The triumph of Will and Wisdom over the Black Dog of Servitude
Month: November 2013
Where is your bliss station? You have to try to find it. Get a phonograph and put on the music that you really love, even if it’s corny music that nobody else respects. Or get the book you like to read. In your sacred place you get the ‘thou’ feeling of life…
Antonio Allegri, called Correggio:
Venus with Mercury and Cupid (The School of Love), c. 1525.
Wondering what The PinkPhoenix is?
Simply put: we help sex workers. There are no requirements for help other than being a sex worker. You don’t have to want to leave or stay, you don’t need to bare your soul and tell us sad stories, you don’t have to subscribe to our belief system. When we say no requirements, we mean it. We just want you to know you’ve got a friend in us.
Loneliness, stress, and isolation can lead to tons of problems, and we want you to know that’s why we’ve worked so hard to keep SexWorkerProblems up and running and why we’re launching The PinkPhoenix now.
You’re not alone and if you need us, we’re here. If you’d like to, you can reach out to us by emailing sexworkerproblems at gmail dot com or filling out the contact form on the-pinkphoenix.com and we’ll respond as soon as we’re able.
Even if you’re not a sex worker, you’re welcome to contribute and help us keep The PinkPhoenix up and running and to help us reach out to sex workers who may not have internet access or be aware of sexworkerproblems yet! If you’d like more information on how you can help, please email us at sexworkerproblems at gmail dot com.
Cambridge Digital Library, MS Mm.5.31, f.76r. Alexander of Bremen, Expositio in Apocalypsim (1250-1260)
Trigger warning for sex tourism
PARADISE: LOVE – TRAILER
On the beaches of Kenya, they’re known as “Sugar Mamas:” European women who seek out African boys, selling love to earn a living. Teresa, a 50-year-old Austrian and mother of a daughter entering puberty, travels to this vacation paradise. She goes from one Beach Boy to the next, from one disappointment to the next, and finally she must recognize: on the beaches of Kenya, love is a business.
So are we supposed to feel bad for the white lady or nah?
why does the media keep tryina make me feel sorry for rich, amoral white ladies? I can’t do it…
I see these women a lot when I go to Mombasa. They’re literally just sex tourists and I side eye this film for trying to humanise them
ugh
I AM SO ANNOYED right now. I am so annoyed right now.
wow.
this is disgusting
but
also a good reminder that it isn’t only white men who engage in sex tourism
WHITE WOMEN ARE AND ALWAYS HAVE BEEN COMPLICIT IN WHITE SUPREMACY
This stuff is very rampant all over Africa and the Caribbean. In Jamaica, they call it “rent a rasta” or a “rent a dread”. Divorced white women are blowing their alimony payments on “rent a rasta” in Jamaica. See a trailer for a documentary of it here.
In Nigeria, there are small pockets of women from the UK who have “rent boys” in cities like Port Harcourt, Uyo and Calabar. They prefer those places because they are very hospitable to foreigners, and it isn’t as congested or hectic like Lagos for instance. They can come and go as they please, and the likelihood of them getting scammed is much lower. They have boys the posted up in flats, and they visit them several times a year.
Make no mistake about it though, these women are predators. Their rent boys are usually young, around 18 and 19. You will rarely see them with men over 25. The younger ones are easier and cheaper to maintain, and they have high sex drives, which is why they are there. It’s a commodification of a taboo; sex with a black person. They get to live out their wild fantasies, and then they go home to their mundane, boring lives.
I’m always weary of white people in Africa in general. Be it ex-pats, vacationers, NGOs, UN peacekeepers, church groups or anyone else. There always seem to be ulterior motives with them, no matter how benevolent they appear on the surface. They will find a way to impose their sexual will and desires over people who are less fortunate. In the DRC, UN “peacekeepers” were violating young girls. Child prostitution was rampant, and many were leaving girls pregnant. See here. This type of thing is widespread.
When white folks go to some tropical getaway where only black and brown folks are, the impetus for a lot of those trips are cheap thrills and cheap sex. They didn’t fly half way around the world just to lie down on a beach. Especially if it’s a solo trip. They could have done that in locales much closer to home. 50 year old white men don’t go on solo trips to Kenya, the Dominican Republic or Thailand to take in the culture and to see the beach. They go for cheap sex, often with minors. White women are following their lead.
Anyway, what irks me about documentaries that focus on white women who partake in sex tourism is that they always try to humanize them, or make them out to be helpless women looking for love. No, these women are predators who are exploiting young men for sex. These dudes are poor. These white women aren’t going after the movers and shakers in society, or people with money in the countries they visit. They know what they’re doing and their targets are the poor and vulnerable. They wave a few bucks in their face so they can have their way with their bodies. This is what it is.
Be weary of white people in general in Africa? There are white people who live in Africa who are not looking for cheap thrills but were simply born there and had no choice. I understand what you’re intending to say but your wording needs to be adjusted slightly.
Towards the film, I don’t understand who in their right mind sides with offending party. Just because it makes a better and lighter film? Completely against how the film makers decided to frame this movie.
re: the bold
Anytime I’m remotely critical of white people in Africa, someone always makes this point. I usually ignore it, but I won’t today. This is the first thing that this person had to tackle and comment on. Out of all what I typed, this is was what they needed to address first. Ok then.
I’m an African. From the Niger Delta to be exact. It has been destroyed and exploited by white people, so my lived experiences tell me I should be especially wary of them. Places I visited regularly to see extended family have been destroyed and polluted. My people can’t fish and they can’t grow crops. It was their livelihood for generations. All that is left is ruin. Some of the white people responsible were born, bred or resided there because Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Chevron, Willbros Group, Exxon Mobile (btw Bill Gates is the largest shareholder in this company. Don’t believe his philanthropic BS. Exploitation is always at the root.) and other multinationals have been sending white people there to rob and exploit us for a very long time. Many of these white people live there and raise their families there. They are there eating good food, dancing to African music and fucking (literally and figuratively) African people, while their parents plunder the minerals in the country. These are the sons and daughters of a colonizing and brutal force who are only there because of unmerciful might and massive greed. There is no other reason. None. They didn’t emigrate to Africa at the behest or with approval from the locals. The driving force has always been greed. They came, they saw, they conquered. They seized lands that weren’t theirs. I won’t ignore that, or the history of white people in Africa.
The history of white people in Africa has a repeating theme, and it always ends with them propping themselves up at the expense of indigenous Africans. Usually in some kind of imbalanced relationship where they get to exploit the indigenous and claim the mineral wealth and assorted treasures for themselves. That’s when they aren’t sexually exploiting the locals, imposing their religious beliefs via missionary work, blindly working with unscrupulous NGOs who do more harm than good, claiming the rights to land that isn’t theirs, participating in slum tourism and exploitative photojournalism, or supplying the instruments of warfare to militias and warlords that will exacerbate unrest and civil wars, which makes it easier for them to further exploit the land and the people. We need to think about who facilitates the flow of weaponry used in African conflicts in the first place.
White people don’t go to be humble residents or to respect their host African nations. Not in the past, and not in the present. They don’t go to Africa to take a back seat to indigenous Africans, they go to commandeer and control. Often with bought and paid African leaders they use covertly, so that they can work behind the scenes and shift blame when the shit hits the fan. They impose their ideologies on unsuspecting people. They don’t look at the indigenous Africans as their equals. There is always paternalism, and Africans are always their subjects. They always go to Africa to take something. Even the white person who goes to Africa on a self-discovery trip to find themselves also takes. The people and the lands become a tool and a backdrop for whatever self-discovery crisis they are going through, and they will usurp the culture and land for their own benefit. It’s always about them and how they can benefit. Even when they appear benevolent, it’s always about them. The Africans are their backdrop. They cannot help it. This is how white supremacy works. It is systemic. It doesn’t matter if they have good intentions. Power dynamics will overrule intentions.
The children of white African nationals don’t get a pass because they had no choice in their place of birth, or because they don’t realize that they are part of an occupying force. Being citizens of an African nation by virtue of birth changes nothing. You need to think hard on how those Europeans ended up in Africa in the first place. Wherever there is a sizable population of white people in Africa, ask yourself how they came to be and how white lineage started on those lands. Once you come to terms with those findings, realize that those findings don’t get wiped out because those white people gave birth to kids on the continent, or because they have been there for several generations.
What kind of point is ‘someone didn’t have a choice in where they were born’ anyway? Does anyone have a choice in where they are born? That’s quite an irrelevant statement to make, and I’m not sure why people continue to make it as if it matters. Even when black people are being exploited by white people on their own lands, someone has to chime in to defend white people. It’s very unbecoming, and it lets me know what your priorities are.
(settlers are never native)
It’s interesting through all the comments it always assumes that going to a sex worker is somehow intrinsically exploitative. Like a person can never choose that occupation or even enjoy it. Yes, the colonization of Africa and other places is real and ongoing. Yes, some of the people working the sex trade do it because they have no choice. But some do choose to do it. Is going to a place that allows this to happen wrong? Or is it the Western nation’s attitude towards prostitution? I am not discounting anything said here, only pointing out there’s more to it.
Ave Babalon
Iconic historical stage designs for The Queen of the Night sequence from Mozart’s “Magic Flute” – the first image by Karl Friedrich Schinkel in 1815, the second by Simon Quaglio in 1818 (x)
32 Days remain, 78 Cards in our Tarot Journey
Holding Focus…
“Lord of Sorrow. Saturn and Libra. Disruption. Discord.”
– Hermetic Tarot
Trinities re-appear. Noting, especially after a “holiday” that not all things are in the air to launch, bounce, and fly into perfection. According to some astrologers and their interpretation of the sky story, it may be time to hang the hat and coat on the door, enjoy the downtime, complete projects that you have. Note the necessities of what need to be done. Energy seems… focused. So focused that it needs gentle guidance to enter into a new phase.
Seeking:
The essential. Harmony is found in pursuing that “one thing,” not by breaking stride and starting off into new ventures. Focus energy on completion through exploration of the nature, the prime, the elemental of what you are doing today. There is a harmony in focus that can scatter with too many points of reference.
Questioning:
The need to do new things. Desire to be/look “busy.” the drive to accomplish everything at once. Questioning certainty of personal authority, especially when the world around you rebels.
Keys:
Harmony. Accord. “Merry chase” not “hot pursuit.” Focused frolic. Note the happiness in the tone. Avoiding “Godzilla on a rampage, crushing citizens and burning buildings.” Culture questions, seek focus, find enjoyment, avoid tyranny, anger, disruption.“Time and time again does the pride of man influence his very own fall. While denying it, one gradually starts to believe that he is the authority, or that he possesses great moral dominion over others, yet it is spiritually unwarranted. By that point he loses steam; in result, he falsely begins trying to prove that unwarranted dominion by seizing the role of a condemner.”
― Criss Jami, Salomé: In Every Inch In Every MileDate: November 29, 2013
Cards: Three of Swords
Deck: The Hermetic Tarot
Number: 1 – back to basics, finding path in the focus…#tarot #tarotgram #dailytarot #tarotdaily #2013 #yearofthelovers #instatarot #numerology #quotes #inspiration #readings #tarotreadings #DrSeuss #ThreeOfPentacles #HermeticTarot #ThanksGiving #BeKindToOneAnother
I am at the Crystal Matrix in Atwater Village Every Sunday of the Month. Come by for a channeling session of Spirit Portrait!
http://www.thecrystalmatrix.com/