Here's a post from Feministing about prostitution. The comments are more substantive than the post, but most commenters take an unbiased approach, along the lines of "it's screwed up as it exists, could it exist in a non-screwed up way?"

One of the links was interesting though, especially with the remarks about sweden.

The question with prostitution is: Can you make it go away, and I guess the answer to this will be no. So the only alternative is to make sure it happens in the limelight (and yes, that will mean that certain aspects of it will hide in it's shadows, that's how it works unfortunately).

As to the waitress thing, a recent Supreme Court ruling has made it almost impossible for a woman to sue an employer for being paid less than a man doing the same job. If it looks like a servant and it's paid like a servant...

That isn't quite addressing my point. I am not arguing that equality is bad, but that anything that even gives the IMPRESSION of servitude gets automatically attacked. There is a nasty strain of Feminism that isn't about gender equality (all for it) but rather about payback.

So what do you have to say about the cause? Or was that just a way of silencing critics. Because, when you say that people should talk about the cause rather than the symptoms, and then you don't talk about the cause...

I doubt you can summarize all the evils in the world in a blog post.

But fine, let's concentrate about the violence against hookers. If the profession itself wouldn't be so marginalized the violence against them would probably be less of an issue.

How often do crooks go to the cops if another crook takes them out?

As long as there is a perception in society that what these women (and man) are doing is wrong (legally) they are automatically marginalized.

But here's the thing: I cannot see the writers at feministing go out and say: Legalize Prostitiution, because the sense I got over the extend of the ensuing discussion is that they are considering prostitution in and on itself being wrong.

I wonder if in their ideal world a woman shouldn't really do anything that "serves" a man, being a waitress in a restaurant (clearly, the man is just doing this to put the woman in her place) or being a secretary (oh, another round of the male dominance over the women).

And hey, criticize the game all you must, but criticize it as a game, not as the ill of all that is wrong in the world, and at least PLAY it. I know I know, it is in vogue these days to hook into one little piece and then blog about it, but I really wish that would be less of an ongoing theme. *sigh*

@87

Then there's the feminists (myself included) who want to see an honest discussion of the violence toward women in the game and what the social implications of that are.

Sorry, but this discussion is simply barking up the wrong tree.

It isn't the game that causes this violence, it is society as a whole. You (and Feministing) want to discuss the symptom instead of looking for the cause.

Furthermore, and that is what got me not only about the discussion on Feministing but also about the article: The author has never even PLAYED the game. The entire outrage was based on the video that was created by IGN. How would you (or anybody else for that matter) feel if I rip one sentence out of a their article and critize it and use this as "proof" about the authors REAL intentions?

There is a certain arrogance by these "rightous crusaders" in as far as their criticism is valid while they are above reproach. The discussion on Feministing (I read roughly half way through) basically turned into: "You don't agree with me, this means you're an idiot".

And now his girlfriend apparently won't talk to him until he gets another ring.

Sounds like he got off cheap.

This tells quite a bit more about the complainer than the producer / seller of this product.

How is that: "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" or in this case "Dirty thoughts are in the eye of the beholder".

My favourite on that list? "No Money, no touch."

Does that mean if there is money touching is allowed?

@#10

There is a huge difference between current tools of crowd control / tasers and this thing.

All of these leave physical marks behind, this means people can see the direct result of their actions. This, in part, is a control mechanism. A Weapon (and yes this is a weapon) like this does not leave any physical mark. It can easily be denied.

And think about it, according to this article it feels like you are burning up alive, over your whole body, this is not "crowd control" much less is it "non violent", this is a tool that is being used in stead of a white hot piece of metal.