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Archive for April, 2011

By the Numbers

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, tagged , , , , , , , , , on April 20, 2011| 44 Comments »

One murder makes a villain, millions a hero.  Numbers sanctify, my good fellow.  –  Charlie Chaplin

In my column of January 24th I used the figures from an exhaustive study of prostitution conducted by the government of New Zealand to estimate the number of prostitutes in the United States:

The only places in which any hard facts about prostitution can be uncovered are those in which our profession is entirely decriminalized, and there aren’t many of those; luckily, New Zealand took the trouble to study prostitution in depth in order to answer fanatics who predicted disaster when decriminalization was implemented there in 2003.  In a survey done in 2005, researchers found that there were a total of 5932 prostitutes of all levels in New Zealand…given that this is the ONLY methodologically sound study available for any portion of the English-speaking world, it’s the best estimate we have for the United States or ever will have until and unless prostitution is fully decriminalized here and whores can therefore feel safe in answering such surveys.  According to the 2006 census the population of New Zealand was 4,143,279, of whom approximately 2,082,049 were female; active, declared prostitutes (excluding part-timers, party girls, strippers, gold-diggers etc) were 5932 of those women or 0.285%.  Since this jibes very closely with the standard 1% estimate of all women who prostitute themselves to one degree or another it seems very reasonable and we can therefore apply it to the American population as the best estimate we’re likely to get in the lifetime of anyone reading this.  According to the most recent estimates (2009) there are about 155,600,000 women in the United States, which after applying the New Zealand estimate gives us a figure of 443,323 active, declared prostitutes in this country…

Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of a way to cross-check that figure by extrapolating from any other study.  But last Friday (April 15th) I read an article on A.K. Smith’s blog and encountered this sentence: “There were an estimated 70,000 prostitutes in the US in 2009, based on a long-term study that showed about 23 prostitutes per 100,000 population.”  Obviously that number seemed far too low, but I still got very excited and followed the link to the study, where I found this explanation of methodology:  “Potterat et al estimated the annual prevalence of full-time equivalent prostitutes in the United States to be 23 per 100,000 population based on a capture–recapture study of prostitutes found in Colorado Springs, CO, police and sexually transmitted diseases clinic records between 1970 and 1988.”  Bingo!  Like nearly all American studies, this one was heavily tilted toward streetwalkers by its reliance on police records and those of STD clinics.  Since streetwalkers are arrested at an enormously higher rate than escorts, and since prostitutes desperate enough to work without protection are also disproportionately found among streetwalkers, what Potterat and company were actually doing was to estimate of the number of streetwalkers in the United States rather than the total number of prostitutes.  Not all streetwalkers are arrested in a given year, nor do most of them contract an STD, but that is balanced by the small percentage of arrested or infected escorts so I think we can accept 70,000 as a reasonable rough estimate of the American streetwalker population.

Now, as I wrote in my very first daily post, “The National Task Force on Prostitution estimates that, of the entire female prostitute community in America, only five to twenty percent are street walkers (that’s an average estimate of 12.5%, so let’s be generous and say 15%).”  The figures provided by several other studies, including the New Zealand report linked above, are similar, so I’ve always used 15% as my standard estimate.  Therefore, if my estimate of 443,323 American prostitutes is correct and 15% of that number are streetwalkers, that gives us 66,498 streetwalkers, which is awfully close to Potterat’s 70,000.  Indeed, considering that the figure must contain at least some escorts and massage girls, it looks like my estimate is almost dead on the money.

These results are extremely exciting to me because they support the premise that we can reasonably use the New Zealand figures to make estimates about prostitution in the United States, and that means my estimate of 15,694 underage prostitutes, drawn from the same data, is also valid.  Interestingly, this tends to show the Estes and Weiner’s original figures aren’t as catastrophically high as their misuse would make it seem; if we use their low-end figure of 100,000 young people “at risk” of sexual exploitation, remember that they define all female prostitution as involuntary and consider that so-called “trafficking” is the least common of their categories, that puts my estimate as 15.694% of their “at risk youth”, which seems very reasonable.

Postscript:  A.K. Smith’s article linked above goes in a very different direction from mine; she compares rates of prostitution arrests to rates of rapist arrests, with disturbing results that are well worth your consideration.  Also, the study from which the “70,000 prostitutes” figure was drawn is one I’ve been trying to locate for a long time; it’s the study which disproves the nonsensical assertion  that either estimates of male infidelity are too high or those of female infidelity too low by demonstrating that most male extramarital activity is conducted with whores rather than other men’s wives.

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That Is So Hot!

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, Philosophy, tagged , , , , on April 19, 2011| 204 Comments »

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.  –  Reinhold Niebuhr

One day a few years ago I was washing clothes, and when the machine shut off I discovered to my chagrin that it had failed to spin after the final rinse; the machine was thus still full of water.  I turned the dial back to “spin” and even tried spinning it in other cycles, to no avail; something was clearly wrong with the mechanism.  So I called Grace, who is very handy with such things, and she told me to empty the machine so she could tilt it as needed in the repair process.  I laboriously wrung out all the clothes and put them in the dryer, but the only clean hose my husband could find to use as a siphon was just a little smaller than a standard garden hose.  I dropped the one end into the rinsewater and he said, “That hose is too big; you’re not going to be able to create enough suction to get it started.”

“O ye of little faith,” I replied, and set to work sucking on the hose until I could draw no more; I then quickly kinked it to prevent air pressure from forcing the water back down, caught my breath for a minute, and repeated the suction.  After about three or four iterations of this process I got a big mouthful of water and immediately dropped the upper end into a bucket, then succumbed to a fit of heavy coughing due to aspirated water.  My husband patted me on the back to assist in getting the nasty water out of my lungs, and as soon as I was done choking and wheezing and he knew I was all right, he looked into my teary, red eyes and said, “That was so hot!”

I guess some women would’ve been upset or angry and accused him of not caring about my distress, but I laughed because it was so typically masculine.  He didn’t speak until he knew that I was all right, and I appreciated the sincerity of the compliment; a man only finds something like that sexy if the woman doing it is attractive.  If Grace had been the one sucking on that oversized hose he might’ve been impressed but not stimulated because he doesn’t find her attractive, but because it was me he couldn’t help noticing the sexual overtones of my performance.

What reminded me of this story was a video which made the rounds on the internet last week, or more specifically the reactions to it.  Many male commenters on various sites declared the girl (named Mel) and/or video “kinda hot” or even “really hot”, while (predictably) a number of feminist commenters pissed and moaned a la “why does everything about women have to have a sexual connotation?” etc.  But as I said in the paragraph above, this isn’t exactly true; if Mel had been fat, middle-aged and ill-favored people might’ve been enchanted with her talent (as they were with Susan Boyle or Ted Williams) but wouldn’t have said anything about “hot”.  But that isn’t the case; she has a pretty face, beautiful eyes, healthy hair and a cute smile and comes across in the video as sweet and fun-loving.  She’s therefore captured male attention before she even opens her mouth, and everything else follows like rail cars behind a locomotive.  Once a man finds himself attracted by a woman, any other positive quality – intelligence, compassion, talent, style, education, etc – tends to be viewed as an enhancement to that attraction.

Now, I understand that women who are unattractive, hate men or have been brainwashed into thinking beauty equals “objectification” might resent this, but the depth of their fanaticism both fascinates and repels me.  How can anyone be so deeply in denial about Nature that she fails to understand that this is the way it has to be?  The things men are programmed to find attractive in women (youth, symmetrical features, clear eyes and skin, shiny hair, a normal weight ratio, etc) are all evidence of health and good genes, and though we humans have added layers of meaning to sexuality its most basic purpose as far as our hindbrains are concerned is reproduction, and there is no getting around that.  If men were not interested in sex as much as they are our species would have died out long ago, and any wrongheaded attempt to reprogram the male brain to be able to turn the sex drive on and off at will, or to be sexually attracted by some artificial non-reproductive criterion feminists consider palatable, is doomed to fail just as surely as attempts to reprogram people to crave foods of low caloric value (leaves, etc) over those of high caloric value (fats and sweets).  And a good thing, too, because anyone who ate only lettuce and celery would die of malnutrition as soon as he exhausted his fat reserves, and if men were attracted to asymmetry, obesity and old age our species would die off in a few dozen generations due to attrition and accumulated genetic problems.

Bitching about the criteria by which men are attracted to women (or women to men, for that matter) is like complaining about the sky being blue or water being wet; it’s the sort of asinine waste of time which could only be found among privileged, pampered individuals in an overcivilized society who have nothing more important to concern themselves with.  There are many, many things in the world which can be changed and many others which cannot, and those who learn to tell the difference are a lot better-adjusted and fundamentally happier.

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Creeping Rot

Posted in Current Events, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on April 18, 2011| 130 Comments »

Any doctrine that weakens personal responsibility for judgment and for action helps create the attitudes that welcome and support the totalitarian state.  –  John Dewey

Maybe I should change my name to “Cassandra”.  Back at the height of neofeminist power in the early ‘90s, I predicted that within a decade or so we would start seeing a backlash against women’s rights, and furthermore that many women would be duped into supporting it just as people are always duped into supporting infringement of their freedoms in the name of “safety” or “equality”.  But because my mind isn’t twisted enough to conceive of representing a reduction in legal responsibility as a step toward equality, I could never have anticipated the pathological irrationality known as the Swedish Model.

For new readers who may be unfamiliar with it, under Swedish law prostitution is legal but hiring a prostitute illegal; it has been rightfully pointed out that this is exactly the same as legalizing the sale of cocaine or heroin but criminalizing their purchase.  But it’s far more sinister than that; though neofeminists in many countries laud the model as a giant leap forward for women’s rights, any sane mind could see that it was anything but that because it classifies prostitutes as tantamount to legal minors.  The closest legal equivalent to a prostitute in a Swedish Model jurisdiction is a girl below the age of consent; she can give consent to sex and even actively seduce a man, but is not legally liable for her actions because she is considered incompetent to consent to the act.  The man who has sex with her, on the other hand, is considered fully competent and is therefore legally liable.  In other words, the adult man is defined as the moral and legal superior of the underage girl, therefore his actions constitute a crime but hers do not.  Similarly, under Swedish law a woman is defined as a legal incompetent who is not allowed to consent to paid sex, but because she is incompetent cannot be prosecuted for it either.  Men are specifically defined as the moral and legal superiors of women, because they are held responsible for the transaction no matter who initiated it.

Neofeminists are so blinded by their hatred of men and bound by their own “victim” rhetoric that they are unable to recognize that these laws rob adult women of agency and define us as permanent adolescents; they establish a very dangerous precedent, that it is legally acceptable to abrogate women’s right to self-determination under the excuse of “protecting” us from our own choices.  Once such a precedent is firmly established it becomes a small matter to bar women from doing anything else the government doesn’t want us to do, which is of course exactly why male politicians enthusiastically embrace this mass psychosis.  What the fanatical neofeminists convince themselves and their minions is a boon for women is nothing but the bait intended to lure us into the same cage to which our sisters in Muslim countries are confined: control of our movements, livelihood and sexuality “for our own good”.  The Swedish Model is nothing other than one of the first steps toward a secular Western version of purdah.

At present, this creeping rot has only infected Sweden, Norway and Iceland (which has contracted a particularly virulent form of the disease), but it is rapidly spreading as crafty male politicians recognize it as an easy way to roll back women’s rights and have yet another weapon to use against male citizens they wish to harass or ruin, while simultaneously convincing gullible, fanatical neofeminists (not to mention stupid or naïve female amateurs) that they support “equality for women”.  These wolves in sheep’s clothing have promoted Swedish-style legislation in Ireland and the U.K. and a number of jurisdictions in the U.S. appear to be moving toward it; now the plague appears to be spreading to France, as reported in this story from the April 13th Guardian:

…A cross-party commission of French MPs have recommended criminalising all clients of sex workers, meaning anyone who buys sex from any kind of prostitute would face prison and a fine…The Socialist Danielle Bousquet and Guy Geoffroy of…[the] right-wing UMP said clients must understand that any visit to a prostitute encouraged slavery and trafficking – which 80% of the estimated 20,000 sex-workers in France were victims of.  Roselyne Bachelot, the social affairs minister, favours criminalising clients.  She told the commission inquiry:  “There is no such thing as freely chosen and consenting prostitution.  The sale of sexual acts means women’s bodies are made available for men, independently of the wishes of those women.”  Proposals for a law could be drawn up this month but it would not be debated in parliament before 2012.

In France prostitution is not illegal, but activities around it are.  Brothels…were outlawed in 1946.  Pimping is illegal, as is paying for sex from a minor.  In 2003 a controversial law against soliciting…[made] it illegal to stand in a public place known for prostitution dressed in revealing clothes.  Sex-workers’ groups in France have long campaigned for legal status and rights.

The French actor, Philippe Caubère…is open about regularly paying sex-workers €200 for sex.  He said the government was playing politics in the runup to next year’s presidential election.  “First it was immigrants, now it’s prostitutes.  This is plain populism and shows a disdain for individual liberties,” he said.  He told Le Parisien the government was not doing enough under existing laws to help exploited and trafficked women.  “As for the other women, leave them alone.  They take care of men who mostly live in sexual misery and terrible solitude.  They are remarkable women.”…The French justice minister, Michel Mercier, supports criminalising clients, but the interior minister, Claude Guéant, said it would be difficult to make buying sex a crime when prostitution itself was not illegal.

I’m sure you’ll recognize the usual prohibitionist tactics such as the picking of ridiculously inflated figures out of the air; this is the second time I’ve heard that ludicrous 80% figure lately, but I’m sure it won’t be the last.  Note the statement made by Bachelot?  This is precisely what I’m talking about; she flatly denies that women are capable of consenting to prostitution, just as we define young teenagers as unable to consent to sex.  Since it’s obvious to anyone with a two-digit IQ that women can and do consent to transactional sex all the time, Bachelot and her collectivist cronies are clearly arguing that women are incompetent to make our own sexual decisions.

It may be that the media are exaggerating the danger and that more reasonable opinions will eventually prevail, but the danger is still very real; in a recent email Laura Agustín told me that the European parliament “recommended” the Swedish Model for all European countries and that Israel was also considering it.  Even Denmark, long among the most progressive of European countries on sexual matters, is facing pressure from trafficking fanatics to infantilize women in the name of “protecting” them from “trafficking”.  The linked story (thanks to EconJeff for providing it) is from CNN, which has a strong anti-sex work bias and so overstates both the effectiveness of the Swedish Model in eradicating prostitution and the popularity of the model among Danish legislators; Laura tells me that the sex worker advocates there are reasonably sure it can’t pass in Denmark now, but that “it’s the way the wind is blowing everywhere over here.”  I’m sad to say it’s the way things are blowing over here as well; unless something is done, the young women of today can look forward to increasing restrictions on their sexual freedom and agency in the name of “protecting” them, and if they dare to protest they risk being classified as mentally ill.

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April Miscellanea (Part Two)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 17, 2011| 86 Comments »

I am fearful when I see people substituting fear for reason.  –  Klaatu, The Day the Earth Stood Still

There were too many of these little stories to fit into one column this month, so here without further ado are the rest of them.

Why Not Teach Them Critical Thinking Instead?

The Arizona leadership of the Girl Scouts apparently believes a vital part of teaching girls to become “strong, active, modern women” consists of training them to buy into moral panics without examining the claims upon which the hysteria is based.  This story (which was called to my attention by regular reader Joyce) appeared in Modern Times magazine on April 12th:

…Through a partnership formed through the Innocence Lost Phoenix Initiative, the Girl Scouts—Arizona Cactus-Pine Council, has partnered with the Department of Juvenile Corrections to address a population of prostituted children.  The program…is a mentor-ship effort intended to help “build girls of courage, confidence, and character who make the world a better place.”  The educational prevention program is applied to underage females who have been sexually exploited and are incarcerated…The 16-week course is designed to decrease risk of victimization of minors by addressing issues related to  domestic minor sex trafficking, including crime and violence, education, gangs, health, homelessness, sexual exploitation, and substance abuse…

According to “Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking, Child Sex Slavery in Arizona”, a report published in December 2010 by Shared Hope International…the issue is unfortunately alive and well in the Grand Canyon State.  According to the report, The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000…defined all minors involved in commercial sex acts as victims of trafficking…“The reality is that many domestic minor sex trafficking victims are detained in the criminal justice system under charges of prostitution instead of receiving the services they need and to which they are statutorily entitled,” the report reads…

While the stated aim of the program (assisting juvenile prostitutes trapped in the Arizona prison system) is a laudable one, I’m afraid no good can come of any partnership with the FBI’s “Innocence Lost” scam or “rescue” organizations like Shared Hope.  Though the principle of locking up “victims” is rightfully challenged, nobody involved seems willing to question the illogic behind defining all teen hookers as “trafficking victims” even if they were in fact acting voluntarily.  Teaching girls credulity and unquestioning acceptance of authority is not any kind of way to make them “strong”.

Porn is Violence Against Women!

I wonder how neofeminist anti-porn crusaders like Gail Dines would spin this April 13th story from CBS News to define it as “violence against women”?  I tried to think like one of them in order to figure it out, but my brain just couldn’t function that illogically.

…an unknown number of homeless people in St. Petersburg, Florida…say they were recruited for videotaped beatings by attractive women for the website Shefights.net.  Homeless advocate G.W. Rolle told CBS…he discovered what was going on after repeatedly seeing homeless men…with injuries.  “Broken ribs, fractured skulls…I think that’s wrong and I think someone’s going to die if they don’t stop this,” says Rolle, who took photographs of some of the injuries.  Two homeless men…are now suing [the website]…seeking damages for emotional distress and money for medical bills.  Lawyers for the two homeless men said the website sells videos starting at $2.99 for a two-minute “sparring session” clip and increasing in price to $33.99 for a 33 minute clip of two women beating a man.  The lawsuit, which was filed April 1 in a Florida court, contends the beatings violate a state hate crimes law that specifically protects the homeless and that the producers are exploiting the poverty of transients for whom any cash is hard to come by.  “What type of society would allow this to happen?” said Neil Chonin, the lawyer for the homeless men.  “This company preyed on people who are desperate.”  Chonin and area homeless advocates said there are many more men who were assaulted in exchange for cash and that some were injured so badly that they were hospitalized…

What Would Orrin Hatch Do?

Since I am former librarian, you’ll have to pardon my smug pleasure at seeing librarians using common sense to solve a problem congressmen would no doubt attack with a sledgehammer.  This story is paraphrased from one which appeared in the Los Angeles Times on April 13th:

On December 28th, 2010 at the Chinatown Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library, a number of parents complained because a patron was using a library computer to watch internet porn.  The incident was covered by several local newspapers, and Derek Ma of the National Chinese Welfare Council organized a meeting with library officials shortly afterward.  Librarians explained that the library has a policy of not filtering Internet access, and Ma and other Council members accepted it because of their experience with internet censorship in China.  All of the computers in the L.A. Public Library system are already outfitted with screens that make it hard for bystanders to see the content, so Ma recommended that the computers be reoriented to further reduce visibility to passersby.  He is happy with the result, and the library’s branch manager said she has not heard any complaints about pornography since her aides reoriented the computers.

A 2003 Supreme Court decision said public libraries that receive federal money have the authority to install filters that block pornography and other material that may be “harmful to children” until a patron asks for it to be unblocked.  New Jersey resident Dan Kleinman, a non-librarian who runs the website SafeLibraries.org, said in a letter to city officials that such filters are “necessary” to keep library visitors “safe” and that privacy screens aren’t enough.  He argued that libraries already have book selection policies and should have similar guidelines that determine what people can view online.  But at a Los Angeles City Council committee meeting Tuesday (April 12th), city librarian Martin Gomez said making computer use as private as possible is the best solution; he said that licensing fees for internet filters are costly and the software is imperfect.  For example, because the filters block websites with certain keywords and phrases deemed by authorities to be “obscene”, they could keep patrons from accessing websites about breast cancer.

I’m glad common sense won out over the demands of amateur busybodies from the other side of the continent with no legitimate concern in the matter.  Kleinman’s comparison of the internet to book selection is spurious; books cost money and so it is necessary to carefully pick and choose which purchases constitute the best use of limited funds.  But once the access fees are paid the internet is unlimited, so there is no legitimate reason for libraries to stop patrons from viewing any content they wish.  The mission of libraries is to make information and entertainment available, and requiring them to censor access is a serious conflict of interest.

What’s the Legal Definition of Prostitution Again?

Amanda Brooks called attention to this website in a post on April 13th; I have nothing to add to her observations other than to remind you for the umpteenth time that the dividing line between activities legally defined as “prostitution” and those which are not isn’t nearly as distinct as people like to pretend.

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April Miscellanea (Part One)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 16, 2011| 43 Comments »

The trouble with lying and deceiving is that their efficiency depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and deceiver wishes to hide.  In this sense, truth, even if it does not prevail in public, possesses an ineradicable primacy over all falsehoods.  –  Hannah Arendt

It’s time for my monthly collection of stories related to sex work, the rights of those who do it and the attempts of sex-haters to repress us out of existence.

Judd Not, Lest Ye Be Judded

In my column of April 2nd I expressed considerable anger toward Ashley Judd’s poisonous lie that normal men “buy children for sex” (i.e. knowingly hire underage prostitutes).  But after hearing about this new story I have to wonder whether she isn’t completely delusional.  Apparently, she recently released a memoir in which she claims to have been raped and otherwise sexually abused by family members and other parties.  But when confronted with the fact that most of the events in her memoir didn’t happen as she claimed they did, Judd said on the Today show that “The book is very honest, it’s not necessarily accurate, because everyone in a family has their own perspective and their own experience.  But it’s very true for me.”  In other words, Judd thinks it’s OK to libel and slander people and accuse them of crimes they didn’t commit as long as one wants to pretend these things happened in order to blame somebody else for her problems, or to hold a pity party for herself in order to prop up a sagging career.  And since she obviously thinks it’s acceptable and even “honest” to defame the characters of her own parents, I guess her accusing the majority of the male population of collusion in child sex slavery isn’t so bad.  The Salon reporter who wrote this story from April 6th clearly thinks it’s virtuous to trash other peoples’ reputations in order to make oneself feel better, but the majority of the commenters are far more rational.

Breaking News:  President Obama has a Human Friend!

I’m glad this “dog bites man” article wasn’t more publicized than it was.  The president has a friend who got caught doing what 70% of men have done at one time or another.  From the Huffington Post of April 6th:

One of President Barack Obama’s close friends has been arrested in Honolulu on suspicion of soliciting a prostitute.  Honolulu police say Robert “Bobby” Titcomb was one of four men arrested in an undercover sting operation late Monday and released on $500 bail.  The 49-year-old Titcomb attended Punahou School in Honolulu with Obama.  The two often golf, play basketball, go to the beach and dine together when the president returns home to Hawaii for vacation…Titcomb has not publicly responded to the charges, and he wasn’t immediately available for comment.

And just in case you’re still awake, here’s another non-news item:

I Told You So

Same song, 365th verse:  the number of men who can make a decent living working as male escorts for female customers is vanishingly small, and I doubt there’s a city on Earth where there are five of them.  But TV is not reality and in male fantasyland there are just oodles of women lining up to pay for sex with men.  Unfortunately for the Showtime network, in reality women have to be paid to pretend that they’re willing to pay to have sex with men.  Yawn.

Also in Jezebel:

Anna North wonders if cops are committing more sex crimes than they used to in a story which compares a firefighting instructor’s use of sexual metaphors with forcible rape.  Frankly, Miss North, I doubt they’re committing more rapes these days than ever before; it’s just that because of the internet it’s harder for them to suppress the stories than it used to be.

Video:  Sex Workers Refute the Claims of Neofeminist Prohibitionists

Though the sound quality in this video (courtesy of Harlot’s Parlour) leaves much to be desired, the girls in it make many of the same arguments I do about the fact that neofeminist efforts to prohibit sex work actually infantilize women and restrict our rights rather than promoting them as the prohibitionists claim.

Backfire

Demi Moore and her boy sex slave, unsatisfied with merely insulting people who have forgotten more about sex work and migrant labor than they have ever known, have recruited their equally empty-headed celebrity friends to create a new series of commercials with which to convince people that “real men don’t buy child sex slaves.”  Because obviously if there are 300,000 child sex slaves in the United States, then there must also be 300,000 child sex slave owners (who presumably store them in cardboard boxes at the top of the closet when not in use), and a series of dumb commercials will obviously convince them to get rid of those slaves, perhaps by flushing them down the loo like unwanted goldfish.  But what Demi and company overlooked is that not everyone is a gullible twit who will believe everything a celebrity tells him, and that there are a number of us getting the word out about the falsity of “trafficking” rhetoric.  The result:  Widespread derision and ridicule of the campaign all over the internet. Even Jezebel, which is usually pretty credulous about the whole “child sex slave” mythology, was unimpressed.

I’m Not At All Surprised, and That’s Truly Sad

Some of the investigators working on the Long Island Serial Killer case now theorize that the killer may be a cop or ex-cop, as reported in this New York Times story from April 9th:

Whoever killed four prostitutes, and possibly four other people, and then dumped their bodies in heavy underbrush along a beachfront causeway on Long Island appears to have a sophisticated understanding of police investigative techniques…taunting phone calls…to the teenage sister of one of the victims…were made from…some of the most crowded locations in New York City…and…were probably chosen because they allowed the caller to blend into crowds, so that if investigators pinpointed his location from the cellphone’s signal, they would be unable to pick him out of the crowd using any nearby surveillance cameras…This fact, as well as the killer’s use of disposable cellphones to contact the four victims who have been identified…suggested to some investigators that the killer was well versed in criminal investigative techniques…and could even be in law enforcement himself.  “He is a guy who is aware of how we utilize technology,” one investigator said.  “Frankly, people are thinking maybe he could be a cop” — either one still in law enforcement or one who has moved on…the caller kept each of his…calls to less than three minutes…the brief duration…thwarted efforts by the New York Police Department to use the signal to pinpoint the caller’s location and find him…

As we’ve discussed on several occasions, police violence toward prostitutes is depressingly typical, and sociopaths often target prostitutes because of the widespread attitude that we are disposable.  But it’s both sad and disgusting (though not, alas, surprising) when both of those motivations occur in one individual.

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House Rules

Posted in Miscellaneous, Philosophy, tagged , , , , , on April 15, 2011| 86 Comments »

To me the “female principle” is, or at least historically has been, basically anarchic.  It values order without constraint, rule by custom not by force.  It has been the male who enforces order, who constructs power structures, who makes, enforces, and breaks laws.  –  Ursula K. Le Guin

Regular readers already well-know that I am what one might call a pragmatic anarchist; though in principle I adhere to the Wiccan Rede, “And it harm none, do what thou wilt”, I understand that a society needs to have some rules because individuals’ views of what constitutes “harm” vary wildly.  IMHO the best principle for government is therefore, in the words of Thoreau, “That government is best which governs least.”  I do not mention this merely for academic reasons but rather for practical ones:  up until recently my readership was relatively small and admirably self-constrained, but in recent weeks my popularity has increased dramatically and with it the number of comments and the breadth of human experience represented by my commenters.  The practical upshot of all this is that while this blog used to be a sort of quiet tea party in which a loud or raucous individual stood out like a turd on a tablecloth and was therefore easily chastened by a glance from the hostess, it has now grown into a large cocktail party in which it is easier for guests to forget themselves and more difficult for your hostess, however vigilant she may be, to keep watch in every room all the time.  So as much as it pains my freedom-loving soul to do so, I’m afraid I shall have to establish a few rules in order to keep the house from being trashed and to maintain a civilized atmosphere.  With the exception of the first two, these aren’t meant to be rigid “laws” but rather flexible rules; if you technically break the letter of one but do not violate its spirit you’ll be fine.  96% of my posters have never even come close to violating any of these guidelines, so don’t stress yourself; I’m actually very difficult to annoy so it’s nearly impossible to do so inadvertently.  You’d almost have to break one of the rules on purpose to get me to invoke it.

1)  Please read my column of January 1st and understand that this is my blog and nobody else’s; I won’t put up with anyone telling me how to run it or what it “should” be, nor will I endure thread hijacking, spamming, or flooding of my comment threads with innumerable inappropriate posts.  Such posts will be deleted without warning.

2)  Anyone who introduces himself for the first time with an insulting, dishonest or trollish post will not ever make it to the board unless I choose to talk about the communication within the context of a column as I did on September 27th and December 27th.  If the first attempted post is hostile but pertinent I may allow it through, but alter the identifying information so subsequent posts must still be moderated.  So if you got a comment or two in but notice that subsequent attempts fail to appear, you might consider asking yourself why that might be so.

3)  Please be civil; I had enough acrimonious argumentation with my ex-husband to last several lifetimes and I will not put up with it here.  If the involved parties restrain themselves quickly I won’t step in, but if it goes on without sign of stopping I reserve the right to delete as many of the offending posts as I like.  If I choose to do this, the posts of BOTH naughty children will be deleted.  Remember Brandy’s mantra:  “I will behave on Maggie’s blog, I will behave on Maggie’s blog, I will behave on Maggie’s blog…”

4)  Please be pertinent; though I don’t mind if a regular poster occasionally throws out something off-topic, or if threads wander organically (which is practically inevitable when more than half my readership is female), that’s a far cry from constantly making posts which have nothing to do with my topic in even the most tangential and cursory fashion (see rule #1 above).  WordPress is free; if you have an agenda you wish to advance, please get your own blog rather than repeatedly attempting to proselytize on my virtual premises.

5)  Please, no manifestos; though nearly everyone needs to make a long post from time to time to say what needs to be said, if your typical post can’t fit all on one screen you should probably consider doing your own blog and just posting links.  I’m not talking to those who are just naturally long-winded; if I made a rule against that it would be pot calling kettle black.  I’m talking about those who cut and paste huge blocks of text, usually on many different websites.

As Le Guin says, I “value order without constraint” and prefer to “rule by custom not by force.”  If you’ve been here a while and I’ve never complained about one of your posts I probably never will, and if you’re contributing positively to discussions I’m willing to look the other way even if you do break my rules once in a while.  But if you’re here to make trouble or even if you’re just naturally cantankerous, you might want to keep these guidelines in mind before spending 25 minutes typing a post which you suspect I might delete.

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The Pro-Rape Coalition

Posted in Current Events, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 14, 2011| 59 Comments »

It is curious to speculate why pornography is considered especially likely to stimulate its readers into performing the activities described.  The literature of murder is a vast one…but I have never seen it seriously suggested that…[it] tended to deprave and corrupt, or would incite weak-minded or immature readers into carrying out in reality the activities described in the fantasies.  On the contrary…representatives of all the most respected professions have stated that detective stories are among their favorite reading.  Musing about murder is apparently “healthy”; musing about sexual enjoyment is not. –  Geoffrey Gorer

In the commentary following the Jill Brenneman Interviews which was later gathered into the second Jill Brenneman Q & A column, Amanda Brooks pointed out the real meaning behind the prohibitionists’ labeling those who support sex worker rights the “pro-prostitution lobby”; as Jill said, “There is NO ‘pro-prostitution’ as it is represented by the antis.  I don’t know that people without experience from within the anti movement realize the horrible meaning [they] attach to that.  [They] believe that all prostitution is bought and sold rape; what they are saying by calling us ‘pro-prostitution’ is that we are ‘pro-rape’, that we are deliberately trying to get as many women raped, assaulted and hurt as we can.”  But as I pointed out in my column of September 24th:  A number of cross-cultural studies such as this one have shown that in every culture where prostitution is legalized, the rape rate dramatically decreases; the author of the linked paper predicts a 25% decrease in rape in the US if prostitution were legalized.  That’s right, the neofeminists and politicians know what’s best for women, so they allow an extra 25,000 of us to be raped every year rather than bury their opposition to a venerable institution which also provides income for many tens of thousands of other women. But I’m sure all the women who were raped by sex-mad men this year can rest assured in the knowledge that their torture was not in vain; after all, it was necessary to advance the holy neofeminist cause of preventing heterosexual males from having convenient access to sex.

In other words, there really is a “pro-rape coalition”, but it’s not those who support sex worker rights; it’s the neofeminists and politicians who oppose measures which have been shown to decrease rape.  And decriminalization of prostitution isn’t the only such measure; as pointed out in Radley Balko’s Agitator column of last Thursday, widespread availability of porn is also associated with lower rape rates, so of course the Pro-Rape Coalition wants it banned as well:

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) has sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder demanding more federal obscenity prosecutions. The letter was co-signed by more than 100 other senators and congressmen.  Here’s an excerpt:

Last June, an important briefing in the Capitol outlined how pornography has changed, becoming more harmful, addictive, and available, and linked to other crimes.  Researchers, scholars, and other experts explained, for example, how today’s hardcore pornography is typified by extreme violence against women and how pornography consumption can contribute to sexual harassment and sexual violence.  Another expert warned that Internet adult pornography normalizes sexual harm to children, while another addressed the growing connection between pornography and sex trafficking…Simply put, we know more than ever how illegal adult obscenity contributes to violence against women, addiction, harm to children, and sex trafficking.  This material harms individuals, families, and communities and the problems are only getting worse.

Hatch is full of crap.  We don’t “know” any of these things.  In fact, every conceivable social trend over the last 20 years obliterates the idea that porn is causing widespread societal harm.  The rise of the Internet in the mid-1990s made porn increasingly accessible to the point that today, just about everyone can watch people have sex damn-near any time of day, in every conceivable manner, in every possible variety.  If Hatch and his colleagues are right, over the last 15-20 years, we should have seen a massive increase in the social ills listed in Hatch’s letter.  And in fact, every single one of these problems are trending in the opposite direction.  And it isn’t even close:

Sex crimes against children:  Down 53 percent between 1992 and 2006.
Abortion:  The abortion rate has dropped by about 25 percent since 1993.
Teen pregnancy:  In 2009, teen pregnancy hit its lowest rate in the 70 years that the federal government has been tracking the statistic.
Divorce:  The U.S. divorce rate is at its lowest level since 1970.
Domestic violence:  The rate of reported domestic violence in the U.S. dropped by more than half between 1993 and 2004.
Rape:  The forcible rape rate in the U.S. has dropped from 41.1 per 100,000 people in 1990 to 28.7 in 2009.  That latter figure is also an all-time low.

These numbers are overwhelming. What’s more, there are at least a couple of studies suggesting that the widespread availability of pornography is partially responsible for some of these trends, especially the drop in reported rapes.  Of course, like the activists pushing bullshit sex trafficking figures to shut down online escort ads, Hatch and his colleagues aren’t interested in actual data.  This much is certainly true:  There are substantially more people masturbating to pornography in America today than 20 years ago. And that’s really the only figure that matters to people like Hatch. (My favorite example of this line of thought:  Concerned Women for America’s amusing attack on the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue a couple years ago.  Note that the article is titled “Do the Math”, yet doesn’t contain any actual math.)

Expect no one to actually challenge Hatch or his co-signers on any of the letter’s claims…

Balko is of course right; with the exception of libertarians like himself, bloggers like me and a handful of ethical journalists, the claims of the Pro-Rape Coalition will be accepted without question and endlessly re-quoted until they are either marginalized by shifting public opinion or they achieve their goal of reducing every American woman to a state of cowering dependence on those who claim to want to “protect” them by entirely eliminating their sexual freedom.

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Who Watches the Watchmen?

Posted in Current Events, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 13, 2011| 24 Comments »

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? –  Juvenal, Satire VI (line 347)

Collectivism depends on the principle that individuals restrict their individual freedoms in favor of some collective good, but who determines what is “good” and what is “evil”?  Whose view of reality is the “correct” one?  If some authority has the power to define certain individuals as victims no matter what the reality of the situation, and to act to “protect” those so defined whether the individuals so “protected” want it or not, what happens to individual freedom?  And who polices these “authorities” to keep them from abusing their powers to “protect” others from their own free choices?  We’ve talked before about prohibitionists’ claims that “happy hookers” like the many well-adjusted whores who frequent this blog are all “in denial” because our realities conflict with their theories; well, now they’re rolling out “Stockholm Syndrome” to explain why those the “rescuers” declare to be “trafficking victims” fail to be grateful and don’t remember events as their “rescuers” would like them to.  From Laura Agustín’s column of April 5th:

At the BBC World thing in Luxor I got publicly annoyed when other panelists wanted to talk about brainwashing of victims.  Now Stockholm Syndrome is given as reason those rescued from trafficking situations may not react as rescuers want them to…It really does not get more sinister than this.  This theory, utterly free from any cultural context and presented as a method for identifying victims of trafficking…[allows] no ideas of individual agency or resistance…[nor any] possibility that migrants or sex workers have any understandable or meaningful loyalty to people that assisted them to travel or get work.  There is no allowance here for survivors’ having colluded in situations that ended up going bad.

They define Stockholm Syndrome as a ‘psychological mechanism of self-protection when a victim attempts to protect herself from more traumatic psychological experiences’ (Carver, 2001-2007). Excerpts:
. . . The characteristics of Stockholm syndrome confirm the common indicators of female sexual exploitation and female victims of trafficking…
• Emotional bonding with the captor/abuser
• Seeking approval from the captor/abuser
• Depending on the captor/abuser for security and purpose of existence
• Befriending and caring for the captor/abuser
• Resenting police and authorities for their rescue attempts
• Losing one’s own identity in order to identify with the captor/abuser
• Seeing things from the perspective of the captor/abuser
• Valuing every small gesture of kindness, such as letting them live
• Refusing freedom even when given the opportunity

They give sub-categories that allow them to disbelieve a victim-survivor’s refusal of help:
Learnt hopelessness attributes (Seligman, 1995)
• Disability to organise one’s own private life.
• Victim can avoid being helped, refuse offers of a supporting organization, and de-evaluate provided support…

One has to admire the diabolical cleverness of these fanatics (in the same way one might admire the fiendish ingenuity of those who devise tortures).  If “authorities” accept this “diagnosis”, anything and everything any sex worker says which disagrees with prohibitionist dogma can be viewed as “evidence” of her being brainwashed and therefore incompetent to make decisions for herself.  But why stop with sex workers?  Any woman who says anything contrary to neofeminist dogma must be suffering from Stockholm Syndrome as well!  You ladies who prefer to stay home rather than compete in the Rat Race?  You’re brainwashed, because obviously if you were in your right mind you would prefer to be an androgynous corporate unit.  You enjoy looking pretty?  Nope, Stockholm Syndrome; “sane” women chop their hair off, refuse to depilate and wear men’s clothes.  The possibilities are endless…

Fortunately, there are already signs of the collapse of the “trafficking” witch hunt, so vigilant civil rights activists and even well-informed members of the general public may soon raise public outcry against this sort of dangerous dogma (I hope).  Here’s another Laura Agustín column, this one from April 7th; it includes her commentary on a story from The Wall Street Journal debunking the “epidemic” of child abduction:

…The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child establishes 18 as the magic moment for becoming adult, thereby reducing teenagers to children who are supposed to be innocent and happy.  But teenagers do leave home all over the world, and  sometimes they are running away from something bad and it makes sense to run.  Runaways can get into trouble, as a Nevada public radio programme discussed last November, in the wake of an FBI scare initiative with the dumb name Innocence Lost.  But sensible people know that adolescence is not the same as childhood and that childhood means different things in different places and times – in terms of the right to work, marry, vote, join the military, drink and have sex.  As for selling sex, stories about Poland’s piggies and mall girls and Japan’s compensated dating (enjo kosai) show how conventional that can be amongst teenagers.  I can hear some people now saying, no but we are talking about real trafficking, like in West Africa.  Well, researchers on supposed child trafficking there have questioned it, too.  This story from The Wall Street Journal should calm a lot of people’s worst fears:  few children are abducted/kidnapped/shanghaied/trafficked.

Study Undermines Kidnapping Fears
By Sean Gardiner, 7 April 2011, The Wall Street Journal

The fear that a child could be snatched away by a stranger nags at many parents.  But a new report examining cases from last year shows that…it is extraordinarily rare for children to be taken by someone they don’t know.  The New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services said Wednesday that 20,309 children were reported missing statewide last year.  Just one of them was confirmed to have been abducted by a stranger…The vast majority of the missing children—almost 94% of last year’s total—were runaways.  Most of them were teenagers.

The state maintains the Missing and Exploited Children Clearinghouse, a database tracking lost children since 1987.  While stranger abductions raise alarm, they are uncommon.  A spokeswoman for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children said a 2002 Department of Justice study, the most recent national numbers available, showed that of approximately 797,500 children reported missing over the course of a year, 115 were kidnapped by strangers.  In New York, there were 196 reported cases of child abductions statewide last year, less than 1% of all missing-children reports.  Of that number, 188 of the kidnappers were family members, and six were family friends.  Two cases involved stranger abductions…but one of…[them] was at a later point determined to be a runaway…In the other case, a 14-year-old girl was taken by a middle-age man in Rochester.  She was safely recovered.

“While every parent is understandably and rightfully concerned that their child could be abducted, the fact of the matter is that stranger abductions in New York state are, thankfully, rare occurrences,” said Sean Byrne, the division’s acting commissioner…Paul Browne, spokesman for the New York Police Department…said that 96% of the missing-children cases reported to police were eventually closed, generally because the child returned home.

For those who have difficulty with math, these figures mean that in the United States,  only 0.014% of all “missing children” are abducted by strangers (of which only some might potentially be sex traffickers).  The vast majority (99.986%) either left home under their own power or with a relative or acquaintance.  The equation of “missing” with “exploited” in the name of the government-funded database is therefore revealed as something equivalent to renaming our country “The United States of America and Wake Island”.

The “authorities” would like to force sex workers into a special “protected” group (just as they do with teenagers, though with even less basis in fact), to define us as mentally incompetent children without any more ability to make decisions for our own lives than infants have.  This allows those “authorities” to then make decisions for us, to restrict us from any degree of control over our own lives, to pathologize anything we might want which goes against the desires of those “authorities”, and to criminalize anyone with whom we choose to associate in a way our keepers disapprove of.  And the only ones who can prevent this, the only group with power to guard the self-appointed guardians, are those members of the public who make the effort to do so.

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They Just Don’t Get It

Posted in Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , on April 12, 2011| 32 Comments »

There are two things which cannot be attacked in front: ignorance and narrow-mindedness.  They can only be shaken by the simple development of the contrary qualities.  They will not bear discussion. –  Lord Acton

Remember my column of October 19th, in which I discussed the misrepresentations made by suburban Pittsburgh cops in order to win public support for their valiant efforts to get handjobs from hookers and look at them naked before sadistically busting them?  You remember, it was the one in which the cops claimed the typical travelling escort was intelligent enough to manage her own business and ambitious enough to make $5000 in a typical weekend, yet not as smart as the geniuses in the police force who know law better than lawyers do?  They also boasted of their stupendous police power to get an erection while actually being repulsed by the diseased harlots who carry drug dealers in the trunks of their cars and spread them around the country like a “ring” of Johnny Appleseeds in fishnets. Well, they’re at it again; they’ve just discovered that touring escorts sometimes use reloadable Visa cards in order to collect prepayment for tours, though in typical cop fashion they paint this as a nefarious plot to escape “justice” rather than a reasonable precaution against being stood up.  Here’s the Suburban Pittsburgh Swine Brain Trust again, courtesy of Brandy Devereaux and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

The world’s oldest profession still is cash-friendly, but police departments along the Airport Corridor notice a new trend in paying prostitutes: gift cards.  “Instead of having a bunch of cash around, they have a handful of gift cards,” Moon police Chief Leo McCarthy said.  “You automatically believe cash is an ill-gotten gain.  But if you see a couple of gift cards, you might not think twice.  It’s just another game people play.”

No, Einstein, it isn’t a “game”; the word is “precaution”.  Those of us not on the public dole like yourself need to actually cover our expenses, and a reloadable gift card allows prepayment from a distance.  It’s also a wise precaution against criminals like yourself who have a nasty habit of robbing people under cover of “law enforcement”.  And please don’t project your warped suspicions onto other people; YOU may “automatically believe cash is an ill-gotten gain”, but normal people and the government of the U.S. refer to it as “legal tender”.

Since 2009, police arrested more than 100 people on prostitution-related charges in jurisdictions along Interstate 376 between the city of Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh International Airport in Findlay, according to statistics from police in Moon, Robinson and Carnegie.  Departments in Findlay, Green Tree and North Fayette said they’ve also noticed the gift card trend.  “It’s becoming more difficult to find cash on them,” North Fayette police Chief Jeffrey Falconer said.  Gift cards, sometimes called stored-value cards, easily are obtained and can be reloaded with amounts of money, McCarthy said.  Visa, MasterCard and American Express issue the most popular types, he said…”The ones we’re working are still using cash, but (gift cards) may be next the next trend,” Findlay police Chief Jesse Lesko said.  “They don’t like to give up the $5,000 or $6,000 they earned over a weekend.”

There’s the $5000 weekend lie (mentioned in the previous story on this subject) again; it’s clearly intended to A) make us look like drug dealers, and B) build on the envy of Joe Sixpack who brings home less than that per month.  Note also the astonishingly narcissistic petulance of the cops interviewed; they seem to feel American citizens should happily allow themselves to be robbed at gunpoint by criminals with badges.  I am pleased, however, that Lesko slipped up and said “earned”, thereby admitting that our work really is work.

Pittsburgh police have not noticed an increase of gift cards on prostitution suspects.  “But, it definitely would make sense. In general, they would think it wouldn’t be as suspect as having a large amount of cash,” said Cmdr. Cheryl Doubt, who heads the bureau’s narcotics and vice division.  “They’re smarter than we give them credit for sometimes.”

Well, certainly smarter than the average cop, anyway, not to mention more honest.  We actually have to WORK to advance ourselves, Commander Quota.  Notice how cops phrase everything in terms of suspicion and criminality?  A female cop can’t think of any reason another woman might not want to carry big wads of cash other than to avoid “suspicion”.  At least, that’s what she claims out loud.  What about YOU, “Commander”?  Would you carry $5000 cash in your purse while at work?  No, didn’t think so.

Moon police made one prostitution arrest from 2004 through 2007, but made 111 since — including 54 last year and 18 so far this year…If they aren’t responding to specific complaints from hoteliers, detectives usually start investigations on the Internet.  “We could be up there everyday, to be honest,” Falconer said.  “They’ll always be there.  It’s the oldest profession, but we’re being more proactive.”

Just as cops like to use the dysphemism “ring” to mean “suppressed business”, so they employ the euphemism “proactive” to mean “predatory”.  Police departments all over have discovered that criminal accusations are a valuable way to enrich themselves at the expense of the public, so naturally they’re upset that people are starting to make it more difficult for them by avoiding the “suspicious” behavior of carrying the currency of the nation in which they live.

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Lost Friends

Posted in Biography, Miscellaneous, Perception, tagged , , , , , , , on April 11, 2011| 67 Comments »

We always thought we’d look back on our tears and laugh, but we never thought we’d look back on our laughter and cry. –  Anonymous

Long-time readers may recall my saying that my mother and I, who had never been very close, finally fell out for good in September of 1997 over my becoming a stripper.  Oh, it wasn’t instantaneous; she shouted and threatened and fussed and inflicted guilt for two months, but by Thanksgiving she realized I was adamant (since my new job had already paid off almost $10,000 worth of overdue bills, how could I be otherwise?)  There were a few terse letters over the next few months, then nothing.  I’ve dutifully informed her of every change of address and status (including my remarriage) since then, but have never received a reply.  Even when I told her I had quit dancing (as you can imagine I didn’t even try to tell her what I was doing instead) there was no response; the damage, alas, was done.  It’s a pity, really; she always wanted me to be a writer and now here I am, writing.  But what I’ve never related here is that my mother wasn’t the only casualty of my adopting sex work; there were two others.

As I explained in my column of July 29th, I had a number of close male friends growing up through the cousin I’ve called “Jeff”, and two of them factor into this story.  The first (whom I’ll call Alan) seemed to cool toward me when he went off to attend LSU, but the other (whom I’ll call Walter) remained a very good friend and I actually lived with him (platonically, in separate rooms) for a while in 1989 during one of my many breakups with my first husband, Jack.  Anyhow, they both eventually got married, and while I soon became great friends with Alan’s wife “Liz” (who provided the epigram for my July 20th column), Walter’s wife “Theresa” was insanely jealous of all his friends, especially his female ones and MOST especially me since she knew we were very close.  Liz and I soon became closer than Alan and I had been in years, but it became virtually impossible for me to see Walter except in large groups, and even then only if Theresa were assured that all women present would be safely under control of our husbands or boyfriends.  Keep in mind that Theresa well knew that Walter and I had never been attracted to one another; he was like a brother to me and was such a trustworthy, sincere man that Jack once said he would trust Walter to sleep in the same bed with me.  None of that mattered; Theresa had decided that all women were a threat to her.

So that was the way things stood through the mid-‘90s; I saw more and more of Liz and less and less of Walter until I started stripping, at which time two things happened.  The first was wholly predictable:  Theresa heard about my career change via the grapevine and went ballistic.  As Walter later told me, the general gist was that I was “sick” and the kicker was, “If that whore lays a hand on you I’ll kill her.”  She even went as far as to call Walter’s mom Kay, long a second mother to me, in order to let her know the “kind of women” her son was friendly with.  Kay was a very wise and likeable woman and called to let me know that she understood my position and didn’t judge me for my choice, but also gently suggested that it might not be a good idea to try contacting Walter, because we both knew Theresa was far too insecure and would doubtless make his life miserable if I did.  It’s not like I was alone in being excluded from his life; by the turn of the century none of his old friends ever saw Walter any more, and if internet sources are correct they’re still together today.

I was much more surprised by the way things turned out with Liz.  When I called to let her know about my taking up stripping, her immediate response was “I think that’s brilliant!”  She was of the enlightened opinion that there’s nothing wrong with a woman capitalizing on her sexuality, and she even went with me to pick out some of my first costumes.  Given that her husband was an old friend of mine and had once dated a stripper, she assumed he would be glad I was making a decisive effort to get myself out of debt; I would’ve thought the same thing.  We were both wrong.  Neither of us realized (because he had kept it to himself) that the stripper had broken his heart and had filled him with an aversion to her profession, an aversion which even extended to me.  He therefore told Liz that he didn’t like her socializing with me anymore.  She was of course incredulous and pointed out that Alan had known me for 16 years and should realize I wasn’t one to descend into the excesses he associated with stripperhood, but he replied that I had “changed” and he didn’t trust me anymore.  Liz was of typical redhead temperament and was therefore defiant, telling him that he couldn’t pick her friends; this of course resulted in his declaring me a “bad influence”.  To keep peace at home Liz only called me when he wasn’t around, and so things went for two years until I became an escort.  We planned to hide this from Alan, but he found out from mutual friends and started making Liz’s life so miserable about the subject that she had little choice but to break off communication with me for the sake of her kids.  Since I had no desire to be the cause of marital strife I of course told her she was doing the right thing, and though we exchanged emails on the sly for some time they became less and less frequent and stopped within a year.

Life is full of choices, and each choice carries consequences; some of these can be predicted and others cannot.  Part of growing is learning to accept those consequences, though they may be bitter indeed.  I don’t regret the choices I’ve made; they opened doors which enabled me to become self-sufficient for the first time in my life, and provided passage into a world I would otherwise only have dreamed about.  I’m a big girl, and I know that sometimes one’s victories and gains come at a higher cost than anticipated, but to this day I can’t help but feel a pang of regret whenever I think of Liz or Walter…and that happens much more often than my heart would like.

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