June | 2012 | The Honest Courtesan

Archive for June, 2012

How Not To Get Your Comments Posted

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, Philosophy, tagged agency denial, anecdote, bisexuality, blogging, censorship, ethics, harm reduction, neofeminism, psychology, stereotypes on June 10, 2012| 58 Comments »

The weeder is supremely needed if the Garden of the Muses is to persist as a garden. – Ezra Pound

Some people seem completely unable to grasp that the public and private spheres are different things, and that what is permissible in one might be wholly inappropriate in the other. As in so many other cases, the Spinach Analogy applies here: though I find spinach revolting and would never cook or eat it, I would oppose any law to ban others from enjoying it. It is wrong for a government or other powerful entity (e.g. a university) to ban free speech, but that doesn’t mean that I or any other individual have to allow books, movies, television shows or even topics of conversation we find offensive in our own homes. It is not censorship to say “I won’t allow such-and-such in a space I control”; it only becomes censorship when some powerful entity tries to prevent anyone from accessing that material in their own spaces. For me to refuse certain comments on this blog isn’t censorship, because I cannot stop (and wouldn’t if I could) the would-be commenter from posting elsewhere, or my readers from reading things that repulse me. In other words, please feel free to insult me or criticize me anywhere on the internet you like, but you’re a moron if you think I’m going to give you the space and audience with which to do it; you can dig holes and strew rubbish in your own yard, but not mine.

That having been said, anyone who’s been reading me for a while knows that I actually don’t refuse very many non-spam comments; on average it rarely rises above one per month. However, as my blog has become more popular the number seems to be increasing, and since April has been closer to one per week. I honestly don’t want to block anyone, but as Pound pointed out weeds must be weeded. So even though I covered this topic already in “House Rules” (conveniently linked in “A Few References” at right) I thought I’d elaborate a bit for the few who still don’t get it. I don’t believe for one moment this will actually have any effect on such people because they tend to blunder obliviously through life with all the civilized concern and preternatural grace of the idiomatic male bovine in a porcelain emporium; however, it may amuse the rest of you.

First, let’s synopsize the house rules:

1) This is my blog and I am the only authority on what goes into it.
2) Anyone who introduces himself for the first time with an insulting, dishonest or trollish post will not ever make it to the board unless I choose to feature and ridicule it.
3) Remember Brandy’s mantra: “I will behave on Maggie’s blog, I will behave on Maggie’s blog, I will behave on Maggie’s blog…”
4) Organic thread-wandering is welcome and enriches the site; repeatedly hijacking threads to promote an agenda which has nothing to do with mine is incredibly rude. The phrase “get your own blog” comes to mind.
5) Everyone’s long-winded sometimes, but if most of your replies are longer than the column to which they’re attached, you might consider the advice in #4.

If your comments always appear soon after you submit them (possibly a bit longer if you include a bunch of links because WordPress automatically shunts those to moderation), you probably have nothing to worry about. If some of your comments appear but others never do, it means I have you on permanent moderation so you might want to contemplate which of these rules you’re breaking. But if you’re a new poster who can’t quite comprehend rule #2 above, here’s a handy-dandy lesson in how to make absolutely sure none of your comments ever see the light of day.

Preach at me.

This is the most certain strategy, hands down. I don’t just mean religious preaching (like the guy who recently tried to attach SEVEN column-length comments about the Whore of Babylon to my “Harlots of the Bible” post); any dogmatic, absolutist screed relying entirely on appeal to authority will do (including excerpts from the “philosophy” of any of the women who are quoted in my column of one year ago today). This technique is especially effective if it incorporates the second method:

Insult me in a trite, tinned and/or completely inapplicable manner.

As regular readers already know, I actually don’t mind insults as long as they’re interesting, fresh and (above all) true. My all-time favorite comment anyone ever made about me was an insult: “She definitely won’t use two words where six will do.” Another favorite: “Sometimes she sounds like a teenage Rand on pot.” But there’s a good chance your comment is headed straight for the bin if you tell me I’m going to Hell, or call me “immature”, “stupid” or (best of all) “pseudo-intellectual”, or state that I “always” commit such-and-such logical fallacy that I actually never commit. Which brings us to…

Demonstrate that you’ve never actually read my blog, and you’re just here to troll.

The most common means of implementing this technique is to state that I don’t allow criticism or that all of my readers are sycophants who never disagree with me; this is particularly egregious because I doubt one could scan three comment threads at random without encountering an example of a reader disagreeing with me, sometimes quite vociferously. Another good one is misstating my positions in a way that indicates total ignorance rather than simple misunderstanding, such as ascribing “-isms” to me that are completely belied by my repeatedly stated beliefs (such as calling me “racist” or “anti-trans”); the best version of this is claiming I’m “homophobic” or “whorephobic” even though I am in fact a bisexual whore. That also borders on the next tactic:

Call me a liar or otherwise impugn my moral character.

You can disagree with me all day, tell me you think I’m wrong, produce facts that prove me wrong, or even say that you don’t think I’ve thought whatever-it-is out. And it’s a given that some people may have personal objections to my stated moral positions (such as the principle that harlotry is a positive social good or the idea that people have the absolute right to own and control their own bodies). But if you’re going to claim that I don’t actually believe what I say I believe, or that I’ve somehow misrepresented the facts to promote a nefarious agenda, I refuse to give you more time than it takes to click “trash” because it’s impossible to prove a negative. Claims that events as I’ve reported them (or my reactions to those events) are deliberately falsified fall into this category, but claims that the falsification is unintentional fall into the next:

Tell me I’m wrong about my own experiences.

Anyone who seriously proposes that a complete stranger is more qualified to interpret my own experiences than I am, or who insists that I’m a victim of “patriarchal brainwashing” or “false consciousness”, or that I just don’t remember things that must have happened to me – and all on the basis of something she read on a website or learned in her “womyn’s studies” class – needs professional help, and soon. But since I’m not qualified to give that (and it’s highly doubtful that such a person would accept it from me anyhow), the kindest thing I can do is to refuse to humor her delusions. Some examples of this are cloaked in the last method:

Pretend to be more knowledgeable in my subject than I am without offering any proof whatsoever.

Really, this brings us around to the first one again, except that the appeal to authority is either personal (“I’ve worked with hundreds of human trafficking victims”) or diffuse (“Everybody knows that…”) and completely unsupported by any kind of evidence, study, professional consensus or even experience of any sex worker I’ve ever talked to. This one is particularly offensive when combined with either of the two previous tactics: “No, you’re wrong/lying: NO woman enters sex work voluntarily, there’s ALWAYS some kind of coercion or emotional/mental issue. I don’t have to prove it because it’s obvious.”

If some of y’all still aren’t convinced that blocking any comments is right, consider what my comment threads would eventually look like if the above tactics became common here.

Exactly.

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That Was the Week That Was (#23)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, Music, News, Obituary, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged Africa, archeofeminism, Australia, avails laws, Backpage, Canada, censorship, condoms, cops, dirty, disease, Don’t Take My Word For It, Down Under, drivers, Europe, fantasy, Feminine Pragmatism, Finding What Isn’t There, gangs, Hard Numbers, harm reduction, Higher Education, Hollywood, hysteria, Illinois, imaginative fiction, internet, Ireland, Kenya, law, male prostitutes, marriage, Michigan, neofeminism, Part of the Picture, porn, psychology, serial killers, sex rays, Shifting the Blame, streetwalkers, stripping, Swedish model, Texas, The Course of a Disease, The Scarlet Letter, Think of the Children!, Traffic Jam, transgender, video, Washington (state), Wise Investment on June 9, 2012| 23 Comments »

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 30^th, 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 29^th, 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 29^th, 2011)

Behold the result of the childish belief that pictures of sex are magically different from all others:

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 19^th, 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 29^th, 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 11^th, 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 16^th, 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 17^th, 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 20^th, 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 5^th, 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 5^th, 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 20^th?

Traffic Jam in TW3 (#21) (May 26^th, 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.

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Quite Contrary

Posted in Philosophy, tagged abortion, anecdote, archeofeminism, blogging, censorship, ethics, imaginative fiction, robots on June 8, 2012| 16 Comments »

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. – Aristotle

I’ve always been a firm believer in free thought. Even in high school I preferred to talk to someone who disagreed with me because of his own independent thought processes, rather than one who agreed with me because some “authority” had told him mine was the correct position. One day when I was about 19 I was going into the Liberal Arts Building at UNO and had to pass a young man and a young woman who were engaged in a heated argument; I didn’t know either of them but apparently they thought I looked “normal” because as I approached I heard the guy say, “OK, we’ll ask her!” He then turned to me and asked, “Don’t you agree that abortion is murder?”

I immediately replied, “Well, I think it’s killing, but I also think killing is sometimes justified.” They were both dumbstruck, and I kept on going. Their reaction told me everything I needed to know about both of them and their stupid argument; had either of them arrived at his position by logic (or any other kind of independent thought) he wouldn’t have been so surprised to hear a complex and unusual answer. But because both of them had obtained their opinions from leaders who had told them what to think, they couldn’t understand any answer to that question other than a binary “yes” or “no”. They both bought into a false dichotomy and been issued a checklist of statements with which they had to agree in order to become an accepted member of the Young Fascists for the Fatherland or the Kampus Kommies (respectively), and an answer which fit on neither list shut them down like the androids on Mudd’s Planet.

I’m not quite as much of a smartass as I was at 19, but I still respect people who disagree with me, especially when they in turn respect me for disagreeing with them. As I wrote in “Never Too Many”,

I have readers who identify as libertarian, liberal, conservative, socialist, anarchist, minarchist, monarchist and apolitical, and who call themselves Pagans, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics and atheists. Some consider themselves feminists, others men’s rights advocates, others anti-feminists or humanists or transhumanists or environmentalists or intellectuals or just “geeks”…But the one thing you all have in common is a recognition that it is wrong for government to use brute force to suppress the right of individuals to associate with whomever they choose, however they choose and for whatever reason they choose, even if money is involved.

Sometimes my readers disagree with me, and sometimes y’all disagree with each other, but it’s rare that I see name-calling or other ugliness; for the most part my readership is one of the most civil and mutually-respectful groups on the whole internet, and I’m very proud of that. But in a very small number of cases (three in two years, if memory serves) a reader has announced his or her disagreement not with a “Well, Maggie, I respect you but I think you’re wrong on this,” or a “We’re just going to have to agree to disagree on that,” or even a “What the hell were you smoking when you wrote this, you silly tart?” but rather with a stated or implied ultimatum: “If you dare to disagree with me again, I’m going to stop reading you.”

Frankly, this sort of thing makes me scratch my head; I’m not sure what such a person really hopes to accomplish. Everyone who’s ever written to me knows that I’m very generous with my time and help when approached nicely, but anyone who’s ever read more than three of my columns can probably guess how I tend to react to threats; it’s the difference between stroking a cat’s fur the right way or the wrong way. It’s inevitable that once in a while, a regular reader will begin to find that he or she is disagreeing with me a bit too often to enjoy reading any more, and so stops coming here; there’s certainly nothing wrong with that. Life is too short to annoy oneself unnecessarily, and I certainly wouldn’t stick around on a blog where I felt uncomfortable or unwelcome. But neither would I make an ass of myself by demanding that a prolific and strong-willed blogger change his or her style or opinions to suit the whims of one reader, and neither should anyone else.

One Year Ago Today

“Because We Say So” examines yet another example of Western cultural imperialists who stick their noses into another country’s business, define a problem into existence and then attempt to “solve” it with brute force.

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Rhodopis

Posted in Biography, Harlotography, History, tagged archeofeminism, courtesans, Egypt, Europe, fantasy, Middle East, pimps, slavery, stage names on June 7, 2012| 12 Comments »

The Egyptians relations affirm that Rhodopis was a most beautiful Curtizan; and that on a time as she was bathing her self, Fortune, who loveth to doe extravagant and unexpected things, gave her a reward… – Aelian, Various Histories (XIII, xxxiii) (tr. Thomas Stanley)

As I pointed out in my biography of La Belle Otero,

…the details of [the] lives [of courtesans] tend to be vague and often contradictory…[because] when one is in the business of selling an illusion, the details of one’s life may become as fluid and embellished as advertising copy, and one’s biographers are forced to choose between conflicting reports from letters, rumors, the rose-tinted memories of favored clients, the gossip of rivals and the propaganda of moralists.

But though many fanciful tales are told of courtesans from Acca Larentia to Mata Hari, none are as romantic and enduring as the story of Rhodopis, which eventually became one of the world’s most beloved fairy tales.

She was a Thracian enslaved in Samos sometime in the first half of the 6^th century BCE; her birth name may have been Doricha, but since the source of this information is Strabo (who lived 500 years later), we cannot be certain. She was the slave of Iadmon, who also owned Aesop, the great fabulist; by this we may infer that Iadmon was an enlightened man who educated his slaves well and allowed them considerable freedom. Sometime in her teens she was sold to Aesop’s original owner Xanthes, a merchant who traded extensively with Egypt (one of the traditions of Aesop’s life is that he was Ethiopian, which would make sense in the context of Xanthes’ business). It is unclear whether she started working as a hetaera for Iadmon or if it was her second master who first employed her thus, but the fact that she was educated (as other Greek women were not) indicates that this was the career for which she was intended from the start. Her stage name, like those of many hetaerae, was based on a physical feature: “Rhodopis” means “rosy cheeks”.

Xanthes took her to Naucratis, the first permanent Greek colony in Egypt, where she quickly became very popular. She had not been working a very long time when she was hired by the merchant Charaxus, elder brother of the poetess Sappho; he soon fell in love with her and purchased her freedom for a very dear price, for which he was scolded by his sister in verse. It is from this now-lost poem that Strabo derived the name Doricha; some sources say the lyric also chided Rhodopis for taking advantage of her brother’s good nature by stealing his property (i.e. accepting her freedom rather than becoming his slave). This helps us to pin down the time somewhat; Herodotus tells us that the reigning pharaoh was Amasis II, whose reign began in 570 BCE, and Sappho is believed to have died not long after that. Rhodopis remained in Naucratis and became very successful; she was religiously devout and tithed to the temple at Delphi, which had to be rebuilt after being destroyed in a fire (the Pharaoh also donated 1000 talents of gold as a gesture of friendship toward the Greeks). Large contributors were commemorated by iron spits engraved with their names; Herodotus (who lived a century later) said that he counted ten inscribed with hers, which gives you some idea of her wealth.

This is all that can be considered historical about Rhodopis; the rest belongs to the realm of legend and fantasy. The first of these stories, which began shortly after her death, claimed that she had built the third of the Great Pyramids. This is of course ridiculous; it was actually built by Menkaure in the 4^th Dynasty, about 2500 BCE. The story may have arisen through confusion of Rhodopis with the legendary 6^th dynasty Queen Nitocris, possibly due to the name of her city (Naucratis); Nitocris was herself confused with Menkaure because her throne name was said to have been Menkaura. Herodotus thoroughly debunked the idea that Rhodopis had anything to do with pyramid-building, but did repeat the legend of Nitocris…who may not have existed at all. Historians believe that she appeared in the historical record due to a mistake in a catalog of pharaohs compiled during the reign of Ramses II, and that previously independent legends were then attached to her. Incidentally, Herodotus’ account of Nitocris’ life inspired the young Tennessee Williams’ first published story, “The Vengeance of Nitocris”, which appeared in the August 1928 issue of Weird Tales; this story in turn inspired H.P. Lovecraft to mention her in two of his tales, thus bringing her into the Lovecraftian tradition drawn on by many writers since. And Ramses II, who inadvertently created her legend, himself inspired Shelley’s “Ozymandias”. It’s almost like I planned all this to fit together, isn’t it?

The confusion of Rhodopis and Nitocris (a lady of very different background and temperament) was no doubt facilitated by the legend that the former also became the Queen of Egypt. Strabo repeats the story, already old in his time, that after Rhodopis had become successful and wealthy she bought a fine house with a pool in the garden. And while she was bathing there one day, an eagle swooped down and stole one of her sandals, carried it to nearby Sais, and dropped it in Pharaoh’s lap. The monarch was of course fascinated by this strange omen and by the richness and beauty of the sandal, and so sent men throughout the capital and other nearby cities to discover who the owner of the dainty lost shoe might be. Rhodopis’ maids had of course gossiped about the singular occurrence at their mistress’ bath, and by this word came to Pharaoh, who summoned the hetaera to the palace. When he beheld her beauty he interpreted the omen as a sign he should marry her, and she therefore became Queen of Egypt and they lived happily ever after.

Though there is no clear historical record of the latter part of Rhodopis’ life, we do know the names of Amasis II’s consorts and she is not among them. It’s certainly possible that she became one of his concubines; she would be neither the first nor the last courtesan to become a royal mistress, and an earlier folk tale may have become attached to her name because of it. But in the end, it doesn’t matter because the magical romance of a king and a commoner enabled by a lost slipper proved greater than either of the living people who inspired it, and Rhodopis – or as we have called her since 1697, Cinderella – is undoubtedly the only whore ever to inspire a Walt Disney movie.

One Year Ago Today

“Full of Themselves” reveals the incredible pomposity of certain women who would be considered sex workers but for the existence of an arbitrary legal line.

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Driskill Mountain

Posted in Perception, Philosophy, tagged anecdote, Louisiana, psychology, rape on June 6, 2012| 18 Comments »

If one does not climb tall mountains, one cannot view the plains. – Chinese proverb

When you encounter people who obsess about minutiae such as calculating the proportions of Barbie dolls, or who claim to have been mortally injured by dumb jokes, do you find yourself thinking that they must not have any real problems in their lives? I know I do, and in fact I have a name for the phenomenon: Driskill Mountain syndrome. What’s that, you say? You’ve never heard of Driskill Mountain? This fabled peak is the loftiest prominence in my home state; here’s a photo of its Himalayan majesty:

Driskill Mountain soars above the surrounding countryside by 69 meters (225’); its apex is thus a dizzying 163 meters (535’) above sea level. Oh, you may laugh, but in Louisiana that’s the closest thing we have to a mountain (and nomenclature notwithstanding, it would be called a hill anywhere else). See, Louisiana is just about the flattest state in the union (by some measures it loses to Florida), so a person who had lived his entire life there might indeed be impressed with poor Mt. Driskill’s rather anemic eminence…though virtually nobody else would, and in many places a point of that altitude would constitute a valley, or even a pit.

Every person’s life is different from everyone else’s; some lives are smooth and flat, while others are as full of ups and downs as a young mountain range. I once knew a girl whose great trauma, the most horrible thing that had ever happened to her (by her reckoning), was that when she was about 12 one of her adult neighbors made a sort of pass at her. He didn’t touch her, and she realized it wasn’t right and never let herself be alone with him again. But the rest of her life was so wholly flat and uneventful that this non-event stuck out in sharp relief. On the other hand, my second roommate at UNO was molested by her own father for over three years, and another friend lost her virginity to a rapist at gunpoint. I never ridiculed the first girl nor belittled her experience, despite the fact that even my lesser traumas were several orders of magnitude worse; in her Louisianaesque life, Mt. Driskill was as high as it got.

If everyone blessed with a flat life were also blessed with a sense of perspective, there would be no problem; such people could look upon those with rougher lots and say, “There but for the grace of God go I.” Alas, this isn’t usually what happens; instead, they angrily insist that Driskill is indeed a mountain in the literal sense, and that those who tell them of Everest, Denali and Kilimanjaro are either lying or exaggerating. They insist on recognition of its place among the giants, and demand sympathy for the colossal impediment it represents in the landscape of their lives. We might even be able to humor them on this account, except for one thing: those who actually abide in mountainous regions tend to say little about it, with the result that one who didn’t know better might believe that Driskill was indeed taller than Aconcagua, and conclude that mountaineers and equipment were more vitally needed in Louisiana than in the Andes.

One Year Ago Today

“The Versatile Blogger Award” is a device by which bloggers draw attention to each other, and an opportunity for me to tell you seven things about myself you may not have known.

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First They Came for the Hookers…

Posted in Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged California, censorship, cops, dirty, ethics, First They Came for the Hookers, Illinois, law, Madonna/whore, Missouri, neofeminism, porn, rape, stereotypes, stripping, teachers, Texas on June 5, 2012| 39 Comments »

First they came for the communists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me. – Martin Niemöller

In “Whorearchy” and “Little Boxes” I pointed out that those who wish to criminalize sex, whether they be politicians, moralists, neofeminists or just plain busybodies, are always drawing arbitrary lines between the “sexual” and the “non-sexual”, between “good” sex and “bad” sex, and between “legal” and “illegal” forms of sexual activity, especially sex work. The unwise or selfish react by claiming to be on the “right” side of such lines, but this is foolish because…

…attempting to define sexuality (commercial or otherwise) as being in the “permissible” or “legal” category rather than the “unacceptable” or “illegal” one is a tacit acknowledgement that such lines of demarcation are valid and that government has the right to draw them. That is a losing strategy because even if one wins the battle, the government can simply re-draw the line to include one’s entrenched position. The only way we as a culture will win the war for liberty is to reject any and all claims by “authority” to power over the private, consensual behavior of individuals, no matter what that behavior is or how far it falls outside of the boxes which define our own personal comfort zones.

As my epigram demonstrates, one cannot stand idly by while others’ rights are trampled simply because one is not a member of the persecuted group, not even if one is an enemy of that group (Niemöller was staunchly anti-communist); the machine one allows to crush others will eventually crush him. Or in this case, her; I’ve written before on a number of occasions about neofeminists’ contribution to the erosion of women’s rights, but today we’ll narrow our view somewhat to examine the inevitable results of “legal” sex workers failing to stand up for “illegal” ones. Take porn, for instance; it’s been legal to film it in California for quite some time, but that didn’t stop the City of Los Angeles from moving the imaginary line so as to make the great majority of it now illegal, nor stop a jury in that same city from convicting a filmmaker of “obscenity” for crossing another imaginary line between “good porn” and “bad porn”, nor prevent another city within the Greater Los Angeles area from firing a teacher for past work in a supposedly legal job.

Of course, there’s always an excuse, whether it be “health” or vague legal principles or “educational disruptions”; Sarah Tressler was fired from her reporter’s job at the Houston Chronicle for having been a stripper, but the excuse was that she “didn’t disclose her past”. I daresay most of the people working for the Chronicle (or any other company) don’t list every single job they’ve ever had on their applications; does anyone imagine Tressler would’ve been fired for failing to disclose that she worked for Astroworld when she was in high school? Of course not, because we don’t give governments power to regulate “theme park behavior” nor pretend that there are “good” park workers and “bad” ones. Once an activity is designated a “special case” the door is open to the sort of abuse for which Texas is notorious; Houston in particular is renowned for trying to shut down adult businesses by declaring them havens for drugs and prostitution, or more recently “human trafficking”:

The City of Houston filed a lawsuit…[alleging] that employees and owners of Treasures allowed human trafficking and prostitution for profit…Treasures’…attorney…said [they were] “actively engaged in litigation with the city for over ten years”…[and] since the city couldn’t get their liquor permit revoked they are trying now to file suit to have the club declared a nuisance.

Houston is not alone in the pretense that strip clubs are magically different from other businesses, thus justifying special harassment; Missouri enacted draconian restrictions on them under the premise that the sex rays emitted by naked female bodies cause “negative secondary effects”, and the total lack of proof for any such phenomena didn’t stop Illinois from enacting a “pole tax” using exactly the same excuse: “Sexually-orientated businesses contribute to objectifying and exploiting women,” said [Lieutenant Governor Sheila] Simon…“There’s been a strong, scientific recognition that when you associate those industries with alcohol, that there’s a substantial effect there, an increase in crime, particularly sexual assault.” Actually, the exact opposite is true; study after study after study demonstrates that stripping, porn and prostitution reduce the incidence of sex crimes, particularly sexual assault. Most politicians aren’t as stupid as they pretend to be; they know about these facts, but because they’re inconvenient they ignore them. Their real motive is visible in this story on California’s attempt to impose the same sort of tax using the same poppycock:

Another strip club tax is being considered by California’s Legislature. AB 2441…would place a $10 fee on visitors of establishments that offer alcohol and topless or nude performances…It’s the fourth attempt to tax sexually explicit businesses in the past four years in California. All of those bills, which would have taxed patrons up to 20 percent on sales or services at sexually explicit businesses including strip clubs, were shot down. AB 2441, however, would be the first [attempt] to mandate a fixed-fee “pole tax”…[whose] beneficiaries…would include programs that treat and prevent sexual assaults…Pole taxes are now mandatory in Texas and Utah, with legislation being mulled…in Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Tennessee. “Most who go to these establishments know very well they’ll have to bring an extra few bucks,” [the bill sponsor’s spokesman] said. “So, for those who go, $10 is not so much to sacrifice. Let’s face it, adult entertainment does very well even during a recession”…

In other words, “they’ve got money and the moralists will back our efforts to rob them because they refuse to understand the precedent it sets.” Nor is it just the moralists or neofeminists who fail to comprehend; in a “tweet” following a link to that story, Furry Girl wrote, “Remember that link, OWS/anti-capitalist sex workers. The ‘we should take their money because they have too much’ argument hurts *you*, too.” If you’re a “legal” sex worker who supports persecution of “illegal” ones, or a feminist who supports persecution of all sex workers, or a Christian who supports persecution of “sinners”, or a pillar of the community who supports persecution of “undesirables”, or a have-not who supports persecution of those with more than you, remember that the rope you’re providing the politicians will hang you just as effectively once the noose is adjusted a bit for your individual neck.

One Year Ago Today

“Perquisites” explains how a large fraction of hookers’ fees are charged to corporate expense accounts.

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Hall of Shame

Posted in Current Events, Perception, Tyranny, tagged brothels, ethics, Hall of Shame, harm reduction, hysteria, law, Madonna/whore, Nevada, pimps, prohibitionist myths, sporting events, stereotypes, United Kingdom on June 4, 2012| 28 Comments »

A fraudulent intent, however carefully concealed at the outset, will generally, in the end, betray itself. – Titus Livius

Long-time readers may remember that I have a Hall of Shame for the recognition of whores who have dishonored our profession by their sleazy, stupid, unethical behavior. Those of you who are newer to the blog may never have encountered a post on such a personage, and that’s a good thing; the reason you haven’t is that there have only been three so far, and the last one was inducted one year ago today in “June Updates (Part Three)” (which also discusses the Satoshi Kanazawa “racism” controversy, persecution of strippers in Colorado and a strong test of my libertarian sensibilities). Well, today I’m going to add number four, but first I’d like to recap the other three.

I announced my Hall of Shame in my very first column, and less than a month later inducted its first member: Karen Sypher, who as I explained in “How To Be a Stupid, Greedy Whore” won the dishonor for her “astonishing stupidity, appalling immorality and truly mythic greed”. The second member, Capri Anderson, was awarded her position less than four months later for her “incredible greed, her denial of her own whoredom despite the fact that she is a porn actress who was paid $3500 to spend the night with a rich cokehead, her pretense that she is better than the rest of us despite her absolute and total lack of the most meager shred of the professional ethics adhered to even by the majority of hundred-dollar Backpage girls, and her stunning stupidity in announcing a lawsuit on national television before she actually filed it.”

The third nominee, former madam Kristin Davis, took a bit longer to earn her place of infamy; in February of last year she attracted my attention by embracing trafficking rhetoric in order to enrich herself, and by repeating prohibitionist claims that professional escorts represent a tiny minority of all whores. She then compounded her sins by claiming that 80% of us are coerced when she knows damned well that’s exaggerated by a factor of forty, and I was considering adding her to the list when she clinched it by talking about a famous client not to protect girls or protest prohibitionism, but rather to see her own name in the news again.

The newest member has been irritating me for a while now, but at first I didn’t consider him due to his gender. But after the latest incident I realized that was sexist of me, and not in a good way; his offenses are very similar to Kristin Davis’ and despite the fact that he was never a prostitute himself, he certainly represents our profession to the American public because he owns a brothel in Nevada. I won’t keep you in suspense: the fourth member of the Honest Courtesan’s Hooker Hall of Shame is Dennis Hof, owner of the Moonlite Bunny Ranch. It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of the Nevada brothel system, but my dislike for a way of doing business is insufficient grounds for labeling it a disgrace. So despite my revulsion at Hof’s aggressive attempts to export the exploitative Nevada model, I’ve kept my mouth shut about him personally until news of the latest outrage came to my attention:

…Dennis Hof…has written the mayor of London in advance of the Summer Olympics in late July-early August. It seems Hof is speaking this week at the Oxford Union on legal prostitution. He’d like to meet with Mayor Boris Johnson to propose a legal brothel, a temporary UK branch of the Bunny Ranch, to operate during the Olympics. The separate, drug-free, safe facility with health checks would compete with the crime-ridden, sleazy, human-trafficking sites that Hof says various mobs bring to such global events, despite official attempts to shoo them away. But Hof says the “well intentioned efforts (of every Olympics host city) to eradicate the world’s oldest profession becomes folly as the unintended results inadvertently place its’ [sic] control into the hands of gangsters, drug dealers and murderers. It’s a strategic miscalculation that is repeated time and time again in the futile hope of an outcome different than all of those that have come before.” Hof’s facility, he says, would also provide valuable tax revenue to the city while removing the black market of illegal prostitution…

Now, there isn’t the proverbial snowball’s chance that the UK will adopt the Nevada model, so even if this crony capitalist were to succeed in winning a license to pimp no woman would be obliged to submit to the degradation, virtual imprisonment and abrogation of consent that American whores are forced to accept in order to be declared “legal” in Nevada. No matter how vile I personally consider his business model, there is nothing immoral about it as long as whores have a free choice whether to work there or not; furthermore, the restrictions of the Nevada system are largely state-imposed and not the fault of Hof or other brothel owners. However, it’s one thing to say, “I recommend you adopt this exploitative system which enriches me while failing to do what it’s actually supposed to do, namely reduce the social problems caused by criminalization”, and another thing to capitalize on prohibitionist rhetoric he must know to be false if he’s actually done any research at all on legalization (and if he hasn’t done that research, he has no damned business speaking on the subject).

Hof promotes trafficking hysteria and repeats the “human trafficking follows mega sports events” myth; he exploits the “organized crime controls prostitution” myth and labels independent brothel and escort service owners “gangsters” (when that title is more correctly applied to businessmen who enrich themselves via shady insider deals with corrupt government); he claims that the Nevada system eradicates “illegal prostitution” while knowing full well that over 99% of Nevada prostitutes prefer to work illegally; and he represents himself as an advocate of freedom while actually promoting the single most unsatisfactory and exploitative legalization scheme in the entire world: I’m sure you’ll agree that these criteria more than qualify him for my Hall of Shame.

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That Was the Week That Was (#22)

Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged Africa, Australia, Backpage, brothels, censorship, China, Counterfeit Comfort, dirty, disease, East Asia, Europe, Feet of Clay, hysteria, Ireland, law, Little Boxes, Louisiana, Lying Down With Dogs, Madonna/whore, marriage, naturalness, Neither Cold nor Hot, neofeminism, New Orleans, psychology, rape, sex offender registry, sisterhood, slavery, streetwalkers, The Rape Question, Traffic Jam, transgender, True Colors, video, Welcome to Our Updates, What a Week!, Whorearchy on June 3, 2012| 34 Comments »

The wicked envy and hate; it is their way of admiring. – Victor Hugo

One new item, eight updates and two metaupdates.

True Colors

New Orleans charity Women With A Vision has been fighting for the rights of poor women, including sex workers, for years; their efforts were instrumental in bringing down Louisiana’s monstrous “Crime Against Nature by Solicitation” law which was used to place whores (especially black or transsexual ones) on the “sex offender” registry. Apparently some hateful person was angry about this or their other work, because on the night of May 24^th he broke into their office and set a fire which destroyed it and virtually everything in it.

There’s no way to know whether the arsonist was motivated by hatred of prostitutes, black people, transsexuals, or some other disadvantaged group for which WWAV fights, but this action demonstrates the true colors of those who would deny rights to others, no matter what rhetoric they use to rationalize their position. WWAV is desperately in need of help: New Orleans area readers could donate time, women’s clothing, computer equipment, office supplies, etc (call 504-301-0428 to volunteer), and readers anywhere in the world can donate to WWAV at their site. My readers have been very generous to me with presents, but for the next few months I ask that you spend that money helping WWAV instead; if you want it to be a present for me, just make the donation in my name. Any help you can give will mean a great deal to me!

An outspoken advocate for sex workers reopened her office…after it was trashed by eight men who punched and threatened her life last week. Ye Haiyan, 37, is the founder of Chinese Women’s Rights Workshops, an NGO that promotes sex workers’ rights and helps raise awareness of HIV/AIDS…Ye said the men did not look like gang members and she suspects that local authorities might have had a role in the attack…Earlier this year, she was also threatened over the phone and told to shut her office…

Updates

Lying Down With Dogs (November 24^th, 2010)

Another example of an African country whose anti-whore rhetoric strongly resembles that of the US, right down to the ludicrous euphemisms:

The Liberian government…disclosed that a campaign named…“Operation Save Our Future” has been launched…[to] minimize prostitution as well as sexual exploitation and abuse against girls…the operation will also tackle indecent dressing…Minister [Julia] Cassell said the prostitutes will be rehabilitated through basic skills including baking, sewing, hair dressing, and pastry…She urged the public to dress appropriately because the “government is now after them.” She called on those involved into commercial sex working to desist from the illegal act and put their hands to use in a positive direction.

Because working independently for good pay isn’t a “positive direction”, but working in a sweatshop or doing other low-paid work for someone else is; that’s especially loathsome rhetoric in a country founded by freed slaves. Note also that Liberian “feminists”, like their American sisters, are unable to recognize that the road from criminalization of prostitution to criminalization of “indecent dress” is a very short one.

Neither Cold nor Hot (April 6^th, 2011)

Jezebel has attacked evolutionary psychologists like Satoshi Kanazawa (who, incidentally, has a new book out) on a number of occasions, and now they’re fighting back: Kanazwa’s colleague Barry Kuhle sharply criticizes the site for embracing the neofeminist “social construction of gender” dogma in his article “Giving Feminism a Bad Name”. He examines the logical fallacies used by “gender feminists” (Christina Sommers’ term for neofeminists) to attack scientific findings, and blames them for the word “feminist” having become an insult. Kuhle’s an interesting writer; I also enjoyed his recent column on why the ever-increasing alphabet soup used to describe sexual minorities (now LGBTQIH and still growing) is ridiculous and should be replaced by a more manageable acronym.

Welcome To Our World Again (January 20^th, 2012)

Too bad Zimbabwe isn’t the only country so Bizarro that it’s willing to cut off its nose to spite its face on the issue of sex laws which cause higher rates of HIV:

President Robert Mugabe yesterday clashed with visiting UN human rights chief Navi Pillay after she appeared to suggest that legalising prostitution and homosexuality could go a long way in combating the spread of HIV/AIDS…Mugabe…swore that this would happen OVER HIS DEAD BODY…police in Harare have intensified a blitz on prostitutes and women found in pubs claiming they are trying to stop crime which is being promoted by prostitution…Mugabe…has previously described homosexuality as “worse than dogs and pigs”…MP Tabitha Khumalo…[said] “[Prostitution] is here to stay and we need to bite the bullet. PLEASURE ENGINEERING…did not begin in…Zimbabwe. It all began in the Garden of Eden and one of those PLEASURE ENGINEERS was Eve”…

In a sense, bigots like Mugabe are more consistent and less hypocritical than certain Americans who are very vocal in demanding their own sexual rights, yet support persecution of whores. Also, I think I’m going to write MP Khumalo a fan letter.

The Rape Question (April 4^th, 2012)

This article about “brothel” raids in Ireland (actually, most were private flats in which women worked together for safety) is full of the usual agency denial and “sex trafficking” mythology, but I was especially struck by one passage: “Mary Crilly, Director of the Sexual Violence Centre (SVC) in Cork [said], ‘I welcome the raids. We need to end the demand for prostitution, as long as there are men who are paying for sex there will be a demand. Prostitution isn’t about sex, it’s about money and exploitation’.” This is of course the old “rape is asexual” dogma, but it does demonstrate how completely out of touch with reality these women are.

Feet of Clay (April 5^th, 2012)

The death-spiral of Nicholas Kristof’s reputation continues:

The Brooklyn prosecutor who had a starring role in…Nicholas Kristof’s expose of Backpage…has resigned amid charges she sat on evidence that would have saved a sex-crimes suspect from spending 11 months in jail. The New York Daily News reported this week that prosecutor Lauren Hersh quit after two black men charged with serially raping an Orthodox Jewish girl since she was 13 were released because the alleged victim had recanted her claims the day after she made them. Hersh…failed to share [the recantation] with the grand jury or defense lawyers…Hersh was also cited in Kristof’s story about Backpage back in January, “How Pimps Use the Web to Sell Girls”…Kristof cited a case prosecuted by Hersh involving an underage prostitute, without disclosing the fact that Hersh only was able to track down the perpetrators because Backpage turned over identifying information…

Unfortunately, Fisher is a mealy-mouthed moralist who denies women’s right to sex on our own terms; he seems more concerned with the fact that Backpage is singled out than the fact that whores are persecuted. But that makes his attacks on Kristof (his natural ally in moralism) all the more indicative of the latter’s fall from grace.

This poster for my favorite perfume was the most complained-about advert in the UK since 1995.

Little Boxes
(April 29^th, 2012)

As I’ve pointed out many times, it is impossible to draw clear lines between female sexual behaviors, and sugar babies are part of a continuum stretching from wives to professional harlots. But while I usually demonstrate the strong resemblance between sugar babies and hookers, Helen Croydon makes the equally valid point that they are a lot like traditional “low maintenance” lovers, and defends such arrangements as sensible and rewarding:

…These models of relationships are an honest way of withholding commitment…That may not be appealing to everyone. It certainly isn’t the route to finding a soul mate. But not everyone wants one of those at every stage in their life. Is it so wrong to underpin the foundations of a relationship with something other than 100% devotion and exclusivity?…payment…doesn’t necessarily have to exclude affection…“compensated relationships” are far more honorable and rewarding than meaningless, vulgar, no-strings sex encounters. Yet we give more respect to the latter. These days relationships can only be rubber stamped if they are all encompassing, full-time, cohabiting and long-term…

Whorearchy (May 10^th, 2012)

Until the mid-19^th century prostitutes and actresses were members of a single profession, and we still haven’t diverged much. But one wouldn’t know that from listening to actresses – including those who have played sex workers – insisting that they’re better than we are:

Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi is demanding an apology from a Hong Kong newspaper after it published claims she had sex with disgraced Communist party official Bo Xilai for huge sums of money…the star of ” Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and “Memoirs of a Geisha” [allegedly] slept with Bo at least ten times between 2007 and 2011…[and] negotiated similar deals with several other powerful men…she [supposedly] earned around $110 million from prostituting herself…

Traffic Jam (May 20^th, 2012)

Reason posted a video of 20/20‘s 1985 report “The Devil Worshippers”:

…It may help, as you watch this, to know that the bodies of the alleged sacrifice victims never materialized, that the statistic of two million missing kids was a wild exaggeration, and that Mike Warnke, presented here as an expert on Satanic rites, was later exposed as a fraud. But really, anyone able to think critically should be able to see through this without the benefit of hindsight. What’s interesting is that so many people took it seriously at the time…Even if you ignore the actual misinformation in the program, this is as pure an example as you’ll find of how a scattered group of unconnected crimes can be presented as a grand, malevolent movement, particularly when they’re combined with anxieties about the influence of popular culture…

Here are the links for Part Two and Part Three.

Metaupdates

What a Week! in October Updates (Part One) (October 2^nd, 2011)

Another advantage to decriminalization: access to the legal system.

A plan to build Australia’s largest brothel is poised to overcome local government opposition in a victory for Sydney’s sex industry over creeping regulation. The $12 million, three-storey extension to the Stiletto brothel…can be approved once client numbers are capped…Even after being decriminalised in 1995, NSW brothel owners are increasingly turning to courts to reverse rejections by councils opposed to the industry…”Research usually shows brothels are not a problem in a community,” said Wayne Morgan, a lecturer specialising in sexuality-related law at the Australian National University. “Staff are usually very discreet, and clients, by their very nature, are very discreet. This was partly the point of legalising brothels in the first place – to take out the criminal aspect”…

Counterfeit Comfort in TW3 (#8) (February 26^th, 2012)

Louisiana’s recent attempt to further destroy the lives of people who urinated in public or had consensual sex with their high-school girlfriends is not the only one to be defeated lately; those condemned to the American pariah caste are fighting back:

Registered sex offenders who have been banned from social networking websites are…successfully challenging many of the restrictions as infringements on free speech…Courts have long allowed states to place restrictions on convicted sex offenders who have completed their sentences…but the increasing use of social networks for everyday communication raises new, untested issues…Ruthann Robson, a professor of constitutional law at the City University of New York, said the bans could eventually be taken up by the Supreme Court…”If we think that the government can curtail sex offenders’ rights without any connection to the actual crime, then it could become a blanket prohibition against anyone who is accused of a crime, no matter what the crime is”…

One Year Ago Today

“June Updates (Part Two)” reports on San Diego’s excuses for rapist cops, Mira Sorvino’s declaring Sacramento the “leading destination for sex traffickers”, and yet another guy playing BDSM games with strangers without a signed contract.

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The Birth of a Movement

Posted in History, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged archeofeminism, Birth of a Movement, bisexuality, brothels, censorship, cops, courtesans, dirty, disease, ethics, Europe, France, harm reduction, holidays, hysteria, law, Madonna/whore, pimps, sisterhood, social purity, streetwalkers on June 2, 2012| 20 Comments »

NOS ENFANTS NE VEULENT PAS LEUR MERE EN PRISON. – Banner hung on the front of St. Nizier’s, June 2^nd, 1975

Contrary to the perceptions of Americans and others, the French have been unusually intolerant of lower-class prostitution for centuries. About the middle of the 16^th century a moral panic over the new venereal disease, syphilis, swept across Europe; then, as now, prostitutes were blamed for diseases spread mostly by promiscuous amateurs, and despite arguments from theologians and philosophers that prostitution was a necessary social safety valve, French moral crusaders demanded that it be “abolished” by closing brothels and arresting streetwalkers (Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose!) Since they catered to the needs of the upper class, courtesans were naturally ignored; it was only the whores who were available to the middle and lower classes who were suppressed. Streetwalkers were periodically rounded up and thrown in jail (or even deported to the colonies), while brothels owned by the wealthy and/or well-connected arranged private deals to be tolerated, becoming the maisons closes which characterized French prostitution up until the aftermath of World War II. Brothels owned by poorer madams managed to stay open by bribing the police with money and sex…and I need not tell you that venerable system is still alive in many countries to this day.

Things went on like this for over 200 years, until the Revolution and its consequent social upheavals drove huge numbers of women into prostitution for survival. The bourgeois had fits and demanded that “something be done”, so under the Code Napoleon police were given the power to “control” the trade. In Paris, the world’s first vice squad (the police des moeurs) was organized; its job was to register all whores and to require them to submit to monthly health inspections (at the women’s cost, of course); if a woman was found to be infected, or failed to show up on time, or was unable to pay her fee, or had failed to pay whatever bribes or provide whatever sex was demanded by the cops, she was confined to a “prison hospital” until the “authorities” decided to let her go. Registered prostitutes were oppressed by an ever-increasing number of rules about where, when, how and with whom they could work; by 1830 these regulations had become so stringent there was literally no way to obey them and still make a living, nor was there any right of appeal for any cop’s pronouncement because there were no actual laws on prostitution (just police rules made up by the police and enforced at their discretion). The only way to avoid all this was to work in one of the maisons closes, but they were just as bad because one of the conditions for a license was that any cop had unrestricted access to any occupant of such a house at all times. Furthermore, the police demanded such huge bribes and fees from the madams that they in turn had to extract more money from the girls.

Unsurprisingly, most women preferred to risk working illegally than to submit to this regime, so the police took it upon themselves to decide which women were prostitutes; any lower-class woman seen walking alone, or noticed in the company of different men at different times, or accused by an enemy, was arrested and forcibly registered as a “known prostitute” for the rest of her life. This was the soil from which the modern pimp first sprung; since men could move about freely, they could seek clients for women who wanted to steer clear of the police. A whore accompanied by a pimp in public could pass as a “respectable” woman, and male lookouts could warn groups of streetwalkers to hide when the police approached. Whores learned to move in and out of different brothels, to change residences, cities and even names, and to employ pimps to avoid detection; by the dawn of the Social Purity Era in the 1870s the French system was moribund, and panic over “clandestine prostitution” fed on the same white middle-class Christian women’s frustration over their inability to control everyone else’s sexuality that soon gave rise to an avalanche of anti-prostitution laws in the United States.

But while the moral crusaders of America and Britain imagined they could completely abolish prostitution, the French would not succumb to that delusion for several generations yet. Instead, they became obsessed with an “epidemic of lesbianism” in the maisons closes and blamed police regulation for the ills of prostitution, demanding that the system be dismantled. In 1907 that was indeed done, but the police maintained surveillance of whores under the pretext of “maintaining public order”; this was accomplished in part by using threats to secure the cooperation of cheap hotels (maisons de rendezvous) where streetwalkers took their clients. Thus the public believed that the regulation system had ended, when in fact it had merely become sneakier. This state of affairs continued until World War II, which as I have previously explained resulted in a wave of anti-whore propaganda culminating in France’s being declared officially “abolitionist” in 1960. The old registries were destroyed, but as always the police became even worse with increased criminalization.

By 1974, the embattled French hookers had enough; the police had (as usual) done nothing about two mutilation murders of prostitutes in Lyon, so a group of whores and supporters (including lawyers and journalists) called a protest meeting to demand an end to the various anti-prostitute laws and police repression which was endangering their lives by forcing them to work in dark, sparsely-trafficked areas. The police responded by harassing the protesters with three or four fines per day each, and the French tax authorities made ridiculous estimates of the number of clients each protesting worker saw, then presented them with tax bills exceeding their entire incomes. When they appeared on television to tell the public what was happening, they were sentenced to prison in absentia for the unpaid fines and taxes. Recognizing that dramatic action was called for, on Monday, June 2^nd, 1975 a group of over 100 prostitutes occupied the Church of St. Nizier in Lyon with the cooperation of the priest; they hung a banner across the front of the building stating in French, “OUR CHILDREN DON’T WANT THEIR MOTHERS IN PRISON.”

When the government responded by threatening to take their children away if they did not leave immediately, there was a public outcry; many women of Lyon joined them so the cops would be unable to tell which were the prostitutes. Furthermore, the demimonde of Paris dispatched a delegation to assist them, groups in other parts of France also occupied churches, and a “prostitutes’ strike” was organized in several provinces. The protest went on for a week, and ended predictably: at 5:30 AM on Tuesday, June 10^th, cops tricked the priest into unlocking a door which they then forced open, allowing dozens of thugs in riot gear to invade the building. All of the occupying whores were beaten and arrested, and similar actions were carried out that day and over the next few at all the other protest sites; by Friday the 13^th it was over.

But if the “authorities” imagined their brutal suppression of a peaceful protest would teach the lesson they had intended, they were sadly mistaken; the whores began holding regular meetings and soon formed the French Collective of Prostitutes, on which the English Collective of Prostitutes was later modeled. Women in a number of other countries were also inspired to form groups, and a number of these came together with Margo St. James’ COYOTE to form the International Committee for Prostitutes’ Rights (ICPR), the organization whose work and example helped to win prostitution law reform in a number of European countries and provided an example which inspired similar campaigns in many other parts of the world. In a way, the modern sex worker rights movement was born on that June 2^nd in Lyon, so we celebrate it now as International Whores’ Day. Many victories have been won in the 37 years since that first lost battle, but we still have a long way to go until our profession is recognized as legitimate and governments cease to treat us as cattle to be herded and milked as they please. In the past decade the prohibitionists have succeeded in forcing us into a defensive posture via their “sex trafficking” mythology and tyranny wrapped up in “feminist” garb, but all moral panics inevitably end and the majority of young women are not threatened by sex as the current feminist establishment is. The tide of history is toward greater individual and sexual rights, and those who would restrict others’ sexuality, no matter what propaganda they employ, will eventually be swept away.

One Year Ago Today

“June Updates (Part One)” features stories on PIPA (a previous version of CISPA) and a sex worker who helps disabled men in Germany.

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The Odor of Socks

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, tagged archeofeminism, censorship, Crippling Thought, ethics, internet, neofeminism, pimps, prohibitionist myths, stage names, stereotypes, survivors, Swedish model on June 1, 2012| 30 Comments »

What! Would you make no distinction between hypocrisy and devotion? Would you give them the same names, and respect the mask as you do the face? Would you equate artifice and sincerity? Confound appearance with truth? Regard the phantom as the very person? Value counterfeit as cash? – Molière, Tartuffe (I, v)

The internet has made it much more difficult to lie about an entire group of people; now that everyone can blog, “tweet” and otherwise self-publish the members of that group can speak up for themselves, thus revealing the truth for everyone to see. As I pointed out in “Objectification Overruled”,

…the average person doesn’t deal with members of any given minority nearly as often as with members of the majority, and if hate or fear toward that group can be maintained he isn’t likely to have an intimate enough relationship with any of its members to learn that the prejudice and propaganda are false. If black people or Jews are segregated into ghettos and prohibited from frequent interaction with the majority, members of that majority don’t get the opportunity to learn the truth about them; and if homosexuals and whores are criminalized they are afraid to expose themselves…

The internet, however, allows whores to write about our lives without revealing our legal names to cops and prosecutors, and blogs like this one expose large numbers of people to the fact that most hookers are pretty much like anyone else, with a wide variety of temperaments, personalities, interests, educational levels, personal histories, etc. Needless to say, this makes prohibitionists very angry; their whole strategy relies on convincing the public that the vast majority of us are broken dolls with bad childhoods, a history of sexual abuse, poor education and a total absence of other options (either because of extreme deprivation or because we were literally enslaved by evil “pimps”). As I’ve pointed out to a number of journalists, can you imagine prohibitionists using me as a poster child? “This poor, eloquent, 33-year-old masters-degreed librarian with high self esteem had no choice but to accept sexual slavery?” They’d be laughed out of the marketplace of ideas so fast their pointy heads would spin. No, they have to make it seem as though people like me are fabulous beasts in stark contrast to emotionally damaged “child” prostitutes who are regularly dragged down streets behind pimps’ cars without sustaining life-threatening injuries or being seen by any witnesses. But how can they accomplish that when there are so many of us telling the truth? “Well, Maggie’s not representative, nor is Brandy, nor Kelly, nor Emily, nor Aspasia, nor Norma Jean, nor Brooke, nor Audacia, nor Tracy, nor Charlotte, nor Elena, nor Cheryl, nor Melissa, nor Sina, nor Ariane…” It begins to get pretty damned unbelievable as that list increases in length.

When I was in library school I once did a research paper on collection packing; I called it “Censorship by Commission” (as opposed to traditional censorship, which is accomplished by omission). Collection packing is when an unethical librarian purchases (with library funds) a large number of books representing a minority view, so that a casual library patron will believe that view is more mainstream than it actually is. For example, an unscrupulous creationist librarian might obtain as many books on “scientific creationism” as she could find and file them alongside books on geology and evolutionary theory, instead of consigning them to the religion section or the 001.9 ghetto where they belong. Prohibitionists do this as well; they present the “reframed experiences” of “survivors” to support their claims, but since these are a small minority the usual approach (as practiced by Farley, Kristof, et al) is to present the same stories over and over again with slightly-altered details so as to “pack the collection” of available narratives.

This can only go so far against the huge number of vocal whores, however; even the most credulous of prohibitionist marks will eventually notice that while we regularly post new material and interact with our readers, the supposed plethora of “human trafficking victims” are represented only in third person. And so a new weapon has become necessary: the sock puppet. Every tool can be used for good or ill, and while the anonymity of the internet makes it possible for whores to speak out without fear of arrest or other persecution, it also allows trolls to set up multiple accounts so as to create phantom “supporters” of their views. Some writers and activists suspect that a number of “big names” are directly behind the ever-increasing number of supposed “survivors” who write in an eerily-similar manner and tend to tell the same stories, but I think it’s far more likely that some of the copious grant money flowing from the likes of the US State Department, the Hunt Alternatives Fund and Google is going to hire full-time shills (some “survivors” but most just ghostwriters) to write blogs, post in comment threads and insult activists on Twitter.

You may feel I’m being paranoid, but I have several strong reasons for believing this. First, the number of such accounts has increased dramatically in the past year; if terrible experiences in prostitution were common, one would’ve expected that the proportion of “survivor” narratives to “happy hooker” narratives would have remained relatively constant for the past decade (with perhaps a gradual increase as “trafficking” hysteria grew). But that isn’t the case; the proportion has instead grown quickly in just the last few months. Second, these narratives appear to pop up just where they can do the most damage (such as in places considering the Swedish Model) rather than in areas such as Australia where they wouldn’t have a great deal of effect. Third, they often seem to be targeted against specific writers; for example, few if any self-professed “prostituted women” ever called themselves “call girls” before, but since January the phrase (which is especially associated with the works of Tracy Quan, Brooke Magnanti and yours truly) is suddenly popping up in the blog titles and screen names associated with neofeminist-flavored anti-sex worker propaganda. Finally (and in my mind most damningly), the style of many of these accounts is the same: they use the same terms, the same tactics and the same idiosyncratic phrases; they rely on the same propaganda techniques and commit the same logical fallacies; and they tend to tell the same stories and rely on the same sources (though this last is true of most anti-sex worker activists). These various online personas are either maintained by one small group of prohibitionists, or else a somewhat larger group of professionals working from a style sheet as the writers of Doc Savage and Tom Swift books did. But in either case, the result is the same: a number of mysterious “women” who share similarly stylized and melodramatic pimp-dominated “histories” in prostitution, and whose blogs, comments and “tweets” all bear the unmistakable odor of dirty socks.

One Year Ago Today

“Mind Reading” looks at “authorities” who claim to be able to read minds and unerringly discern the motives of people they wish to persecute.

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