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Archive for December, 2013

Inexperience

Posted in Miscellaneous, Q & A, tagged , , , , , , on December 11, 2013| 6 Comments »

I have been considering going into escorting for quite a while now, but I’m not very sexually experienced; I’m 24 but I’ve only ever been with one guy.  I know agencies often accept girls without experience, but I’m sure they assume the women have at least unpaid sexual experience; do you think I’m too inexperienced to even consider this type of work?

Young Virgin AutoSodomized by Her Own Chastity by Salvador Dali (1954)Every escort has to start somewhere; I mean the first time she does it, she must be inexperienced.  But as you say, she usually has some non-commercial experience.  I’m not saying you have to be a slut or anything, but if you’ve only ever been with one guy, sex work may not be right for you.  Now, there are a few caveats:  this has nothing to do with the clients, because some guys really like an inexperienced girl.  And I know nothing about your sexuality; it may be that getting paid for sex really turns you on (I know it does me).  But if that isn’t the case, you may want to explore sex with at least a few more guys before getting into sex work; not only will it help you to map out what you like and what you don’t like (which is vital for setting your boundaries), it will also give you a better sense of the way different men tend to act during sex.  That will help keep you safe by helping you learn to anticipate things that can go wrong, and to recognize behavior that’s outside the pale.  The more you know, the more you can stay in control of the situation, and that’s necessary both for your safety and for the client’s pleasure.

I’m in my early twenties and sexually active, but very unfulfilled because I’m very repressed.  Can you tell me how to go about freeing myself from these inhibitions so when I find a great woman, I won’t be too hung up to have a good sexual relationship?

It’s very difficult to help another person ease his own inner repressions; paradoxically, we all tend to hold on to the things that hold us back!  I think the best thing for you is to read as many different things as you can from as many different people as you can, so as to be exposed to the wide variety of different preferences, viewpoints, etc.  This won’t smash your inhibitions, but what it will do is to show you that A) you’re not alone in feeling the things you feel, and B) that there are people out there with much more extreme desires than you have (whatever those might be).  Once you begin to realize that your needs aren’t “weird” or “bad”, you’ll find that the repression tends to just fall away on its own.  For example, when I was in high school over 30 years ago, one simply didn’t talk about bisexuality; it was a shameful thing to be hidden or at most joked about, but not seriously discussed.  But as I met other bisexual women it began to seem more and more normal to me, and by the late ‘90s I was totally “out” about it.  Furthermore, it’s not at all abnormal for people your age to feel unfulfilled by sex; it’s hyped as being this magical experience, but in actuality (as with most things) one has to learn to appreciate it.  And very often, it takes until one’s late twenties or early thirties to do that, and to really feel comfortable in one’s sexual skin.

(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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More Stand-Up Guys

Posted in Biography, Perception, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 10, 2013| 28 Comments »

These days it takes some serious balls for a man to stand up, demand rights for sex workers, and actually sign his real name to the thing. – Maggie McNeill

A year and a half ago I published “Stand-Up Guys”, in which I saluted men outside the sex industry who dared to stand up and speak out for sex worker rights, despite the rising tide of “end demand” and other Swedish-flavored prohibitionism.  Things have grown only worse since then; prohibitionists viciously attack men who support sex worker rights, hinting that they are “pimps” or “sex traffickers” even when they don’t identify as clients.  What’s more, some sex worker activists appear to have imbibed the neofeminist Kool-Aid and foolishly shun the help of clients or other men; some even proclaim themselves misandrists, which looks to me a lot like using one’s own feet for target practice.  And yet despite all that, some men stubbornly fight for our rights anyway; I don’t mind saying that I find that sort of obstinacy rather sexy.Tim Barnett  So today I present another list of male allies; remember, this doesn’t include men who are directly involved in our industry, since it’s as personal for them as it is for us.  It does, however, include clients (and one former sex worker) who have chosen to “out” themselves for the cause.  As before, this is by no means meant to be a complete list; if you have any suggestions who didn’t appear on either list, please mention them in the comments below!
Dave Barry
Tim Barnett  The New Zealand MP who sponsored the Prostitution Reform Act (which decriminalized sex work in 2003) is now his party’s general secretary, and still often speaks in favor of decrim both in New Zealand and in the UK.  Follow him on Twitter: @tim4858

Dave Barry  The famous humorist has libertarian leanings, and has spoken out about the injustice of prostitution stings.  Email him at nolowflow@davebarry.com or follow him on Twitter: @rayadverbChester Brown

Chester Brown  Well-known comic book artist who wrote Paying for It, in which he detailed his experiences as a client of Toronto sex workers; the book’s appendix contains a strong argument for decriminalization.  I’m also proud to say that he’s a regular reader and a friend, and drew the cover art for my upcoming story collection Ladies of the Night.  Chester can be contacted through his publisher, Drawn and Quarterly, at info@drawnandquarterly.com

Graham EllisonGraham Ellison  Professor of Criminology at Queen’s University Belfast, a staunch proponent of decriminalization and outspoken opponent of the Swedish model; I have linked a number of his essays in my TW3 columns.  Email him at g.ellison@qub.ac.uk

Rupert Everett  This British actor came out as having done sex work when he was young and struggling, and is nowRupert Everett supporting an anti-Swedish model campaign by the English Collective of Prostitutes and Queer Strike.  He can be contacted by mail through his agents.

Zander-Dexter Falcon  A regular client in Saskatoon who recently came out in the process of fighting legislation that endangers sex workers.  Email:  zanderfalcon@sasktel.net  or follow him on Twitter: @furyofpatience

Ally Fogg  Freelance journalist in the UK who generally writes on social justice and gender issues,Ally Fogg including strong support for sex worker rights.  He prefers to be contacted via Twitter: @allyfogg, but his website also has an email contact form.

Chris Hall  Freelance journalist in the US who can be counted on to consistently write about sex workers and our rights in a respectful and eloquent manner.  Follow him on Twitter: @literatepervertMichel Houellebecq

Michel Houellebecq  French novelist who has repeatedly states that he loves prostitutes, and has often featured us in his books.  You may email him at houelle@magic.fr

Karl Lagerfeld  The famous fashion designer prefers escorts to unpaid companions, and often speaks of his admiration for us; he also helped former underage hooker Zahia Dehar get started as a designer herself.Karl Lagerfeld  He may be written at Karl Lagerfeld Group, 12 rue Vivienne, 75002 Paris, France.

Matthias Lehmann is a German sex work researcher whose articles (especially those debunking prohibitionist lies) I have referenced many times.  Email him here or follow him on Twitter: @photogroffee

Scott Long  Veteran activist for human rights, especially sexual rights, who unlike many in that field does notPaul Maginn seem embarrassed to speak out for the rights of sex workers.  Follow him on Twitter: @scottlong1980

Paul Maginn  Urban planning expert who is especially interested in the sex industry; I have linked his anti-criminalization essays several times.  Email him at paul.maginn@uwa.edu.au or follow him on Twitter: @planographer

Marc Randazza  Prominent First Amendment lawyer who has gone to batMarc Randazza not only for porn, but for the speech rights of hookers as well.  You may email him through this page, or follow him on Twitter: @marcorandazza

Mike Siegel  Astronomer, libertarian/conservative blogger, regular reader and friend who has written on numerous occasions in support of sex worker rights.  Follow him on Twitter: @Hal_RTFLC

Jesse Walker  Though virtually all libertariansJesse Walker are against criminalization, some are more actively vocal about it; this historian, Reason editor & writer of The United States of Paranoia is one of them. Email him at jwalker@reason.com or follow him on Twitter: @notjessewalker

Ken White  Respected First Amendment lawyer, popular blogger, defender of those threatened by censorious twatwaffles, geek extraordinaire and personal friend.  Read his thoughts on sex work, email him at ken@popehat.com or follow him on Twitter: @popehat

Kevin WilsonKen White  Professional research consultant, graduate student in epidemiology and friend who became interested in sex work research through reading this blog.  Email him at Wilson2@dal.ca or follow him on Twitter: @WilsonKM2

Tim Worstall  Economist and journalist who writes often on the absurdity of prostitution law; he also debunks “trafficking” myths.  Email him at timworstall@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter: @worstall

I apologizeKevin Wilson for anyone I’ve forgotten.  If you’d like to be on the next list of this type, just email me with a link to whatever public statements you’ve made about sex worker rights under your real name, and we’ll see about adding you to the next one (and you needn’t be shy, either; Aphrodite knows I’m certainly nothing of the kind).  If I did forget you, please don’t be offended; most of y’all know how busy I am, and things that shouldn’t often slip through the cracks.  In the meantime,Tim Worstall keep your eyes peeled for “Stand-Up Guys” in my weekly TW3 column, where I’ll mention guys who come to my attention without having to wait another year and a half.

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Guest Columnist: Jasper Gregory

Posted in Guest Columns, History, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 9, 2013| 42 Comments »

Jasper Gregory is a citizen science advocate and gender activist in Oakland, California; for the past few months he’s been researching the development of modern feminism from the 19th-century variety, and his “tweets” on the subject were so fascinating I invited him to contribute this column.  I think you’ll find it just as interesting as I do.

A new wave of sexual repression has swept through the lands of the Puritan Diaspora.  Under the banner of Feminism sexual puritans have declared a war on prostitution in Sweden and politically incorrect words and images in the UK and North America; the new Puritans are on the rise and have wrapped themselves in a rhetoric of “True Womanhood” that seems more appropriate for the 19th century than for the Internet Age.  But the similarities between today’s prude feminism and the earlier Victorian age of moral regulation go far deeper than you might suspect:  the radical “cultural” feminism of 1970-2013 is actually the continuation of a two century moral purity movement.

Frankenstein illustration by Berni WrightsonThe English romantic sentimental novel became established in the 1730s during the evangelical Protestant “Great Awakening“.  Under the label of “sensibility”, displays of romantic sentimentalism became the measure of good character; the more sensitive you were, the more civilized you were.  According to True Woman ideology, they were the most pure and civilized and thus the most sensitive, which is they were always fainting away and coming down with cases of nerves.  One outgrowth of Gothic romanticism was the science fiction novel, which first rose to international success in 1818 with Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, daughter of romantic novelist and women’s rights pioneer Mary Wollstonecraft.  And soon the Utopian science fiction novel became a way for the early women’s movement to inspire collective action just as the earlier Gothic romance heroines had provided a template for individual reformist action.

The first American woman science fiction author published the Utopia Three Hundred Years Hence in 1836.  In it, Mary Griffith imagines the Philadelphia of 2135, in which middle-class white women have attained more power in society.  The novel displays many features which would appear in later feminist Utopias, but it also contains many elements which were more in keeping the Victorian separation of spheres.  For instance, 2135‘s women do not have or desire the vote, for when they were given equal status under the law they retreated into a women’s sphere and separated themselves even more fully from the men’s sphere of politics and the university.  They did, however, enter the realm of business, which they were suited to on account of their house-holding skills; in fact, quite prophetically, Griffith saw equal competition in the marketplace as the route by which women achieved equality.

Griffith lived in an era in which romantic movement activists were holding up women as especially pure and civilized within the separate women’s sphere of the home.  Though it seems paradoxical to us, it was middle-class women who fought for their gilded cages as moral arbiters of the home and guardians of society’s manners and morals.  Rather than being imposed upon women, the separate women’s sphere was fought for and attained by a Romantic Era women’s movement.  This can be seen in Griffith’s Utopia; her 2135 Philadelphia is a world in which the women’s sphere had domesticated and civilized the male public sphere.  All of the rough edges had been removed:  the roads were smooth, and noisy, scary steam engines were banned once women began to guide technology.  All dogs were also exterminated, a theme common in later feminist Utopias:  dogs were uncouth, ill mannered and dead, though cats would be allowed to live.  Griffith’s Matrons got together and censored the vulgar passages of Shakespeare, and in another flash of prophecy, once the actors had been censored they would go on to become major cultural figures.  Mostly, Griffith dreamed of state regulation and a strong police to intervene and protect white middle class women from undignified situations and unscrupulous men.  Liquor and smoking were banned; if a bachelor was found drunk three times his head was shaved and he was sent to the work camps.

These themes mirror the concerns of Romantic Era Christianity in which a highly artificial version of sentimental femininity came to dominate.  As Colin Campbell wrote in The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism,

…the rise of sentimentality went hand in hand with the rise of consumer capitalism and of middle class women’s new role as head consumer of household items.  This is reflected in Three Hundred Years Hence, where all duties on imported luxury goods have been lifted.  2135 is a consumer paradise.

MizoraBy the 1880s the women’s movement was picking up steam and had moved on from the creation of women’s space into the purity campaigns, the effort to impose what they considered to be feminine virtues onto all of society.  Proto-eugenics was also becoming popular because as mothers, the reformers believed they could lay claim to special eugenic knowledge.  These themes are especially noticeable in Mary Bradley Lane’s Mizora  (1881), the first parthenogenetic Utopia (this element would become dominant in 20th-century feminist Utopias).  In Mizora, our narrator descends inside the Earth to find a blonde, Aryan, all-female society; their forebears had decided that dark skin caused criminal behavior and had used eugenic breeding to “cure” this affliction, and men were regarded as an inferior dark-skinned race whose elimination had led to a perfect society (an idea familiar to readers of 1970s feminist Utopias).  As in Griffith’s work, the Mizorans had tamed and domesticated uncivilized nature; animals had been eliminated and farming was held in suspicion because of the “deleterious” effects of earthly matter.  Their engineers made food from chemicals, produced bread from limestone and were close to achieving their glorious goal of finding chemical substitutes for fruit and vegetables; in a sense, Lane was imagining the Hostess Twinkie Utopia.  But besides being the first exclusively female Utopia where all of the turbulent and chaotic aspects of the men’s sphere had been tamed and made safe for proper ladies, Mizora was also a whiteness Utopia:  even their architecture and clothing were all bleached white.

1888 brought the literary Utopia into the mainstream with the publication of Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, which contained many of the themes of earlier women’s Utopias.  Looking Backward became the first international blockbuster bestseller and inspired the American Nationalist Socialist movement, the Nationalist Women’s Movement and later the Progressive Movement, the New Deal and Europe’s National Socialist movements.  One early Bellamyite was Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who in 1915 wrote Herland, a direct inspiration for 1970s women’s separatist Utopias.  Gilman continued the dog exterminationist themes of Mizora and Three Hundred Years Hence, and like most feminists of the time was a strong believer in Lamarckian evolution and eugenics; the Herlanders “of Aryan stock” had made eugenics the focus of their society, and had perfected their race by eliminating males along with the dogs.  The “Race Mothers” gave virgin birth to girls and were never subjected to the degradation of sex; women thus became supermothers and maternal passion was the only emotion left to them. Herlanders did not eat meat and cats had been eugenically engineered not to meow or catch birds; female cats were allowed to roam free, but males were kept in cages for stud purposes only.

Contemporary feminists consider Gilman one of the founders of American feminism, which is ironic considering that her eugenic feminism contained so much of the intolerance displayed by modern neo-Puritans.  She is less known for the white supremacism evidenced in her 1908 “A Suggestion on the Negro Problem”, in which she argued that the state should re-enslave African Americans to instill social hygiene in them and take away their right to reproduce; her proposal anticipates both the German solution to “the Jewish Problem” and the invasive social hygiene policies of the modern welfare state.  Gilman was rediscovered in the 1970s and adopted as a feminist idol, thus supporting the idea that 1970s feminism was a white women’s power movement; her model of purified eugenic Utopia became a cottage industry as multiple generations of women’s studies students read and wrote these Utopias and used them as a guiding principle for action.  The following graph shows the rise in use of the term “feminist Utopia” from 1970 to the mid-’90s: feminist Utopia graph

The year 2013 has seen a renewed feminism which in the United Kingdom is busy banning rock music, men’s magazines, pole fitness and exotic dancing, while in California a new culture war is aimed at the traditional libertarian values of the high-tech scene.  Without knowing it, a new generation is taking up the battle to civilize and domesticate the wild unruly natives and impose the traditional values of the Victorian women’s sphere on men and women alike.

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Links #179

Posted in Current Events, History, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 8, 2013| 12 Comments »

Don’t worry about the price tag!  –  Erin McDonald

I suspect this will be the last Links column this year in which Christmas things are not a large proportion of items (whether that’s a good thing or a bad one in your view).  Our top contributors were the guys from Popehat, with both videos and the two items before the first video.  That one requires a bit of information to appreciate:  it seems our increasingly-totalitarian government held a contest for the best propaganda song touting one of its massive government programs, and though the winner isn’t actually entitled “Don’t Think, Just Obey“, it might as well be.  Well, Patrick Non-White created this video parody by dubbing the winning song over a clip from a cult movie which had an intriguing premise, but IMHO would have been dramatically better had it been exactly six minutes and twenty seconds shorter.  The links between the videos were provided by Radley Balko  (“headline” and “truth”), Jesse Walker (“mesmerism”), Jason Kuznicki   (“welcome”), Violet Blue (“website” & “Microsoft”), Mike Siegel (“superheroes”), Grace (“singing”),  Laura Lee (“naughty”), Furry Girl (“1%”), Molly Crabapple  (“solitary”), Mike Riggs (“warrant”), Cop Block (“isolated”), Jack Shafer (“FBI”),  PWW (“assault”), and Mistress Matisse (“Xmas”).

From the Archives

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That Was the Week That Was (#349)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 7, 2013| 37 Comments »

Prostitutes…will be forced to continue to hide…because even if they are not risking arrest, their clients are.  And their survival depends on their clients.  –  Tim Leicester

The Lesser of Two Evils

A rabbi makes an argument familiar to students of medieval Catholicism:

Britain should…[legalize] brothels and…[implement] basic controls over safety and hygiene…without monitoring activities too closely and thereby discouraging usage of them…It may be more messianic to want to end the sex trade altogether, but perhaps it is more religious to seek to channel it safely.

Feminine Pragmatism

…Layal has…turned to sex work in [Beirut] to support her two children…“I don’t have any products to sell…I have myself to sell, and I’d much rather earn my money [like that] than I would begging on the street”…Layal says her Iraqi husband…sends her a monthly allowance from Baghdad, but…it’s not enough to cover her $900 rent…and allow her to send money to her family back in Syria.  He has no idea his wife is supplementing their income with prostitution …“A woman should never depend on anyone else for money, even her husband,” she says defiantly…

A Procrustean Bed

Note the assumption that there is always a “trafficker” hiding somewhere:

[Massachusetts’] new human trafficking law has been on the books since early last year, but Bristol County has not charged anyone and Plymouth County has brought charges against one man…[law sponsor] Mark C.W. Montigny…said the problem of human trafficking exists everywhere…and…the attitude that it doesn’t happen here is part of the problem…Law enforcement should use cases involving johns and prostitutes “to go up the ladder” and identify and prosecute the trafficker, he said…

Marching Up Their Own Arses
Slave Hunter

Remember Chris Baughman, the Las Vegas cop claiming to be an “expert” on “pimps”?  Pay especial note to the “magical pimp” trope:

[MSNBC’s]…new series, Slave Hunter: Freeing Victims of Human Trafficking…reveals…what happens behind closed doors in the sex trafficking underworld.  The series highlights the…work of human rights advocate, Aaron Cohen and his partner, former Las Vegas vice detective, Chris Baughman…MSNBC’s cameras follow Cohen and Baughman as they…identify trafficked women via on-line ads and then arrange to meet them in New York City hotel rooms with Cohen posing as a potential john.  When the women are open to help, Cohen and Baughman…[help] them to escape their bonds and build a new life…other times, the trafficked women sadly succumb to the powers of their “pimp”…

We can only hope this blows up in NBC’s face the way To Catch a Predator  eventually did.  Hey, guys, do you know the word for men like you who prey on women in order to enrich and aggrandize themselves?  Oops.

An Example to the West

…over 1,500 sex workers…[voted in Delhi on] December 4…thanks to an enrollment drive by the state election commission…over 80 per cent [of] sex workers [are now registered]…”We all will vote…for the person who will fulfill our long-pending demands,” Munni Begum…of GB Road Sex Workers Association…said…

And in Mysore:

…Ashodaya Samithi…is…a powerful collective…of 336 members…[and] a network of volunteers operating in six districts of Karnataka.  It reaches out to 8,000 sex workers through its different initiatives…such as providing knowledge of legal and human rights…running drop-in-centres, operation of a crisis management unit, a restaurant…and a training academy predominantly run by members …they also offer HIV and STI testing facilities, counselling and free condoms…90 percent of sex workers in Mysore have been contacted monthly, 70 percent…visit…drop in centres regularly and 65 percent have become consistent condom users.  Ashodaya Samithi has successfully reduced STI prevalence within three years…

The Power of Myth

As I’ve explained before, even cases which could credibly be called “trafficking” rarely fit the myth:

…Since Australia introduced tough laws to crack down on trafficking a decade ago…eight of 15 people…convicted…were…female…migrants, born in the same…country as their victims and typically from similar…socio-economic backgrounds.  Most…involved…[debt-bonded] Thai women…[and] three…had reportedly been victims…themselves…[none] were involved in “high-end organised crime”…

Mythbusters

Eight common migration myths debunked, including “Migration is on the increase”, “Strict border controls reduce irregular migration”, and “Migrants take jobs that would otherwise go to natives.”Thompson & Hurd

The Widening Gyre

The words “sex trafficking” and “pimp” do not appear in this story; however, I think we all know what was going through these cops’ sick minds:

Houston Police have refused to explain why they took a 13-year-old white girl from her two black guardians…and [gave] her [to]…Child Protective Services.  Landry Thompson’s mother had signed notarized papers giving dance instructor Emmanuel Hurd full guardianship over her during a trip from Oklahoma to Houston…Thompson, Hurd and another dance instructor had stopped at a gas station…when they were surrounded by police cars…All three told the police the same story, but…“They still put handcuffs on me and it really scared me”…Thompson [said]…At first officials…demanded that the mother fly to Houston to get her daughter, but 11 hours later, the girl was released back into [Hurd’s] custody…

The Course of a Disease (TW3 #28)

The French parliament has backed part of a bill that imposes a 1,500 euro (£1,250) fine on anyone paying for sex…Protests…took place outside the National Assembly in Paris as the debate took place…

The Course of a Disease (TW3 #47) Sidse Babett Knudsen as fictional Danish Prime Minister Birgitte Nyborg in Borgen

The Danes weren’t just satisfied with rejecting the tyrannical Swedish model; they also dramatized the events in a political television show:

…in the internet age, it is simply not good enough to pretend to be speaking for a “voiceless” group, as the surprised politicians learned in Borgen…Sadly, the biggest fiction…was the bit when the politician found herself impressed and moved by the voices of sex work activists…frighteningly few people in power have been willing to listen…

First They Came for the Hookers… (TW3 #132)

For those who still pretend government is different from organized crime:

…Houston Mayor Annise Parker…cut a deal with a group of strip clubs allowing them to…operate freely in exchange for an annual tax of $1 MILLION!…According to [a Houston Chronicle] article, “The city…has reached a settlement…that would halt enforcement of the three-foot rule and allow dancers to be fully topless in exchange for an annual $1 million donation to help combat human trafficking”…for those who have not completely removed the wool from their eyes, this is what is known…as a…shakedown.  But wait, only 16 clubs were included…so where does that leave the 50+ other strip clubs that have been purposely excluded from this deal?…I would venture…that…vice raids and harassment at these other clubs…will increase tremendously…the Mayor…herself…all but said that the other clubs will now be more routinely targeted…

Another, more obsequious blog reversed the roles by calling the deal “Houston’s dance with the devil” and breathlessly informed its readers that “Houston…has long been regarded as the nation’s hub of human trafficking”; I’d call that a claim for the #1 spot, wouldn’t you?

Due Consideration

I must admit, this one shocked even me:

…a pregnant Italian mother flew to England for a two-week…training course…she had…a panic attack when she couldn’t find the passports for her two daughters, who were with her mother back in Italy.  She called the police, who arrived…when she was on the phone to her mother…who explained [to cops] that her daughter was probably over-excited because she suffered from a “bipolar” condition and hadn’t been taking her medication…The police…[took] her to…a psychiatric hospital [where]…she was restrained…[and] sectioned under the Mental Health Act…five weeks later she was…strapped down and forcibly sedated, and when she woke up hours later, found she was in a different hospital and that her baby had been removed by caesarean section while she was unconscious and taken…by social workers.  She was…[then deported] to Italy without her baby…[who was] placed for adoption…Polaris King of the Hill

Number Puzzle (TW3 #324) 

Matthias Lehmann debunks more prohibitionist lies:

Re…“Germany is having second thoughts on legalized prostitution”…Alice Schwarzer’s… book and her appeal against prostitution have been widely criticized for using entirely unreliable data.  The counter-appeal…has been signed by numerous experts, including counseling centers for sex workers and victims of human trafficking as well as social scientists, social workers and sex workers themselves…a majority of the German public has consistently shown not to support a move to roll back the…law…

Number Puzzle (TW3 #326)

I don’t think many sex workers are unhappy about this:  “Germany’s biggest political parties have agreed to ban so-called flat-rate sex offered by some brothels…they view as exploitative the special offers…where men can have unlimited sex for 100 euros ($136)…”

R.I.P. Petite Jasmine

In Sweden, sex workers are considered “unfit parents”; child molesters, on the other hand…

A Swedish man convicted for molesting a five-year-old girl…has been [allowed] to adopt a child of his own…the man…has been found guilty of more than 90 crimes, mostly different types of fraud…and was also suspected of raping a…teenage girl…the…social affairs committee…found that his risk of relapse was…low…but…members were not given access to…details about his…sex crime…[and] there were no supporting documents to back up the assessment…

Dutch Threat (TW3 #334)

Utrecht city council has agreed [on] a new location for…prostitutes, five months after the licences for most of the…floating brothels were withdrawn…because of concerns the boat owners were involved in human trafficking…The prostitutes, some of whom had attempted to take over the boats themselves, will be relocated to a new location with 162 workspaces…The city is also introducing a minimum age of 21…and…in order to prevent a monopoly…owners will only be given three-year licences for no more than 20% of the windows.

Under Every Bed (TW3 #335)

I take back anything nice I’ve said about Al-Jazeera and “sex trafficking” mythology; this example of the new “gang” myth-motif (complete with the magic mind-control philter and confusion about the meaning of the verb “to sell”) is as bad as anything in the American media:

Washington DC…gangs are prostituting underage girls…Prosecutors say the pimps gave their victims drugs…to keep them submissive… “[prostitutes] can be considered a ‘reusable resource’…if you’re going to deal marijuana or cocaine; you use it up, you have to find another source or supply”…

The article does admit that “relatively little is known about the overall nature or extent of juvenile prostitution in the United States,” but of course that never stops prohibitionists from making grandiose pronouncements.

A War for Peace (TW3 #336) Femen at Artemis

Oh, the irony:

…Femen staged a topless protest outside one of Germany’s biggest brothels, as part of a campaign promoting [the Swedish model]…The women chanted “Go rape yourselves” and…briefly scuffled with the club staff…before being led away by police…Femen held a similar protest in Amsterdam earlier this month…Femen leader Inna Shevchenko said…”Prostitution is not a women’s industry, it’s a business controlled by men”…

Absolute Corruption (TW3 #336)

Still more victims of the Satanic panic released from prison:

Fran and Dan Keller…[were] released after 21 years in prison…The case…was part of national hysteria over alleged sexual abuse with Satanic overtones…therapists were subsequently criticized for having implanted the bizarre allegations into the minds of children…[Defense attorney Keith] Hampton…has vowed to work to completely exonerate the Kellers…

Whimsical Notions

Think this would’ve happened if legal, professional whores were available to soldiers?  “Female soldiers at Fort Hood [Texas] testified…that they were recruited for a prostitution ring set up by a sergeant involved in the sexual assault and harassment program…”

Something Rotten in Sweden (TW3 #345)

This might make sense if selling sex were a bona fide criminal act, AND if nearly all clients only paid once in their lives:

…public defender Edgar Lin [had] filed motions to dismiss the two counts against Alexis L. Smith…99 percent of…arrested [clients]…never faced criminal charges, while 40 percent of the prostitutes were criminally charged…The discrepancy formed the basis of Lin’s argument that his client’s right to equal protection had been violated…But…Judge Mark McGinnis ruled that the patrons and prostitutes are not similarly situated, because the prostitutes…have ongoing criminal activity, while the johns typically only commit a single crime…

Hard Numbers (TW3 #348)

Another lurid, dysphemism-laden article on Brazilian sex work; this one conflates child, underage and adult prostitution, plays a shell game with agency, blames sex workers for the sadistic actions of police and has a faint Swedish odor in places.  All in all, a truly noxious mixture.

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St. Nicholas’ Day

Posted in Holidays, Perception, tagged , , , , on December 6, 2013| 6 Comments »

A good many things go around in the dark besides Santa Claus. 
– Herbert Hoover

St. NicholasLife is full of odd paradoxes, things are not always as they seem, and the common folk wisdom is very often at odds with the truth.  Take whores, for example; due to many decades of ever-worsening propaganda, the common belief is that we are either anti-social criminals (equal to slavers if we dare to work with other whores) or pathetic victims reduced to such a subhuman state that others must speak, act and think for us.  Those who believe the former imagine that as monsters fallen from grace there is no place for us in religion; those who believe the latter could never imagine that we would have a designated patron saint because they refuse to see our work as work.  But the truth is that up until the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Church was actually extremely tolerant of harlots, viewing us as a “necessary evil” in the imperfect, sublunary world; we therefore had as much right to a patron saint as anybody.  Furthermore, it is very difficult for modern people to understand just how pervasive religion was in the Middle Ages; a look at the Muslim world will give you a rough picture of the role of the Church in Christendom 600 years ago.  So everybody had a patron saint, even (repentant) thieves.  Interestingly enough, their patron was the same as ours, but lest you imagine that this means prostitutes were viewed as akin to thieves, consider that this busy saint was also in charge of protecting merchants, sailors, archers, students and children.  But it is in that last capacity that he is best remembered today, in his modern guise of Santa Claus.

Though long-time readers already know this, newcomers may be surprised.  Why is Nicholas the patron saint of whores rather than Mary Magdalene?  For the answer to why he is, consult my column for three years ago today; for that to why she isn’t, try July 22nd (which is her feast day, as today is St. Nick’s).  But that isn’t the only misconception about the jolly old elf; I debunked some of the more obnoxious ones in last year’s column.  Among them is the idea that Santa’s use in advertising somehow makes him unfit as a symbol for this most joyous time of year.  But that’s utter hogwash; as we have seen, he’s always managed to play a variety of roles that would give a lesser saint a panic attack, and given that merchants are one of the groups he watches over it could hardly be considered inappropriate for him to appear in advertising.

stocking full of coalThere is, however, one group which misuses his image terribly; despite the fact that filles de joie are under St. Nick’s special protection, a powerful group dedicated to our utter extermination has the effrontery to use him as a symbol in their promotions.  To make things worse, they’re not even selling a product to help the merchants or to give to children; they just put out men dressed in his universally-recognized outfit to beg for donations…at least some of which are used to pay for their hate campaigns.  I am speaking, of course, of the Salvation Army, whose bell-ringing ersatz Santas are ubiquitous this time of year.  That’s the paradox I spoke of in the first line; using a beloved image to disguise a crusade against a group of people is disgusting enough, but when the target group happens to be one for which the image’s original has a special devotion, it crosses a line into a special kind of iniquity.  There is no coal black enough and dirty enough for the Salvation Army’s stocking, so when you are out and about this season please find a more deserving recipient of your charity; one which directly assists any of the Saint’s favored groups (such as students, prostitutes or children) would almost certainly ensure your name ends up on his “nice” list.

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Ignoble Experiment

Posted in History, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , on December 5, 2013| 24 Comments »

Beware of purity workers [who are]…ready to accept and endorse any amount of coercive and degrading treatment of their fellow creatures in the fatuous belief that you can oblige human beings to be moral by force.  –  Josephine Butler

prohibition beer raidEighty years ago today, a so-called “Noble Experiment” that was anything but was forcibly shut down.  At exactly 4:31 PM Eastern Time on December 5th, 1933, the 21st Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified, repealing the 18th Amendment and thus putting an end to a massive social engineering effort which cost the United States over $1 billion (over $13 billion in today’s money) and resulted in the imprisonment, impoverishment and death of over 100,000 Americans.  But despite the enormous economic and social costs (clogged courts, the rise of large-scale organized crime, widespread disrespect for all law, warfare in the streets and the birth of the modern police state, to name but a few), prohibitionists fought tooth and nail to prevent the dismantling of their mad scheme.  Furthermore, politicians learned the wrong lesson from the experience: not “prohibition doesn’t work and has catastrophic effects on society,” but rather “start small and then slowly ratchet up the number and popularity of banned substances and behaviors, and spread prohibition across many bureaucratic regulations instead of investing it in one easily-targeted law.”

I’ve often discussed the nearly-exact resemblance between “sex trafficking” hysteria and “white slavery” hysteria; I’ve also compared the rhetoric of sex work prohibitionists to that of drug prohibitionists, and I won’t insult your intelligence by presuming any of y’all haven’t recognized the resemblance between alcohol prohibition and drug prohibition.  But even though I’ve often said “All prohibitionism is the same,” I wonder if y’all have ever given any thought to how much the same the various colors of prohibition are.  Today I’m going to share a few facts about the capital-P Prohibition whose end we recognize today; I won’t waste my time and yours in pointing out the modern parallels, because they really are that obvious an exercise in plus ça change.

To prohibitionists, human rights, happiness and even life are subsidiary to “sending a message”, and the cost of that message can never be too great.  Various penalties proposed for the “crime” of drinking included torture, whipping, branding, imprisonment in Alaskan concentration camps, sterilization, enforced celibacy and even execution; some wanted the punishments applied to drinkers’ children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren.  Others preferred to execute drinkers stealthily by releasing poisoned alcohol through undercover agents posing as bootleggers; they understood that the death toll could be in the hundreds of thousands, but declared that damage a “price worth paying” for an alcohol-free society.  And though that plan was not carried out, the government did intentionally poison industrial alcohol in a failed attempt to keep people from drinking it; over 10,000 people died as a result.  Police and G-men raided homes and businesses (often without warrant), seized or destroyed property (including cash, vehicles and buildings), murdered citizens and even crossed into Canada for their “operations”.  Nor were these depredations limited to government actors; die-hard prohibitionists formed groups to “assist” enforcement by spying on others, ratting them out to the police and even conducting raids on their own.

Washington Taking Leave of the Officers of His Army by Currier & Ives (bowdlerized version)Since the very real threat of official violence was still not enough to stop Americans from imbibing, prohibitionists mounted a campaign of disinformation, sometimes producing bogus studies to “prove” their dogma.  They claimed that any amount of drinking dramatically increased the chance of dying from edema, and that habitual drunks often died of spontaneous combustion.  Drinking mothers (or even fathers) supposedly produced babies who were born addicted, and even the smell of alcohol was said to cause birth defects; some claimed these birth defects were inheritable, thus affecting multiple generations.  Children were subjected to presentations “proving” that alcohol caused severe brain damage.  The “anti-saloon” crowd also indulged in historical revisionism, censoring, reinterpreting or even retranslating documents (especially the Bible) to remove references to wine or other forms of alcohol, and altering pictures such as the one above (here’s the 1848 original) to retroactively turn historical figures into teetotalers.

The soi-disant Progressives wanted to remake society along “scientific” lines, to impose their idea of clockwork “perfection” on the human race; eugenics was a large part of this, as should be evident in the suggestion that “undesirables” be sterilized or their children executed with them.  But though the Nazis gave eugenics such a bad name it was eliminated from “progressive” philosophy, the rest of its catechism is virtually untouched; neither Prohibition nor the four-decade “War on Drugs” has cured the adherents of that revolting 19th-century cult of their dedication to the idea that, as Butler put it, “any amount of coercive and degrading treatment” of peaceful citizens is acceptable in order to force them to obey the cultists’ perverse notions of morality.

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Familiarity Does Its Thing

Posted in Miscellaneous, Q & A, tagged , , , , , , on December 4, 2013| 16 Comments »

My husband and I are quite happy together, but in the last few years his sexual interest in me has really dropped off.  He’s in excellent health and physical shape and performs perfectly when we do have sex, and he’s still quite affectionate; he just doesn’t want sex nearly as often as I do.  How can I get him interested again?

Calvin CoolidgeHave you ever heard of the Coolidge Effect?  It’s a biology term named for a story (possibly apocryphal) about president Calvin Coolidge.  He and the First Lady were visiting an experimental farm, and split up to tour different areas.  Mrs. Coolidge reached the chickens first, and upon being told that there was only one rooster for several dozen hens she quipped, “Tell that to Mr. Coolidge.”  When he was told, the president asked if it was not true that the rooster could mate with any of the hens he liked; upon receiving the affirmative reply, he said “Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge.”  When presented with a female of his species, a male animal will repeatedly try to mate with her; after he accomplishes it a few times, though, he loses interest…yet will immediately attempt coupling with a new female.  This is Nature’s way of maximizing sexual potential; remember, to Her sex is only for procreation, and our enjoyment of it is just Her little trick to get us to do it a lot.  Even when we’re using birth control, our hindbrains still act as though sex will probably result in babies, and so human males – like their brethren in the lower orders – will eventually tire of the same female.  Remember, this is biology, and has nothing at all to do with his love for you; he probably doesn’t even consciously realize that he’s less interested, and may be putting it down to overwork or whatever.

My suggestion is that you try to trick that portion of his brain into believing you’re a different woman.  I know that sounds absurd, but remember we’re talking about pre-conscious brain activity here, not conscious thought.  This is why new lingerie often turns a husband on:  since he’s not used to seeing you in it, the primitive brain may be fooled into thinking you’re not the same female he’s mated with before.  Think back on your years of experience, and try to remember stuff that seems to turn him on; for example, if you’re a brunette and you’ve caught him checking out redheads, a red wig might light a fire.  If he seems to perk up when some chick on TV sports a bustier, try that.  If there’s something (like blow jobs) you know he likes a lot, but which has fallen out of your usual repertoire, put it back in.  Even watching porn together works for a lot of couples in your situation.  Let me know what you come up with, and how it works; there may be some other things we can try, but I suspect this is the most likely culprit.

When we were dating, my wife seemed happy to give me blow jobs, but now she won’t do it unless I beg and even then resents that I ask; this despite the fact that she needs me to go down on her every time we have sex, or she can’t come.  But if I even hint about reciprocity, she acts as if I’m the worst person in the world.  Our lives together are otherwise fine, but I really like getting head and she knows that; I still cannot get her to blow me without acting like there’s a gun to her head.  Is there any way to get her to do this for me willingly?

Gil Elvgren advertisement for NAPA (1980)The short answer, I’m sorry to say, is “no”.  Your situation is not unlike that of the questioner I answered in “On a Mountaintop”, though his wife wouldn’t give him any kind of sex.  Your wife has been taught that (basically) only her needs matter, and you should be happy with whatever you get.  Other than hookers, I’m afraid your only chance is marriage counseling…and that often causes more problems than it solves.  I really wish I could give you a happier answer, but I’ve heard this sort of thing so very many times you wouldn’t believe it.  Alas, for many women, giving a man sex which he likes but they don’t is nothing but bait for their hooks.  And once the fish is on the hook, they see no point in re-baiting it.

(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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The Spiral of Absurdity

Posted in Current Events, Perception, tagged , , , , , , , on December 3, 2013| 26 Comments »

Modern man must descend the spiral of his own absurdity to the lowest point; only then can he look beyond it.  –  Václav Havel

High AnxietyFor several years now, I’ve been pointing out examples of the increasingly-bizarre claims of “sex trafficking” hysterics; regular readers have watched the claimed numbers of “sex slaves” rise along with their supposed number of clients and their pretended income, while at the same time their “average age” has dropped and the imagined abuses to which they are subjected have become ever more horrifying.  It is the natural tendency of rumors to grow in absurdity, and moral panics only collapse when the myths become too ridiculous for the average person to believe any longer; every time a claim ratchets up to a new level more people become skeptics, and the process continues until the number of True Believers drops below the critical mass required to sustain mass hysteria.  Every new inflation of the myth is therefore a good thing, because every one hastens the day when the whole thing collapses.

There was a perfect example of this just over a week ago, but the path to it began back in 2001 with the publication of Estes & Weiner’s “The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in the U.S., Canada and Mexico”.  In this farrago of breathless nonsense they claimed that somewhere between 100,000 and 300,000 “children” (a category that to the authors includes both adolescents and adults below 21) were currently “at risk” for “sexual exploitation”.  Their idea of “risk factors” included things like having access to a car and living within a short drive of either the Canadian or Mexican border, and their definition of “sexual exploitation” included stripping, consensual homosexual relations and merely viewing porn.  In fact, they considered “sex trafficking” to be the rarest form of exploitation; in 2011, Estes estimated the number of legal minors actually abducted into “sex slavery” as “very small…We’re talking about a few hundred people.”  But by that time, his “estimate” had taken on a life of its own:  in the course of ten years “all people under 21” became “children”, “at risk” became “currently involved”, “having some sort of sexual contact with older people” morphed into “coerced prostitution”, “at any given time” grew into “per year”, and the estimate was usually quoted at the high end.  By 2011 we were seeing nonsense like “100,000 – 300,000 children between the ages of 12 and 14 years old are victims of the child sex trade in this country” or “100,000 American children are…sold into a life of sex slavery every year”, and by last year it was usually something like “300,000 children at an average age of 13”.

But in November, this meme underwent the strangest metamorphosis yet.  Texas congressman Ted Poe, eager to boast of the power of government to destroy people’s lives, stated not that there were 300,000 sex trafficking victims per year, but rather 300,000 sex trafficking prosecutions per year…quite a different claim.  And, I might add, an unwise one; while the usual nonsense is supported by hand-waving about how “trafficking is a hidden crime” (therefore we don’t need to prove any of our statements about it), prosecutions are official proceedings for which records are kept.  Had the news media in this country not degenerated into the slave-parrots of government this would have immediately been fact-checked, but instead the opposite happened;Ted Poe on Friday the 22nd the Dallas Morning News published an editorial which repeated Poe’s error, further distorting it to “In Houston alone, about 300,000 sex trafficking cases are prosecuted each year.”  It proved one of the tipping-points I mentioned in the first paragraph, something so absurd that no rational person could believe it.  And as a result, even people outside the sex worker rights sphere took note and wrote about it.  The story was first mentioned on Twitter by Dr. Laura Agustín, and I pointed out that the number is 1/7 of the population of Houston.  The next morning Amy Alkon published a column on it:

…[including] uncaught…[sex traffickers] on top of the 300,000…suggests that a vast segment of Houston’s population…maybe 25 percent…is engaged in…sex trafficking…a Bureau of Justice Statistics report…[states that there were only] 2,515 suspected incidents of human trafficking…between January 2008 and June 2010…Hey, Dallas Morning News…should we send over a math teacher and the Jaws of Life to help pull your staffers’ heads out of their asses?…

Walter Olson soon linked that post, and then Texas criminal defense lawyer Mark Bennett blew the claim to smithereens:

…accord­ing to Texas Office of Court Admin­is­tra­tion sta­tis­tics, 2,650 new felony cases…and 5,819 new mis­de­meanor cases were filed in Har­ris County in 2012…So the total of all new cases…is nowhere near the 300,000 sex traf­fick­ing cases asserted by the Dal­las Morn­ing News.  Accord­ing to the Har­ris County Dis­trict Clerk’s web­site, there hasn’t been a pros­e­cu­tion for sex trafficking in Hous­ton since 2010.  But when peo­ple say “sex traf­fick­ing,” they may mean “com­pelling pros­ti­tu­tion.”  There have been two compelling-prostitution cases filed in Har­ris County this year.  Not 300,000.  Two…

On Sunday, the News “corrected” the story, but I’ve become more diligent lately and had already secured the screengrab I linked above.  Then on Monday, Techdirt made sure it got national attention:

Editorials written in support of legislation are prone to conjuring up hysterical…numbers…But the…writer should at least make sure the numbers being used don’t immediately prompt incredulous laughter from any reader with a couple of functioning brain cells…[the claim] that Houston prosecutes nearly 900 sex traffickers a day…365 days a year…has since been removed…

The article extensively quotes Bennett’s analysis, including a reference (and links) to yours truly; it also links Alkon’s post.  I’d have been happier if an even bigger media outlet picked it up from Techdirt, but one can’t have everything.

Of course, this is just one incident, and it isn’t even on most people’s radar.  But the good news is, it doesn’t have to be.  Because it isn’t an isolated incident; it’s part of a trend which will be producing many more equally-egregious idiocies in the coming year.  Every one of them will wake up more people, and soon every one will lead to articles like the ones above.  And in about three more years by my prediction (and I see no reason to revise it yet), the bubble will implode and the busybodies will all move on to worrying about the next big bogeyman.

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Unbound

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, tagged , , , , , , , on December 2, 2013| 41 Comments »

In each human heart terror survives
The ravin it has gorged: the loftiest fear
All that they would disdain to think were true:
Hypocrisy and custom make their minds
The fanes of many a worship, now outworn.
They dare not devise good for man’s estate,
And yet they know not that they do not dare.  –  Shelley, Prometheus Unbound

Prometheus Unbound by Tim OglineStarting today, my readers will have the opportunity to see me in a rather different mode.  Normally, my arguments are in the form of a monologue; though people can and do disagree with me in the comments, they aren’t writing full essays; furthermore, the readership of any blog is going to self-select towards a general zone of agreement with its author.  In other words, though most of my readers disagree with me on some points and some disagree with me on many points, very few disagree with me on most points (else they’d probably not be regular readers).  But near the end of October, Jason Kuznicki invited me to contribute the lead essay for this month’s issue of Cato Unbound; it will post today at about 11 AM Eastern Time (16:00 UTC).  About the same time Wednesday, a response essay will post, then another on Friday and one more next Monday.  For the rest of this month I and the others will then write a series of shorter essays responding to each others’ points, creating a debate in print that will conclude at the end of December.  Here’s the index of previous issues, so you can get an idea how it tends to unfold.

I would like to thank Jason for thinking enough of my writing and thinking skills to invite me to lead off the debate on this subject; I hope that I can argue my position convincingly and adequately answer the criticisms of the other writers, and that I can sway those Cato readers who aren’t necessarily predisposed toward decriminalization to see the sense and justice of it.  My lead essay is entitled “Treating Sex Work as Work”, and here’s the first paragraph:

When researchers taught capuchin monkeys how to use money, it didn’t take long for one of the male monkeys to offer a female one of the coins in exchange for sex.  Prostitution is often called “the world’s oldest profession” with good reason; it is a form of exchange that predates the human species, and has even been observed among chimpanzees.  Males tend to want sex much more frequently than most females are willing to accommodate, and where a demand exists it is inevitable that some individuals will choose to meet it for a price.  But because sex has traditionally been viewed as sacred, magical or otherwise special because of its ability to produce life, it has always been an area authoritarians felt especially compelled to enact restrictions upon; the fact that most of the sellers were female and most of the buyers male probably also had a lot to do with it, especially in pre-modern times when virtually all political power was concentrated in the hands of the client class.  We no longer live in a time when power depends upon gender, nor one in which coitus runs an uncontrollable risk of creating unwanted offspring, yet our laws regarding prostitution are still solidly anchored in the era when those conditions prevailed…

It’s about 3000 words, two to three times the length of one of my normal columns, but I don’t think you’ll get bored.  Click on over to Cato Unbound for the rest, and be sure to look in for the other contributors’ responses and the debate to follow.  Following the usual pattern, my first response should post on Thursday the 12th, and then a few more times over the next few weeks as needed.  So for this month, you’ll be getting a double-dose of Maggie if you are so inclined…and I really hope you will be!

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