Whorephobia…can manifest in various forms, including…rejection of a fellow…human being…projection of one’s own life experiences onto another…and in severe cases, frothing at the mouth…and feverishly campaigning for extreme punishment and prohibition of Whores and Whore-adjacent peoples, places, and objects. – Aspasia Bonasera
Another good article about sex work with disabled clients, this one a first-person account from reader Laura Lee. Due to the movie The Sessions this has become a very “hot” topic, which is good because it deals a strong blow to the “victimized prostitute” narrative. For more on the subject, here’s Becky Adams:
Customers…now have another option…at [Tokyo]…cuddle club Soineya…For $11 per minute, patrons…can ask for the oshiri makura (butt pillow) service and rest their heads on the behinds of its female staff…Customers must first pay an admission fee — starting at 3,000 yen (around $34) — and then have the option to purchase premium services, such as foot massages…[or] laying in a female employee’s lap…
Interestingly, “sex trafficking” fetishists waited until Super Bowl Sunday to trot out their claims this year, probably to avoid the high-profile debunking which will soon be inevitable; the story was updated less than 38 hours after its initial appearance to include a reference to an article for which I was consulted last year and the opinion of Rachel Lloyd, a “sex trafficking” promoter who has criticized the rampant exaggerations and the “gypsy whores” myth. The main attraction is yet another soi-disant “survivor” spouting the typical tinned narrative (brutal pimp, 50 clients a day, etc), and there’s a bonus appearance by SOAP. The most interesting bit is this snapshot of “Chinese Whispers” in action: the story claims that “133 underage arrests for prostitution were made in Dallas during the 2011 Super Bowl,” when in actuality a very-typical 133 adult arrests of all types (not prostitution alone) were made in the 2½ weeks before the Super Bowl. The number of actual “pimps” arrested? One, an idiot who got the idea from the hype.
Get Out of the 19th Century Often?
Atlanta’s police chief…George Turner has asked city council to approve a…banishment law…the first conviction would result in the accused prostitute being ordered not to return to the area they were arrested…upon second conviction, the accused prostitute would be banished from city limits forever…Larry Miller…said he supports anything that would put a dent in the prostitution plague…
Human beings are now a “plague” to be “banished” from an autocrat’s realm.
Dr. Brooke Magnanti on the “pimp” myth:
…I have never met a person even remotely like the stereotypical pimp, and yet I “know” they exist, largely because I have been told so over and over again. I’ve met streetwalkers, both drug-addicted and not; escorts and call girls, same; not one ever had what popular imagination would classify as a “pimp,” but then I keep getting told I’m not representative, so maybe the literally hundreds of…sex workers I’ve met are just “not representative” too?…Independent sex workers who organise their own affairs…Roommates who share a flat…escort agencies with a dozen or so girls…Massage parlour owners. Women whose house is used by other sex workers…People who set up message boards and internet forums…All of these are…called “pimps” by the anti-sex lobby. A guy in a crushed velvet suit on a street corner, keeping his girls high and working the neighbourhood? Not so many of those…
Look past the fashionable “sex slave” rhetoric to what’s actually going on here:
…Chee Mei Wong…[allegedly] ran the Diamonds brothel in …Sydney…between…2008 and 2010…[and] employed six women…who…were told they would have to work until they paid off the cost of their airfare, visa and course fees [around $5000]…Despite…having paid off their debt after a “short period of time” it is alleged Ms Wong threatened she would have their visas revoked if they left. But Ms Wong’s barrister Bruce Quinn said she…only worked at the brothel as…receptionist…[and] the matter was simply an “industrial dispute” and a “sham” created so the women could stay in Australia…
These sorts of conflicting claims are not unusual in contract disputes, and unfortunately many people are quick to accuse others of wrongdoing in order to divert government attention from themselves. The important thing is that nobody here was criminalized for her profession, and the same situation could have arisen in any industry employing migrants.
Aspasia published a bang-on and hilarious parody of medicalized pop-psychology entitled “Join Me in the Fight Against Whorephobia” which you simply MUST read in its entirety to appreciate. I also recommend this thoughtful essay in which Obsidian proposes that the same shortage of eligible women which is at the root of so much violence in the Middle East may also influence the differences between homicide rates in American cities:
…the Big Apple saw a 50-year record low of just over 400 murders in a city of over 8 million; while for Chicago, the murder rate topped 500, with a population of roughly 2.5 million. Much has been said about the differences…in…their approaches toward fighting crime…Chicago has a proportionately larger police force than does NYC…[but] there are more Women to Men in NYC, than in Chicago…it’s been long known that whenever there are more males to females anywhere, trouble ensues. Indeed, we are beginning to see this manifest itself in earnest in places like China and India, where the male to female sex ratio is so off the chain that extreme exhibitions of behavior are being seen on the part of the males…
…U.S. District Judge Dean Whipple sentenced Christjan Bee of Monett, Missouri, to three years in prison for “possessing an obscene image of the sexual abuse of children…[namely] a collection of electronic comics, entitled ‘incest comics,’…[containing] multiple images of minors engaging in graphic sexual intercourse with adults and other minors”…In other words, he is going to prison for drawings; no actual children were involved at any point.
You may have seen the latest “meat kills!” pseudo-study; of course, the media didn’t bother to report that the “researchers” and sponsors were all vegetarians who didn’t bother to control for little things like diabetes and age.
[Vincent Burroughs of] Oregon…has filed a lawsuit against an IRS agent…claiming he was coerced into [a sexual] relationship…Dora…Abrahamson contacted Burroughs about an audit…flirted with [him] over the telephone…offered him massages and sent him a photo of herself in her underwear…”She said that she could impose no penalty, or a 40 percent penalty, and that if he would give her what she wanted, she would give him what he needed”…
Mexican officials broke up a bizarre cult that allegedly ran a sex-slavery ring…The “Defensores de Cristo”…allegedly recruited women to have sex with a Spanish man who claimed he was the reincarnation of Christ…Followers were subjected to forced labor or sexual services, including prostitution…prosecutors were still trying to work out which of the detainees may be considered victims, and which were abusers…
Cult messiahs invariably have sex with female followers, and how is contributing sexual labor any different from contributing money or other labor as members of established religions do? But due to “trafficking” hysteria, it becomes “sex slavery” even though the “authorities” themselves admit that any assignment of “victim” and “abuser” status will be arbitrary.
The high standards of American journalism have reached Pakistan:
Meet Doctor Maria Zulfiqar Khan…In her recent programme, she conducted a self-styled raid on a massage center in Lahore…and harassed the women…police [accompanied] her, but she played being in charge…we see women helplessly trying to hide their faces…[and Khan]…going through handbag of a lady…picking up a condom…and shouting…”what is this? what is this?”…Khan also plays being an interrogator…and…at one point, not agreeing to the answers…says sarcastically, “yeah right, tell that to the cops when they take you”…At the end of the programme…she visits [the] house of one of the girls…and…tells her audience “this man made [his] daughter a prostitute, what an animal he is”…
For those who suspect I’m biased, here’s legal scholar Michelle Alexander:
…police have a special inclination toward confabulation…[and] an incentive to lie…[they] shouldn’t be trusted any more than any other witness, perhaps less so…Peter Keane, a former San Francisco Police commissioner…[decried] a police culture that treats lying as the norm…Gustin L. Reichbach of the [New York] Supreme Court…condemned a widespread culture of lying…in…drug enforcement units…the Bronx district attorney’s office was so alarmed by police lying that it decided to stop prosecuting people who were…arrested for trespassing at…housing projects…Numerous scandals involving police officers lying or planting drugs…have been linked to federally funded drug task forces eager to keep the cash rolling in…
For Those Who Think Legalization is a Good Idea (TW3 #34)
The Indian Supreme Court’s waffling on decriminalization has emboldened prohibitionist legislators, who tried to quietly criminalize prostitution by defining all sex work as “exploitation” and therefore illegal under existing law. The National Network of Sex Workers has appealed to the President of India to veto this sleazy back-door scheme, but if he does not you can bet a court challenge will not be long in coming since Indian sex workers, unlike most in the United States, are unified to fight for their rights.
A minor war has broken out…in the village of Kiad [Saudi Arabia,] where large groups of hungry baboons from nearby valleys are attacking residences in search of food and drink…Adel Medini [said]…“The baboons are targeting empty houses and are well aware of what they are doing…They proceed according to studied plans. That’s why their attacks do not fail…a resident…[returns] to find his home in disarray. Some people…thought that thieves had…ransacked their houses…”
Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic (TW3 #39)
Remember the scientists who proved one could find neural activity in a dead fish? Well, here’s a video of a thought forming in the brain of a larval zebrafish:
I really wish people who support legal prostitution would talk to actual sex workers or even just do a little research before writing articles which perpetuate ugly myths such as “It’s no longer just a drug-addled woman forced onto lonely street corners” (it never was), and “sex workers are likely reticent to draw attention to their illicit life by divulging STDs and surely no one checks customers for STDs”. The latter is an especially damaging myth because you can guess his proposed “solution” to this nonexistent problem: compulsory disease checks for registered whores (but not amateurs, who are free to spread disease at will).
On the Simultaneous Having and Eating of Cake
The Kansas…Supreme Court ruled that exotic dancers are employees of the club where they work, not independent entertainment contractors…[at] Club Orleans [in] Topeka…dancers were required to pay non-negotiable “rent” for use of the stage and dressing rooms, as well as extra fees for the disc jockeys and bouncers…House rules governed what the dancers could do in their shows and the prices they had to charge for specific types of dances…The women were required to sign in with the bouncer at the beginning of a shift and weren’t allowed to leave…until the end of the shift…
In this book review, Harvey Silverglate made the same point I did yesterday:
In Unlearning Liberty, [Greg] Lukianoff…[presents many] examples of campus censorship …65% of liberal arts campuses have speech codes that violate…free speech norms…Lukianoff…persuasively argues that…contemporary campuses can be seen essentially as incubators for a future society governed by censorship of iconoclastic ideas and kangaroo courts that enforce those prohibitions…some…now sitting on the federal bench do not blanch when innocent citizens are convicted of violating statutes and regulations that no normal person could possibly understand [because] students…get accustomed to the administrative tyranny…and…don’t have much adjusting to do when they gain, and abuse, real power of their own…
How is it that people who would laugh at the idea that well-paid swimsuit models are “exploited” by pornography think kids would be harmed if pedophiles masturbate to cartoons or indeed, if they masturbate at ALL? How are these people supposed to get help BEFORE they harm someone if they are not allowed any way to relieve their sexual desires?
These beliefs are based in the delusion that sex is a want rather than a need, and that people can simply “choose” not to “give in to temptation”. It’s the same delusion which drives “ex-gay” therapy, the “end demand” approach to prostitution, “abstinence-only” sex education and a number of other notions which fly in the face of reality.
Remember your column on the “slippery slope”? If the government can make it a crime to whale away to a picture of Charlie Brown or Peppermint Patty, they can also do the same for pictures of Wonder Woman or Superman—and I think some people would definitely try to do just that.
RE: Get Out of the 19th Century Often?
Sounds like a more extreme version of the boundary laws workers face here in Halifax.
RE: See No Evil.
Unless I’m mistaken, there is precedent running in the opposite direction in the US.
RE: A Moral Cancer (Metaupdates)
Nutrition research is comparable to sex work research in the mysterious retardation in the methods used. Sex work research* is basically stuck in the very lower bowels of research methods; small, plainly unrepresentative samples are recruited over and over, asking the same two or three questions about condoms. Nutrition, which is a field where we could actually do high-quality randomized control trials, spends most of its time looking at massive pre-collected cohorts and running correlations between every variable at hand without being able to make firm claims about causation. Both fields, for whatever reason, have become the ‘dumb cousins’ of health research.
*At least in the first world and outside of HIV/AIDS research. Studies conducted in the developing countries that look at HIV/AIDS in sex workers actually tend to be quite well done.
You’re not mistaken. The established precedent in the US is that drawings are not photos; however, for decades now prosecutors and judges have used a variety of schemes to get around that and convict people for drawings, written words and even dreams. Follow the link to that Reason article to see how it was done in this particular case, but legal back-doors are not the only method.
I wish those ladies well, but I don’t see myself negotiating a BBBJ rate with a hooker when I’m 80! 😀
They sense our weakness – I believe we’ll look back on this as the day the inter-species battle for the Earth began!!! 😀
Judging from your avatar I can guess what side you’ll be on once The Battle for the Planet of the Apes begins! 🙂
My appearance and sub-standard intellect make me capable of infiltrating the ranks of our enemies so that their evil simian plans can be effectively vanquished!!
I will fight with the humans!!!
krulac is an inverse simian Inspector Javert! (I think I got all those inversions correct…)
On Michelle Alexander;
I’ve been saying this for years. While I don’t have a large acquaintance group among the feloniously inclined, I do know that out of 11 encounters with police, the cops lied about material issues in 7 of those encounters. This is orders of magnitude above any other cohort of my encounters in terms of percentages of lies told per encounter. So, if I’m ever on a jury, I will accord less veracity to the cops on the stand than any of the other witnesses based on my own personal experience over the last 15 years. Full disclosure; my grandfather was a deputy sheriff and the leader of the lay clergy at my church was the statewide commander for the state police – and an honorable man. I find it harder and harder to use that term – honorable – in relation to any police officer any more.
I’m an epigraph this week?! Look at that, I’m….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L09qnRfZY-k
Heh.
Re: Messiah Cult Sex
The authorities clearly need to brush up on, not only ancient history, but recent history as well. No victims of sex slavery needed, only very naive women with a desire to be “close to god”. I mean, take away the deceit and manipulation, it is no different than sacred prostitution. Maybe if that was allowed to exist, opportunities for hucksters wouldn’t be as available.
Not just a regular epigram, either, but the “Quote of the Week” spot reserved for the best quote from any item in that week’s column. 🙂
I’d like to thank The Academy…. 🙂
Re: Above the Law:
Something about this one trips my bullshit detector…as you’ve pointed out before, women don’t usually have trouble getting sex if that is what they really want, for simple supply and demand reasons. Such coercion ought to be unnecessary. Unfortunately there’s not enough information in the linked article to say if the agent in question was unusual in that regard.
The demand consideration might be removed if there was a prior relationship between the two of them, but the article makes it sound as if she just picked someone out of IRS records.
My sense: Either he was someone she already knew and wanted, or she’s unusually un-mateable (or thinks she is) and felt the need for extreme measures, or she has a fetish for power abuse, or he’s lying.
Phone records should make parts of the claim easy to prove or disprove. Might be worth keeping an eye on the case.
Re: My Readers Write:
The bit about the effects of a local excess of men on crime rates makes me wonder about the corresponding effects of a local excess of women. It also makes me wonder which cities and metropolitan areas have a surplus of women or men — I know gender balance is tracked for college campuses but I don’t think I’ve heard of it being tracked for cities until now.
Oh, I’m with you; my bullshit detector went off as well, but I’m adopting a “wait and see” attitude. I’m sure more detail will be forthcoming.
I agree with you and “A” about “most” women, but THIS woman is an exception and someone needs to help her before it’s too late:
http://suicideproject.org/2011/01/lets-be-honest-celibate-at-42-i-might-as-well-top-myself/
She clearly wants a relationship, not just sex.
In regards to speech codes on campus, I am of the belief that LGBT people, people of color, and other minorities have the rIght to a learning environment free of intimidation and harrassment, so yes, speech codes are necessary. And if a student, staff, or faculty member is so insulted by the presence of minorities that they can’t help but open their mouths about it, then they’re in the wrong place to begin with.
If you don’t believe in sitting your ass down next to a Black or gay person in class, then take a correspondance course.
So certain groups get veto power over the speech and behavior of others? Do you not see how that guarantees tyranny?
Theoretically, you can argue that. But what about the right to attend university free of intimidation and harassment?
You have two basic alternatives to speech codes on campus. You can have students voluntarily agree to accept differences in each other, or, failing that, have each group protected by armed guards. The first option is virtually unobtainable, the second unpalatable.
There is nothing theoretical about the damage to freedom of speech and freedom of thought done by speech codes. I suggest you check out http://thefire.org/ for countless examples.
You seem concerned with “intimidation and harassment.” The problem is those concepts are being defined so broadly that no difference of opinion or values is allowed. One either agrees with those who define the concepts or one is guilty of a crime. That is a nightmare from which there is no legal escape.
I feel much more intimidated and harassed by the “PC nannies” who decide what is a violation of these speech codes than by any of the speech or activity they ban.
The trouble with political correctness is that it isn’t really about consideration for everybody’s feelings. If you’re not in one of the groups they support, your feelings don’t matter. And whores and their supporters are unlikely to be a group they support.
Well she doesn’t have a problem with it as long as LIBERALS control the college campuses. I would submit to her that CONSERVATIVES are minorities on campus and deserve freedom of speech and she’d take an issue with that.
Although I come from a different side of the ideological fence from krulac, I have to agree with him here. Anything used to suppress “nasty” “evil” conservatives can also be used against “nasty” “evil” liberals. In other words, anything used to keep THEM from expressing themselves can also be used against US.
Speech codes are NEVER appropriate and college campuses are PRIMARY EXAMPLES of how, when such codes are implemented – they are ABUSED.
“People of colour” is a monumentally stupid expression. Someone complained to Scottish comedian Frankie Boyle about using the word nigger in an ironic way. The person said to him “I don’t think it’s ever right to use the word nigger”. Frankie Boyle said “you just have”.
Let me introduce you to a very useful notion: the “Use-mention distinction”
The sentence “I don’t think it’s EVER right to use the word nigger,” disallows any verbal context, which includes for the sake of mention, so I don’t see the relevance. And BTW I’m already familiar with use-mention distinction and it’s not a useful notion at all, it’s a very problematic one, since there is no clear distinction between use and mention.
How is it ambiguous. If I say ‘nigger’ to talk about the word ‘nigger’, like in this sentence, I’m mentioning it. If I use the word ‘nigger’ to talk about someone with a lot of African blood in their veins, I’m using it. There are very few contexts in which it isn’t clear whether I’m talking about a word or a person. They’re very different things.
Maggie, could you please go through and wash that post’s mouth out with soap? I don’t even want to mention it that much.
I understand, but at the same time I really think people need to get over words. They don’t have magical powers; there is nothing more ridiculous than the spectacle of supposedly-sophisticated adults using phrases like “the n-word” and “the f-word” as though they were prancing savages afraid of the runic power inherent in the syllables. Furthermore, IMHO it’s better for marginalized groups to “take back” words like whore, queer, nigger and dyke, because otherwise they can always be used to inflict emotional pain.
So you’re not even vaguely familiar with the argument that you so patronisingly thought to “introduce” me to.
You have given two examples in which you have USED the word nigger, but you have been able to give a clear definition of what the difference between “use” and “mention” is or how it’s possible to mention a word without using it. It’s not!
Moreover, it is also possible to both simultaneously use a word in mention but also convey a meaning that draws an inference that is external to the sentence. For example, in the following sentence: “I don’t think it’s ever right to use the word BLUE,” the statement is predicated on an external inference that blue is in and of itself offensive.
Now lets change the sentence to: “I don’t think it’s ever right to use the word NIGGER”. We all know that the word nigger has an inferred external meaning that makes immediate sense of the statement.
I apologize for being patronizing.
I maintain that I am using the distinction correctly. Here is an entry from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (you can get an extremely similar from wikipedia if you prefer, on the page ‘Use-Mention Distinction’)
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/quotation/#2.2
The example given is precisely parallel; all I left out were quote marks, but from context they are not needed.
That one can make an inference about the referent of the word, as you are using it, is aside from how the word fits into the structure of the sentence. Moreover, you can’t make those inferences reliably – for some reason you deduce from the ‘blue’ example above (note, it’s a ‘blue’ example, not a blue example), that blue is in and of itself offensive.
Now, already I’ve got alarm bells going off in my head because offensiveness is not in the thing itself… but setting that aside, you did not take the parallel deduction. That would have been, ‘Niggers are in and of themselves offensive’. Note, I mentioned that statement, NOT used it.
Forget Wikipedia and Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, they will only give you the briefest outlines as to what it means, and in fact the Stanford article says “it is controversial exactly how to draw the distinction,” and “Other attempts to characterize the use-mention distinction quickly run into difficulties”. So it doesn’t support you, not that it is a good article it’s appalling inept, and that maybe why you have completely misunderstood it.
It might be easier to read précis but it’s no substitute for reading Wittgenstein, Moore and Russell. The Use-Mention Distinction falls because there is no possible distinction between mention and use because it is impossible to mention a word without using it. That is a semantic truth.
Quotations marks are irrelevant to logic and do not carry from one language to another, so I wouldn’t bother with that crap. And if you re-read what I said, you will see in the examples I have given there is no proposition in the statement that would justify that blue or nigger are offensive but if it is “not ever right to use the word” it is implicit that they are offensive, or at least the “I” in the statement regards them so whatever the context. In the first example it is not clear why blue is offensive but in the second example it is very clear why nigger is offensive, the word has negative connotations. This gives the nigger sentence a meaning that is understand because of the USE of the word nigger. But obviously it is not so in the blue sentence, so we left trying to deduce why “I” thinks it’s never right to use the word blue.
To be frank, you are pushing a philosophical argument that was rebutted long before I was born. If you stick with this theory you are never going to be able to give a logical definition that is incapable of rebuttal. Unless you can succeed where Wittgenstein, Moore and Russell failed.
I’m starting to think that you two have outsmarted yourselves.
That’s another patronising comment. I have stated a semantic truth: it is impossible to mention a word without using it. Frankly, I don’t care whether you understand the argument, but having studied philosophy on my way to getting a doctorate in jurisprudence from Sapienza, the most prestigious university in Italy, I’m quite within my area of knowledge. I purposefully avoid commenting on posts if I know little about.
I never said anything to the effect that you didn’t know what you were talking about.
I made no claim one way or the other about whether or not it’s possible to mention a word without using it.
I frankly don’t care where you studied since I’m not trying to assess your education.
No, I leave outsmarting ones-self to Heidegger et al. He’s the best ever at throwing mud on glass.
Re: Having and Eating of Cake: This sounds like perfectly normal and fair application of the long-standing IRS rules which spell out the difference between an employee and an independent contractor. It all boils down to how much control the employer has over how the employee does her job. Here are the IRS guidelines.
I’m a tax professional and see this issue frequently. The penalty was recently increased for employers who misclassify their employees as independent contractors to get out of payroll taxes: it’s now up to $5,000 per employee, paid half by the employer and half by his tax preparer; plus the employer has to pay out of his own pocket the taxes he was supposed to send in (and he doesn’t get to go back and collect any of them from the employee).
An employee who thinks his employer did this can also ask the IRS to make the determination by filing form SS-8. Usually, you do this when you leave your job, since if you still have it they are likely to retaliate by firing you.
Re: Above the Law: My first reaction was “Oh, please throw me in the briar patch!” But “A” has a good point — something fishy is probably going on. It did kind of make me think of this case (warning: gross).
Oh yes, I covered that one in an early miscellanea column.
This was all I could find about the Chee Mei Wong case.
http://searchcourtlists.lawlink.nsw.gov.au/scm/search
You can access the judgements as well. I hope I remember to keep on top of this because if they find in Chee’s favour this is the last you’ll ever hear of it.
Finding someone is innocent of keeping ‘sex slaves’ sells nowhere near as much advertising as a guilty verdict.
Sorry about that ^^. You have to put her name in the search box.
Reblogged this on irregularvoice and commented:
One of my all-time favourite bloggers, The Honest Courtesan is intelligent, informed, opinionated and entertaining. Much recommended.
Becky Adams introduces Para Doxies on the Alan Titchmarch show
I think it’s a splendid idea, and wish we on this side of the Atlantic could be as reasonable. Then again, the USA isn’t the only part of the world on this side of the Atlantic, so I look forward to seeing what Canada and Mexico will do. Heck, even Nevada.
Japanese Prostitution
If that’s what they want to spend their money on. I like the idea of Soaplands or anime-themed brothels better, but there’s no reason we can’t have them all.
Don’t Buy It
In Texas in 2011 there were in fact only 44 juvenile arrests for “prostitution and commercialized vice” in the entire state, for the entire year.
Get Out of the 19th Century Often?
Get thee hence! thou wicked strumpet!
Chupacabra
I pointed out once before that, with the definition of “pimp” being so broad, it makes me a pimp. Just for fun, I’ll run through it again.
I’m on disability. It’s paid for by taxes. Hookers pay taxes. I’m living off the taxes paid by hookers (and everybody else who pays taxes in this country, but let’s not over-think a good scare-mongering). Hookers (along with all the other tax payers) are supporting me. Waddayano, I’m a pimp.
A Working System
You mean… you mean that if prostitution isn’t against the law, prostitutes can sue or press criminal charges when they’ve been wronged? Wow, whodathunk it?
See No Evil
He should get out on appeal. Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition specifically exempts drawings, cartoons, or computer generated images.
Above the Law
Yep, that’s different all right. There is no mystery how this would turn out if it were a male IRS agent coercing sex from a female tax payer. I wonder how this case will turn out.
OK, I’ll get to the rest a bit later. I gotta catch up on some D&D videos on YouTube, before the Devil takes them down. LOL
Well, took me long enough, didn’t it? Truth is, I just plumb forgot I hadn’t finished, and then fell behind in e-mail. I’m like that sometimes.
Traffic Jam
I should’ve become a cult leader. Money, power and sex. It would’ve been easy enough to come up with some mumbo-jumbo about aliens spirits and the need to be personally blessed by a Holy Man.
But then there’s my conscience. If I had a yaller dog that didn’t know no more than a person’s conscience does I would pison him. It takes up more room than all the rest of a person’s insides, and yet ain’t no good, nohow.
Yellow Fever
Dr. Maria Zulfiqar Khan is very pretty. Too bad she’s in such a rotten business. This isn’t anything new, of course, but it’s still sad to see. KHHAAAAAANNNNN!!!
Under Duress
Until we make it unprofitable to lie, the lying will continue. Cops lie for the same reason thieves steal: that’s how you get the money.
For Those Who Are About to Ro…
I mean, For Those Who Think Legalization is a Good Idea
I think the way Indian sex workers have organized is an inspiration. They rock.
Monkey Business
Just wait until the chimpanzees start in!
Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic
Well obviously he’s thinking about sex. Heh heh.
So Close and Yet So Far
Maggie knows that I’ve come around on mandatory health inspections for prostitutes. STD rates are so low among even the most illegal of hookers that it just isn’t necessary. If the public (either through law-making or just a nervous customer base) demands something, prostitutes themselves can set up a sort of “Underwriters Laboratory” to take care of things.
On the Simultaneous Having and Eating of Cake
Fine, as long as that’s consistent. If the dancers are employees when it’s time to split the tips, they can’t suddenly be independent contractors when that will save the club a few bucks.
The Devil’s Toys
I wouldn’t have so much of a problem with speech codes on a university campus, as long as they stayed there, if there were some way to keep them from expanding and engulfing everything around them, all the while being abused like mad.
Well, now I’m off to do a little more catching up.
The abusive pimp like the women trafficked against their will are a powerful tool in the prohibitionists’ arsenal, the French parliament approved a motion recognising prostitution as a form of violence against women, and one of their halfwit feminist ministers is trying to convince the rest of the EU to adopt the same resolution. We should be recognising prostitution as a legitimate career option and a way out of poverty.
I seem to recall that the last time France’s parliament considered such a bill, France’s whores went on strike against its MPs. It worked then.
Unfortunately the executive hit back hard by using the pimping laws to target anyone connected to a prostitute. So any time a prostitute spends her money, anyone deemed to be a direct beneficiary is liable to be charged with the French equivalent to living off immoral earnings, including landlords, boyfriends, children etc. How the hell as France become so puritanical on prostitution?