If you believe that selling sex means selling women, you believe that a woman’s value equals her capacity to have sex. – Kate Heartfield
Yet another example of what real sex slavery looks like:
A Utah truck driver kept sex slaves in his semitrailer for months at a time while he traveled the country, filing down their teeth, forcing them to alter their appearance and beating them until they nearly passed out…The charges against [Timothy Jay Vafeades] include kidnapping, [Mann Act violations] and possession of child pornography, and could bring a life sentence if he is convicted…
When I miscarried at 22 weeks in 1994, the cops weren’t even informed, much less involved. If that happened today, it might be very different (especially if I weren’t white). This detailed article on the Rennie Gibbs case touches on other, similar travesties, but also establishes the case as part of the pattern of willful incompetence perpetrated by Steven Hayne, Mississippi prosecutors’ go-to medical examiner for over 20 years because he was willing to declare just about anything a murder without the slightest scrap of valid scientific basis. Veteran Agitator readers will no doubt remember Hayne, whom Radley Balko wrote about many times.
Prohibitionists use a young woman’s murder as an excuse to deny her agency and talk about short skirts:
A…nonprofit that works with sex workers is holding a candlelight vigil for a 21-year-old woman whose naked body was found last week on a conveyor belt inside an Anaheim [California] trash-sorting facility…No Boundaries International…said they had frequent contact with Jarrae Nykkole Estepp in Oklahoma City in 2012, when she was featured in several videos…on…JohnTV.com…Detectives believe the woman was probably [murdered, then] dumped in a garbage bin and…delivered to the plant by a trash truck…
Graphic illustrations of child molestation in a vintage book have landed librarians in…Sweden in…trouble with police…I Last Och Lust…contains illustrations…to show how sexuality has been depicted historically…head librarian [Anna-Karin Axelsson said]…”We cannot go back and clean up history…that’s not what libraries are meant to do”…the title [will now] be kept for…research only…
…On March 11, 1974, ABC aired Marlo Thomas’ “Free to Be…You and Me” — a musical program celebrating gender-free children…and…[envisioning] a world…[of] non-gendered human persons…But, after 40 years of gender activism, boys and girls show few signs of liking to do the same things. From the earliest age, boys show a distinct preference for active outdoor play…with…clearly defined winners and losers…[while] girls…are more drawn to imaginative theatrical games…the…preferences…hold cross-culturally and even cross-species…ignoring differences between boys and girls can be just as damaging as creating differences where none exist…
Another week, another rapist cop:
A San Jose [California] police officer has been arrested and charged with raping a woman…after she had argued with her husband… Geoffrey Graves…and three other…officers responded to a [domestic violence call]…the woman…[said] she wanted to spend the night at a hotel…Graves…[followed her] to her room…and…[forcibly] raped her…Police Chief Larry Esquivel called the case…”an isolated incident”…
It’s so very isolated that I have another one right here:
Sheriff’s deputies arrested [an]…Irwindale police sergeant on suspicion of sexually assaulting a woman…David Paul Fraijo…stopped [a newspaper carrier on her route, then groped and orally raped her]…the [resulting] lawsuit…was [settled] in January…for $400,000…Fraijo faces a maximum penalty of life in…prison…
Some cops don’t even “isolate” their attentions to one woman at a time:
A U.S. Border Patrol agent [who raped] three undocumented immigrants was found dead in his Texas home, likely by his own hand…a…woman…told officials that [Esteban Manzanares] had attacked her, her 14-year-old daughter, and another 14-year-old girl…She and [her daughter] had been raped and left for dead…[Manzanares tied up the other girl in his home] until he finished his shift…then returned…raped her, and committed suicide…
Megan Schmidt-Sane and Meena Seshu respond to rescue industry types:
In a CNN piece…last year…Jane Wells and John-Keith Wasson…blatantly ignore the voices of sex workers…As representatives of two of the largest sex worker rights organizations in India and Uganda, we hope to ensure that [their] voices…are heard…Wells and Wasson…cite imaginary statistics…[and] falsely state that a “small percentage of voluntary sex workers” are somehow condemning a vast number of women into sexual slavery…
The latest gypsy whore tale is among the funniest yet: “High school tournament season in Des Moines…[has] a dark side…human trafficking victimizes over 25 million…worldwide each year…The state of Iowa is not immune to this crime…” Yes, 4% of the world’s population has been “sex trafficked” since the hysteria started, many at high school football games.
Turns out Ed Wood made a few commercials in the late ‘40s, before he embarked on his movie career; note that these are generic so the local sponsor could insert a card for his specific business. Look for Wood himself as the magician in the last one.
…the film Chosen…was produced by Shared Hope International…and portrays true experiences of two young All American girls who were lured into sex trafficking…Oregon and Washington along the Interstate 5 corridor leads the nation in the number of victims…
Lying Down With Dogs (TW3 #44)
A group of Tunisian sex workers have demanded to be allowed to return to work, 18 months after their brothel in the coastal town of Sousse was attacked by Salafists and closed down. A delegation …[presented] a petition signed by 120 women calling for their brothel…to be allowed to reopen…
The Netherlands is known for its social subsidies on everything from education to housing, but it’s also subsidizing sex for the disabled…While there is no direct “sex grant” per se…benefits…can be spent however they like…social workers, caretakers and affected individuals are calling for increased access to sex services for citizens with disabilities…
First They Came for the Hookers… (TW3 #322)
The spectacle of lawyers censuring other lawyers for lying probably exceeds safe levels of irony for a public facility:
The Illinois Supreme Court has agreed to a three-year suspension for a solo lawyer who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of prostitution and failed to disclose her illegal work history on her bar application. Reema Nicki Bajaj…was suspended [for not mentioning sex work she did to put herself through law school]…in response to a question about jobs she held in the last 10 years…
An agreement has been reached with the City of Vancouver and the provincial and federal governments to pay $50,000 to each of 11 families whose relatives were victimized by serial killer Robert Pickton…The civil suit was launched last May by the children of four women whose remains…were found on Pickton’s…farm after his arrest in 2002. Other families had since joined…The lawsuit claimed police…failed to warn women on the Downtown Eastside that a serial killer may have been on the loose…
Jerry Barnett…of…Sex & Censorship, said he was “delighted” with the turnout at the “Don’t Censor Me!” protest…against the Stop Porn Culture conference, including representatives from the English Collective of Prostitutes, the Sex Worker Open University and Queer Strike campaign groups…Stop Porn Culture [leaders]…Gail Dines and…Julie Bindel…aim…to expand the “antipornography feminist movement” in the U.K…Dines and Bindel appeared outside…to debate with the…crowd…for about 15 minutes…
Catastrophic Consequences (TW3 #406)
Police carried out inspections of Edinburgh’s…saunas hours before a new system came into force that is likely to make brothel raids more difficult…police will [now] need a warrant to search premises…Margo MacDonald MSP said…”Last year’s raids have backfired badly on the police…There was a successful policy in place for 30 years, but now the women have less protection and police will have less access to intelligence. Trust has been shattered”…
Gingerbread House (All Traffick, All the Time)
If a sex worker doesn’t see herself as a victim, the state must victimize her to prove her wrong:
A [Florida] bill…was temporarily postponed after senators determined that placing human trafficking victims in a locked facility is not a good idea…The…bill…was created by the House Healthy Families Subcommittee, where…[its sponsor] said…[it] was designed to break young trafficking victims away from former lives…“So many of [them] don’t see themselves as victims”…
An earlier version of the story informs us that “Florida [has] the third-highest rate of child sex-trafficking in the country. Jacksonville is third in the state…”
Traffic Jam (All Traffick, All the Time)
More busybodies who want to help cops brutalize and cage women:
…three St. Louis area women…are developing a website of hotel room photographs that can be accessed by police…hoping to track down…victims of sex trafficking…and their pimps…millions of [sex workers post]…pictures of [themselves in] their rooms [in their Backpage ads]…the website is in initial development and needs about $200,000 in funding. When it is ready, images…will be cataloged by hotel name, city and date taken and possibly made searchable by room color or other basic decor…
The Course of a Disease (TW3 #408)
The European Parliament recently recommended that its member states should criminalise sex work. This has prompted 26 Danish researchers to sign a protest letter against the proposal, as they believe that…politicians have ignored the majority of the research in this field, including reports from the UN, WHO and Human Rights Watch, who all recommend a decriminalisation of sex work…
The ACLU actually did something for sex workers for a change:
Dozens of supporters packed the courtroom…in support of…activist Monica Jones…[whose] lawyer filed a motion to challenge [the law] on constitutional grounds, resulting in the trial being postponed until April 11th. Ms. Jones [stated], “We will be back with twice as many people”…Sex Workers’ Outreach Project (SWOP) of Phoenix is continuing to build momentum for Monica Jones’ case with the support of the ACLU motion…
Noah Berlatsky proves himself a valuable ally to sex workers with another good article in The Atlantic, this one using the hubbub surrounding Belle Knox to launch a sensible and well-informed discussion of student sex workers which also quotes Melissa Gira Grant and regular reader Christina Parreira.
The Canadian government’s consultation on prostitution laws ended on Monday, but it hardly seems likely to have much influence over politicians, who have already decided to pursue some form of criminalization instead of listening to the sensible advice of sex workers, human rights advocates and even many criminologists. By the public discourse, one would think the New Zealand model didn’t even exist; editorials like that in the Globe and Mail pretend that the only two legislative models in the world are the Dutch and Swedish models (which criminalize either some or all sales of sex, respectively). And though a sizeable fraction of the members of the Liberal Party (whose past leader Pierre Trudeau famously said, “There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation”) support decriminalization, a motion to adopt that as official policy was pulled in the name of political expediency. So though most of the Canadian media oppose blanket criminalization (even under its fake-moustache Swedish disguise), only the Ottawa Citizen has come out in favor of full decriminalization:
…supporters of the Nordic model…say [prostitution] is a commodity sale [that] is inherently objectifying and exploitative…A woman who believes she is freely choosing her job…is a victim whether she knows it or not…that same notion underpins many of the world’s most sexist ideas — including the idea…that rape is a property crime. We in Canada don’t generally talk about rape that way any more, but we still use that language when we talk about prostitution. We use phrases like “selling her body” or even “selling herself” — rather than “selling sex”…We don’t say that a hairstylist “sells her hands” or that a doctor “sells herself”…a woman’s value as a human being has nothing to do with whom she chooses to have sex with or how often or what conditions she imposes on that choice…sex is merely the service she sells…
The Mississippi case of “stillborn murder” – well, this kind of highlights what I’ve often said about making decisions within a democracy outside of consensus.
I’m not going to argue the merits of Roe V. Wade – but I will say that it was a decision made by the courts before there was any consensus among Americans.
Half of the country cannot expect to just impose major changes that the other half vehemently opposes and considers either immoral or destructive to society – or both. It’s folly to believe you could.
The slaves were freed at the end of the civil war – yet blacks were not truly free until late in the last century. Even after fighting and winning a civil war that badly damaged the South – Southerners still aggressively opposed civil rights for blacks. It was not until a semi- consensus materialized among Southerners that what they had been doing was wrong that civil rights were actually able to gain traction. This was made possible by the horrible imagery of Ku Klux Klan crimes and fire breathing segregationist politicians (like George Wallace). The imagery was so bad it made Southerners wince … and collectively reevaluate their position.
Roe came along – imposed by the courts with AT LEAST half of the American population against it and liberals just expected the other half of the nation to lie down and accept a “paper decision” from the Supreme Court on it. That was foolish. The side opposed to Roe dug in and has waged a quite successful “guerrilla war” on RVW for decades. Don’t believe it has been successful? Mississippi has ONE abortion clinic in the entire state and, by the time I hit “post” on this comment – it may be shut down. That is how tenuous their operation is there.
You can consider the “stillborn murder” case to be just another battle in the war against RVW.
If Pro-Choice folks want to win the issue (which I really don’t think they do – they’re more like the “Pro-Life” crowd – they’re just interested in imposing their will on the other side) – but if they want to win this … they are going to have to do more than file lawsuits and pound the table. They are going to have to do the HARD WORK of consensus building – and that may take compromising with the other side.
There is a consensus in Mississippi on the issue of abortion – and the fact that only one abortion clinic in MS has been (barely) able to survive in the state – should tell you what that consensus is.
Sooo … as “great” as the courts and congress may be – they still can’t impose their will on half the population that disagrees with them on issues they are PASSIONATE about. Look at ObamaCare … I just have to laugh … only 40% now approve of it (according to a Pew Poll just released 17 hours ago) … and these 40% think they can impose it upon the other 60% of us? Nay, nay, sweet toad! Not unless you can convince that 60% that it’s still a good idea or …
You’re willing to use guns to enforce it!
You should read Lies My Teacher Told Me. TL;DR version: There actually was a period of racial equality and relative harmony after the Civil War. But it began to collapse when the election-fraud deal between Hayes and Taney ended Reconstruction, and we hit nadir when Woodrow Wilson ordered the segregation of the federal civil service. Approved school history books intentionally omit these facts because they embarrass the South and Democrats.
>”Half of the country cannot expect to just impose major changes that the other half vehemently opposes and considers either immoral or destructive to society – or both. It’s folly to believe you could.”
The problem is that the “half” (And I’m not sure it’s near half) of the vehemently anti-abortion aren’t willing to debate the question on a rational basis. While the pro side looks at medical reality, and human rights, the anti side’s main argument is that “Gawd don’t like it.”. You can’t really work that one out. You can’t come to consensus with religious fundamentalists.These people are not interested in a democracy.
And many of those picketing abortion clinics these days would have been picketing African Americans trying to go to school or vote fifty years ago.
Would we have been better served by letting African Americans remain as slaves or denied civil rights until the most backward citizens were comfortable with the idea of change? We might still be waiting. Rule by the ignorant is never a good thing for the nation. It’s the same with abortion, or gays rights. Why should an ancient superstition deny rights and benefits to millions now?
I don’t think a consensus is possible with the fundamentalists.
I’m in the middle on this – so I think I’m more qualified to look at both sides objectively – you seem to be solidly on the “Pro” side – unrestricted abortion to the moment of birth, correct me if I’m wrong on that. I don’t want to misstate your position and I’m often wrong.
Me? I can deal with a little abortion. I don’t see any reason to force a woman to have a rapist’s child and I damn sure don’t see a reason she should have to sacrifice her existence on this planet trying to have a child that she medically is incapable of having. And – I’m not actually “Pro-Life” anyway. I believe in the death penalty and I’m willing to deal with a mistake or two when it comes to carrying it out. I also have no problem with an acceptable number of “collateral deaths” in war and I would wage war against the terrorists for ten thousand years until their “passion” to fight evaporated or I had killed every single one of them.
But at the same time – I see the Pro-Life’s side when it comes to late term abortions. I also see the fact that the science is on their side even though the Pro-Choice crowd believes they’re “anti-science”. By definition – life begins at conception. This is when cellular mitosis of a unique individual begins. It’s more that a lump of tissue – because “lumps of tissue” have DNA that match the mother’s and a fetus does not. If life doesn’t begin at conception – then the Pro-Choice crowd needs to articulate a scientific argument for the moment at which it does.
So this whole thing is at a stalemate – and it won’t be solved until the extremists on both sides of the issue are excluded from the conversation and the folks in the middle can solve it. Until then – you can expect to continue to see idiots like Rennie Gibbs making mischief – and people on the “Pro-Life” side applauding him for it. He’ll probably be governor of Mississippi eventually – thanks to this.
I never argued against the civil rights movement – I simply used it as an example of reality. The civil war didn’t settle the issue – the issue was resolved when the passion on one side eventually evaporated – and it took over a century for that to happen.
“Backward citizens” … aren’t these always going to exist? I would consider anyone who believes in the prohibition of prostitution to be pretty “backward” – yet, I don’t get to have my way on the issue simply because I believe that – or simply because it may be true. We live on planet Earth – and there are certain realities we have to deal with and large populations of politically influential “backwards” people is one of them. This is why I believe in “evaporating” opposition to prohibition by CONVINCING the other side that it’s in their best interests to discard the notion. This could take awhile.
You’re the one who raised consensus. Consensus has to wait for everyone. That’s what makes it distinct from a supermajority. So, one backwards citizen, inevitable exactly as you say, would hold things up. There’s no reason to wait THAT long.
~~~~
‘Late term abortion’ is a linguistic abortion.
‘Term’ is when the baby is due. ‘Late term’ isn’t even a medical term, but if we try to shoehorn it, it would only apply to events after the due date.
More properly, this would be ‘near term abortion’. Abortions late in pregnancy are, generally speaking, to save the mother. So you’re on both sides of that one.
~~~~
Life begins at conception? Sure, life does. We kill things all the time. What we value about human life isn’t simply that we’re alive.
Hark, Hark, the Dogs Do Bark
…On March 11, 1974, ABC aired Marlo Thomas’ “Free to Be…You and Me
I was recently jumped upon by feminists (female and male) for saying that I could reliably detect a difference in the Science Fiction writing of male and female authors, and that I generally preferred male writers, although I was careful to point out that many of my favourite authors were women and named them.
At no time did I say that female authors were inferior, merely that they had a style that I did not prefer.
This, they stated was impossible, and that I was obviously biased against female writers and obviously hated women. When I pointed out that many of the covers were just spaceships and the author names were initials + surname, they said that I had to be picking up subtle signals in the cover or elsewhere that told me that the book was written by a woman because nothing else could explain it.
Anne McCaffrey vs. Robert Heinlein. ‘Nuff said.
I made one experiment at writing in male voice, to prove my ex wrong (he said I couldn’t do it). But even though most people consider it fairly good, it does have one glaring slip from male voice which wasn’t pointed out to me until years after I wrote it. The tale will appear in my next story collection (tentatively January 2016) complete with flaw.
I have a female life experience. I don’t have a male life experience. I can imagine it, I know plenty of men, and understand a bit, but in the end, the experience I know best is female, that’s the point of view I have. so I suppose I write from that point of view.
Anne McCaffrey and Robert Heinlein are easy: Heinlein was a man’s man, even when his novels were narrated by a female character. McCaffrey, like Jane Austen, structures her novels around social relationships, although without writiing about them like she was paid by the word.
C.J. Cherryh is far more difficult. She writes remarkably bloody books for a woman, and way, way back I read several of her early books before I began to suspect that “C.” concealed a feminine name. However, I did suspect that long before it was revealed that it stood for “Carolyn”.
And now you’ve got me struggling to remember C.L. Moore’s stories. Was there anything feminine about them, aside from often having a cover drawing of the main character with an armor-plated brassiere? But much of her work and of Henry Kuttner’s was a collaboration between them.
Next in the Gypsy Whore Mythos: 1) Spelling Bees; 2) Community theatre dance recitals; 3) Summertime, small-town, socials/festivals; 4) Track-and-field regionals; 5) Swim regionals….and so on.
LOL at “spelling bees”. 😀
“Next on Eyewitness News, hear how a local spelling bee went from spelling ‘trafficking’ to becoming the largest trafficking event in our state. At ten o’clock!” [/serious voice]
Don’t forget Church Carnivals!
Wait, wait, wait. I’m confused. How could Bajaj have had a job as a sex worker? Sex work isn’t a real job, you know. She was obviously forced into it against her will. Probably trafficked into it, too. I’m sure where she “worked” was #1 for trafficking, too. Because, hysteria.
Sigh.
I’m utterly confused for real, though. Why would such people expect applicants to anything to admit to holding an “illegal” job, whether it be sex work or drug dealing or suchlike. And why is sex work only considered work in cases like this. Is it a job, or isn’t it? The mind just boggles.
My fear in Canada is that they’ll just full-on recriminalise prostitution. The wording of the Bedford decision would seem to allow that, IMO. I also don’t have a lot of respect for MacKay, especially in the Justice portfolio, and I can see him doing that to avoid changes to the current laws.
“Still, French MP Jérôme Guedj is attempting to push ahead with the creation of the country’s first sexual assistance service for severely disabled people in his region of Essonne Gernal. He rejected the ethics committee’s suggestions that the services will constitute a form of prostitution and told French newspapers in March that it would be free of charge and run by charities for the disabled using voluntary workers” from http://www.thelocal.it/20130626/disabled-people-should-have-the-right-to-choose. How wonderful it is to see this type of thing being talked about without any unfair blanket statements, stereotypes, etc. about literally free sexual help and those who give it. This type of help is very needed and I’m hoping this’ll happen. That would mean less sexual frustration for the disabled (a lot of whom are poor in $’s due to being on disability income) because they won’t have to stay in frustration even longer saving up $’s for other types of sexual help. I love to see anything about “sex angels”, “sex volunteers”, “wild women (and men)” (any of the terms for them) out there and having it without the above noted things is a plus also.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/robert-pickton-s-victims-families-to-get-50k-each-1.2575932 -am hoping these surviving family members don’t get called “vultures” like some surviving family members have (Ron Goldman’s family for example) for pursuing civil court action.
Re: The Slave-Whore Fantasy. I think what you have to recognize in your campaign against the trafficking myth is that you are dealing with your classic compelling narrative. People believe in it because it appeals to their subconscious. it’s going to be damned difficult to break that narrative and substitute something that more closely approximates reality, but one way to do it, I would think, that is NOT being employed at present is to point out its subconscious appeal Real life is different from fantasy. It’s possible to have all sorts of sex fantasies, and enjoy them, so long as you realize what’s a fantasy and what isn’t. Sex fantasies as a rule make a poor basis for governmental initiatives. And describing your opponents on this issue a bunch of crazed sex fantasists would wound them to the core and provoke cries of outrage … and when you challenge them on their “statistics” it will hurt them even more. Just a thought.
When I was in college (early 1980s) claims of Michigan police demanding sex in return for not writing speeding tickets for women (and the cops claimed women were offering sex to avoid tickets) got bad enough that MI debated enacting a law requiring that a ticket be written any time a woman was pulled over for a traffic stop. The legislature figured that either way, this should solve the problem. I don’t know if they enacted it, and if they did, if it helped.
As for the “they’re a victim even if they think they aren’t”, sorry, but only the “victim” gets to decide that they ARE a victim, nobody else gets to decide that. There certainly are cases where the “victim” decides they’ve been victimized, and someone else will have to decide for them that they were NOT.
e.g. Sally: Timmy got the last piece of cake! It isn’t fair! Wahhh!
Mom: Well Sally, Timmy had four pieces, and you had four pieces, so shut up and sit down.
“I think what you have to recognize in your campaign against the trafficking myth”
Its a “myth” that people are being trafficked against their will? How so?
You might start with my recent Washington Post article, then move on to the literally scores of essays I’ve written here on the topic such as this recent one (make sure you follow and read ALL of the embedded links).
[…] are willing to deny models income in order to deny lads’ mags to men, and would rather see women in the porn industry unemployed rather than know that men can watch porn videos. “Sex trafficking” fetishists are willing to […]