The Face of Jaycee?

One of the strangest facts to emerge from the deeply weird (as well as horrifying) story of Jaycee Lee Dugard is that her deranged abductor Philip Garrido allowed her face to appear on some of his business cards. The Telegraph ran with the story a few days ago, quoting one of Garrido's clients, Cheyvonne Molino: "Her picture was all over his business cards for the last 10 years". The paper speculated, bizarrely, that this may have been a "cry for help" on the kidnap victim's part.

Today, we learn that

The Sunday Telegraph was shown a card advertising the business that featured her in a glamorous pose, head resting on her hands, blonde hair falling across her made-up face.

She looks just like a happy young woman, even an aspiring model. That she could have appeared so contented is another mystifying twist to a near-inexplicable story.

The cards, if genuine, must now be quite valuable collectors' items - though I couldn't, yet, find any available for sale. I did however track down what seems to be the picture described in the Telegraph report. It's hard to tell if it's the real thing. It certainly looks a lot like her last known childhood photo (above), but it's so blurred it's impossible to be sure. The hair and make up have rather an Eighties feel to them, though it must have been taken no more than ten years ago - but then Garrido did inhabit a time-warp of his own creation. Read the rest of this article

Total Fiddlesticks

A day late, I discover that Heresy Corner ranks at no 30 in the "Right of Centre" category of this year's Total Politics poll. That's a miserable 7 places higher than last year, when my average daily readership was less than a third of what it is today. From that I conclude that most readers didn't bother to vote for me. Pooh. (But if you did, a thousand thankyous.) I'm less popular than Nadine Dorries. Or even Boatang and Demetriou. How the hell did that happen?

I demand a recount.

I'm happy to congratulate my evident superiors, though, including Leg-Iron and the Epistolary Conservative, who had a tremendous result at 14.

I also take some consolation from the fact that I didn't debase myself this year by soliciting votes, and in any case Heresy Corner is not a committed, one-dimensional political blog like many others on the list. "Right of centre" is also by far the largest category, with 491 blogs in the Total Politics database. Annoyingly, if it had been placed in the libertarian category (which I think it qualifies for) it would have come in at more impressive-looking number nine.

I note, by the way, that more than 2000 blogs are listed in the TP directory, while only around 1,500 people bothered to vote (or could think of ten blogs to vote for). I've had afternoons with more hits than that. So the result is utterly meaningless, except in a willy-waving sort of way. The real result, the top 100, will be revealed in a couple of days time. I anticipate humiliation.
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What Women Want

The hit topic on Comment is Free today concerns an erotica/porn mag aimed at women called Filament. It has recently launched, or it will launch if it can find a printer. They started off with soft-focus shots of men in shorts - but it seems that in the course of their research they uncovered a desire for something a little more obvious, to wit, erections. The magazine's staff were more than happy to oblige - indeed, photographer guidelines have been issued which state, inter alia, that "if your model is keen, we encourage it", but encourages freelancers to "think creatively when photographing an erection". Some may find that easier than others.

Unfortunately, they hit a snag: "the pervasive nervousness about depictions of aroused men". Nervousness among printers and distributors, that is. There was some concern about the Obscene Publications Act, and printers, citing potential objections from "the women's/religious sectors", didn't want to go anywhere near it. Kristina Lloyd and Mathilde Madden, writing on CIF, think that this attitude ("cockblocking") reveals "a deeply entrenched sexism: men can look at women but women cannot look at men". In a magnificent display of Guardian logic, they then go on to argue that while pictures of naked women aimed at a male audience are inherently sexist, pictures of naked men aimed at women aren't:

But there's nothing inherently sexist about depicting nudity. It's sexist when only women are deemed to signify the erotic; it's sexist when eroticised images of women are so normalised and widespread that women stand to be viewed first and foremost as sex objects – their value inextricably linked to their sexual desirability. The sexism is in the inequality.

Filament, by contrast is "challenging a culture that positions women as sex-products for men" - by, erm, positioning men as sex-products for women. This is far more positive, since it "is asking for women to be acknowledged as human beings who can look and lust just as men can." Otherwise, the "deficit" in penis (compared to nipple/vagina) depiction "positions women as the providers of sex for perpetually horny dudes." This leads on to a rather convoluted piece of political positioning, which rather misses the point of any sort of porn, which is to turn people on:

Perhaps what's most insidious in this saga is that the market's refusal to admit that Filament reinforces an idea of female sexuality that justifies that very refusal.

Come again? No, that sentence doesn't work, grammatically or otherwise.

The absence of visual erotica for women on shelves crammed with magazines where women are products for male consumers, reduces female desire to the less-interested counterpart of male desire.

Help!

And so, runs the self-fulfilling logic, of course women don't want magazines targeting their desire. Women don't have desire, see? They merely receive it. How do we know? Just check out those magazine shelves.

Oh, I see. I think. As an experiment it's worth doing. There's no reason in principle why women shouldn't be able to buy magazines featuring naked men, with or without erections., provided the same concession is accorded to men wanting to look at naked women. But I fail to see why it should be seen as some sort of moral crusade. Many feminists object to pornography on the grounds that it degrades and "objectifies" women. It certainly reduces its participants, male as well as female, to their sexual attributes, using them instrumentally to provoke sensations of arousal. Porn is exploitative, by its very nature: not because it exploits the women who appear in it (some of whom, it seems to me, are more exploited than others) but because it exploits the consumer. It takes a fact of nature - that sexual arousal (in the male) is a necessary precondition of successful coitus, which in turn is biologically driven - and turns it into a source of profit.

Is the woman (or the man) who is "objectified" in the name of porn degraded thereby? Only in a society which regards sexual allure as inherently demeaning, surely. Such would seem to be the underlying assumption of those opposed to porn on political as opposed to religious grounds. It's one thing to say that sex is crassly commercialised in the modern western world, and that this puts undue pressure on young women to dress or act in overtly sexy ways. But it's quite another to maintain that women who do act in this way, to the extent that they become strippers, glamour models, pornstars and the like, are debased by it. In a society that worships sex, such women ought to be objects of worship; and, indeed, the most successful "adult" performers become brands, selling not merely videos but sex-toys and other paraphernalia, signing autographs for the thousands of fans who queue up for a brief glimpse - in the flesh, as it were - of their fantasy object.

Kristina Lloyd protests in a comment:

At the heart of all this seems to be a culture which says women don't want to be consumers of sex/porn/erotica because women don't lust, they are the objects of lust.

But are the women in porn seen merely as objects? On the contrary, they are usually depicted as active participants, getting a kick out of displaying their bodies, masturbating, actively enjoying the sexual acts taking place, reaching improbably explosive orgasms. They are not - except in some sub-genres - lying still and passively accepting what is being done to them. The main purpose of heterosexual porn marketed to men is to arouse men by the depiction of female pleasure. An unrealistic fantasy of female pleasure, no doubt, and one that flatters the male that he is a "stud" - and may mislead the viewer as to what women actually enjoy - but the payoff is nevertheless significant. The woman who is sexually uninhibited, unabashed, in control, demanding "more" - and getting it, and climaxing - is the star of the show. It is the male, with his obliging erection, who is the bit-part player. He isn't even strictly necessary, as the huge market in faux-lesbianism reveals. At most, he provides reassurance to the male viewer that women really enjoy heterosexual intercourse.

Why should there be such emphasis on female pleasure if porn is inherently misogynistic and degrading? Why, if men hated women, would they want to fantasise about women having fun?

But back to Filament. On their website, the editors set out what they see as the main imbalance in the erotic marketplace.

Representations of women’s bodies far outnumber representations of men’s bodies everywhere: from advertising to art. In erotic image in particular, representations of the male body specifically designed for women are almost non-existent.

The common explanation for why women have sometimes seemed disinterested in images supposedly intended for them – the idea that "women are less visual" – has now been largely disproven by research. Research also shows that women prefer images of men designed quite differently to those usually marketed toward women.

Filament's big idea is "the female gaze" - cod-academic jargon for what women find attractive. To discover precisely what women did want in their naked men, the editors looked at both psychological research into female sexual tastes and the input of a panel of women who contributed their thoughts via LiveJournal (I notice that this year's most exciting young feminist, Laurie Penny, was one of those who took part). They determined that women tend to prefer men who were "not muscle-bound", had "more feminine faces" and adopted poses that showed "the subject's character and the environment he is in". Boy bands rather than hunks, then. However, the guidelines suggest that "if you’ve got a guy who is very muscular and you think, very hot, we’ll certainly consider your images".

The advice for photographers is extremely detailed - and thus informative as to what they think women want to look at. It counsels photographers against using body-oil, instead suggesting a “flushed and sweaty” look that might be achieved by "having your model run up and down the stairs a few times before you photograph them." It urges them to shoot in interesting, beautiful and/or recognisable environments where it would be reasonably believable that a sexual encounter might take place - which apparently does not include "places like kitchens, the outdoors, plain studio backgrounds or hotel rooms". Facial expression should "convey eroticism" without being "angry or arrogant", and could include "vulnerability", but not "pictures of men looking hurt or abused". They don't want pictures of men cross-dressing, holding babies ("just inappropriate") or doing housework.

What is most striking about Filament's website is its overwhelming, almost oppressive, air of moral seriousness. This is porn with a purpose. It might be thought that satisfying a demand among women to see naked men was enough on its own, but no. Under "What inspired the concept of Filament?" we learn that:

Women are 10 times more likely than men to undergo cosmetic surgery and 43 times more likely than men to suffer an eating disorder. Is this because women are ‘naturally’ life-threateningly obsessed with their appearance, or is this in some way influenced by women’s media? Many men’s magazines don’t discuss men’s appearance, but nearly all women’s magazines discuss women’s appearance.

Difficult to see how a few tastefully photographed stiffies will put an end to all that.

UPDATE: Ms Penny explains her involvement with Filament in more detail here. Similarity of title might or might not be a coincidence.
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Beware the Spinal Trap

Simon Singh's allegedly libellous article
Originally from The Guardian, Saturday April 19 2008

(DISCLAIMER: I publish this as a gesture of solidarity, and for information purposes, only. The words complained of are in italics. The British Chiropractic Association successfully argued before Mr Justice Eady that the phrase "happily promotes bogus treatments" amounted to an accusation of knowing fraudulence on their part. Singh continues to deny this.)

This is Chiropractic Awareness Week. So let's be aware. How about some awareness that may prevent harm and help you make truly informed choices? First, you might be surprised to know that the founder of chiropractic therapy, Daniel David Palmer, wrote that, "99% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae". In the 1860s, Palmer began to develop his theory that the spine was involved in almost every illness because the spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body. Therefore any misalignment could cause a problem in distant parts of the body.

In fact, Palmer's first chiropractic intervention supposedly cured a man who had been profoundly deaf for 17 years. His second treatment was equally strange, because he claimed that he treated a patient with heart trouble by correcting a displaced vertebra.

You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact they still possess some quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything. And even the more moderate chiropractors have ideas above their station. The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying, even though there is not a jot of evidence. This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments.

I can confidently label these treatments as bogus because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world's first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions.

But what about chiropractic in the context of treating back problems? Manipulating the spine can cure some problems, but results are mixed. To be fair, conventional approaches, such as physiotherapy, also struggle to treat back problems with any consistency. Nevertheless, conventional therapy is still preferable because of the serious dangers associated with chiropractic.

In 2001, a systematic review of five studies revealed that roughly half of all chiropractic patients experience temporary adverse effects, such as pain, numbness, stiffness, dizziness and headaches. These are relatively minor effects, but the frequency is very high, and this has to be weighed against the limited benefit offered by chiropractors.

More worryingly, the hallmark technique of the chiropractor, known as high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust, carries much more significant risks. This involves pushing joints beyond their natural range of motion by applying a short, sharp force. Although this is a safe procedure for most patients, others can suffer dislocations and fractures.

Worse still, manipulation of the neck can damage the vertebral arteries, which supply blood to the brain. So-called vertebral dissection can ultimately cut off the blood supply, which in turn can lead to a stroke and even death. Because there is usually a delay between the vertebral dissection and the blockage of blood to the brain, the link between chiropractic and strokes went unnoticed for many years. Recently, however, it has been possible to identify cases where spinal manipulation has certainly been the cause of vertebral dissection.

Laurie Mathiason was a 20-year-old Canadian waitress who visited a chiropractor 21 times between 1997 and 1998 to relieve her low-back pain. On her penultimate visit she complained of stiffness in her neck. That evening she began dropping plates at the restaurant, so she returned to the chiropractor. As the chiropractor manipulated her neck, Mathiason began to cry, her eyes started to roll, she foamed at the mouth and her body began to convulse. She was rushed to hospital, slipped into a coma and died three days later. At the inquest, the coroner declared: "Laurie died of a ruptured vertebral artery, which occurred in association with a chiropractic manipulation of the neck."

This case is not unique. In Canada alone there have been several other women who have died after receiving chiropractic therapy, and Professor Ernst has identified about 700 cases of serious complications among the medical literature. This should be a major concern for health officials, particularly as under-reporting will mean that the actual number of cases is much higher.

Bearing all of this in mind, I will leave you with one message for Chiropractic Awareness Week - if spinal manipulation were a drug with such serious adverse effects and so little demonstrable benefit, then it would almost certainly have been taken off the market.

· Simon Singh is the co-author of Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial
www.simonsingh.net
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Mistress of Reinvention

It's a year since the Heresiarch first became intrigued by the goings-on of Max Mosley and his friends in Chelsea. For those directly involved, it has been quite a year - especially for Mosley himself who not only won his legal action and reasserted his control over the FIA but has turned himself into a scourge of tabloid journalism. His ongoing feud with Paul Dacre may well lead to permanent changes in the way in which newspapers operate in this country, for good or ill.

For his nemesis, the Milton Keynes-based dominatrix known officially as Woman E, who filmed the private spanking party (inaccurately described as a "Nazi orgy") at the behest of NoW's Neville Thurlbeck, the fallout from the affair has been less happy. Her husband lost his job with MI5, the Screws diddled her out of some of the money they had promised, she was shunned as a traitor by many former colleagues, barred from clubs and placed on blacklists. She was reduced to begging forgiveness in a cringe-making Sky Television interview - in which she was revealed as a very ordinary-looking housewife called "Michelle" - and selling her story to Dacre's Mail on Sunday.

It seemed to be all over for her. But, as the Heresiarch can exclusively reveal, the dominatrix formerly known as Abi is now getting back into the mistressing business. She has a new name, a new website, and even a new costume which an untutored eye might think incorporates elements of Nazi chic.




In her new site, illustrated with pictures both of her facilities and of herself in a number of poses, she introduces herself as "Mistress Kiera, supreme Dominatrix and Goddess". "I am a tall, beautiful, sensual and sadistic Dominatrix with many years of experience," she proclaims. "I have a commanding presence and I am always dressed in the finest rubber, leather and fetish clothing." But although she might "seem an unattainable goddess", she reassures her potential clients that she is "approachable" and will "consider most requests". Including, no doubt, those from journalists.

Kiera offers "high class BDSM and fetish services from my fully equipped chambers in Buckinghamshire". (Always fully-equipped, these dungeons. When did you last hear of a "semi-equipped dungeon"?) The range of her services is as extensive as ever, ranging from "anal training" and "foot worship" to "light to severe nipple torture" and "shaving". Wasn't that one of Max's special requests?

Not without reason, given last year's events, Kiera would appear to be especially proud of her expertise in blackmail. She boasts:

I run a number of blackmail and financial schemes including; taxation, extortion, contractual control, photo and personal details blackmail. Each scheme is tailored to individual requirements and a bespoke contract will be drawn up between us by my legal slave. Because of timewasters you will be expected to prove you are genuine by either visiting me for a session or pay an upfront fee to cover the set up costs (contracts etc) before any scheme can start.

She must regret not following these rules when negotiating with Mr Thurlbeck.

Given the animosity towards her in the tight-knit world of bondage and whipping, it might be expected that she would be desperate for any custom that came her way. But apparently she can still afford to be choosy. She writes:

Personal hygiene is extremely important to me and I expect the same from clients. Anyone arriving for a session who is lacking in this area will be turned away. Also anyone who in my opinion is under the influence of alcohol or drugs will be turned away. My chambers are situated within a private house and are extremely discreet. I expect the same level of discretion from all clients in return. Anyone who fails to arrive for an appointment without having the courtesy to cancel will be banned from ever visiting me again. Likewise all other timewasters will have their phone and email details submitted to 'timewasters' websites and to fellow Mistresses.

As to who those fellow mistresses might be, we are given no clues. Presumably they don't include the celebrated Mistress Switch, her former best friend turned sworn enemy, who has been warning her contacts and anyone else who cares to listen of the prospect of Woman E's re-entry onto the scene for several months now. On an online forum, La Switch has repeatedly calumniated her traducer as "thick" and "a liar" who "has no loyalty to anyone except herself". "Leopards don't change their spots", she believes. She complains that:

This bitch is playing the sympathy angle, I hear what untrue stories she is putting about. I'm sure she'll be deluding herself and not facing facts. Too scared to look at herself and see what she did. All you have to remember is SHE (not her husband, not the newspaper) walked into a flat wired and betrayed a client and her friends for money. Who would do such a thing?

Who indeed? Clearly, for Mistress Switch, the anger is still very raw against a woman who "went against everything that is fundmental to a PD/client relationship, discretion and trust". She was "blinded by the pound signs" says Switch, who isn't above issuing the odd predictive curse:

I believe in karma. Years ago a neighbour caused our family unnecessary nasty aggravation. My husband said at the time that she was evil to the core. 2 years later she died of bone cancer.

Another mistress joins in, expressing doubt that Kiera's new venture will prove successful. "Even the watersports enthusiasts wouldn't piss on her if she was on fire!" But this lady intuits that there might be something more to the story:

Is she hoping that this will hit the tabloids and get her some more lucrative column inches, a contract with Max sodding Clifford, and perhaps a new job on the telly where she's wheeled out to make a comment on every future scandal as it breaks from an *insider's* perspective? It all seems a bit odd.

It makes the atmosphere in the higher reaches of the Labour party seem loving by comparison.

"She's most likely back because she's penniless and isn't qualified to do anything else" Andi Switch speculated the other day. She's advising anyone booking a session with Kiera to "film your sessions for You Tube, we could do with the laugh being on her". I thought YouTube had guidelines about that kind of thing.

For Mistress Switch herself, things are going rather better. Together with two of the other Mosleyettes and a number of other women, she was in Las Vegas a couple of months ago to film some shorts and take part in a prestigious spanking convention. She continues as active as ever in her particular demi-monde. Women C and D are equally busy: a recent explicit lesbian romp featuring the two of them has attracted great excitement, while Miss D chose to celebrate the completion of her doctorate by getting several of her colleagues to kidnap her and subject her to waterboarding and "interrogation". It was, she reports, "the most amazing experience in my scene life so far". Mistress Switch was a particularly sadistic interrogator, by all accounts, leaving her victim "totally broken". Perhaps "Kiera" should watch her back.
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