I think I’m in favor of this but I would not want to go to court for a 5- or 10-year-old and say: “You’re charged with a misdemeanor” – Lula Davis-Holmes
A little busier this week, except for videos; still, I thought you’d enjoy this lovely example of why correlation does not equal causation, contributed by Pope Shakey. Everything above it is from Radley Balko, who also wrote the last one above the video; however, I gave credit to Rick Horowitz for first calling my attention to an earlier (but less powerful) report of the incident. The video was provided by Zander Falcon, and the links above it by Clarissa (“honest”), Michael Whiteacre (“important”), Jason Kuznicki (“garbage”), Jesse Walker (“hypocrites”), Grace (“guns”), and Gideon (“throat”).
[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
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…
…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…
[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”…
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!”
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…
…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.
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…
…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 Wiener Sydney Leathers exception”…The sound you hear is Mary Anne Franks applauding as Crazy Joe Arpaio rounds up as many people…as he can find…
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…
…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…
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.
This essay first appeared in Cliterati on April 13th; I have modified it slightly to fit the format of this blog.
Probably the most common stereotype of anti-sex worker feminists is that they’re all misandrists, and on the surface that certainly seems true. But a closer examination of the issue reveals a deeper motivation which more closely resembles an obsessive concern with men at the expense of women. Feminists are willing to deny models income in order to deny lads’ mags to men, and would rather see women in the porn industry unemployed rather than know that men can watch porn videos. “Sex trafficking” fetishists are willing to undermine the entire edifice of civil liberties for both sexes in order to stop men from having access to commercial sex. Anti-sex worker screeds go on and on about “ending men’s demand for sex”, or “teaching men they aren’t entitled to sex”, or “look at the awful things men say about ‘prostituted women’!” Men this, men that, men the other thing; men, men, Men, MEN, MEN! No matter how vociferously prohibitionists insist that their motive is women’s protection or “empowerment”, sex work prohibition has absolutely nothing to do with women: it’s all about the men.
Nearly every Western society has a long tradition of viewing sex as something “dirty” and “demeaning”; the idea of punishment is inextricably bound up with the concept of “correction”, so buried in the misandrist rhetoric spouted by prohibitionists is the notion that if Big Nanny just spanks men hard enough and often enough, they won’t have those dirty thoughts any more. The underlying pretext of punishing men for male sexuality, and restricting them from enjoying same, is not to hurt them but rather to “help” them by making them more like (asexual, idealized) women. To be sure, “fallen” women are to be “helped” as well wherever possible, but when it happens it’s merely a happy byproduct of the campaign to “improve” men; those women who refuse to be “saved” and to dutifully recite the feminist catechism thereafter will be thrown under the bus without the slightest hesitation. While this motive is obvious in most Christian prohibitionism, it’s often less so in the feminist variety; that is not, however, the case in Katha Pollitt’s remarkably-transparent jeremiad in The Nation, whose lede included the feminist shibboleth “male privilege.” But rather than quote from Pollitt’s polemic itself, let’s instead look at Elizabeth Nolan Brown’s excellent criticism of it in Reason:
…Pollitt is upset about what she perceives as widespread leftist support for legalized prostitution. This is, in itself, a strange perception…I am far from alone in noticing a recent surge in anti–sex work passion among progressives. But more problematic/annoying are the reasons Pollitt gives for criminalizing prostitution, reasons which turn on an unsavory belief that restricting liberty is justified if it leads people to better (read: more progressive) views…Giving sex workers more rights…would also mean giving johns less punishment—a point which Pollitt expects women to find scary. Have you thought about the fact that men you know might visit prostitutes, young ladies? “This faceless man could be anyone: your colleague, your boyfriend, your father, your husband…When feminists argue that sex work should be normalized…they accept male privilege they would attack in any other area…Maybe men would be better partners, in bed and out of it, if they couldn’t purchase that fantasy,” Pollitt [writes]…
Despite its “feminist” trappings, Pollitt’s argument rests on the premise that men’s attitudes, ideas and feelings are so important and so central to our society that the state is justified in criminalizing and marginalizing some women and endangering all women in order to shape men in some way. The goal of making them better bed partners for “good” women justifies dispatching thugs to stalk, entrap, humiliate, brutalize, rape, chain, abduct, cage and torture the “bad” women who want no part of this social engineering project; or failing that, at least to starve, ostracize and endanger them via the “progressive” Swedish model. In either case, what the prohibitionist philosophy boils down to is that it’s perfectly acceptable for women to be endangered, harmed or even killed if it keeps some men from thinking Bad Thoughts; whether the aim is to control men or to “improve” them, women must be limited, subjugated or even sacrificed to accomplish the goal. One way or the other, it’s all about making men acceptable to the state and to “good” women, and what happens to “bad” women in the process is neither here nor there.
HRH The Prince of Wales: I’ve spent enough on you to build a battleship! Lillie Langtry: And you’ve spent enough in me to float one.
Once the “prostitute” was defined into existence as the lowest of the low in the late 19th century, it became necessary for those who were emotionally invested in the concept to police the dividing line between whores and all other women. If it was possible for a “fallen woman” to not only raise herself by her own efforts, but to do so without repenting her whoredom, she obviously was not someone any woman could look down upon; since the whole purpose of the definition was to provide such an exemplar, famous harlots became an embarrassment to the prohibitionists. Such women’s harlotry therefore had to be ignored, rationalized or even denied so as to maintain the fiction that we are all monsters, criminals, victims or whatever other role the individual fanatic’s belief-system requires. In the past few decades especially, whores who achieve fame and/or accomplishment that transcends their whoredom are routinely co-opted by prohibitionists, and most popular biographies either leave out the fact that they made a living on their backs or else sanitize it with words like “mistress” or “lover” in order to pretend that the arrangement was established for romantic reasons rather than economic ones. And if a professional achieves greater and more lasting fame in some other career after her hooking days, the general practice nowadays is to omit her earlier means of support entirely.
Emilie Charlotte Le Breton was born on October 13, 1853, the only daughter of Rev. William Corbet Le Breton (Dean of Jersey) and his wife Emilie; though she had six brothers, only two survived childhood. Emilie was a high-spirited girl who inherited her mother’s looks and her father’s temperament; he had numerous affairs and eventually resigned his post in disgrace several years after his daughter had left the island. Being the only girl also contributed to her personality: she learned to handle males from a very early age, and was educated by her brothers’ tutor because she was far too rambunctious for a governess. At the wedding of her brother William in autumn of 1873 she met the Irish landowner Edward Langtry, the 30-year-old widower of the bride’s older sister; Emilie was taken with his charm and apparent affluence and he dazzled her with (chaperoned) cruises on his yacht. They were married on March 6th, 1874, and he bought her a stately home in Jersey and a flat in London; unfortunately, Langtry was not as wealthy as he appeared to be, and her family’s dislike for him was so intense that when her beloved younger brother Reggie died in the spring of 1877, she hadn’t seen him in years.
After the funeral Emilie fell into a deep depression, and in an effort to cheer her Lord Ranelagh got her an invitation to a salon held by Lady Sebright and attended by a number of famous artists and literary figures. Because she was still in mourning, she wore a simple black dress without jewelry and isolated herself in a quiet corner of the suite; but because she was both beautiful and charming this had the opposite effect of the one she was looking for. She attracted the attention of a number of artists at the salon, among them Frank Miles (who had previously seen her at the theater and was very taken with her); Miles made several sketches that evening and raved about her beauty to everyone he knew. By the end of the week the Langtrys were overwhelmed by invitations, Miles’ sketches had been sold and every photographer and painter in London wanted Emilie to model for him; the most famous of these portraits was A Jersey Lily by Millais, which not only spread her fame but gave her the nickname by which she would be known ever after: Lillie.
Within weeks, she had come to the attention of the Prince of Wales, who asked to be seated next to her at a dinner party on May 24, 1877 and was soon spending legendary amounts of money on her; since this allowed a far more lavish lifestyle than he would otherwise have had, Langtry was content to go away on fishing trips while his wife entertained her royal patron. Though His Highness was a noted womanizer, he became totally infatuated with Lillie and even built a house (now Langtry Manor Hotel) for them to tryst in; she became the closest thing to an official mistress as was possible in that time and place, and was even accepted by the Prince’s wife, Princess Alexandra (Queen Victoria, on the other hand, was said to have treated her rather coldly). The relationship continued for two years, during which Lillie made many important friends; chief among them was Oscar Wilde, who later helped her launch the career for which she is known today. And though it ended when Sarah Bernhardt captured the Prince’s eye in June of 1879, they parted on good terms and he later helped her on a number of occasions.
Lillie immediately became involved with the Earl of Shrewsbury, but that arrangement broke up the following January once rumors of divorce began to circulate and creditors started to hound her husband. By April she had attracted another royal patron, Prince Louis of Battenberg, and when she found herself pregnant in June she told him that he was the father; however, she was also carrying on a romantic affair with Arthur Clarence Jones at the same time, so it’s possible that the child was his. By this point the Langtrys were truly estranged; Edward went off on an extended fishing trip, leaving Lillie to deal with the bill collectors (which she did in October of 1880 by selling off many of the expensive gifts Prince Albert had given her). She at first tried to hide the pregnancy by renting a cottage in Jersey, but soon realized a small community was the worst place to be; she then appealed to “Bertie” for help and he gave her some money and had her taken to Paris, where she and Jones lived until she gave birth to her daughter Jeanne Marie on March 8, 1881.
By autumn she had deposited the child in her own mother’s care and returned to London, where Wilde suggested she should take up acting. He connected her to Henrietta Labouchere, a retired actress turned acting coach, and after one amateur production in November she was hired for a part in She Stoops to Conquer; though the critics were divided in their opinions, she had lost none of her charisma and the ever-supportive Prince of Wales made a point of attending several of her performances in order to draw attention to them. Her popularity attracted enough investment to form her own company only a few months later, and she toured the UK for the rest of the year before landing a deal for an American tour in October – less than a year after she had started acting. She was an even bigger hit in the US than she had been at home, and her box office receipts broke all previous records. Nor had she entirely given up her previous career: she found a new patron in the person of Freddie Gebhard, a multi-millionaire who bought her a townhouse in New York and a private railway carriage built to her specifications. She eventually became a US citizen and divorced Edward Langtry in 1887, but though she and Gebhard remained together until 1891 they never married. He bought her a whole stable of thoroughbred horses, and she enjoyed modest success racing them; she also bought a vineyard and winery in California in 1888, and though she sold it in 1906 it still bears the name Langtry Farms. She also sold endorsements for soap and cosmetics, becoming one of the first celebrities to do so.
In 1899, she married Hugo Gerald de Bathe, who became Lord de Bathe in 1907. Though he was 19 years her junior, the relationship does not appear to have been the typical love match between an aging courtesan and a young lover, but rather a marriage of convenience contracted to get money for him and a title for her; when they retired to Monaco in 1917 he lived half an hour away in Nice, and they only saw each other on social occasions. She continued acting right up until her retirement, at which time she also sold all of her horses and racing interests. During her last decade her closest companion was Mathilde Peate, the widow of her butler; she had been estranged from her daughter since 1899, after Jeanne Marie’s fiancé had explained the truth about her parentage (which had been kept from her for eighteen years). In the winter of 1929 Lillie contracted bronchitis and later influenza, dying on February 12th at the age of 75; she left her entire fortune to her daughter, grandchildren and Mrs. Peate, and nothing at all to her husband. She was buried in the churchyard of St. Savior’s Parish on Jersey, near the rectory in which she had grown up; though she had left early and wandered far in her eventful life, the Jersey Lily eventually returned to the soil of her beloved home, which her heart had never really left.
As a pagan, do you believe in magic and psychic powers? If so, what are your views on love spells, sex spells, tantra, etc.?
It sometimes confuses (or even upsets) people to find out that I have some irrational beliefs, but all humans do. Even the most vocal atheists and dedicated skeptics have some things they accept on faith or because they want to; for example, a couple of years ago there was a group called “Atheism Plus” which insisted its members embrace neofeminist dogma. It could even be said that the principle of self-ownership upon which classical liberalism (modern libertarianism) rests is an article of faith, since there is no way to “prove” that such a principle exists or is “good” for the human species in some concrete way. But in the end, self-ownership is a moral principle, not a scientific one; it cannot be “proven” in the same way as the existence of electromagnetism can be. The moral difference between a good skeptic and an “Atheism Plus” style hypocrite is that while the former recognizes he might himself have some irrational beliefs, he has no right to impose them on others. Furthermore, the wise person recognizes that because different people have different irrational beliefs, it’s probably best to keep them out of most conversation with strangers (the old “avoid religion and politics” rule). The only exception is the self-ownership principle, because it’s the one irrational belief which allows our modern idea of manners to even exist; refusing to accept that every person is the “captain of his soul” opens the door to violence and coercion, which makes polite discourse impossible. Can you have a truly polite conversation with a judge in his courtroom, or a cop anywhere at any time? Of course not, because in both cases the “official” wrongly believes his view of reality is the “correct” one, and that he has the “right” to use violence to enforce that view upon everyone else. Furthermore, he is backed by the vast and brutal machinery of the state, which will uphold his use of force no matter how arbitrary, excessive and immoral it may be. The moral individual, on the other hand, accepts that everyone has the right to his own thoughts; he just doesn’t have the right to implement them in a way that infringes upon the equal rights of everyone else. There’s nothing innately wrong with a personal feeling or belief that sex work is bad or sinful or whatever; it only becomes wrong when the one who believes it employs armed thugs to enforce that belief on other individuals.
Many times in my life, I have experienced events that I cannot explain unless psychic phenomena and deities of some sort (though not anthropomorphic ones) exist. I don’t believe in magic per se, because I don’t believe thought can affect physical reality. In fact, I do not believe that even the gods can affect matter; as I have often said, “God cannot stop a nail from puncturing your tire, but She can move the heart of a passing motorist to stop and help you fix it.” In other words, gods, prayer and “magic” (if you want to call it that) act only within the brain and have no power outside of it, nor do they have any effect on free will. There is no “magical” way to “make” a person do anything; all psychic forces (including gods) can do is to “poke” his mind and create an urge. But just as he has the power to resist the urges caused by the smell of delicious food, the sight of a beautiful woman or the presence of a drawer full of money, so he also has the power to resist the “push” of psychic forces or divine inspiration (though in my experience it’s very foolish to do the latter). Given all this, there is no way at present to empirically demonstrate the existence of either psychic powers or deities; due to my own personal experiences I believe in those things for myself, but I don’t care if anyone else believes in them, nor will I waste my time trying to convince others of their existence. Furthermore, I would oppose any laws based upon my (or anyone else’s) irrational beliefs; laws should be based on facts, not faith, even were that faith to be accepted by the entire human race save one.
Every nation has the government it deserves. – Joseph de Maistre
It is often said that large companies are amoral, and commit myriad sins in the name of profit. At the same time, it’s clear that companies like Google, Paypal, Facebook, Chase and Amazon police “morality” and discriminate against anything to do with sex. Oddly enough, though the concept of an amoral morality cop would seem oxymoronic, it’s actually fundamentally correct; though corporations are not completely amoral, most have only one moral principle: responsibility to their stockholders. A corporation is both legally and practically bound to protect its investors and to maximize their profits, and unless the board of directors is dominated by unusually-principled shareholders, all other moral precepts are subordinate to that one. Readers who are my age and older will recall that in the ‘70s and ‘80s companies weren’t nearly as bluenosed as they’ve become in the last two decades; as I explained in “They Don’t Want To Know”, “It’s not that the owners of these companies are all a bunch of prudes; it’s that far too many of the people who buy their products are, and they can’t afford to take chances in a world where ‘offense’ is as fetishized as it is today.”
But while this was sufficient motivation for some companies who were both controlled by a small number of executives and image-conscious to the point of paranoia (e.g., Paypal and Facebook), others needed a stronger impetus to induce them to reject piles of lovely money merely because a few of their customers might clutch their pearls if they discovered sex workers or other businesspeople they deemed “shady” were also customers. Naturally, the US government was happy to provide that stronger motivation. The latest in a long tradition of government programs designed to criminalize private behavior and harass nonconformists, minorities, the poor and those with unpopular opinions and pastimes is Operation Choke Point, which started in March of last year but has only recently come to light due to a few high-profile effects. Jason Oxman of the Electronic Transactions Association explained it thus:
…the Department of Justice and other federal agencies are…[pursuing] disfavored – but legal – categories of merchants by targeting our nation’s payments systems…as more details of the program become public, more concerns are raised. The “chokepoint” in this operation is the nation’s payments infrastructure…Federal law enforcers are targeting merchant categories like payday lenders, ammunition and tobacco sales, and telemarketers – but not merely by pursuing those merchants directly. Rather, Operation Chokepoint is flooding payments companies that provide processing service to those industries with subpoenas, civil investigative demands, and other burdensome and costly legal demands. The theory…has superficial logic: increase the legal and compliance costs of serving certain disfavored merchant categories, and payments companies will simply stop providing service to such merchants. And it’s working…Thus far, payday lenders have been the most frequent target…what category will be next and who makes that decision?
While some of these (such as get-rich and Ponzi schemes) are undoubtedly sketchy and others (credit repair, debt consolidation) have strong potential to be, some of the others (escort services, gambling) are on the list due to a high chargeback rate, while others (gun & ammunition, drugs & tobacco) are purely political targets. But whatever the reason, the government’s growing tendency to force private entities to act as arms of the fascist state is incredibly alarming, not merely to those who care about human rights and individual liberty, but even to bankers:
The Justice Department’s “Operation Choke Point” is…being pushed far beyond its stated objective…and is having potentially devastating impact on lawful check cashing and small loan businesses. This in turn will cut off tens of millions of people from much needed access to money to meet emergency needs…No matter what your personal view [of targeted industries]…Operation Choke Point should be both alarming and repugnant. It is a direct assault on the democratic system and free-market economy that have made the United States the most powerful and prosperous nation in world history. Without color of law and based on a political agenda, unelected bureaucrats at the Department of Justice are coordinating with some bank regulators to deny essential banking services to companies engaged in lawful business activities. Bankers operating under the yoke of an oppressive regulatory regime are being cowed into compliance. If lawful payday lenders and check cashers can be driven out of the banking system because someone in the government doesn’t like them or what they do, what lawful businesses are next?…
Note that two of the articles I’ve quoted here ask the sensible question, “Who will be targeted next?” As I’ve pointed out many times, campaigns of persecution always start out with unpopular entities (in this case payday lenders and sex workers), but absolutely never stop there. Paypal would have shut down all of Patreon because some of its clients produced erotic art; by the same token, what’s to stop Operation Choke Point from attacking convenience stores for selling tobacco, liquor, lottery tickets and men’s magazines? There are always useful idiots who will support tyranny against things they don’t like (such as guns, tobacco or porn), and are then shocked when the same legal tools are used against things they do like (such as birth control). For now, legal-but-disfavored businesses can turn to bitcoin and offshore payment processing. But while the DoJ is currently satisfied with mere financial harassment, it wouldn’t be hard for its prosecutors to invent spurious charges using vague statutes (“conspiracy”, “wire fraud” and “money laundering” are very handy that way) to persecute targeted businesses which keep going despite the government’s attempts to stifle them. I can’t say where it will all end, but I can say this: it won’t stop on its own. The institutions behind it must be hacked apart, before they strangle us all.
There is almost nothing more convincing than a live human being who takes the stand, points a finger at the defendant, and says “That’s the one!” – Elizabeth Loftus
After I participated in the Albany Law School Symposium in February of last year, the organizers asked if I’d like to submit a research paper for inclusion in the school’s journal; the invitation was both enticing and intimidating. On the one hand, it would allow me to present my arguments in a form and medium through which they would both reach a professional audience that might otherwise be denied me, and give those arguments a certain gravitas denied to the contents of a “mere” blog. On the other hand, I had not written a scholarly paper in twenty years, and even then not for a journal; furthermore, I was unfamiliar with what might constitute an acceptable style for a law journal, and also with the citation format. I was assured that they would be happy to hold my hand if necessary on the matter of style, and that the editors checked all citations and put them into proper format.
So I accepted the invitation, and though the deadline wasn’t until September I worked on it through last June and submitted it on July 2nd so as to give the editors plenty of time for all the revision I was sure it would need. To my great pleasure it needed very little; the editor wanted to double-check some citations, asked for a couple of alternate sources and requested that clarifying text be included in a few passages. Finally, the journal was published in March and I received a box of copies last week. I scanned it into a PDF and uploaded it, and today I’d like to formally present “Mind-Witness Testimony: The Unreliability of First-Person Accounts in Sex Trafficking Discourse” (Albany Government Law Review, volume 7). It’s much longer (34 pages), much more formal and much more scholarly than my usual writing, but I don’t think y’all will find it too dry and the points it makes are, in my opinion, very important. Here’s the concluding paragraph of the introduction:
…While some fraction of the firsthand accounts, related by those who represent themselves as victims of “sex trafficking”, are almost certainly true as related (subject to the usual distortion of time), and another probably larger fraction have been altered by the process of stereotypical conformation described [herein], it is likely that the majority of reported narratives are not factually correct in any way, however real they may seem to the self-identified victim. I realize this is an extremely bold and controversial claim; however, in this paper I will present three types of evidence to support it: first, that “sex trafficking” is neither as common as the public has been led to believe, nor as consistently and stereotypically exploitative; second, that there is extremely strong evidence for a mechanism for the formation of absolutely false memories, and that the narratives reported by self- identified “trafficking victims” bear a striking resemblance to past examples that experts and the legal system alike now agree are undoubtedly false; and third, that there are strong sociological, political, and economic reasons for certain parties to encourage the development, dissemination, and public acceptance of these narratives.
It’s a topic I’ve covered in this blog before, but it’s examined in much greater depth in the paper; you may also appreciate the historical overview in the first section. Oh, and one more thing: I reduced the scans by 40% to keep the PDF down to a manageable size, so you’ll need to expand the display to read it properly. Class dismissed, and I promise not to give you a pop quiz.
This was an odd week; it was apparently so dominated by several big stories that the smaller ones were swamped out. Nobody contributed more than one link this time, so they all appear between the two videos. The first was provided by Jesse Walker, and definitely isn’t what Hank Williams, Sr would have considered a typical country song; for the second, I decided to remind y’all just how weird (and even creepy) Sesame Street‘s short videos could be. The links between are from Radley Balko, Mancrack, Brooke Magnanti, Gideon, Clarissa, Jasper Gregory, Popehat and Carol Fenton (in that order).
…The havoc prostitution can wreak on lives played out in a London [Ontario] courtroom…when [Nelson] Martinez…was sentenced for what was described as a “callous and dangerous” attack on a sex worker…Martinez received a sentence of [merely] 38 months…[because] Justice Peter Hockin [was] impressed by Martinez’s promise to take counselling for his anger and sexual problems…[his] marriage was healthy until…Martinez turned away from his wife and children, and to pornography and prostitution…
Actually, the author of this particular articleisn’t uptight; he seems accepting, though he’s a bit ill-informed about screening and seems to believe streetwalking is the norm:
…the Berlin-based Peppr app uses GPS to connect potential clients with prostitutes in their immediate area…to save prostitutes from having to pound sidewalks for customers. It was created by…Pia Poppenreiter…after seeing sex workers out of doors on a cold night…To help make sure that its sex workers don’t become part of any human trafficking chain, Peppr interviews its advertisers over the phone before they sign them up…The company will also not work with brothels, only individuals and escort agencies…
Massage parlors…have multiplied over the past decade, and city leaders don’t believe the boom is based on increased demand for back rubs…South Pasadena City Manager Sergio Gonzalez said…“That is something I believe is exploitation of women…it’s promoting sex, and that’s not what we want in South Pasadena”…
The rest of the article lays the blame for this terrifying invasion of peaceful businesswomen on the incompetence of the California Massage Therapy Council (CAMTC), an organization which claims to be such an efficient investigative body that it “did what the FBI couldn’t: uncover PROOF of a “vast network” of traffickers!” The law which created the CAMTC contained a “sunset clause” which will expire next year, and many politicians want it to do just that; however, CAMTC director Richard McElroy warns of dire consequences if his crack team of super-massage-cops is dissolved: “The human trafficking cartel…are [sic] praying we sunset because we are the biggest thorn in their side”…
…in…Fading Gigolo…John Turturro…plays…a gentle bookstore employee who loses his part-time job…For his first trick – a passionate one-on-one with [Sharon Stone] – Fioravante earns $2,500…A string of satisfied clients follow…and the money rolls in…
A [Washington state cop]…involved in fighting…sex trafficking was arrested…on child porn charges…Donald Glunt…described himself on his LinkedIn page as being a training coordinator for the church-based group Hope4Justice…officials…discovered images on Glunt’s city-owned cell phone while conducting an internal administrative investigation…
Panhandling…in Louisiana would be banned if a bill the House unanimously [approved] …gets signed into law…[sponsor] Austin Badon…proposed the bill…[in] answer to a call by [cops] to help…break up obvious patterns of prostitution…The legislation would allow for prostitutes to be “hassled by the cops,” he said…it would also apply to hitchhikers…
Four French police officers are being held in custody on suspicion of raping a 34-year-old Canadian woman at their Paris headquarters…[after she met them] during a night of heavy drinking at a nearby Irish pub…
Once again, deputies from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office have busted someone who went to Craigslist looking for sex with an animal. This time, a 22-year-old Phoenix man went to…Craigslist seeking a male horse “on which to commit the act of fellatio”…Detectives were able to identify the poster as…Donald Waelde…
It takes a truly sick mind to vomit out the phrase “commit fellatio”, and unless I miss my guess that’s not a man but a transwoman; of course, Arizona’s pretty intolerant of them as well.
…I feel that if an adult woman…wants to charge money for sexual services, it’s not a lot different from anyone else charging for massage services, or to be a clown at your birthday party, except the balloon animals are way more fun. They have an ability others are interested in that they have monetized. If that upsets you, it’s probably because you have an issue, not them. Naturally, I’m opposed to human trafficking, sex slavery, underage prostitution, violence, and substance abuse, but I really believe a person can sell sex and not be involved in any of that, just as you can be a pot smoker and maybe not be involved in Mexican drug cartels, the beheading of civilians, organized crime, robbery, and meth-related buggery…
John Danaher…published a paper that…lays out two contrasting hypotheses: one in which robots dominate the sex industry; and another in which robot use actually leads to an increase in human sex work…The displacement hypothesis says sex robots will eventually push human sex workers out of a job…The resiliency hypothesis…[argues] that human prostitutes are here to stay…[because] humans will overwhelmingly prefer a human-on-human encounter to one with a robot…and…somewhat humorously suggests that there will be a spike in human prostitution because robots will edge people out of otherwise conventional jobs…
Yes, women turning to sex work because they can’t find any other profitable work is “humorous”. Naturally, the first hypothesis is “supported” with nonsense about “exploitation”, “sex trafficking” and “diseases”.
The one-child policy in China has resulted in more than just forced abortions and sterilizations — it has led to massive cases of child trafficking as families attempt to buy children. It’s also leading to international sex slavery rings and selling women as brides…
…SWOP [Chicago held a]…public event…called, “Understanding Sex Work and Allyship”…on…the…social misperceptions surrounding sex work, and the services that SWOP provides…including…the need for decriminalization and basic labor rights as a way of countering isolation and shame…SWOP should be respected as a union organization, and equally as fighting an important civil-rights battle…
A Ugandan pastor who has spent years calling for a stricter anti-gay law could now be charged under that very same law…Martin Ssempa is notorious for screening gay porn in church and claiming it is common for gay men to “eat the poo-poo”…Paul Kaliisa, from Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST)…[suggests Ssempa] is almost “obsessed” with [gay porn]. “He moves everywhere with clips of gay men”…
…I’m Felicia Anna, a 27 year old prostitute from Romania working in the heart of the Red Light District in Amsterdam. I’ve been working there now for more than 4 years, unforced, unexploited and completely on my own free will…Before I got in touch with my boyfriend, I had no idea of the stories, witch hunt and simply false facts…about my work place…and prostitution in general…most of the prostitutes don’t speak out…because they’re scarred of a pimp, or because what people are saying is true, but simply because they just don’t know what’s going on…almost nobody does anything to debunk these false stories and bring out the truth, and the people who did hardly got heard…
What the hell is going on in Washington state? These recent anti-whore editorials read more like something one might expect from a small-town paper in the Bible Belt than from a major newspaper in a supposedly “liberal” state. This one urges the government to grant itself censorship powers over the internet and includes pearl-clutching sentences like “The Internet empowers pimps to post an endless stream of titillating photos of sex workers, many of whom are forced into the trade as children” (gotta love the juxtaposition of the term “sex worker” with blatant anti-agency propaganda). Another one infantilizes women even further with prudish arsehole-clenching about “illicit ads that reduce people’s daughters to faceless bodyshots…body measurements…and suggestive pseudonyms.” Yes, a grown woman with a university education wrote that. A third one from Olympia quotes the usual idiocy, calls strip clubs “hotbeds of human trafficking” and cheers the enacting of a new law which “makes it a felony to coerce someone into involuntary servitude” (apparently, they’ve never heard of the 13th Amendment up there). All I can say is, I know a lot of people who will be very disappointed when this moral panic collapses and they need to find a new way to sell papers.
This article is an odd hybrid; it admits that the majority of “trafficking” is for manual labor rather than sex, yet inflates the Bales number to 32 million, then claims that exploitative sweatshops aren’t exploitative if they’re owned and operated by “rescue” organizations.
“We’ve got to swarm these girls with love,” said the Rev. Deborah Manns, who…works with police, probation officers and parents to reclaim runaway girls…”We go to parties, we go to parks, we go to malls…I will chase a girl down the street, grab her, hold her, fight her…whatever it takes to keep her from going back to the track”…where trafficking victims are often forced to sell their bodies…
Ignoring people’s choices, spying on them, tackling them and betraying them to cops is “love”.
It’s really good to see Reason expressing such strong opposition to sex work criminalization lately, especially when they quote me in the process; I just wish they wouldn’t give quite so much time to the awful Dennis Hof.
Windie Jo Lazenko …went to [North Dakota]…to fight the sex trafficking…that…is a direct result of the oil boom…she said…she has helped 10 trafficked girls escape the sex trade…“Some…hotels…actually have floors that are bought out by pimps…and it operates pretty much like a brothel”…
Gov. Jan Brewer…signed sweeping legislation that…[forces] businesses such as massage parlors and escort services that advertise online…to post their license numbers…[and] have written permission of any women they depict and have evidence they are not minors. Cindy McCain…said the…law will help close off the state to…traffickers…[it] received unanimous support in…the…Legislature…
This essay first appeared in Cliterati on April 6th; I have modified it slightly to fit the format of this blog.
Neofeminists are fond of pretending that women are not individuals, but rather mere appendages of some vast gestalt entity for which the neofeminists are the designated mouthpieces. Many of their arguments against sex work rely on the notion that the private actions of individual women somehow resonate across this vast, incorporeal, hydra-like entity and magically harm all women everywhere in the world. Therefore, they argue, the state is justified in using violence to suppress sex work for the “greater good”. As so often happens with arguments based on irrational beliefs, however, the truth is exactly the opposite; prostitution laws pose a real and serious danger to all women, not just sex workers. As I explained in “Be Careful Who You Rape”,
If one is prone with a boot on one’s neck, it makes very little difference whether that boot is a left or a right one. Yet political feminists are forever attacking the misogynistic schemes of “conservatives” while actively supporting the misogynistic schemes of their own party, despite the fact that they’re impossible to tell apart from the vantage point of the one beneath the boot. Control of women’s bodies is one issue upon which all statists can agree, and the tactics employed by the Cult of the Allwomyn are indistinguishable from those used by the devotees of other deities:
The sharia police in…[Indonesia] have rounded up 15 young women after they were “caught” in a late-night coffee shop. They have been accused of not wearing appropriate Muslim clothing and for loitering outdoors after midnight…Police chief Rita Pujiastuti [said]…it was believed that certain teenagers choosing to hang out in coffee shops until the early hours were involved in prostitution…police…also arrested…female beauty-parlor employees who were allegedly caught engaging in immoral acts…and…jailed without being given access to legal advice…
If you think this is the sort of thing that only happens in Islamic countries, you need to read the links in both of the block quotes above (not to mention my essay “Savages in Suits”). But hey, you can’t make a morality omelette without breaking a few eggs, right? Surely women should be happy to sit in jail for a few hours (or days, or weeks, or months, or years) if it serves the greater good of feminism (or Christianity, or Islam, or The Workers, or The Children!TM). But speaking of children:
…Cirila Balthazar Cruz…gave birth to her daughter in November of 2008 at Mississippi’s Singing River Hospital. Afterwards, Cruz, who grew up speaking Chatino–an indigenous language native to Oaxaca—was interviewed in Spanish…From Cruz’s very limited Spanish, the interpreter allegedly understood that Cruz was engaged in sex work…[she] was deemed an “unfit” mother, whose failure to learn English “placed her unborn child in danger”…we have no way of knowing how those details were possibly extrapolated from a conversation in a language that Cruz barely speaks…[but her] baby was taken away from her and placed with a foster family for an entire year…
The article goes on to discuss the injustice of using inability to speak English as grounds for declaring a woman “unfit” to be a mother, but totally ignores the other excuse: that she was a whore. Note that Cruz may not actually be a sex worker at all; that may have been a misunderstanding deriving from her poor grasp of Spanish. The mere accusation was enough, however, just as it was for Petite Jasmine (whose ability to speak her own tongue, Swedish, was not a factor). As long as prostitution is defined as a crime or a pathology, it can be used to draw lines between “good” women and “bad” women regardless of whether “bad” is defined as succubus or victim. And as long as the weapon of a prostitution charge is available, it can be used against any woman even if she’s never sold sex even once in her life.
If you want to donate but don't want a recurring charge, you can send any amount you like via PayPal to my email address (see below). Be sure to include a note so I can thank you!
All original content on this website (i.e. all of my columns, pages and anything else which I write myself) is protected under international copyright law as of the time it is posted; though you may link to it as you please or quote passages (as long as you attribute the quote to me), please do not reproduce whole columns without my express written permission. In other words, you have to say “pretty please with sugar on top” first, and then wait for me to say “okey-dokey”.
