They want to save us, but they punish us until we are willing to be saved. – Pye Jakobsson
Because obviously, a random amateur will give him a better experience than a skilled professional.
Looking to send her nerdy son off to Harvard in style, this helicopter parent to end all helicopter parents has taken to Craigslist’s “casual encounters” section to seek a young woman who can help claim the “socially awkward” boy’s virginity, and turn him into a “cool college kid.” The plan is simple: You, a 19 to 20-something seductress, pick up a pair of complimentary tickets to “some great concert,” where your target, a handsome 18-year-old varsity cross country team member with “almost zero body fat” will be waiting unsuspectingly…
Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic
A lawyer in Nashville, Tennessee filed a lawsuit against Apple, Inc. that blames the company for the dissolution of his marriage and the collapse of his mental health…because Apple devices do not have a filter that keeps them from playing pornography. The devices purportedly failed to protect Sevier from his porn addiction, so the attorney is suing the company in an effort to have all of its devices equipped with a filter that blocks sexually-themed content…
An Example to the West (TW3 #20)
Anu Mokal wasn’t breaking the law when she was out walking…when a police officer viciously attacked her…beating her severely…SANGRAM and…Veshya Anyay Mukti Parishad (VAMP)…demanded that Maharashtra politicians investigate the beating and institute…a grievance commission to address abuses of sex workers’ human rights…the attack echoed a deeper culture of oppression that sex workers face around the world at all levels of society…funded in large part by the foreign aid that pours into the Global South from Washington’s coffers…the Supreme Court recently dealt a potentially lethal blow to the so-called “anti-prostitution loyalty oath”…[for] U.S.-based groups…[but it] still looms large over the Global South…SANGRAM…has proudly defied PEPFAR…but…faces a political climate suffused with the pernicious pressures of America’s “soft power.” When aid comes with political strings attached, poor governments are pressured to mirror Washington’s culture wars…
Backwards into the Future (TW3 #40)
Sex workers have been fighting to enjoy their right to dignity. For this to happen, they say, prostitution has to be decriminalised…Ntokozo Yingwana, of the Sex Workers Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT)…[argues] that it is not sex-work but the stigma and discrimination that sex workers have to endure that strips them of their dignity…Marlise Richter, a public health researcher with the International Centre for Reproductive Health, said: “[The] evidence shows that the decriminalisation of sex work would serve public health and individual sex worker health best. Criminalisation of any aspect of sex work, including [the Swedish model]…means that the sex industry is driven underground and sex workers and their clients away from health, social and legal services”…The World Health Organisations (WHO) recommends that all states decriminalise sex work. It then becomes easier to take action to protect sex workers from HIV and sexually transmitted diseases…
A Tale That Grew in the Telling (TW3 #50)
Once again: the existence of a movie featuring “lurid tall tales” about sex work does no more to prove them than the existence of The Wizard of Oz proves the existence of flying monkeys and talking scarecrows:
…Alexander Perlman…logged thousands of miles and hundreds of hours to make [Lot Lizard, his new documentary about truck stop prostitution]…braving roach motels, crack highs, and homicidal pimps…None of the women…profiled had pimps…and…one of the concerns [Perlman] had…[was] that selecting them downplays the prevalence of pimps and trafficking in the industry. There’s an amazing organization called Truckers Against Trafficking that addresses the issue…
In other words, they couldn’t find any “trafficking” but it must exist because an NGO says so.
This Swedish model advert from Justine Reilly and her fellow shill Rachel Moran is not unusual except for its naked admission that prohibitionists want sex workers hounded into desperation: “Justine said…that without clients, women…would be thrown out on the streets where they could get support…”
Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs (TW3 #312)
A plan by the Social Affairs Ministry to close down 50 red-light districts across Indonesia has caused nervousness among inhabitants of…Sunan Kuning…one of the ministry’s five main targets in a crackdown on prostitution…Ari Istiyadi, field coordinator of NGO Griya Asa PKBI Semarang… expressed his fear that the closure of the prostitution center would create new problems in the social and health fields…
“A teenage girl from Georgia disappeared Monday after arranging a meeting with a boy she met on Instagram…Beverly Knepper, 14…had an argument with her parents about seeing a 14-year-old boy named Jahlil…” Predictably, this not-vanishingly-unusual teen behavior triggered a huge panic which was starting to involve “sex trafficking” rhetoric when she was located soon afterward.
…Polk County, Florida [is] unique in the nation for its unadulterated hostility to legal pornography and the people who make it…[its main city is] Lakeland…[whose] police department…is at the center of a sex scandal…[involving] a…crime analyst, Sue Eberle, who was apparently having sex with nearly a dozen of her co-workers…Coercing people into having sex is something sex traffickers do, but in Lakeland it was apparently the pastime for the police…the person asked by legislators to help get Lakeland PD “on track” is none other than…Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd…
One Born Every Minute (TW3 #315)
…a…computer consultant was jailed for 16 months in connection with a “pitiless deception” in which he sought to con hard up students into having sex with him in return for falsely offering to pay their university fees. Mark Lancaster…was exposed following an undercover investigation by The Independent into the website and fictitious business Sponsorascholar.co.uk. The pornography-addicted father-of-two admitted a charge of voyeurism and another of trafficking…
Three people who allegedly sourced more than 100 sex workers for Melbourne brothels would be likely to continue operating their lucrative syndicate…a magistrate…said [so] Mae Ja Kim, Moon Ja Kim and Huan Wen Ye were denied bail…Investigations are continuing into possible human trafficking and sex slavery…workers were allegedly transported to Australia, given accommodation, and driven between there and the brothels by about 10 “overseers”…The worker was paid $75 for each appointment, with the syndicate paid at least 50 per cent of the rest…
Spitzer’s return to politics has accomplished at least one good: it has emboldened journalists to speak out against criminalization. Here’s Michael Smerconish of MSNBC:
…we should have an adult conversation about the laws [Spitzer] violated…it’s time to bring the world’s oldest profession aboveboard in communities willing to allow it…let government share in the revenue, but otherwise stay out of the private affairs of consenting adults. Beyond the role of the taxman, prostitution doesn’t warrant the involvement of federal authorities…[to catch him] “they used 5,000 wiretaps. They intercepted 6,000 e-mails. Every hour spent on going after prostitution is an hour that could have been spent on going after…people who victimize”…another argument in support of legalizing…[is that] some among us are never going to find companionship for a variety of reasons…it can’t be healthy for some people to feel the amassed pressure of [sexual] images, and have their personal expectations go unfulfilled…
Keli Goff of the Washington Post called on Tracy Quan for assistance:
…Disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner and disgraced former governor Eliot Spitzer have come back…would the same kind of comeback be possible for the women on the other side of their scandals…could a former prostitute ever run for office and have a real shot, the way that Spitzer, former patron of prostitutes, now does?…Kristin Davis is also running for comptroller…she previously ran…the escort service that Spitzer once used…[but] her bids for office…are seen as little more than publicity stunts…Linda Fondren was a candidate for mayor in Vicksburg, Miss., when it was revealed that she worked as a prostitute decades ago…she broke no laws…was a nationally recognized leader in the field of public health…[and is] intelligent, articulate, telegenic and able to inspire people…[but] lost the primary…Tracy Quan…said…that even for legal sex work, such as exotic dancing, there is a double standard when it comes to stigmatization…a woman who works her way through law school as a stripper would have a tough time being elected to the…Senate but a man who visited strip clubs while in law school would not find that to be an obstacle to the White House…feminists share as much of the blame for this double standard as misogynists…[because they] are dismissive and suspicious of other women who have used their bodies and their beauty to succeed in a professional capacity…
Caty Simon of Tits and Sass interviewed Pye Jakobsson of Rose Alliance about Jasmine’s death and the horrible Swedish model which created the climate that enabled it. Nor was she the only sex worker whose recent stigma-provoked murder has angered sex workers around the world: “A 24-year-old trans woman was stabbed to death in her own home in Turkey…[on] 9 July…Dora Oezer…was found dead by her housemate…sex work is not illegal in Turkey but [because] they are not allowed to work in regulated brothels, trans woman are often left in vulnerable and dangerous positions…” Activists used social media to coordinate “Justice for Jasmine and Dora” protests in many cities yesterday, such as this one in London.
Jessi Winchester who lived in Virginia City, NV and worked in a brothel
ran for U.S. House of Representatives in 1996, placing second in the primary election.
Also, in 1998, she ran for Nevada Lieutenant Governor, finishing third in a field of nine.
Keli Goff is erroneously supposing that so-called feminists cannot also be misogynists.
On “Neither Addiction nor Epidemic,” I will quote Augustine of Hippo:
“Continence, Oh Lord, Continence; just not yet.”
As for the former sex workers running for office, I’m all in favor of it. After all, they are used to screwing the public for the public’s pleasure. (Okay, Okay: Bad boy, bad boy, no biscuit.) But, a successful Sex worker has to be intelligent, inventive, and adaptive to her constituents needs. Besides, they have to have a degree of both business and legal acumen to be successful.
Intelligent, inventive, and adaptive is not the same as able to govern. Sex work does not usually involve supervising subordinates, mediating disputes between parties, or studying reports. I mean – rah rah sex workers, you go girl and all that. But it’s not really the best preparation for the job.
So what is?
Running something – anything – involving managing subordinates. Being in charge of a project that takes more than an hour booking to complete. Knowing a bit of law would probably help, too.
Much as we might dislike the notion, the best training for politics and public service is probably politics and public service.
I would then say the law, in that a good attorney must carefully gather information, including discovering his clients needs, and plan how to use it to the best advantage of his clients. Not any attorney: we don’t need ambulance chasers
Lawyers must adopt one side of a conflict and argue that case – no matter how nuts it may be. Not necessarily the best thing for an administrator. They don’t necessarily do a lot of deciding, which is what being a governor is all about.
A lawyer who paid her way through college doing sex work, and ran an escort agency for a while.
Polk County – Sue Erble, who is 37 claims that half the police force were trying to sex her. And a lot of them were, admittedly consensually, I might add. The girl was sexing a lot of the boys in blue.
Look, I’m suspicious of police too, but my money is on “disturbed woman making up stories” with a side bet on “woman attempting to cover up her multiple infidelites by crying rape”. It’s an oft-told story, barely worth remarking if not for where it happened.
We can enjoy a little shadenfrude as the police fall foul of the laws by which they themselves often victimise innocent men, but with what little I’ve read I simply don’t believe Mrs Erble, not for an instant.
Late again. I can’t even blame this one on Tracy. Well, I could, but it would be silly. I don’t mind being silly in a general sense (basket weavers who sit and smile and twiddle their thumbs and toes) but would rather not be in this particular way.
The First Time
I guess the idea is that he’s not supposed to know that this is a case of hiring. He’s supposed to thing that he’s suddenly become very lucky. I don’t know why a professional couldn’t do that too, unless that sort of deception is against professional ethics, and I can see that it might be.
A Lesson to the West
So did anything happen to the cop? I don’t find the words “prosecuted” or “charged” anywhere in there, and the only two incidences of the word “arrested” were in the comments.
A Tale That Grew in the Telling (TW3 #50)
If it were just one network TV investigation which failed to find the trafficking and the pimps, then I might think that they’d botched the investigation or that the pimps are good at hiding or that the TV network just had some bad luck. And t it were just one theatrical documentary filmmaker, I might think the same thing. Or if it were just one police investigation, then sure, bad luck or clever pimps or a botched investigation. And if a charitable organization, the same thing. But one police investigation after another, one documentary after another, one charity after another, one TV network after another, one newspaper after another? There have been enough searches, from enough different angles, that the vast international trafficking network would’ve been found by now.
Legitimate Outrage (TW3 #328)
Yes, I’ve linked to YouTube of Smerconish’s little speech at least once.
I’d love to see “i was a stripper many years ago” or even “I was a hooker many years ago” follow the same path as “I smoked pot many years ago” when it comes to running for public office. And hey, it did happen with Demon Weed, so…
R.I.P. Petite Jasmine
A couple of decades ago, a rally or protest for the rights of gay people (except perhaps in San Francisco) was a BFD in the US. Now, it’s pretty standard. Prostitution seems to be following the same path.
In truth, the fact that somebody got my debit card number and went on a spending spree in Indiana (Indiana?) has more to do with my slowing down here than Tracy, and at least I like Tracy. Whoever got my card info…