In poison there is physic, and these news,
Having been well, that would have made me sick,
Being sick, have in some measure made me well. – William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2 (I, i)
A collection of links, comments and items relating to previous columns.
The Biggest Whores (September 6th)
In this column I reported that Craigslist had bowed to governmental pressure and blocked its adult services section from being accessed in the United States, though it was still available to everyone outside the reach of American censorship. But now the website has apparently bowed to pressure from the Canadian government and prohibitionist groups and removed the section entirely, thus allowing all those who advertised in it to return to posting free and unmonitored ads in other sections of the website. An article in yesterday’s New York Post reported:
The popular classified ad website Craigslist has pulled the adult services section from its websites around the world; the section has been removed from international Craigslist sites in Canada, Asia, Europe, South America and Africa. The adult services section was removed from US Craigslist sites in September after complaints from 17 states that it facilitated prostitution. The section was replaced on US sites with the word “censored,” but its removal from international sites came without announcement or comment from Craigslist. A spokeswoman for the site declined to comment on the removal of the section.
Craigslist apparently believes this will silence the fanatics, and it certainly may as the crusaders move on to annoy Backpage. Of course, it’s also possible that a few of them will recognize that most of the whores who advertised on Craigslist are still there in the personals, massage, etc as they used to be and demand that Craigslist control them, such as by creating a ghetto in which their ads can be confined and then requiring payment so courts can order the info turned over to them. Oh, wait, that’s what they just forced them to close. Oops.
Think of the Children! (September 30th)
In this column I wrote:
The dogma of [the Cult of the Child] preaches that children are as emotionally fragile as soap bubbles and the merest hint of sexual imagery before puberty can cause irreversible trauma; its adherents also believe that teenagers (whom they equate with “children”) should be lied to, spied on or even criminally prosecuted to prevent them from engaging in any kind of sexual behavior, and some even believe that adults should not be allowed any form of entertainment or reading material which is inappropriate for even the youngest child, on the grounds that a child “might see it” and thereby be petrified as if he had looked into the eyes of the Gorgon. Child cultists can be recognized by their stated belief that any degree of tyranny is acceptable “if it saves even one child,” and by their fondness for promoting unconstitutionally broad legislation lugubriously named after dead little girls.
Until the Cult of the Child again goes into decline, you can be sure we’ll keep seeing proposed legislation of this type.
Yesterday (October 20th)
In this column I opined:
What’s going to be needed [to achieve decriminalization] is for some big moneybags like Bill Gates to get behind sex worker rights so we can advertise and thereby attract a bunch of empty-headed Hollywood stars who are looking for a new cause to adopt. In the minds of the hoi-polloi, the opinion of one celebrity who knows nothing about the subject is worth the life-experiences of a thousand veteran whores, and once the cause becomes “sexy” enough all of a sudden people will be coming out of the woodwork to support it.
Here’s a case in point from yesterday’s MTV News. Neither Lady Gaga nor Katy Perry have horses in this race; they’re not in the military, they’re not homosexual and they’re not male. Yes, it affects lesbians too, but let’s be honest here; the opposition to the repeal of DADT came overwhelmingly from men for reasons which should be obvious. Yet somehow, the public considers the opinions of pop-tarts with no personal experience in the issue to be more important than those of activists who actually know what they’re talking about.
Something Rotten In Sweden (November 13th)
In this column I talked about the rise of “Swedish Model” rhetoric in American police departments; by pretending that all whores are degraded victims, they can hide the outrageous sexism of prostitution laws from the gullible. One example of this infiltration is the increasing popularity of “john schools”, government programs which hire brainwashed ex-streetwalkers to scream neofeminist victimization propaganda at men arrested for soliciting prostitutes. Brandy Devereaux recently published a column in which she reports on a recent proposal for one of these so-called “schools” in Colorado, then explains her ideas of what a real “john school” might be like.
Barbie (December 5th)
In my column on Barbie I mentioned that I played with mine as though she were an action figure, and then I saw this hilarious spoof advertisement for toys that, unfortunately, do not actually exist. For those who slept through 19th-century English lit, I should mention that Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte avoided the Victorian prejudice against female authors by publishing their works under the male pseudonyms Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.
Not So Different (December 8th)
For years now internet escorts have employed sites like Date Check to screen potential clients, and now our amateur sisters have gotten into the act with some of the very same sites, proving once again that the line between prostitution and dating is far too fine to justify criminalizing the former but not the latter. And just as governments think escorts are mental incompetents who must be protected from ourselves, so they apparently think the same about women who date online; New York’s “Internet Dating Safety Act” now requires dating sites to post common-sense safety tips, like “meet in a public place,” for those who are too dimwitted to be dating without a chaperone in the first place. And the nanny state being what it is, I’m sure other states (and eventually the federal government) will follow New York’s lead.
Bits and Pieces, Part Two (December 10th)
For weeks there have been conflicting stories about what Julian Assange has actually been accused of, but now Sweden has finally bothered to release a report detailing the exact claims. Assange calls the case a “smear attempt” filled with “incredible lies,” but even if the report is exactly true (and it may very well be), that doesn’t change the fact that Sweden, as pointed out in Saturday’s column, doesn’t expend nearly this much energy catching alleged rapists who have not embarrassed governments.
The Red Umbrella (December 17th)
I don’t really approve of the concept of “hate crimes”; after all, if a man kills me just because I’m in his way I am no less dead than if he kills me because he hates me. But if we’re going to have any “hate crime” laws at all, it’s only fair that whores be among the protected groups because, as we discussed on Friday, we get far more than our share of violence. Well, the city of Liverpool is now treating violence against sex workers as a “hate crime”; what a difference from the United States, where the police themselves are among the worst perpetrators of that very same crime!
