It’s…extremely patronizing…to say someone’s conscious choice of work is degrading. – Jon Millward
A [Mt. Pleasant] Texas police officer pleaded guilty to aggravated sexual assault of a child under 14-years-old…Eric Jason Campbell, 41, has been sentenced to 50 years in prison. He will also be required to register as a sex offender when he is released…
A Massachusetts DA helpfully explains why it’s a good thing his office persecutes teenagers for “sexting”:
…”We do not have any exceptions…for kids who are really in love, for girls who wanted to do it and for guys who promised they wouldn’t share it…” [Robert] Kinzer said. “A nude photo of [a minor’s] exposed genitalia is child pornography…When they start sharing photos like this, we are going to start charging people with the manufacturing, dissemination and possession of child pornography, and they’re going to…face [prosecution]…You’re going to lose jobs and relationships, and you’ll spend the rest of your life as a registered sex offender”…
Since LA County officials have not leaped at the opportunity to waste millions of dollars policing porn shoots to enforce his private condom crusade, Michael Weinstein is now trying to force the city to establish its own redundant health department, which Weinstein presumably believes would be more easily pressured into dancing to his tune:
The AIDS Healthcare Foundation announced…a new ballot measure …[for] an all-new City of L.A. Public Health Department…AHF has urged Dr. Jonathan Fielding, Los Angeles County’s Public Health director, to shut down non-condom porn shoots…[but] Fielding…hasn’t…despite AHF-led letter and phone campaigns. And it is well known that officials at the county Public Health Department are opposed to their agency enforcing Measure B…
In this column I wrote, “Prostitution and stripping are already illegal, and it seems that porn will be next, followed by censorship of print media and the internet.” Yes, I do get tired of being right all the time:
The government is considering…internet filters, such as those used to block China off…to stop Icelanders downloading or viewing pornography on the internet…Ogmundur Jonasson, Iceland’s interior minister, is drafting legislation to stop the access of online pornographic images and videos…”violent pornography…has…very harmful effects on young people and can have a clear link to incidences of violent crime,” he said.
In reality, the evidence suggests exactly the opposite, but since Iceland already has the highest rape rate in Europe I guess they figure a few more raped women are just extra eggs for the totalitarian neofeminist omelette. The story quotes the ubiquitous Gail Dines, who also used the occasion to get her name in print in the UK as well.
This week I received a copy of Sex at Dawn (which people have been trying to get me to read for years) from Eddie JC. Thank you, Eddie!
One would think that the Comic Relief organization could tell the difference between actual statistics and the absurd claims of a “pathological liar” comedy routine, but apparently not: “75% of women working in prostitution started before they were 18, and most of them feel trapped and would leave if only they could find a way. The UK is a major destination country for trafficked young people…”
“…Dublin City Council…rejected calls to support the Turn Off The Red-light campaign. Amendments passed removed the proposal to criminalise the purchase of sex, and changed the report on Swedish evidence to hearsay.” The national crusade still rolls on, but this local rejection of the Swedish rot shows that not everyone in Ireland is asleep at the wheel.
…On March 4, a new game on Facebook, inspired by the book Half the Sky…will be introduced, with a focus on raising awareness of issues like female genital mutilation and child prostitution…The central character, an Indian woman named Radhika, faces various challenges with the assistance of players, who can help out with donations of virtual goods, for example. The players can then make equivalent real-world donations to seven nonprofit organizations woven into the game…As her empowerment grows, Radhika moves across the globe to Kenya, Vietnam and Afghanistan…Players who reach the final level learn about sex trafficking in the United States and can donate to an organization in New York called GEMS…
Because it’s really important to simplify complex issues and make them fun so that wise, benevolent white people will be tempted to manage the lives of helpless, childlike brown ones.
A bill that could send women to prison for going topless in public appears set for approval by the North Carolina legislature…[it] would amend the state’s indecent exposure law to expand the legal definition of “private parts” to…include “the nipple, or any portion of the areola, [of] the female breast.” Depending on whether such exposure is judged to be “for the purpose of arousing or gratifying sexual desire,” the woman could be charged with a felony, punishable by up to six months in prison…More mundane exposure would be a misdemeanor, meriting up to 30 days in jail. “Incidental” exposure by breastfeeding mothers would remain exempt…Rayne Brown…[said] her constituents are concerned about topless rallies promoting women’s equality…
Another fun promotional video from the Sex Worker Freedom Festival last July:
Dr. Paul Maginn has published another appeal for sanity, stating that “various parts of the world appear to be suffering from a mix of moral panic and ideological myopia” on the issue of sex work. Though brief, the article debunks lies about “sex trafficking”, “dirty whores”, “end demand” and “negative secondary effects”, and includes quotes from Drs. Laura Agustín and Brooke Magnanti.
Oklahoma “authorities” seem even more enchanted with the notion of “human trafficking” than most Americans:
…Clarence F. Holden, 25, of Fort Smith [Arkansas] faces felony counts of human trafficking and procuring for prostitution…Officers arrested Holden and two other people…after the Vice Unit responded to an Internet post…for “a massage with a ‘happy ending’ ” for $150…Destiny Hope Niles, 24, also of Fort Smith – told police Holden keeps her money, car keys and credit card and threatened her physically…
Consider that even though this sort of petty manipulation is what passes for “trafficking” to American cops, they still can’t come up with anything like the hysterical claims.
“4 Things You Should Know About Women Who Strip” by Jennifer Ward doesn’t break any new ground for readers of this blog, but as far as I’m concerned we can’t have enough articles explaining that sex workers and our clients are “a lot more diverse than people assume them to be.” In the same vein, three porn actors answered questions at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri: “Lance Hart…Tori Black and James Deen answered questions as a part of a Sex Week panel event…the purpose of the panel was to foster dialogue about aspects of the porn industry that are not typically discussed, such as sexual health…”
Something Rotten in Sweden (TW3 #44)
Though this article perpetuates the increasingly-common lie that the Swedish model is “decriminalization”, it at least tells the truth about the damage to sex workers caused by “end demand” campaigns:
…the “End Demand Illinois” campaign…asks that johns…become the law’s targets…[and] is working to make johns, pimps and traffickers more accountable, but it’s also sought to…stop treating prostitution as a felony. Right now, if a sex worker is hit with two misdemeanor charges related to prostitution in Illinois, the second charge is upgraded to a felony…Last fall The Chicago Reporter…found that prostitution-related felonies are being levied almost exclusively against sex workers…Rachel Lovell, a researcher at Case Western University…co-authored a paper that criticized End Demand Illinois. It argued that stiffer penalties against johns actually end up hurting female sex workers. “The philosophy and the overarching theme of the End Demand movement is that all women in prostitution are victims,” Lovell said…it’s important to distinguish between the different ways one can be a sex worker…“To say if we increase penalties for men they will just stop buying…[is] too simplistic…”
Indian sex workers have powerfully resisted “sex trafficking” hysteria, and have convinced many “authorities” that they are not passive victims. Unfortunately, the rescue industry will lose money and power if it has nobody to “rescue”, and so has increasingly turned its attentions toward abducting sex workers’ children, defending the practice with propaganda films:
…Not Today…[is] a feature-length film that sheds light on the modern-day sex trafficking industry that consumes the Dalit class in India…”The world needs to understand that slavery still exists, that even today young children are bought and sold like cattle, that little girls are forced into the dark illicit sex trade, that young boys and girls are coerced to beg in the streets and bring their proceeds back to line the pockets of thugs who abuse them at night,” said the film’s executive producer, Matthew Cork…
Though I’d love to see a methodologically-sound study of 10,000 whores, 10,000 porn actors is a good start. Click on the picture (and again to enlarge), then read Jon Millward’s article and Brooke Magnanti’s interview with him.
Get Out of the 19th Century Often? (TW3 #136)
A proposed prostitution ban met with opposition at an Atlanta City Council work session…Community leaders, church pastors and advocates against sex trafficking said the ban was harshly targeting victims of the sex trade…Chad Brock of the ACLU said they might consider challenging the ordinance if it becomes law…”Instead of pairing you up with the social services you need, they’re telling you to go away,” Brock said. “We don’t believe that’s going to help any sex worker rehabilitating themselves”…
As expected, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny has issued a less mealy-mouthed follow-up to his previous pseudo-apology to the victims of the Magdalene laundries, but as blogger Bock the Robber asked,
Where is the apology from the nuns who ran these slave labour camps? Where is the apology from the NSPCC (now the ISPCC), employers of the feared and unsupervised cruelty men who consigned so many children and young women to this slavery…Where is the apology from the Legion of Mary, whose members…[facilitated] the incarceration of people they disapproved of? Where is the apology from the Roman Catholic church on behalf of all those parish priests who ripped children from the heart of their families because of some warped and perverted view of sexuality?…What an extraordinary society it was that deputised an assortment of self-serving busybodies…and continues to give…such power to clerics and self-appointed meddlers…
On the same day, the Telegraph carried a moving article by Samantha Long about her birth-mother, who was an inmate of one of the laundries.
This article about sex work with the disabled covers some good ground, but unfortunately also gives a platform to those who think real people’s needs should be subordinate to “messages” and sacrificed to the impossible quest for an unreachable Utopia:
…The sexual needs of people with disabilities are under the spotlight like never before after the release of…The Sessions…last month, ex-staff from a care home…[said] they had allowed sex workers into the home at the request of disabled residents…and…Becky Adams…plans to open the first brothel…for disabled clients in the UK…[but others see] the use of sex workers as a potentially harmful development. “It’s like the world telling you that disabled people are so unsexy that the only way they can have sex is to pay for it…What disabled people need is full and equal rights. An inclusive society, which doesn’t create barriers”…
On the same day my column appeared, Robin Hustle published the similarly-themed (though broader) “What Prostitutes, Nurses and Nannies Have in Common”. The Jezebel commentariat is predictably split between the narcissistic, the wholly clueless, and nurses who are Terribly OffendedTM at being compared to whores.
I think you are going to like Sex At Dawn Maggie. If I had to sum it up in a sentence, Dr. Christopher Ryan and his wife Cacilda Jethá use the behavior our primate relatives, the culture of hunter gatherer tribes that have not yet adopted agriculture, and the evidence of our bodies to conclusively prove that dogs indeed bite men.
Hope the barking doesn’t keep you up at night! 🙂
Iceland and Internet Filters …
They better be careful about going down that road. The one great thing about Western Democracies is that make people feel (true or not) that they are genuinely free.
I have been to countries who filter the internet – in my travels that’s been mostly the Arab countries of the middle east. Let me tell you – there is nothing that says … “You ain’t in a democracy son” quite like logging on to the hotel’s wireless and then being greeted with a “BLOCKED! THIS CONTENT VIOLATES THE LAWS OF ….”
And that’s doubly true when the content you’re searching for – is completely benign and actually doesn’t violate any laws. These internet filters – are not very elegant. They allow some blocked content to come through. They block some very legal content.
An Icelandic mother wishes to view an educational video on breastfeeding. Will that be blocked? In some cases it will.
There’s all kinds of examples I can think of where people looking for completely legitimate content will be blocked from access to it. On each occasion – they’ll be greeted with a message … a road sign … that says … “Oh I’m sorry, you’ve turned down a road for which WE, your BETTERS do not believe you should go down!”
The trick about Western Democracies is eroding freedom without making it obvious to the “subjects”. Internet filters … are overt, IN YOUR FACE reminders that … you’re no longer in Kansas anymore Dorothy!
The more people are smothered by rules, the more zealously they follow them. See Prof Kaczynski’s analysis of “oversocialization”. That mass internet censorship is being proposed in a country that strongly supported Wikileaks really illustrates this paradox.
I’m not saying you’re wrong about that … there’s prolly some studies on it but, that’s not my personal experience with rules.
What I’ve seen is that … the more chickenshit rules heaped upon a group of people – the more they start to disregard all rules including the important ones.
The quote is something like “bad laws create contempt for good laws.” I suspect that there’s some corollary about “if you can make bad laws look good…” but yeah, bad laws create contempt for all laws.
An apology from the religious orders who ran the Magdalene laundries would be tantamount to an admission of liability; and leave them open to claims for compensation. I detect the lawyers advising them to say nothing to protect their financial interests.
The Magdalene laundries weren’t the only ones; there are also survivors of Bethany laundries:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-21548710
and there is an inquiry along similar lines in N Ireland:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-21532791
Meanwhile, BBC1 broadcast The Magdalene Sisters a couple of days ago — but not in N Ireland. NI terrestrial broadcasts can be received in the Republic. Censorship or politics? The film is available for another month on the BBC iPlayer; it’s a dark and grim film, yet a survivor said that the reality was much worse.
That would probably be like a 3rd or 4th generation version of the one I’ve been telling you about. I would imagine the costs would easily push $500,000. For now I’ll have to settle for aiming for 515. 😀
All the work in this study raises as many questions as it answers; is the “average” performer the most successful? How do the characteristics of the most “successful” differ from the average? And is it true that some performers only act to add to their CVs as escorts?
The answer to the first might be more likely to be ‘yes’ if the averages were generated after weighting for number of films appeared in (such that high-frequency repeat performers are given more weight than one-off performers). Same type of analyses for comparing more/less successful performers overall. The last question is probably beyond the scope of the data, I would imagine.
It’s so damn weird. Seems as if 90% of the stuff I read about sex work, certainly the stuff written by non-sex workers is so at odds with my own experience that it leaves me wondering if I’m in an alternate universe, or they are.
Being a whore was the best job I ever had. I’ve done other things, waitressing, bartending, retail, and now an office. But hooking was best. Porn was second best, but being an independent whore gave me much more freedom.
I suspect that the non sex work writers suffer from an inverse of what I do now- They aren’t personally at all suited to sex work, and so, they filter it as being awful in their minds. I’m not as suited to anything else as I was sex work, and so I’ll always miss doing it.
Re: Saving Them From Themselves
I have nothing much to add beyond what a commenter named S A Barton wrote on that story:
Absolutely.
Some of the most pathetic whining one is likely to hear from nurses concerns gender and class resentment. The amount and shrillness of the whining rise exponentially as one moves up from the hospital floors into nursing education and nonclinical administration. Most of the nurses I’ve known do not get their panties in a bunch over the sexual and class implications of their profession. Then again, these were men and women who were happy to keep working on hospital floors, and the three I can think of who eventually went into educational positions are no-nonsense. The content and tone of what I hear from the nurses I know personally is wildly different from that of the loudmouths in administration and education, who tend to be resentful that they spent so much of their careers as lowly ass-wipers subordinate to the physicians on their floors.
When the latter start articulating their decades’ worth of accumulated grievous butthurt, the listener’s only viable option is to leave. It’s a fool’s errand to try to reason with social climbers who are resentful that MD’s are held in higher socioeconomic esteem. These are the same dipshits, by the way, who drive credential inflation in nursing. Superficially, it makes nurses look more like physicians, and that’s what matters to resentful social climbers. Competent physicians would generally rather work with competent associate’s-level RN’s than with advanced-degree nurses whose theoretical education came at the expense of their clinical experience, but a lot of nursing administrators and educators live in a parallel universe where that kind of thing doesn’t matter. Easily bruised feelings are at stake, and that’s what counts.
I find this dynamic exceptionally absurd and pathetic because my mother, a physician, has a network of friends and close acquaintances that includes other physicians, RN’s, psychologists, social workers, and occasionally LPN’s, LVN’s and ward clerks. I never get the feeling that these people resent or distrust each other on account of their different scopes of practice or incomes. Quite a few of them do, however, despise the administrators at their hospitals and the mushheads who insinuate rubbish into what would otherwise be solid clinical curricula.
Wow. Usually prosecutors at least pretend that they’re sad about it or that they are constrained by the law (even though they aren’t). This one is just out in front about it: “We’re going to ruin your lives”. I’m sure that will work about as well as scared straight campaigns always do.
Also, does Eric Campbell moonlight as Shrek? 🙂
Oh, one thing about the porn stars study. Gail Dines has the big thing where she says the most common thing in porn is “triple penetration”. Nice to see that the research shows, as usual, she’s full of it.
It’s hard to find triple penetration outside of hentai. It’s there in live action porn, but not a lot of it.
Regarding “Not Today.” Why is it when I hear the words Oral Roberts, I picture two guys named Bob? And do they really have to go to university to learn how to do that with each other?
As a teenager, I used to joke that his son’s name was Anal.
lol!
Bonus pun: in French, “Roberts” is slang for breasts (especially when they’re big).
“Heh heh, I’d sure like to oral her roberts, winknudge”
Somehow, that just doesn’t sound… right.
I don’t think you read “2. What they can be” on the Jennifer Ward article. Or perhaps I’m reading it wrong.
“I think of the ideal dancer as this beautiful, intelligent, educated, sexually empowered woman who doesn’t do drugs, doesn’t get drunk and doesn’t prostitute herself. She treats her job as a job and not a party. Her bills are paid and she’s saving money for the future. I’ve met a few of these mystical creatures who always seem to have their sh*t together and have a good head on their shoulders.”
I thought you posted this as a “we are diverse” article but I’m slightly taken aback that a dancer who “prostitutes” herself is shown negatively and lumped together with drug and alcohol users. ??
It may be that Ward feels that since prostitution is against the rules, an ethical dancer shouldn’t do it, or it may be that she has a personal aversion to prostitution just as she does to drinking and drugs. By lumping the three of them together, it seems to me she’s no more arguing for the prohibition of one than either of the other two. I think it’s perfectly fine for a person to have a personal aversion to anything, just as long as she doesn’t use that to argue for its brutal suppression.
Thanks for your insight, that makes sense.
As some of you know, I’m familiar with Protestant Christianity, but am not a particularly religious man. For instance, I don’t know for sure that I believe in hell. But I will say this: if there is a hell, and Berkshire Second Assistant District Attorney Robert W. Kinzer III doesn’t go to it, then it’s a waste of perfectly good brimstone.
Well, there goes that trip to Iceland I wasn’t planning to make anyway. But in truth, I wouldn’t mind visiting Iceland if it wasn’t for this stuff. It’s an amazing place, geologically, and they have that amazing Viking history.
And then I raided that brothel and freed all the slaves, yeah. And that’s when I met my first wife, Prici… Lynds… Morgan Fairchild, yeah!
The arc of history bending towards justice and all that. Yes, even in Ireland. Or in Iceland, though it’s currently bending the wrong way.
I’m not opposed to using games as one more way to get out an important message, but I wish they’d restrict themselves to TRUE messages, or fiction presented as fiction.
I sure hope these lock ’em up boob-haters stay the @%$! away from Mardi Gras.
Peaceful protest. Signs in English. Reasonable demands. Regular people.
I can see that this would be effective, both nationally and internationally.
Dear Mrs. Jones
I wish to clarify that I do not now, nor have I ever, worked at Home Depot. I am a pole dancer at the Lions of Fire Club and I told…
I’m going to split my stuff into two, because it’s too long otherwise, but I wanted to say something about most of these.
The fact that the Swedish Model has to be sold as something other than what it is shows that what it is isn’t selling.
It’s going to be pretty grim is poor children aren’t even able to beg.
This is where I make the joke (and I’m sure I won’t be the first) about who I’d like to get Deep Inside (Alex Wagner or Tamron Hall, but that’s another fant… story). But yeah, I’m glad somebody did this. And if you’re a teenaged mom who cheerleads, babysits, and wants to be a nurse, you are a DAMNED popular girl!
The ACLU recognizes something important: that prohibitionn hurts the very people prohibitionists claim they want to help.
The news today and yesterday is election of a new pope. I might hope that the Pope would say something about this. I’m not holding my breath, but wouldn’t it be nice?
It would also be nice if people simply gave food to the poor, and some people do, and may all Gods bless them. But there are not enough who do, and that’s why we have food stamps and disability and such. Wouldn’t it NOT be nice if we said that, because people should give the poor enough food that such programs aren’t needed, let’s shut those programs down. Well, that’s the argument here: disable people shouldn’t have to pay for sex, so don’t let them pay for sex.
The same day, huh? Something is in the air. The arc is bending. Slowly, slightly, but it IS bending.