Tag #sexualfreedom | VenusPlusX

Re-envisioning the future: A personal call to action

VenusPlusX re-envisions the future as A New Age of Sexual Freedom because that is a state of being the heralds the end of racism (at its root sexual oppression) and the end of nationalism for the purposes of war (at its root racism)and other forms of inhumane exploitation. In connection with our recent relaunch, a manifesto for this new age was offered up for comment and critique. It included a working formula to bring about peace, and some of the obstacles in our way. Using this tried and true, non-violent formula (systematically replacing coercive systems with humane voluntary associations), we can bring about universal solidarity (world peace) and justice.

We purposely frame the conversation about peace and justice in terms of Sexual Freedom because, in part, it corresponds to the end of racism, sexism, nationalism, etc., and also because it makes us more visible as emissaries along the way towards this better future. We work in the present not for this future but as this future, now in this moment, the here and now of making things better for the largest number of people, starting now. When we take action, any action, based on application of this formula, it serves as a guide to enhancing productivity and a confidence in our purpose because in this way we are able to stay fully conscious and balanced in choosing the next steps that would be appropriate.

Of course, I apply this formula for peace to the equality rights movement, both nationally and globally, and it turns out to be a personal call to action.

If we are truly relentless in trying to free our movement of its own coercive systems, we have to take a frank look at how we are ourselves obstacles to our goals, and show a ready willingness to escape the status quo. If we look at our movement in terms of what’s good now that can be preserved, what should be left behind as a coercive system within our movement, and what new voluntary associations can we make to more fully realize our joint goals in the shortest amount of time, two problems to work on right now quickly emerge.

First, while it’s a given that we support organizations whose mission we agree with, we must ask ourselves why we have what is almost comically referred to as “Gay, Inc.”? Nurturing and training the leaders of the future is by itself a noble enterprise, and we certainly need some cadre of people to insure compliance with better lawmaking, but should not these 700 organizations in the United States alone, all with more or less overlapping agendas, have as its number one goal be instead planned obsolescence?

Haven’t we already deduced that coalitions are more effective and worthy of greater donor support than more and more separate and often competing organizations? Why do we hold so dearly to this model when so much more progress is possible by merging most of these organizations into just a few that reflect higher goals shared by more people?

Let’s stop ignoring the fact that those who would enslave us to their unjust ideologies just love that we have so many organizations, are so disjointed, we even brand ourselves with letters, L, G, B, T, Q, I, etc., to display our disjointedness.

An apt analogy is that national borders and barriers would instantly become extinct if suddenly earth had visitors from another planet. Friendly or unfriendly aliens, we would immediately put down our nationalistic impulses in favor a world united in responding to such an “invasion.” Likewise, the equality rights movement has to strategize and develop our agendas in a transparent way that encourages rather than discourages the coalescing of organizations for a mutual purpose, folding these hundreds of organizations into just a few with a clearly stated and complementary agenda. It seems needless to say this would be a power block in today’s politics.

Second, by tapping into this peace formula to root out our movement’s own coercive systems, we have to ask why our goal to end discrimination is tarnished because of the disunity our alphabet soup floats on? We go to conferences led by respected national organizations and find sexism, racism, and homophobia and especially transphobia as obiquitous as the cocktails. When are we going to get our act together? Why don’t we get rid of the bullies in our midst that are the progenitors of homophobia and transphobia once and for all?

In order to end the need for a Gay, Inc., to protect us, to instead arrive together at a time and place where everyone is free from discrimination, racism, and social injustice, we have to today become the thing we want by starting to reflect that as fact with the brightest light we can muster. If we are incessantly competing for the attention of donors and the media, if we can’t end homophobia and transphobia among our own ranks, if we cant demonstrate to the rest of the world how to do that, it defeats our integrity as a movement, and, sadly, it means that lots of donations have been sought and spent for spinning wheels.

But there is even a more important reason to consolidate and to institute zero tolerance of homophobia and transphopia in our own ranks (and to continue to examine our movement in terms replacing our own coercive systems in our movement with more humane and focused voluntary associations). When we reflect in real time and in unison our jointly-held, hoped-for future, where discrimination is no longer legal, and education and advocacy are complete, we arrive at a clarity of purpose wherein lies the only rational basis for deciding what to do next. Then, there will be no stopping us.

Simply, if you can see the future, you can know what to do next, and not be an obstacle yourself on the road to The New Age of Sexual Freedom.

Eros and Agape are One, another excerpt from The Unseen Journey (working title)

The primary reason we created VenusPlusX a few years ago was to establish a repository of our solutions for freeing humanity of its many misconceptions about an individual’s direct connection to cosmic technology. It is also the reason we decided to capture the essential premise of our work in book form. Here is another excerpt of our upcoming book, tentatively entitled, The Unseen Journey, that may prompt some comments and criticism, both of which we crave and adore.

Anira/WikiCommons
Fair Use/Educational

We declare that eros and agape are one with unified Love. We declare that the erotic is a major component of cosmic Love. We declare that the ability to experience Love, either as physical or spiritual, is one and the same gift of the Supreme to all creatures. We declare that the erotic has a functional purpose in any vitology (way of living in dedication to destiny) and that failure to acknowledge this underlies the social stagnation and oppressive belief systems that characterize human society today.

© VenusPlusX, 2013, All Rights Reserved.

What we are talking about here is a non-religion, transhuman in nature. There’s more about these ideas in our Library and all over this website, including a preliminary reference that will become an Appendix to our new book, A Course in Immortality (and in Spanish, Un Curso En Inmortalidad). And, in connection with the relaunch of VenusPlusX last week, we’ve added A Manifesto for The New Age of Sexual Freedom.

In order for humankind to fully explore and manifest its destiny, we start by accepting everyone where they are, as they are, of course, but that doesn’t stop us from railing against the coercive systems established by governments, religious hierarchies, and corporations that enslave us to false values and principles and interfere greatly with happiness, both individual and collective. Immediately important to this cause is sexual freedom, global equality rights, the end of racism, and tangentially things like net neutrality. In connection with the relaunch of VenusPlusX this month, we have published A Manifesto for The New Age of Sexual Freedom, which covers these matters further.

Right now, there is so much garbage and senseless noise all over the globe, piled higher and deeper with each succeeding generation of misinformation, all of it interfering with all good will efforts to recreate a world where every human retains from birth the inherited and inherent freedom of self-expression and is mutually respected, even revered, as a cosmic citizen, a living vessel of love from, and part of, this cosmic reality.

Like the agrarians, marxists, and feminists that paved the way, we aim to preserve that which is old and good, and disappear that which is old and bad, sometimes very bad, and build on or create new and better systems, voluntary associations, that uplift humanity within an atmosphere of mutual support where no one is enslaved to another.

in Cosmic Citizenship / Public Information / The Unseen Journey (working title) / Transhuman Erotic Freedom by Alison Gardner 30 Apr 2014 0 comments

Wartime Sexual Abuse — of Men and Boys

“Everybody has heard the women’s stories. But nobody has heard the men’s,” says Stewart M. Patrick, a senior fellow at the DC-based, non-partisan think tank The Council on Foreign Relations, writing for The Internationalist. His recent report was widely circulated this summer on the startling 22% of males and 30% of females who have been sexually assaulted as a terror tactic and weapon of war used throughout the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Lisa F. Jackson’s award-winning documentary, The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo, likewise offers disturbing data on this nascent crisis. The film won the Special Jury Prize at Sundance in 2008 and subsequently inspired a UN resolution condemning rape as a weapon of war.

Rape is always a crime of opportunity wherein the victim is not targeted based on appearance, gender, or behavior but because he or she is simply available. War only enlarges and magnifies the politics of this violence.

The male rape epidemic has affected men in Bosnia, El Salvador, and many other war-torn nations, and in the androcentric world, focused on men, the image of a weak man has not been sympathetic.

How will this male-on-male rape be incorporated in and be fairly addressed by the United Nations, the individual state, and/or Non-Governmental Organizations? Patrick addresses this question and encourages you to take progressive action for these victims.

Adrianna Midbama contributed to this post. The full article appears below.

Stewart M. Patrick’s, “Stopping Wartime Sexual Abuse – of Men

Today, I would like to draw your attention to a disturbing phenomenon ignored by the foreign policy community but all too common in global conflict zones: The pervasive sexual abuse of men in war.

Women, of course, bear the main brunt of wartime sexual violence—as they always have. Last December, my CFR colleague Mark Lagon hosted a sobering meeting with the eminent legal scholar and activist Catharine MacKinnon. Now the special gender adviser to the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, Mackinnon in 2000 argued the path-breaking legal case Kadic vs. Karadzic — about mass Serbian rape of Bosnian women — which for the first time established mass rape as an act of genocide. Over the past two decades, international attention to rape as a weapon of war has been growing. Documentary filmmakers have often been in the forefront. In 2006 Lisa F. Jackson traveled to DRC to interview thousands of rape victims, and their perpetrators. Her resulting film, The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo, won the Special Jury Prize at Sundance in 2008 and subsequently inspired a UN resolution-condemning rape as a weapon of war. Several of my CFR colleagues — including Laurie Garrett, Isobel Coleman, and Matthew Waxman — have spoken and written eloquently on the scope of such atrocities and the need to hold perpetrators accountable.

At the same time, as the Guardian reported on Sunday, the United Nations (UN) and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) “barely acknowledge” the pervasive sexual violence against men that occurs in modern war.

The article documents the terrible suffering of a Congolese refugee who was captured by rebels and raped multiple times per day, and watched countless other men be similarly brutalized. 22% of men in Eastern Congo reported being victims of sexual violence, compared to 30% of women. One victim reported the crime to police, and was laughed at. A doctor in whom he confided merely gave him Panadol (a local equivalent of Tylenol). He described:

Everybody has heard the women’s stories. But nobody has heard the men’s.”

The violence, and the disregard, is global. 80% of Bosnian males imprisoned in concentration camps and 76% of El Salvadoran male political prisoners report sexual abuse. Yet, of roughly 4,000 NGOs addressing wartime sexual violence, only 3% mentioned male victims (and usually only in passing).

Read: U.S. trade policy; is America AWOL?

International institutions are also falling short. They should be lauded for attempting to address mass violence against women during wartime, but the protection and outreach must be extended to all victims.

The Guardian quoted one refugee who sought help from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and was told “‘we have a programme for vulnerable women, but not men.’” Margot Wallström, the UN special representative of the secretary-general for sexual violence in conflict counters that UNHCR does assist both men and women, but that women are “overwhelmingly” the victims. Emerging studies, however, suggest sexual violence against men is more widespread than commonly acknowledged.

Part of the difficulty stems from the fact that some countries do not criminalize sexual abuse of men, as this report (PDF) by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs documents. International humanitarian law criminalized rape in the twentieth century, but “prosecution was nonexistent” during the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and its Rwandan counterpart (ICTR) included rape in the category of crimes against humanity, war crime, and genocide, but abuse against women earned harsher punishment than abuse against men.

However, Lara Stemple of the University of California’s Health and Human Rights Law project also notes that:

“There are dozens of references to “violence against women” — defined to include sexual violence — in United Nations human rights resolutions, treaties and agreements, but most don’t mention sexual violence against men.”

The UN Security Council Resolution 1325 in 2000 treats wartime sexual violence as something that only impacts on women and girls… Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently announced $44m to implement this resolution.”

“Because of its entirely exclusive focus on female victims, it seems unlikely that any of these new funds will reach the thousands of men and boys who suffer from this kind of abuse. Ignoring male rape not only neglects men, it also harms women by reinforcing a viewpoint that equates ‘female’ with ‘victim’, thus hampering our ability to see women as strong and empowered. In the same way, silence about male victims reinforces unhealthy expectations about men and their supposed invulnerability.”

I recognize that this is not an easy subject for men, in particular, to acknowledge. But we all need to shine the spotlight on such suffering to underscore that sexual abuse, no matter the gender of the victim, is abhorrent—and that perpetrators must be held to account. And the world needs to provide legal resources and psychological support to men who demonstrate the courage to come forward in reporting such crimes, despite the social stigma so often attached to their plight.

in Global Sexual Freedom Watch by Alison Gardner 21 Oct 2011 0 comments

This Revolution Will Not Be Privatized

One of the best signs at the Occupy Wall Street‘s ongoing protest that is spreading like wildfire across the country right now said, “This revolution will not be privatized.” Well, what do we actually mean by that?

In the last 24 hours, Occupy Together has increased by almost 200 more cities, up from 749 to 928 cities, including Washington, DC. Wildfire. It’s about effin’ time. A movement like no other that has been 40 years in the making by my clock.

This week, Occupy Wall Street’s NYC General Assembly issued an official declaration. This is the American people standing up for the U.S. Constitution and the egalitarian principles it represents, here and abroad.

This is and always has been a public matter, of the people, by the people, and for the people, our joint struggle for universal pluralism, expressed by true democracy, not what passes for democracy today. It’s definitely not what the Values Voters Summit 2o11 speakers and politicians will be talking about tomorrow at the Omni Shoreham Hotel. They are billed as “upholding traditional values” and “protecting America” while they spout hate and homophobia and seek more and more draconian limitations on our constitutional rights. We’ll be outside there to call these bozos out, will you?

Occupy Wall Street and Occupy DC came together in irresistible solidarity yesterday with Stop The Machine, a 4+ day, long-planned event focusing on ending the wars, the killing, the corruption, and corporate greed that is ruining human lives and the natural environment. The mood of the crowd was summed up by one speaker at the microphone last night (paraphrased), “The economic collapse is good news because it tells us that this system is finished. The CEOs and politicians responsible should be jailed. No election in 2012, we need to start from scratch and never again allow class and race determine who can survive. Our environment has been ignored and we have a chance to fix it but that is not possible under this system.” He went on to say, “Nothing short of revolution is acceptable, an end to biggest police state (America) ever created. Like past successful revolutions where the people were pit against enormous odds, we will end this system once and for all.”

Yes, the meek will inherit the earth.

Liberty? Justice? Equality? Love? Truth? Freedom? Who will keep them alive if not us?

If not us, who will put an end to the coercive systems we have allowed our government to wield against its own people and innocents abroad? When will we stop the state-sponsored murders and corruption America has spawned? And who if not us can replace them with the voluntary associations of autonomous individuals? We can do it. We can envision a better world and make it a reality. We have ideas and we have skills.

Asking for the end of repressive government systems, such as War (the only thing to justify massive spending budgets and expand economic slaves to fill body bags without end) will be replaced by something better. It’s not anarchy, but anarchism that oversees the progressive ecology that replaces bad policy and legislation, all repressive, coercive systems, with something better. That something better focuses on helping the most number of people, not just the elite. This is the essence of progressive improvement of civilization.

Reproductive choice is a good example. Activists have worked and are working dutifully and passionately to extract this human decision from the grips of the state, religions, corporations, and even entrenched social customs. We know that it is private choice between a woman and her doctor, that’s it and that’s all it should ever be, a completely voluntary association.

To change our current system, to Stop the Machine that oppresses the 99% who wish to live in peace on a clean planet, we engage in envisioning, articulating, and advocating for better ways to do things, built to serve all of humanity, not a small global gang of greedy and bullying busybodies that stand in the way of all happiness. All of these movements, Rebuild the Dream, Occupy Together, and Stop the Machine are the spirit of Madison,Wisconsin, to the nth degree, and we applaud them. Power to the people. The truth will set us free.

At VenusPlusX, we have pointed out before that sexual freedom is the bedrock of all freedom because it brings to every human’s heart and mind the physical, mental, and spiritual “feeling” of freedom that no one can assail or strip. It’s a bodily guarantee that we carry inside us. Each person experiencing sexual pleasure or orgasm, for the first time or throughout a lifetime, knows in both heart and head what freedom feels like. Everything we do, our search for our own happiness, tries in some way to recreate a bit of that dynamism inherent in sexual pleasure because we know what we are looking for, that feeling of at-one-ment, peace, joy, and satisfaction, the drive to move forward towards a better life.

Right now many movements are coming together in force to rescue victory from the jaws of defeat. We are doing this without uniformity (not needed) but with passion for a newfound unity of purpose, long overdue.

Wildfire.

in Campaigns / Events / Global Sexual Freedom Watch / Grassroots by Alison Gardner 07 Oct 2011 0 comments