Louisiana Congressman Breaks Down Talking About Oil Spill: comments
"Stewardship is a two way street, but the people who control the traffic lights are fast asleep. The government is bleeding money like the gulf is bleeding oil and the buck stops at the President's desk.
I trust nobody currently in office, including all the Republicans."
Oil Reaches Louisiana Shores: gallery
Oligarchy: definition
Why the Kendra Wilkinson Sex Tape Should Make You Angry
"This isn't a sex tape, really. It's that thing we talk about that happens to our young women. That thing that we, as grown-ups, write about and research incessantly and condemn broadly, but don't remember so vividly. It's right here on video."
COMMENTS
"LET'S not pretend that releasing a sex tape of somebody without their consent isn't an abusive act. It is. It's a way of asserting power over somebody who should be free of you. It does not matter if the video was "consensual", or she once thought of releasing it herself.
The fact that men feel the right to do that just reinforces what the content of the video does. That the wants and needs of women, their level of comfort or whether or not they're enjoying themselves, doesn't matter. Not anywhere in life, and certainly not in sex."
"PEOPLE watching this tape are watching a young woman learn the same twisted lesson that so many young women are learning without cameras present: sex is not about women's pleasure; for women, sex is a performance.
And that lesson, absorbed by every generation of young people, IS the culture of rape -- and that includes everything from 'If you loved me' to 'It hurts? Just five more minutes...' to 'Shut up and take it'."
"IT'S some weird combination of dreadful and comforting to know that if you bring up coercion and/or assault in a room of only women, nearly all of them will have a story to share. And yet, it doesn't make sense to say that many men are sociopaths, does it? It has to be environmental, please G-d. It's like we are all drinking from a poisoned well."
"I FIND it strange that this video offended you, but porn does not. Because if you listen to porn stars talk about their first few experiences in the industry, almost all of them describe something very similiar to this situtation. That is most of them started at age 18, hardly out of childhood, were pressured by a director, producer, etc. into doing more than they signed up for such as full on porn as opposed to soft-core or stills, were completely uncomfortable and felt awful about it later, but ended up getting addicted to the money or atention and sticking with it
Or are you saying the first time someone pressures them into this it's wrong, but once their self-esteem is so damaged by that experience the pressure is no longer required, it's perfectly ok?
I guess I'm just wondering at what point being pressured and taken advantage of as a teen becomes empowering? When you get the first check?"
"KENDRA is coerced several times into doing something she clearly does not want to do. Because she consents, it is not rape, but it does qualify as sexual assault. It is still wrong. It is still awful.
I think the very worst part of this IS the fact that she's getting paid lots of money. She must know that the money she's receiving is coming from a video of a moment when she was being taken advantage of that millions of people will not only see but find sexually exciting. To be coerced, demeaned and disrespected like that is bad enough, damaging enough, but then for that experience to be denied as horrible and viewed instead as "sexy" or "erotic" would be devastating.
This worries me because I feel like it further promotes the idea that women have to kick, scream and fight for their lives in order to say no. Our voices become much quieter when men learn that all they need to do is PUSH A LITTLE HARDER to get what they want."
"THIS post is depressingly timely for me. I was reviewing my sexual past in my head recently, and all of a sudden it occurred to me that most of my early sexual experiences (including losing my virginity and the majority of the sex I had in college) either started off with me actively not wanting to be there or kind of resigning myself to it. I've been in so many situations where I asked a guy to leave and he wouldn't. Once I tried to push him off the bed and he just stayed put because he was bigger and heavier than me, which was a frightening revelation. Once a guy just crept into my room and lay down in my bed while I was drunk. Many times I had sex with a guy because we had had sex before and he just expected it now. I kept having sex with men I had long since stopped being attracted to because we were "such good friends" and I didn't want to "ruin the relationship." I was shy and anxiety-ridden and felt unattractive, and it was such a self-esteem boost to find out that someone found me attractive that I was afraid to lose their attention.
None of this is shockingly original stuff, but I guess I just found it strange that for most of my life I had thought of my sex life as one way, and all of a sudden it has revealed itself to be a whole lot sadder than I remembered it. God, it's so good to be older and not give a shit what people think anymore. It really improves your sex life!"
"HER making money off of the tape is so fucking irrelevant. It's the content that matters."
"ONE thing that really saddens me is that this post resonated not only with me but with so many other women on this board. This was college for me too. All of my sexual encounters had this sense of insecurity and ambivalence wherein I knew logically that I had a say. Yet underlying so much of the pressure from guys was this assumption, for some, that 'no' meant 'yes.'"
"I WAS with a man once when I was about 19 who I made wear a condom. He took it off right before he came. Slipped his hands down there and off it went.
Of course I figured it out, I thought the condom had broken or leaked. Nope, he took it off. I could have killed him. He rolled over like he was then going to sleep in my bed. I kicked his ass out of my bed and out of my apartment in his tighty-whiteys. I was livid.
But, I've been raped. That wasn't rape. It was a violation of trust, rude, disgusting, and scary, but I still had some power over the situation. I wouldn't have been able to kick him out if I hadn't."
"AFTER the 10th time my ex hit me, I still wasn't able to walk away from the relationship. Courage is a tricky thing in relationships."
"THE fact that I would want the money enough to agree to the commercialization of the rape hasn't got anything to do with the fact that young women like me don't always know how to say no, and that that sucks for us, and hurts."
"YOU'RE talking about a woman who has been taught that her sexuality is a commodity. No amount of dollars can repair that dehumanization."
"I HAVEN'T watched the video, but it's fairly obvious that men are turned on by power, and she could be using this knowledge to her advantage during the filming. Perhaps she was playing a coquettish role intentionally."
"HOW does this man not have broken legs yet?"
"I HATE when people say that women can just "say no and walk away." Rape is often a lot more complicated than that, playing on power and trust. I was not pinned down or physically beaten during mine, but I promise you, I was so freaked out I could not move. Don't be so sure it's black and white."
"JUST because the law has created a definition of something does not mean that that definition is accurate, complete, or necessarily just...To clarify my point: what I am saying is that the only person who is really authorized to judge Kendra's experience is Kendra. If she feels that her experience was not consensual, then it wasn't. If she thinks it was, it was."
