Charleston was once the rage, uh huh
History has turned the page, uh huh
The miniskirt’s the current thing, uh huh
Teenybopper is our newborn king, uh huh. – Sonny Bono, “The Beat Goes On”
What, you thought we were done with updates for the month? We’re getting so many of these now that I’m soon going to change the way I handle them; look for a new feature, “That Was the Week That Was”, coming February 4th.
Shifting the Blame (January 26th, 2011)
Remember how last year at this time the media was still trying to blame Craigslist every time something bad happened to a hooker? Well, they eventually realized that Backpage was now the fashionable scapegoat, and since we can’t possibly put the blame where it belongs – the laws which force prostitutes into the shadows where we can be preyed on by evil men in and out of uniform – it must be Backpage’s fault when women are killed. Here’s what Sex Workers for Choice has to say about the recent murders in Detroit:
Over the past month, 4 women have been murdered in Detroit, MI and another two have gone missing…It is unknown at this time if the cases of the missing women are related to the recent murders, but the possibility certainly seems too unlikely of a coincidence. Police say that 3 out of the 4 murder victims had profiles on Backpage…[which] has responded by reaching out to authorities to aid in the investigation, including helping to identify a number of other websites that the women might have had profiles on. There is a sense of déjà vu in the rush from the media and other online sources to vilify Backpage as some sort of co-conspirator in the deaths of these women. The “Craigslist Killer” was the tipping point in helping shut down Craigslist erotic services section, and this…will no doubt fuel the already strong campaign…[against] Backpage. What these critics ignore is that the true co-conspirator is not these advertising venues, but rather…the laws that isolate us from the protections most others take for granted. What makes…sex workers a target for violence is not how or where we advertise, but the fact that violent predators know that those crimes…are not investigated or prosecuted as diligently…[because we] are…viewed as criminals that somehow signed on for such violence…Until we have equal rights and equal protection, the predators will continue to seek us out in any and every advertising venue available…
Real People (February 6th, 2011)
It’s interesting that the New York Times, a major proponent of the “whores are passive victims” mythology, should publish this profile of an independent, strong willed streetwalker:
Like many single mothers, Barbara Terry, 52, scrounged for baby sitters and leaned on her own mother while raising her four children and working the night shift. But Ms. Terry is a prostitute who has worked nearly her entire adult life on the streets of Hunts Point, in the Bronx. “When they were old enough to understand, I would tell them the truth,” said Ms. Terry, whose daughter and three sons are now grown. “I’d say, ‘This is how I’m supporting you.’ For me, it’s a business, a regular job.” Yes, she said, she was arrested more than 100 times, sometimes landing at Rikers Island for several days or weeks — but that never deterred her from returning…Today, Ms. Terry lives nearby in the Bronx, but she hopes to retire in a year or so to a house she bought upstate…“I’ve survived because God was with me,” Ms. Terry said. “Every Sunday, my mother and grandmother prayed for me out here”…
The story has a heaping helping of lurid detail, but never tries to deny Terry agency or paint her as emotionally damaged. And though a story like this wouldn’t be unusual in the Canadian media (as you’ll see in the story below), I think it’s the closest thing to “sex work is work” we’re likely to see in the mainstream American media for a very long time.
Harm Magnification (May 15th, 2011)
The Canadian government, like its bloated US counterpart, seems intent on continuing the prohibitionist laws and policies which create crime, expose many thousands of citizens to danger and cause incalculable damage to society. But unlike their U.S. counterparts, the Canadian media are refusing to be the stooges of their government. Rather than mindlessly parroting “trafficking” mythology in order to support anti-prostitute tyranny, Canadian reporters are almost universally laying the blame for harm to sex workers where it belongs: on the bad laws and the evil actions of the police. And though the American version of Huffington Post is happy to “cater…to the current fashionable delusions about us”, the Canadian edition is equally happy to go whichever way the wind is blowing up there:
…Repression from police has pushed prostitution into more dangerous, isolated parts of [Montreal], making sex workers more vulnerable to violence, said Anna-Louise Crago…[of the] advocacy group…Stella…”Criminalization and police repression against sex workers, our clients, and our work places make it impossible to work in safer conditions.” Experts say the same pattern of repression has been repeated in other cities across Canada, making prostitution a more dangerous job. In Vancouver, police engaged in a decades-long campaign to move prostitutes into the more isolated Downtown Eastside, where…it [was easier] for [serial killer Robert] Pickton and other predators to target women…
It’s not illegal to be a prostitute in Canada, but many of the activities associated with prostitution are classified as criminal offences…the ambivalence has caused confusion in the courts and made it difficult for police to do their job. Efforts to protect sex workers often appear to be at odds with the police’s attempt to crack down on prostitution. That seemed to be the case in December when Ottawa police chief Vern White, faced with a possible serial killer targeting prostitutes, warned them to be extra cautious. Advocacy groups countered that it was the force’s very own tactics of aggressive policing and repression that had forced them into more dangerous situations. A study…based on interviews with more than 200 sex workers between 2006 and 2008, found a link between prostitutes who reported having been harassed or assaulted by a police officer and the likelihood they were victims of violence in future. In Montreal, Stella has recorded between 50 and 60 cases of violence, including rape, brutal beatings, and attempted murder against sex workers annually. Yet only four or five cases reach the courts every year [because] the victims are often afraid to press charges…
…The debate about how to cut back on the violence may end up being settled by the courts. The [government is] trying to overturn a lower court ruling in which a judge struck down three laws against prostitution, saying they force people in the sex trade to choose between obeying the law and keeping themselves safe. Sex workers argue that the laws prevent them from working indoors where it’s safer, taking time to talk to a potential client to assess the risk they pose and hiring bodyguards. The…government maintains that protecting victims of exploitation and supporting the enforcement of existing laws should be a priority…The top court’s ruling in support of the Vancouver safe-injection site Insite has given advocates cause for optimism…”That judgment gives us a lot of hope,” said [Stella’s director Emilie] Laliberte, who is also a former sex worker. “For us, it’s a really important sign that even though the government doesn’t want to respect our rights the courts will.”
American media would obediently echo the government’s ludicrous claim that persecuting whores somehow makes “victims of exploitation” safer, but the Canadian reporter dismisses it in a line. Perhaps one day the American media may grow that bold again, but probably not for a few years yet.
One Year Ago Today
“January Miscellanea” reported that the Dutch government had announced plans to collect sales tax on prostitution; that the city of Modesto, California recognizes prostitution as a victimless crime yet persecutes hookers anyhow; and that ultra-enlightened Sweden claims prostitutes can infallibly be recognized by our clothing. And four other items, too!
Doesn’t surprise me that the Canadian media isn’t all too keen on toeing the line for the prohibitionists. Cannucks already received a taste of bad law which resulted in a lot of censorship thanks to the 1992 Butler case.
http://www.fiawol.demon.co.uk/FAC/harm.htm
The authorities in Canada used Dworkin and MacKinnon’s “feminist” language to expand the criminal code to include sexually-oriented materials they hadn’t been able to reach, with the result that gay and feminist materials and shops were suddenly under continuous attack. The first successful prosecution was of a lesbian magazine and a gay bookshop. When the pattern of prosecutions became clear, one gay shop sued for harassment, with the apparent result that the police began to look elsewhere for victims – among student and radical bookshops.
The last paragraph reminds me of my favourite lawhead quote: “If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear.” Right, right…
Truly awesome animated GIF from The Oatmeal:
That was one of the headlines on the USA today I found outside my hotel door this morning.
No wonder I couldn’t get to Wikipedia yesterday.
Rats abandon the stinking ship …
It’s a genuine tribute to the sheer mass of trouble we find ourselves in that we have befuddled leaders like John Cornyn in Washington, DC to “help us out” of this mess.
LOL – a guy who threw NRSC support behind two Republican Senatorial candidates who later switched parties on his ass (Specter and Crist)! Also the guy that blew $8M in NRSC campaign funds on a California Senatorial race that wasn’t even close (Boxer vs Fiorina).
He’s one example of the jugheads we have in charge now … which is why this plane is doing nothing but being piloted to the scene of the crash.
I propose to ignore SOPA. I host my materials under common law, not legislation. I would recommend other people do the same.
Now is the perfect time for a REAL documentary on prostitution.
I’m not talkng about one with an agenda either. Those kinds of documentaries don’t do a damn thing to change public opinion.
One of the best, most honest, thought-provoking and entertaining documentaries I’ve ever seen was “Bigger Stronger Faster”
http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/movies/30bigg.html
It’s Christopher Bell’s documentary on anabolic steroid use – and it centers around the people in his own family who use, and used to use them. He doesn’t attack steroids – neither does he try to glamorize them. However, he DOES do a good job explaining why they are here to stay; how they are really only ONE part of the very large puzzle of “performance enhancement”; how a lot of the down sides ARE heavily exaggerated and probably most important – he gets across the message that it’s our culture that is responsible for them and they are – here to stay. No matter what we do – they will not go away. Laws have made them MORE dangerous, since every injectable steroid is now banned and most people opt for the oral “designers”, many of which you can buy on amazon.com – which are every bit as “steroid” as the “injectables” are but HIGHLY hepatoxic.
Would someone please watch this documentary and make a similar one about prostitution? It’s fertile ground … there are a lot of myths to be shattered … it would be a chance to portray the profession honestly – with all its up’s and downs, etc …
Citius, Altius, Fortius
July 27th. I’ll useless for two weeks.
Maggie,
close to topic. 2012 started out with a bang. There were a lot of dead women in the first week of 2012. I am keeping a forum now on men killing women. Link below. NONE of the stories I saw were sex workers. They were ALL angry men somehow abused by a woman though, usually in the FCs.
Pretty soon it will be safer to be a street walker than a female divorcee. Though maybe not. See below.
Check out all the dead women. I have been warning for a while about this rapid increase. I have been seeing it for 3.5 years now.
Also. In the UK there is a new crime emerging. Lads watch the banks on pension pay day. The old women go to pick up their pensions. The lads follow them back towards their homes. When the lads think they can get away with it they rob the old woman. Sometimes the old women is killed in the process as they are so frail…not “equal” at all to a 16-22 year old male. I guess “empowerment” is not working for the old women. Not much point saying a frail old woman is “empowered” when she is faced by a 16-22 year old lad, is there?
When they are, very occasionally caught, the profile is mostly the same. No father in the house to tell the lad that if he steals he will be punished. After all. These lads saw their mothers steal and be rewarded all their lives. How can these lads have any sense of justice? They are usually also brutally beaten by their mothers and told what human pieces of sh*t they are all their lives as the mother talks down the father. Boys do not miss this stuff.
I guess there are going to be a lot of lads coming through to be clients of sex workers who have about as many scruples as it takes to bash an old woman on the head and steal her purse. I am not sure how sex workers feel about having more and more men coming through with displaced anger management problems. But you are going to see them come through for sure. Your clients are almost exclusively male. Do you think you will be able to avoid these men with these anger management problems? Do you think ANY woman can avoid them? Inside 10 years the biggest risk to a woman will an angry man.
There was a case lately in the UK where some parents were at a soccer match and one young father went beserk and beat the shit out of a much older father. This was RARE if not UNHEARD of previously. You dont hit much older men. In another a bunch of kids were making noise outside a mans house and he went to quite them down. The lads beat him to death with some bricks that were laying around. He was 40, married with kids. Beaten to death at his own front gate.
The young men coming through are MUCH more violent and much more willing to be violent than 30 years ago. Lots more sex workers are going to end up dead because of this. Much smaller incidents will cause these young men to fly into rages.
If sex workers think that their fellow women throwing the fathers out of the house was not their problem? You might want to keep a count on dead sex workers and keep profiles on who kills them.
I will BET you that men who had their fathers removed will be the perpetrators on a VASTLY over represented basis. For some reason women refused to listen to men like me tell them that they are raising the next generation of criminals and that it would get much worse if they did not stop. Oh well. Lets just start counting the dead women, sex workers will be among them. After all. The women didn’t bother counting the dead men and still don’t.
http://www.crimesagainstfathers.com/australia/Forums/tabid/82/forumid/123/scope/threads/Default.aspx
I’ll have to look up the stats for the UK, but in the US violent crimes by teens and early-twenties are at historic lows.
Everybody here knows how I feel about nostalgia, so my first inclination when reading yet another account about how today’s young people are so much worse than back in the day is to roll my eyes and dismiss the claim as yet my fog in the rear-view mirror. But in truth I don’t know a lot about trends in youth crime in the UK, so while I feel that I’m justified in being skeptical, I shouldn’t just dismiss the claim.
You are a psychopath.
Time for Revolution…..vote for Ron Paul for president.
This month only, free hookers for Ron Paul voters!
http://whoresandhookers.blogspot.com/2012/01/bunny-ranch-offers-discounts-on-hookers.html
For some reason the link I got in e-mail didn’t work. I did find it, though, and here I am.
I can explain that. This column was written and pre-posted on January 8th, and I stupidly hit “publish” instead of “preview” when I was proofreading it so it was instantly published and the notifications automatically sent out. I rescheduled it within 90 seconds, but the damage was already done so the notices had an improperly-configured link with the January 8th date embedded in them. Then when the post published properly on the 18th, no new notifications went out. Sorry about that.