How did that happen?

It's hard enough as it is to secure rape convictions but you'd hope it wouldn't be much of a feat when the defendant's only defense is that he fell and landed in her:

A Saudi millionaire has been cleared of raping a teenager after claiming he might have accidentally penetrated the 18-year-old when he tripped and fell on her.
Property developer Ehsan Abdulaziz, 46, was accused of forcing himself on the girl as she slept off a night of drinking on the sofa of his Maida Vale flat.
He had already had sex with her 24-year-old friend and said his penis might have been poking out of his underwear after that sexual encounter when he tripped on the 18-year-old
Abdulaziz said he had accidentally fallen on the youngster as she tried to seduce him, and that was how traces of his DNA came to be in her vagina. (Mirror)

Now, this doesn't necessarily mean the jury believed him over her, but merely saw that this story constituted "reasonable doubt". Of course, someone obviously forgot to explain the meaning of "reasonable" to the jury. The standard itself  ("guilty beyond reasonable doubt") is perfectly understandable, but it requires the jury to consist of reasonable individuals as well, and we know from the O.J. Simpson & Casey Anthony cases that a randomly drawn jury, even after accounting for "strikes" (although I'm not sure if the British have these), can end up consisting of morons or simply weak-willed invididuals who are susceptible to the manipulations of a single strong-willed individual.
This is NOT a call for lowering the standard of evidence. Some American colleges are setting up Mickey Mouse courts to try serious offenses such as rape, using a much lower standard of evidence ("preponderance of the evidence"), while it shouldn't be their job to investigate rape claims in the first place; that job belongs to the police and prosecutors. Serious offenses require serious standards of evidence. It's just that people may fail that standard sometimes. This case clearly should have resulted in a conviction.

No respect for adult entertainers

I hate it when porn stars, strippers & such are viewed as second-class citizens. I came across a news article from last summer about some Democrat Congressman (who looks a bit like Goebbels) having a "sexting" scandal involving Ginger Lee, a former porn star, now a stripper. The comment section of the Huffington Post article (also NYPost and Powerline) is another treasure trove of human stupidity with high-and-mighty conservatives ganging up on Lee:

We're supposed to take what a former porn star / current stripper has to say seriously?  -sbtrfly27

Maybe if we started calling them [porn stars] dim lights their futures might turn around. Would anyone want to be known as a porn dim light -Ginny Saul

Poor kid -- this must be *so* embarrassing for her. I'm sure she can't wait to get out from under the spotlight, and return to her simple, quiet lifestyle, and continue to make more films like "Share My C--k! 2" and "Manuel Ferrara F---s Them All!" -Yisrael Harris

I guess she didn't realize that you can block someone from texting you. That's why she's a porn star, not a rocket scientist. -Turtleposer

I find it hard to believe that a woman who takes on 3 guys at a time on film can be destroyed by texts containing sexual innuendo. -Shapi
Well, she's a porn star. She was overwhelmed by written language.  -Turtleposer

Did she obtain this moral code before or after she started performing sex acts for money? -imhotep40

And if you check her chin, you'll find ' Place Testicles Here'. -Adi Kotler

Post everything on this DIRTY WHORE! She is far from innocent and I hope she gets everything she deserves!!! -John Haines

And these people claim the moral high ground?

The sad thing is that adult entertainers don't get much respect from the left either. In fact, many academic feminists are devoted to putting them down, painting them as victims who cannot be trusted to make decisions on their own. Of course, such academic feminists are merely projecting their own feelings of inadequacy on those they envy, namely, sexually powerful women like Lee. The conservative reaction is a similar Freudian projection: The supposedly pious men hate themselves for how women like Lee make them feel while conservative women (and why not women in general) merely feel threatened by adult entertainers (i.e., jealousy):

I'm so sick of these women who act as if they are completely innocent and have no responsibi­lity at all. Men wouldn't cheat on their wives if there wasn't other women willing to cheat with them. -anotherwomanfromva

Of course, the vast majority of men (and an increasing number of women) consume pornography, and that majority includes a huge chunk of conservatives too. Too bad few have the guts to voice their support and respect for something they consume.

Strip clubs, pornography and feminists

The United States is an easy target when it comes to narrow-minded attitudes toward sexuality. Here's Texas, the heart of the Bible Belt:

In 2007, state legislators passed the Sexually Oriented Business Fee Act, which imposed the fee ["pole tax"] on nearly 200 establishments that feature live nude performances and allow the consumption of alcohol. The $5-per-customer entrance fee, which is imposed on the business and not the patron, is intended to raise money for sexual assault prevention programs and health insurance coverage for low-income people. (NYTimes)

This a form of collective punishment, which is kinda perverse in a country that values individual responsibility. The tax assumes that everyone attending strip clubs is responsible for the actions of a few rapists. 

Moreover, open attitudes toward adult entertainment have actually been found to reduce violence against women. So, if the aim is to reduce the incidence of rape, Texan lawmakers should consider subsidizing strip clubs rather than taxing them.

But at least it's still legal in Texas to take your clothes off for money. In the so-called progressive Nordic countries women's rights and liberties are being curbed by feminists (a female supremacist movement that opposes individual liberties and equal rights) to a much, much greater degree than some conservatives in the United States ever could. Here's Julie Bindel, a feminist author, writing about banning strip clubs and pornography in Iceland:

Iceland has passed a law that will result in every strip club in the country being shut down.

Even more impressive: the Nordic state is the first country in the world to ban stripping and lapdancing for feminist, rather than religious, reasons.

So, feminists are united with religious extremists in their contempt of women's right to make decisions about their own lives. Only their reasons differ.

Kolbrún Halldórsdóttir, the politician who first proposed the ban, firmly told the national press on Wednesday: "It is not acceptable that women or people in general are a product to be sold."

This is just idiotic. How is selling "yourself" at a strip club any different from selling "yourself" at an office? Nearly every profession is a mixture of inherent talent and obtained skill and those are the things you're selling. The labor market consists of people selling themselves. So, the problem is not that these people are selling themselves as "products"; the problem is that feminists don't happen to like this particular product even though it's none of their business. Feminists, like religious extremists, have a vision of what a proper woman is like (even their rhetoric is similar: "It is not acceptable that women..."). Any deviations from this standard are to be looked down upon. Feminists perceive women not as adult individuals capable of using their own discretion but as child-like members of a collective who are to do what the collective tells them to do.

Supporters of the bill say that some of the clubs are a front for prostitution – and that many of the women work there because of drug abuse and poverty rather than free choice. I have visited a strip club in Reykjavik and observed the women. None of them looked happy in their work.

What an idiot. If "not looking happy" or "working just to make ends meet" is a qualification for banning an occupation, I guess all of us are to be unemployed in the not-so-distant future. Simple-minded authoritarians like Bindel are not really helping the situation by not showing much of any respect for these women. If feminists and cultural conservatives actually respected women working in the adult industry (and taught their children to respect them as well), these women might have a better time at work and life in general. I'd guess that a big reason why some women in the adult industry don't feel appreciated is precisely because narrow-minded people like Bindel don't appreciate them as adults capable of making their own decisions. Instead, they're trying to force-feed the "you're a victim" mantra. This could also explain why drug abusers and poor people are overrepresented in the adult industry; only they've really got nothing to lose. Mainstreamization of pornography would attract more "mainstream" people. In fact, it's not surprising anymore to find that an adult entertainer holds an academic degree. Of course, feminists probably consider well-educated women who choose to work in the adult industry as traitors.

Let's end this post on a positive note:

Let’s look at attitudes towards women – studies of men who had seen X-rated movies found that they were significantly more tolerant and accepting of women than those men that didn’t see those movies, and studies by other investigators, female as well as male, essentially found similarly that there was no detectable relationship of the amount of exposure to pornography and any measure of misogynist attitudes. No researcher or critic has found the opposite, that exposure to pornography – by any definition – has had a cause and effect relationship towards ill feelings or actions against women. No correlation has even been found between exposure to porn and calloused attitudes toward women.

Gay extinction, to a degree?

Homosexuals across the world are celebrating their sexuality, expecting their numbers to increase in the near future as tolerance spreads from one corner of the globe to another. However, it should be at least considered that the result of this tolerance may be the exact opposite of what they're expecting: that homosexuality as a biological trait may, in fact, become endangered as a result of this tolerance. Let's establish a few facts first:

First, it'd be ludicrous to claim that homosexuality is, by and large, a choice. Some Christians want it to be so, so that the "naturalness" of homosexuality would not conflict with their "God created man in his image" view.

Second, as implied above, homosexuality is, to a degree, hereditary, i.e., the offspring of a person with "gay genes" (but who's not necessarily gay) is more likely to be gay than the offspring of a straight person. Obviously genes are not the only biological factor affecting sexuality but they are a significant factor nevertheless.

Third, one reason why homosexuality has survived this far despite its obvious selective disadvantage is precisely because of the society's negative attitude toward homosexuality in the past. When gays weren't tolerated and it was assumed that everyone marries at one point in their lives, this effectively ensured that homosexuals too managed to pass on their genes even if in an unwanted union with a straight person.

Combine these and you've got a situation where the "coming out" of gays might contribute negatively to the overall number of homosexuals. If homosexuals are no longer under societal pressure to procreate with the opposite sex then they won't whileas their own sexual desires are an evolutionary dead end.

This isn't to be misunderstood. Genes influencing homosexuality can spread even if there are no homosexuals left and even if we disregard genes, homosexuality may still result from fetal-stage disruptions. But the point I'm making is that the recent openness toward homosexuality may have a negative effect on the proliferation of those genes, not that gays will go extinct.

This also makes all fears of homosexuality overblown. The reason why homosexuality seems to be on the rise is because of the "coming out" factor, not because homosexuality as a biological feature is on the rise. The latter would be ludicrous as there are no evolutionary benefits to being gay. (In fact, there may be some but hardly anything that'd lead to a notable proliferation of homosexuality.)

And for the same reason it's stupid to claim that "heteronormativity" is a social construct. People are not heterosexual because society forces them to but because heterosexuality is the only kind of sexuality that makes sense from an evolutionary point of view. If, as a result of genetic drift (chance) maybe, bisexuality were the norm, it wouldn't take long for evolution to take us right back to "heteronormativity".

Feminists couldn't care less about women's rights

Spiegel:

Copenhagen's city council in conjunction with Lord Mayor Ritt Bjerregaard sent postcards out to 160 Copenhagen hotels urging COP15 guests and delegates to 'Be sustainable - don't buy sex'.

"Dear hotel owner, we would like to urge you not to arrange contacts between hotel guests and prostitutes," the approach to hotels says.

Now, Copenhagen prostitutes are up in arms, saying that the council has no business meddling in their affairs. They have now offered free sex to anyone who can produce one of the offending postcards and their COP15 identity card, according to the Web site avisen.dk.

According to the report, the move has been organized by the Sex Workers Interest Group (SIO).

"This is sheer discrimination. Ritt Bjerregaard is abusing her position as Lord Mayor in using her power to prevent us carrying out our perfectly legal job. I don't understand how she can be allowed to contact people in this way," SIO Spokeswoman Susanne Møller tells avisen.dk.

(Boldface and italics mine.)

Ever wondered how little feminists appreciate the liberty of women to choose their own occupation? I haven't. It's common for these types of socialists to have such a high opinion of themselves as to be able to make decisions about how individuals are supposed to live their lives. Another feminist trait is the perception that whenever a woman chooses to be a model, a pornstar or a prostitute instead of a chief executive she has somehow betrayed other women and the feminist cause, as if individual women are worth something only as members of their respective genders and not as individuals acting on their own.

Also, this is a gross violation of state's appropriate role in the economy. What if she had attacked retailers, suddenly telling people that they should not buy anything and just let the retailers starve?