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Archive for January, 2015

Links #236

Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 11, 2015| 4 Comments »

I am the Pope.  –  John Jonchuck

Regular readers have seen me feature several videos from Garfunkel & Oates; usually they sing about sex, but here are two about relationships (or more specifically, breakups).  The second really isn’t even comical but rather a little sad, which is definitely a change of direction for them.  The links above the first video are from Popehat, and those between the videos from Nun Ya, Radley Balko,  Clarissa, Angela Keaton and Skye (in that order).

From the Archives

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In the News (#503)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 10, 2015| 13 Comments »

[Anita Sarkeesian]…has the same paternalistic views that many feminists have regarding sex workers—that they need to be rescued, saved; that they would never actually choose this line of work, but rather, were led or coerced into it by a man.  –  Princess Kora

Imagination Pinned Down

Note that as usual the supposed “sex slavery” was decades in the past, unsupported by anything remotely resembling evidence:

…Niki Cross…was forced into sexual slavery as a teenager.  She’s now sharing her story and…working with other victims.  “I didn’t realize I was being sold.  I just thought I was being raped over and over and over…at least 10 a day.”  Cross…was lured by a man to Akron, Ohio, with promises of a singing career.  Instead, she was chained in an attic, drugged and sold as a sex slave for a year, until she managed to escape one night…and…was taken in by Chrissie Murphy.  The two went their separate ways, until a friend of a friend recently reconnected them nearly 40 years later…

Subtle Pimping (#330)

Sex workers in video games are nothing new, but a game whose developers want to promote empathy for whores rather than just exploiting us as a game mechanic definitely is:  “[In] The Oldest Game, currently in development, [players assume] the identity of a sex worker in one of three Canadian cities…the objective…is to make as much money as possible while staying safe, which creates a difficult, no-win scenario…to show the very real constraints sex workers experience…”

Meanwhile Anita Sarkeesian, who has insulted and infantilized sex workers in order to promote her particular brand of pop-neofeminism, is getting a taste of her own medicine from a sex worker:

…Princess Kora…[has] found a way to profit from Sarkeesian’s detractors.  Two weeks ago, the 29-year-old PhD student and veteran sex worker launched an adult webcam series called “Boob Frequency,” a parody of [Sarkeesian’s YouTube channel] Feminist Frequency…Kora dresses in Sarkeesian’s typical uniform of hoop earrings and a plaid shirt, only she leaves most of the buttons undone and exposes a generous portion of her substantial cleavage…She also mocks Sarkeesian by “whining about exploitation and oppression”…hordes of Gamergate supporters have come flocking to her webcam channel…and…“Boob Frequency” has garnered several hundred subscribers…

Chauvinism (#335)

Russia has listed [transgender status]…fetishism, exhibitionism and voyeurism…as “mental disorders” now barring people from driving…because Russia has too many road accidents…Russian psychiatrists and human rights lawyers have condemned the move…Valery Evtushenko at the Russian Psychiatric Association…said some people would avoid seeking psychiatric help, fearing a driving ban…

Under Every Bed (All Traffick, All the Time)

The increasing grandiosity of the Bakken oil field trafficking subsection of “sex trafficking” mythology will probably get an entire chapter to itself in my book.  Here’s an “investigative series” which manages to run for an entire week  without actually investigating the topic, at least not by the usual meaning of that word; it’s just the typical hodgepodge of ridiculous, unsupported claims, wildly exaggerated numbers and cop wanking fantasies without the slightest shred of proof or even a single interview with an actual sex worker.  Truly astonishing, even by the low standards of yellow “sex trafficking” journalism.

A Mound of Filth

Even for Arizona, referring to the same old lies which have been circulating for years as “new statistics” is a pretty bold (not to mention stupid) move; some of the intended audience must recognize the claims as not remotely “new”, and even if they still believe such factors contribute to the erosion of the mythology:

New statistics show how big the problem is in Southern Arizona…A third of runaway girls are approached by a sex trafficker within 48 hours…the average age of victims…is just 13 years old…Human sex trafficking is a $9.8 billion business…During a sporting event like the upcoming Super Bowl…girls can be sold to as many as 45 buyers in a night…

Theatrics (#446) 

The dating app Tinder appears to be the new hub for aggressive moralists seeking to sexually shame others:

A group of young Melburnians say they are exposing paedophiles [sic] grooming underage girls on dating app Tinder by creating a fake profile…of a 15-year-old girl they called “Imogen”.  The group say they secretly filmed her conversations with men online where she tells them her [false] age and then subsequent face-to-face meetings…The creators [are all 21 or older, including the one who]…pretended to be “Imogen”…cyber safety consultant Susan McLean said the experiment [is]…”absolute stupidity.  I can see this ending terribly for everyone involved”…

One can only hope so.

A Tale That Grew in the Telling (#502)

Another good way to give lies weight in the minds of the Great Unwashed: embed them in an infographic. trafficking bullshit

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Mandy Rice-Davies

Posted in Biography, Harlotography, History, Perception, tagged , , , , , , , on January 9, 2015| 10 Comments »

Well he would, wouldn’t he?  –  response when told Lord Astor had denied having her

As I’ve written many times, the maintenance of the Madonna/whore dichotomy demands the erasure of all ambiguity; women must solidly be classified as one or the other, “good” women or “bad”, “empowered” women or “fallen” ones, without a hint that a single woman could play both roles at different parts of her life (much less at the same time).  And so women who succeed in other careers after sex work, especially if they’re popular and well-liked, must never ever ever be described as sex workers; they might be dancers, or perhaps masseuses, or models, or even mistresses, but not what they actually were: prostitutes, no different from me or any inhabitant of any red-light district.  Of course, it helps when the prostitution is genteel and privately arranged and the whores have other “legitimate” jobs as showgirls or hostesses; then they can be described politely as “party girls” and their clients as “lovers”, and the transactional nature of their “affairs” can be glossed over on the BBC or in polite newspapers.

Marilyn Rice-Davies was born in Wales on October 21, 1944 and after a fairly conventional upbringing began modeling at 15.  After playing a window-dressing part in the film Make Mine Mink, she ran away to London at 16 and quickly got a job as a showgirl at Murray’s Cabaret Club in Soho; there she met and befriended Christine Keeler and the two lived together for a while.  Keeler introduced her to the well-connected osteopath Stephen Ward, who both delighted in and profited by introducing ambitious young women like Keeler and Rice-Davies to his wealthy friends.  Mandy soon became the mistress of slumlord Peter Rachman, who had previously kept Keeler, but the arrangement ended abruptly with Rachman’s death by heart attack on November 29th, 1962.  Rachman was a notorious character who had been under constant police investigation since 1959; he had been prosecuted twice for brothel-keeping and among his expensive gifts to Mandy was a new Jaguar (which was, alas, seized by his widow).  But Mandy later insisted that there was no profit motive involved in her relationship with the short, dumpy Rachman, a statement repeated without question by journalists and others ever since.

It was after Rachman’s death, however, that Rice-Davies’ ship finally came in, via the Profumo Affair and the associated persecution of Stephen Ward.  She had always hoped to achieve stardom, and since coming to London had appeared in several advertisements, but the free publicity afforded her by her appearance as a prosecution witness at Ward’s trial gave her career a mighty boost.  This is not to say that she intentionally capitalized upon Ward’s misfortune; in fact, she only agreed to testify after the cops trumped up charges involving a fake ID (and later, a supposedly stolen television set) so she could be threatened with a long stretch in Holloway if she refused to “cooperate”.  But once the trial started, she clearly both enjoyed and took advantage of the publicity.  The cameras loved her, and her comparing herself to Lady Hamilton (Lord Nelson’s mistress) made her the talk of the papers for a few weeks.  After the trial ended with Ward’s suicide at the end of July, Mandy was offered a job as a cabaret singer in Germany and quickly became involved with another wealthy patron, one Baron Cervello.

For several years she toured the world, taking whatever singing gigs she could find, then in 1966 she moved to Israel; there she met and married nightclub owner Rafael Shaul and converted to Judaism, founding a chain of restaurants and nightclubs called Mandy’s.  The couple amicably divorced in 1971 but remained business partners, and Mandy appeared in a number of Israeli films in the ‘70s, then European ones (and television show episodes) in the ‘80s.  She also published her autobiography, Mandy, in 1980 and a novel, The Scarlet Thread, in 1989.  During this time she had a number of liaisons with ever-wealthier men and an extremely short-lived marriage to the French restaurateur Jean-Charles Lefevre.  But it was her third marriage, to British businessman Ken Foreman, which accelerated what she called her “long descent into respectability”; among Foreman’s friends was Sir Denis Thatcher, and Mandy – now going by Marilyn Foreman – is known to have holidayed with Thatcher and his much more famous wife, Margaret.  She died of cancer just three weeks ago, on December 18th, and was the subject of laudatory obituaries in the Guardian  and Telegraph, among many others.

But despite her respectability and long-maintained insistence that she had never really taken money for sex, Mandy never attempted to distance herself from the Prufumo Affair and the Ward trial; in fact, in 2013 she was consulted by Andrew Lloyd Webber for his short-lived stage musical, Stephen Ward.  At the time, she revealed that she had not spoken to her old flatmate, Christine Keeler, in over three decades; while Rice-Davies had embraced the publicity and used it to advance her own interests, Keeler had been embarrassed by the whole thing and vanished from the limelight for 20 years after it was over.  Their different ways of reacting to the debacle had driven a wedge into what was never a particularly close friendship to start; “I don’t think she liked me,” Mandy said in an October 2013 interview.  And though neither of the two ever (publicly) considered themselves sex workers, their very different post-scandal lives demonstrate an important truth about two kinds of women involved in the work:  those who consider it to have been a humiliation, and those who embrace it as a means of attaining their goals.

(This month’s harlotography first appeared in Cliterati on January 4th; I have modified it slightly for time references and to fit the format of this blog.)

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Boy Juice

Posted in Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , on January 8, 2015| 24 Comments »

‘Cause I’m just a girl, little ‘ol me
Don’t let me out of your sight
I’m just a girl, all pretty and petite
So don’t let me have any rights.  –  Gwen Stefani

A few days ago I was talking to Jae about my upcoming car trip to Seattle, and told her that my departure date could potentially be delayed slightly if snow were predicted anywhere along my planned route.  She asked why, and I replied that I’m just not comfortable with the idea of driving in Rocky Mountain snow in Wyoming or Idaho; to this she replied, “You just haven’t shaken off all the boy juice yet.”  That’s an especially powerful image coming from one whore to another, so I asked her to elucidate and she explained that it was her term for the kind of learned incompetence that men tend to (even unintentionally) inflict on women they care about.

woman changing a tireLong-time readers know that I am not a gender-difference denialist; I fully accept that there are many ways in which men and women tend to be totally different, and believe it’s foolish and counterproductive to pretend otherwise.  But there are other differences between the sexes which have little (if anything) to do with biology and everything to do with societal expectations.  Take car repairs, for example; though many women don’t care for getting dirty, there is no earthly reason for a woman not to learn basic techniques that could get her out of a jam or save her money (especially if there’s no man handy to do them).  My father would not let me drive alone until I showed him I could change a tire, and though I absolutely hate doing it and generally prefer the “stand on the side of the highway and look frustrated until a man stops and changes it for me” method (which for me never takes more than five minutes to work, at least in the daytime on a busy highway), I think it’s still a good thing that I know how to do it in a pinch…even if I do (as per Daddy’s lesson) stop as soon as I can thereafter and ask the first convenient man to make sure the lugs are tight enough.  But see, that’s not really helplessness; that’s just recognizing that I simply don’t have the upper-body strength necessary to tighten those babies as tight as they probably should be.  And for all his bad qualities, I do have to give Jack credit for one thing:  he insisted I learn how to perform every simple car repair he could teach me, from changing spark plugs to replacing a brake master cylinder.  Since Grace’s dad didn’t believe in letting her be ignorant of cars, either, I haven’t had to do any of those repairs myself in over twenty years; however, it’s still nice to know what is involved in them.

But even if a woman is as lucky as I was, and has boyfriends and family members who don’t intentionally keep her as helpless as possible, she still has to endure endless societal pressure (not just from men but from women and institutions) telling her not to take risks, not to do anything that might scare her and get her in trouble, not to explore her existence without the help of a man (or worse, of Big Brother).  And though early feminists seemed to be making some progress against that, their successors have embraced it and are its most vociferous proponents.  “Feminists” demand that young women be protected not only from physical harm, but even from ideas or pictures that might upset their delicate sensibilities, rattle their chains or force them to question their preconceptions for five minutes.  And they march arm-in-arm with religious conservatives and police-state functionaries to restrict women’s sexual choices and send armed thugs to hunt, entrap, rape, brutalize and cage them in order to “send a message” that utilizing one’s sexuality to win economic independence is too dangerous an activity for women.  Their propaganda reveals their incredibly low opinion of women’s competence; sex workers are said to be unable to place their own ads online, and touring is reframed as a criminal “circuit” in which helpless, ovine women are passively trucked around by evil “pimps”.  The idea that the female brain might actually be capable of booking hotels and writing ad copy is completely alien to the narrative.

African QueenThe cumulative effect of this pressure to be helpless is both profound and insidious; it even affects women whom one would think would be immune to it.  Case in point one Maggie McNeill, a nervy, hard-as-nails dame once favorably compared to Lara Croft by her admiring husband.  And yet when it came time to plan a cross-country book and speaking tour, the idea of doing it alone never even entered into her head until circumstances demanded her planned traveling companion be elsewhere for the duration of the trip.  Full disclosure:  I was scared, y’all.  I had driven long distances alone, but only if I had friends at the destination point.  The idea of not only making all the arrangements myself, but of then driving alone to strange cities and booking into hotels alone, was so daunting that the only reason I attempted it was because I had no other choice.  But why was it so scary?  What exactly was I afraid of?  Beyond the danger of running out of money, there was little to fear; it’s not like I was going up the Congo on a tramp steamer or something.  No, my trepidation came from only one place:  the social programming that it’s unacceptably dangerous for girls to travel alone far from home.  And now that I’m aware of the fact that this brainwashing is still subtly affecting me even after almost two decades of living outside “acceptable” female norms, you can bet I’ll be on the lookout for it.  That still doesn’t mean I’m comfortable with the idea of driving in a snowstorm, though; that has very little to do with “girls can’t” messaging and a lot to do with the fact that I grew up in south Louisiana and never even saw real snow until I was 34 years old, much less drove in it.

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In the News (#502)

Posted in Current Events, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 7, 2015| 26 Comments »

It is a somewhat quaint, futile idea that the sex trade, an industry which has continued with hardly a murmur for 20,000 years, will be “ended” by a bill passed through an ineffectual Canadian parliament, but politicians have never had much self-awareness when it comes to the limits of their own power.  –  J.R. Ireland

License to Rape

…Jennifer Stelly and her boyfriend Channing Castex were…pulled over for speeding in Brazoria County [Texas] in March  2013.  Castex said he was handcuffed and put into a patrol car after he admitted to a state trooper that he had smoked marijuana.  A female state trooper was called to search Stelly in full view of a dash-mounted camera.  “She started going into my clothing and she penetrated areas that I don’t wish to disclose at this point,” Stelly said.  “I was scared.  I was violated.  I didn’t know what to do”…the full, invasive cavity search happened on a busy freeway as people sped by…the same trooper [was] involved in [lawsuits over] two [other] roadside cavity searches two years ago…

I Told You So

Cowboys4Angels is at it again, trying to convince the world that their male escorts only have female clients; the “journalist” who wrote this fluff piece apparently didn’t do enough research to discover that they had to pay women to pretend to be clients on TV.  But now agency owner Garren James also wants us to believe the “time and companionship” dodge, which at least in this case is probably closer to the truth.

They Just Don’t Get It (May Updates) 

St. Louis cops are trying to convince politicians that knife-wielding hookers who need to be gunned down in the street are among “the risks officers face every day”.  I am not making this up.

The More the Better

This article in Cracked entitled “5 Ways Life as a Prostitute is Nothing Like You Expect” is nothing like perfect, and in some places it’s grating.  But the reporter troubled himself to interview five actual sex workers for the piece, which is something American non-humor media can’t seem to manage.

Japanese Prostitution (#346)

…preparations for the upcoming Olympics Games in Tokyo include cleaning up red-light districts…“Nowadays, for job interviews at sex clubs, nine out of 10 women will be refused,” says “pink” writer Taizo Ebina…Such selectivity is due to a decrease in number of such businesses as the city attempts to sharpen its image prior to the arrival of hundreds of thousands of tourists in 2020…Tokyo had 847 “fashion health” joints…in 2007.  Six years later, there were 813.  Also experiencing declines over the same period were soapland bathhouses (1,239 to 1,218), adult-goods shops (340 to 232) and “encounter” coffee shops…

Something Rotten in Sweden (#445)

It’s a good sign when a blog post debunking prohibitionist mythology makes it into the national media:

…Charles Hill, a business school professor…starts from the increasingly validated position that most sex workers have personal agency, and haven’t been coerced to pursue their trade.  Dr. Hill suggests that…reducing demand side will [actually] increase supply…conservative aspects of society use morality as a tool to control sexuality, especially that of women, under the guise of providing a social good.  And that the ways in which they exercise these tools consistently puts the weakest members of society at the greatest harm…

A Procrustean Bed (#448)

Here’s Molly Crabapple with the most thorough, revealing look yet at New York’s “sex trafficking” courts:

…[Former sex worker] Love…caught up [with an old friend], hanging out on the corner of Edgewater Road and Lafayette Avenue.  When a car circled the block several times, Love assumed it was an acquaintance.  She waved.  “Hop in,” the man in the car demanded. “I’ve got thirty dollars for a blowjob.”

“OK, officer, have a nice day,” Love shot back.  As she walked away, the man shouted, “You must be a cop.  You’re calling me a cop.”  Love forgot the man, until, as she walked back to the train station, three police officers…arrested Love for prostitution…[she] spent the night in a cell—missing a day of classes.  The whole process took 24 hours…At the pre-trial hearings, Love had become increasingly confused.  Undercover officers are supposed to wear a recording device in order to have proof that solicitation took place.  Since Love never solicited anyone, the police department had no recording to present.  Yet Judge Michels would not throw out the case…when the undercover cop took the stand, Love began to panic.  She’d never seen this guy in her life.  His story was filled with inconsistencies, but the prosecutor later said this only proved he was honest.  The stranger on the stand testified that…Love offered him a $20 blowjob.  For $30, he said, she’d fuck him in the street…

Longtime readers may remember my own experience with the adolescent porn cops pass off as “testimony” in prostitution cases.

A Tale That Grew in the Telling (#449)

It’s bad enough that people think anything in a movie most be true; the new thing seems to be that anything written on a card held up by a po-faced person in a photo must be true:

Original Sin (#501)

I’m really happy to see evangelicals increasingly embarassing themselves with bombastic Bible-thumping anti-harlot rhetoric in support of prohibitionist laws; the more they do it, the more they’ll alienate their neofeminist allies and open the eyes of ordinary people who’ll buy the pseudoscientific crap but not so much the holy rolling.  Here’s a post on the Locust Kings blog which ably takes down both a ridiculously mouth-foaming anti-whore screed in Crisis magazine and the 2006 National Review essay which partially inspired it.

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Little Christmas 2015

Posted in Holidays, tagged , , , on January 6, 2015| 11 Comments »

There is neither heaven nor earth
only snow, falling incessantly.  –  Hashin

You may be wondering why I’m featuring this lovely picture of a beautiful witch on this particular day.  Well, since this is Christmas Eve in Russia, you might think of her as the Frost Maiden, granddaughter to Ded Moroz (the Slavic Santa Claus).  And since today is also Epiphany,  when children in many Catholic countries receive their presents, you might think of her as Befana, the witch who performs that function in Italy.  Befana is traditionally depicted as an old lady, but since Italy is Italy sexy Befana images are now quite common there; besides, if I were an immortal witch with magical powers you can bet I wouldn’t go around looking like a hag.  Befana is a Christianized version of the minor Roman goddess Strenia, who was herself associated with the Greek witch-goddess Hecate.  So as you can see, a sexy witch image is totally appropriate for this first day of the carnival season…and besides, it’s my blog and I’ll use just about any excuse I can think of to post a picture of a beautiful fantasy chick.

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Wild-Eyed and Spittle-Flecked

Posted in Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 5, 2015| 15 Comments »

Nothing is more horrible than my self in the mirror of hysteria.  –  Karl Kraus

screaming womanAs I’ve often pointed out, moral panics don’t slowly subside; on the contrary, they pick up speed as they go, with the claims growing ever wilder and the official responses growing ever more extreme, until they fly apart and hurl debris in every direction.  In the terminal stages of such a panic, many of those who failed to voice their skepticism in the early days are at last moved to open their mouths; however, others double down and continue to vomit out whatever evil nonsense the hysterical narrative demands, with their eyes bulging and froth flying forth from their lips.  Domina Elle sent me this prime example of the genre in early December, but once I started trying to edit it down for inclusion in a news column I realized it deserved to be shared in all of its bizarre, moon-barking glory.  The lunacy starts with an egregiously mixed metaphor in the incredible headline, which declares “human trafficking” both a “highway” and an “empire”; Hamlet, eat your heart out.

Whether it’s for sex or labor, labeled human trafficking or slavery…human beings in this country still live and die toiling under force, fraud and coercion every day to fulfill criminals’ wealth, power and sexual fantasies.  And it turns out Denver is a human-trafficking hub, a place where newsworthy, exploited little girls combine with forgotten boys to make up a roughly $40 million industry…In the last 11 years, the FBI’s Innocence Lost National Initiative brought together more than 400 law-enforcement agencies nationwide to collaborate with communities to recover and assist more than 3,400 children…The initiative resulted in roughly 1,450 convictions…

Sexual fantasies are involved, all right, but they aren’t those of criminals; they’re in the sick minds of cops and FBI agents who are happy to destroy the lives of peaceful adults in order to fulfill them.  I’m not sure where that ridiculous “3400 children” number comes from, but the actual number of underage sex workers, mostly 16 or 17 (the real meaning of “exploited little girls”) who have been arrested (the real meaning of “recovered”) since the beginning of the lugubriously-named “Innocence Lost” pogroms is less than 1200, and a slightly-higher number of men charged with “pimping”; given that the conviction rate on these bogus charges is roughly 4%, that makes the number of convictions somewhere below 100.  Of course, that’s only pimping convictions; given that over 15,000 adult sex workers (all women; male sex workers are charged as pimps) were also arrested in these operations, 1450 convictions wouldn’t be at all surprising.  But to equate throwing adult women into prison (for having sex for taboo reasons) with locking up slavers goes beyond dishonesty into the realm of Stalinesque evil.

…Human trafficking stands as one of few issues in this country nobody can call “polarizing.”  It’s fucking horrible.  The end.  That the people we sell here in the United States think their circumstances are normal, are terrified to leave or don’t know they’re victims or survivors…doesn’t make this acceptable, it makes it…modern slavery…

Translation:  The “authorities” are the arbiters of what is normal, and if you disagree that you’re a victim or a “survivor”, we’re going to label you as one anyway and “rescue” you by subjecting you to a terrifying deception, tearing you away from your life and locking you in a cage until you learn to accept our opinion without question.

…No 13-year-old girl — the average age of recruitment for a female prostitute — or 12-year-old boy dreams of becoming a prostitute, raped 20 to 48 times a night…Seven years after recruitment, studies show he or she will most likely be dead…

Though the “average age” idiocy has remained the same, note that the number of clients (labeled “rapes” here) per night is now fluctuating wildly; some “trafficking” porn lists numbers as high as 110, while others claim numbers more within the bounds of reason, like 5.  This one splits the difference with a range of 20 (ridiculous) to 48 (wholly absurd but not an egregious violation of physical laws).  I’m still trying to track down the origin of the “average life-span of 7 years” myth; given that another commonly-circulated idiocy is that the average whore dies at 34, one wonders how fanatics can subtract 13 from that and arrive at 7.  But I guess math isn’t important when FEELS are at stake. And I’m not even going to comment on the saccharine pap that what children “dream” of has any bearing on adult employment opportunities.

“Regardless of what…some people actually experience in real life…There’s a lot of victimization, whether it’s rape, beatings, torture, you name it…isn’t it pretty reasonable to assume maybe people are being forced…to be in it rather than volunteering to be in it?”

Denver cop Dan Steele says you shouldn’t believe what actual sex workers tell you; his wanking fantasies involve raping and torturing whores, therefore we’re all enslaved.  Q.E.D.

…They’re sold on a circuit…[that] brings the exploited into towns for male-dominated events and operations such as conferences, sports games and construction or mining projects…

Note the denial of women’s agency; we “are sold” and “are brought” rather than travelling under our own power, because of course women are too stupid to make our own business and travel arrangements.  So was I “trafficked” on my tour “circuit” last summer?  Or did I magically gain the ability to use Priceline once I stopped “selling my body”?

…“We’re in the middle of the country, and that makes us a destination state but also a transit state,” says [“trafficking” profiteer Amanda] Finger.  “With I-25 and I-70 connecting us to the coast or to the borders, we sit right in the middle of a lot of action…”

King of the Hill!  Have you figured out yet that “trafficking” fans will claim anything as an excuse to declare a given city a “hub”?

…With a rough total of 1.5 million human trafficking victims at any given time in the United States alone…

Where does this number come from?  What relationship does it have to “300,000 trafficked children” and “30 million slaves worldwide”?  Does the author of this mess, Brandy Simmons, know or care?  Given the abysmal level of mathematical ability she demonstrated above, I somehow doubt it.

…Human trafficking is in your food, clothes, neighborhood, your favorite ethnic food restaurants…

Ethnic restaurants, natch.  But Brandy isn’t a racist, no sirree; it’s not her fault that McDonald’s doesn’t “traffick” people.  Except that it does.

…many cases…begin…with a simple call from someone whose “gut feelings” about a person or situation proved right…

They’re of course “proved right” by the cops arresting whoever’s accused.  So if you see something, say something!

…Some studies say an average sex worker will have 800 sex partners in a year…

That’s actually pretty reasonable; I averaged about 700 a year and street girls do more.  But does Brandy do the basic math to recognize it doesn’t jibe with her claim of 20-48 per night (i.e. 7300 – 17,500 per year)? Please tell me you don’t need me to answer that.

…“We have 12-year-old boys being recruited to be pimps, just like we have 12-year-old girls being recruited to be victims,” says [“trafficking” profiteer Brad] Riley…“When a 12-year-old has seen tens of thousands of images that objectify a woman, that [creates]…this appetite that’s not appropriate or healthy or respectful to women.  When that 12-year-old gets to be 25, it’s much easier for him to be a buyer, and a trafficker will prey on that”…

lurid sex trafficking adYes, Brad says sexy TV commercials cause “sex trafficking”; savor the neofeministy, end-demandy goodness.  Do we really need to research Brad to find out how he feels about porn, glamour modeling, or even miniskirts?  No, I don’t think so.  And I wouldn’t be shocked to find he’s anti-abortion as well; after all, we’ve gotta “protect” women from going down that human highway to the underground “sex trafficking” empire, even if we have to “traffick” them into prison to do it.

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Links #235

Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Obituary, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 4, 2015| 13 Comments »

If you can talk, you can breathe.  –  unidentified murderer cop

Not a bad selection of links for the post-holiday weekend, really; the first video was one of several Jae showed me on New Year’s Eve, while the selection of the second was based on a Twitter conversation between several sex workers (I will leave you to guess the subject yourselves).  All the links above the first video were provided by Tushy Galore, and those between the videos by  Popehat,  Grace, Rick Horowitz, Radley Balko, Clarkhat, Elizabeth N. Brown, and Dave Krueger (in that order).

From the Archives

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In the News (#501)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 3, 2015| 9 Comments »

Sex workers are…the sacrificial offering that people outside of the industry are willing to make in an attempt to attain an impossible state of societal purity.  –  Clay NikiforukClay Nikiforuk

The Red Umbrella 

This excellent December 17th column by Clay Nikiforuk only came to my attention this week:

…Canadian law…C-36 [supporters]…talk of wanting to “end demand” for sexual services, and I wonder what that could mean.  Is there a lab somewhere cooking up a pill to end cravings for intimacy?  Or maybe an army of attractive sex robots are being programmed as we speak?  Ending demand seems like an imaginary Conservative wonderland, and no one wants to talk about the fact that it doesn’t exist and thus no one has any idea of how to get there.  In the meantime, prostitution abolitionists are content with an approach that…will result in nothing but violence against a marginalized group if these heinous laws are enforced…[prohibitionist] language suggests that sex workers are things to be purchased rather than lucid, valuable people who make choices, among others, to market and sell services…no sex worker sells their body.  They are not passive ragdolls, slaves for the enjoyment of ravenous perverts, as the pornographic imagination might wish to believe…they are complex and complete people who have their own stories and are part of communities.  They cannot be sacrificed for a supposedly feminist ideal that wishes to ignore, silence, and erase them…

A Narrow View

Ask yourself:  if the operators of “rescue homes” really have the best interests of “rescued” sex workers at heart, why must they invariably deny these women’s agency and reduce them to passive, doll-like creatures to be done to?

A St. Louis charity will open a home next year where a small group of women who are trying to escape from a cycle of prostitution and prison can rebuild their lives.  Christine McDonald has spent months visiting prisons searching for women…[to] be the first residents of the 10,000-square-foot home being opened by Magdalene St. Louis.  The women will live there two years and will have access to free food, health care, counseling and job training…director…Tricia Roland-Hamilton…said many people believe these women choose a life of prostitution, but they don’t…

The Widening Gyre 

An escort is murdered, and cops immediately pimp her corpse to promote their crusade by declaring her a “victim of sex trafficking”:

A Vancouver woman found murdered inside her…Portland hotel…was a victim of sex trafficking, according to…Police…Ashley Renee Benson’s…body was found in a stairway at the Double Tree [sic] Hotel…Benson’s family [said]…they didn’t know Benson was a sex trafficking victim until they heard it on the news…they didn’t notice anything different about Benson when they saw her on Christmas Day, just 21 hours before she was found dead…

The reason the family didn’t know she was a “victim” is because she wasn’t.

Checklist bingo prostitution

Baltimore hotels would be required to train their staffs to recognize signs of forced prostitution under proposed legislation that also would prohibit rooms from being rented for less than half a day.  City Councilman James B. Kraft said the anti-human trafficking bill is necessary to combat an “international plague”…[because] Baltimore …[is near] Interstate 95…Hotel staff may recognize individuals who frequently rent rooms…The victims may eat all their meals inside the room and only…pay in cash…

Original Sin

It’s unusual to see an evangelical break with the party line on “trafficking”, but refreshing to be cast as a powerful witch instead of a helpless “victim”:

…why it is that only clients should be criminalised, but not the prostitute?  The question that must be asked is who the victim is and who is the predator…Modern society generally deems the prostitute to be “hurt” or “harmed” because she is used by clients…This is a dangerous half-truth.  The prostitute is the woman of Proverbs 7 who is brash, rebellious, sly, and of a wicked bitter tongue…She victimises even strong men through her sexual immorality and wicked flattering words…While she may indeed be used by others for sexual gratification, she is a predator…Prostitutes are harlots – they seduce unsuspecting men who do not know about the moral dangers of indulging in sexual immorality…

Original Sin (#321)

Another self-proclaimed “authority” helpfully explains that porn causes “sex trafficking”:

…sex trafficking and exploitation exist…even [in] Utah…social media and easy global access have made it more simplistic [sic] for criminals to entice targets…young men and women…are more exposed than ever [due to online flirting]…chat rooms are still…the weapon of choice for criminals…Sgt. Jason Randall…[fantasizes about] minors being forced to engage in sexual acts…on pornographic…websites…Randall said he believes pornography is at the source of all the exploitation problems…“Pornography is just like drugs.  People can dabble in it and never get addicted to it.  But some people — it’s just taking that first hit of meth, and then they’re hooked…There’s no question that there’s a correlation between pornography and sex offenses”…

Highlight of the story:  a bureaucrat named Tammy Atkin wisely pronounces that nobody grows up and then makes a statement about what she’d like to do when she is 12.

Welcome To Our World (#327)

Fifteen people have been arrested in Beijing in connection with a prostitution ring which used websites to connect young mothers with men who paid to be breastfed by them…Wet nurses that serve adults are paid $2,600, nearly four times the monthly average…

Mumbo Jumbo

Sometimes the connection between “sex trafficking” hysteria and the Satanic panic is subtle, and other times…well, see for yourself:

Traffic Circle

It’s a small development, especially considering that the publication is Reason and the author is steadfast ally Elizabeth Nolan Brown; however, it’s still fantastic to see “Sex Trafficking Hysteria” as a heading in a national magazine article that treats both the hysteria itself and the bullshit used to promote it as what they are rather than deferentially pretending that there’s any doubt at all, as even most skeptical articles do.

Shame, Shame (TW3 #348)

“Cyber Civil Rights Initiative” is a front organization for Mary Anne Franks:

Illinois became the latest state to criminalize “revenge porn,” crafting what its creators hope will become a model for federal legislation…The…law…will punish offenders with one to three years in prison and up to a $25,000 fine.  “We believe [revenge porn] is a form of sexual assault,” [figurehead sponsor] Scott Drury [said]… “You could be someone working at Burger King, and now you’re a sex object.”  Carrie Goldberg…of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, which [wrote] the Illinois law [downplayed valid concerns about the unintended consequences of the vague, overbroad legislation]…

Property of the State

Note how the police state uses the mere existence of a sex worker’s child as an excuse to proclaim consensual sex a “felony”:

A woman was arrested for promoting prostitution while her 2-year-old was at daycare…Trishta Daniels [was ratted out by hotel employees and ambushed by cops upon] leaving her room…Police [abducted] the child and [trafficked her to] the Department of Children’s Services…

That Old Black Magic (#422)

West African “penis stealing” hysteria, now with whores!

A 23-year-old woman, Uche Agunta, who works as a prostitute confessed that her gang specialises in cutting off victims’ manhood during sex…[she] had har­vested about seven [penises] be­fore she was arrested…her method is to lure men into sex…and at the height of ecstasy, she would sneak out razor blade and cut off her partner’s manhood…for money rituals…

Follow Your Bliss (#424) White Slaves of Chinatown

…There’s something profoundly perverse about many of the “grim truth behind prostitution”…articles…Rescue stories read like erotica, but they sensationalise sex workers’ lives at their expense and commodify the experiences of actual victims.  They are obsessed with how many penises in filthy surroundings and rape by their stepfather and forced abortions and getting peed on and condomless blowjobs.  While sex workers and sex work activists want to talk about human rights, international law, respecting the agency of other adults and stopping violence, rescue fetishists get all flushed as they emphasise that thousands of women get raped with objects and are forced to drink buckets of sperm and they get tattoos so everyone can see they are a whore…The rescue industry exploits others for financial gain, which is morally reprehensible, but their non-consensual use of vulnerable women for their perverse sexual preferences is a grim truth about the rescue industry that really nobody is telling you…

Worse Than I Thought (#433)

As I predicted, this trope is becoming much more common:

Darlene Pawlik…was…sold into prostitution…before she reached legal adulthood…[she] found herself sold hundreds of times, bought by local businessmen, a city councilman, and a candidate for sheriff..[when she] found herself pregnant…[she] faked an abortion so she could leave the lifestyle.  She reached a new home and began a new, restored life and eventually became a nurse, business owner, married mother of 5 children, and pro-life advocate…

All conveniently far in the past and without names or evidence, natch.

Backwards into the Future (#439)

“Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!”

Vietnam will not see prostitution as a legitimate profession…[said] Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam…[he also pretended] that anti-prostitution measures [could somehow be considered]…human rights protection…The [repetition of political dogma]…came in response to a number of opinions from…officials who suggested that sex work should be legalized in Vietnam as it serves an essential need of people and such legalization would help improve the management of sex workers…

Subtle Pimping (#445)

…Jin Ohashi…is being questioned for his unethical way of taking photos [of]…Thai sex workers who don’t even know their photos were exhibited at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography…[Ohashi has] fondly and proudly talked about how he pretended to be a regular tourist and sneaked his camera into the brothels, where cameras are strictly prohibited.  He talked about his bravery of doing so against his local coordinator’s warning.  He even said, without the slightest nuance of guilt, that sex workers got panicked when his camera flashed and ran about trying to hide from him…the attitude shown by Ohashi indicates the less-than-human views he holds of the Thai sex workers…in [a] 2007 interview [he said]  sleeping dogs by the roadside and those girls had the same tension… whatever that means…Sandra

Monkey Business (#449) 

An orangutan named Sandra has become the first non-human animal recognized as a person in a court of law.  The Association of Officials and Lawyers for Animal Rights…had asked Argentine courts recognize the 28-year-old great ape’s right to freedom from unjust imprisonment…if the zoo does not challenge the decision within 10 working days, Sandra will be sent to a sanctuary in Brazil…The decision may have ramifications for other great apes.  In the United States, a group called the Nonhuman Rights Project is currently seeking similar rights for four privately-owned chimpanzees in New York state…

Banishment (#452)

Predictable as sunrise:

Timothy Poole, the…registered [sex offender who won the Florida] lottery…is being sued by two alleged victims who say he owes them for pain, suffering and psychological damages.  The two are brothers who were 5 and 9 years old at the time of the abuse in 1996…Their attorneys…are seeking a court order to freeze Poole’s [assets] until the proceedings are over because Poole may “squander, hide or otherwise dispose of assets”…

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It Was Twenty Years Ago Today

Posted in Biography, tagged , , , , on January 2, 2015| 10 Comments »

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.  –  Friedrich Nietzsche

Creepshow thing in the boxI’ve often referred to my “year of disaster”, August 1994 to July 1995, a single twelve-month period of my life which contained enough misfortune and trauma for any twelve bad years.  By the time it was over, I felt as though my psyche had received the equivalent of a sustained beating with a wide assortment of blunt instruments; it took me years to recover from the accumulated stress, and I was still subject to panic attacks (often provoked by unpredictable stimuli) until about 2003.  Even to this day I dread being alone with my own thoughts unless I have something like writing or a book to focus on; when unoccupied by work, reading or conversation my brain is wont to start dwelling upon things best left shut up in mysterious boxes under my mental stairs.  But since those boxes often emit sharp thumps, chilling whispers, horrifying moans and unintelligible muttering that can sometimes be heard through the locked door, a few words about their contents is probably in order on this, the twentieth anniversary of what at the time seemed the most devastating of the incidents.

On August 16th, 1994 I suffered a 22-week miscarriage; in the old days that would’ve been called a stillbirth, but modern medicine prefers more neutral, clinical language.  I was convinced it had been dead for some time, and my OB/GYN saw no reason to argue with me about that.  Some of y’all may find it strange that I wanted children, but Nature is, as I have so often said, a bitch goddess and She often makes us want things that clearheaded consideration would declare absolutely terrible ideas.  I was also very young (27) at the time, and not half as cynical as I am now; however, honesty compels me to point out that anyone who’s ever been a guest in my home can tell you that my frustrated maternal drives have resulted in my compulsively mothering every mammal within reach, all the time.  And anyone who’s ever heard me talk to my pets…well, the less said about that, the better; I have a reputation as a hardheaded badass to maintain.  On some level, it probably even influenced my shift into a kind of sex work where I could directly care for people, and my soft spot for disabled clients.

A few months later my doctor broke the news to me:  unless, as he put it, I wanted to keep having deformed babies, my uterus would have to come out.  I did not take the news well, but like the miscarriage itself the hysterectomy was probably for the best in the end.  My hormones had always fluctuated erratically, and within weeks of getting them out of a bottle instead of relying on my hopelessly-befuddled ovaries to supply them I was marveling at how much quieter my brain was and how much more stable the world outside of my head looked.  But I’m getting ahead of the story; the actual hysterectomy didn’t come until early July, because…well, I can’t honestly remember why I waited that long.  I guess it was because of everything else taking up all of my attention that winter and spring, things like the awful car accident a few days after Easter which left me with five broken vertebraewrist and that rather unsightly scar those of you who have met me in person may have noticed on my left wrist.  Had the surgery not already been scheduled by then, the Memorial Day attack (please indulge me by being patient for a few months until I write about that again) would probably have delayed it even more…but as I pointed out yesterday, I have a peculiar dedication to schedules and once I had made the appointment I wasn’t going to let little things like major sexual trauma and PTSD get in the way of the program.

The last-referenced incident definitely had the longest-lasting negative effects; all the others I eventually came to see as “blessings in disguise” except for the car accident, which I filed under “Just One of Those Things That Happen To Maggie”.  It wasn’t what I perceived as the worst of the shocks at the time, though; that dishonor is reserved for the events of Monday, January 2nd, 1995.  I’ve already described them in detail four years ago, so it will suffice to say that my ex-husband, Jack, used my attendance at a library conference to clear out and take most of our stuff with him.  I was utterly devastated; I’m very phobic about abandonment so I didn’t really take it well when faced with a literal nightmare come true.  It took me two years to come to the conclusion that my friends really had known what they were talking about when they warned me away from marrying Jack in the first place, and were therefore more than likely correct now when they urged me to forget about him and take advantage of my looks (though I did that in a rather different way from what most of them meant).  Twenty years later those looks have not yet faded (not much, anyway), and they’ve taken me places poor Jack’s narrow little imagination never could have dreamed of; I sometimes wonder how he’ll react if he ever sees my picture online or catches me on television.  I’m not the scared little girl he dumped any more, and in a way I have him to thank for that; had he not left me twenty years ago today my life would’ve been much different and certainly a great deal less rewarding.

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