Girls Gone Wild Francis Faces Nevada Tax Charges Pre-Sexual Battery
“Girls Gone Wild creator Joe Francis will travel to Nevada to face charges of evading $20 million (£10 million) in taxes after completing his five-week stint in a Florida jail for contempt of court.Francis is currently serving a 35-day sentence at a Bay County prison, after he was convicted of shouting abuse at seven women during recent settlement talks.
The women had taken legal action against Francis for allegedly filming them in sexual situations while underage at Panama City Beach in 2003.”
Personally I hope his scummy little self gets to stay in prison somewhere for a very long time.
I was reading WSH opinion journal written by Garance Franke-Ruta - The Age of Innocence Revisited thanks to several links at Andrew Sullivan dot com.
An op-ed which suggests taking away the rights of eighteen to twenty-one year olds to legally consent to participate in erotic media, curbing the supply side so to speak.
I read a few of the links, some disparaging blog posts and a lot of commentary for and against. Most of it academic, feminist and counter feminist, much blathering about the efficiency of such a plan, and much discussion as to at what point in time does one hold total agency over their own body.
I abhor that whole “girls gone wild thing”, and hope this creep ends up in prison somewhere for a very long time, I don’t care if it is on tax evasion charges. It is the worst of us and we have become almost oblivious to how horrid and crude it all is.
So why am I torn as to the suggestion in the article? I agree that there is a great deal of difference in the brain of an eighteen year old and the brain of a twenty-one year old (just read my blog posts from a couple of years ago). I just don’t know how one would even go about instituting a law in which an eighteen year old can not be participate in an erotic or pornographic film or photo, should she care too.
There is much discussion of wrecked lives and future careers destroyed when one does something at age eighteen that one regrets, but how far do we go? And is it only females who need protecting? The road to reason is long I know, but at what exact age do we become rational self controlled and not wildly misinformed as to the effect of our behavior?
According to Danial Dennet “we learn to deliberate and negotiate” and over time the reasons for and against certain types of behavior are considered, our ability to make better decisions arrives over time and with practice, but in order for this to happen one must come from an environment in which reasons are demanded, an environment where reason is expected. Is this not a learning process? Do we really need to go this far to protect young women?
“The self is a system that is given responsibility, over time, so that it can be there reliably to take responsibility.”
I guess my problem here is at what point do these little bits of responsibility get given. Who is to decide what types of responsibility is given at any given time in order to make us completely able to make reasonable decisions and become a totally autonomous and responsible adult, ready to take full responsibility for our actions?
You all know my feelings on pornography in general, and “The Girls Gone Wild” phenomenon is porn there is no doubt, it’s crude and offensive as well as sad.
I just don’t know if it is reasonable in a country where an eighteen year old can go to war, vote and marry, to make laws preventing them from participating in erotic film-making?
Is it necessary?
Maybe in this day of the internet it is.
A picture of our grandmothers sans clothing from the fifties might never have been such a big deal; it might have been held on to by some old boyfriend or other or destroyed maybe even passed along to a few lucky recipients, but a picture of me or you sans clothing could end up on a hundred different web sites on several different continents in maybe ten minutes. And although I certainly wanted to be able to do whatever it was I pleased with nude photographs of myself — at age eighteen. I can fully consider it reasonable, after some thought, to prevent eighteen year olds from signing over any rights to their images in any form until they are older.
Maybe, due to the technologically advanced world we now live in, there needs to be a law.
I believe that teenagers and young adults need to be free to delve into their more erotic selves, but maybe we can sanction the liberty in one area and still take away a certain degree of freedom for decisions in regard to it it another area? I don’t know.
What do you think?
Maybe this curbing of the supply side is the answer?
I see the whole “girls gone wild” phenomena as an extention of the party culture prevelant on so many college campuses. Males are taught by older students, particularly when they are part of some multi-level group like some sports teams or frats, that women are nothing more than non-human sex objects, while the women, in many of the same sorts of groups, are taught that their only route to popularity, and value within their social group, is to place themselves in the category of sex-object.
But the problems start much earlier than age 18. How are little girls supposed to come to any other conclusion when even female cartoon characters are more concerned with boys, makeup, clothes, and popularity than in learning. I was flipping channels on Saturday morning while getting ready and saw the latest version of this; Animated Troll-Dolls, all made up like porn stars and dressed like L.A. club kids, who spent the entire time (it was like watching a train wreck) talking about how to get the football star to notice them.
And that is a show intended for kids under 10.
So, maybe it isn’t so much that 18 year olds are too young to make a decision about the erotic side of life, but the fact that they have been bombarded with the idea that good looks and a willingness to do anything to get the right type of boyfriend are much more important than developing decision-making skills.
Curbing the supply side could help but like you said at what point so we allow these decisions to be made, who makes them, and when. It’s true the internet makes things worse and the culture most of us were brought up in does not help but I can see one line being drawn and then another and before you know it you would not have a right to do what you want with your own pictures whether that is to give them to a boyfriend or show them to friends — you know exactly what I mean. Why not a five day or ten day waiting period? Why not a law against signing anything when drunk or impaired. You can’t sign hospital papers if you have been given pain medicine so why not the same thing in this situation.
The part about teenagers having erotic selves is right and that is another thing our society deals poorly with, they exploit it when it should be left to itself, while still admitting it is there. I have no clue as to how to do this in this technology overloaded era.
These waters get very deep in an awful hurry.
I find it bitterly ironic that the generation of Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan has raised children that are, by and large, slaves to the very stereotypes against which Steinem and Friedan battled. Except that we now expect her to be skanky, glamorous AND hold down a $150,000 a year job. Without breaking a sweat. Except during coitus, of course.
I don’t think a “supply side” approach to this problem will work. Unless one also works to cut demand, cutting the supply will just create “forbidden fruit” — and bid up the price for it. Girls (some of them anyway) will make more money, but all of them will be subject to the increased risks of an underground/illegal activity. Overall, I think women will wind up worse off.
We forget, especially (dare I say it) those of us of a Dean’s List / Ph.D. persuasion, that it’s hard work to “do the right thing”. And, too often, the rewards for “being good” are low. I mean, say I look like [insert name of pinup M/F here]. Why the flying fickle finger of fate should I hock my grandchildren for a Bachelor’s degree and ten years internship experience, for the privilege of being locked up in a cubicle like a monkey in the zoo, and making less than that damned monkey?! When I can make more in a year than that cubicle loser will make in fifty just by taking off my clothes in front of a camera?
The situation is similar to that of the Royal Navy sailors who turned pirate back in the early 18th century. They got sick and tired of hard slog and no prospects for advancement, all for three shillings a year. And need I remind us how popular pirate movies et al. are these days? A lot of us wish that we could cut loose from our slog and be that pirate. Or that pinup. Which is exactly what the purveyors are counting on. Ka-CHING!!!
I agree that teaching responsibility is essential, but I think any attempt to set a fixed “age of responsibility” is doomed to failure. Because individuals develop and mature at different rates. As if you don’t know this. It might be possible to ascertain the mean age of responsibility for a group, but individuals within that group will vary, widely. And, unless these individuals get individual attention (which is expensive, and that expense is why society clamors for the “machine” of a set “age of responsibility”), the outliers will wind up on “Girls Gone Wild”.
I fear that the only strategy that will make a meaningful dent in this phenomenon is the development of a comprehensive social code like the one we commonly associate with Japan, in which approved behaviors are universally supported, and non-approved ones universally suppressed. Such a cultural development could shut down things like pornography (though in porn’s case it would more likely ritualize it), but at a fearful cost to civil liberties.
But then, Americans had the luxury of civil liberties because they lived in a nation that was resource replete and labor scarce. We the People of the US of A are now transitioning, I think, into a resource-scarce, labor-replete condition — exactly the kind of situation that compelled the rigid social codes of Japan and England. So we seem to be on our way to social repression, willy-nilly. But I’d be wary of actions that would hasten the process. It’s already far enough along, while most of us sleep.
More under “bitterly ironic” is that there are people actually considering abolishing rights of 18 to 21 year olds as a result of the actions of Joe fucking Francis. That man is a degenerate and a criminal and to shape policy to any tune other than “beat Joe Francis with chains on sight” as a result of that douchebag is absurdity.
I’m reminded of an old joke about a man who heard that most car accidents take place within twenty-five miles of the home. With safety in mind, he moves fifty miles away.
I’d like to see a study that maps the maturity level (understood this is subjective) of minors against the scaling back of the rights they hold. It’d be hard to back it with statistics, but it’s my experience that treating someone as if they’re not mature enough to make their own decisions tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Alcohol is a prime example. The drinking age and relevant laws are among the strictest in these United States and damn if we don’t have a hell of an underage drinking problem.
Girls Gone Wild, and the entirety of the mindset that accompanies it, is a direct result of college students being high on newfound freedom.
Of course, the remedy, as Reagan like the brilliant man he so clearly was discovered one night when regarding the drunken actions of some 18 year old, is to tell them to wait three years.
Right.
My coffee has not kicked in, I may have to revisit this later.
I have a few comments I’d like to make though they come to no conclusion. I’m nowhere as articulate as the previous guys.
The changing of the drinking law in such places where it has been changed has had success at reducing the deaths among males ages 18 to 21, that is statistically verifiable via insurance company statistics.
Girls Gone Wild and the like are a direct result of the demand side of the market provoked possibly by the culture described in the first comment and secondly by the millions to be made of course entertainment.
I think there is some validity in considering not allowing someone to sign a contract involving erotic media involvement when they are under twenty-one or impaired but if we start defining the age at which one can do this and that I fear we are just going to be taken back further into the way of the abstinence only crowd to further close our eyes and pretend that good teenagers do not have sex or think about having sex.
As a father I can see the points and should I ever have a daughter I would see them clearer still. You mentioned the technology as part of the problem and I think you’re right. We have to consider all things.
The fixed age of resposibility is where the real problem comes in , like you said who decides and where does it all end.
I don’t know either.
Am I the only woman to comment here?
Yes I have seen your posts mature
However tough this question seems to be, and no I’m not a mother, however…
Eighteen year olds of both sexes can vote, go to war, do things without parental consent
Technology has made things tougher. Yet in my day there were “underground movies” I acted in a few, always with my clothes on
That was a choice I made. Would I have made that choice if I were drunk?
I honestly don’t know. But I do know, take my rights or any woman’s rights away, take the boy’s rights away also
This can’t be an issue of sexual gender or of a new form of en-loco-parentis
That would be society going backward
And lets never pretend that abstinence only works for most people. We have come too far to go back in time.
I agree that people mature at different rates and in different areas, but there is no formal test we can give to see, nor would we want to
Yes, kids are bombarded with sexual images from an early age. It is a parent’s responsibility to explain those images. It’s up to parents to teach children that the Internet can be a wild and crazy place.
Most people I know who are your age have absorbed that lesson well
Maybe if we hold parents legally responsible for their children’s actions up to the age of 25.…but nobody wants to go there
Maybe if my generation has the strength to tell our children we did really stupid things. You can do even more stupid things, or not…
A lot of girls gone wild problems are directly because their parent’s pretended not to have a past
A lot of girls gone wild problems are made because boys goaded them. So boys should be held equally or more responsible.
This is a tough question Cooper and goes directly to who should be held responsible, and in the end it’s a confluence of influences and people.
Most everything I have to say on the topic has been said. The ones that stick most in my head are these four:
1) with freedom comes responsibility and regret.
2) if they are old enough to go to war, then they are old enough do drink and disrobe.
3) slime buckets will find dirty/indecent/compromising pictures no matter how much you try to hide them now or how much you may regret them later.
4) al capone caused the deaths of many but only did a long stint in prison because of income taxes. Maybe there is a constructive use for the tax man afterall.
You are all giving me much to consider. I’ll be back later to comment on it all, I have to run do a few errands as I have a pre employment meeting tomorrow and I have to get some stuff done.
Pia: it does seem like I have an abundance of male commenter’s but I am trying to rectify that. I think part of the reason is that most girls my age are posting about pop culture, clothing or boyfriends, ( kait I love you posting about clothing though), and most girls my age have never gotten me anyway so I don’t tend to attract them, unless they know me personally. I don’t know maybe I just suck.
Later.
I have to give all these comments some thought.
Jacob, there was a decline in overall drinking in the United States that began well before the minimum drinking age act. Less alcohol consumption means less alcohol-related deaths, plain and simple. As I understand it there hasn’t been an established causal link to age restriction. When there was more variance in purchase age among states, it was demonstrated that single-vehicle accidents were more frequent in states with a higher purchase age.
But that’s beyond the point. What I was driving at in making that point is that societies that don’t tow a hard line on drinking among that age range do not experience the sort of alcohol-related shit that ours does. I turn 21 tomorrow, which in this country is accompanied traditionally by a pub crawl and excess. I had a very hard time explaining that to a French girl I met a couple of years back and as a result I came off as the one of lesser intelligence in the conversation, which is what I mainly blame for not having slept with her (kidding… maybe) In Europe there just isn’t a concept of it.
The way American society views sex is harmful in the same way that its treatment of alcohol is harmful. There’s a culture of excess versus abstinence that leaves little to no middle ground, and the mixed messages are killing us. More sexual repression is a step in the wrong direction.
In much the same manner as relating to voting or drinking or whatever have you…
If you can be drafted to carry a weapon in a foreign country and be asked to risk death at 18, you should be given the rights attendant to that…
A person’s right to participate or view or whatever else those materials is just as important as any other right. We cannot legislate based on morality… it’s too squirmy because all of us have different standards. What consenting adults do, be it girls gone wild or gay marriage or what have you is up to them…
Of course, that being said, it doesn’t mean I condone the activities, or don’t cringe when I think of the choices that these young women have made when they could choose better.
But I liken it to college. I don’t think college is right for everyone. Flashing my tatas for $50 isn’t right for everyone either. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to take that right away from an adult who choses that path for themselves. If people didn’t watch it, or take the money or alcohol to participate, it wouldn’t exist.
Dichotomous nature of freedom. We’re equally free to advance or destroy ourselves. Pursuit of happiness indeed.
(Please note my emphasis on adult and 18 above… You can get drafted you should be able to flash the goods for money if you choose. Underage/minors/etc is a completely different topic all together.)
Let’s not go there. That’s all I have to say.
You’d be the first to complain about not being able to do whatever you wanted at age eighteen while still having the some sort of expectations put upon you.
I know many people are not reasonable but they have to learn to be reasonable despite the technology.
I am thinking of it from the standpoint of freedoms that should not be taken away. Unless the age for everything is raised to twenty-one the age for nothing should be raised to twenty-one and by not raising that age maybe we can force some reason, maybe not.
I’m not a parent and I’m not female, maybe I’d be on the other side if I were either one or the other. I can’t say.
I don’t think signing contracts when drunk or under the influence of anything should be legal so if that is the concern then that is what should be addressed. There are already already laws which pertain to that, are there not.
I Just had a horrible thought. What if he gets the cell next to Paris?
Someone making laws to prevent 18-year-olds from doing what they want is a waste of time. It’s legal for them to marry and have children — which is pretty scary. How often do those relationships go well? How do the children fare?
And when they go to war? Why are they really going? To protect the U.S.? All of it adds up to lack of judgment, or better said, judgment that often is commensurate with that of an 18-year-old.
Laws can’t change developmental issues. But I guess it looks great on someone’s docket. Right?
Wombat, it was awhile ago and today’s mileage may differ, but when Maine lowered the drinking age to 18 in the early 1970s, traffic accidents and deaths/injuries spiked, especially among the newly-legalized male drivers. The drinking age went back up to 21 faster than you can say “Card that kid”. And if the insurance companies had had their way, the drinking age for males would have shot up to, like, 25.
Maybe if we hold parents legally responsible for their children’s actions up to the age of 25….but nobody wants to go there
Pia, that might be more to the point than you know. A key element of the Japanese-style culture is that of shame — what you do reflects directly on me. Even better, on us. The whole family suffers loss of face from your binge. That sure as hell was the message I got as a kid. It was some deterrent. Now? Don’t think so. We open ourselves to predators so we don’t have to live in fear of our loved ones.
We’re not getting any closer, are we, Cooper?
I’ve thought about this on and off all day.
I have decided my vote goes to.….….….….
taking away the ability of creeps to prey upon and make money off young girls.
I would support this kind of legislation. I think in a way it gives them power, a power that maybe in some cases they loose in this rat-ass culture.
I would want a girl to be able to take nude photos and even participate in film should she choose to do so privately and not for profit, face it a lot of experimentation goes on in those years and I have no judgment on that, but I would support making it illegal to sell or distribute or for her to consent to such a thing.
I am still partially torn by all “taking away our freedom” rhetoric and by all the “well they can vote and go to war and drive” talk but I see it somewhat differently.
Maybe a lot of girls want the right to prance around naked and drink while guys paw her and place their grimy little fingers in places they shouldn’t be but I really doubt it.
I think it one is going to prance around naked and drunk or do anything else on film at that age it should be kept private.
So for now this is where I sit, on the other side of the fence than most but that is really not unusual.
Doug: That would be justice.
I’ve gotta say I’m surprised, but you’ve heard most everything I have to say on the subject.
Except that it would almost certainly be unconstitutional, whether or not our current Supreme Court would deem it so.
It doesn’t matter how many girls want the right to prance around naked etc. Even if there was only one there isn’t a damned person on earth, nor a legislative body, who has the right to stop it.
If you really wanted to put the screws to the likes of Joe Francis the way to do it would be to legislate a minimum payment for participation in commercial smut. his racket is profitable because he gets tops to fly off in exchange for T-shirts, hats, and panties. If he had to pay real money then his business and the copycats in its shadow would fizzle.