I hurt people . . . and then I make their cocaine fucking appear. – Constable James Ebdon
This was not a good week for me; on Tuesday night my slave hard drive (the one where all my data is saved) crashed, which meant I had to recreate yesterday’s and today’s columns (which were already mostly done) from memory. And though Outlook was supposed to be saving my mail and backup file on two separate drives, it seems it wasn’t. So now a data retrieval expert has my drive and will be letting me know sometime today if he can get my stuff back, so I don’t lose all my mail and a lot of other good stuff. No one person really dominated the links this week; our top contributor, Mike Siegel, only edged out two others by providing the first video (a simple but extremely effective horror short). The second video is a Taiwanese parody of the New York “stop and frisk” training video, and the links between the two were supplied by Grace, Gideon, Jesse Walker, Radley Balko (two links), Michael Whiteacre (two links), and Jillian Keenan (in that order); plus Mistress Matisse (“sex kittens”) and Emil Kirkegaard (“because he can”).
The greatest special-effects artist of all time has passed away at the age of 92. His movies are among my all-time favorites, and no digital creature has ever entertained me as much as Ray’s masterful puppetry still does. And even though he’s been retired for 32 years, I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that the world will be just a little less magical without him.
Formalised money-sex exchanges get the attention and conflict…lots of other exchanges are ignored, a line is drawn between commercial and non-commercial sex. But that line is imaginary. Many people who expect to be compensated for their company will never call themselves sex workers or escorts…
A Colorado woman was convicted of prostitution for answering a personal ad; after trying to talk her into having sex in a parking lot, a disguised cop “shoved a fistful of cash in front of her face and issued a command: ‘TAKE IT!’…Moments later, the car was surrounded [by] ‘Guns and guys in black with masks on’…the prosecution focused on the word ‘roses’ in the Craigslist ad…” Maybe if this sort of thing starts to happen more often, amateurs will start to wake up to the fact that anti-whore laws harm everyone.
[For] five years…[William Coleman has been] force-fed…Starving himself…is the only way he has to…protest his conviction. Not eating is his only available free speech act…He and his lawyer have gone to court to stop the force-feedings, but a judge ruled against him in March…Coleman is…[not at] Guantánamo…where a mass hunger strike of 100 prisoners has brought…force-feeding to American newspapers, if not American consciences…but…in Connecticut…Guantánamo is not an anomaly. Prisoners…are routinely and systematically force-fed every day…force-feedings…are considered torture by most of the world’s medical and governing bodies…yet most media outlets continue to portray feeding tube use as a “complex ethical debate.” It’s not. Competent prisoners go on hunger strike because they have something to say and no other way to say it. Prison officials choose not to hear — and silence them with tubes…
American’s mathematical illiteracy goes clear up to the White House, whose spokesman recently claimed that almost 4% of school-age American girls have become “child sex slaves” since the beginning of the panic a decade ago. Also of note: since the government was unable to shut down Backpage via unconstitutional censorship demands, it is now claiming that it intentionally gave up trying.
Routledge (Taylor & Francis Group) have announced…a new journal devoted to the study of pornography. Porn Studies, to be edited by Professor Feona Attwood of Middlesex University and Dr Clarissa Smith of the University of Sunderland, will be the first dedicated, international, peer-reviewed journal to critically explore those cultural products and services designated as pornographic and their cultural, economic, historical, institutional, legal and social contexts…
…Thousands of sex workers in Sonagachi have lost their lifelong savings…in Ponzi schemes…”about [30 million rupees] has been lost”…[said] Bharati [of Durbar Mahila Samanaya Committee]…Till 2004-05…sex workers [only] deposited their earnings and took loans…[at] Usha Bank…but…7-8 agents [who] were sacked by [the] Bank…continued to operate in the red light area. “Sex workers were easily trapped because the agents were well known to them or were their relatives…” [said a bank officer]…Bharati says, “We…repeatedly issued warnings…But you can’t stop anyone…hell bent to invest her hard earned money in schemes promising much higher returns.” The Durbar has recently launched a massive awareness programme…
…Dongguan…has a population of about 7 million and a reputation as the Chinese capital of sex…Between 500,000 and 800,000 people – some 10 per cent of Dongguan’s migrant population – are in some way employed in the world’s oldest profession…[including] 300,000 sex workers…[but] authorities are now…trying to push prostitution off Dongguan’s streets with a crackdown…
A company within Sweden’s home care services…mistreated migrant workers by making false promises about work conditions…Hassan…said that his official job offer stated that he would be employed full-time by…TPS Vårdteam…with a monthly wage of 26,500 kronor ($4,000)…”In the beginning I didn’t get any work at all…Then I had to work seven days a week….[for] only…8,000 kronor per month”…the company had not paid in any taxes at all for Hassan…
Tulsa police have…charged 23 individuals under a state law that permits a felony to be filed when a person suspected of prostitution is arrested within 1,000 feet of a church or school. “It’s just a nightmare,” said defense attorney, Charles Kania…a “scarlet letter on their foreheads that follows them forever”…The felony charges are part of a stepped-up effort by police to get tough on prostitution…Sgt. Todd Evans said…”Most of Tulsa is within a thousand feet of a church or school”…[and] police have sometimes opted to book individuals under another statute that makes it a felony to utilize a computer to violate any state law…
…Active Blessing Uganda…[promised that children] would get an education and live a better life…instead [they were] denied basic rights and exploited…76 children, aged between four and 16 years, have been rescued from the alleged human traffickers…the children are malnourished…do domestic work…in return for food and when they fall sick…are not cared for…the parents [were]…always prevented…from visiting…
…Being poor in the Philippines…means…no matter how much you believe things to be wrong you must believe it to be right when the rich, your master (amo)…[says] so…That…[is] why it was not difficult for the feminist (abolitionists) to appropriate our voices and to start…speaking for themselves in our name…For years, we could only stand , mouths gagged, as we watched our new “amos” build their careers speaking for other underprivileged and “mindless” women in their list who they claim do not have the ability to speak for themselves…We…do not understand the arrogance by which they have anointed themselves our saviors…what we want is save ourselves from them instead…we really do not care about “patriarchy”, “commodification” and other words they spew. Those matters don’t bring food on our table nor pay for our rent. All we are interested in is to work undisturbed…It is time to tell the world that only sex workers [can] speak for sex workers…
Last month saw the publication of the EU’s first Trafficking in Human Beings report, which…is (properly) littered with disclaimers…Unfortunately…the press release…[went] for the handy soundbite…so we’ve been deluged with headlines like “Human trafficking increased by 18%” when…the report doesn’t show it did any such thing…if all the statistics were accepted as readily as the “18% increase” has been, it would be a little bit inconvenient for some…Contrary to what we’re constantly told by the anti-trafficking movement, the most recent figures make it hard to discern any link between trafficking and the legal status of sex work. The Dutch rate is very high, but the Cyprus rate is higher – and Cyprus has much stricter laws than the Netherlands…Romania, where sex work itself is illegal, is nearly as high. Hungary (legal), Portugal (legal) and Lithuania (illegal) are tied for last. Austria and Germany are also relatively low – in fact, Germany and Sweden are tied, at 0.8 per 100,000. And the German rate has remained more or less constant over the three years surveyed, while Sweden’s has quadrupled…But sex workers’ rights advocates shouldn’t leap on those figures, either, because truthfully the whole report is pretty hopelessly undermined by its methodological weaknesses…
Sometime…[in] April, an Ohio transgender woman was…stabbed repeatedly and then tied to a concrete block and cast into a pond. She was left with no clothes below the waist, perhaps to shame her…But…insensitive stories by the local press…[wrote] about [her] as if she were a bizarre spectacle, not a victimized human being…the Cleveland Plain Dealer…used a mugshot of [Cemia] Acoff instead of the other readily available photos…the [headline which now reads]…“Oddly dressed body found in Olmsted Township identified,” originally said “oddly dressed man,” (you can see it in the url; it was changed after readers and activists protested)…the story [also] refers to her as Carl Acoff (her birth name) and uses a male pronoun...[a follow-up] story…details what she was wearing…lists old petty “crimes”…[and refers to the] hormones [she was carrying as] “dangerous drugs”…
…The anti-sex trafficking cause is already thick with moral panic, misinformation, and ill-informed, PR-boosting celebrity activists, and you’re cluttering the already-diminished discourse with further nonsense….[which spawns] attitudes and policies that actively harmsex workers. You are ignoring the freely-available perspectives and requests of real-life sex workers because they interfere with your romantic notion of the Prostituted Woman as a forlorn, passive victim who needs to be saved. If you engage with sex workers before you form a view on what’s oppressing them, you might find that criminalisation and stigma are higher-priority concerns than mythical drug-dealing pimps wielding persuasive charm and Beyoncé’s hotpants…
…an undercover police officer…[repeatedly paid for sex] over five months…in a fight against prostitution and human trafficking. Officers say such methods led to…[their raiding] two businesses [and] arresting…four alleged prostitutes and two alleged pimps. But the methods…were criticized…by legal…experts and women’s advocates as excessive, unnecessary and misapplied…prostitutes can be arrested and charged in Indiana as soon as an agreement to pay for a sex act is made…Plus…if the women indeed had been…working…against their will, the sex acts they performed on the officer only contributed to their humiliation, exploitation and degradation…Aaron Dietz, head of the…Task Force…which conducted the nine-month sting, said…the sophisticated nature of the prostitution ring required officers to take more extreme measures…Dietz and others wanted to emphasize that it was not a pleasurable experience for the officer, but entirely necessary. “No one…really wants to go into these…It’s something that’s ethically and morally very trying, so I’d do anything to keep guys out of there.”
You’d do anything? Then how about advocating for decriminalization, you fucking filthy liar?
An inability to tell fantasy from reality would normally be considered evidence of psychosis, but in law enforcement it’s a job requirement. – Maggie McNeill
Since at least the time of Plato, the natural world was generally viewed in Western thought as corrupt, foul and bad; this idea entered Christianity via Gnosticism and dominated philosophy until the advent of the Romantic Era in the late 18th century. Anything of the natural world (including, of course, sex) was to be looked down upon and avoided wherever possible; the things of the mind and spirit were what was important, and those who wished to appear superior to others removed themselves from the natural world and eschewed the “pleasures of the flesh” (at least in public). The Romantics, however, rejected all that; they taught that the natural world was innately good, that childhood “innocence” (i.e. closeness to the natural state) was a thing to be cherished, that primitive people were “noble savages” and that “natural” living was purer and better than “artificial”. This was decidedly a minority viewpoint; the growing middle class of 19th-century Europe and America still saw untamed Nature as rather nasty, and those who lived closer to it than they (in other words, the working class) as inferiors to be “improved” by curing them of their dedication to physical pleasures such as sex and liquor.
But humans are not known for logical consistency, and the bourgeois less so than most; as the Victorian Era wore on, some elements of Romantic philosophy were absorbed into the common weltanschauung, even when they contradicted other aspects of it. For example, the “innocence” of children became the center of a veritable cult despite the fact that adults were expected to behave in an incredibly artificial manner, and “natural” foods and medicines were all the rage in the “social purity” crowd because they were believed to excite the (natural) physical passions less than highly processed ones! But if the Victorians’ beliefs were incongruous, those of the neo-Victorians are even worse: while they reject the belief that sex is innately bad, they also believe against all reason and evidence that it’s something like a radioactive material which must be handled with special and elaborate precautions or else it becomes the single most destructive force on Earth. They imagine that engaging in sex for the “wrong” reasons, or without the benediction of elaborate rituals of consent, or with people separated from one another by more than a very few years of age, is terribly harmful. They believe that merely taking pictures of the taboo act creates a kind of Gorgonic icon which drives its viewers mad, and that the mere existence of such images harms women and children who are not even in close proximity to it. And they fervently assert that it is so incredibly dangerous to the sacred “innocence” of “children” (a term which refers not to true children, but to a ritual category which actually includes some adults), for strangers to even imagine sexual contact with them causes such tremendous harm that those who indulge in these Forbidden Thoughts deserve penalties greater than those for violent assault, followed by lifelong social ostracism.
Needless to say, most of this has only the most tenuous basis in reality, and some of it none at all. But the desire to describe Nature (especially sex) as “good” or “bad” is a very strong one, and for the neo-Victorian mind to accept sex into the “good” category it must be ritually purified by amputating all of its darker aspects, branding even the discussion of them as “violence”, and even pretending that they aren’t even sex at all. This belief flies in the face of reality; sex, fear, dominance and violence are inextricably bound together, and only by living in a state of complete denial can someone pretend that the only valid, “healthy” and legal sex is that which is so sanitized and neutered that it resembles the real thing about as closely as a hamburger does a heifer. Even many unadventurous people have a few rather dark fantasies or repressed turn-ons, and a few have fantasies that if acted upon would be evil indeed (as my friend Philippa used to say, “good fantasy, bad reality”). But the mere existence of violent, dark fantasies does not indicate a corresponding plan to carry them out; probably 99% of all sexual fantasies are never acted upon, and when it comes to those involving unquestionably evil acts I’m sure the percentage is higher still. Furthermore, the mere discussion of such fantasies with others does not constitute a conspiracy to turn them into reality. But in a world where prosecution for thoughtcrime has become a grim reality, it might be wise to restrict such discussions to fully-anonymized online accounts and to encrypt any files referring to the fantasy; otherwise you could end up like Gilberto Valle:
…agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation took Officer Valle into custody…after they uncovered several plots to kidnap, rape, cook and eat women…the officer’s estranged wife recently contacted the F.B.I. to report that…[he] viewed and kept disturbing items on his computer…[though he] never followed through on any of the acts he is accused of discussing. His lawyer…said the officer committed no crime. “At worst, this is someone who has sexual fantasies…There is no actual crossing the line from fantasy to reality,” she added…
At first I leaned toward believing the allegations, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that these were almost certainly no more than extreme fantasies used by a vindictive ex to put him away; the only reason I had given the story as much credence as I did was that it’s very easy to believe a cop capable of acts of extreme, non-consensual sadism. Then just a few weeks ago, I went from “almost certain” to “dead certain”:
A high-ranking police official…and a former high-school librarian were charged…in a plot to kidnap, torture and kill women and children, federal prosecutors said. Richard Meltz…and Robert Christopher Asch…were held without bail…Peter Brill, an attorney for Mr. Meltz, said his client “had no interest or intention of hurting anybody…it was never anything other than a fantasy”…An official said the case against the men grew out of an investigation in which a former New York Police Department officer was charged and convicted in a plot to kidnap, rape, cook and eat women. The former officer, Gilberto Valle, was convicted in March and is awaiting sentencing.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard of an organized interstate gang of serial killers who plot capers for months on the internet without ever carrying a single one out. I think it’s pretty obvious that what the defense attorneys in both cases said is true: these are men with a very extreme BDSM fantasy who are being sacrificed to further the dominant cultural myth that sex can be purified, sanctified and tamed.
I lurk at your site frequently, and love the way you write. My own blog deals with…marriage topics, and one of my most popular subjects is “girl game”. In these posts I try to explain to my female readers some of the psychology behind why and how men like to have sex, and what they can do to cater to it. Most of the time I’m actually explaining the usual “why men go see whores” meme in different ways, and I have had some good response to it. I’ve covered the GFE, the Happy Ending, and a couple of other professional go-to moves, but I was wondering if you had any further ideas in that direction. What were the common reasons men saw you when you practiced, and how could their wives have countered their decision to go to a pro by giving them what they wanted at home?
The three most common reasons married men see whores could be abbreviated as “She doesn’t”, “She won’t” and “She isn’t”. The first is wholly in the woman’s court, the last wholly in the man’s, and the second somewhere in between. “She doesn’t” means the wife just doesn’t provide enough sex, or that the sex she provides is so lackluster it isn’t satisfying to the husband. “She won’t” means the wife won’t do something the husband really yearns for, whether that be a particular activity (such as oral sex) or a mode of behavior (such as role-play or just being enthusiastic). “She isn’t” means the wife is simply no longer sufficient for the husband’s desire no matter what she does; either age or weight has made her unattractive to him, or he can’t see her as sexual after having kids due to a bad case of the Madonna/whore duality, or he has a strong need for variety. “She doesn’t” and most “She won’t” are completely under the wife’s control; giving one’s husband the kind of good, enthusiastic sex he craves will go a long way toward sapping his desire to see whores. If the man’s desire is for something the woman actually can’t provide (such as an energetic PSE when she’s over 50 and no longer athletic), a frank discussion of alternatives which might do the trick is in order; if it’s something for which she has a visceral repulsion (such as cross-dressing), he may not even dare to mention it to her and then, obviously, it moves into “She isn’t”.
By definition, there is less a woman can do to circumvent “She isn’t” issues, unless they’re purely dependent on something like her weight. That’s quite rare despite what you might think; I can’t recall very many cases of a man telling me that his wife was still very interested in sex, but that she was so fat or old or whatever that he couldn’t get interested. Though some feminists like to rant about male shallowness in this regard, the truth is that in the overwhelming majority of cases it’s a wife’s attitude and behavior which turn her husband off rather than her physical appearance (though obviously, if she pointedly insists that she doesn’t care about her appearance it says a lot about her attitude, no?) The need for variety is a tough one, but not insurmountable; if a wife comes up with ways to spice things up (or even just responds favorably to her husband’s ideas) his hindbrain can often be tricked into perceiving her as different, and therefore satisfying to his need for variety. If that’s not enough, there are couple calls and wife swapping, which allow the husband to satisfy his craving for “strange” under controlled conditions rather than acting behind the wife’s back. Of course, if it’s the illicit nature of trysts with hookers which turns him on, that’s going to present a problem; if he craves sneaking around behind his wife’s back, he’s not likely to be satisfied with activities she attends, arranges or even simply condones. The same could be said of the Madonna/whore issue, which might require some kind of counseling to help him get over it. Still, those represent a very small minority of cases; most of the time, an attentive and caring wife can keep her husband from straying by simply taking her own responsibilities seriously, and by helping him to do the same for his.
If mankind minus one were of one opinion, then mankind is no more justified in silencing the one than the one – if he had the power – would be justified in silencing mankind. – John Stuart Mill
After thinking seriously about morality and ethics since my early teens, I eventually arrived about 15 years ago at a simple working definition of evil: “The attempt to inflict control upon others that they neither desire nor require.” If an individual wants to be controlled, giving it to him is not evil; if he needs to be controlled to stop him from harming others (or, if a child, himself), giving it to him is a necessity (though depending on how it’s handled, possibly a necessary evil or distortion of a necessity into evil). The right of the individual to be individual is otherwise inarguable; every individual has the right to survive, to follow his own path of growth and happiness, and to defend himself, so long as he affords others the same rights. Furthermore, these rights are indivisible and non-commutative; they cannot be subdivided, added to those of another or re-assigned to someone else. Each individual entity, no matter how large or small, has the same rights, and large groups do not gain more rights by adding those of their members together. The rights of each individual, no matter how small his minority group, are inalienable; even if he is the only representative of a wholly unique species, he would still have the same rights as everyone else, no matter how many “felt” or “thought” or “voted” that his rights should be abrogated (not even for “the public good”), unless (and only if) he abrogates the rights of another individual first (such as by violent attack). Violence is not the only form of evil, but it is the most severe, and even most of the non-violent forms are enabled by the threat of violence. Use of violence or threat of violence against an individual who has not himself violated or attempted to violate anyone else’s rights is always wrong and always evil, no matter how offensive, unpleasant, unpopular, weak, strong, poor, wealthy, stupid, intelligent or whatever he may be, and no matter which mores, rules, ordinances or laws he has broken.
There are those, possibly among those reading this, who would argue with some or all of this definition, who would like to pretend that there are certain “mitigating circumstances” or conditions under which some group has the right to inflict unprovoked violence upon another; they pretend that it’s moral to physically restrain him, violate his privacy, interfere with his interpersonal relations and private arrangements, steal his property or impede his free movement simply because he has done something or belongs to some group they don’t like. But that is a slippery slope indeed, because once we allow this the number of excuses for violence inevitably increases, and the size of the consensus needed to trigger the violence inevitably decreases, until we reach the nadir of America in 2013: a single individual can now inflict horrific violence upon anyone he chooses, so long as the aggressor has the right credentials and accuses his victim of the right “offense”. Nor are state actors the only ones who can get away with this; the right accusation by virtually anyone sets the machinery of the state in motion to crush the hapless individual hurled into it, and even many innocent bystanders who just happen to get in the way.
That last is the main reason that extremely large entities of any kind are dangerous, and need to be dismantled or at least heavily defended against. We all know what happens when a mob, an army, a large corporation, a government or other large, powerful entity actually intends to harm individuals or smaller collectives, but some of these are so large and ungainly that they cannot avoid harming others even when it isn’t intended. A bull in a china shop probably has no desire to break anything, but it’s exceedingly likely that he will; his size, strength, robustness and lack of agility combine to doom any of the comparatively small, fragile objects into which he cannot help blundering while attempting to operate in an environment to which he is unsuited. The same can be said of elephants stampeding toward a native village in a jungle movie; the panicked pachyderms merely want to save themselves from whatever has frightened them, and any destruction of breakable property and tiny humans who happen to get in their way is incidental. A government so large that it consumes most of its host-country’s gross domestic product in return for very little, and which limits individual freedom by its very existence, is much too large. A financial institution so huge that governments cannot prosecute it for flagrantly criminal behavior (due to fear of the economic repercussions) is dangerously huge. The fact that these institutions have millions of supporters is irrelevant; those numbers do not add up to greater rights than those of even the smallest, poorest, weakest individual they have harmed. It is long past time to either cut these leviathans down to size, or else to restrain them in such a way that their careless movements cannot crush us by the thousands without their even noticing.
He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. – Thomas Paine
As we’ve discussed before, erosion of civil liberties always begins with unpopular groups, and then once the precedents are established they are gradually extended to everyone else. Nobody minds when it’s “just” criminals, undesirables, foreigners, heretics, slackers, sinners, perverts and whores being persecuted; in fact they cheer officials “getting tough” and decry instances where the worst consequences are avoided due to “legal loopholes”. And while the useful idiots are cheering tyranny and supporting politicians who increase it, the categories get broader and more numerous until one day it’s their door being smashed down in a “no-knock raid”, or their daughter being arrested for wearing a miniskirt and carrying condoms, or their children being abducted because someone didn’t like photos they took, and suddenly they’re concerned about civil rights a generation too late to do anything about it. Last month there was a perfect example in the Wall Street Journal:
I am a feminist. I have marched at the barricades, subscribed to Ms. magazine, and knocked on many a door in support of progressive candidates committed to women’s rights. Until a month ago, I would have expressed unqualified support for Title IX and for the Violence Against Women Act. But that was before my son, a senior at a small liberal-arts college in New England, was charged—by an ex-girlfriend—with alleged acts of “nonconsensual sex” that supposedly occurred during the course of their relationship a few years earlier. What followed was a nightmare—a fall through Alice’s looking-glass into a world that I could not possibly have believed existed…Title IX…has obliterated the presumption of innocence that is so foundational to our traditions of justice…the tribunal does pretty much whatever it wants, showing scant regard for fundamental fairness, due process of law, and the well-established rules and procedures that have evolved under the Constitution for citizens’ protection…
…the…allegations were a barrage of vague statements, rendering any defense virtually impossible…Nor were [they] supported by any evidence other than the word of the ex-girlfriend. The hearing itself was a two-hour ordeal of unabated grilling by the school’s committee, during which, my son later reported, he was expressly denied his request to be represented by counsel…The many pages of written documentation that my son had put together…were dismissed as somehow not relevant…witnesses against him were not identified to him, nor was he allowed to confront or question either them or his accuser. Thankfully, I happen to be an attorney and had the resources to provide the necessary professional assistance to my son. The charges against him were ultimately dismissed but not before he and our family had to suffer through this ordeal…I fear that in the current climate the goal of “women’s rights,” with the compliance of politically motivated government policy and the tacit complicity of college administrators, runs the risk of grounding our most cherished institutions in a veritable snake pit of injustice…Unbridled feminist orthodoxy is no more the answer than are attitudes and policies that victimize the victim.
Cry me a fucking river. Judith Grossman’s son escaped with his academic career, reputation and future intact; how many young men with less wealthy and well-connected parents can say the same? The abominable policies she and other soi-disant “feminists” have supported for decades have made a mockery of the justice system, creating kangaroo courts where evidence is optional and accusers are afforded special protections not given in any other crime, including murder; in the hothouse environment of universities, where administrators avoid anything that might jeopardize political goodwill, it’s even worse. As Scott Greenfield writes in his commentary on the article,
This was about promoting the feminist agenda that no woman who alleged that she had been sexually abused, no matter what evidence she had or existed to the contrary, should ever, ever, lose. This isn’t a contrarian view, or a secret scheme, but as open and apparent as could be. It affected the serious and foolish alike. It was a policy choice. They would rather ten innocent male students be expelled than one false accusation of sexual misconduct fail. And it not only seemed like a good idea at the time, but was bolstered by legal scholars who ridiculed the notion that the rights afforded to criminal defendants, due process, reliable evidence, confrontation, double jeopardy, have any place in university discipline when a claim of sexual abuse was on the table. Anyone who thought the accused deserved half a chance was a misogynist, which is one step above a rapist and deserving of whatever pain was inflicted anyway.
But as Greenfield points out, even when people like Grossman wake up to the reality of the monster they have invited into their homes, they still only acknowledge that tiny portion of the injustice machinery by which they, personally, have been affected:
…Judith Grossman’s…vision is still limited to that which touched her life. The evil she sees is “unbridled feminist orthodoxy,” because her son was charged with sexual misconduct. But it’s no more evil than any agenda stoked by the “current climate” of fear. I hope she is never forced to come to the larger epiphany because her son has been accused of some other offense against some other orthodoxy…she still has a very long trip ahead of her before she realizes what the “tradition of justice” really means.
This is the most difficult part of getting people to open their eyes to the dire state of civil liberties in America: all but the most benighted souls support protections for their loved ones and groups for whom they feel sympathy, but I’m afraid very few understand that the most important rights are those afforded to the people we can’t stand, because they are the ones the tyrants are most likely to use to pry open loopholes that never stay small for long.
Several [congresscritters claim]…that climate change…could…drive poor women to “transactional sex”…The resolution, from Rep. Barbara Lee…and a dozen other Democrats, says…”[F]ood insecure women with limited socioeconomic resources may be vulnerable to situations such as sex work, transactional sex, and early marriage that put them at risk for HIV, STIs, unplanned pregnancy, and poor reproductive health”…
“Vulnerable to sex work” may be an even more agency-annihilating phrase than “prostituted woman”.
…a number of [recent] conversations around sex work, autonomy and feminism…trotted out the tired idea that sex work degrades and harms all women…I have a number of [sex worker] friends and acquaintances…and I’m tired of seeing their lives denigrated because of how they choose to make money…Demonising sex workers under the guise of “helping” them is simply a way of expressing puritanical snobbery…[and] relies more on myths and prejudices than any real knowledge…
Western Australia’s war on whores continues: “The City of Vincent is considering a high-tech surveillance system that captures…licence plate information to help track kerb crawlers…mayor Alannah MacTiernan said…statistics proved more needed to be done to stamp out street prostitution and protect residents…she…also wants to name and shame people convicted of soliciting…” Obviously, there is no actual crime in Vincent.
…Sex work…is one of the few areas…that allows the worker a wide variety of choices in how…where…and when they work. It…provides a relatively good [cash]…return…for those…with few choices or…who need to make money quickly and anonymously…This…is…why sex work survives and flourishes no matter how [persecuted it is]…
This article starts by claiming that “Police have a growing fear about the spread of human trafficking” due to “the growth of gambling in Maryland”. But the text (which reads more like a Salvation Army screed than a news item) is about the cops “rescuing” a hooker by deceiving her, arresting her and abducting her children so she can be “saved from selling her body.” After reading that, I feel I need to wash my eyeballs.
Harsh public registration laws often punish youth sex offenders for life and do little to protect public safety, Human Rights Watch said in…Raised on the Registry: The Irreparable Harm of Placing Children on Sex Offender Registries in the US…the laws…[make] them targets for harassment, humiliation, and even violence…[and] severely restrict where, and with whom [they] may live, work, attend school, or even spend time…Human Rights Watch interviewed 281 youth sex offenders, whose median age at offense was 15, across 20 states, as well as hundreds of offenders’ family members, defense attorneys, prosecutors, judges, law enforcement officials, experts on the topic, and victims of child-on-child sexual assault…Numerous studies estimate the recidivism rate among children who commit sexual offenses to be between 4 and 10 percent, compared with a 13 percent rate for adult sex offenders and a national rate of 45 percent for all crimes…
“Monica Contreras went to family court with her 2-year-old daughter in August 2011….on a routine divorce case”, but as she was leaving the Las Vegas courtroom Ron Fox, a bailiff-like cop called a “marshal”, ordered her into an anteroom (supposedly for a “drug search”) and groped her. She went back into the courtroom and complained to the presiding official, Patricia Donninger, who literally ignored her; Fox then had her arrested for “false allegations made against a police officer.” Nothing was done until the video below was discovered and publicized by KLAS-TV; Fox was fired but is suing to get his job back, and Donninger is being investigated.
Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, a cop named Aravanh Lakmany was sentenced to only two years in jail after pleading guilty to “extortion by threat and three counts of solicitation of prostitutes,” thus escaping a much longer sentence and sex offender registration for raping three whores.
Chicago Shakespeare Theater presents Roadkill, an immersive, theatrical event spotlighting the global issue of sex trafficking. Based on real-life experiences, the American premiere of Cora Bissett’s chilling production…[allows] audience members…to witness firsthand the brutal realities behind the newspaper headlines…
…the United States may have been giving special treatment to major powers China, Russia, and India…[and] let even Uzbekistan off the hook…because of the repressive nation’s cooperation in getting supplies to American troops in Afghanistan…Iraq and Thailand too have seen their potential ranking downgrades delayed while Vietnam has won a premature ranking boost…due to strategic considerations…legislators and ex-state officials charged at a U.S. congressional hearing…
This story is noteworthy in that the quoted cop, while still buying the “gypsy whores” myth, only exaggerates the coercion rate by a factor of about 5 instead of the typical 45 or 50:
…beneath the pageantry, sport and spectacle, Kentucky Derby time is also the darkest hour for victims of human trafficking. “We have high rates,” said Gretchen Hunt…[of] the Kentucky Association of Sexual Assault Programs…the phenomenon…accompanies other major sporting events in the United States, an influx of men willing to pay for sex. Sgt. Andre Bottoms, of the Louisville…Police…estimates about ten percent of hundreds of prostitutes in Louisville this week are being forced or coerced…
Caty Simon of Tits and Sass continues a string of good interviews, this time with veteran activist Carol Leigh (AKA Scarlot Harlot), originator of the term “sex worker”. Carol speaks about the growth of activism, trafficking hysteria, neofeminism and whore art.
For the past five years, Lyon has enforced bylaws prohibiting the parking of prostitutes’ trucks in much of the city, forcing them into the Gerland industrial district. The city has now issued orders to prohibit this as well, but the girls stayed…Karen, their spokeswoman, reaffirmed that they would not leave despite “unprecedented” police operations: “We are forced to stay. There was nowhere to go. When you try to move to other parts of Greater Lyon…you are immediately driven out by the police.” Since March 19, the…police have patrolled the area three to four times a week…to enforce the bylaw…and…discourage the clients…the mayor says she is not seeking “the eradication of prostitution” in Gerland…[but claims she has had] a “flood” of complaint letters from local businesses…the police are also continuing to use the offense of passive soliciting to “identify trafficking networks and pimps”…[despite the fact that] the Senate repealed the offense on March 29…
This article on Edinburgh’s saunas (tolerated brothels) is fairly respectful; the only people quoted are sex workers (including advocate Laura Lee) and a punter, the dysphemisms are kept to a bare minimum, sex work is recognized as work and the threat posed by Rhoda Grant’s attempt to impose the Swedish model is mentioned.
Sex workers…demanded representation in all policy making bodies…dealing with them. “People who make laws don’t know anything about our issues, concerns and why we do this work. So, policy making bodies must have our representatives,” said a participant from Ajmer…[they] also…rooted for self regulatory boards like Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC) in Kolkata and Ashodhaya in Mysore to check violence in sex work and trafficking…
…a sex-education book…in Berlin elementary schools has some parents up in arms…Wo kommst du her? [“Where Do You Come From?”]…is recommended for ages 5 and up [and] shows a couple…in various stages of arousal. In one illustration, Lisa puts a condom on Lars’ erect penis…The text also veers toward the explicit. “When it’s so good that it can’t get any better, Lisa and Lars have an orgasm,” it reads. And…”The vagina and penis feel nice and tingly and warm”…Parents began to complain…but the school did nothing…until it was reported in the local press…
People like to read reviews online before buying a car or reserving a hotel room. But one website, http://www.eccie.net…allows users to review the services of local prostitutes…the idea that you can review prostitutes has a lot of people concerned…Jenny Ford…[of] ACH Child and Family Services…says people posting on sites like this often use kinky sex and prostitution as a cover up for sex trafficking…State Senator Leticia Van De Putte…[has] filed…a bill that go [sic] after the people using them…
Those of you who followed the #whenantisattack hashtag on Twitter back on March 3rd know the sort of abuse sex workers have to put up with; because of her prominence Dr. Brooke Magnanti gets more (and more severe) than most of us, and after a particularly nasty barrage last Saturday she wrote this essay on why it’s so very important that even angry perverts not be censored by “hate speech” laws.
A missing 18-year-old Aurora [Colorado] woman [named Raven Cassidy Furlong]…was found…[after] police received a tip that she was sighted in Venice Beach…at tryouts for American Ninja Warrior…Furlong was taken to the police station [but released] once they ascertained she was in California of her own free will…Her family believes she was coerced into saying she’s OK. “We know what Raven gave was a canned speech…They’ve been coerced to believe their families are bad, this is common in human trafficking,” [said] Shelley Shaffer, Director of the National Women’s Coalition Against Violence & Exploitation…
I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t need to be “coerced” into wanting to escape from parents who infantilized me and were willing to use armed thugs to force me to live with them.
Three “gay and effeminate” teens have died after being starved, tortured and killed at a camp that promised to turn them into “men”…Raymond Buys, 15 [died]…in April 2011…just 10 weeks [after he entered] the Echo Wild Game Rangers training course in South Africa in perfect health…Buys was severely malnourished, dehydrated, his arm was broken in two places and there were burns and wounds all over his body…Alex De Koker, 49, and employee Michael Erasmus, 20, are on trial for charges of murder, child abuse and neglect…[tentmate] Gerhard Oostuizen, 19, claims Buys was chained to his bed every night…refused permission to visit the toilet…forced to eat his own faeces…beaten with planks, hosepipes and sticks…[and tased while] tied…to a chair naked with his head covered in a pillowcase…Eric Calitz, 18, and Nicolaas Van Der Walt, 19, had both died after being enrolled at the…camp four years earlier…Calitz…died of…seizure, dehydration and [cerebral hemorrhage, and] Van Der Walt…appeared to have been choked with a seatbelt. In 2009, De Koker was handed a suspended sentence over Calitz but escaped charges for…Van Der Walt, and the camp was allowed to continue…
When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free. – Charles Evans Hughes
Language changes over time; words come and go, and new words are used in place of older ones. One word which was common in my youth but has since declined sharply in popularity is “chauvinism”, meaning “blind and fanatical devotion to something”. A chauvinist is one who believes his own group, belief system or whatever is superior to all others and refuses to even consider the possibility that it is not so; usually, he is willing to use state violence to enforce his own views. So although we’ve devised a plethora of neologisms over the past several decades, usually ending in “-ism” or “-phobia” and often cumbersome, awkward or improperly derived, we actually don’t need any of them because “chauvinism” covers the whole spectrum without having to add yet another term to the ever-growing list. Furthermore, the word correctly places the stress where it belongs, on the bigot rather than on those toward whom his bigotry is directed, and thereby makes the behavior pattern far more obvious.
When one accepts at face value the excuses by which chauvinists justify their positions, the true connections between those actions may be obscured or even wholly invisible. But once attention is focused on the chauvinism itself rather than on its targets, the connections suddenly appear. Take, for example, the current moral panic over “human trafficking”, a term so nebulously defined that it is nearly impossible to make any valid factual statements about it at all. Looking at the various phenomena to which the label is applied – exploitative labor, arranged marriage, unorthodox immigration, usury, surrogate motherhood, sex work, even attempted rape – it’s difficult to understand how they’re connected other than the fact that most of them involve sex, travel or both. Furthermore, sometimes things which clearly seem to fit the popular definition aren’t called “trafficking” at all, especially when a government or multi-national corporation is the “trafficker”.
But if one stops listening to the claims of those who spread the hysteria, and instead looks for common factors, it soon boils down to chauvinism: every single one of the things called “trafficking” is a transgression against conventional middle-class white Western ideas of morality and propriety. Nobody is concerned about immigrants doing awful work that middle-class people don’t want, so this is rarely labeled “trafficking” even when it clearly fits the standard definition; but because sex work offends both conservative Christian and radical feminist notions about “proper” female behavior, it is labeled “trafficking” even when it clearly involves neither travel nor coercion. Once we recognize that Euro-American chauvinism has become widespread enough to maintain a xenophobic panic, one can also predict that other forms of institutionalized bigotry around issues of sex and travel should be popular right now, and indeed that is the case: In Europe we see persistent attempts to ban pornography and Muslim clothing, and in the US assaults on abortion rights and mass deportations. Superficially, these things may seem to be unrelated, but in actuality they are all motivated by exactly the same thing: the quest to purge from Western society everyone who is different from “us”. Our persons, practices and ways of life are assumed to be superior to everyone else’s, so obviously every nonconformity is a contaminant to be removed, by violence if necessary.
There is one exception, but it proves the rule. Gay rights was for a very long time an uphill battle, especially in the pathologically-prudish United States. Yet in the past few years, opposition to the cause has quickly withered and died with astonishing speed…astonishing, that is, to anyone who fails to take chauvinism into account. If one insists that the cause of opposition to gay rights is “homophobia”, in other words a particular aversion to homosexuals, the rapid turn of the tide makes no sense whatsoever. But when one realizes that the same hatred is dispensed to anyone who is outside the norm, the reason for the change becomes clear: same-sex marriage. While gay people were chanting “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it”, progress was achingly slow. But once they started to stress how little different they were from heterosexuals – “Look, we even want to get married and form families like you do, see?” – opposition to granting them rights rapidly dissolved. Once the majority came to see gay people as sufficiently “normal”, their chauvinism was no longer an issue; the same can be said for European Muslims who adopt Western dress. The problem is not any specific form of bigotry against race, religion, sexuality or anything else; it’s a general bigotry against anyone who is viewed as the “other”. And that is why the chief purpose of my own blog is to demonstrate how typical sex workers actually are; once the majority realizes that we are not dangerous “outsiders” determined to bring down their culture, they will stop treating us like an infection to be eradicated or quarantined.
(This essay first appeared on Cliterati on April 7th; I have modified it slightly to fit the format of this blog.)
To accept passively an unjust system is to cooperate with that system; thereby the oppressed become as evil as the oppressor.
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
As I have stated many times in this blog, in interviews, and in public speech, I am firmly convinced that criminalization of sex work in the United States will only end by judicial fiat. Some people have (either sincerely or willfully) misinterpreted this position to mean that I prefer it that way, but that is not the case; it’s simply that it is the only realistic strategy open to us. History has demonstrated over and over again that the vast majority of politicians are self-centered, morally retarded pigs whose actions are never determined by what is right, but only by what will get them re-elected; they can be counted on never to defend the rights of the weak against the powerful until it becomes politically popular for them to do so. Democrats pretended to oppose George Bush’s various police-state actions on principle, but once their man was in the White House doing exactly the same things they suddenly stopped speaking up. And the recent reversals on same-sex marriage are a striking example; hundreds of politicians who had vowed to fight it forever had a sudden change of heart as soon as it became politically expedient for them to do so. Even then, the issue had to be reframed as being about wholesome “love” rather than dirty, nasty sex; had that not been done the puritans would still be fighting it just as viciously as they attack all sexual expression.
The rights to birth control, to abortion, to non-vaginal sex, to view sexual materials, etc have all been won by court decisions; had these things been left to politicians they would all still be illegal (as we have seen repeatedly demonstrated in the cases of abortion and “obscenity”). Furthermore, it would be absolutely impossible to stop every little tin god with a title in every state, county and city in the US from working to enact laws favored by loudmouthed busybodies and designed to abrogate the rights of oppressed minorities and docile, silent majorities alike. The only way to stop politicians from gaining power and money at the expense of those they criminalize is for a more powerful entity to prevent them from doing so, and that generally requires the decision of a higher-level court. State supreme courts can put a halt to the oppressive schemes of all politicians in their state; federal district courts can do so over several states at once; and the US Supreme Court can quash the power-madness of any politician, even the President and Congress.
As soon as we lost Proposition K I called Margo St. James. She pointed us to Coyote vs Roberts, the case which decriminalized indoor prostitution in Rhode Island; we won’t be settling out of court as they did, because we want the highest court’s ruling we can get so as to help as many people as possible. Also, a court ruling would have enduring effects, while a settlement would put us at the mercy of legislators (as in Rhode Island, which recriminalized in 2009). Our next step was to file for non-profit status (which took 3 years); Larry Cohen and I become founding members of ESPLERP, and now donations are anonymous and tax deductible.
Our case is about having our commercial sexual privacy legally noticed and protected by the courts. Our plaintiffs’ privacy will be protected during the proceedings; we have a customer plaintiff, prospective worker plaintiffs and a union plaintiff (to cover our right to associate without being prosecuted for conspiracy). Louis Sirkin will be representing us; he came highly recommended by the Free Speech Coalition due to his victory in Ashcroft vs Free Speech Coalition. It is both his belief and ours that asking the highest court to strike down anti-prostitution laws is vital to ending the American war on sex and the expansion of ridiculous anti-trafficking laws such as Proposition 35. What we would really like to get is a summary judgement based on the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, because a long trial would be much harder in the US than in Canada; though our case is similar to Bedford vs Canada, the two countries’ respective constitutions and the way anti-prostitution laws are written (state by state as opposed to nationally) and enforced (local district attorneys rather than provincial) are different. Getting that judgment would be the beginning of the end of all the discriminatory laws against our class. It won’t be overnight magic; it will probably take much more litigation to force police and prosecutors to stop arresting and charging us.
This will of course require a large war chest; it’s always been about the money and always will be. We’ve asked certain groups like OSI for support and I’ve not received any response from them, so though we’ve launched our own GoFundMe page I’d welcome any suggestions about how to secure additional funding. Even though groups like the ACLU and Open Society Foundation regularly throw us under the bus, I don’t mind asking; the worst they can do is to refuse. I’m not going to waste any more time reaching out to non-funding groups, though; getting them to return my phone calls, emails or FaceBook messages on any issue over the past several years has never been fruitful (if I wrote a book about the subject, it would be called Nobody Home).
We at the Erotic Service Providers organize like our lives depend on it because they do. Many of us have suffered greatly under criminalization – we’ve been arrested, jailed, and lost our ability to pay our rent and provide for ourselves and our children. Our lives have been shattered when we’re held hostage for years in court proceedings where we are publically humiliated by officials and the press, and we don’t want one more person to suffer that fate.
Readers often ask how they can help, and to whom they can donate; I don’t think I need to tell you how important this is. Maxine believes that once the case is filed, there are several organizations which will support it with amicus curiae briefs; they’re just waiting for us to make the first move. The goal for the funding drive is $60,000, and I plan to do my part next week; I’d like you all to please consider making a donation as well. As Maxine says, this isn’t going to be a magical solution, but it’s a necessary first step; civil rights are not won at a single stroke, but by a long series of judgments which clear out successively-larger areas of breathing room. Sex workers in other countries have led the way, and now it’s our turn to claim the rights to privacy, sexual agency and productive labor which are violated by prohibitionist laws.
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