House Resolutions 5492 and 6415: Liberty, Equality, and Selective Service

Today I saw an email recently sent me by the progressive group RootsAction.org, urging me to support one bill pertaining to military  conscription while opposing another. Having previously arrived at my own views on how people committed to emancipatory politics should address the current male-only draft, I sent my own message to my federal legislators, then wrote RootsAction as follows:

Hello!

I received your communication concerning HR 6415 and HR 5492.

Your position on the first of these is not consistent with my commitment to sexual equality. Consequently, instead of using the link in the email I wrote Rep. Boyle and Sens. Casey and Toomey directly via their websites, as follows:

"As a supporter of individual liberty and sexual equality, I am interested in two bills currently in the House: H.R. 5492 and H.R. 6415. The first would abolish the Selective Service system while the second would expand it to include women.

"I am opposed to military conscription and urge you to vote for H.R. 5492 if it comes to a vote in the House[Senate] or in any committee on which you sit.

"At the same time, it is unacceptable that the present system discriminates against men. I believe that, much as the college deferment dampened opposition to the draft during the Vietnam era -- by shielding middle-class families who had more political voice from its impact -- so the current female exemption dampens opposition to the Selective Service system by shielding "cherishable" women while targeting "disposable" men in accordance with the preferences of our gynocentric culture. Therefore, if you have occasion to vote on H.R. 6415 while the Selective Service system is still in existence, I urge you also to vote FOR it -- on the grounds of simple justice, but also because I believe its passage would actually hasten the system's complete abolition."

It's Getting Draft-y, and That's Cool

 This evening I completed a first major step in a project I decided on about a year ago.   A little over a year ago I discovered the short discipline story "Poor Beth," written by HBrushed a.k.a. Pam. I was already familiar with this author and knew that I liked her stories a lot. But this one blew me away like no other. Not only is it extremely hot, but it has many striking visual images.   Even though I'm not a very visual person, HBrushed managed to put a number of very vivid pictures into my head with her words, and I became convinced this story deserves to be turned into a film.   When I tried to contact her to praise her work, I found her contact information was out of date, and also noticed that she apparently hadn't written anything since 2012. I became worried that she might no longer be with us.   This made me sad, since she's such a wonderful writer. But it also strengthened my resolve to do my part to help turn it into a film by writing a screenplay based on the story. I felt that feeling I'd heard about writers getting but hadn't experienced myself: the feeling that a work was demanding that I create it; that the Universe required it of me. In part, it was also a feeling that I owed this to her memory, if she was in fact gone.   Not long after, I started participating in a writers' Meetup group, and I also mentioned my project while introducing short poems and songs of my own at the monthly Erotic Literary Salon in downtown Philadelphia (this month's will be online on the 21st). But despite these efforts to spur myself on, I didn't make a lot of progress for close to a year; it was my old problem of feeling intimidated by big projects and procrastinating. At a meeting of the writers' group a couple months ago, I finally felt I had enough to present something, and got a good response to it, helping to dispel my worries that other members would disapprove the subject matter. But it was only about one printed page.   But recently, lemonade came from the lemons of the lockdown compounded by losing my smartphone and having to wait several days for its replacement. I hate feeling unproductive, and now there was nothing productive I could do except work on the screenplay! So I finally started putting at least a couple hours into it every day. And this evening I completed the first draft!   When I submitted a song recording yesterday for Tuesday's virtual salon, I included in my intro an announcement that I was almost finished with this phase of the project; during the event I'll let people know that it's done now and reiterate that I'm looking for collaborators to take it to the next stage.   If you're interested you can read the short story in the Library of Spanking Fiction at https://www.thespankinglibrary.org/. To read the stories you need to sign up and get a virtual "library card," but this is free and easy to do. You can find it other places on the Web as well -- but why not support a site that takes serious measures to protect its authors' copyright, as LSF does? And if you're interested in collaborating on this project, please write me at strippy6@gmail.com.

Pass H.R.4027 -- Stop the Censorship Act

 I just wrote my Congressman, Brendan Boyle, about this bill:

Internet censorship has gotten out of hand. In just the past few days Twitter has suspended Green Party presidential candidate Howie Hawkins as well as Turning Point USA ambassador @Alx, for ridiculous-to-nonsensical reasons. Please announce that you are co-sponsoring H.R.4027 -- Stop the Censorship Act, which would put an end to this nonsense.

1. "Twitter Terminates Account of Howie Hawkins, Green Party candidate for President," http://howiehawkins.us/twitter-terminates-account-of-howie-hawkins-green-party-candidate-for-president
2. "Trump campaign manager slams Twitter censorship of TPUSA ambassador @Alx," http://reclaimthenet.org/twitter-alx-brad-parscales