"BDSM" torturer/pornographer faces up to 30 years

[delphyne]

Via Feminist Law Professors:

http://feministlawprofs.law.sc.edu/?p=1833 (extremely graphic descriptions of sexual torture)

Glenn Marcus a BDSM pornographer who owned slavespace.com has been found guilty of sex trafficking and forced labour. What he did in reality was commit horrendous acts of sexual torture on women he had in his power and then uploaded recordings of them to his website for paid subscribers to view.

Ann Bartow contrasts the media coverage of his crimes which still focuses on the victim's supposed "consent", to what the court reports actually happened - which was a man committing unbelievable acts of cruelty and violence against a woman and then making money from it.

As an extra bonus "feminist" pornographer Tristan Taomrino writing in the Village Voice trots out the old sexist standard that the victim enjoyed it at the time but changed her mind later, and then portrays it as a he-said-she-said situation, a typical stance for people who like to disbelieve victims -

What is clear is that the relationship began as consensual but, for Jodi, at some point this changed. It's possible that she regretted her participation and re-wrote her role into an unwilling victim, but it's equally likely that Marcus lost touch with reality, believed he actually owned her, and behaved accordingly.

http://www.villagevoice.com/people/ 0712,taormino,76097,24.html

[alyx]

Ok, haven’t been here in while, but I have to comment on this.

Let’s indulge the civil libertarian fraternity for sec. Even supposing that Jodi consented to having herself sewn shut, defecation acts, etc., with neither a messed-up sexual history nor an ingrained sexism that makes some women feel like they literally can’t exist unless they’re physically and psychically bonded to a man, does it then follow that if a woman consents to one thing, that she’ll consent to anything? And that she’s once she’s given her consent for a sexual act, she forfeits the right to withdraw it at any time she wants? Because that’s what Taormino et al. seem to be saying.

Cripes alive. How is this any different from the misogynist arseholes who claim that if a woman decides she doesn’t want to continue having intercourse once it’s already begun, she’s “crying rape”? But of course, Taormino wouldn’t say that. Apparently it’s only within the context of a BDSM relationship that a woman’s lack of consent means fuck-all. (except it’s not, it’s the entire culture, but BDSM is different from the entire culture because in BDSM culture, women who like sex are sluts and “no” means “yes”…wait.)

I felt so sad reading about what Jodi, Joanna, and the other women had to endure at the hands of that heartless piece of human-shaped shit. I mean, he tried to rape her sister. The women were tortured. They literally could not leave.

That we live in a society that enables monsters like Marcus is depressing. That we also live in a society in which self-described "progressives" and "feminists" not only accept the existence of such monsters but actively provide the grist for the female torture-mill is so damn depressing that it makes me want to get real blotto about now.

[elfeminista]

And in the anals of crime they have *yet* to find a single woman who has done these things to a man, (against his will) which to me is enough evidence to be able to say that the pathology is male, even if women have been colonized into "participating".

I have met Tristan, it is hard to believe she thinks like that.

[delphyne]

She's a pornographer. Have you seen the shit she produces?

http://www.puckerup .com/?cPath=1&products_id=347&tpid=8

"Nothing is off limits: from rimming and facials to strap-ons, anal, and double penetration, they do it all. Get a unique perspective as they film each other with their own "perv cam" and share personal revelations in the private confessional. Watch them test each other's boundaries and push their sexuality to the limits."

Even supposing that Jodi consented to having herself sewn shut, defecation acts, etc.

The other thing that is getting to me is that the above is described as labour. The problem wasn't what he was doing to her, the problem is that he wasn't paying her and forcing her to do it - thus he was prosecuted for forced labour, not physical assault or torture.

When did destructive acts like these on another person's body get reclassified as labour? And I guess the answer to that is when you are filming them and making money from them.

(Good to see you, Alyx!)

[alyx]

(Good to see you, Alyx!)

You too.

She's a pornographer.

Really? I never would’ve guessed!

Seriously though, I think I’ve heard of her before. She wrote some ‘Ultimate Guide to An@l Sex For Lesbians.’ Beloved by Penthouse, Pl@yboy, et al. And I’m not sure why. Because you’d think white male-headed stroke rags would be shocked at all that sexy feminist boundary-pushing, right?

The problem wasn't what he was doing to her, the problem is that he wasn't paying her and forcing her to do it - thus he was prosecuted for forced labour, not physical assault or torture.

You’ve pretty much described the problem I have with proztitution above. And with explaining it to people who accept academia’s newspeak regarding it. You have to keep reinforcing that the distinction between forced and free obscures the fact that proztitution per se is a problem, in that rape becomes just another on-the-job risk. Sure the latter is way preferable to the former, but defining dissociation as a job skill that’s not problematic so long as it’s employed voluntarily? Scary.

Re. consent—Suppose a gay man is beaten to within an inch of his life by a group of straight blokes. The media gets a wind of this. The gay man tells reporters he was voluntarily beaten—in fact, he asked the men to beat him. He was raised in a religious household and thought the bashing would help him become a Real Man.

How many progressives do you think would look at his situation and then go, “Well, he had the shit kicked out of him, but it was voluntary, he seems happy about it, and as long as it was consensual—all peachy!”

Conversely, how many do you think would look at his situation and wonder at the kinds of circumstances that produced a young person who claims to be deserving of his own subjection?

In the former? Almost none. The latter? Pretty much all. With proztitution, and other forms of female oppression more generally, it’s the exact opposite. But everyone will look at this perception and laugh. One day.

[Andrew]

So what if I pick a guy at random off the street and beat him up then claim he consented to it? Now it becomes a "he said/he said" situation? Bull. THere are all kinds of areas where the law takes no cognizance of "consent" and , in short, this ought to be one of them.

[sam]

When did destructive acts like these on another person's body get reclassified as labour?

When sex became accepted by feminists as work. Men have always considered whoring women's "oldest profession", but only in the past 20-25 years have the women supposedly looking out for women dropped the ball so hard it punched a hole in the Earth.

I ran across this article of mine and it reminded me of your question. The same article was posted at NYC Indymedia and though delphyne (and a few others) had some great comments there I don't feel like digging for the link.

Clamor Magazine erases rapes, promotes racism
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2006/08/345293.shtml

(excerpt)

Nair writes about Kim Meston, a Tibetan trafficking survivor and co-director of the Cambridge-based Trafficking Victims Outreach and Services. Instead of blaming the man who tricked Kim's parents into giving him their daughter, Nair offers a vague blaming of religion and poverty. It may look like Meston's story revealed a man making a sex and labor slave out of a brown female, but in Nair's telling the man who did the actual enforcing of the indentured servitude with rape privileges did not cause her abuse. You see, it was really poverty and Christianity that enslaved Kim Meston, not the man who abused her:

Meston's story reveals the vulnerability of the family unit to neo-liberal economic pressures and the hypocrisy of and potential danger posed by US faith-based representatives.

In a particularly gut-wrenching turn, Nair decides to reclassify Kim Meston's being "forced into sex by the minister" (her own words) as not rape but "labor":

Meston's story reveals the kinds of labor, sexual and commercial, that may be extracted from family members under economic stress.

There's a sexist and racist trend going around liberal circles lately that says there's no such thing as sexual abuse anymore for some, usually not-white, women. What would be called rape or sexual harassment for Global North white women is being called uncompensated sex work for Global South black women. What used to be called economic coercion is now called economic incentive in the new liberal whoreticulture.

[elfeminista]

i dont know if this fits in with this thread, but I had a thought about this classifying abuse as 'sex work".

pro porn people can classify it as whatever they want but the main people we have to think about here, in terms of what they think class woman *is* is men.

The idea here is to empower Women. That means that men will have to also begin to look to Women as leaders.
Men think differently than women. men think in hierarchic ways more than women do. thus the male "hero" the charismatic hero is important in male society.

Now picture napoleon, jesus, ghandi, julius caesar,
george washington, castro, mohamed, shakespeare, *any "Great man"* as a sex worker......

[delphyne]

but only in the past 20-25 years have the women supposedly looking out for women dropped the ball so hard it punched a hole in the Earth.

I love the way you write, Sam.

I'd forgotten that article but yeah, it's exactly the same set of attitudes and beliefs - a real disgrace. In turn in reminds me of this exchange I had someone who actually works for an anti-trafficking organisation set up to help trafficked Nepalese girls and who says that:

many Nepali girls see prostitution as a genuinely better life than the one they have

http://community.livejournal.com/femini ... #t70520738

What do you say to someone who thinks like that? How the hell did they get a job in an anti-trafficking organisation?

[sam]

That's where pro-prostitution feminism gets things all racistly wrong.

The argument is that women should be allowed to pursue whatever course garners them the most money and that the money in itself will better women's lives. Set aside the traffickers and pimpfucks who control around 90% of prostitutes for a minute and just focus on the privileged few who get to keep all their earnings from prostitution.

The way it's assumed poverty-stricken women, women of color, and women in war-torn nations should accept men paying to control their bodies sexually as their best option doesn't translate outside of these most oppressed women's experiences to expectations for average American white women. Pole vaulter Allison Stokke could undoubtedly make far more money as a sex worker than as a pole vaulter but suggesting she should follow the money wouldn't go down well with the "sex worker positive" liberal feminists who can envision themselves in Stokke's beleagured position as an unwilling, unpaid Internet porn worker.

They can't imagine themselves as an Estonian teen without enough to eat at home so they can't transfer the sense of their own personal bodily integrity, sexual choice and human dignity to those girls. White, upperclass American Allison Stokke they can relate to, and her humiliation at being made a sex object is something they can taste in their mouths like a bite of berry pie at a Clinton pr luncheon. It's all well and good if poorer, darker women suck dick for cash but to divert Stokke from her athletic aspirations would be a waste of her talent and a rollback of Kournikovian proportions.

Feminism is stuck in a holding pattern so long as white Western feminists think they can barter poor women's prostituted bodies in exchange for some sexual and reproductive freedom of their own. Jessica Valenti once wondered if letting men pay to have strippers dry hump men via lap dance might reduce rape, but she didn't offer to sign up for a rape-prevention shift of her own at Scores. If I thought dancing naked for men in strip clubs would reduce rape I'd be a pole dancing fool bumping my cunt against the crotch of every man I saw.

It's the same white men jerking over Stokke's pictures, patronizing strip clubs, and going on rape tours to SE Asia and Eastern Europe.

The whole shebang reminds me of the racism Jonathan Kozol exposed about how schools track white kids to be lawyers and doctors while black kids are tracked to be car mechanics and hairdressers. The low expectations white folks have for minority peoples mean it's somehow all right to ask minority parents to accept that their kids should settle for jobs as greasemonkeys and hookers "servicing" the cars and cocks of white men.

[elfeminista]

You rock Sam.

[sam]

Thanks elfeminista. delphyne, the writing admiration is very much mutual, as is the schutzpah in spades. You're graceful under pressure.