Only death goes deeper than sex. – Mason Cooley
One obituary, ten updates and three metaupdates.
R.I.P. Ray Bradbury
The beloved fantasist died Wednesday morning at the age of 91; he was one of my favorite authors and wrote one of my favorite books and one of the scariest stories of all time. Here are a story and an article from Bradbury himself (courtesy of the New Yorker), my tribute tale “Penelope”, lovely remembrances from Neil Gaiman and regular reader Hal 10000, and a video from singer and comedienne Rachel Bloom; Bradbury had a great laugh when he saw it and gave her an autographed copy of The Martian Chronicles.
Updates
Think of the Children! (September 30th, 2010)
So, school personnel, think you’re safe because you’ve never done sex work and/or don’t have direct contact with kids? Think again:
…Des Moines school superintendent Nancy Sebring resigned last week…for sending sexy emails at work…Sebring was forced out of her position because school district staffers discovered…emails she’d sent…to an adult man with whom she was engaged in a consenting sexual relationship…district…policy forbids using school computers…for personal correspondence…
Had the emails been about him taking her to a movie nobody would’ve said boo; she was sacked for being sexual, because sex rays can flow through the school’s computer system or become embedded in memo paper and thus imperil students (i.e. helpless, asexual fetuses) in a different part of town.
The Scarlet Letter (March 29th, 2011)
Public shaming of whores and clients without due process is evil and twisted enough, but this takes it to a new level of piggishness:
…[In Chicago] a disproportionate number of transgender individuals are apparently being arrested for patronizing or soliciting for prostitution…Transgender “buyers” are much more likely than non-transgender buyers to be black…[and] are also, on average, almost 10 years younger. We should note that 10.5% of the arrestees were transgender, a shocking statistic…It seems much more likely that these individuals were “sellers,” not “buyers”…
As the Swedish Rot begins to pervade more American jurisdictions, it has become less politically popular to arrest women; so, Chicago cops simply lie and accuse transgender hookers of being clients instead due to their biological gender. Since neofeminists hate transgender people anyway, this is a bonus for them.
Down Under
(One Year Ago Today)
Australian politician Craig Thomson is under fire for misappropriation of funds, and though less than 6% of those funds were spent on whores guess what everyone’s talking about? Kelly Hinton of Project Respect comments:
…The question of whether or not [Thomson] actually did this has been lost…as a woman…dared not only to come forward publicly saying she could identify him from a photo, but accepted money to do so. It seems that what she has to say is irrelevant – we have already scrutinized, judged, degraded and discredited her in a public trial by media… from all sides. Owners of escort businesses and brothels in Sydney…have been quick to discredit her (and ultimately, other women in the sex industry)…[by] depicting [them] as stupid…[or] manipulative…Mr Thomson is quoted as saying: “To buy a story from a prostitute is cheque book journalism at its worst”…Is he suggesting that because she has been in the sex industry, we must assume she has no morals, is a liar and will do anything for money?…
This is yet another demonstration of why sex work must be completely decriminalized: any arbitrary limitation which doesn’t apply to other people besides hookers will be used as a weapon by those in power:
…A local sex worker…said prostitution laws in Queensland were much harsher than in other Australian states…sex workers may only enlist the services of a registered bodyguard and a driver. They are not permitted to have a receptionist book their service or handle payments. Detective Superintendent Brian Wilkins…said enforcing these laws helped prevent the exploitation of sex workers…
So to “protect” the girls, cops trick and arrest them, “helping” them into a criminal record and “helping” the state to some of their money. I’m sure they’re very grateful.
Part of the Picture (August 29th, 2011)
Young women who report that their romantic partners look at porn frequently are less happy in their relationships than women partnered with guys who more often abstain… said…Destin Stewart [of]…the University of Florida…Discovering explicit material on a partner’s computer “made them feel like they were not good enough, like they could not measure up”…women who reported that their boyfriends or husbands looked at more pornography were less likely to be happy in their relationships than women who said their partners didn’t look at pornography very often. When women were bothered by their partner’s porn use, saying, for example, that they believed he was a porn addict or that he used porn more than a “normal” amount, they were also more likely to have low self-esteem and to be less satisfied with both their relationship and their sex life…that doesn’t prove that porn necessarily caused the women’s self-esteem to drop…women who feel bad about themselves might seek out or stay with porn-loving guys more often than secure women…
Or, women who believe in nonsense like “porn addiction” might be labeling a normal amount of porn-watching “excessive”, or might even be classifying as porn materials that more secure women don’t think of that way (e.g., I don’t call Playboy porn). Or, a woman with self-esteem problems, or who is dissatisfied with her relationship, could be much less interested in sex, which drives her man to look at more porn. There’s just no way to tell anything at all from sloppy studies like this, but that sure didn’t stop the anti-sex crowd from trying.
Wise Investment (September 19th, 2011)
I’m really pleased to see more sex businesses counterattacking with civil litigation. Escort review and message board ECCIE is suing a blogger who refers to the owners as “pimps” and has repeatedly accused them of “human trafficking” (sound like anybody we know?); the buffoon doesn’t seem to comprehend that actual felony accusations cross the line from criticism into libel. Meanwhile, Backpage is suing the state of Washington to prevent implementation of a new law which would require escorts to place ads on websites in person rather than over the internet, and would hold any website (including Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc) criminally liable for outside submissions, which as the lawsuit points out would “bring the practice of hosting third-party content to a grinding halt.” Apparently federal judge Ricardo Martinez recognizes the implications, because he has temporarily blocked enforcement of the new law while the suit proceeds.
Don’t Take My Word For It (September 29th, 2011)
When one of Dan Savage’s readers asked him for advice on how to become a straight male escort, he enlisted the aid of an expert:
“There is no gigolo industry,” says Dominick, the former escort who writes Ask Dominick, an advice column…at Rentboy.com…“What STUD is seeking is a fantasy—one that has been fueled by cultural products like American Gigolo and HBO’s Hung,” says Dominick. There are no reputable agencies…that book male escorts to see female clients, just as there are no websites like Rentboy.com for straight male escorts. “The fact of the matter is, almost all clients for escorts are male…” When [Dominick] was working as an escort in New York City, his ads stated that he was available for male or female clients. “Over three years, I went on exactly one call with a female client…and one call with a married couple for a cuckolding scene, which was initiated by the husband. During that same period, I averaged about 5.5 calls per week with men”…
Higher Education (December 11th, 2011)
I think you’re probably better off just learning on the job (from the Spanish with Google’s help):
A “serious” Spanish company offers a €100 course in “professional prostitution”, at least according to a poster…in the city of Valencia…adult students (both male and female) are trained to charge for sex. They learn the Kama Sutra, both common and uncommon positions, and the use of toys; the number of classes is optional according to student needs. Upon graduation, a student can apply to be a teacher in the school, or explore a world of other possibilities to “make big money quickly and easily”…
The Course of a Disease (February 16th, 2012)
Swedish Model proponents just won’t give up trying to inflict their filth on Canadian society, and are even trying to hijack the term “decriminalization”:
The Quebec Council for the Status of Women is calling on the government to decriminalize prostitution, and instead go after the clients and escort agencies…[The group claimed] the average age young women become involved in the sex trade is between 14 and 15 years old. Many, they say, have been sexually abused as children…[and that] bodies need to stop being objectified, including in strip clubs…
Finding What Isn’t There (April 17th, 2012)
The Irish Police have been forced to admit that prohibitionists are full of crap:
…Gardai…are examining information gathered in last week’s…raids on apartments that were being used mainly by foreign prostitutes…all the young women who were detained or questioned said they were working in the sex trade here voluntarily…Gardai disagree with claims by Catholic and feminist groups that there are high levels of human trafficking involved in Ireland’s sex trade…
Hard Numbers (April 20th, 2012)
This account from a Congolese whore clearly demonstrates why criminalization and legalization schemes are dangerous both for women and for public health:
When Redempta…came to Kenya, she quickly had to find a source of income to feed and house herself and her two younger siblings. But as an illegal immigrant with no knowledge of local languages, her options were very limited. “I met some women from my country…and they introduced me to sex work…When I refuse to have sex with [men] without a condom, some threaten to report me to the police. They say they will tell the police I stole from them…I don’t have any papers to allow me [to stay] here, so I just have sex with them without a condom when they want.” Redempta sometimes has up to eight clients in two days, but…has only been tested for HIV once in the last two years. “I just tested once when they conducted a public one [testing campaign], but I fear going to a facility to test for HIV. I don’t know what the health workers will tell me when I go there because I am not a Kenyan,” she said…
Metaupdates
Shifting the Blame in TW3 (#18) (May 5th, 2012)
These are obviously the same two who were questioned before: “Two men have been arrested in connection with the Backpage.com murder investigation…[they] were questioned by homicide detectives and will be held pending expected charges.”
Feminine Pragmatism in TW3 (#18) (May 5th, 2012)
Nadya Suleman accepted a topless dancing gig in order to promote her porn video and says “that she would accept adult entertainment offers, although she ‘wouldn’t even kiss somebody for money’.” But despite her “dreams of building a business ‘empire’ that will pay for food, shelter and college educations for her 14 children” and her “hopes to become a role model for other women facing major struggles”, she backed out of the contract after “the club’s bartender said [in a TV interview]: ‘She must be a little crazy, normal people don’t have that many children’… and…the club’s manager said that ‘maybe after a few shows she gets comfortable, we’ll see more’ [than just her tits].” Wake up, Octomom; your kids can’t eat your pride, and if you’re that easily offended how the hell do you hope to handle Howard Stern’s comments when you ride a Sybian on his show on June 20th?
Traffic Jam in TW3 (#21) (May 26th, 2012)
Another gang leader was sentenced on “human trafficking” charges for the prostitution of female gang members; the story is chock full of the sort of melodramatic language one expects from a 1930s B-movie and of course portrays female gang members as innocent lambs.
Part of the Picture –
So “secure women” don’t stay with porn loving guys?
And how do these women happen to “discover” the porn on their partner’s computer anyway?
I’d be really interested to know what the “normal” amount of porn use is. Is there a normal amount of mp3 or soap opera use?
Higher Education –
Is there such a thing as non-professional prostitution? Apprentices perhaps?
Maybe if those women gave their boyfriends a little more attention, and more exciting attention, they wouldn’t look at so much porn?
[dodges bricks thrown by feminists]
Any porn at all is abnormal, according to some of these women. Because, you know, sex is abnormal.
>”Is he suggesting that because she has been in the sex industry, we must assume she has no morals, is a liar and will do anything for money?…”
Of course he is. He’s a politician, and so that’s the standard of behaviour he’s used to. That’s more politics or banking than sex industry.
I’ve never quite got the whole thing about women feeling bad about their men watching porn. Does that mean their husbands should feel bad if the women read romance novels about rich, hunky men? Or watch Hollywood action heroes in movies?
For over thirty years, I made my living in the sex industry. And anyone who has done so can tell you there’s a huge gulf between professional sex, and a personal sexual relationship. Confusing the two is madness.
“Does that mean their husbands should feel bad if the women read romance novels about rich, hunky men?”
So true.
“I don’t call Playboy porn”
Can you provide a definition of “porn”?
And once we have defined it, how can we get more porn and less violence on TV?
Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? Since she didn’t define “porn” or set any standards of “average”, this is nothing but a tautology: “insecure women with misconceptions about porn feel insecure and have misconceptions about porn”. Oooh, big surprise. As Brooke Magnanti pointed out, she didn’t even ask the men how much porn they actually read or viewed; she just relied on the women’s self-reinforcing appraisal of what constituted porn (National Geographic? Victoria’s Secret catalogs? Lady Chatterly’s Lover?) and what constituted “more usage” than…what? I honestly don’t know if I’ve ever seen a “study” less moored in anything than this one; even Melissa Farley’s garbage is rooted deeply in neofeminist dogma, but this thing just blows around like a tumbleweed unconnected to science, reality, ideology, religion, politics or anything else. 🙁
Sorry, I need to make a correction to the text. In bold:
How many relationships are there were the man pretends he doesn’t look at porn and the woman pretends to believe him?
You know, thinking about this some more, that “study” really annoys me. There is a spectrum of men from those who are perfectly content with one woman to those who crave more variety. If a man isn’t looking at a lot of porn, he’s probably the former and his desire/drive is closer to a woman’s. If he is looking a lot of porn, he’s the latter and his desire/drive is very different. The choice is not between him looking at porn and not looking at it; it’s between him looking at porn and sleeping with other women. The article you link seems to cling to this idea that we can somehow mold men so that they are perfectly suited mates to women.
It’s a remarkably delusional piece of work on several levels. My stock response to women who want to feminize men is, “If you want a woman with a cock, why don’t you just date a woman and buy her a strap-on?”
I hadn’t thought of that but I may be able to validate it a bit with my own anecdotal experience. I don’t watch porn – well, very rarely anyway and I am incessantly chasing “skirts” and it’s beyond my ability to control.
I was able to control it while I was in the military. I think that is partly due to my belief that maybe monogamy is easier for a man during the first ten years of it. I think the other part of it was, the only women I met back then were military women and, although several of them made it known to me that they were available to me – I never bit into the fruit because of my position in the military and not wanting to corrupt it. This almost came unraveled once when I met a beautiful female Master Chief who was my equal (no power imbalance) and there was nothing “duty bound” to keep us from developing a relationship save the fact that we were both married. Fortunately we ended that before it turned into a sexual relationship – well, at least it never progressed “technically” to intercourse.
Now that I’m just a “joe-blow” civilian though – the urge is too strong for me and honestly – sometimes I don’t want to control it because it’s one element of life that makes me feel honestly alive. At the same time it disgusts me, because although my wife has some serious issues with postmenopausal libido – she’s never denied me.
I’ve thought about porn as an outlet – but honestly every time I try to watch it I feel like I’m in “The Matrix” and I’m just tickling an itch with a virtual finger. It’s just not real enough to me – and maybe just not “dangerous” enough for me too.
I’ve definitely found there’s a satiation hierarchy with sexual activity (based on how long the particular activity causes urge reduction) which goes from porn & masturbation at the lower end all the way up to passionate sex with my wife at the top. (the latter being off the agenda entirely, for about 15 years now, long story).
I’d rather be looking at porn than cheating, but if porn were to be entirely criminalized, there’d be not much choice left. I’m not a trappist monk.
Okay, I don’t follow your traffic jam update and I don’t like where I think it’s going.
MS-13 doesn’t let women join the gang. This actually seems like a perfectly valid sex trafficking. Certainly, the article says nothing about the girls being gang members or refusing to testify.
This seems like a perfectly valid instance of sex trafficking. It’s is very rare, but this is one guy and three victims in the whole of Northern Virginia.
The ring wasn’t a part of the actual gang operations and seems to have been carried out only by the leader as a separate activity where he used his affiliation as a threat.
Yes, it feeds the sex trafficking moral panic, but at the same time, what sex trafficking is said to be, seems to be exactly what happened.
So do you believe that these girls were mindless little bunnies who were passively “used”, and didn’t go along with the program for their own reasons? Because in reality, that’s not how it works; pretending that girls are totally passive and helpless appeals to neofeminists and male chauvinists, but the real world isn’t like that. And pretending it is will only keep increasing the legal precedents which are even now being used to justify tyranny like waiting periods and sonograms for abortions, disregard for women’s choices in domestic violence prosecutions, and the Swedish Model.
I don’t know what happened and I could be wrong. But, you did jump to the conclusion without gathering any evidence to the contrary. While, that conclusion is very rarely wrong, at the same time, it’s not always correct.
And you did make a big assumption by saying the girls were female gang members, just because the guy was a gang leader.
Oh, and thanks for the link, Maggie! 🙂
It was well-deserved. 🙂
The Kenyan story is a good illustration of why I absolutely despise any kind of immigration restrictions.
For one, I’m very proud of DePaul’s SSRC. They’ve interacted with SWOP-Chicago a couple of times and even spoke about ongoing research they were conducting at a 12/17 event a couple years ago.
But I totally support a whore’s academy, if you will, once the profession has been decriminalized and largely destigmatized. Similar to the training of geisha and the one-on-one training Renaissance courtesans received, usually from an older female relative who was a courtesan herself. Essentially, I would love to see Firefly’s Companion Academy come to fruition.
That video is hilarious! I’m sharing it with friends. And knowing my love for George R.R. Martin, I’d do a video like that for him.
I have loved that video since I first saw it last year, so when Ray died I knew it had to be part of my tribute.
And I, too, would love to operate a gynoecia! Can you imagine? “Dean Maggie”. What do you think, Professor Aspasia? 😉
Oh yes please! I can totally imagine this.
I’ve already decided that if I ever get my doctorate in art history, that my courses are going to all revolve around The Whore in Art. Hell, all my papers did! 🙂
I’m an Iowan myself, and my take on the Sebring teapot-tempest is that she’s made a lot of enemies who seized on this as a way to oust her. A lot of her decisions were questionable, or not very popular.
I probably watch more than an average amount of porn. Laura and I don’t live together, I don’t have a job, and I’m not having any sex with anybody other than Laura. If I had a job or some time-consuming, physically vigorous hobby (surfing would do nicely), I’m sure I’d watch less porn.
That reminds me: I haven’t finished watching that hentai DVD I bought at the con.