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Archive for July, 2013

Links #159

Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 21, 2013| 6 Comments »

America has no functioning democracy.  –  Jimmy Carter

As I explained in Tuesday’s column, I was at the Desiree Alliance convention this week; everything but these weekend columns was already scheduled, and considering how busy I was I hope y’all will forgive me for the uncharacteristic brevity of these features.  It wasn’t lack of time which caused yesterday’s column to go up in incomplete form, however; there was a sudden and severe thunderstorm in Las Vegas which knocked out the hotel’s internet access, so I couldn’t put the finishing touches on it until last night in a different hotel (on my way home).  The top contributor was Radley Balko, with the first video and everything above it; the second video was provided by Amy Alkon, and the links between the videos by Walter Olson (“mice”), Mike Siegel (“bad news”),  Kevin Wilson (“vegetarians”), and Jesse Walker (“map”).  The epigram comes to us via Glenn Greenwald.

From the Archives

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That Was the Week That Was (#329)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 20, 2013| 12 Comments »

They want to save us, but they punish us until we are willing to be saved.  –  Pye  Jakobsson

The First Time

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 Epidemicthink different

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…

Justine Reilly
In other words, they couldn’t find any “trafficking” but it must exist because an NGO says so.

Puppet Show

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…

The Widening Gyre (TW3 #314)

“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.

I Saw My Brain

…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)Mark Lancaster

…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…

Bottleneck (TW3 #317)

It’s difficult to judge the legitimacy of these claims when none of the alleged victims were interviewed:

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…

Legitimate Outrage (TW3 #328)

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…

R.I.P. Petite Jasmine

Dora OezerCaty 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.

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Long Spoon

Posted in Current Events, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 19, 2013| 10 Comments »

This essay first appeared in Cliterati on June 9th; I have modified it slightly for time references and to fit the format of this blog.

The casual modern observer can be forgiven for perceiving the issue of “human trafficking” as nothing but a moral panic conjured up as a disguise for anti-sex work efforts, inextricably bound up with “end demand” rhetoric and supported by dodgy statistics, grandiose claims and bombastic rhetoric, because that is what it has become.  But it wasn’t always that way; though the issue was grounded from its very beginning in the old “white slavery” myth, groups like the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (founded in 1984) worked to alter “the anti-trafficking paradigm by introducing the tools of the human rights framework…[and] de-linking trafficking from prostitution.”  They were quite successful for a time:

…the 1994 Utrecht Conference on Traffic in Persons…actually called for the decriminalization of prostitution and efforts to improve health and safety regulations for sex workers worldwide…[but soon after] there emerged what some scholars have termed an unlikely collaboration between abolitionist feminists and conservative Christian groups in the United States whose common aim is to eradicate prostitution…

long spoonAs I’ve explained before, the anti-sex crowd created a mythology in which the typical sex worker is a “trafficked child slave”, and thereby hijacked what was becoming a positive force for human rights, turning it into a vehicle for repression; once governments realized they could use it as an excuse to restrict migration, the corruption of a noble cause into a base one was complete.  It is extremely likely that when prohibitionists and governments first started to offer aid and money in the late ‘90s, they were welcomed by advocates who had no idea of their true motivations; unfortunately, by the time they realized what was happening it was far too late.  But we can learn a lesson from them:  when someone offers help it’s wise to consider his motivations, and to use the proverbial “long spoon” if it’s impossible or impractical to reject the deal altogether.  Here are two recent examples from the United States:

The Illinois General Assembly voted…to end felony prostitution…Lynne Johnson, policy director for Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation (CAASE)…said the felony punishment only served to victimize people in the sex trade even further…“After people…leave the sex trade…their felony record prevents them from getting good housing or…a good job”…CAASE is part of End Demand, a campaign that wants to change how law enforcement deals with prostitution.  Advocates say johns, pimps and traffickers should be held more accountable…

Now, on its face this is a good thing; in the US exchanging money for sex is illegal in and of itself, unlike most Western countries where only certain acts such as brothel-keeping, soliciting or “living on the avails” are criminalized.  And in Illinois and a few other states (Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and Vermont) prosecutors are actually able to charge some sex workers with felonies.  This legislative act would remove Illinois from that list, but note the agenda of the group and its rationale for the campaign: these people don’t want to help sex workers, but rather to infantilize us as “victims” and to persecute clients (a group that in Chicago includes transgender sex workers) and anyone who can be labeled a “pimp”.  Their goals are not compatible with ours; this particular step just happens to coincide.  Here’s another, similar case:

…Heartbeat International…which [operates] more than 1,300…[anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy”] centers…is urging the United States Supreme Court to overturn a federal pledge against prostitution.  The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and the Christian Legal Society are doing the same.  Their position may seem counter-intuitive, since all three…oppose prostitution.  But the case boils down to whether or not the government can require groups to adopt its views before it gives them funds.  At issue [is] a Bush-era program to fight HIV/AIDS that requires grant winners to “explicitly [oppose] prostitution and sex trafficking”…[but] some fear that the antiprostitution policy could inspire the government to attach loyalty oaths to other federal benefits.  It could require an organization like Heartbeat to tell clients about abortion, or a religious nonprofit to affirm the government’s views on gay marriage or contraception, to retain tax-exempt status.  Many believe such oaths violate the First Amendment and its promise of freedom of speech…

So though these people are apparently on our side, all they’re really doing is protecting their own interests; once this is over they’ll be right back in bed with the other prohibitionists.  Even groups like the American Civil Liberties Union are weak allies indeed; though they support decriminalization in principle, that’s only because to do otherwise would weaken their true interests: privacy and discrimination concerns.  While the ACLU invests considerable money and energy into civil rights minutiae, it has never launched a challenge to any prostitution law and its representatives are fond of making ignorant, bigoted statements like “People don’t choose to become prostitutes.”

There are, however, a few real friends of sex workers out there, groups who truly care about human rights and have spoken out for decriminalization.  The aforementioned Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women is one of them; it has released a number of reports exposing the harms caused by the “anti-trafficking” movement and debunking the myths it spreads to advance its agenda.  And in May it sent a report to the UN calling for an end to support for “end demand” policies, discussed here by Cathy Reisenwitz:

The [GAATW]…report calls for countries to …consider…decriminalising sex work and practices around it…to reduce the opportunities for exploitative labour practices…Anti-trafficking discussions on demand have historically been stymied by…efforts to eradicate the sex work sector by criminalising clients, despite protests from sex workers rights groups and growing evidence that such approaches do not work…[under the Swedish model] sex workers are harassed instead of helped by police, forced to undergo invasive searches and testify against their customers and have to rely more on their pimps to find clients. And the result? No change in supply, no change in demand…

Swedish model propagandaThe Swedish Model is currently being pushed for Scotland by MSP Rhoda Grant and “end demand” tactics have become extremely popular in American police departments as well; brown-nosed academics ignore the evidence to proclaim that the approach is “successful”.  But the GAATW is not the only large human rights organization fighting this monstrous violation; the highly-respected Human Rights Watch, which recently called for worldwide decriminalization of personal drug use, has also officially announced its support for decriminalization of sex work.  Thus far the position has only appeared in a report on China and a journal article condemning the use condoms as “evidence” of prostitution:

The criminalization of voluntary, consensual sexual relations among adults is incompatible with…a number of internationally recognized human rights…Human Rights Watch has repeatedly documented the negative consequences of the criminalization of sex work on access to rights to personal autonomy and privacy, freedom from discrimination and violence, health, and justice…positions that cast sex workers only as victims, and eliminate the possibility of voluntary sex work, deny sex workers’ agency and their rights to exercise their autonomy and engage in private, consensual behaviour…Human Rights Watch has concluded that ending the criminalization of sex work is critical to achieving public health and human rights goals.

I corresponded last month with Megan McLemore, one of that paper’s authors, and she assured me that HRW’s next report on sex work in the US (later this year) will “contain a clear call for decrim of sex work on human rights grounds.”  This is wonderful news; HRW thus joins GAATW, several UN agencies and countless health officials in supporting the right of adults to consent to sex even when money is involved.  Though it’s a shame there are so many people who only pretend to care about sex workers in order to suppress sexuality, an ever-growing number support our cause simply because it’s the right thing to do.

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More Harm Than Good

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 18, 2013| 34 Comments »

No people do so much harm as those who go about doing good.
–  Mandell Creighton

I’ve often written about how important allies are in the struggle for sex worker rights; it’s why I call for them to speak out every Friday the 13th.  One of the reasons is that we’re an awfully small minority, and another is that we need third parties to fend off the inevitable circumstance ad hominem accusations:

…we’re often accused of distorting facts to make ourselves look good, and no matter how assiduously we work to present a balanced view this is a natural and credible accusation against anyone who advocates for some issue which directly concerns her.  That’s why allies are so important; it’s much harder for the prohibitionists to shout down people who don’t have a dog in the fight, but merely support prostitutes’ rights on moral grounds.

I think male allies are especially important, because the majority of men have directly paid for sex at least once and a sizable minority do so regularly, yet one wouldn’t know it by listening to the public discourse; vocal male allies help to give other men the courage to speak out.

Sex Worker Ally BrakUnfortunately, both male and female would-be allies tend to undermine our cause with depressing regularity.  Some of them do this inadvertently, by failing to check their facts with sex workers and thereby buying into prohibitionist talking points such as the myth that “sex trafficking” is a huge problem, the naïve belief that the police can be trusted to “manage” sex workers, the lie that legalization increases “trafficking”, the ill-considered notion that licensing and registration decrease exploitation  or the demeaning canard that we have more diseases than other non-celibates.  Some make good arguments against criminalization, but feel compelled to insist that they disapprove of sex work, or opine that we live an “immoral lifestyle”, and they’re only defending us on principle.  And some even vomit out agency-negating poison like “People don’t choose to become prostitutes”  or “they should go after the pimps”.  But even the ones who commit none of the more egregious errors and insults will often use the incredibly-insulting phrase “selling their bodies”; I recently saw an essay in which the writer (who was clearly pro-decriminalization) used the phrase “rent out their bodies for sex.”  And because that incredibly stupid expression is so very common and so incredibly insulting to literally everyone, I think it’s high time we purge it from polite use, preferably with fire.

My most succinct argument against the phrase was probably this one I made on a newspaper story some time ago, and would never have remembered had a reader not immortalized it on Tumblr and recently tweeted the link:

The claim that sex workers “sell our bodies” is not only logically absurd (I was a prostitute for years, but my body is still right here with me), but totally sexist because it is based on the notion that a woman’s sexuality is her entire worth.  The belief behind this expression is that since a woman has nothing of value to offer except her sexuality, if she “sells” that she has “sold herself” and there is nothing left.  The fact that anti-sex worker activists use this expression so often says a lot about them.

This is of course the same pernicious and demeaning concept of a woman’s worth which lurks behind the horrible belief that rape is a “fate worse than death” from which a woman can never, ever recover.  Those who prefer my mocking idiocy to getting sort of feministy over it may like this more outre demolition of the phrase from two months ago:

It’s almost as though some people actually believe that after one transaction whores become spiritual beings (after all, when one “sells” something the buyer generally takes it with him when he leaves) who then, presumably, reincarnate like the Dalai Lama and return to the brothel to “sell” their instantly-grown, identical new bodies again.  One wonders what happens to all the old bodies, however; I reckon once the men are done with them, they flush them down the loo like unwanted goldfish or “child sex slaves”.

sex dollNow, my objections to the word “selling” don’t apply to the word “renting”, but the use of the word “body” to mean “services” conjures a whole host of issues on its own.  The idea that sex requires only a woman’s body and not her mind is just as absurd as the “selling” part, and insults both whores and clients:  whores because the very real talents and skills we bring to our craft is ignored, devalued and reduced to mere physical presence; clients because it essentially casts them as necrophiles or desperate men who can be wholly satisfied with inert dolls.  Any woman who believes that men are satisfied with a girl who does little more than show up has some deep issues with men, and any man who believes it…well, let’s not go there.  It’s clear that neither of them has ever read a review of an escort who acts that way, and equally clear that such beliefs say far more about their own expectations (if male) and bedroom behavior (if female) than about the sex workers and clients they insult and demean by the use of such expressions.

Allies, we really appreciate your wanting to help us, and Aphrodite knows we really need your help, especially these days when the crusade to exterminate us is running hotter than it has in a century.  But if you’re going to spout prohibitionist propaganda, stop short of saying that our work is valid work, refuse to respect our agency and choices and use moronic expressions which perpetuate harmful, ignorant stereotypes about us, our clients and our associates, it’s probably better if you just go away and keep your mouth shut, because you’re doing more harm than good.

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Keep Doing What You’re Doing

Posted in Perception, Q & A, tagged , , , , , , , on July 17, 2013| 14 Comments »

For the first time in my life, a man has is proffering me the opportunity you usually only read about:  not just becoming his mistress, but doing so with all the trappings.  Delightful traveling, charming bed-and-breakfast accommodations, wonderful lingerie and clothes, my own residence…This man isn’t Donald Trump, but it’s quite a step up from my usual.  He keeps telling me that spoiling me is what he enjoys.  I find it hard to take such generosity with the easy grace he’s clearly expecting.  Obviously, I don’t want to mess this up.  Any tips?

La Loge by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1874)Whatever you’re doing, he’s obviously happy with it, so my advice is that you keep doing it.  Now, that may seem as though I’m being a smart-ass, but I assure you I’m not; there are two ways women mess up gigs like this, and both of them involve trying to change the situation.  The first strategy for failure is to decide being a mistress isn’t good enough any more, and pushing him to leave his wife; the second is the same way wives mess it up, by assuming the man is “caught” and getting lazy.  Both errors result from exactly the same cause: a failure to understand the basis of the arrangement.  A married man who keeps a mistress is not interested in replacing the former with the latter; he has economic, social and emotional reasons for staying married, and the mistress is his means of making up whatever he feels is lacking in that relationship.  So if the mistress starts trying to undermine her gentleman’s marriage, or fails to provide whatever interested him in the first place, there is no reason for him to continue the arrangement and heartache, drama and scandal may follow.

What it boils down to is this: being “kept” is a job.  It may be a very nice, pleasant dream job with fantastic fringe benefits, but it is still a means of earning one’s keep, and it needs to be thought of that way.  You are following in the footsteps of the great courtesans of old, and you should take the best of them as role models.  Keep making your patron happy in the ways you know best, let him know you appreciate what he does for you in return, always make time for him when he calls, and above all else be discreet.  And as long as you keep in mind that even the most loving relationships have an economic basis, I think you’ll do just fine.

(Have a question of your own?  Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)

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Rubbing Elbows

Posted in Biography, Diary, Miscellaneous, tagged , , , , on July 16, 2013| 9 Comments »

I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and cry, ‘Tis all barren–and so it is; and so is all the world to him who will not cultivate the fruits it offers.  –  Laurence Sterne

Desiree 2013I’m in Las Vegas this week, at the Desiree Alliance convention.  Desiree is an organization of sex workers, academics and other allies; I really wish it were a lot more politically active than it is (like the sex worker organizations in India and Southeast Asia, for example), but because so many people attend this will be a great opportunity for me to rub elbows, press flesh, network, get face time, hobnob, mingle, socialize and otherwise associate with other people in the movement, including some of my readers.  Even the drive here was rather nice; my husband was headed to California anyhow, so we drove together to Vegas and he rented another car for the last leg.  As usual, I’ve already got all my columns posted for the week, but if I’m slow to moderate or answer comments, now you know why.  Of course, I still have to work on this week’s TW3 column while I’m here, but since I didn’t volunteer for anything I should still have a bit of work time and the column should appear as normal on Saturday morning (that’s the plan, anyway).  I plan to be home Sunday night, and a week from today I’ll tell you about what I did and saw and all.  Send me your prayers, thoughts, wishes or whatever for a good and safe trip!

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Fictional Interlude: For I Have Sinned

Posted in Fiction, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 15, 2013| 11 Comments »

Prostitution in the towns is like the cesspool in the palace: take away the cesspool and the palace will become an unclean and evil-smelling place.  –  St. Thomas Aquinas

On Saturday afternoon Sister Magdalene Theodora filed quietly into the chapel with all the others of her order, just as she did every Saturday between Nones and Vespers, to make her confession.  It never took long; after all, even the weakest member of a cloistered order could find few opportunities for sin.  Theodora presumed that most of the confessions were like hers usually was:  a short recitation of sinful thoughts, admissions of gossip and revelations of submitting to unorthodox acts in the performance of their duties, followed by a short penance of the Act of Contrition and a few Ave Marias, or at most a decade or two of the rosary.  It would take less than an hour altogether, and then the priest would be off to prepare for the vigil mass at his own church.

But for some time now, she had held back one serious sin at each confession, then compounded the offense by taking communion the next day with that mark still upon her soul.  She had no excuse other than fear; the penance was entirely at the discretion of the priest, and she had seen the terrible humiliation which could be meted out for the rare mortal sin.  And since the particular canon law she had (repeatedly) broken left considerable room for interpretation, she wanted to be absolutely sure her confessor was sympathetic.  When she first resolved to admit her crime three months ago, she knew that she could never do so to anyone but Father Anthony; but he had been there only the week before her decision, and not once after that until today.

Maria MagdaleneTheodora wasn’t sure why Father Anthony was so fond of her in comparison with the other Magdalene Sisters, but it was obvious to everyone that he was (and the fact had generated some jealousy and more than a few unkind comments).  Perhaps he reminded her of a favorite niece, or a girl he had once courted before entering the priesthood; unlike most he had not pursued that vocation directly after school, but rather turned to it after a distinguished military career in the 29th Crusade.  He was, in fact, a highly-decorated flying ace, and Theodora had often thrilled to his stories of aeroplane combat in the Pacific against the ruthless forces of the Emperor of Japan.  But even though killing in the service of God is no sin, he was pained by the thought of all the blood he had spilled and resolved to pursue the path of peace, entering the seminary less than a year after the end of the war.  Perhaps it was this personal history which made him so kind and merciful; that, in combination with his obvious affection for her, helped to quell her fears about the possible outcome of her confession.  Try as she might, she just couldn’t believe he would inflict a harsh punishment on her; he was more like a kindly old grandfather than a dreaded disciplinarian as Father Gerald had been.

The memory of the fateful day when she stood disgraced before that other priest suddenly intruded upon her consciousness like the unannounced arrival of the Inquisition, and the smiling visage of the beloved Father Anthony was crowded out by Father Gerald’s angry scowl.  Though it had been fourteen years since she laid eyes on him, she still remembered every line of his cruel face, and the sound of his oddly high-pitched voice as he pronounced her a corrupting influence on the community.  “Jack O’Connor was led astray by this young Jezebel, and now faces months of penance labor!” he shouted; “There is only one sure way to keep her from tempting other young men into sin, one certain method of turning her wickedness to a constructive end!”  Her parents’ signatures were a mere formality after that, and she was whisked off to a St. Margaret’s asylum in New Amsterdam, over a thousand miles from the only home she had ever known.  She wasn’t even allowed to see the baby; the kindly nun who ministered to her during labor assured her that it was better that way.  Then after a brief convalescence, she was transferred to the convent where she would be trained for a life of indefinite penance in the Order of St. Mary Magdalene.

All things considered, it wasn’t such a bad existence; they ate well and did little manual labor, because their vocation required the maintenance of their health and beauty.  And though they were reviled by chaste women and often made the butt of vulgar jokes, they heard none of it once they entered the gates of the convent because the censors allowed them only wholesome and uplifting books and films.  And as the reverend mother and senior sisters frequently reminded them, they served an important social function by protecting others from the effects of what St. Augustine had called “capricious lusts”; by accepting men’s sin into their bodies and then doing penance for it every day of their lives, they played a vital role in cleansing the world of evil.

But there was one aspect of her situation which Theodora found almost unbearable, and it was that which had driven her into the transgression for which she now sought forgiveness.  Despite the nuns’ assurances that her babies would go to deserving parents who had been unable to have natural children of their own, she was haunted by the memory of the babies – two more since the first – whose cries she had heard, but whose tiny faces she had never been allowed to look upon.  She was obsessed with thoughts of what they might be like now; were they happy?  Did their adoptive parents treat them well?  Did they know their real mother was a sacred harlot, or had that been kept from them?  She knew that it was possible one of her regular patrons might eventually marry her, thus freeing her to have children she could keep; in fact, there were two likely candidates and she might well see the outside world again within the next year.  But she also knew that she could not stand to have another child ripped from her, and for a very long time now had taken steps to thwart the will of God in that respect.confessional  Though submitting to a patron’s urging for unorthodox sex acts was one of the minor sins they all confessed every Saturday, Theodora had for years carefully calculated her times of fertility and taken the lead with men she ministered to during those times; thus she had not only sinned herself, but had also tempted others who had sought her services in order to avoid sin.

She was unsure how serious her transgression was, but considering that seduction was the offense which resulted in her commitment to this life in the first place, she wasn’t going to take any chances.  She had faith that God would forgive her; it was only the judgment of His priests she wasn’t too sure about.  But she knew Father Anthony wouldn’t be overly harsh with her; when her turn arrived she glided into the confessional without hesitation, and though her heart leaped when she heard the little grilled window slide open, her voice did not tremble as she started the ritual:  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned…”

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Links #158

Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , on July 14, 2013| 7 Comments »

If you don’t want your yard dug up, don’t get accused by psychics of having buried bodies there.  –  Ken White

This was an extremely quiet week, which was good because I was so busy working on my house I wouldn’t have had time to deal with a busy one.  More details on that next week!  But in the meantime, here are two links and a video from Popehat, another video from EconJeff, and the links between them from Amy Alkon, Mike Siegel, Thomas Larson and Radley Balko (in that order).

Miami police chief says those who don’t want to be tased should leave the United States; Ken shares some more helpful hints on how to avoid the senseless brutality of police.

From the Archives

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That Was the Week That Was (#328)

Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Obituary, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 13, 2013| 15 Comments »

Be the sort of victim people want, swallow the crap about not really choosing sex work, tell a few stories about bad clients and pray with the fervor of a convert at the altar of end demand and all the support you want is there, on their terms.  –  Jemima

R.I.P. Petite Jasmine

Petite JasmineA Swedish sex worker rights activist was stabbed to death by her ex-husband on Thursday.  Swedish “feminists” pretend to care so very much for sex workers that they’re willing to destroy our lives to “save” us from imaginary “degradation”; selling sex is not illegal, but if a sex worker dares to speak openly about her choice she will be punished in many ways other than imprisonment, such as by expulsion, eviction, police harassment and more:

Several years ago she lost custody of her children as she was considered to be an unfit parent due to being a sex worker.  The children were placed with their father regardless of him being abusive towards Jasmine.  They told her she didn’t know what was good for her and that she was “romantisizing” prostitution, they said she lacked insight and didn’t realise sex work was a form of self-harm.  He threatened and stalked her on numerous occasions, she was never offered any protection…

Activist Jemima pointed out that “Jasmine could have been listened too, could have had custody of her kids, could have been flying off to international conferences and doing TV shows, instead of being prepared for burial, all she had to do was lie…be good little puppets who trot out the party line like defendants at a Stalin era Russian show trial and then the doors of rape crisis centers, domestic refuges and conferences open wide to you…”

Third Party

Another refutation of the myth that the presence of a camera magically protects sex workers from arrest:  “Phoenix police arrested seven people at…a self-serve porn studio allegedly used to front a prostitution business…William James Hartwell…and six women were arrested during a raid on the studio…[after] a six-month investigation…”

Another Example of Swedish “Feminism”

This was a real banner week for Swedish “feminists”; besides enabling the murder of a sex worker, we also got this:

A professor in law at Stockholm University has called for legislation prohibiting parents from drinking alcohol in the company of their children.  “It is a parent’s responsibility to be sober when they are with their children,” said Professor Madeleine Leijonhufvud…She compared the offence to minor assault which…carries a penalty of up to six months imprisonment.  While the proposal is aimed at “everyday drunkenness” it in effect suggests that parents would not be able to share a glass of wine at dinner.  “If you have a sick child and need to drive them to hospital then you can’t drink wine”…

Perhaps Sweden should just confiscate all children at birth and raise them in crèches?  But then, of course, people would stop having them.  And the feminists want even criticism of their tyrannical insanity to be criminal: “the Nordic Council of Ministers…[suggested]…the government…take action against…‘anti-feminist attitudes’…expressed in public…”Heavy Hand of Justice by Kevin Moore

Saving Them From Themselves

A 15-year-old Florida girl was arrested…for shooting and possessing a photo of another teen girl engaged in oral sex with a teen boy…She was charged with a felony child porn count.  “The two girls were friends, and one of them was dating the guy,” Detective William Lindsey [said]…”Possession of child pornography is [a crime] no matter what age they are… If she had taken a picture of herself in sexual conduct, she could be charged with child pornography”…

Wholesale Hypocrisy (TW3 #25)

The rather dull-witted and credulous Bonnie Erbe seems to genuinely believe in mathematically and sociologically impossible nonsense, but more shocking is her support for censorship despite her pretense of being a journalist:

…The Internet…provides an almost unfettered platform for…pimps to find, track and enslave girls and women in sex trafficking…local and federal authorities seem powerless to ban the sale of commercial sex online.  Nor do they seem able to keep up with and control the horrendous amount of trafficking the Internet generates…experts point mainly to laws that predate the Internet and define places where criminal commercial sex acts take places as “houses of prostitution” or “brothels.”  Today, no such places exist.  Pimps — mainly men — find customers online and direct them to meet prostitutes, who work out of different motels or apartments or sometimes even their own homes…[in] a New Mexico case…two men…were [cleared of] running “an extensive multistate, online prostitution ring”…after a judge ruled that…their website did not constitute a house of prostitution, though it was used to recruit prostitutes and promote prostitution…It would seem easy to amend anti-prostitution laws to include a ban on websites for procuring commercial sex…

Because when governments ban things, they magically vanish!

Shift in the Wind

Those who were surprised at seeing an anti-criminalization article in The National Review must not remember that A) many “conservatives” at least claim to be for smaller government, and B) the magazine’s founder, William F. Buckley, was a vocal opponent of drug criminalization.

…the proscription of prostitution…continues to be a mystery to me.  Sex remains one of the few things that a free person may give away gratis but which he is forbidden from selling.  It is perfectly legal to sleep around in the United States — subsidized and panegyrized, even — and, as the growing parade of octogenarian billionaires’ wives demonstrates, it is both permissible and socially acceptable to sleep with someone in pursuit of regular material comfort…While the laws surrounding the issue remain such a dizzy and irrational mess, drawing a clear moral line through the morass remains nigh on impossible…To broach this topic in polite company is to invite someone…to parrot the banal old line that “nobody grows up wanting to be a prostitute.”  At best, this is a red herring.  Certainly, few people grow up wishing to be prostitutes.  But there are an awful lot of careers that escape the dreams of children…It is no accident that prostitution, which was almost uniformly legal in the United States from the period of colonization up until the start of the 20th century, was banned in almost every state within the same five-year period during which the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union managed to convince the nation that alcohol should be constitutionally outlawed…

Of course the comments are full of Puritans and trafficking fetishists, but there are a surprising number of truth-tellers there as well.Eliot Spitzer

Legitimate Outrage

…Eliot Spitzer said he hopes he has changed since he was caught in a prostitution scandal that led to his resignation, as he attempts to revive his political career with a run for New York City comptroller.  “I think the public will have to ask itself the question, ‘can we forgive him?’  I’ve asked for the forgiveness, I hope the public says ‘yes,’ based upon the record I have, based upon qualities I can bring to the office,” Spitzer told reporters…

Politicians are usually forgiven; those whose lives they destroy, not so much.

The Naked Anthropologist

Though New Scientist published only a very small part of what Dr. Laura Agustín says was a much, much longer interview, it’s still good to see mainstream magazines presenting her views and debunking the “sex trafficking” hysteria and anti-whore tyranny.

Unclean Situation

You know how the Magdalene Laundry orders (through their modern front, Ruhama) like to pretend that sex work is “human trafficking”? 

Despite being funded by the HSE annually, including over €126,000 last year, St Patrick’s Guild informed the Adoption Authority last week that it no longer has the resources to staff the organisation.  The agency, run by the Religious Sisters of Charity, had been accredited by the Adoption Authority to assist adopted people and natural parents through tracing, counselling and mediating…Between 1947 and 1967, St Patrick’s Guild…arranged for the export of 572 “illegitimate” children from Ireland to the US for adoption…Despite the agency’s admitted involvement in facilitating illegal adoptions, the Adoption Authority again reiterated its stance that it will not inspect the files to ascertain the extent of the agency’s involvement in such activity…

In other words, the nuns abducted children from their Irish mothers and sold them to Americans; if that’s not “human trafficking”, I don’t know what is.Laetitia Rebord

Skin To Skin (TW3 #313)

The New York Times seems unable to write about sex work without dysphemisms like “so-called”:

…in France…disabled people struggle to have a sex life.  But their desires are often disregarded, and while prostitution is legal here, soliciting potential clients and serving as an intermediary between prostitutes and clients are not.  The issue of sexual surrogates came up in March, after the National Ethics Committee…issued a report criticizing the practice as the “unethical use of the human body for commercial purposes”…but…some legislators and associations of disabled people are demanding the legalization of sexual surrogates.  “Prostitution is a fake debate; the goals are different,” said Pascale Ribes…[of] the Disabilities and Sexualities Group, an association defending sexual surrogates in France.  “Sexual assistance is about allowing a disabled person who can’t access sexuality in a satisfying way to reconnect with the body”…

Advice to disabilities advocates: foolish reinforcement of whorearchy is not the way to go about winning your right to employ sex workers.

Flush Criminalization

More sophomoric “humor” from New York “authorities” working assiduously to destroy as many people’s lives as possible:

Police shut down…12 massage parlors…for alleged prostitution…arresting owners, managers and workers.  The Brooklyn District Attorney’s office is investigating whether workers were “victims of human trafficking, being manipulated or held against their will”…and whether a central organization was controlling…the operations.  According to DA Charles Hynes, all of the women…gave very similar stories about having children in Asia they needed to support.  NYPD Commissioner was typically…tone-deaf in his assessment of the case.  “We know people in Bay Ridge have back pain…but we don’t think that’s enough to sustain 19 massage parlors”…

That the DA seems to perceive the fantasy of a huge “sex trafficking” conspiracy as more credible than the simple fact that most sex workers have children to support, speaks volumes about his warped view of humanity.

Still a Child

This is no more ridiculous than defining a minimum age above that of majority for any other legal activity, such as drinking or sex work:  “Somalia…has set the minimum age at 40 for anyone intending to practice as a journalist in the country…”

True Colors (TW3 #327)

Authorities in southern China have left…Ye Haiyan…homeless…Guangdong security agents abandoned her on the side of the road with her boyfriend…and 14-year-old daughter…”Zhongshan does not welcome you; Guangzhou does not welcome you either. I will break your legs if I ever see you again in Zhongshan,” one of the security agents said…

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Ad Absurdum

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 12, 2013| 24 Comments »

This essay first appeared in Cliterati on May 26th; I have modified it slightly to fit the format of this blog.

real ouroborosReductio ad absurdum is a form of argument which follows the logical consequences of the thing argued against until they reach a point the opponent must agree is false, ridiculous, harmful or otherwise undesirable.  Laws against consensual behavior could easily be defeated by such arguments were those who support them open to considering their possible consequences; unfortunately they never are, and so the laws are enacted and those harmful consequences must happen in fact to real human beings before most people will even begin to consider that they should be repealed.  It takes even more than that to move the really staunch prohibitionists, especially those whose power or livelihood depends upon criminalizing as much of the spectrum of human behavior as possible; no matter how awful the consequences of their beloved laws, no matter how great the costs in money and ruined lives, no matter how damaging to the fabric of society or destructive to the principle of justice, they will just keep chanting “the Law is the Law” or “society needs to send a message” or “perhaps you want to legalize murder as well” while shutting their eyes, ears and hearts to the evil their policies cause.  The chief weakness of the reductio ad absurdum technique is that some people are unable to recognize absurdity when they see it, or else unwilling to admit it when they do.  And when the situation involves sex and adolescents, some people will adamantly refuse to acknowledge the wrongfulness of even the most outrageous outcomes:

…Kaitlyn Hunt, 18, faces two felony counts of “lewd and lascivious battery on a child”…after the parents of her 15-year-old girlfriend pressed charges…Kaitlyn Hunt’s mother, Kelley Hunt-Smith, wrote in [a] statement posted to Facebook…”They were out to destroy my daughter.  [They] feel like my daughter ‘made’ their daughter gay”…police arrived at the family’s home Feb. 16 and put her daughter in handcuffs…Indian River County [Florida] Sheriff Deryl Loar said that age difference, not sexual orientation, determined prosecution…”If this was an 18-year-old male and that was a 14-year-old girl, it would have been prosecuted the same way,” Loar said…The state attorney’s office has offered Kaitlyn Hunt a plea deal which includes two years’ house arrest and a year of probation, which would stay on her adult record and limit her career choices…

I have absolutely no doubt that the sheriff is telling the truth, but that only increases the absurdity rather than acting as a defense as he seems to believe.  Age of consent laws are currently justified by the pretense that they “protect” girls below that age from adult “sexual predators”, but that was neither their original rationale nor is it the way they’re usually applied: 80% of young men prosecuted under these laws have an established, consensual relationship with the so-called “victim”, and fewer than half are more than six years older; 55% of them are under 21, and 75% under 24.  In other words, the great majority of such prosecutions are initiated to eradicate and punish boyfriends of whom the girl’s parents do not approve; as in the case at hand, the age difference is merely a convenient excuse.

Kaitlyn HuntBut while one might (justifiably or otherwise)  raise the specter of teen pregnancy or venereal disease to object to a heterosexual relationship, one would be hard-pressed to find such grounds for a lesbian one; though a few STIs (namely vaginosis, chlamydia, herpes, HPV, trichomoniasis and pubic lice) can be spread from woman to woman, several of these could also be contracted via behavior that even the most bloodthirsty prosecutor would hesitate to use as the basis for a criminal charge.  And really, does anyone believe that the younger girl’s parents were truly concerned about the possibility of their daughter contracting a disease whose name they probably can’t even spell?  If so, would Kaitlyn’s providing a clean blood test have caused charges to be dropped?  OK, I’m indulging in a bit of reductio ad absurdum myself there, but I think y’all can see what I’m driving at.  None of the possible negative side effects of this relationship, whatever they might be, justifies destroying a young girl’s entire life; morally infantile rubbish like “it’s the law” or “we mistreat everybody equally” is even worse.  And if those of us who are sane can agree that these laws create monstrous injustices when inflicted on young women, perhaps we can also agree that they’re just as horrible when inflicted on young men.

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