Why isn’t everyone equal before the law? Why are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people subjected to a level of discrimination on the basis of the sexual orientation and/or gender identity that heterosexual people don’t have to worry about? Why does a transgender woman walking through a park have to fear being harassed and arrested by the police who are supposed to be ‘protecting and serving’ her? Why do people fear what is different?
What role do governments and religions play in crushing individuals and relationships they are not comfortable with, not familiar with, or that they do not approve of? How does our silence or refusal to confront this oppression enable it to continue?
Let us know what you think. Make a video, write a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts on these topics. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you.
Today’s video comes to us from the Demi & Ashton Foundation (DNA Foundation) and is about human trafficking: the illegal trade of human beings for the purposes of reproductive slavery, commercial sexual exploitation, forced labor, or a modern-day form of slavery. Some important facts from their website:
Today, more than twelve million people worldwide are enslaved.[1] An estimated two million children are bought and sold in the global commercial sex trade.[2] The sex slavery industry has become an increasingly important revenue source for organized crime because each young girl can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars each year for her pimp.
While this is a problem in many countries, many Americans don’t realize that it happens here at home as well. Thousands of children are forced into domestic sex slavery each year and that the average age of entry is 13 years old.[3] The majority of American victims of commercial sexual exploitation tend to be runaway youth who live on the street, often who have left homes where they were abused or abandoned. Pimps prey on their vulnerability. These girls are our neighbors, our friends, our sisters and our daughters. [Footnotes on their site.]
The DNA Foundation website includes a comprehensive list of important organizations that are working on this issue. How much have you heard about this important subject? Has it personally affected anyone you know, a neighbor, a friend, a relative? Do you think the topic is getting the public discussion and the media attention that it needs and deserves? Do you think people may be uncomfortable talking about it? What can we do to make it okay to talk about this subject, and what can we as individuals do to stop this practice?
Let us know what you think. Make a video, write a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts on these topics. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you.
Last year the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest private prison company, received $74 million of taxpayers’ money to run immigration detention centers. Their largest facility in Lumpkin, Georgia, receives $200 a night for each of the 2,000 detainees it holds, and rakes in yearly profits between $35 million and $50 million.
Prisoners held in this remote facility depend on the prison’s phones to communicate with their lawyers and loved ones. Exploiting inmates’ need, CCA charges detainees here $5 per minute to make phone calls. Yet the prison only pays inmates who work at the facility $1 a day. At that rate, it would take five days to pay for just one minute.
Most people are unaware that private prisons exist. These entirely for profit commercial enterprises lobby elected and appointed officials to keep laws in place that call for longer and tougher sentences. Did you know the US has the highest incarceration rate in the entire world? It is not okay for America to be oblivious to the needlessly suffering this profiteering causes or how corrupt this corporate-government connection actually is.
This video comes to us from Newsweek, and is called “POLYAMORY: Making Poly Love Work.” For anyone not familiar with the term polyamory (from Greek πολύ [poly, meaning many or several] and Latin amor [love]), Wikipedia defines it as “the practice, desire, or acceptance of having more than one intimate relationship at a time with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved.”
Terisa and Matt and Vera and Larry—along with Scott, who’s also at this dinner—are not swingers, per se; they aren’t pursuing casual sex. Nor are they polygamists of the sort portrayed on HBO’s Big Love; they aren’t religious, and they don’t have multiple wives. But they do believe in “ethical nonmonogamy,” or engaging in loving, intimate relationships with more than one person—based upon the knowledge and consent of everyone involved. They are polyamorous, to use the term of art applied to multiple-partner families like theirs, and they wouldn’t want to live any other way.
More from Newsweek:
Some polyamorists are married with multiple love interests, while others practice informal group marriage. Some have group sex—and many are bisexual—while those like Greenan have a series of heterosexual, one-on-one relationships. Still others don’t identify as poly but live a recognizably poly lifestyle. Terisa describes her particular cluster as a “triad,” for the number of people involved, and a “vee” for its organization, with Terisa at the center (the point of the V) and her two primary partners, Scott and Larry (who are not intimate with each other) as the tips of each arm. Other poly vocabulary exists, too: “spice” is the plural of “spouse”; “polygeometry” is how a polyamorous group describes their connections; “polyfidelitous” refers to folks who don’t date outside their menage; and a “quad” is a four-member poly group.
What unique challenges do individuals in polyamorous relationships face from society, from religion, from the government? What do you think are the advantages of being in a polyamorous relationship? Is it something that you have ever considered or experienced? How do children factor into these challenges? What role would jealousy play, and how could it be overcome?
Let us know what you think. Make a video, write a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts on these topics. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you.
For some people, bisexuality is their sexual orientation, and it’s here to stay. For some other people, coming out as bisexual is a first step to admitting that they’re gay — to friends and family, perhaps even to themselves. The men in these two videos have a lot to say about bisexuality. (Note: Some video not appropriate for certain environments.)
Did these videos make you change your opinions about bisexuality, or even reconsider them?
What’s your reaction upon learning someone is bisexual? Do you automatically think they are just confused, just as straight people think of gay people?Is it ever our place to try to influence someone else’s sexual orientation. Some believe bisexuals suffer discrimination from all sides, from both gay and straight people, so what do you think?
Let us know share your voice. Make a video, write a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts on these topics. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you.
Thursday at 1:00 PM in Washington, DC, the Transgender Day of Action will confront the Metropolitan Police Department, the United States District Attorney for DC, the Mayor, and Members of the City Council about systemic bias against the trans community in our nation’s capital. Local activists, members of the LGBT community, and concerned area residents will be participating in this action to bring media and political attention to the serious ongoing problem of neglect and abuse of trans folks in DC. It is in honor of that action that we bring you today’s video, “Transgender People In The Workplace.”
Have you witnessed biased and prejudiced jokes or remarks about someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity? What was your reaction and action? Did you take it personally even if it wasn’t about you?
Let us know what you think. Make a video, write a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts on these topics. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you.
Gina identifies as a union elevator constructor, a parent, a dog owner, and trans. She talks about the results of coming out as trans to her mom and dad, her children, and the owners of her company and her union, and her joy in how she has been accepted and welcomed. Gina reminds us that by living one’s truth and walking through our fears, we open our lives up in new, better, and unpredictably exciting ways.
What is your coming out story, and what were the results?
Tell us your story, let us know what you think. Make a video, write a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts on these topics. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you.
How did where you were raised affect what you were taught about sex, and the kinds of conversations you had about sex? What role did religion play in what you were taught or what you talked about? How have you overcome any negative ideas about sex — or even just ignorance about sex? Who should have the ultimate responsibility to ensure that young people receive an education in sexual matters that may affect their relationships and their health?
Your answers are important to us. Write them in an essay, a poem, or a song, or express them in an original work of art or a response video, and we will thank you with a free VenusPlusX t-shirt.
Video by Tiye Massey.
TRANSCRIPT by David Kreps
So like my family is very traditional. They’re Muslim and they’re South Asian. They grew up in Pakistan and came here in 1980. And they never talked to us about sex because they they only spoke to us about marriage, and said that you, when you reach a certain age, you’ll get married, and then you’ll have kids. So sex was never really spoken about, it was more like they were more concerned like about the type of relationship that I would have. I mean there’s a real disconnect between reality and what my parents taught me, and what my parents taught my siblings and my brother. I remember once I was trying to explain to my little brother what a period is. And my aunt, my mom’s sister, got really upset and she said that, ‘That’s just because you’re American, that you’re, that you’re talking to him about that.’ I’m like no, I think I think he should know about it. I think he should know that this is what many people experience. And it does directly impact him because he lives with four women.
We were really impressed with this video which brings into sharp relief some of the dissonance and hypocrisy of American politicians’ sweeping calls for democracy and equality abroad, through the UN, in the US Congress, and from the White House.
They take seriously the populist rebellions in repressive foreign nations, at least the ones that might be useful to the US, but our political leaders dismiss 0r only limply support the successful “Occupy” movement in our midst that is already altering the national conversation of government’s role. The effectiveness of this movement is scaring them because it flips the paradigm in favor of the people, the 99%, and makes those who advocate for the 1% an endangered species that will soon be extinct.
Another good example of this is last February’s remarks by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton directed at Ugandan lawmakers poised to enact their heinous “Anti-Homosexuality Bill.” She said, “Gay rights are human rights.” But our own country’s commitment and ability to protect the human rights of its own citizens, especially those of sexual minorities, falls so short.
Not long ago, I explained how sexual freedom is the bedrock of all freedoms because the ability to experience sexual pleasure and orgasm it is the single, pluralistic, shared reality of everyone on earth that gives each of us a taste, a feeling, of what freedom feels like. It is our internal drive to cooperate with each other in seeking more and more freedoms. It is our collective bodily guarantee that promises mutual respect for individual autonomy, that makes full equality an inherited right. This is primal and precedes the laws of men, and no law can attempt to diminish personal sovereignty without losing credibility and honor.
Do you agree that gender roles define or control our personal behavior? limit our freedoms, opportunities, and ability to be ourselves? Is location, where you are in the world, the greatest indicator? What will be the results of raising children today with more relaxed ideas about gender? Do you foresee a future in which gender gradually disappears?
We want to know what you think, hear your voice. Make a video. Write u an essay or a poem. Paint us a picture, write us a song. If we feature your views here on the site, we will send you a VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you.
Video by Tiye Massey.
TRANSCRIPT by David Kreps.
Um, oh, I don’t know actually . . . our gender… that’s a difficult one. I think it’s definite qualities that lead to, that lend themselves to a different gender, but I don’t think it’s this is clear-cut. It’s not black and white. You know, I grew up with all boys, so even though I’m very much female, I still have a few male qualities, and I don’t think gender, I don’t know . . . I get kind of not annoyed, but I get kind of worried at the fact that everything is based on that gender specification, as opposed to just being human and being allowed to be who you are and whatnot. I think there’s definitely, obviously, there is something to be said about genders and how do they have their specific traits, but just to concrete them as that and not have any room for change, I think as the world changes, it’s just a bit silly, really. It’s definitely religion, I think it’s just we’re in a generation in the moment where it’s not been long enough out there in the open for people to realize that’s a thing, you know. When something’s been concreted for so many generations and since relationships in humans began, that males were males and females and were females, if you think about it, instead of being the last couple of generations that it’s sort of been coming out in the open, that there are, there is room for difference. There is room for people being who they are. And there is, there is biological reasons why people are who they are, for every facet of everything. I think it’s just we’re just too soon into it with only the second generation of [us] having that out there. So I think religion plays a lot, a big part of it. Your family upbringing plays a big part ofit, the country you reside in plays a big part of it. I mean, even London is not as accepting as maybe here in New York. I know New York is more accepting than maybe the rest of America. So it’s just a lot of contributing factors. I think it takes a while for people to catch up with actually what’s happening in the world, if that makes sense.
