Baby Boomers: Egocentric Comes With A Price

By Yvonne Roberts. Published by The Guardian on 29 June 2013.

To some, it must have been a very long time coming but here it is at last. That smug, gold-plated, bloated slice of the population whose main preoccupation appears to be, on the one hand, continually bragging about their unique birthright of rock'n'roll, flower power, feminism and the sexual revolution while on the other grabbing jobs, income and bread from the mouths of their young, are running into trouble.

As newspaper headlines told us last week: "Baby boomers face a lonely future." According to Who Will Love Me When I'm 64?, a report published by the relationship charity Relate and the New Philanthropy Capital consultancy, the over-50s, unsurprisingly, rate health, financial security and strong relationships soundly – but many are ill prepared for the significant transitions that ageing brings. These include retirement, loss of income, loss of status and ill health. And these changes, in turn, have an impact on spouses and friends resulting, for some, in an isolated and difficult older age.

For my generation, as we all know, counter-culture Cupid fired his arrows in a variety of directions. Among those born between 1946 and 1964, divorce flourished for the first time; cohabitation became the norm and fidelity was for many no longer seen as an essential part of a relationship. In addition, women could earn a living and pay their own way while the stigma attached to being either a divorcee or a thirtysomething spinster evaporated. The bars on the matrimonial cage were removed, and many a canary fled.

But, according to Ruth Sutherland of Relate, that also means now, in later life, baby boomers face "a looming crisis … totally overlooked by government". They may have fewer intact relationships and a thinner financial cushion on which to look for support when they become vulnerable.

According to the Relate-NPC report, while the number of divorces is falling in every age group, the number of "silver splitters" is rising. In the late 1970s, a third of marriages ended in divorce before the 50th wedding anniversary. By 2005, that had risen to more than 45% while cohabitation has an even higher rate of attrition. One in three children will see their parents separate. "Blended families" including step-relationships add to the complication. Sons and daughters, second wives, husbands and partners – all of mature years – can still behave like children when family ties turn into Chinese knots. Add to that the inevitable loss of bereavement, and for those aged over 70, in particular, even the most gregarious, will see their circle of friends shrink.

So what is to be done? Relate offers recommendations, including a minister for ageing; health checks on relationships (depends upon who is wielding the stethoscope) and greater efforts in later life to add to the circle of friends (although one Ipsos-Mori poll shows that only 4% of the over 50s rate making new friends).

What the report irritatingly fails to point out is that an attitude of mind is crucial. Predict a pessimistic "looming crisis" and it will undoubtedly happen. A minister for ageing would have no budget, no clout and no seat in cabinet. Instead of encouraging each ministerial department – housing, health, communities to consider ageing as a natural continuum of its brief – it would allow them all to continue in their Peter Pan position and park any concerns on the secretary for senior citizens' very small and wizened desk.

What the report also omits is that the baby boomers are nothing if not inventive. The plot of 50 shades of silver grey has yet to unfold. So far, that has consisted of developing every kind of device known to man to deny that ageing is even taking place. But there is more to come.

Ageing is no longer a process tied to chronological age – the 60-year-old first-time father springs to mind. But it does trigger a physical and mental change of mind that eventually impacts on even the most ardent of age-deniers as time runs out. Because the baby boomers are "the pig in the python" according to demographers – a large group of people of similar age causing a bulge in population statistics that moves through the demographic cycle – they have left an impact in each decade through which they passed by the sheer weight of their numbers and financial clout. How they meet the challenge of ageing well – with or without a partner, in or out of love – is therefore of interest to us all.

Last year, Al and Tipper Gore divorced in the US after 40 years of marriage. Forty years is no mean feat. And still time for a second go. Why do people separate after a lifetime together? The reasons are as diverse as they are well rehearsed. Once the children are gone, silence may set in and boredom creep from the closet. Or it might be a case of: "Is that all there is?" And good enough is no longer strong enough; or one partner wants adventure and the other prefers more of the same. "It's not just about what you want to do," says Penny Mansfield of the relationship charity One Plus One. "It's also about what you are scared of changing."

In his 2003 book Aging Well, George Vaillant, an American psychiatrist, drew lessons from three longitudinal studies that followed 824 people – the parents of the baby boomers – for more than 60 years. He was fascinated by why some became "sad sick" as the years progressed and others "happy well". One of the studies selected a Harvard group for their soundness of mind. Yet a third had suffered mental illness by their 50s. "They were normal when I picked them," one researcher told Vaillant, "It must have been the psychiatrists who screwed them up." Childhood isn't decisive. How you start out, Vaillant learned, is no indicator of where you will end up.

He looked at those people, male and female, who had fared well emotionally as octogenarians and saw patterns in their 50s that gave signals. They were in a stable relationship, did not smoke, drank little, exercised, had a normal weight and had the maturity to handle emotional issues well, "and make a lemon into lemonade". Comfortable in their own skins, they would not have mouthed the words of Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman: "I still feel kind of temporary about myself."

It is this "social aptitude" or emotional literacy that Vaillant discovered, not intellectual brilliance, or income or parental social class or genes that leads to successful ageing – that is being rich in well being and not alone.

Some of the wealthy in his studies died alone, prematurely and miserably just like a number of the poorest.

As you age, Vaillant advised: "Don't try to think less of yourself … try to think of yourself less." That, of course, may mean breaking the habit of a lifetime for some of the baby boomers. But it's worth a try.

Read more here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/29/baby-boomers-old-age-lonely

Pornography: A Habit That Can Destroy Lives

Published by The New York Times (Room for Debate) on 11 November 2012. By Gail Dines, a professor of sociology and women’s studies at Wheelock College in Boston, is the author of “Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality.” Robert Jensen, a professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, is the author “Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity.” They are founding members of Stop Porn Culture.

Assessing the effects of mass media is never simple, but the important questions about pornography are obvious: What happens when a culture is saturated with sexually explicit images eroticizing male domination and female subordination? When those images become increasingly cruel and degrading to women and increasingly racist? When pornography becomes the de facto sex education for most boys and an increasing number of girls?

These disturbing trends do not apply to all pornography. There are many varieties made by hundreds of small producers, but the porn industry around Los Angeles dominates, shaping cultural ideas about sexuality, relationships and intimacy. Just as the food industry shapes how we eat and the fashion industry shapes how we dress, the sex industry shapes the way we think about sex.

This dominant source of pornography has some consistent themes. The most extensive peer-reviewed study in the past decade found that a majority of scenes from 50 top-rented porn movies contained physical and verbal abuse of female performers. Physical aggression – including spanking, open-hand slapping and gagging – occurred in 88 percent of scenes, with expressions of verbal aggression – usually a man calling a woman derogatory names – in 48 percent.

Individual experiences as a viewer of pornography differ, and many men and some women report pleasurable experiences. But clear patterns emerge from more than 30 years of academic research and organizing informed by a feminist critique of pornography. In heterosexual couples, men who habitually use pornography sometimes withdraw from intimacy with female partners, and sometimes make demands on female partners for sexual acts that are uncomfortable, painful or degrading to the woman. Women in heterosexual relationships report that both these behaviors can destroy relationships, and men sometimes report that they are aware of the damage but cannot break the habit. 

Anyone who doubts these trends should talk to marriage therapists and divorce lawyers. 

Although there is little systematic research on performers, anecdotal evidence suggests it’s a harsh business for women. The industry portrays high-profile performers with glamorous lives, but producers and directors we’ve interviewed said candidly that the industry “chews up and spits out” women. According to the Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation, which provided testing and health care for performers in Los Angeles until it closed last year, female performers are at risk for injuries and diseases. The group’s founder once said the average career of these women was “six months to three years, tops,” after which they must cope with a variety of physical and psychological problems. 

Pornography is the industrialization and commodification of sex, and like all big industries, its product is generic, formulaic and plasticized. These images tend to rob sex of its creativity, playfulness and intimacy, and hence are ultimately profoundly alienating. The performers, the consumers and the culture deserve better.

Link: 

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/11/11/does-pornography-deserve-its-bad-rap/a-pornography-habit-destroys-relationships

SUMPTUOUS EROTICA: Sex therapist said the couple needed immediate help

Published by Malaysia Chronicle on 20 October 2012.

SEX BLOG- Girlfriend's parents warn law student not to touch her again

KUALA LUMPUR: THE Malaysian law student who posted pictures of him and his girlfriend having sex on their blog was warned by the woman's parents not "to touch her again".

Alvin Tan Jye Yee, 24, a third-year law student at National University of Singapore, was given the stern warning by parents of his girlfriend, Vivian Lee, 23, after their blog, "sumptuous erotica", came under the spotlight. A Singapore daily quoted Tan as saying that both their parents were very upset over the pictures.

"I never thought this matter would become big. A lot of relatives called my parents asking why I did that. My girlfriend's parents also scolded me for turning their daughter into a 'bad girl'," said Tan, adding that the decision to post the pictures was mutual.

However, in a video posted on Tan's YouTube account early yesterday, he said his family was supportive and had not talked about the matter from a moral slant. In the video, the couple also did not show any remorse and said they would do it again.

They spoke of the massive support they received from friends and how they made hundreds of new friends after the blog came under the spotlight. Tan said they did not want to shut down their blog, but did so due to pressure from family members. He added that the blog had been shutdown temporarily.

Federal Commercial Crime Investigation Department director Datuk Seri Syed Ismail Syed Azizan said action could be taken against the couple if their blog was registered in this country. "We are checking where it was registered. If they did it in Singapore, it falls under the republic's jurisdiction."

A senior sex therapist said the couple needed immediate help. Dr Edward Chan, principle consultant psychologist at the LoveLife Centre for Sex Therapy, International Psychology Centre, said the couple showed symptoms of dangerous levels of sexual addictions. "From what was reported, I can say that the couple suffers exhibitionism -- a form of sexual addiction, and swinging, which is another form of sexual addiction."

"Both can be very dangerous if not treated, as they can't have a normal loving relationship. They have to resort to such extreme measures to achieve sexual satisfaction," he told the New Straits Times. He said it was good for a person to love his or her body, but there was a fine line between love for the body and being addicted to show it off for satisfaction.

On exhibitionism, Chan said an exhibitionist was a person who liked to show their private parts and get stimulated from it. Swingers are those who get satisfaction from watching their partner having sex with another person, or listening to their experiences after the sex has ended. It can also extend to partner swapping.

"Both forms of sexual addictions are treatable. They need to seek help immediately as these are illnesses which can lead to destruction of their relationship and also add stress to their lives," said Chan who has 16 years experiences in the field. For exhibitionism, he said the couple could seek help from LoveLife Centre where they would be given sex therapy sessions.

- New Straits Times

Link: 

http://www.malaysia-chronicle.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=42778:sumptuous-erotica-law-student-warned-not-to-touch-girl-again&Itemid=2

Canadian Archbishop warns U.S. of dire consequences of gay ‘marriage’

BY JOHN-HENRY WESTEN.

Link: http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/canadian-archbishop-warns-u.s.-of-dire-consequences-of-gay-marriage

MINNEAPOLIS, October 12, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – “You are summoned to a tribunal where you cannot have a defense lawyer and you cannot record the proceedings nor have a witness present. The people judging and prosecuting you have no legal qualifications. The accusation is ambiguous, having to do with ideas the state does not like. The penalties could include fines equal to several thousands of dollars, public recanting, and rehabilitation classes. You are a bishop. This is not China. This is Canada. The offense: explaining why homosexual relations are a sin.”

Abp. Terrence Prendergast has seen the American church's future.

So began the address of Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast to St. Thomas University Law School Monday, October 8, where he laid out the alarming consequences of same-sex “marriage” from the Canadian experience. 

The archbishop was describing the true experiences of Calgary Bishop Fred Henry, who in 2005 was hit with a human rights complaint for proclaiming the Church’s teachings on homosexuality. The complaint was subsequently dropped by the plaintiff, who admitted that he only filed the complaint to get media attention.

Others, however, have not been so lucky. Alberta pastor Stephen Boissoin, for instance, was dragged through a several year process in a human rights commission, at the end of which he was found “guilty.” His crime? Writing a letter to the editor of a local newspaper expressing his concern about the gay agenda in schools. Boissoin was hit with a fine and ordered never again to publicly speak about his views on homosexuality.

Archbishop Prendergast also expressed his concern for those who, thanks to the legalization of gay “marriage,” are deceived into destructive lifestyles, approved of and funded by Canadian governments. "The Bible is being called hate literature,” he said. “Clearly, the Church is in the crosshairs. There will be growing pressure for the Church to comply or to be shut down.”

Enumerating the “consequences of same-sex marriages and related sexual license are already manifesting themselves,” the Archbishop noted:

- restrictions on freedoms; 

- forced sex education; 

- sexually confused children; 

- sexual experimentation among children; 

- muzzling and debilitating the Church; 

- more births out of wedlock; 

- more in vitro fertilizations;

- more abortions; 

- more poverty; 

- more misery; 

- more disease; 

- more addictions; and 

- higher health care costs.

Click “like” if you want to defend true marriage. 

“By reassigning financial benefits to same-sex marriage, what was once an incentive to fruitful, traditional families has become an incentive to sterile, destructive social arrangements,” he said.

Archbishop Prendergast ended his address on a positive note. “Every challenge to the Church’s teaching is an opportunity to clarify it,” he said. “Media attention is putting the Church on the front page, and we must see that as a good thing.”

“Just the same,” he warned, “the playbook of our opponents is unrelenting attempts to change or destroy the Church.” The state of Minnesota is set to vote on a referendum to protect traditional marriage on November 6.

Legalising prostitution hasn't prevented organised crime

By Julie Bindel. Published by STANDPOINT magazine on 1 October 2012.

Amsterdam, often hailed as the sex mecca of Europe, is to have a major facelift. After 12 years of legalised window brothels, attracting hordes of customers from all over Europe, politicians, police, citizens and even many of the prostitutes themselves are admitting that state-sanctioned prostitution is a failed social experiment. 

Given almost ten years of evidence that criminal gangs control the red-light area of De Wallen, the local council has announced plans to clean it up in an attempt to transform the reputation of the city. Out will go at least half of the window brothels, sex shops and cannabis cafés and in will come more museums, restaurants and art galleries. 

Many of those controlling the window scene and facilitating the trafficking of thousands of women into Amsterdam are so-called "loverboys", young Dutchmen of Moroccan, Turkish or Surinamese descent, most of them Muslims, who look for vulnerable young Dutch women, pose as lovers, and after a few months, force their "girlfriends" into prostitution, keeping them under close control both by force and psychological means.

Loverboys have the same modus operandi as another group of sex exploiters — the Asian grooming gangs, first exposed in Standpoint (December 2010) — that operated with impunity in the northern towns of England. They single out insecure, under-age girls in schools and coffee shops, and outside care homes, and woo them as "boyfriends", promising love, clothes, status and excitement. Then they start to run them as prostitutes. The girls, now emotionally and financially dependent on their loverboys, find themselves locked into a cycle of abuse, sometimes made to work in windows in official red-light districts or being handed from flat to flat.

They put their victims to work in a window so that they can keep an eye on them day and night. Because it is not an offence under the legalised regime to profit from this form of prostitution the loverboys appear invincible, and the young women feel they have little chance of proving the abuse.

The sex industry in Amsterdam, often hailed as an exploitation-free zone, has also been  shaped by the huge influx of desperate, vulnerable women coming to the EU from Eastern Europe, Africa and southeast Asia to work in the legal zones. Most will have been trafficked by criminal gangs or individual entrepreneurs promising them a better life and the chance to earn a lot of money. Trafficking, and a sharp rise in heroin and crack cocaine abuse among prostitutes, means the women are increasingly desperate, resulting in customers getting what they want.

"I was told I needed someone to protect me when I started working here five years ago," Ingrid, a 24-year-old Slovakian prostitute, tells me, having agreed to speak to me because at 10am it is still a quiet time for her, when customers sleep off their hangovers.  "But all that means is that I pay a pimp to stop me being beaten up, and that is on top of my rent. I can barely make a living."

Since legalisation there are no "pimps" in Amsterdam's red-light area. Men who own the windows and brothels, and live off the earnings of prostitution, are now "managers" or "facilitators". A few feet from the windows, men resembling bouncers stand chatting and checking their merchandise. A customer comes out of a brothel, zipping up his trousers. "The Englishmen drink a lot and can be difficult to handle," says Lena, a quietly-spoken woman from Estonia. "But they spend money. They tell me that back home it is seen as dirty to pay for sex, but here it is just like going to the toilet."

Jan is a beat police officer assigned to the red-light district. I meet him at 1am as he is checking the window brothels by tapping on them and asking the women if there are "any problems". He is nervous about giving me his full name; he tells me that his chiefs have become increasingly sensitive to criticism. "People are starting to hear that our system has a lot of crime and a lot of violence against the working girls linked to it," he says. "The trafficking problem, and the Turkish loverboys, they are all coming to the surface now. Really we have allowed it by being too adventurous with allowing prostitution to be such an attraction to our city."

Legalisation has resulted in a significant increase in sex tourists, in particular from the UK, who travel to Amsterdam primarily to visit the legal brothels. Legal prostitution, including sex shops and live sex performances, attracts as many visitors to Amsterdam as its art galleries and canals.

In 1995, a tippelzone, or pick-up area, was set up for street prostitutes in central Amsterdam. The zone was a strip of road behind which were several parking spaces separated by 6ft-high wooden partitions, as well as one for cyclists, or those who wished to stand up to have sex. 

The tippelzone was promoted as a way of controlling the problems associated with prostitution, such as drug dealing, trafficking and violence. In 2004 the local council closed it down. The mayor, Job Cohen, admitted it had become a haven for traffickers and drug dealers, and had not achieved its aim — to break the links between prostitution and organised crime.

That same year deputy mayor Rob Oudkerk, leader of the Socialist Party, the city's biggest political party, lost his position when it became known that he frequented prostitutes, including streetwalkers, whom he would have known to be illegal or drug addicts.  His successor, Lodewijk Asscher, has very different views on prostitution, and has challenged the pro-legalisation propaganda that has enabled Amsterdam's sex industry to flourish.

In 2006 the city council refused to renew the licences of 37 prostitution entrepreneurs in the red-light area.  Using the Public Administration Probity Act, which enabled municipalities to close illegal venues, the council concluded that many brothels were run by organised crime. Among the charges were human and drug trafficking, and money laundering.

Since 2006 Asscher has implemented radical new prostitution policies. It is not just in Amsterdam where change is taking place. Tippelzones in Rotterdam and The Hague have been closed, as well as one-third of the 450 window brothels in Amsterdam. 

"I was very worried about what had been happening in the old city. When I came into office, six years after legalisation, the signs were not good," Asscher told me. "There is lots of crime in this part of the city."

The Prostitution Framework Act, expected to come into force next January, reads like a last-ditch attempt to address some of the worst consequences of legalisation. It includes a requirement that prostitutes register with the government — an unlikely scenario for those in a stigmatised and clandestine sector. It will also raise the minimum age of involvement from 18 to 21 years. Customers of illegal prostitutes will also be  punishable and owners of premises where abuses recur repeatedly will be dealt with. A national register will be introduced for prostitution businesses whose licence application was rejected or licence revoked. But it is almost certainly too little, too late for a city awash with under-age, trafficked and otherwise coerced prostitutes.

"Legalisation was naive," admits Asscher. "We thought we had dealt with it better than anywhere else in the world. There are arguments that further criminalisation would push it underground but it takes it out of the hands of criminals." 

One research study on men who pay for sex found that 19 out of 103 interviewees, including some who had never previously had a sexual encounter, had travelled to Amsterdam in order to visit the window brothels.

"Amsterdam was like going through a turnstile into a fairground ride: two minutes and you're out," said one the men. "The idea that the women had been with five men in the last hour or 20 men in a day was a big turn-off." Martine and Louise Fokken, 70-year-old identical twins who worked in the red-light area for almost 50 years, give me a tour.  They tell me that the influx of loverboys and young foreign women has "ruined" the trade for Dutch women. "Legalisation has never worked. It is better for the pimps and the foreigners," says Martine. "The vultures came in 2000 — organised criminals. They thought, ‘Aha, it's legalised, now we're OK.'"

The sisters appear to have a rose-tinted view of a region that has always had problems with the sex trade. In the mid-19th century the Netherlands was a hotbed of prostitution, with sailors being the most prolific buyers and impoverished Dutch women the streetwalkers. 

The women were forced to register as prostitutes and submit to weekly medical exams for syphilis. When certified as "clean", they received cards that effectively licensed them to practise and without which they could be imprisoned. In Britain Josephine Butler condemned this system of enforced medical exams, inspiring a coalition of feminists, socialists and Protestants to abolish them in Britain and to campaign in Europe against the regulation and acceptance of prostitution because it was degrading to women. 

Amsterdam's brothels were closed by 1897, and in 1911 the abolitionists won the day throughout the country: the government outlawed brothels and criminalised pimping and profiting from prostitution. 

But gradually the brothels returned; though still illegal, they were tolerated. In the 1930s, Amsterdam saw its first window brothels. In the 1950s the red-light district became a tourist attraction. Prostitution, sex clubs, pornography shops and drugs were openly tolerated. The 1980s saw an influx of foreign women trafficked into Dutch prostitution, a trend that continues today. 

Pressure slowly grew for prostitution to be legalised. In 1985 the Rode Draad (Red Thread), the sex industry workers' union based in Amsterdam, declared that sex workers' rights could only be achieved if pimps and brothels were decriminalised. (Only 100 of Holland's 25,000 prostitutes are union members, most of them "erotic dancers".) The Mr. A. de Graaf Foundation, originally a Christian research institute that promoted the view of prostitution as harmful, changed its focus during the government's consideration of the new law, and began to lobby in favour of legalisation. It was the recipient of generous state subsidies during this period. The legalisation was passed in 2000.

The Prostitution Information Centre (PIC) is run by Mariska Majoor, a former prostitute and advocate of total legalisation of pimping and brothel-owning. She is on the record as saying that trafficking is rare in Amsterdam. PIC conducts excursions through the prostitution area. In 2005 Thomas Cook, the worldwide tour and travel agency founded to promote ethical and educational tourism, launched a night walking tour through the red-light district. Building on tours organised by the PIC, it offered the outings, advertising them as "free to children under three".

"It is a well-oiled propaganda machine," says Chrissie Bennet, a British-born former escort who spent a month in the window brothels in Amsterdam. "The girls all knew we were under the cosh of the pimps, out of debt and desperation. No one would be there if there was any other choice."

But Lodewijk Asscher is sceptical about the propaganda machine which has long claimed that the Dutch way is best when it comes to regulating the sex industry. "The pro-sex-work lobby does not represent the women but the pimps," he says. "They are financed by the [prostitution] sector and so paint a picture that is too good to be true."

His latest scheme is called Project 1012, named after the district's postal code, and aims to bring new and non-prostitution related business and tourism into the red-light area. It is a collaboration between banks, developers, corporations, investors and entrepreneurs. Under the scheme, licences of coffee shops, gambling houses and brothels will be revoked if they are discovered to be involved in criminal behaviour.  

One of the city's most talked-about restaurants, Anna, opened last year in a refurbished brothel building. Next door to the window brothels is online music station Red Light Radio. When I walk round the red- light district with the Fokken twins they take me to what was the first window brothel they worked in together, and squeal with delight at seeing not naked women in the window but naked mannequins: the building is now a haute couture dress shop. The Red Thread sex workers' union went into receivership in August as a result of losing its government grant.

Asscher hopes to attract more than £600 million of investment from businesses moving to the area, but he also has a plan B if his project fails: he will consider bringing in new legislation to criminalise the buying of sexual services, as countries such as Sweden and Norway have done. 

Link: http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/4648/full

Statutory Rape: Courts sending out mixed signals

Published by The StarOnline on 30 August 2012.

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2012/8/30/nation/11935447&sec=nation

NOW that their trials are over, former national youth squad bowler Noor Afizal Azizan can go on to fulfil the promise of his bright future and electrician Chuah Guan Jiu can focus on his fixed job and many years ahead. Through it all, no one spoke of the 13-year-old girl Noor Afizal took to a hotel to spend the night with, or the 12-year-old schoolgirl who was “coaxed” to go to her 21-year-old electrician boyfriend's flat instead of to school because he said he was too sick to take her.

These were prepubescent girls who were deemed to have consented to sex with the older boys they were dating and Court of Appeal president Justice Raus Sharif wrote in his written judgment that Noor Afizal had not “tricked the girl into submitting to him”.

In the electrician's case, Sessions judge Sitarun Nisa Abdul Aziz also thought the “sexual act was consensual”, even though DPP Lim Cheah Yit recounted how the girl had repeatedly asked Chuah to take her to school. If she did give consent, there was certainly trickery and fraud involved.

The fact remains that the girls were 12 and 13, children barely out of primary school. They are not old enough to be able to legally buy cigarettes, or even obtain medical treatment if they had contracted sexual transmitted diseases.

The law on statutory rape was meant to protect these very girls. Section 375(g) of the Penal Code states unequivocally that a man has committed statutory rape if he has sexual intercourse with a girl under 16 years of age, with or without her consent.

It is rooted in the presumption that girls below 16 have not attained the mental maturity to consent to sex, and this law was enacted to protect children from abuse. It places the onus on those around her to not have sexual intercourse with her, even if she gives consent, because she is not deemed mature enough to give consent.

In other words, the older guys should have known better. Noor Afizal and Chuah were found guilty of raping the underaged girls, but were not jailed. They were bound over for five years and three years respectively on a RM25,000 good behaviour bond.

The public uproar has been over how these young men got away with a slap on the wrist, and how the emphasis has been on not blighting their future.

Our teenagers are growing up inundated with overt sexual messages from the media and the Internet, without the benefit of a full-fledged sex education curriculum, or avenues to get answers. Clearly, our young people are having sex with each other but there is a line drawn by the law. And that is sex with girls below 16 children is off limits, even to their peers.

By letting Noor Afizal and Chuah off lightly, are the courts sending out mixed signals? Are they saying these two girls aged 12 and 13 are capable of giving consent for sex, and are they saying future good behaviour is sufficient punishment for having sex with minors? What is the message that teenage boys and younger men are getting? At the root of it all, this is about protecting our children boys and girls.

A 12-year-old girl was lured by a man twice her age into his flat, and coaxed into having sex with him, and he got away with a promise to behave himself for the next three years. Where does that leave her? What about her worth? What are we doing for these two girls? How do we protect other naive young girls from being sweet-talked by an older teen into a sexual relationship if he knows he could be found guilty of statutory rape but walk away with a promise to behave? If we do not uphold unequivocally our intolerance of sex with underaged girls, what does that say about us?

Related reports:

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/sideviews/article/how-does-a-12-year-old-girl-say-no-marina-mahathir/

Adult women especially if they are less educated and financially dependent have problems saying “no” to their boyfriends and husbands sometimes even fathers uncles and brothers. Female employees often have to say “yes” to their bosses or risk losing their jobs. If these women well above the legal age have difficulties in turning away sexual advances what more a 12 or 13-year-old girl? This is why the statutory rape law exists. It presupposes that an underage person cannot have the wherewithal to refuse sex with an older person. Even if the person is only a few years older. And if the younger person is female growing up in a society where men are assumed to always hold more power in any relationship then what choice would she have but to say “yes”?

http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2012/08/30/suhakam-alarmed-over-statutory-rape-sentences/

Suhakam has voiced “great concern” over sentences meted out recently on two offenders guilty of statutory rape, saying they may not have protected the interest of the victims. “Whether the rights, protection and best interests, not to mention the future, of our minors have been and will be upheld and safeguarded in cases involving statutory rape is now doubtful in the light of those sentences,” said the human rights commission’s chairman Hasmy Agam.

Hasmy said that Suhakam was alarmed that the consent of the child victims appeared to be one of the mitigating factors in both cases, though he noted that there had been similar sentences in the past in cases of statutory rape committed by young first offenders... He said that the vulnerability of a child was also recognised by the Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC) “which states, inter alia, that the child by reason of his/her physical and mental immaturity needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection.” “It is also of great concern that the lenient sentences meted out might send the wrong message to would-be offenders, thus would not be an effective deterrence for statutory rape cases,” he argued.

http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/207480

Sebuah NGO yang memperjuangkan hak wanita mempersoalkan kemunasabahan seorang kanak-kanak memberi keizinan untuk melakukan hubungan seks dengan seorang lelaki yang lebih tua. "Di segi perundangan dan moral, bolehkah mereka memberi keizinan itu?" soal Pengarah Eksekutif Pertubuhan Pertolongan. Wanita (WAO), Ivy Josiah, ketika dihubungi untuk mengulas mengenai dua kes penggantungan hukuman yang dijatuhkan ke atas perogol kanak-kanak. Beliau menegaskan bahawa, di segi undang-undang, kanak-kanak di bawah umur tidak boleh memberi keizinan itu dan itulah sebabnya undang-undang seperti Akta Kanak-Kanak 2001 digubal untuk melindungi mereka.

Statutory Rape: One more escapes jail sentence

Published by The Staronline on 29 August 2012.
By Simren Kaur.

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2012/8/29/courts/11931992&sec=courts

Another person has been bound over on a good behaviour bond for statutory rape. This time, it is an electrician found guilty of raping his 12-year-old girlfriend on two occasions last year.

Sessions judge Sitarun Nisa Abdul Aziz ordered Chuah Guan Jiu, now 22, to be bound over for three years on a RM25,000 good behaviour bond. She said the court took into consideration that Chuah was a young, first time offender. “We also considered the fact that the sexual act was consensual and that he is a school dropout,” she said when handing down the sentence.

Sitarun Nisa said that another consideration was Chuah’s future. Chuah, who was wearing a shirt and blue jeans, showed no emotion when the sentence was passed.

The court had on July 20 found him guilty of raping the girl, then aged 12 years and 10 months, at his flat in Air Itam between 7am and 1pm on July 18 last year, and between 2.25pm and 2.45pm the next day.

The offence under Section 376(1) of the Penal Code carries a maximum jail sentence of 20 years and whipping. On Monday, DPP Lim Cheah Yit said Chuah had coaxed the girl into skipping school and following him back to his flat on the pretext of him being sick.

“They were dating and the accused should have protected her but he took advantage of her instead."

She asked him many times to take her to school but he said he felt unwell and took her to his home,” Lim had said when pressing for a deterrent sentence. In mitigation, counsel Yusuf Idris said his client earned RM30 a day and was staying with his parents and a younger sibling. “This is his first offence. He has a fixed job now and many years ahead of him,” he said. Yusuf said his client had repented and urged the court not to impose a custodial sentence in view of Chuah’s age.

The sentencing came in the wake of the case of former national youth squad bowler Noor Afizal Azizan who was bound over for RM25,000 to be of good behaviour for five years after he pleaded guilty to the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl.

There was public uproar on Aug 8 when the Court of Appeal allowed Noor Afizal’s appeal against a High Court’s decision to sentence him to five years jail for the offence.

In a written judgment released on Monday, the Court of Appeal said Noor Afizal, who was 19 at the time of the offence, had not been “very much older” than the minor he had consensual sex with, had cooperated with the police, shown remorse, and given a guarantee that he would not commit such an offence again.

Related reports:

http://thestar.com.my/sports/story.asp?file=/2012/8/28/sports/11922113&sec=sports

In a 14-page written judgment http://www.kehakiman.gov.my/directory/judgment/file/M-09-227-10-2011.pdf released yesterday, Court of Appeal president Justice Raus Sharif said Noor Afizal – 19 at the time of the offence and now 21 – had not “tricked the girl into submitting to him”. Sitting with him were Justices K.N. Segara and Azhar Ma’ah...

There was public uproar on Aug 8 when the court allowed Noor Afizal’s appeal against a High Court decision to sentence him to five years’ jail for statutory rape of the 13-year-old girl. In his oral decision, Justice Raus said he agreed with Noor Afizal’s counsel that public interest would not be served if he received a jail sentence when he had “a bright future”.

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/rapists-freed-by-courts-match-medical-definition-of-paedophiles/

Both national bowler Noor Afizal Azizan and Chuah Guan Jiu two young men who escaped jail terms despite raping 13- and 12-year-old girls respectively, may be classed as paedophiles according to international medical standards and psychiatrists here, suggesting the courts may have freed sexual predators who might repeat their crime. The World Health Organisation’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD) categorises paedophilia as “a sexual preference for children boys or girls or both usually of pre-pubertal or early pubertal age ”.

And according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) used by mental health professionals globally, paedophilia is the sexual attraction to pubescent or pre-pubescents aged 13 or younger, and the subject must be 16 or older with the child at least five years younger.

http://news.malaysia.msn.com/regional/bowler-statutory-rape-sex-consensual-court-says

MSN Malaysia readers were vocal in their overwhelming opposition to the verdict. Some of the following comments regarding the case include:

How can a 13 year old girl even know what she is agreeing to? Are judges now sick? How are we to uphold our law if Judges take crime lightly? I think ONE OF THE MAIN REASONS THAT CRIMES ARE FLOURISHING IN this country are because we have judges who are WEAK. -- rightofvictim

Has the girl a bright future too, your honor?? -- ERLISH

Outrageous! Even a world boxing champion was jailed in the US for his trysts with a woman under the age of consent. Oops, but then it was a different court. -- choun young

So what is the message we are getting here? If you show promise in sport, you are above the law? -- Sar3 Ong

More British women aborting their children over financial worries, say UK doctors

BY HILARY WHITE, 

ROME CORRESPONDENT.

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/more-british-women-aborting-their-children-over-financial-worries-say-uk-do

LONDON, August 14, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A survey by a market research firm has found that the global economic crisis may be influencing more British women to abort their children. The research by Insight Research Group found that about one-fifth of GPs are reporting more women requesting abortion for financial concerns.

Seventeen percent of GPs surveyed felt there was an increase in patients who “were specifically requesting terminations due to financial concerns.” Fifty-four percent of those GPs said they believed the biggest increase was among women ages 26-35. Another twenty-three percent believed the biggest increase was among single women with no previous children, while twenty-one percent said they believed it was among single women living with a “partner” with 1 to 3 previous children.

Thirty-four percent of all the GPs surveyed said that they are seeing women putting off having children “until their financial security improved.”

The findings echo those of Russian demographers who fear that recent gains in the country’s abysmally low fertility rate will be lost as more women turn to abortion to ease financial worries http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/international-life-and-family-roundup1 . 

Although pro-life observers say that they have no argument with the study’s findings, they question the reaction of GPs who endorse abortion for financial reasons.

Anthony Ozimic, the communications manager for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, said that for authority figures like doctors to affirm with their actions that an abortion is an acceptable solution to financial anxiety sends a profoundly negative message to the culture at large.

“Whatever the merits or otherwise of this study, Western society will continue in its moral and demographic declines as long as the message goes out that women should abort their children or significantly postpone conceiving because of financial concerns,” Ozimic said.

The UK should follow the lead of other EU countries who are offering financial, tax and other incentives to increase the financial security of families and encourage couples to marry earlier and have children, Ozimic said. Instead, the myth is being promulgated that there is such a thing as a “perfect” economic condition in which to have children, when the reality is that such conditions will not exist while the European fertility rate continues to decline.

“While prudence in planning a family is necessary, optimal economic conditions for raising children are illusory.”

Ozimic confirmed that the law does not technically allow for abortions for financial or “social” reasons, but said that doctors have been granted enormous latitude in deciding what factors in a woman’s life constitute a threat to her “mental health”.

This is acknowledged even by the courts to be the case, despite voluminous research demonstrating that abortion has a serious, long-term negative impact on women’s mental health and increasing skepticism http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/new-study-says-pregnancy-is-safe-even-beneficial-for-women-recovering-from/  among the psychiatric community of the existence of any mental health benefits of abortion.

Standing up for sex workers is standing up for pimps

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/standing-up-for-sex-workers-is-standing-up-for-pimps-20120618-20k84.html Published by The Age on 19 June 2012. By Caroline Norma.

Prostitutes are not sex workers, they are prostituted women.

ELITE academics in Australia love to profess their support for ''sex workers''. University of New South Wales academic Catharine Lumby in ''Sex is not dirty work'' on these pages pleaded for the media to treat sex workers with more respect, given that prostitution is a legal form of employment in Australia.

Lumby recalls telling her sons over the dinner table to not make jokes about women their friends call ''prosties'', and to remember that feminists and Christians could be condemned for failing to properly recognise prostitution as work.

This idea of prostitution conveyed to the two Lumby juniors is unmistakably a liberal one. In this framing, prostitution is embarked upon by individual women as something akin to a small-business enterprise (women in brothels in Australia are legally recognised as sub-contractors, not employees). While ''sex workers'' might be at the bottom rung of the social ladder in terms of education, prior victimisation, social networks, and personal asset bases, liberals see them as admirable for attempting to improve their circumstance, and possibly give their kids a better chance in life.

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In conveying this idea of prostitution, Lumby teaches her sons to be nice to ''sex workers'', which is indubitably a charitable thing for an elite academic to do.

However, in framing prostitution as a benign form of ''work'', Lumby also disenables her sons taking social and political measures against the sex industry and its customers as perpetrators of serious and widespread harm against women in Australia.

There now exists a mountain of empirical research, not only from feminist social scientists, but also from psychologists, clinicians, nurses, anthropologists and economists, of the harms of prostitution for women. These harms include post-traumatic stress disorder, genital and other physical injuries, pregnancy, depression and anxiety, and social isolation.

It has been known since the late 1970s that a major precursor of women's entry into prostitution is childhood sexual abuse. There is also empirical evidence of the damage to women's social status, and the negative impact on women's connection to local community, of the sex industry.

Overwhelmingly, the social science and health literature condemns prostitution as a source of harm to women, as well as children.

For liberals to successfully frame prostitution as ''work'', rather than commercially mediated sexual abuse, they must close their eyes to this evidence. They must also avoid encountering most women in prostitution - even the most conservative demographic studies of this population find that half would leave the sex industry if they could. And they must overlook the good results that governments in Sweden, South Korea, Norway and Iceland have achieved in declaring prostitution a violation of gender equality, and criminalising the sex industry and its customers.

Most significantly, though, liberals must avoid mentioning pimps, traffickers, and sex industry customers in making their argument that prostitution is a legitimate form of work for poor women. Lumby doesn't breathe a word of the profit-making activities of pimps in Australia, nor the acts perpetrated by sex industry customers who buy women in half-hour blocks. She fails to tell her sons about the strategies of violence, debt and intimidation that pimps use to keep women in prostitution, and to make sure they service customers with a smile.

She also omits to mention the kinds of sex acts customers do to women in prostitution, and the misogynistic abuse and brutality that women face when they're dispatched to the hotel rooms and houses of prostitution buyers.

These inconvenient facts cause liberals great difficulty in selling the message that prostitution is work. In light of these facts, prostitution begins to look like a system of hush money paid to pimps to supply men with vulnerable women for sexual use and abuse.

When elite academics like Lumby publicly declare their allegiance to ''sex workers'' they concurrently reveal a loyalty to pimps and sex industry customers. They do this through framing prostitution as ''work'', and therefore sending the message that no policy or community action need be taken against the sex industry as an employer of women and legitimate business sector.

In this atmosphere, pimps and their customers are able to continue their harmful activities, and the sex industry in Australia is able to profitably expand and diversify.

On the other hand, when elite academics like me declare our support for ''prostituted women'', we declare a commitment to elimination of the sex industry. We work towards public recognition of prostitution as a social harm through public awareness campaigns highlighting the effects of the sex industry on individual women, and women's social status.

Just like the anti-smoking campaigns that began in the 1970s, we seek a reorientation of the public's thinking about prostitution towards a critique of the ''pretty woman'' and ''happy hooker'' stereotype. Australian policymakers and community leaders mobilised against the tobacco industry in the past three decades, and we seek similar government action against the sex industry as a driver of social harm.

The criminalisation of pimps and sex industry customers is a necessary first step towards this goal, but we also call for public education about the reality of prostitution, as well as policy planning for programs and initiatives to assist women to leave the sex industry and build lives that reflect their worth as full citizens.

Dr Caroline Norma is a lecturer in the school of Global Studies, Social Science & Planning at RMIT University.

Selling Sex Short: The Pornographic and Sexological Construction of Women’s Sexuality in the West

http://feministsforchoice.com/feminist-conversations-meagan-tyler.htm Published by Feminists for Choice on 18 June 2012. By Hennie.

Feminist Conversations is a regular feature at Feminists for Choice, in which we spotlight activists. After reading Meagan Tyler’s book Selling Sex Short: The Pornographic and Sexological Construction of Women’s Sexuality in the West, and not being able to put it down, I had to ask her a few questions. 

You have written extensively about pornography, the sex industry, and the construction of women’s sexuality. How did this interest come about?

Looking back now, it seems rather an odd thing to have chosen to research! What really got me interested was teaching in high-schools in my home town of Melbourne. Most schools in Australia have uniforms and on the few “free dress” days a year, students often want to wear their most coveted pieces of clothing. All the way back in 2004, I noticed a growing number of 12 and 13 year old girls wearing Playboy branded t-shirts, which seemed like a new phenomenon. I wanted to know about the marketing operations that were going on with companies like Playboy and if they were consciously “mainstreaming” their brands. So I went back to uni to do a PhD.

What was your motivation for writing Selling Sex Short?  

The book came out of my PhD research. When I started looking at the mainstreaming of pornography, or what some scholars refer to as “pornographication” or “pornification” of popular culture, it became clear that you can’t look at these pop culture trends without looking at the pornography industry itself. I hadn’t bargained on this when I started and didn’t really know what to expect when my research led me to actually having to look at how elements of the porn industry operate.

A lot of other academics have undertaken content analyses of pornography (i.e. to find out what is in mainstream porn, e.g. what kind of acts, violence, engagement with the camera / other actors etc.) so I needed to do something different. What interested me was what those within the industry actually say about how and why porn is produced, which is what led me to analyse Adult Video News, a porn industry based magazine aimed at producers, directors, distributors and vendors. In intra-industry forums people are often very open and forthright about the problems and harms that they believed are associated with the production of pornography. That, to me, was fascinating, and occasionally, quite disturbing. But it is important that we understand pornographic content in the context of its production. How the porn industry markets its products, for example, gives us important information about how the industry wants itself to be seen and what those within the industry believe consumers want to see and buy.

The other half of the book is really about sex therapy. I had done some previous research on the supposed “epidemic” of female sexual dysfunction (FSD), which was largely “discovered” after Viagra hit the market. In countries like Australia, the US and the UK, some medical experts were claiming that almost half of all women were suffering from some form of FSD. I wanted to find out how the sex therapy industry was marketing its treatments for this form of dysfunction and what larger cultural changes were occurring to create such popular interest in a medicalised understanding of sexuality.

In the end, I wanted to know what kind of sex these two industries were promoting. The trend towards pornographication and the trend towards the medicalisation of women’s sexuality post-Viagra were both noticeable cultural shifts occurring in roughly the same time period but I had no sense of if they were connected or if they related to each other at all. I was quite surprised to find that there were both theoretical and material connections between the two. I had no idea before starting my research, for example, that some therapists recommend pornography to patients as a template to follow for their own sex lives or that a number of porn stars have produced their own sex advice literature.

The book really came about because I didn’t want the debates about these issues to be limited to academia. We need to be having much more informed public discussions about sexuality and inequality.

The book is written from a feminist perspective (especially so radical feminism), what does feminism mean to you?

Yes, the book certainly draws on radical feminist writing and theorising, which is quite unusual these days. So much so, I am often required to dispel myths about radical feminism and feminism in general before even beginning to speak about my research. It is quite bizarre being accused of being a prude or being “anti-sex” when you spend your professional life researching, writing and talking about sex and sexual pleasure!

One of the most important elements of feminism is an understanding that sexuality is socially constructed. That is, sexuality is not purely an issue of biology. How we understand and experience sexuality is heavily contingent upon the cultural and historical circumstances in which we live. This perspective is not unique to feminism, but it is a very important element of all forms of feminism.

So when we talk about inequality between men and women, for example, a social constructionist approach forces us to recognise that this is not an innate or pre-determined situation. This is a situation that can, and should, be challenged.

But challenging inequality is, unfortunately, not enough. There are real material barriers relating to overcoming disadvantage associated with gender, class, race and ethnicity, disability and sexuality (to name but a few). And this is why claims that individuals can simply be “empowered” to overcome disadvantage rings a bit hollow. If we do not recognise that there are often structural and institutional barriers to equality then we tend to blame people for their own circumstances.

To bring about real change, we need social movements. And that is what, to me, feminism is at its heart: a social movement for equality and women’s civil rights.

What are the main points you would like readers to know about the book, but also about pornography and sexology?

The overarching theme of the book is really that sex is a social act. Our conceptions of what sex is, and what is should be, are framed by cultural expectations and norms. The porn industry and sex therapy are both important players in forming these expectations and norms in the West today. So it is important that we question the glamourised version of porn that is (carefully) presented to us in many pop culture representations and that we also question the over-simplified and medicalised version of sexuality presented to us by many so-called “sex experts”. The book shows that the concepts of what “good sex” is in both porn and sexology (the “science of sex”) actually have a lot in common, in particular, the idea that women’s sexuality is largely there to service men’s needs. Hardly a great vision for women’s sexual pleasure!

Ultimately, we need to start imagining versions of sexuality we would like to see and this is how I end the book. There aren’t any grand solutions presented, I just hope it opens up some new conversations.

You discuss the influence of the sex industry and sexology on women’s sexuality and the notion that these industries promote harm, objectification and the sexual servicing of men by women. For those who have not read the book, could you offer a short explanation?

I argue that the dominant model of sexuality promoted to women in both pornography and in sexology / sex therapy has a lot in common with systems of prostitution. That is, it is assumed that women should be constantly sexually available and that women’s role is primarily having to sexually service men. In this model it is not a woman’s sexual pleasure that defines whether or not sex is “good sex” but rather whether or not she has performed to the expectations of an (assumed) male lover.

That this model of sex, focused on men’s sexual pleasure, is a hallmark of how the porn industry constructs “good sex” is probably not surprising.  What was surprising, to me at least, was that these same assumptions about what women are “really for” can be found in academic and popular sexology. There are concepts such as “receptivity”, for example, which suggest normal and healthy women should be “highly receptive” to sexual advances from a male partner and that women should have sex when they don’t want to in order to please angry or irritable partners. This vision of sex presented to women is quite bleak, and in many instances, tends to justify men’s sexual coercion.

A model of sex which promotes the idea that women should acquiesce to unwanted sexual advances because they are there simply to please men is seriously harmful, not only to individual women’s interests, but to women as a group. It also sounds like something from a century ago! Instead of telling women to “Lie back and think of England” we tell them to watch porn or take a variety of pills, patches and creams.

When you are not busy lecturing, writing and doing research, what do you do to unwind?

Nothing very glamorous – I’m not sure how I survived before the advent of DVDs and Wii. Curling up in front of the TV with a blanket and a cuppa helps keep me sane and I like to kid myself that being good at tennis on the Wii means I could have been a Wimbledon champion if only I hadn’t spent all my time reading books.

Dr Meagan Tyler is a lecturer in sociology at Victoria University, Australia. She tweets @DrMeaganTyler.