Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile. – Traditional saying
I find it terribly ironic that just as the American Library Association’s “Banned Books Week” (which, incidentally, ends today) was getting underway, legislation innocuously referred to as the “Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act” was introduced into the US Congress by a congresswhore in the employ of several big media conglomerates. This bill is ostensibly intended to fight copyright violations (i.e. people posting pirated material online), but does so by giving Congress the power to create a blacklist of prohibited domains which internet service providers would be bound by law to filter, just as China and other oppressive regimes require ISPs operating within their borders to do. Supposedly the only domains placed on the site would be those which “promoted” infringement, but of course judges and lawyers get to determine what constitutes “promotion” and how widespread it has to be. For example, if some judge was paid by the RIAA to declare that too many YouTube postings violated the rights of their poor little multimillionaire “artists” the whole of YouTube could be shut down.
This act gives the government far too much power; it is roughly equivalent to authorizing cops to use deadly force to stop speeders. And that isn’t even accounting for the “camel’s nose under the tent” effect; once Big Brother has the power to shut down big hunks of the internet for one specific purpose, does anyone honestly believe that he will only use that power for the stated purpose and no other? Because if you do believe that, please PayPal $1000 to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net and I promise to perform a magical spell that will give you the power to see through girls’ clothes. Honest, you can believe me!
Here’s a link to an article at The Huffington Post which explains the proposed legislation in more detail and includes a link to a petition. It is written by Rhode Island State Representative David Segal, who incidentally was an opponent of the recriminalization of prostitution in Rhode Island last year as he discussed in this article. Though a year old, the latter article is worth reading because it demonstrates that at least a few people in government recognize that the suppression of prostitutes is not only morally wrong, but that we actually form the best line of defense against real “human traffickers” (rather than the imaginary ones who can somehow be stopped by prohibiting adult women from earning a living).
Update to Out of Control (September 24th)
This item is paraphrased from an AP story released on September 30th:
Twenty-nine women have alleged that Toronto anesthesiologist Dr. George Doodnaught, 61, sexually assaulted them while they were unconscious, and there could be more victims.
Doodnaught was already facing three counts of sexual assault before police announced 26 more charges Thursday (September 30th); North York General Hospital said 25 of the new charges relate to assaults alleged to have occurred at the hospital during surgical procedures.
When Doodnaught was charged in March with the first three assaults, police released his photograph and asked other potential victims to contact them. “Twenty-six additional victims have come forward,” Toronto police Constable Tony Vella said Thursday. “Investigators believe that there could actually be many more victims in this case,” he added.
One of the alleged assaults took place in June 1992 and the rest between 2006 and this past February, when he was dismissed from the hospital, police said. None of the allegations have been proven in court, and Doodnaught has not yet had the opportunity to defend himself from the charges. Lawyer Adam Halioua, who represents the alleged victims in out-of-court civil negotiations with the hospital, said he could not comment on the new criminal charges because of the police investigation. Doodnaught, who graduated from the University of Glasgow in 1974, has been an anesthesiologist since 1981 and worked at North York General for 28 years.
During an operation, a surgeon, surgical assistant, scrub nurse, circulating nurse and an anesthesiologist are usually in the room — but they can come and go, and there were no cameras in the operating rooms in the hospital. The hospital’s chief of staff, Dr. David White, said in March it was possible for an anesthesiologist to be alone with a patient. White had also said the police investigation would also examine whether the allegations are the result of vivid dreams that some patients experience as a result of the various medications and types of anesthesia.
I think we can safely discount the notion that 29 women all had dreams of being raped by the same anesthesiologist, so the question we are left with is “Why?” Why on Earth would a respected doctor less than a decade away from retirement risk his liberty and reputation and violate both his patients’ trust and all of his medical ethics to do such a disgusting thing? In my column of September 24th I discussed the bizarre, extreme and often criminal behaviors to which sexually frustrated men may resort, and it seems likely to me that something must have happened in 2006 to close off Doodnaught’s available means of sexual release. So why didn’t this crazy bastard just hire whores instead of victimizing innocent women? Even though doctors in Canada don’t make as much as their US counterparts, he certainly could’ve afforded streetwalkers (which are all he needed if an unconscious woman is enough to satisfy him). And certainly the consequences of arrest for patronizing hookers can’t be nearly as great as the penalties for serial rape! I guess some men just lose all decency and capacity for rational thought when they start “thinking with the wrong head.”
Here’s another example of the same thing, paraphrased from a Fox News release:
A man was arrested Tuesday (August 17th) in Fullerton, California for ejaculating twice into a female co-worker’s water bottle. Police said that in January 2010, 31 year old Michael Kevin Lallana entered a female co-worker’s office at the Northwestern Mutual Mortgage Company in Newport Beach, California and ejaculated into a water bottle that was on her desk, leaving it there afterward. The woman later returned and drank the contents of the water bottle, and claimed she felt ill afterward. Approximately three months later (in April 2010), Lallana again ejaculated into another water bottle that the same woman left on her desk; again she returned to her office and drank from the bottle, but this time (after supposedly feeling ill again) the victim sent the remaining contents to a private lab to be tested. The lab confirmed in June that the water bottle contained semen, and the victim reported the incidents to the Orange Police Department.
In early July, following further investigation by the police and the Orange County Crime Lab, Lallana was linked through DNA to the crimes and was arrested on August 17th outside of his home. He was charged with two misdemeanor counts each of releasing an offensive material in a public place and assault, with special circumstances of committing a crime for sexual gratification. If convicted, he faces a sentence of three months to three years in prison followed by mandatory sex offender registration.
Now, I personally find it difficult to believe the victim’s claim that she felt ill after ingesting semen; though it usually doesn’t taste all that great, it cannot make a woman sick after swallowing. What I think much more likely is that she knew very well what the taste was, but felt too ashamed to admit it to anyone until the second incident, after which she invented the “illness” to avoid having to tell leering male cops that she knew what semen tastes like. And thereby hangs the tale; who in his right mind could believe that an adult woman in 21st-century California would NOT know what semen tasted like? Lalanna would have to be completely deranged to imagine he could sneak his seed into a woman’s mouth unnoticed! The very idea exceeds all the bounds of rationality. Once again, we have a man so sexually frustrated that all judgment and basic respect for others flies out the window, completely superseded by the need for sexual gratification through a perverse fantasy of sexually violating a woman unnoticed. Perhaps if our work were not suppressed men like Lalanna and Doodnaught could gratify their urges safely and harmlessly before their brains degenerate to the point where they care about neither common human decency nor even their own safety.
Update to Advice for Clients (August 21st)
In my column of August 21st I gave advice for clients on how to treat their escorts; this video segment from the Sexplorations video series entitled “How To Treat a Sex Worker” is another examination of that same topic, based largely on the book Paying for It which I have already recommended on my bibliography page. It doesn’t say anything very different from what I already covered in that column, but I think hearing the same advice from other women (and a gay escort as well) will serve to reinforce that these things are not mere pet peeves on my part.
