Sex

The first is the age-old assumption that women who take payment for sex – who are overwhelmingly coerced or trafficked into this rotten “industry”

One of those assertions that simply isn’t true, isn’t it.

And women are being trafficked into the UK from countries such as Romania and effectively held as sex slaves to be raped by several men a day paying for the privilege.

Another of those assertions which is not even congruent with reality.

FFS, a real, proper, total and whole investigation was done into this. Operation Pentameter.

The UK’s biggest ever investigation of sex trafficking failed to find a single person who had forced anybody into prostitution in spite of hundreds of raids on sex workers in a six-month campaign by government departments, specialist agencies and every police force in the country.

It’s just not true.

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a href=”https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/aug/18/you-feel-a-bit-mass-produced-donor-conceived-people-on-the-export-of-uk-sperm”>Experts have warned that sperm donated in the UK is being exported and used to create large numbers of children across multiple countries, contradicting a strict 10-family limit that applies in the UK.

A legal loophole means that while a single donor can be used to create no more than 10 families in UK fertility clinics, there are no restrictions on companies making sperm or eggs available for additional fertility treatments abroad.

Sperm is also imported into the country. Which must face the same problems.

The problem being that the limitations upon who may donate being so strict that there aren’t enough who meet them.

Sweden has registered Europe’s first case of the more dangerous variant of mpox which is spreading rapidly in Africa, after the WHO declared a global public health emergency.

“We have now […] had confirmation that we have one case in Sweden of the more grave type of mpox, the one called Clade 1,” Health and Social Affairs Minister Jakob Forssmed told a press conference on Thursday.

Sweden’s Public Health Agency said: “It is the first case caused by clade 1 to be diagnosed outside the African continent.”

Last time around with this one we had the more actively gay insisting that it was terrible that no one was taking it seriously. Then a few out here said look, if you stop shagging around quite so much then perhaps the outbreak will die down. At which point some of the more sensible actively gay said Guys, why don’t we stop shagging around quite so much for a few weeks? At which point the nascent epidemic did start to fade away. The non gay folk who’d said shag less were still vilified because homophobic bastards, the less shagging as a triumph of the gay community overcoming adversity.

It’s not specifically gay of course. Not the mechanics that is – it’s that there’s that portion of Teh Gayers who are, by the standards of the rest of society, virulently multipartnered, almost randomly orgiastic. Chacun a son gout of course but there are always costs to everything, just as there are benefits.

It’s going to be fun to see whether the spread this time works along the same lines. Well, for observers – this isn’t going to be fun for anyone who gets it.

One more thought on it – PrEP works great against spreading HIV. But the behaviour that allows does leave opportunities for other opportunistic infections, no?

Their eyes opened by the swinging 60s, and with women empowered by the pill,

When you’ve control of something in scarcity then you’ve power over those that want it. When there’s an abundance of supply then you, the supplier, is less empowered.

Obviously, it did mean that women got to have more sex and more fun. But not wholly sure that’s exactly the same as empowered.

Yamauchi said that the campaign is “exploitative, demeaning, sexist, regressive rubbish”. “Of course the intended audience is men,” she added. “Portraying women as sex objects will not encourage teenage girls into sport.”

Perhaps not. And perhaps the portrayal should be different and all that. And possibly even not “objects” and all that.

But it is true that teenage girls are considered sexy by humans. Which is that difficulty. Those changes at puberty are exactly what signal to other humans about sex. Sure, sure, we can run with all sorts of societal controls – not until 16, or 18, or until marriage, or she wants to or whatever. But the base thing really is that tits, hips n’hairy pudenda are sexy simply because that’s what signifies looming fertility in humans.

Which is that bit of a problem.

‘Sex in an LA spa was strangely wholesome, like an extension of the wellness experience’: This is how we do it in America
…
Rob used to be hyper-monogamous – but then he met Mikey and discovered a whole world of experimentation

Anyone ever seen the word or phrase “hyper-monogamy” before?

Revealed: how a US far-right group is influencing anti-gay policies in Africa
US anti-pornography campaigning group has advised, promoted and endorsed anti-LGBTQ+ activists and politicians in Uganda

The very worst of extreme Christian colonialism, of course it is.

#Whereas US and other pro-gay rights campaigning groups aren’t colonialism at all, they’re just ‘uman rights, right?

Foreigners tellin’ everyone brown what to do is only sometimes colonialism, see?

OK, so age of consent, under that it’s rape. Fair enough. But what if in one of the multis- it’s common for a relationahip to start under 16?

A man who raped a 12-year-old girl was acquitted by a court that deemed their relations formed “part of the cultural reality of the gipsy community”.

Under Spanish law, minors under the age of 16 cannot consent to sex. But the court ruled that the man, who was 20 years old at the time, should benefit from a legal exception.

The ruling in Ciudad Real in central Spain, holds that the relationship was “always consensual within the framework of a romantic relationship”, adding that the two were “close in age and maturity”.

The acquittal is the latest in a series of rulings in which judges have taken into account customs followed by some of Spain’s Roma population when dealing with cases of sexual assault concerning minors.

It was rape because she was 12. In the eyes of her community it – so we are told at least – it was a normal enough time to have selected a mate.

According to the ruling, the defendant said he did not know the exact age of the minor and discovered that she was 12 only when they went to the doctor about her pregnancy.

Prosecutors had asked for a sentence of 11 years for a crime of repeated rape against a minor.

However, the court ruled to acquit, describing it as “an undisputed fact [that] the relationship took place in the cultural and social context of the gipsy community, where marriages between very young people are frequent”.

Whose rules win? And how multicultural are we being if our culture overrides their?

Making the case against her, barrister Joe Allman sought to illuminate how differently society tends to view female teacher predators compared to their male counterparts. Had Rebecca been “Robert” instead, and the complainants girls not boys, the response would surely not have been the same, the prosecutor argued.

This thought experiment was more than a courtroom flourish. There is evidence to support the idea that society does indeed view female teachers who prey on male school pupils in an alternative light to how male teachers preying on girls are seen.

Society does view it differently. Much of the rest of the article is about how terribly damaging such is and how awfully damaged the lads are by having had sex at 15.

And yet – why does society regard this differently?

Leave aside the teacher part – position of power, duty of care and all that. Think instead about 30 year old haveing sex with 15 year old. Society does view it differently dependent upon the male and or female ages there, which way around are they?

We can and should go on – that society views them differently means they are different. Because this is exactly the sort of thing where it’s the views of society that make the difference. That is, it is different because society views it differently. QED.

Her film was not meant to be “a demonstration of anything”, but its title and synopsis alone – the story of transsexual women moving from Palestine to Tel Aviv to live out their new identities – risked being read as a political statement on the current conflict.

In Israel, gay marriage can be registered but only if it is performed abroad, and male-to-female sex reassignment surgery is carried out in public hospitals, while in the Palestinian territories homosexuality remains a taboo.

Of course, it rather is a demonstration of something, isn’t it?

Admittedly, not something I’d previously given a great deal of thought to but apparently this is the sort of thing that makes The Guardian’s problems pages these days:

I am a man in my early 30s married to a man in his mid-50s. We have always been in an open relationship: we met at a sex party. When we met I was always a bottom and he a top. Over time, however, he has become obsessed with bottoming. He never penetrates me, even in a group, and has starting expressing jealousy about the tops that I attract. I feel he is throwing our life away in pursuit of a pipe dream and I long to get back the dominant top that I married – a role he is suited for physically. He has been looking at escort websites, which I find depressingly inevitable. How can I wake him up to reality?

How unlike the hiome life of our own Dear Queen, no?

Stormy Daniels says sexual encounter with Donald Trump left her ‘shaking’

Apparently not then?

The programme collates allegations made by 10 men, most in the US, some who worked with Spacey when he was the director of the Old Vic theatre in London. With the exceptions of one who was at high school with Spacey, and another who says he encountered him in 1981 long before he was famous, the men all level more or less the same accusation: an influential man made unwanted advances to them and, at the time, they didn’t feel able to complain. Only one has come forward publicly before.

If someone insists upon concluding unwanted advances, perhaps carrying on with unwanted advances, then that’s a crime. If someone makes unwanted advances then that’s human sexuality.

There is, obviously enough, always a question about whether an advance is wanted or not. That cannot be resolved unless an advance is made, considered and accepted or rejected. Someone, somewhere, has to ask “You wanna, you know?” or no you know will ever happen.

To complain about advances is to be non-human. To insist upon completing rejected advances is to be criminal. Most of what’s interesting about human sexuality (no, not sex, but the surrounds of it) happens between the two.

She said she was “groomed” into regular intercourse and felt used as a “sex object” to help his boredom.

That he was a GP, that patients were involved, that it took place in the examining room in the surgery, that some of it was claimed to be forced – all good reasons why he’s lost his licence to practice.

But that a shag is just a way to pass the time, to alleviate the ennui, erm, yes?

Let’s stop pretending that paying for sex is anything but abuse
It’s revolting to see men casually boast about how they treat prostitutes — they should be shamed and jailed

Sigh.

Things that are illegal to do to people – beat them up, say, or cheat them – should obviously be illegal for all people. But things that people voluntarily agree to do – rent out a body part for 10 minutes, say – should be legal.

And leaving sex work where it is, legal, means that it’s possible for those who undertake it to report and therefore be protected from those things which are illegal for all people.

Legal prostitution is safer than illegal that is.

Now, obviously, those who charge for sex in a different way might not like the cash but otherwise cost unencumbered supply but that’s just one of life’s little toughies.

It’s also possible to put this a different way. Why should middle aged women be allowed to control the sexuality of other adults?

My husband is my co-parent, friend and lover – but he isn’t the only person I have sex with: the inside story of an open marriage

Another way to look at this is that aristocratic marriage has moved down into the bourgeoisie. After all, once that heir and spare had been delivered it was thought somewhat uncouth to even try to determine the paternity of any others. The same being true of other such aristocratic marriages of course so it all evened out.

A source close to Mr Menzies told The Times he met a man on an online dating website and went to his flat before then going with another man to a second address and continuing drinking.

The source added it was falsely claimed he was sick at one point and several people at the address demanded £5,000 they asserted was to cover the cost of cleaning and other expenses.

Traditionally it was the bushes in Hyde Park wasn’t it? Such winter activity being one of those things that made you proud to be British.

Still, makes the solution fairly simple. Increase the defence budget and keep the Household Division up to muster.

The former page-three model Samantha Fox has admitted to being drunk and disorderly in alleged scrap with her wife on a British airways flight.

David Bonney realised his employer, the Royal Air Force, was investigating his sexuality within minutes of entering the guard room at RAF Mount Batten, a military base near Plymouth. It was 1991 and Bonney, then a 21-year-old medical assistant, had just been escorted from his post at the medical centre by military police. He sat down in the guard room, opposite the duty staff, and the interrogation began.

“Questions about my sex life,” says Bonney, now 55. “Questions about witnessing me with other gay people. Questions about things I said on the phone to my mother.” He says there was shouting, swearing, banging on the desk. “Threats to me, threats to my career, threats to my family.” Bonney hadn’t told anyone in the military that he was gay. Before 2000, it was illegal for gay people to serve in the British armed forces and he knew a confession would cost him his career. “They wanted to get rid of me,” he says. “Anything they could to just manipulate me into confessing, to frighten the hell out of me.”

The initial interrogation took two hours. The RAF’s investigation into Bonney’s sexuality lasted two years. He says he was questioned more than a dozen times, spied on, threatened and intimidated.

When Bonney did confess, in October 1993, he was court martialled. He received a dishonourable discharge, a criminal record, multiple fines and was sentenced to six months in detention – one month of which was in solitary confinement. They would have taken his medals, too, had he not hidden them. The solitary confinement was, he says, a vindictive decision, he says, because “I made them work for two years to try to get rid of me” before he confessed.

Bonney served four months in prison, before being let out early for good behaviour. He is believed to be the last person in the UK to be imprisoned for being gay.

You can describe that as being imprisoned for being gay, sure. But that’s not quite right either.

He was imprisoned for lying while being in the RAF. Which is a slightly different thing.

If he hadn’t been in the RAF then he wouldn’t have served time. Thus the serving time was about the RAF, not about being gay.

It is somewhat impolite to be as logical as this these days but there we are.

Adultery is set to become legal in the state of New York with politicians poised to scrap the crime of infidelity among married people.

So now they’ll spend more time fucking each other rather than the country.

Sorry, obvious joke is obvious.