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VICE Vs Video Games: Would You Kindly Read This Article on Gaming’s Greatest Plot Twist?

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I've been thinking about BioShock a lot over the past week or so. Its co-director, Ken Levine, has been in the news after he leant his support to a questionable Change.org petition requesting that gaming sites Polygon and Kotaku effectively own up for Gamergate attracting great criticism.

A VICE article on how video games can never truly be cinematic saw some commenters point to the 2K-developer shooter of 2007 as evidence that, actually, they can. And then there's Sony's new The Order: 1886, issued to the press with a strict reviews embargo and instructions to not spoil the game's biggest narrative twist—which, honestly, you'll probably figure out long before its reveal.

But BioShock's twist wasn't one most players will have predicted before it presented itself. And for the sake of those yet to play it, know now that spoilers follow. The game can be considered cinematic, if you really must, for a few reasons. Its setting is undeniably widescreen, the collapsing underwater utopia of Rapture a set designer's soggy dream, if only there was money enough to make a movie happen. The fiction of the series—three main games, plus accompanying DLC, so far—has been greatly acclaimed, the climax to 2013's clouds-set BioShock Infinite comprehensively studied and "explained" by several outlets: VentureBeat, Eurogamer, Digital Spy, IGN.

As deeply detailed as Infinite's plot proved, it's the first game that delivered the series' standout moment of narrative ingenuity. "You" are Jack, the survivor of a plane crash into the Atlantic Ocean in 1960. You swim to what seems to be a lighthouse, just standing there, in the middle of the sea. It's a terrifically atmospheric, wholly enveloping introduction, and one of modern gaming's best first chapters. The building proves to be a bathysphere station, the docked vessel taking Jack down to Rapture, a seabed city constructed in the 1940s by business magnate Andrew Ryan to encourage scientific and artistic progression without governmental meddling: "No gods or kings. Only man."

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Needless to say, Ryan's dream has rather died on its ass by the time Jack shows up, and while the city's founder remains in residence, Rapture is a creaking shell of its former self, plasmid-powered freaks terrorizing its once tranquil halls. Jack is contacted by a man calling himself Atlas, who wants to break Ryan's hold on Rapture, freeing what sane inhabitants there are left from their dire situations. But all is not as simple as it seems. Jack catches up to Ryan himself, and it's here, after so much instruction from Atlas, that the game delivers its guts-crunching twist, flipping the narrative and role-reversing the story's most pertinent players.

Another warning here, and it's your last one: spoilers follow.

Jack is Ryan's illegitimate son. Ryan knew he was coming. It's revealed that Atlas is actually the gangster Frank Fontaine, who'd smuggled Jack to the surface several years earlier with the intention of bringing him back as a weapon, as "your" DNA can operate a lot of Rapture's systems that only Ryan would otherwise have access to. Jack has been used, abused, hypnotized to carry fabricated memories and respond to a key phrase: "Would you kindly." Fontaine has been, to this point in the game, using it to control Jack's progression through Rapture. "Would you kindly head to Ryan's office and kill the son of a bitch." Ryan willingly dies at the hands of his son: "A man chooses, a slave obeys." If you're not following, the video below will clear things up.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/oG25S51qJQQ' width='560' height='315']

'BioShock' gameplay: the Andrew Ryan plot twist

YouTube comments on the above clip include "The greatest moment in any video game, period" and "My jaw was on the floor the entire time, one of the greatest moments in gaming for me, ever." I vividly remember the first time I saw the scene, and it left me numbed, actually—cold, and oddly uncomfortable in my own home. I felt like I'd been taken advantage of, that I was really in Jack's shoes; that I'd smashed that skull in with the business end of a golf putter. That's fantastic fiction, right there: believability enough that you're living the moment. Rapture might be a fantastical backdrop, but BioShock's most dramatic instance of deadly intimacy felt more palpable than any plot twist from the world of film.

In comparison, The Order's "big reveal" was received with a shrug. My wife and I called the twist several cutscenes before it occurred. Anyone with the slightest experience of gothic fantasy fiction could have guessed, accurately, at where The Order was headed: think of the period in question, the late 1800s, and certain world-famous horror novels of the time. The Order is a game that desperately wants to be a movie, and is a slave to the worst clichés from that world. BioShock's brilliant writing allowed it to transcend its medium—it really is a piece of terrific storytelling, albeit punctuated by explosive first-person gun battles. Its twist is the best that gaming has so far delivered; but others have come close to matching its impact.

Infinite might actually be nearest to its series predecessor for what-just-happened emotional resonance. Its ending (watch it) delivers a couple of bruising blindsides that recontextualize what you knew about proceedings to that point, lending unexpectedly relatable, affecting closure to so many hours of explicit murder. Elizabeth, your quarry early on and subsequent partner, was once called Anna DeWitt, the daughter of player-protagonist Pinkerton, Booker DeWitt. Who, in turn, isn't all he appeared to be: the game's alternative-realities-rooted plot reveals that the apparent antagonist, Zachary Comstock, is a Booker whose life branched in a different direction at a pivotal point in his life, a baptism.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/HB8u3txkYuw' width='560' height='315']

IGN analyses the ending to 'BioShock Infinite'

As the above video confirms, there's a lot going on in Infinite, not least of all an appreciation of multiverses within physical cosmology and a healthy dose of applied American exceptionalism, as the game is set on a breakaway, theocractic state in the sky where institutional racism runs rampant. It's high artistry trapped within the conventional construct of a guns-front action game, and perhaps suffers for deafening its thought-provoking qualities with ballistic thunder.

A little easier to understand is the twist of Quantic Dream's interactive drama of 2010, Heavy Rain, which, while less original than the BioShock brace, was nevertheless an eyes-widening revelation. You control four characters in pursuit of the Origami Killer, whose signature paper figures are found beside his drowned victims. One of these four is Ethan Mars whose son, Jason, is (accidentally) killed in the game's opening hour. His remaining son, Shaun, goes missing, and his disappearance becomes linked to the Origami Killer, who eventually contacts Ethan and presents him with a number of trials. Complete them, and he'll earn clues to his son's whereabouts, where he might yet be saved. And it's the identity of the killer that provides the game's crucial twist.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/8zh78iopqXA' width='560' height='315']

The ending of 'Heavy Rain' varies, depending on the player's performance

Another of Heavy Rain's playable characters is Scott Shelby, an overweight, asthmatic private detective who, at one point, successfully gets a baby to settle down after he's dragged her suicide-attempting mother out of a bathtub (assuming you follow the correct commands). He stands up for a case-significant prostitute, beating down one of her clients when he turns aggressive. He's made out to be a good guy, quiet and considered, determined despite an inclination for introversion. So it's naturally shocking when he turns out to be the Origami Killer, his crimes hardwired into a personality misshaped by childhood tragedy, when his own brother drowned before his eyes.

Konami's Silent Hill 2 of 2001 is a classically brooding survival horror game with a disturbing twist at its core. Like Heavy Rain, there are several possible endings, but every playthrough will feature a scene where protagonist James Sunderland watches a videotape of him smothering his terminally unwell wife, Mary. This act of assisted euthanasia is what causes the terrifying environments of Silent Hill to rise up around James, as a manifestation of the guilt he feels. The unstoppable Pyramid Head figures that stalk James are representations of his desire to be punished, inescapable demons that won't quit until, as the "In Water" ending portrays, he takes his own life as penance.

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It's all in your head, James, it's all in your... oh, hell no.

Browse the internet and you'll find various lists of the "top twists in video games," featuring some that are arguably not all that important at all, a couple of epilogue surprises (Samus is a girl! In a bikini?), and just a few that do seem striking, but that I haven't experienced first hand. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic sucker-punches the player by revealing that their good guy is actually, drumroll, the evil Darth Revan with his brain all scrambled. Apparently nobody saw that coming. You can then choose to stick with the Republic or pursue the Dark Side and slaughter the rebel scum, although I'm basing that on Wikipedia because I've not actually played the thing. Sorry.

I have played BioShock, though, more than once, and it's what I think of first when considering video gaming's most memorable twists. The greatest moment in any video game, ever, it's probably not—seriously, what beats an entire level's worth of lemmings exploding? But with its "would you kindly" method of mind control reaching meme level, inspiring Easter eggs in other games and wretched dubstep tracks, BioShock is the title that's given the most to video gaming about-turns.

Follow Mike on Twitter.


We Asked Someone Who Hates America Whether Obama Loves America

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Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has spent the last 14 years reminding us that he shepherded New York through 9/11. By most measures, he made a good figurehead for the city during that time, and he might believe that's given him a lifetime supply of patriotism tokens.

But his lifetime supply may have run out last week when he got in front of an audience of Republican moneymen and said, "I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America. He doesn't love you. And he doesn't love me. He wasn't brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country."

Unsurprisingly, liberals were outraged by the remarks. TV conservatives were more muted in their reactions, and gave him some space to clarify his remarks. But what about people who hate America? Do they think Obama doesn't like America either?

It's incredibly hard to find a journalist or activist who has shouted that they hate America and is willing to be interviewed about. A South American musician we interviewed (who asked to remain anonymous) isn't a political activist. But VICE had heard that he hated America, so we asked him what he thought about Guiliani's remarks:

VICE: Rumor has it you hate America. Is that true?
Anonymous: I dislike it. My friend and I were talking and I was like, "I hate it." I don't want to say it too much, or be misunderstood. We have a saying in Spanish: "Me llega al pincho," meaning something like, "It's under my balls."

Why don't you leave then?
I'm a musician, so here is the best place to be.

So what's wrong with it?
America goes to war, and they say it's about creating peace, but they want to take something from that other country. My country is never in wars, so I'm not sure.

Anything else?
Well, I even have American friends who say, "Americans are stupid."

Stupid how?
They care about stupid shit. For instance, near my apartment, there's a Nike store, and once a month I come out and people are lined up to buy shoes. On the other side of the world, people die because they don't have shoes.

Do you think that Obama loves America?
He does. Totally. He's super American.

What makes someone "super American"?
Usually it means not knowing or caring about the rest of the world.

You're saying he believes in American Exceptionalism?
Less than other presidents. Bush was someone who believed, "America is the best country in the world, and that's it." Obama is much warmer in his relationships with other countries than other presidents. Don't you feel it? He's trying to do a little more work for the world.

But he definitely loves America.
Obama is an intelligent guy, but there's no way he doesn't love America. If he doesn't love America, what does he love? If he didn't love America, he'd do something else rather than invest all that time and money trying to be president.

But he has something to gain.
If you want money over fame, you'd be in another part of politics, not there.

Obama kills American citizens with drones if they're believed to be terrorists. Does this affect your answer?
No. He's trying to make his country a "pure" and "safe" country I think. Patriotism here works differently.

People have different definitions of "pure" and "safe" though.
Americans are not [as] united as they act like they are.

So speaking as someone who doesn't like America, how do you regard Giuliani saying Obama doesn't like it?
Well you're just talking about a fight between political parties. They always say shit about the other side. Always. That's the first rule of political parties.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

NOTE: The name of the interview subject was removed from this article.

We Are All Samantha: Eduardo Casanova on His Short Film About a Girl with an Asshole on Her Face

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Eduardo Casanova is a 23-year-old director from Madrid whose short film, Eat My Shit, is currently competing in a contest sponsored by a well-known Irish whiskey. Posted on the contest page, his video has gone viral in Europe, not just because of its catchy title or its star's intriguing visage. From such an exaggeratedly sensationalist, potentially fraught, initially dubious starting place, Casanova, a former child actor on a popular Spanish TV show, has ended up with the most unexpectedly moving, meaningful commentary on social-media censorship you've ever seen. It's concise, too. Well worth 210 seconds of your time.

It all starts when Instagram rejects Samantha's selfie for its "sexual content." But she only posted a pic of her face! Her face is not like other faces, however. Turns out she was born with a wrinkled, harry, puckered asshole where her mouth should be. In a bar so empty it only includes the chair she sits on, her table, and a totally unsympathetic server in an Iron Maiden T-shirt, Samantha orders soup and weeps as she pages through a notebook collaged with huge smiles across every face. By the film's end, let's just say she takes advantage of her special power to leave an existential comment on all the service she's received in life—an all-encompassing negative review that feels glorious, victorious, a finger in the face of the world's jerks.

Eduardo Casanova kindly agreed to receive a few questions sent to him in Spanish. His translated responses appear below, but in any language Eat My Shit is an affecting dramatization of the conflict between oddity and ostracism.

VICE: You've written that you used all your child-acting earnings to fund your own work. Have you also invested lessons from the directors of your youth in short films like Eat My Shit?
Eduardo Casanova: I learned a lot as an actor, most of all how to manage filming from behind the camera. Acting has been a bridge that's connected me to directing.

It seems like you have a normal mouth, but your artistic tendencies might not be so conventional. Do you see something of yourself in Samantha, your differently mouthed protagonist? How autobiographical is Eat My Shit? You mention your therapist on your site... Was making the video cathartic?
We are all Samantha. No one (or so I believe) has an anus on their face, but we've all felt socially excluded for something, or at least we all understand that something similar can happen. I've felt this way sometimes, although it doesn't happen to me day to day.

Like your protagonist, have you managed to harness your oddities and avenge yourself, at least a little bit, against any real assholes?
I believe so. Eat My Shit has become a viral success in Spain, France, the United Kingdom... The movie is going to do it. This makes me think that people understand a woman with an anus on her face more than I thought they would.

Did you go with a spare aesthetic out of necessity (i.e., it's easier and cheaper)?
All aesthetic choices should have a moral justification. She's alone in a bar because she's alone in the world and she hides from society. Someone like her wouldn't enter a McDonald's. Beyond that, it looks better aesthetically.

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Do you think social media helps overcome solitude?
Social networks make you believe you're less alone and you're essential to society. But this isn't necessarily true. Social networks also make it so you have a place (a place among millions) in society. To deny someone an existence on a social network, like what happens to Samantha, is the strongest possible type of exclusion.

Did you start out thinking you'd create a striking commentary about online censorship, or did its conception have more to do with creating something worthwhile about someone with a literal buttface? Also, once you started working on this, how concerned were you about its emotional force? How consciously did you exaggerate the juxtaposition between sensationalism (the finale) and subtlety (the music, the tears, the cut-outs in her notebook)?
Eat My Shit isn't about a woman with an anus on her face. Eat My Shit speaks to the difficulty people have in society if they're physically different. This is a drama and it deserves a dramatic shit like the one that occurs in the film.

I'm sure you're happy that the video has gone viral. But what about your aspirations? Do you think about making feature-length films one day? Do you expect to always make short films, which seem best suited for online distribution? How do you feel about online distribution in general? How do you see this short in terms of your career?
My idea is to make feature-length films. To echo that, Eat My Shit functions like a teaser for my first feature. Short films are all very good and can go viral like in this case, but I have the need to tell stories that travel more distance.

Last question: Would it be considered anal if someone with an anus on their face performed fellatio?
Absolutely.

Lee Klein is the author of The Shimmering Go-Between: A Novel and Thanks and Sorry and Good Luck: Rejection Letters from the Eyeshot Outbox.

New York Towns Are Plotting to Secede to Pennsylvania

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As a native New Yorker, the schisms in my home state always existed just north of the Bronx, past Westchester County . Below it, you have Downstate—people living inside or just outside New York City who talk like New Yawkahs and cannot understand why their city hasn't replaced Albany as the state capital. Above that divide, you have Upstate—New Yorkers living in smaller, more rural towns near Syracuse, and Binghamton, and Rochester, who talk like they're from Canada or Virginia, and feel more closely aligned, both politically and spiritually, with the Great Lakes than they do with the East River.

Put simply, New York has an identity crisis: Yes, the state may be deep blue, but it's not as liberal as its reputation may suggest. Pockets of red exist throughout the state, particularly in more rural or economically depressed regions. Most of the time, these political outliers are conveniently ignored, outgunned and outspent by their liberal counterparts in Manhattan and the Hamptons. But last week, tensions over the state's Mason-Dixon-esque divide reached a boiling point.

Fifteen towns, in an area known as the Southern Tier, announced that they would consider seceding from the Empire State to join their more conservative brethren across the border in Pennsylvania. The Upstate New York Towns Association, the group behind the efforts, has pointed to two main issues as the reason for the break: Gas and Taxes.

It's not the first time a New York entity has proposed this: In 2008, a band of rebellious Long Islanders kicked around the idea of declaring their own statehood. But this time around, the motives for the Southern Tier's move are more understandable, and say something about the internal divisions facing the country as a whole.

The town of Conklin, New York, is a tableau of classic Rust Belt imagery: Closed factories, foreclosed homes, "For Sale" signs. Two major floods in recent years added to the town's already long list of hardships. "There's nothing going on here," James Finch, the town supervisor and a major proponent of the Southern Tier secessionist movement, told me. "Our kids go to college and don't come back. There's nothing here for them."

Even if the secession talk will probably amount to nothing, this is the underlying sentiment of the Southern Tier movement, hitting home on a major theme of America in 2015. A growing segment of the lower and middle classes living outside of cities feel disenfranchised by, and disenchanted with, the economic policies promoted by progressive politicians in Washington and blue-state capitals like Albany and Boston.

In this specific case, the culprit is New York's Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo. For the towns located in Broome, Tioga, and Sullivan counties, the problem is administration policies that they see as having disturbed the balance between north and south, a tightrope that every New York governor is informally forced to walk after being sworn in. According to Finch, the powder keg was ignited by Cuomo's decision this past December to institute a statewide ban on hydraulic fracturing—or what Finch refers to as "safe gas drilling"—and further exacerbated by the news that none of New York's new casino development would reach the Southern Tier.

Back in December, CUNY political science professor Doug Muzzio told the Wall Street Journal that the fracking ban could prompt political backlash outside of the more liberal swathes of New York state. "All in all, it's going to prove a controversial decision that creates blowback," Muzzio said. "It helps and it hurts."

To an extent, the Southern Tier secession movement is the extreme consequence of the blowback Muzzio warned would occur. "Secession talk is just that — talk by some born out of frustration," Muzzio told me this week. "Ain't happening. Not all in Southern Tier are opposed to the ban by any means."

"Not that Southern Tier is not often neglected by State and in need of jobs and economic rejuvenation," he added.

In a phone call Monday, Finch characterized this intra-state anxiety. "Everything goes to New York City and nothing stays here," Finch explained. "They dictate what goes on in the rest of the state. It's like New York should be Washington D.C.. And there's nothing we can do about it."

That powerless feeling of inequality—the perception that New York's economic recovery has benefited only Wall Street and emerging market oligarchs looking for a place to stash their billions—is borne out by the state's 2014 unemployment numbers. Last year, the 10 downstate counties added 223,000 jobs (a 3.1 percent increase), while the 52 counties upstate only added 36,700 jobs (a 1.3 percent increase).

Finch said that the divide could also be seen in last year's gubernatorial election results. On Election Night 2014, the majority of upstate New York was painted solid red, while Cuomo's election victory came mostly on the support of his base in the city's metro areas. "He didn't win up in the Southern Tier," Finch said. "New York City elected Cuomo."

The tale of the Southern Tier secessionist movement also highlights national issues that the US is struggling to resolve. In recent years, natural gas drilling and fracking have brought an economic boom to rural American towns that had seen many of their jobs shipped overseas in the second half of the 20 th century, cleaning the rust off much of the Rust Belt. While environmentalists continue to question whether the cost of the domestic shale boom has been worth the economic stimulus, the towns along the border of New York and Pennsylvania show both edges of that sword.

To the north, you have New York, where environmentalists have largely won the war against fracking, possibly to the economic detriment of towns like Conklin. On the other side of the border is Pennsylvania, where gas and property taxes are lower, and where the natural gas boom has led to an economic resurgence, often with environmentally disastrous effects.

To Finch, it is clear which side is winning. "The people there were depressed for a long time, but now they're doing great," he said. "They all have new cars, new siding on their homes, new stores opening up."

In his State of the State address last month, Cuomo sought to mend ties with the broken Southern Tier, promising to push for casino licenses and proposing a $50 million bailout of sorts for the region. The package would invest in clean energy and agriculture there, as well as host bids for green companies to win state funding.

"The farmer in the Southern Tier who is struggling to make ends meet, that farmer is our brother," Cuomo said.

But the chance to save that brother, Finch argued, has long past: "He proposed farming subsidies, but we have farmers who have gone out of business."

"After the one-two punch to our community from the recent casino and gas drilling decisions, my office received many emails, phone calls and messages from constituents calling for a Southern Tier secession from New York State," Republican State Senator Tom Libous, who represents the counties included in the secession effort, said in a statement to VICE. "While getting my constituents' opinion on spending the $5 billion surplus was our top priority, I thought a question on secession should also be included in the survey."

In that survey sent out to his constituents, Senator Libous office added a question: "Some Kirkwood & Conklin residents want those towns to secede to Pennsylvania. Would you support that?" His press office said the results of the survey are still being collected and would be released in coming weeks. However, Finch said he's received great feedback and encouragement from his fellow Conklin residents about the secession efforts. Cuomo's office has not responded to VICE's requests for comment.

To secede from New York, the Upstate New York Towns' Association's proposal would have to be passed by both the New York and Pennsylvania State Legislatures, and then receive a stamp of approval by the federal government. So yes, as much as they might dislike their fellow downstaters, chances are the Southern Tier towns will have to continue to live with its New York zip code. But the threat of secession is a nuclear option that residents can use to make some noise, Finch said.

"You can send three, four or five busloads of people to Albany to protest, but what will that do?" he asked me. "Now, we're all over the radio, the television, and the Internet. It's an awareness campaign, if anything. So maybe, the Governor will ask himself, 'What will we do now to fix them?'"

Follow John on Twitter

Incest: The Love—and Brutality—That Dare Not Speak Its Name

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From the column Komplaint Dept.

[body_image width='794' height='523' path='images/content-images/2015/02/13/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/13/' filename='incest-the-loveand-brutalitythat-dare-not-speak-its-name-405-body-image-1423800686.png' id='27158']Julianne Moore and Barney Clark in 'Savage Grace,' 2007, directed by Tom Kalin

The recent story about a 17-year-old who was reunited with the father she hadn't seen since she was 5, their subsequent intense attraction, intimate physical relationship, and their intention to marry and have children instantly set off every bell and whistle that plays to the mother of all taboos: incest. She even lost her virginity to him. The girl is now roughly the same age as her father when she was conceived, reportedly on his high school prom night—no protection? a broken condom?—for which he may well have boasted to his buddies the next day about having "gotten lucky." At the risk of alienating miracle-of-lifers, there's no special talent involved in getting pregnant or in impregnating someone. The birds do it, the bees do it, even semi-educated teenagers on prom night do it, let's do it, let's bring even more new humans onto a planet that is doomed, with overpopulation threatening its potential demise. Lest we forget the great triumph of heterosexuality, barebacking the future, and another billion blessed events.

[body_image width='1100' height='520' path='images/content-images/2015/02/12/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/12/' filename='incest-the-loveand-brutalitythat-dare-not-speak-its-name-405-body-image-1423783193.jpg' id='27133']

Whether practiced in church, temple, or remote compound, religion represents yet another plague of angels with an abundance of randy, unrepentant devils, and wholly against contraception for many obvious, self-serving reasons. Where would the money come from to support their tax-free businesses if not from a steady stream of faithful parishioners and followers, including many who are eligible for government assistance, not to mention the unmentionable—a continuous supply of innocent, supple bodies to abuse, in the Name of the Father? (That incest can be found among insular religious groups, from Mormon fundamentalists to Amish and Hasidic communities, has long been known.) Clearly, improper relations between close relatives are non-denominational as well. And now, 17 years later, our dubious prom king is what? Getting lucky all over again? Many of those who read and commented on the New York magazine interview with the girl have their doubts as to its veracity.

Daddy's Little Girl
The case of this woman, having turned 18 and now of consenting age, includes the fact that intercourse occurred a year prior, when she could not claim the status of an emancipated minor. Setting aside for the moment a retroactive charge of statutory rape for her father/fiancé, in addition to legally being able to make her own most intimate decisions, she asserts having science on her side, something identified as GSA: genetic sexual attraction. The designation, dating back to the 80s, identifies a particular occurrence between relatives who reunite after being estranged for lengthy periods of time. These attractions are not always acted upon but, according to researchers, are frequently experienced by children and parents, as well as separated siblings who are brought back together, often adopted children seeking each other out in adulthood. One wonders to what degree these reactions are chemical and to what extent they may be psychological? After all, one factor related to incest is a fear of abandonment, whether on the part of the initiator or their intended. Now very much together, the girl revealed that once vows have been exchanged, the happy couple plan to move to New Jersey, where consenting adults aren't prosecuted for incestuous relationships. This was news to legislators and residents in the Garden State, not to be confused with the Garden of Eden, though incest seems to have been around for as long as marriage and divorce, unwanted pregnancies, immaculate conception, questions of paternity and child support, and the dogged determination of royal families to maintain their bloodlines, purebred all the way.

For those who believe that the institution of marriage needs to be defended, who define marriage as the sanctified union between a man and a woman, wouldn't this girl and her long-lost father qualify? Wouldn't clerks in the great state of Texas, for example, issue them a certificate to marry? After all, they may not share the same last name, and fornication would be of the wholesome boy-girl variety. Well, of course not, because even if the protectors of traditional marriage aren't biology majors—and homozygous zygote sounds more than vaguely gay—they could never conceive of consanguinity in exactly these terms:

Blood Is Thicker Than Water, but Semen Is Thicker Than Blood
The thought would likely repulse them, since nothing disgusts people more than talking about anything vaguely incestuous or bodily fluids. Even if this particular essence of life is not a liquid but rather a viscous protein, squeamishness readily applies. On either side of the fake bi-polarity of political life in America, whether left or right, nothing is more repulsive than incest. And yet hardcore right-to-lifers seek to prohibit the termination of pregnancies resulting from coerced sexual relations, even between fathers and daughters, as well as involving grandfathers, brothers, cousins. They don't seem much bothered by the horror of forced relations between relations—as if the notion of innocence lost only applies to the unborn.

[body_image width='640' height='360' path='images/content-images/2015/02/11/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/11/' filename='incest-the-loveand-brutalitythat-dare-not-speak-its-name-405-body-image-1423697462.jpg' id='26782']The Kornegay Family

For many, incest hits too close to home. Nearly concurrent with the publication of the New York Magazine interview was a news story about a 15-year-old girl in White Springs, Florida, Misty "Ariel" Kornegay, who murdered her 16-year-old brother after being psychologically and sexually abused by him and, previously, another family member over many years. The girl had suffered sexual abuse by an uncle when she was 11, for which she received no counseling, and later attempted to take her life. At 12 she was caught by her mother having sex with the brother—for which she, and not the brother, was punished. Punishment included being locked in a room with only a blanket and a bucket in which to relieve herself. The longest period of her confinement is reported to have been twenty consecutive days—nearly three weeks.

Clearly, this girl had plenty of time to become enraged, enough to imagine her brother out of the picture. Permanently. She has now been charged with premeditated murder. But what about the premeditated sexual abuse at the hands of her uncle and brother? And what of the pattern of sadistic imprisonment she endured as part of her parents' discipline? The murder took place when they were away from home for three days (and possibly not for the first time), leaving the teenagers behind to care for their 11-year-old and 3-year-old sisters. This points to another contributing factor for incest: a shift in responsibility, children taking on adult roles within familial structures that have been disrupted. Following the murder, which was committed with a pistol kept in the parent's bedroom, the two girls fled, leaving the three-year-old alone in the house with the dead body. The parents were charged with child neglect, while prosecutors decided against trying the older sisters as adults. With any sense of mercy, a jury will spare the 15-year-old from prison after already serving hard time, enslaved and dehumanized in the jailhouse of her childhood home.

[body_image width='1000' height='448' path='images/content-images/2015/02/23/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/23/' filename='incest-the-loveand-brutalitythat-dare-not-speak-its-name-405-body-image-1424702716.jpg' id='29889']Lily van der Stokker, drawing, 1994

Mommy Knows Best
If the more widely known stories of familial sexual relations involve fathers and daughters or brothers and sisters, particularly where abuse and trauma are reported (and some would insist that in every instance they are abusive), this is not only because men and boys are more actively aggressive perpetrators. With examples of relations between mothers and sons, there is the possibility of underreporting, less likelihood of children being produced, and a matter of cultural perception, that while these relations are wrong, they may be seen as non-traumatic. The extent to which this is true for male participants/victims is not easily qualified, but on the part of the public and the media it's possible that trauma is generally understood as particular to women, as if boys and girls are not equally coerced and damaged, as if "boys enjoy sex and girls are violated," or "boys have sex and girls have babies."

One noteworthy case involves a young man who had a multi-year relationship with his mother, beginning when he was 14 and she was 37, and continuing until he went away to college. Three years ago on a Reddit page, he candidly answered questions and graphically described their relationship, while claiming to have emerged from it unharmed, saying that for both himself and his mother he would "characterize the experience as positive."

From his description of its inception, it's possible to infer that he broke his arms in an accident and, unable to masturbate (going, he says, from his usual teenage twice a day to zero), he began to act out at home, to the extent that his mother stepped in to 'lend a helping hand.' This was apparently done with the approval of her husband, with an understanding that the problem needed to be directly addressed. The boy wrote that he is "not an advocate for incest. For whatever reason, it worked for us," and coolly asked readers "not to use use my experience as a template. I am here to relate my experience, not debate incest as a subject."

"It started with her masturbating me. Progressed to her giving me oral and eventually we had sex/made love. It was a slow progression. She never rewarded or threatened with sex. Over the years my dad had seen us together but he never watched per se. The first time we had intercourse, I was lying in bed getting oral from her. In the middle of it, she stopped, climbed up my body, pulled her panties aside and sat on me. She was wearing a long Tshirt. She told me not to cum and she rode me for about a minute and came. She then finished me with her mouth. My head was spinning."

When asked by a reader if there was any "dirty talk" between them in bed, he said there hadn't been, and elaborated, "At the beginning, she could be clinical in her description of what she was doing and I would get turned on, but not dirty dirty. At orgasm, there could be the 'Oh Shit' or 'Oh Fuck.' Sometimes it was discussed at the table but not with my dad around." He added, "I would never tell anyone I know. I have an older sister that was unaware and not involved." As to its culmination, the boy is matter-of-fact. "It just started to slow down and then eventually stopped. There wasn't an event that ended it. I have talked to my mother and father about it over the years. The subject is not off limits. I don't think that either of us wishes it to start up again."

From the often mocking comments and probing of his readers, the obvious question remains: Did it really take four years for his broken arms and hands to fully heal? Why did the sexual relations continue and even progress to the full extent of intimacy? And how did the husband/father allow this to go on over an extended period of time, well past the point of the initial problem? Clearly, mother and son derived pleasure from their couplings, with the son overcoming his initial confusion and guilt. But how was he able to separate the realities of the woman who was both his mother and his occasional sex partner? And how was the father able to share his wife with the boy, and still see them as his son and his wedded wife, the mother of his children? While children often come between parents as natural rivals for affection, maneuvering is primarily psychological and, with the exception of mostly harmless play-acting, rarely occurs "between the sheets." Kept within the family, was this a sanctioned and controlled infidelity? Entirely free of jealousy and shame? Much is missing from this story, and much, despite the boy's insistence that "it worked for us," will remain baffling for those who attempt to reconcile the incredible narrative.

[body_image width='640' height='436' path='images/content-images/2015/02/13/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/13/' filename='incest-the-loveand-brutalitythat-dare-not-speak-its-name-405-body-image-1423802113.png' id='27159']Barbara Baekeland and her son Tony

Incesticide
A far less happy ending, if the conclusion of an extended mother/son affair can even be described in these terms, resulted from one of the more famous cases of maternal incest, that of Barbara Daly Baekeland and her son Anthony.

Their story served as the basis for the movie, Savage Grace (2007), starring Julianne Moore and Eddie Redmayne, which prompted a lawsuit, and extra publicity, from one person depicted, the art curator and social gadfly Sam Green. One would expect that for an aging gentleman who helped define the swinging 60s, the revelation of certain conquests would only add to a hedonistic reputation rather than detract. But his complaint was most certainly pursued on the basis of a particularly steamy scene in the movie, where Green is shown in bed between both Baeklands, an incident which he says never occurred. Here a greater horror than "bi-polarity" rears its ugly head—that he may have participated in the Baeklands' incestuous relationship. The suit asserts that his representation in the movie "induced an evil opinion of him in the minds of right-thinking persons, and deprived him of friendly intercourse in society." Or, as Savage Grace would have it, implicated him in frisky intercourse with mother and son.

The Baekeland's tragic story is one fueled by Oedipal/chemical imbalance on either side. Tony was Barbara's only child, and in the years after her divorce he simultaneously discovered his homosexuality and LSD, and began to display schizophrenic behavior. His mother's attempts to "cure him" of being gay, first by hiring women to sleep with him, a failure, and then, if the story is to be believed, sleeping with him herself, concluded with Tony stabbing her to death in London in 1972. He had made a previous attempt for which she had declined to press charges (he tried to push her in front of a passing car), and his own psychiatrist had alerted her just over two weeks before the murder that Tony had spoken of it, and she was in mortal danger—a warning she chose to ignore. She had on a number of occasions tried to take her own life, and it's possible that what occurred was not merely the result of a mother's inability to conceive of her child being able to kill her. The ending of her life could be seen as an extreme "death by misadventure," as no less than "death by schizophrenic son." She had, in a sense, used her son as the weapon to end her life, a death which, given the particularly twisted circumstances, and its likely trigger, could be ruled "incesticide." Tony Baekeland would serve seven years in an English hospital prison before influential friends managed to secure his release.

After traveling to New York to live with his 87-year-old grandmother (apparently rather generously forgiving of his crime), and, no longer taking his meds, less than a week would pass before Tony violently set upon and stabbed her eight times with a kitchen knife. She only managed to survive the attack because every thrust had struck bone. Not only had he attempted to kill the woman who had given birth to his own mother, he reportedly told police that he had wanted to have sex with her. Sent to Rikers Island and months of psychiatric evaluation, Tony was found, on a spring day in 1981, dead in his cell with a plastic bag wrapped around his head. A murder? A suicide? Never to be determined. And why bother? In a story of damage upon damage, sweeping bodies under the rug is always preferable to an accounting of their messy, fucked up passage. Even Sam Green didn't live to see whether he would prevail in his lawsuit against the fictionalized account of the Baekeland saga, and what would otherwise have been a common he said/she said duel, tantalizingly enmeshed to include the prodigal son, will never be known. As the saying goes, and then there were none.

[body_image width='634' height='407' path='images/content-images/2015/02/11/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/11/' filename='incest-the-loveand-brutalitythat-dare-not-speak-its-name-405-body-image-1423696807.jpg' id='26776']
Princess Vicky and her son Wilhelm, the future Kaiser

Purebreds, or All in the (Royal) Family
Well worth noting is the fact that Barbara Baekeland had maneuvered her wealthy future husband into marriage by claiming that she was pregnant when she was not. The conception of little Tony was, on the happy wedding day, more of a con-de-ception. For Brooks Baekeland, there was perhaps as much a desire to do the right thing, to make an honest woman of his deceitful lover, as to spare the family name from scandal and dishonor, as well as to keep the dynastic ball rolling. The child would be his heir, and where a fortune is concerned it's always best to keep wealth in one's pockets. While it's fairly common for inter-family marriage and inbreeding to be considered as the province of "backwards hillbillies," the most common of folk, the opposite turns out to be true. As the young woman at the center of the Genetic Sexual Attraction story remarked, when asked if she worried about birth defects that might result in producing children with her biological father, "That happens when there's years of inbreeding, like with the royal family." It's a hilarious take-that swipe on her part, particularly when you consider how throughout history more than a few heirs to the throne have not only appeared freakishly formed but, on occasion, not in any way resembling their claimed sire.

Where the history of so-called inbreds and purebreds is concerned, how insurmountable is the distance between an insular religion's compound and an old drafty castle? If we think of the family as an island or surrounded by a moat, a similar siege mentality is common to both. When dipping into a shallow gene pool over and again, isn't everyone equally at risk of genetic drift? Cultish and tethered to the same DNA chain, the mating of those closely related, particularly over many generations, often proves disastrous. While harmful mutations are weeded out as a result of natural selection, they can be thought of as virtually cultivated within the aristocracy—from the hothouse to the most splendid formal gardens—when genetic drift occurs, as with incest. Arranged and coercive marriage may here be thought of as unnatural selection, a kind of pseudo-science which gave rise to the term "throne clone." During the reign of Queen Victoria, unions that were orchestrated for financial and political advantage resulted not only in nearly all the royals of Europe being interrelated, but sparked the family infighting and sibling rivalry that led directly to the first world war, the first leading inevitably to its horrific sequel. (When Prince Harry created a scandal by choosing the uniform of Rommel's Afrika Korps, complete with Swastika armband, as his costume at a 2005 Halloween party, and only two weeks prior to Holocaust Memorial Day, he might have been acknowledging the fact that Kaiser Wilhelm II was Victoria's eldest grandson.) A notorious anti-semite, the Kaiser eerily foretold the future when, after his forced abdication in 1918, he insisted that the best thing for "the tribe of Judah ... would be gas." Wilhelm is said to have had an "unnatural love for his mother," bordering on incestuous but unrequited desire, which ultimately led to his complete contempt for Britain. But extending and exploiting spheres of influence across the land, a programmatic "sleeping with the enemy" to keep the peace while maintaining the bloodline—its purity!—extracted an exorbitantly high price: the near exsanguination of the continent. And not only. For with the first world war came the invention of biological weapons. That we might in any way equate them with the biological promiscuity encouraged at the time may seem in itself promiscuous. And yet modern times demand the discovery of new and ingenious ways to eliminate one's enemies, whether on the battlefield or in the bedroom.

Even if the sexual repression we associate with the Victorian era has proven to be a myth, we acknowledge that the perpetuation of myths—romantic love, ruling "by divine right"—enables the continued enforcement of supposedly sacred law, primogeniture first of all. Within paternalistic culture, every man is a first-born son to whom all inheritance shall pass, while hereditary prejudice requires the care and maintenance of the dominant narrative. The story thus far can only serve to remind us that marriage is a merger, conceived in terms of business and commerce. Until now, marriage has traditionally been defined as the legal union of man and woman as husband and wife. (Lest we forget the particular pecking order of the species.) Certain entitlements and federal protections are associated with marriage and its dissolution, which can be seen in terms of pros and cons, including tax and health benefits, pensions, property, assets—and their division—parental custody, alimony, and so on. Whether the definition of marriage officially shifts, these rights and protections will still be applied. Marriage, no matter who its participants, no matter how deeply in or out of love humans may fall, will forever remain an abiding form of social control. And if good Christian neighbors continue to view same-sex couples as sodomites living in sin, a piece of paper and wedding bands aren't likely to dissuade them. Even so, the forward motion of a society will not be denied.

[body_image width='1000' height='631' path='images/content-images/2015/02/13/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/13/' filename='incest-the-loveand-brutalitythat-dare-not-speak-its-name-405-body-image-1423848333.jpg' id='27472']AP Photo/Rick Bowmer

The End of Their World.
That these recent incest stories are surfacing at a time when the highest court will decide, country-wide, on the issue of same-sex marriage is only coincidental. But those who oppose marriage equality have in the past equated it with incest, child abuse and polygamy, as if allowing marriage between people of the same gender would open the floodgates to anyone being able to marry whomever they want—even close blood relations—partners of any age, and as many times as they want. This is entirely unfounded. While same-sex marriages cannot possibly produce offspring whose DNA triangulates them with both parents, those who oppose it fear that these couples will have or raise children, whether through surrogacy or adoption, and pervert them. And yet children being "turned gay" is really not their true and greatest fear. What scares them more than anything is that these children may grow up to think for themselves and, in families that stress respect and have had to fight for it, populate a more tolerant world. For social conservatives, this above all else is entirely intolerable.

Here it's easy to be reminded of the opposition to marriage between the races, of those horrified by the prospect of the children that would result, just as many before them bitterly mourned emancipation and denied evolution. The fact that certain groups within the species have not fully evolved is in no way contradictory. Quite the opposite. And if one considers bondage purely as the expression of a power dynamic, one can see a correlation between slaveholders—with the perceived right to do as they please within an extended "family," their property—and those engaging in incestuous relations—within their private harem. The lord and master, as if he were the head of a cult, expects and demands obedience and subservience from his followers. Is incest more common within families that emphasize sin and damnation over forgiveness? And if it is, how surprising would that be?The incest taboo is an integral element in human development because it opens the door to the individual's independence, to leave home and engage intimately in outside relationships. Looking back upon the history of hetero-conservancy in this country, on its insularity, its need to strengthen the family ties that bind, there has always been a determination to find new ways to incite all the old battles lost. In this there is a particularly dangerous form of incest, an inbreeding of fear among "their kind," a fear that breeds contempt, a relentless need to demonize and destroy anything perceived to threaten their way of life—as if life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness belong to them alone, a God-given right.

Egypt Calls for Pan-Arab Military Force to Tackle Terrorist Groups

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Egypt Calls for Pan-Arab Military Force to Tackle Terrorist Groups

Looking Up Symptoms Online? These Companies Are Tracking You

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Looking Up Symptoms Online? These Companies Are Tracking You

The Old-Fashioned, Fart-Filled Comedy of the Razzies

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[body_image width='1500' height='762' path='images/content-images/2015/02/23/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/23/' filename='i-went-to-the-golden-raspberry-awards-223-body-image-1424717230.jpg' id='30086']One of the skits from the Razzies, honoring Transformers 4 as a Worst Picture nominee. "Michael Bay" kept asking for more explosions in the scene until it was just him dancing around with explosions. Because Michael Bay likes explosions. All photos by Cynthia Sanchez

Year after year, the Academy Awards delivers the same old schtick to the A-list Hollywood crowd: the same mildly funny but (mostly) politically correct jokes, the same sparkly outfits, the same barrage of shiny awards given out to the same movies that please the old white men of the Academy. So when I got the opportunity to attend the 35th annual Golden Raspberry Awards this year, I jumped at the chance.

The Golden Raspberry Awards, better known as the Razzies, are dedicating to celebrating the worst in movies, sort of like a Bizarro universe version of the OScars. Since 1980, the award show has been a toothless but necessary finger wag in the general direction of the artless side of Hollywood. This year marked the first year this ceremony would be opened up to the public (for the low, low price of $35 per ticket), meaning I'd be joined in the audience by the kind of people who willingly paid to see movies get panned.

I got my first whiff of this held-together-with-spit-and-bailing-wire vibe of the Razzies when I went to their website to check this year's list of nominees. Put plainly, their website is terrible. It looks like something that was made on GeoCities or AngelFire. After trying to avoid the site's dodgy banner ads and closing virusey pop-ups for nearly five minutes, I still couldn't find the nominee list. A quick Google search of "Razzie nominations" pulled up an in-Google sidebar list of the noms, sourced from Wikipedia.

This year's nominees contained the usual explosion-filled blockbusters, but also things like Kirk Cameron's Savings Christmas and Atlas Shrugged 3: Who Is John Galt. This surprised me, as the Razzies website states, "The Golden Raspberry Award Foundation's well-aimed Darts of Derision have always been directed at Hollywood's High Profile Humiliations (rather than at the easier target of low-budget/drive-in fare)." Picking on low-budget pap, insane as it may be, seemed to go against this credo.

[body_image width='1500' height='1180' path='images/content-images/2015/02/23/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/23/' filename='i-went-to-the-golden-raspberry-awards-223-body-image-1424717640.jpg' id='30091']

I showed up at the event Saturday night looking very underdressed, but determined to have a good time. I had incorrectly assumed people would be pretty casual about the whole event and wouldn't bother to ironically (or unironically) dress to the nines. The first few cocktail dresses and tuxes my photographer and I passed through as we arrived painted a clear picture of how wrong I was. The place looked like my senior prom.

The show was held at the historic Ricardo Montalban Theater, spitting distance from the iconic Hollywood and Vine intersection. I would soon learn how appropriate this location was, as the Golden Raspberry Award Foundation made it clear early into the evening's proceedings just how much the group fetishized Old Hollywood.

Though the ceremony has seen some notable star appearances over the years, as a rule celebrities don't attend the Razzies, especially not the celebrities being "honored." The biggest attraction on this year's Razzie red carpet was an uncannily accurate Kim Jong Un impersonator who usually poses with tourists in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater. A gaggle of old women had crowded around him and were telling each other, "That's the guy from The Interview!" I informed them that no, it was not.

[body_image width='1500' height='956' path='images/content-images/2015/02/23/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/23/' filename='i-went-to-the-golden-raspberry-awards-223-body-image-1424716487.jpg' id='30079']

Before entering the theater, I chatted with a young local couple, Angeline Rose and Troy, who were costumed in overall shots and knee-high socks for some reason. I asked them why they had decided to come to the Razzies.

"We just love bad movies," Troy said. "Have you ever seen The Room? That's our favorite. Do you think they'll award a movie like that tonight?"

[body_image width='1500' height='1288' path='images/content-images/2015/02/23/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/23/' filename='i-went-to-the-golden-raspberry-awards-223-body-image-1424716518.jpg' id='30080']

After grabbing a glass of white wine, my photographer and I found seats in the balcony, where the press was supposed to sit, and settled in for the show. Before the house lights went on, I took a glance at the program, which offered a sampling of the humor we'd be experiencing tonight—for instance,Transformers 4: Age of Extinction was listed as, "Transformers 4: Age of Ex-STINK-tion."

Like the Academy Awards, the Razzies began with a musical performance. The opening number was a medley of tunes from the Annie soundtrack with lyrics that spoofed the nominees.

[body_image width='1500' height='965' path='images/content-images/2015/02/23/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/23/' filename='i-went-to-the-golden-raspberry-awards-223-body-image-1424716460.jpg' id='30078']

I should mention here that I'm not exactly the target audience for this kind of hammy, cornball shtick: I absolutely hate when Billy Crystal hosts the Oscars. I stopped participating in my school musicals, mostly because I couldn't get past the overly earnest cringeyness of it all. The Razzie performances were the epitome of this brands of self-satisfied bad comedy: The dance routine footwork was sloppy, the jokes were a bad attempt at Mad magazine–style humor, and the pratfalls were endless. Eight times over the course of the evening, fart noises were blasted over the speakers; this was supposed to be self-evidently funny.

[body_image width='1500' height='995' path='images/content-images/2015/02/23/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/23/' filename='i-went-to-the-golden-raspberry-awards-223-body-image-1424716571.jpg' id='30083']

Presenters that I'd never heard of came up after each new sketch/dance/circle of hell to announce the nominees for that category with a smug, campy delivery that even Bruce Vilanche would call overkill. One presenter, who I did not recognize, came onstage with a dog wrapped around his neck. This was never addressed and everyone else treated this like it was the most normal thing in the world.

When Keifer Sutherland was nominated for the film Pompeii, one presenter seemingly ad-libbed to her partner that the film was "more like Pomp-ous!" OK, let's be clear. Pompeii is a bad film, but in no way is it a self-aggrandizing flick. It's a relatively low-budget action flick that was shat out in the box office doldrums of February. Hearing these jokes gave me the same feeling in the pit of my stomach as when I'd hear people in as late as 2011 doing those terrible George W. Bush impressions.

[body_image width='1500' height='960' path='images/content-images/2015/02/23/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/23/' filename='i-went-to-the-golden-raspberry-awards-223-body-image-1424717468.jpg' id='30089']A Ninja Turtles skit, where Shredder enlisted "all the pizza delivery guys you didn't tip" to fight against the turtles. The Turtles farted as they did their combat moves.

None of the Golden Raspberry winners were in attendance to receive their statue, so the hosts cut to pre-recorded clips of "field reporters" attempting to track down the winners. Highlights of these clips included:

  • Audio of "Ah-Nuld" (yes, spelled like that everywhere; no, I don't know why) Schwarzenegger having sex in the back of a Topless Maids van.
  • A scene of crumpled tissues in a cave next to a DVD of Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas, to suggest Cameron was jerking off to his own movie and, for some reason, needed to do this in a cave.
  • A black-and-white clip of "Bette Davis" saying the equivalent of "back in my day, we knew how to act" in response to Cameron Diaz winning Worst Actress.
  • A dirt trail because Megan Fox's career is leading to nowhere.

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The somewhat bright spot of the night was a pretty decent Birdman parody from SyFy channel's Z Nation star Keith Allen. Much like Keaton, Allen found himself clad only in tighty whities and needed to sheepishly make his way around the side of the theater to the front door. The clip ended and transitioned to him making his way on stage IRL in said briefs. That would've been funny on its own, but since these were the Razzies, they had to muck things up at the end with him doing a fake stumble as he climbed the last step onto the stage and paused for too long while bent over to make sure the entire audience got a hilarious view of his butt and balls. (For what it's worth, Neil Patrick Harris did basically the same bit during the Oscars.)

The rest of the show was mercifully short and Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas swept most of the awards (rightfully so, if you ask me). Toward the end, Sister Rose Pacatte, who is one of the world's few movie-reviewing nuns, went onstage to present the first ever Razzie Redeemer Award to an individual who had pulled their career out of a tailspin and produced more laudable works. The sister dispensed some zingers before finally giving the angel-bewinged statuette to Ben Affleck for going from Gigli to Argo and Gone Girl. Affleck was not in the audience to accept this award. This must've come as a shock to the head host, however, who closed the ceremony with what was arguably the night's funniest line:

"Ben Afflick said he was going to be here, but he's a dick so... good night."

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Sister Rose Pacatte, nun and Razzie presenter

As the crowd began to shuffle out of the theater, I asked some of the guests how they enjoyed the show.

"Eh, yeah, it... was fun," one man said with the conviction of someone desperately attempting to stave off the oncoming wave of buyer's remorse about to hit. Another woman, who was visiting from Korea, seemed to have genuinely enjoyed it: "It was just nice to get to visit Los Angeles to see this!"

Obviously, the Razzies were not made for people like me. The jokes are accessible to the point of childishness, the references date back to the Clinton administration and before (a decapitated shark head in one sketch contained the necklace of drowning victim Natalie Wood), and the show exudes nostalgia for the era when movies were just muggy Broadyway shows on film.This all makes sense: The founder and executive producer of the Razzies, John Wilson, is now in his 60s. He's doing these for himself, and unfortunately, it shows. Loving bad movies has become more and more popular over the years; it's a shame that what could be a major touchstone for fans of The Room and MST3K is still so cheap.

Follow Justin Caffier on Twitter.


You Need Arthur McArthur's Fetty Wrap/Queen "Trap Queen" Mash-up in Your Life

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You Need Arthur McArthur's Fetty Wrap/Queen "Trap Queen" Mash-up in Your Life

VICE Premiere: Watch Yung Gutted's Video for 'Hustle or Starve'

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Brooklyn-based producer Yung Gutted has really come into his own with his new EP, Tower II. His spooky, lo-fi beats still nod to his influences, but in a way that shows he's part of a lineage and not just ripping off Triple Six. This video, for Tower II's song "Hustle and Starve," features rappers Czarquan and Shogun Ack making great use of low-key lighting as they mob around New York City. Czarquan is the founder of Yung Gutted's crew, Nocturnal Sons Posse, and various members pop up throughout the video. Check it out.

Towers II was released yesterday for free on WeTransfer via the UK label Earnest Endeavors. You can get it here.

How the Competitive Fitness Industry Pressures Women into Getting Breast Implants

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How the Competitive Fitness Industry Pressures Women into Getting Breast Implants

Womenswear Designer Christian Cowan-Sanluis Has More to Offer Than the Selfie Hat

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[body_image width='1200' height='801' path='images/content-images/2015/02/23/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/23/' filename='christian-cowan-sanluis-lfw-191-body-image-1424711573.jpg' id='30046']

Christian Cowan-Sanluis in his studio.

This post originally appeared on VICE UK.

Photos by Carl Wilson.

It's hard being famous, because you never shake the fear that people will only remember you for one thing.

Robbie Williams, for example, must worry he'll only be recalled as the man who soundtracked the moment three of your distant relatives were lowered slowly into the earth. Cheryl Fernandez-Versini will wonder if she'll go down in history as the woman who battered a toilet attendant. Britney will forever be bald, ramming an umbrella into a car window. And Christian Cowan-Sanluis, the London-based womenswear designer, will always be the man who invented the "selfie hat."

Except, in truth, he probably won't; he'll probably also be remembered for single-handedly making a pink glitter tuxedo chic. But the selfie hat is how you know him and his fashion creations, so the selfie hat is how we'll begin.

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One of the walls in Christian's studio

"It was on 50 Cent," Christian says, and pauses. "50 Cent wore it on international television." Just let that sink in: 50 Cent wearing a pink, glittery hat designed specifically to help you take photos of yourself. Lady Gaga, Rita Ora, and Charlie XCX have all worn his clothes, too, and he's increasingly being commissioned to make special pieces for celebrities.

Dreamed up in a meeting with his now-sponsor Acer, the selfie hat was sadly a one off—"It was meant to be a press stunt that might get some coverage on the Mail Online, and it ended up everywhere"—but headwear remains central to Christian's collections.

"I love Amish hats," he explains, "and because the whole Amish thing is about the simple life, I took the hat and made it huge and really flamboyant."

What I've already realized after spending less than an hour with Christian is that he's the living embodiment of a character from an American daytime TV show about outrageous, fabulous fashionistas, probably called Outrageous, Fabulous Fashionistas. Or maybe Death by Chic. Apparently Wilhemina from Ugly Betty was an "instrumental" inspiration, for instance, and it shows.

"I've never been the kind of designer who's inspired by Bauhaus architecture—I'm very proud of my cringe references," Christian explains, adding that he grew up thinking Girls Aloud were "awesome." "I was 14 when Lady Gaga broke, and I thought she was the coolest shit ever because I grew up in the middle of nowhere on a farm. The internet was my life."

The result of his "cringe references" is a clothing line that looks like it could be the forgotten wardrobe for a Pamela Anderson cameo in The Fifth Element. There are the Amish hats, tiny pink toweling hot pants, chaps, metallic pinstripe skirt suits, and enough glitter to bring Victoria Beckham out in hives.

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Looks from Christian's new collection.

"I was obsessed with Legally Blonde, Paris Hilton, Britney back in the day—all of that," Christian tells me. "I was never that into Tumblr; I was more like an internet stalker. I would Google people non-stop. I really fell in love with that fake, American Barbie culture. I know it's not the nicest underneath, but on the outside it's hilarious. I'm so pro-cosmetic surgery. Not in the sense that people should feel like they have to do it for someone else—I'd never want that. But I love the idea that you can do it for yourself and change."

Christian grew up the youngest of 11, with nine step-siblings and a fair amount of parental pressure. "My mom wanted me to be a GP—my whole family is in medicine," he says. "I hated growing up—hated it. It was that classic thing of being a gay kid in a private school that was all focused around sports."

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Looks from Christian's new collection.

Skipping school at 15 to assist make-up artist Isamaya Ffrench, and dipping his toe into London nightlife, helped Christian finally realize he was always destined to be more Vogue than verrucas. It was then that he started making outfits to wear to clubs Boombox (2.0) and East Bloc.

"I remember one time I bedazzled these sex harnesses so they were covered in big diamonds and stars, and underneath I wore a T-shirt with a Hindu god on it and leopard print jeans with platforms. Then I took off the jeans and I had hot pants below. And I had a spiky arm harness." And breathe.

After sixth form he got a place at the London College of Fashion, where he's currently studying womenswear. I assume, out loud, that everyone in his class hates him for being so successful. "I don't know!" he insists. "I think because I always have to turn down parties to work full time on this that people assume I'm saying no because I'm being sassy, which is not the case."

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A hat from Christian's new collection.

It must be semi-weird going to lessons in the day to learn how to be a fashion designer, and then going home to make outfits for Lady Gaga and Rita Ora. However, Christian doesn't really even entertain the thought of dropping out, which will probably keep his mom off his back. (In fairness, the more we talk, the less she sounds like your average pushy parent: "My mom's glam," says Christian. "She's called Mercedes, and when she was younger she had super long black hair and used to wear black pencil skirts and little white tops. She's 100 percent one of my influences.")

Christian might enjoy talking about his glam mom, but it's only when we get onto the subject of my personal life idol, Courtney Stodden, that his face truly lights up. "Pink, tight, and sparkly" is what he can see her in, or maybe on a Playboy cover? "Absolute dream. Literally a dream."

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Courtney manifests all the traits that Christian admires and is something of a poster girl for his AW15 collection, which is all about the American Dream. "This season is kind of a parody of Republicanism," he explains. "Republicans are quite anti-drag queens, but I think drag queens are the epitome of the American dream. Take Ru Paul, for example—his family were immigrants and he's now a multi-millionaire international star. It's basically a joke version of the presidential campaign with rainbow gay pride pinstripe and a glittery presidential stamp of approval."

Rifling through the rail, Christian pulls out a little white toweling halterneck. "I wanted to take the piss out of them being really wholesome and going running with their dogs, so I've got their gym gear, too." His hand stops again on a fluffy white jacket. "Oh, and there's also the shaved poodle, of course."

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For the show itself, naturally Christian's concept goes beyond the usual "let's be groundbreaking and stand some of the models on plinths" idea.

"There are two parties in the collection running against each other, and at the presentation people can vote," he explains. "I never want to do a standard show. I can't wait until I have a huge budget; I always have these ideas that would cost hundreds of thousands of [dollars] to produce."

While the budget might not be there yet, the amount of support Christian's getting from the press means those days surely can't be far off.

As we wrap up the interview, I ask if he was ever obsessed with the reigning queen of Americana, HRH Barbie. "I wasn't; I actually destroyed my stepsister's Barbies," he laughs. "I would burn them. I blew them up with my stepbrother. And her Furbies."

Wilhemina would be so proud.

Follow Bertie on Twitter and visit Carl's website to see more of his photos.

You Can Stay in a Tent in LA's Skid Row for $10 a Night

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When I saw that artist Barry Boen was using Airbnb to rent out a tent in LA's homeless-dominated Skid Row district for $10 a night, I knew it was a stunt. I just wanted to know what kind.

The listing promised guests their own "private tent near the corner of Sixth and San Pedro," which would "give you the experience of what life is like living on Skid Row." Check-in time was 5 PM; checkout was promptly at 8 AM, when you'd have to dismantle your tent, per city regulations. The listing also mentioned a "concierge" named Dice, who would be there "to help you settle into to this new way of living and be able to answer any questions you may have."

It seemed like a dick thing to do. Skid Row has the largest concentration of mentally ill and homeless people in America, and it can resemble Third World–esque refugee camp 1.5 miles from where the Lakers play. Boen's listing took poverty tourism to its logical extreme: Spend a night in Skid Row and sleep on the ground with real-life junkies! Eat the authentic garbage food! But when I met with Boen to see the tent for myself, he didn't think of it in that way at all.

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The original Airbnb listing

Boen, who is 37 years old, lives with his girlfriend, Brittney, and an aging greyhound in a tall apartment building in the heart of Skid Row. The area in the Airbnb listing, around the corner at Sixth and San Pedro, is bustling on account of the neighboring Midnight Mission, one of three in the immediate area. When I met Boen and Brittney at the tent site, a woman behind me began puking more than seemed humanly possible.

After a good minute she was empty, and walked off, smiling dreamily. "There's a lot of vomiting here," Boen explained. "If there's good drugs there's vomiting; if there's no drugs there's vomiting."

We turned down San Julian Street, where drug use is a little more tolerated than it is elsewhere. The neighborhood is still in flux, with people seemingly settling back into their digs. "They just bleached the streets," Boen told me.

He was referring to Operation Healthy Streets: Four times a year, the city gets everyone to temporarily pack up their belongings so they can give the sidewalks a hosing down. In Skid Row, it's a constant battle against the trash and bodily fluids. "There's one public bathroom on San Pedro, but there need to be more," Brittney said.

I asked Boen about the Airbnb listing. Was he trying to make light of the squalor here?

"I don't think this is a joke," he said defensively. "I live right here"—albeit not on the literal street.

The Airbnb listing came about after Boen noticed that a homeless man who lived on the street near him, 20-year Skid Row resident Dice, was advertising tent rentals on a chalkboard for $10 a night. Boen partnered up with Dice and offered to put the scheme online.

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Dice is, of course, the aforementioned "concierge." He also acts as security (he sleeps in the next tent), and his wife is the cook. Dice is also there to make sure guests have their tents promptly dismantled by 8 AM, which is a city requirement.

He's adamant that guests eat his Southern cooking, because "the Mission's food is terrible." As for security, he said San Pedro Street is safe because drug use is kept to the adjacent blocks, "and I know when something is jumping off." He splits the $10-a-night fee with Boen.

Although Boen's had seven or eight people book the tent since he put up the listing in November, nearly all of them have backed out, some at the moment they saw the tent. So far only one woman, a sociology student, actually stuck it out for the night.

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Barry Boen and Dice

When I asked Boen and Dice to name the biggest issue on Skid Row, it wasn't lack of food or services or blankets or safety or even access to drugs or drug treatment. It was housing.

The shuttering of many mental health institutions in the 80s created "an open asylum for the mentally ill" in Skid Row, as Lamp Community outreach founder Mollie Lowery pointed out in the documentary Lost Angels. But the area's problems stretch back farther than that—Skid Row has a 100-year history of being LA's home base for low-income and transient populations on account of its proximity to factories and Union Station. Residents used to rely on cheap single-unit housing in the neighborhood, but during LA's downtown revitalization have been put on the streets as more and more of that potential housing is either left undeveloped or converted to lofts like the one Boen lives in.

Boen wants people to view the tent-rental project as a comment on gentrification and not a gross form of poverty tourism. At least he's publicizing the issue instead of quietly squeezing out the locals, as the city and county have by acquiescing to real estate developers. In 1985 Skid Row had approximately 6,000 units of low-income housing; now that number is around 3,400, according to a 2014 LA Weekly story.

When we'd finished touring the street, Boen took me upstairs to his loft, six stories above the Skid Row tents. The space was clean and industrial and bleak, save for his art decorating the walls. We talked about the people below, and they told me that except for the "interesting nudity," Skid Row's residents aren't confrontational or violent. If people could get past their own deep aversion to the area, they could see it safely for themselves, they told me.

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Barry Boen and Brittney in their loft apartment

I asked to go back down to the street to see the Airbnb tent, which Dice had been keeping inside his own tent. When we got there, Dice was gone—his gift-shop table overturned, the food splattered, and his belongings strewn out onto Sixth Street. Dice's wife was crying. They'd had a fight, things had gone wrong. The police were there. That night when I got home, I saw the listing for the tent was gone.

Before I left, I brought up how easy it was to view this sort of stunt as a crass form of slumming. Boen understood, and said he'd been inundated with messages accusing him of that sort of thing since he had put up the listing.

"Getting people to talk about it is all I'm shooting for," Boen said. "Skid Row's not as scary as it is sad."

Follow Jacob Harper on Twitter.

West Ham Soccer Fans Were Caught Chanting Anti-Semitic Slurs

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Tottenham and West Ham are bitter rivals. Via Flickr user Justin Barton

Yesterday afternoon, soccer fans broke into an anti-Semitic chant aboard the London Tube as it passed through the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Stamford Hill. Following a match between West Ham and Tottenham, supporters of the former team united in singing a charming little ditty: "I've got foreskin / I've got foreskin / I've got foreskin / How 'bout you? / Fucking Jews!"

A Twitter user recorded the moment on his phone, and the video went viral just weeks after a British photojournalist captured Chelsea fans in Paris pushing a black man off the train while chanting, "We're racist / We're racist / And that's the way we like it."

[tweet text="On the train on the way to the game, West Ham fans break into song in Stamford Hill,a Jewish area, scum #WHUFC #THFC pic.twitter.com/KFfAa5kkE3" byline="— Berry head (@RomanGeezer)" user_id="RomanGeezer" tweet_id="569553900333871104" tweet_visual_time="February 22, 2015"]

Some context here: West Ham and Tottenham are bitter rivals, and both Jewish and non-Jewish supporters of the latter refer to themselves as "Yids." And while West Ham has a history of chanting anti-Semitic things, the video is particularly appalling considering the recent wave of anti-Semitic terror in Paris and Copenhagen that's left more than 20 dead.

Since the 1960s, the UK has been struggling with hooliganism in soccer, which is sometimes called the English disease, though it's hardly unique to Britain. In the 80s and 90s, the government cracked down on the hooligan "firms" responsible for the violence and vandalism, although journalist Bill Buford documented numerous riots during that time, including one at the 1990 World Cup, in Sardinia.

Members of West Ham's Inter City firm were known as "casuals" because they didn't dress in soccer attire and avoided chartered trains that were patrolled by police. They were mainly active from the 70s to the 90s, although they held a reunion in 2009. Soon after, violence erupted at a West Ham vs. Millwall match, and one man was stabbed. Police sources told the Daily Mail that firms were back and using the internet to drum up anger and plan violence.

In 2012, West Ham fans started mocking the Holocaust and making Nazi salutes after Tottenham beat them 3–1. The club took this very seriously; two men were arrested, while another season ticket holder was banned for life from attending West Ham games. Spokespeople categorically denounced the fans and said they would ban anyone caught making similar remarks. "We know the animosity there is between Tottenham and West Ham," the team's manager told the Daily Mail. "As long as it doesn't reach stupidity, it is a great rivalry."

Well, it seems to have reached stupidity, even if some people think the West Ham's fans antics have more to do with rivalry than racism.

Just yesterday, a West Ham fan posted a video on Twitter making fun of the incident in Paris with the Chelsea fans: In the short clip, two fans invite a black man onto a train. But at least one other fan doesn't think the two videos contradict each other—instead suggesting that bigoted remarks (at least anti-Semitic ones) are how supporters of that team talk about their rivalry with the so-called Yids.

"I don't agree what Chelsea fans done," one tweeted. "but come on leave West Ham fans alone. Only Tottenham and jews they offended. So not really racist."

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

Even if 'Gendercide' Is a Major Issue, Is Criminalizing Women and Doctors Really the Answer?

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Image via Flickr user Daniel Lobo

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

"All I remember him saying was, 'it's another girl,'" Rani Bilkhu, founder of women's NGO Jeena International, says to camera as she re-tells one woman's horrific experience at the hands of her partner. "Next thing she knows she was lying on the floor and he was repeatedly kicking her in the stomach." Bilku's head and shoulders are softened by sunlight radiating through a window as she says the words: "He almost left her for dead."

This is how Stop Gendercide—"a movement to stop sex-selective abortion"—have chosen to open their short, highly emotive video to support an amendment to the Serious Crime Bill, which will be debated in Parliament today.

The amendment intends to clarify that The Abortion Act 1967 does not permit a pregnancy to be terminated on the grounds of the sex of the unborn child. Proponents of the bill argue that sex-selective abortion is a serious issue in UK South Asian communities, where many families have a preference for sons.

The video—which also features Jasvinder Sanghera, who was awarded a CBE in 2013 for her work on forced marriages and honor killings—frames the issue of sex-selective abortion as a simple one, and the bill as a step to protect women and girls from gender based violence, echoing rulings against FGM or forced marriage.

However, aside from ignoring the complexities of the issue, proponents of the amendment have been criticized for failing to present any conclusive evidence that sex-selective abortion is actually a common practice in the UK. Instead, they are using "circumstantial" and "anecdotal" evidence to support a bill that campaigners say will erode abortion rights and could, ultimately, lead to racial profiling.

Navtej Purewal is the deputy director of SOAS South Asia institute and author of Son Preference, a book on son preference in India. Last week, she presented a paper in which she spoke frankly about the Bill, describing Fiona Bruce's assertion that sex selective abortion is a problem in the UK as "based on thin and very speculative evidence."

Purewal pointed out that, rather than coming from official bodies like the Department of Health, many of the studies purporting to show evidence of sex-selective abortion in the UK were commissioned by the media, raising questions about their reliability. As a social researcher with a specialism in South Asia, Purewal has had first-hand insight into these studies are conducted.

In 2002, after the 2001 census, Purewal said she was approached—like many other demographers and social researchers—and asked to help analyze data, actively looking for evidence of sex-selective abortion. Despite the leading nature of the questions she was asked, Purewal said: "Me and my colleagues at that point showed very clearly and adamantly that we did not see any evidence of sex-selective abortion taking place on a significant scale in the UK."

Since 2002, Purewal has been watching the research emerging on sex-selective abortion in the UK with understandable interest. "In many ways it looks very concocted," she explained, describing how studies have compared extremely specific groups—for example, only women born in India with exactly one or two children—with the general population and ignored those groups that didn't appear to support their hypothesis.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/NvZFUAkbU0I' width='560' height='315']

Fiona Bruce's speech on gender-selective abortion

Even with creative analysis, researchers have only able to provide "indirect" and "circumstantial" evidence of sex-selective abortion in the UK. This speculative evidence has been widely misrepresented in the media, despite the Department of Health having said conclusively that, "when broken down by the mothers country of birth, no group is statistically different from the range that we would expect to see naturally occur."

The leading UK abortion service provider British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) also states that they do not experience women seeking abortion based on the sex of the fetus. In fact, 91 percent of abortions in the UK take place before the sex of the fetus can even be identified.

On Monday, February 9, when the amendment was first supposed to be debated in Parliament, a group of women converged on the grass outside to protest against it, on the grounds that any erosion of women's right and access to abortions is dangerous. Considering abortion access has traditionally been a primary battleground for feminists, the protest—which was called "the national pro-choice campaign" by Abortion Rights—was surprisingly small. It was a workday, so perhaps it's understandable that only about 40 people turned up, but Purewal says the lack of opposition to the Bill could also be to do with how the debate has been framed.

Purewal believes that a "right-wing agenda" has consciously presented the debate "in polarized terms," to present a very simplistic "right and wrong." "The single issue can, when framed as an issue of violence against women and girls, attract unanimous support," she explained, citing the fact that at it's first reading in November the Bill received 181 "yays" to one "nay."

Although Purewal is extremely critical of the way the Bill has been framed by its proponents, she is critical of the position taken by people on the other side of the debate, too. She believes the polarization of the two sides is simplistic and that, actually, no one is looking far enough below the surface. "In order to be able to respond to the introduction of this amendment," she says, "we must question what lies behind the states delving into the wombs of South Asian women."

While proponents of the Bill argue—in somewhat contradictory terms—that the Bill is not explicitly anti-abortion, many of the people behind it are part of what Purewal describes as the "Anti-Abortion Lobby," and none of them have been honest about their vested interest in restricting access to terminations.

For instance, Labour MP Mary Glindon said in a recent press release, "If opposing the abortion of baby girls—often under coercion—makes me anti-choice, then I will wear the label with pride." This quote seems audaciously dishonest when you consider that Glindon is a Vice Chair of the All Party Pro-Life Group in Parliament, and thus already explicitly anti-choice. Incidentally, Fiona Bruce—the MP proposing the amendment—is Chair of the group.

Tellingly, Abortion Rights point out that, if the Bill does go through, it will be the first time ever the words "unborn child" have been written into British law in place of the scientific, and far less emotive, term "fetus." Much of the rhetoric surrounding the Bill justifies it on the grounds of the right of unborn girls to live, which Abortion Rights believe fundamentally contradicts a pro-choice position.

"Pro-choice means recognizing that women's rights take primacy in matters of reproduction," the group argues. "According fetuses rights on the basis of sex inherently means removing rights from pregnant women."

While evidence of sex-selective abortion is speculative, evidence that women are coerced into aborting female fetuses is even more sparse. When I spoke to Bilkhu she emphasized, emphatically, that "it's not always women who are being abused or under duress to have abortions—it's women themselves doing what they feel like they need to do."

If it's true that some women feel this way then the Bill would be explicitly taking away these women's ability to make a free, un-coerced choice. At the anti-Bill demonstration, Kate Smurthwaite, the Vice Chair of Abortion Rights, said: "Ultimately, you can be pro-choice or you can be anti-choice, and if we're going to support a woman's right to choose, awful as it may sound, you have to just support a woman's right to choose... making laws about what somebody's reasoning should be is not the way to make laws."

Given the presence of the Anti-Abortion Lobby behind the Bill, and the way in which it seems to fundamentally contradict a pro-choice position, both Abortion Rights and Purewal fear that the amendment could represent the top of a slippery slope away from easy access to abortion in the UK.

"Sex selection has been used in the US in a number of very high-profile cases in the last few years to undermine existing abortion legislation state by state," says Purewal. On analyzing a recent petition to Parliament in favor of the bill, Purewal found that two-thirds of the signatories were faith groups, who are likely to oppose abortion on religious grounds. Again, this is reminiscent of how abortion is restricted in the US, where religious groups both lobby the government and picket abortion clinics on a far greater scale than we ever see in the UK.

"In other countries these tiny little encroachments have been very successful," said Smurthwaite. "Especially in the US, at eroding a woman's to choose."

Interrogate the evidence, and it's unclear how the Bill is going to help—and not damage—the interests of South Asian women

Abortion Rights have stated publicly that they believe "arguments in favor of criminalizing sex-selection are imbued with prejudice towards ethnic minority communities." But proponents of the Bill still seem intent on presenting the people who disagree with them as a small group of "radicals," concerned by a hypothetical and petty erosion of their right to choose, while dismissive of the practical concerns of South Asian women, who are purportedly being coerced into having abortions on a significant scale, and who have, so far, been abandoned in their plight by the government.

But scratch the surface, interrogate the evidence, and it's unclear how the Bill is going to help—and not damage—the interests of South Asian women most of all. It's unclear whether "helping" was ever the intention of the people behind it.

In the same way that the Anti-Abortion Lobby have a vested interest in passing a Bill that restricts access to abortion, Purewal believes that anti-immigration groups had a vested interest in producing "evidence" of sex-selective abortion in the UK, because this perpetuates "the idea of [health] services under pressure, and deviant minorities using these public services for their health practices."

In her talk, Purewal pointed out that one of the most influential pieces of research on sex-selective abortion in the UK was produced by the Oxford University demographer David Coleman. Incidentally, as well as being a respected demographer, Coleman is one of the founders of think tank Migration Watch UK—an "independent, voluntary non-political body concerned about the scale of immigration to the UK."

Alongside scaremongering, projected statistics about immigration, Migration Watch highlights causes for concern like a lack of primary school places and pressures on the NHS due to health tourism and temporary migrants, while completely omitting any reference to the vital contributions of migrant labor to the NHS. Purewal believes it's important to take Coleman's background into account when considering the conclusions he inferred, indirectly, from the data.

Purewal also believes it's crucial to look at the wider context in which the Bill has been proposed; cuts to frontline health and social services—including many women's services—have been happening steadily since the Conservative government came into power. The "abuse" of health services by "deviant minorities" is an excellent excuse for the government to continue this agenda, justifying further cuts and implementing more restrictions.

It's not difficult to see how the Bill might discourage South Asian women from seeking terminations that have nothing to do with sex-selection. "It's just another piece of red tape to frighten and intimidate women into not getting the services that they want," said Smurthwaite, suggesting that doctors would be forced to ask South Asian women an increasing number of prying questions—as Purewal says, "delving" into their wombs.

While Bilkhu tried to discredit fears of racial profiling, saying "this is nonsense, and if the same argument were made about FGM and forced marriages, people would run a mile." She failed to explain, however, exactly how it is nonsense.

"Any attempts to criminalize sex selective abortion is just going to result in... reinserting state authority over women's bodies," says Purewal, and this authority is likely to be exercized over South Asian women's bodies the most.

The "abuse" of health services by "deviant minorities" is an excellent excuse for the government to continue this agenda, justifying further cuts and implementing more restrictions.

If sex-selective abortion does happen in the UK, and if women are indeed coerced in to it (which, let's be clear, is a huge assumption), it's still unclear just how criminalization could help them. Stop Gendercide argue that criminalization would send a strong message, presumably to the coercive men they believe are making women have abortions. But even if this is true, it's likely to happen at the expense of pregnant, victimized women who are denied recourse to abortion.

The fact that the law is unclear now—which seems like a deliberate thing, allowing practitioners to be sensitive to each woman's specific, complicated situation—reflects how difficult and murky an issue this is. Current UK law simply says that an abortion is justified when "continuing the pregnancy may involve risk, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated."

Purewal points out that the danger to the physical or mental health of a pregnant woman who is being victimized for being pregnant with a female fetus could, on these grounds, legally justify a sex-selective termination. In effect, denying a woman an abortion in this situation would squash her between two oppressive forces: a coercive patriarchal community, and an authoritarian, patriarchal law.

In India, Purewal believes there is little evidence that criminalizing sex-selection abortion has helped at all, primarily because criminalisation does nothing to challenge the economic cultural and social dimensions of son preference. There's no reason why it would be any different in the UK, where Abortion Rights suggest that, if sex-selective abortions are happening, efforts should be "directed towards gender equality education instead."

"I want to see the government think about how they can help these women, so that they don't have to go through these traumatic situations," Bruce argues in her Bill. But it bears repeating: proposing a criminalization of women demonstrates little understanding of the broader context and reasons why women might be seeking sex-selective abortions. As Abortion Rights argue, "the solution to societal gender inequality is not further removing women's rights."

Then again, there's not much evidence to suggest that Bruce cares about helping women, at least not as much as she cares about gradually eroding access to abortions.

Follow Charlotte on Twitter.


Post Mortem: Should Photographing Corpses Be Illegal?

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Photo by Kimmo Metsäranta

Last month, a bill was introduced to the West Virginia State Legislature that would make photographing a corpse a misdemeanor offense "except for certain legitimate purposes." Fines would range from $50 for a first offense and go up to $5,000 and six months in prison for a third violation. The only situations explicitly mentioned in the bill that would be exempt from the law's reach are photos taken in the course of law enforcement investigations, medical examinations, and funeral services.

George Ambler, who authored the proposed legislation, told the Intelligencer that the bill is a response to an incident where EMTs took pictures of the body of an accident victim that they then posted online and sent to the decedent's family. Ambler introduced a similar bill in 2013, which failed to pass a committee vote.

The idea of paramedics sharing such photos of Facebook sounds awful enough, but could what essentially amounts to a blanket ban on corpse photography by regular citizens have drawbacks?

The victim in the case Ambler cites was Jonathan Thomas, a UPS driver who got stung by a bee while on the job. The sting apparently caused him to swerve his truck into a home in Crawley, West Virginia, where he was found dead by emergency responders. According to a local newspaper report on the incident, ambulance driver Angel Willis took photos of Thomas's body with her cell phone, which were "later circulated through the community with Willis' co-workers and others at New River Community and Technical Center." The lawsuit, filed by Thomas's family against Willis and Quinwood Emergency Ambulance Inc., stated: "The offending photographs clearly depicted identifying features of Jonathan Thomas as well as his mortal wounds... They were unsightly, intrusive, and outside the bounds of decency."

That might seem like a strange, isolated incident, but according to Darla Thomas, the mother of the deceased, this was not the first time Willis took photos of dead people. Thomas claimed in the suit that Willis had also previously circulated pictures of a corpse that her husband was transporting from a hospital to a funeral home. As Thomas told the Charleston Gazette, when Delegate Ambler introduced his original bill, "I think people thought, 'Doesn't Charleston have bigger fish to fry?' I think they thought this is some kind of crazy bill and thought, 'Who's taking pictures of dead people?' I don't think they realize this is an issue."

But if it is a worthy topic for public debate, legislation like this raises several questions. For starters, could a law that broadly bans corpse photography even be constitutional? When I asked Nick Little—the legal director for the Center for Inquiry, a nonprofit organization that advocates for freedom of speech—he told me it was "constitutionally problematic," since the bill seeks "to ban people taking photos in places they are allowed to be." He also expressed concern about the lack of explicit mention of media in the text of the bill. (Don Smith, executive director of the West Virginia Press Association, expressed concern to the The Intelligencer about a potentially detrimental effect on local journalism.)

Curt Varone, a practicing attorney with 29 years of experience as a professional firefighter, shares many of Little's concerns about the law's wide scope, but conceded that "the fire service is struggling with [the] issue" of taking photos of dead bodies on the job and posting on social media. According to Varone, it's "a real big problem."

A related high-profile case he mentioned was that of Nikki Catsouras, who died in 2006 in a car crash in California. California Highway Patrol's mishandling of the photos from the scene caused the images to flood the internet and led to years of torment and harassment for the family as they were targeted by trolls who would trick them into opening emails with the pictures of the car crash inside. Ultimately the parents were awarded a $2.4 million settlement, but only after six years had passed and they had spent countless hours trying to remove the images from the internet.

Varone pointed me to "Cathy's Law," a 2012 New Jersey statute that bans first responders from sharing photos or videos of accident victims without their permission. That law was prompted by the case of Cathy Bates, a woman who died in a car accident, a photo of which was posted on Facebook before the family was even notified of her death.

"I know when I was a young firefighter in the 70s, we saw pictures of bodies. But they were 35mm slides or photographs and there was no real mechanism for me to share those with millions—hundreds of millions—of people. The internet, and the fact that we now have digital imagery, has changed that," Varone told me. "Those pictures that only a handful of people would see can now be shared globally. And there's a demand for it, too. And the social recognition when a firefighter or an EMT goes to a high-profile incident and wants to kind of show off that he was there and here's the pictures [they] took to prove it."

I asked Varone if firefighters faced consequences from their employers if they were found to have shared such photos on social media. He explained that current disciplinary measures against firefighters have "been all over" with some being fired or disciplined and no consequences for others.

"A lot of well-intentioned fire chiefs and EMS leaders have sort of turned a blind eye to this problem. And it is a problem," Varone explained. "It is a challenge to try and get a policy that's going to meet the First Amendment and satisfy all the legal requirements." He told me about a situation where he was lecturing on the topic and had a conversation with some firefighters and someone got upset and asked, "Why can't I take pictures? There's a civilian standing two feet away from me, he's taking pictures. And I can't take a picture, and that's not fair."

There are other scenarios left out of the West Virginia bill: professional photographers, for example, who some argue have demonstrated an artistic merit in photographing the dead. VICE published Serbian photographer Aleksandrija Ajdukovic's collection of " Crime Scene Selfies" earlier this month. When I asked her about that work, Ajdukovic said, "The Crime Scene photography collection is as much about death in the media and popular culture as about a predatory nature of photographers and observers. Dead bodies are incorporated in pictures in the Crime Scene collection and it wouldn't be so effective if opposite."

A similar collection is Kimmo Metsäranta's " Photographs of My Grandfather in His Coffin," which was featured on VICE in December. When I reached out to him for this story, he said he specifically wanted to challenge the taboo of not publishing pictures of the dead.

"Everybody dies, your parents die, but you can't show it," he said. "It's like, as soon as someone dies, you just have to get them out of the way, close the casket and take them out the back and put them in the ground. The sooner you get them out of the way, the better. It's a common principle, but I think it's just ridiculous."

When I asked him about the West Virginia bill, though, he said that the idea of an EMT posting an accident victim's picture "sounds absolutely crazy. It's like no moral code."

Still, criminalizing corpse photography may not be enough. Even Varone doesn't think that laws against photographing dead bodies—even under narrow circumstances, as in New Jersey—are the appropriate way to solve what he sees as a cultural problem. Ultimately, he believes this is something that fire and EMS departments need to resolve in-house by "having their internal policies where they need to be to prevent these types of things from happening."

Follow Simon Davis on Twitter.

Ontario’s New Sex Ed Curriculum Has Been Unveiled, and It’s Still Pretty Prudish

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Photo via Flickr user romana klee

Having last been updated at the height of the Backstreet Boys' powers, Ontario revealed its revamped sex ed curriculum today, with lessons on outrageous, wildly radical subjects such as sexting, homosexuality and the proper names for your private parts. But some sex educators are concerned that the update, 17 years in the making, still won't be enough information, and that these lessons need to come earlier than the ages they're currently scheduled.

Certified sexual health and relationships educator Sonya JF Barnett says the update covers a lot useful ground, including the nitty-gritty information on a dozen-plus different contraceptive methods, masturbation, erections, vaginal lubrication, and wet dreams.

Barnett also stresses that the curriculum doesn't really address one of the central facts about sex—that it can be awesome and not just an activity that might result in pregnancy, disease, death, and despair.

Essentially, this curriculum will mirror much of what was proposed in the never-enacted 2010 update. (All the gays! Butt sex! One-way tickets to blazing Hades!) Proper names for body parts will be taught in grade one, grade three students will be taught about the concept of same-sex relationships, grade four students will learn about puberty and online safety, grade six students will be taught about masturbation, healthy relationships and consent, and grade seven students will be warned of the perils of the dreaded "sexting," as well as about STIs, and anal and oral sex. Education Minister Liz Sandals says now that the material has been released, THERE'S NO GOING BACK.

The Ministry of Education kept the new material secret until Monday. Barnett was asking the ministry to give her more information over the past few months, but the department didn't seem to want to comment on its own material. I also reached out to the ministry but I didn't get a response, either.

Teachers will have the spring and summer to learn the new material, and it will be taught beginning in the fall, in both Ontario's public and Catholic schools.

Toronto-based Barnett, who is also a parent, says that currently, lessons on sex are shrouded in negativity. She says the plan to teach about consent and sexting is a positive, but worries the lessons may not be as clear as they should be.

"I wouldn't say a focus on sexting is wrong, but I hope that the curriculum will address why sexting happens, and not just how to avoid doing it," she said. "If the promise of consent and respect being included in the curriculum is fulfilled, then kids will be armed with proper decision-making tools if they do, indeed, decide to sext. The concept of 'safer sex' should be extended to online communication."

She says teaching kids not to sext or engage in other sexual activity "just isn't a sensible or sustainable method of teaching this topic."

And as for consent, it will take work to clear up years of misunderstandings there, too. So many people think of consent as just being about sex, and socially conservative critics say teaching it will greenlight sexual activity. Barnett says it needs to be taught at an even earlier age, and address things like respecting other people's personal space.

"It's as much about learning respect for another person as it is about getting permission to be intimate."

Barnett worries the teachings won't be as in-depth as they need to be, and stresses that the all-important subject of consent merits more than just a few passing minutes.

Also, she says, many of the lessons included in the new curriculum are not occurring early enough.

"If a kid is young enough to ask a question," she says, "they're old enough to know the answer."

Her own son, for example, asked her how gay dudes have sex when he was all of five years old, so she simply came out and told him. "The whole idea that kids shouldn't know these things until a certain age is bullshit. They should know, especially, the proper names for their body parts at the same time they're told it's called a knee, and a nose, and an ear, and a foot."

Because sex is cast in such a negative light in society, many aspects of it remain taboo. Kids aren't learning how to love their bodies or connect with their partners, let alone how to have safe anal sex, or which times of the month are their most fertile. (This enforced confusion can and does create whole gaggles of awkward adult sexual experiences).

Regardless of some of the potential kinks with the new subject matters, Barnett is happy the changes are being made, and says the current trajectory is a good start. As far as she believes, all that is being taught in schools right now is the idea of abstinence and the risk of STIs, and "not much else." Children, she says, are taught about sex as a cautionary tale, and not that it's a pleasurable, natural, and healthy activity. Barnett says the fact that sex is fun should be taught alongside the fearmongering about pregnancy and STIs, but she worries the negative vibes will continue to dominate the discussion despite the changes.

Obviously, religious fanatics and crusty pearl-clutchers argue that the new curriculum is too radical. The Campaign Life Coalition protests the "graphic" nature of lessons teaching six-year-olds how to name their body parts with words like "testicles" and "vulva." Conservative MPP Monte McNaughton questions whether the material is "age appropriate." And the president of the Canadian Christian College, Charles McVety, has been fighting against these updates since 2010. He played a big part in scrapping the province's collective syllabus when the last curriculum change was suggested, and he's trying to do so again.

In response to the suggested curriculum changes, McVety said, "It's very sad for children to have to face such contrary sex at such young ages."

Though Barnett might not agree with arguments from the religious right, she's not out to dismiss their beliefs. She says teaching those religious people's children that sex is a thing that exists, and preparing them for when it inevitably happens to them, does not violate a family's religious or moral code.

"If you have taught your kid your family's moral and religious values, that is going to trickle down into the decisions that they make about sexual activity," she said. Simply preparing kids for what is probably inevitable will not undo years of Catholic indoctrination on the sins of sluttiness. Schools, she says, should be teaching the practicalities about something, families should teach family values, and kids will be in the middle with the tools to make a balanced decision that's right for them.

I asked Barnett if she thinks schools might be getting any closer to having experts like herself teach students how to have at least somewhat pleasing and safe sexual encounters. (Admittedly, this is a difficult feat for many otherwise fully functioning adults. But I digress.)

In the curriculum now, there's "no indication that sexuality is a positive," she says. Unless kids are taught about pleasure they can find on their own, and within a relationship, they're always going to associate sex with consequences.

Follow Sarah Ratchford on Twitter.

Could Bread Decide the Outcome of the Syrian War?

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Could Bread Decide the Outcome of the Syrian War?

Comics: Megg, Mogg & Owl: 'What the Hell Is Werewolf Jones Doing Here?'

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Follow Simon Hanselmann on Twitter and look at his blog. Also buy his books from Fantagraphics and Space Face.

Alleged Human Sacrifice in India Was Supposed to Help Find Buried Treasure

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Depiction of a human sacrifice in Hawaii via Wikipedia Commons

Last week, police in Koppal, a town of 56,000 in Karnataka, India, arrested nine individuals and detained four others for questioning in the kidnapping and murder of a five-year-old girl. According to the local authorities, the girl was sacrificed in an effort to magically locate buried treasure on a construction site.

The girl, identified only as Gayatri, disappeared around Koppal on January 26. Yet police believe the girl was not killed until February 3, as they found her body the next day in the first floor bathroom of the unfinished house the murderers apparently believed contained a $2.9 million fortune.

Human sacrifice is a viscerally disturbing accusation, and is often met with understandable skepticism. America collectively freaked the fuck out over it during the Satanic panic in the 80s and 90s, which led to a bevy of false accusations and terrified housewives assuming the teenager listening to Slayer next door was offering up babies to the dark lord. Given that history, a healthy suspicion about claims like those in Kappal are understandable. Yet the local police, led by Superintendent P. Raja, took their time in labeling Gayatri's murder a ritual sacrifice rather than jumping to the conclusion. And they have a good amount of precedent to draw upon in determining the motives of the murder, not just because of the testimony of the many participants they brought in, but because there have been quite a few well-attributed, vetted, and prosecuted cases of human sacrifice in India over the past decade.

One of the most famous of these cases was the October 2011 kidnapping and murder of a seven-year-old girl named LalitaTati in the state of Chhattisgarh. Police discovered her body—throat slit, and liver removed—a week after her disappearance, but the case only made international headlines in January 2012 , when suspects admitted that they'd killed the girl in order to yield a successful crop. Reports indicated that many locals believed the girl's father, Budhram Tati (the original suspect in the case), was casting black magic spells against them, which could be counteracted by the potent ritual of killing a pre-pubescent girl and offering her organs to the Hindu goddess Durga.

However, there were many cases of human sacrifice throughout (mostly rural) India before and after the Tati incident that received less press. In 2003, a couple in Uttar Pradesh kidnapped and sacrificed a child on the advice of a mystic, in the hope that it would bring them a son. And in 2006, a woman in the same state sacrificed a boy from her village after a tantric told her this would allay the curse she believed she was living under. This case led to a flurry of local coverage during which police spoke of a rise in ritual murders and regional papers claimed as many as 28 human sacrifices had occurred in the same district within the first third of the year.

In 2013, the practice caught international attention again when a 50-year-old woman in a Mumbai suburb was murdered on the advice of an Air India technician-slash-black magic practitioner she frequented. The sorcerer, who later admitted to his involvement in at least one other human sacrifice, had told another set of clients that the woman's death would bring them wealth and wellbeing. His admission and the proximity of this usually backwater crime to a major urban center managed to spook quite a few people in the area.

There's even at least one precedent for the alleged use of child sacrifice to locate treasure as in the recent Koppal incident. Last spring, a man in Bihar supposedly sacrificed his 15-month-old daughter to find a treasure buried in the ruins of a nearby fortress. And just a few weeks before Gayatri's death in Koppal, police in Thuvakudi in the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu implicated a local "witch" named Dhanam, who they claimed had tried to kidnap and sacrifice three children in 2008, in the death of a four-year-old girl found floating in a stone quarry pit.

It's tempting to look at these patterns and say that the publicity surrounding cases like those in Bihar and Tamil Nadu is priming folks to mislabel other deaths as sensationalist human sacrifices when the reality might be something more mundane. And that is a real possibility. But India's not the only country to be persistently hit with accusations of human sacrifice. During the Liberian Civil War, there were many allegations (at least one couple with an admission) of systematic human sacrifices, and even now there's a well-documented spate of ritual murders of albinos in Tanzania for the mystic benefit of the murderers. These cases may be exaggerated as well, but it does seem that while human sacrifice is utterly taboo and completely unheard of in some parts of the world, there are pockets where epidemics of the practice still break out—usually in regions of deep traditional belief and often deep crises which throw the whole social balance out of whack.

Local authorities and anthropologists argue that the Indian countryside, where traditional beliefs and practices remain strong amongst marginalized, poor, and isolated minority groups, is suffering from just such an epidemic. Some credit this to ignorance and backwardness, but the more likely cause seems to be a sense of dislocation as businesses snap up land and populations shift rapidly, throwing sometimes-predatory outsiders into churning and turbulent societies.

"The tribal people [rural India, major mystic practitioners] feel really threatened," Professor Subhandra Channa, an anthropologist who studies these issues at the University of Delhi, told the Daily Mail in 2012. "They are feeling helpless in the face of a big power [like land grabbers]."

In these uncertain environments, although it seems brutal and absurd, it's not unheard of for people to turn to ritual. Sometimes that ritual is violent—especially against outsiders or those who challenge the status quo. Think of the leopard-man murders of West Africa in the late 19th century, in which secret cults of men pretending to be were-cats took out those who threatened local power balances, but whose murders eventually spun out of control and fizzled out.

We can't be sure whether the Koppal murder was a ritual sacrifice, or what the explicit or implicit motives behind it were. But within the context of a churning Indian countryside, it's not impossible that the cops in Karnataka were right—that this is just the latest in a series of cultic child murders, which no matter the social forces driving it is an unforgivable tragedy. If we believe that this is what's happening in Koppal and the rest of rural India, then the next step is to figure out how to allay whatever forces are driving this disturbing trend. Because right now there seems to be a lot more rubbernecking at baroque tragedy and debating the reality of the seemingly outlandish problem than discussion of ideas on how to overcome the issue.

Follow Mark on Twitter.

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