Today, I was simply going to announce that you can buy a slot on my dance card at SkeptiProm/Dino Prom. The proceeds will benefit Skepticon. Though I can’t promise that I’m good at dancing, since I grew up in a Footloose-esque family, I can promise that I’m always entertaining.
As always, I can never just announce a thing without something else coming up. A simple fundraiser is too hard to comprehend for some people, evidently. Avicenna notified me of … well, read it for yourself.
Avicenna’s forward of the comment is below. The comment itself is differentiated by being in quotes and italicized.
Here is the comment. It’s from someone with a randomised name. Fake e-mail. It was left on an old blog post so got caught in my spam filters.
“It’s all well and good that you are speaking out against human traffic and the sex slave trade but what about the people you work with?
Anti human trafficking crusaders literally selling off dances at Skepticon [redacted link to an anti-feminist Twitter troll account’s screencap of the Eventbrite page]
Will you be stopping them? Will you be fighting them there? How can you let hera do this? Are you encouraging sex slavery?”
I…
I think he thinks you are Hera. Because “brown people”. The Email is sadly from a 10 Minute E-Mail
Incidentally? You are now a Malaysian Tamil Doctor to be in the UK.
Your Dosa recipe is in the mail…
Summary: Someone thinks that the “Heina Dadabhoy” of the SkeptiProm dance card fundraiser is “Hera”, who is Avicenna’s partner. They also think that Avicenna has the right to scold his partner on behalf of Slymepitters and that selling slots on a dance card promotes sex slavery.
The idea to fundraise via dances originated in a joking conversation I had with Beth Presswood when I found out that I no longer had a date to my first prom. All participants opted in of their own free will and without any kind of obligation or pressure. Equating that to slavery and trafficking is hilariously absurd on one level. On another, it is frankly insulting to not only the participants, but also people who have, you know, endured actual slavery and human trafficking.
I would have seen their point had we been “selling off” people rather than dances. Even symbolically and as a fundraiser, I think that selling people is distasteful rather than funny or cute. In this case, however, we are selling slots on a dance card. Then again, the fact that the person thought that “Hera” and “Heina” are the same person speaks to a failure in basic reading comprehension in the same way that their assumption that Avicenna controls his partner’s behavior and is her keeper betrays their sexist beliefs.
Oh for fuck’s sake (to the emailer, not to you!)
Human trafficking is the selling of other people (or the use of their bodies) without their consent.
Selling anything else with consent is selling anything else with consent.
The distinguishing feature isn’t sex, or dancing, or any other activity. It’s the consent (read: the choice) of the person involved. You don’t get to decide for someone else that they must have sex, or dance, or anything else with another person against their will. They must decide that for themselves. If they decide that for themselves, whether in exchange for money or not, there is no problem.
People who don’t grasp this scare the crap out of me. It’s one thing to quibble about whether informed consent truly exists– it’s another thing to disregard the concept entirely.
God dammit! These fuck-nose troll fuckers are really trying to bankrupt me with buying up your dance card. Because, you know, if I donate to a charitable event, and get a reward back for the donation, it’s not like I donated to the charity for the fucking, specific rewards. The rewards are nice, and are a great perk, but are in no way commiserate to the value of the donation. Plus, it is not like the dance is any invitation for sexual rewards after the dance is over.
This anti-feminist loon fucker (loon as in the bird and not in the fuck-brigades ablest terms) probably sees no issue with buying someone a drink and/or dinner then there is some type of sexual reward afterwards. You know, because, “I bought you something, so you must put out in the appropriate sexual proportion to the cost of ‘x'”.
My response: “Hey anti-feminist fuck-face fucker. Save a loon, and go fuck yourself!”
PS I will put some money in your FtB donate account this Friday so that you can have some extra fun at Skepticon. Drinking and Dancing with people who have a clue regarding context, limits, and consent will be a small, but enjoyable middle finger to these douche noozles.
That is so sweet of you. I appreciate it.
See, they don’t get that consent element. That’s why they cannot see the depth but only the surface, and if there’s some similarity there, it’s the same. That’s why they think they have a gotcha whenever a woman wears a low cut top, or puts on make-up, or has sex.
++++
I also want to protest against the horrible injustice of me not getting a dosa recipe!