September 2007

These women need our help

Watched a documentary on the sex trade in the philippines tonight. They have slave houses with young women kidnapped into warrens of nasty little cubicles with a shelf and a bed and a curtain. Rough shabby materials used to build them, no cleaning done, the communal toilets just rough porcelain bowls with packed brown shit all around them. These women spend their entire short lives in these dark infested mazes servicing male needs, whatever the male might demand, on demand 24/7 till they're too far gone to be any use. After that? Who knows. If you try, you can find porn that shows how it ends for many of them.
What kind of man would GO there? Ok, don't answer that, I know. What puzzles me is that, even internationally, there could be enough of them to support so many of these Casas as they're called. One such I could understand, but the cities are riddled with them! How can there be so many brutal men willing to go into these nightmares and take a part in the savage abuse of these women? How do they justify their behaviour? How can they think these women somehow belong there? Even if they were not human, the conditions would shock any thinking or feeling man. The men I've known in my life, both friends and lovers, would fight tooth and nail to free these women if they just got taken to such a Casa once! Were they unable to expend that effort, at the very least they wouldn't patronize a place like that. How then can there be so many men, and make no mistake they're american and european as the offspring that turn up show in their features, to support these places?
And now I take it home, because I live here, because I might have some influence here, and cannot there. I do not know of any such brothels here in Canada, though I suspect one could find them if one really wanted to. There is probably at least one house in this country where a man can indulge any level of fantasy, however cruel and selfish it be. However, it would be costly, it would be rare, and it would be in the greatest secrecy. Aside from exposing one to the law if found, there's naught we can do about it.
What then is there locally that we, as caring equalists, or feminists, or compassionate citizens, can do for our least women? Those women who embrace strangers hourly? We legalize and regulate their trade. Women are dying on the street. Women are being tortured, beaten and murdered, robbed and raped, in the pursuit of their trade. Whatever your feelings about paid sex, nobody can deny the trade has been around forever as far as our history can tell. No amount of prohibition has ever stopped it. If we devised a system of regulation we could free these women from pimps, providing for them a way to ply their trade with security and access to tailored services. They would have quicker access to the resources to leave that life when they were ready for a hand up. They would have better health care. The men who use them would have better health care also, reducing the spread of STDs. The crime factor would take a serious hit. Prostitution money fuels far too many criminal enterprises including mugging of customers, kidnapping of young girls, rape of minors, drug trafficking and extensive property crimes.
I don't want to try and go into the details and structure of a regulated system. I do not doubt there are many qualified people who could aid in the design, many of them having been involved in the sex industry at some time, or in helping women in that trade. I also suspect that the tax system could see a massive influx of funds from regulation of prostitution. These women need us. They need us to stand up and demand our govt. start the process of legalizing and regulating prostitution. We need inspectors, we need systems, we need rules. We need to get these women out of the back alleys and into clean brothels with work standards that consider their health and well being.

news article says people aren't washing their hands enough

They say they don't understand why people don't wash their hands more in public washrooms. After all, we could cut the spread of disease by doing so! Well yeah, cleanliness is lovely, sure. So why don't we? I admit I'm one of those folks you see ducking out from stall to door. Why? Well first off, I figure if I didn't get my hands dirty I don't need to clean 'em. Yes that's right. I can tell if I touched something that's dirty (aside from doors and such.) So sure, I could just wash 'em anyway, right? Wrong. Why wouldn't I? Well the first reason is moisturizer. My hands get terribly dried out and I just haven't gotten myself to carry a small bottle around in my purse. One thing holding me back on that is I don't like to carry luggage and there's only so much room in a purse for stuff. Mine are full. So that's one reason. Maybe if public restrooms offered a squirt of moisturizer (I'd even pay a dime for it in a vending machine) we'd wash more? But then there's reason #2. No towels. I just won't use those stupid fucking air blowers. If you didn't get every scrap of soap off your hands it lathers up on youand you're back at the sink. It takes forever to dry your hands, long long waits. I mean, I'm just not into standing there!
So why don't people wash their hands more often? They don't percieve the need vs the inconvenience, that's why. If I know I got my hands dirty, by golly I wash 'em.

Sam's here!

So I've got a new parrot...
Sam is a nice little fellow, thoroughly overwhelmed and shocked. He's definitely bigger than my senegal Petey. Sam has pretty dull feathers with lots of signs of recent moult and a serious need for good preening and bathing. He looks really skinny too, you can read the structure of his skeleton a bit. I can see his collarbone shape when he moves his wings and his chest is too pointy. Not like broad brassy Petey at all. No wonder the guy was shocked at how nice petey looks. I took it for granted that feathers shimmer and shine, beaks gleam like satin, and muscles smoothly round the firm body. Not so with Sam. Poor guy looks like a survivor! His cage was pretty dirty but not in a serious neglect kind of way, more in a casual "we hate dealing with this" sort of way. He had but one small wooden perch across the corner and some toys. Not much to get around in really. The cage is nice enough. The food bowl has to be replaced, it's aluminum or something, a sure fire zinc problem anyway.
His family were nice if you dont' mind kids. Very good kids, gentle with him and interested in him, but everyone was afraid of being bitten. Dad was never home and nobody else could really handle sam. They figured I'd expertly march in, towel him, and haul him away in a kennel they tell me I needed to bring... Well they loaned me a cat carrier and I used my coat to gently persuade him in the carrier, he and I both trembling the whole time. I pick up on a critter's feelings that way and if they're distressed I just get sick from it. I've never towelled a parrot! LOL I can tell though, Sam and I are going to get along very well after the adjustment. I think he'll like the peace and quiet after a home with 3 young children zipping around in their loud high voices. Just the 20mins I was there was enough to wear me out. Kids always do. It's the solitary bratty genius kids I like. The rest are just too frenetic for me.
On the way home we stopped at the pet store for some perches. I got a couple of rope twisty perches and a concrete nail trimmer perch. Needless to say he's not impressed. He's up there in the top of that cage, it's got a tent-style top, and won't come down for anything. "ahhh, weird things!" Up there his familiar toy hangs and from it, hangs he in the twilight. Quiet, shifting uncomfortably, certain that the weird things are BAD. Poor guy. I figure, with everything new, might as well get it all over with now. He'll be grateful when he adjusts and he has to adjust because it's just uncomfortable.
Petey's reaction was surprising. He seemed fascinated but completely accepting of this. I think he's excited about having a buddy around who speaks his language. The critter who got their nose out of joint was the dog!!! I so didn't expect that. She was just frantic and scared and worried all over. We put some direct focus on her to comfort her and reassure her that she's still our #1 child. I think Petey's going to really take to having Sam around, kinda take him under his wing as a big brother. He's been trying to make friends with the canary, he really needs feathered companionship.
I think once we get him healthy, Sam is going to look very pretty. His tail is very gothic, black shot through with deep blood red. His pale skin and black charcoal feathers with silver accents are again very very gothic. He's a real vampire bird. When he gets his gloss on, gets sleek, he's going to look wonderful. I love his narrow face and sensitive eyes. He's clearly very bright.
I'll be taking Sam to the vet next week or the week after for a base-line checkup. I have to find out when exactly that paint job I"m booked for goes. I also need my car to be fixed, it's still not done, one problem after another. Can't drive a bird to the vet without it!

He isn't cheating, it's spam!

Dayum, ladies, it's getting harder to trust isn't it?
I got this in the mail from some chick's name:

Heeey, baby…
Hope you didn’t forget about our tour to Varadero…
You don’t write me…
Ok, I took out the pictures I told you about right here http://arabesque.ru (login:kisss, pass:catch) (don't go there, it may be infected)
Hope you’ll love it…
Write me as soon as you check it?

So... If you saw that in your man's mail for whatever reason, like you're checking up on him or getting info for him over the phone or whatever, you'd totally start to wonder eh? But it's spam! I mean, I dunno who this bitch is and I know, in fact, it's not a bitch, it's a porn merchant trying to hook someone, or it's a phishing scam, or some other seedy way to rip off decent unsuspecting people.
So don't click those links, don't fall for this BS, and most importantly, give your man the benefit of the doubt when he says he doesn't know anything about that email. Oh, and don't mail her back, you'll get your addy harvested and the spam will triple in volume.

being attractive

This is a tough one. What do you say to someone who places visual standards above life itself? How do you combat something so pervasive? People use scathing comments about appearance as a way of demonstrating their wit. They spend fortunes on appearance, from grooming to clothing to body modification of all kinds including tattoos, gym memberships and plastic surgery.

When I was young I'd look in the mirror and get a pleasure from the view. I'd prance, preen, pose and paint myself, cover myself in nice fabrics draped attractively, and daydream on all the good fortune that might come to me if the world saw it too. It was a pleasure, this vanity. I appreciated it and enjoyed it. I'd even do it by candle light because it was yet more flattering! My home had mirrors everywhere!

In my 30s I got older, and more importantly, got heavy. I got older looking by being unhealthy and smoking and not taking proper care of my health and being depressed, and also by illness. Hypothyroidism meant weight gain, poor skin tone, and tiredness. The mirror stopped pleasing me. I took some down, let others get covered by furniture, and avoided seeing myself in the rest. At times even using the mirror for personal grooming was a challenge. I felt such dismay to see this fat old woman looking back when once there was a lovely young maid.

Finally I got my health back on track. As I lose the weight and regain my fitness I gradually begin to see myself in the mirror again. Older, but not in a bad way after all. I'll never see that lovely young maid again. Never. That's just a fact. She's gone like the forest I played in as a child. Gone like my dear old dog Kira. Gone like my sweet fuzzbucket Freyr.

Losing the weight has been a real challenge. I did it for vanity, certainly, but also had enough other valid reasons to keep me motivated. I'm not done but I'm on the home stretch. Only 15# more out of the 50# I set myself to lose. I see a womanly figure in the mirror again. It's not as pretty anymore with all the sagging stuff that my old skin allows, but at least it doesn't depress me anymore!

So there is this business of attractiveness. Killing ourselves over it even! A brief peruse through any anorexia support site quickly shows us that appearance still counts more highly than any personality issue. Or does it? I was a lovely young woman, no question of it. I may not have been starlet gorgeous but that maybe was just a lack of finances and focus on glamourous clothes and such. I don't know or care really. I never did. I was always pretty enough, you know? Thing is, I never had that great of a personality. Oh, I'm a wonderful person, don't get me wrong, but I don't show that quality in social interaction. I don't make the right formulaic responses and so instead am assumed to be many less attractive things. Let me tell you, personality is definitely more important than looks! However, you really only need a base level of social skills to cover up less savoury character traits. People will put up with outrageous levels of abusiveness from persons who are visually attractive and capable of making the right responses at the right times.

I see these anorexics and I want so very much to earnestly assure them that appearance isn't that important. Then I sit down and analyze it. I can't tell them that. I can tell them that happiness has nothing, ultimately, to do with social approval. That who they see themselves to be is the part that counts when you strip away the rest in the dark of night. That being able to say with complete frankness that you're the best person you know how to be, have always striven for maximum grace, and you know you continue to teach and restrain yourself for future growth.

That's not much to go on, is it? They still believe, with good reason, that the world will like them better if they meet the requirements of beauty as dictated by the face of their world, the media. I guess the only way to combat ED, then, is to stop promoting emaciation as beauty, right?