Op/Ed: A plea for Sasami Wishbringer
by Alphaville Herald on 11/12/04 at 12:57 pm
By Mrs. President Chomsky
Several months ago I was interviewed by the Herald about my opposition to the ?culling? of rare breed pets in TSO. In the interview, I observed that the practice of buying many virtual pets and destroying all but the rare pets was just as bad as killing real animals. Now I am moved by a very similar situation ? the Herald?s attack on SL resident Sasami Wishbringer. Depending on how we calculate age, Sasami is either 8 years old or 808 years old, so this attack amounts to BOTH the defamation of a child and an octocentarian senior. It is discrimination against both children and the aged. But not just that; by implying that we should ?question? (note that ugly phalocentric word again) whether Sasami was right to offer herself as an escort and a slave this article is an offense to sex workers and enslaved people worldwide. Finally, by ?questioning? (shudder) whether the Lindens should allow virtual child porn in public places, the Herald has effectively cast its lot with patriarchy and defenders of missionary-position-only human relations. In short, the article was anti-child, anti-elderly, anti-sex, and deeply reactionary.
Sasami Wishbringer is the most important avatar in Second Life. By juxtaposing the numbers 8 and 808, she subverts the western conception of aging (no accident that the original Sasami is Japanese!), and as a bonus helps us to rethink traditional western medicine and to some extent even mathematics. She has effectively evacuated the categories of ?child? and ?elderly? ? deconstructing both and reconstructing a new low/high age and packaged it in a so-called ?virtual? being. But given that all being is virtual in this sense, we had best say that Sasami has created a new life form ? one with much more promise than those life forms ? socially constructed against a background of patriarchy ? that currently walk mother earth. She is a ray of hope among the zombies that we must confront daily.
As Sasami has deconstructed our conceptions of age, so too she has challenged the master/slave dialectic foisted upon us by Hegel, and shown us that the end of history did not lie in some future synthesis, but in the slave itself. The slave is the alpha and omega ? the beginning and the end ? whether we are 8 or 808. We can find liberation through slavery ? we should seek it out and revel in it. Particularly sex slavery. Sasami is telling us that the children worldwide that are sold into sex slavery are not victims so much as pioneers. She is helping us to reconceptualize our archaic conceptions of who is a slave and showing us that those enslaved children are actually empowered! Not only is their status quite tolerable, but perhaps it is something that we too should aspire to. Surely this is a much healthier attitude than the one that pervades Western life now.
Finally there is the ?question? of the hentai that Sasami was selling in public places. (And may we please retire the word ?question?, which is actually a weapon of intellectual violence that has been wielded by western patriarchy for far too long and is quite simply just a prop for maintaining hegemony.) What is hentai, but an art form that inhabits the margins: the margins of fiction/reality, east/west, sex/violence, innocence/experience, etc. What is offensive to viewers are not the throbbing penises being shoved into the childl?s mouth, but the fact that the art transgresses boundaries. It problematizes our concepts of east/west, sex/violence, etc. It offers us liberation, and that is what we fear.
As for the feeble excuse that the Herald was merely ?republishing? what Sasami herself had made public in her profile and in advertisements in public places and in clubs, we can easily see the stock moves of partriachy here. Consider the violence of the word ?re-publish? itself. Publish, from public ? a common place where vested powers can see all and control all. Re- publishing amounts to putting something *back* under the eye of patriarchy where it can be ?questioned? and ?probed? etc. Need I connect the dots? (By the way, the similarity between ?repub ? lish? and ?repu(tation) ?lash? is not accidental I am sure.)
So, I conclude, the Herald?s attack on Sasami Wishbringer is nothing more than a transparent and feeble effort to prop up patriarchal values by the usual thuggish tools of ?questioning? and ?republication? of public facts. It is an attempt to stifle the liberatory message that Sasami is bringing to SL (the joy of child sex slavery), and is an attempt to prop up the archaic dualisms of young/old, sex/violence, cartoon/real, etc.
Sasami is a prophet. You go girl!
E.P.
Dec 11th, 2004
I’m not sure if this is a satirical attempt at postmodernist writing or whether the author is actualy being serious.
Cocoanut
Dec 11th, 2004
I never believed in pure evil. But if this isn’t a parody, I think I’m gonna start to. In fact, even if it is a parody, the fact that it was even thought up is going to make me start to.
coco
Muirwen
Dec 11th, 2004
I second the two previous comments.
RB
Dec 11th, 2004
I third the 1st 2 comments. Go back to your crusade for pixel animals mrs chom while it still amuses us.
And Coco you still need to be kinder to your alarm clock :p
- RB
Occasional Reader
Dec 11th, 2004
OMG, that is the funniest thing I’ve seen in ages. Discrimination against virtual octocentarians. Ageism indeed!
Even funnier is the people who aren’t sure if its parody. ROTFLMAO
that having been said, I still liked BloodNinja better. When is he coming back?
TBT
Dec 11th, 2004
Er uh ummm who really cares anyway?
Uri you’ve posted many other images of SL avatars that are far more degrading or in a pornographic tone then this one that you seem to be on a crusade against at the current moment… SL took care of it and removed it *supposedly* so why keep flogging a dead horse..
Why is that the more adultish pornographic avatars don’t garner this much or any attention at all from you? Well with the excdeption for using those images for other articles with other topics..
Adult pornography acceptable by you, but not child porn or “so-called” child avatar porn? It’s all the same and shouldn’t be… Just posing a question as you do.. ;-p
Fact of the matter is this stupid image is nothing compared to how the kids actually act in these games, they are far worse then any cartoon image can ever be by them playing pimps, whores, sluts, escorts etc. with their little, cough, “love theme” lots or properties.
The avatar this person chose comes from a tv cartoon or dvds that the kids can easily see its no big deal.. What you might have one or a couple adults who may occasionally use an avatar like this and yet daily you have hundreds of kids playing and acting out these roles as they play online..
Sorry, but I have gto ask “What’s the bigger problem”?
Not pointing fingers or trying to give you crap or flack Uri, but my thinking is what’s the big deal there’s alot more far worse going on coming from the younger players themselves.. and no young players i’m not saying all of you so don’t jump down my throat immediately unless you’re that whore.. I’m referring to the ones who play these roles..
“What did you do today jimmy n mary”?
“oh we played ‘pimp n whore escort’ and jimmy collected money that mary went out and earned from talking dirty to other perverted people in online games”
Yes todays children aspire to such greatness…
Roleplaying my ass…
Delirium
Dec 11th, 2004
Holy hell. Mrs. Noam Chomsky must have taken one too many of her blood pressure pills this morning and now she’s whacked. I’ve tried to warn her about that, but granny kinda likes being whacked’. Ah, well..what is one to do?
Speaking of impossible tasks, I wouldnd’t hold your breath for BloodNinja to get back in the office. It has been rumored that he’s wandering around the Amazon with I.P. Lithium, swinging from some burning ayahuasca. Maybe they’ll send us all something back eventually (like a freakin’ article when the burning bush has smoldered).
-Delirium
Maria laVeaux
Dec 11th, 2004
I read some fairly Bizzarre things here on this Blog,, many of them penned by myself, But this one takes the Prize.
Amusing if satirical,
Disturbed if not.
God i hope it’s Satire because it’s brilliant.
Maria.
Ava Eldritch
Dec 11th, 2004
duh . .
obviously its satire. I nearly fell out of muh chair laffin. And, duh . . Uri isnt makin a big deal out of it. Everyone else is, especially Sasami. That is like the whole purpose of this article, to point out the absurdity of it all. Come on guys.
E.P.
Dec 12th, 2004
“Even funnier is the people who aren’t sure if its parody. ROTFLMAO”
The reason I ask, is because there are many academics in real life that write stuff of this calliber…and they *are* serious.
Urizenus
Dec 12th, 2004
Sad but true, EP.
I sincerely hope that Mrs. President Chomsky is not one of *them*!
Cyanide Leviathan
Dec 13th, 2004
The sasami porn is just WRONG. I think that the person responsible for it should be banmned from secondlife, and their home address and phone number be made public knowledge so we can call them up ourselves and tell them how disgusting they are!
Wonderswan
Dec 14th, 2004
Well personally, wether its the 8 or the 808 or whatever ‘age’ they want to claim for their ‘AV’, its still obvious which one they are doing and running with. Yah I’m 808 years old but I look like 8 still. I’m sure a lot of people would just bone Sasmi all night long knowing she’s a grandma. Hell might as well look the part if you’re 808 or whatever grand scale age you want to hide behind.
Everyone pretty much knows what AGE is being prefered in their cyber sex romps with her. ‘duh’.
St. Frank of AV
Dec 17th, 2004
OMG Mrs. President Chomsky! THERE you are. You know, I was forced to close down Pet Haven in Alphaville. You never helped! You were all talk…I made you the little cottage with the flowerboxes and the gingham curtains, but you never came to live there. I waited and waited. I must had 50 pets on the lot, well, 16 anyway, and they were all mutts, not a single rare, and well, we had agreed I wouldn’t “cull” any of them and you said you’d help…and you didn’t. You were going to help scoop poop, remember? And I put out the tip jar…*cough*…you never got the hint. You SAID you’d pay for the buffet! Yes, I had to go buffet…all that home-cooked just got way, way too time consuming what with having to re-name all the pets constantly to sell them and with all these girls calling constantly. Yeah…you’re all talk! So ok, I deleted. You missed the miracle. The Miracle of St. Frank in AV. St. Frank deleted…he left…his new roomie took the lot…*and yet all his objects remained even after leaving and re-entering the lot*. And you missed it! Hah! *His pet statue was there for weeks* even though he was assumed unto heaven! OK, so the database got wiped, the lot disappeared, and you lost what could have been a cash cow had you only worked it right!
Mrs. President Chomsky
Dec 18th, 2004
St. Frank! So good to hear from you. Alas I just have too many causes these days. Right now I am wrapped up in fighting the rampant defoliation of SL — people removing linden trees and replacing them with those ghastly zero pixel flowers.
humdog
Dec 27th, 2004
this is a scream.
” (And may we please retire the word �question�, which is actually a weapon of intellectual violence that has been wielded by western patriarchy for far too long and is quite simply just a prop for maintaining hegemony.)”
an absolute scream.
humdog
Dec 27th, 2004
this is a scream.
” (And may we please retire the word �question�, which is actually a weapon of intellectual violence that has been wielded by western patriarchy for far too long and is quite simply just a prop for maintaining hegemony.)”
an absolute scream.