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Archive for November, 2011

Semper Fidelis

Posted in History, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged , , , on November 10, 2011| 24 Comments »

We will embrace you in uniform today, we will embrace you without uniform tomorrow.  –  Josephus Daniels (U.S. Secretary of the Navy) to a group of woman Marines, 1919

Happy Birthday, Devil Dogs!  As I explained in my column of one year ago today,

On November 10th, 1775 the Second Continental Congress ordered Captain Samuel Nicholas to raise two battalions of marines, and he began that task by holding a recruitment meeting at Tun Tavern in Philadelphia.  The organization which resulted, the Continental Marines, was later reorganized into the United States Marine Corps, so Marines consider Tun Tavern to be the birthplace of the Corps and November 10th to be its birthday.

In that column I also explained that I’m very partial to military men in general and Marines in particular, and I mean that both personally and professionally; you’d be hard-pressed to find a proper whore who didn’t count military men as among our favorite customers, not only because of their dependability but because, as Amanda Brooks pointed out in a comment to last year’s column, “They’re respectful, condom-friendly, no-attitude and just terrific fun in bed.”

And that’s what makes the Bush administration’s anti-prostitution policy, foisted on the military under the excuse of “combating human trafficking” and continued by Obama, to be so deeply insulting.  It is nothing less than a vicious betrayal of a millennia-old relationship between two professions, a sacrifice of the needs and welfare of tens of thousands of men and women on the filthy altar of political correctness.  U.S. military personnel are now required to attend propaganda sessions full of lies, exaggerations, spurious associations and tortured logic in the hopes of tricking them into believing the prostitution equivalent of “Every time you masturbate, God kills a kitten.”  It’s unlikely these brainwashing programs are any more successful in the long run than any other neofeminist-approved mental-castration scheme, but even if they succeed in introducing guilt or doubt over a normal, healthy sexual activity and mutually-agreeable business transaction, that’s damage enough.

Besides last year’s column, I’ve touched on the interaction between whores and the military in a number of columns; this list includes previous instances where that interaction was less than ideal or even severely exploitative, including previous attempts by prudish military officials to restrict or abolish prostitution.

Ching Shih (March 18th, 2011)
Collaboration Horizontale (November 11th, 2011))
Dirty Whores (June 24th, 2011)
Honolulu Harlots (July 5th, 2011)
Japanese Prostitution (October 21st, 2010)
Meretrices and Prostibulae (November 3rd, 2010)
The Ouled Nail (September 11th, 2011)
A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody (Part Two) (September 5th, 2010)
Storyville (September 3rd, 2010)

I’m very pleased that, in the year since the last USMC birthday, a number of military men have discovered this blog and are numbered among my regular readers and commenters.  Hang in there, guys; don’t ever let the social engineers break your spirit, and know that the whores of the world appreciate you for being men and wouldn’t want you any other way.  And though your government has abandoned any concern for your sanity, self-esteem and sexual health, you may take comfort in the fact that ethical harlots remain, in our own unique way, always faithful.

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Don’t Confuse Us With Facts

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 9, 2011| 12 Comments »

Nothing is more damaging to a state than that cunning men pass for wise.  –  Francis Bacon

The advocate system which underlies the Western machinery of “justice” is, in a way, the exact opposite of science, though they both claim to have the same goal:  discovering the truth.  But while everyone in science is presumed to be on the same side, and an ethical scientist who has made a discovery wants others to share his information and to test his hypotheses by trying to prove them wrong, lawyers do things the other way around.  Those who represent the accusatory side (the state or plaintiff) do everything in their power to find the defendant/respondent guilty of whatever it is he’s accused of, even if they know he isn’t, and those on the defense will similarly attempt to exonerate their client even if they know he’s guilty.  Furthermore, either side is allowed to hide critical information from the other; it’s considered the responsibility of each side to demand that the other side turn over its information (a process called “discovery”), and if it fails to do so in exactly the right way the other side is allowed to hide that information, even if it results in an innocent man being imprisoned or executed.  Furthermore, the United States Supreme Court recently ruled (in a case involving former New Orleans district attorney Harry Connick) that even if a prosecutor maliciously hides exculpatory evidence, and even if this monstrous act sends an innocent man to prison for 18 years (14 of them on death row), that said prosecutor hasn’t done anything wrong and is immune to lawsuits filed by his victim.

In short, the two systems are incompatible, and when they clash it is science which must lose because the scientist practices full disclosure, while the lawyer tells only those facts which are to his advantage.  The result is that most of what passes for “science” in courtrooms is junk science at best, when it isn’t outright lying by hired guns posing as scientists to advance an agenda or simply to earn a paycheck.  A large proportion of forensic “science” has long been attacked by legitimate scientists as undependable or totally bogus, but prosecutors like it because splatter or bite-mark analysis, dog behavior, and other highly subjective, error-prone “techniques” can be used to “prove” whatever the prosecutor wants proven; this may be acceptable to the moral cripples whose job is to cage as many humans as possible for as long as possible, but it isn’t “science” by any stretch of the imagination.  In science, every possibility must be considered; in prosecution, the only one which is presented to a jury for consideration is the one which tends to make the defendant look guilty, whether it’s “shaken baby syndrome” or the mysterious “diseases” supposedly caused by silicone in the chest wall but not anywhere else in the body, or in any woman who isn’t American.

And despite what you may have seen on television, judges are downright hostile to science in the courtroom when it calls established procedures or the basis of laws into question:

[Dean] Boland, a Lakewood, Ohio, lawyer who specializes in technology cases, was ordered by a federal judge to pay [$300,000] to two unidentified minors whose stock photos Boland used to create…[artificial] images of children engaged in sexual conduct…[in order] to aid his testimony as an expert witness in courts in Ohio and Oklahoma.  “The court concludes that a constitutionally effective defense to a child pornography charge does not include the right to victimize additional minors by creating new child pornography in the course of preparing and presenting a defense,” U.S. District Judge Dan Polster in Cleveland said in an opinion, rejecting Boland’s claim that his use of the images was constitutionally protected.  Boland used the morphed images to show how difficult it is for people possessing child pornography to determine whether the images depict real children or were created artificially…Boland said he plans to appeal the judgment.  “This ruling has the potential to affect the ability of people to get fair trials across the country,” [he] said…

…Boland used the images to aid his expert testimony in three criminal prosecutions for possession of child pornography.  In one hearing, prosecutors questioned whether Boland’s use of the images violated the law against possession of child pornography.  In 2007, Boland entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with prosecutors in Cleveland, avoiding a criminal conviction.  As part of the agreement, Boland apologized in a local legal publication and admitted the images violated federal law, according to an appeals court decision.  That same year, the guardians of the children whose photographs were used sued Boland for digitally altering the stock shots.  Polster [originally] dismissed the claims, calling it a “difficult and troubling case.”  That decision was reversed on appeal and the case was returned to Polster, who granted summary judgment for the two children…awarding $150,000 to each.

Note the sleaziness of the prosecutors’ circumvention of Boland’s defense tactic by attempting to charge him with a felony, despite the fact that they knew with certainty that the child porn was artificial.  Personally, I think he was most unwise in creating artificial child porn images; his point could have been made by “morphing” adult photographs in the same way.  But the fact remains that the prosecutors’ desire to “win” inspired them to call attention away from Boland’s undoubtedly effective defense tactic with the legal equivalent of an ad hominem attack.  “Difficult and troubling” indeed; the message being sent here is that a mere image can be illegal even if its creation hurt nobody, but that creating artificial child porn is apparently acceptable to the court as long as the models are paid outrageous sums.  Judges and prosecutors don’t want to be confused with facts that point out the absurdity of the laws; to them, facts are only acceptable when they can be bent to fit their own legalistic purposes, and lies dressed up as science will do just as well.

One Year Ago Today

“Drama Queens” refutes the neofeminist claims that prostitution is “humiliating” by pointing out that if anything, many whores’ self-esteem is too high, and that there are far more prima donnas among us than beaten-down victims.  The column also contains a couple of news items and a humorous criticism of clients from a rather bitter escort.

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Eglimaphilia

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, The Dark Side, tagged , , , , , , , , , on November 8, 2011| 23 Comments »

The stigma of the prostitute is the badge of her identity. That is why the client goes to her. If he wanted someone without a stigma, he’d go and screw the lady next door.  –  Camille Paglia

The psychological term for what is commonly called a “kink” or “perversion” is “paraphilia”.  Clinically speaking, mere sexual arousal by a thing does not rise to the level of a paraphilia; it only becomes one if the individual is distressed by the arousal or is unable to achieve sexual satisfaction without it.  So if you’re turned on by enemas, but not obsessed with them, and you’re able to achieve orgasm through intercourse, that doesn’t technically qualify as klismaphilia.  In more general sexological usage, though, the terms for the various paraphilias are used to describe those feelings and behaviors even when they aren’t pathological; the first draft of DSM-V proposes that the term “paraphilia” be used this way and “paraphiliac disorder” be used to describe a paraphilia that causes “distress or impairment to the individual or harm to others”, which seems like a reasonable distinction.  There are over 500 known paraphilias (you may be interested in this list of the more common ones) and some of them are quite obscure, so it’s possible that the syndrome I plan to discuss today already has another name.  But if that is the case I’ve never heard of it, so I’m going to coin and define a new sexological term:  eglimaphilia (literally, “love of crime”).

In my online readings and discussions of sex worker rights, I’ve run into a small group of whores and clients who state that they are not in favor of decriminalization.  Some prostitutes are concerned about registration or other onerous requirements of legalization, governmental interference, disproportionately high taxation and the like, or else they wrongly believe that legalization or decriminalization will encourage many women to enter the field  and thus deflate the price.  And some clients imagine a nationwide Nevada-style system and fear that independent escorts will largely vanish.  Some of these are realistic concerns and others are not, but they’re all based in practical considerations.  There is a certain group of clients, however, whose opposition to decriminalization has nothing to do with such concrete issues; these are the eglimaphiles, men for whom the chief turn-on of seeing a prostitute is the illegality of the act.

Though I usually agree with Camille Paglia, I think she generalizes far too much in today’s epigram; in my experience most clients don’t give a damn about the stigma, or they’re even repelled by it (such as the men who got angry when I referred to myself as a whore).  But her statement is certainly true for some clients, who are indeed looking for the feeling that they’re doing something “dirty” with a “bad girl”.  There are a number of paraphilias in which the thrill derives from the feeling of violation, transgression, etc; the most common example is probably the person who seeks sex in public places because he’s turned on by the possibility of being caught.  I think eglimaphilia is related to these, though more serious; mere “naughtiness” or harmless “sin” is not enough for the eglimaphile.  Rather, he is excited by the fact that by seeing a prostitute he is actually breaking a law with real and possibly serious consequences, and he opposes decriminalization or legalization because the thrill would be far less intoxicating for him were the act of hiring a whore to be a mere social transgression (assuming he’s married) rather than a legal one.

It’s easy to tell the eglimaphiles on a hooker board; they’re the ones who see girls, write reviews, and participate in discussions like everyone else until the subject of cops comes up, then they’ll emit some weird, self-loathing, badge-licking comments about how the police are right to bust escorts and clients because “we all know what we’re doing is wrong” or something like that.  In a way, eglimaphilia is the opposite of reaction formation (discussed in my column of one year ago today); in the latter external moralistic behavior results from suppressed sexual desires, while in the former external sexual behavior results from suppressed moralism.  And just as the neurotic suffering from reaction formation tends to secretly indulge his repressed passions, so I suspect does the eglimaphile occasionally surrender to his repressed sense of “morality” by phoning in anonymous tips to police or otherwise acting to “punish” the “criminals” that he himself patronizes and socializes with.  And if such a man is ever arrested, you can bet he’ll enthusiastically volunteer to rat out every single person about whom he knows anything in order to save his own worthless hide.

Prostitutes are by our nature accommodating to men’s sexual desires, and some specialize in catering to even the more unusual paraphilias.  But the wise professional should consider carefully before agreeing to see a man who has revealed eglimaphiliac tendencies; this is a person who thinks of her as a criminal, and who will probably not hesitate to betray her should the opportunity present itself.  For any cautious whore, indications of eglimaphilia should result in a free one-way ticket onto her DNS list.

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Maier’s Law

Posted in Current Events, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 7, 2011| 39 Comments »

If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be disposed of.  –  N.R.F. Maier

In 1960 N.R.F Maier, writing about the neurotic behavior of experimental psychologists like himself, proposed Maier’s Law, which forms my epigram above; he explained that for one who has become convinced of his own correctness…

…the theory supersedes the fact.  It is the fact that must conform; and it is the theory that we must strive to nurture, develop, and abstract…The method of how psychologists as scientists dispose of facts is of special interest.  One of the most common is to give the facts a new name.  In this way they are given a special compartment and therefore cease to infringe on the privacy of the theory…Giving disturbing facts a name is almost as good as explaining them because a name supplies a useful answer to inquisitive people.  Other ways of disposing of facts are omitting them in reference books, and the most efficient method…that of failing to report them…

Of course, psychologists aren’t the only ones whose misguided minds adhere to Maier’s Law; politicians also practice it, and cops follow it obsessively.  And nowhere is this more evident than in the interactions of modern police with prostitutes.  Only a few years ago, prostitution was regarded as a “crime” and prostitutes as “criminals”, and police defended that theory by ignoring well-adjusted hookers and concentrating on the maladjusted minority, even creating criminal conspiracies in their minds and claiming without the faintest shred of evidence that discreet indoor prostitution magically “attracts crime”.  But now police departments are switching to “trafficking” rhetoric, which teaches that all whores (especially those even one day under the Age of Shazam) are “victims” in need of “rescue”, and that they are always and without exception “forced into prostitution” by evil men.  The fact that an official study sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice found that only 8% of teenage prostitutes in New York City were forced into prostitution by a “pimp,” and only 10% currently worked with one, is immaterial; the “trafficking” theory says that 100% of them have pimps so that inconvenient 90% who don’t has to be explained away somehow.  How they do it is explained in this October 19th article from Metro, called to my attention via Laura Agustín’s column the next day:

New York City police say they are trying to rescue teens forced into prostitution, only to find that the girls often don’t want their help.  A state law enacted last year considers prostitutes under the age of 18 victims, not criminals, and police are encouraged not to charge them with a crime.  But according to Inspector James Capaldo, head of the NYPD’s new anti-sex trafficking division, their efforts to help girls forced into prostitution are often spurned, he told the City Council at a hearing on sex trafficking yesterday.  The teens are often terrified of being punished by their pimp, or they’re brainwashed into thinking he is a boyfriend, said Capaldo.  They also often lie and say they are 19.  “Sometimes they refuse to talk,” he said.  “If it takes a man six weeks to put this woman in a situation, how do we undo that in 46 hours?”  The teen prostitutes often advertise their illegal services on Backpage.com, according to the Brooklyn district attorney’s office.  Earlier this year, in Brooklyn, a tip led police to “Jennifer,” 18, who refused to testify against her pimp.  Instead, prosecutors found him through a prostitution website.  He was charged with sex trafficking.

That’s right, it’s the social engineer’s best friend, “brainwashing” again.  When people act like free-willed individuals instead of victims and behave in a way contrary to what the control freaks consider “right thinking”, that person must somehow be deranged.  And if someone the “authorities” label a victim insists she isn’t victimized, obviously it must be brainwashing (or as they sometimes prefer to call it, “Stockholm Syndrome”).  As Maier pointed out, the most common way to ignore facts is to give them a new name, to redefine them.  When a woman says she doesn’t want to be “rescued”, her statement is called “lying” and her desire is said to be the result of “programming”.  When the 90% say they are not victims, they’re suffering from “false consciousness” or else they’re “terrified of their pimps”.  And when a legally-adult woman refuses to “testify against” a pimp she doesn’t have, she is treated as a child and the police railroad somebody she had some contact with through a hooker board (a client or moderator, perhaps?) to play the role of the nonexistent “pimp” in their sick psychodrama.

This is, as many of you may remember, exactly what I predicted would happen once such laws became popular; if all prostitutes are victims it follows that each of them was victimized by someone, and if there is no such person it becomes necessary to manufacture him out of an innocent bystander so the “theory” is not revealed as arrant nonsense.  The fact that most prostitutes, including teenage prostitutes, are acting under their own volition doesn’t fit the trafficking/coercion/ “no woman would prostitute herself voluntarily” theory, so it must be disposed of.

One Year Ago Today

“November Book Reviews” discusses A Renegade History of the United States, Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do, The Internet Escort’s Handbook and Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry.

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TANSTAAFL

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, Perception, The Dark Side, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on November 6, 2011| 96 Comments »

There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.  –  unknown origin, popularized by Robert A. Heinlein

It should be obvious, yet many reasonably intelligent people refuse to recognize it; one cannot get something for nothing.  It’s a basic law of the universe; everything has to come from somewhere.  In human terms, if someone offers something at no apparent cost to the recipient, it means that someone else has borne that cost; if the giver and recipient are close friends we call this a “gift”, but if they are strangers or near-strangers it nearly always means that the donor wants something of value from the recipient.  In most cases, what he wants is both obvious and fair; for example, literal “free lunch” buffets at bars are subsidized by more expensive drinks and draw increased traffic to the business.  But when the goods being offered for “free” are very expensive and the donor’s motivation is not readily apparent, it would behoove the recipient to be very wary and to remember another popular adage:  “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.”

Case in point:  this October 16th story from the Los Angeles Times, called to my attention by regular reader Gorbachev:

David Dutcher met Sharon on Match.com in late 2008, a few months after separating from his wife.  “We had a lot in common,” he recalled.  Sharon loved four-wheel-drive trucks and sports…[and] was tall, slender, blond and beautiful.  She moaned that she had not had sex in a long time.  She told him he had large, strong hands and wondered if that portended other things.  She described his kisses as “yummy.”  “It felt a lot like Christmas,” said Dutcher, 49, a tall, burly engineer with wavy red hair.  On their second date, Sharon suggested they join one of her friends “who was partying because she had closed a real estate deal,” Dutcher said.  They drove to an Italian restaurant…[where] Sharon’s friend, “Tash,” was…pounding down shots.  The women fiddled with Dutcher’s tie and massaged his neck and shoulders.  [Tash] unbuttoned her blouse to reveal generous cleavage.  “I am way over my head with these girls,” he remembered thinking.  “I hadn’t been out dating in a while.”

Sharon had trouble finishing her tequila shots and asked Dutcher to help…[then she] suggested going to a house with a hot tub that Tash was housesitting, Dutcher said.  He followed them in his truck.  Within a few minutes, a flashing red light appeared in his rearview mirror.  The officer said he had been swerving.  Three months later, Dutcher’s wife filed a motion in their divorce case, telling the court that her soon-to-be former husband had been arrested on suspicion of drunk driving and that she feared for their children’s safety.  The judge ordered that Dutcher’s visits be supervised.

Then, earlier this year, Dutcher received a letter from…[the district attorney which] contained a transcript of a police interview with Christopher Butler, a private detective and the subject of a state and federal criminal investigation…[The letter said that] the women…worked for Butler’s detective agency.  Sharon…was a former Las Vegas showgirl.  A man who once worked for Butler…told authorities Butler arranged for men to be arrested for drunk driving at the behest of their ex-wives and their divorce lawyers — and that entrapment was only one of many alleged misdeeds.  Butler, 49, a former police officer, was arrested in February.  In addition to setting up at least five DUIs, he sold drugs for law enforcement officers and helped them open and operate a brothel…Butler said his accomplices reasoned that they could shield their illegal businesses because any complaints would be investigated by a state-run narcotics task force, which one of the officers headed.

…In May, the FBI took over the probe, interviewing Dutcher and other ex-husbands arrested on suspicion of drunk driving.  A federal grand jury indicted Butler and two of the officers in August and September.  The charges included drug dealing, running a prostitution business and illegal possession of a weapon.  More indictments are expected.  A third officer, implicated by Butler in the DUIs, faces state charges of accepting bribes to make arrests…Butler paid his decoys $25 an hour for four-hour minimums.  The women worked in pairs.  One drank heavily with the target and the other drove.  Butler videotaped the encounters from a nearby table.  When the man got into his vehicle, Butler tipped off police…

[After getting the letter from the D.A.] Dutcher…contacted others he had learned had been set up, including Declan Woods, a contractor arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence in 2007.  Woods’ ex-wife was represented by Mary Nolan, the same divorce attorney who worked for Susan Dutcher…Woods’ ordeal began with a call for a kitchen remodel estimate.  The prospective client turned out to be an attractive, flirtatious brunet [sic].  She told him she was new in town, a writer, and wondered what he was doing that night.  He said he planned to grab dinner at a local cafe…The woman showed up with a friend that evening.  They went to a nearby bar, where the three drank…the brunet [sic] was so aggressive he twice pushed her off his lap…Looking back, he said, he should have realized something was wrong.  “Things like that don’t happen to blokes like me,” said the British-born Woods.  “But the alcohol kicks in, you are having a good time, and you think, what the hell.”  The women suggested going to a house with a hot tub.  Woods hopped into his truck and followed them.  He was pulled over almost immediately…

Prosecutors offered to help Dutcher and Woods remove their DUI convictions and approved the dismissal of charges against the three other men.  Dutcher obtained a court order last month to expunge his conviction.  Even though the men had been drinking, prosecutors said Butler’s stings violated a little-used 19th century law that makes it a felony to conspire to subject another person to arrest.  The female decoys have not been charged…

Before I get to my main point, I’d like to call your attention to a few details.  First, that “Sharon” and her friends have absolutely no self-respect, selling their sexual services for half of what a cheap streetwalker might charge.  Furthermore, they demonstrate the topsy-turviness of the American legal system; being paid to flirt with a man, lie to him and set him up for arrest in a sleazy plot to deny him visitation with his kids is apparently legal, but being paid a mutually agreeable fee to honestly provide sex isn’t, and I’ll bet “Sharon” thinks she isn’t a whore.  Furthermore, why haven’t the lawyers who paid Butler to frame their clients’ husbands been charged with conspiracy along with Butler and the cops?  And though it’s almost a throwaway detail in the story, here’s another example of cops doing the sort of things they get paid to nail other people to trees for doing.

But the main lesson is this:  Guys, Penthouse letters are fiction.  “Things like that” don’t happen to blokes like Woods, Dutcher or anybody else.  The Myth of the Wanton is just that; a myth.  Women who look like Las Vegas showgirls don’t advertise on Match.com, and if they say they haven’t had sex in a long time they either didn’t want it or else they’re lying.  They don’t throw themselves at dumpy, goofy-looking, middle-aged guys who aren’t rich or famous, and they ABSOLUTELY DO NOT offer three-ways in hot tubs with their gorgeous friends on the first or second date…unless they’re whores.  And if they haven’t asked you to pay them, somebody else has.  Free pussy is every bit as mythical as free lunch; if a strange woman offering sex doesn’t ask for cash, she wants something else.  If that “something else” is obvious or you can figure it out, and it’s a price you’re willing to pay, by all means go ahead and I hope you have a great time.  But please, think with the big head; if you know a chick is out of your league and she’s acting in a way no other woman has ever behaved toward you before, you need to recognize that something is wrong.  Sooner or later the bill will be presented, and you may find it’s a lot more than you bargained for.

One Year Ago Today

“Jezebel” starts with control freaks who get off on policing other people’s sexuality, moves on to the lady whom the column is named after, and ends up with the website of the same name.  All that, and adult cartoons, too.

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Revolution

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , on November 5, 2011| 58 Comments »

You say you want a revolution
Well, you know…
We all want to change the world.  –  John Lennon, “Revolution”

One year ago today I published “Guy Fawkes Night”, in which I briefly explained the holiday for those outside the UK and suggested that perhaps former British colonies (such as the U.S.) which no longer celebrate it…

…need to renew the holiday…as a time to burn tyrants in effigy.  Governments need to be reminded (at least annually if not constantly) that they only hold power by the sufferance of all the people, not merely the majority, and that the overthrow of any government by a disgruntled minority is always a possibility.  I would like to see most if not all politicians and their minions paying for their power and privilege by being forced to live in a constant state of nervous anxiety; maybe then fewer would choose that path and more would concern themselves with keeping all the citizenry happy rather than merely pleasing barely enough of the population to keep themselves in office.

The graphic novel and movie V for Vendetta used Guy Fawkes Day as a symbol of rebellion against tyranny; the protagonist, known only as “V”, dressed in a Guy Fawkes costume and mask, and the number 5 (for November 5th) appears repeatedly (even the letter “V” is a Roman 5).  The imagery wasn’t lost on some young Americans who saw the movie, because many of the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters wear Guy Fawkes masks.  And though their protests have so far been peaceful, I hope the masks constitute an implied threat rather than an inappropriate pop-culture reference; Guy Fawkes’ aborted revolution was not remotely peaceful, nor was that of the fictional “V”.  While I don’t advocate mindless violence as a measure of first resort, I believe the threat of it needs to be present for government to heed the demands of protesters.  As I wrote last year:

Interrogators have long understood something which both terrorists and pacifists alike fail to understand, which is that human nature tends to respond only to BOTH the promise of reward and the threat of punishment used in tandem.  Terrorism fails because it offers only violence, and pacifism fails because it offers only the reward of keeping the non-violent protesters happy, but the classic “good cop, bad cop” scenario works because it offers both.  Not even children consistently respond to the promise of the carrot without the threat of the stick; why then should we expect adults to, most especially the self-important adults who set themselves up over their fellows?  The civil rights movement worked because Martin Luther King and other peaceful protesters offered an attractive alternative to the race violence which had escalated since soon after the Second World War, but without the looming specter of race war their peaceful protests might never have accomplished anything.  In more recent times the peaceful activism of mainstream “gay rights” groups offered an attractive alternative to the disruptive antics of groups like ACT-UP and the quiet violence of “outing”.  Perhaps one of the reasons that the prostitutes’ rights movement has languished in futility for four decades is that there is no threatening alternative; maybe the “good girl” activists…need a few “bad girl” groups who run around outing politicians, disrupting fundamentalist religious services and neofeminist meetings, hacking prohibitionist websites and spying on police to publicly expose “stings” so the government will have some compelling reason to consider the reasonable alternative of decriminalization.

The American political system has failed; the two officially-sanctioned parties are merely two wings of the same vulture, and their members are too locked in groupthink to make the radical changes which need to be made to save this country.  81% of Americans are dissatisfied with the way the country is being governed, and half of the citizens now recognize the federal government “poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens”.  Yet the two approved parties merely point fingers at each other and their leaders refuse to listen to those who recognize that BOTH parties are at fault and need to be reformed or abolished.  Listen to the mindless attacks on the “Tea Party” from soi-disant “liberals”, and compare them to the equally-mindless attacks on “Occupy Wall Street” from soi-disant “conservatives”; they’re almost indistinguishable.  Neither dissident group has proposed a unified program of reform, but both are widespread and popular grass-roots campaigns made up of people who are dissatisfied with the status quo and extremely angry with the entrenched political establishment’s criminal mismanagement of the Ship of State.  And as the Guy Fawkes masks of OWS and the Revolutionary War symbology of the Tea Party connote, that establishment ignores or underestimates them at its own peril.  I wonder if the various Middle-Eastern dictatorships who have recently been overthrown in the so-called “Arab Spring” thought as little of the citizens who eventually rose up against them?

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November Updates (Part Three)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 4, 2011| 31 Comments »

To legislate against the moral codes of one’s fellows…is to steal their moral codes, to suppress their characters.  –  R.M. MacIver

Three forays into the bizarre world inhabited by lawheads, and a little good news.

Imaginary Lines (July 7th, 2011)

As this article Grace showed me demonstrates, it’s not only people whom the government subjects to arcane and complex border-crossing regulations, then treats as violent criminals if the paperwork is improperly filled out:

A…supplier of guitar-making parts is ensnared in an international smuggling investigation after federal authorities seized 24 pallets of exotic wood…Luthiers Mercantile International, or LMI, imported the $200,000-worth of Indian rosewood and ebony to sell to Gibson…On Aug. 24, federal agents descended on a Nashville, Tenn., warehouse where LMI’s wood was waiting for Gibson to take possession.  They seized the wood along with Gibson computer hard drives and guitars.  [Federal officials claim] the wood was “unlawfully imported, purchased and received”…[but] LMI officials say minor paperwork mistakes by their import broker on a separate wood shipment led to the raid…Though LMI has imported rosewood from India for decades, the U.S. government is now saying that Indian rosewood fingerboards are an illegal export…

Many of Sonoma County’s estimated 100 luthiers, who depend on tropical exotic hardwoods that have particular resonant qualities, say their futures are at stake…[Tom] Ribbecke, whose guitars are displayed in the Smithsonian Museum…fears that if authorities decide some of [his stock] is illegal, they will take it.  “The Lacey Act…makes all of our material that all of us have been saving and setting aside for our retirement illegal for us to own,” he said…Since 2008, the Lacey Act has made it illegal to bring wood into the United States that was exported illegally from a country of origin…but under World Trade Organization laws…what is legal in one country can appear illegal in another, based on differences in national tariff codes…

In other words, the government is fighting evil wood traffickers, working to rescue innocent boards from being enslaved in guitars, where they are sold to satisfy the sick desires of music lovers.  Don’t you feel safer now?

J’accuse (July 21st, 2011)

As I said in my column of October 23rd, most politicians hire whores at least occasionally, therefore reports that any individual politician hired a whore do not constitute news.  But this October 17th New York Post story on the continuing Dominique Strauss-Kahn hijinks has other features of interest, so I’ve edited it to remove colorful Post inanities like “bootyguard” and “serial sleazeball”:

A top French cop served as [Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s] personal pimp, organizing orgies for him in both France and New York…The new allegations came to light during an investigation into a ring of prostitutes that included underage teens…Sources…[said] that…DSK is among a group of politicians, lawyers and business leaders whose names were found in the ring’s “black book’’ of clients.  The French cop, Jean-Christophe Lagarde, also allegedly escorted ladies of the evening all the way from the French city of Lille, where the ring was headquartered, to New York for DSK.  Strauss-Kahn’s personal prostitutes were allegedly selected for him by a…procurer named Dominique “Dodo’’ Alderweireld, who…has since been arrested.  Lawyer Frederique Beaulieu says Strauss-Kahn “is asking to be questioned to put an end to these insinuations and extrapolations”…but has not yet been contacted by police…Five men…have been arrested in France and charged with pimping…

Welcome to the Wonderland of legalization.  Prostitution is legal in France, but “procuring, aiding or assisting” prostitutes is illegal, as is “living on the avails”.  In other words, it’s OK to be a whore as long as you have no friends, family, employees, assistants, managers or other human contact other than customers.  As soon as you move in with someone, tour with another girl, or pay someone to arrange travel or book appointments for you, your legal business is instantly transformed into a “ring”, your private affairs are a matter for police “investigation” and you are buried under an avalanche of dysphemisms.

Presumption of Guilt (July 29th, 2011)

How many of y’all enjoy shopping at used book or music stores, flea markets and the like?  I sure do.  But I’ll bet you didn’t know that every time you walk into such a place you might be surrounded by criminals so dangerous that, according to the Louisiana legislature, the need to catch them justifies outlawing an activity which is literally as old as civilization:

This summer…Louisiana passed a law that bans individuals and businesses from transacting in cash if they are considered a “secondhand dealer”…[which is defined as] “…Anyone, other than a non-profit entity, who buys, sells, trades in or otherwise acquires or disposes of junk or used or secondhand property more frequently than once per month from any other person, other than a non-profit entity…”  The law then states that “A secondhand dealer shall not enter into any cash transactions in payment for the purchase of junk or used or secondhand property.  Payment shall be made in the form of check, electronic transfers, or money order issued to the seller of the junk or used or secondhand property…”  The broad scope of this definition can essentially encompass everyone; from your local flea market vendors and buyers to a housewife purchasing goods on ebay or craigslist, to a group of guys trading baseball cards…Louisiana [has] effectively banned its citizens from freely using United States legal tender.

The law goes further to require secondhand dealers to turn over…their business’ proprietary client information.  For every transaction a secondhand dealer must obtain the seller’s personal information such as their name, address, driver’s license number and the license plate number of the vehicle in which the goods were delivered.  They must also make a detailed description of the item(s) purchased and submit this with the personal identification information of every transaction to the local policing authorities through electronic daily reports.  If a seller cannot or refuses to produce to the secondhand dealer any of the required forms of identification, the secondhand dealer is prohibited from completing the transaction…individuals and businesses are [thus] forced to report routine business activity to the police.  Can law enforcement not accomplish its goal of identifying potential thieves and locating stolen items in a far less intrusive manner?  And of course, there are already laws that prohibit stealing, buying or selling stolen goods, laws that require businesses to account for transactions and laws that penalize individuals and businesses that transact in stolen property.  Why does…Louisiana…need…more laws infringing on personal privacy, liberties and freedom?…Interestingly enough, although Pawnshops are still required to obtain clients’ personal information and transmit their client database information to law enforcement, they are exempt from the restriction of cash payments.  A jeweler next door to a pawnshop cannot offer clients the same payment method offered by its competing pawnshop neighbor…

The excuse used to justify this blatant tax grab and surveillance method was a recent increase in copper robberies.  The pillage of cables for their copper always increases during periods of high metal prices and/or high unemployment, but somehow government has always managed to deal with it before without requiring merchants to record the license plate numbers of little old ladies trading in romance novels or university students selling CDs they’re tired of.  But that’s because we used to have this thing called “presumption of innocence”; well, it was nice while it lasted.

Sea Change (November 4th, 2010)

My column of one year ago today discussed examples of the way that public opinion is slowly changing in our favor, and here’s a new one; on August 20th the 60-year-old Society for the Study of Social Problems adopted a resolution stating that it supports decriminalization:

WHEREAS the criminalization of prostitution and other forms of sex work negotiated between consenting adults perpetuates violence and social stigma against sex workers, including by law enforcement…WHEREAS the criminalization of prostitution and other forms of sex work denies sex workers basic human and civil rights, including healthcare and housing, extended to workers in other trades, occupations, callings, or professions; WHEREAS the decriminalization of prostitution would lead to safer working conditions and better health for both the worker and client, and allow workers to report nonconsensual activities to law enforcement without fear of being arrested…BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the SSSP supports:  (1) bipartisan legislation to decriminalize prostitution (2) public education regarding the costs of policing sex workers and (3) normalization of the occupation.

You can read the full text at the link; it was written by Jenny Heineman, co-coordinator of SWOP Las Vegas, which was also honored by the SSSP at a banquet.  This is a small change, but it has to start somewhere; the ACLU is pro-decriminalization as well (though they rarely say anything about it), and every professional organization we can win to the cause gives us that much more credibility in the eyes of the public and politicians.

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November Updates (Part Two)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 3, 2011| 14 Comments »

When truth is no longer free, freedom is no longer real: the truths of the police are the truths of today.  –  Jacques Prévert

Three more dispatches from the War on Whores.

…And Always Know Where Your Towel Is (November 17th, 2010)

SWOP suggests that “every hooker…develop a ‘Don’t Panic’ plan she can give to friends in case she is arrested.  The idea is that if a woman knows her kids, pets, house, etc are being taken care of while she is delayed for hours after the arrest, she is less likely to panic and let the cops take advantage of her.”  Well, technology marches on, and according to this October 12th article from CNET some clever fellow has decided to automate the process:

Imagine you’re in New York…peacefully protesting…to curb excessive influence of big business…on U.S. laws and policy.  You’re holding up a sign declaring your heartfelt beliefs and chanting a bit with some of your fellow demonstrators when, all of a sudden–bam!  The cops slap the cuffs on you, with the intention of carting you off to the nearest police station.  Meanwhile, your friends and family are at home completely clueless about your situation.  Enter I’m Getting Arrested, a creative Android app that…was inspired by a similar incident.  It lets you quickly notify your family, friends, and crack legal team (if you have one) of your situation with a single tap of your finger.  Just initially enter a custom message and some SMS-ready numbers to contact in the event of your arrest.  Then, as you’re about to be corralled into the back of a squad car, fire the app up and long-press the bull’s-eye for 2 seconds.  From there, you can rest assured that your message will be sent to the appropriate contacts…

Clearly, this could be useful for whores as well, though I’m not sure an entrapped girl would be able to get her hands on her smartphone quickly enough before the pigs snatched it away from her.  Perhaps a mark II version could include a timer that fires off the panic message unless a code is entered by a certain time, thus foiling the sadistic “you’ll get your call later” game.

Where Are the Victims?  (May 14th, 2011)

Considering the economic and social collapse of Detroit (which has lost 60% of its population in the last 30 years), one would think its “authorities” would have better things to do than persecute hookers.  But for that to happen, they’d have to have sense and a moral center, which they don’t.  So instead they keep wasting tremendous amounts of money, resources and manpower to persecute people for having parties, as reported in the October 14th Macomb Daily:

…Three men have been named in federal indictments accusing them of setting up events [at bowling alleys] where male customers could engage in “meet-and-greet” [events with] prostitutes who would then take them to hotels for sex for cash.  The alleys, the owners say, are unfairly being singled out and had no knowledge of what went on after those who rented their party rooms left the premises.  David Kilvington, Steven Thompson and Mark Leblanc are charged with creating websites to lure customers to the sex parties, according to a complaint unsealed in U.S. District Court in Detroit…A cover charge of $20 at the door allowed guests inside to meet up to 72 prostitutes — or “service providers” — for the purposes of later having sex.  The prostitutes were expected to give “donations” to the prostitution organizers of between $100 and $1,000 for the events…While the bowling centers may have served as staging areas for the alleged prostitution ring, the owners of the locations say nothing untoward occurred at the alleys…[which] have meeting rooms that can be booked by anybody, and are glass-walled and what goes on can be seen by everybody at the lanes, the owners say…FBI agents were alerted to the operation by the mother of a 17-year-old escort who sent an email to the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office claiming her daughter was lured to the operation by promises of money and drugs in exchange for sexual favors.  The mother provided information because she feared for her daughter’s life and was concerned other women would become involved, according to the message contained in court records.  Over the course of three years, federal investigators used confidential informants, an electronic paper trail and PayPal records to build a case against the suspects…The case was investigated by the Violent Crime Squad in the Detroit division of the FBI…

Most of this is the typical filth vomited out by cops and prosecutors (party organizers “lured customers”, the mother “feared for her daughter’s life” from a bunch of middle-aged businessmen at a bowling alley, etc), but there are a few points of interest, not the least of which is that the “violent crime squad” is so idle that it could devote three years to busting a bunch of guys for organizing social events for consenting adults (I’d lay good odds that “17-year-old escort” is some kind of red herring).  The lesson to be learned here?  In these days of gigantic FBI boondoggles, “meet and greet” events are not a good idea; that many fat ducks in one pond presents far too tempting a target for the shotguns.

Mind Reading (June 1st, 2011)

Remember that Utah law that made it illegal to “act sexy”, and how when it was challenged as criminalizing normal female behavior its sponsor insisted it would only be used against “real” prostitutes, as determined by the super-duper psychic mind probe powers of cops?  Well, obviously Florida believes its cops have that power as well, because they’re trying to criminalize not only acting sexy, but strolling, waving and asking “are you a cop?”:

Hillsborough County authorities are looking for ways to make it easier for authorities to arrest suspected prostitutes…[by] passing a law making it illegal to participate in activities that signal an intent to sell sex.  Potentially illegal activities would include “strolling” along public rights of way while waving to or trying to stop passing motorists, or repeatedly entering different vehicles for short periods of time.  Touching oneself in a provocative manner could also be grounds for arrest.  The ordinance would also seek to thwart suspected prostitutes and their customers from trying to identify undercover officers.  It would make it illegal for the suspected prostitute or customer to ask someone if they are a law enforcement officer.  It would also be illegal to ask someone to prove they aren’t an officer by asking them to expose themselves.  Today, Hillsborough County Sheriff’s deputies rely on state laws that typically require an undercover officer to get a prostitute or customer to agree to exchange sex for money before making an arrest…

Wait, you mean right now somebody actually has to break the law before being arrested for breaking it?  Well, we can’t have that!  But just in case you think the ignorance of these “authorities” only extends to the U.S. Constitution, Commission Chairman Al Higginbotham (who obviously fancies his position magically grants him a degree in sociology in addition to super psychic powers) has a message for you:

While he said he holds no expectation that the measure will end prostitution, he rejected characterizations that it is a victimless crime.  He cited statistics showing many prostitutes are teenagers, are often victims of violence and tend to abuse drugs.  “This is no story about a pretty woman,” Higginbotham said.

Obviously, Mr. Higginbotham thinks the best way to help drug-addicted teenage crime victims is to arrest them for walking down the street or asking questions; I suspect the ACLU is of a different opinion.

One Year Ago Today

“Meretrices and Prostibulae” is a glossary of the many, many different kinds of whores who lived and did business in Imperial Rome.

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November Updates (Part One)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 2, 2011| 40 Comments »

Lust is to the other passions what the nervous fluid is to life; it supports them all, lends strength to them all…ambition, cruelty, avarice, revenge, are all founded on lust.  –  Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade

One year ago today I published “Election Day”, which told of the prohibitionist persecution by power-mad perverts which eternally accompanies the approach of elections in the U.S.  And while we do have one story of such a politically-motivated campaign of mass victimization today, the real unifying feature of this column is the frustrated male need for sex.

A Whore in the Bedroom (September 9th, 2010)

In this column I suggested that many a marriage would be happier if the wife were to be a bit more understanding of her husband’s sexual needs; I stated that “ignorant modern women not only feel that husbands should be satisfied with whatever sexual pickings their wives choose to dole out, however meager or restricted, but also refuse to understand that a starving man will seek food elsewhere if it isn’t available at home…If [accommodating his needs] seems too difficult, you can certainly just keep on the course you’ve set, but if your relationship hits the rocks solely because you couldn’t be bothered to tend the wheel there is nobody to blame but yourself.”  I’m sure at least a few female readers felt I was overstating the importance of this; the neofeminist propaganda that sex is not a need is widely accepted in American society.  But as this October 1st Huffington Post article explains, a husband’s sexual satisfaction is the single greatest indicator of whether a marriage will succeed:

…Kristina Dzara at Southern Illinois University…in her article, Assessing the Effect of Marital Sexuality on Marital Disruption…used the Marriage Matters Panel Survey of Newly Wed Couples that followed over 1000 couples in Louisiana from 1998 to 2004…The author used three measures of sexuality in the first three to six months of marriage — frequency of sexual intercourse, sexual satisfaction, and agreement between spouses about their sex life.  Dzara used these measures to predict divorce by the 5th year of marriage.  As we know, there are a lot of factors can contribute to divorce — marital quality, early marriage, cohabitation and many more.  In order to get a better understanding of the effects of sexuality in marriage, the author controlled for many of these other factors.

…On average these young couples had intercourse between one and several times a week, but frequency didn’t seem to matter…For wives, satisfaction with physical intimacy decreased the likelihood of divorce, but overall marital quality and satisfaction with intimacy appeared to have the same effect.  In other words, marital quality and satisfaction with sex could not be teased apart for wives…[However,] the probability of divorce is dramatically reduced when husbands report being sexually satisfied.  Dzara writes, “a couple with a husband who has the highest self-rated satisfaction with physical intimacy, compared to a husband with the lowest self-rated satisfaction with physical intimacy, decreases their odds of experiencing a marital disruption by around 83.7%.”  Overall, husbands’ satisfaction with physical intimacy is a stronger influence on divorce than any other measure in this study.

Somewhat surprisingly, agreement between husbands and wives about their sex life did not seem to have much influence on their likelihood of divorce.  “Agreement about one’s sex life” may be bound up with many other factors of agreement.  In short, sex seems to matter to healthy marriages — not too big of a surprise.  For wives, satisfaction with physical intimacy and marital satisfaction seem to be rolled into one overall factor.  Not so for men.  When men report being satisfied with their marriage, this reduces their likelihood for divorce, and if they also report being sexually satisfied, then divorce is even more unlikely…

I didn’t really need a scientific study to tell me this, but validation is always welcome.

The Camel’s Nose (October 2nd, 2010)

The second part of this column discusses the case of “a man so sexually frustrated that all judgment and basic respect for others flies out the window, completely superseded by the need for sexual gratification through a perverse fantasy of sexually violating a woman unnoticed.”  To be precise, he masturbated into a woman’s water bottle and was apparently surprised when she figured it out.  Nor is he alone in either his filthiness or his stupidity, as reported in this October 6th AP article:

…Anthony Garcia admitted he tainted a sample of the yogurt he was handing out at Sunflower Market (in Albuquerque, New Mexico) in January.  He also admitted putting some of his semen on a plastic spoon that he placed with the yogurt.  Garcia then approached a female customer and offered her a sample…The woman told police that after tasting the sample, she spit on the floor several times and wiped her mouth on the garment she was wearing to get the taste out of her mouth.  Investigators collected samples of the woman’s spit from the floor and took the garment she was wearing as evidence…Garcia was linked to the yogurt through DNA samples…[but] lied to investigators about the case…Garcia faces up to three years of imprisonment to be followed by three years of supervised release.  He has been in federal custody since his arrest in July, and remained detained pending his sentencing, which has yet to be scheduled.

I presume this is a federal case because its occurrence in a supermarket made it a violation of the federal food purity laws.  Presumably, a 32-year-old man who works as a food sample distributor in a supermarket couldn’t afford an escort, but a streetwalker or at least some porn might’ve been a wise investment.  I’m rather beginning to wonder what the deal is with Albuquerque, though.  And here’s a warning to any would-be spooge sneakers out there:  Nearly all adult women know what the stuff tastes like, moron.

Something Rotten in Sweden (November 13th, 2010)

Last November I predicted that “more and more prohibitionists would shift to the Swedish rhetoric in order to capitalize on “human trafficking” hysteria, deflect arguments based on women’s right to control our own bodies and win the support of fence-sitters and even some misguided whores.”  Police departments have been especially enthusiastic about “end demand” rhetoric because it allows them to attack other men instead of women, thus pumping up their male egos by denying women agency and feeding their “pimps and hos” masturbatory fantasies while simultaneously avoiding criticism of their violence against sex workers and allowing them the pretense of “saving victims” when they’re actually persecuting adults for private behavior.  Early last month, police departments across the U.S. staged a joint victimization campaign against clients; here’s an October 11th story from the Chicago Tribune:

Cook County sheriff’s officers…took part in a nationwide prostitution sting…that netted more than 200 arrests – most of which were of men soliciting sex acts…Dubbed “The National Day of Johns Arrest,” the crackdown involved police in eight different jurisdictions targeting commercial sex on streets, in brothels and over the internet, according to a statement from the sheriff’s department, which said the enforcement action was the first nationally coordinated operation of its kind.  According to the statement, the pilot program is expected to be the first of several national sweeps to be aimed primarily at men who seek out prostitutes and who are increasingly seen by law enforcement as the true perpetrators of the sex trade, rather than the women who are often economically desperate or the victims of pimps.  In addition to the three Chicago-area departments, police in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Cincinnati and Newport News, Va., participated.  All told, the various departments arrested 233 people – 216 of them men seeking to patronize a prostitute – and levied $238,000 in fines…The action was conducted in conjunction with the Hunt Alternatives Fund, a Massachusetts-based social foundation that is attempting to combat demand for commercial sex and sex trafficking in the United States.

You may recall that the Hunt Alternatives Fund also bankrolled Melissa Farley’s recent attempt to cast all men as abusive monsters; as Laura Agustín pointed out over a year ago, funding campaigns to hunt men down like animals is only one part of Hunt’s and her neofeminist allies’ larger crusade to make sex workers’ lives miserable (without being seen as the misogynists they are) by targeting “demand”.  I know that a number of my readers are interested in the Men’s Rights Movement; I suggest that those of you who are ought to spread the word about Swanee Hunt’s repugnant and dangerous crusade against male sexuality and female sexual autonomy.

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Saint Death

Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on November 1, 2011| 18 Comments »

It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.  –  William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar (II, ii)

As I mentioned in yesterday’s column, in Mexico today is El Dia de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead), a festival honoring the departed.  And though it takes place on the Catholic observance of All Saints Day (continuing into tomorrow, All Souls Day), it is a far more important and popular holiday in Mexico than in other Catholic countries because it is in reality a descendant of the Aztec festival of the goddess Mictecacihuatl.  As we’ve discussed a number of times before, nearly every Christian holiday is an older pagan observance reconsecrated to the newer religion, and many pagan gods are still revered as holiday figures (such as Santa Claus or Befana) or Christian saints (such as St. Brigit).  But in the Americas, Christianity never completely replaced the native religions as totally as it had in Europe, and many peasant religious practices in Latin America are fusions of Catholic teachings and pagan beliefs in much the same way as Voodoo and Santeria are combinations of Catholicism with African and Caribbean beliefs.  For example, Our Lady of Guadalupe is a syncretism of the Blessed Mother with the Aztec mother-goddess Tonantzin (“Guadalupe” is a Hispanicized pronunciation of one of her titles, Coatlaxopeuh); it is even possible that her cult was an artificial one designed by Catholic clergy as an aid in converting the natives.  But while the Church was happy to allow the festivities of Mictecacihuatl to be transferred to All Saints Day, it had no use for the death-goddess herself; her worship therefore went underground and did not reappear in public for centuries.  Her modern name is Santa Muerte (“Saint Death”) and today is her feast day.

Since Christian theology has no place for apotheosized Death, the Church could not convert Mictecacihuatl into an official saint or folk figure; like so many pagan goddesses she was therefore condemned as a devil and her worshippers persecuted as witches or Satanists.  But the Aztecs had a strong reverence for death that could not be ground out of them by the conquerors’ religion; most Mexicans were satisfied with the elaborate Day of the Dead festivities, but others continued to venerate La Señora de las Sombras (The Lady of the Shadows) in secret.  Researchers have discovered relics from hidden temples and references to suppressed rites dating back to the early 18th century, and the cult began to emerge into public view during the political unrest of the late 19th century.  The cartoonist José Guadalupe Posada created a secularized representation of her called La Calavera Catrina (The Elegant Skull) which has become popular in association with the Day of the Dead, but worship of the goddess was still harshly suppressed by the Church until the 1940s, when it began to appear in poor neighborhoods of Mexico City.  By 1965 many of her devotees started openly declaring themselves, and by the 1990s they numbered about two million.  The first public shrine to Santa Muerte was established in Tepito in 2003, and since then others have sprung up all over Northern Mexico and in Mexican communities in the United States; a full-sized church to her is supposed to be built in Mexico City.

Santa Muerte appears as a skeleton in a robe or dress, usually white but sometimes other colors depending upon what the devotee wishes to invoke her for.  She usually carries a scythe and a globe, or sometimes an hourglass.  Her rites are borrowed from Catholicism and include praying the rosary; sometimes her images are placed alongside those of Jesus, Our Lady of Guadalupe, or even Jesús Malverde, a Robin Hood-like folk hero revered by many Mexicans as a saint.  Candles maybe burned as prayers to her, and believers also offer her small gifts of fruit, flowers, cigarettes, coins, etc.  Santa Muerte is particularly revered among the very poor and those whose lives are more dangerous than those of others, especially those who work at night or feel unwelcome in traditional churches because they live outside the law.  She is extremely popular among prostitutes, taxi drivers, bartenders, policemen and soldiers, but also among petty thieves, drug traffickers, smugglers and prisoners.  Though criminals are the minority of her worshippers, the Mexican government has sometimes used the association (and the Church’s condemnation) as an excuse to persecute the sect and to consider the presence of a Santa Muerte shrine or altar as “evidence” of criminal behavior, just as the Pima County, Arizona Sheriff’s Office tried to claim that a picture of Jesús Malverde was “evidence” that José Guerena (who was murdered by the Pima Country SWAT team last May 5th) was connected to a “narcotics ring” on the grounds that Malverde is revered by drug traffickers (and also immigrants and those who have been robbed, but obviously that’s not important).

I don’t ever recall reading that the Catholic Church was reviled during Prohibition because most Mafia members were Catholic (many Americans were anti-Catholic due to their protestant upbringing but that isn’t the same thing).  But as traditional religion has decreased in importance to many people, governments have become increasingly emboldened to persecute people on religious grounds.  This has nothing to do with the government itself or its members being less religious; states with official religions are perfectly happy to oppress members of minority religions as well.  But for those regimes, the official religion serves the purpose of social control, just as the state-sanctioned religions called “political parties”, “feminism”, “socialism”, etc do today.  It is only minority religions which oppose the status quo or encourage private, personal behavior of which the state disapproves that are targeted for suppression nowadays, and if a few members of the religion are violent outlaws, it provides a convenient excuse for persecution of the entire group.  Those who revere Santa Muerte have not been singled out for vigorous suppression yet, but given her popularity among those who live outside of middle-class society in both Mexico and the U.S., it’s only a matter of time.

One Year Ago Today

“Amsterdam” is a short history of prostitution in the famously-tolerant city.

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