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Archive for December, 2011

December Miscellanea

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 11, 2011| 15 Comments »

The freakish is no longer a private zone, difficult of access.  People who are bizarre, in sexual disgrace, emotionally violent are seen daily on the newsstands, on TV, in the subways.  Hobbesian man roams the streets, quite visible, with glitter in his hair.  –  Susan Sontag

…and as usual, we give the most freakish and emotionally disturbed of all power over us, like a medieval Carnival celebration writ large and practiced all year ‘round.  In today’s collection, I’ve saved those for last.

Not To Be Taken Internally

It’s not too often an article leaves me at a loss for words, but…see for yourself, in this November 19th story from NBC Miami:

A Miami Gardens transgender woman is facing charges of practicing medicine without a license after police say she injected a patient’s rear with everything but the kitchen sink in an illegal cosmetic surgery procedure.  Oneal Ron Morris, 30, was arrested Friday after an investigation by Miami Gardens Police and the Florida Department of Health.  According to police, the victim saw Morris in May and was injected in her buttocks with a substance consisting of cement, “Fix a Flat,” mineral oil and super glue…the amateur incision was then sealed with super glue…[and] the victim was later hospitalized with a serious medical condition…Morris, who police say is a man but appears to look like a woman and sports an apparently enhanced rear herself in arrest photos, was being held on $7,500 bond.  It was unknown whether she has an attorney…


Since then, other victims like this one have come forward.  Take a look at Morris’ photo at right and ask yourself, “Would I trust this person’s judgment regarding cosmetic procedures?” The only other thing I have to say is from “February Updates”: “ladies, please, real plastic surgeons do NOT make house calls to hotel rooms!”  Nor, I might add, do they perform procedures at parties.

Higher Education

OK, according to American law filmed harlotry magically becomes legal.  I wonder how this scheme (reported on November 29th in the Huffington Post) would fly in the US?

The world’s first international sex school has opened which claims to teach its students how to be better lovers.  But far from being a cheap thrill, one term at the “hands on” International Sex School in Vienna will cost pupils £1,400.  Swedish-born “headmistress” Ylva-Maria Thompson says anyone over the age of 16 can enroll at what she describes as “the world’s first college of applied sexuality”.  Students live in a mixed sex dormitory block where they’re expected to practise their homework.  “Our core education is not theoretical, but very practical.  The emphasis is on how to be a better lover”, the new school head added.  “Sexual positions, caressing techniques, anatomical features.  And we teach people hands on.”

Thompson is better known for her art exhibitions, including one which displayed 100 casts of Swedish women’s genitals.  Raunchy adverts for the school showing a couple making love have already been banned by Austrian TV.  “This is wrapped up in a very stylish way but it is just selling sex,” one protestor commented.

One has to laugh at the protester’s inane statement, because selling sex is legal in Austria.  I do have to wonder if Thompson’s students could be prosecuted in her native country, though.

Poetic Justice

I hope you’ll forgive me for indulging myself in a moment of schadenfreude, courtesy of Hypervocal:

If you needed any real-world evidence as to why you should never put your name on a building while you’re still alive, former Arapahoe County [Colorado] Sheriff Patrick J. Sullivan Jr. has you covered.  The National Sheriff Association’s 2001 “Sheriff of the Year” was arrested on [November 29th], suspected of trafficking methamphetamine,  according to CBS Denver.  The 68-year-old Sullivan served as Arapahoe County [Colorado] Sheriff for 19 years before retiring from his elected post in 2002.  The investigation leading up to his arrest…began on Nov. 17th when several police informants connected Sullivan to the use and distribution of meth.  “As part of the investigation authorities say Sullivan agreed to meet a male informant and provide the man drugs in exchange for sex”…

Here’s the kicker:  Sullivan, who is being held on $250,000 bond, is sitting in the Arapahoe County Jail.  His new home is better known by its updated name:  The Patrick J. Sullivan Jr. Detention Facility.  Current Arapahoe County sheriff, Grayson Robinson, said Sullivan will likely be charged with a felony count drug count, with additional charges against him and other suspects to follow.  If he is convicted of the class-five felony, he faces one to six years in prison…

This story could almost have served as an update to “Wholesale Hypocrisy” or even “Reaction Formation”, since the CBS report notes that this “dedicated, loyal, available,” dope-dealing “hero” who posted bond for drug suspects on numerous occasions over the past few years was simultaneously “an active participant in state and local methamphetamine task forces, helping craft a state plan to deal with the scourge of methamphetamine.”  Well, I guess they went straight to the source.  I wonder if he’ll be prosecuted as a “human trafficker” too, since he offered to pay for sex and Colorado politicians claim that “end demand” initiatives will “cut down on the enormous public harm that comes from human trafficking”.  Alas, it’s much more likely he’ll just get the usual slap on the wrist after his defense says he fell off of his bicycle or became an addict due to some act of wonderful, selfless heroism.

The Clueless Leading the Hysterical

As students of hysteria know, the vast majority of panics would be extremely short-lived if people actually bothered to investigate the moronic claims made by authority figures such as “the average age at which a woman enters prostitution is 13” or “there is a 40% increase in domestic violence on Super Bowl Sunday” (as described in my column of one year ago today).  Of course, they never do, and neither do the self-proclaimed “authorities” themselves.  All it takes is for some glorified security guard in Arizona to declare that teenagers are using vodka-soaked tampons to get drunk without booze breath and before you know it cops and media from sea to shining sea are reporting it as Gospel.  The idea of thinking critically about the claim or simply visiting The Straight Dope  or Snopes or Mythbusters or The Honest Courtesan never occurs to these yo-yos, and the result is stuff like this November 30th story from Huffington Post:

The New Mexico Attorney General’s Office is warning parents that an increased sighting of depictions of a cartoon-like bear that is linked to pedophiles could be an indication of increased child sex offender activity in the Albuquerque area.  “Our ICAC unit has received reports that the Pedobear window sticker has been sighted in Albuquerque on at least two vehicles recently,” said New Mexico Attorney General Gary King.  The concept of the Pedobear was made popular a couple years ago on the Internet forum 4chan.  The bear illustration was a joke aimed at people who were inadvertently creepy about children.  The bear, however, has since been embraced by pedophiles, according to the attorney general’s office.  The Pedobear, they allege, “has a sexual interest in underage girls” and has spread from use among an online subculture to the mainstream…

Last year flyers circulated of a Pedobear masquerading as a TSA agent, and in May a man dressed as the Internet-based Pedobear was escorted by police from the San Diego Comic Con event, where he had been distributing candy to children.  It is not illegal for people to display the Pedobear image in public.  Some people may be displaying them as a joke, but the attorney general’s office said they are taking the bear images seriously and are trying to get the word out.  “We are very concerned about the potential link between the Pedobear symbol and pedophiles; we also want to increase public awareness of the potential danger to children, especially young girls,” King said.


Because, you know, pedophiles are usually strangers who wear funny costumes to attract the attention of every single adult in the area before swooping down on unsuspecting prepubescent girls, only they’re not.  Of course, this is Albuquerque, the city which seems determined to win some kind of award for police and governmental corruption, incompetence  and all-around control freakishness.  Still, they’re just taking their cues from San Diego, which started this particular nonsense last year with a hilarious two-page flyer that sounds like it was composed by the bastard child of a cop and a failed writer of vintage Hollywood ad copy.  The sick minds of police are compelled to project their own internal ugliness onto the external world, so it’s inevitable that they would fantasize that a tool of community self-policing is “really” a badge of criminality that they have to “protect” people from by imposing further tyranny.

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Updates Galore (Part Two)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 10, 2011| 7 Comments »

Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.  –  Ralph Waldo Emerson

Four stories in which government bullies trample on individual rights in order to satisfy their own perverted lust for power.

Full of Themselves (June 7th, 2011)

Local governments are always proposing new ways to stop people from engaging in mutually satisfactory sexual arrangements, but what makes this November 15th story from KOKI in Tulsa, Oklahoma interesting is the holier-than-thou whining from licensed masseuses:

A Tulsa police officer and…city councilor are pushing for…[a] new ordinance [which] would require any type of massage facility to have a business license through the city, that would have to be renewed each year.  Additionally, anybody performing massages in the business would be required to have a license through some sort of nationally accredited massage therapy organization.  The ordinance also requires those giving massages to be fully clothed during the massage, and outlaws any touching of “private areas”…Any violation…would result in a suspension or revocation of the business’s license…

Those who run legitimate massage businesses are big supporters of the ordinance.  “What it does, it makes the industry, the massage community, look bad,” Karen Harr, licensed massage technician, said…Another woman who owns a massage parlor was afraid to talk on camera because she was worried people would think she’s running a prostitution ring.  But she, too, supports a law requiring all people giving massages to have a license like she does at her business.  “I make sure they have a license, I do background checks on them, I make sure they’re not on drugs, I do drug tests,” she said.   She hopes the ordinance will eliminate most or all of the illegitimate massage businesses in town…she’s also hoping to pick up some extra clients after other businesses are shut down.

Trail says it’s not just prostitution that bothers him.  Some of the massage parlors accused of prostitution are operating near schools.    He says other crimes, specifically drug-related, often come hand in hand with the prostitution at massage parlors.  Beyond that, some of the prostitutes themselves are victims of crimes.  “Some of these girls are just sex slaves,” Trail said.  “I mean, this stuff happens here in Tulsa”…

There is a bit of good news embedded in that last paragraph; busybody politicians are beginning to realize that most people really don’t view prostitution as a problem as long as it’s discreet, so Trail has to throw as much shit at the wall as possible in the hope that some of it will stick.  “It’s for the children; they could be hit by sex rays!  And there’s drugs, too!  And prostitutes attract crime, and they’re sex slaves!  It’s true, I heard somebody say so!”

Slap on the Wrist (October 8th, 2011)

It must be nice to be one of the Overlords, and therefore able to do whatever one likes without fear of serious legal repercussions.  This article comes to us courtesy of the November 29th Mercury of Hobart, Tasmania:

Terry Martin…walked free from the Supreme Court in Hobart this afternoon after he was found guilty of having sex with a 12-year-old girl. In a move surprising to many – but expected by others – Justice David Porter chose not to jail the former MP and long-serving Glenorchy mayor…He instead handed him a 10-month suspended sentence back-dated to November 22 when he was taken into custody.  Martin was last week found guilty of having underage sex – with a 12-year-old girl prostituted by her mother and mother’s friend – in September, 2009.  He pleaded not guilty and argued from the start he believed the girl was 18…but the jury found he ought to have known she was underage…Justice Porter accepted expert opinions backing up Martin’s assertion the medication he was prescribed for his Parkinson’s Disease had caused him to suffer from hypersexuality at the time of his offending.  The judge said he accepted…that if Martin had not been taking those drugs he would not have become “obsessed with sex” and hooked on prostitutes – and would therefore not have come into contact with the 12-year-old.

Well, there you are!  If any of you male readers ever find yourself in a tight spot, keep “medication-induced hypersexuality” in mind along with “bicycle-wreck-induced brain damage”.  Too bad neither of them will work for non-politicians.

Collaboration Horizontale (November 11th, 2011)

French politicians continue their two-century-old habit of persecuting whores:

French lawmakers will next week test France’s long history of liberal attitudes toward sex by introducing a bill outlawing prostitution…[which] is not illegal in France though several linked activities are…a cross-party parliamentary commission…said criminalisation “is the best path to reducing prostitution in France, as countries that have regulated this activity saw it increase”.  Earlier this year, the commission recommended…[the Swedish model]…Sex workers’ groups denounced the proposal as an attack on their rights and this week protested in front of the National Assembly against the bill.  “Abolition and repression have never been the solution, all sociologists say so,” a member of the Strass sex workers’ group…said…[adding that] “feminists” should “stop speaking for us” and urged lawmakers to instead grant sex workers full legal status…

The first line is clearly derived from a stereotyped and historically-ignorant view of France, which at the end of the 18th century was the first European country to develop a national system of “regulating” prostitutes by turning them over to the tender mercies of the police.  It also ignores the postwar campaign of vengeance against whores and the fact that France has been officially “abolitionist” since 1960, not to mention its recent record of micromanaging its citizens’ lives down to their choice of clothing.

Follow Your Bliss (November 29th, 2011)

On December 1st Radley Balko discussed a New York Times Magazine profile of Illinois prosecutor Mike Mermel, a man who seems to have discovered the perfect job for a sadistic, misogynistic pervert:  Mermel excels at developing absurd and convoluted “theories” as to why men he wrongfully convicted of rape and murder are still guilty once DNA testing proves the semen found in the victim’s body does not belong to the convicted man.

…“The example I like to give people is next time you go to a motel room, bring a plastic bag, because the dirtiest thing in that room is the remote control.  Everybody has sex and then rolls over and goes, ‘I wonder what’s on?’ ” he said.  “O.K., so you can find DNA in the form of sperm from 10 different people in that room from that remote control or even on a person who has touched it.  And that woman gets murdered in that room tonight, and you are going to have a lot of DNA.  Is it all going to be forensically significant?”

His theory for why there was sperm that did not come from Juan Rivera inside 11-year-old Holly Staker on the day she was murdered is, to his mind, simple and straightforward.  She and her twin sister, Heather, were sexually active, Mermel argues, and Holly must have had sex with someone else before Rivera came along and raped (but didn’t ejaculate) and murdered her.  There was scant evidence to support this sexual-activity theory, but Mermel dismissed that objection.  “Nobody is going to admit to having sex with an 11-year-old girl, even if the statute of limitations has run out”…

…When a DNA test in 2003 showed that the semen in the underwear of a 68-year-old woman didn’t belong to Bernie Starks, a man convicted in 1986 of raping and murdering her, Mermel dismissed the results because the semen came from the victim’s clothing…Three years later, defense attorneys found the rape kit and tested semen recovered from the woman’s vagina.  Again, there was no match.  Mermel again wouldn’t budge, this time arguing that the woman must have had sex with someone else just before the rape.  Mermel’s biggest blunder was Jerry Hobbs, who was arrested in 2005 on charges of raping and stabbing to death his 8-year-old daughter and her 9-year-old friend.  Hobbs confessed to the killings, but only after 16 straight hours of questioning that began after he’d spent the previous night looking for the girls…When Hobbs’ attorneys revealed in court in 2008 that DNA tests showed the semen found in the mouth, rectum, and vagina of Hobbs’ daughter didn’t belong to Hobbs, Mermel postulated that the foreign semen must have found its way into the girl’s body while she was playing in a patch of woods where teenagers were known to have sex.  The girl had been found fully clothed…

There’s a lot more which you can read at The Agitator, but I think you get the picture; he’s so awful even the local sheriff called for his resignation, which he finally announced Thursday.

One Year Ago Today

“Bits and Pieces (Part Two)” reports on semi-orgies, a punter who helped rescue a 13-year-old girl from a pimp, further developments in the then-breaking Julian Assange rape case, and an FCC scheme to shut down broadcasters who annoy the government.

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Updates Galore (Part One)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Philosophy, The Dark Side, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 9, 2011| 38 Comments »

A man’s jealousy is a social institution; a woman’s prostitution is an instinct.  –  Karl Kraus

What is it about the end of the year and prostitution-related news?  Last year saw an explosion of such stories after mid-November, so that I ended up doing a number of miscellanea columns between then and Christmas; one year ago today “Bits and Pieces (Part One)” appeared, featuring Derrick Burts’ self-outing, a Melissa Petro follow-up, the duplicitous Annie Lobert of “Hookers for Jesus” and an astonishingly ignorant “child sex trafficking” story from NPR.  Well, this year was much the same; I had so many short articles I had to spread them across six different columns!  Don’t worry, I won’t throw them at you all in a row; we’ll start with a two-part update column and a miscellanea column on Sunday, then save the others for the end of next week.

Think of the Children! (September 30th, 2010)

The list of teachers “outed” as porn actors continues to grow; first Tera Myers, then Benedict Garrett, and now Kevin Hogan of Malden, Massachusetts, whose stage name was “Hytch Cawke”.  But if reporter Mike Beaudet of WFXT in Boston imagined he would be hailed as a hero for exposing the dirty porn-making fag lurking in our schools to corrupt innocent children, I’m sure he was unpleasantly surprised.  Oh, he was easily able to find the usual assortment of sheeple to bleat out quotes like “I’m disturbed. I’m surprised…This is scary” and “he’s teaching our children.  Everyday.  It does bother me a lot.”  But take a look at the comments on the story, which are not only overwhelmingly defensive of a person’s right to do (legal) sex work, but also overwhelmingly condemnatory of the TV station and reporter.  Beaudet actually went on the air the next day to defend his actions, probably because there’s a “Support Kevin Hogan, FIRE Mike Beaudet” Facebook page and a Fire Mike Beaudet petition at Change​.org.  I don’t believe for one second that the furor would be this strong if the teacher were a heterosexual woman, or if Hogan had been a gay prostitute rather than a gay porn actor, but any vociferous public support for any flavor of “sex work is work” is a huge step in the right direction.

An Older Profession Than You May Have Thought (October 12th, 2010)

In this post I explained that in some species of cricket, males give females large bags of low-quality food as their payment for sex; I compared them to human clients who pad their pay envelopes with low-denomination bills hidden among the large ones.  Well, this November 13th article from Physorg.com introduces us to the arthropod equivalent of clients who try to cheat hookers with envelopes full of worthless paper strips:

Male nursery web spiders (Pisaura mirabilis) prepare silk-wrapped gifts to give to potential mates.  Most gifts contain insects, but some gifts are inedible plant seeds or empty exoskeletons left after the prey has already been eaten…New research…examines the reproductive success of deceitful males and shows that females are not impressed by worthless gifts.  [In the experiment] male spiders were provided with either a potential gift of a fly, or a worthless item, such as a cotton wool ball, a dry flower head, a prey leftover (previously eaten housefly), or no gift at all.  All the gifts were approximately the same size, so the females would not be able to tell what the gift was without unwrapping it.  Males that offered any gift were more likely to successfully mate than males without.  However the length of time the females allowed males with worthless gifts to spend transferring sperm was shorter than those with edible gifts (and even shorter for those with no gift at all!)  It appears that both male and female spiders are apparently able to assess the value of the gift and modify their behavior accordingly…Maria Albo who led the research explained, “The evolution of male deceit involves a complex equation of costs and benefits.  It costs the males to find and wrap a gift, but these costs can be reduced if the male does not have to first catch his gift, or gives one that has already been eaten.  The benefit of the gift is longer mating, which leads to more sperm being transferred, and potentially a higher number of offspring.  However, the females are wise to deception and terminate mating early for worthless gifts”…

Keep this in mind next time some neofeminist tries to tell you that gender-based human sexual behavior is “socially constructed”.

No Other Option (October 17th, 2010)

Most severely-disabled men and many whose handicap is less severe are completely unable to acquire sex by noncommercial means, so prostitutes are their only recourse.  Neofeminist fanatics declare that sex is not a “need” and that such a transaction still constitutes “male oppression”, but sane, moral, decent people know better and fortunately many whores are happy to help these men experience sex.  A newly-released documentary named Scarlet Road follows an Australian professional who specializes in helping disabled clients:

Australian sex worker Rachel Wotton works with many clients who have disabilities.  Her work has become the subject of the latest documentary from award-winning director Catherine Scott and producer Pat Fiske.  Filmed over a three-year period, Scarlet Road follows Rachel in her relationship with John, diagnosed with multiple sclerosis 26 years ago, and Mark, a client with cerebral palsy.  It reveals the therapeutic aspects of human touch and sexual intimacy.  This unique documentary gives voice to two men generously sharing moments of sexual self-discovery.  “People with disability are not seen as sexual beings and on the other hand sex workers are often portrayed as oversexed, victims or damaged goods.  I really wanted to tackle these stereotypes head on”…Scarlet Road shows Rachel in her daily life and follows her on a journey to the UK, Denmark and Sweden, where she meets with sex workers, people with disabilities and their families, as well as making quite an impression as a speaker at the World Congress for Sexual Health.

Aphrodite bless Rachel and her work; I’ve added a link to her charity, Touching Base, to my “Resources” box at the right.

Interview:  Jill Brenneman (starting February 21st, 2011)

On December 2nd our friend Jill spoke at the Sex Worker Summit in Asheville, North Carolina hosted by the North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition and several other organizations (including New Orleans’ own Women With a Vision).  Local newspaper Mountain Xpress covered the event and according to Jill even got it mostly right.  I don’t have a lot of hope for North Carolina becoming a center for sex worker rights in the U.S., but I’d love to be proven wrong!

Validation (May 25th, 2011)

“Even when one already knows something, it’s good to get validation from others.  And when one is beset by enemies on all sides, particularly ruthless enemies who are willing not only to lie but to distort or completely fabricate bogus “research” to support their lies, every extra bit of academic research which soundly supports one’s position is another arrow in one’s quiver.”  So I was quite pleased to see this November 11th article on the Migrants’ Rights Network; we’ve seen this study before in my November 15th column, but this article mentions a different aspect:

A new study on migration and trafficking in the UK sex industry has challenged the idea that trafficking is the main factor in trapping people in exploitative and abusive employment.  Based on a survey of 100 people of migrant background involved in the industry, [Dr Nick Mai of the Institute for the Study of European Transformations (ISET)] has found that a majority of them had not been forced or trafficked into the profession…[and that] difficulties in exercising rights…were more likely to come from the issue of official immigration status than from forced labour.  Many of the workers had entered the industry because the alternative employment available to them was likely to be more exploitative and unrewarding than sex work.  They also felt that the stigmatisation of the profession had a negative impact on their personal lives…[and that] criminalisation of clients…[would] not reduce demand or exploitation but [would] mean more insecurity for migrants working in the industry.  The report argues that better strategies to combat negative aspects of the industry would…[include allowing] migrants to become and remain legally documented…[allowing] the industry [to] operate legally…[and providing] victims of trafficking the right to remain in the country and the long-term support needed for integration.

This information needs to be pounded directly into the skull of every career politician and cop in the United Kingdom, United States and every other country which uses “human trafficking” as an excuse to persecute whores and/or our clients and partners.

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Traumatic Effects

Posted in Perception, Philosophy, Q & A, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 8, 2011| 20 Comments »

I often receive emails from readers asking for answers or advice, and I try to answer every one of them as thoroughly and promptly as possible.  Many of them have found their way into Q & A columns, and some have inspired full columns on their own; this particular example was, I think, interesting enough to deserve such a treatment.  I’ve condensed the reader’s letter and removed some facts in order to protect his privacy, but my response is essentially the same as the one I sent him personally.

Hi Maggie, I wandered into your blog because I was researching if being a working girl has a negative effect in your psychological make-up.  I have read in multiple articles that it gives you post-traumatic stress syndrome.  Here’s my situation:  I am a young guy who lives in a particularly conservative country and I don’t have much experience with women; in fact I’ve only ever had sex with working girls.  Recently, I met a very pretty 19 year-old girl and after our “date” I spent more time with her just drinking, so I got to learn a little more about her.  She shared some intimate details of her life with me, and it seems that prostitution was not a desperate or coerced decision for her; she enjoys the economic freedom of being able to buy anything she wants.  The next time I saw her she seemed more vulnerable; she drank more, revealed her real name and told me that one of the reasons she got into prostitution was looking for love and attention that she never got from her parents.  She kept saying that if her father ever accepted her back that she would leave this lifestyle, but didn’t say the reason for the rift.  I think she has a lot of “whore guilt” and is trying to drink it away.  So I have four questions:

1)  How do I convince her to walk away from this life?  I believe it really does have a traumatic effect on 99% of the women who engage in it.  It is like forcibly going against your programming which would definitely cause some undesirable effect with your psychology, especially at such a young age.

2)  Should I even try to convince her?  After engaging in this type of work for a significant amount of time, would she be able to walk away from it, knowing that it would lead to a more difficult life?

3)  If I shouldn’t convince her, what can I do to help her protect her psyche?

4)  Should I just walk away?  Is my line of thinking just too naïve?  Am I sticking my nose into something I shouldn’t?  Is it possible that she is just playing me?  I want to help her but I am afraid that maybe I can’t.

The idea that prostitution causes PTSD was developed by anti-prostitute neofeminists like Melissa Farley and has absolutely no basis in reality; in fact Farley’s claim to be able to diagnose PTSD via questionaire is one of many gross ethical violations named in a recent complaint to the APA filed by a psychologist in New Zealand, which petitions for her membership to be revoked for her dishonest, unprofessional and bigoted behavior.

Prostitution is a job like any other; some women love it, some only like it, some merely tolerate it and others dislike or even hate it…but the same could be said of teaching, housewifery, nursing, office work or anything else.  But even in the cases where a whore hates what she’s doing, it isn’t the fault of the work but rather the fact that she is not suited to it.  Women with strong guilt complexes over sex, those with weak personalities, those who have low emotional barriers or those who have listened to far too much anti-whore propaganda should not be doing this kind of work, because they aren’t right for it and it isn’t right for them.  In fact, a lot of the “horror stories” you read are spread by women who should never have entered hooking but did (for whatever reason) and had a bad experience which they then exaggerated in their minds as people are wont to do.

With all that in mind, let’s look at your questions:

1)  Prostitution is not “going against programming” for any woman; it’s the most natural thing in the world.  Take a look at my column “How Old is Oldest?” and make sure you read the links as well.  While as I said above, formal prostitution is wrong for some women, it’s not because of biological programming but rather cultural programming (or just personality type).  It’s definitely not bad for most women who choose it freely; as explained in my column “Out of Context”:

A 2005 study…[reported] that 97% of California escorts surveyed reported an increase in self-esteem after they entered harlotry, compared with 50% of Nevada brothel workers and 8% of streetwalkers (Prince, 1986: 454).  That study (page 497) also reported that the escorts saw their work positively, while the brothel girls were merely satisfied and streetwalkers were largely dissatisfied.  Another study of low-end escorts in the U.S. found that 75% of them felt that their lives had improved since becoming escorts, 25% reported no change and 0% said their lives were worse.  (Decker, 1979: 166, 174).  A Dutch study (Dalder, 2004: 34) gave the same results, and all of the escorts studied by Foltz (1979: 128) took pride in their work and viewed themselves as more sensible than amateurs; “they consider women who are not ‘in the life’ to be throwing away woman’s major source of power and control [sexual capital], while they as prostitutes are using it to their own advantage as well as for the benefit of society.”  And an Australian study found that half of all prostitutes surveyed ranked their work as a “major source of satisfaction” in their lives, and 70% said they would definitely choose prostitution again if they had their lives to live over (Woodward et al., 2004: 39)…[another study]…reports that 72% of escorts feel their self-esteem is higher because of their work…

2)  You most definitely should NOT try to convince her of anything.  Suggesting that a sex worker needs to be rescued is highly presumptuous, because it is based on the premise that she is incompetent to make decisions for herself or to take care of herself.  As I explained in “The Rescuers”, lots of people want to “rescue” us, and most working girls are mightily sick of it; even when the intentions of the would-be “saviors” are sincere, they never have any actual, feasible plan for supporting these “poor victims” after they’re “rescued” in anything like the style the girls can support themselves.  And when the “rescuers” abduct women by force in the name of “saving” them from their own choices, the results are highly predictable.  Since you recognize that quitting prostitution would make your lady friend’s life more difficult, why on Earth would you want her to do it?

3)  You can’t do that, either, except by offering her a sympathetic ear if she wants it.  Based on what you’ve told me it seems that her emotional problems have nothing to do with prostitution, but rather a poor family life (and obvious Daddy issues).  In other words, she’d probably be drinking, looking for male attention via promiscuity and burdening herself with guilt no matter which job she did…only she’d be making a great deal less money.  Surely you don’t want to add poverty to her other problems?

4)  Your thinking is indeed very naïve, but you are the only person who can decide whether you should walk away.  All relationships involve risk; allowing oneself to care for someone else exposes one to emotional injury, but that doesn’t mean one should avoid opening up to others.  There’s nothing wrong with a client becoming friendly with a whore, though I would advise caution in allowing his feelings to go beyond friendship unless he is an excellent judge of character and honestly comes to believe he might have a chance with her.  As my marriage proves, it’s possible for a client/hooker relationship to develop into a truly intimate one, but that is rare and takes two mature, well-balanced individuals.  If you feel a genuine sense of friendship for this lady as a person and not merely a fascination with her as a prop for a white-knight fantasy, you might be able to help her work through some of her issues by listening, caring and supporting whatever decision she makes even if you don’t like it.  But yes, it’s also possible that she’s playing you to keep you coming back, and even more likely that there’s nothing you can do for her; in either case you may get hurt, perhaps seriously.

One Year Ago Today

“Not So Different” reports a case of a rapist using a sugar daddy website to lure a victim, and the interesting way in which the story was covered in the media.

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Heads in the Sand

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, Perception, tagged , , , , , on December 7, 2011| 38 Comments »

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.  –  Saul Bellow

Anyone who has ever attempted to tell the truth about prostitution on websites or in person has encountered people who, while clearly not indoctrinated prohibitionists, are completely unwilling to challenge the status quo.  They won’t read articles written by prostitutes and ignore statistics which contradict prohibitionist dogma, yet swallow whole any ridiculous claim or exaggerated statistic put forth by prohibitionists and “authorities”.  A few years ago I went back-and-forth with a guy whose idea of justifying the persecution of prostitutes was to keep repeating “it’s illegal”; he fully admitted that laws can be wrong and that people had the right to fight bad ones, yet rejected every link I gave him as “pro-prostitution”.  The issue was obviously too complicated for him to think about, so he was content to let “authorities” deal with it and didn’t want to be exposed to any information that might cause him to call their decisions into question.  Depressingly, a new study described in Science Daily on November 21st  demonstrates that people like him are in the majority:

The less people know about important complex issues such as the economy, energy consumption and the environment, the more they want to avoid becoming well-informed…and the more urgent the issue, the more people want to remain unaware, according to a paper published online in APA’s Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.  “These studies were designed to help understand the so-called ‘ignorance is bliss’ approach to social issues,” said author Steven Shepherd…”The findings can assist educators in addressing significant barriers to getting people involved and engaged in social issues.”

Through a series of five studies conducted in 2010 and 2011 with 511 adults in the United States and Canada, the researchers described “a chain reaction from ignorance about a subject to dependence on and trust in the government to deal with the issue.”  In one study, participants who felt most affected by the economic recession avoided information challenging the government’s ability to manage the economy…[but] did not avoid positive information…researchers provided either a complex or simple description of the economy to a group of 58 Canadians…[those] who received the complex description indicated higher levels of perceived helplessness in getting through the economic downturn, more dependence on and trust in the government to manage the economy, and less desire to learn more about the issue.  “This is despite the fact that, all else equal, one should have less trust in someone to effectively manage something that is more complex,” said co-author Aaron C. Kay…”Instead, people tend to respond by psychologically ‘outsourcing’ the issue to the government, which in turn causes them to trust and feel more dependent on the government.  Ultimately, they avoid learning about the issue because that could shatter their faith in the government.”

…[In another study] 163 Americans…provided their opinion about the complexity of natural resource management and then read a statement declaring the United States has less than 40 years’ worth of oil supplies.  Afterward, they answered questions to assess their reluctance to learn more…Another two studies [of 93 Canadian university students] found that participants who received complex information about energy sources trusted the government more than those who received simple information…The authors recommended further research to determine how people would react when faced with other important issues such as food safety, national security, health, social inequality, poverty and moral and ethical conflict, as well as under what conditions people tend to respond with increased rather than decreased engagement…

Simply put, the more complex the issue and the more helpless people feel about it, the less they want to know about it.  The chief argument for decriminalization is based upon two very simple principles:  that everyone, male or female, has the right to do as he wishes with his or her own body; and that people have the legal and moral right to make mutually-beneficial agreements for goods or services which are not themselves illegal (in other words, anything which is legal to do for free should be legal to do for pay).  So I wonder if this isn’t the real reason academic prohibitionists such as Farley, Jeffreys et al try to complicate the issue by throwing in sophistry about “power imbalances”, “patriarchal systems” and PTSD; perhaps they consciously or unconsciously realize that if they can turn a simple issue of individual rights into a complicated, scary one (made even more scary by the addition of “pimp” bogeymen), most people will simply stick their heads into the sand and trust the government to deal with it.

One Year Ago Today

“O, Canada” discusses the claims of Canadian politicians that anti-prostitution laws are designed to protect whores from crime…except, of course, crimes committed against us by the police.

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Bell, Hook and Kettle

Posted in History, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , on December 6, 2011| 31 Comments »

The profession of a prostitute is the only career in which the maximum income is paid to the newest apprentice.  It is the one calling in which at the beginning the only exertion is that of self-indulgence; all the prizes are at the commencement.  It is the ever-new embodiment of the old fable of the sale of the soul to the Devil.  The tempter offers wealth, comfort, excitement, but in return the victim must sell her soul, nor does the other party forget to exact his due to the uttermost farthing.  –  William Booth

Today is Saint Nicholas’ Day, on which Dutch (and some German) children traditionally received presents from the Saint, who of course later became known as Santa Claus.  One year ago today I discussed the many traditions surrounding him, and pointed out that beside archers, children, merchants,  sailors, students and repentant thieves, the jolly miracle-worker is also the patron saint of prostitutes.  But like perverts using candy to lure unsuspecting schoolchildren into vans, a certain anti-whore cult has co-opted the saint’s familiar and comforting image in order to lure unsuspecting good-hearted people into funding a campaign to hound and persecute hookers.

I’m speaking, of course, of the Salvation Army, which every Christmas employs Santa impersonators to ring bells beside hanging kettles into which passersby may deposit money.  Now, to be fair, I must point out that the great majority of the cash thus donated goes to helping the poor via various programs; that’s highly commendable and the SA deserves to be praised for it.  However, from the time of its founder William Booth, it has always agitated for the criminalization of prostitution.  Indeed, it was among the earliest groups to promote the “white slavery” hysteria; by 1884 Salvationists were composing lurid accounts of “child sex slavery” and soon launched a campaign to raise the age of consent in the UK from 13 to 16.  The moral panic they helped to create was the driving force behind most modern anti-prostitution law, especially in the United States.  Once these laws were in place the Salvationists’ efforts to persecute whores became much less energetic, and for most of the 20th century very few (including myself) knew of the SA’s pivotal role in engendering the official oppression of hookers so common in the modern world.  I used to put money into those kettles every time I passed one, though I can no longer do so in good conscience because of the organization’s history of hatred toward my profession and its recently-renewed efforts to persecute and impoverish us.

In 2003, the Salvation Army reclaimed its prominent place among crusaders against harlots by establishing its “National Anti-trafficking Council“, one of whose principles is “Prostitution and related activities are not forms of work, are inherently harmful and dehumanizing, and contribute to the phenomenon of trafficking in persons.”  It was one of the instigators behind the “Anti-prostitution pledge“, a U.S. government policy which denies funds to any health or aid organizationSalvation Army bus shelter ad unless it refuses help to prostitutes:  “Supporters of the pledge requirement argue that prostitution is inherently harmful and needs to be abolished, reject harm reduction approaches, and hold that legalized prostitution increases demand for sex trafficking.”  Its propaganda calls all prostitution “sexual slavery”, and its name is always found alongside that of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, Polaris Project, the Hunt Alternatives Fund, Shared Hope International and other anti-sex worker organizations whenever they agitate for further criminalization in the United States, Canada, the U.K. and other countries, or recriminalization in places like Australia and New Zealand.

Though its ubiquitous bell-ringers make it very easy to donate to the Salvation Army, I strongly suggest y’all find other worthy charities this Christmas (such as my own favorite, Toys for Tots).  Though it did a great deal of good in the 20th century, the SA has returned to its anti-sex roots and has recently diverted large sums which should be going to the poor into efforts to persecute hookers instead.  I urge everyone who reads this to boycott them, and to spend your charity dollars on organizations that care more about helping the unfortunate than about fighting to rob millions of women of their  livelihoods and to suppress the sexual choices of consenting adults (including queers) in the name of “saving” them.

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Tempest in a Toybox

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged , , , , on December 5, 2011| 29 Comments »

As the creative adult needs to toy with ideas, the child, to form his ideas, needs toys—and plenty of leisure and scope to play with them as he likes, and not just the way adults think proper.  This is why he must be given this freedom for his play to be successful and truly serve him well.  –  Bruno Bettelheim

At this time of year it’s difficult to avoid thinking of toys, even if one is a childless adult; stores devote much greater space to them than usual, Christmas displays and illustrations feature them prominently and even seasonal songs often mention them.  Modern middle-class American children, showered as they are with toys on every conceivable occasion (or even just to shut them up in stores), cannot conceive of what toys meant to us old folks when we were kids; as late as the 1970s most middle-class children got toys only at Christmas and birthdays, and (as depicted in the wonderful movie A Christmas Story) the process of obtaining a much-desired toy could become a sort of miniature Grail quest.  It’s likely that this is one of the culprits behind modern parents’ perhaps-misguided generosity, and judging by their irrational behavior it seems that obsession with toys has grown into a full-fledged neurosis among many adults of my generation and the Baby Boomers who preceded us.

Take Barbie, for example.  My column of one year ago today explained her origin as a gold-digging German secretary who later became a doxy, and commented on the absurd controversies sick-minded adults have projected onto her:

…like any attractive woman who dares to be sexual, Barbie has inflamed the passions of losers everywhere.  People with a lot of free time and more math skills than sense have published complicated calculations showing that at 1/6 scale, Barbie would be 5’9” tall, with measurements of 36”-18”-33” and a weight of 110#.  University Central Hospital in Helsinki, Finland actually announced that Barbie lacks the 17 to 22 percent body fat required for a woman to menstruate; it’s good to know that the Finns are so healthy that University Hospital has nothing more important to do than theorize on the menstrual irregularities of plastic dolls.  Most of this nonsense is based on the ludicrous notion that little girls have such a highly-developed sense of proportion that they can actually perform these ratios in their little heads without the help of calculators, neofeminists or bored Finnish doctors…[in 1992] middle-class feminists with no actual problems started spinning their heads around and foaming at the mouth because ONE of the 270 possible phrases “Teen Talk Barbie” might say was “Math class is tough!”  Apparently, these women were concerned that the phrase would magically leach math skills from the brains of young girls and thereby render them unable to calculate the proportions and body mass index of dolls.

The neofeminists’ real problem with Barbie has nothing to do with her figure or academic credentials; they hate her because she is unashamedly sexual, just as they hate all women who are unashamedly sexual.  The campaign to suppress or neuter Barbie derives from the same repressions and insecurities as the campaign to ban porn and abolish prostitution; neofeminists are uncomfortable with any sexual depiction or function of women, even tiny plastic women.  The oft-repeated rhetoric that Barbie “causes little girls to develop unrealistic expectations” (one wonders what caused those same unrealistic expectations in the millennia preceding 1959, but we’ll let that go for now) is  a cover for their real fear, that Barbie might help young girls to see themselves as sexual beings rather than androgynous eunuchs.

Nearly every new version of Barbie which comes out spawns another brouhaha, and this year is no exception:  back in October a limited-edition Barbie intended for adult collectors ignited a furor among the easily-upset  because she had pink hair and (hide the children, Prunella!) tattoos!  Moralists anxious to predict the downfall of Western civilization were not discouraged by the fact that this was not actually a child’s toy, and social-engineering-crazed feminists went the other way with inane statements like “I much prefer tattoos to unrealistic proportions and the message that the most important thing is to be pretty and get a boy. Good for you Mattel for making a doll a little more like the rest of us.”  Because, you know, it’s important that all toys be strictly realistic (after all, we wouldn’t want to promote imagination or anything), and certainly most of “us” have pink hair and huge tats on our upper torsos.  How about this for a novel idea:  why don’t adults STFU about kids’ toys unless they’re actually dangerous or something?  If you don’t want to get a toy for your kid, don’t.  It’s a doll, people; get over it.

But it isn’t just Barbie who inspires frighteningly obsessive behavior in deranged adults; one Swedish preschool micromanages the color and placement of toys, and a school in Toronto recently banned balls.  Meanwhile, the EU (you know, that organization which bankrolled “end demand” ads despite the fact that prostitution is legal in most of its member nations) ruled that children under eight must be supervised when blowing up balloons and declared blowout noisemakers “unsuitable” for kids under 14.  Obviously, a lot of this is just part of the modern obsession with “safety”, but that doesn’t explain the twisted need to employ toys as brainwashing tools intended to turn children into whatever adults want them to be rather than letting them develop as strong, self-reliant individuals through the magic of unstructured, self-directed play.

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Neither Addiction nor Epidemic

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, Perception, Philosophy, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 4, 2011| 110 Comments »

Thought is an infection. In the case of certain thoughts, it becomes an epidemic.  –  Wallace Stevens

Back in February I published “Not an Addiction”, in which I criticized the popular confusion of the word “addiction” with the related concepts of habituation and obsession.  I was (and remain) especially critical of the concept of “sex addiction”:

Craving something the body (food, water and oxygen) or mind (sex and companionship) actually needs is not and cannot be an “addiction”, though it can certainly become an obsession if one thinks about it to the exclusion of all else and indulges in erratic, inappropriate or even dangerous behavior to gain access to whatever it is he is obsessed with.  In the late ‘90s certain pop psychologists started throwing the term “sex addiction” around, and though it is totally impossible to be “addicted” to sex…the term has nonetheless become very popular in the general public and even a few psychological professionals have adopted it (though only for use in popular articles).  What makes this improper term even more damaging than such asininity as “internet addiction” is that A) it is confused with the real and serious psychological disorder which the DSM-IV calls “hypersexuality” (and which was previously called “nymphomania” in women and “satyriasis” in men); and B) it has been co-opted by neofeminists to mean “sexual behavior which falls well within the normal range of male behavior but outside the normal range of female behavior.”  We’ve previously discussed the damage done to society by neofeminist pathologization of normal male behavior; the application of the very strong term “addiction” to behavior characteristic of two-thirds of men is more of the same and should be fought by every man and every woman who loves men.

Given Newsweek’s fondness for promoting hysteria and willingness to jump on the neofeminist anti-sex bandwagon in its increasingly-yellow pages, it will surprise absolutely no one to hear that on November 25th it published a scare-story under the title “The Sex Addiction Epidemic”.  Holy mixed metaphors, Batman!  Author Chris Lee writes that this supposed affliction “wrecks marriages, ­destroys ­careers, and saps self-worth” and ominously warns that “Americans are being diagnosed as sex addicts in record numbers”; considering that “sex addiction” is not a valid diagnosis (it doesn’t appear in DSM-IV and, as I confidently predicted in February, was rejected for DSM-V), this statement is roughly equivalent to “record numbers of Americans are being diagnosed with orgone deficiency.”  But because the truth rarely supports hysteria, Lee eschews interviewing reputable psychologists and instead quotes religious counselors, the director of a “reality” TV show about “sex addicts”, the staff of for-profit “sex addiction” clinics and other quacks.

Salon, on the other hand, published a Tracy Clark-Flory interview with clinical psychologist David Ley entitled “Don’t Believe the Sex Addiction Hype”; it starts out strong:

The sexy alarmism of Newsweek’s  latest cover story is irresistible — but it should be viewed with extreme skepticism.  Mental health experts haven’t come to the consensus that sex addiction even exists, let alone that it’s an epidemic.  The cultural phenomenon of sex addiction, which I first wrote about in 2009, is just that:  A cultural phenomenon, not a legitimate medical diagnosis, and the release this week of the much buzzed-about “Shame,” a sex-addiction drama starring Michael Fassbender, further secures the concept’s place in the zeitgeist.  Never mind that it was rejected from the upcoming revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), psychiatry’s bible.

…and it just gets better when Dr. Ley comes in:

…The sex-addiction concept is a belief system, not a diagnosis; it’s not a medically supported concept.  The science is abysmal…over the past year or two, [proponents of the sex addiction model] have started trying to use brain science to explain it.  They’re now talking about morphological changes that supposedly happen in the brain as somebody watches porn or has too much sex.  The reality is, careful scientists will tell you they are absolutely unable to identify any brain differences between these alleged sex addicts and non-sex addicts…[and] that the brain changes constantly — any behavior that a person engages in, especially repetitively, changes your brain.  So, identifying changes related to this sexual behavior and distinguishing it from anything else is absolutely ridiculous…

And better still:

They are typically unable to put forth a healthy model of sexuality, and when they do, it is so transparently conservative and religiously driven that it’s frightening.  Most of the leaders of the sex-addiction movement are themselves recovering supposed sex addicts and religious folks…what they’re advocating for is a moral system, not a medical one.  For a while, they were pushing the idea that if you had an orgasm once a day, every day, that made you a sex addict — but they finally had to back off on that because data was building up showing that there are lots of people who have sex once a day and have no problems.  That’s the other big hole in their argument:  For every one of the behaviors they raise as addictive — whether it’s porn, strip clubs, masturbation, infidelity, going to prostitutes — I can present 10,000 people who engage in the exact same behavior and have no problems, and they can’t explain why that is…This is a moral attack on sexuality…They [want] people to…develop fear of sex.  Because they think that if we’re not afraid of sex, people are going to go out and have lots of sex.  God forbid.

And best of all:

Instead of examining the application of the concept of monogamy over a 30- or 40-year marriage, and looking at how male sexuality works, it’s much easier to say:  “Well, it’s a disease.”  I include a quote in my book where a woman says, “When my husband was cheating, it really was a comfort to consider it a disease and that it really wasn’t his fault.  Finally, I had to realize that it wasn’t a disease, it was just him being selfish and treating my life and health casually”…There’s incredible risk of pathology here — we only need to look at the history of nymphomania to see that.  Women had their clitorises removed, they were subjected to electroshock therapy, all kinds of medication.  When female sexuality was diagnosed as a disease.  Now male sexuality is diagnosed as a disease, only instead of getting electroshock therapy they get the country-club treatment for 30 days.

If you have time, you really ought to read the whole article; Flory writes well and is consistently sex-work friendly and skeptical of anti-sex propaganda, and Dr. Ley has the balls to buck the politically correct narrative and call a spade a spade.  The public sphere needs more people like both of them to help combat the rising tide of ignorance which threatens to engulf us all.

(Thanks to regular reader Marla for calling my attention to BOTH articles!)

One Year Ago Today

“Courtesan Denial” is a species of historical revisionism spawned to resolve the cognitive dissonance caused by the knowledge that courtesans, temple prostitutes and the like were highly respected in their times, coupled with the belief that all prostitution is degrading.

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Where Are the Protests?

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, Perception, tagged , , , , , , , on December 3, 2011| 36 Comments »

…sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love.  –  Butch Hancock

The concept that sex, even non-procreative sex, is somehow different from every other human activity and therefore requires special rules is deeply ingrained in the minds of mystics and the middle class alike, and nowhere is this more true than in the United States.  It is an article of faith among Americans that sex is magically “special” even when divorced from reproduction or feelings; that accepting money for sex is somehow “degrading” even in a capitalist society which allows the commercialization of anything and everything else from cradle to grave; that the sexual activities of consenting adults are a matter for deep governmental concern; and that looking at “dirty pictures” in private somehow causes such grievous social ills that it constitutes a “crime” which in some cases is more serious than murder.  I’ve written about this weird belief on many occasions, but I think it’s important to call attention to it whenever it rears its ugly head.  Most of you are probably familiar with this recent news story:

The lure of a job and a place to live cost one man his life after answering a Craigslist ad.  Two southern men traveled to [rural Ohio] to interview for a job running a cattle farm.  The Florida  man was shot dead and buried in a shallow grave and the South Carolina man was shot but escaped through the woods…[the ad] offered employment on a rural 688-acre cattle ranch and instructed the men chosen for the jobs to bring their belongings with them to Ohio [to] begin living and working on the ranch…The two men did not know each other and reported for work on different days.

The South Carolina man…hid in the woods for approximately seven hours…[then went] to a home almost two miles away for help…[he] had initially met his supposed employers for breakfast and started the trek to the ranch in a vehicle [but] was told a landslide had closed the country road and they would have to go the rest of the way to the ranch on foot through the woods…[where he heard the sound of a gun being cocked and was able to knock it away from his head…he was hit by multiple shots in the arm instead]…Five days [later] the Noble County Sheriff’s Office received a call from the Florida man’s sister…[who] had not spoken to [him]… since…October 22…The Sheriff and his deputies returned to the wooded area from which the South Carolina man had fled…[and] discovered a vacant shallow grave they assumed was meant for [him]…Cadaver dogs [then] located human remains in another nearby shallow grave…

On November 16th 52-year-old Richard Beasley and 16-year-old Brogan Rafferty were arrested for the crimes; they were located via email communications with Scott Davis (the South Carolina man).   On November 25th the bodies of two other men who answered similar ads were discovered, then on November 29th an AP story revealed that Beasley has a long criminal history and had in fact recently been arrested on unrelated charges:

An Ohio teenager charged with aggravated murder…is not a monster, but a “scared little boy,” his mother says…[police allege] that he participated in the Oct. 23 slaying of David Pauley and the Nov. 6 attempted murder of Scott Davis…Beasley’s mother says her son would take the teen to church almost weekly, go fishing, play video games and involve him in volunteer work.  But the teenager’s mother paints another picture of Beasley — that of a man who threatened her son and who once said that he knew where the teen lived and that “I know where your mother lives”…Beasley has a criminal record dating to the 1980s.  He was convicted in Texas of burglary and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle in 1985, sentenced to a 40-year prison term and placed on parole for 34 years in 1989.  Previous charges in Ohio include aggravated menacing, tampering with evidence, possession of criminal tools and illegal cultivation of marijuana, court records show.  Following Beasley’s return to Akron in 2003, he ran a halfway house, helped deliver food to the poor and vouched for fellow offenders, telling judges they had changed their ways…Police say the halfway house was a front for prostitution…and Beasley was awaiting trial on prostitution and drug charges when authorities took him into custody this month.  The teen appears to be placing blame on Beasley…[whose] mother has said that her son had taken the boy to [church] since he was 7 or 8 years old…and that they did volunteer work together, such as delivering food to the needy…

The ABC News story named the exact charge on which Beasley was first arrested as “compelling prostitution”, i.e. pimping.  But that’s not why I’ve called attention to this story; what interests me is what it doesn’t say.  Where are all the protests, the online petitions and the expensive full-page newspaper ads demanding that Craigslist close its “help wanted” section?  After all, it’s being used by pimps to lure men to their deaths!  Sure, murder and robbery aren’t as bad as prostitution, but he recruited a “child” (whom his mommy says is a “scared little boy”) to help him, so surely that counts for something?  And what about that church?  It’s being used to seduce innocents into murder, prostitution and even {gasp} DRUGS!!!!!  So why isn’t anyone demanding it be closed as well?

I think we all know the answers; in the minds of anti-sex fanatics the mere possibility that a few score teenage girls might over time post online hooker ads is of far greater concern than the murders of a few divorced, unemployed, middle-aged men.  And though some religious leaders claim that it’s a “basic fact of the moral universe” that businesses should be held responsible for criminals wrongfully using their services, they certainly don’t support holding churches or church programs responsible for exactly the same thing.

One Year Ago Today

“The Slave-Whore Fantasy (Part Two)” reports on a news story (also from Ohio) which “points out the difference between a free prostitute and a sex slave in a rather dramatic fashion.”

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My Favorite Things (Part Two)

Posted in Favorites, Miscellaneous, Music, tagged , , , , on December 2, 2011| 29 Comments »

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes
Silver white winters that melt into springs
These are a few of my favorite things.  –  Oscar Hammerstein II

Yesterday I wrote about my favorite (non-horror) movies, though as some of you undoubtedly noticed a few of them were borderline horror or contained horror elements.  Two of those films (and one from my horror movie list) have connections in today’s column, in which I discuss my favorite music.  I’m going to limit myself to popular music here, but since I’m sure some of you would like to know my favorite composers are Bach, Beethoven, Haydn, Holst, Shostakovich and Vivaldi (though the first two stand out above the others).  Since chronological order is useless in discussing popular musicians, let’s list these in alphabetical order:

1)  The Beatles:  Because my father used to set a radio to lull me to sleep, my first experience of the Fab Four was when “Let it Be” was in heavy rotation on WTIX in 1970.  The first Beatles album I actually owned was The Beatles: 1967-1970 (the “Blue Album”) which I bought (on vinyl, of course) sometime in high school.  I played that album so often it would be a candidate for my favorite-album list (see below) had I not purchased every single Beatles album on CD while I was stripping.

2)  Blondie:  My first exposure to this now-legendary band was “Heart of Glass”, and the album from which it came (Parallel Lines) and its successor (Eat to the Beat; see below) were among those I got “free” with my first Columbia House membership in high school.  Unfortunately, they went sharply downhill after that, though I later bought and enjoyed their first two albums (Blondie and Plastic Letters).

3)  Blue Oyster Cult:  I don’t really much care for their early work; the first song which caught my attention was “Don’t Fear the Reaper”, but I never considered them a favorite until Fire of Unknown Origin (see below), which I came to know through the Heavy Metal soundtrack (also below).  Strangely, the band went into decline immediately thereafter.

4)  Enya:  When I bought Watermark as a Christmas present for Olivia, I listened to selections in the music store and got a copy for myself as well; I later purchased everything Enya had ever recorded (or has done since).  Her popularity has faded since the turn of the century, but not with me.

5)  Heart:  I fell in love with the Wilson Sisters from the first time I heard “Crazy On You”, and it’s still one of my favorite songs; Dreamboat Annie (see below) was one of the first albums I ever bought with my own money (from a neighbor’s garage sale a couple of years later for 25¢).  Though I liked their ‘80s heavy metal incarnation less than their original sound, it was still much better than the Private Audition/Passionworks era.

6)  Meat Loaf:  One of my university boyfriends introduced me to Bat Out of Hell (see below), and it quickly became one of my favorites.  After buying a number of his other albums I discovered that though I do enjoy his singing in general, the songs I really like are those written by Jim Steinman, so it’s most accurate to say that the Meat Loaf/Steinman collaboration is among my favorite music acts.

7)  Queen:  With a few exceptions, it’s their earliest stuff I like the most; I bought A Night at the Opera at the same garage sale which gave me Dreamboat Annie.

8)  Rush:  This particular band came to reside among my favorites by a circuitous route; they were the favorite of a boy I knew in 7th and 8th grades who was very friendly to me when his male friends weren’t around (he lived next door to my Maman) but rude to me when they were.  Later, they were also the favorites of a friend of mine’s stoner boyfriend whom I couldn’t stand.  So, I never gave them a chance until the 1984 hit “Distant Early Warning” caught my attention.  Frank slowly worked on me, exposing me to the group on every possible occasion throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, and though I came to like them it was my husband’s influence (Rush is his favorite band) which finally pushed them into my top ten.

9)  Joe Satriani:  “The Crush of Love” was released in November of 1988 and was played nearly every night on my favorite classic rock station while I drove home from a horrible retail job; driving much too fast down I-10 late at night while that composition played refreshed my soul, and I went out and bought the CD on which it appeared, Dreaming #11 (see below) as soon as I could.  Others followed, and Satriani is one of the few artists whose work I will buy simply because his name is on it; I own every one of his albums.

10)  Vangelis:  Most Americans only know his soundtrack for the movie Chariots of Fire, but that is IMHO among his weakest work!  My first exposure to him was through the passage from Heaven and Hell which was used as the theme to Carl Sagan’s Cosmos television series, and when I learned the name and composer of the piece in the Times-Picayune TV supplement, I absolutely begged Jeff to take me to New Orleans’ then-best record shop, Leisure Landing, so I could buy it.  In those pre-internet days it was nearly impossible to discover every album released by a European musician, but by the time I met my husband I had most of them and he helped me uncover the rest.  I thought I had them all, but my research for this column indicates I missed his very first soundtrack commission, which I’ve added to my Amazon wishlist.  Personally, I think Vangelis’ best and most productive period was from 1975 to 1979, though 1978’s Beauborg is below average and 1984’s Soil Festivities is as good as any of his golden ‘70s oeuvre.

There are favorite artists, and then there are favorite albums.  Some musical anthologies are just pure synergy; it’s like all the cosmic forces were in alignment when they were created, and every song contributes to that whole.  I think most people have certain albums they feel that way about; such a favorite becomes more than JUST a collection of songs, and instead becomes an experience in itself.  They certainly differ from person to person, but the experience is the same; they’re played so often one memorizes all the notes and all the lyrics, and may even have to be replaced due to wear!  Here are mine, in alphabetical order by title:

1)  Bat Out of Hell (Meat Loaf)
2)  China (Vangelis)
3)  A Clockwork Orange (original movie soundtrack)
4)  Dreamboat Annie (Heart)
5)  Dreaming #11 (Joe Satriani)
6)  Eat to the Beat (Blondie)
7)  Fire of Unknown Origin (Blue Oyster Cult)
8 )  Heavy Metal (original movie soundtrack)
9)  Jesus Christ Superstar (original rock opera)
10)  The Stranger (Billy Joel)
11)  Tubular Bells (Mike Oldfield)
12) The Turn of a Friendly Card (The Alan Parsons Project)

These particular albums were just lightning in a bottle for me; I mentioned most of them above, and of course the two soundtracks are from movies discussed yesterday.  I was introduced to Jesus Christ Superstar in 8th grade and bought it almost immediately; it may be the one album I have heard all the way through more often than any other, and the only stage play I’ve paid to see more than once.  The Stranger and The Turn of a Friendly Card came to my attention via my second roommate at UNO, and are interesting in that I actively dislike several other albums by the artists who recorded them.  And then there is Tubular Bells, which I first encountered via one passage used as the theme of The Exorcist but came to love after I bought a copy from a used-record store in high school.

Well, I think that’s enough for now; as I said yesterday, if you’re curious about my favorite whatever-else-I-didn’t-mention, just ask in a comment!

One Year Ago Today

“The Slave-Whore Fantasy (Part One)” proposes that the reason so many men choose to believe in “trafficking” mythology is that it allows them to deny the uncomfortable truth that women are in control of the sexual sphere by pretending that prostitutes, the most sexually powerful of all women, are pathetic victims who are controlled by men.

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