Lindsey Beyerstein on BDSM & disabled teen tortured for porn

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Lindsey Beyerstein on BDSM & disabled teen tortured for porn

Postby sam » Tue Sep 14, 2010 10:12 am

Here's the link to the Jezebel article referenced
http://jezebel.com/5636632/the-troublin ... z0zVikK6AS

http://bigthink.com/ideas/24020

Irin Carmon of Jezebel put a disturbing spin on the very disturbing case of a cognitively disabled teenage runaway who was allegedly tortured, mutilated, tricked into fictive bonded servitude, pimped, waterboarded, partially suffocated, and shocked into cardiac arrest by the middle aged man who took her in at 16. Read the indictment here.
What's the line between a consensual BSDM relationship — one party as master, another as slave — and a "brutally tortured sex slave"? Probably when the FBI says that the woman is mentally disabled and tried to escape.

According to federal prosecutors, in 2002, a sixteen-year-old "mentally deficient" woman who had grown up in foster homes was invited to live in a trailer with Ed Bagley of southern Missouri, who allegedly promised her she would be a model and a dancer. Over the years, he gave her drugs and sexually abused her, and when she turned 18, prosecutors say, he "started to sexually torture her and persuaded her to sign a 'sex slave contract,'" tattooing her with three marks of her slave status. [Emphasis added.]


What is this "line" Irin speaks of? Why would you even ask that question in this context? As far as I know, the alleged perpetrator's lawyer hasn't said anything about what kind of defense he will pursue. Since the girl was discovered in a house full of torture devices, and since her captor allegedly tortured her online for paying customers, it's going to be hard to argue that the torture part was made up. Logically, "she consented" would appear to be his only out. But why are Irin and some commenters on Jezebel preemptively floating the "consent" theory before anyone has made the case?

BDSM (short for bondage, domination, sadism, and masochism) is a very general term for various kinds of power-tinged sex play. It's a game, a hobby, a community of consenting adults. Sex advice columnist Dan Savage likes to call it "cops and robbers with your pants off."

It's a bizarre notion that there's any kind of blurry line between a consensual BDSM relationship and this. Either the government's allegations are true, in which case this is a clear-cut case of kidnapping, torture, and near-manslaughter. Or the government's allegations are untrue and we're back to square one.

If it's safe to take any part of the government's case for granted, we can assume they got her age right. According to the indictment, she moved in with now-43-year-old Ed Bagley, Sr. when she was 16 and he started sexually abusing her right away. Any sex at this point would have been statutory rape. Allegedly he didn't start in on the really hardcore torture until she turned 18 and he convinced her to sign a bogus "slave contract" that purportedly bound her to him forever. Thereupon he allegedly sewed her vagina and urethra shut to "show her what was expected."

No reasonable person would believe that an 18-year-old could consent to the most hardcore and potentially lethal forms of BDSM play in the most intense kind of 24/7 relationship while she was in the midst of a sexually exploitative relationship with a middle aged man harboring her as a teenage runaway. Bagley allegedly confiscated her ID. The indictment says he threatened to kill her if she left. Any sex between a prisoner and her captor would arguably be rape.

Maybe they played some consensual sex games in addition to the torture. The indictment alleges that the perp routinely disregarded pre-established safewords and kept on torturing her. Being a kinky teen doesn't make you unrapeable.

The victim may have independently aspired to be a fetish model or a porn star. Bagley allegedly lured her in by promising to make her famous. She may have outwardly consented to appear on the cover of Larry Flynt's "Taboo" magazine--which she did, after Bagley took her to California. If she was his prisoner at the time, she couldn't meaningfully consent to participate in a shoot he arranged.

Even if the victim was interested in being a porn star, that doesn't give the alleged perp carte blanche to torture her. Being in porn doesn't make you unrapeable, either.

There could only be a blurry line between consent and non-consent if we assumed that the girl was of age throughout her sexual relationship with Bagley and mentally competent to consent generally and not tricked by a bogus contract and fully appraised of the risks of the potentially lethal stuff he was doing to her (heart-stopping electric shock, home surgery, suffocation to unconsciousness, and waterboarding), and not physically or financially coerced... I've only covered some of the relevant "ands" here. In fact there are so many provisos that would have to be met before this case even approached ambiguity that it seems absurd to raise the possibility that we're dealing with a "blurred line scenario" without a lot of additional evidence.

Everyone is innocent until proven guilty. The allegations in the indictment are so extreme that they have an aura of surreality, like the litany of bizarre charges rattled off in various spurious satanic ritual abuse panics of the eighties. But this time the charges are provable, if true. The girl ended up in the emergency room in cardiac arrest after after being electrocuted. Bagley allegedly performed abortions on her at home with medical implements. A search of his house found speculums and other medical tools--plus enough torture devices to stock several dungeons and a substantial arsenal. He allegedly charged customers to watch him torture the girl on the internet. If these allegations are true, they should generate a damning trail of medical, financial, and digital evidence.

It's insulting to devotes of consensual BDSM to even suggest that it's hard to tell the difference between their hobby and the alleged kidnapping, rape, torture, pimping and near-killing of a disabled teenage runaway.
sam
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Re: Lindsey Beyerstein on BDSM & disabled teen tortured for porn

Postby sam » Tue Sep 14, 2010 10:29 am

Jezebel is disgusting. I was almost ready to excuse Lindsey Beyerstein for the completely fucked up moral she took from the story:

It's insulting to devotes of consensual BDSM


because she outlined the problems with the BDSM framing before falling back into that frame for a "poor, poor violent sexers are the real losers" moment.

Then I read some comments at Jezebel and the main thrust of them is "poor, poor violent sexers are the real losers here...and don't blame the pornographers who colluded and profited from this girl's torture, either!"

That's the same attitude expressed by Portland weekly The Willamette Week, whose biggest problem with a 37-year-old pimp murdering the bipolar 18-year-old girl was the pall it casts on pornographers. Poor, poor violent pornographers are the real losers when news of organized torture of teenaged girls for porn profits come to light.


The real problem with murdered 18-year-old pornstitutes is the way they harsh the sexy buzz of the pornography industry and the pornographers who make it.

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2683&p=17751&hilit=+emily+egan#p17751

"Winner & Losers" column

Loser
Portland’s DIY porn industry suffered a blow to its otherwise sterling reputation when Paul Eugene Frizzelle II was arrested in the murder of 18-year-old Emily Egan, his live-in girlfriend and model. Frizelle had maintained several online porn sites out of his downtown apartment. Let’s hear it for the creative class!


Once again and seemingly forever, sexpozzers are shocked, SHOCKED to discover porn is made of rape.
"Your orgasm can no longer dictate my oppression"

Trisha Baptie
sam
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Re: Lindsey Beyerstein on BDSM & disabled teen tortured for porn

Postby delphyne » Tue Sep 14, 2010 1:16 pm

I couldn't get past the first comment at Jezebel. Women being nearly tortured to death by a sadistic piece of scum equals:

the unfortunate result of 'burning bright, burning quick, burning out'.


Those people are morally vacant. Like you say Sam, all Beyerstein and Jezebel can think of saying is "won't someone think of the poor BDSM" when a young woman has nearly died because of the harm a sadistic and murderous male has inflicted on her, harm that men like him can get away with every fucking day of the year because instead of fighting male sadism, rape, torture and murderousness towards women, the sex poz gang have turned it into a fun sex game that every woman should take part in (sex negative if you don't). Actually it's not moral vacancy, it's moral imbecility.

Do these female writers go home every night to get tortured by their boyfriends/husbands? Is that really fun?
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Re: Lindsey Beyerstein on BDSM & disabled teen tortured for porn

Postby berryblade » Tue Sep 14, 2010 8:18 pm

First the events of the 16 year old girl in Sweden, a couple of days ago near my city a group of young boys torturted, raped and filmed a disabled girl (also 16 I think) and now this? What is this, I don't even.

How anyone can possibly delude themselves into thinking pornography and BDSM don't involve real harm being inflicted on womyn is just fucking shocking. This kind of thing happening is so common it terrifies me to think of these girls getting left alone and tramatised by these psychos.
I'll feel no fear or hate as I commit menocide
Kill your masters.
'Menocide' - Otep Shamaya
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