Government-Funded Porn! Starring Yours Truly.
Update: Since writing this, I have discovered that a certain set of Republican/Religious Right operatives is somewhat obsessed with my sexual habits, and seems to have shared them with their foot soldiers. God bless hidden cameras and chatty therapists! (If the harassment continues, you'll get to know all about some of these folks.)Since puberty I've struggled with two major sexuality-related themes: how to be both smart and happily sexual, and how to get out from under the culturally-ingrained notion of my sexuality as some sort of commodity.
Ironically, my sexuality seems to have literally become a commodity in the form of tape(s) purchased by government contractors. The reason? My environmentally- and rights-preoccupied brain.
While all of this surveillance/harassment has been happening in the last year, I've constantly tried to piece together why. Now a number of events have made clear that at least part of it was an aspect of the $250 million anti-environmental PR industry that was trying to recruit me. This makes so much more sense than a variety of other explanations, and actually makes me feel a lot more hopeful about the dismal state of civil liberties in the U.S. I wasn't targeted just because of my political beliefs, but because of my very specific theory/activism/PR skill set, and the fact that my course of study had the potential to do great damage to anti-environmental PR efforts.
Now it has. After circumventing Herculean efforts to prevent me from filing my thesis for May graduation, I released a shortened version of it to a variety of journalists. The work exposes Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus as very likely funded by anti-environmental industries (there's a link to it at the bottom of this post). After their work is investigated, I have very little doubt that they and others will be discredited. Of course, this means that I must be discredited too.
Since efforts to frame me as a would-be assassin or entrap me using drugs have failed, I do expect that some day the compromising images I've been taunted with repeatedly over the last year will make their way onto the Internet.
What's troubling is that if the last year has primarily been about
luring me to the anti-environmental "dark side" it was obviously done
in collusion with government contractors and their carte blanche
NSA-approved privacy violations. That means that agents acting on behalf of private
industry were able to benefit from unfettered access to my private
life. Did you hear that, Congress? Obviously: not ok.
First, I just want to point out the irony of this administration's policies leading to the creation of pornographic material in which I am featured. This was supposed to be the "family values" clan, after all. Ashcroft wanted Lady Liberty covered up. My breasts, however, are "fair game."
And just as I don't believe Valerie Plame would have been outed and accused of being a "glorified secretary" if she were male, a man in my position would not have had to deal with rape threats, or an endless parade of men trying to get her in bed (apparently for more footage?). Seriously. Of course, a montage of a man with multiple partners would say "stud" rather than "slut."
Is my intellectualizing meaningless? My love of children and bunnies and kittens a sham? My capacity for commitment and love sullied? My passion for justice and equality only a deceptive veneer barely concealing my slutastic true self???
What is more offensive? Private mistakes between private people? Or an industry-funded campaign to manipulate discourse on environmental issues so that it's easier to poison the air and water?
Who is more suspect? Someone who simply has sex, or the one who records an unsuspecting person?
What is more offensive? A woman who's not ashamed of her sexuality, or an entity that would compile, buy or sell sexual footage in order to manipulate and humiliate?
I may be an unwitting commodity, but I'm a lot of other things too.
Shellenberger and Nordhaus as Rove.Web.pdf
~~
First, I just want to point out the irony of this administration's policies leading to the creation of pornographic material in which I am featured. This was supposed to be the "family values" clan, after all. Ashcroft wanted Lady Liberty covered up. My breasts, however, are "fair game."
And just as I don't believe Valerie Plame would have been outed and accused of being a "glorified secretary" if she were male, a man in my position would not have had to deal with rape threats, or an endless parade of men trying to get her in bed (apparently for more footage?). Seriously. Of course, a montage of a man with multiple partners would say "stud" rather than "slut."
Is my intellectualizing meaningless? My love of children and bunnies and kittens a sham? My capacity for commitment and love sullied? My passion for justice and equality only a deceptive veneer barely concealing my slutastic true self???
What is more offensive? Private mistakes between private people? Or an industry-funded campaign to manipulate discourse on environmental issues so that it's easier to poison the air and water?
Who is more suspect? Someone who simply has sex, or the one who records an unsuspecting person?
What is more offensive? A woman who's not ashamed of her sexuality, or an entity that would compile, buy or sell sexual footage in order to manipulate and humiliate?
I may be an unwitting commodity, but I'm a lot of other things too.
Shellenberger and Nordhaus as Rove.Web.pdf
~~
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Greetings. I applaud your courage putting all this out in the open; I suppose it less an act of courage when one realizes the relative triviality of ones own sexual past as compared to the efforts to damage or destroy our capacity to speak freely and even to be understood.
To me the obvious reply to your ending series of questions is that those damaging our civil liberties and attempting to silence varying viewpoints are far worse than anyone who has some embarrassing moments in her/his life. Those who claim the loudest that they are pure are often those who have the most to hide.
Best of luck to you, and as you deserve may you get respect from all who know you or know of you.