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Group of Toronto Striking Renters Declare Victory

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Another group of renters in the Parkdale neighbourhood of Toronto have succeeding in standing up to their landlord with a rent strike. Over 50 residents at 1251 King Street West stopped paying their rent in February when they were faced with an annual increase of 3.4 percent—an increase well above the government-recommended guidelines.

Now, about two months into the strike, their landlord, Nuspor Investments, has withdrawn its application for the above-guideline rent increase.

At the corner of King West and Jameson streets around 8 AM Tuesday, a gathering that was to be held in protest turned victorious.

Jennifer Rosser, a resident of Parkdale.

Jennifer Rosser, a resident of who has been participating in the rent strike, has been living in Parkdale for four years. “The reason why I participated in the rent strike is because what they’re doing is really an attempt to push people out of the neighbourhood,” Rosser told VICE, holding a red sign with “VICTORY” written across it. “It’s classism, it’s racism, it’s sanism.”

Rosser is single, in career transition, and lives in a one-bedroom unit with her orange tabby cat Burrito. She said that Nuspor choosing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, in part on remodeling the building’s lobby—which now features gleaming, stark-white modern aesthetic—was at odds with the upkeep of individual units and not supported by residents. She cited cockroach infestations and lack of proper ventilation in the hallways and her bathroom as major issues that have yet to be resolved. Her rent is currently $1,176.79 per month.

“Being afraid of homelessness is something that’s been part of my reality for a long time,” Rosser, 39, said. “I’m proud of standing up to bullies.”

Toronto is currently in the midst of a housing crisis, with the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom hitting $2,000, according to one online posting tracker.

In May 2017, hundreds of renters living in notorious Parkdale landlord MetCap’s buildings also staged a rent strike. The strike came to an end after three and a half months, with the landlord agreeing to lower than planned rent increases.

Cole Webber, a community legal worker at Parkdale Community Legal Services, helped organize the rent strikes against both MetCap and Nuspor. He said the success tenants of MetCap had last year helped pave the way for those living in the Nuspor property.

“They were inspired at 1251 King to take up the fight,” Webber said. “Tenants of the building started to organize, go door to door, have conversations with their neighbours, hold meetings in the lobby in the building, and talk about what they could do to fight this rent increase.”

In a letter posted throughout the King Street West building, Nuspor maintained that the rent increase it had applied for was aligned with recent repairs in the building. The company instead cited “harassment from Parkdale Organize against tenants, our employees, and their families” as its reasoning to drop its application for above-guideline rent increases.

During the Parkdale Organize demonstration this morning, Webber pointed to a nearby apartment building on Jameson Avenue where balcony repairs were going on. Balcony repairs, he said, are regularly cited in reasoning for above-guideline rent increases by landlords. Other typical repairs used in these applications, he said, include window replacements and changes to front lawns—changes that affect outside aesthetics of buildings and could serve to lure in new tenants willing to pay more for rent.

Meanwhile, longtime residents in buildings that experience these sometimes disruptive construction projects may be facing perpetual issues with disrepair in their own units, such as pest infestations and water damage.

“I think that the model for landlords is to try to come in and upscale these buildings—but through struggles like these rent strikes, people are putting the breaks on that process,” Webber said.

“We got together, refused to raise rent, and we got what we wanted—for now,” Rosser said.


Some Alleged Neo-Nazis Accidentally Blabbed About a Murder to 911

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The alleged leader of the Aryan Circle has been arrested in connection to the murder of another accused neo-Nazi during a house party, according to a federal indictment unsealed last week. David Wayne Williams and seven of his followers are implicated in the 2016 shooting death of Clifton Hallmark. And as the Daily Beast reports, they apparently failed horribly at trying to portray the crime as a robbery gone wrong.

The story goes that one alleged participant in the violent group named Jeremy Jordan got into an argument with Hallmark during a Fourth of July celebration and shot him in the head. The injured man's wife and another woman, who are both alleged Aryan Circle members, transported him to a gas station where they called 911 and reported that he'd been shot by a robber. They just waited a little too late to get their story straight.

"We are going to tell them he got robbed, OK?" a dispatcher heard another woman yell in the background as she made the call, Louisiana's KATC reports.

By the time the cops got there, the women's story didn't add up—the Evangeline Parish Sheriff’s Office didn't find bullet casings or blood at the scene. Hallmark died at the hospital later that day. Now eight members of the group, including Williams, Jordan, Anissa Hallmark, Michael Auxilien, Elizabeth Auxilien, Christa Williams, Heather Tate, and Brian Elliot Granger have been charged with accessory after the fact to second-degree murder.

A press release from the Department of Justice explains that the Aryan Circle is a gang that broke off from the Aryan Brotherhood and operates primarily in Texas and Louisiana. It also operates like a crime family—engaging in smuggling activity in prison and robbery on the streets, according to the ADL. What bonds them together is white supremacy, and members are responsible for a number of hate crimes, as well as the murder of two police officers in 2007.

Interestingly, the AC gang, which the ADL estimates has around 1,400 members, allows women to rise to the top of its ranks. That might explain why the wife of the guy who was shot, Anissa Hallmark, was allegedly involved in trying to cover up the murder after someone from her own gang shot her husband.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Butt-Enhancing Underwear for Guys Is Way More Popular Than You Think

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The US patent office is littered with hilariously dry descriptions of male support garments. One underwear brand claims it can provide the ideal “cosmetic buttock profile” while another promises “integral male member adjustable support.” One pair of padded boxers with removable butt inserts says it also has a system for “easily venting the scrotum.”

Then there’s Rounderbum, a butt-enhancing underwear brand that comes with two butt-shaped polyurethane foam pieces woven into the brief’s backside, creating what the makers describe as “lift technology.”

“When brands use silicone, it’s heavier, and it’s a little more obvious if someone were to smack your butt,” Rounderbum inventor Jonathan Diersing tells me. “Ours is spongy, like a real butt.”

There have been predecessors, but Rounderbum, which says it’s done over $1 million in sales since 2015, is perhaps the most visible male butt-enhancing underwear brand in history. After winning $150,000 during an appearance on Shark Tank, Diersing claims his Amazon sales have shot up a thousand percent; his butt-lifting boxer briefs are currently the fourth best-selling pair of trunks on the site.

Rounderbum’s rapid expansion suggests men are under similar pressure to women to present a thick and juicy ass to the world. But Diersing, of course, would like to sell a more empowering message. “We’re not here to fake anyone out,” he says. “We just want your clothes to fit as well on you as they do on a mannequin.”

Surely, wearing padded underwear is a healthier way of dealing with your own body dysmorphia than using steroids or compulsively exercising, but it also perpetuates unrealistic standards of beauty, according to Columbia University psychology professor Melanie Brewster. “It’s hard for me to imagine that when someone goes out and buys any kind of shaping undergarment, that there isn’t some underlying dissatisfaction with their own bodies,” she says.


Men, especially queer men, have long been padding their asses. But the majority of products previously available were marketed for reasons other than image-improvement. Rounderbum is refreshingly shameless about their mission to make your butt look bigger, and they’re not hiding behind medical language to justify that mission.

Butt for You, which has been selling padded underwear since 1997, features a man in a wheelchair on its homepage; the owner told SFGate that many of his clients were seniors and HIV positive men who’d lost fat in their butts from years of taking antiretroviral drugs. BottomsUp, a brand that made headlines about ten years ago, also catered to cancer patients and men in wheelchairs. Rounderbum’s advertising, in contrast, is de-medicalized, emphasizing the confidence a man can feel with a bubble butt (assuming it doesn't slide around).

The ascendance of padded underwear for men isn’t entirely expected. According to the American Society of Aesthetic Plastic, women still make up the bulk of cosmetic butt procedures, with men undergoing just 2.6% of a total of 20,126 butt augmentations and 3.7% of butt lifts in 2016.

But Karen E Jones, the owner of Bubbles Bodywear, says that more men are buying her products than ever before. “The men complain that their jeans or pants sag. We had one doctor who felt self-conscious when residents were walking behind him. He thought they were just staring at his flat butt.”

She adds that a “perfect” butt just isn’t attainable for many men through exercise alone. “They aren’t genetically built with the hormones, fat and muscle makeup in the backside," she said. (According to a 2009 study, women on average store 6 to 11 percent more body fat than men.) ”Sometimes they need a little silicone help.”

Unlike Rounderbum, Bubbles offers a range of padding, from one to three inches, as well as optional silicone inserts. Jones says her sales reps spend hours on the phone with customers, trying to craft the ideal derriere. “It’s like fitting a bra times one hundred,” she said.

Brandon Gray bought Rounderbums after seeing ads for the bulbous underwear brand pop up on Facebook. “I’ve had many compliments,” he tells me. “I’ve even had friends ask me if I’ve had cosmetic surgery.”

Gray was so happy with the way the briefs made him feel that he bought a pair for every occasion. “I’ve always been self-conscious about my butt. I think most guys check their butts out in the mirror and wonder if they look okay.”

Naturally, the Amazon reviews for Rounderbum are all over the map. One customer praised the briefs for cupping his cheeks effectively, while another remarked, “these will make you look like Jennifer Lopez before her reduction.” Still, one gets the sense that the briefs are solving a pressing issue for some men, especially those who have butts so flat that they can’t hold their jeans. As one customer says, “I have worn these with loose jeans and also skinny pants (that show what little real butt I have) and have [received] compliments from everyone, including slightly inappropriate ones from coworkers.”

Brewster worries about what the rise of padded underwear says about male self-esteem. If a patient brought up padded underwear as a solution to their problems, she says she’d proceed with caution. “If people compliment you on your new butt, is that going to make you feel better about yourself or is that going to make you feel potentially worse because you’re getting attention based on this superficial modification that you’ve made?’”

She believes that gay men, in particular, are more likely to self-objectify. “Rather than really living in and enjoying your body, you’re constantly thinking about how this body can look better for the benefit of other people,” she says. “Gay men internalize the male gaze just like straight women do.”

Every time someone changes their shape artificially, they’re putting forth an ideal that isn’t achievable, she adds. “I’d just suggest that they wear it mindfully.”

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

For the Better: Jerimy Rivera

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When we think about ballet, it tends to evoke the image of a very competitive, exclusive, and strict world. It’s a hard stereotype to shake off knowing that some teachers, directors, and choreographers are still famously known for pushing dancers to the extreme, shaming their bodies, and silently encouraging unhealthy rivalry.

In this episode of For the Better we meet Jerimy Rivera, a 24-year-old dancer who wants combine dance and his life experience to create a more inclusive space for ballet.

Things Aren't Going So Well in Gilead in the New 'Handmaid's Tale' Trailer

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With the next chapter of Offred's story in Handmaid's Tale rapidly approaching next month, Hulu has decided to drop yet another terribly bleak trailer on us in anticipation. On Wednesday, we got to see a lot more of what's to come in the highly anticipated second season, and things seem to have taken an even darker turn in Gilead.

Next to shots of labor camps, people being weighed down by kettlebells in pools, a bunch of Handmaids lined up on the gallows, and Aunt Lydia, who somehow got hold of a microphone, the trailer teases Offred's (Elisabeth Moss) freedom. We do get a shot of Offred leaving a nondescript house wearing street clothes and announcing herself by her real name, June Osbourne, by the end. But even if she does manage to escape Gilead, it looks like she'll have to endure a hell of a lot of torture to get herself free.

Meanwhile, Luke is still trying to find his wife from Canada after learning she's still alive, and Moira is spending her freedom protesting, though it looks like she's found some time for a new love interest. Alexis Bledel's character, Emily, is back working at some kind of Holes labor camp alongside Janine. And the Commander (Joseph Fiennes) and Mrs. Waterford (Yvonne Strahovski) don't look like they're doing so well after Offred's departure. While the Commander seems to be on some kind of homicidal hunting spree, Serena winds up in street clothes yelling about the "future of mankind."

Needless to say, if this trailer is any indication of how bat-shit the next season of Handmaid's Tale is about to be, then April 25 can't come soon enough. Check out the clip above.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Of Course Donald Glover's Mock 'Deadpool' Script Is Amazing

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Last week, FX announced that Donald Glover's upcoming Deadpool cartoon—the first major project announced on the heels of the actor's overall deal at FX—was, well, dead. The network cited "creative differences" between the network, Marvel, and Glover's camp as the reason for the show's demise, but seeing as how Glover is single-handedly responsible for roughly 60 percent of the world's quality creative endeavors lately, Variety speculated that the guy was just a little too swamped to take on the Deadpool project right now.

But on Wednesday morning, Glover took to Twitter to set things straight.

Then, he decided to air out his apparent grievances about the newly canceled show in the most Donald Glover-y way imaginable—by posting a 14-page mock draft of the Deadpool finale starring the superhero as he ruminates over why, exactly, the animated series got canned.

"Do you think they canceled the show... cause of racism?!" Deadpool asks. "Yeah, but all the writers were black. And the references were pretty black too... Maybe we were alienating our white audience? No. We did a whole goat yoga episode. Damn. What was it?"

Of course, this is Donald Glover we're talking about, so the thing is more than just a few parting jabs at Marvel. The dense script is also crammed full of zingers about Sudan the white rhino, Bitcoin nerds, Facebook's shadowy dealings, armed teachers, and the ongoing mystery of who exactly bit Beyoncé at that party.

Sure, the whole thing is one big meta-joke, but it still gives us a tiny taste of how incredible the Deadpool cartoon could've been if, uh, everyone's creativity wasn't so different or whatever. But worry not, Donald Glover will probably drop another ten brilliant projects soon that will make us forget all about Deadpool, since he's nowhere near "too busy" yet.

Until then, read the full script via Glover's Twitter below.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Toronto Chef Butchers Deer, Eats Steak In Front Of Vegan Protesters

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A Toronto chef, exasperated with some vegan activists protesting outside of his restaurant, decided to fire back in a rather unique way.

A small group of vegans gathered outside of Antler Kitchen & Bar, a west-end Toronto restaurant, with a banner and cameras to protest the eating and butchering of meat this weekend. The vegans have been protesting there regularly and The Antler has responded with a few stunts like pushing their foie gras usage. This time though, much to the vegans chagrin, Michael Hunter, the restaurant's chef, who specializes in wild game meat, upped his game by hauling a leg of deer out to the window and starting carving it up in full view of the protestors.

Police, there to oversee the protest, went in to talk to Hunter during this but decided that, hell, since it’s his restaurant he can do what he likes. In a video provided to UniLad, you can hear the protesters were none too pleased.

“He’s doing it deliberately to mock and taunt us because we’re vegans,” says the man behind the camera. “As you can see the owner has brought the leg of a recently murdered animal to the front of the restaurant to taunt the activists.”

From here, Hunter didn’t really pay any heed to the protesters, he just butchered part of the deer, cutting off a good sized hunk of meat. The chef then took this meat and headed to the back of his restaurant. When he returned to the window he had a big plate with just a sole chunk of (most likely the recently butchered) meat—cooked to perfection—on it. No garnish, no sides, just meat. Once sitting, Hunter quickly went to town on the steak.

Protesters chant outside of Antler. Photo via Facebook screenshot.

Hunter has been denying media interviews after chomping down his steak but told the National Post in a statement that he doesn’t really know why he’s being targeted because, “our identity as a restaurant is well-known throughout the city as is our ethical farming and foraging initiatives.”

One of the protesters said that their reason for targeting Antler was because it’s a small business that uses ethical meat. The reason behind this is they think they have a better chance of getting action at a smaller restaurant rather than a chain and the protesters don’t believe in the concept of ethical meat.

Oh deer. (Whatever, you think of something better.)

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Someone Made a Glorious Fake Craigslist Ad to Help Trump Find a New Lawyer

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Trump has been on the hunt for a new lawyer to take over the Mueller probe ever since the head of his legal team, John Dowd, peaced the fuck out of the White House last week, reportedly because the president wouldn’t listen to him. It now looks like no one really wants the job—no matter how many attorneys Trump's asked to take it.

But that was before an unnamed Good Samaritan swooped in to try to help Trump fill the post using the internet's go-to platform for getting odd jobs done: Craigslist.

Screengrab via Craigslist

The ad—titled "SEEKING LEAD ATTORNEY FOR DIFFICULT CLIENT"—never names the president outright, but it's pretty clear who it's talking about. For one, whoever's up for the task would be working at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And there are a few uniquely Trumpian requirements for the gig.

"Working knowledge of social media, especially Twitter is a plus, as is a better than average knowledge of the adult film industry and a collection of Playboy magazines from 1985-2010," the post reads. "Prior appearances on Fox News a huge plus. No fatties."

The listing—posted by "General John," a nod to Trump's chief of staff John Kelly—makes it clear that more than anything, Trump's new lawyer should try to keep the president from sitting down for an interview with Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Trump has insisted that doing so might be a good move, despite the fact that pretty much everybody who was on his legal team thought it was a terrible idea.

"Basically your job boils down to keeping him from testifying under oath and hoping the rest comes out in the wash," the listing reads.

Difficult as the job may be, whoever has the guts to take it would apparently make a fortune. As the listing notes, "Client is a hugely wealthy man. Hugely successful. Everyone says it."

The post might be just a gag—but given that there's basically one guy handling the Mueller probe right now, it could also be the work of Trump's old spokesman John Barron, turning to the same place you find used cigarettes and dirty mattresses to hire legal help.

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Related: Trump to Talk to Mueller?

This article originally appeared on VICE US.


How Sex Offender Registries Can Result in Vigilante Murder

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Stephen Marshall was driving through rural Maine under the cover of night with three guns by his side and a laptop with 34 names and addresses he’s found online.

It was the early hours of Easter Sunday in 2006 and 20-year-old Marshall, a dishwasher from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia was paying a rare visit to his father in Houlton, Maine, a town near the Canada-US border. His father was asleep and had no idea that Marshall had taken his truck after quietly slipping out a window.

Around 3 AM, Marshall reached his first stop: about two hours southwest in the town of Milo, Maine. Fifty-seven-year-old Joseph Gray was in his living room asleep. He’d been up late watching Forensic Files with his wife. She was woken up by the sound of their dogs barking. Gray was shot and killed by Marshall through the living room window as she stood by, helpless.

Over the next few hours it’s believed that Marshall drove by at least four other homes, but it isn’t until just after 8 AM, that he meet his second victim.

Twenty-four-year-old William Elliott answered the door of his mobile home in Corinth, Maine after Marshall knocked. Even after Elliott crumpled to the floor, Marshall continued to shoot him. As the Toyota pickup peeled out of the driveway, Elliott’s girlfriend took down the license plate as her boyfriend lay dying.

Grey and Elliott were among around 2,200 names on Maine’s online sex offender registry in 2006. Marshall was able to access their photo, name, address, identifying characteristics—even their place of employment. And he wasn’t the only one checking them out. The registry was the state government’s most popular website at the time receiving over 200,000 hits a month.

By the end of the weekend the count of people dead at Marshall’s hand would rise to three. After abandoning the truck in Bangor, Marshall hopped a bus to Boston. Around 8 PM, as it approached its destination, the bus was surrounded by police. In his final act, Marshall put a .45 calibre handgun to his head and pulled the trigger. He was pronounced dead a few hours later.

An undated family photo of Stephen Marshall, of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Photo via CP

The murders of Grey and Elliott came at a time when the internet was new enough that fears were sparked that this sort of extreme vigilantism would become commonplace. Lawmakers in Maine and other states floated the idea of taking the registries offline. Maine’s was shut down—but only for a day.

In Canada, Marshall couldn’t have committed his crime so easily. The national sex offender registry run by the RCMP, then like now, was only available to police agencies. But some politicians, including Conservative leader Andrew Scheer want to see it made available to the public. Because knowledge is equated with power, it’s long been assumed that a public registry helps keep people—in particular children—safe. But there’s a cost. The tradeoff with registries has been the harassment of those on them at their homes and workplaces.

Though Marshall’s murders made international headlines at the time, they are largely forgotten by the Canadian public. The issue of public registries is still debated, however, even though the public might not realize exactly what that entails and the ensuing harassment that might put a group of people across the country at risk. But given the attitudes towards sex offenders, the public simply might not give a damn about the consequences.

***

In several jurisdictions across North America, sex offender registry laws are branded with names like “Christopher’s Law” and “Megan’s Law.” Christopher Stephenson is the namesake of Ontario’s sex offender registry—the first in Canada. In 1988 the 11-year-old was kidnapped, sexually assaulted and murdered by a convicted pedophile out of prison on statutory release.

Because Christopher had been kept alive for 36 hours before he was killed, it was believed that a database for convicted sex offenders could have helped find him before it was too late. The 1993 coroner’s inquest into his death recommended starting one on a national scale. This would happen in December 2004, three years after Ontario launched their registry. Unlike those in the United States, it would remain hidden from public view, though this was overshadowed by a more controversial fact—being placed on Canada’s registry wasn’t initially automatic and wasn’t totally retroactive to offenders who had already finished serving their sentences.

A Saint John-based group called the Sexual Abuse Network of Canada created their own ersatz registered offender map using publicly available information from media reports. Over the years various other Facebook groups and websites in communities across the country have been created to share similar information. Creep Catchers groups use online stings in cities across Canada to coax alleged pedophiles out using online stings and then posting their encounters on YouTube.

This is despite the fact that most abusers are known to their victims and that the registries themselves are imperfect tools. For instance, it wasn’t mandatory to register on the national registry until 2011, meaning that thousands convicted of sexual crimes aren’t included among the over 40,000 registrants.

In 2013, Stephen Harper’s Conservative government announced legislation to have a public sex offender registry (which passed in 2015), but according to Scott Bardsley, press secretary for the Office of the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness “they never actually set it up and they never funded it.”

The Liberals aren’t certain it will be an effective plan of action. The registry would include high-risk child sex offenders, but only those who are already included in local or provincial public notifications. Bardsley said in an email that this wouldn’t advance the amount of information the public currently has.

“It would simply compile information already made public by local police,” he said.

But for some concerned Canadians that won’t matter, they’ll feel safer simply having the knowledge. Recently in New Brunswick, Seniors and Long-Term Care Minister Lisa Harris said despite a case where someone on the registry was living in a special care home and sexually assaulted a fellow resident there will be no policy change to check residents against the sex offender registry. In the United States, however, public registries have made things less safe for those on the registries. American registrants have fallen victim to everything from harassment campaigns to homicide simply because their information is so easily available.

One such person was Michael Dodele. In 2007, Ivan Garcia Oliver spread word among his neighbours in a Lake County, California trailer park that he’d discovered something shocking. Dodele, their new neighbour, was on the state’s Megan’s Law sex offender website.

Oliver feared for the safety of his young son from pedophiles and Michael Dodele’s listing incensed him. It included the offenses "rape by force" and "oral copulation with a person under 14 or by force."

Dodele was only 35 days out of prison when Oliver came to his trailer and stabbed him to death. Though the intention was to protect Oliver’s son, he later learned Dodele’s crimes were against adult women.

***

One of the inconvenient truths about sex offender registries is that not all offenders are equally dangerous, nor are their crimes equally severe or prolific. Reasons for registration could cover, in theory, anything from groping to a violent sexual assault. With Marshall’s victims it was no different. While Grey was convicted of rape, indecent assault and battery on a minor, Elliott’s case featured a mitigating detail.

He was jailed for having consensual sex with a girlfriend who was 15-years-old after her father discovered the relationship. If they had waited longer—it’s been reported between two weeks and a few months—she would have been 16 and, though certainly morally problematic, the relationship wouldn’t have been a crime.

Stephen Gehl, a lawyer in Waterloo, Ontario, unsuccessfully challenged the Ontario sex registry in three superior courts on behalf of a client who was listed. He recalls the Marshall case and points out Elliott as indicative of one of the main problems of a public registry.


“It’s unlikely anyone would have thought this guy needs to be sent away (and) locked up forever and certainly not killed,” he told VICE.

But it’s not just Marshall and Oliver who’ve murdered someone they tracked down on an online sex offender registry.

In 2004, Lawrence Trant was charged with attempted murder. He went to jail for stabbing one man and trying to burn down two apartment buildings that had at least seven sex offenders living in them using information gathered from the New Hampshire registry.

Michael Anthony Mullen killed two sex offenders whose names he found on an online registry in 2005. His friend in prison, Patrick Drum, would murder two sex offenders known to him in Washington State in 2012. Had he not been apprehended, Drum had planned to murder further offenders he found randomly on the state’s registry.

In 2013, Jeremy and Christine Moody killed a man they found on the South Carolina registry as well as his wife, who was not a sex offender. Christine referred to her as “a casualty of war.”

Gehl is skeptical of why we need a registry at all. He says constitutionally, according to Section 7 of the Charter, that it violates your right of security of person and that it’s focused on what you might do in the future as opposed to what you did in the past. In March 2018 however Ontario’s top court ruled it was constitutional to keep offenders listed on the registry for life.

“You can’t access people’s criminal records,” Gehl says. “You can barely get their driver’s licenses. And there seems to be no value in having persons registered as sex offenders simply for the purpose of just having them named as such.”

***

In 2006, the same year as Marshall’s murders, Eric Janus, a professor at Minnesota’s Mitchell-Hamline School of Law, wrote a book called Failure to Protect about overemphasizing predatory strangers and how it distracts from solving issues of sexual violence.

He says the public and government response to sex offenders should be to ask what set of policies will have the most beneficial effect on reducing the level of sexual violence in society.

“That’s not what most people are asking,” he told VICE. “Most people are asking who are the dangerous people and how can we identify them and separate them from us.”

He adds that the problem with the first question is that it’s “abstract,” while the latter is “very, very interesting and exciting and simple and satisfying.”

Janus adds that while research shows that registering sex offenders has benefits, there is little or no evidence that public notification achieves a positive outcome.

Among the research on this matter, one group is largely missing: sex offenders themselves.

A 2013 paper in the Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science looked for the first time at Canadian sexual offenders' views on being on a registry. Examining the accounts of 30 registered offenders they learned that 48 percent of those surveyed identified registration as a "minor irritant" or "slight inconvenience." But it’s likely that feelings would be stronger with a public registry, the prospect of which still looms, ebbing and flowing with the political mood.

This past summer, Conservative leader Andrew Scheer spoke about the public registry at Question Period.

"If the Liberals have a problem with the public being informed about dangerous criminals living in their neighbourhood, then Canadian parents have a right to know," Scheer said.

Trudeau later accused the Conservatives of playing "the worst kind of crass political games" on the issue, though this didn’t result in Scheer dropping the issue.

In the intervening years since Marshall murdered Gray and Elliott, there’s been no consensus on why he did it. It’s possible if he was alive and went through a trial that we’d have a better understanding. But none of the other similar murders have done much to advance the dialogue on registries. The Bangor Daily News reported five and 10 years after the Marshall murders on how little the registries have changed.

Earlier this year, Elliott’s mother announced to the Maine media that she was working on a book called Destroying Angel that talked about the vigilante murder of her son.

"It was really horrifying just to have [him] on the registry,” she told a Maine TV station. “He was getting obscene phone calls and threats that he was going to die and people throwing crap in his yard and just harassing him to the point where he didn't know what to do."

And then because of a tragic mix of surging hormones, a vague listing and an address within a reasonable drive, Marshall would knock at her son’s door Easter morning, ready to take justice into his own hands.

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The 'Three-Body Problem' Series Could Be Amazon's $1 Billion Answer to 'Game of Thrones'

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Jeff Bezos really, really, really, really wants his own Game of Thrones series for Amazon, and it looks like he's ready to spend more money than the Iron Bank of Braavos can hold to get it.

Amazon has reportedly already dropped hundreds of millions to make a Lord of the Rings TV show and now the company is gearing up to shell out even more. According to Vanity Fair, Amazon is currently in talks to buy up the rights to the Chinese sci-fi book series, The Three-Body Problem—for a whopping $1 billion.

Of course, Amazon is Amazon, and it's got the deep pockets to throw around a billion to get Bezos his tentpole hit, but even still, that kind of money means the fledgling project is already on track to be one of the most expensive series ever produced.

Liu Cixin’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, better known by the title of its first book, The Three-Body Problem, is a sprawling, literary sci-fi epic. But the basic premise involves some aliens on their way to invade earth, and the fractures between the humans who want to welcome the visitors and work with them and those gearing up for war. From there, it evolves into a vast, tangled story involving virtual reality and China's Cultural Revolution and galaxy-spanning conspiracies and things not easily summarized in tidy soundbites.

The Three-Body Problem was a massive hit in China when it was first released in 2008, and went on to win a Hugo for its English translation in 2015. NPR called the book "a science-fiction epic of the most profound" and Barack Obama even praised it, saying that "the scope of [the book] was immense" that it made his "day-to-day problems with Congress seem fairly petty."

Amazon is reportedly trying to acquire the rights to the book from Chinese studio YooZoo Pictures—which currently owns the TV and film rights—in order to produce a three-season run based on the series. There's no word yet on when the series might go into production if and when the company secures the rights, but Obama is probably kicking himself right now for not bringing the idea to Netflix first.

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A Running List of Canada’s Biggest Weed Hypocrites

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Not so long ago, Stephen Harper was Canada’s prime minister and he was warning us all that weed was “infinitely worse” than tobacco.

Harper, you’ll recall, favoured a tough-on-crime agenda that included mandatory minimum sentences for certain drug crimes—laws that were eventually struck down as unconstitutional. During his tenure, Health Canada also spent $7 million on anti-drug ads, including one that dubiously claimed cannabis use lowers the IQ of young people.

So it’s a tad ironic that one of the people by Harper’s side during his war on drugs—former finance minister Joe Oliver—is now singing the praises of medical weed.

Oliver, 77, is the latest former Conservative/narc/old white guy to cash in on legalization. But people have short memories, so we’ve put together a list to help keep track of Big Weed’s biggest hypocrites:

Joe Oliver

As noted above, Oliver was both finance minister and minister of natural resources under Harper. In a recent op-ed for the Toronto Sun, he announced that he’s chairman of PlantExt, “a private Israeli/Canadian company devoted to developing and commercializing cannabis extracts in the treatment of diseases.”

Oliver noted that it’s hard to come by solid cannabis research because “scientists in most countries were intimidated or legally prohibited from experimenting with the plant’s medical potential. So for decades progress did not match the promising research and preliminary clinical results. Then attitudes started to change.” Yes they did, no thanks to the government you were a part of for four years, Joe.

Julian Fantino

In addition to being Toronto’s former police chief, Fantino also served as veterans affairs minister under Harper. He compared legalizing weed to murder in 2004, telling the Toronto Sun “I guess we can legalize murder too and then we won't have a murder case. We can't go that way."

But now Fantino is executive chairman of Aleafia Total Health Network, a medical weed business that aims to connect patients with resources, including doctors and research.

He claims meeting with veterans who suffered from PTSD helped change his mind about the benefits of medical weed.

When grilled by the CBC’s Carol Off on the hypocrisy of his previous positions on weed and the fact that he now stands to make a lot of money from his cannabis-related business, Fantino said he was “addressing a different era at that time.”

He went on to claim that these days he is a “responsible, educated, informed citizen who's had the experience of knowing the benefits of medical cannabis for people who are suffering from ailments that are normally not well cared for by plying them with opiates.” If only he had done that research when he was actually in government.

Raf Souccar

Souccar, former RCMP deputy commissioner who spent decades on the force, is Fantino’s business partner. His current role is president and CEO of Aleafia Total Health Network.

According to his company’s website, Souccar’s past experience includes drugs and organized crime enforcement and helping the federal government come up with the new drug-impaired driving regulations.

Souccar told reporters it took being a part of the government’s weed legalization task force for him to realize that medical cannabis patients aren’t bullshitting.

"It was an opportunity I never had before, I was too busy enforcing the law. It brought about a huge change in me," he said. After decades of enforcing prohibition, we’re glad he finally came to a more reasoned position. We are sure the prospect of making money off legalization has nothing to do with it.

Derek Ogden

Ogden is former head of the RCMP’s drug squad whose new job is president of National Access Cannabis—another referral service to help people get medical weed prescriptions. He told Global News that his old gig helped prep him to work in medical weed.

“We did see a number of groups across the country that were very, very involved in the cannabis industry and they generated a lot of revenue,” he said. Guess he wanted a piece.

Bill Blair

As former Toronto police chief, Bill Blair oversaw a force that disproportionately charged black people with pot possession. A decade of data obtained by the Toronto Star showed that black people with clean records are three times as likely to get charged with low-level possession (up to 30 grams) than white people with clean records, even though there is nothing to suggest a difference in pot use between the two groups.

Blair retired in 2015, after 10 years as chief, and is now a Liberal MP as well as the party’s point person for heading up weed legalization. While campaigning to be an MP, he criticized prohibition.


“If the only tool you got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Frankly, we can do better than that.” In his absence, the Toronto police continue to hammer away.

Doug Ford

The new leader of Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives, who is now gunning to be premier, recently said he would support a free market for weed.

“I don't believe in the government sticking their hands in our lives all the time. I believe in letting the market dictate,” he said on CBC Radio’s Ottawa Morning, adding he will consult with his caucus on the issue.

This strategy flies in the face of what Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals want to do, which is run a tightly-controlled legal weed monopoly via the LCBO. It’s highly possible that Ford is trying to make cannabis an election issue. But that’s also a bit hypocritical considering that he once said Justin Trudeau is not fit to lead Canada because he’s smoked a joint at some point in his life. The hypocrisy doubles when you consider that Ford himself is an alleged former hash dealer.

Kash Heed

Heed, now a strategic consultant with licensed producer-hopeful National Green BioMed, is former BC Solicitor General and West Vancouver police chief. He was also head of Vancouver police’s drug squad. Despite having been a cop, Heed canned West Vancouver’s Drug Abuse Resistance Education program, hinting that even back then he wasn’t a full-blown prohibitionist.

Norman Inkster

Inkster is former commissioner of the RCMP. He was an independent director at Mettrum Health Corp., a licensed producer that was bought out by Canopy for $430 million last summer.

Justin Trudeau

We’re putting Trudeau on this list because he admitted to VICE that he was “confident” weed charges against his brother Michel would be dropped due to his dad’s connections—but he still will not commit to pot amnesty for Canadians unfairly charged under prohibition.

If you’re not sufficiently annoyed, here’s a list of a bunch more people who made the switch from government to weed once it became profitable.

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Stop What You're Doing and Watch Carrie Fisher Slap Oscar Isaac 41 Times

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Behind every great scene is an untold number of takes that just didn't make the cut, most of which remain forever locked away in the annals of some big Hollywood studio's servers. But every once in awhile, we get lucky—some bigwig decides we deserve to see the bloopers, outtakes, and deleted scenes never meant for the general public, and a cinematic gem is born.

Thus, we have this: a heavenly, 37-second montage of Carrie Fisher slapping Oscar Isaac in the face more times than you can count—we counted 41—rescued from the depths of The Last Jedi's cutting-room floor.

For some reason, director Rian Johnson insisted on re-shooting the scene dozens of times—Isaac pegged it at 27 takes. Maybe Isaac had really pissed Johnson off that day, or perhaps—given that it was the actor's first time on set—it was just Johnson's way of throwing him into the deep end. Either way, Fisher really seemed to enjoy whacking him in the dome. In a 2017 interview about the scene, Isaac told Vanity Fair that "she loved hitting me."

There are a few other choice moments in the outtake video—from John Boyega complaining about "something hangin' out my bum" to Mark Hamill goofing off in front of a green screen—and even more gems in the blooper reel, which Disney dropped to promote The Last Jedi's release on Blu-ray. But at the end of the day, nothing can ever really top seeing Carrie Fisher whack the hell out of Oscar Isaac on repeat—at least until we finally get our hands on that clip of Harrison Ford actually decking Ryan Gosling in the face.

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Related: Disney Is Suing 'Lightsaber Academies' Operated by Star Wars Super Fans

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

'Grace and Frankie' Star June Diane Raphael Was Almost an Athlete Instead

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In Early Works, we talk to artists young and old about the jobs and life experiences that led them to their current moment. Today, it's actor June Diane Raphael, who stars in Netflix's Grace and Frankie. (You've also seen her in The Disaster Artist and Happy Endings.)

I had a pretty idyllic childhood in Long Island, New York. Although I didn’t have parents who were artists—my mother was a New York City public school teacher and my dad was a steamfitter—I did have a family that valued storytelling. There was a premium on being able to make everyone laugh at the dinner table.

My parents were incredibly encouraging. We would go see plays as a family. Going into the city and to see Broadway shows was a really big deal growing up outside of Manhattan. I was obsessed with them. My favourite one was Les Misérables. I’ve seen it 16 times.

My parents weren’t patrons of the arts, but they and I look back and I’m very grateful for it. I had a pretty promising basketball career and potential scholarship money because I could have been recruited, but I wanted to do theater. No one dissuaded me or said, “Hey, you might be able to go to an Ivy League school if you continue with this.” There was no discussion. It wasn’t until my wedding day, when my dad listed every athletic achievement I ever had, that it occurred to me, Oh, that was really important to him. Literally, my stats—I didn’t remember or care about them. He never led me onto the fact that he was ever disappointed that I didn’t go the distance with athletics. It was probably really hard for him. He went to every game. Every everything.

When I said I wanted to go to NYU, my parents were really supportive. I went to a public school that put a really big emphasis on the arts and had amazing theater and music programs. Thank god for that. After I graduated from high school, my dad would still go to see their shows like he was going to the theater. He also considered like, “I pay my tax dollars. I get to go enjoy this.”

I was working as soon as I could. My sisters had jobs too. I babysat, and I was counselor at a summer camp. I did the shows there for the kids. At 14, I was an HIV/AIDS peer educator with the Red Cross. It was actually a paid job. We would go from school to school talking about safe sex. I always had tons of condoms in my bag. Like, piles of them. And then I waitressed too.

I met [collaborator and Happy Endings co-star] Casey Wilson at NYU. We were at the same acting studio but were in different classes our freshman year. I saw her and remember thinking, She has a really loud laugh. I was in a much more quiet, shy, kind of gloomy place, and really overwhelmed by New York, while she was hitting the ground running, planning karaoke nights for our whole class. She was the only acting student who was pledging a sorority. She was the girl who had gone to spring break. I remember getting passed a flyer with kids in bathing suits, and there were, like, flames behind them. And jello shots. I remember thinking, Literally, that is my worst nightmare.

But then I had the luck of her shining that light onto me. I think it was our sophomore year that we were in the same clowning class. We just connected. Once I got to know her, there was this unbelievable positivity, a zest for life, fun, building community, and bringing everyone up with her. She became a friend for life.

Paul [Scheer], my husband, also went to NYU, but he went to the [Steinhardt] School of Education.

I look at my time at Tisch and think, I’m so glad I had that time to just work on the work, and not worry about the industry and getting jobs. What I would tell anyone about to enter the industry is, look around you at your peers, because they may be be your collaborators. They will hire you.

What I found to be true is that you have to show up for other people. Being there for indie movies and student films; hold the boom and get in there, because there’s no waiting for it to happen… Unless you’re beautiful, and then, congratulations. You just go to LA and just arrive and somebody will find you. If you’re not literally drop-dead gorgeous, you should probably be thinking about creating your own work, collaborating, and being kind to and supporting the people you admire. And showing up for them. Because then they will do the same for you.

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Season four of Grace and Frankie is now available on Netflix.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

The Amazing Vintage Shop That Celebrates Black History Every Day

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The empowering thing about history is that it helps us understand how we fit into the complex fabric of humanity and society. But unfortunately, as any person of color will attest, the American history taught in US schools is, in many ways, incomplete, downplayed, and intentionally kept hidden. In order to find a fuller, richer, more complete narrative of African-American heritage, one has to search beyond pop culture and textbooks.

Through their love of vintage and antiques, Jannah Handy and Kiyanna Stewart, founders of BLK MKT Vintage, are on their own journey toward piecing together a more tangible narrative about black life in America. The couple met in college and turned their hobby of vintage collecting into a business. BLK MKT Vintage not only celebrates “black curiosities,” as Handy and Stewart call their wares, but ultimately cultivates an honest, more complete collective black memory.

Founded in 2014, BLK MKT Vintage set up shop at New York City flea markets before expanding to an Etsy store online. This summer, the couple have plans to sell their finds—1970s afro picks, decades-old Etta James vinyl, first edition Dick Gregory books, Black Panther newspapers, and rare slave portraits, among other collectibles—in their first brick and mortar location in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Their hope for this physical space is to not only cultivate tangible black memory but to also celebrate and build black community.

Recently, VICE sat down with Handy and Stewart to talk about cultural preservation, memory, and how their passion for black vintage shapes their lens on being black in America.

Jannah Handy (left); Vintage afro picks (right)

VICE: When did you start collecting?
Stewart: I've been collecting for as long as I can remember. As a kid, my mom and I spent weekends going to thrift shops, antique shops, garage sales, and all that stuff. It was beautiful bonding between the both of us. I didn’t realize I was collecting until graduate school. Folks would come into my apartment and were really impressed with the things I had collected over the years. It was other people experiencing my things that made me realize that I was actually collecting.

Handy: My journey into collecting was 100 percent Kiyanna. I started going to flea markets with her, because I wanted to date her. But little did I know that vintage was the fastest way to her heart. She went away for a summer to Ghana with some students. And when she was gone, I realized that I missed her and just started going to thrift stores on my own. By the time she got back, I realized I had my own little collection of stuff that I got from the thrift store.

BLK MKT Vintage products (L); Kiyanna Stewart (R)

What was the impetus to start BLK MKT Vintage?
Stewart: In a lot of antique shops, vintage shops or flea markets, there were very few folks who look like us. At certain markets, there were lots of folks of color but for the most part there was a nostalgic dissonance. So we're going into markets looking for black folks, black artwork, black photographs, black records. But you can’t find any because all of the records are white records, all the art features white women running through a landscape somewhere. Nothing looked like us. And the things that were “black” were astronomically priced and very much out of reach.

The black-centric items cost way more than other vintage items?
Handy: Yes. So our origin story starts with wanting to fill that gap of what we didn't see. But also that the items we were looking for were so scarce that we wondered, How did all these things become scarce?

Walking into white-owned vintage shops, it felt so infuriating, at one point, to have a white person selling black items and up-charging us on our own history, and they are the reason why it’s so scarce. We realized dynamics of race in just collecting. Kiyanna would always wonder, How do you have this place that is dedicated to antiquity and we as black people are not in the story?

A button campaigning for Shirley Chisholm (L); Soul Cards (R)

Now that you have your own business, how does race come into play? What is your experience with white customers?
Handy: We started BLK MKT Vintage four years ago in Hell’s Kitchen and then moved to Brooklyn Flea. Brooklyn Flea was a great platform in terms of, like, getting constant commerce, but we realized that the patrons of Brooklyn Flea weren’t quite our audience.

There was this one experience… we had a little figurine from the 40s—a black football player figurine. I was so happy about it, because it was so hard to find. A white couple comes up and they say, “Oh my God, this hysterical. This will be perfect for a trophy for fantasy football.” I sold it to them, but after that I cried. I asked myself, What are these emotions? And I realized that it felt like our history was a joke. It was that experience that made me realize that I really want the same reaction and appreciation we as collectors have of the work that we do. I want other folks in the community to have that. Not all white folks see our culture as a joke, but that experience was really demonstrative to me that we needed to get in the right lane in intentionally attracting people of color.

Why are black antique items so scarce?
Handy: Items before the 1880s are scarce due to migration. We were property, and property can’t own things, so there wasn’t a lineage of things being passed on. Back then, there was likely no perceived value to black items. We see an uptick after Emancipation. But a downtick when it comes to the Great Migration and Jim Crow. As folks were forced to move around, they didn’t have an opportunity to save things to take with them. The impact of domestic terrorism—people were forced to leave at the drop of a hat, and that really impacts what was or wasn’t passed on.

What is the rarest item you've acquired?
Handy: An 1843 fugitive slave notice. It’s a piece of paper on a wooden board, and it talks about a slave named Paul whose master is looking for him. It notes that Paul frequents another plantation to see his family. The description on it: Paul has one ear and considerable lashes on his back. So we know that Paul has been through some harrowing things, but we know that he escaped and is still going back to visit his family. Those are the kinds of things that I want for BLK MKT to help instill and reinforce—that we as black people have been through so much, and we can look back at artifacts and other items and feel empowered by them.

What is the most expensive item you've sold?
Stewart: A 1960s round peacock chair for about $700.

Do you get requests or commissions to search for certain items?
Handy: We offer consultations just to tell you what you have and how much it could potentially be worth. We also take requests and source items as well. If you choose to buy it, we’ll attach a finder’s fee.

Stewart: There are a few folks who—say their grandmother was profiled by Ebony magazine back in the day, and they have access to the digital archives but want the actual publication. We go out and find it for them.

How much stuff do you sell each month?
Handy: We sell about 300 to 400 things a month.

Diana Ross on vinyl and hot combs (L); Handy (R)

Where do you source the items?
Stewart: We pick from upstate New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts a few times a year. If we travel, we will pick up things. Most recently, we did that in Cuba, and the farthest we’ve picked was Thailand. Sometimes items come from estate sales, from the side of the road, or people come to us with items that they don’t want to hold onto that other folks can benefit from. We talk to other collectors. It takes time. It can be intensive, which is also why we wanted to do this—so others wouldn’t have to exert so much labor trying to find things that were representative of their history.

What are your goals for your business?
Stewart: Our goal is to have a physical store—an intentional space that pays homage, one that preserves our heritage. We are looking to do this in the next few months. There are items that we still buy and sell that aren’t considered race-specific, but they are cool décor pieces and cool things folks would want to have which are a little difficult to sell online.

What do you make of being black in America based on your experience as vintage collectors?
Handy: Recently I read The Sellout by Paul Beatty while also reading Die Nigger Die! by H. Rap Brown. What I found is that being black in America now is the same thing as back then when these books were published. Now, as compared to back then, we talk about it in different ways, we code in different ways. Both books were about what it means to be black, what it means to be a nigger and what it means to be a negro. Are there differences? And how do we identify as black people?

Die Nigger Die! was published in 1969, and The Sellout was published in 2015. Being black in America, for me, means now is the time to actually do something about the things that affect our community so that in ten, 20, or 30 years, we don’t have the same books about the same issues that we still haven’t figured out. In the context of the work we do, I always find the fortitude and strength and power in some of the documents that we have. But I’ve also realized that it will always be a cycle until it’s not—until someone makes sure it’s not.

Stewart: I think being black in America, for me, I can use the items we source as a metaphor. They’ve survived. They’ve survived Jim Crow and the Great Migration. They survived folks having to move around, all kinds of stuff. Yet they exist. They persist. I don’t just want us, as black people, to make it. I want us to be able to thrive as a community. And we do that in a number of different ways despite the shit. I think these items are beautiful, because they remind me that we have always existed and persisted despite white supremacy. It's been really beautiful to find my identity in these things.

Handy and Stewart (L); NAACP buttons (R)

Why is preserving culture in this way important?
Stewart: I collect black women's poetry. I'm always fascinated by how black women used language and continue to use language to inform their community, to shape their community, to teach others, to describe themselves, to articulate their sexualities, their politics, and their identities. It's been really beautiful to find my identity in these things. And so those are always my favorite things to hold onto. So this work is personal. I'm inspired by this stuff. And it is a promise that we will continue to persist.

This story is a part of VICE's ongoing effort to highlight the contributions of black women around the globe who are making a difference. To read more stories about strong black women making history today, go here.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

This Angry ‘American Chopper’ Meme Is Our New Favorite Meme

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A few weeks back, one of my editors asked me if I wanted to write a quick blog on the Gru’s Plan meme. The format had begun to make some noise on Twitter and Reddit, but the meme wasn’t really resonating with me. Sue me, but the non-Minion lead from Despicable Me giving a powerpoint? Who gives a shit. Next!

This week, it looks like my prayers for a high-energy meme have finally been answered.

The images in this as-yet-untitled meme are screenshots of an infamous scene from the reality show American Chopper, in which Paul Teutul Sr. and his large adult son Paul Teutul Jr. yell at each other about the younger Paul consistently being 45 minutes late to work. Things escalate quickly.

After you’ve got those images set up, just slap on whatever esoteric argument you want, and voila! Now Junior and Senior from fuckin’ Orange County Choppers are arguing about Garfield or Western imperialism or some shit.

While versions of this meme have apparently been floating around for years, the solidification of this format just HAPPENS to coincide with the 2018 revival of American Chopper . Say what you will about memes going normie, but if this turns out to be a guerilla marketing scheme to revive awareness about American Chopper, that is some next level shit.

Additional reporting by Anna Iovine.

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We Met the People Who Fantasize About Monsters

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On the season finale of VICELAND's SLUTEVER, Karley Sciortino explores the world of monster erotica, meeting up with a handful of people who get turned on by creatures you'd typically find in horror movies. She gets to know the creators of dragon dildos, checks out werewolf porn, and tries to parse out exactly what it is about evil beasts that gets some people going.

SLUTEVER airs Wednesdays at 10 PM on VICELAND.

Then it's time for the season finale of THE TRIXIE & KATYA SHOW, featuring two former RuPaul's Drag Race queens digging into life's most pressing issues. Today Bob the Drag Queen joins Trixie for an episode all about family, and the two investigate what’s really going on in a few awkward family photos, taste-test baby food, and invite Karley from SLUTEVER onto the show for a little fun.

THE TRIXIE & KATYA SHOW airs Wednesdays at 10:30 PM on VICELAND.

Want to know if you get VICELAND? Find out how to tune in here.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Alton Sterling and the Hollow Theater of Letting Killer Cops Go Free

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It remains incredibly hard to watch the footage of Alton Sterling's death. The gruesome images captured by bystanders outside the Triple S Food Mart in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on July 5, 2016, show how the father of five was already pinned to the ground, his hands apparently empty, outnumbered two to one by the cops as his brown body recovered from being stun-gunned, when he was shot at point-blank range. The shooter: a white officer who reportedly intimated to Sterling, only seconds before pulling the trigger, that he was going to kill him.

The playback of the officer’s gunshots is still jarring—clapping against your eardrums never quite when expected, like the loads of firecrackers that splinter the humid evening air every Fourth of July in Louisiana.



Nearly two years later, state Attorney General Jeff Landry's press conference Tuesday announcing the decision not to indict either of the officers involved was almost equally hard to watch and just as difficult to hear. Landry—a 47-year-old former police officer who was briefly a US Congressman as part of the 2010 Tea Party wave—stood before the podium in a navy suit and gold tie, and, reading from his prepared statement, declared with performed sobriety that “both officers acted in a reasonable and justified manner in the shooting death of Mr. Sterling.”

His full remarks, dressed in southern drawl and legalistic mendacity, were the insidious part-two of an increasingly familiar process that gaslights communities of color when their loved ones are unduly killed at the hands of police. Post-factum statements meant to rationalize police violence are an old dance, of course. But the practice has taken on a new edge under the specter of a White House that came to power by picking at the old, undried scab of “law and order” politics.

Donald Trump wasn’t subtle in his racism on the campaign trail when he—among other things—angrily pined for “the old days” when protestors “would be carried out on a stretcher.” Yet even Trump called Sterling’s killing back in 2016 “terrible, disgusting.” When he was questioned about Sterling’s death and the killing of Philando Castile by a Minnesota officer (who since then has been acquitted by a jury) in the immediate wake of those back-to-back incidents, the then-candidate went as far as telling Bill O'Reilly, “I mean, the one man who was being stepped on and then shot, in particular, I looked at that and I said ‘wow, that's bad. That's bad.’"

This week, though, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders deflected questions on Sterling, calling the case “a local matter.” And the current Justice Department, led by Jeff Sessions—an Alabamian who was blocked from becoming a federal judge in the 80s due, in part, to concerns about his views on race—halted reform efforts credited with reducing police shootings by 29 percent. Last year, the Sessions's Justice Department cleared both officers involved in Sterling’s death of federal civil rights charges—admittedly a higher legal bar.

For his part, Landry looked to cast his inaction as grounded in stubborn realities, concluding near the end of his 20-minute statement, "These are the facts.” That declaration was preceded by an attempt to paint a picture of by-the-book cops pained to the core as they dutifully tried to get Sterling to comply, only to be forced to take lethal action. It was a play-by-play commentary contradicted by video evidence and the public statements of Triple S’ owner, Abdullah Muhlafi, who was reportedly not re-interviewed as a witness for the state attorney general’s report—even though the incident occured steps from his shop and despite Muhlafi’s own claims that while Sterling was armed (a loaded .38-caliber handgun was found in his right pocket), he never appeared to try and actually use the weapon.

Anticipating these criticisms, Landry said Tuesday, “This decision was not taken lightly; we came to this conclusion after countless hours of reviewing the evidence.”

Americans are told, again and again, of the quasi-religious need to value and trust in the work of law enforcement, particularly by the Trump administration. And yet, how can people respect a system that utilizes the sophisticated tools of legalese, the purported due diligence of formal reports, and the officialdom of drawn-out investigations to impugn common sense justice? These evermore rote non-indictment statements, in essence, mock the families victimized by police brutality with the old tragicomic line: "Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?"

“They get away with it by putting it right in your face and calling it an official report,” as the Sterling family’s lawyer, Chris Stewart, put it.

These press conferences are, in practice, a confidence game meant to make the state look stoic and rational so that commentary or public protests overtly questioning the state's rationale come across as immoderate, or even unhinged. If the prosecutor declares that he feels downright awful about what happened, but is simply being reasonable, according to the letter of the law, then the press, in turn, is pressured to also be impassive, no matter the outrageousness of a death we can all see on video.

But let's be brutally honest about what happened here: The decision to not even allow for a court case to decide if these Baton Rouge cops acted wrongfully is not just an insult to the Sterling family, and to the spirit of justice; it is also an insult to our intelligence.

As Wesley Lowery reported at the Washington Post, after meeting with investigators, "Stewart, the lead attorney for the Sterling family, told reporters that evidence shows that at the beginning of the interaction with Sterling, Officer Blane Salamoni put his gun to Sterling’s head, and said, 'I’ll kill you, bitch.'”

Are we really to believe that Officer Salamoni preemptively yelling that he will kill Sterling wasn't enough for at least a trial? Or that the Louisiana Attorney General's office, in light of the recklessness on display in the video, couldn't have admitted that the rash actions taken by the officers were "unreasonable"—the characterization necessary to indict? And are we, as writers, observers, and citizens, willing to pull the wool over our eyes and not admit that Sterling was likely to receive different treatment from the officers if he were white?

A few years ago, the famous gun-toting Bundy family and dozens of other white militia-minded supporters faced off with federal law enforcement officers who had moved to repossess Bundy's cattle due to his noncompliance with federal law. And not only did Bundy live to tell the story, but the federal case against him was declared a mistrial due to government misconduct.

What are the odds that the family of the young California black man Stephon Clark will get justice for the reckless actions (also captured on video) that ended his life just weeks ago when he was shot at over 20 times by officers of the Sacramento Police Department in his grandmother's backyard for holding a cell phone cops suggested they thought was a gun?

At this juncture, after years of damning evidence produced by academics and data journalists, it’s clear that the process for adjudicating police brutality—whether resulting in death or injury—is a systemic sham. The American state has, in essence, constructed a process riddled with what legal experts have called "ubiquitous" conflicts of interests between prosecutors and their law enforcement partners that, in the end, tends to sanction the disproportionate violence perpetrated by white officers against blacks by granting accused officers the most generous interpretation of plausible deniability that the law allows.

It is still not clear that either of the Baton Rouge police officers involved in Sterling’s death, who are currently on paid leave, will even be fired. Sterling’s community is hoping that, in the least, Officer Salamoni—who fired the fatal shots—will be dismissed after an administrative review. John McLindon, the attorney representing Salamoni, said he believes a decision is imminent. “I think they've already made up their mind. They're going to terminate him,” he said in an interview, vowing to launch an appeal.

But even if the shooter does lose his job, the Sterling family now belongs to a long line of loved ones who have lent their politeness and patience to the official process, investing money, energy, and precious time into garnering justice, only to be told that—after very careful consideration and a thorough investigation—nothing significant will be done. “The system failed us,” Alton Sterling’s aunt, Sandra, said during a news conference.

“He was murdered by two white, racist police officers!” cried another distraught aunt to Sterling, Veda Washington. “He was murdered like an animal. And they said they don't see nothing wrong?"

One of the many reporters prying for a soundbite, nipping at Washington's heels as she walked to her car after the family was told of the non-indictment, asked what she had to tell Landry's office in response. She whipped around one last time towards the camera, clearly having had enough: "I told them to ‘kiss my ass!’”

In light of law enforcement's disingenuous respect for the rule of law when it applies to them, who can blame her? Who, if they saw themselves in her pain, wouldn’t have felt the urge to say the same?

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The 'Trainspotting' Gang Takes Another Dark Turn in Irvine Welsh's New Book

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In the grand scheme of junkie lit, you've got William S. Burroughs, Hubert Selby Jr., and then there's Irvine Welsh. For the last two decades, the Scottish author of the 1993 seminal classic, Trainspotting, has cranked out titles including The Blade Artist, The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins, and Porno, each exploring the druggy, seedy underworlds of Edinburgh and beyond. No stranger to controversy, Welsh is a modern-day literary icon, a writer as comfortable with novels as he is plays (Babylon Heights), short stories (Reheated Cabbage), and feature films (The Acid House).

Today, Welsh's novel, Dead Men’s Trousers, debuts in the UK. The book reunites Trainspotting favourites Mark Renton, Begbie, Sick Boy, and Spud, and Begbie, later on in life. Renton now has a jet-setting career as a DJ manager, Begbie a successful artist, Sick Boy a pimp, and Spud a beggar. There's rage, reunions, and even a death in the crew. (In 2017, the characters returned to the screen in T2 Trainspotting.) I caught up up with Welsh by phone to find out what fans can expect from Dead Men’s Trousers.

VICE: Did you ever think the characters from Trainspotting would take on such lives of their own? That you’d still be telling their stories decades later?
Irvine Welsh: Not at all, I was just happy to finish the book. I had notes for the book for a long time, and I hadn’t done anything with it, and I just decided I would try and finish them. I hadn’t really written anything before, so I was just so relieved to finish it and get it out to a publisher. I didn’t really expect it to get published. I didn’t expect the book to do well. Everything was kind of a bonus, and the most important part was actually doing it and finishing it. But the guys are fairly universal, they’re kind of archetypes—everybody knows versions of these guys, basically.

Trainspotting is the book everyone knows about. Which do you think is your most underrated, and why?
Glue is in some ways a better book than Trainspotting. I think if Glue came first, it probably would have done as well as Trainspotting, but sometimes it’s not the best book that does it, it's the first one that breaks through. I think Marabou Stork Nightmares is a better book than Trainspotting too, but it’s not as well-read or known, so you never really know. I suppose its kind of like having lots of kids—you’re proud of them all. The most successful one is kind of like the one that becomes the actor. A film star is going to be well-known, the other one becomes a carpenter, but the carpenter might be a better guy.

So what can fans expect from Dead Men’s Trousers?
If Trainspotting was about friendship and betrayal, then Dead Men’s Trousers is a redemption thing. It's that time of life that they’re looking back on, not necessarily with regret, but looking back at the mistakes they made in life. They’re trying to get some kind of resolution, some kind of redemption over it, but they’re still very optimistic and twisted guys. So it doesn’t quite work out the way they really want it to.

Would you say their maturation is a reflection of yours?
I supposed I have matured in a lot of ways. It's really the wrong time to ask, because I was out rather late last night behaving a bit irresponsibly, but generally I’m much more mature and responsible now. These guys aren’t quite that way. If people do mature, it gets a bit boring. They’re probably more persons—much more than me—of their own vanities and vices.

Did you ever expect to be successful when you first started writing?
I messed around in music for a long time. I didn’t really get anywhere, and I thought I would be successful. I didn’t expect to be successful in writing. When you’re younger, you’ve got this incredible ego. You believe you're going to be successful although there’s no real evidence for it. I was one of these guys who thought, I’m going to do something that’s going to make an impact. But I wasn’t sure what it would be.

I thought it would be music. I wrote ballads, and ballads are just stories in songs. I thought, Just get rid of the music and write stories, and keep going from there. It came easy to me, because writing you don’t really have to learn anything. Everybody can write, basically. The technology of it is very easy. You do your own thing, walk at your own pace, and follow your own ideas. There’s no real compromise about it, so that suited me.

How much of Francis Begbie is real, and how much is he an invention?
You never really know, because I’m the kind of writer who tends to let the subconscious do the heavy lifting. I just sit down there and write. You don’t really know at the time where it comes from. When you get into it, you can see similarities, where two or three people fall into every type. There’s always elements of yourself, maybe repressed elements of different characters. To me, they’re more like emotional states that you think yourself into, and you build it from there. I find music helpful for building characters. What would this kind of guy listen to? What would a womanizer listen to? What would a psycho listen to? What would an intellectual listen to? I just make these different playlists and I put them on when I’m writing, and it helps me.

In The Blade Artist, Begbie kept talking about Guns-n-Roses's Chinese Democracy album. Is that where it came from ?
I was on the plane one time listening to some music, and Chinese Democracy was one of the albums on the plane. I thought, This is something Begbie would really like, because everybody else hates it. I listened to it a couple of times and thought it would be great if he really liked this album, like got quite obsessed with it. Basically a modern obsession, because most obsessions are 80s stuff, so I updated the obsession a little bit. There’s something about the album—I’m not mocking it myself—but I could see why somebody like him would like it, basically.

What was it like getting everybody back together again for T2 Trainspotting? Is a third installment in the works?
I really enjoyed it. It was wonderful to get everybody back together again.

I think a third one would be pushing it. When you think about movies, everybody loved The Godfather, everybody loved The Godfather II, but nobody gave a fuck about The Godfather III. Same with Terminator I and Terminator II. Terminator III was decent, but not in the same league. I think, cinematically, it’s better to quit while we’re ahead. Also, does John [ T2 screenwriter John Hodge] want to spend a year of his life on the script? Does Danny [director Danny Boyle] want to spend two years of his life on another Trainspotting? I would be a bit surprised if we managed to get together for a third one.

How do you feel about Trump’s recent suggestion that we should be giving drug dealers the death penalty? Will it solve the opioid crisis?
It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard. All these right-wing politicians are not really interested in people who take or deal drugs. They’ve never taken drugs, never came across a drug dealer, and have nothing to do with drugs. They’re easily influenced by attention. It could be anything. Wars on drugs, wars on terror, wars on crime, wars on the public... It’s just nonsense, basically.

You’ve been living in the states for some years now. Recently, you made Miami your new home. How do you feel about Trump's America?
We’re living in very polarizing times. The changes in the economy are going to make it very hard for people to make money. They are making it harder for people to make wages and for people to make profits. When they stop paying wages, nobody is going to listen to all this shit. Even rich people, because the industrial economy is tanking, just disappearing. It’s bringing all these divisions to the floor. All the agendas and divisions from the old imperialism, and all the racial and ethnic divisions, are breaking down.

It’s like we’re in this position where everything is polarizing, and all these divisions that date back to colonization, imperialism, and the American Civil War, are all re-manifesting again and seem more acute than ever now. Every nation, and the public, is being forced to come to terms with this imperialist past and the old institutions from that era. We’re no longer serving people now, because we’re moving into a different type of economy, a different type of society. I think America is in that kind of crisis.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Adnan Syed from 'Serial' Is Getting a New Trial

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Back in 2016, a Maryland judge granted Adnan Syed—the man at the heart of Serial's first season—a new trial after the podcast threw his murder conviction into question. Prosecutors appealed the decision, hoping to get it thrown out—but now it looks like Syed is officially going back into the courtroom.

On Thursday, an appeals court upheld the lower court's decision, finding that Syed had ineffective representation at his original murder trial in 2000, CBS News reports. The three-judge panel ruled 2-1 that his attorney, Cristina Gutierrez, had failed to call up a critical alibi witness: Asia McClain, who claims she was with Syed at the time prosecutors said his high school sweetheart, Hae Min Lee, was murdered, BuzzFeed News reports.

"Trial counsel's deficient performance prejudiced Syed’s defense, because, but for trial counsel’s failure to investigate, there is a reasonable probability that McClain’s alibi testimony would have raised a reasonable doubt in the mind of at least one juror about Syed’s involvement Hae's murder,” the opinion reads.

Syed's murder conviction has now been vacated. His case is headed back to a lower Maryland court, where he'll be tried by jury on his original charges of murder, robbery, kidnapping, and false imprisonment.

Someone cue the Serial theme song.

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Related: Serial Podcaster

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

I Tried 'Needle Play' to Help Me Get Over My Fear of Needles

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This article originally appeared on VICE Netherlands

My earliest memory of being truly terrified is during a vaccination. I was about five years old, and as soon as I caught sight of that enormous needle I screamed so loudly that I'm sure I gave the nurse tinnitus right there and then. Although I'm now 20 years older, not much has changed – I still get all sweaty just thinking about needles.

When I read about "needle play" on the BDSM website Fetlife, I couldn't work out for the life of me why anyone would find sticking long pins into their body a turn-on. But as I scrolled through the site and saw an ad for a needle play workshop taking place in Amsterdam, I thought this could be a chance for me to find some pleasure in my pain and overcome my fear of needles.

I reached out to the workshop's instructor, Hans, to see if the class is suitable for people who are terrified of needles. The 57-year-old was understanding – so understanding, in fact, that he offered to give me a private session on his houseboat. Alright, sure.

Hans showing me his collection of needles.

On the day of the visit, I start thinking that this might not be the best idea I've ever had. My five-year-old self is fairly pissed off at me, too. But my apprehension soon fades as I hop aboard Hans' boat. He's kind and welcoming, wearing a bright pink shirt and offering me tea and muffins.

I'd expected his place to be some sort of BDSM dungeon, full of latex-everything, sex swings and a dining table doubling as some sort of torture contraption. But aside from a collection of whips, nothing in Hans' houseboat betrays his sexual passion. Instead, the room is stuffed with toys, dolls and pink children's items.

"Those are my wife's," he reassures me. "She's into age play, where she pretends to be a young girl."

Hans' trusted needle play kit.

Hans learned his craft by taking workshops at the Vereniging Studiegroep Sadomasochisme – an association for the safe practise of sadomasochism. "The first needle workshop I participated in was horrible," he remembers. "The instructor just wanted to stick needles into women's breasts. He didn't prioritise safety at all."

He stresses the importance of communication and code words when trying out BDSM, especially if your partner initially doesn't seem all that interested in being tied up and poked with sharp objects. "Try to introduce the topic very casually and emphasise the fun in it," he tells me. "That's how to stir up curiosity."

Hans has an incredible ability to make needle play sound like an average massage session. But I still don't understand the appeal, so I ask him directly why anyone would get sexual pleasure out of having dozens of pins stuck into their skin.

"It's mostly about enjoying the physical sensation, and the knowledge that someone can literally crawl under your skin," he says. "You’re giving a partner complete control over your body while you kick back and relax. Sometimes, people just like to be objectified – to be treated like a pin cushion. And, importantly, you can choose the level of pain that you're willing to endure."


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That all sounds a bit much for me, but – I assure him – I still plan on having at least one needle jammed into my flesh during our session. "For someone experienced in BDSM, one needle doesn't really mean anything," Hans explains, chuckling. "Generally, I'll use a maximum of 25 to 30 needles on a woman each time. But for someone like you, one is a big step."

Before we begin, Hans runs through a quick safety demonstration, complete with a PowerPoint presentation. There's a video ending with a close-up shot of a pin disappearing into someone's skin. I feel sick. Hans insists I sit down for the rest of the session, "just in case you faint". I don't know whether that's reassuring or terrifying.

Hans piercing himself like a pro.

Hans won't jab a needle into my skin unless I practice on myself first, but he's on hand to guide me through the process. "Firstly, you need to disinfect the needle and find a good spot on your skin," he explains. "Don't wobble around with it or you'll end up opening a wound."

While Hans disinfects his own skin, he explains his love for sadism. It's the pain and sexual humiliation that does it for him – and the sight of seeing a submissive woman. "For example, if someone has never deep-throated before, I really enjoy being the first one she allows to do it," he says. "Especially when she uses a ring gag and can't close her mouth."

From there, Hans takes a pastel green needle out of his first-aid kit, and puts a Hello Kitty plaster aside for later. "I was aware from a very young age that I was a sadist," he adds. "I used to tie up Barbies, dress them in raunchy outfits and create the most sexually gruesome scenarios. Before I even knew what a vagina looked like, I'd fantasise about all the horrible things I could do with it."

He proceeds to pinch a bit of skin on his own leg and drives a needle through it.

Me struggling with my sweaty, nervous fingers to pinch a bit of skin.

It all looks relatively easy, but when I try it on myself I can't seem to do it. My fingers are so sweaty I fail to effectively clasp a roll of my own flesh. In the end, I sort of jab at myself a few times before I'm able push it right through.

The pain is sharp and brief, but the adrenaline rush I'm experiencing is intense. It's the feeling of being in control of my own body that is surprisingly exciting. And although it's in no way making me feel horny, I'm overcome with a sense of pride.

"This is your needle, which you put into your own leg – congratulations!" my instructor beams.

I have to practice on myself before I relinquish control to Hans.

In the past, Hans says he's struggled to reconcile his sadism with his personal values.

"I'm a feminist, and believe all women should be treated with respect," he explains, grabbing another needle. "I reject any form of oppression, so it's hard for me to admit that I love seeing a woman struggle. It's about those impulses of lust and pain in her eyes for me, and the marks on her body."

Hans was relieved to eventually find partners who share his fantasy. "I found women who were happy that they no longer needed to play the 'good girl' in bed," he explains. "Being tied up and relinquishing control somehow makes them feel liberated."

After my warmup is done, it's time for Hans to take over.

Now, it's my turn to hand over control to Hans. "I like making things unpredictable," he says. "That way I know someone has fully surrendered herself to me." He chooses my back as his canvas, so I won't be able to see where and when he sticks the needle in. After he disinfects my skin, he starts to softly caress me. "It's important to pay attention to the body's needs, otherwise you're just hurting a person."

I'm feeling as anxious as I've felt that morning. Suddenly, while Hans is still talking to me, he plunges a needle into my back. I'm not really sure whether I'm now screaming because of the pain or because of the adrenaline rushing through me. "You’ll notice that the skin around the needle feels different," he says softly. He's right – it feels raw and sensitive, like a carpet burn.

The needle, safely inserted into my back.

It's up to Hans to decide when to take the needle out of my body. And when he finally does, I realise that I have a better sense of why some people are so into this. As well as paying attention to the parts of your body that you would normally ignore, the after-pain comedown offers a pleasant mix of freedom and relaxation. In many ways, it's comparable to a trust fall – you've fought against your instincts to overcome a specific fear, no matter how minor that worry might have been. I can also picture how thrilling it might be to be aware of those little sex wounds underneath your clothes while you're having boring water-cooler chats with a co-worker.

Still, I personally feel more comfortable with less needlework in my sex life. In my defence, I did overcome my fear of needles today, by allowing someone to literally crawl under my skin with a pin – and I think that's enough progress for now.

This article originally appeared on VICE NL.

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