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Archive for February, 2011

Not the Same Tree

Posted in Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 18, 2011| 27 Comments »

A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees. –  William Blake

Those who foolishly insist on viewing the world through the filter of dogma are blind to everything that dogma will not admit, even when the truth lies right before them.  The ass who looks at prostitution with neofeminist blinkers on sees only what her driver wants her to see, and no more; prohibitionists are told that prostitution “victimizes” or “exploits” women, and their eyes remain so fixed on that false image that they can see neither the harm their policies do to prostitutes nor the dangerous precedent they set for women’s rights and the legal assumptions about women’s competence and right to self-determination.  Those without those blinkers can turn their heads and look freely at all parts of a situation, and thus may see a very different picture from those blinded by the brainwashing.

I found an obvious case of this on Brandy Devereaux’s blog last Monday (February 14th); it led me to this article on MLive.com, a Michigan news website, and I was struck by the contrast between the clear sight of Darrell Dawsey (the journalist who wrote it) and the blindness of the officials who appear in it.  I’m so impressed with the article, in fact, that I’m willing to overlook its truly annoying title in favor of its abstract: “A recent post-mortem of high-profile sex ring Miami Companions, which was broken up by federal agents last year, highlights the glaring inconsistency and imbalance in how we tackle the ‘crime’ of prostitution.”

On May 12, Gregory Carr, who prosecutors say masterminded Miami Companions, will be sentenced for running what the feds had dubbed one of the biggest sex rings in the country….But none of the 30,000-plus clients who paid as much as $500-an-hour for sex were ever outed.  The so-called black book that contains their names remains in an FBI office in Tampa under tight security.  And Barbara McQuade, U.S. attorney for southeast Michigan, said she has no plans to release the book — nor does she need it now that she has guilty pleas.  “Our goal is not to stamp out prostitution.  I don’t think we’ll ever do that,” she said.  “But what we are concerned about is deterring criminal organizations from exploiting women as a commodity for profit.”

“Ring” is of course a dysphemism for “suppressed business”.  When the 18th amendment went into effect in 1920 liquor dealers suddenly became “bootlegging rings”, and when the 21st amendment ended Prohibition in 1933 those “rings” magically turned back into businesses.  The word “ring” is a pejorative term intended to conjure up images of seedy gangsters meeting around tables in the back rooms of pool halls.  And the reason the “black book” isn’t being released has nothing to do with guilty pleas and everything to do with the fact that a number of prominent citizens – including some of McQuade’s bosses – are listed in that book.  “Ring” indeed.  But McQuade goes from disingenuous to asinine in the last line, considering that every commercial employer in America exploits women (and men, too) as a “commodity for profit”.  How is an escort service different from a theatrical agency or a temp agency, whose sole product is living humans of certain desired characteristics?  It of course isn’t, unless you believe that sex is somehow intrinsically different from every other human activity.

Apparently, McQuade can tolerate prostitution as long as it remains a mom-and-pop endeavor.  But grow that business from two girls on a street corner to a Web-based ring with international ties, then, suddenly, prostitution becomes deserving of federal wrath.  She’s not so much interested in busting the men who pay for sex, she says.  Or the women who provide it — as long they keep their sex ring small.  Her problem seems to be less with the act than with the scale of it:  “We’re not trying to be the morality police,” McQuade said.  “We try to go after what we perceive to be more important offenders, those who are engaged in organized criminal activity.”  But here’s the thing:  As long as prostitution is illegal, it’s all “organized criminal activity.”  Whether the sex workers are independent contractors or part of a larger group, they’re all providing pretty much the same service.  Why is it suddenly worse because some middle manager is making flight arrangements or work schedules?

I wanted to stand up and clap when I read that last part, starting with “But here’s the thing.”  McQuade claims her office isn’t trying to regulate morality, but of course that’s exactly what it’s doing whether she admits it or not.

.. McQuade’s stance [is] mired… in some common…perceptions about pimps…they can be abusive and low down…But there’s no evidence that Carr coerced any of these women…they worked when they wanted to and pursued other interests when they didn’t. Miami Companions simply made it easier, and probably more lucrative, for them to do what they wanted to do…Carr’s worst crime, as far as I can tell, seems to be getting paid to serve as a middle man in the sex industry. Is he really substantively any worse than, say, Hugh Hefner?  It seems a little disingenuous for McQuade to acknowledge that prostitution is an ineradicable trade on one hand, but then to declare it intolerable only when folks actually make money at it (which, of course, is the point of selling sex in the first place).

So what about sex workers who enjoy the trade and want the opportunity to earn more money and meet more clients?  What about the women who get into the game of their own volition, independent “working girls” who tolerate no pimps but who still see the value in growing their network?  How many clients can a “sex ring” have before McQuade determines that it’s become too big to succeed?  Despite McQuade’s clear acknowledgment of the intractability of the world’s oldest profession, the feds’ message seems to be that our government is fine with prostitution — as long as you’re not too good at it.

I don’t have anything else to add.  Thank you, Mr. Dawsey, both for your defense of women’s right to work in the profession of our choice and also for just being a rational human being.

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An Educated Idiot

Posted in Perception, The Dark Side, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on February 17, 2011| 28 Comments »

Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. –  Bertrand Russell

I recently stumbled on this article at Wired Magazine and was immediately impressed with the incredible stupidity and ignorance of its author, who apparently believes that if he watches one flock of pigeons in one city for a while he can safely make pronouncements about swallows in Capistrano, hawks in Africa and Adelie penguins in Antarctica.  Even with all my experience I hesitate to make general statements about all hookers everywhere, but Sudhir Venkatesh doesn’t; after talking to a bunch of streetwalkers and low-end escorts who used to be streetwalkers in New York City, he apparently considers himself expert enough to make pronouncements about “sex workers” in general.  This article has to be seen to be believed, but I warn regular readers that the only part which won’t have your jaw dropping in astonishment is the angry commentary from real whores below the main article.  So, I’ll just cover some of the highlights.

What is it like to be a prostitute?  The answer depends on whether you work out of a client’s car or a $500-a-night hotel room.  In 1999, I set out to study the effects of efforts to bring the suburban middle class back to New York City.  The gentrification of Times Square made for a unique social experiment:  What happens to sex workers when they are pushed off the streets and into the outer boroughs?  I had little idea at the time that I’d be documenting the rise of an entirely new, upper-end “indoor” market, in which streetwalkers have given way to a professional class.  The economies of big cities have been reshaped by a demand for high-end entertainment, cuisine, and “wellness” goods.  In the process, “dating,” “massage,” “escort,” and “dancing” have replaced hustling and streetwalking.  A luxury brand has been born.  These changes have made sex for hire more expensive.  But luxe pricing has in turn helped make prostitution, well… somewhat respectable.  Whereas men once looked for a secretive tryst, now they seek a mistress with no strings attached, a “girlfriend experience,” and they are willing to pay top dollar for it.

Let this sink in for a moment.  Venkatesh, a professor of sociology at Columbia, has apparently never heard of courtesans and seems to sincerely believe that upscale prostitution, stripping and massage parlors were all born in the past decade in New York City.  This represents such profound historical and sociological ignorance it literally boggles the mind.  The next paragraph is more of the same:

Technology has played a fundamental role in this change.  No self-respecting cosmopolitan man looking for an evening of companionship is going to lean out his car window and call out to a woman at a traffic light.  The Internet and the rise of mobile phones have enabled some sex workers to professionalize their trade.  Today they can control their image, set their prices, and sidestep some of the pimps, madams, and other intermediaries who once took a share of the revenue.  As the trade has grown less risky and more lucrative, it has attracted some middle-class women seeking quick tax-free income.

Undoubtedly, the rise of the internet has made it a lot easier for girls to be completely independent, but even agency girls are independent contractors and there were personals ads and referral services long before the internet was invented.  The internet has also allowed girls who might once have worked the street to inexpensively advertise to a wider audience and stay more safely indoors while doing so.  In this one respect, his findings aren’t far off-base; the problem arises when he attempts to extrapolate information gleaned from streetwalkers and ex-streetwalkers (“I followed 290 women, 170 of whom made enough (at least $30,000) to separate them from streetwalkers”) to the entire sex worker population.  And his bizarre assertion that high-end prostitution is a product of computers and cell phones would certainly surprise Phryne, Theodora, Mata Hari, Madame Pompadour or even Josie Arlington.

After interviewing 120 streetwalkers and 170 low-end escorts ($30,000 a year is very low-end, especially in New York) Venkatesh feels confident enough to pronounce that “escorts” (not low-end escorts, all escorts) earn about 50 percent more per transaction than streetwalkers (after saying the latter make about $75 per transaction), are “beaten twice a year, on average,” and “keep working to pay for clothing and shoes.”  Just a bit of perspective here:  In New Orleans (a cheaper market than New York) during the time period of the study agency escorts charged an average of $300 (of which they kept $200) and independents $200, and I never met a girl who was literally beaten by a client, ever.  And I guess they’ve never heard of things like “rent”, “food”, “gasoline”, “electricity bills” and “children” up at Columbia.  He also declares that independent escorts “have to” pay for drugs for clients, which is as amazingly stupid an assertion as any in this mess; it would be a foolish escort indeed who agreed to bring drugs to a client since the very request screams “cop”, and the idea that she would pay for such out of her own pocket leads me to believe that some of these girls were pulling Venkatesh’s leg.

It just goes downhill from there; we are told that nearly all escorts have a day job (in reality a minority do), that a boob job will increase earning potential about 50% (obviously he’s never heard of “spinners”), and that bottle-blondes make more money (they don’t; I got just as many requests for brunettes).  “Caitlyn” sold this sucker on the idea that mid-range escorts spend $2000 per month on shoes, and he somehow got the notion that a girl with four regulars making $80,000 a year is “high-end” in New York.  The professor says all sex workers (even, apparently, strippers and PSOs) “always” carry two cell phones because “Guys sometimes grab a woman’s mobile to gain a sense of power and control” (perhaps that happens to New York streetwalkers from time to time, but I’ve never heard of it) and that “If the client wants to skip the condom, there’s usually a 25 percent surcharge” (no, there’s usually a boot out the door for such a request, and even among desperate street girls or semi-pros who agree to it there’s no “usual” charge because desperation is not a predictable thing).  But in the end, he reveals his methodological flaws in spades:  though 61% of his interviewees had used Craigslist at one time or another, according to his graphs only 8-15% advertised via “personal referral or other”, with that “other” containing every other means of internet advertising including Backpage, Eros, personal websites, review boards, etc, etc, etc…in other words, his “study” ignored somewhere in the neighborhood of 75% of the whores in New York.

The only remotely interesting thing about the study (outside of its author’s capacity for self-delusion) is that he claims to have encountered 290 streetwalkers and low-end escorts but only 11 pimps.  Considering that like most people he was probably predisposed to overestimate the percentage of girls with pimps the number is a tantalizingly low 3.8%; unfortunately his worthless methodology renders even that number unusable, which is too bad because otherwise it would’ve been a great statistic to quote.

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The Swedish Disease Spreads

Posted in Current Events, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 16, 2011| 36 Comments »

A decadent civilization compromises with its disease, cherishes the virus infecting it, loses its self-respect. –  E.M. Cioran

The Swedish Model of prostitution law is based on the premise that women are moral imbeciles who are psychologically incompetent to determine the conditions under which we will consent to sex, and the state therefore assumes the right to set those conditions for us.  Like girls under the age of consent in most countries, women in Swedish Model countries are neither allowed to consent to certain sex partners, nor can they be held liable for their actions if they violate the law; since only men are considered fully competent to make sexual decisions, Swedish Model law only punishes men for violating that law.  Up until now only three Scandinavian countries (Norway, Sweden and Iceland) had such a low opinion of women’s competency, but despite the total lack of demonstrable positive results the Swedish disease appears to be spreading; several jurisdictions in the United States appear to be flirting with it, a neofeminist group presumed to “demand” that Canada adopt it last year, Labour MSP Trish Goodman has repeatedly tried to force it through the Scottish parliament, and England only narrowly averted it by replacing its last Labour government.  The latest country to jump on the repressive, misogynistic bandwagon is Ireland; the Sunday before last (February 6th) this appeal from the Sex Workers Alliance of Ireland (SWAI) appeared in Harlot’s Parlour:

Sex Workers Alliance Ireland (SWAI) are trying to get as much support at the moment as possible.  There are plans to change legislation in relation to prostitution to criminalise the buyers of sex.  To people who are not aware of sex worker issues internationally this may seem like a good idea.  However, its proven to be a mad move in other countries with sex workers being put more at risk with their safety, human rights and civil rights being greatly affected.

SWAI would be grateful to any support that they can get.  Labour and Fine Gael have both come out as supporting a change in legislation without any debate.  There is no discussion and sex workers are not being involved or consulted despite being the people who are going to be most affected by this change in legislation.  The government are confusing issues like trafficking and abuse with sex work in general and mashing them together.  It has been taken on as a moralistic issue with Ruhama leading it (a Christian organisation)….it’s craziness not to at least open the discussions!

HELP!!  I want to see if we can open people’s eyes.  Perhaps the Unit Left Alliance, Socialist Party or similar would hear our opinions and help us.  We are not looking for legalisation..simply to stop further criminalisation which would further stigmatise and alienate these women and men.  If anyone could help us in our campaign or know anyone who could help by perhaps joining us in the mini marathon, helping us gain support by email or web based media, messaging people to make them aware of SWAI or in any way at all please contact SWAI through their web site.  The mini marathon is being held in May to raise awareness of the proposed changes in legislation.

SWAI web site and link to a Facebook page where you can be kept up to date with developments.  “HERE”.

I don’t think the writer of this appeal is thinking very clearly when she suggests that the Socialist Party would be interested in helping (unless it was merely to anger the Christian group); Socialists and Communists have always been hostile to prostitution as a capitalist institution and tend to view prostitutes as victims of economics, the “Patriarchy” or both.  And considering that the model originated in the Scandinavian social democracies, asking the Socialists to oppose it would rather be like asking the Ku Klux Klan for help against a Neo-Nazi policy.

Neofeminists are so blinded by their hatred of men and sex, and so immersed in their own propaganda of “degradation”, that they are willing to sell out other women in order to oppress men (such as by opposing prostitution even though it has been shown that decriminalization tends to dramatically decrease rape rates).  It’s time free women rose up against those who would dictate what we can wear, say, think and do and let them know that our lives, means of support and sexuality are our own and therefore not subject to the dictates of those in power, no matter what their gender or supposed motivation.

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Life Imitates Artifice

Posted in Current Events, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 15, 2011| 20 Comments »

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble. –  Samuel Johnson

On Sunday I wrote a little about this article from The Dallas News of February 7th, and promised to say more about it today.  This time I’ll reproduce it as it appeared (though slightly edited for length) with interpolated comments, saving my main point for the end.

A felon from Austin forced a teenage girl and her adult sister to come work as prostitutes in Dallas because “there was big money to be made during Super Bowl,” according to police documents.  But Dallas police say they busted Anthony Ladell Winn, 35, before the sisters, ages 14 and 20, arranged any weekend dates.  “We’re very proud of the work on this one,” said Sgt. Byron Fassett of the Dallas Police Child Exploitation Squad.  “Any time that we can identify a child victim on the street involved in this, it is exceptional work, quite frankly.  It’s like finding a needle in a haystack.”  Winn was arrested early Sunday on felony charges of attempting to compel prostitution by force and trafficking of persons…

You’ve gotta love the way cops like to pretend their own job is harder than it is so they can then pat themselves on the back for doing it.  Cops see a 14-year-old girl streetwalking and get her to cooperate so they can catch her pimp, and then pretend some Holmesian deduction was involved.  This “needle in a haystack” poppycock of course also provides a ready-made excuse for all the imaginary traffickers they didn’t catch on account of their not actually existing.

Area authorities had been bracing for a possible influx of prostitutes and human trafficking victims in the run-up to Super Bowl XLV.  Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and the FBI pledged additional resources devoted to combating human trafficking last week.  Authorities say it can be extremely difficult to accurately measure whether such crimes spike and why.  However, early indications in Dallas are that there was not an obvious increase in reported prostitution cases, perhaps due in part to the icy and cold conditions, police said.

Yeah, that must be it.  Pimps spent all kind of money to “traffick” thousands of enslaved hookers into Dallas but didn’t bother to send them out on the streets because it was too cold.  “It can be extremely difficult to accurately measure…such crimes,” but that didn’t stop cops and officials from making ludicrous predictions despite the fact that no such spike has ever been recorded around a major sporting event anywhere in the world.

Dallas police reported 23 adult prostitution arrests from Wednesday through Sunday, though they noted they do not know how many were related to the festivities or people surrounding the Super Bowl.  “We didn’t see that as being a drastic increase in our normal enforcement numbers,” said Assistant Chief Tom Lawrence.  “We were trying to focus much more heavily on the locations where we thought there’d be a high level of parties, activities related to the Super Bowl.”

“Areas where there’d be a high level of parties?”  WTF?  I mean seriously, what is that even supposed to mean?  Restaurants?  Bars?  People’s hotel rooms spread all over the Dallas-Fort Worth area?  And what did that “focus” involve, sending out cops to look for women strolling around the stadium in high heels, fishnets and miniskirts in subzero temperatures?  I can tell you how many of those 23 prostitution arrests were “related” to the Super Bowl:  Zero.  They were just plain old streetwalker busts which happened to occur the same week.  The big talkers in Arlington were too embarrassed to admit their prostitution arrest figures until yesterday:  32 total “prostitution-related” arrests (note the attempt to pad the number to 59 by quoting 2½ weeks at one time), which obviously includes clients since only 22 were hookers and 3 “pimps” (possibly drivers or boyfriends).  Only 13 of the 59 were from out of town and NONE were juveniles.  Imagine that.

…For Fassett, whose squad handles sex crimes involving juveniles, the Winn case was the only arrest of its kind thought to be related to the Super Bowl.  “I don’t know that I saw on the street level any more activity than any other normal night that we would have run an operation,” said Fassett.  He acknowledged that “there’s no real statistical data to prove it one way or the other.”

But that didn’t stop us from uttering grandiose prophesies of hordes of hookers descending on the Metroplex like a Biblical plague, of course.  Obviously, Mr. Fassett doesn’t  understand advanced concepts like “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

Investigators believe Winn met the sisters in Austin [and] had been prostituting the older sister for about a year and the younger sister for about a month…a few days ago, Winn and the older sister got into an argument because the woman did not want Winn prostituting her younger sister anymore…Winn punched the 20-year-old woman in the face and bit her twice on the arm, police said.  He then told the women “they were going to Dallas to prostitute for him” during the Super Bowl and that “there were men that would spend a lot,” the documents said.  Winn drove the women to the city Saturday morning, rented a northwest Dallas hotel room and sent them out to engage in prostitution.  He told them all the money they made would go to him, the documents said.  Dallas patrol officers came in contact with the sisters Saturday and investigators ran a sting operation on Winn, police said…

So, what gave this pimp wannabe the idea that “there was big money to be made during Super Bowl,” and “there were men that would spend a lot” on streetwalkers?  Any guesses?  It certainly wasn’t personal experience, nor anything he learned from the “organized crime” with which he obviously was not affiliated.  What gave him these ridiculous ideas was the constant media repetition of them.  In other words the trafficking fanatics, by their constant reiteration of the “Super Bowl as sex trafficking Mecca” mythology, put the notion into this violent loser’s otherwise-empty head.  Congratulations, trafficking fetishists; all the money and effort you expended on spreading your lies actually accomplished something:  You inspired a pimp to traffick an underage girl to the Super Bowl.  The same mechanism was obviously at work in the minds of the fanatics who staged this little escapade, paraphrased from a report in the Washington Times of February 1st:

A Planned Parenthood manager in Perth Amboy, New Jersey was secretly videotaped by an anti-abortion activist posing as a pimp supposedly trying to hide his “underage sex ring”.  A group calling itself “Live Action” was behind the scam, in which the “pimp” was accompanied by a woman who claimed to be a prostitute; the “pimp” claimed to be interested in obtaining abortions for girls around 14 or 15 years old who speak no English.  The clinic manager, identified only as “Ms. Woodruff”, gave advice to the fake “pimp”, saying “so long as they just lie … we just kind of play it stupid,” and explaining that they look past this because these girls still need the help, even if they are underage.

Planned Parenthood employees reported the visit to their higher management as soon as the “pimp” left, and according to a February 1st statement by Phyllis Kinsler, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Central New Jersey, “on that same day, prior to learning that these visits had also occurred in other states, the local Planned Parenthood affiliate notified local law enforcement in New Jersey.”  Upon learning that at least 12 more of its clinics have had instances where men have come in with similar stories involving sex-trafficking, the organization contacted the FBI.

But that didn’t stop “Live Action” from posting the edited video on its website and claiming it was evidence that Planned Parenthood facilitates “sex trafficking”.  Kinsler said that despite the lack of any “cover-up” as alleged by the activists, “the behavior of our employee, as portrayed on the video, if accurate, violates PPCNJ policies, as well as our core values of protecting the welfare of minors and complying with the law, and appropriate action is being taken.”

As it turned out, the audio was doctored and the manager did nothing wrong. Trafficking fetishists aren’t doing anything to help real victims, but their omnipresent mythology is beginning to inspire various unscrupulous creeps to attempt to live out a sexual fantasy of being “pimps” with enslaved “hos”, either in earnest as in the Dallas case or as part of the same kind of bogeyman deception practiced by the “trafficking” fanatics themselves.  I’m sure they must be proud of themselves; on a small scale at least, they’re beginning to make their warped vision of the world a reality.

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Valentine’s Day

Posted in History, Holidays, Miscellaneous, tagged , , , , on February 14, 2011| 12 Comments »

To-morrow is Saint Valentine’s day,
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your Valentine.
Then up he rose, and donn’d his clothes,
And dupp’d the chamber-door;
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more. —  William Shakespeare, Hamlet (IV, v)

Most Christian holidays are based on older pagan ones, and Valentine’s Day is no exception; like Christmas, the modern celebration of love has much darker origins in a very ancient Greek festival which involved human sacrifice and cannibalism.  The original reason for the festival of Lykaia is unknown, but it was held in Arcadia sometime in the spring (possibly May Eve but this is by no means certain) from roughly the beginning of the third millennium BCE and involved adolescent boys; it may have been a manhood ritual but also seems to have involved some recognition of the bestial side of humanity.  When the worship of Zeus was introduced to the area, a myth arose (very similar to that of Tantalus)  that the native god Lycaon was overthrown by Zeus after serving one of his own sons to the god at a banquet.  As previously discussed in my Christmas essay, such myths demonstrate the abhorrence of the later Greeks for the human sacrifice practiced by their ancestors.  But in the case of the Lykaia, the ancient habit continued on in a sort of grisly game of Russian Roulette; every nine years one who had broken a taboo by entering a sacred cave was sacrificed and a small portion of his meat was mixed into the meat of a slaughtered goat, and whichever young man consumed this nasty surprise at the sacrificial feast was believed to turn into a werewolf.

In later times the festival became associated with the god Pan, and in this form (without the human sacrifice) it was carried into Italy.  There it merged with the pre-Roman festival Februa (from which is derived the word “February”), a ritual cleansing very much like the Celtic and Germanic Imbolc; the combined festival was called Lupercalia (“Wolf Festival”) and ran from February 13th-15th.  It honored both Lupercus (one of the Roman names of Pan) and Lupa, the she-wolf who had suckled Romulus and Remus; they were invoked to protect the new kids and lambs from wolves in the months to come.  The celebrants were, as in the Lykaia, young men, and over time the blessing conferred by the ritual grew beyond the flocks and was believed to affect human women as well.  As Plutarch wrote in his Life of Caesar:

Lupercalia, of which many write that it was anciently celebrated by shepherds, and has also some connection with the Arcadian Lycaea.  At this time many of the noble youths and of the magistrates run up and down through the city naked, for sport and laughter striking those they meet with shaggy thongs.  And many women of rank also purposely get in their way, and like children at school present their hands to be struck, believing that the pregnant will thus be helped in delivery, and the barren to pregnancy.

The ceremonies were presided over by the Luperci, goatskin-wearing priests of Lupercus (also called Faunus), who sacrificed a dog and two billy goats and anointed younger priests with the blood.  After the sacrificial feast the Luperci would cut rough strips from the skins of the sacrificed goats and then young men of the equestrian and senatorial classes would run around the Palatine Hill swinging these makeshift lashes; girls and young women would line up along the parade route because it was believed that being struck by the whips conferred a blessing which would ensure fertility and ease the pains of childbirth.  This popular celebration was eventually abandoned by the upper classes around the time of Julius Caesar, but it remained popular with the lower classes into Christian times until its observance was banned by Pope Gelasius I in 496.

It isn’t too difficult to understand how a festival of fertility eventually became a holiday celebrating love, but what does it have to do with a Christian saint?  The answer, I’m afraid, is “nothing at all”.  Though there were several early martyrs by the name of Valentine, the only things known about the one whose feast day was February 14th are 1) that he was buried along the Via Flaminia north of Rome on that day in the year 270 or thereabouts; and 2) that Pope Gelausius I established his feast day the same year he abolished Lupercalia.  Legends tell us that St. Valentine married young couples in violation of an (otherwise unheard-of) imperial edict forbidding the marriages, and that his letter to his sweetheart from prison was signed “From Your Valentine”.  But these legends date only to the late 14th century and do not appear in any hagiographies before that.  Indeed, the concept of St. Valentine’s Day as a time for romantic love seems to have largely been the idea of Geoffrey Chaucer, who in his Parlement of Foules (1382) wrote: “For this was on seynt Volantynys day/Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make.”  Why Chaucer chose to portray birds as mating in mid-February is immaterial; the important thing is that it (pardon the pun) dovetailed neatly with the growing popularity of the idea of courtly love, and Chaucer, his friends and his readers quickly established the day as an occasion for displays of romance.  The French established a “high court of love” on St. Valentine’s Day of 1400, and the earliest surviving handwritten valentine dates to 1415.

By the end of the 18th century English printers were producing valentine cards, and by the 1840s mass-produced valentines were the rule rather than the exception; these valentines were among the first popular printed greeting cards and Valentine’s Day was the first commercialized holiday (by which I mean a secular holiday heavily promoted by merchants as an excuse for gift-giving).  But it wasn’t until the 1950s that American merchants began to sell the holiday as an occasion for giving flowers, chocolates and the like, and beginning in the 1980s jewelers upped the ante by presenting the day as one on which to give diamonds.  From werewolves to teddy bears and from cannibalism to chocolates; what changes a holiday can undergo in 5000 years!

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February Updates (Part Two)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 13, 2011| 9 Comments »

…and now you know the rest of the story. –  Paul Harvey

More short news stories hearkening back to the dim and distant past, namely late January and early February.

Welcome To Our World (January 20th)

Here’s another example of people using the same arguments we use, except for a different issue.   I wonder how many soi-disant “liberals” out there (especially in Sweden) would accept the idea that a severely retarded man has the right to make choices about his own sexuality, while simultaneously rejecting the concept that an intellectually-normal adult woman has that same right.  This is paraphrased from an article which appeared in the Telegraph on February 4th:

An English judge has ordered a severely retarded 41-year-old man to be placed under “close supervision” by the authorities who provide his housing in order “to prevent any further sexual activity on his part” after the local council complained that his “vigorous sex drive” was inappropriate for someone with an IQ of 48.  They claimed he did not understand what he was doing, and an official psychiatrist even tried to prevent his being given sex education on the grounds that it would leave him “confused”.  The 41 year-old had been in a relationship with a man whom he lived with and told officials “it would make me feel happy” for it to continue.

The judge said the case was “legally, intellectually and morally” complex as sex is “one of the most basic human functions” and the court must “tread especially carefully” when the state tries to curtail it, but he agreed that the man, known only as Alan, should not be allowed to have sex with anyone on the grounds that he did not have the mental capacity to understand the health risks associated with his actions.  The judge concluded:  “I therefore make a declaration that at the present time Alan does not have the capacity to consent to and engage in sexual relations…in such circumstances it is agreed that the present régime for Alan’s supervision and for the prevention of future sexual activity is in his best interests.”

Under the Mental Capacity Act 2005, judges have the power to make life or death decisions for people deemed to lack the intelligence to make them for themselves – such as ordering that they undergo surgery, have forced abortions, have life-support switched off or be forced to use contraception.  The judge in Alan’s case said sexual consent requires an understanding and awareness of the “mechanics of the act”, “that there are health risks involved” and that sex between a man and a woman may lead to pregnancy.  He said that the psychiatrist thought Alan “believed that babies were delivered by a stork or found under a bush”, and that “sex could give you spots or measles”.  On that basis the judge ruled that Alan did not have the capacity to consent to sex, but also ordered that the council should provide him with sex education “in the hope that he thereby gains that capacity”.

If ignorance about sex is grounds for a court order forbidding it, neofeminists and religious fundamentalists need to start worrying.  And if ignorance about a specific aspect of sex (e.g., prostitution) provides similar grounds, trafficking fanatics and Swedish Model proponents had better get used to celibacy.

Walking Stereotype Sues Whore (January 22nd)

We all knew this would turn out this way, but it’s still good to see.  Thanks to Brandy Devereaux and regular reader Joyce for calling my attention to this UPI press release on the 8th:

A federal judge in New York tossed a lawsuit alleging a stripper who performed sex acts in a tourist’s Las Vegas hotel room did not fulfill her obligations…”Plaintiff’s claims do not arise under a federal statute or the U.S. Constitution,” [Judge Loretta] Preska wrote in the ruling…Preska said Blackman should have filed the suit in Nevada, “where a substantial part of the events or omissions giving rise to the claim occurred.”  The judge said she decided not to transfer the suit because it “would not be in the interest of justice.”

January Updates (January 25th)

Is an update to an update a meta-update?  The first “January Update” story was about a woman who died during her sixth boob job; well, this one wanted to enlarge her bum but the result was the same (from Yahoo News, February 9th):

A woman who had a cosmetic injection in her buttocks at a hotel near the Philadelphia airport died early Tuesday…Detectives said the woman and three companions traveled from London and were staying at the Hampton Inn…Two of them had traveled to the city in November to have their buttocks enlarged and, on Monday, one received another injection while the other had a hip augmentation…the 20-year-old woman who had the buttocks injection later complained of chest pains and trouble breathing.  Paramedics were called, and she was taken to Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital where she died…

Police were seeking two people involved in the cosmetic procedures…[which] they believe… were arranged over the Internet.  “We’re not quite sure right now if that person performing that procedure is licensed or unlicensed,” said Lt. John Walker.

I‘m not quite sure why a woman would want her derrière enlarged, but I suppose there are some who might need it.  In any case…ladies, please, real plastic surgeons do NOT make house calls to hotel rooms!  You get what you pay for, and botched cosmetic procedures are just as dangerous as any other botched medical procedure.

Don’t Buy It (February 1st)

Among the people duped by all the hype about the Super Bowl being a bonanza for “sex trafficking” was a wannabe pimp from Austin, as reported in this paraphrased story from the Dallas News of February 7th:

Anthony Ladell Winn, a 35-year-old felon from Austin, forced a 14-year-old girl and her 20-year-old sister to come to work as prostitutes in Dallas because he thought “there was big money to be made during the Super Bowl”, but Dallas police caught him before the sisters arranged any dates.  Winn was arrested early Sunday on felony charges of attempting to compel prostitution by force and trafficking of persons.

Area authorities had been bracing for a possible influx of prostitutes and human trafficking victims in the run-up to Super Bowl XLV.  Authorities say it can be extremely difficult to accurately measure whether such crimes spike and why, but as critics predicted there was no increase in reported prostitution cases, perhaps due in part to the icy and cold conditions, police said.  Dallas police reported 23 adult prostitution arrests from Wednesday through Sunday, though they noted they do not know how many were related to the festivities or people surrounding the Super Bowl.  “We didn’t see that as being a drastic increase in our normal enforcement numbers,” said Assistant Chief Tom Lawrence.  Sergeant Byron Fassett of the Child Exploitation Squad said the Winn case was the only arrest of its kind thought to be related to the Super Bowl.  “I don’t know that I saw on the street level any more activity than any other normal night that we would have run an operation,” said Fassett.  He claimed that “there’s no real statistical data to prove it one way or the other.”

I’ll discuss the broader implications of this in Tuesday’s column, but note the most important part of this article:  Despite attempts to blame the epic failure of their ridiculously overblown estimates on the weather or to make bullshit statements like that last line, the Dallas police had to admit that Aunt Maggie and the other voices of reason were right all along:  THE SUPER BOWL IS NOT A MECCA FOR TRAVELLING PROSTITUTES, and there was no “explosion” of “trafficked children”.  Of course, virtually nobody in the media will remind the public of this next time it happens, and the Winn case will be used as “proof” that there were tens of thousands of others out there who didn’t get caught.

Maggie in the Media (February 3rd)

Kelly Michaels was so pleased with her January 31st show that she’s asked me to join her on Nymphtalk Live for about a half-hour every Monday night, and I’ve agreed.  Here’s the link to last Monday’s show, and tune in tomorrow night for the next one!

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February Updates (Part One)

Posted in Current Events, News, Perception, Philosophy, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 12, 2011| 19 Comments »

No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change. –  William Shakespeare, Sonnet 123

As so often happens, a number of stories have come up recently which remind me of past columns; this time there were so many that I’ve divided them up into two parts.

Cops and Condoms (August 6th)

I’ve written on a number of occasions about the self-destructive male aversion to condoms and the absolute necessity for vigilance on whores’ part to prevent clients from pulling some sneaky trick to get inside a girl “bareback”.  I’ve also pointed out that even most streetwalkers are scrupulous about condom use.  This story published on the Fox News website on February 2nd (thanks to regular reader Joyce for the link!) illustrates the reason why clients and hookers both should insist on proper protection:

A 45-year-old Denver woman was arrested Tuesday [February 1st] and accused of knowingly spreading HIV while allegedly working as a prostitute…prosecutors say Frances Woodke — who has known for years that she is HIV positive — offered sex to an undercover police officer for $23.  Woodke is being charged with two misdemeanors — prostitution and solicitation for prostitution — and a felony count of prostitution with knowledge of AIDS…the woman has pleaded guilty twice before to attempted prostitution with knowledge of AIDS — spending time in prison for the charges in 2000 and again in 2008, according to the Denver district attorney’s office.  “It’s going to be difficult for us on the law enforcement side to identify people she put at risk — if there are people she put at risk,” said Lynn Kimbrough, a spokeswoman for the Denver district attorney’s office.

What the DA’s spokeswoman is alluding to in the last sentence is that we don’t know that Woodke ever offered any of her clients unprotected sex; she may not have.  But I think it should be obvious that any whore desperate enough to offer her services for pocket change would probably find the lure of extra money for “bareback” irresistible if any man were insane enough to make such an offer.  And though the chance of female to male HIV transmission via intercourse isn’t all that high, the chance does exist and such a careless man, if infected, would then be free to carry HIV to any other girl he hired.  Girls, never go “bareback” with a man to whom you aren’t deeply committed no matter how generous the offer (if you’re a professional) or how much you “love” him (if you’re an amateur).  And guys, please think with the big head when seeing hookers and insist on protection yourself – and if your date offers unprotected intercourse, RUN!

Election Day (November 2nd)

If Kristin Davis had managed a miracle she be Governor of New York right now, but alas, she didn’t get enough votes even to keep her Anti-Prohibition Party alive.  And though she can restart the party later by petition, this article which appeared in the New York Daily News last Tuesday (February 8th) tells us what she’s doing in the meantime…and it sounds fishy:

Kristin Davis…plans to use her notoriety to help victims of sex trafficking.  She’s starting a nonprofit called Hope House to provide shelter and social services for women in need.  Before serving a four-month prison term for prostitution, Davis claims to have run the highest-grossing escort service in U.S. history, supplying call girls to the likes of Eliot Spitzer.  She ran for governor last year on a platform of legalizing prostitution, pot and gambling.

Because of her prominence, she says that “hundreds” of women who have suffered in the sex industry have come to her to tell their stories and seek help.  To her dismay, she found there were few places to direct them…Hope House will offer women food, shelter, security and medical care, ranging from HIV testing to drug treatment and psychiatric counseling, Davis says.  Her plan is to open the full-scale shelter by 2013.  She says a 24-hour emergency help line, similar to suicide hotlines, should be up within the next few months.  Ultimately, Davis hopes to build the organization into something larger and more ambitious…

…Will people be surprised to see an advocate for legal prostitution crusading against its evils?  They shouldn’t be, according to Davis.  She says her critics “don’t understand the disparity between a woman who chooses to work and women who have been forced.”  Her old agency represented what she calls the “‘Pretty Woman’-ish,” professionalized side of the sex trade — a slice she says accounts for “5% of the world of prostitution…I never forced a girl to do anything,” she explains. “It’s a completely different business model.”

Kristin, Kristin, Kristin.  I understand you have a need to reinvent yourself, and your idea of a charity to help coerced girls appears to be a noble one.  But you know damned well that there aren’t enough trafficked girls to support anything “larger and more ambitious” than a shelter; maybe if you extend your help to subsistence level hookers, drug addicts and teenage runaways selling sex to survive you might have something.  Please, don’t feed the trafficking hysteria by requiring whores to claim they’ve been “trafficked” or coerced in order to earn your help; just needing help should be enough, even if that need was the result of a girl’s own poor choices.  And finally, don’t throw the rest of us under the bus with idiotic exaggerations; 5%?  You know damned well it’s about 60%, so let’s not launch yet another deception-fueled “rescue” organization when you could do something real and good.

Harm Reduction (January 13th)

In this column I talked about the principle of harm reduction, which holds that because humanity is not perfectible laws which attempt to eradicate vices are not only doomed to fail, but actually create worse evils.  Early Christian thinkers understood this and obviously Reverend Paul Turp does as well, as reported in this story published in The Independent on January 30th:

…Reverend Paul Turp – the inspiration for Father Adam Smallbone in the BBC comedy Rev…this weekend strongly criticised a London council for attempting to “impose a moral code” on residents and visitors by outlawing lap dancing, sex shops and adult cinemas in the area.  Hackney council voted last week for what it called a “nil” policy, banning any new strip venues from opening and holding out the likelihood that four existing clubs will lose their licences as they come up for renewal.  The policy was approved despite more than 66 per cent of people who took part in a public consultation on the plans saying “no” to the ban.

Reverend Turp…said he was “hugely disappointed” with the decision, adding that it will “push the business underground, resulting in more women working dangerously on the streets” and will add to the people who turn to his church for help.  The clergyman, who provides refuge for 17 homeless people, as well as caring for alcoholics, addicts and prostitutes, said: “The council have created a problem where there wasn’t one to begin with.  They deliberately disregarded the views of the people.”

The local authority’s clampdown on strip clubs derives from the 2010 Policing and Crime Act, which gives councils greater authority in the licensing of strip clubs…[and] removes sex establishments’ rights of appeal if licence renewal is refused.  Bill Parry-Davies, a solicitor who is representing two of the existing clubs, said the local authority had abused its powers and plans further legal moves to challenge the ban:  “Hackney’s policy seems ideologically driven, regardless of its consequences in the real world.  It’s regressive.  People fought to protect women by introducing licensing.  The courts will want to look very closely at a policy which seeks to deny a licensee’s right of appeal and the courts’ jurisdiction in such a manner.”

…Mr Turp warned that, unless overturned legally, the policy was likely to lead to danger for strip club workers and disruption for members of the public:  “A wretched mistake has been made.  Hackney 30 years ago was a very dodgy place.  I remember the struggle to get these places licensed.  Now they are well run and safe.”

Maybe we need to get the Reverend Turp to do a lecture tour in the States; perhaps some self-professed “conservative” politicians would be more inclined to listen to common sense if it came from a clergyman.

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Not An Addiction

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 11, 2011| 68 Comments »

Addiction (Psychiatry):  A preoccupation with and compulsive use of a substance despite recurrent adverse consequences; addiction often involves a loss of control and tolerance, and may be associated with a biological predisposition to addiction. –  The McGraw-Hill Concise Dictionary of Modern Medicine, 2002 edition

An addiction is a physical and psychological dependence on some psychoactive substance (such as alcohol, tobacco or an opiate) which affects brain chemistry; if there is no gross physiological change in the body’s function which renders normal function impossible without the substance, there is no addiction.  It’s normal for words to shift their meanings in common usage; sometimes they become more specific (“stench” once meant any odor, but now it specifically means a very bad odor) and sometimes less.  The word “addiction” has, in common usage, become confused with the related concepts of habituation (psychological reliance on a substance which is not physiologically addictive) and obsession (psychological fixation on a behavior).  And while that sort of confusion is OK for common words, it becomes a problem when the word in question has a specific scientific or academic meaning because legislators and special interest groups often use the popular meaning of such a word in a context where only the scientific meaning should be permitted, thus intentionally or unintentionally creating confusion in the minds of listeners.  For example, in the recent defeated attempt to decriminalize marijuana possession in California, opponents repeatedly called it an addictive substance when in fact it is not.  Though marijuana is certainly habituating (long-time users crave it and experience psychological symptoms when deprived), it is not addictive to a normal physiology and the pothead deprived of his weed will not experience any medical withdrawal symptoms worth noting.

The same is true of the plethora of behaviors people to which people now claim “addiction” such as computers, television, work, gambling or shopping; I guarantee you that if I locked up a compulsive gambler and denied him access to casinos, he would become upset, erratic or even highly depressed, but he would not die and blood tests would reveal only the neurochemical changes one would expect to result from his mood shifts.  An even stupider claim is that of “food addiction”; every last person on the face of the Earth is a “food addict”, because food deprivation will grossly affect our moods, behavior and physiological function and if we are deprived for long enough we eventually die.  One might as well claim to be an “oxygen addict”.  Craving something the body (food, water and oxygen) or mind (sex and companionship) actually needs is not and cannot be an “addiction”, though it can certainly become an obsession if one thinks about it to the exclusion of all else and indulges in erratic, inappropriate or even dangerous behavior to gain access to whatever it is he is obsessed with.

In the late ‘90s certain pop psychologists started throwing the term “sex addiction” around, and though it is totally impossible to be “addicted” to sex (as explained above) the term has nonetheless become very popular in the general public and even a few psychological professionals have adopted it (though only for use in popular articles).  What makes this improper term even more damaging than such asininity as “internet addiction” is that A) it is confused with the real and serious psychological disorder which the DSM-IV calls “hypersexuality” (and which was previously called “nymphomania” in women and “satyriasis” in men); and B) it has been co-opted by neofeminists to mean “sexual behavior which falls well within the normal range of male behavior but outside the normal range of female behavior.”  We’ve previously discussed the damage done to society by neofeminist pathologization of normal male behavior; the application of the very strong term “addiction” to behavior characteristic of two-thirds of men is more of the same and should be fought by every man and every woman who loves men.

Here’s a recent example of a professional unethically catering to this misconception of “addiction” in order to make a fast buck from Match.com; though the author states near the beginning of her article that DSM-IV doesn’t recognize the concept of “sex addiction” as valid, she undermines the statement by claiming it’s being considered for DSM-V (it isn’t, though a form of sexual obsession less serious than hypersexuality might be).  And since she then for the rest of the article proceeds to use the term to refer to any man who cheats, you can be sure most of her readers will forget she ever said otherwise long before reaching the last sentence.

The news has overflowed lately with salacious tales of cheating husbands…while each of these guys acted despicably toward the women they’d married, do they really fit the “sex addict” stereotype?  What, technically, is sex addiction?  Counselors say errors in judgment do not classify someone as sexually “addicted.”  The Society for the Advancement of Sexual Health reports that “sex addicts” comprise only 3-5% of overall the population.  The official handbook of psychiatric diagnoses, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), doesn’t include a diagnosis for this ailment, although it is being considered for inclusion in the 2012 edition.

With the professionals themselves disagreeing on who is and is not a sex addict, how can a single woman assess whether the guy she’s dating will be faithful?  Daniel Amen, M.D. reveals that if a man’s fourth finger is longer than his second finger, he is likely to stray…[and] brain scans can identify who will cheat.  While the finger test is easy…who would shell out the cash for a brain scan? …Researcher Arthur Aron speculates that a man’s level of commitment grows stronger depending on how much his romantic partner enhances his life.  While this discovery won’t change an addict’s history (and altering addictive behavior is difficult), if an addict is dedicated to building an expanded future together with his romantic partner, changing his cheating behaviors may be possible.  Morris Halperin, Ph.D., adds that a sex addict is someone whose compulsive behavior prevents him from functioning in his own life…So who is a genuine sex addict — and who is just a very bad partner who struggles to remain faithful?  And should the difference matter to a woman who is suffering with the fallout from a cheating mate?

I’m going to interrupt for a moment here to point out how much this article panders to unhealthy female preconceptions.  A “test” can uncover if a man is in the third who won’t cheat, if he “really loves you” he won’t stray, and any infidelity makes a man a “very bad partner” no matter how he behaves in other ways.

Sexual addiction is usually accompanied by other addictions.  For this reason, single women must be good detectives in regards to potential romantic partners…This CNN report by Elizabeth Cohen warns, “If you continue your sexual activities even under threat of being divorced, dead, fired, or arrested, you’re an addict.”

Yes, she’s advising women to spy, pry and do background checks, because the way to prevent a man from betraying your trust is obviously to betray his first.  And we all know how accurate and well-researched CNN’s stories are.

…Elle…chose to stay with her cheating husband.  When Elle discovered her husband romping with women and men…she demanded he tell her everything…he revealed that he was secretly working with a sex therapist because, like other sex addicts I interviewed, he hated his hidden life.  Elle is still working to eliminate the “mind movies” of her husband engaging in sex outside of their marriage.  Both of them continue to pursue therapy together, and he regularly attends 12-step programs…Elle said she saw her mother get sober after 25 years of drinking, so she knew addiction can be overcome…

Are 12-step programs helpful with obsessions as well as true addictions?  Well, Overeaters Anonymous and Fundamentalists Anonymous think so.  But do women like Elle deserve to know the truth about the real reasons for undesirable male behaviors instead of being told they are “addictions”?  Absolutely; it’s called “informed consent”.

Elle tells single women to beware of three red flags:

-“Frat boy” humor consisting of inappropriate comments
-Pawing at your body sexually, despite your objections
-Blatant objectification of women as only being useful for sex

My own suggestions for women who suspect their man may have a sex addiction include:

-Ask questions about your guy’s parents, their relationship dynamic, and explore any possible stories or memories he might have of early molestation.
-Check out the length of your guy’s fourth finger…Even if you’re skeptical about this finding, use the information as a guide nonetheless.

Yes, if your man makes dirty jokes or gropes you while you’re trying to wash the dishes, if his ring finger is longer than his index finger or if he denies he was ever molested or objects when you keep obsessing about it, he’s probably a “sex addict” despite the fact that at least one of those statements applies to probably 95% of heterosexual males.

When people make grandiose, inflated claims, the critical thinker asks “what’s in it for them?”  And in this case, the answer lies in the very last line: “If you seek out dates that have the potential for true, caring mates, you may save yourself from broken heart in the end.”  And how do you seek out such dates?  Why, on Match.com of course, whose links are conveniently located before, after and in the middle of the article.

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Coming and Going

Posted in Current Events, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 10, 2011| 21 Comments »

Unnecessary laws are not good laws, but traps for money. –  Thomas Hobbes

Yesterday I mentioned the rash of prostitution prosecutions in Surrey, England, which appear to be motivated by a desire to rob the victims of those prosecutions.  Kelly Michaels and I discussed this sort of strategy on her Nymphtalk Live show last week (among many other things) and I mentioned that it’s also the strategy apparently favored by Las Vegas:  Arrest, fine, release, repeat.  Q:  What do you call a useless man who extorts money from prostitutes?  A:  A cop.  But as we discussed, other jurisdictions do things in exactly the opposite way; I shudder to think how much the NOPD’s little escapade the night I was arrested, or the typical shenanigans of cops in Pennsylvania, or the vast operations organized by the FBI to pop streetwalkers, cost the taxpayers in their jurisdictions (which in the case of the FBI means the whole USA).  But those can’t compare to the massive waste perpetrated by the State of Texas, as detailed in this paraphrase of a January 27th news article recently commented on by Brandy Devereaux on January 29th and Laura Agustín on February 1st:

Every year, millions of tax dollars in Texas are spent on prostitutes. The money goes for housing hundreds of them in Texas prisons and Harris County jails.  Texas has tougher laws for prostitution than most states, which can mean prostitutes who are arrested more than twice can be charged as felons; that qualifies them for prison, where it costs about $50 a day each to care for them.  In Harris County (where Houston lies) there are about 130 prostitutes at any given time, costing the taxpayers about $2.3 million a year, and the state prison system currently confines over 300 female prostitutes at a total estimated cost of nearly $8 million a year.

This vastly understates the problem by only mentioning Texas’ most populous county; the state has 253 counties other than Harris, and if each jails whores at a similar per capita rate there are 673 women locked up in other Texas county jails at any given time for a staggering grand total of $22.6 million per year ($2.3 million for Harris + $12.3 million for other counties + $8 million for state prisons).

“Three or more prostitution convictions, we’ll send you to prison five or 10 years. No other state even thinks about that,” said State Sen. John Whitmire, a Houston Democrat who chairs the Senate Criminal Justice Committee.  Texas is one of only seven states [this is incorrect – it’s actually ten – Maggie] where prostitutes can even be sentenced to prison at all, the others being Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, [Indiana, Louisiana], Michigan, [South Carolina and Vermont].

I’m not sure what to make of this sloppy reporting; the article says seven states classify repeat prostitution convictions as a felony, then lists only six!  The actual number is ten and I’ve added the missing ones in brackets.

Probation officers and court employees said drugs are the common denominator when they work with prostitutes.  “The ladies are in prostitution to support their drug habit,” said Bernadine Gatling, with Harris County Community Supervision.  But there’s now a new way to prosecute prostitutes; it’s called the STAR court (Success Through Addiction Recovery).  The court was launched in 2003 to exclusively handle addicts, male and female, getting them into treatment — not jail – in the hope they wouldn’t come back.  Of the women who began showing up in front of the STAR court judges, one thing stood out: the majority of them were, or had been, prostitutes. But now, instead of being sent back to jail, they’re getting drug treatment — closely supervised by a judge, to whom they have to report weekly.

My, what a mass of fallacies!  Just because a statement is true does not mean its converse is as well; “all beagles are dogs” does not automatically imply “all dogs are beagles”, and “most arrested addicts in Houston are prostitutes” certainly doesn’t imply “most Houston prostitutes are addicts”.  I don’t expect reporters who can’t count to seven to understand a principle of formal logic, but considering that Texas isn’t exactly shy with escort stings the cops certainly know that most escorts aren’t druggies even if most arrested Houston streetwalkers are.  Perhaps, since most escorts can afford lawyers, the only hookers these “probation officers and court employees” ever deal with are destitute addicts and they judge all of us by that narrow slice of the whore spectrum.  But then again, maybe not:

The court staff who runs the program said it doesn’t work for everyone, but it sure beats just sending them to jail over and over and at a fraction of the cost.  Currently, the program can help only a fraction of the women prosecuted in Harris County for prostitution.

Why do you think that is?  Hmm, maybe because the only whores eligible for the program are drug-addicted subsistence-level ones, who are only a fraction of all women prosecuted for prostitution.  I’m not knocking the program; I’m in favor of anything which lessens the number of working girls locked up in jails.  What offends me is the hypocrisy of trumpeting this small, specialized program as some sort of solution instead of simply changing the prostitution laws in Texas so they can no longer be used to persecute women for trying to earn a living, and then presenting the citizens of Texas with the bill for the cops’ and prosecutors’ sadistic sex games.  Places like Texas and Pennsylvania waste tremendous amounts of money to victimize us, and places like Nevada and Surrey conspire to rob us, but in both cases we are the ones on the receiving end of the attack; no matter which direction the cash flows, whores are the ones who suffer.

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To Protect and Serve

Posted in Current Events, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 9, 2011| 26 Comments »

However low a man sinks he never reaches the level of the police. –  Quentin Crisp

The title of today’s column is the motto of many police departments across the United States, and is often painted on the doors of their cars.  Unfortunately, what this usually translated into in real life is “To harass and control”, or as written on the police cars in South Park, “To patronize and annoy.”  And where whores are concerned, it’s often “to victimize and rape.”  We’ve discussed this subject at length before on a number of occasions, so I won’t repeat myself here; it’s just by way of introduction to two news stories involving police abuse of hookers.  The first was published last Thursday, February 3rd in the Orlando Sentinel, and is paraphrased here both to update it with Friday’s events and to correct the bizarre bias of the author, who seems to believe that the cop’s shooting of a hooker was a less important story detail than his serious traffic accident in 1995.

Sheri Carter, a 29-year-old escort from Boynton Beach, Florida, died about 8:30 AM Friday (February 4th) after being shot on Monday by Jimmy Dac Ho, a 47-year-old police officer.  Ho was arrested on Tuesday and tried to kill himself on Thursday; jail deputies found him hanging in his cell about 5 a.m. and he was taken to Wellington Regional Medical Center in serious condition, where he is being held under guard.

Ho was being held without bail on attempted murder and false imprisonment charges in the January 31st shooting, and with Carter’s death the charge has now been increased to murder.  Carter’s boyfriend told police he got a text message from her about 4:21 p.m. Monday, saying that a client was acting “weird and scary”; either he or someone else [the story is unclear] called the police, who found Carter shot in her home and took her to Delray Medical Center in critical condition.  She had been shot twice, in the stomach and in the neck, and was paralyzed below the waist until her death.  Phone records showed that Ho had contacted Carter prior to her boyfriend’s text message, so detectives went to his home and told him Carter had survived.  According to the arrest report Ho appeared nervous, changing his story a few times and claiming to have shot Carter in “self defense”.  He said he planned to pay her for sex, but they didn’t have sex; Carter then wanted money and supposedly tried to rob him, and he claimed to have shot her in the struggle.

His employer, Florida Atlantic University, placed Ho on paid administrative leave Tuesday morning, and that afternoon he quit for “personal reasons.”  Ho was previously a deputy with the Broward Sheriff’s Office between 2002 and 2004, but was fired in September of 2004 for violating “moral character standards” after pleading no contest to a misdemeanor “disorderly conduct” charge resulting from a domestic battery charge filed by his then-wife, Wendy Jane Ho.  According to his Sheriff’s Office Internal Affairs file, Mrs. Ho also said that Ho had threatened suicide during the same general time period.  Ho worked for the university police since 2006 and had disciplinary actions in his file that included a two-day suspension in November 2009 for making a student lick clean an elevator security camera lens that he admitted to spitting on.

“Well,” you might say, “clearly this guy was a bad egg.  And the shooting was investigated, after all.”  And to a degree, you would be right, though I must point out that many cops consider former colleagues who disgraced the force to be fair game.  But the second story involves not just one cop but the entire police department of Surrey, England; this is excerpted and slightly paraphrased from an article which appeared last Friday (February 4th) in Harlot’s Parlour:

An abuse of process suit against Surrey Police was filed today at 2pm in Guildford Crown Court on behalf of Hanna Morris; the case aims to stop the prosecution of Ms Morris who reported a violent attack and now faces charges for brothel-keeping and money laundering.

On 16 September 2009, Ms Morris dialed 999 when two identifiable men, one who appeared to have a sawn-off shotgun up his sleeve, barged into a flat used by her escort agency, threw petrol around and threatened to torch the place.  Anxious to protect the women who work for the agency, Ms Morris innocently helped the police investigation.  Since then, the investigation against the dangerous men has been dropped, but Ms Morris is being prosecuted.  Ms Morris gave the Surrey Police information on the understanding that it was needed to pursue the attackers; she was never at any point cautioned that what she was telling the police would be used as evidence against her, and without it they would have no evidence whatsoever.  If the judge rules that there has been no abuse of process, Ms Morris will instead ask the court to exclude evidence obtained from her at any proceedings which result from the incident.

Ms Morris’ solicitor Nigel Richardson wrote to Surrey Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to ask for the prosecution to be dropped as it is “completely contrary to the stated aims of trying to improve the safety of sex workers” and that “it is hard to see how a prosecution in this case can do anything but . . . make would-be attackers more confident in their actions and increase the dangers for working women. . . the prosecution of this offence is likely to directly discourage the reporting of crimes against potentially vulnerable women and thus increase risks to their safety.”

It is possible that profiteering by Surrey Police and CPS is behind this and other recent prosecutions; under the “Proceeds of Crime” law the police keep 50% of assets confiscated during raids and 25% from subsequent prosecutions, with the CPS keeping another 25% and the Inland Revenue the rest.  Ms Morris’s home and life savings have been frozen pending confiscation if she is found guilty.

Most Americans know that the federal government has given itself the power to steal the property of those accused of drug offenses, but the parent nation has exceeded its offspring in the tyranny department twofold:  Once, by extending license for larceny on the excuse of any “crime” (rather than limiting it to drug “crimes”); and Twice, by giving the power directly to the police so they can more easily case potential victims and thereby concentrate on the fattest.  After all, we couldn’t have the Surrey Police chasing hooligans who are very likely poor when they could instead rob a reasonably well-off madam, now could we?

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