How God Conquered One Lesbian's Heart

By Michelle D. Smith. Posted by Charisma News on 22 May 2016.

It took me a couple of years before I could work up the courage to go back home for a visit. I wouldn't go alone and took my girlfriend, Ann, and her daughter, with me. My mom was very warm and welcoming, even loving toward all three of us. I thought perhaps things had changed in the nearly seven years I'd been gone.

She pulled me aside and said, "Michelle, I love you, and you are all welcome to stay here tonight, but you'll have to sleep in separate rooms." I was mad, but I understood and appreciated the forewarning. We went to a hotel.

Mom continued to love on us by sending cards and money on birthdays and holidays. I joked it wasn't fair Ann got the same amount of money on her birthday as I did from my parents.

I was beginning to calm down, to live a more stable life, one that wouldn't cause the neighbors to blush. Normal. I thought perhaps I should also pursue a more normal religious identity. I was still seeking God. I knew I couldn't return to mainstream Christianity, just the thought of it still gave me the heebie-jeebies, but I had a deep longing I couldn't satisfy. I was still writing, reading and viewing porn.

I began studying Kabbalah and the Zohar (both Jewish mysticism), and I decided I needed to talk to a rabbi, to learn as much about the foundational aspects of Judaism as possible before I could truly attain proficiency in Jewish mysticism. At the time, this seemed to fall within the realm of "normal" for me. I met with a rabbi in the Reformed tradition, one who assured me it was OK to continue my life as a practicing lesbian.

Although the thought of entering a Christian church or speaking to any of my former mentors and friends who were Christians almost sickened me, I could read the Bible if I was doing it to pursue Jewish knowledge. I stuck to the Old Testament, which kept me safe from the pesky and disturbing writings of Paul. I couldn't deal with Jesus either, but that was OK for now. He seemed safely ensconced in the New Testament.

What I didn't intend during my course of study was to have feelings about God emerge. I began to sense an awareness of Him again. My previous experiences into other forms of spirituality (or non-spirituality) had always been to soothe an ache, but had always been unsuccessful. They were fun, scary, encouraging or wishful, but never fulfilling. I began to pray the serenity prayer and the 23rd Psalm.

More than a year passed as I met with the rabbi once a week, alone and in a small group. I rarely went to synagogue. I am an introvert by nature, and couldn't seem to break into this Jewish family in any meaningful way. Finally, Rabbi M. told me it was time to pick a date for my official conversion ceremony.

Within days of the announcement, I received devastating news. Aunt Jan, dearly beloved and only 11 years older than me, had died unexpectedly. My entire family felt this loss deeply. I drove with my girlfriend to Oklahoma to the funeral.

As I sat in the funeral home chapel, listening to a sermon by a very inexperienced friend of my uncle's, I heard a voice say to me, "You can't give up Jesus." I turned my head to the left and to the right, but no one was looking at me. "You can't give up Jesus." Again, I looked around and no one was paying any attention to me. It repeated again, and perhaps one more time.

I found myself saying, "I can't give up Jesus. I can't give up Jesus." The voice of the minister had faded. I wasn't aware of anything except that thought. I knew to convert to Judaism was to deny Jesus. It turned out I wasn't prepared to do that.

Strangely, even in spite of hearing an audible voice inside my head, I continued to be lost. I searched on the internet for an acceptable church. When I would find a local church that accepted and endorsed the gay lifestyle, I would get excited and go try it out. However, I never went back to any of those churches. It was as if there was a heavy cloud over every single one of them. It was like a giant room lit with only a few 25-watt bulbs. Any church that would accept me as a practicing lesbian lacked all credibility with me. I knew it was wrong, and having someone tell me it was right made me lose all respect for their authority.

I began reading theologians in what is called Progressive Christianity such as Marcus Borg and John Shelby Spong. While their theology was appealing to someone who wanted Jesus without sacrifice, Christ without obedience, I was still hungry. The intellectual spin was interesting, but didn't sound the bell of truth in my spirit. I had experienced a relationship with God when I was a child. I longed to be deeply loved and cherished by Him.

Excerpt from "Prodigal Pursued" by Michelle D. Smith. Former Assistant District Attorney, Michelle spent nearly 25 years as an out, loud, and proud lesbian. A feminist, separatist and anarchist, she wandered through New Age beliefs, witchcraft, Buddhism, agnosticism and all the other "isms" available to explore. At last she encountered the undeniable, indescribable love of Jesus, and everything changed. Today Michelle not only reaches out to touch the LGBT community with the love of God, but also speaks to the church, sharing a message of hope to those who feel they have lost a   loved one to the LGBT lifestyle.

Link: 

http://www.charismanews.com/opinion/57327-how-god-conquered-one-lesbian-s-heart

No money and nothing to eat at times

Published by The StarOnline on 3 December 2012.

Manizel Mazano, from the Philippines, has only one wish – she just wants to be in a place where she can put her miserable experience at a maid agency behind her. “It was terrible. I had no money and nothing to eat at times as the bosses ordered me to work for the past six months. I have not seen any of my salary as well. The worst part is when they (maid agency owners) locked me in a room with other maids after work. I don’t have much to ask now. I just hope we are placed in a much better place after this,” the 22-year-old woman said yesterday at the district immigration office."

Mazano said she paid for her own travel expenses when she came to the country several months ago.

Adinda Tanas, 20, an Indonesian helper, said the agency owner was indifferent to their health. “I once complained of a swollen leg because I was standing too long but they did not care,” she said.

Adinda, who entered Malaysia on a social visit pass in May, also claimed she had not been paid her wages. When she questioned the agency about this, Adinda said she never got a proper answer.

Another Indonesian woman, Yusnida, who arrived here six months ago, said the agency had been bringing her and other women to different homes to work as maids from 5am to 8pm daily. “My hands and legs were swollen from the long hours of work every day. The agent only provided us with two meals a day. There was not enough food and the workload was heavy,” she said.

Yusnida had once asked to go home but was told by the agency that she could only leave once she could settle the cost in agency fees to bring her here.

Link: http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2012/12/3/nation/12404814&sec=nation

Related report:
http://www.malaysia-chronicle.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=44629:105-foreign-maids-rescued-in-klang&Itemid=3

The Port Klang Immigration rescued 105 foreign women confined in a four-storey building of a maid agency in Bandar Baru Klang near here after raiding the premises yesterday. Selangor Immigration director, Amran Ahmad said the raid at about 7.45am found the women aged between 18 and 25 years, locked on three floors of the four-storey building, occupied by the maid agency.

"The women comprised 95 Indonesians, Filipinos (six) and Cambodians (four) who only had social visit passes and were believed to have entered the country between one and six months earlier," he said in a media conference here today.

He said 12 people were arrested, three of them were local men believed to be the agency employees, as well as nine foreign women supervisors, comprising five Indonesians, three Cambodians and one Filipino.

"Based on investigations, all women rescued were believed to be tricked into becoming maids on monthly and daily basis and were not paid wages after working for the past six months. All the women were sent by van every morning to houses around Klang to work as maids and would be confined in the building after work," he said.

Amran said the women were promised a salary of RM700 per month but have not received any money as the agency had claimed that their seven months salary would be charged as payment for working in the country. He said the licensed agency, believed to have been operating for the last five years, would be committing an offence for recruiting the women who have only social visit passes.

He said rescued women alleged they were roughed up and had their food rationed by the agency. Amran said the department was looking for a local man who is the owner of the maid agency to assist in the investigation. The operation was led by Immigration deputy director M. Chandran with 20 Port Klang immigration officers.

– Bernama

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

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.