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Suicide Girls: an anti-Arab, anti-woman-ran company
by Max B
February 14, 2006

Dressed up as punk and Feminist, the SuicideGirls will be at the Arena in Qld., inevitably parading piercings, dyed hair, skin art and the other ingredients which effectively guaranteed the sensation its success.

There will be readers who will have acquainted themselves with Suicidegirls.com, and book, and burlesque review, alike. Championed by "pro-sex"-identified "Feminists" and Pop Culture's darlings, each are capitalist triumphs.

However, company president of the SuicideGirls Sean "Spooky" Suhl's inarguably questionable contracts, misogyny, pro-war neo-conservatism and lies should be common knowledge by now.

As should be Suhl's equally grotesque ideas about the Palestinians:

"I just said that all the Palestinians dying of smallpox is hopeful thinking for me. Sue me. It's a death cult not a civilization and them finally being wiped out by their buddy Saddam sounds like such a fitting end."

An exemplary piece on nypress.com, complete with some rather cogent testimonies maintained by plenty of people who vacated the office once Suhl's corporate strategies, sexist language, and lies about their wages, surfaced; Blog entries and threads authored by progressives which scrutinise Suicidegirls.com's misappropriation of "empowerment" to reinforce its recruitment tactic ("The fact that doing a shoot for Suicide Girls makes you feel empowered doesn't mean that the audience masturbating to your pictures is going to recognise you as any more of a human being than if you had done a shoot for Hustler," observed one blogger);

An accurate observation which adorned a Bitch magazine write-up:

"...despite their tattoos, hair coloring, and creative piercings, they fall neatly within the confines of mainstream beauty standards. Imagine giving the varsity cheerleading squad makeovers at Hot Topic, and you wouldn't be too far off. Most of the models here (and on other indie-porn sites, too) are thin, white, and traditionally beautiful. Fat girls-hell, even average plump girls-aren't Suicide Girls, and with only a couple of exceptions, neither are girls of color...there's a certain kind of hypocrisy in a site that pats itself on the back for being "different," yet seems to equate that only with being different from others featuring blond Pamela Anderson manques."

So what triggered the suicide's decomposition?

Dia, ex-SuicideGirl, believes all the models who exiled themselves either are among girls enabled to encounter company patriarch Sean Suhl's misogynistic abuse, rightfully pursued the royalties disingenuously promised the models, or demonstrated loyalties, which indubitably strengthened the allegations.

Another ex-model, DVD star Jennifer "Sicily" Caravella, says Suhl housed the models in squalor, and too maintains charges of sexism and lies about their wages:

"You're giving money to a man who treats women like shit."

Another says, "Sean always seemed to have short man's complex. Like one of those geeks in school who suddenly gets pussy and he's not overjoyed-he's thinking, 'I'm going to get back at them now'."

"SuicideGirls is the Wal-Mart of alt-porn," says another.

And Kelly "Shera" Kleinert, "talentless," "replaceable," "stupid," by Suhl's account, too mentioned the squalor, and the sexism, and the very same royalties scam.

Online, Jessica Hopper and Julianne Shepherd boast a thinkpiece which scornfully examines Suicidegirls.com:

"Suicide Girls' much-touted diversity includes dark-haired, tattooed, skinny white girls with lots of piercings and dark-haired, tattooed, skinny, white girls with just a few piercings."

Homogeneous women striking porn mag poses always resembled homogeneous women striking porn mag poses.

"Suicidegirls.com hinges itself on the idea that there is no male gaze, that pornography can exist outside the bounds of subject/object relations, that there is no soft-focus power imbalance inherent in paying to look at naked girls. Behind this facade, convenient principles of second-wave feminism are folded into convenient principles of "fuck me feminism"-the ideals of independence and self-support are melded to "empowerment via self-exploitation and aesthetic control." Suicidegirls.com uses tattoos and piercings as shorthand for the real-life ethics of punk rock, and its feminism is similarly superficial. Its members and models are led to believe they're dismantling the master's house; in fact, their photographs and membership dues have helped build it."

Suicidegirls.com's "rhetoric of edginess" veils its reality. Contracts ensure SG Services, Inc. owns all the images of the models, now and forever. The women relinquish ownership, immediately. Now, and forever, SG Services Inc. can, and have, abused the contracts of critics. Surprise, surprise. Intimidation, and Exploitation, "sex" work style.

What those who embrace euphemisms as duplicitous as "pro-sex" or "sex-positive" neglect to offer are a shifting of paradigms, worthwhile activism, or anything.

Anyone who considers a commodity, wherein germinates male-centredness, sex, only exhibit their complicity unto patriarchy, just as those who embrace an equally duplicitous euphemism, "pro-life," exhibit their sheer ignorance (who is anti-sex or sex-negative, or anti-life, seriously?)

Eclipsed by photo shoots or scenes "calculated to kindle male desire," our struggles with violence, domestic or otherwise, rape, unaffordable or inadequate childcare services, corporate media's role in auto-observation, inarguably patriarchal leadership on reproductive rights, and the trafficking of girls (unquestionably, pornography preys on girls who, coerced by gross economic disadvantage, "choose" "sex" work), are inconsequencial.

Be empowered by porn mag poses and homogeneity, girls!

Should the work operate as another woman's enslavement, then who cares?

To cynically indulge injustice isn't Feminism.

Feminists, authentic Feminists, challenge agents which cultivate a socialised inequity.

Gender, class, race, all three "conditions" distort the value so often accorded to choice.

White, middle class women who can, and have, chosen a career indulging patriarchy glamourise "sex" work, exhibit their complacency, denying "conditions" affect their sisters' "choices," so challenge nothing.

Pimping is pimping.

Sean "Spooky" Suhl's cash cow, Suicidegirls.com, despite its costume, another clear example.

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