Fucking magnets, how do they work? – Insane Clown Posse, “Miracles”
It’s not always easy being the Honest Courtesan; sometimes in the process of talking about human sexuality, I run into some aspect of my own sexuality which is somewhat embarrassing to admit to. At that point I have to decide whether to walk around the subject, or say “I’d really rather not discuss that”, or just throw caution to the wind and forge ahead out of my comfort zone, trusting that Aphrodite will bless my courage. Often it’s because a reader asks a question which can be answered in part by discussing my own feelings, but in this particular occasion it’s because a reader wrote an article in Psychology Today. The reader is Dr. Robert King, and the article is subtitled “What Monster Porn Might Tell Us About Human Nature”. It’s a critique of John Horgan’s “What ‘Monster Porn’ Says About Science and Sexuality” in Scientific American…an odd venue for it because, as King explains, Horgan “used a blatantly creationist strategy to attack an entire field of science of which he disapproves”, evolutionary psychology. Horgan absurdly claims that because he personally can’t think of a reason for women to be turned on by the idea of sex with monsters, there must not be a scientific explanation, and that this is wonderful because Freud. Or something.
Dr. King, on the other hand, displaying the superior insight one would expect from one who appreciates this blog, has a very good sense of what the biological connection is:
…monster porn is by no means novel…Ancient dildoes going back 20000 years are adorned with pictures of various potent animals. And…just take a look at what the Centaurs are trying to do to the Lapith women on the metopes of the…Parthenon…raucous festivities involving symbolic sex with humans dressed as animals…go back as far as records begin. Not far from where I work there is an annual festival at which the Queen of the May symbolically marries King Puck…an icon of animal potency and fertility. In the UK symbolic animals grab innocent maidens off the streets with impunity during May festivities. What do things like Bigfoot, Cthulhic monsters, magical beings, werewolves, vampires and centaurs have in common? Well, to someone not wedded to a creationist psychology might I venture one or two themes of adaptationist relevance? Power. Potency. Transgressiveness. Loss of control. Outbreeding. The evocation of uncontrollable desire. Dominance. Submission. Rescue. Heroes. Villains. Large penises. Do these sound like themes irrelevant to biology or reproduction? If so, then it’s time to go back to school…it might easily turn out that the prevalence of these fantasies has no adaptive function—they might be by-products of other adaptations. Not everything is an adaptation. Every first year biologist knows this…
Horgan is apparently so content to view sexuality as an unfathomable chthonic mystery that he doesn’t even bother to ask a reasonably-intelligent woman who’s turned on by this sort of thing what she thinks about it. And though I’ll never read Taken by the T-Rex or Moan for Bigfoot, that’s not because I’m disgusted by the subject matter; as it turns out, I myself am a reasonably-intelligent woman who’s turned on by this sort of thing. See these illustrations? I’ve got a bunch of ‘em in my art folders. People who played Dungeons & Dragons with me could tell you about some memorable episodes. And remember my mentioning how the movie Gargoyles inspired one of my favorite make-believe scenarios as a kid? Yeah, that. The thing is, anybody who’s read some of my other columns on my own kinks and paid attention to some of the fantasy iconography I’ve featured (dig the cover of my book at upper right) could’ve guessed as much; it’s no surprise when a woman who is turned on by rape, abduction and bondage scenarios is similarly affected when the abductor is some sort of non-human entity. For the record, dinosaurs and the like do nothing for me; it has to be an intelligent monster, like a demon, an astropelagic alien (again, see my book) or a werewolf. In a spoken sequence on Bat Out of Hell, a male character asks a female, “On a hot summer night, would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?” My friend Philippa used to say that her answer to that was, “Every fucking time.”
When Horgan declares that evolutionary psychology can’t explain monster porn, he indulges in the same narcissism as prohibitionists do when they declare that no woman could choose sex work: “I cannot understand this, therefore it is inexplicable.” But actually, women being turned on by monsters is no odder (vampires, anyone?) than women indulging in transactional sex; however much either or both of them might upset and horrify prudes, they both have their origins in female behavioral scripts going back to the time when the behavior of human men wasn’t much different from that of the monsters in the fantasies.
How can an escort be successful and completely avoid the hobbyists and their review system? I usually attract the gentlemanly type who won’t kiss and tell, and after my first few interactions with hobbyists, I’m utterly shocked by their entitlement and crude behavior. Since Eros and Slixa do authentication (so clients can be reasonably sure I’m real), is there any point to an escort putting up with hobbyist garbage?
Most clients will respect a lady’s request not to be reviewed, and that is reinforced with time because an escort without reviews will tend to be avoided by the sort of men who are most invested in the review culture. The best clients know that a large fraction of reviews are bullshit anyway, and will judge for themselves based on an escort’s website, the length of time she’s been around, and perhaps even non-review conversations on the boards. As you correctly point out, there are other means of authentication, and if you’ve made it up until now without allowing reviews I don’t think there’s a need to start. One thing you might do is get to know a few of the other escorts in your area who don’t allow reviews; a good reference from one of them would help you to know that a gentleman can be trusted to be gentlemanly.
I am just beginning in the escort industry and trying to find out which are the best agencies to work for in my area. Also, do you know what agencies would be looking for as far as interviewing – things to be sure to mention or avoid, dress, etc?
Though working for a reputable agency used to be a good deal, it has become much less so now that the internet makes self-advertising so easy. And remember, this is advice from a former escort service owner! Take a look at the “Mentoring” section of “Previously Asked Questions” and read the linked entries; it may help you to make up your mind, and most of the advice there will be useful no matter which route you take. In the interest of providing a complete answer, though, I asked a friend who lives in your area if there were any good agencies, and here is what she wrote:
I would dissuade her from working for an agency. Besides the cost factor, clients seem to be shifting away from agencies; they are also becoming more and more targets of LE due to the “trafficking” hysteria (remember, to target an escort service police must arrest the escorts first). I would tell any woman entering the business to consider finding a mentor, and working independently; it just seems to me to be safer at the present time.
What she said about client shifts and cop targeting is dead on; since agency owners can be branded “pimps” and “traffickers”, they attract a lot of attention these days from cops looking for heads to mount on the wall. Though working independently is by no means safe from cop depredation, it may indeed be safer than working for an agency (especially if you’ve got a friend who will check you in and out).
If, however, you still prefer to work for an agency, interviewing is really not all that different from what you’d do for any other job interview: dress nicely but not fancily, be friendly, answer the interviewer’s questions honestly and be prepared to provide whatever information they need; you’ll probably be asked to sign a disclaimer. I preferred to weed my applicants on the phone and in the interview, but it may be that they’re using online forms nowadays. If you’re attractive and present yourself well, it shouldn’t be difficult to get them to take you on; the real test comes later, because just like any company they’re going to rely most heavily on employees who are dependable and make the company the most money (in this case, by high customer satisfaction). Girls who are easy to contact, professional and make the clients happy will get the most calls; those who are the opposite will find their phones ringing less and less.
Nobody was ever meant
To remember or invent
What he did with every cent. – Robert Frost
People who have never owned a company often fail to understand that any institution formally organized and registered with the government is a separate entity from its owner, even if there is only one owner. I am the sole owner and member of Maggie McNeill, LLC, yet I cannot simply take money from that entity as I please; I can pay myself as much salary or bonuses as I like, but it must be recorded that way, and if I spend the company’s money on myself without proper documentation (say, by buying cat treats or going to a movie) it is considered embezzlement. It can get complicated; when I’m on my book tour this summer, for example, I can buy myself dinner with company funds (as long as I keep the receipts), but I could not do the same tonight because I’m not travelling on company business right now. And though I could give copies of my book purchased with company funds to reviewers or other business contacts, if I wanted to give them to friends as gifts I’d have to buy them from the company because there is no valid promotional reason to give them to friends.
To those who have never owned a company, this probably seems remarkably silly, and it would be if not for the existence of income taxes. But because businesses and individuals are taxed differently, using company funds directly for personal use avoids having to disburse those funds on paper, so it then becomes undeclared income. When the company is small and the amounts meager it’s unlikely the taxman will discover anything amiss, but as the amount of money in question increases the government pays a great deal more attention: remember, while Al Capone got away with many murders and other violent crimes, it was for tax evasion that he was finally imprisoned. And when the entity in question is a nonprofit organization, the rules are even more strict; the owner of a nonprofit is still subject to income tax even if the organization isn’t, so spending nonprofit funds on personal use is considered an even more serious offense.
The reason I’m bringing all this up right now is not merely because I got a short lecture on it from my banker last Friday, but also because of certain information a confidential source provided me just the day before that. Remember Rachel Moran, touted by Irish prohibitionists as a former sex worker despite the fact that she doesn’t know the first thing about the profession and nobody in the area she supposedly worked had ever set eyes on her before? And then there was her confederate Justine Reilly, who was convicted of “pimping” in 2001 but repeatedly “reframed her experiences” until she was magically transformed into the “victim of pimps” herself. Well, with the help of Magdalene laundry front Ruhama, the two of them formed an “independent” liar’s club named “SPACE International” and then set about soliciting (ahem) donations (ahem ahem). Here’s an interesting email exchange with Norma Ramos of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (a major prohibitionist group instrumental in spreading Swedish rot propaganda); I’ve inverted the order from the way it appears on the forwarded email so as to make it easier to read, and I’ve also hidden details like addresses and bank account numbers.
From: Rachel Moran [mailto: rachel.moran8@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, November 11, 2013 11:05 AM To: Norma Ramos Cc: justine reilly Subject: Bank account details
Dear Norma,
After more nonsense with the bank today where I have been advised that Justine and I will need to set an appointment for next week, we have decided that the commonsense thing to do is have our funding transferred into my account, where it will stay only until we have set up our joint account.
I am going to Norway tomorrow for five nights and myself and Justine are going to the UK the following week, and of course you are leaving CATW within weeks, so we feel this is the best way to deal with things for the time being and are hoping this is okay with you.
Mine is a current account, not a savings account (in case you are asked) and my bank details are below:
CATW is thrilled to an award a seed grant in the amount of $5000.00 to SPACE to facilitate the development of this NGO dedicated to working against the commercial sexual exploitation of human beings. Thank you for the leadership you and Justine have shown been working to end this human rights violation. Warmest, Norma
Norma Ramos, Esq.
Executive Director
Coalition Against Trafficking in Women
Phone: (212) 643-9895 www.catwinternational.org
I am confirming that a wire for the amount of USD 5,000, Euro 3,656.31 was processed today. The funds should be in your account within two days. Please confirm receipt of these funds at such time.
From: Rachel Moran [mailto: rachel.moran8@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, November 20, 2013 6:35 AM To: Janet Gumbs Cc: Norma Ramos; Corey Backes; justine reilly Subject: Re: Bank account details
Dear Norma and Janet,
We are very grateful for the kind donation of USD 5,000 (Euro 3,656.31) which arrived in my account during my recent stay in Norway. We will be spending this money on communications equipment and fees and technological support, and will be retaining all receipts associated.
Our deepest thanks for your kind assistance,
Rachel and Justine
Well, that’s all pretty clear; the $5000 was awarded as a “seed grant” to SPACE to “develop” its work of ending the terrible human rights violation of consensual sex. And SPACE’s directors said the money would be spent on “communications equipment and fees and technological support,” complete with receipts. So nothing to see here, then…except for the part where organizational funds were deposited into a private account, and also that I’ve been hearing rumors that Moran & Reilly are not exactly friends any more. Perhaps the estrangement is due to the fact that while Moran’s star is rising (she was even interviewed by Rupert Everett for his upcoming Channel 4 documentary, Love for Sale), it seems Reilly is being quietly retired as an embarrassment. But if Moran & Reilly are no longer a team, what about those company funds that went into Moran’s personal account? Here’s what my source said about that:
Ms. Moran is currently living it up in the states with the funding from SPACE. All the original founding members left, including Justine Reilly, and none of the original members had access to SPACE funding or any of the internal administration. SPACE International is all Rachel Moran!!!
Obviously, this is merely an allegation, but it seems it would be an easy one for the Irish tax authorities to investigate were they of a mind to do so. While the Irish government seems afraid of crossing the Laundry Orders or looking too closely at anything they’ve polluted with their foulness, governments invariably seem much more likely to sit up and take notice when taxes are involved than when it’s a matter of some trifle like the enslavement of thousands of women.
Line in nature is not found;
Unit and universe are round;
In vain produced, all rays return;
Evil will bless, and ice will burn. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Uriel”
I’ve been giving quite a few interviews lately, and I’ve noticed that one particular question comes up quite often (either on mike or off), especially from female interviewers: “Would you ever do it again?” I don’t think most of them intend it as a “gotcha” because I have been very fortunate so far in avoiding interviews with the sort of people who ask such questions (the most popular of which is “Would you want your daughter to do it?”) Rather, I think it’s symptomatic of the underlying assumption, even among many people who firmly believe in self-ownership and sex worker rights, that there is something intrinsically “wrong” or distasteful about sex work. I’m not blaming them, mind; that attitude is so deeply and firmly embedded in our culture that it’s a rare person indeed who is completely free of it, and that includes whores. Most people, including many sex worker allies and staunch advocates, tend to think of retired sex workers as people who have “exited”, or “gotten out”, or even “escaped”, and are therefore understandably curious about someone like me who views our profession as not merely something to be tolerated, but a positive good.
When people ask why I retired, I often reply “Did I?” As I’ve often stated, I don’t view marriage as all that different from prostitution; the affection my husband and I share does not lessen the economic basis of our formal relationship. But that’s not really what my questioners mean; what they want to know is, “If you were faced with economic need, would you go back to professional whoring?” And the answer is, “Of course I would.” I already came out of retirement once due to a major financial setback, and life is full of such passages; if a similar situation arose, I would do it again. There’s nothing strange about this; many women drift in and out of sex work at different times in our lives, or change between different types of sex work as conditions change, and I’m no different from anyone else. Perhaps the question also reflects a kind of intellectual snobbery; maybe there’s an assumption that because I’m now a writer who is noted for her mind and words, that returning to sex work would be a kind of regression or even debasement. But that’s elitist garbage; unless I suddenly evolve into an incorporeal being who can live on air and sunlight, I will always have physical and economic needs which must be addressed pragmatically.
The fact that this isn’t completely obvious to everyone says a lot about our society’s weird hang-ups. Nobody would even think of asking a retired nurse, teacher, cook or real-estate agent if she’d go back to it should the need arise; for any profession other than whore, it would be a given. Only when we reach the point where that query seems just as inane when directed toward a sex worker, will we know that at long last humanity has given up its childish and destructive superstitions about sex.
Even if I have lost some important parts of my body, I still want to get rich. – Chamangeni Zulu
I’m grateful for these quiet weeks we’ve had lately; they’ve allowed me to get boring-but-necessary business stuff done for setting up my company and my tour. Pretty soon, you should start seeing new things populating the tour calendar, but if you’re in east Texas toward the end of next week I would like to see you at my book signing in Fairfield. And if you don’t live near any of my planned stops, don’t forget you can get an autographed copy by mail. This week’s top contributor was Jesse Walker, with the first video and everything above it; those between the videos are from Marc Randazza (“legit”), Mike Siegel (“headline”), Radley Balko (“gag”), Clarissa (“Satanic”), Police Misconduct (“driveway”), and Thaddeus Russell (“blasphemy”).
Danford Grant, a prominent Seattle lawyer…is charged with six counts of rape, one count of attempted rape and one count of burglary for allegedly attacking multiple women at massage clinics…Grant’s lawyers claim Jie Shao, owner of Carnation Massage: “deleted all the footage that recorded what really occurred…to destroy what was evidence of prostitution, not rape or attempted rape”…attorney…Richard Hansen…has repeatedly put…responsibility …on the…victims…saying…“a lot of these…(massage businesses) were advertising on Backpage…that should tell you something”…
…To criminalise male purchasers while simultaneously exonerating female vendors…is a violation of natural justice…this…“denial of consent”…fails to understand the motivation of women who…prefer prostitution to the alternative…the duplicity and irrationality of wanting to eliminate prostitution…while simultaneously denying the moral agency of prostitutes…is mind-boggling. The contortions of the mind needed to support this feminist narrative have…also led to…prostitutes [being treated]…like children incapable of taking responsibility for their actions…[while] male clients…are…“sex offenders”…along with rapists and child abusers…According to Dr Melissa Farley, upon whose dubious “research” seemingly every justification of the Swedish model is based, they are “predators”…For Christians, promiscuity has [always] been the defining aspect of prostitution…medieval canonists agreed that although it was wrong for a prostitute to practice her trade, there was no wrongdoing in her receipt of money for her services…It is…hypocritical and inconsistent to criminalise only this one form of promiscuity…It is not…criminal…for a woman to have a different sexual partner each night…nor…for a man to buy his mistress an apartment, clothing, etc…integrity would demand…prohibition [of sex work] apply to all illicit sex…Such a prohibition…was ludicrous in Catholic medieval Europe, and…even more so in a modern western democracy…
Prostitutes could be sued for breaching the Consumer Guarantees Act, the same as any other service provider, a law professor says. A man who tried to sue a prostitute for compensation and damages had his claim dismissed…But…Professor Cynthia Hawes said prostitutes were…no less accountable than other service providers…”if you’ve made a contract with somebody there could be a case. A contract of prostitution is not unlawful in itself”…
Despite ample warnings about the prevalence of con men seeking to prey on easily malleable puppets like me…I almost became the victim of a murky, seedy, dark, sex trafficking ring operated by equally murky, seedy, dark (-skinned) men…prostitution…is never a victimless crime…all fact-based evidence to the contrary should be deeply scrutinized…Furthermore, prostitution and sex trafficking are synonyms because if you disagree…you’re a pedophile…
A [Connecticut] woman faces prostitution charges after…she reported being robbed by a man who responded to her ad…Nikoletta Herman…became nervous about the way he was acting…changed her mind and…the man got upset, assaulted her and stole her cellphone…
…Wausau [Wisconsin] Police Chief Jeff Hardel [wants]…an escort license…ordinance [which] would impose fines in the $2,000 to $5,000 dollar range, and [require] licensed escorts to be fingerprinted, pass background checks, and file a…business plan.
…Minneapolis will require massage businesses to be licensed…to prevent sex trafficking…With cooperation from…victims, prosecutors are…working to drive down the demand…through aggressive prosecuting of “johns.” The city also has conducted training sessions to educate hotel and motel owners and employees to recognize, report and stop sex trafficking…
To paraphrase one line from the article, “The new law is intended to make Minneapolis a safe police state to call home.”
“…Coffee smoking is a dangerous new trend that could be going viral among teens…But the side effects can be dangerous. People have reported trouble breathing, dizziness, vomiting and even hallucinations.”
…violence and assault against sex workers by the police…has come under the scanner of the Karnataka State Human Rights Commission…Peoples’ Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) filed a complaint…on behalf of the sex workers…”Women have been beaten up just for standing on the road, or while walking towards the bus stop…Women have been…compelled to pay money, failing which they are threatened that false cases will be filed against them,” Professor Rajendra Y J of PUCL said…
PayPal is at it again; here’s a letter sent out on Monday by the crowd-funding platform Patreon (which lets patrons pledge a set amount to an artist for every new work created) to artists who create “adult” material:
…we had to change your custom URL and set your Patreon page to “private”…users must [now] have a specific link to view your page, as it no longer appears in our search results. We got a notice from Paypal this morning that they were shutting down their entire integration with Patreon because of “adult content” on our site! As you can imagine, this would be detrimental to creators – hundreds of thousands of dollars were to be “frozen” unless we flagged all adult content pages, made them private, and removed Paypal functionality from their individual pages…We have already emailed your patrons who signed up to become your patron through Paypal, and we have asked them to switch over to a credit card. No action is needed on your part, however, if you would like to email your patrons as well, that could be helpful in converting patrons from Paypal to credit card…
…here are the basic numbers of their claims: 140 girls & women in Ottawa right now are trafficked sex slaves…[each makes] $260 000 – $280 000…on average…[at] $200/Hour average price…$260 000 per year at $200/hour…[is] 1300 sessions in a year…if each one works 365 days per year, they earn $712 per day…[and] 3.56 clients per day, every single day…that’s 498 unique men seeing trafficked girls in Ottawa…[and] 182,000 sessions per year…[which would mean] 65% of all men in Ottawa have had sex with a trafficked sex slave…
There’s been much in the Irish media…about a new report on sex workers’ clients…You’d need a pretty small population size for 58 [respondents] to…tell us anything about clients as a class – and the authors can hardly claim simultaneously that the population size is small enough, and that it spends €250m a year…if the respondents amounted to even 10% of the sex-buying population of Ireland, that would still require them to pay an average of €431,034 per year for sex…the…survey…asks…Have you ever changed your mind and walked away because the person seemed…a list of options follows, including “scared”, “controlled”, “unwilling”, “unhappy” and “too young”…a client who…walked out of an appointment with an independent escort who was in a bad mood…[was] recorded as having encountered a sex worker who he believed was exploited or trafficked. This…is a gigantic leap that undermines whatever credibility this survey might otherwise have had…
This collection of single sentences about the “sex trafficking problem” in Boise, Idaho (population 200,000; known chiefly for lumber and potatoes) is not actually organized into a coherent article; apparently, its “writer” is a dual devotee of the “sex trafficking” cult and the Hemingway software. The gems found therein include (multiple sic): “a child is taken in…they’re used not only for prostitution but also in gang organized crimes”; “victims…go through a ‘moral development’ period…in order to stay safe they must go along with their captures”; and “investigators…believe that a major problem stems from the Internet…‘where kids play online’”.
This breathless article from the Canberra Times is clearly intended as an attack on decriminalization in New South Wales: it spouts “sex trafficking” nonsense; quotes cops, politicians and an NGO named “Brothel Busters”; and does not quote any sex worker organizations at all. But like many prohibitionist screeds about the “failure” of legal sex work regimes, it ignores a vital point: the women it discusses are only victims because they are specifically excluded from working legally via some legal bottleneck, in this case the inability to get visas for sex work. Naturally, Scarlet Alliance has repeatedly warned the government about this exact issue.
[Sheriff’s Sgt. Darrell L. O’Neill] was charged…with felony promoting prostitution…for allegedly tipping off bikini baristas in exchange for sexual favors…[cops claim] Java Juggs stands hire young women who have worked as strippers and escorts and “essentially operate as drive-through strip clubs or brothels”…
[Los Angeles] officials are exploring a plan to require more…training for foster parents and group home workers to help them recognize …signs that children and teens under their care may be victims of sex trafficking…pimps sometimes recruit underage sex workers from group homes…Rachel Thomas, a sex trafficking survivor [said]…”There’s a grooming process…with recognizable signs.”
Campaigners fighting the Ministry of Justice over a ban on books being sent to prisoners…threatened to take their battle to the courts…Geoffrey Robertson QC, who has offered his services for free, said…justice secretary Chris Grayling [is] acting “unlawfully and irrationally”…to inflict “cruel and unusual punishment” on literate prisoners. “Grayling is not a lawyer, he is a politician who seems to think he is above the law,” said Robertson…”He has no power to impose additional punishment on prisoners over and above that which is imposed by the courts. The action has nothing to do with prison security or any other legitimate purpose”…Grayling [pretends]…”the arrival of thousands of unknown parcels in our prisons each day”…would undermine the…battle against drugs…
A prostitute rescue program…is now on hold because police are no longer laying prostitution charges in Saskatoon, says…Don Meikle…once an arrest was made “we would be sitting at the police station waiting for them…It’s…very disappointing…It’s taken away that crisis that quite often created change”…
The rest of the article is littered with words like “combating prostitution” and the program is praised by a pro-Swedish model prohibitionist group.
Go back and look at the text below the second picture on yesterday’s column (which I actually posted on March 8th) before reading this:
…[Miranda Barbour] made up the claim that she killed more than 20 people and is drawing on the escapades of television serial killer “Dexter,” her sister said…”She takes a lot of truths and puts the lie in the middle so when people…see all these truths…they believe the lie”…Ashley Dean said Elytte Barbour loved the TV show Dexter and suggested that her sister…”is using descriptions from the show”…
This essay first appeared in Cliterati on March 16th; I have modified it slightly to fit the format of this blog.
In early December, Elytte and Miranda Barbour were arrested on a charge of murder in the first degree, three weeks after getting married and moving from North Carolina to Pennsylvania:
[The Barbours]…lured a man to his death with an ad on…Craigslist…because they wanted to kill someone together…Elytte Barbour [said]…he and…Miranda…[lured] Troy LaFerrara…[with an escort] posting…Elytte [said]…Miranda…regularly…made anywhere from $50 to $850 by meeting with men for such activities as having dinner together or walking around a mall. The ads she placed…all said upfront that sex was not part of the deal…“She is not a prostitute…she…meets with them and has delightful conversation”…
Generally, when a couple commits murder together, the man is the leader and the woman the follower. But from the moment I read this report, I strongly suspected that this time it was the wife who was the psychopath and the husband her weak-willed assistant. Why? Because she actually expected him to believe that the ridiculous “time and companionship only” disclaimer was literally true, and he actually did. And a man who can “tenderly be led by th’ nose as asses are” in such a fashion is also the sort who can be convinced that killing somebody for fun is a reasonable idea. After this story broke I waited for over two months for the other shoe to drop as I knew it inevitably must, and on February 16th came the awaited thud:
[Miranda Barbour claims]…she killed many more victims…the 19-year-old…[said] she participated in at least 22 killings in the past six years in Alaska, Texas, North Carolina and California. “When I hit 22, I stopped counting…I can pinpoint on a map where you can find them”…Barbour [said] she had her first experience with killing when she [was] just 13, shortly after she…joined a satanic [sic] cult in Alaska…she [says that she] felt no remorse for her victims and…killed only “bad people”…
Miranda’s father, Sonny Dean…is not the only one who doubts his daughter’s story…If she really killed 22 to 99 people in the span of six years in four different states…that means she was getting away with murder every few weeks to every few months since the age of 13. It would make her America’s most prolific serial killer. “Miranda lives in a fantasy world made up in her own mind,” Sonny said. “She craves attention, is selfish, dishonest and manipulative”…at…16, Miranda [had told a friend] she was a member of a “gang” that was “comprised mostly of men”…[and] “mentioned having been raped by multiple men at once”…[after returning from her first episode of running] away from home when she was 12…she told her mother, Elizabeth Dean, that she’d been “out prostituting” and had met a 25-year-old man named Forrest, who was “into satanic [sic] stuff” and was now her “ruler”…
Miranda claimed to have been “branded” with a swastika and Forrest’s name, but though her mother found large cuts on her they were not words or other recognizable symbols. Several years later, after her parents divorced, Miranda claimed…
…that she [had become] pregnant…[and] the cult members…”tied her to a bed, gave her drugs and [gave her] an ‘in-house abortion.'” Miranda’s mother…[immediately] took her daughter “to a doctor, who said there were no signs of an ended pregnancy”…
When she later really did become pregnant, she claimed that Forrest was the father, but that he had since been murdered; she also claimed to be a “high-ranking official in the satanic [sic] world” at the age of 17, when a judge decided it was better to send her to live with her uncle in North Carolina. There she met Elytte, won him from his pregnant girlfriend, and talked him into eloping to Pennsylvania with her, where they committed the murder to “bring them closer together”. And while it’s obvious that Miranda is capable of murder, it also seems very likely this was her first one. She was never unsupervised in most of the places she claims to have killed, and…
…Alaska State Troopers issued a statement that there is “no evidence” that Miranda committed any murders in the state. Members of Seeking Alaska’s Missing, a statewide support group, are also skeptical. Authorities where Miranda lived in North Carolina said that their only unsolved homicide cases date back to Miranda’s infancy, and thus would’ve been impossible for her to have committed them. Experts have said she doesn’t fit the profile of a serial killer, who are rarely women [and] are typically older…
According to Miranda’s mother, a person claiming to be Forrest called about Miranda’s baby after she moved to North Carolina (and after Forrest had supposedly been murdered). But though her mother seems to believe in the existence of this “Satanic cult”, I do not; while it’s entirely possible Miranda belonged to a group of maladjusted teenagers playing at being a “cult”, her ideas about the behavior of such groups bear far more resemblance to pop-culture depictions than to anything real. The notion of uncatchable serial killers preying on “bad people” seems borrowed from the television series Dexter, the “branding” motif should be familiar to anyone who’s been following the “sex trafficking” hysteria, and imaginary “forced abortions” appear over and over again in the “recovered memory” literature and latter-day descendants of the “Satanic Panic”. As I’ve explained before, those suffering from such delusions and confabulations remember them just as clearly as you remember what you did yesterday, or even more clearly if your day wasn’t very interesting. And over time, the false memories invariably become more detailed, more extreme and more lurid, and conform ever more closely to whatever narrative the deluded person has embraced (such as the belief-system of a political or religious group). Miranda Barbour’s story already bears some resemblance to those of “sex trafficking survivors” (branding, gang rape, enslavement, exploitation of adolescent girls by older men, etc), though for now she is not only claiming her prostitution was voluntary, but also that it wasn’t even prostitution. However, this affair is not yet over and Barbour’s tale is not done changing; I won’t be at all surprised if she soon “remembers” being the victim of “sex trafficking”, and her “Satanic ruler” turns into a “pimp”.
Impenetrable in their dissimulation, cruel in their vengeance, tenacious in their purposes, unscrupulous as to their methods, animated by profound and hidden hatred for the tyranny of man… – Denis Diderot, “On Women”
As I have written on numerous occasions, the fallacious notion of the prostitute as a specific type of woman, with characteristics that set her apart from all other women, is a relatively recent one. Prior to the mid-19th century it was widely understood that transactional sex was a normal female behavior, one that any woman might engage in under the proper circumstances. This is not to say that it was accepted and condoned; far from it. But nobody imagined that a woman was entirely defined by the act, either, nor embraced the foolish fantasy that only women of a certain background or experience made the choice. I have also often pointed out that women are far more pragmatic than men like to believe; many if not most of us, even those from relatively sheltered lives, are perfectly capable of trading sex for money or other advantages should the need arise.
Case in point Jeanne-Louise de Belleville, Dame de Montaigu, born in 1300 to the powerful Breton nobleman Maurice IV of Belleville-Montaigu and his wife Létice de Parthenay. She was married off at the age of 12 to a 19-year-old nobleman named Geoffrey de Châteaubriant and bore him two children. Geoffrey died young in 1326, and four years later she married Olivier III de Clisson, bearing him five children. But while her first marriage seems to have been a typical one, the second one was unusually passionate for a 14th-century noble couple. The two were extremely close, and Jeanne was very devoted to him…so devoted, in fact, that what would have been the easy and unremarkable life of a wealthy French noblewoman became remarkable indeed after her husband was executed for treason in 1343.
It happened like this: in the early part of the Hundred Years War, there were two rival claimants for the title of Duke of Brittany; Charles de Blois was favored by the French and John de Montfort by the English. Olivier was on the French side, but after he lost Vannes to the English in 1342, de Blois complained that Olivier had not fought enthusiastically enough, and accused him of having defected to the English. Olivier responded, predictably enough, by defecting to the English, but was captured by French forces and beheaded by order of King Philip VI on August 2nd, 1343; in a particularly barbaric touch, his severed head was then displayed on a pole at Nantes. Jeanne was devastated by his death and furious at the King and de Blois, and swore revenge on both. But while a lesser woman might’ve been content with cursing them from afar, spreading rumors or bribing someone to poison the royal wine, Jeanne was no ordinary woman. She promptly sold off all of the Clisson lands the King had not seized, purchased the three best warships she could find, and had them painted black and rigged with sails dyed blood-red. To raise money for a crew and to win allies from amongst the other Breton noblemen (who were none too fond of the French to start with), she sold her favors to them and charmed them into swearing to support her. Keep in mind she was 43 years old at the time, had borne seven children and presumably had only been to bed with two men before this; she must have had a powerful charisma.
But that charisma, however great, paled beside her hatred. From 1343-1356 the “Lioness of Brittany” mercilessly hunted and pillaged every French ship she could find, slaughtering the crews except for one or two who would be released on shore to tell the King who it was that had done the deed. At the Battle of Crécy (1346), she helped to secure an English victory by bringing in supplies on her ships. And after King Philip died in 1350, Jeanne only got worse; apparently enraged at his having escaped her wrath by fleeing into Hades, she began specifically hunting down ships owned by French nobles, and whenever she caught one she would personally behead him with an axe and have his body thrown into the sea, despite the fact that she could’ve made tremendous profit by ransoming them. Were this a Hollywood movie, she would have eventually caught up with Charles de Blois and given him his comeuppance, but real life is rarely so neat; de Blois not only outlived the Lioness by five years, but was also made a saint (though the canonization was annulled by the next pope on request from the English-supported Duke John V of Brittany, whose side had eventually won). By the time she was 56 Jeanne’s thirst for vengeance was apparently slaked at last; she retired from piracy, married Sir Walter Bentley (who had personally fought de Blois) and settled in Hennebont, France, where she died in 1359. Her son, Olivier Jr, earned the sobriquet “The Butcher” for his fierceness in war; he obviously inherited that from his mother, whose ghost is supposed to haunt the ruins of the old Château de Clisson (which was destroyed during the French Revolution).
Jeanne de Clisson was neither poor nor disadvantaged; neither sexually abused as a child nor mistreated by a husband; and neither homeless nor addicted to any drug. Perhaps it could be said that she was emotionally disturbed by the loss of her beloved husband, but if so it was a very lucid kind of madness: Jeanne knew exactly what she was doing, and chose to sell sex as a means toward that end. And though most whores have far more mundane goals than the death of a king and the downfall of an entire country, our choices are every bit as pragmatic – and often as temporary – as hers.
The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic. – H.L. Mencken
So, were y’all thoroughly confused yesterday? Were you wondering who the hell wrote that crap that was posted under my name, or did you think it was a great improvement over my usual baroque sentence structure and outré descriptions? Did you find yourself saying, “Ye gods and little fishes, it’s as though Ernest Hemingway had come back from the dead to write a guest column!” Or did you not even notice anything amiss?
Yesterday was, of course, April Fools’ Day, and for this year’s prank I decided to run my Reason essay “The Mythical Invasion of the Super Bowl Hookers” through Hemingway, a program which purports to “improve” your writing by making it “bold and clear”…in other words, by shortening and simplifying each sentence down to a level that would not confuse a rather slow-witted ten-year-old. Hemingway said that my original text was “OK”, with 16 demerits; the final product was rated “good” with only 8, though I had eliminated everything the machine had labeled a “problem”. Presumably, my score couldn’t get any lower because it still had too many words of more than one syllable and too many highfalutin’ terms like “prohibitionist”, “television” and “Canada”.
Now, in part I did this was because I thought it would be funny; not necessarily Monty Python funny, Three Stooges funny or even Noël Coward funny, but at least whimsically amusing. But I also did it to show just how stupid it is to defer to the aesthetic sensibilities of something that would lose in a battle of wits with a starfish. Even if one stupidly believes that there is only one kind of good writing, and suffers from the lamentable but popular delusion that Hemingway was its archetype, and furthermore imagines that even Hemingway always wrote in that clipped, easily-parodied style we refer to as “Hemingwayesque” (which he did not), the notion that a glorified Nintendo console is qualified to judge adherence to that standard is ludicrous at best. But as stupid as that idea is, a very large fraction of moderns cling to it with childlike devotion because it is a natural outgrowth of one of the most pernicious dogmas of the machine age: that human beings are just another kind of (albeit complex) machine governed by knowable rules, and that Utopia can be achieved if we can only discover those rules and implement them thoroughly (and ruthlessly) enough. This is the heart of “Progressive” thought: force people (via social engineering, prohibition and criminalization) to only eat, wear, watch, read, hear, say, do and think what “experts” have decided is “good” for them, and the Millennium will arrive on the very next high-speed train.
The problem with this is that it’s 99 44/100% pure bullshit. Human beings are not Skinner’s programmable modules, social interactions are incredibly complex and most “experts” aren’t even qualified to make decisions for their dogs, much less for millions of people they don’t know. That idea that human beings can and should be governed by rigid, top-down rules designed by said “experts” has given us the Drug War, sex work prohibition, mass incarceration, mass surveillance, the nanny state, “Child Protective Services”, the “sex offender” registry, mandatory minimum sentencing, “zero tolerance” school policies and a host of similar abominations far too numerous to list. People’s lives, like their writing styles, are unique, and what works for one does not necessarily work for another; by the reductionist “logic” of modern governance, Shakespeare, Cervantes and Dostoyevsky were all terrible writers because they don’t sound like Hemingway…and their works should be mercilessly edited until a mindless computer program declares them acceptable.
The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. – Ernest Hemingway
Major events always provide an excuse for governments to “clean things up” in the host cities before the guests arrive. These include World’s Fairs and Olympic Games. Police sweep undesirable, embarrassing, ugly people out of public view. They throw them into jails or exile them for the duration. The victims vary with the time and place. The poor, the homeless, unpopular minority groups, drug addicts and gay people have all been among them. The list always includes sex workers. Moralists in countries where prostitution is legal still feel they must purge it from visitor areas. They don’t want the visitors to see it, even in Greece or Brazil. Bigotry is also heightened by such events. Those so predisposed fear strangers coming to town, bringing with them outlandish and alien forms of sin and crime. Together, these two factors may be the origin of one of the strangest and most persistent myths of our time. Tens of thousands of whores wander about the world from mega-event to mega-event. They are not impeded by the usual logistics of transport and lodging.
The legend seems to have first appeared in conjunction with the 2004 Olympics in Athens. Prohibitionists depicted sex work as “sex trafficking” since the late 1990s. But the moral panic seems to have begun in earnest in January of 2004. Athenian officials went through the usual pre-Olympic cleansing procedure. They raided brothels for bogus violations of zoning restrictions. A Greek sex workers’ union complained. They said the city would increase illegal prostitution by making it difficult to work in legal brothels. European prohibitionists twisted this into “Athens is encouraging sex tourism.”
The growing “anti-trafficking” movement used bad stats. They claimed that “sex trafficking increased by 95 percent during the Olympics. And they did it by the end of the year. Then anti-sex worker groups predicted that about 40,000 women would be “trafficked” into Germany. They meant for the 2006 FIFA World Cup. It was bizarre. Of course, nothing of the kind happened. Police raided 71 brothels, but only came up with five cases of exploitation they believed linked to the event. The Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women investigated the myth in its 2011 report. The report’s name was “What’s the Cost of a Rumour?”, and it was unable to find a credible source for the “40,000” figure. It seems somebody made it up. But it has hung on like a tick since then. It accompanies every major sporting event. Some of them were the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, and the 2012 Olympics in London. Massive police crackdowns cost about £500,000 in London. They found no significant increase in prostitution, coerced or otherwise. Neither has anyone else.
By 2008, the myth reached the United States. It became attached to the Super Bowl in place of the fading but also spurious claim about domestic violence. You know the one. The story that year took the form of police statements about “warnings” that they “[were] prepared for”. But by the following year police and other officials in Tampa had turned the rumor into a campaign. They bagged exactly one quarry. She was a 14-year-old. Her pimps were two clueless individuals. They called her a “Super Bowl Special” on Craigslist. Ever since, prohibitionists repeat the detail as part of their catechism.
The Florida Department of Children and Families claimed to have “rescued” 24 other people. This is not substantiated. But that number pales beside the grandiosity of another claim. The claim was that “‘tens of thousands of people‘…[were] sold into the sex trade during Miami’s Super Bowl in 2010.” The claim was that most of them were young girls. Miami was the first instance of full-blown circus-like hype. This hype has characterized the buildup to the game in later years. Members of “anti-trafficking” groups descend in droves upon the host city. They do it to “raise awareness” and “rescue victims”.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott would not to be outdone. He declared the Super Bowl “one of the largest human trafficking events in the United States”. He organized a huge “task force” involving a dozen different federal, state and local agencies. He did this in preparation for the Dallas game (2011). He missed no opportunity to pontificate about “pimps” and Backpage.com. The total haul from all this effort? One would-be pimp who got the idea from hearing the myth on television.
But legends like this take on a life of their own, which mere facts cannot end. By July, Indiana’s attorney general, Greg Zoeller, got the Indianapolis Super Bowl bandwagon rolling. He made the claim that the Texans had made “133 separate human trafficking related arrests”. They picked a two and a half week period around the game. Then they claimed every vice arrest made in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex was “trafficking”. It was dishonest. The number has since become part of the narrative.
Reporters can locate such articles with a quick search. It’s easy. But even if they’re too dumb to handle that, they could just go to Snopes.com, which has listed the story as false since February 2012. But sex sells and the “rescue industry” brings in at least tens of millions of dollars per year. Anthropologist and commercial sex researcher Dr. Laura Agustín called it that. The “rescue industry”, I mean. So there are quite a few people in and out of government with a vested interest in keeping the myth going. Even if it’s destructive, absurd, and easy to show up as false.
But there’s a glimmer of hope. An article reports that some “anti-trafficking” folks are unhappy with the legend. It was in Canada’s National Post, but I won’t quote it because it’s too hard to read. True Believers will ignore anything skeptics or sex worker rights advocates have to say about the issue. But they may listen to those they consider fellow travelers. With any luck the Super Bowl Prostitute Invasion story may finally be on the way out. We can only hope that the “sex trafficking” hysteria of which it is a part will follow close behind.
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It’s not always easy being the Honest Courtesan; sometimes in the process of talking about human sexuality, I run into some aspect of my own sexuality which is somewhat embarrassing to admit to. At that point I have to decide whether to walk around the subject, or say “I’d really rather not discuss that”, or just throw caution to the wind and forge ahead out of my comfort zone, trusting that Aphrodite will bless my courage. Often it’s because a reader asks a question which can be answered in part by discussing my own feelings, but in this particular occasion it’s because a reader wrote an article in Psychology Today. The reader is Dr. Robert King, and the article is subtitled “What Monster Porn Might Tell Us About Human Nature”. It’s a critique of John Horgan’s “What ‘Monster Porn’ Says About Science and Sexuality” in Scientific American…an odd venue for it because, as King explains, Horgan “used a blatantly creationist strategy to attack an entire field of science of which he disapproves”, evolutionary psychology. Horgan absurdly claims that because he personally can’t think of a reason for women to be turned on by the idea of sex with monsters, there must not be a scientific explanation, and that this is wonderful because Freud. Or something.
Horgan is apparently so content to view sexuality as an unfathomable chthonic mystery that he doesn’t even bother to ask a reasonably-intelligent woman who’s turned on by this sort of thing what she thinks about it. And though I’ll never read Taken by the T-Rex or Moan for Bigfoot, that’s not because I’m disgusted by the subject matter; as it turns out, I myself am a reasonably-intelligent woman who’s turned on by this sort of thing. See these illustrations? I’ve got a bunch of ‘em in my art folders. People who played Dungeons & Dragons with me could tell you about some memorable episodes. And remember my mentioning how the movie Gargoyles inspired one of my favorite make-believe scenarios as a kid? Yeah, that. The thing is, anybody who’s read some of my other columns on my own kinks and paid attention to some of the fantasy iconography I’ve featured (dig the cover of my book at upper right) could’ve guessed as much; it’s no surprise when a woman who is turned on by rape, abduction and bondage scenarios is similarly affected when the abductor is some sort of non-human entity. For the record, dinosaurs and the like do nothing for me; it has to be an intelligent monster, like a demon, an astropelagic alien (again, see my book) or a werewolf. In a spoken sequence on Bat Out of Hell, a male character asks a female, “On a hot summer night, would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?” My friend Philippa used to say that her answer to that was, “Every fucking time.”
