This week got a little taboo. There's been a lot of stuff in the media lately about porn - including the resuscitation of the feminist/evangelical alliance against porn - so it made me think about porn in the military. I bounced the idea off of Charlie and Ben Varlese and Chris Otero came on the show to discuss porn in the military. The pros, the cons, the unintended consequences and the way porn intersects with wartime service. Before you ask, yes, we really wanted to have at least one female from the Havok family come on the show, because we felt like it would be a valuable perspective, but we couldn't pull it off in time. But it was a good roundtable nonetheless. And I'm sure we'll revisit a lot of issues raised in the months to come, so plenty of opportunities to get more perspectives. 

Have a listen here.

Show Alibis

So what's with joshing Ben about his cyber certificate from Colorado State? The last time he was on, he had everything go wrong with his connection that could happen - from not being able to get on to interference to jets flying overhead. When a graduate certificate in cyber is on your resume, you know you're going to take a few rounds if you're the one struggling to connect to a podcast. So that's what that's about.

There were also a host of issues that Chris and Ben wanted to talk about. They made the tactical mistake of throwing them into the podcast chat assuming I would see them. Since I'm the one that drew their attention to the chat, that was a reasonable assumption. But then I didn't check it until the show was over and I saw all their hand raising and footnotes and suggestions. I can't cover all that ground in these alibis, so I'll highlight just one. Chris had a good point about erotica in Islamic culture - certainly there is no lack of representation in many classical Islamic texts. It is the relatively recent Salafist fundamentalism that has mandated a more repressed sexuality in Islamic countries (which, hypocritically, is frequently - though privately - ignored by its adherents). This deserves its own discussion.

Ben wanted to clarify his comments regarding revenge porn. “I am on the fence with the criminality aspect of revenge porn; however, I support civil actions in the matter. The reason is the legal precedents are still tumultuous and divided on the issue. Several cases are being overturned on appeal over expectation of privacy of shared images and over 1st Amendment rights to share content freely given.”

Show Notes

I Love My Rifle More Than You by Kayla Williams

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Havok Journal

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Veterans Repertory Theater