February | 2012 | The Honest Courtesan

Archive for February, 2012

That Was the Week That Was (#6)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged A War for Peace, Africa, Backwards into the Future, censorship, condoms, cops, dirty, disease, Don’t Buy It, drugs, Europe, Facebook, Girls Girls Girls, harm reduction, hysteria, internet, Kenya, law, lawheads, libraries, marriage, Missouri, Namibia, neofeminism, Not An Addiction, porn, psychology, sporting events, stage names, stereotypes, stripping, The Dogs Do Bark, WWOHD?, yin and yang on February 19, 2012| 11 Comments »

Goodsex is any form of sex considered acceptable by the Party…all other forms…are considered sexcrime. – George Orwell, 1984

Eight updates from the sixth week of 2012:

Just Drawn That Way (July 21^st, 2010)

This is another of those “dog bites man” things which are only news because neofeminists have worked so hard to convince everyone that they’re not true:

New research is demonstrating what many people already knew from experience: Women lose interest in sex over time, while men don’t…researchers Sarah Murray and Robin Milhausen…of the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, asked 170 undergraduate women and men who had been in heterosexual relationships for anywhere from one month to nine years to report on their levels of relationship satisfaction, sexual satisfaction and sexual desire…The participants reported being generally satisfied with their relationships and sex lives, but women reported lower levels of desire depending on the length of their relationship…In fact, relationship duration was a better predictor of sexual desire in women than both relationship and sexual satisfaction. While the…decrease in female desire was small, it contrasts with male desire, which held steady over time…evolutionary theorists predict that male desire should remain perpetually high in order for them to produce many offspring, while female desire should decrease as their attention turns, historically, toward child-rearing…

…Hormonal changes that occur as couples move from the passionate early stage to the compassionate later stage…sometime between six and 30 months may also mediate changes in desire over time. Pharmaceutical companies are currently researching the impact of testosterone on women’s desire, but so far, the results have been inconclusive…In an earlier study, Murray found that women who reported more realistic expectations about what sex would be like in a long-term relationship also had higher levels of desire than those with less realistic expectations. “I think that individuals who expect to maintain the high level of excitement and passion that often exists in the first few months of a new relationship are setting up unrealistic expectations about what is to come and will be more disappointed when the desire and passion take on different forms,” she said…

I’ve frequently pointed out that both sexes need to view the others’ differing desires realistically: women need to either provide enough sex or expect that their men will get it elsewhere, and men who feel so driven need to hire professionals rather than entering into dangerous dalliances with amateurs.

Don’t Buy It (February 1^st, 2011)

In this column I provided links to a number of studies demonstrating that mega sporting events don’t attract increased numbers of prostitutes, but it never hurts to have a couple more. Here’s a new one from the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW):

A widespread belief that major sporting events fuel sex trafficking is unsubstantiated and has a negative impact on groups that campaigners purport to protect, undermining anti-trafficking objectives…Activists opposed to sex work say large groups of men attending the Olympics, FIFA World Cup and U.S. Super Bowl competitions create a high demand for sex work causing large numbers of women to be trafficked…[but] there is no correlation between those beliefs and the actual number of trafficking cases found, the report titled “What’s the Cost of a Rumour?” said…“Despite increased scrutiny by the media, political figures and law enforcement, there is no evidence that large sporting events cause an increase in trafficking for prostitution,” Julie Ham, the author of the study, said…GAATW reviewed literature from United Nations (U.N.) agencies, government offices, academic researchers, anti-trafficking organisations, sex-workers rights organisations, non-governmental organisations and the media.

The claim sex work will increase is perpetuated in part because it is useful as a fundraising strategy, as a way to grab attention and be seen to “do something” about trafficking, and as a more socially acceptable guise for prostitution abolitionist agendas and anti-immigration agendas, the report said…[but] anti-trafficking campaigns that are based on unproven claims can…result…in increased criminal penalties and human rights violations against sex workers…[and] controls on women’s movements, intended to stop trafficking, can actually lead to increased trafficking…

Even better, the mythbusting website Snopes has now officially listed the rumor as false, which will greatly accelerate its demise among the internet-savvy portion of the population.

Not an Addiction (February 11^th, 2011)

Why must every strong urge now be described as an “addiction”?

…A new study shows…the urge for a Facebook fix is at least as strong as the lure of tobacco and alcohol. The survey of 250 people was published…in the journal Psychological Studies, and revealed that sex and sleep were the two things most longed for during the day, yet the need to check Facebook was too hard for most to overcome…alcohol and cigarettes generated lower levels of desire than the urge to check social networks…

The fallacy here, of course, is the pretense that Facebook is a “substance” to which one can become addicted. It isn’t; it’s simply a process by which many people communicate with their social groups. The urge to check Facebook is nothing more or less than the desire for social interaction, which is extremely strong. If checking Facebook can be an “addiction”, then all human interaction is an “addiction” and the word loses all meaning.

Backwards Into the Future (March 30^th, 2011)

South Africa, once the human rights pariah of the Western world, is now advancing in its treatment of sex workers while the United States moves backward into the sort of human rights model one associates with third-world dictatorships. And now Kenya and Namibia are joining the list of African countries with a more civilized attitude toward sex work than that of the US:

…Nairobi is considering [decriminalization]…Mayor George Aladwa said…the council was working to harmonise by-laws with provisions of the new Constitution before allowing commercial sex workers to operate without restraint…“We will certainly find places to have them operate freely without any harassment. These are people who have dedicated themselves to do their work, there is no need to continue harassing them”…

And though Namibia isn’t that far along, it’s still way ahead of the US:

The Director of Namibia’s largest sex-workers’ organization, Rights not Rescue, has called upon the government to decriminalize prostitution as an important step in the fight against HIV and AIDS. Nicodemus Aochumub, better known as ‘Mama Africa’, [said]…“Government should decriminalize sex-work to [allow sex workers]…access to universal health care and to enable them to lay charges with the police without the fear of being arrested. Discriminating against prostitutes will inevitably increase the HIV rate because they are helplessly exposed to abuse, even by police…How can we fight this deadly disease when law-enforcement officers take away condoms from the girls…They throw them away and tell us we don’t deserve to use condoms. Some police officers force us into sex, otherwise we will end up in jail…We…are not free even 21 years after independence. Prostitution is work and feeds many families,” emphasized Mama Africa…HIV infection among sex-workers has declined significantly in countries where prostitution is legalised. Prostitutes in Germany, for instance, are registered with the legal and health authorities, are required to undergo regular medical checks and pay tax.

What Would Orrin Hatch Do? (April 17^th, 2011)

Is it so damned hard to just orient the computers so nobody can accidentally see what someone else is viewing?

…Libraries around the country are frequently troubled by the conflict of your First Amendment right to view “protected speech” and others who just have to watch pornography in a public library setting. The most recent publicly exposed incident in Seattle occurred at the Lake City branch of the Seattle library system. Julie Howe said in a public email that her 10-year-old daughter was disturbed after looking over the shoulder of a man last month as he watched pornography at the branch…Andra Addison, spokeswoman for the Seattle Public Library, told the Seattlepi.com: “…We don’t tell people what they can view and check out…Filters compromise freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment. We’re not in the business of censoring information.” However, in 2010 the State Supreme Court ruled in favor of a library that had taken a much less permissive attitude toward porn on its computers. The court ruled that public libraries in Washington can filter Internet content to block things like pornography…Howe says she understands the predicament the library is in, but wants there to at least be signs warning patrons to watch out where they look…New Yorkers can [also] watch internet porn at the city’s public libraries thanks to a policy of free speech protected by the First Amendment, the New York Post reported in April…

Apparently, the Jefferson Parish Library is less averse to censorship; when I logged on there with my husband’s laptop on February 6^th, the first thing that popped up on my screen was a warning that I better not look at “adult” materials, or else. So I made sure I viewed my red umbrella picture, just on principle.

A War for Peace
(May 12^th, 2011)

I have no real comment to make about this, but I figured my male readers might enjoy these pictures of Femen’s latest protest.

Girls, Girls, Girls!
(December 15^th, 2011)

There’s more than one way to skin a lawhead:

At least one Kansas City adult business is taking a creative approach to increasing attendance while attempting to follow tough new regulations limiting what its dancers can wear onstage. Bazooka’s…now [features]…large, flat-screen televisions adjacent to the stage. While a dancer performs live with her intimate areas covered, as the law requires, a video of the same dancer — with those areas exposed — appears on the screens…The latest strategy may help the business sidestep a new state law requiring “sexually oriented businesses” to close at midnight…Had the dancers exposed those areas in the flesh they would have broken the law, or at least forced the club to close at midnight. But because they appeared on screen, [owner Dick] Snow said, they’re as legal as a general-interest movie. “There is some full frontal nudity in these videos, but there’s full frontal nudity in every theater in the city,” he said. Dick Bryant, an attorney who represents adult businesses, said, “The projection of the images of the nude dancers fully complies with the statutes and the U.S. Constitution”…A spokesman for the Kansas City Police Department said the department had received no complaints about Bazooka’s videos and said it did not appear that the establishment was violating any local or state laws…

Hark, Hark, the Dogs Do Bark (January 11^th, 2012)

Everyone whose mind isn’t hopelessly mired in neofeminist dogma knows that hormones cause most differences in gendered behavior, but a new study shows which genes are affected:

…a team of scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) has uncovered many genes influenced by…testosterone and estrogen that…govern several specific types of male and female behaviors in mice. The UCSF team selectively turned many of these genes off one by one and found they could manipulate individual behaviors in the mice, like their sex drive, desire to pick fights, or willingness to spend extra time caring for their young. “It’s as if you can deconstruct a social behavior into genetic components,” said Nirao Shah, MD…”Each gene regulates a few components of a behavior without affecting [others]”…Identifying how genetic differences in our brains account for the differences in our behavior may also be a starting point for understanding how to better address human mental illness and neurodegenerative conditions in which such gender differences exist. For example, autism is four times more common in males than in females…

Of course, this won’t convince “true believers”, but every such discovery makes it harder for them to peddle their lies to others.

One Year Ago Today

“John Law” presents four short articles about cops and hookers.

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That Was the Week That Was (#5)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged Africa, Australia, brothels, California, Canada, censorship, condoms, cops, cosmetic surgery, disease, end demand, Europe, Florida, genitalia, Good News-Bad News, harm reduction, hysteria, Islam, law, marriage, neofeminism, Netherlands, psychology, rescue industry, Scientific Detachment, semen, South Africa, St. James Infirmary, Swedish model, tabula rasa, teachers, The Camel's Nose, The Dogs Do Bark, The Enlightenment Police, underage, Welcome to Our Updates, welcome to our world, Who Did Your Tits?, yin and yang on February 18, 2012| 11 Comments »

The good news is that Jesus is coming back. The bad news is that he’s really pissed off. – Bob Hope

Three new stories and six updates from the fifth week of 2012.

Good News, Bad News

Sometimes, reading stories about prostitution law is like the classic joke format. GOOD NEWS: 77% of Canadians support decriminalization of prostitution and UNAIDS has condemned criminalization of sex work (including the “Swedish Model”, “end demand” schemes and the rescue industry) as a danger both to sex workers and to public health:

…Forced rescue and rehabilitation practices lower sex workers’ control over where and under what conditions they sell sexual services and to whom, exposing them to greater violence and exploitation…this leads to social disintegration and a loss of solidarity and cohesion (social capital) among sex workers, including reducing their ability to access health care, legal and social services. Low social capital is known to increase vulnerability to sexually transmitted infections among sex workers and therefore has a detrimental impact on HIV prevention efforts…undermining sex worker organisations is one of the most important negative effects of law enforcement practices…anti-trafficking efforts typically ignore the possibility of engaging sex workers as partners…[even though they] are often best placed to know who is being trafficked into commercial sex and by whom, and are particularly motivated to work to stop such odious practices…Organised groups of sex workers are also best placed to establish safe working norms within the sex industry, and influence other[s]…to ensure that trafficked adults and children are not retained in sex work…

BAD NEWS: Western Australia is starting to buy into the “trafficking” narrative:

Federal police have launched an operation to rescue people trafficked into WA for forced labour, prostitution and servile marriages. There are fears that an increasing number of women are being brought to Perth and forced into the city’s sex industry. Supt Glyn Lewis…said human trafficking was insidious and abhorrent and many victims were never found…There have been only 14 convictions for human trafficking since legislation came into force in 2003. People working in the area in Perth fear trafficking is a real and emerging issue “under the radar” of authorities and the public. Australian Catholic Religious Against Trafficking in Humans said the problem had to be addressed…

None of these people stop to consider that maybe the reason that there are so few convictions and “many victims were never found” is that there was no crime in the first place. But hey, we can’t let facts get in the way of hysteria and fear-mongering by cops and religious groups.

Scientific Detachment

The ability to look at sensitive subjects dispassionately and to present evidence without emotion is an admirable one, but as Professor G.S. Brindley (the doctor who developed the first medical treatment for erectile dysfunction) discovered in 1983, it’s probably best not to assume that the majority of one’s audience possesses that capacity to any great degree. This January 27^th article on the Discover magazine blog explains, and since synopsizing it in any way would do it a disservice, I’ll just leave you with the link.

Fundraiser for St. James Infirmary

I’ve been asked to publicize an online fundraiser for St. James Infirmary, which provides compassionate healthcare and social services for sex workers in San Francisco. It will be held tomorrow (February 19^th, 2012) at 3 PM EST on BlogTV; even if you can’t attend please spread the word!

Week 5 of 2012 Updates

Nothing in the Dark (August 8^th, 2010)

This story demonstrates not only the reason for considering condoms a “safety net” against disease rather than a first line of defense, but also the reason I’m hesitant to entrust my health to a government bureaucracy:

…South Africa’s leading anti-AIDS group said…that…faulty condoms are among more than 1.35 million handed out at the African National Congress’ 100^th birthday party…[they were] recalled but the Treatment Action Campaign said no warning has been issued to people that they may have carried away defective condoms…The third recall in less than five years raises questions about the quality of some of the 425 million-plus condoms that the government gives away each year, and the competence of the South African Bureau of Standards [SABS] that is supposed to ensure their quality…In 2007, the government recalled more than 20 million defective condoms…but recovered only 12 million…a [previous] recall…[resulted after] a testing manager at [SABS took] a bribe to certify the faulty contraceptives…

[AIDS activist Sello Mokhalipi] said people started coming with complaints about the condoms…three days after the celebrations ended…”We poured water into the condoms and they were leaking, not just in one place, they were leaking like a sieve,” he said. Looking at them, “you can see there are small pores” like pinpricks…the Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce, said many of the 10,000 to 15,000 prostitutes they work with often complain about the free government condoms…[so] they instead use a brand provided by an international charity…South Africa’s government sources its condoms from several companies and rebrands them with its colorful CHOICE packaging, in bright blue, red, yellow and green…

Any time there’s a lucrative government contract, there’s going to be graft. And anything sourced out to the lowest bidder…

Who Did Your Tits? (October 1^st, 2010)

Most women who have boob jobs feel they confer psychological and/or financial benefits, but I never considered this possibility:

A 41-year-old Florida woman says the breast augmentation surgery she had three months ago saved her life…her ex-fiancé’s new girlfriend…attacked her…stabbing her repeatedly in the left side of her chest…the knife had punctured the implant and she was soaked with saline. Doctors say the salt water and walls of the implant prevented a deadly blow.

The Camel’s Nose (October 2^nd, 2010)

Yet another spooge sneaker; this one is so reprehensible he constitutes a one-man argument in favor of sex offender registries:

…Mark Berndt, a third-grade teacher [at Miramonte Elementary School in California]…is charged with committing lewd acts on 23 boys and girls, ages 6 to 10, between 2005 and 2010…[he] was removed from classwork in January 2011 and fired within the month, but only parents of children identified as victims were told…some angry parents…complained that they only learned of the investigation through the media after Berndt’s arrest this week. School officials and investigators said proper procedures were followed…but…two former students…said school officials were informed about [Berndt’s] odd behavior two decades ago…

…Berndt is suspected of snapping nearly 400 photographs of…students, some with a giant Madagascar cockroach from a classroom terrarium on their faces. Others were blindfolded or had clear tape over their mouths, and some were shown with a spoonful of milky liquid placed near their lips…The photo sessions were treated as a game and some children were given sperm-laced cookies to eat as treats…The investigation began in the fall of 2010 when a film processor became suspicious about the photographs and turned them over to…police…an investigator…found a blue spoon…in a trash can [in Berndt’s classroom] that appeared to be the one seen in the photographs, but it took months before analysis determined there was semen on the spoon and more time before DNA testing matched it to Berndt…Meanwhile, investigators kept trying to identify children in the photographs…

I would hope that prosecutors build their cases on photographic and DNA evidence, and that they, cops and parents have the sense not to question the children or (even worse) subject them to the ordeal of trial participation; adult eyewitness testimony is unreliable at best, and that of children is often worse than useless. Alas, I fear that’s a vain hope; adults just can’t resist traumatizing young children by subjecting them to frightening and confusing interrogations and filling their heads full of horrible images, thus exploiting them just as monstrously as the criminal did.

Welcome To Our World (January 20^th, 2011)

I think my readers can answer David Reber’s questions, which he seems to consider rhetorical:

…What could a teacher possibly know about education? Countless arguments used to denigrate public school teachers begin with the phrase “in what other profession…” and conclude with practically anything the anti-teacher pundits find offensive about public education…In what other profession, indeed. In what other profession are the licensed professionals considered the LEAST knowledgeable about the job? You seldom if ever hear “that guy couldn’t possibly know a thing about law enforcement – he’s a police officer”, or “she can’t be trusted talking about fire safety – she’s a firefighter.” In what other profession is experience viewed as a liability rather than an asset? You won’t find a contractor advertising “choose me – I’ve never done this before”, and your doctor won’t recommend a surgeon on the basis of her “having very little experience with the procedure”. In what other profession is the desire for competitive salary viewed as proof of callous indifference towards the job? You won’t hear many say “that lawyer charges a lot of money, she obviously doesn’t care about her clients”, or “that coach earns millions – clearly he doesn’t care about the team”…For no other profession do so many outsiders refuse to accept the realities of an imperfect world. Crime happens. Fire happens. Illness happens…People accept all these realities, until they apply to public education…

Well, Mr. Reber, there is at least one other…

The Enlightenment Police (October 1^st, 2011)

One would think the usually-sensible Dutch would have waited to see what the European High Court will do with the French version of this first:

The Dutch…government plans to ban Muslim face veils…”People should be able to look at each other’s faces and recognize each other when they meet,” the interior affairs ministry said…The ban will also apply to balaclavas and motorcycle helmets when worn in inappropriate places, such as inside a store, Deputy Prime Minister Maxime Verhagen told reporters, denying that this was a ban on religious clothing…The face-veil law, which still needs to win approval in both houses of parliament, excludes clothing worn for security reasons such as that worn by firemen and hockey players, as well as party clothing such as Santa Claus or Halloween costumes. The ban does not apply to religious places, such as churches and mosques, nor to passengers on airplanes or en route via a Dutch airport…

Hark, Hark, the Dogs Do Bark (January 11^th, 2012)

Since neofeminists insist that all gendered behavior is “socially constructed”, I’m sure they’ll deny these findings just as creationists deny fossils and carbon dating:

Testosterone makes us overvalue our own opinions at the expense of cooperation, research from…University College London has found…Problem solving in groups can provide benefits over individual decisions as we are able to share our information and expertise. However…collaborating too closely can lead to an uncritical groupthink, ending in decisions that are bad for all…research has shown that people given a boost of the hormone oxytocin tend to be cooperative. Now…researchers have shown that…testosterone has the opposite effect — it makes people act less cooperatively and more egocentrically.

Dr Nick Wright and colleagues…[tested] 17 pairs of female volunteers who had previously never met…On one…day…[they] were given a testosterone supplement; on the other day, they were given a placebo. [Men were not used because supplements can trigger a drop in their own testosterone production, invalidating the results]…as expected, cooperation [in a task] enabled the group to perform much better than the individuals alone…but, when given a testosterone supplement, the benefit of cooperation was markedly reduced. In fact, higher levels of testosterone were associated with individuals behaving egocentrically…”Most of the time, this allows us to seek the best solution to a problem, but sometimes, too much testosterone can help blind us to other people’s views,” [said Dr. Wright.] “This can be very significant when we are talking about a dominant individual trying to assert his or her opinion in, say, a jury”…

One Year Ago Today

“Not the Same Tree” showcases a Detroit reporter’s excellent and very perceptive article about the federal persecution of an escort service.

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The Anti-Life Equation

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, Words, tagged abortion, agency denial, anecdote, censorship, comics, cops, ethics, law, lawheads, nanny state, neofeminism, psychology on February 17, 2012| 31 Comments »

Suppose that humans happen to be so constructed that they desire the opportunity for freely undertaken productive work. Suppose that they want to be free from the meddling of technocrats and commissars, bankers and tycoons, mad bombers who engage in psychological tests of will with peasants defending their homes, behavioral scientists who can’t tell a pigeon from a poet, or anyone else who tries to wish freedom and dignity out of existence or beat them into oblivion. – Noam Chomsky

When I was writing That Was the Week That Was (#3) I started thinking about the name of “The Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine”, and how it cleverly forces its opponents to give it a compliment and essentially promote its own propaganda just by saying its name. As I explained in that column, the PCRM is “a fanatical animal-rights group with ties to PETA which relies primarily on scare tactics and gross-out ads in its continuing attempt to impose veganism on everyone, and less than 5% of its members are physicians.” But because its name contains these positive, respectable words, one can’t speak of opposing them without sounding to the uninitiated as though one opposes physicians or responsible medicine.

This is of course the same tactic employed by the prohibitionists; they call themselves “abolitionists” or “anti-trafficking activists” or the like, to imply that anyone who is against them is in favor of slavery. It’s a cheap trick, but it does put one’s opponents at a subtle disadvantage; that’s why I refuse to use such terms. When it’s an actual name I use initials wherever possible, and when it’s a common descriptor I substitute my own; thus I call them “prohibitionists” rather than “abolitionists” (because they do in fact work for prohibition of something), and anti-prostitute or anti-sex worker activists rather than “anti-trafficking” or “anti-prostitution” activists. As Furry Girl rightly points out, anti-sex worker activists try to pretend they’re not against people but rather practices and concepts, but in reality the laws and policies they advocate result in the persecution, marginalization, imprisonment, rape and death of actual human beings. They claim to be against ideas, but are really against people, and should be so labeled.

The day after I wrote that column, another good example of it turned up; an Anne Summers essay entitled “There is No Such Thing as a Pro-Life Feminist” appeared in The Age, and as I saw that title “tweeted” over a dozen times it began to sound ever more bizarre to me. Yes, I understand that Anne Summers was using the anti-abortion people’s own preferred term, and that by “pro-life” she really meant “anti-abortion”, so why didn’t she just say “anti-abortion”? Why give them what they want? People who want something banned or outlawed (whether it be meat, prostitution or abortion) need to be described as “anti” whatever it is, not “pro” some vague positive concept like “responsibility”, “equality” or “life”. Summers’ title makes it sound as though she’s actually calling her fellow feminists mass murderers or something. If feminists aren’t pro-life, what does that make them? Anti-life?

The late, great Jack Kirby was a prolific comic book writer and artist from the 1930s to the 1980s who created many well-known characters including Captain America, the Hulk, Iron Man and the Fantastic Four. But one of his most intriguing creations was the godlike supervillain Darkseid, ruler of an evil planet named Apokolips. All of Darkseid’s complex machinations were aimed toward one end: the discovery of a mysterious formula called the “Anti-Life Equation”, which he believed was somehow hidden in the minds of humans. Despite what you might think, this equation was not a death ray or anything like that (Darkseid already had one of those, the “Omega Force”), but rather a means of destroying all free will and controlling every sentient being. Kirby understood (as “pro-life” fanatics, opponents of assisted suicide and others of their ilk do not) that for a sentient being, “life” is not mere biochemical function but rather the capacity to make one’s own decisions. To “live” in the biological sense while being denied volition, agency and the control of one’s own body and mind is not to be a man or woman; it is to be the equivalent of a cabbage or a sponge, a thing without freedom, dignity or humanity. It is not life at all, and anyone who opposes the right of human beings to make their own choices, no matter what lying excuse he gives, is therefore anti-life.

Kirby is said to have intended Darkseid to be the apotheosis of every power-mad tyrant there ever was, so one might say there is a little bit of him in every petty dictator on Earth. Every prohibitionist, moralist, crypto-moralist, lawhead, control freak, cop and politician; every censor who wants to prohibit certain substances, sex acts, ideas, tools, words, images or types of clothing; every busybody who wants to deny others the right to privacy, self-defense, profit, free movement or free association; every official or “concerned citizen” who thinks it’s his job to tell others what to eat, watch, read, think, say and do; and every costumed ape who thinks he has the right to brutalize the bodies, steal the property and control the movements of those without a costume, has in his mind a minute fragment of the anti-life equation. It doesn’t matter whether they claim to be “pro-life”, “pro-woman”, “pro-law”, “pro-safety”, “pro-family”, “pro-health”, “pro-morality”, “pro-equality”, “pro-Homeland”, “pro-nature”, “pro-God” or pro-anything else, because in reality they’re all anti-choice and anti-freedom, and therefore anti-life.

One Year Ago Today

“An Educated Idiot” presents a study of street prostitution in New York City by a sociologist who, while he seems to sincerely want to get at the truth, has to be among the most credulous people on Earth.

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The Course of a Disease

Posted in Current Events, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, Australia, brothels, Canada, censorship, cops, Denmark, dirty, disease, East Asia, end demand, Europe, France, hysteria, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, law, Middle East, neofeminism, New Zealand, Norway, porn, Sweden, Swedish model, The Course of a Disease, United Kingdom on February 16, 2012| 20 Comments »

This sickness doth infect the very life-blood of our enterprise. – William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part One (IV,i)

If you pay any attention at all to the “debates” amateurs indulge themselves in over how prostitution should be “handled” or “regulated” (discussions that rarely, if ever, involve actual prostitutes), you’ve encountered the term “Swedish Model” (AKA “Nordic Model”). My column of one year ago today contained a simple explanation of this “model”, its shockingly sexist basis and a short synopsis of its progress at that time:

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

Though I have nothing to add about the model itself, I thought a report on how the various patients exposed to this political disease were faring might prove instructive.

Sweden: “Patient Zero” is like a psychotic HIV-positive man who makes an effort to give it to as many others as possible. The Swedish government is actually proud of its deeply-twisted view of male-female relations and works hard to export it, even to the point of producing pamphlets and sending representatives to lie to other governments about its “success”. But despite its grandiose claims about overwhelming public support for the “model”, its attempts to brainwash toddlers so as to ensure future support for it and its harsh suppression of women who dare to challenge its “philosophical” basis, the truth is that 81% of Swedes say they are “angry” about the law and 10% of Swedish girls report having taken money for sex at least once. A few brave Swedish politicians keep opposing the law while others use their positions to run clandestine brothels, and there is no evidence sex work has decreased even one iota, just as it never decreases under any criminalization regime.

Australia: The Aussies appear highly resistant to this particular malady, and have even attempted to help others overcome it by releasing a report which “dismiss[es] it as a load of politically-motivated codswallop unsubstantiated by facts.”

Canada: The efforts of neofeminists to infect this portion of the Commonwealth have failed dramatically, and despite government efforts to dehumanize prostitutes and deny them rights, the opinions of the public, the media and the courts are all moving toward decriminalization. At the time of this writing a constitutional challenge against the anti-whore laws is in progress, and the Himel Decision striking down the laws in Ontario is still being discussed by an appeals court.

Denmark: Though sex worker advocates are fighting it and few politicians support it, “sex trafficking” fetishists have even succeeded in exposing this usually-sensible country to the Swedish disease. Though the fetishists would like to believe they have a chance of full infection, Laura Agustín tells me advocates there are reasonably confident that it hasn’t a chance.

Europe: Despite the fact that individual European countries have their own prostitution policies and most are quite happy with their own versions of legalization, the soi-disant “European Women’s Lobby” managed to scam public funds to produce a ridiculous “end demand” commercial; some highly-placed officials were not at all pleased by the fact that the Swedish-born (and openly anti-whore) “Commissioner for Home Affairs” gave public funds to a fringe group to advance a personal agenda.

France: The French have long had a love-hate affair with filles de joie which rivals that of the United States in its depth and intensity; after the Second World War whores became the scapegoats for Gallic self-loathing and the country has been officially “abolitionist” since 1960 (except in the military, which provided its troops with whores until about 15 years ago). France is now “considering” the Swedish Model, but those who support it are in conflict with those pushing total criminalization. And since France doesn’t shy away from criminalizing clothes and opinions, why not motivations for sex as well?

Iceland: The Swedish infection is so acute in this westernmost outpost of Scandinavia that it might well prove terminal. In addition to prostitution, Iceland has also criminalized stripping and is working on banning porn; this climate has bred a large group of misandrist vigilantes who use the laws to stalk and attack men and who demand censorship powers over all print, electronic and internet communication in the country.

Ireland: Irish sex worker advocates have fought the massed forces of prohibitionists for a year now, despite interference from anti-whore behemoth Google and media-supported “sex trafficking” hysteria very similar to that in the American media; as in the US, the chief struggle for Irish prostitutes is simply to be heard (much less considered) above the Puritanical din raised by neofeminists, fanatical Christians and control-freak politicians. I’ll be keeping an eye on Turn Off the Blue Light and Feminist Ire for further developments; the matter seems poised to come to a head in the spring.

Israel: The Knesset (Israeli parliament) “Ministerial Committee on Legislation” unanimously approved a client criminalization bill on February 12^th; it now passes to the full legislature for consideration. And if this recent editorial from the Jerusalem Post (which portrays all women as helpless moral imbeciles at the mercy of caricatured mustache-twirling male villains) is any indication, Israeli plague carriers are just as willing to use outrageous claims and blatant lies to promote their agenda as those in the US and Scandinavia.

Norway: The second country infected by this vile illness hasn’t completely succumbed yet; as I reported on February 5^th the country’s official report to UNAIDS listed significant public health and human rights problems which it directly blamed on the ban. Of course, the opinion of one government department won’t change anything, but since Norway isn’t as politically invested in the “model” as Sweden is, it could be some small sign of hope.

United Kingdom: This patient offers the most hopeful prognosis after Canada; despite a close brush with an especially virulent case in 2010, Britain now seems to be moving in the direction of decriminalization. The Association of Chief Police officers supports it, as does the new assistant commissioner at Scotland Yard, and in December several politicians met with Tim Barnett, the British-born New Zealand MP who sponsored decriminalization there. Recent developments in Scotland could lead to problems, but it’s too soon yet to tell.

United States: The US State Department continues to pour money into “anti-trafficking” campaigns which encourage persecution and abuse of prostitutes in countries which depend on American charity (especially in the Far East), and while these campaigns aren’t directly tied to the “Swedish Model” they often feature “end demand” rhetoric which directly meshes with it. In addition, wealthy American individuals with personal agendas and corporations eager to capitalize on popular hype continue to bankroll “rescue” operations which victimize women and children and “end demand” efforts which result in the arrest and officially-sanctioned robbery of hundreds of men.

All in all, then, I think we can be guardedly optimistic about the danger of this epidemic continuing to spread. Though some countries (Ireland and the US) seem to be sinking into the disease, others (such as Canada and the UK) appear not only to have avoided the sickness, but to be headed in the healthy direction of family members like Australia and New Zealand. In most countries (such as France and Denmark) it looks like business as usual, and though two of the three full-blown cases appear to be worsening, the third has shown a few faint signs of improvement. I’ll continue to keep all the patients’ charts up to date, and let y’all know as the prognosis changes for each one.

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That’s the Ticket!

Posted in Current Events, Perception, tagged Australia, bogus studies, Canada, China, East Asia, Europe, hysteria, India, Indonesia, Netherlands, stereotypes, Sweden, That's the Ticket!, underage, United Kingdom on February 15, 2012| 6 Comments »

I really know nothing more criminal, more mean, and more ridiculous than lying. It is the production either of malice, cowardice, or vanity; and generally misses of its aim in every one of these views; for lies are always detected, sooner or later. – Philip Stanhope, 4^th Earl of Chesterfield

In the 1980s, American comedian Jon Lovitz created a comic character called “Tommy Flanagan, The Pathological Liar”; he would construct absurd and convoluted lies, and when satisfied with them would declare, “That’s the ticket!” Sometimes when one reads the wildly-exaggerated poppycock disseminated by trafficking fanatics, one can hear Lovitz’s voice: “There are lots of sex slaves in the world…27 million of ‘em, yeah! And most of them are young, real young…75% of them are below 25, yeah! And the average age is 13! That’s the ticket!” Sadly, this stuff isn’t just part of a comedy routine; it’s taken very seriously by people who lack the math skills necessary to calculate how many eggs are in a dozen, yet make grandiose pronouncements that adversely affect the lives of millions of sex workers.

Here’s a recent example from a French prohibitionist group named Fondation Scelles:

Yes, prostitution is the “world’s oldest profession.” But it’s also a booming and decidedly global business, according to a new report from Fondation Scelles…Between 40 and 42 million people around the world are prostitutes, with 80 percent of them female and about 75 percent of them between the ages of 13 and 25. Here’s a map of where they live, which Fondation Scelles reportedly produced in 2010. It shows national concentration by number of prostitutes per 1,000 people. Fondation Scelle had no data for the countries labeled green…

It has no data for most of the other countries, either; it just made the whole thing up. Do you honestly believe China has the highest concentration of whores in the world? Because I don’t, and I doubt the Chinese government does either. Similarly, I doubt the home of the Swedish model would be happy with the group’s declaration that it has the same concentration of prostitutes as Australia, where the profession is largely legal, and that both are similar to Indonesia. How did the group arrive at these “estimates”? It doesn’t say, of course! But its declaration that “75% of prostitutes are between 13 and 25” should give you an idea, considering that we know the average Western prostitute doesn’t even enter the trade until 25.

Clearly, until there is worldwide decriminalization we can’t even begin to know with anything resembling certainty how many prostitutes there are worldwide. In Western countries the fraction is probably similar to the number in the US, 0.285% (just under 3 per 1000); in very poor urban areas it might climb as high as 2.5% of the female population (the highest guess on the map) but I’m unsure how many of those there might be. In the 19^th century, the fraction of the female population working as prostitutes in a typical European or American city was 5.5%, but there were fewer work options for women and even then the fraction was much lower in rural areas (possibly below 1%). If we simply average these figures, we do indeed come up with about 42 million (the average of 8.5 million and 75 million), but that would presume a minimum density of 2.85/thousand, which isn’t what their map shows. Furthermore, Dutch censuses show that only about 10% of prostitutes are male; I suspect their 20% figure is based on some unnamed study of underage streetwalker populations, which as the John Jay study demonstrated have a much higher ratio of male to female.

In total population and fraction of male participants, then, the study isn’t wildly wrong (though its map does not agree with its guesses); it’s only off by (very roughly) double in both cases. It’s when they slap in that “75% between 13 and 25” that their statements enter the realm of fantasy. Even if the average entry in developing countries were an incredible eight years younger than in Western ones (i.e. 17), and the proportion of prostitutes in the population dramatically higher in such countries (which isn’t what their map claims), that would still put the average prostitute in the world entering her trade at 19…and to arrive at that number I had to presume that 75% of all whores live in the developing world, which is neither supported by evidence nor claimed by Fondation Scelles. In other words, if I bend over backward, making some highly dubious assumptions in an attempt to get their numbers to work, the closest approach I can manage is a guesstimate of 75% of all prostitutes falling between 19 and 25 (if we arbitrarily assume an average professional life of six years before exit). Simply put, there is absolutely no legitimate set of assumptions that can possibly generate an average age of 19 for all working prostitutes even in the most impoverished developing nations, much less over the entire globe; it’s the sort of whopper even Tommy Flanagan might hesitate to tell.

One Year Ago Today

“Life Imitates Artifice” presents figures showing that there was literally NO increase in prostitution during last year’s Super Bowl, and presents two cases in which prohibitionist hype actually inspired criminals to commit crimes.

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Lupercalia

Posted in Current Events, History, Holidays, Perception, tagged Aphrodite, brothels, courtesans, dirty, holidays, neofeminism, Rome, slavery, streetwalkers, United Kingdom on February 14, 2012| 20 Comments »

I passed by the brothel as though past the house of a beloved. – Franz Kafka

Today is Valentine’s Day, the modern version of the Roman Lupercalia (as explained in my column of one year ago today). Because the festival was dedicated in part to Lupa (who, as I explained in “Larentalia”, may have actually been a courtesan rather than a wolf), it’s appropriate that I use it to present yet another small peek inside the world of Roman harlots, especially in light of a recent discovery which I’ll mention in a bit. By providing a window into the minds of prohibitionists, however, this discovery actually tells us a great deal more about the deeply sick modern view of sex than it does about the healthy Roman one.

Longtime readers have probably noticed that I mention the Romans quite often, and in fact even have a “Rome” post tag with more entries than the tags for a number of modern places. The reason for this is simple: though people often refer to “ancient Rome” in order to distinguish it from the modern city, there was nothing “ancient” about Imperial Rome; in many ways, it was the first modern civilization. Historians have long considered the Battle of Actium (31 BCE), at which the forces of Octavian defeated those of Mark Anthony, the dividing line between the ancient and modern worlds. And that isn’t just because of its convenient proximity to the beginning of the Common Era; in fact, it might be argued that if not for the world created by the Romans, the Christian religion could never have developed enough to inspire a calendar (built, of course, on the Roman one reformed by Julius Caesar). The entire Western world was shaped by the Romans; we owe most of our holidays, many of our legal traditions and political structures, a good fraction of our titles and offices, the names and locations of many of our places and the languages spoken by ¹/₆ of the world’s population to them.

Unfortunately, one of the ways in which we have not followed in their footsteps is in our collective treatment of whores. The Romans respected the institution of harlotry; a number of goddesses were worshipped with acts of prostitution, and Roman society recognized a bewildering variety of different types of hookers. Even the very word “prostitute” derives from a Roman term for an unregisted sex worker; registered ones, especially those who worked in brothels, formed an important part of the Roman economy. But since modern “authorities” have a far less reasonable and practical attitude toward sex in general and sex work in particular, they decline to learn from the sensible Roman example and some even do the opposite by trying to rewrite history to reflect not the modern reality, but rather modern mythology. This January 4^th article from The Guardian (first called to my attention by regular reader Aspasia) is an example:

[A recently-discovered Roman coin] made from bronze and smaller than a ten pence piece…depicts a man and a woman engaged in an intimate act. Experts believe it is the first example of its kind to be found in Britain. It lay preserved in mud for almost 2,000 years until it was unearthed by an amateur archaeologist with a metal detector. On the reverse of the token is the numeral XIIII, which historians say could indicate that the holder handed over 14 small Roman coins called asses to buy it. This would have been the equivalent of one day’s pay for a labourer in the first century AD. The holder would then have taken the token to one of the many Londinium brothels and handed it to a sex slave in exchange for the act depicted on the coin…

…The token has been donated to the Museum of London, where it will be on display for the next three months. Curator Caroline McDonald said: “This is the only one of its kind ever to be found in Great Britain. When we realised it was a saucy picture, we had a bit of a giggle but there’s also a sad story behind it because these prostitutes were slaves. It has resonance with modern-day London because people are still being sold into the sex trade.” The object, dated to around the first century AD, was protected from corrosion by the mud. Similar tokens have been found elsewhere in the Roman Empire, but this is the first time one has been unearthed in the UK. Some historians believe the Romans invented prostitution in the modern sense. It played a significant part in the empire’s economy – with sex workers required to register with the local authorities and even pay tax.

First of all, I find Caroline McDonald’s deliberate lying more disgusting than the mud in which this coin was found. Anyone with more than a cursory knowledge of Roman society knows that the majority of Roman prostitutes were not slaves; in fact, many were of the upper and middle classes and as I’ve previously explained, the great majority were independent practitioners who plied their trade either in licensed lupanars or in various unlicensed venues, including temples and bakeries. But this weed in Clio’s garden isn’t concerned about that; like other neofeminists, the truth to her is a tool to be distorted in whatever way is necessary to promote her agenda…which is clearly a prohibitionist one. Ironically, a recent study of London prostitutes demonstrates that McDonald’s statement has more truth in it than she intended; like their sisters in Roman Londinium, most of them aren’t slaves, either. Her duplicity is clearly revealed in the text: 14 asses was a day laborer’s pay, which is far more than slave-prostitutes have ever cost at any time in history. Consider Solon’s one-obol brothel slaves or the 50¢ “cribs” in Storyville for comparison; most bottom-end hookers have always cost roughly 2 hours’ pay, which in 1^st century Rome would’ve been about 2 asses rather than 14. If this was indeed a brothel token, it purchased the services of a proseda, not a slave.

It’s not at all certain it was a brothel token, though; it may have been a gaming token or something else, as explained by Professor Mary Beard of Cambridge:

The object in question is…what archaeologists term a “spintria”. This is a Latin word for male prostitute…but it is an entirely modern practice to apply it to these little objects; we haven’t got the foggiest clue what the Romans called them…or (despite what you read) what they used them for…The favourite idea circulating about this recent discovery is that it was part of the highly developed Roman brothel economy…as there is no evidence…at all, no-one could actually disprove that. But remember that there is no Roman mention of such things, none have been found in any place that has been identified as a “brothel”…and just think of the kind of infrastructure of the ancient “brothel industry” that this kind of internal currency would imply…So what is a more likely explanation?

…Almost certainly these were tokens whose main function was the numeral, and the sex scene on the back was “decoration”…More likely, if you ask me (and as the curator at the Museum of London concedes it might be so), is that it is a gaming token, for one of the many Roman board games…whose rules and customs were anyway shot through with sex (the best throw of the Roman dice was called a “Venus throw”). This belonged, in other words, on a board in a Roman bar, not in a brothel.

But though Professor Beard is still woefully ignorant of the sex trade (she also states “most sex for money in the ancient world — like now –happened at street corners, under bridges, after closing time at the bar…“) and pays lip service to trafficking mythology, she has enough respect for both the Romans and the truth to give her honest opinion rather than vomiting out politically-correct filth intended to advance the cause of suppressing modern prostibulae of all types.

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Fictional Interlude: Companion

Posted in Call types, Fiction, tagged courtesans, ethics, fantasy, imaginative fiction, psychology, United Kingdom on February 13, 2012| 26 Comments »

I don’t know how to take this.
I don’t see why he moves me.
He’s a man. He’s just a man.
And I’ve had so many men before,
In very many ways,
He’s just one more. – Tim Rice, “I Don’t Know How To Love Him”

Deep down, I always knew this day was coming, but I simply didn’t want to believe it; like any other woman, I desperately clung to the belief that I was somehow different, that I was the one you would never leave. Or failing that, at least that it wouldn’t hurt so much when you eventually said goodbye.

When we met, I was so sure of my self-control, so confident of my resistance to male sweet-talk. I thought I had heard it all, learned how to deflect every line, every strategy, every silver-tongued attempt to circumvent my barriers to get some special deal. But you outmanoeuvered me at every turn. I guess it isn’t surprising, considering that you had already racked up a long tally of broken hearts before I was even born, but I didn’t know that then; I couldn’t imagine how completely outclassed I was until it was far too late.

But the bait was so tempting, the deal so apparently straightforward: “Come travel with me,” you said; “I’ll pay you all you ask and more, and you’ll see and do things few other women have ever seen and done.” Coming from anyone else that would’ve been an obvious lure, but you managed to make it sound so convincing – especially considering what I had already learned about you in our first chance encounter. I’m not saying it was a lie; you were as good as your word. You’ve showered me with money and gifts, so generously that if I invest wisely I’ll never have to work again. And if anyone else has ever done some of the things we’ve done together, I’ve never heard of it. I’ve seen wonders I could only have dreamed of, walked in places I never knew existed, and experienced feelings ranging from near-bliss to mortal terror. I’ll certainly have no dearth of stories to tell my grandchildren, though I doubt they’ll believe me.

Of course, you weren’t really travelling all those places for me; you were going anyway, and just wanted some company on the journey. And wealth comes so easily to you; pick up a few things cheap in places where they’re common, sell them dear in places they’re rare or unique, and before you know it you’re as rich as Croesus with less effort than it takes to decide what you want for tea. Everything comes to you like that – travel, money, women – and because it does you don’t truly value any of it. Money becomes merely a means to your ends, one place is a great deal like another and women are as replaceable as any other creature comfort.

Don’t say I’m being unfair; yes, I know, you love everybody. But don’t you see, loving everybody is the same as loving nobody? When love is just a principle rather than a feeling, it loses all personal meaning; I’m sure you want “justice” for me as well, but that will hardly be a comfort during all the long, lonely nights to come.

Have you picked her out yet, my replacement I mean? I can think of a few likely candidates; I’ve seen the way you looked at some of the women we’ve encountered of late. And I know you have a knack for “accidentally” running into someone again when you want to, even though you and I both know that with the way you travel, the odds against such a second meeting occurring purely by coincidence are completely astronomical. It’s just one more example of the way you fix the game to get the outcome you want.

Please, don’t look at me like that, and don’t act as though I’m really hurting your feelings; I’m sure that I’m not the first woman to react in this fashion. You probably can’t even count the number of similar scenes you’ve played, much less remember the names of the actresses. And now it’s my turn; “Exit, stage left”. My goodies are all packed, and I see we’ve arrived at the home I left all those many months ago (or is it years? It’s been so hard to keep track). All that remains now is for me to walk out that door with my valises, then turn around and watch you quite literally vanish from my life forever, off on new adventures with a new companion.

One Year Ago Today

“February Updates (Part Two)” reports on a judge forbidding a retarded man from having sex, the dismissal of a really stupid lawsuit against a Las Vegas escort, a woman who died from a botched butt enlargement, and the epic failure of the “sex trafficking” predictions for last year’s Super Bowl.

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That Was the Week That Was (#4)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, All Shapes and Sizes, Australia, avails laws, Backpage, bad customers, brothels, censorship, cops, cosmetic surgery, dirty, disease, drivers, ethics, Forward and Backward, Full of Themselves, genitalia, harm reduction, law, lawheads, Legal Is as Legal Does, Madonna/whore, neofeminism, Nevada, New Orleans, pimps, prohibitionist myths, rape, Real Men, restaurants, Russia, sex work is work, stereotypes, streetwalkers, stripping, survivors, The More the Better, The Red Umbrella, transgender, violence vs. sex workers, Washington DC on February 12, 2012| 21 Comments »

Nothing can be more surely established by a larger experience than that a Government which interferes with any trade injures that trade. – Walter Bagehot

Seven updates to previous columns from the fourth week of 2012.

All Shapes and Sizes (September 8^th, 2010)

In this column I mentioned Peyronie’s Syndrome, which causes penile deformity; according to this January 23^rd article from Science Now a more effective therapy may be on the horizon:

…A new study in rats shows that lacing a penis graft with adult stem cells yields better healing and sexual function…Men with penis injuries, deformities, or severe Peyronie’s disease…sometimes need surgery to reconstruct their genitalia and restore their sexual function. Many receive a graft made of their own tissue, cadaver tissue, or pig intestines, but the surgery can cause complications, including erectile dysfunction. Wayne Hellstrom, a urologic surgeon at Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans…wanted…a surgical intervention with fewer side effects. So he teamed up with colleagues in California and China [to seed] pig intestine grafts with adult stem cells taken from fat tissue in rats…the researchers…found that rats with stem cell-laden grafts had less scarring and better erectile responses…than did those with stem cell-free grafts. The rodents’ erections were comparable in rigidity, blood flow, and response time to those in the…control rats…The results…suggest that lacing the grafts with stem cells enhances blood flow and boosts the production of molecules that make and maintain erections, all of which makes for a better penis reconstruction…Hellstrom and colleagues plan to test the method in primates next and then eventually in people. “Peyronie’s affects 3% to 9% of adult males and causes a lot of psychological distress,” Hellstrom says. “If we can improve what we have now, it seems like the logical thing to do.”

The Red Umbrella (December 17^th, 2010)

“As we’ve discussed many, many times in the past, violence from the police [and] bad customers…is all too common a part of the lives of prostitutes, most especially streetwalkers; too many men…consider whores to be disposable, “non-persons” against whom assault, robbery or rape is permissible. A large part of the reason for this is the suppression of our trade; the laws criminalizing our profession allow weak-minded men…to convince themselves that since we are “criminals” we don’t deserve to be treated like human beings, and the attitude of both the law and the police makes it difficult to impossible for…prostitutes to even be heard by the police much less have crimes against us investigated.” This story from the January 10^th Orlando Sentinel demonstrates the first part of my statement and provides a welcome exception to the latter part; too bad Juarez will never recognize the poetic justice of the date he was arrested:

…Ernesto Juarez, 32, is facing several charges in a Dec. 17 attack, including sexual battery with a deadly weapon…[he] admitted to attacking, raping or attempting to rape five prostitutes…[but] detectives have yet to charge him in four of the cases. One of his alleged victims…told [reporters] about her dangerous encounter…Juarez…picked her up on the afternoon of Dec. 10…agreed to pay her $40…and said he was going to take her to his house…[but when he] head[ed] into a secluded area and stopped at a metal gate, the woman became suspicious…[he] got out…went around to her side of the vehicle and pulled off his pants…[but when she asked for her] money, he punched her in the face…[then] pulled her outside and continued hitting her…[she got free and] crawled under the truck, grabbed ahold of the frame and held on as he tugged on her legs…[eventually she got] away…and [ran] to a nearby business screaming for help…A week [later] the property owner noticed Juarez’s pickup parked in the same [spot]…[he] found Juarez [raping] another prostitute in the front seat and called police…Juarez managed to drive away but didn’t get far…he first denied hurting the woman…but later changed his story and described how he had beaten and raped several prostitutes beginning in September. [He claimed] he would “lose control” when the prostitutes asked him for money up front, because he viewed it as a sign of “disrespect”…Juarez is being held without bail at the Orange County Jail.

One wonders if he “loses control” when cashiers expect him to pay before taking groceries from a store, or if he just reserves his indignation for women he thinks won’t call the cops.

Real Men Support Sex Worker Rights (April 22^nd, 2011)

In this January 26^th essay in Reason, Jacob Sullum demonstrates his balls not only by opposing the popular campaign against Backpage and criticizing Forbes columnist Daniel Fisher (who ruined his own attack on Backpage’s critics with a mealy-mouthed anti-whore statement), but also by standing up for our rights and slamming Nicholas Kristof as one of the perpetuators of the system which exposes us to harm:

…Fisher hastens to add, “I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with trying to shut down the vigorous market for human flesh.” Well, I am saying that, if…he means the exchange of sex for money. It makes as much sense to ban prostitution because some prostitutes are forced…as it does to ban agriculture because farms have been known to use slaves…prohibition forces…prostitutes to work in dangerous conditions, picking up customers on the street or covertly connecting with them online, and makes it harder for them to seek legal remedies when they are cheated or abused. These hazards, similar to those seen in black markets for drugs and gambling, are not inherent to the business of selling sex; they are inherent to the policy of using force to suppress peaceful commerce. Since these dangers are entirely predictable, prohibitionists like Kristof should be reflecting on their role in perpetuating them, instead of making scapegoats out of businesses that run classified ads.

I strongly urge you to read the whole thing!

Full of Themselves (June 7^th, 2011)

“I always find it fascinating when women in professions which are only barely different from prostitution (such as stripping or domination) or historically connected to prostitution (such as acting and massage) get all holier-than-thou, proclaiming themselves ‘better’ than we are…”

Would you believe…competition pole dancers trying to distance themselves from strippers?

Three Russian pole dancers…applied for visas to travel to the United States…they were told that it was best not to mention…that…[they were] in a pole dancing competition…the visa authorities decided to do some poking around…on…Facebook…[and discovered] they weren’t just tourists…their visas were…canceled…[and they] were subjected to an humiliating…grilling by three federal agents…Any other dance competition would have been above suspicion, but since it was pole dancing, they immediately [made] the stripper connection and…presumed that the competition was just window dressing for human trafficking, prostitution and illegal stripping! This sad lack of comprehension is unfortunately still a reality and we have a long way to go before the stripper association is dislodged from people’s minds. As of now the stereotype that people still have about pole dancing prevents them from viewing it as the legitimate art form that requires creativity and imagination and a sport that requires tremendous skill, athletic ability and great strength.

Because, you know, when a stripper does it to make a living it isn’t “legitimate” and requires no creativity, imagination, skill or athletic ability. The writer doesn’t criticize the whole “sex workers are trafficked” nonsense; she’s only irate because the dancers were confused with “common” strippers.

Forward and Backward (November 22^nd, 2011)

Remember those “prostitution-free zones” that enable Washington, DC cops to arrest people for “looking like prostitutes”, and how they’re trying to make them permanent? Well, a coalition of civil rights advocates and transsexuals (who suffer disproportionately because cops assume they’re all drag streetwalkers) are fighting it, and the DC attorney general reluctantly agreed with them. According to the January 24^th Washington Post:

The D.C. attorney general’s office said…that the District’s temporary “prostitution-free zones” are probably unconstitutional, raising fresh doubts about a bill…that would broaden the zones and make them permanent…In [such] areas…police can make arrests for up to 24 consecutive days if two or more people congregate in public…and ignore dispersal orders…Council member Yvette Alexander…has introduced a bill that would empower police to make the zones permanent. But [assistant AG Ariel] Waldman and Assistant Police Chief Peter Newsham expressed broad reservations about the bill…The statements…and…concerns from social service and gay rights activists, present fresh hurdles for Alexander’s efforts to combat prostitution…

When a politician says something is “probably unconstitutional”, it really means “this is so obviously unconstitutional we haven’t a snowball’s chance in Hell of slipping it past the civil libertarians without raising a huge stink.”

Legal Is as Legal Does (December 14^th, 2011)

Yet another example of the dangers of legalization, in this case laws which presume hookers are so stupid we need Nanny to “protect” us from big bad pimps (unless they have a government license, of course):

A young prostitute was caught out in a covert operation called Operation Heatwave after she and three other prostitutes went to visit clients who turned out to be undercover police. Aimee Louise Roy, 21, went to a hotel…with three other sex workers on October 23 to meet clients…[who were secretly] police and the group was arrested. Roy was charged with knowingly participating in providing prostitution…If she was acting on her own, she wouldn’t have been in trouble. There are two forms of legal sex work in Queensland – sole operators (private work) where a single sex worker works alone and sex work conducted in a licensed brothel…Magistrate Matthew McLaughlin noted the law was designed to catch out “pimps” and told Roy if she wanted to keep up that line of work she should do it through a licensed premises.

The story also demonstrates that pigs are pigs and will inevitably use whatever loophole the law gives them to harass and victimize whores.

The More the Better (January 9^th, 2012)

The “gentrification” of Nevada brothels continues:

…a legal brothel near Reno [Nevada is]…taking the world’s oldest profession into the modern age of luxury recreation, featuring a cabaret…a fully equipped spa, and 10 deluxe suites. “We see this as the Ritz-Carlton of brothels,” [said] Lance Gilman, co-owner of the Mustang Ranch Resort…[which] seeks to earn 40 percent of its revenue from goods and services unrelated to private time with the ladies…It costs nothing to stay at the resort [but] guests have to pay at least one of the women to accompany them around the Ranch at all times…Gilman and [his wife Susan] Austin said they were inspired by Walt Disney, who famously took his children to a shabby carnival and imagined building what would become the world’s first theme park — Disneyland. “Most brothels are basically trailer parks in isolated places and there’s nothing to do once you get there other than have sex,” Gilman said…

This is great news; it was after Vegas casinos started “gentrifying” in the ‘80s that people from other states dropped their prejudices against gambling, and now casinos are everywhere in the US. Of course,

…That’s not good news to people like Anne Bissell…[a] former prostitute…[whose self-appointed] mission is to deglamorize the…sex industry, which she believes to be full of what are not victimless crimes. “The sex industry has hijacked so many terms, like freedom of choice…It used to be the definition of an empowered woman was a doctor or lawyer. Now it’s a stripper or prostitute…”

This incredibly stupid statement has become very popular among prohibitionists; I wonder what looking-glass world they’re living in? Because in this one, legally barring women from certain jobs is a restriction of choice, and the government and media paint sex workers as powerless victims.

One Year Ago Today

“February Updates (Part One)” features items about a hooker accused of spreading HIV, a former madam pandering to popular prohibitionist myths and an Anglican priest fighting for strippers’ rights.

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That Was the Week That Was (#3)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged A Moral Cancer, Against Their Will, brothels, California, Canada, censorship, condoms, crypto-moralism, dirty, disease, genitalia, harm reduction, hysteria, India, law, libraries, Madonna/whore, neofeminism, New York, porn, psychology, rescue industry, restaurants, Sex Lies and Busybodies, So What Else Is New?, stereotypes, stripping, violence vs. sex workers, welcome to our world on February 11, 2012| 25 Comments »

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. – Charlotte Bronte

Five stories from the third week of 2012.

Twice As Interesting

It’s not too often a story attracts my attention both as a librarian and as a harlot, but this one from the January 18^th National Post did:

Instead of a book, patrons of Ottawa’s city libraries will have a chance to check out a stripper, a prostitute, a Somali refugee, a judge, an HIV-positive man, a Peking Opera performer, a woman born as a man, a police officer…a bipolar man [and many others] as part of a Human Library program. Billed as “real people, real conversations,” the Ottawa Public Library is bringing dozens of people with diverse experiences into its branches, encouraging patrons to check them out for a 20-minute, one-on-one chat…Human books cannot be placed on hold…Patrons peruse the list of options like an old-fashioned card catalogue and ask to check out the title. While the event’s message is diversity and dialogue, there have already been complaints about including a stripper and a sex trade worker, said Elaine Condos, the acting city librarian… “Books are about information and information comes in many, many formats, and a human book is a unique way of presenting information…The role of the public library is to provide access to information,” Ms. Condos said. “People will have an opportunity to have a one-on-one conversation…for 20 minutes and ask them questions about their experiences.” It is being billed as an event for adults and conversations will take place in open areas of the libraries. “These are conversations, not presentations,” she said of the stripper and prostitute. “I don’t think we want the pediatric neurosurgeon to do any demonstrations either”…

It’s sad that bigots felt compelled to complain, but can you imagine a stripper and a hooker being included in such an event in the US? Not in this decade!

So What Else Is New?

This item from the January 19^th Huffington Post isn’t really news because it’s what researchers have said for years:

Many women swear they have one, but a new review of 60 years of sex research shows science still can’t definitively find the G-spot. Researchers have used surveys, imaging scans and biopsies of women, all trying to locate and define the presumably orgasmic area on the vaginal wall known as the G-spot. Based on a review of 96 published studies, an Israeli and American research team came to one conclusion. “Without a doubt, a discreet anatomic entity called the G-spot does not exist,” said [lead author] Dr. Amichai Kilchevsky …The G-spot was named in honor of the late Dr. Ernst Gräfenberg, who in 1950 described a particularly sensitive…spot…a few centimeters in from the vaginal opening…toward the front of a woman’s body…[but though] a majority of women believe a G-spot actually exists…some of those women also say they can’t locate it.

…Kilchevsky doesn’t think women who claim to have a G-spot are crazy…”What they’re likely experiencing is a continuation of the clitoris,” he said. G-spot skeptics often point out that the tissue of the clitoris extends into the body, behind it where the G-spot would be located…Barry Komisaruk…of…Rutgers University…advocates calling it the…G-region…instead. “I think that the bulk of the evidence shows that the G-spot is not a particular thing. It’s not like saying, ‘What is the thyroid gland?'” Komisaruk said. “The G-spot is more of a thing like New York City is a thing. It’s a region, it’s a convergence of many different structures”…pressing on the area…also presses the urethra and a structure called Skene’s gland, which is analogous to the male prostate. “Each of those areas have different nerve sites,” said Komisaruk. “I think there’s good enough data that a lot of women feel that that is a particularly sensitive region”…

I’ve always adhered to the “back of the clitoris” theory myself, mainly because it’s consistent with my own experiences.

Update to “A Moral Cancer” (March 6^th, 2011)

Crypto-moralists just love pretending that their puritanical agendas are really about physical (rather than spiritual) health, and always disguise their desire to control others’ lives as “for the public good”:

…The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine…put up [a series of] graphic cellulite-filled billboards around Albany [New York on January 17^th]…The group claims cheese products play a big role in the epidemic of childhood obesity, and want the Albany city school district to cut cheese from its lunch menu…

Well, if they’re doctors promoting health, they must know what they’re talking about, right? Wrong. Their name and hype has fooled the media for 25 years, but in reality they’re a fanatical animal-rights group with ties to PETA which relies primarily on scare tactics and gross-out ads in its continuing attempt to impose veganism on everyone, and less than 5% of its members are physicians. Its founder is a psychiatrist with no background in nutrition, and the American Medical Association has repeatedly tried to inform the public that the PCRM is a “fringe organization” which uses “unethical tactics” and is “interested in perverting medical science.” Sort of reminds you of trafficking fetishists, doesn’t it?

Update To “Against Their Will” (July 23^rd, 2011)

Prostitutes “rescued” against their will generally fight their “saviors” and attempt to escape from “rehabilitation centers” at the first opportunity, but at least one “rescue” organization has figured out how to get around this issue: they simply abduct the women’s children instead.

“How many nights of safety can you give a child?” is India Partners’ tagline for its campaign to rescue children of sex workers in India. More than 2.3 million girls and women in India are believed to be working in the sex industry against their will. In addition, there are at least 5 million children of sex workers in India. India Partners is working with an organization in Mumbai to rescue the children of trafficked women and relocate them to loving safe homes outside the red-light districts.

Children in red-light areas are vulnerable to abuse, trauma and second-generation prostitution. During the day, children are often left alone while their mothers are sleeping. At night, some are drugged and put under the bed while their mothers work the trade. Anandalay, a safe home for daughters of trafficked women, provides the rescued girls with education, food and excellent accommodation under the committed care of a houseparent couple. If the child’s mother is still living, she is granted supervised visits.

One couldn’t ask for a finer example of doublethink; we are told that these women are “trafficked” and working “against their will”, and that the solution is to further victimize them by stealing their children. The brainwashed supporters of this filthy scheme are assured that the children are “loved” by their jailers, because obviously those degraded whores (oops, I mean “exploited victims”) can’t possibly have any maternal feelings. But hey, India Partners isn’t completely inhumane; they magnanimously allow their victims to occasionally stare at their kidnapped babies under the watchful gaze of armed thugs.

Update to “Sex, Lies and Busybodies” (January 27^th, 2012)

From a January 18^th AP release:

Some of the most prominent purveyors of porn say they’ll start packing up their sex toys and abandoning the nation’s Porn Capital if authorities really do…police their movie sets and order that every actor be outfitted with a condom…[on January 17^th] the Los Angeles City Council voted 9-1 to grant final approval to an ordinance that would deny film permits to producers who do not comply with the condom requirement…the council has called for the creation of a committee made up of police officials, the city attorney, state health officials and others to determine how it might be enforced. “It’s going to be interesting to see how…they…try to enforce it…[and] fund it…” said Steven Hirsch…of…Vivid…”Ultimately I think what they will find is people will just stop shooting in the city of Los Angeles…”

…Other industry officials condemned the measure as an unneeded [and unenforceable] exercise in political correctness…”The only thing that the city could potentially achieve is losing some film permit money and driving some productions away, but you can’t actually compel an industry to create a product that the market doesn’t want,” said Christian Mann…of Evil Angel…The ordinance would require filmmakers pay a permit fee…to pay for surprise inspections at film shoots…Mann said smaller productions involving only a handful of people can probably fly under the radar and just ignore the permitting requirement. Larger ones, he said, will likely just leave town…

Raise hands, anyone who didn’t see this coming. The porn industry has no choice; in order to survive it has to produce a product consumers want, and if it can’t do that in Los Angeles it will do it elsewhere.

One Year Ago Today

“Not an Addiction” explains what an addiction actually is, why it’s impossible to be addicted to sex and how the myth of “sex addiction” is used to promote moralist agendas (and dating websites).

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You Oughta Be In Pictures

Posted in Biography, Philosophy, tagged activism, anecdote, blogging, condoms, courtesans, drivers, internet, porn, psychology, Texas, Twitter on February 10, 2012| 11 Comments »

“…what is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?” – Lewis Carroll

Regular readers may have guessed by now that I have a lot of trouble playing by other people’s rules if I can see no rational basis for them. If a rule makes sense to me, and I can easily internalize it, then well and fine; but a good way to get me to take my ball and go home is to come out with a bunch of arbitrary crap that goes against my grain. As soon as I hear “you must” or “it is imperative that” or “because I’m the mommy, that’s why,” I tune out and go my own way. So when I started blogging and some well-meaning friends and acquaintances told me that I needed to do “search engine optimization” and word my posts such-and-such way for the search engines to pick me up and all that hoo-ha, I said “thanks, but no thanks” and did it the way which seemed right to me: that is, to invest my time and energy in making a good site with interesting, varied posts which was fun to look at and easy to navigate. A few months later, once I started appearing on a lot of sex-worker-advocacy radar units, I had some other (again, well-meaning) people tell me that I was going about it the wrong way, and that if I was going to be a sex worker advocate I needed to look and act and sound like everybody else. To them also, I said “no, thanks”. Every once in a while I still get suggestions like that; if I think they’re good I act on them (my “Offsite” page, Subject Index and participation in Twitter were all suggestions), but if they want to change the basic way I do things (like the casual reader who called the fictional interludes “distracting”) I politely thank the person and then ignore them.

Well, my instincts were good; by spending my time generating quality content rather than worrying about how people would find it, and by following my gut about what to write about and how to write it, I’ve managed to create a fairly popular blog here. But though most of my visitors arrive via link or referral or content search, a very large number get here in a way I never anticipated: image searches. I’ve written before about how I came to start The Honest Courtesan; the nutshell version is that regular reader The Human Scorch pointed me to WordPress when I complimented him on his blog’s appearance. So after I chose my theme and got my first page up, I asked his opinion; it can be summed up in two words: “widgets” and “pictures”. So, I played around with the widgets and went searching for a few pictures which I thought would enhance my first post. I still tweak the widgets occasionally (you’ve probably noticed the new Twitter feed by now), but it was in the pictures that I went really all-out. I quickly discovered that good pictures can add a lot to a column; oh, sometimes they’re just decorations which do little more than make the posts easier to read by breaking up a wall of text, but other times they drive home points, add humor or actually provide additional data. I couldn’t have imagined they would actually bring in an appreciable number of visitors, though.

Boy, was I ever wrong; as I explained in “Top Ten”, my three most-visited columns (and four more in that original “top ten” list) earned those positions almost entirely via image searches. My most popular column to date was the one published one year ago today, “Coming and Going”; it was viewed 6353 times last year, and 5628 of those times were from searches which homed in on a map of Texas counties I used to illustrate an estimate of the total amount of money wasted by locking up hookers in all the counties in Texas combined. Image searches for Veronica Franco, Pompeii, Mira Sorvino, “Mardi Gras tits”, Phryne, the fictional planet Gor and even sofa beds brought in lots of traffic by the time I wrote “Top Ten”, and in the last six months “broken condom”, “hells angels”, “grimoire”, “Capri Anderson” and “ground hog” each brought in hundreds of hits. I even get respectable traffic from “Maggie McNeill nude”; seeing that one in the search list never fails to make me smile.

Performing an image search for any of these terms (except the last one, naturally) will deliver oodles of results; why, then, do so many searchers end up here? I think it’s because I choose my pictures in the same way I write the columns in which they’re embedded: carefully and according to my own standards and sense of aesthetics. Sometimes it takes me as long to illustrate a column as it does to write it (especially when there are more than the usual two or three pictures), and if I can’t find what I’m looking for I often reread the text for a different idea to illustrate and start all over again. Readers often compliment the picture choices, and I suspect that the images I select so carefully stand out among dozens of others, thereby drawing the searcher to this blog…where at least some of them, I hope, find more to hold their attention than just pretty pictures.

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