy) — like religion.

Of course, it was over the next 48 hours after my scathing post on Jason’s Freethought blog that the Great Penis Debate (posted by Stephanie Zvan on her Almost Diamonds blog) was broadcast live via Google podcast where these guys showed their asses for the whole world to see them as they really are: vile, rape apologist, mansplaining, misogynistic alpha dipshits and they just kept digging their own holes deeper on the FtB posts thereafter.

And I thought the Vatican had problems washing its dirty underwear in public, but these guys (Emery Emery, Wendell Henry, BJ Kramer, Travis Roy, and Mallorie Nasrallah and Sara Mayhew) in the Great Penis Debate really take the cake. I am really glad that Jason Thibeault, who blogs under the name Lousy Canuck on Freethought, constructed the sexual harassment timeline of the events, which seems to keep building as more and more outrageous faux pas are committed — by the very same men (and a couple of their Stepford groupies) claiming the “superior” position of being “rational.”

From what I have seen, the only thing they’re superior at is alienating a sizable chunk of the atheist/skeptics movement at the most inopportune time when the godless community had the greatest chance of a victory against religious tyranny, given the fight women are waging in the trenches in defense against of the stripping of our human rights with the War on Women launched by the Teahadists, the Christian Right, the Vatican and the USCCB. Could these actors in the atheist/skeptics movement be agent provocateurs trying to help the Religious Wrong out by wrecking the freedom from religion movement? (Seriously. Nobody could fuck things up this bad!)

So after yet another woman has been targeted for threats and harassing emails (Ophelia Benson) and decided to bow out of TAM, I decided to put my unembedded/freelance investigative journalism hat on and call DJ Grothe myself to ask him point blank what the hell is going on with him, JREF, TAM and these accusations against the women that had been JREF’s and TAM’s biggest cheerleaders (until the shit hit the fan with this fiasco). I got his answering machine and within 10 minutes he called me from his cell phone and promised to call me back when he returned to his office within 15 minutes. He never called me back. Instead, I got this email on Facebook from Carrie Poppy:

Hi Jacqueline,

My name is Carrie and I am the Communications Director for the JREF. I understand you called our president to request an interview today. I apologize that you didn’t hear back from us sooner. Unfortunately, DJ has been tied up with urgent TAM meetings and preparations, and isn’t able to call you back today. If you have any specific questions, would you email them to us? I will make sure you get a response quickly. My email address isCarrie@randi.org, and DJ’s is djgrothe@randi.org.

Thanks so much, Jacqueline, and sorry again for the delayed response.

Best,
Carrie

So here are those tough “specific” questions I planned on asking DJ on the phone:

1. Women are saying they’ve suffered retaliation for speaking out about sexual harassment and/or for making harassment reports to TAM staff. Is this true?
   
2. Did you accuse feminists of trying to destroy JREF and/or TAM because they spoke out about harassment and retaliation and a “sweep it under the rug” approach to the handling of harassment complaints? (i.e. the accusations of ‘witch hunts’ and demanding criminal evidence as in the case of “Dr. Buzzo” (aka Monopod Man, who was stalking female TAM attendees and taking up-skirt photos and who was/is well-known by TAM staff as a harasser of women because he has been doing this for several years in a row at TAM conferences)
   
3. Why would Emery Emery of the Ardent Atheist show claim that Rebecca Watson is trying to destroy TAM after she had been a solid endorser and supporter of JREF and TAM and is that YOUR position as well?
   
4. What is your position on the copy of a threat/harassing email received by Ophelia Benson, the scheduled TAM 2012 speaker who has now decided to bow out, which she says she sent you on June 19^th 2012 and will you answer her email to you about it?
   
5. Why did you blame your falling numbers of women TAM registrants on the very same women (Skepchicks’ Rebecca Watson in particular) who praised TAM while raising funds for more women attend TAM?
   
6. Did you or anyone else in JREF give Emery Emery the authority to speak for you and for JREF?TAM regarding what he said during the Great Penis Debate podcast?
   
7. Did you make accusatory complaints/comments/statements — including press releases — saying that women who complain about harassment are making women afraid to come to TAM conferences?
   
8. Why did you deny that a specific harassment incident occurred involving a conference attendee (Ashley Miller) after you, according to several witnesses, removed the offending jerk yourself?
   

I will share the answers I get, if any at all, with my readership here, on Facebook and with the rest of Freethought Blog forum’s readership because I think the public deserves to know the truth, not just a polite kiss-off answer but the truth. I can already guess what the response will be — if I get any response at all.

Eyes Closed, No Peeking

By Tracy Lynne Stout Meisky

“Dedicated to the governor of Pennsylvania, who suggested that women upset at being forced to have an unnecessary internal ultrasound should ‘close their eyes’, and to the Georgia legislator who wants to outlaw abortion even for a woman carrying a dead fetus because ‘cows and pigs do it all the time’ , and to the gentleman in Wisconsin who wants to outlaw divorce and says that women who are abused by their husbands should just ‘remember the good times’, and… and…. and….

“Just close your eyes” he said.

Close your eyes and maybe it won’t hurt so much. Maybe you can make the shame go away if you don’t have to look at it, don’t have to meet the eyes of the doctor who is ready to violate you, who is no longer allowed to address your pain and need.

Close your eyes and deal with it because from this point on, health care for you is nothing more than a power play, the political blood sport of men, drenched in your own desperate blood.

Close your eyes, ladies, and think of Jesus who wants you to know that you are a sinner- and a slut for having dreams beyond the ones given to you by your pastor, your employer, and your governor.

See, they are worried that you might get an abortion mistakenly thinking it’s a treatment for the flu or something, eager to brand you a wanton for having sex at all, a Jezebel for enjoying pleasure without consequence…the way that they get to.

Close your eyes and pretend that you are still a person with the right to make your own, most intimate decisions about your future.

Close your eyes and remember when planning your own family wasn’t considered dirty, when owning your body was still your birthright and the right to give birth also included the right not to.

Close your eyes and forget that you are supposed to be a mindless object of desire, to be salivated over and then dismissed, used by men to sell beer and shoes and laundry detergent, expected to exist only for their sexual pleasure, reviled for feeling it yourself, condemned for being what they so determinedly make you: a sexual being.

So come here, little girl, here’s a push-up bra, stilettos and a chastity belt. Learn now that sex is something for a man to do to a woman, not actually with her.

Understand that you must grow up to be either a slut, a dyke or a mother…and a mother, and a mother.

Close your eyes, girls, and enjoy your patent leather Mary Janes and princess dreams that don’t yet end in blood and probes and congressmen playing doctor behind the statehouse, insisting that the princess carry even death in her womb, all in the name of life.

Close your eyes and think of your grandmothers, and of their grandmothers owned by their fathers, traded to their husbands, needing permission to go to college.

Think of the days when the few lady-like jobs that existed were only for those un-natural old maids unable to join the ranks of the real women doing a woman’s real job of having babies.

Think of not even being allowed to learn or to help support yourself and your family, of depending on a man to feed and clothe you and your children, your own love and need to protect them a chain and an anchor that keeps you in the harbor of even a loveless, abusive marriage, your yards and yards of beautiful sail forever stowed belowdecks, because the open seas of life is no place for a woman.

Close your eyes, ladies, and think of England; and of Iran and Afghanistan where women are chained for their own good, beaten for showing their faces, stoned for going to school, sewn shut between babies, robbed of the ability to feel passion, used for a man’s desire but allowed none of their own; receptacles, incubators, cooks and maids.

So close your eyes, and shut your mouths, and be thankful that you live in such an enlightened, modern land.”

Brava Tracy! I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Having a Vagina and Uterus is Not a Lifestyle Choice

By Jacqueline S. Homan, author of Divine Right and Classism For Dimwits

In the past 35 years’ onslaught on women’s basic human right to bodily autonomy (i.e. specifically to reproductive choice) under the “pro-life” banner, the anti-woman/pro-forced birth movement — 77% whom are male, 100% whom will never be pregnant — has never promoted any laws to protect women from unwanted pregnancies in the first place, thus eliminating about 90% of all early term abortions, which comprise 88% of all abortions according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute. As an aside, most early term abortions are due to birth control failure. The risk of death from pregnancy complications increases exponentially for women over age 35, and the time a woman spends vulnerable to pregnancy spans from menarche to menopause — about 40 years of her life.

The hazards, rigors, risks, side effects, pain and trauma of childbearing are rarely talked about in these abortion “debates.” Neither is the vulnerability of destitute and homeless pregnant women and the extra hazards that pregnancy imposes on them in their already precarious situation. The “pro-life” faction has never valued or protected the lives of vulnerable women, and for the most part, the majority of men never cared about women. Viagra is doled out like water at a marathon and is covered by almost all insurance plans, including Medicaid, to ensure that every selfish jerk who refuses to wear a condom can get it up but what about all the poor women that get pregnant as a result? Who takes care of them?

Reproductive abuse against women far out-ranks the number of women who get pregnant to “trap a man.” A study published by Dr. Elizabeth Miller in the September/October 2007 issue of Ambulatory Pediatrics confirms this — 25% of the young women surveyed reported incidents of abusive partners who tried to force them to get pregnant against their will by sabotaging their birth control and manipulating condom use.

The same mentality that thinks it’s perfectly OK to treat women as disposable reproductive chattel who should be forced to get/remain pregnant against our will with no concern for what permanent physical and psychological damage that such a traumatic thing poses for us — never mind care about how the reproductive “livestock” feels about it — is the same mentality that rationalizes that it’s OK “rent” a woman’s vagina for an hour and do whatever they want to that woman’s body since they “paid for it.”

Men as a class have all the money (because men get the lion’s share of all the good-paying jobs), sexual entitlements and political voice, and that gives them power as a class over women’s sexuality and reproduction. That power is tied to violence and force. When sugar-coating fails, violence in the form of misogynistic male-centric laws eliminating access to birth control and abortion clinic violence follows — it’s carrot-and-stick dominance. Men get to say who they fuck, when, and under what terms and conditions irrespective of how the woman feels about it or what it might do to her as a result (frequently couched in terms of “consequences” that only women “deserve”). Freedom and social justice for only half the citizenry is not freedom and social justice at all.

When men watch medical education videos of pregnancy complications and videos of live natural childbirths and they see the tremendous pain and trauma that women suffer trying to give birth, nearly ALL of them say “thank god I have a penis.” But what you will never hear any of them say is: “I don’t want my sister/niece/wife/girlfriend/daughter to be forced to go through that against her will just because she had sex.”

Newsflash: Having a uterus, ovaries, and a vagina is not a “lifestyle choice.”

Misogyny and the oppression of women as a class does not occur in a vacuum. The oppression of women happens because of consent through silence and indifference by those who have the most unearned privileges and who get to dictate all the rules, policies, customs, norms, and traditions in this society. The onus for dismantling oppression created in this system of unearned privileges rests on those who have privilege.

Since birth rates have jumped as a result of limited access to reliable contraception and abortion through “conscience clause” laws and “fetal personhood” laws enacted in many states, our maternal death and disability rates surpass those in some Third World countries — serving as grim reminders that women are the last to be taken care of in this society. People utterly disregard the pregnant woman as if anything she suffers as a result of being forced to give birth doesn’t matter, usually articulated as “you should have kept your legs shut” and “just have the baby and put it up for adoption” when it’s pregnancy and childbirth that are exactly what a woman seeking birth control and/or having an abortion wants to avoid — for very good reasons!

Since the passage of Roe v. Wade up until the recent Planned Parenthood clinic closings, 40 million women safely terminated unwanted pregnancies. During that same period, 21 million women died from pregnancy complications or during/shortly after giving birth. 400 million women have sustained debilitating permanent health problems, side effects, disabling childbirth injuries, and disfigurement which utterly destroyed their lives. A woman dies in childbirth every 90 seconds, according to WHO and Amnesty International. This is what male privilege costs women. Getting stuck in traffic is an inconvenience; being forced by law and public policy to go through pregnancy and childbirth against your will and having to suffer all the inherent risks and side effects is more than just a mere “inconvenience.”

According to obstetric specialist and colorectal surgeon Dr. Michele Thornton,  about 40% of all Western women who have given birth sustain pelvic floor damage, leaving them with permanent fecal and urinary incontinence — undermining their confidence, wrecking their sex lives (which destroys marriages), and eliminating their ability to function in any job. Dr. Thornton also states that the problem is underreported because many women are too ashamed and embarrassed to tell their spouses and partners, let alone tell their doctors. Even when the surgical repair of fistulas caused by obstructed labors, episiotomies and tears is successful, the permanent physical limitations and compromised organ tissue’s integrity remain permanent, costing women everything from being able to participate in society to being able to have a normal sex life to being able to keep their jobs or get hired at new ones. Maureen Treadwell at the Birth Trauma Association confirms this devastation and frequent occurrence of this “silent epidemic.” The trauma from the emotional and physical fallout left many women unable to contemplate another baby.

As to the argument that pregnancy and childbirth — particularly childbirth without pain relief — are “natural” to the female condition and that biology is destiny, there’s nothing logical about equating “natural” to “safe” and fate. The natural course for appendicitis without medical remedy is 30% chance of death from peritonitis. Who in their right mind would deny a person remedy for that natural infliction on the human condition?

And if it’s “only natural” to force women to endure pregnancy and childbirth against our will when we don’t want to or can’t handle it for whatever reason, then why the need for unnatural man-made laws to forcibly deprive women of access to contraception and abortion? If this was all so natural with everyone “in their place”, women would only have sex when pregnancy was the goal.

Many women’s bodies don’t handle pregnancy well.  Not all women  suffer the worst results of pregnancy and childbirth, but there’s no way to accurately predict which women will and which won’t — it’s a real crap shoot even under the best of terms and conditions.  Here is a short partial list of the permanent and often irreversible changes to a woman’s body caused by pregnancy and birth which really makes the shot-gun wedding or the 18 years of monthly child support checks (if she gets it), and inadequate, meager temporary welfare benefits look like a cheap kiss-off:

Normal or expectable side effects of pregnancy:

• exhaustion

• gestational diabetes – can remain permanent as Type II diabetes

• altered appetite

• nausea and vomiting

• heartburn and indigestion

• constipation

• weight gain

• hypothyroidism

• dizziness and light-headedness

• bloating, swelling, fluid retention

• hemorrhoids
• hematoma (usually on the vulva but can be on the inside of the vagina)

• abdominal cramps

• yeast infections

• congested/bloody nose

• acne and skin disorders

• skin discoloration

• mild to severe backache and strain

• increased headaches

• difficulty/discomfort with sleeping

• increased urination/incontinence

• gum disease (leading to premature tooth loss)

• pica

• breast pain and discharge

• swelling of joints, leg cramps, joint pain

• difficulty sitting/standing in later pregnancy

• inability to take regular medications

• shortness of breath

• higher blood pressure

• hair loss (this is a permanent side effect)

• anemia

• inability to participate in some sports and activities

• high susceptibility to infection (pregnant women have a much lower immunity to illness, infection and disease than non-pregnant women or men because the pregnant woman’s immune system has to literally shut down so her system’s antibodies don’t attack the implanted fertilized ovum)

• extreme pain during labor and delivery (which can last for several hours to several days)

• hormonal mood changes, including post-partum depression

• post-partum psychosis/birth related PTSD (caused by a birth that was traumatic for the woman)

• extended post-partum recovery period and exhaustion (a difficult vaginal birth or a C-section can take a year or more to fully recover)

Normal, expectable, and frequent permanent side effects of pregnancy and birth:

• stretch marks

• loose skin

• permanent weight gain or redistribution

• permanent change to pelvic skeletal and ligament structure — it is not uncommon for a woman’s hips to be 4” wider than normal for the passage of the fetus during birth as her pelvic bone opens and ligaments stretch, and often this change is permanent, leaving many women unable to EVER get back into their pre-pregnancy clothes even if they lose ALL their pregnancy weight (leaving poor women who are unable to afford to go out and buy all new clothes with absolutely nothing to wear except a couple pairs of oversized sweatpants and maybe one or two donated used maternity outfits)

• abdominal and vaginal muscle weakness that Kegels won’t necessarily prevent or fix

• pelvic floor disorder (causing urinary and fecal incontinence and severely diminished quality of life, try re-entering the workforce with a problem like that!)

• difficulty resuming employment due to lifting restrictions imposed by permanent pelvic floor damage from pregnancy stress and/or childbirth injuries.

• changes to breasts (saggy and “deflated”)

• varicose veins

• disfigurement/scarring from episiotomy or C-section

• other permanent aesthetic changes to the body (which can be devastating to a woman’s life chances for everything from finding a marriage partner to getting a good job in a culture that emphasizes women’s value on youth, thinness and beauty)

• hemorrhoids

• loss of dental or bone calcium (tooth decay/loss and osteoporosis)

Occasional complications and side effects:

• domestic violence (pregnant women are more at risk for being murdered by boyfriends and husbands than non-pregnant women)

• hyperemesis gravidarum (kidney failure, requiring surgery and kidney stent)

• obstructed labor (caused by fetal malpresentation, large babies, fetal shoulder dystochia resulting in internal pelvic organ tissues to necrotize)

• permanent injury to back (late pregnancy and delivery)

• severe lacerations, tissue scarring requiring surgery (especially after additional pregnancies)

• prolapsed uterus/vagina (risk increases tremendously after additional pregnancies and pelvic floor weaknesses)

• pre-eclampsia (the most common pregnancy complication — edema and hypertension associated with 10% of all pregnancies, mostly among older pregnant women; a precursor to eclampsia, which is fatal)

• eclampsia (convulsions, seizures, coma during pregnancy or labor, fatal unless pregnancy is aborted)

• gestational diabetes which often remains permanent in the form of Adult Type II diabetes – resulting in permanent debilitating health condition requiring medication, often leading to blindness and limb amputations (aggravated by lack of ability to afford healthy food low in starches and sugars)

• placenta previa (causes laboring women to bleed to death during delivery)

• thrombocytopenic purpura (causing women to bleed to death during/immediately after birth)

• severe cramping

• embolism (blood clots, air bubbles, amniotic fluid bubbles escaping into circulatory system causing stroke or massive heart attack; usually fatal)

• medical disability requiring total bed rest

• diastasis recti (abdominal muscle separation/tears)

• mitral valve stenosis (causes heart failure, stroke, and pulmonary edema)

• lack of resistance to highly infectious diseases

• hormonal imbalance (causes weight problems, depression, and breast and reproductive organ cancer)

• ectopic pregnancy (fatal unless medically aborted)

• broken bones (rib cage and lower spine from fetal pressure in late pregnancy and during delivery)

• hemorrhage

• refractory gastroesophegal reflux disease

• aggravation of pre-pregnancy conditions/diseases (epilepsy, diabetes, heart condition, high blood pressure, etc)

• permanently ruined sex life from injury to the nerves and tissues of the sexual organs (caused by 3^rd and 4^th degree vaginal tears, episiotomies, etc. during delivery often accompanied by permanent fecal and/or urinary incontinence)

• elevated risks for certain cancers

Serious complications causing permanent problems associated with pregnancy, labor and delivery:

• peripartum cardiomyopathy (weakened heart)

• cardiopulmonary arrest (fatal: irreversible brain damage and death occurs within 4 minutes)

• magnesium toxicity

• severe hypoxemia/acidosis

• massive embolism

• increased inter-cranial pressure, brainstem infarction (An Alzheimer-like forgetfulness from brain matter shrinkage called “mommy brains”)

• molar pregnancy/ gestational trophoblastic disease (a mass of abnormal/malignant tissue growth from the placenta)

• malignant arrhythmia ( coronary artery spasms)

• circulatory collapse

• obstetric fistula – (tear/hole due to tissue damage from pressure to the area separating the vagina from the rectum or the vagina from the bladder; causing urine and/or feces to pass through the vagina uncontrollably. Fistulas require surgery and are not always able to be repaired even after several subsequent surgeries)

• colostomy – caused by an irreparable obstetric fistula

More permanent side effects:

• future infertility

• autoimmune disease – caused by lingering Y-chromosomes from carrying a male fetus

• ovarian cancer – caused by elevated estrogen levels due to pregnancy

• breast cancer

• permanent disability

• death

If pregnancy was a drug, the FDA would have banned it decades ago. Instead of enacting any measures that enable women and girls to defend themselves from unwanted pregnancies, every “pro-life” measure is backdoor sexual prohibition against women — from the Hyde Amendment to the “fetal personhood” laws and “conscience clause” laws to discriminatory clinic zoning regulations and unaffordable (and invasive) mandatory vaginal ultrasounds — restricting or eliminating access to birth control and abortion, deliberately targets women to punish them with pain, physical and economic encumbrance, trauma, debilitating health problems, risk of disability or death, and disfigurement for the “crime” of having sex.

The “pro-life” bloc refuses to admit this. They trivialize the harm to women and even justify it in terms that preserve unearned male privilege at the expense of women’s human rights by claiming that it’s “all about the baby” and that we should “punish rapists, not the unborn” — as if this somehow makes it perfectly OK to subject women to torture, cruelty, disfigurement, enslavement, permanent bodily damage and possible death against their will without any regard for how the reproductive “livestock” feels about it, or if we survive the ordeal. The only ones “pro-lifers” are interested in punishing are not rapists, but those whose bodies incur 100% of the risks and side effects of pregnancy and birth: women.

Griswold v. Connecticut (passed in 1965) framed the right to access contraception as a “marital privacy” right. Roe v. Wade (passed in 1973) quite specifically made the balance between a woman’s human rights to life and bodily autonomy and the fetus very reasonable and fair. But the predominantly white male rapists’ rights political bowel movement persisted under the “morality” banner and succeeded in chipping away at Roe v. Wade and Griswold v. Connecticut over the last 35 years to the point where a woman’s basic human right to have control over her own body exists in name only.

The pro-forced gestational enslavement movement never cared about “the unborn” except to use a fetus to shame and injure its “slutty” mother; otherwise an artificial stand-alone uterus would have been invented by now to facilitate the transplantation of a blastocyst/zygote from an unwilling female host with minimal risk to her, creating a win-win situation. But fascists rarely compromise.

Abstinence-only until marriage has been a major epic fail.  A marriage license is not contraception and doesn’t prevent any pregnancy that a woman cannot handle/does not want to carry, and abstinence in a marriage is not conducive to nurturing and preserving marriages and families in a nation that already has a 50% divorce rate. Adoption is not the solution to unwanted pregnancy; it’s the solution for those who don’t want to parent the child after it’s born. When a woman does not want to be pregnant, the drive to become un-pregnant is as strong, if not stronger, than the natural forces that want her to stay pregnant. And then she will seek an abortion and do anything to get one, whether it is safe and legal or not. That is fact.

Those cloaking their misogyny in the habiliments of “morality” say that sex is for procreation only, and should only be engaged in when childbearing is the plan. But that flies in the face of reality. Humans, unlike many other mammals, do not have seasons for going into heat. We can reproduce at any time of the year. As a highly social species, we have sex for purely pleasurable reasons and emotional pair-bonding most of the time without wanting to have a pregnancy result with each encounter. There is nothing “sinful” or “slutty” about that. That is reality.

As a bipedal species with large brains, pregnancy and childbirth is exceptionally hazardous for women. When you see a mother, you’re looking at someone who suffered through a physically grueling experience with permanent battle scars that aren’t a pretty Norman Rockwell picture. Pregnancy is not a benign health condition — a cold hard fact that has been sanitized and romanticized with too much quackery. Not too long ago, pregnancy and childbirth killed about one fifth of American women.

A ruined body is the least of the hazards, although aesthetics should not be downplayed in a society where a woman’s life chances for everything from job opportunities to finding a life mate to gaining/keeping social acceptance hinges on being thin and “attractive looking” enough — whether we like to admit it or not. And not all women are able to “snap back” after childbirth, even if they did “all the right things” during pregnancy and after giving birth. Often, pregnancy fat never goes completely away. This is non-trivial considering the devastating emotional effects of poor body image suffered by women and girls as a direct result of the pornification of advertizing in which an unrealistic standard of beauty is upheld as “normal” and males drive this by making cruel and cutting comments about women’s bodies that fail to meet this unreasonable criteria.

In addition to these personal expectations, husbands, family members, friends, and media images add to the pressure, warning that having a baby is no excuse for “letting yourself go.” Yet few women are able to regain their pre- pregnancy figures. Childbearing and the passage of time change bodies in irrevocable ways. According to the Department of Health & Human Services, eating disorders among pregnant women has reached epidemic proportions. Incidences of bulimia have tripled since the 1980s and anorexia incidences have also risen, according to studies collected by the National Eating Disorders Association.

Forced childbirth is tantamount to FGM and sexual torture, considering that 85-90%  of all women who give birth naturally suffer vaginal tears and/or episiotomies which are extremely painful and traumatizing, often resulting in long-term debilitating health conditions. Deprivation of my human rights would never be acceptable if I were a man. Who today would debate the “right” to own slaves?

Forced pregnancy and childbirth is no more moral than any other form of forced organ donation. No “pro-life” laws exist anywhere that force men to suffer trauma, pain, permanent damage to their bodies and risk of death from mandatory kidney donation surgery to save the life of another — even if the person in need of it is their own child who would otherwise die without it. No one has the right to the use of, or to coerce the use of, another’s body — in whole or in part — against their will.

Consent to sex is not consent to pregnancy. Medical ethics and philosophy professor David Boonin framed the argument supporting a woman’s right to choose based on consent. A woman has the right to refuse use of her body to support another potential human’s continued existence if:

1. The cost is not trivial (even “good” pregnancies in healthy women of optimal childbearing age are non-trivial).
2. The woman has not previously consented to the exact conditions of use, or the conditions which she consented to have changed.
3. The woman does not owe the recipient (fetus) compensation for causing its worsened condition.

Boonin quite specifically excludes a woman who conceived following consensual sex from obligation to provide life support for that developing entity. The fetus would not have existed without this act and its accompanying male act, and is therefore better off — not worse off. The female host has not caused any harm to the fetus at all and is therefore not required to compensate it by being an incubator. The fetus on the other hand, is harming its host, and is therefore obligated to her. And the male that has caused the woman harm by impregnating her when she didn’t want to become pregnant is therefore obligated to compensate her.

Any woman who wants to gestate some “pump and dump” ungrateful prick’s genetic material for patriarchy’s benefit in almost a year of involuntary servitude is more than welcome to do so. But no woman owes such sacrifice and martyrdom to anyone — especially not to a society that has always treated women like garbage; a society that grants full personhood to 15 second old zygotes and corporations while denying that very status of personhood to the woman in whose body that zygote is being hosted.

Forcing women to get and remain pregnant against their will is a violation of human rights, period. The architects of the UN and Article 7(g) of the Rome Statute agree. The International Criminal Court (ICC) in addressing the “most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole” has provided an international legal definition of rape. The Rome Statute has acknowledged sexual assault as both a war crime and also as a crime against humanity. The Rome Statute was adopted and opened for signature on July 17^th 1998 and was entered into force on July 1^st 2002. There are 139 signatories and 89 state parties to the statute. The Rome Statute establishes a permanent ICC body with jurisdiction over individuals limited to the crimes within its jurisdiction to prosecute. The Rome Statute defines these serious crimes as the crime of “genocide; crimes against humanity; war crimes; and the crime of aggression.”

Article 7(g) of the Rome Statute states: “crimes against humanity means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population with knowledge of the attack: Rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced pregnancy, forced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity.” Article 7(g) also includes the “persecution against any identifiable group or collectively on gender…or other grounds that are universally recognized as impermissible under international law” as well as “other inhumane acts of similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.”

Now, this War on Women did not occur out of the blue. It began with the concept of idolizing “invade and conquer” ideologies, male-centric cults of hero worship, and the promotion of wealth accumulation through deracination and turning everything (including women) in the natural world into disposable commodities for the sole purpose of converting them into dead capital.

What we have is a predator society based on misogyny, racism, and capitalistic competition and that predation fosters aggression and manifests itself in our “culture of rape.” That we lead the world in producing serial killers speaks truth to power about the casualties of male privilege, patriarchy and capitalism. It is not the perpetrators who are solely responsible for our inequality but also those who are sitting on the sidelines doing nothing about it except covering their own asses by excluding themselves from wrongdoing. Doing nothing in situations of injustice is the same as being an enabler. Silence is consent.

Classism For Dimwits Updated Edition is Out!

Classism For Dimwits - the new revised updated edition

The updated edition of Classism For Dimwits is now available as of December 29th, 2010.

This new edition has updated information from 2008 on forward through the present year and month, along with a more thorough source citations and about 100 new pages of additional new material that I was able to crunch down to fit into 368 pages by altering the margin width and going from a size 12 Times New Roman font to a size 11.

The new material reflects much more information on the utilities shut-off crisis in states where utilities have already been deregulated, and also cites current representation of the Great Depression II that was not in my earlier edition that was written and published in 2007.

Although Amazon takes awhile to upload books’ images and updated annotations from the printers and publishers, it is also available through Amazon. And it is also available through Barnes & Noble online as well.

For anyone who has been following me on Alternet and here who would like to get a copy of this updated edition of Classism For Dimwits, you can buy a signed copy directly from me using PayPal, or by mailing a check or money order.

To buy by check/money order, send to:

Jacqueline S. Homan
816 E. 26th Street
Erie, PA 16504

Skype: 330-238-6951

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An Untold History of Organized Labor’s Inconvenient Truths

Jacqueline S. Homan - Feminine Defiance

On the progressive site UnionBook.org, a seemingly sincere union organizer from Canada, Blaine Donais, asked me some thought-provoking questions that have deep and complex answers — painful, but truthful ones. In response to my article on classism, he asked me:

” I am curious to know, since it is your view that unions have been co-opted, what you think of unionized employees? I ask this because I have a theory of my own on this matter. I believe that unionism in North America has in essence created a new class of employees whom many see as privileged – that is the unionized employee. This is the only employee left with defined benefits pension plans, pay for overtime work, and rights in the workplace. Other employees (especially in the US it seems) regard unionized employees as privileged and thus the subject of derision.

It always surprises me to see read or hear from non-unionized employees, that unions are just thugs and bullies and only protect themselves – that they have no care for the work or lives of others – that in essence they are acting like a privileged class lording it over the unionized masses. Yet when I go to union functions, it seems the primary desire of many is to improve the lot of unionized employees either through minimum standards legislation or by organizing them. UFCW for example took a run at the Ontario Government over the exclusion of farm workers from the right to unionize. At least in my view, they improved the lot of farm workers immeasurably by doing so.

It is hard to deny that there is a considerable difference between the lives of most unionized employees and those who are not unionized. Does this make unionized employees a privileged class?”

And here is my well-detailed answer to Blaine’s very valid questions.

What I think and what I have to say to answer your question is a lot of inconvenient truths that those who are comfortably off and securely employed as well-paid union workers don’t want to hear.

A lot of union workers who are middle class white males never gave a damn about those of us who are hungry, who are/have been homeless, who lost all our natural teeth before age 35 due to lack of access to medical and dental care, who never got a chance to have anything at all in this country — a nation whose bedrock was rooted in racial and gender inferiority, economic oppression (colonialism), and the exploitation of poor women who are at the bottom of every pile.

They refuse to acknowledge how their unearned privileges (male privilege, white privilege, and class privilege) work against someone like me — a very poor woman from the Underclass. For the most part, union workers are overwhelmingly white middle class men who got into their good jobs by virtue of race privilege, gender privilege, and having an “in” — i.e., knowing the “right” person willing to help them get a union card.

Meanwhile, these same middle class white men railed against Affirmative Action — the only measure that ensured that a meager 2% of all the good-paying union jobs went to women while 10% went to non-whites. Those who automatically got 90% of all the good jobs and opportunities in this country cried victim if those of us on the receiving end of discrimination and exclusion got very, very little.

I find it ironic that those who’ve benefited unfairly at the expense of poor women and minorities from an entire matrix of unearned privileges and nepotism — the “White Guys’ Affirmative Action program” — which ensured that the favored, dominant group got the lions’ share of all the good jobs and vocational choices, complained about poor women and minorities getting a miserly inadequate slice of the pie.

Given that women comprise over half of the population, it is beyond grossly unfair for us to be begrudged and denied proportional opportunities for the good jobs — especially since we don’t get to pay less for the things we need to be able to live than men. And it’s not like those white men with the good-paying jobs were lining up to marry and economically support poor women (and our kids) to lift us out of poverty and utter misery and hopelessness.

Instead, they frequently exploited us as sex trophies and told us that we should be “grateful” if they bought us a cheap meal, or put a five dollar bill in our G-strings.

Based on my experiences and observations, I’ve found that an overwhelming number of union workers getting middle class wages are white males with a sense of entitlement — they’re the only ones deserving of anything while it’s perfectly okay for poor women to starve, be homeless, be without utilities, be without medical and dental care, exploited and abused, cheated out of paltry child support, and then deprived of even the miserly safety net that AFDC once was before that got eliminated by the Welfare Reform Act of 1996.

There isn’t much difference between middle class white collar professionals and the overwhelmingly white male blue collar middle class union workers. Both have taken food and other economic needs away from the poor. , 84% whom are women, because both are self-important middle class greeds who only care about themselves and they both identify with the bourgeois. So long as they’re comfortable and their own seat is secure within the socio-economic hierarchy of our capitalist system, they could care less and they grow increasingly intellectually lazy. They don’t want to know about injustices faced by other people. All is fine in their own little world.

The unemployed union workers getting far more in unemployment benefits than poor women who work two minimum wage jobs with no health benefits got their middle class unemployment benefits extension paid for with cuts and slated future elimination of food stamps for destitute women, children, the disabled, and the low-income elderly. They get to live a nice life, but they cry poverty with two loaves of bread under their arms while we get to suffer and starve — and unlike them, we don’t have a lifetime worth of middle class doo-dads bought on middle class union wages to sell on eBay to get money to live until someone maybe feels like giving us chances for jobs so we don’t have to go hungry.

Unions, especially the skilled trades and manufacturing unions, are just as responsible as the rich for creating a destitute Underclass by oppressing poor women because they discriminated against us for union memberships and for getting a chance in life for living wage jobs with dignity that didn’t entail having to dance naked or trade sexual favors just to get money to eat and a place to live.

They’re the ones who helped create all those poor welfare mothers whom they despise — poor women who have been denied equal opportunities for decent paying blue-collar jobs, after being abandoned while pregnant without medical care and then left with children to raise while rarely getting enough money in child support.

They complain about their “hard-earned money” being taxed to support “welfare queens” and “able-bodied SSI cheats.”

They voted for racist, sexist and misogynistic Congressmen and US presidents like Reagan, Bush Sr., and the Shrub who won elections by cutting social programs for the poor and dismantling any measures that tried to provide equal opportunities for poor women and minorities. Union workers’ votes raised lawmakers and presidents to office who promised them an array of middle class goodies and tax cuts at the expense of the “undeserving” poor. Of course, those same pro-capitalist leaders then turned around and began the assault on organized labor after greasing the skids for organized labor’s middle class white male majority to throw those of us at the very bottom — poor women and children on welfare and poor disabled people on SSI — to the sharks in exchange for their “lentil soup.”

"Classism For Dimwits" by Jacqueline S. Homan

They sacrificed us because they identified with the bourgeoisie and sided with them out of personal greed and hatred for the poor who have been economically excluded by discrimination and a real lack of enough living wage jobs to go around for everybody who needed a job. So these union workers who had their nice life didn’t give a shit about those of us with absolutely nothing, and no chances to ever get anything either.

Their votes for presidents and lawmakers, who made their pile by hurting the poor, brought us 30 years of abusive social and economic policies that are called “Benign Neglect” in polite circles. But make no mistake about it, those policies were not “benign.”

Union workers with economic security who comprised part of the economic middle class were no different than the rest of the middle class — everything was all about “ME ME ME.” Middle class voters whose votes resulted in this nation’s poorest and most downtrodden being thrown under the bus with the elimination of CETA and other social programs that were the poor’s only economic lifeline, overwhelmingly supported and cheered the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. This was not the result of a momentary absence of mind.

Good-paying white male dominated union jobs, in addition to all the other good jobs this nation enjoyed during the Clinton administration, largely did not go to poor women being booted off of welfare who faced the “gender penalty” in addition to significant barriers to decent jobs due to classism — the most deeply entrenched but least challenged bigotry in the US.

The overwhelming majority of workers with middle class wages and benefits never wanted poor women to be able to climb out of grueling poverty and join their ranks because they viewed us as competition for “their” jobs. If they hadn’t felt this way, the Equal Rights Amendment would have been passed (among other things).

Union organizers, leaders, and membership bodies begrudged us welfare, voted for Congressmen and presidents who cut our throats, while denying us a chance for the good life as union workers. All the rules about joining the unions were set up to favor white middle class males who hadn’t been excluded by a legacy of discrimination for training and employment opportunities. Unreasonable prior work experience requirements, heavy lifting requirements for job descriptions where such activities are not a BFOQ, and countless other requirements that had little to do with whether or not someone was qualified for a chance for a job and union membership were contrived to deliberately exclude poor women from opportunities.

Unions, their leaders, members, et al, were part of the middle class problem. The good life erased their memory. The middle class — unionized or not — who were Reagan’s electoral foot soldiers begrudged miserly inadequate AFDC benefits for the poor, but demanded that the poor be thrown off the dole and get jobs. The middle class were/are overwhelmingly a bunch of greedy, insecure backstabbers who were only concerned with ensuring their own position was comfortable within the capitalist system — a system in which somebody always has to be at the bottom, in which there has to be “losers” in order for there to be “winners.” Typically, the “winners” were men.

The lawmakers and president who passed the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 knew it. So did unions and their members who were part of the “new” middle class.

In a capitalist society where the economic law of supply and demand does not operate in a vacuum, where markets are artificially manipulated by the rich and powerful, there exists a lot of unearned privileges for some members of society at the expense of others. Unions and their individual members don’t seek to challenge the unfairness in that reality.

Welfare Reform was a one-sided policy that put a unilateral obligation on the most socio-economically underprivileged to get jobs — any job. But there was no conciliatory gesture by unions to voluntarily welcome and include these poor single moms — or any other poor women for that matter — into the fold and let us join the ranks of middle class union workers. And there was no requirement under the Welfare Reform Act obligating the unions to do so. There was also no requirement for employers to hire poor disadvantaged women who had been on welfare for many years for lack of any appropriate or real equal opportunity for good-paying blue-collar jobs, which rapidly disappeared throughout the 1980′s and 1990′s.

Middle class gatekeepers in union organizational structures and in employers’ human resources departments alike viewed the poor as “the Other” due in no small measure to decades of indoctrination with deficit theory ideology such as the “culture of poverty” school, which blamed the poor for their misfortune for being “morally defective”, rather than acknowledge that poverty and inequality of opportunity as the culprit.

Welfare Reform did not include a guaranteed right to a living wage job (or any job at all), but it placed a lifetime benefit limit of five years and drastically slashed benefit amounts. And the unions were silent. Neither their leaders, organizers, nor worker members uttered a peep about that. They had theirs, tough luck for those of us who never got a chance to get ours. For that, they have blood on their hands. All of them.

On the eve of the passing of the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, there were 14 million AFDC recipients comprising 5 million families — almost all who were poor single mothers and children with no other means of economic support and opportunity, and no resources built into their lives. Less than 1% of AFDC recipients were able-bodied men. Eliminating paltry sub-poverty AFDC benefits was defended by comfortably off union workers along with the rest of middle class America as a way of getting “baby makers” and “leeches” off the public dole (which was never enough to live on).

Welfare was never an adequate solution to the problems inflicted on the poor by a patriarchal capitalist society. But eliminating welfare without providing other realistic opportunities and alternatives was a worse solution. Some in the poor people’s rights camp have even likened Welfare Reform to the “Final Solution” for the poor because in the US, being poor is often a death sentence just based on the lack of access to medical and dental care alone.

This society has serious issues with classism, and classism has two daughters: sexism and racism. Classism is capitalism’s greatest social and economic harm.

Capitalism is based on unearned privileges and entitlement, and as you go up the economic ladder, the attitudes of self-importance and entitlement increase. This naturally follows the rate of capital accumulation, which increases at a greater rate as one moves up the income scale. And the micro mirrors the macro. But we never talk about the culture of capitalism; the culture of greed and getting ahead at all costs that is pervasive among the middle class — including well-paid blue-collar union workers and union organizational leadership, which has a white male face — who think they have a “divine right” to always come first.

We have a culture of capitalism that promotes and maintains classism. We have a capitalist society that touts greed and self-centered entitlement as a virtue. We have an architecture of aggression in which capitalism’s biggest losers (poor women) are discarded, labeled as “the Other”, devalued, disrespected, and unacknowledged. We’re not even seen as being human enough for harm to us to matter. The culture of capitalism is centered on the notion that wealth and unearned privilege (race, gender, and class privilege) is sacrosanct, that only the “fittest” deserve anything and to hell with those of us who have been socially and economically excluded. Unions, their bodies and individual members, are content to operate under the status quo within the culture of capitalism.

Capitalism is an Architecture of Aggression

This all arose out of the “second purges” in the 1930′s and 1940′s where unions expelled anyone remotely suspect of Communist politics and socialist leanings from their ranks. Unions made a deal with the devil, and they became indifferent and even hostile to the equally valid needs and claims of others among the ranks of the poor and working classes. Unions sought to protect their own at the expense of many less fortunates, which created divisions among the working class and poor, and left very deep wounds that cannot be readily dismissed with admonitions along the lines of “just get over it and move on.”

Harvard and Princeton Sociologists Resurrect the“Culture of Poverty” During the Worst Recession Since the 1930’s

Jacqueline S. Homan, author of Classism For Dimwits and Divine Right: The Truth is a Lie

In the October 17^th, 2010 New York Times article, Culture of Poverty Makes a Comeback by Patricia Cohen, labeling the poor as “the Other”, as “less than” and as morally and socially defective by Princeton and Harvard sociologists and various other poverty pimps has made a resurgence and is now once again in vogue. The article cited former Assistant Labor Secretary Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s description of urban poverty in terms of race and a culture that was a “tangle of pathology” of unmarried mothers and welfare dependency couched as moral deficiencies to blame the poor for their own misfortune.

Moynihan’s analysis appeals to politicians who bandy the poor around like a political football, especially conservatives and moderates (Reagan Democrats), and led to the passage of the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, which placed a lifetime limit of five years, regardless of one’s ability to get a living wage job. This was more generous than the draconian measure that Clinton initially proposed: limiting welfare to two years.

Neither proposed welfare reform bills, including the one that was passed in 1996,  came with the guarantee of a right to a living wage job; or any job at all.

Clinton, like his predecessors Reagan and Bush the Elder, and both parties of Congress declared war on this nation’s poorest, most economically vulnerable and socially disadvantaged citizens: poor women and children and the disabled. These measures were largely the result of the influence wielded by purveyors of the “culture of poverty” school and all its tangential deficit theory views about the poor.

The article quoted coddled Ivy League members of America’s selfish class, as if their bovine excreta passing for “research” were some sort of infallible gospel.

Princeton sociologist Douglas S. Massey argues that Moynihan was unjustly maligned, saying, “We’ve finally reached the stage where people aren’t afraid of being politically incorrect.”

Cohen’s article mentioned that at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, attendees broached the subject of the “culture of poverty.” In Spring of 2009 in Washington DC, social scientists participated in a Congressional briefing on the “culture of poverty” linked to a special issue of The Annals, the journal of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. The introduction proclaimed, “Culture is back on the poverty research agenda.”

How convenient for the resurgence of this deficit theory view of the poor to come on the heels of the worst economic depression since the 1930′s where we now have one in seven Americans living below the federal poverty level. How convenient, indeed, that the entire discourse shifts the burden of poverty from government and the most privileged members of society onto the backs of the poor.

Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) said that the “culture of poverty” views “play an important role in shaping how lawmakers choose to address poverty issues.”

This blame-the-victim claptrap is propagated by those with the most interest in preserving a system of unearned privilege. Blaming the poor for their misfortune is nothing new, but such views that shape social and economic policies never include the views, experiences, and voices of the poor at whom said policies are aimed.

Also quoted in the article was Harvard sociologist Robert J. Sampson who conducted a well-funded and large study of the poor conducted in a way to assign personal value judgments against the poor and confirm his own class bias using the “culture of poverty” school of thought. His experiment entailed dropping fake letters on the streets of a poor Chicago neighborhood to see if anyone would pick them up and return them. Sampson said he studies inequality and that the dominant focus is on structures of poverty, and suggested that the poor are amoral with no respect for the rule of law because they “believe that laws were made to be broken with impunity.”

It is beyond arrogant for those who have received the most advantages and benefits from an entire system of unearned privileges to authoritatively proclaim that it’s the undeserving, defective poor who need to be “fixed” and taught how to get with the middle class program, and then call such ideas “scholarship.”

There is nothing that remotely passes for intellectual and academic honesty in a study that was undertaken with confirmation bias reeking with the stench of classism.

Poverty pimps who advance the “culture of poverty” school despite knowing better, do so to curry favor and receive social prizes and rewards from the corporate ‘Massas’ who endow their academic department chairs, fund their research, and pay them to serve as “policy experts” in right-wing think tanks.

Capitalism is based on entitlement, and as you go up the economic ladder, attitudes of self-importance and entitlement increase. But we never talk about the culture of greed and getting ahead at all costs that is so prevalent among the middle and upper classes who think they have a “divine right” to come first.

The notion that the misery and deprivation commensurate with grueling poverty is merely the “undeserving poor” getting their “just desserts” for being morally defective is not an original idea. It is rooted in Protestant Calvinism — the Calvinist deficit theory view of the poorest and most downtrodden people is predicated on the ideologies of predestination.

The argument for the “culture of poverty” has been internalized these past 30 years by lawmakers from both sides of the aisle who say that social security is a “milk cow with 310 million tits”; that unemployment benefits (which only cover about 40% of the unemployed) makes the jobless “lazy” and encourages them to buy drugs; that the miserly inadequate food stamps allotment in post-welfare reform America makes the recipients rich and causes obesity; and that the solution for 50 million uninsured Americans, 44 million struggling in unrelenting misery below the poverty level, and for the 35 million ill-housed, are more vouchers, more “free market” capitalism, and more budget cuts for food stamps, Medicaid, and Medicare to pay for middle class unemployment benefits extensions — leaving the poorest of this nation’s jobless to starve to death given that food stamps is the sole income for six million of the most disadvantaged and unemployable jobless.

As it stands, deregulation of utility monopolies in tandem with deep cuts to the already underfunded LIHEAP program, which provides very stingy and inadequate help to only 20% of the eligible poor while 80% of the poor are turned away, has resulted in nearly ten million US households suffering without at least one life-sustaining utility. The increasing number of casualties among the poor from freezing in unheated homes and apartments or fatal residential fires caused by unsafe alternative heating methods in a desperate attempt to avoid freezing to death, evidences only some fruits of the “culture of poverty” school’s bitter harvest of classism.

The past three decades of abusive social and economic policies justified by the “culture of poverty” amount to one sordid continuum of human rights violations against the “undeserving” poor. For those who have unfairly benefited from a legacy of unearned privileges, including advanced educations at prestigious universities, to use their privileges like a cudgel to beat the poor into the ground and crush them underfoot for personal gain and accolades under the guise of “scholarship” is sociopathic.

We don’t have a “culture of poverty.” We have a culture of capitalism that promotes, perpetuates, and maintains classism — the least challenged bigotry that is responsible for the most social harm. We have a capitalistic society that touts greed and self-centered entitlement as a virtue. We have an architecture of aggression in which capitalism’s biggest losers (poor women) are set up and labeled as “the Other”; devalued and unacknowledged.

"Classism For Dimwits" by Jacqueline S. Homan

This culture of capitalism is centered on the idea that wealth and privilege is sacrosanct, that only the “fittest” deserve anything and to hell with those of us who have been socially excluded and economically marginalized in order to make way for the spoiled, overprivileged alpha dipshits of this society to grab everything they can latch their greedy grasping meat-hooks onto; without a shred of remorse for the human casualties they leave in their wake.

Since cultural norms, mores, and trends are largely defined by the higher status and more affluent classes, this “culture of poverty” was created by the privileged. The injustices and social ills framed by deficit theory thought are not caused by “just a few bad apples.” They’re caused by a cultural ethos; a sociopathic one that is reflective of the dominant class’s “values.”

It has not escaped the notice of those of us who struggle in poverty and who agitate for social justice that the government is described as “democratic” when it serves only the interests of the privileged and economically powerful elements of our society. In the words of Michael Parenti: we have a “democracy for the few.” And whom this “democracy” serves was made painfully obvious by the absence of poor people’s voices.

When poverty is couched in euphemisms that really mean race and gender, it’s a deliberate attempt to justify classism and legitimize the economic terrorism and social repression visited upon the poor of all races and genders. Being black, being a woman, or even being a single mother doesn’t make one poor — abusive social and economic policy and discrimination does.

Raising rhetorical questions associating crime and poverty in terms that label the poor as “criminals” is a deliberate promotion of prejudice. The poor are routinely denied employment opportunities because there is now a widely held view among human resources personnel and corporate employers that the poor are a bad risk for hiring because they’re likely to steal. Asking why the poor “break the law with impunity” implies that they’re not punished — an outright fraud when everyone knows that the poor overwhelmingly comprise the US prison population. It further ignores the fact that when people see those with lots of money and privilege breaking the law on a grand scale with impunity, there is a loss of respect for any law.

The “culture of poverty” claptrap also led to the assumption that poverty can be reduced to a lifestyle choice — something former House Speaker Newt Gingrich claimed from his bully pulpit during the Clinton administration as he cheered the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. The Welfare Reform Act of 1996 threw this nation’s poorest and most socially disadvantaged families and individuals under the bus; 99% whom were women and children (only 1% of AFDC recipients were able-bodied men) under the guise of “personal responsibility” — a unilateral social contract best described as a policy of Benign Neglect in which the entire burden of poverty was dumped on the poor while society and government did nothing to guarantee poor women living wage jobs with health benefits, child care help, and assistance in obtaining reliable transportation.

Former Wisconsin governor and US Department of Health & Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson provided the template for the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 is one of the “pro-life” religious conservatives who would deny poor women access to birth control and abortion while cruelly leaving poor single moms and their babies utterly destitute if society failed to provide the supports required for poor mothers to enter the workplace and guarantee them living wage jobs with health benefits.

Since the enactment of Welfare Reform, Tommy Thompson (and other political leaders who swallowed the “culture of poverty” pablum spoon-fed by Ivy League “poverty experts”) defeated measures to track the outcomes of all the poor women and children thrown off of welfare after exhausting their five year lifetime limit, regardless if they were able to get a job.

Are the promoters of the “culture of poverty” school proud of these “scholarly” achievements that encouraged nationwide mother-mugging and framing poverty as a “choice?”

There is a fundamental mathematical theorem that has been proven over 200 years ago, named after mathematician and clergyman Thomas Bayes, who studied how to compute a distribution for the probability parameter of a binomial distribution. Bayes’ Theorem treats conditional probability and the outcome based on the relationship of the conditional and marginal probabilities of events. One of the most simple and basic mathematical statements of Bayes’ Theorem is:

P(A|B) = [P(B|A)*P(A)/P(B)]

{Read as: “The probability of A given B is equal to the probability of B given A times the probability of A, all divided by the probability of B.”}

where :

P(A) is the marginal probability of event A. It is “prior” in the sense that it takes nothing into account of anything known about event B.

P(A|B) is the conditional probability of A, given B.

P(B|A) is the conditional probability of B, given A (also called the “likelihood”)

P(B) is the prior or marginal probability of event B and acts as a normalizing constant.

Theorems analogous to this one cover situations entailing more than two events. Applying Bayes’ Theorem to the existing axioms and theorems of calculus, we can describe the marginal probability distribution of a variable to a data set where the likelihood function is the probability of “y” successes in “x” trials for a binomial distribution, in the set of all real variables. (The most common application being in the study of voting patterns and employer drug testing).

More famous applications of Bayes’ Theorem are the Monty Hall Paradox and the Principle of Restricted Choice, which proves with a mathematical certainty that making the “right choices” 100% of the time is impossible. It is therefore intellectually dishonest and morally bankrupt to frame the discussion of poverty in terms that blame the poor for their poverty by reducing it to “lifestyle choices” and the “culture of poverty.”

It is no secret that middle and upper class people also frequently screw up and make the same “poor choices” as poor people. But the difference is that the outcome is totally different; such that it does not punish them with lifelong destitution and misery. It is also known that the middle and upper classes have a lot more options available to them while options for the poor are really a Hobson’s choice (either way, you’re screwed). Any well-funded and large “study” of poverty that makes personal value judgments about the poor based on whether or not anyone in a poor neighborhood picked up fake letters deliberately dropped on the street is shambolic. So here’s a thought for future “poverty studies”:

Being poor is being fetishized, demonized, and infantilized by teams of “poverty experts” from the middle and upper classes.

Being poor is hoping you and your disabled spouse make it through winter alive without freezing to death, or dying in a house fire from a space heater mishap after your gas got cut off because they raised the rates by 20% and you can’t afford the bill.

Being poor means nothing around your run-down home ever works and everything is in serious disrepair because there’s no money, or way of getting money, to fix what’s in disrepair.

Being poor and white means being an invisible non-person.

Being poor means you have no pictures of your “ancestors” — or even of yourself and your sister — after being evicted where anything you might have had got taken away from you when your roach-infested ghetto apartment got padlocked.

Being poor is a lifetime of everything always getting taken away from you.

Being poor is being wrong even when you’re right.

Being poor is never fitting in.

Being poor is guilty until proven innocent and still getting slapped with unaffordable fines or a criminal conviction regardless.

Being poor means never getting a chance your entire life, and then having some self-centered privileged person tell you how poor they are when they enjoy far more economic opportunity, comfort, and security than you will ever get a chance to have — especially if you’re still poor by the time you’re middle-aged (and therefore unemployable) after an entire lifetime of never getting a chance for a good job, no matter how hard you tried.

Being poor means going hungry at least two or three days out of each month for years.

Being poor is living in a neighborhood where you can’t put chairs or a couch near the window because of the drive-by shootings.

Being poor is dying or becoming permanently disabled from pregnancy and childbirth complications.

Being poor is facing having to go blind from glaucoma because there really isn’t “all this help out there.”

Being poor is losing a leg from diabetes complications because you couldn’t get the help you needed to afford diabetic supplies and the low starch/low carb low MSG diabetic-friendly foods so you could manage your diabetes better in the first place.

Being poor means that your only interactions with middle class “professionals” are through bullet-proof glass windows at government agencies and welfare offices after waiting all day to be “served”, and then being told “sorry, we can’t help you.”

Being poor is everyone who isn’t poor wondering why you went back to the abusive asshole (whom you hope won’t kill you) who gave you that black eye when it’s either that or live on the streets with NO way to get a living wage job and get on your feet and support yourself after your 30 day time limit at the battered women’s shelter is up.

Being poor means you have to choose whether you have electric or gas, or food or a roof over your head.

Being poor means you don’t get the early preventive glaucoma treatment options to save your eyesight, while being told that you don’t deserve your eyesight because you’re just a “loser” who “blames everyone else for your problems” — it’s never the fault of employers who refused to hire you at a good job with health benefits, and it’s never society’s fault for being too selfish and punitive to have a safety net for the economically excluded.

Being poor means access to dental care is a luxury that is as far out of reach for you as a day trip to Sedna.

Being poor is getting denied even a minimum wage job in retail or as a supermarket cashier where you must face the public because of your visibly decayed/broken/missing teeth as a result of never having access to decent dental care — while everybody else who has never been anywhere near as poor as you or for as long as you, tells you that it’s all your own damn fault that you don’t have any teeth and lack the “right image” to be “deserving” of a job because you were “too stupid to brush your teeth properly.”

Being poor means dying a lot younger than those who lived in middle class comfort for most, if not all of their lives.

Being poor means suffering with an untreated UTI until it goes into your kidneys because you couldn’t afford antibiotics.

Being poor means you can’t even get a chance for a minimum wage job at Wal-Mart because your credit is poor due to poverty — which is, by definition, not enough income to afford your basic needs, including utilities, let alone afford an expensive emergency room bill because you didn’t have a good job with health insurance when you got that UTI or that abscessed tooth.

Being poor means that even if you go into unaffordable debt for a Bachelors degree from a state college in order to be “worthy” of a chance for a job, you still won’t get one because your visibly decayed/broken/missing teeth, a big gap in your work history of menial jobs, your lack of the proper clothing and a car, and your address is in the “wrong” side of town — all which serves to alert the employers’ middle class gatekeepers that you’re “not a good fit” for the office culture and that you “lack work ethic.”

Being poor means that nobody cares about you, your problems don’t matter.

Being poor means that no matter how hard you try and whatever you try, you never get a break but you sure get a generous helping of middle/upper class social Darwinist lip service, condescension, and personal value judgments that they call “advice.”

Being poor is always being told that it’s your own fault you had to suffer without getting your needs met your entire life because you’re nothing but a “loser.”

Being poor (if you’re white and female) means that decent paying blue-collar “men’s jobs” are never afforded to you so you can support yourself without having to resort to prostitution or stripping.

Being poor (if you’re white and female) means you’re never good enough to be wanted, loved, married and supported by some middle class mother’s grad school bound son because everybody knows that poor white women are all nothing but “whores who get pregnant only for the welfare check” — or “gold-diggers” who have no social status and cultural capital to bring to the table.

Being poor (when you’re white and female) means never being wanted or accepted. It’s getting left on the shelf since poor white males either see you as a burden they can’t afford/don’t want, or if they DO commit, you frequently become a punching bag for them to take out their own frustrations and resentment at their own oppression.

Being poor is being begrudged any pleasure in life; even the most basic human need to have sex because your birth control options are very limited and if you get pregnant, you have no money to travel to get an abortion and pay for the procedure.

Being poor means any hopes, dreams and aspirations you might have once had got crushed out of you and ground underfoot.

Being poor means you don’t get to have any hobbies because all the cool stuff costs a lot of money — which you don’t have.

Being poor means owing a lifelong debt of nothing but misery and deprivation to the comfortably off for the status crime of being born into “their world.”

Being poor means your suffering and misery doesn’t matter, only those who are poor in other countries are worthy of middle/upper class concern.

Being poor is when middle class people with advanced educations read what you write, they act shocked that you’re actually smart and educated too.

Being poor is having scars that will never heal.

I cannot speak from the perspective of a poor white male or a poor person of color. I am a poor white female that was a homeless orphaned teen who endured danger and deprivation on a daily basis on the streets in a Philadelphia ghetto, so my experience is a white female urban one. I am a 43 year old woman who did “all the right things” and who has no criminal record, but I never made it out of poverty because I never got a chance.

I can count the number of times on one hand that I’ve had access to medical and dental care throughout my entire life. I saw one of my neighbors lose her leg to diabetes for lack of help. I saw another neighbor die at age 37 from an abscessed tooth. I face possible blindness from glaucoma that I got diagnosed with three weeks before my 43^rd birthday this past May for which I have yet to get any help outside of universal health care to afford the routine monitoring and possible future treatments in order to preserve my eyesight — a cruel blow for someone in poverty whose life is already difficult enough and whose only outlet is reading books and writing.

I could certainly go on with more on what being poor is, but I think I’ve illustrated enough for you to get my point. I have over 40 years worth of life experience in the trenches of poverty, suffering because of inequality and classism in addition to all the “gender taxes” too. You don’t get to be more of a poverty expert than that.

Jacqueline S. Homan,

Author: Classism For Dimwits

Freedom in the Homeland

Jacqueline S. Homan, Author: "Classism For Dimwits", "Nothing You Can Possess", "Eyes of a Monster", and "Divine Right: The Truth is a Lie"

While checking out Paul Street’s page at Znet, something leapt out from the computer screen and gripped my throat. An article titled “A Comeback For Chattel Slavery?” by Geraldine Winstanley published through the Associated Newswire on April 1, 2010 quoted a top Obama administration aide on condition of strict anonymity in an extensive interview in which the aide stated that Obama is considering an executive order to resurrect slavery on an experimental basis here in the US.

The aide said that the program under consideration would be called “Freedom in the Homeland.” It would begin in two selected Washington, DC ghettos where unemployed men and male high school drop-outs would be purchased by a joint public—private consortium. This program would be operated and overseen by the US Department of the Interior.

The article quotes this anonymous White House official as saying that under the Freedom in the Homeland program, these slaves would provide a wide range of services for senior members of participating firms; including shining shoes, washing cars, picking up children from daycare, laundry, personal care for lobbyists’ aged parents, planting and tending lobbyists’ vegetable gardens, working in lobbyist-owned sweatshops, and auto repair. In return, these poor and mostly inner-city enslaved males would get food, clothing, shelter, and (quoting Winstanely’s article):

“a feeling of being at the real center of power in the world’s greatest empire — priceless. It should move a bunch of them off that destructive, personally irresponsible inner-city culture that the president has been criticizing for years. Knowing that Barack Obama stands behind this program will be useful for garnering cooperation from the young men selected for service to their country. It will help them see bondage as an opportunity for growth.”

This official also added that Obama’s “vision for this is color-blind and post-racial. Although Freedom in the Homeland might initially target poor urban blacks, it would eventually include poor Latinos, Asians, and poor whites. Several top corporate Obama sponsors — Boeing, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Wal-Mart, and Exxon-Mobile — have already expressed an interest in participating as slaveholders in Freedom in the Homeland.

My initial knee-jerk reaction was to dismiss Geraldine Winstanley’s article at Paul Street’s Znet page as a twisted April Fool’s joke. But there’s nothing funny about it. The only ones who realize any “opportunity for growth” in a system of chattel slavery are ruthless exploiters — those profiting from the trafficking in human beings.

Although the overwhelming majority of Americans should be outraged enough to march on the White House lawn, most probably won’t. This society has already accepted the time-honored tradition of degrading the poor and supporting abusive economic and social policy that targets capitalism’s losers with punishment for the status crime of being poor.

"Classism For Dimwits" by Jacqueline S. Homan

Americans applauded the assault on women’s basic human rights and personal liberties with specious “conscience clause” laws and “fetal personhood” laws which put every woman’s uterus and genitalia in the realm of male dominated church and state owned property; expropriated for patriarchal capitalism’s benefit — guaranteeing the reproduction of a reserve army of labor. The conscription of unwilling women into childbirth chattel slavery without any regard for how the “breeder livestock” feels about it (or if the reproductive chattel survives pregnancy and childbirth) was welcomed by society under the “pro-life” banner.

Nobody cares if women suffer trauma from the permanent negative impacts of compulsory maternity — we’re not human enough for harm to us to matter.

Nobody cares that rape victims are denied EC in emergency rooms, and why 87% of all US counties have NO abortion provider while women in most regions of the US (excluding large coastal cities) are forced to travel 50 miles or more to the nearest Planned Parenthood for free/low-cost reliable contraceptives.

Pregnant women in US delivery rooms are routinely deprived of privacy, basic human dignity and civil rights under the aegis of “fetal personhood” laws and degrading (and often sadistic) “routine” medical procedures.

Being denied the right to self-determination and bodily autonomy and bodily integrity IS chattel slavery. Only rich women enjoy the blessings of liberty in a nation billed as the beacon of freedom.

The public accepts slave labor for inmates in our prison-industrial complex under AR 210-35. The assaults on workers’ rights and the gutting of social programs for the working class and the poor beginning with the Reagan Revolution precipitated a burgeoning underclass and skyrocketing drug-related crimes — to which the response was “Three Strikes” laws and mandatory minimum sentencing.

The state and federal prison system has replaced HUD Section-8 as the nation’s largest subsidized housing program. With an increasing number of drug offenders from the dispossessed working class, more money in federal tax dollars goes to the communities where prisons are built. The prime beneficiaries are businesses using prison labor and private prison corporations. There are two corporations that dominate the privatized prison industry in the US: Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group (formerly known as Wackenhut). These two outfits control 75% of the for-profit prison industry.

“The clever young man who recently made it to the White House is a very fine hypnotist, partly because it is indeed exciting to see an African American at the pinnacle of power in the land of slavery. However, this is the 21^st century, and race together with gender and even class can be very seductive tools of propaganda. For what is so often overlooked and what matters…is the class one serves.” ~ John Pilger

Wackenhut’s founder was an ardent John Bircher who made his pile during the McCarthy era by compiling dossiers on those suspected of “un-American activities” (Communists); achieving over 4 million files by 1966 — one for every 46 American adults. The company was founded in 1954 by George Wackenhut, a former FBI official. It was a publicly held corporation from 1966-2002; after which it merged with Group 4 Falck, creating the monster private security firm Group 4 Securicor (now known as G4S). Prior to the merger, the chairman was George Wackenhut, the CEO and vice chairman was George C. Zoley, and the president and COO was Wayne H. Calabrese. The company’s upper echelons included ex-CIA, FBI and other government officials.

Wackenhut is a subsidiary of G4S, a UK based global security firm. It has profited handsomely from the school-to-prison pipeline created by an agenda of deliberate disinvestment, which escalated during the Reagan Revolution. The Reagan administration aimed its malevolence at poor single mothers and cut social programs for the working class — including CETA, the federally subsidized jobs placement program. During the 1980’s, the US got “tough on crime” by implementing “Three Strikes” laws. Wackenhut entered the prison business in 1987 and was reaping annual profits of $630.3 million by 1992. By 1997, Wackenhut controlled one third of the prison market contracts and provided prison slave labor for IBM and Microsoft. Prison industry officials admit that there is a vested interest in ensuring a burgeoning prison population, and how those prisoner slave laborers are treated is of no concern.^[[i]][[ii]]

The permanent loss of jobs and aggressive union-busting left the most vulnerable members of the working class with few alternatives other than the illicit economy. Most of the crimes committed by the poor are illegal drug sales out of economic desperation for lack of any real job opportunities. The semi-skilled $7/hour worker who loses his job due to disinvestment finds himself unemployed and alienated by a society that was indoctrinated with the meritocracy myth. He turns to crime to survive, then gets arrested and imprisoned where he is given a new job by a private corporation doing business with the prison system under the federal guidelines framed within AR 210-35, where he is put to work for 22 cents an hour. He went from worker to unemployed to criminal to convict slave laborer.^[[iii]]

Inmate slave labor is the goose that lays the golden eggs for wealthy corporate interests. There’s no unionizing, no strikes, no unemployment benefits, no workers’ comp insurance, and no employers’ portion of the social security taxes. It’s not a coincidence that the working class is overwhelmingly represented among the prison rolls.

Nothing You Can Posses

Prisoners across the US work at data entry jobs for Chevron; taking telephone reservations for TWA, raising livestock, making electronic components for computer motherboards, making waterbeds, and making sexy lingerie for Victoria Secret.  The beneficiaries are the corporations using slave labor, the investment banking firms, mutual fund managers, and the rich who can afford to have stock portfolios. Saloman Smith Barney, American Express, and GE (to name a few) are major shareholders in the privatized prison-industrial complex — of which Wackenhut has cornered the market. By 2001, Wackenhut’s revenues topped $2.8 billion as the leading provider of security at US national defense sites with a global presence on six continents. It serves as the US division of a global corporation that provides security officers, customs protection officers, property security, training programs and investigative services. It handles law enforcement duties, “operations maintenance”, and airfield management for the Justice Prisoner Transport System (JPATS).

In 1997, Professor Ian Stewart — science fiction writer and world class mathematician — met with Alexander B. Cuppett to discuss what he knew firsthand about the implementation of a fascist totalitarian regime through FEMA and Wackenhut under REX-84 (Executive Order by Ronald Reagan for constructing concentration camps to detain “subversives”). Cuppett is a retired US Army /Joint Chief of Staff and US Department of Defense inspector. Cuppett extensively documented the infrastructures set up under REX-84. He told Dr. Stewart that as of 1999, there were heavily fortified FEMA bases throughout the US. This is corroborated by the fact that FEMA contracted with Haliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) to build “black site” prisons and detention camps at undisclosed locations throughout the US as a final preparation phase of REX-84. According to former diplomat Peter Dale Scott, the KBR contract is part of a US Department of Homeland Security plan called ENDGAME. The stated purpose of ENDGAME is the “removal of all removable aliens and potential terrorists.” No Congressmen spoke out against this no-bid contract with Haliburton.^[[iv]]

To be clear, a “potential terrorist” is anyone who agitates against the corporatocracy. Under the Patriot Act passed and reauthorized by both Democrat and Republican Congressmen, anyone can be charged with the status crime of being a “terrorist” and indefinitely incarcerated — habeas corpus has been replaced with corpus juris^[[v]^] for this status crime.

In 1995, right before KBR got its no-bid gulag building contract, the air fleets of the US Marshals Service and ICE merged, creating JPATS. This merger created a frighteningly efficient “Con Air” airline for the transport of prisoners and detained undocumented workers. JPATS is managed by the US Marshals Service. It handles over 1,000 requests per day to move prisoners between judicial districts, prisons, and foreign countries; performing over 300,000 transports prisoner and alien transports per year. JPATS is the only government-operated and regularly scheduled airline in the nation, routinely serving over 40 domestic and international cities on an as-needed basis. It transports prisoners for a fraction of the cost that privately owned commercial airlines would charge. JPATS flight schedules are kept secret.

The infrastructure is already in place to reintroduce slavery. The public has already accepted the deprivation of rights and the enslavement of certain subgroups of the US citizenry on “moral” grounds.

The notion that a black man, especially the first black president, would contemplate issuing an executive order to reintroduce slavery for unemployed males is not an unlikely prospect. Nor would Barack Obama be the first wealthy black man to participate in slavery on US soil.

When the axe entered the forest, the trees said, ‘Behold! He was once one of us.’  ~ African proverb

In the antebellum South, the majority of black slaves were owned by “slave magnates” — wealthy plantation aristocracy in the top 1% income bracket. Of this top 1%, some were black.

In 1860, at least six wealthy freed blacks in Louisiana owned about 65 slaves apiece. A wide, C. Richards and her son, P.C. Richards, were wealthy blacks who owned a sugar cane plantation with 152 slaves. Another wealthy black slave magnate in Louisiana was Antoine Dubuclet who owned well over 100 slaves. Dubuclet owned a sugar cane plantation and according to 1860 tax and census records, his estate was valued at $264,000 ($7 million in 2010 dollars), while the mean wealth of southern white men was $3,978 ($93,978 in 2010 dollars). In Charleston, South Carolina, 125 freed blacks owned slaves and 69 freed blacks in North Carolina owned slaves. The most famous wealthy black slaveholder was William “April” Ellison. ^[[vi]]

Obama is one of America’s fortunate sons. In the antebellum South, blacks couldn’t vote whether they were free or not. But that same imperialist tool of oppression — legalized slavery — still permitted some blacks to gain freedom and wealth, which they used to get even richer by owning their brethren.

How impossible would it be today in post-racial America for a black US president to use his wealth, power, and privilege to resurrect the despicable practice of chattel slavery as a matter of social policy in dealing with the poor?

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[i] Palast, Greg, “Wackenhut’s Free Market in Human Misery”, London Observer, September 26, 1999

[ii] Silverstein, Ken, “America’s Private Gulag”, Prison Legal News, June 17, 2000

[iii] Evans, Linda and Goldberg, Eve “The Prison-Industrial Complex and the Global Economy”, 1999

[iv] Homan, Jacqueline S. “Nothing You Can Possess”

[v] Corpus juris: the imperial pronouncement of the force of law without due process; based on the ecclesiastical courts set up under the Roman Curia.

[vi] Johnson, Michael P. and Roak, James L. “Black Masters: A Free Family of Color in the Old South”

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