The truth doesn’t have a sound bite. – Hadil Habiba
While working as a high-class escort for nine years, Rebecca Dakin saw hundreds of married men turn to her to fulfill sexual needs not being met by their wives. In 2009, she…became an infidelity counselor, using her experience…to teach women about how to satisfy their husbands…Dakin says that the number one reason men look outside of their relationships for sex is because they’re not getting enough of it at home…other reasons…include…feeling bored by the sex they receive…or feeling hesitant to share their intimate desires and fantasies with their spouse…
Thaddeus Russell lectures on A Renegade History of the United States at the recent New Hampshire Liberty Forum:
The pathetic losers who believe young girls can perform complex calculations in their heads are at it again, informing us that if Barbie were both alive and life-sized she wouldn’t have room for intestines. That’s ironic, because it’s obvious that doofuses who obsess about plastic dolls have no room in their heads for comprehending that the smaller any animal is, the more slender its proportions tend to be, and that kids don’t actually notice this kind of stuff in any case.
It’s surprising that this article on Bay Area sex workers (including Kitty Stryker and Siouxsie Q) who cater to the tech sector appeared on CNN, of all places; the phrase “human trafficking” occurs only once, in a very short passage about a vice cop. Maybe a few people over there are starting to wake up (or just seeing the writing on the wall). The same holds true in the next item:
The anti-whore rhetoric in this New York Times piece about Afghan sex workers is minimal, and the word “trafficking” entirely absent:
…Mazar…is…Afghanistan’s unofficial capital of prostitution…[this is] partly [due]…to the city’s culture, which is considerably more forgiving of vice than is the rest of the country. Alcohol, though still illegal, can be found without too much trouble. Women…can be seen socializing with men in…public parks, a rare sight even in Kabul…In recent years, the city’s economy has flourished as its proximity to Central Asia and its relative peace and stability have transformed it into a trading hub…The sex trade has [always] existed in one form or another…even under the ultraconservative rule of the Taliban. But officials here say the rapid spread of mobile technology has made the business easier to manage and harder to detect…Women…host clients in a series of apartments…The point of contact is typically a man who orchestrates the meet-ups by cellphone. This has made the business tough to infiltrate for those police officials eager to crack down…[sex workers] are almost always impoverished and typically divorced or widowed, struggling to support a family…they risk death if they are discovered…
“The Supreme Court [of India] sought response from the government on a plea to block and ban porn sites on the internet, particularly those showing child pornography…The petition filed by Indore-based advocate Kamlesh Vaswani said watching obscene videos is not an offence but it is one of the major causes for crime against women…” As we know, this is the exact opposite of the truth.
Even the police state seems unable to explain what legitimate public interest is served by jailing a 69-year-old quadriplegic polio victim who breathes through a ventilator for the “crime” of having sexual feelings. In 2011 he was “convicted” of helping sex workers find safe clients by running a screening service, and apparently the terms of his probation demand he not be sexual in any way; unsurprisingly, he has been caught violating that condition twice so far.
…As part of a legal settlement, Tennessee-based Stop Child Trafficking Now…will agree to follow a list of requirements if it returns to Missouri…some of the stipulations include [detailing] how donated funds will be spent in the Kansas City area…[and] an accurate depiction of the organization’s accomplishments. A 41 Action News investigation…followed the money trail and fact-checked some of SCTNow’s bold claims made on its website…hundreds of thousands of dollars [went] to fund private “special operatives” teams to gather undercover intelligence about child sex trafficking…[but] when pressed for more details, SCTNow could not point to a single case in the country where information lead to an arrest or prosecution…
The Gambia introduced…new laws…criminalising male prostitution [and] cross-dressing…Any man or boy who solicits, is “attired in the fashion of a woman” in a public place or who “practises sodomy as a means of livelihood or as a profession” now faces a hefty fine and jail term of up to five years…
Where’s the outcry from picket-fence gay activists? {sound of crickets} I reckon they don’t want to be soil their newfound respectability by speaking up for drag hookers any more.
Dr. Laura Agustín on how all prohibitionism is the same:
…outlawing activities accomplishes only one thing…It tells citizens that government has decided something is Wrong…Sending A Message is the principle …behind the Swedish state’s…law against buying sex, and…behind all the [others]…who want the law for their countries. Everyone wants to be seen to be Taking a Stand against immoral behaviour. Try bringing evidence into the conversation and you will quickly learn how irrelevant it is; you can find Swedish promoters themselves saying things like We know it doesn’t work but we want to be in the forefront of Gender Justice…Any other claim about what prohibitionist laws achieve when they outlaw social activities like sex, drinking and drugs is not supported by evidence. That’s because, after the law is passed and the message is sent, individuals deal with prohibition deviously…So buyers and sellers of drugs, alcohol and sex become creative, some of them maintaining a disapproving stance in public at the same time…
This is, of course, why self-reporting about paying for sex has become so absurdly inaccurate.
A new Ohio law bans teachers from discussing “any gateway sexual activity or health message that encourages students to experiment with sexual activity” and allows parents to sue for “damages” if they claim a teacher has done so. What exactly are “gateway sexual activities”, you ask? The law doesn’t say, but we know that in Tennessee they include hand-holding.
Add Latin America to the list of regions that do sex work activism more effectively than the US:
A new study, designed and carried out by the network of female sex workers in Latin America and Caribbean (REDTRASEX), has documented legislation that affects sex work – as well as detailing what this means in practice…independent sex work is not prohibited in any of the countries studied. What is criminalized…is proxenetism (or ‘pimping’) and…“immoral” behaviours or disturbances to the peace or public order are applied in relation to sex work. Furthermore…confusing sex workers…with trafficked persons…silences the legitimate voices of sex workers and actually blocks discussions on how to end human trafficking. This creates a framework of legitimacy for police repression and state violence…[and] results in a culture of secrecy around sex work, increasing stigma and the vulnerability of sex workers…
The study is available in Spanish, and I’ll provide the English translation as soon as it’s available.
The Leading Players in the Field, Not (TW3 #14)
Gloria Steinem is at it again, now in collusion with rescue industry NGO Apne Aap: “On April 18, human rights activists Gloria Steinem and Ruchira Gupta will kick off a two-day symposium at Smith College, ‘Trafficking Sex: Politics, Policy, Personhood’…” Note the unintentional irony of prohibitionists borrowing the term “personhood” from their anti-abortion rights soulmates.
Held Together With Lies (TW3 #28)
Despite a total lack of evidence (“[trafficking] convictions [declined] 13 percent”), Chicken Licken and other overly-excitable barnyard fowl ordered EU member states “to get a move on with adopting tough new rules against human trafficking or face sanctions as a first report on the problem showed ‘modern-day slavery’ worsening”. Obviously math isn’t the typical politician’s strong suit, but one would think even they could comprehend that the larger estimates might have something to do with the fact that they “[broadened] the definition of the crime” two years ago; now they’re claiming “the trafficking business is second-only in illegal activity to the weapons trade”, up from the equally-bogus assertion that it was third. Anyone want to take bets on whether it will rise to first before the hysteria collapses?
“Texas lawmakers…[want to criminalize] advertisements soliciting prostitution…‘the Backpage Bill’…would make it a felony to buy such advertising and might press Backpage.com to get out of the business.” It will do nothing of the kind and these politicians know it. But because they don’t pay the cost of defending tyrannical and patently-unconstitutional laws, they’re perfectly happy to buy votes from control freaks at taxpayer expense.
The news that “San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón has agreed to make a ban on using condoms as evidence of prostitution permanent” is good (though as a policy rather than a law it could be revoked at a moment’s notice), but dig Gascón’s bizarre and Orwellian claim around mid-article that criminalization and police harassment of women are for our “protection”.
…we’ve been hearing it for years. Gay marriage is a slippery slope! A gateway drug! If we legalize it, then what’s next? Legalized polygamy? We can only hope…let’s not forget that the fight doesn’t end with same-sex marriage…Legalized polygamy in the United States is…constitutional, feminist, and sex-positive…we really can make our own choices. We just might choose things people don’t like…Arguments about whether a woman’s consensual sexual and romantic choices are “healthy” should have no bearing on the legal process…It’s condescending, not supportive, to minimize them as mere “victims” without considering the possibility that some of them have simply made a different choice…
A Sydney madam has been found guilty of keeping young Malaysian students in sexual servitude…Chee Mei Wong, 39, forced the six young women to work up to 20 hours a day in the Diamonds brothel…and ordered them to perform unusual sex acts against their will so they could pay ”debts”…
Something Rotten in Sweden (TW3 #138)
More on the ugly campaign of disinformation currently being waged by “End Demand Illinois”:
…Who are the organizers of this campaign trying to communicate with? My suspicion is…people who already have a soft analysis of prostitution gleaned from watching 20/20…or true crime TV shows about sex trafficking busts…who is going to step up and be “in favor” of “modern day slavery” or “sex trafficking?” …I really want to know what it’s going to take for people to actually think about how complicated the sex trade is, and that it’s not all the same, and that ads that make us all the victims of overwhelming violence don’t do anything to actually improve our circumstances…
For Those Who Think Legalization is a Good Idea (TW3 #313)
Remember, prostitution was recently re-confirmed as legal in India, but brothels are still illegal; it’s therefore a simple matter for cops to redefine a business as a “ring”, label women of 20 to 25 as “girls”, call their arrest a “rescue” and describe imprisonment under psychological torture as “rehabilitation”. That way the money from the US and NGOs keeps rolling in.
…Fox 2000…[is] adapting Go the Fuck to Sleep for the big screen…the bedtime-story parody, written by Adam Mansbach and illustrated by Ricardo Cortés, has become something of a viral hit…It is unclear how the filmmakers plan to turn what is essentially a nursery rhyme with one punchline…into an entire feature- length film…
I hope this proves lucrative for Ricardo and also opens more doors for him.
Hi, I’ve read the article about Rebecca Dakin. I think her idea of becoming an infidelity counseler isn’t without any foundation. Working as an escort gives you the chance to get to know your clients in a very intimate way, and they tend to expose their most vulnerable sides (in my case). However, I hightly doubt the validity and reliability of her counseling sessions. Infidelity is not only about sex, but also about communication, social standards, social life etc….
Most people have had a proper education to do this.
On the other hand, I would fully support her if she decided to become a sex counseler ( to do more practical sessions). But then I doubt she would attract couples to, since sex workers have such a good reputation…….
But that’s only my opinion off course.
I started my career as an escort not that long ago, so probably I’m still lacking experience and insight.
That’s exactly what I was thinking when I read that piece. She’s making the assumption that if she turns a wife into a whore in the bedroom – then the man will not cheat. I can tell you from personal experience – this isn’t so. Oh, how I wish we were wired to be monogamous, we men, but not all of us are capable of it.
Do I think that the wife needs to give an inward look to how she fullfills her husband’s desires? Yes – I do. However, she also needs to be capable of looking at the situation and saying … “He cheated, but it’s not my fault because I’ve done everything I can. Maybe he’s trying to fullfill a desire I NEVER will be able to satisfy – and that is the desire for variety.”
Easy money! Just get the wife to watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTQnUTgLssI . Problem solved.
Regarding Barbie, you certainly have a point. On the other hand, my Lady is a victim of childhood sexual abuse, and has body image issues that express themselves as an eating disorder. NOT Anorexia or Bulemia (she overeats rather than under-eats, but the roots are similar). Nevertheless, I have spent far too much time in rooms full of adult women who look like teenaged elves. It’s creepy and pathetic and frightening, and their body self-images are very weird and very NOT-helped by the weird distortions they see everyday in the media. Of which Barbie is a small case-in-point.
One of my pet peeves in this is a magazine called SHAPE, which regularly (I want to say always, but haven’t kept careful track) features cover girls who simply don’t HAVE a ‘shape’; no hips and damn little in the breast department. Not usually really muscular either, which is a look that doesn’t bother me in the least. Just so thin that they look like adolescent boys.
Now, I think that my Lady and her fellow-sufferers are a special case. Most girls and women have better mental defenses against such idiocy than to be seriously effected by hope disrupted a doll is. But is is something that should be ridiculed. Not made an issue of LAW, just made fun of.
>saw hundreds of married men turn to her to fulfill sexual needs not being met by their wives.
So totally true. I saw this over and over. It’s not that the men wanted out of their marriages, or didn’t love their wives. Quite the reverse.
Many of the men I saw wanted the type of sex they saw in porn (regardless if they were capable of their end of that or not.) It was about fantasy.
There should be totally nothing wrong with that. It should be legal, available, and the women should come to an understanding about it. It’s not all that threatening, it’s really more threatening to a marriage when the woman makes the man feel terrible about it.
And no, I don’t think the wife ought to have to step up and provide the kind of experience I did. Most would have no idea how, and aren’t used to it. Everyone ought have the sex that they enjoy, and not have to hold back or participate in things they don’t enjoy.
>This has made the business tough to infiltrate for those police officials eager to crack down…[sex workers] are almost always impoverished and typically divorced or widowed, struggling to support a family…they risk death if they are discovered…
Let’s cut to the meat of that. Police are eager to send poor women to their deaths.
Exactly. It’s amazing how few people realize how absolutely horrible the motivations of cops, prosecutors, prohibitionists and other control freaks are once all the window-dressing and euphemisms are stripped away.
I pointed out that people who are in favor of criminalizing prostitution, are pro-death, pro-rape and pro-torture for prostitutes and this is simply the best example. Because when they altered that UN resolution to remove rights for sex workers, they were removing language that applied to Afghanistan just as much as Iceland. (Not that Afghanistan would listen to it, but right now the push is all toward criminalization, so they don’t even have to pretend to in order to get foreign aid.)
I suspect they’ll eventually collapse weapons trade and ‘trafficking’ together.
Unlikely. The weapons trade is used as a US foreign policy instrument. The government has strong incentives to not talk about it.
That’s a good point.
Re: Barbie. Victorian ladies could certainly get a wasp-waist of 18 inches by being tightly corsetted. Their viscera were, however, (1) forced upwards, significantly reducing their ventilatory capacity, and leaving them at greater risk from pneumonia; and (2) forced downwards, with greater risks of prolapse and procidentia. But since when has fashion been concerned with health?
I think Rebecca Dakin is maybe mistaken. Men cheat because we crave variety. Hard monogamy is probably impossible for most men.
Exactly! Wives need to realize that just because a husband cheats – it doesn’t mean that something is wrong with her. Now – that can be the case and she needs to sit down and analyze the relationship for that possibility – but if she’s doing everything she can then she’s not the problem.
That doesn’t mean the husband is the problem either though. A dog will occasionally relieve himself in the house – it happens – it’s in their nature. You might get disappointed about it when you find it but getting angry about it is just futile.
“The sex trade has [always] existed in one form or another…even under the ultraconservative rule of the Taliban. ”
But banning it is going to work in Sweden and Iceland, I’m sure of it!
They also claim that criminalizing the clientele helps providers.
In the case of Chee Mei Wong, the women chose a client to help them out of a bad situation; not a cop, a prosecutor, a prohibitionist, or a “rescue” activist.
Prohibition does damage, so in order to push Prohibition, you need a victim and a victimizer.
In the old Anglo-Saxon model, it was the foolish, weak man who was victimized by the temptress.
In the Swedish model, it is the innocent, weak-willed woman being defiled by the brute.
Hi Krulac, I think you’re totally right, when you’re saying “Wives need to realize that just because a husband cheats -it doesn’t mean that something is wrong with her. My opinion is that most women are too insecure to realize that. Lust is not the same as love. And the same happens to women too. I’m not a jealous person myself. The only thing I ask, if I will ever have a husband or a partner, is someone who takes care of me, and who’s able to sympathize with me. I think my partner has to be a friend, but not the ‘ideal partner or husband’. It’s a quite utopian idea that most people have, that their husband has to be this and that, and so many things……
but that’s just not realizable.
And I have this quite pessimistic view, namely that many people aren’t able to love and to take care of people (although I know exceptions too), if these people aren’t able to meet certain expectations. It makes me feel sad at times, and that’s why I decided to follow my own path, no matter what people will think of me. Because what I think , and what I want, will never be ‘good’ enough. But my way of life, is good to me. Sorry, I’m gettin a bit sentimental right now…
Coming next to an insanity near you: The scientific analysis of the body types of cartoon characters.
When the Eliot Spitzer fiasco happened four years ago, I wanted to kick Dr. Laura’s ass when she mentioned that Mrs. Spitzer was to blame for not satisfying Mr. Spitzer’s needs.
Yes, it is possible to “spice up” married love-life, but some men cannot be monogamous no matter what you do. Something “I am my kid’s Mom” should keep in mind, especially since we all know how her kid turned out.
Of course, if the husband wants something in the bedroom that the wife just can’t stomach, there’s always the possibility of her saying, “You know, you could hire somebody to do… that.”
TL;DW
But I did look it up on Amazon. Interesting book. Of course, sometimes people start with “the traditional heroes are wonderful and did so many wonderful things,” and then start to think “maybe the traditional heroes had some flaws; maybe somebody else is responsible for a few of those good things” and then quickly switch to “the traditional heroes were evil and they didn’t do anything good!” I’d have to read the book to know if that’s what’s going on here (or maybe listen to him talk about it for an hour and a half), but it looks like the sort of book I might want to read anyway.
My calculations show that if Barbie stands six feet tall in heels, she has a 22 1/2 inch waist, which is small but not ridiculously so. Interestingly, her bust would be 36 inches, which is quite reasonable for a woman standing six feet in heels. Her hips would be 30 inches, which seems a bit small but probably within normal ranges. About twenty years ago I actually had a spreadsheet which would calculate these things automatically; I used it to determine the measurements of Elves and pixies.
I don’t know where these people get their numbers.
I found it interesting that CNN called Silicon Valley’s $50,000 matchmaker a “related story.” The comments were so awful I had to close the tab or start yelling at my monitor. All in all, though, I have to say “bravo, CNN.”
First the Bay Area story and now the Afghanistan story. I do believe the tide is turning. It isn’t turned, but it’s turning.
OK, I’ll move on to “The End of the Beginning” and come back to this after that.
The porn-rape link has been demonstrated to be false so many times, it’s amazing that anybody still tries to claim it. But enough people are willing to believe it that the false perception trumps the reality. I think it could be reasonably now be classified as a superstition.
I don’t know why there would even be any anti-porn feature of probation. He didn’t commit some porn-related crime; it was prostitution-related. This makes no sense even if you believe that prostitution should be illegal.
When you’re given buckets of money to fight a problem which either doesn’t exist or barely exists, you have to spend that money on something. I wonder what Stop Child Trafficking Now is expecting to spend it all on?
Way to go, Gambia. Another way to waste money and make life harder for your citizens.
Maybe we need more gangster movies set during Prohibition. Remind people how this worked out last time.
OK, I’m about to go grocery shopping, and I’m going to have to flee home again, perhaps until the 15th. But I really can continue to catch up at Laura’s, if I just will.
If the law doesn’t spell out what is prohibited, it’s going to be awfully hard to not break the law. Romeo & Juliette contains gateway sexual activities, but every school I know of includes it in the curriculum.
Surely all these nations legalizing or decriminalizing prostitution and NOT going up in smoke has to have an impact, especially in this Internet age. It’s awfully slow in coming, though.
It would be nice if they recognized the personhood of sex workers and, BTW, my browser’s spell checker didn’t recognize the word personhood.
I do think that it will rise to number one, but from there it has only two ways to go: it can move right back down, or it can rise one more spot… to zero.
Little that Texas does surprises me anymore.
OK, see you later!
That’s why I included a polyamorous married squiggle in my latest writing project, and in fact they are the main characters. I took the slippery slope and slid with it, saying, in effect, “Well, what if we do follow same-sex marriage with plural marriage?” I may or may not ever write much more, though the dinosaurs do make it something beyond a thought experiment in plural marriage. And no, there is no legal dinosaur marriage.
It’s a good thing if we are reminded, from time to time, that real sex trafficking does exist. It gets lost in all the mirages, but we need to be reminded what the reality is.
And what it is not. Way to go, Illinois. Sheesh.
As far as I can tell, it’s just a nursery rhyme that throws the word fuck in several times. I’m going to write Ring Around the Fucking Rosey and see if anybody will cut me a check. Oh, wait: a fucking check.
[…] [are indicators of women’s] self-loathing” and mercilessly ridicule those who spend their time calculating the body proportions of plastic dolls, I do think it’s worth discussing the way people of both […]
[…] come out with a new draconian law designed to save nonexistent “trafficked children” by shredding the Constitution and scattering its remains to the four winds; and even countries which have previously taken a […]