née Melanija Knavs

[Morty]

It may be a candid and genuine response we see from her at the inauguration. Non native speaker, trophy wife, unhappy. Likely, over-determined, almost inevitable, even. But she didn't get to where she is by not knowing how to play to an audience, and it's probably fair to say at this point that there was likely no small amount of over-acting going on there.

[Morty]

If it was a genuine response, the only thing I can think is maybe Trump was looking past her to his daughter for acknowledgement, in that moment when the speaker had just put forward the notion that God was looking down approvingly on Trump's presidency. That could do it.

[PufPuf93]

If it was a genuine response, the only thing I can think is maybe Trump was looking past her to his daughter for acknowledgement, in that moment when the speaker had just put forward the notion that God was looking down approvingly on Trump's presidency. That could do it.

I mentioned above but lost track of where I saw the account (so can't provide a link) that the young Trump spawn is hidden in that group and that Melania is responding to his disciplining Barron from fidgeting and talking.

Could happen.

Makes as much sense as some initial reports that the clip is played backwards.

These video clips and variations sure propagated across the internet very fast, including some way out speculation.

[stefano]

If it was a genuine response, the only thing I can think is maybe Trump was looking past her to his daughter for acknowledgement, in that moment when the speaker had just put forward the notion that God was looking down approvingly on Trump's presidency. That could do it.

Yeah - or maybe she doesn't at all feel like smiling at Donald, for any number of reasons, and drops the fake smile as soon as he turns his head back to the front. The other video, showing the singer and the older man behind her, does make it seem that he said something out of place, though.

[Heaven Swan]

http://johnstompers.com/2016/12/melania ... irst-lady/

Melania Trump, America’s first sex worker First Lady

By Sam Berg // Articles, Sam Berg // No Comments

published at Feminist Current December 17, 2016




In late November I was in the Portland State University’s Women’s Resource Center listening to a teacher explain that sex work is feminist work. Where an evidenced explanation for the Nordic Model’s supposed failure should have been, she asked the students to postulate a reason for its failure. One young woman guessed, “Because sex is used transactionally all the time, so police can’t know if transactions are professional or not.” The teacher agreed and moved on to how not all prostitutes were raped as children.

In that woman’s mind and to the teacher’s agreement, sex is perceived mainly as a means to acquire things. All women are prostitutes, but some go on to make careers of it and the transition is so seamless that onlookers can’t tell the difference between fucking for stuff as an amateur and fucking for stuff as a pro.

I bring up this recent anecdote because the assembled sex-positive liberals in that class were adamantly anti-Trump and aghast at his election without reflecting on how Trump is the most pro-sex work president the USA has ever had.

The knee-jerk position of the American Left is to oppose anyone who goes through public life with an R in front of their name. However, liberal men are much more supportive of women as public sexual property than conservative men who prefer their women privately owned. Prostitution is a limitless public harem thanks to the internet, and a harem is just a woman-zoo where men fuck the animals.

So why are liberals who advocate for expanding the public harem of hookers deciding, against all his prior actions up to and including marrying a sex worker, that Trump is anti-sex worker?

Jenni Kutner wrote for Mic about porn actress Jessica Drake, one of the dozens of women who have accused Trump of sexual abuse. She concluded:

“Trump has done more than imply how he feels about people in the sex industry. He’s demonstrated that he doesn’t view them as people at all.”

According to Drake, he treated her the same as he has numerous other women, “He grabbed each of us tightly, in a hug and kissed each one of us without asking permission.” That’s an ordinary day for the world’s most notorious pussy-grabber. Donald Trump treats women the same way he treats sex workers because he agrees with the Portland State teacher and student that all women prostitute for gain, some are simply more organized about it than others.

Drake said Trump called her later asking her to return and offering $10,000 plus the use of his private jet to get back home the next day.

I haven’t seen any of the people who want to legitimize prostitution as a profession acknowledge Trump’s extreme generosity here. It’s very rare for a sex worker to make $10,000 in one night. A sum of that amount should be a cause for sex-positive celebration and an example of a man honoring the work of sex they proclaim it is. The added offer of a private jet ride home afterwards surely makes him a gentleman john if ever there was one.

Robert Brannon of the National Organization for Men Against Sexism collected details of Trump’s financial dealings that support prostitution in his article, “Donald Trump and the Sex Industry.” Among his findings are such pro-sex worker facts as Trump’s Taj Mahal casino being the first casino in Atlantic City to have an in-house strip club, and Trump’s numerous collaborations with Playboy:

“Donald Trump, himself, has appeared on the cover of Playboy magazine, and has proudly performed as an ‘actor’ in three different Playboy-produced ‘softcore’ pornography videos in 1999, 2001, and 2004 (Moye, 2016). He was always fully clothed, but in other scenes in these films, many women were naked. In the most recent film, young women are shown naked in sexual positions, dancing naked, rubbing honey on their breasts, taking a bath, and suggestively touching themselves and each other while naked (Moye, 2016).”

And still the mainstream liberal media keeps trying to paint Donald Trump as anti-sex work.

Rolling Stone ran a story on sex workers donating tips to Planned Parenthood in protest of Trump that included this rationale, “Whether their clients are Republicans or Democrats, they all spend the same money.“

AlterNet ran a story wondering if a Trump presidency will be bad for the porn industry.

What more could this avid client of erotic service providers possibly do to show he’s 100 per cent on the side of pimps, pornographers, and the sex workers they exploit? Would marrying a sex worker, having her bear his son, and making her America’s first sex worker First Lady suffice?

Apparently not.

Even the most apologetic of commentators can’t bring themselves to claim Melania Trump as one of their own and congratulate her on her new position as First Lady. Self styled “dominatrix and sex worker” Margaret Corvid poses the oddly noncommittal question, “Who Cares If Melania Trump Was Maybe A Sex Worker?” as if it doesn’t matter that an alleged former sex worker will be America’s First Lady for the next four years.

Corvid avoids treating Melania Trump as an agent of her own destiny and turns the topic towards herself and the abuse liberal men continue to dish out to prostituted women, “When liberals aim at Melania for alleged sex work, they hit me with their bullets of shame.”

It would be a step forward for Corvid to stop being wishy-washy about Ms. Trump’s rumoured sex work past and embrace it. Perhaps then she could begin to show concern for the woman whose naked image is being used by liberals as a cudgel to hit conservatives with instead of twisting it into an attack by proxy on herself.

Jill Filipovic, a former AlterNet editor and Guardian columnist who typifies the politics of third wave feminism, once wrote about begrudgingly allowing abusive men the legal right to purchase sex:

“I do think men who get off not just on sex but on exploitation are irredeemable shitholes, though. And yeah, they should have a legal right to access porn and to pay for sex (with people who are above the age of consent). But I still think they’re shitholes…”

By her own stated ethics, Filipovic should accept that not-convicted not-rapist Donald Trump offered a very agent-full sex worker a respectful sum of $10,000 for one night’s work. Drake considered the offer then refused, all in all the ideal hypothetical sex work scenario conjured by advocates for legal prostitution.

I disagree that the best people can do about paid-for sexual assault is make an informal complaint, heave a sigh, and walk away feeling superior to “shitholes.” But those are my radical ethics, not the espoused tenets of sex-positive feminism.

By capitalist feminist standards, Donald Trump is a sexual freedom hero. He offers vast sums of money to sex workers, pioneered strip clubs in Atlantic City casinos, appeared on Playboy’s cover plus performed cameos for Playboy products, and his third wife is said to be a former sex worker whom he made the mother of his child before making her First Lady.

Today, on International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, I will raise a glass to toast America’s first sex worker First Lady, Melania Trump. I will drink for all the sexee liberals who got exactly the punter-in-chief they deserve. Donald Trump is well and truly the president of third wave feminism.

http://johnstompers.com/2016/12/melania ... irst-lady/

[Cordelia]

^^^
Good for her. If so, I hope she, like Patricia Kluge, has a thick skin for some of Washington environs more high-brow social circles. If she doesn't, no wonder she wants to stay in New York.

The Incredible Life Of Nude Model Turned Billionaire Turned Bankrupt Divorcée Patricia Kluge (NSFW)

Apr. 8, 2011

Embattled socialite Patricia Kluge filed for personal bankruptcy last week, months after Bank of America foreclosed on her massive Virginia estate and Donald Trump bought her winery for a song.

Kluge was once married to TV mogul and Metromedia founder John Kluge, whom Forbes at one time named the richest man in the world.

Born to middle class parents in Baghdad, Kluge lived a true rags-to-riches fairytale until the recession took its toll

Continued......
http://www.businessinsider.com/patricia ... tos-2011-6

more on Patricia Kluge http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/busin ... nturn.html

[km artlu]

Jesus fucking wept.

I was partially raised when in my teens by high-end hookers...taught about how to survive without a net; sheltered and lovingly cared for. As far as I can discover they're all dead now, and they all died before they reached fifty. "Sex workers". Give me a break.

Their misery and self-loathing, their slides into oblivion, all had nothing to do with prostitution being illegal They operated at a level that was immune to law enforcement.

Anyone who equates fucking for money with feminism is insane.

[parel]

Jesus fucking wept.

I was partially raised when in my teens by high-end hookers...taught about how to survive without a net; sheltered and lovingly cared for. As far as I can discover they're all dead now, and they all died before they reached fifty. "Sex workers". Give me a break.

Their misery and self-loathing, their slides into oblivion, all had nothing to do with prostitution being illegal They operated at a level that was immune to law enforcement.

Anyone who equates fucking for money with feminism is insane.

I'm 55 and I am not dead.

My body is my business.

The misogyny in that article Heavenly Swan posted is just suffocating. The mean feminism of white radfems and their disgusting imaginations. Unable to give sex workers any credit for having minds and souls. Wrongly calling provision of sexual services "sale of the body". That kind of crap. Gah. Nowhere does it even make the claim that Melania was a sex worker.

It's misogyny against women who believe in bodily autonomy (as opposed to the property of the state) designed to smear Melania Trump.

She has not disclosed she was ever a sex worker. afaik.

Playboy is not sex work.

[km artlu]

Maybe it was to some degree the era Parel.
If you've steadily been a working girl without negative consequences, more power to you.
Although I have to doubt it would be anyone's first choice of a path to solvency.

[Project Willow]

Anyone who equates fucking for money with feminism is insane.

[Cordelia]

Previous thread on prostitution: http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/ ... 0&start=75

I remember Melania said that, if she became First Lady, she wanted to make anti-(cyber)bullying her w.h.project, which seems richly ironic.

The voters have spoken and Melania Trump is our next first lady. Typically, I wouldn’t give advice to someone about to occupy the east wing of the White House, but Trump has said that she plans to use her new platform to help combat cyberbullying.

“We must find better ways to honor and support the basic goodness of our children, especially in social media,” she said at a recent campaign speech in Pennsylvania. “It will be one of the main focuses of my work, if I am privileged enough to become your first lady.”

http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/11/10/m ... -bullying/

[barracuda]

I remember Melania said that, if she became First Lady, she wanted to make anti-(cyber)bullying her w.h.project, which seems richly ironic.

We should be kind to America's First Victim — Melania Trump

My heart goes out to Melania Trump. Admittedly, my heart goes out a lot of places I'd rather it didn't, often in the middle of the night in naughty clothes. This time, though, I mean it. Married to the world's most powerful sociopath, mocked and humiliated by left and right alike, a salon-styled lightning rod for all of America's weird feelings about women, foreigners and politicians, you’ve got to wonder who Melania, born Melanija Knavs in rural Slovenia, can really trust.

Certainly not the liberal press. In a rare instance of actually saying words in public, the future first lady made a speech in a Maryland courthouse where she is pursuing a libel suit against a local blogger and a British tabloid newspaper. In the heavy accent that many believe kept her off a campaign trail ringing with dogwhistle xenophobia, Melania restated in the vaguest terms her stand against cyber-bullying, launched days before the election, when she lamented, apparently with no irony, that “Our culture has gotten too mean and too rough.”

It's easy to mock this position, and progressives have duly done so. After all, the wife of the bully-in-chief speaking out against online harassment is not unlike Mary Todd Lincoln coming out against sideburns, or Eva Braun starting an inter-faith community centre. But what if something else is going on? What if this, in a veiled, desperate way, is a cry for help?

I'm not the first to notice this — SE Smith writes at XoJane that: “When a shy, retiring woman speaks out and the first words out of her lips are about a dangerously abusive culture, that sounds a little bit like a woman asking for help.” When Melania speaks, more than any of Trump’s adoring female entourage, she looks like someone with a gun discreetly pointed at her back, with her necklines so high her clothes seem to be trying to strangle her and that rictus smile that never reaches her eyes.

That smile is strangely familiar. It took me a long time to work out why, until I saw it on my own face in a shop window, a few seconds after an encounter with a gentleman in the street who took time out of his busy day for a stroll-by appreciation of my backside. It's the smile you give to street harassers and drunk strangers who corner you at parties when you've lost your friends. It's the smile you give someone who you're afraid of, someone who might hurt you if you make them feel bad. The lines of that smile are etched into Melania's face under the makeup, and now she's training it on the world. I would have a crumb of respect for Trump if he were married to someone equally ruthless and conniving — a Claire Underwood figure, perhaps, a Lady Macbeth for the digital age who we’d all love to hate. That’s not how Trump wants his women. Trump will not be talked back to. His women do what he says, or else. His women must not get old, put on weight, or step out of line. What will happen to Melania if she starts to show her age?

Imagine being in her position. Imagine being married to that man, having to live with him, back him up, soothe his ego, deal with his tantrums. Her marriage will be under relentless scrutiny for the rest of her life, just as her body has been since she did her first catwalk at the age of five, but if anyone raises the alarm, we'll be told it's music and ordered to dance. Do we think that the ham-faced, race-baiting, woman-hating monster about to waltz into the White House respects his third wife as a person? This is a man who slut-shames and humiliates any woman who stands in his way, who is on record boasting about “grabbing women by the pussy”, whose first divorce was granted on grounds of “cruel and inhuman treatment”. In the gauntlet of horrific appointments to the new cabinet — an oil magnate and alleged friend of Russia as Secretary of State, a hero of the alt right movement as Chief Strategist, and Cruella De Vil presumably overseeing Animal Welfare — Trump’s history of violent misogyny seems to have slipped from view. But we must not forget it.

No, Mrs Trump is not the most unfortunate woman in America right now. She will be unaffected by many of the more venal policies of her husband’s cronies, and as the mother of an ex boyfriend once told me, if you must cry, it's nice to be able to cry in the back of a Porsche. But there are all sorts of cages you can keep a woman in — ask the wife of any Saudi Prince — and this, now, is what American girls are being taught to aspire to. Costlier chains. Shinier bars.

...

I am frightened for Melania Trump. This is a person who cannot put a foot wrong, ever. This is a person whose nude photos and immigration status are the subject of ridicule by those who should know better, because of what these facts supposedly say about her husband. Patriarchy is not a game any woman can win, and Melania is playing it on nightmare mode, in the version where you have to sleep with the end-level boss. The man she is married to has a thug’s understanding of consent and every intention of screwing the world, violently if necessary. How we treat his First Victim sets the tone for the fight to come. Be kind.

[Heaven Swan]

Jesus fucking wept.

I was partially raised when in my teens by high-end hookers...taught about how to survive without a net; sheltered and lovingly cared for. As far as I can discover they're all dead now, and they all died before they reached fifty. "Sex workers". Give me a break.

Their misery and self-loathing, their slides into oblivion, all had nothing to do with prostitution being illegal They operated at a level that was immune to law enforcement.

Anyone who equates fucking for money with feminism is insane.

I'm 55 and I am not dead.

My body is my business.

The misogyny in that article Heavenly Swan posted is just suffocating. The mean feminism of white radfems and their disgusting imaginations. Unable to give sex workers any credit for having minds and souls. Wrongly calling provision of sexual services "sale of the body". That kind of crap. Gah. Nowhere does it even make the claim that Melania was a sex worker.

It's misogyny against women who believe in bodily autonomy (as opposed to the property of the state) designed to smear Melania Trump.

She has not disclosed she was ever a sex worker. afaik.

Playboy is not sex work.

Well said Kim Artu, well said.

Parel. Working for an NGO that sells out your sisters is not "sex work". It's aiding and abetting pimps and pornographers and helping send abused women to early graves.



Article:
Open Letter from Sex Trade Survivors to the organizers of the Washington Women’s March
https://medium.com/@autumnburris/open-l ... .oovjc2vvk

[parel]

I used to work for a membership-based regional network of sex workers with an estimated 250 000 members of mostly female, but also male and transgender sex workers. We had members 23 countries and worked across 20 languages with mostly arts-based advocacy. I now live in New Zealand and work in my own tribal region on our own tribal land on community development objectives. We will be completely self sufficient in 5 years.

Sex work is work and I reserve the right to provide consent until the day I die.

The work of which I am most proud, a collaborative work by sex workers from all 5 regions of the world and scientists - the sex worker implementation tool for WHO.

http://www.who.int/hiv/pub/sti/sex_work ... tation/en/

[brekin]

'Tis an old tale, and often told; But did my fate and wish agree, Ne'er had been read, in story old, Of maiden true betray'd for gold, That loved, or was avenged, like me!

Sir Walter Scott

T H E A R T O F T H E S T E A L
A stunning white designer dress,
A lovely speech, no sign of stress,
Some platitudes, but I digress,
In general, a poised address,
Designed to placate and impress,
And deemed at first a great success.
But soon . . . an unpredicted mess
That Trump’s campaign could not finesse,
With Donald’s damsel in distress!
Yes, Twitter beat the mainstream press
In finding words that more or less
Were copied from a fine address
Michelle delivered with noblesse.
They hate Obama; nonetheless,
They cribbed from him to gain success.

http://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2016/07 ... erika-fine