Not the sexy- drugs and politics

In my "Social Problems" class, we're talking about drugs, about their use, abuse, prosecution, and the potential for decriminalization.

It's hard to be objective about this. It's really hard.

Drug abuse has fucked my life up- badly. My mother was an alcoholic, and because of her many, many DUIs, she spent the majority of my childhood either in the hospital or prison. Later, as a teen, despite the fact that I have never touched an illegal drug (unless you count the occasional rum'n'coke with my father as a teen), cocaine took my brother, my lover, my home, my job, my car, and nearly my career in the military. Even now, the specter of addiction, and the mistakes of both myself and my loved ones haunt me.

And yet... and yet... I pride myself on my objectivity, and now that my wounds are healing a little (a very little!), I'm learning to look at drug use with a less fearful eye. (It helps to have a lover who's experimented with every drug under the sun!)

The evidence is mounting that marijuana is significantly less dangerous than cigarettes or alcohol, and that it can have great effectiveness in helping to treat the nausea and discomfort associated with chemotherapy, as well as other maladies. Certainly, while driving 'high' is not to be recommended, I've never seen evidence that its any worse than driving drunk- which is also illegal, and likely to remain that way!

It's well-known that the prison-industrial complex makes billions of dollars a year, and nearly as well-known that nearly half of American inmates are incarcerated for non-violent drug offenses. It's a matter of common sense that a reputab;e liquor vendor will refuse to sell alcohol to a minor, and that an average street vendor of illegal drugs will not. One might also consider that while hundreds of billions of dollars are spent on the "War on Drugs", drug use among teens has been holding steady for years, with nearly half of American teens admitting to having experimented with drugs at some point in their lives.

Clearly, my personal distast for drug use aside, the War on Drugs is failing, and we as society failing to come to grips with it.

Certainly Holland's policy of decriminalization and compassionate care for addicts has actually led to a decrease in criminal acitivity and even a decrease in drug use.

Would this work in the US? I'm afraid I'm not far enough along toward my sociology degree to answer this with any accuracy. American culture and Dutch culture are dissimilar, and the sizes and populations of our respective countries are very different.

One thing, however, is clear: American drug policy doesn't work.

Sexual violence- the sad, not the sexy

So I just finished watching Bad Girls. It’s a pretty decent movie, but the movie itself isn’t what I’m thinking about.

I’m thinking about sexual violence.

Bad Girls got one thing right, from a sociological perspective. Every time that the female characters acted in a way that was out of keeping with mid 19^th-century mores, the immediate response was not simply violence, but specifically sexual violence. The opening is one of the women- they are all prostitutes- refusing to kiss one of her clients. He responds by slapping and attempting to rape her. Every time a woman stands up to a man, she is consistently punished by sexual violence- one of the main plot devices are the brutal rapes of two of the characters at different points in the movie.

While it ends on a semi-hopeful note- the women kill their attackers and stake a claim in the Klondike- the theme is consistent, and the only character who finds a successful relationship is the semi-helpless one who never abandons “feminine” behavior.

I’d like to write this off as an isolated example, or even the necessity of a “big evil” for Hollywood to have the women struggle against. I can’t, though, because I’ve seen too many movies like it, and I’ve experienced the reality of this mindset. No, I’ve seen too many examples of women punished with violence- particularly sexual violence- for acting outside of accepted gender norms.

And given my thoughts earlier on my own less-than-clear-cut gender, is it any wonder that this scares me?

Rape, and not the fun kinky kind

Go read this Dan Savage column, and it's attendant comments.

Go on, read it. I'll be here when you get back.

Now see why I'm just a teensy bit homicidal? Sure, maybe the commenters were trolling. Maybe I should ignore it, and them.

But I can't, see, because too many people still honestly believe that.

Honestly believe that being drunk and not screaming, not slugging him, mean consent.

Hell, I know men who still believe that being drunk means consent.

Let's make something clear.

It doesn't.

Sure, I'm probably preaching to the choir here. But I don't care. I need to preach this little sermon, and I don't care who to right now, because it hits too close to home. It tears open my own scars a little too deeply, a little too bloodily.

And now I'm bleeding rage and decade-old pain, and I've got to fling the blood and pain somewhere.

Congratulations, you're reading this and therefore the lucky recipient.

See, I was raped.

Sort of, kind of, quasi-date-couldn't-ever-prove-it-in-court raped.

But you know what? To the scars in my head, it was rape. To the scars on my heart, and on my sexuality, it was rape.

He was my 'boyfriend'. Read as: I had a gigantic crush on him, I was a naive kid, and he found it amusing that he could get me to do damned near anything.

When he broke my hymen fingering me too roughly, he laughed. Thrilled he'd 'popped my cherry'. I still cringe at that phrase. I cried for over an hour. It hurt, and I hadn't wanted it.

When we had sex, I wasn't ready for it. I cooperated, because I thought I was 'supposed to'. I told him I didn't think I was ready for this, that I didn't want to.

He kissed me, told me to trust him.

And because I was 15, and I wanted so badly to please him, wanted so badly for him to want me like I wanted him, I cooperated.

Should I have stopped him? Of course.

But like so many women, I was trained not to fight back. Trained that the men I was in relationships with had a certain right to me, to my body.

It hurt.

There was no fun to it, no feeling good. There was no hymen in the way anymore, but I was young, and scared, and not really aroused at all, and it just hurt. I was so grateful when he finished. I wanted to curl up and cry, but I didn't want my sister to know anything was wrong.

We went horseback riding the next day.

He broke up with me on the next school day.

No, it wasn't a terrible, violent, forced-at-gunpoint rape.

And that may have you shaking your head and saying, "sad story, but so what?"

Well, here's 'what'.

I'm 24 years old. This happened nearly 10 years ago. And I still have nightmares about it. And in those nightmares is mixed in what-I-should-have-dones, and the guilt for not doing it. Because you see, even though he pushed me into it, I am the one with the guilt. I am the one who should have stopped it.

After all, he was just being 17, y'know? Of course he'd try to have sex if he could... of course he wouldn't take a 15 year old virgin's fears into account.

Of course the 15 year old virgin should have had the balls to tell her older boyfriend whom she worshipped, "no," to something he wanted.

Of course it was my fault.

In fact, I'm willing to lay even money that if you ever asked him, if you ever found him and looked him in the eye and asked him, "Did you rape Bella?" that he'd be shocked, appalled, and offended. Of course he didn't.

I didn't scream.

I didn't hit him.

I didn't fight him.

Of course it wasn't rape.

And nearly 10 years later, that haunts me still.

That closes my cunt with fear and expectation of pain, and stops me from having sex with my lover for nearly a year.

That makes me break down in scenes even with people I thought I trusted.

That makes me terrified to drink in public even with people I love and trust around me.

Call it what you want, but in my head- and in my heart and more importantly, in my sexuality- it was rape and it's still left scars.

Being a little drunk and thinking, "she'll some around," is not an excuse, and it's not consent.

Yes, we can- we have.

This is where I live

Most everyone int he pervy community knows that Alabama is the last state in the US to ban the same of sex toys.
In 1998, Alabama enacted a statute that forbade the distribution, possession for distribution, or offer to distribute devices "designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of the human genital organs[.]"
This law was challenged in 1999, but was upheld by judges worried about "public morality."

Alabama law also still prosecutes sodomy, and yes, cunnilingus is included under it.
The first reported sodomy case (with a human) was Woods v. State, in 1914. This case had to decide if fellatio constituted a violation of the law. The Alabama Court of Appeals decided unanimously that it was. Lifting verbatim from the Illinois Honselman decision (q.v.), the Court decided that fellatio was a crime against nature, without giving any analysis for its conclusion.

In the next reported sodomy case, Brown v. State, from 1945, the Alabama Supreme Court dealt with the issue of cunnilingus and the crime against nature statute. In an opinion notable for its lack of analysis, the Court decided that cunnilingus was just as much a crime against nature as fellatio.

And, my personal favorite,
In 1935, trying to expand the existing therapeutic sterilization law, Alabama attempted to go the rest of the country one better with a bill to include

"those suffering from perversions, constitutional psychopathic personalities or marked departures from normal mentality[.]"

This group included any inmate of a penal institution or insane asylum whose "physical, mental or moral condition" would be improved and who was a

"sexual pervert, Sadist, homosexualist, Masochist, Sodomist, or any other grave form of sexual perversion [sic]."

The sterilization law was struck down as unconstitutional, BUT:
In 1951, Alabama joined the chorus of states singing the praises of psychopathic offender laws by enacting its own statute in which anyone convicted of a sex offense could be referred for a psychiatric examination if believed to be a criminal sexual psychopathic person. If so found, the individual could be committed to an institution until "fully and permanently" recovered from the psychopathy. If recovered and discharged, the prisoner was to be placed on probation "for such reasonable time as the circumstances may justify."
In 1961, Alabama revised its psychopathic offender law to eliminate the need for a criminal conviction to trigger the operation of the law. One merely had to be "charged with" a sexual offense in order to have proceedings instituted.
(This was deemed unconstitutional in 1973.)

Alabama passed a comprehensive criminal code revision in 1977.
The sodomy law was changed to "sexual misconduct," which outlawed "deviate sexual conduct."
The definition of "deviate sexual conduct" was

any act of sexual gratification between persons not married to each other, involving the sex organs of one person and the mouth or anus of another.

Consent was no defense,and the penalty was set at up to one year in jail. In addition, a "public lewdness" provision was enacted to prohibit "any lewd act in a public place" which the offender "knows is likely to be observed by others who would be affronted or alarmed." Thus, simple acts like kissing or hand holding could get a Gay man or Lesbian into trouble.

All of this comes from The History of Sodomy Laws in the US, and references are there.

Yeah. And I live here.
Although in Alabama's defense, although I can't find a date of revocation, the sodomy laws are no longer on the books- I've checked. Only one which protects minors (ages 12-16) from sodomy by an older person (over the age of 16) is still present. This is most likely due to the Lawrence v. Texas case which ruled unconstitutional all state sodomy laws.