Raging Feminists Ruin Everyone’s Stalky Fun

It’s hard to know where to start with this “colour and movement” piece from today’s Age Technology coverage, detailing how a GPS-enabled bra is apparently “rais[ing] the hackles of feminists” because it allows men to keep tabs on their partners. Oh, really? Here’s the front page slug:

Those bloody feminists, always raging! It continues in the article proper (the point-missing idiocy, that is, not the raging – funnily enough not a single “raging” feminist with their “hackles” up is quoted in the piece!):

Lingerie maker Lucia Iorio says her new design targets the modern, techno-savvy woman, but the GPS-equipped “Find Me If You Can” line has raised the hackles of feminists who call it a 21st-century chastity belt.

The lingerie combo consists of lace bodice, bikini bottom and faux pearl collar, with the GPS device visibly nestled in the see-through part of the bodice next to the waist.

“This collection … is a wink to women and a challenge to men because, even if she gives him the password to her GPS, she can always turn it off,” Iorio told AFP.

“She can be found only if she wants to.”

“It’s not a modern chastity belt. Some men think they can keep tabs on their girlfriends with it, but they’re wrong,” she added.

Oh, she can turn it off? So can the freak who has been following her and has just tied her up in the boot of his car!

That men’s magazines have already trivialised stalking by making it fun and sexy and hilarious has already been well documented, and the Find Me If You Can bra is not the first odious tracking device for women (no, there’s the vaginal-temperature-monitoring Forget-Me-Not panties!), but really, do people need to be told how fucked up this stuff is?

Furthermore, given Iorio makes the reasonable point that GPS-enabling items will likely sell well in a high-crime, violence-prone country like Brazil, why the need to present them in such a ridiculously sexualised way? She should have door-to-door denial sales parties with those high-heels-for-newborns people!

Don’t Want Domestic Assault Charges To Hinder Your Career And Travel Prospects? How About Not Assaulting Your Partner In The First Place!

Fashion designer and sometime reality TV personality Wayne Cooper was charged with common assault, assault occasioning actual bodily harm and stalking and intimidating his partner Sarah Marsh in June, and has today been found guilty of common assault (he had earlier pleaded not guilty, but changed his plea to guilty when the other charges were dropped).

It’s always shocking and disappointing when someone who is so frequently in the public eye acts in this way, but what struck me was this kicker at the end of the article:

“We accept … that there was a hostile intent in the end and there was an assault,” [Cooper's barrister, Ian] McClintock said.

He asked the court not to record a conviction against his client as it may hinder his travel to the United States as required by his fashion business.

That reminded me acutely of the similar denouement to the Brooke Satchwell/Matthew Newton domestic assault case, in which Newton’s assault conviction was overturned and not recorded, ostensibly because he and the defense counsel argued it was a one off, but also because it would be injurious to his career. As Acting Judge Joseph Moore said, when clearing Newton:

“If a conviction is recorded, it will continue to have a lifelong effect not only for his reputation in Australia, but also his chances overseas.

“He has suffered severe shame personally, and he feels remorse for the attention he has brought on his family and friends.”

How about the “lifelong effect” having been assaulted by the man she loved will have on his former partner?

What on earth do these decisions say to the woman involved? “Oh, yeah, we see your husband/boyfriend/partner beat you, but he’s got a career to look after, you know? Chin up”. There are enough shamefully short sentences, pointless good-behaviour bonds and, in many cases, no convictions at all when it comes to domestic violence and partner assault and rape, adding this pathetic celebrity escape clause is an insult to survivors and victims of domestic violence.

If these notable men don’t want assault convictions hampering their career travel options, why don’t they consider, you know, not assaulting their partners? I know it’s a pretty revolutionary idea, but maybe, just maybe, it’ll catch on.

Free Sex? Only If You’re A Corrupt Cop

An alarming report handed to State Parliament yesterday suggests Victoria Police (and interstate) officers have been linked to illegal brothels and corrupt dealings with street sex workers. The report, by former judge David Jones, reveals that the officers (believed by The Age to have formerly worked in the St Kilda area, an area with a long history of turbulence when it comes to street sex workers and proposed “tolerance zones” and safe houses, plans for both of which were abandoned by the Bracks government) have been involved in numerous cases of highly questionable behaviour over the past 18 months, with sources telling The Age that:

A small number of police who have had sex free with street prostitutes, including transvestites, at a hotel and other locations around Melbourne.

A long-serving officer who was involved in plans to run a brothel with a notorious criminal figure who is also involved in the nightclub industry.

One former officer and one serving officer who are believed to have had long-term sexual relationships with street prostitutes.

[...]

Corruption investigators have also examined claims that a street sex worker was raped by a policeman using a baton and that an officer had travelled to a Sydney hotel where he met a transvestite and engaged in illegal drug use.

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that these are a very worrying state of affairs, particularly when you consider the high concentration of sex workers currently working within the St Kilda area. As St Kilda Legal Service senior lawyer Vanda Hamilton says later in the article,

“Without safe houses or decriminalisation, police can say to street sex workers, ‘We are not going to charge you if you do this for us.’

“It also means the sex workers must rely on police to protect them against assaults, leading to a potentially unhealthy symbiotic relationship. But if they are allowed to work in a safety zone, things are much more transparent and it lessens those risks.”

Street work is still illegal in Victoria however previous talks and a report tabled by the Attorney General’s Advisory Group supported legislative reform to decriminalise street work in certain areas (the aforementioned “tolerance zones”) which was – as mentioned – rejected by the Bracks government.

I doubt I’d be be alone in thinking this, but there is something deeply troubling about officers expecting – or, worse, demanding/bribing – sex workers to “service” them, free of charge (not to mention the fact that the media is overflowing with the issue of politician or civil servant freebies, whether it’s pollies receiving cars and goods for free, or Police chief Christine Nixon acting as her husband’s +1 on a swish junket to LA, and this seems to be an ugly extension of that greatly skewed sense of entitlement and power).

If the public (and often the law) turns a blind eye to so-called “legitimate” sex work (stripping, high-end escort services, licensed brothels), then street workers are surely amongst the country’s least-protected workers. In so many cases – murders, rapes in particular – sex workers are silent victims, seen as expendable by many members of society (and more than a few members of the justice system). But as long as prostitution and everything it entails exists, sex workers have as much right to be protected from abuse and assault as any other citizen – which makes this gross corruption of Police power even more repugnant.

People in positions of power often expect to be given things for free, but to use a woman or man’s body for free? There is a reason that sex workers charge money for that most intimate of transactions. The question of paying (or being paid) for sex is already a fraught enough topic – if those who are meant to serve and protect us are putting a zero value on these workers’ bodies, what value do they place on their lives?