[Mary Anne] Franks couldn’t care less who is turned into a felony sex offender, as long as some variation of her pet law is enacted, the hated men go down along with the innocent, and she gets credit for it. – Scott Greenfield
A [Filipino man]…fell to his death while trying to evade police arrest…for allegedly beating up a [sex worker]…the man [hired] her…and…they had sex [but he] started to beat her after she refused to take [methamphetamine]…
Here’s a long, confused article on the latest attempt to destroy the internet in the name of “protecting children”. Among its other lovely features: it would criminalize advertising “illegal sex” on the internet. The article is packed with the usual asinine claims (including the ludicrous assertion that 82% of all prostitution advertising is on Backpage) but does state that the proposed law is basically similar to the ones that judges keep striking down as unconstitutional. You’d think they’d learn, but why bother? The consequences don’t fall on them. Politicians are like stupid kids egging somebody’s house: it only takes them a short time and very little effort to “send a message”, but the mess they leave behind takes others a very long time to clean up.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court is weighing whether it’s constitutional to force all juvenile sex offenders to sign up with the state sex offender registry…Pennsylvania law requires anyone 14…or older who is convicted of [a sex crime]…to register for life…they can petition for removal…only after 25 years, and only if they’ve had no subsequent offenses, even of a non-sexual nature…
Note that this particular rapist cop works for the same department that wanted to “live tweet” a prostitution sting: “John Warhurst [was arrested] for sixteen…sex offenses…[including] rape…Warhurst is a Prince George’s County Police Officer…” In a rather odd twist, his wife was also arrested on similar charges.
If you though a gem and mineral show as “sex trafficking” magnet was ridiculous…
…twice a year High Point triples in size with crowds numbering more than 80,000 people…[for] the weeklong Furniture Market…[which] draws more people than any other event in North Carolina. Unfortunately, with any large crowd there comes the opportunity for anonymity, and sex traffickers are all too eager to take advantage…
What kind of mind calls anonymity “unfortunate”?
Lawheads are willing to shut down a city to stop consensual behavior, but can’t even conceive that maybe their stupid laws are the real problem:
[Cincinnati] police…[have installed] concrete road blocks all along McMicken Avenue…While most agree something must be done to stop human trafficking…some say stopping traffic all together [sic] isn’t the answer…officials plan to keep the closures in place for…three months…[and] are…considering other drastic measures…like publishing the names of people convicted of prostitution related crimes, notifying their spouses and increasing fines…
Here’s an excellent article on how the amazing diversity of the Golden Age of comics was destroyed by the repressive Comics Code Authority, a sort of self-lobotomization performed to save the industry from Congressional censorship after Frederic Wertham’s witch hunt:
…Distributors agreed not to carry comic books that didn’t abide by the Code, making it functionally as effective as law…independent women, and people of color, and all sorts of stories that didn’t fit with the compulsory patriotism and cop-worship of the 1950s, essentially vanished from comics for decades…What was left didn’t interest adults nearly as much, and comics slowly began to become less ubiquitous and more associated with pasty adolescent boys…
An American medical student is auctioning off her virginity…Using the alias “Elizabeth Raine” and operating a blog entitled, Musings of a Virgin Whore, the 28-year-old…said she is willing to submit to a medical examination or polygraph as proof to the winning bidder…[and will consummate]…in Australia [to]…circumvent…American prostitution laws…Raine says she does not care about being labeled a prostitute…and…while she does not advocate prostitution she supports [its] “decriminalization and destigmatization”…She has promised to donate 35 percent of the auction proceeds to a charity “that brings education to women in developing countries”…
When they’re not infantilizing sex workers and demonizing our clients, they’re doing the exact opposite:
A disabled British retiree has ended up in court after he punched a council official who stopped him from seeing a prostitute. Alan Thipthorpe, 88, was furious after he was prevented from seeing…Terri-Lee Pearce…[who] had regularly visited his care home. Swindon council…stopped the visits because [they accused Pearce] of fleecing him out of his life savings…An angry Thipthorpe said…he should be able to spend the money how he wanted…
A “sex trafficking” cluck lectures us about the importance of word order, but apparently isn’t too concerned with number agreement: “There is no such thing as children prostitutes, they are prostituted children who can be found in…any neighborhood and any town.” Whenever I read something like this, I hear the voices from Chickenman crying “It’s everywhere, it’s everywhere!”
The Pro-Rape Coalition (TW3 #316)
There cannot be a complete ban on Internet pornography in [India]…the government has told the Supreme Court…the…servers…are…quite often located in foreign countries, where such publication is permissible…even if a website is blocked, the same content can be hosted on a different server, may be in a different country, within a few seconds…
Birth of a Movement (TW3 #323)
…a few hundred women [marched] down a busy commercial street in Mexico City during a May Day demonstration…to highlight the rights of sex workers… members of la Brigada Callejera (“the Streetwalkers Brigade”)…emphasized that…marchers were in the sex trade of their own free will…Mexico City’s government is currently attempting to redevelop La Merced and close down various hotels that it [pretends] are involved in trafficking…
A Minnesota law firm posted a page busting the common myths I’ve often written about, such as the notion that there are certain things cops can’t do or that one is safe if one has some kind of payment ritual. I’d really like to see more whore-friendly entities posting information like this.
Acting and Activism (Extra Edition)
Another empty-headed actress attacks the less-privileged branches of our shared profession with stupid lies and moronic myths:
…Jada Pinkett Smith…[is working on] a CNN documentary…about…sex trafficking. Jada…had her eyes opened wide by two strippers who made clear to her that strip clubs in Atlanta, ground zero for the sex trafficking industry —are a gateway to…slavery…
Sheriff Ed Brown considers himself to be the owner of every human being…in North Carolina’s Onslow County – but he counsels his subjects not to worry, for his is a benevolent dictatorship administered by quasi-divine people endowed with transcendent wisdom…in [an ad] for his re-election campaign [Brown wrote] “Those in the law enforcement profession have complete power over you, your life, your family, your loved ones, your rights, your freedom, your future and everything precious to life”…After the ad prompted criticism…Brown objected that his words were misunderstood…Brown apparently can [also] command the very elements themselves to surrender valuable secrets that remain inaccessible to lesser men. While investigating the murder of…Maria Lauterbach, the Sheriff didn’t bother to collect shoeprints, choosing instead to conduct a forensic investigation using a divining rod made from a coat hanger…
…For months, Amazon has been deleting the wish lists of porn performers, models, and other…adult [entertainers]…Often, Amazon will cite “inappropriate” use of the wish list, such as it being used for “bartering” purposes…even when…there is no real evidence to that effect…Amazon has also deleted adult entertainers’ wish lists on the grounds that they include “inappropriate” items, such as adult toys or DVDs, despite the fact that Amazon offers these products…
New York City has agreed to pay $450,000 to settle a lawsuit…by a man who said he was falsely arrested on a prostitution charge outside a Manhattan adult video store…Robert Pinter…says the settlement was a victory for 40 or so men…targeted [because cops] believed [them] to be gay…
A Tale That Grew in the Telling (TW3 #345)
…the [Las Vegas] Police co-sponsored [a] “Choose Purity” event…to show young girls what can happen when they don’t wait until marriage to have sex…Typically four things: sexual assault, gangs, drugs and prostitution. Avoid sex and avoid those perils, [organizer Regina] Coward said…The room of about 125 parents and children watched recorded interviews with a pimp and prostitutes, learned modern-day slavery exists in the form of the sex trade, and saw grisly images of…a woman who’d lost limbs in a methamphetamine lab explosion and a man who’d had his face partially gnawed off by a meth user…The monologues concluded with each girl getting on a gurney and into a body bag…
When Mary Anne Franks began her Jihad against revenge porn, it was pointed out that…her law would also criminalize the revelation of Anthony Wiener’s dangerous selfie…Franks adamantly denied her law suffered from significant…deficiencies. But quietly, while no one was looking, the law morphed to include a…“Sydney Leathers exception”…even though few people know or care who Sydney Leathers is…Then came the viral twit…of a woman whose model plane strayed off course…and some snarky lawyer pointed out that anyone who retwitted it may well have committed a crime under Franks’ law. Deniers strained to contend that could never happen, convincing no one. But it didn’t take long before…Arizona [enacted]…its…revenge porn…law…The crime went from misdemeanor to felony…and it has no “
Anthony WienerSydney Leathers exception”…The sound you hear is Mary Anne Franks applauding as Crazy Joe Arpaio rounds up as many people…as he can find…
Backwards into the Future (TW3 #352)
Stephanie Wilson was reaching for a receipt inside a paper shopping bag from Saks Fifth Avenue when she found a letter pleading, “HELP HELP HELP”…from a man who…made the bag while being unfairly held in a Chinese prison factory…The note…was signed Tohnain Emmanuel Njong and was accompanied by a small passport-photo sized color picture… DNAinfo New York…located…Njong…who…said he had been teaching English in…Shenzhen when he was arrested in May 2011 and [wrongly] charged with fraud…he was forced to work long days in a factory, starting at 6 a.m. and continuing as late as 10 p.m…in December 2013…he…was put on a plane back to Cameroon…relatives…had believed him to be dead…
Can you imagine this in an American paper?
…the government is leaning heavily towards the…Nordic model…as featured in [Joy Smith’s] Tipping Point report…Smith starts with a pre-conceived notion that presumes something which is simply not true, but is rather a sop to her own sensibilities…Eliminate prostitution? With a law?…Maybe if Smith jumps up and down, holds her breath until she turns blue, and wishes really, really hard that’ll happen. But I doubt it…
Best part: the author’s an ex-cop.
Heather Berg’s criticism of Katha Pollitt’s ninnyish “OMG, men might see WHORES!!!1!!” essay from early last month makes the same point I made in “Dilemmas”: workers are not responsible for the moral failings (real or imaginary) of those who employ them.
…By making sex work exceptional, analyses like [these] ask us to forget that the wage system functions precisely by compelling us to work…If only everyone who opposes forcing people to work under threat of poverty and homelessness would join the struggle for a guaranteed annual income…the nature of a product is irrelevant to how we should theorize, legislate, or organize the labor involved in producing it. Workers are not socially accountable for whatever may come from their work. To accept otherwise encourages the over-identification with work that management finds so efficient in getting us to do more for less. It allows capital to extract not only time, but also ethical responsibility from workers…
Though Berg’s view proceeds from a Marxist background and mine from a classical liberal one, we agree on both this subject and on the advisability of a guaranteed income.
.
Not.
I’m pretty sure most US states have laws similar to Queensland where the act of prostitution is considered to have taken place where the client was solicited not where it was ‘consummated’.
I recall that the all girl grunge-metal band L7 once raffled off sex with their drummer at a British concert. I wonder how they avoided prostitution charges.
And to accept Berg’s argument is to open the door to anything anyone – including cops, soldiers, even hit men – wants to do as long as it is part of their ‘duties’ as an employee. It’s an ethical Nuremberg defence.
If you are to have any claim to self-ownership whatsoever you are ethically responsible for all your actions – even those performed at gunpoint. The only exception would be if you somehow lack control of your mind and/or body, in which case you aren’t really self-owned.
I can’t speak for Berg, but for me there’s a vast gulf between “my evil actions are excused by the fact that I was following orders” and “a person paid me to perform actions that were moral in themselves, but for which he had nefarious purposes”. If you’re going to hold a whore culpable for her client’s wasting the rent money on her, you also have to hold the grocer culpable for selling beer to a man who used it to drive drunk, or a shopkeeper culpable for selling rope to the mad strangler. In a complex society, any action may have unintended evil consequences, but that’s not the same as committing rape, home invasion and murder and excusing it with “it’s my job to uphold the law.”
Seems to me that Berg is arguing about the “nature of a product” not ‘dirty money’.
There are a lot of ‘products’ (including murder and oppression) that are simply unethical and any part you play in their production – either knowingly or through negligence – is also unethical. If you believe sex work to be unethical then you would be acting unethically if you did sex work (which is not to say you wouldn’t be even more unethical if you let your kids starve when you could feed them by doing sex work – sometimes you’ve gotta go for the least bad option).
I agree with that, but if you look at the Pollitt essay you can see her position isn’t nearly that clear. Berg’s point is somewhat muddled in places, but since she’s a Marxist that’s hardly avoidable.
“my evil actions are excused by the fact that I was following orders”
I can’t read a statement like this without recalling the Nuremburg WW2 trials, where it was a common defence, though not accepted (sorry, Godwin’s Law), without also recalling the Stanford experimental psychology experiment (warders and prisoners) which strongly suggested that we all will follow orders, no matter how obscene. Milgrim’s experiment only confirm this belief (though not always reproduced). Seems we are in no way to moral as we would like to think. It’s no fun looking into your soul, and finding out just how black it can be.
The Milgram experiment consistently shows that ‘only’ about two thirds of subjects will follow orders up to the point of causing serious harm to the victim (at least without more coercion or conditioning than Milgram inflicted).
The Stanford prison experiment wasn’t about compliance with orders at all but about the dehumanising that occurs when you put one easily identifiable group in authority over another. The abuse of ‘prisoners’ was spontaneous and in defiance of the instructions given the ‘guards’. It found about one third of the ‘guards’ displayed sadistic tendencies over the course of the experiment but it was poorly designed and executed and, unlike the Milgram experiment, did not give reproducible results.
That’s fair enough; but the idea that we are all idealistic and altruistic does seem to be false. In the “right” circumstances, most of us will follow orders unthinkingly, and if the orders include cruelty we’ll do that too.
Maggie,
I was surprised to hear you support a guaranteed income. That’s a strong liberal position, and one that’s at odds with most libertarian thought.
I actually support a guaranteed income myself despite holding many libertarian positions and this forces me to answer the question of how I view the role of government without the help that most people receive from established ideological groups. I can’t think of any major politician or opinion writer in the United States who takes strong libertarian positions on issues such as drug use, prostitution, and the surveillance state while also supporting the major expansion of the welfare state that would result from a guaranteed income.
Personally, I take this rather uncommon position because I think there is a difference between government’s coercive powers and its provision of services, and we can expand the latter without significantly expanding the former.
The welfare state would not expand with a guaranteed income; it would contract, as long as the income replaced ALL of the current (misnamed) “safety net” and eliminated its bureaucracy. The savings would be enormous and the recipients both happier and freed of domination by bureaucrats. Anything that shrinks government and frees people from bureaucratic micromanagement is, IMHO, a libertarian position. And more libertarians agree with this than you might think. Google “negative income tax” sometime.
Guaranteed minimum income per se may not expand the welfare state but any welfare state inevitably expands. Even if GMI was the only function of the welfare state politicians and administrators would constantly seek to expand it (for electoral bribes and their own power bases), as would recipients. The expansion would require more taxation which would require more enforcement against tax avoiders which means more power to the state. And so it goes.
As long as you accept the role of the state in either safeguarding or redistributing property you are accepting it as the ultimate power in society and once it’s got that sort of power it will use it to gain more.
That said, I do currently accept the state as the arbiter of power over property and would grant it more if I could. That’s because the main threat to both property and liberty is no longer the state it’s corporations and they can only be kept down presently by a more powerful state. We need to play state and corporate power off against each other until they can both be dismantled. How to break the symbiotic nexus between them is, IMHO, one of the most important questions currently facing mankind. I bet corporations will beat us to the answer by destroying civilisation – unless some head-of-state pushes a button and gets there first.
Private property of any kind inevitably results in concentration of power and oppression. When we abolish that, guaranteed minimum income will be moot. No one should own the necessities of survival.
Somehow I doubt it work work that way… Certainly wouldn’t be sustainable after 50 million or more Latin Americans crossed the border demanding their fair share
[…] That Was the Week That Was (#419) […]
Have you encountered this person, yet? http://rebeccamott.net/
Yet another feminist ex-prostitute, who claims to have started work at 14. She seem particularly “triggered” by the fact that men look at porn.
She’s just another Ruhama puppet like Reilly & Moran.
I’ve no idea if what happened to her is correct, but her language suggests that she’s being manipulated. Or something:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b042l78n
An interesting discussion here:
http://www.escort-ireland.com/boards/threads/143596-Rebecca-Mott-argues-for-the-Swedish-model?p=1354815#post1354815
I’m quite sure that there are people like her who have had bad experiences; but, as in the graphic above, the correlation between what happened to me must be what happened to everyone is weak in the extreme.
Perhaps, Maggie, you might give us your thoughts on why “antis” find it necessary to use sock puppets and “facts” which are demonstrably wrong to promulgate their views. I’m quite open to a debate with antis who say that their religion finds sex work wrong, to those whose feminist views find it wrong: but I don’t really understand why so many antis find it necessary to support their views with untruths. I’d be much more impressed if they were honest—I might not accept their views, but I’d accept them as being honest;y held: Just why is it necessary to lie to get your point across: why can’t they be honest?
Because “it’s my opinion” isn’t strong enough to induce most normal people to support violent coercion of peaceful individuals; they have to be tricked into thinking it’s a menace to Our Cherished Way of Life and The ChildrenTM, and that requires lies.
Well, fair enough. But I can’t be the only person who prefers facts, and then opinions based on them—I didn’t get called out for being “Empirical” for nothing.
And I accept that manipulation of the facts, the selective reporting of facts etc is normal enough today, it’s propaganda.
But what I don’t get is outright lying, pretending things are something they aren’t. If I can disprove such “facts”, I cannot accept anything you say. Do the “ends really justify the means”?
I’d guess it all boils down to sex: well, actually fucking. This is clearly a bad thing, for religion says so, and there are people who cannot or will not accept that it’s something that people actually like. And I’d bet that the people most against fucking are also the most sex-obsessed people—people who are also the most severely repressed. I’d still like to hear your opinion as to to why it’s something that antis seem to find to essential; that it’s OK t lie to present their views; it’s fair enough to be anti, but why lie? (Again, I’d guess that such people are not only sex obsessed, but also repressed.)
Put it another way: there are lots of things going on in the word today that I’m not happy about: but most commentators don’t find it necessary to lie about them. Why is sex work different?
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