Treating adult humans as children, pets or dolls is offensive and repugnant. – Zoee Garza
Cops raping whores is so ubiquitous, non-cop rapists often pose as cops to facilitate the crime:
…Michael Edward Baker…was convicted [of rape in Maryland]…after…[rejecting] a plea deal in which he would have received a six-month sentence…Baker sexually assaulted a 25-year-old prostitute…after she…refused to have unprotected sex with him, he flashed what appeared to be a police badge…and then pretended to call a superior officer, before propositioning that he wouldn’t arrest her if she obliged him. After she refused, once again, to have unprotected sex with him…Baker punched her in the mouth and raped her, before forcing her to perform other unprotected sex acts and fleeing…After he had raped the woman, Baker had called the victim’s cell number a few times in an attempt to befriend her…
Proponents of surrogacy claim that it is completely different from prostitution…The fact that altruistic surrogacy is legal in Great Britain and commercial surrogacy is legal in many American states (but not anywhere in Australia), ought to suffice to keep people from looking abroad, according to this argument. On the contrary, however, Americans, Britons and Australians are dominant amongst the foreign buyers in India…If the procedure is legalised…the risk that a black market will develop increases…the distinction between altruistic and commercial surrogacy is a dishonest one…in both…the woman is reduced to a container…
The author, though a neofeminist fanatic, is right about one thing: surrogacy is absolutely a form of prostitution. See also One Size Fits All (TW3 #311).
I know I covered an earlier round of counterprotests, but I can’t seem to find it:
Topless dancers at an Ohio strip club went on the offensive…baring their breasts in front of a church where congregants have protested their presence for…nearly a decade by picketing the venue on weekends and photographing guests’ license plates…[last] Sunday, workers, friends and family of [Foxhole North protested New Beginnings Ministries]…during service…Because it’s legal for both men and women to be topless in public in Ohio, the demonstrators faced no criminal charges…
Far away from the murky world of brothels, children of sex workers have found shelter in a free residential school on the outskirts of Kolkata…To ensure their minds are free from the stigma attached to the lives of their mothers, they are kept with other children…”Apne Aap Women Worldwide” rescued these children…and brought them to the school…Reluctant initially to stay away from their mothers, the children, aged between 6 and 16, are now a happy lot…
Apne Aap is probably the most unscrupulous and dishonest of the many anti-whore groups in India.
Despite years of criticism of the state’s asset forfeiture laws, Pennsylvania lawmakers approved a new human trafficking law that expands law enforcement’s ability to seize assets of the accused, without any statutory oversight of where seized property and proceeds end up…There is no required audit of the proceeds, something civil liberties advocates say could lead to abuses…
“Authorities” will call it anything to avoid saying a cop raped someone:
Former Jemez Springs [New Mexico] police chief Shane Harger – fired by the town in February for “questions of judgment” – has been indicted on criminal sexual penetration and other charges…A 19-year-old woman filed a complaint in January after she…was taken…to the police station [and raped] for three hours…a grand jury indicted Harger on charges of kidnapping, criminal sexual penetration, criminal sexual contact and extortion…
It takes a special kind of obtuseness and cultural illiteracy to actually name your disguised prison “Gingerbread House”:
[Sex] trafficking of children…is a growing problem around the world. Thirty-five local kids that entered the Gingerbread House last year are victims or potential victims of trafficking. Caddo Parish…is handling 13 red flag cases where trafficking may be a factor….Shobana Powell…says…sex trafficking…is…”not this highly organized crime that you see in the movies”…
It’s interesting, however, that even some rescue industry people are now moving away from the myth of international “trafficking rings”.
Another example of the effectiveness of disruptive protests:
On Sunday 15 June…Traffic Jam, an Internet based anti-trafficking organisation…[linked to] the American…A 21 Campaign (A21) , attempted to launch their new website in…Sydney…To the surprise and ill-disguised antipathy of the organisers, a group of sex worker activists…gatecrashed the event, refusing to pay the AUD $25 entrance fee, and demanded stage time to speak to the audience about trafficking issues. The protesters carried placards referring to the recent [exposure] of Somaly Mam…once migrant sex workers and their allies took the stage, their interactions and exchanges with the audience seemed to far out-weigh any of the previous engagement the audience had with the anti-trafficking speakers…[and] the…take-over of the stage outlasted the initial time allotted to the Traffic Jam event…
Another pathological-liar cop (pardon the redundancy) spouting ridiculous “signs of sex trafficking”:
Every two minutes, a child is exploited in the sex industry…and Portland has one of the highest…rates…[cop] Mike Gallagher has personally talked with more than 2000 sex trafficking victims…He and others…held a conference to instruct people on the signs of a sex trafficker. “Things like paying with a prepaid Visa or cash at check in”…Traffickers are often proud of their work and often sport tattoos alluding to it…
…Ugly Mugs…by Peta Brady…is…based on confidential accounts of assaults…given by sex workers for inclusion in the Ugly Mugs publication (closed, for distribution only to sex workers)…this represents both a breach of trust and an alarming low point in exploitation of sex workers through “pity porn”…Concerns were promptly raised with both hosts of the play – Malthouse Theatre and Griffin – neither were willing to accept sex workers concerns. Instead we were offered free tickets…presumably because seeing your rape played out live…always makes you feel better…
It looks as though Brady, a Salvation Army worker, used her status as a social worker to steal a copy of Ugly Mugs from an ally’s office in order to use it for her own purposes.
On July 25, FIRE President Greg Lukianoff testified before the United States Commission on Civil Rights…Commissioner Michael Yaki asked Greg…whether college students’ brains are sufficiently developed to handle freedom of speech…The following is Greg’s answer…”What we’re really saying is that 18- to 22-year-olds are children…[who] can’t handle the real world…[or] the duties of citizenship…we have decided in this country that 18…is considered the age for majority. We also send our 18-year-olds to war. Unless you’re actually also willing to make the argument that nobody below the age of…22 should go to war, and we repealed the 26th Amendment, we’ve got a serious problem…“
Sex workers in Seattle are trying to fight the anti-whore madness that’s now epidemic there:
Seattle Against Slavery would have us believe that anyone who patronizes a sex worker is guilty of exploiting a victim of human trafficking. But only a tiny percentage of sex workers are trafficked…Seattle Against Slavery is…partnering with “members of the law enforcement community” to [spread lies]…despite the fact that “criminalization [of sex work] and aggressive policing have been shown to increase sex workers’ vulnerability to violence, extortion, and health risks“…
Another respected policy magazine calls for decriminalization, this time The Economist:
…This newspaper has never found it plausible that all prostitutes are victims. That fiction is becoming harder to sustain as much of the buying and selling of sex moves online. Personal websites mean prostitutes can market themselves and build their brands. Review sites bring trustworthy customer feedback to the commercial-sex trade…the web will do more to make prostitution safer than any law has ever done…Governments should…rethink their policies. Prohibition, whether partial or total, has been a predictable dud. It has singularly failed to stamp out the sex trade…
Here’s a superb essay from recently-retired stripper Zoee Garza on the “Cupcake Girls” and their patronizing “ministry” to sex workers:
…On August 3, 2014 Oregonian journalist Kelly House reviewed a spa event thrown by the Portland branch of The Cupcake Girls…The stereotype that I found most troubling is that sex workers are not loved…It is judgmental to assume that being a sex worker and being loved are mutually exclusive…Another myth the article seemed set on perpetuating is that all sex workers are in dire need of primping…The stripping industry is one of image, entertainment and competition. As with many professionals, dancers make a point to have enough money…for massages, pedicures and dye jobs…if we were [needy] we would need some quinoa or a steak—not a cupcake…In the video on her website [founder] Joy [Hoover] compares the women that she has helped through The Cupcake Girls to her unborn child, she goes on to refer to herself as “The Stripper Whisperer,” similar to the “Dog Whisperer”…
Seriously, what is it with stupid ex-whores who actually expect people to believe they never had sex with their clients?
…Danielle Staub…of…The Real Housewives of New Jersey…[was] confronted…with…allegations of prostitution…Staub [pretends that]…she made money without actually having sex with her clients…”[Men] thought they were…paying for sex…but I was so good at twisting them into making sure that we didn’t have sex…They keep returning [to] me in hopes that it would happen…I made a lot of money doing it…”
Pull the other one, Danielle; maybe those who believe hookers can see 100 clients a day will believe men are that gullible, but don’t expect it from the rest of us.
Politicians in Germany have called for the laws on prostitution to be tightened…the…Christian Democrats (CDU) want the minimum legal age of sex workers to be raised from 18 to 21…They also want…punishments…for men who [hire] women forced into prostitution, and for compulsory health checks…According to police, 50 to 90 per cent of the country’s prostitutes have been forced into the work…
Worse Than I Thought (Traffic Updates)
Expect this trope to become much more common in the next few months:
Last year, LifeNews shared a story about a woman named Veronica (referred to as ‘Ana’) who escaped forced abortion by jumping out of the window at an abortion clinic. Veronica was a former sex worker trafficked from Albania…Although this case of sex trafficking occurred in London, the United States is a hub for predators who look to exploit women and girls. Oftentimes, these predators are hidden by the abortion industry…
Once in a while a reporter wakes up:
…many of the men whose mugshots have been paraded out by [Grady Judd and his ilk] in made-for-TV press conferences were not seeking to meet children online. Instead, they were minding their own business, looking for other adults, when detectives started to groom and convince them to break the law. While detectives used to post ads suggesting an underage teen or child was available for sex, they now routinely post more innocuous personal ads of adults on traditional dating sites. When men – many of them under 25 with no criminal history – respond, officers switch the bait and typically indicate their age is really 14 or 15 years old. However, sometimes the storyline isn’t switched until the men…start falling for the undercover agent…law enforcement is also now routinely making first contact with men who have done nothing wrong, responding to their ads on dating sites…after men start conversing with what they think are adults, officers change the age they claim to be, but try to convince the men to continue the conversation anyway…If the men indicate they [aren’t] interested, they [are] still often arrested for just talking to [a cop]…
I think that’s a very unhelpful equivalence you’re drawing there Maggie.
Both the moral and practical issues are far more complex when the ‘product’ is a (hopefully) living human being. The free market is woefully ill-equipped to deal with them. I leave you to think through some of the issues that arise from the fact that the surrogate mother can’t guarantee a ‘product’ of a given quality and where liability should rest if things go wrong. Or what rights the clients should have to control the mother over the course of her pregnancy.
This is not an academic argument. The issues are real and present.
A blowjob is just as precious, but there are no refunds or returns for a bad one.
Wow!
Gob squirt = sprog!
Congratulations!
That’s gotta be the most cynical comment I’ve seen on any blog.
BTW, is there any such thing as a bad blowjob?
We’ll have to agree to disagree. If a woman has the right to terminate a pregnancy for her own reasons, she has equal right to start one for her own reasons. Adult humans own their own bodies, period. End of discussion. And any government restriction of that right leads inevitably to evil.
Set aside your ideological aphorisms and think for a minute Maggie.
This isn’t just about the woman. There is a child involved.
If the client refuses to take the child – perhaps due to foetal alcohol syndrome or some other chronic, expensive medical condition – should she have the right to sue for support?
What about if she’s implanted with the last viable embryo of a now infertile mother?
Does she still have the untrammeled right to abort at will?
If the state has to pick up the costs of medical intervention if things go wrong shouldn’t the state have the right to regulate the transaction?
What about if the child is genetically half hers and the hormones kick in and she wants to keep it? Should she have the right to unilaterally rip up the contract?
This isn’t just a blowjob we’re talking about here. Read the link I posted.
Actually, there is only a child involved if she carries it longer then a certain time. Before it is both legally (harder border) and biologically (with some fuzziness) not a child, but a medical condition. Decisions over a medical condition rest with the patients, aided by doctors. As to your example with “last viable embryo of a now infertile mother” (could you get any more contrived?) as soon as it is implanted, the object changes custody.
Unless you subscribe to the insanity of creation of a human being at conception? If you do, you should know that far more than 50% of fertilized eggs do not make it. Fertilizing eggs (e.g. with unprotected sex) would then be akin to murder.
I am assuming that since there has been a commercial transaction aimed at producing a child one probably will be involved.
Regarding the ‘last viable embryo’ – in fact most Australian couples who seek surrogacy do so because the woman is unable to carry a child – often because she is too old. Embryos for surrogate implantation are produced via the expensive procedure of IVF, which in Australia still involves induced hyperovulation with drugs that can result in all remaining viable ova being expelled (as well as other complications that can prevent further rounds of IVF). Because surrogacy so often involves embryos from women beyond child bearing age the risk of ‘defects’ like Down’s Syndrome is increased. So my scenario is in no way contrived.
No I don’t subscribe to the notion that human life begins at conception. I believe the point at which you declare a foetus ‘human’ to be completely arbitrary and support abortion on demand right up to full term. Not because I believe a foetus suddenly becomes a human baby when it emerges but because I think a line must be drawn somewhere and to me that seems the most logical place to draw it.
The problem I am trying to draw Maggie’s attention to is that when a child-foetus-embryo-whatever is commodified via a commercial transaction the question of quality control must inevitably arise (check the link I posted if you haven’t already). If that then gives rise to the question of abortion then it becomes a commercialised question of ‘life worthy of life’. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you where that kind of thinking leads. If clients can reject a baby (or foetus) because it has Down’s, why not because it has hemophilia, because it is a dwarf, because it has the wrong eye colour or wrong gender? Why wouldn’t wealthy clients be able to enter into a dozen simultaneous surrogacy agreements and only accept the ‘best’ of the resulting babies?
I should point out that I also strongly object to allowing women to abort their own foetus purely on the grounds of the qualities of the foetus. In fact I would support outlawing abortions once a foetus has been scanned or checked via amniocentosis were it not for the fact that it would simply open the door to backyard abortions again. That would prevent the widespread practice of aborting foetuses because of their gender as well as preventing implicit support for the idea that those with ‘defects’ do not deserve to be born. The only exceptions I would make would be if carrying the foetus to term would endanger the health of the mother beyond the usual dangers of pregnancy.
Raising a child is far more expensive than even the most lucrative surrogacy agreement, especially if it has a serious medical condition. If the client can simply leave the surrogate literally holding the baby if they consider it substandard then it will result in yet more unwanted children in the world and further impoverishment of a probably already impoverished woman. And if the state must take responsibility for the care of the child then the state should have the right to regulate the transaction.
Fine with me, as long as it doesn’t result in a guy having to pay support for a child he never agreed to create. Sex is NOT “implied consent” to have a child; that’s a huge decision, which is why marriage was created as a way to formalize that consent. The rule needs to go back to, no marriage, no child support.
I have to say I’m not happy about the item you yeadlined The Widening Gyre. Invading another group’s gathering and shouting down their speaker or seizing the stage is a tactic I associate withhcensorious campus Leftism, and I think ts despicable. Protest outside, sure. But even people who are wrong across the board have ther twin rights of free soeach and free assembly.
I totally understand the impulse, but if i condemn the tactic in those I despise, tgen I have to in thise I like.
We’ll have to agree to disagree on this, too. Without a violent alternative, peaceful protests are useless. Without the Black Panthers waiting in the wings, MLK would’ve gone exactly nowhere.
I think your history is slightly off. The Black Panthers didn’t exist until the last year-and-a-half or so of Martin Luther King’s life, and most of his significant accomplishments had already happened.
That was my memory, but I didn’t want to wade through the hagiography.
The Panthers weren’t the only black militant group, merely the best known. It was convenient shorthand for the point, that carrots don’t work on authoritarians without the threat of sticks also present.
True as far as it goes, but “nonviolent” protesters including King often had to defend themselves. There’s a good new book on this topic.
Nevertheless, I have to agree with cspschofeld: You don’t stop opposing groups from speaking, especially when they paid for the meeting hall. You have a right to speak, but so do they.
But having to defend oneself is different from going on the offensive.
I guess I’ve misunderstood the psychology of authoritarians. Hypothetically speaking, If you’re an authoritarian and already firmly ensconced in power (as whites were in MLK’s time), and have access to superior weaponry, why would you want to give in to carrots OR sticks? That diminishes your power. Simply conflate in the minds of your followers that the people offering carrots are stooges for the people threatening sticks, or even better that the carrot-offerers are the same as the stick-threateners who will stab peace-loving followers in the back at the first opportunity. Then proceed to crush both groups mercilessly as the followers cheer.
And if the people with sticks happen to land a lucky punch and kill a few of your followers, that’s a small price to pay to keep the followers cheering (“their deaths can’t be in vain!”).
That begs another question, who would be the sex worker equivalent of the Black Panthers?
The problem is that all authority – whether political or economic – inevitably keeps concentrating it’s power upwards. That disenfranchises an increasing proportion of the population until eventually even superiority of arms (or any other means of holding onto power) will eventually be overcome by the sheer number of people who no longer have a stake in the status quo.
This is inherent in the structure of power. ‘Enlightened’ leaders can delay the process via devolution but their real opponents aren’t the masses but the less ‘enlightened’ authorities jostling for their position, so they too will either keep gathering power to themselves or be deposed by those who will.
The real virtue of revolution is its destructiveness. It temporarily flattens the power pyramid so the process can repeat. Reforms that don’t destroy the existing power structure are of little value. The most they achieve is to allow authorities and those they oppress some breathing space until the inevitable reasserts itself.
Mao thought he had short-circuited the process via ‘permanent revolution’ but no matter how violent or destructive, a revolution that leaves existing power structures intact is no revolution at all.
Unfortunately, revolutions do not work either. They universally lead to a power-vacuum and people just as bad or far worse than those disposed are always ready to fill that. I think the only thing that works is a population with a high level of suspicion of their government and effective mechanisms of kicking them whenever they overstep. Whether that is doable with what we currently have as human race is unclear to me. We may indeed be doomed to repeat a vicious cycle of destruction and rebuilding. The currently raising fascism (under the capable leadership of the US) looks pretty bad.
As now can be seen all over the world – perhaps most clearly in the US – that doesn’t work either. If you somehow make governments accountable to the people in an enduring manner (without regular revolutions to prune them) those who seek power will simply do so by other means – such as commercial empires. They will then use that power to subvert government and rule by proxy.
Actually I shouldn’t have said ‘those who seek power’. Power seeks itself.
If the directors of a commercial enterprise don’t seek to constantly increase their power they will be at a competitive disadvantage to those who do. So they will be replaced.
Saying ‘revolutions don’t work’ is the same as saying ‘evolution does not work’. It depends on how you define ‘works’.
Revolutions are simply the inevitable result when power structures become so top heavy they are no longer viable. Just as evolution is the inevitable result when species are no longer viable in their ecological niche. They only ‘don’t work’ if you have a preconceived idea as to what their outcome should be.
Celos, in your recent comments I think I’ve spotted a tendency for you to seek out particular people or human attributes to ‘blame’ when things don’t go according to your moral preconceptions (e.g. ‘extremists’, ‘what we currently have as human race’, ‘women who report dubious rapes’).
I think you’re smarter than that and are perfectly capable of the sort of abstract thinking in regards to mechanisms of power, ultimate vs proximate causality and self-determination that should sweep such simplistic ideas aside.
It seems to me that the need to place blame is a sort of a mirror of the mind set that is always looking upwards for some kind of authority – be it government, god or ‘natural law’ – that can be appealed to in order to justify its own beliefs or preferred social arrangements. All too often it is simply a means of dismissing those who are even more the victims of the processes you deplore than are you.
Brooke Magnanti has a piece in the Telegraph>/i> about the Economist’s leader and article.
Sorry, mangled tags and forgot the link; I’m a bit gaga today:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/sex/11036096/Sex-work-in-the-UK-Just-what-would-decriminalising-prostitution-mean.html?placement=CB2
I didn’t follow the story, so I don’t know exactly what Danielle Staub says she did, but that kind of thing is not unheard of. There was a strip club around here that was infamous for it. The “dancers” would sell a dance and then immediately upsell to a more private room, a second dancer, an even more private room, charging more money for every step…guys told stories of racking up $1000 credit card bills before realizing that nothing was ever going to happen. There are also massage parlors that imply a lot more than they ever deliver, with baseball bat wielding thugs to deal with anyone who objects. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was an outcall version of that, er, business model.
That said, the sad thing is that Staub — or anyone else — thinks that lying to clients and ripping them off makes her a better person than if she had been a sex worker — stripper, masseuse, or prostitute — who delivers an honest service for an honest fee.
If she had claimed to be a ripoff artist I’d believe her; what she claimed was that she was a siren who could keep regulars returning without putting out, and that’s pure bullshit.
Now, the interesting question is how a siren (if at all possible, I share your doubts) would not be a special king of rip-off artist 😉
[…] first glance, this hasn’t been a good year for sex workers; our rights are even under attack in countries where they’ve been reasonably secure for years, and agency-denying “sex trafficking” propaganda is […]