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.

Transsexual Returns to Original Gender After Relationship With Christ

By Jeff Schapiro, published by The Christian Post on 11 January 2012.

By his early teenage years, the fantasy had only grown. He adopted the female name Andrea West, and began cross dressing. At age 15, he also began learning about Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS) and, although he struggled against his desire to be female, he says those feelings were like a radio playing in his head that he just couldn't turn off.

"While I didn't want to be going down this pathway I seemed to be on this track that I couldn't interrupt, stop or change,” he recalled. “But I wasn't homosexual. I was having dates with girls, I never felt any desire to have relationships with men, so from the standpoint of my sexuality I was always heterosexual.”

“That I think, too, is one of the...misleading factors. Most people consider transgenders to be homosexual and, from my experience...98 to 99 percent of the people who contact me are not homosexual...It's really a gender identity issue, not a sexual preference issue.”

In the midst of his struggle, Heyer got married and had two children. He worked as an engineer for a while and achieved significant financial success.

“But the difficulty that I faced was that I couldn't shut the thoughts or the feelings off," he said. He turned to alcohol to cope with his issues, and eventually his life came crashing down around him.

He and his wife split after 17 years of marriage, and he lost his job when he began making the physical transformation into becoming a woman. He got breast implants, began taking hormones, had electrolysis to reduce the hair on his face and had his genitals removed.

As an adult woman, he gave himself the name Laura, and lived under that identity for eight years.

After studying psychology while still living as a woman, however, he says he eventually realized that a person can't actually change genders and that he was delusional. He also later found out that he had a dissociative disorder and multiple personality disorder as a result of his haunting past.

"You're not born transgender, something happens in your childhood that causes you to not want to be who you are...And today the only thing that is...socially acceptable is calling yourself a transgender,” he said.

“I don't think that's an accurate description of where the people are. They're individuals suffering from a delusional disorder that is going to become very self-destructive if, in fact, they don't get good psychological counseling or psychiatric help during that process.”

While he was living as Laura, Heyer says that he believed in Christ but struggled to be accepted in the church. He recalled one church he attended where he entered as a woman but was asked to leave by the pastor once his identity issues were revealed.

Not all his church experiences were bad, however. He found a church that welcomed him in, even with the knowledge of what his struggle was. The pastor of that church told him, “Our job is to love you and it's God's job to transform you.”

“The church, what it did for me was it allowed me to really get to the point where I asked the Lord for forgiveness. I began to pray for forgiveness. And I realized that the critical point is understanding that you can accept Jesus Christ, but there's a point where that doesn't become real...until you're walking with Christ,” he said.

“Because the real truth that Christ is alive is the fact that you see a transformed life. And so what happened in my life is that when I finally... got down on my knees and was working through these things many years after I had accepted Christ – probably 10 to 15 years after I accepted Christ – I finally felt that I was broken enough as a man that I got on my knees and prayed.”

He says that one day he had a vision while praying with his psychologist. He saw Jesus pick up a baby version of himself, look at him and say, “You will now be saved with me forever.” From that point on he could feel the Holy Spirit moving and guiding him in his life.

Today, Heyer says he no longer struggles with his gender identity and uses his testimony to speak out in support of those who have similar struggles and against those who advocate sex reassignment surgery as the solution to the gender identity problems.

A Swedish study published online in February 2011 examined individuals who had sex reassignments between 1973 and 2003, and found that switching sexes can have a significant negative impact on the individual and is not a good solution to someone's gender identity crisis.

“This study found substantially higher rates of overall mortality, death from cardiovascular disease and suicide, suicide attempts, and psychiatric hospitalizations in sex-reassigned transsexual individuals compared to a healthy control population,” the study's authors write in their conclusion. “This highlights that post-surgical transsexuals are a risk group that need long-term psychiatric and somatic follow-up.”

Heyer is the founder of websites such as Sex Change Regret and True Trans Christians, and is the author of several related books including Trading My Sorrows and, most recently, Paper Genders, which was published in June 2011.

He emphasizes the point that SRS is cosmetic surgery only, that it is “scientifically, medically and surgically impossible” for a man to actually be changed into a woman, but also says other people need to show compassion toward those who are struggling with gender identity issues.

Today Heyer is married once again, and he says that he has found happiness in being the gender that God created him to be.

Read more here: http://www.christianpost.com/news/transsexual-returns-to-original-gender-after-relationship-with-christ-66932/

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.

Oldest Profession, or Oldest Oppression? Ohio Judge Creates Court for Abused Prostitutes

Published by Christianity Today on 1 June 2012. By Amy L. Sherman.

"God, I realize that being a judge is a very unique position. Not many people get this opportunity. Can you show me some way that I could be significant for you in my work?"

About nine months later, Herbert, 51, was presiding in arraignment court. A typical procession of domestic violence victims passed before him. "A woman will come in, and she'll have these bright red marks around her neck. Clumps of her hair will be pulled out, maybe she'll have a puffy eye or a broken jaw—it's horrible." After seeing several of these women, the sheriff brought a prostitute before him. "She looked exactly like one of those victims that I'd been seeing," Herbert recounts. It shook up his categories.

Soon after, Herbert began researching the criminology of prostitution. What he learned stunned him. "Around 87 percent of these women are sexually abused, typically starting at around age 8," he explains. "They start using drugs to deal with that trauma around age 12." The girls run away from home or foster care and are dragged by predatory pimps into the commercial sex trade. "They are not in this lifestyle because they are nymphomaniacs who want to have sex with 15 different men a night."

Before, Herbert admits, "I would have said that women engaged in prostitution were involved in the world's oldest profession." Now he considers it "the world's oldest oppression."

Herbert decided to establish a restorative justice program for these women, launching CATCH Court—"Changing Attitudes to Change Habits"—in September 2009 with the support of his colleagues. Traditional treatment and probation had never been successful with this population, Herbert explains. Prostitutes simply cycled in and out of jail. The other judges told him, "If you want to try this experiment, go right ahead.'"

Through the two-year CATCH Court, women are sent to residential rehabilitation programs to detox and receive intensive therapy. Their movements are monitored electronically, they are subject to random drug tests, and they appear before Judge Herbert weekly in the courtroom to report on the progress. "I wish you could see the way they interact with each other," he says. "They all have each other's phone numbers, and they call, and they make meals for each other, and if one's in the hospital, they all go visit her. It's an amazing community."

Read more here: http://www.christianitytoday.com/thisisourcity/7thcity/oldestprofession.html

The Rhetoric of Chastity: Making Abstinence Sexy

Communications expert Christine Gardner reveals what makes abstinence campaigns work.

Interview by Sarah Pulliam Bailey | posted 11/18/2011 09:52AM Copyright © 2011 Christianity Today.

Evangelical abstinence campaigns have shifted their emphasis from "just say no" to sex before marriage to "just say yes"—within marriage, that is, says Christine Gardner. In Making Chastity Sexy (University of California Press), the Wheaton College communications professor examines the rhetoric of three evangelical abstinence organizations, comparing them with an abstinence campaign in sub-Saharan Africa, where HIV/AIDS is a common threat. Christianity Today online editor Sarah Pulliam Bailey spoke with Gardner about the larger ideas communicated to young people in the campaign.

What did you find upon examining the language of the U.S. abstinence movement?

This is a study of rhetoric in the classical sense—the study of the art of persuasion, focusing on three very specific church-related evangelical campaigns. These groups are using a savvy rhetorical strategy: They are using sex to sell abstinence. They are using the very thing they are prohibiting to admonish young people to wait. They are saying, "If you are abstinent now, you will have amazing sex when you are married." The argument then becomes a promise of marriage.

What are the limitations of this approach?

Such campaigns don't address the challenges of singleness. Also, what if you are gay? What if you do get married, but sex isn't all it's cracked up to be? There are many challenges with this kind of strategy, as savvy and persuasive as it is.

Evangelicals are quite good at interacting with secular culture. We have a long history of adapting secular forms for religious ends. The language of self-gratification in "sexy abstinence" is showing the ability of evangelicals to speak the language of the culture.

But in doing so, are we actually transforming it?

You looked at how Africans view abstinence, saying they "saw their bodies as temples of the Lord and themselves as caretakers … a more deeply theological response."

I assumed that HIV/AIDS would be the big motivator for [African] young people to commit to abstinence. It is big, but I found this other undercurrent that was deeply theological. A leader of one of the programs told me that yes, they do talk about AIDS as a motivator for young people to commit to abstinence, but they noted that "you can get malaria and die, too." AIDS is not as much of a motivator as a Western researcher coming in would have assumed.

How do the American and African messages compare?

Americans have turned a prohibition into a more positive admonition. In this case, pleasing God is an end in itself. Pleasing God will have tangible benefits. In Kenya and Rwanda, it was more of a combination: "Avoid death. Avoid HIV/AIDS, and do it out of fear of God, because he wants you to do this."

'I'm concerned that we may be raising a generation of abstinent teens but setting them up for divorce.'—Christine Gardner

Also, in the places I visited in Africa, the condom is viewed as a medical device, a tool for saving lives. It is not viewed as a tool for promiscuity, as evangelicals in this country largely view it. The same little piece of latex is described so radically differently by evangelicals in two different cultural contexts.

How does Western rhetoric translate to the African context?

It offers an understanding of self and empowers young people, especially women, to respect their bodies. This is, of course, fabulous and indeed, very biblical. But the language of individualism and self-gratification can seep in and pose a problem.

You say that U.S. evangelicals are strange bedfellows with feminists when it comes to sexuality and reproduction.

The campaigns borrow an essentially feminist argument of "my body, myself" to encourage young people to take control of their bodies, to wait to have sex. In essence, evangelical campaigns say secular culture is telling young people that they have no choice but to have sex, that they are governed by their hormones. In contrast, evangelical campaigns tell young people, "You can control your body. You can choose to wait to have sex."

How do these campaigns deal with those who are no longer virgins?

They talk about "second virginity" or "renewed virginity," how a young person can make a decision from that day forward to remain abstinent until marriage. It's a rhetorical construction of virginity, but it's steeped in a theological understanding of God's forgiveness. Some would criticize that as a form of cheap grace, that you can go out and have sex with your boyfriend or girlfriend and then go to the abstinence event and renew your pledge. But the young people I talked to understand that there is no cheap grace. There is no get out of jail free card with these abstinence pledges. The young people who have broken their pledges carry heavy emotional burdens.

What are other ways the U.S. campaigns are successful?

Millions of young people have committed to abstinence since these campaigns began. Have some of the young people broken their pledges? Sure. But this isn't just a numbers game. These programs are successful because they are opening a space for the church to talk about sex. They are teaching both women and men a sense of respect for their physical bodies. We Christians are people of the Incarnation, and yet the physicality of the body scares us. These campaigns empower young people, especially women, to respect their bodies, to realize that they are worth waiting for.

What role do purity rings play in the campaigns?

The purity ring mimics the wedding ring, a physical manifestation of that pledge. One of the young people I interviewed talked about how if someone breaks his commitment, he is encouraged to flush the ring down the toilet in order to maintain the integrity of the symbolic power of the ring. It's a pledge to God, it's a pledge to one's future spouse, but it's also a pledge to a community of other abstinent teens.

What did you learn about the "fairy-tale narrative"?

Some of the campaigns use fairy tales about passive princesses and valiant knights to communicate traditional gender roles. When I looked closer, I found an interesting subversion: The princess, even though she seems to be inactively waiting for her prince, is pictured as actively choosing to adopt princess-like behavior. The dragon that the knights are supposed to slay in order to rescue the princess is really the dragon of their own sexual desires. The campaigns may not be as conservative as they think they are: the young men are impotent, enslaved by their own desires, while the young women are powerfully choosing princess-like behaviors.

What role does modest fashion play?

Modesty is not to be confused with meekness. The campaigns talk about modesty as a form of power. It is similar to the function of the hijab, or head covering, for Muslim women. The hijab forms a kind of community, a physical manifestation that joins women together. It also portrays women's power over men, because it suggests that if they were to reveal their bodies, men would be lusting after them. So if they veil their bodies, they maintain and conserve that power.

What did you find missing from the campaigns?

The campaigns largely avoid talk of sexuality as sacrifice or suffering. But of course it's not sexy to talk about sacrifice and suffering to young people who are raised in a sexualized culture. On the other hand, perhaps this is where the evangelical church is selling out too fast. Language of sacrifice and suffering can be transformative to those who know that sex sells everything from cars to deodorant and, now, abstinence. It's a new kind of asceticism for the generation that has it all.

Instead of trying to master the idioms of the day, we could emphasize the difference the gospel message makes. The gospel is radical enough all on its own, even without the music of Usher or Beyoncé in the background. It's truly an alternative lifestyle. I think that too could be very persuasive among our media-savvy young people. That language of sacrifice and suffering for the purpose of worship to God, and understanding our sexuality as a gift of God, is key.

How might this self-fulfillment language potentially impact a future marriage?

I'm concerned that we may be raising a generation of abstinent teens but setting them up for divorce. I don't think that you need to promise fabulous sex in marriage to make marriage winsome. If we are focusing on great sex in marriage as a reward for abstinence now, then when those young people marry and the sex isn't great—then what? I'm afraid we are making marriage all about sex. So if it's not that, then what is marriage?

You suggest that abstinence is part of a larger endeavor.

By daily acting on that commitment, young people understand through their bodies what it means to become more like Christ. It's essentially a call to holiness that the Scriptures give us. It's just like practicing scales on a piano if you want to become a concert pianist. It's practicing abstinence that allows young people to inhabit their faith commitments in practical and tangible ways.

The largest study and the most quoted critique is that these kinds of pledges only delay sexual debut by about 18 months. I wonder if a more richly theological undergirding to some of the programs could help lengthen those commitments. When the going gets rough, and there is no marriage partner on the horizon, and the abstinence pledge starts to grow cold and stale, what is going to be there for them? I hope that it's something more than a funny skit, a dramatic rock song, or a winsome testimony from a cute guy. I hope there is something deeper from God's Word that's going to stay with them.

Walk and Rawk for Change

Penganjur: EMPOWER, Women's Aid Organisation, Sisters in Islam, Jaringan Rakyat Tertindas (JERIT), Suara Rakyat (SUARAM), Tenaganita, Centre for Independant Journalism (CIJ), Malaysia Youth and Students' Democratic Movement (DEMA), Persatuan Sahabat Wanita Selangor and All Women’s Action Society.

Sambutan 100 tahun Hari Wanita Antarabangsa

Sabtu, 26 Mac 2011, 9.30pg – 12.00tghari,

Pasar Seni, Kuala Lumpur

Mengapa ‘Walk and Rawk for Change’

• Setiap hari, 10 orang wanita melaporkan kes berkaitan penderaan fizikal, seksual dan emosi;
• Sebanyak 9,575 kes perkosaan dilaporkan sepanjang 5 tahun;
• 4 orang wanita diperkosa di Malaysia setiap hari;
• Kes penderaan pekerja asing semakin meningkat;
• Kadar gaji minimum masih belum dikuatkuasakan di Malaysia;
• Gaji pekerja ladang wanita adalah jauh di bawah garis kemiskinan;
• Akta Pekerjaan telah diubahsuai sehingga mengenepikan hak wanita di tempat kerja;
• Perlembagaan Malaysia mengandungi klausa yang berterusan mendiskriminasikan wanita;
• Pengubahsuaian Akta Undang-Undang Keluarga Islam telah menidakkan hak-hak wanita Muslim;
• Penyertaan wanita dalam politik adalah kurang dari 10% sepanjang tempoh 20 tahun;
• Tiada peningkatan terhadap penyertaaan wanita dalam tenaga kerja, hanya 47% sepanjang tempoh 20 tahun;
• Isteri warga asing yang telah bermastautin di Malaysia selama 10 tahun masih dinafikan hak taraf penduduk tetap.

Mari sertai acara ini sekiranya ada ingin:-

- Dilihat, didengari dan diberi hak sama rata.

We want women’s voice and representation at all levels of decision making.

WILL YOU WALK WITH US?

Organisers: EMPOWER, Women's Aid Organisation, Sisters in Islam, Jaringan Rakyat Tertindas (JERIT), Suara Rakyat (SUARAM), Tenaganita, Centre for Independant Journalism (CIJ), Malaysia Youth and Students' Democratic Movement (DEMA), Persatuan Sahabat Wanita Selangor and All Women’s Action Society.

100 years of women's struggles - in commemoration of International Women's Day

Saturday, March 26 · 9:30am - 12:30pm
Central Market, Kuala Lumpur
Why we MUST walk

• Everyday, 10 women report physical, emotional and sexual abuse;
• 9,575 statutory rape cases were reported over the past 5 years;
• Every day, four women are raped in Malaysia;
• Migrant workers are increasingly abused, tortured and enslaved;
• Basic, decent minimum wages do not yet exist for all Malaysians;
• Women in the plantation and informal sectors earn well below the poverty line;
• Amendments to the Employment Act remove work security and erode the rights women gained at work;
• The Federal Constitution, the Supreme Law of the Land, have clauses that continue to discriminate against women;
• Amendments to the Islamic Family Law Act have diminished the rights of Muslim women;
• Representation of women in politics has been less than 10% for the past 20 years;
• Women labour force participation has stagnated at 47% for the past 20 years;
• Foreign wives with more than 10 years of residency still denied permanent residence.

We walk because it is our right - to be seen, heard and respected as equals.

We walk for all women who remain hidden, silenced and discriminated.

We call upon ALL parliamentarians, state assembly persons, government representatives

AND the PEOPLE of Malaysia -- Make the Change.

We want women’s voice and representation

at all levels of decision making.

WILL YOU WALK WITH US?