The Swedish model, in its mission to eradicate sex work, is by definition an unapologetic mission to eradicate sex workers. – Nine
…a new documentary screening at the Venice Film Festival has revealed that Femen was founded and is controlled by a man. Ukraine is not a Brothel…by…Kitty Green, has “outed” Victor Svyatski as the mastermind behind the group. Mr Syvatski is known as a “consultant” …[but]…“It’s his movement and he hand-picked the…prettiest girls because…[they] get on the front page… that became…the way they sold the brand,” [Green] says… “These girls are weak,” [Syvatski] says in the film…“They show submissiveness, spinelessness…and many other factors which prevent them from becoming political activists”…
…PEERS Victoria Resource Society quietly closed the doors to its drop-in centre and shut down its most incremental program…PEERS will continue its daytime and nighttime outreach services, but only 10 per cent of its current 515 clientele have been matched with service providers…executive director Marion Little…says the decision …[is] due to the…new [British Columbia] provincial integrated case management system…[which requires] many more administrative steps…clients…would now be required to issue a full name and social insurance number just to access services…“we were losing so much staff time to administrative roles…we could…no longer afford our own services,” said Little…
OK, now this politician/hooker story is news:
An investigation into a fire that gutted the home of a former escort…[focused on]…Sutter County District Attorney Carl Adams…Sarah Garibay…showed police text messages from Adams saying he was jealous of her other lovers…Yet she said she does not believe Adams set fire to her home…“Someone is trying to smear him and they’re using my name to do it”…
Their next study will attempt to determine if water is really wet:
…married men are more likely than women to have extramarital affairs, as well as to seduce someone else’s partner…New research published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin…suggests men’s ability to resist temptation is no stronger or weaker than that of the ladies. But it gets overridden more often because of the intensity of men’s desire…
In a column on humorist Dave Barry’s surprising depth and wisdom, Lucy Steigerwald quotes a 1994 interview he gave to Reason magazine:
…I saw one of these real-life cop drama shows…[where] the whole show consisted of this [undercover cop entrapping]…prostitutes…Meanwhile…the other cops, these fat men with walkie-talkies, are laughing…because…they are about to enforce the law and protect society…This poor woman–I don’t know whether she’s feeding her drug habit or feeding her kids or whatever. And the cops are so proud of themselves…It just made me sick to see this. To treat these people who are trying to make a living…this way, and to be proud of it…we’re all supposed to watch this and feel good about it. It’s just disgusting…
…St. Louis [Missouri]…Alderman Jeffrey Boyd…posted this tweet…“A constituent suggested legalizing…Brothels What do you think?” The woman who made that suggestion said she wanted to be taken seriously and offered it as a way to protect women in her community. “These are human beings, and you can do something to help them,” said Joyce Glaspy…[she] conceded that most folks in St. Louis won’t agree with her, but said a brothel would provide security for these women and get them off the streets…
In Bangladesh, as in the Netherlands, “morality” is being used as an excuse to evict sex workers so developers and their government cronies can profit:
…“If anybody thinks that these evictions took place out of some moral issues and that we are doing some criminal activities, then they are wrong…[it was] to grab our land”…[said] Joya Shikder…of the Sex Workers Network…“Usually after evicting, the government hands over Tk10,000 and a sewing machine…in the name of rehabilitation…the department does not even bother to know whether we can sew or not”…
The cancer keeps spreading: “[Virginia state] Sen. Mark Obenshain…wants to make human trafficking a standalone felony offense…add offenders engaging in commercial sex with a minor to the sex offender registry and extend asset forfeiture laws to human trafficking…”
This excellent article about Ruhama’s efforts to persecute Irish sex workers was transcribed (in English) from the print edition of Rabble by the Spanish-language blog El Estante de la Citi:
…According to [Ruhama]…it’s “prostituted women” and never “work”…they’re [not] very concerned with trafficking…when it’s young Asian men…[sitting] in weed growhouses…but they’re not having sex so it doesn’t matter right? They believe all sex workers are abused and…only Ruhama…can represent [them]…Ruhama…[says] prostitution is…violence against women and the Swedish law has been great at reducing prostitution and trafficking…[but] the Swedish government admitted…that they actually hadn’t a clue how much prostitution there was…and the Swedish police have reported that trafficking has grown significantly since that…law was brought in…
The Course of a Disease (TW3 #42)
…Dr Graham Ellison…is working on a research project on sex work regulations in Berlin, Manchester, Prague and Belfast…one of his co-researchers is Dr Susan Dodillet…[who says] Sweden’s sex purchase law has made sex workers more vulnerable…like Dr Ellison, she favours…decriminalising prostitution…in 2002 new [German] laws put the sex trade almost on a par with other work. One exception…is that the unemployed cannot be penalised for refusing [sex] work…However, prostitutes can claim unemployment and sickness benefit and brothel owners must provide the same…rights as other employers…Dr Ellision added…”a senior officer in the Berlin Kriminalpolizei who [investigates] organised crime…was emphatic that trafficking for sexual exploitation [is] not a significant problem. Generally, the more you criminalise something the more you drive it underground and into the hands of gangsters”…
Laws and interventions aimed at reducing human trafficking by targeting commercial sex workers can…actually endanger their health and result in human rights violations, experts say…Part of the problem…is that anti-trafficking programmes often take the form of “raid and rescue” missions…[which] invade privacy and…scatter…networks of sex workers who, in some cases, had implemented successful sex worker-led health programming…“rescue raids of sex establishments have exacerbated violence against sex workers and compromised their safety,” say the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS…
On the Simultaneous Having and Eating of Cake
…Four exotic dancers are suing Fantasy Gentlemen’s Club in Grand Junction, Colo., claiming the club’s owner violated…minimum-wage laws…Fantasy…took such a large cut of…tips that dancers sometimes made less than $7.25 per hour…“The case is fundamentally one of…exploiting workers that are vulnerable because of the stigma that’s attached to what they do,” Mari Newman, the [dancers’] attorney [said]…Kevin Eardly, the owner of the club…characterized the suit as a shakedown by a group of disgruntled strippers…
…Fran Keller and her husband Dan…are each serving 48 years on multiple sexual abuse charges…“We were supposed to have buried children…or flown them to Vegas, California and Japan…we had an airstrip in back of the house, dinosaurs and sharks in the pool. It was just so farfetched that I had no idea anyone could believe such stories.” The Kellers were caught up in the 1980s-era hysteria surrounding satanic [sic] ritual abuse…popularized on daytime talk shows [and] lurid paperbacks…Nearly two dozen years after their conviction, [they] have filed a Writ of Habeus Corpus that could lead to the end of their prison sentences…
Fraudulent recruitment, debt bondage, abusive conditions, threatening workers with deportation…but it’s never called “trafficking” when politically-connected companies do it:
…twice this summer…more than 150 Jamaican guest workers who clean luxury Florida hotels and condos walked off the job…They…borrowed to pay recruitment fees of $2,000 to $2,500, counting on promises of full-time work and good housing. But…the cleaning company packed as many as 15 people into unfurnished two-bedroom apartments, for…as much as $5,000 a month. Charges for rent and required extras like $70 for a T-shirt “uniform” reduced the workers’ net pay to subminimum levels, sometimes even zero, and…paychecks repeatedly bounced…Guest workers…are tied by law to the employer who sponsored their visas, which means that if they are found too “difficult” for any reason — including asking that their rights be respected — the employer can…deport them and blacklist them from receiving future work visas…
Islan Nettles was out…with friends when a group of young men…learned she was a transgender woman and began taunting and maliciously beating her—right in front of a police precinct in Harlem…[the 21-year-old] was punched in the face, knocked to the ground and beaten until she lost consciousness…she…fell into a coma…[and later] died…Nettles’ alleged assailant, Paris Wilson, was booked on a misdemeanor assault charge and freed on $2,000 bail…Nettles’ death was officially ruled a murder…[but] Wilson has not yet been arraigned on any murder charges…
The mainstream media touted another bogus client study last week; this one used a single Backpage ad placed twice in each city, and thus (unsurprisingly) generated wildly-varying figures for their “estimate” of the fraction of men who buy sex. The design presumes that all clients use Backpage and that all men will respond to a generic ad for one particular type worded by ignorant amateurs; it’s like counting the pigeons near one statue at some random time and using it to estimate the number of all birds in the whole city. The academic behind this is the ethically-retarded Dominique Sepowitz of Arizona State, who has a history of reporting her survey subjects to the cops; her department is also involved in “Project ROSE”, which entraps streetwalkers and then offers them a “choice” of jail or Bible-based brainwashing. And who funded this bogus “study”? Try the Phoenix Police Department, Arizona State’s “Office of Sex Trafficking Intervention”, and Asstoon & Dumi’s THORN. In other words, it’s about as trustworthy and reliable as anything from Melissa Farley or the Schapiro Group.
As bad as things are in the US, at least sex workers aren’t executed here:
Kim Jong-un’s ex-girlfriend was among a dozen well-known North Korean performers who were executed by firing squad…Hyon Song-wol…a singer with the Unhasu Orchestra, was among those arrested on August 17 for [selling pornographic videos of themselves]…All 12 were machine-gunned three days later, with other members of North Korea’s most famous pop groups and their immediate families forced to watch. The onlookers were then sent to prison camps…
Here’s a good introduction to the horrors of the Swedish model by Nine of Feminist Ire, illustrated by the way the policies led to Petite Jasmine’s death:
…Prohibitionist campaigners…portray Sweden’s stance on sex work as progressive, and assert that sex workers themselves are not targeted…They’re painted as victims to be pitied and rescued…[but] as with religion-cloaked homophobia, this distinction makes little difference to those on the receiving end…Police stake out sex workers’ homes and workplaces, clandestinely film them, and subject them to invasive searches. Sex workers are often forced to testify in court, but have the rights of neither victim nor accused…
A Tale That Grew in the Telling (TW3 #329)
“A film by three students in Plymouth is being used nationally to teach people about child sexual exploitation…the film…is the fictional story of…a 13-year-old sex trafficking victim, who is kidnapped and forced into prostitution after being groomed online”…UK authorities have little choice but to use a film about fictional “sex trafficking” victims, because they can’t seem to find any real ones.
…Parliamentary servers have registered tens of thousands of attempts to access porn every month with over 100,000 attempts last November alone…A…spokesperson said…the figures may have been enlarged by “automatic links” and “pop up” windows. “We are not going to restrict Parliamentarians’ ability to carry out research,” they added.
But restricting the citizens’ ability to carry out similar “research” is A-OK.
“According to Homeland Security, Texas is the second largest human trafficking state…” Because third place ain’t good enough for Texas!
Ruhama are doing well, financially speaking; a court, sitting specially on a Sunday, gave them “a substantial amount of cash”:
http://www.leitrimobserver.ie/news/local/gardai-raid-carrick-brothel-1-5454070
Meanwhile, in the North, my Lord Morrow was telling Wendy Austin about the wonderful benefits of the Swedish model…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b039g0vl
(He’s at the beginning, along with the cop who doesn’t want it, and an English escort.)
Ha, ha, ha!
FEMEN set up and run ruthlessly by a sexist businessman to promote his own political agenda.
It’s just a ‘live’ version of a Murdoch red-top tabloid, except that Victor Svyatski had the acumen to put the tits front and centre instead of burying them on page three.
Thanks for that one Maggie.
And here’s hoping Fran and Dan Keller are released soon and successfully sue Texas for millions over their ridiculous wrongful conviction.
Oh you should read my account on the FEMEN reveal. Just had one response from an idiotic FEMEN fan who wanted to claim that she or he had never heard of their racist views and actions against Islam (And to say nothing of FEMEN Brasil’s neo-nazi connections).
The also attacked Catholic Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard with Virgin Mary-shaped water bottles while he was speaking in Brussels earlier this year.
They also took over Saint Sophia’s Cathedral in Kiev to stage a Pro-Choice rally … ringing the bells in the towers until arrested by police.
They are radically opposed to any church.
Not really, they don’t attack Synagogues and FEMEN’s vitriolic attacks on Islam and Muslims weren’t just attacks against an organised Church, they were extremely xenophobic and directed against Muslim culture.
Why wouldn’t they also attack Synagogues? Is there some kind of Jewish representation in Femen?
Not that am aware of. That wasn’t my point, I could have said they haven’t attacked Sikh temples. What I meant is they aren’t consistently against religion. Their attacks against the Catholic Church were designed to outrage Ukrainians (maximum media coverage), their attacks against Muslims were much more xenophobic, particularly in the way they vilified Arabian women.
Don’t you remember that Tunisian woman who quit Femen because she thought it was secretly funded by Israel? I wonder if this is worse. 🙂
Reblogged this on respectsexwork.
What is a “transgender woman”? I’m guessing that is someone surgically altered? “Transexual” … to me, that’s a male who lives as a woman? Like Frankenfurter from Rocky Horror? Honestly – I cannot keep up with the definitions here of who’s who and what’s what.
Dave Barry is pretty goddam awesome ain’t he? He really “gets it” and articulates it well.
I always thought that something was going on with Femen because there were always just too many HOT girls in it. Amazing girls who look like that – those aren’t real protesters. Real protesters you wouldn’t want to look at … kind of like a nude beach. Nice concept – until you see what’s out there on it!
“Transgender” started out as a blanket term for any gender variation, but has now settled in as the accepted term for what used to be called “transsexual”. It’s a person who is genetically of one sex, but feels internally like a member of the other. A transgender woman (or “transwoman”) is genetically male, but living as a woman, and usually (but not invariably) taking hormones & headed in the direction of SRS.
Frankenfurter is a transvestite (AKA cross-dresser), a man who identifies as male but gains sexual pleasure from dressing up in women’s clothes. Transvestites (a term some now consider insulting, BTB) don’t want to be women; the dressing is for them a sexual act.
There needs to be class for us rednecks.
By the way … I’m starting to get into this Twitter thing now that a lot of escorts seem to be into it! 😛 Anyway, I played around and retweeted a couple of your articles just as an experiment … and picked up two new followers.
I’m gotta ride the hell out of the “retweet” bandwagon and see if I can get thousands of followers just by being a “retweet whore” for Maggie McNeil!!!
Fuck yeah! Retweeted this article too! That’s cool right? 😀
Yes, it’s cool. 🙂
Ugh. The Oak Hills / Dan and Fran Keller case hit the trifecta: “satanic ritual abuse”, “recovered memories”, and a massive campaign by “Believe the Children” (a group of deluded McMartin Preschool parents).
By 1991 when Dan and Fran Keller were tried, the whole “satanic ritual abuse” industry had reached its peak of influence.
There is a decent overview of the case in the Austin Chronicle published in 2009.
I don’t know for certain whether today’s Daubert standard for expert testimony would have made a difference in their trial, but I think it likely would have. Bizarre testimony by dubiously qualified “expert” witnesses certainly was a major factor in their conviction. But so were Brady violations, prosecution withholding exculpatory evidence.
The whole case against them reeks of bovine excrement.
Daubert only helps when it’s applied and even then I’m not sure that applying its Popperian standard to satanic ritual abuse would have helped much. It was always theoretically possible to disprove many of the claims made in these trials, but only if you’re prepared to look at the evidence.
Even the old Frye standard of ‘theory is generally accepted among scientific experts’ would have got this stuff tossed out of court, but the problem is that courts always have been and still are highly selective in their application of standards of acceptance for scientific evidence.
If they want to use the evidence and Daubert excludes it, they’ll look at Frye. If that still excludes it they’ll use a state-based precedent (I can’t remember the name of the Texan one now, but it’s been used to get some ridiculous stuff through, including a whole load of forensic evidence known to have been trashed due to the pathetic anti-contamination standards in the Houston lab).
If even the state based standard excludes the evidence the court is just as likely to exercise its discretion to apply no standard whatsoever.
Science in the courtroom?
Don’t make me laugh.
Granted that courts are remarkably accepting of some bogus expertise. Nothing rankles like the phrase “based on my expertise and training as a police officer …”, which courts tend to accept as basis for expert testimony on everything short of flying saucers.
At least in the 9th Federal Circuit, “recovered memory” evidence has been off the table since the mid-1990s. That result happened after the 9th Federal DCA upheld the district court’s ruling overturning George Franklin’s murder conviction in CA state court, which had been based almost entirely on “recovered memories”.
Of course, the 9th was the federal court with jurisdiction in CA, not TX. I don’t know of any TX rulings. But I suspect most courts have followed suit these days. For one thing, the psych experts opposing the pseudoscience of “recovered memories” have become more organized and active.
“Nettles’ death was officially ruled a murder…[but] Wilson has not yet been arraigned on any murder charges…”
How could his death been officially ruled a murder if there hasn’t been a trial? It’s a homicide and Wilson hasn’t been charged with murder because there is currently insufficient evidence to do so. Not unusual, this is the way the system supposed to work.
I’m sure the reporter meant that the coroner ruled it a homicide, which is the first step toward filing charges in the American system.
The writer is specifically commenting on the “fact” that it was “officially recorded as a murder” and that murder charges haven’t been filed yet, which seems to be a theme amongst some of those protesting. As NY doesn’t adhere to the Joint Enterprise doctrine it makes sense that they won’t be able to rush to charge anyone. This is the way the NY CJS should work. Wilson might be charged with murder but if he is it should be because this is a fair assessment of the evidence not because protesters demand it (as was the case in the Zimmerman trial).
A War for Peace
Why am I not surprised?
Elephant in the Parlor
Interesting. And she thinks he didn’t do it. Well, if he didn’t, this is probably the last we’ll here of it.
Stand-Up Guys
I’m not so sure that either Dave Barry or Lucy Steigerwald “knows economics better than economists,” or better than anybody who takes the time to ask a few obvious questions. But yeah, Dave Barry seems a decent guy, and I liked the Elvis songs.
Whatever They Need To Say
I’m starting to think the world will be a much, much better place as soon as all clothing manufacturing is totally automated. Better automate toilet cleaning and a few other “we’ll bust the hookers and make them do it” type jobs too.
Absolute Corruption
Ah yes, I remember the Geraldo thing. I watched it with a sixteen year old girl who found more nonsense in it than I did. Not saying I would have believed it all without her, but any tendency to think Rivera was onto something was blasted to hell by this girl.
If I finish this today, I will be ONLY two months behind… again.
A Tale That Grew in the Telling (TW3 #329)
We also need to do something about the rising number of children abducted by aliens. This poor girl obviously was never taught how to protect herself, but by studying her story we can protect the real children from this menace.
King of the Hill
What?!? Texas isn’t #1!?! Something must be done! Let’s see… I’ve already got some candy… I could rent a van…
Ah, but then I’d fall even further behind here. Some other patriotic Texan will have to do his duty and push the Lone Star State over the top.
OK, comments, replies, replies to replies to replies, etc. and then it’s time to skip lightly over Links #166 and onward.
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