Project ROSE is a diversion program like a person who pushes ten people onto the train tracks and pulls three off is a hero. – Ryan Beck Turner
It’s especially satisfying when a vice cop is the victim:
…Denver police detective…Michael Ryan…[is under] investigation [for] solicitation of a prostitute…Ryan works in DPD’s Vice and Narcotics unit and was instrumental in the investigation that led to federal judge Edward Nottingham resigning in the face of accusations he had patronized prostitutes. Ryan…also served on a human trafficking task force…
Another good essay from Belle Knox:
…The concept of the desperate exchange permeates discussions about sex work…People assume that my support for sex workers and porn is somehow invalidated because I chose to do porn for the money rather than for love. They act as though this is some shocking victory for them because being a sex worker wasn’t my dream job…it now somehow reverts to being morally wrong, and I become another pitiable whore to be dismissed at leisure…of course I do porn for money. It’s a job, not a summer retreat…The majority of people don’t work every day for fun; they do it because they want…something in exchange. Do you honestly think that the people working at McDonald’s flipping burgers and responding to rude customers on a daily basis would come to work every day if they weren’t getting paid? Moreover, do you think as a child their dream job was to do this?…
Police in southern France have been accused of racism after asking local hotel owners to report the arrival of Eastern European guests, in a bid to crackdown on certain crimes like pimping…a national police union official [pretended]…”(It) would not violate the values of the Republic by advocating snitching…in the fight against pimping speed is essential”…French authorities have taken a hard line against the presence of Roma people from Romania and Bulgaria, repeatedly bulldozing their unsanctioned settlements and expelling them from France…
For more examples of “sex trafficking” and “the fight against prostitution” as excuses for racism and xenophobia, see here, here, here and here.
Umpteen Thousand People Can’t Be Wrong
It takes a special kind of stupidity for a reporter to call for censorship:
Young girls are being sold online for sex…but not much is being done to stop…the most popular websites…Backpage.com…makes millions of dollars each month from “escort” and “body rub” listings. Portland police…said it’s frustrating to know Backpage.com makes money off illegal activity, but if it went away, another similar site that is less cooperative with law enforcement would likely pop up…
…when…Queer Strike “named and shamed” LGBTI organizations who they said were refusing to help decriminalize sex work in the [UK], the picture they gave was misleading…in most cases it simply wasn’t part of those organizations’ remits. This is a particular issue under British charity law, which means they have to stick to their stated “charitable aims”…
I’m really pleased to see Reason doing a lot more on sex worker rights these days, and doubly glad to see “sex trafficking” in scare quotes:
…If you could put a date on when modern-day progressives fully re-inhabited the moral rigidity of their…forebears, it might be September 24, 2012. That’s when Village Voice Media…split off…Backpage.com after a years-long, progressive-led campaign to shutter the site over claims that it facilitates “sex trafficking”. “If street pimps go to jail for profiteering on under-age girls, should…Village Voice Media really get a pass?” New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, the country’s most prominent progressive scold, wrote in a March 2012 column that blamed Backpage for the 2003 peddling of a 16-year-old prostitute, even though the site didn’t exist in 2003. “Paradoxically, Village Voice began as an alternative newspaper to speak truth to power. So it’s sad to see it accept business from pimps”…Kristof had the paradox almost exactly backward. It is he and his fellow crusaders, not the buyers and sellers of controversial products and services, who are aggrandizing power at the expense of the little guy and mangling truth in the service of that unseemly goal…
This title of this New Yorker article would seem to indicate a general piece about HIV in the American South, but it’s really much more about Deon Haywood, Women With a Vision and the arson which destroyed their offices on May 24th, 2012. The responsible party was never caught, but here’s a clue: the fire was started by piling up all the reproductive health models and posters in one room and setting them ablaze.
Think of the Children! (TW3 #23) 
Sex rays can apparently enter one Lego construction and be randomly emitted from other Legos elsewhere, presumably via quantum tunneling:
[In January]…Christy Mack…tweeted [“Whoever builds me the best Lego creation to put in my house gets a blow job”]… The response on Twitter was enthusiastic, to say the least…Unfortunately for Mack’s fans, and toy store proprietors nationwide…the Lego challenge drew to an abrupt close…[when] lawyers for the company had contacted her, objecting to her usage of the Lego name…
They won’t stop until they extend the “gypsy whores” myth to every possible event: “An undercover sting operation targeting prostitution and child sex trafficking netted five arrests in Augusta [Georgia]…because of the Masters Golf Tournament…”
Another Example of Swedish “Feminism” (TW3 #36)
Who cares that a woman was stabbed? The sadfeelz of naïve prudes are much more newsworthy!
Hookers are using…Airbnb…to turn prime Manhattan apartments into temporary brothels…One apartment…belongs to publicist Jessica Penzari…But when a hooker got slashed by a client in the…apartment over the price…Penzari got a call from cops…Airbnb put her up in the swanky InterContinental hotel in Times Square for two nights…and also paid to change her door locks, clean her apartment and replace her pillows and other belongings…Airbnb said…“we have zero tolerance for this activity”…
According to the Post, having a snack at your desk is “turning prime office space into a temporary restaurant”.
The underworld of prostitution and human trafficking is a dark one, often hidden from the public eye, but it exists in [Alabama] a lot more than one may think…”We used to be just a pass through state,” said Pat McCay with the Madison County Human Trafficking Task Force. “They would come from Atlanta to Memphis…Now they are staying”…
The event which sparked all this portentous talk of vast criminal cartels? A cop arrested a massage girl. Of course the reporter has to get the usual self-important bile from a “legitimate” masseuse.
As the days pass with no sign of [missing 8-year-old] Relisha [Rudd], some…believe she may have been sold into a child sex trafficking operation. They point to the wads of cash and expensive items Relisha’s mother and boyfriend flaunted on Facebook in the days following the little girl’s disappearance…Andrea Powell…of FAIR Girls…says, “There’s kids as young as 5, 6, 7.” The average age of entry into this dark and devastating underworld is 13…
In Washington, D.C. alone, the trafficking of children is a $100-million industry…
Given that the population of the Washington metro area is 5.8 million, that would make the “trafficking of children” worth over $5 billion in the US as a whole. The level of mathematical illiteracy required to believe such a blatant absurdity constitutes a national crisis vastly greater than “sex trafficking” could ever be.
Sheriff Grady Judd of Polk County, Fla…brought felony charges…in October 2013 against two girls, 12 and 14, after the suicide a month earlier of a third girl, Rebecca Sedwick…[Judd] charged the two girls, Katelyn Roman and Guadalupe Shaw, with aggravated stalking and released their names and mugshots…He made it sound like they posed an urgent risk…A month later, prosecutors dropped the charges after…failing to find evidence of [Judd’s claims]…Judd’s tendency to overdo it isn’t news to the voters who elected him…a…suspect [was shot]…68 times…he boasted of arresting a man for running an Internet pornography site out of his home…[he] took the basketball hoops out of the local jail and stopped supplying inmates with underwear…[he uses] pepper spray on detained juveniles…
Is there anything more worthless than an “authority’s” promise?
French investigators began taking DNA samples…from 527 male students and staff at a high school…as they searched for the assailant who raped a teenage girl on the closed campus…All those who received summonses…were warned that any refusal could land them in police custody…Authorities have promised to discard the DNA collected once a donor is eliminated as a suspect…
One Born Every Minute (TW3 #338)
A French fundamentalist priest repeatedly raped three teachers at the school he ran in…Paris during so-called exorcisms…[he] was indicted this week on charges of rape, cruelty and torture…he had first raped one teacher during an exorcism to purge her of the “evil” from a previous sexual assault…[then] used his “spiritual influence” to convince two [others]…to undergo similar exorcisms…[which included torture with] a broom, a toothbrush and scissors…Police became involved only last year when two of the women reported the rapes to authorities…[but] several years ago the…society of St. Pius X tried him in a religious hearing and sentenced him to two years in a monastery…
A strong criticism of the ethical bankruptcy of Project ROSE from academics studying “human trafficking”:
This program is ostensibly designed to “rescue” victims…of sexual exploitation, yet there is no form of victim identification at any point in the process. Rather than attempting to assess whether someone is being coerced…they threaten the arrested person with prosecution…If sex trafficking victims/survivors do not meet the “perfect victim” criteria and are convicted, they will face mandatory minimum sentencing in Arizona’s particularly brutal prison system…It…bears little resemblance to anything that could be considered an anti-sex trafficking program…and…is a tragically absurd version of a “diversion” program. Instead of keeping people out of the criminal justice system, it sweeps them up and funnels them in…Project ROSE is responsible for at least 100 percent more incarcerations than “diversions”…ASU social workers…are acting like colonial missionaries – they offer to “save” the sex workers
they perceive as helpless and damaged, but should [they] not gratefully accept…“help,” then armed…men are at the ready – “for their own good.”
“We are aware of certain allegations that have surfaced…regarding Somaly’s history…We are treating these accusations with the utmost seriousness…the Foundation has recently launched an independent, third party investigation to further examine these claims …”
The Course of a Disease (TW3 #349)
According to STRASS, sex workers are increasingly marginalized and insecure since the parliamentary debate on the criminalization of clients…attacks against prostitutes have increased…On the night of March 31…a Chinese prostitute was stabbed to death…“Her assailant was known to be a bad customer so she would have refused him if she had the means. But she had been unable to work for several days, due to constant police operations targeting Chinese women, and was therefore unable to take the time to choose her customers” said a STRASS statement…The police harassment has been repeatedly denounced by Doctors of the World…
Remember, three weeks ago they were saying there was no serial killer.
Two registered sex offenders have been arrested in connection with killing four women in Orange County…[targeting them] because of their ties to prostitution or escort services, and investigators suspect there are more victims yet to be identified…Franc Cano…and Steven Dean Gordon…were arrested Friday evening…
…the Upper House of the German Parliament, the Bundesrat, passed a resolution calling for an objective debate…amid plans by the ruling coalition of Conservatives and Social Democrats to reform the German Prostitution Act of 2002…The Bundesrat found that debates in the public sphere and in the media were still based on prejudices, a lack of knowledge and sensationalism. The Bundesrat particularly opposed the blanket equation of prostitution and human trafficking…[and] opposed the introduction of mandatory health checks, judging them as unreasonable and hardly expedient…
Belle Knox is increasingly becoming my own personal “heroine”. She’s almost too good to be true. I hope other sex workers are reaching out to her to render support. She’s under siege and it’s only a matter of time until the bastards wear her down unless she has some good people to lean back on.
Also – she’s like a FRESHMAN? She’s writing things very close to what you have written, Maggie – which makes me think she’s been reading the work of other activists for some time now.
Christy Mack? Shit … I would have RUN out to buy legos!! Women built like her exist only in Hentai cartoons! LOL. Is the contest still on? Shit I might build her house anyway.
Fuckin’ serious.
Unfortunately, no. You understandably stopped reading once sex was offered.
I still wager that if I make something cool for her house … I’ll seal this deal yet!
Also – she’s like a FRESHMAN? She’s writing things very close to what you have written, Maggie – which makes me think she’s been reading the work of other activists for some time now.
Belle said that she wrote her term paper on the legalization of prostitution and other sex work, so there must have been some reading for that. Combine the fact that she is well read and that she wants to advocate for the rights of sex workers; you can see why the opposition is so obsessed in attacking her.
Bobbi Eden, a few years ago, promised all her Twitter followers a BJ if Holland won the football World Cup. (They didn’t.)
The French have an immigration problem that has been accelerated by the entry of more nations into the European Union and the accompanying easing of travel between eastern Europe and the western countries. Their response includes the recent national legislation to fine men 1500 euros for soliciting a prostitute. Any bets on whether that policy will be applied differently to immigrants? They seem hell-bent on keeping people out.
Despite this, I am visiting Normandy for the 70th anniversary of D day. I hope the French authorities are prepared for the influx of prostitutes that large events like this always draw. There will be several heads of state there and we know about the accompanying secret service contingent from the US.
As for the cops here in Denver, no one who reads Maggie’s column is surprised that a vice cop was busted for soliciting. Too bad he didn’t have the presence of mind to pull up his pants and say “Well, I’m done collecting evidence.” Maybe he could have gotten off . . . twice.
I envy you – I have never been to Normandy but would like to. Are you sure the POTUS is going to the memorial – he didn’t last year.
I’m pretty damn sure he will because it’s the 70th anniversary, and it’s a big deal not only to France, but also Canada, the UK, and even Germany.
Couldn’t the stop the influx of whores at the Atlanta Masters by banning Tiger Woods?
Any chance ‘The Call Girl of Cthulhu’ will be released nationally? Or at least scripts made available?
Caitland Moran’s piece bothers me. Yes, we now have effective contraceptives. We also have pretty widespread evidence that a lot of people don’t think far enough ahead to use them. We have cures for SOME STDs, but the incidence of STDs is very high indeed and at least one is deadly and incurable at this time. So I agree hith her conclusion – that sex work should be legal – and find the reasoning that took her there to be mush-headed to the point of imbecility.
every time I read something from Belle Knox I fall in love a little bit more.
micromanagement-doesn’t France have liberty as one of their guiding principles? I wonder what happened?
uncommon sense-other than that whole WWII thing, Germany seems to be a country that usually gets it
Germany isn’t perfect (no country is), but everything I’ve seen shows that they have better learned the lessons of World War II than the countries that defeated them. As for Japan, unfortunately, the way that country is going under Shinzo Abe, it looks like the only lesson they seem to have learned is not to attack the United States.
Belle Knox: Smart one that sees what is instead of what she wants to see. Also writes well. Of course, insightful writing is only ever going to appeal to a minority of people.
As to enjoying work: If you can find a way to do it _and_ fulfill your economic needs, you are fortunate. If you can fill your economic needs and have time to do things you enjoy besides, you are also fortunate.
Amen. Where can I order Knox’ work?
That is not dead which can eternal copulate. And with strange aeons even death may fornicate.
[…] For now, let’s just ignore the absurdity of calling sex work a “crime” in one sentence while admitting it isn’t in the next; let’s just wonder how any sane, modern adult believes that sex for pay in a hotel room is somehow intrinsically different from “free” sex in the same room. The principle of contagion is even more obvious in this story about Airbnb, a website which allows people to rent their homes to strangers for short periods of time. A person would have to be hopelessly naïve to imagine that none of these renters ever have sex in their beds, yet when money is exchanged for the exact same activity we get this: […]