It’s much harder to usurp someone’s voice when she’s out there saying you’re wrong. – Maggie McNeill
A [Chicago area] man accused of raping eight [sex workers] was sentenced…to 36 years in prison. Charles Oliver…forced the women to perform acts to which they had not agreed [and] often videotaped…In one video, Oliver…could be heard saying, “I don’t have to listen to you. I paid you”…Oliver also stole women’s IDs and threatened to expose them as prostitutes if they reported what he had done…Oliver…[has] herpes and [raped the women without]…condoms…Prosecutors also played recorded jailhouse phone calls where Oliver is heard saying…”I should have killed them it would have been easier”…
Noah Berlatsky quoted me and other activists in his Salon piece about how sex workers are using social media to attract attention to our cause. As a result of that piece, I was interviewed on the Between the Synapse radio show on Thursday. I apologize for quoting myself in the epigram, but this quote proved very popular on Twitter.
Police in Italy believe that a murdered prostitute…could have been the victim of a serial killer…Andrea Cristina Zamfir, was…naked except for her shoes and…bound with tape to an iron bar in a position similar to crucifixion…a year ago [another] prostitute was found in the same place and in a similar state…though…still alive…
This week I received two music CDs: The Herring and the Brine from Dave Curran of Inspireland, and Whirlygig from a reader whose screen name I don’t know; please email me so I can thank you properly!
Harm Magnification (The Beat Goes On)
Montreal…is considered a hub for…human trafficking, with police saying women and teenaged girls are brought into the city and forced into…sexual slavery…Mayor Denis Coderre said he wanted the crack down [sic] on massage parlours…Stella Outreach Worker Robin Maynard…[said] “The negative effects of arresting women in the sex industry have been widely documented”…
Cops don’t only rape adult women:
A…Colville [Washington] Police Officer has been arrested…and charged with Rape of a Child…the…victim…[said] she was “very fearful…since [rapist Scott] Arms was a police officer”…the girl…[finally] came forward…because she found out Arms was quitting his job in Colville and was going to be in [her home town] more often…Arms told investigators…she…[made] these allegations…”Because she has a crush on me”…
A [Minnesota] sheriff’s deputy has been sentenced to 33 years in prison for sexually abusing several boys on a fishing trip. Aaron Heuer…admitted he inappropriately touched four boys, ages 8 to 10, while volunteering as a fishing guide…Heuer threatened to throw the boys into the lake if they told…
First the once-respected Southern Poverty Law Center pronounced pickup artists a “hate group”, then branded everyone (including women) who doesn’t want to be groped by government thugs a “far-right homophobe”. Then “…the SPLC tried its hand at painting anarcho-capitalists as a rising new threat through a convoluted chain of logic that somehow sought to link voluntaryists to the Patriot movement…now the scaremonger group cautions that some people who oppose Common Core education standards are right-wing extremists…”
Sure, I’d have sex with an android; their money’s as good as anyone else’s:
…nearly one-in-five people [polled] said they were “willing to have sex with an android”…11 percent [said] they want a robot child similar to David in the movie A.I…41 percent said…the concept of sexual intimacy with a robot is “creepy” and an additional 14 percent said they don’t think robots should be used in such a manner. Nearly one-fifth of pet owners said they would replace a cherished animal with a robot…
First They Came for the Hookers… (TW3 #27)
The Texas Third Court of Appeals has upheld a punitive $5 tax levied on anyone who patronizes a strip club in Texas…ruling that the fee was not an occupation tax, a violation of free speech, or an unfair assault on live nude entertainment…The court went on to explicitly cite the alleged “secondary effects” and “social harms” brought by adult entertainment venues as a justification…Funds extorted from strip clubs and their patrons will go to pay for programs for sexual assault victims, under the nonsensical theory that the mere existence of strip clubs drives up rape…”The primary purpose of the sexually-oriented-business tax is…to discourage this type of business activity altogether…”
A TSA Supervisor was arrested at Kennedy Airport…Vernon Lythcott …[raped] two 15-year-old girls…[in] the Dominican Republic [after luring them]…from the beach into a van [with promises of] money and gifts…Lythcott and two other men [also] forced one of the girls [into] a room where they all sexually assaulted her…
In the US, this business would be violently suppressed and its customers and workers shamed, robbed and caged: “A brothel is showing other businesses how to…provide disability access on the Sunshine Coast…Scarlet Harem…will receive an award…from the Sunshine Coast Access Advisory Network for going above and beyond in providing accessibility and customer service…”
…Sharie Keil…is…at the forefront of a growing fight against sex offender registries, a shame-free alliance of offenders and their families, supported by researchers and some advocates who helped pass stringent…laws in the first place. They…claim…a steady patter of legal and legislative victories…[mostly] limited to…juvenile offenders …but [Keil]…wants to abolish the…registry altogether…
On top of the other flaws it’s just a policy, rescindable at a moment’s notice:
The New York Police Department will no longer confiscate…condoms …as evidence of prostitution…[but will] continue to seize condoms…in sex-trafficking and promotion of prostitution cases…Civil rights groups and advocates for sex workers…argue that…police may continue to seize condoms from sex workers and teen runaways under the pretense of investigating pimps and traffickers…
The free market provides a defense to a particularly nasty tool of the fascist panopticon:
…Erase deletes 99.5% of DNA left behind. Replace obfuscates the remaining .5%…Don’t let DNA spill your secrets. Protect your image and be invisible. Spend the night somewhere you shouldn’t have? Erase your mistake and be invisible…Exercising your freedom of speech? Be invisible and never get tracked…
Counterfeit Comfort (TW3 #330)
If you’re a fan of “sex offender” registration, meet your bedfellows:
A couple who…[murdered] a registered sex offender and his wife…were sentenced to life in prison…Initially, Jeremy and Christine Moody apologized…and asked for a 30-year sentence so they could see their children and grow old together. But after…[the] Judge…handed down the maximum punishment, they…showed how they really felt. “See you perverts later,” Jeremy Moody shouted at [his victim’s] family…”That’s what child molesters get.” And…Christine Moody…told reporters: “Killing that pedophile was the best day of my life”…
A recent email from a listserv for sex researchers:
In my role as Chief Science Officer for AshleyMadison, I’m looking to pay sexologists…to represent/interpret academic infidelities research — without bias — to the media. You would be commenting on affairs/cheating research by other academics, or by our own AshleyMadison surveys…You do not have to say that AshleyMadison is paying you. You simply speak as a sexologist…
I was pleased to see that one of the researchers immediately answered with an email on Ashley Madison’s deceptive practices.
400 cops to arrest 19 masseuses. Need I mention the motive?
Sixteen women and two men accused of running a Bay Area prostitution operation…have been arrested. One suspect…remains at large…There are 111 counts against the group including pimping, pandering, and tax evasion…The massive sweep involved some 400 law enforcement officers in 6 counties…[who] seized cash, drugs, weapons, cars, assets, and marijuana…
With just under three months…until the Glasgow [Commonwealth Games] begins, a strategy designed to tackle sex trafficking and prostitution is being put in place…High-profile sporting events, such as the World Cup and the Olympics, have historically resulted in a spike in sex crimes…and…human trafficking…
No, they haven’t, “historically” or otherwise.
Another example of Dateline’s revolting practice of luring men to be fodder for their televised Roman circus:
A…TV news producer slapped NBC with a lawsuit…claiming her Dateline boss used her as “sexual bait” to lure targets for a hidden-camera series about drug-related prostitution, sex trafficking & sadomasochism. Kimberly Lengle…[says] Dan Slepian…criticized [her] for not dressing provocatively enough and even asked why she didn’t have any nude photos…to send to men looking for…sexual playthings…Slepian threatened her job when she didn’t…[post] her photo in response to a Craigslist ad by a sexual deviant looking for a “human punching bag”…
…[German] sex workers…are asking…politicians not to put obstacles in the way of…their profession…[Johanna Weber of the sex workers’ professional association said] “Many politicians…are working on a problem that does not exist as such…so…90 percent of women we represent…are worse off under these changes…in New Zealand…prostitutes have all the rights of workers. And fears that the country would be a hotbed of international human trafficking did not materialize…a pure policy of prohibition couldn’t win a flower pot in Germany…so [prohibitionists] say they want to do something good for the oh-so-poor prostitutes instead. I would recommend politicians go to a brothel and ask who would like to be taken out of there…we do not want to be rescued…”
Remember, the “authorities” even admit there isn’t a shred of proof for any of this; much of it seems to be the product of one woman’s BDSM fantasies:
…where there are men and money, there are prostitutes. And…some reports estimate that about 70 percent of “prostitutes” are actually human trafficking victims…it’s no secret that human trafficking victims are being bought and sold every day in…the oil-rich Bakken region of North Dakota…Windie Jo Lazenko is…investigating rumors of rampant human trafficking in the state…[including] visits to…hotels where entire floors have been purchased by pimps…state law enforcement officials [say]…the…human trafficking epidemic could be helped by national efforts…
Lawheads amazed that their barricades did not magically abolish the need to earn money for bills and food:
Residents of [Cincinnati] worry that a recent crackdown on streetwalkers…has rerouted prostitution problems to their [neighborhood]. Cincinnati police recently set up barricades in hopes of cutting back on johns cruising the streets…”Instantly we’ve seen an increase in streetwalker prostitution,” Pete Witte said…
Given that she lies like a rug about her education and weight, the back-out was totally predictable:
…Elizabeth Raine…launched an online auction for her virginity…[which] concluded on May 7…at $801,000. However, Raine backed out…She claims to have biology and engineering bachelor’s degrees and to be in school to finish a combined Masters and PhD program. She expressed her concern that the auction might kick her out of college…Raine listed her height as 5’10” and her weight at 130 pounds…
Dr. Brooke Magnanti on efforts to control women using pregnancy as an excuse:
…in Utah, a woman was charged with…felony child endangerment after accusations that she used meth while pregnant. The police report wrote…”Being that her child was only 39 weeks gestational age, it was surmised that the use of methamphetamine caused [her] to go into labour”…39 weeks is considered full term and a large proportion of women experience the start of labour at that stage…Meanwhile in Alabama, a state Supreme Court decision ruled that a mother could be convicted of endangerment for testing positive for cocaine use during pregnancy, even though her child was born healthy…a…new law in Tennessee went against the recommendations of many major medical associations…drug tests for some substances are unreliable after a surprisingly short time…so…false accusations of endangerment could easily be made by others, and considering the high rate of miscarriage that occurs naturally, how would police know the difference?…
Of course, the cops don’t care; in fact, the lack of definitive proof is a feature rather than a bug for those who make and enforce these laws.
There are so many things wrong with the original police report on the 39 weeks gestation, it’s hard to know where to begin.
The woman was delivered by emergency c-section for unspecified medical reasons. It’s not at all clear if spontaneous labour had actually begun or not.
So, how long is pregnancy? Well, the “standard” is 266 days from fertilization. One method of determining the estimated date of confinement (EDC) is to add 280 days to the first day of the last menstrual period; this is what the ‘wheel’ calculators do. The assumptions include that periods are regular, with a 28 day cycle, and fertilization occurs exactly at mid-cycle. Of course, ovulation can occur at any time during the cycle, though mid-cycle is commonest. For someone who ovulates early or late, there is therefore a potential ± 2 week error in the EDC estimation.
Sonographic estimations of foetal size in early pregnancy are more accurate than this rule. Still, 266 days of pregnancy is only an average, a “standard”. It’s quite possible for healthy spontaneous labour to begin much earlier than 9 months. Nowadays, in developed countries, pregnancy isn’t allowed to continue longer than say 40 + 10 (i.e. 40 weeks and 10 days) because of the risk of post-maturity.
For the cops to claim that the 39 weeks gestation meant prematurity is simply uneducated nonsense—particularly here as the delivery wasn’t natural. And then to try to pin this onto “drug abuse” is absurd.
And that’s before I ask what exactly the difference between 39 + 6 and 40 + 0 is.
I checked my ideas with an expert: rather than 280/266 days I’m told that it’s more usual now to have 283/269.
Further, the time of fertilization is a normal distribution or “bell” shaped curve, with the “average” being midway through the cycle.
Likewise, the spontaneous onset of normal labour also follows a normal distribution curve—with the proviso that in developed countries, pregnancy isn’t normally allowed to continue beyond 40 + 10. I had half-remembered these data, I just wasn’t sure enough to include them before.
And all this is a very long winded way (sorry!) of saying that delivery at 39 weeks gestation falls absolutely within the normal parameters, no matter what the cops in Utah might think.
I find it fascinating that these virginity auction stories so often end in disappointment for the seller. It does rather pop the balloon of a certain strand of argument from the antis as well, that clients prefer to pay for inexperience. It has a value of a type, sure, but for the better part of a million, I at least would like the best lover in the world ever instead.
As for her weight, a casual examination of driver’s licenses will reveal 99% of all women are 105, 115 or 130 pounds, self reported, of course 😉
LOL – I’ll pay a girl $800K to let me impregnate her – but for a slice of cherry pie?
That’s fuckin’ ridiculous!!
She’s too skinny anyway … for my tastes.
all I know is that if I am going to see an escort I would really prefer that she knows what she is doing
I wonder, is this some sort of manifestation of the “used goods” idea, a throwback to Victorian ideas.
Or, perhaps it’s like buying a used car; nowadays, such a car might be described as pre-owned, or even “cherished” to differentiate it from the usual bundle of scrap.
I”d certainly expect a lot—a lot more—for my $800k than is offered in these auctions.
I think the auction was likely BS from the beginning to end. This really crossed me as someone trying to get attention, not a serious auction.
I can only think of two rational reasons that any man, past or present, nice or not, might want “his” woman to be a virgin, and neither makes sense in the auction scenario.
#1, of course, was that it was once the only way to feel certain that the kids he is supporting and helping raise carry his genes. Of course history tells us that this “certainty” was quite easy to fake — and most of the time still is, since most men won’t consider DNA testing unless they first get suspicious — and if it does turn out that a cuckoo put that egg in the nest, in most places it’s unlikely to get him out of paying child support anyway.
#2 is the nasty idea of narrowing her horizons to include only him, and I suspect this is the purpose fundamentalists have in mind, both here and in places like Arabia. Fortunately, this is also unlikely to work in the modern world.
So I’m with the rest of you. I want someone who knows the art well enough to have plenty to teach me.
The reason a guy want to deflower a virgin enough to pay big bucks for it is the same reason another guy wants really big tits or certain kind of feet: it’s a fetish. And in the modern West, a virgin of legal age is a very rare thing. Furthermore, the concept of a virgin whore has always been very exciting to some men, and virginity auctions were very common in old-time brothels, commanding prices of hundreds of dollars at a time when the average girl charged ten.
# In some places, there is also the persistence of the idea that sex with a virgin “cures” a man of STIs. I doubt that this applies here.
it has been quite some time since SPLC said anything that wasn’t pandering to the worst tendencies of the extreme left. They just need to be ignored and then hopefully they will go away
They have refused to condemn the endless hatred that neofeminists aim towards sex workers and transgender persons, which confirms that they are quite accepting of hate when it is spewed by their allies.
‘Anything’?
:eyebrow raise:
Doh! I composed a wonderfully erudite, fully researched though not peer reviewed comment, typed it up, posted it, and WordPress clearly didn’t like it….and it vanished.
That’s bizarre; it put two of your comments in the spam folder. Since you’re a regular commenter I reckon it must’ve been some sort of glitch, but I was able to retrieve them.
Ah, thank you!