Whatever happened to TIMESUP?
It seems they were passing fads. Once Senator Al Franken was pressured to resign, pressured by the otherwise comatose Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and once Harvey Weinstein and Woody Allen stopped making movies, that was enough.
Having Ruth Bader Ginsberg on the Supreme Court, and Judge Judy on television, that's also enough? Is it really Happy Christmas every day, and "War is Over?"
Where is Senator Gillibrand on "a woman's right to choose," and why is it up to a Trump-slanted Supreme Court to reverse the progress women have made over the past decades? The news today has a quote from a doctor in Louisiana who is tired of going it alone.
With abortion clinics being shut down all over, the Hope Medical Group has found itself one of the last clinics standing. It's bad enough that doctors have been assassinated, and buildings threatened with arson. Where's the safety in numbers when people are looking to ONE clinic and one Brave Eagle to fly the flag of freedom?
Here's the quote:
"If I'm the only one left, I'm not going to continue...apparently women don't care enough to fight for their rights..."
On THIS website, the question is why there aren't ENOUGH women who care enough to fight for their rights? If there were a few more famous actresses with a VeRO (Verified Rights Owner) rep on eBay to send in a DMCA complaint, there wouldn't be THIS:
If Senator Kirsten Gillibrand got on the podium and called attention to eBay violating FEDERAL LAW by not making sure there were SIGNED MODEL RELEASES OF AGE AND CONSENT for the nude images on its site, ORDINARY WOMEN wouldn't be subjected to THIS:
"FOUND PHOTO." Really? Where did you FIND it? And who gave you the right to sell it? Do we call this "slut shaming" and profiting from theft? If a woman chooses to indulge her fantasy of being in Playboy or Penthouse, that doesn't mean her images can become "revenge porn," thrown onto a website and then downloaded by somebody trying to sell them as "FOUND" photos.
WHERE is the model release of age and consent? WHERE is EBAY'S RESPONSIBILITY AND MORALITY?
The answer is that just as women must continue to fight for their rights. All mistreated people from the Jews to the blacks to the Latinos to the Asians must have watchdogs and whistleblowers. They need people in power positions to make sure abuse does NOT go unpunished.
Ebay has allowed a seller using the handle PKC527 to stay on the site despite several VeRO complaints...because not enough celebrities have lawyers, managers or FANS sending in DMCA's. Ebay can shrug, "If Miss X and Miss Y and Miss Z have sent us complaints, that doesn't mean that Angie Dickinson, Scarlet Johansson or Mila Kunis haven't given consent. And guess what, we're "just a venue" and we won't ask the seller to provide those documents of consent.
Part of the problem is of course EBAY, who noticed that this seller, cut loose from PAYPAL, was telling customers to send her money orders (a banned method of payment). All they did was shut down auctions where she mentioned that fact. So she uploaded more. EBAY was told that this seller was in violation of their own TOS by offering faked celebrity images and stolen celebrity images and hidden camera celebrity images. Dozens and dozens of these auctions were removed. The seller uploaded more. That's because Senator Gillibrand and the others in power have not addressed the problem...and have not addressed even more pressing ones involving women's rights, including the abortion issue that is now reaching a crisis level.
A frustrating problem here is that famous actresses are difficult to contact, can usually only be reached by finding a number of an agent or manager, and those people, for perverse reasons, will not even accept the FREE offers that VERO reps give them. A reason why VERO reps make these FREE offers is that the more women they represent, the easier it is to get a seller suspended. Strength in numbers. Instead, like the doctor in Louisiana, a VERO rep sees a friend abused, stops the auction, and can't do anything about the 100 other women on the seller's list.
The seller often leaves a teasing email: "You got me on HER, but I have a hundred more and I'm making a VERY nice living doing almost nothing but putting a few print-outs into envelopes!" And degrading women. And pretending women in faked photos are really posing that way. And encouraging the buyers to consider women as nothing but entertainment. Or, to quote the seller's header for the Emma Watson picture nothing but "PUSSY, ASS..."
Constant vigilance is part of freedom. Being an activist is part of freedom. One can't rely on others to do it, or one lone doctor in Louisiana or only a few VERO reps on eBay. And one can't count on THESE two women:
How nice, EBAY has TWO women among its vast army of executives. Huber has blocked anyone on Twitter who contacted her about the pornography problem. Huber has also ignored letters, because they don't have Senator Kristen Gillibrand's logo on the top, or any other powerful elected official.
EBAY has been very slow to enforce general rules about celebrity pornography on the site. PAYPAL has suspended sellers who use their service and sell via EBAY. But EBAY has too often ignored "report item" complaints, shrugged over phone-in complaints, and allowed sellers to profit from the most grotesque and even violent abuses of women.
The headlines today also mention BLACKFACE, and the outrage that in the 80's, a few Virginia officials degraded the dignity of African-Americans by dressing up in minstrel-like poses. What about the degradation of women, who are deliberately subjected to Photoshop fakes, and totally hostile rape fantasies and abuse, of which the Emma Watson image is only ONE example?
The Abortion issue, the BLACKFACE issue, whatever issue...it takes public awareness, and whatever other measures need to be taken: new laws, enforced laws, a front page news report, or legal action. Apathy is not the answer.
Who decided time's up for TIMESUP? Who said "no longer interested" at #METOO? Who is hanging up the phone and ignoring the emails when a VERO rep says "I can represent YOUR client, too, and free. We have a problem here and it should be solved."
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