I love EBAY, and find most of the impossible pieces of pottery that I have spent life searching for there- things that I cannot get anywhere else.
I also like convenience, but then again, not at the hands of rip off artists.
I had Paypal for a while- but they had a nasty tendency of just suddenly saying "you MUST 'verify' this account or we won't let you use it-- with VERIFY meaning LINK IT TO A CHECKING ACCOUNT.

So I left.

I am glad I did. The proliferation of problems there scares me, as does the *reasons* for some of those problems.
I ran across this on a search about freedoms-- and it was VERY interesting and rings true.


The Malignancy We Won’t Cure
By Jack Rinella

Since last July I have found prosperity of sorts by selling my books on my website and collecting payment through Paypal. It was easy to use, didn’t cost a great deal, and there was no worry about bounced checks or fraudulent credit cards. I had even begun to sell packages to our up-coming D/s Intensive. Years of hard work, I thought had begun to pay off.

That is until last night when Paypal shut me down. Accused of violating their terms of agreement, I can’t even (right now anyway) retrieve the more than $1,200 in my account -- sitting there to help pay for the next printing bill. Now I’m sure that once I get all references to Paypal off my website, that the money will be forth-coming but resolving all this is a mini-crisis of sorts.

The major crisis that is hidden in all of this is a malignancy we won’t cure. Cure? Hell we hardly even talk about it. Haven’t seen a workshop on the topic for a long, long time, if indeed I ever have. There’s no stories about it in the New York Times, never heard about it on the radio, seldom ever seen a movie about it, and you certainly don’t see any hospitals or health organizations doing anything about it. What’s it? Our negative attitude about sex.

As far as I can tell, Paypal shut me off because they think that my writing about relationships between consenting adults is salacious, dirty, shameful, illegal, immoral, and pornographic. I think it’s just 100% natural.

Now this isn’t just a Paypal thing, though they’re the ones who’ve set me off to writing this morning. Negative attitudes about natural human functions permeate our existence and sex negativity, as far as I’m can see, tops the list. I’m not in favor of rape or the sexual molestation of children or animals. I’m not in favor of spreading diseases through intimate contact either.

I am also opposed to the self-hatred, the repression, and the psychoses perpetrated by an outright deception about the beauty, appropriateness, and sacredness of sexual expression. It is as simple as that. Still we do damn little about it. We are held captive by puritanical mores and morals that dictate what we can and can not do with our bodies.

The old-fashioned Judaic-Christian standards rule our lives: virgins come first, then widows, and wives are a far third. Sex is for procreation and marriage is allowed just so we won’t burn. That’s a quote as St. Paul wrote “It is better to marry than to burn.” (I Corinthians 7:9, KJV) All of this, of course, isn’t limited to Christianity. As far as I can tell, all the major religions place a pall over sexual activity and the ones that didn’t have long since disappeared from public view. The temple prostitutes in Athens or Thebes haven’t been seen in centuries, to name just a few.

It’s not just a Judaic-Christian thing either. We are besieged with the Platonic idea that Idea is better than body, that somehow matter is evil. When will we return to the thought that creation is good rather than see all this as a “vale of tears?”

Hidden in all of this ranting is a serious question. How do we overcome our fear and loathing of sex? How do we purge from ourselves the millennia of training that echoes that sex is dirty and shameful? That demands we hide genitalia, not teach the truth to our children, engage in sexual acts only furtively?

When do we proclaim that masturbation is a good and healthy activity? That sex is for solace, for comfort, for pleasure, for bonding, for friendship, for exploration, for enlightenment, for itself without bounds and reasons? When do we honor our own bodies as beautiful and that our own bodies and those of others are real dwelling places of the divine? When do we respect both self and mutual gratification? When will the roles we take sexually be seen as equal and complementary rather than top (better) and bottom (not as strong)? When will gender roles disappear?

Basically when will each of us become authentic? How can we free ourselves from the “shoulds” that have been drilled into our psyches since the day we were born? When can we let go of the expectations imposed upon us by those who said “I know what’s best for you?” We are, after all, many drives and many talents. We have many possibilities before us. When will we be able to attain not our parents’ desires, not the propaganda of church, school, or state, but the goals of our highest and most authentic selves? When will we be free to us?

This is, after all, more than just about selling a few books. It is about the health of the individual, every individual. Starting there, it goes beyond the individual to society and the planet. It takes healthy individuals to create a healthy society and a healthy society to insure a healthy planet. Environmental disaster, after all, is caused one person at a time.

So my rant comes back to myself. What can I do to become healthier? How can I rid myself of self-loathing, of the echoes of the “Thou shalt nots” that rise up from my past? How do I become free to be me? Then, and here’s the hard part, how do I help liberate my fellow men and women to be themselves as well? It’s not, after all, about Paypal but about each and every one of us doing the work, the hard work, to become authentic.

Authenticity is not an easy way to live. It demands we be honest with ourselves and that we recognize the ways we pollute, negate, and deny our real selves. It means that we ask hard questions and then work hard to answer them honestly. It means that we take time for ourselves to improve ourselves, that ultimately we are more important than our schedules, our careers, our families, and our society. It is not that we forsake any of those but that we live knowing that a better self insures a better schedule, a better career, a better family, and a better society.

The process of being authentic means that we have to evaluate our priorities. We can’t dismiss as unimportant the work of personal growth, of reflection, of learning and probing, of doing those things that that are most helpful and (here’s the rub) giving up some of those things that maintain an unhealthy status quo. Growth as a couch potato is not the same as growth as real person.

Sometimes we have to choose between healthy activity of the mind and body and the same old status quo of relaxing and zoning out.

Right now, though, I have to take Paypal buttons off my website. After that I’ll be able to think about what I’ve asked. Don’t hold your breath for answers but join me in asking them of yourself anyway. "

Not a bad article- and it also hit on one of my favorite buttons, sexual freedom of action for consenting adults. But more about the morals police in another post at another time.

Back to Payhell!




A small quote from the site Pay pal sucks:
" PayPal's SPP: The Seller Punishment Policy

PayPal's Seller Protection Policy is a farce, and at least one PayPal employee admits it.
By PayPalSucks.ORG Created 10/19/2005

PayPal made a huge mistake when it published one of it's pages on the web with some internal comments still included. The comment was, "too strong I think given the limited ability to comply with SPP." (Referring to the PayPal SPP, i.e., Seller "Protection" Policy, but we call it the Seller Punishment Policy.) It's supposed to help sellers from being ripped off. However, it doesn't work because it's impossible to comply with all the requirements of the SPP. For some reason, there was only a little media coverage and it focused on the mistake, not the admission or what it meant."

All in All, I think I will continue to avoid Pay Pal and use money orders or my credit cards directly-- after all, the credit companies make it possible for everyone to dispute charges and items- and don't freeze every dime you have.