The war on sex offenders poses perhaps the greatest political challenge for those seeking to dismantle the carceral state. – Marie Gottschalk
Gay folk who promote anti-whore crusades are about the sleaziest sleaze there is: 
A Kiwi couple needs public help in a quest to take part in a…bootcamp which would help their dream of putting a stop to the forced sex trade industry. In 2013 Xavier Hartstonge and partner Jesse North created the not-for-profit organisation SweatsHope with the vision of halting the forced sex trade industry in…India…Six people will be selected to receive an all-expenses paid trip to…spend two weeks working with a business coach, life coach and personal trainer…The organisers hope to turn it into a reality TV show. Hartstonge…says we all know the sex trade is happening, yet we choose to close our eyes…“It’s about empowerment, showing these women they do have the choice and no longer have to do this…It’s modern day slavery and should no longer be tolerated”…
Yes, that’s a gay man demonizing a kind of sex he isn’t interested in. Breathe deep of the putrid stench of that irony.
The fact that Hof endorsed Ron Paul in ’12 should tell you that this has nothing to do with the candidates’ actual positions. From a press release that was probably sent to everyone who blogs on sex work: “Prostitutes at Dennis Hof’s…Moonlite Bunny Ranch…announce their support of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign…” The so-called “Hookers For Hillary” campaign’s embrace of “health care reform” seems primarily an attempt to demonize “illegal” sex workers by casting us as vectors of disease who need to be micromanaged by the benevolent state and licensed pimps like Hof lest we spread plague like a host of scarlet-clad Typhoid Mary Magdalenes.
Is Al Jazeera swinging away from anti-whore hysteria again?
…Because sex work is legal in Ecuador…are, for the most part, allowed to conduct their work openly, without fear of being arrested. In other cities such as Kampala, Uganda; Manila, the Philippines; Phnom Penh, Cambodia; Islamabad; Skopje, Macedonia; and Kiev, Ukraine, where it is illegal, sex workers conduct their work in the shadows, which makes it more likely that they will be subject to violence and limits their power to negotiate safe sex…For refugee sex workers in particular, an arrest for prostitution could jeopardize their asylum claim or result in deportation. The high stakes of getting caught thus force them to take even greater risks, such as working alone or on the least safe stretches of road…refugees, notably those clustered in cities, often engage in sex work. But international institutions need to do much more than just turn a blind eye to this informal form of employment. By publicly acknowledging refugee sex workers and establishing support protocols, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and other international organizations could help them do their work more safely and ensure their rights — to health, information and dignity — are respected…
Landlords of massage parlors, spa managers and even motel managers who knowingly allow prostitution on their premises could face prison and fines under [new Rhode Island laws]…The pandering law…would be amended to include those who allow prostitution on their premises, because they derive money from the illegal activity. That includes landlords, managers, owners of spas or businesses, or any other place where commercial sex is practiced or allowed. Under both bills, the penalties for a first offense would be one to five years in prison, and fines between $2,000 and $5,000…
It’s like they’re competing with each to see who can inflict the most mindlessly-draconian sentences:
People who solicit prostitutes would face increased penalties under a bill that [unanimously] passed the Florida House…The penalty for a first offense would increase from a second-degree misdemeanor to a first-degree misdemeanor. A second offense would be a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a third offense would be a second-degree felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison…
The number of licensed brothels and escort agencies in the Netherlands fell to 674 in 2014, compared with 1,127 in 2006…The figures also show six out of 10 local authorities have no licensed sex business within their boundaries….researchers say the decline may be due to the rise in the online sex industry…Justice minister Ard van der Steur says it is difficult to get a grip on the size of the unlicensed industry but that exploitation, human trafficking and forced prostitution are a serious issue…
You’ll notice that none of these laws really affect picket-fence queers:
…Gay rights groups have made great strides in repealing anti-sodomy laws on federal and state levels, and these efforts should be commended. And yet, prosecutions for sex crimes are growing faster than any other type of crime, with an exponentially rising rate of arrests and convictions. Gay men are arrested in cruising stings, HIV-positive men are sent to prison for merely being sexually active, and sex workers and clients are arrested for victimless crimes. Much of these prosecutions disproportionately affect queer folk, despite advances in civil rights for LGBT people. Have the baldly homophobic laws of the 20th century really gone away? Or are they merely being repackaged and rebranded for a more gay-friendly public?…
…Lapdancing is a kind of entertainment that trades on power — men’s power over women, the economic supremacy that gives men the disposable income to buy a woman right out of her clothes, the ritualised submission of the naked women pantomiming sexual frenzy for the men in suits, the little assertions of possession that comes every time a man crosses the line and puts his hand on the skin he’s paying to see. Feminism is the politics of rejecting men’s power over us. Not eroticising that power, not exploiting it to rinse a little cash benefit out of our own inferiority, but refusing it…Ask…how feminism can tolerate any [sex work]…
First They Came for the Hookers…(#341)
Licensed strip clubs are no longer allowed in Saskatchewan, but the government says it will make an exception for charitable events once a year. Premier Brad Wall announced…that his government would reverse its decision to allow licensed strip clubs because of concerns about human trafficking and sexual exploitation…
…the Dutch central bank has fired a 46-year-old female employee claimed to have been working after hours as a highly paid prostitute – specialising in sadomasochism. The woman, who had been with the central bank for eight years…had allegedly been offering her services under the name “Conchita van der Waal”, advertising under the motto: “the kinkier the better”. Ms van der Waal also offered to engage in sexual role play…one of the roles in which she was photographed online was that of an SS commandant…the…bank’s code of conduct…forbids “indecent behaviour” – and stipulates that no employee should act in a way which could harm the reputation of the bank or lead to negative publicity…
Sex workers in Edinburgh are facing increased health risks following the controversial police crackdown on saunas…Fewer women are attending the specialist NHS clinic set up to support them – and…sexually transmitted infections have increased. Sex workers are also giving up on condoms, with saunas refusing to stock them because police can use possession of them as evidence of selling sex…many women had moved away from saunas and now operated from other venues, like flats or lap-dancing bars…
…The US’s current anti-trafficking policy…produces a tangle of finite good and possibly infinite harmful effects…stories of “sex slaves” produced by some advocates and propagated with alacrity by the media and accepted by…US law makers—has permitted…an incoherent spectrum of immigration and criminal law enforcement operating without much critical oversight, let alone public understanding…the media here [follows a]…template of treating exploited (male) workers as migrant labours while reserving the term “trafficking” for (female) “sex trafficking victims”…
Pay attention to this: a motel chain is systematically ratting out guests to cops:
The popular hotel chain, Motel 6, has recently decided to partner with the police to violate the rights of their guests. Without the consent of the guest, or even informing them whatsoever, Motel 6 employees will now turn over the guest information to the police, who will then run a background check on the subject…I highly doubt that all, or even 10%, of the 1,100 Motel 6’s in North America have a huge sex trafficking problem. I doubt many of them have real “major” crime issues at all. Yet, Motel 6 is allowing the police to run the names of all their guests, regardless of probable cause, incident, or reasoning…
Guest Columnist: Kaytlin Bailey
There’s the old chestnut that’s supposed to help you relax in front of an audience, “imagine them in their underwear,” and its dark twin — the classic nightmare of being naked in public. For comedians, the Naked Comedy Showcase provides a chance to experience both scenarios…According to New York host and producer, Kaytlin Bailey, “It’s a rush…there’s something about being in the survival mindset and that amount of adrenaline that really brings the performer in to the room and they’re present from moment to moment and that’s great to watch.” The brainchild of Boston-based comedian, and nudist Andy Ofiesh, Bailey took over hosting and producing duties in…2014 and has been playing to standing-room-only crowds ever since…
And folk who promote business coaches, life coaches, personal trainers and reality TV are nearly as bad.
Excuse my ignorance, but can anyone enlighten me as to what US laws make gay cruising an arrestable offence?
Does it matter what the laws actually are, or if they even exist? The law is whatever the cops say it is at the time of your arrest, to be changed as needed when you’re brought to your sentencing.
True and well said.
Nonetheless I’m still curious about what kind of legal justifications they’re invoking.
Good grief, it’s depressing when what you thought was hyperbole and an attempt at being obnoxious is instead a sober stating of the facts.
Huh?
Where did you get that idea?
My own all-too-extensive experience of police leads me to agree wholeheartedly with you. I perceived nothing hyperbolic or obnoxious in your comment.
Okay, I may have been a little hasty with that last remark. It’s still depressing to be told I’m right, though, because in this instance I don’t want to be right. Perhaps that last comment wasn’t hyperbolic, but what I’m about to say probably is: this is a horrid little world, isn’t it? And it’s only getting more horrid by the day. I hear of pundits and politicians speak of all sorts of ‘tipping points’ that we’re rapidly approaching, about the Constitution, the climate, demographics, etc. It feels like we should have gone over any one of these cliffs several times over and now we’re like a cartoon character suspended in mid-air, and we need only look down to plunge into the canyon. It seems like some of us having been looking down for a long time, yet we’re still not actually falling.
Honest question, cabrogal; what do you do for fun? Do you do anything that takes your mind off the ballooning amount of disgusting inhumanity cataloged here, on copblock, on popehat, by Radley Balko and Clark Bianco? Because it’s clearly not getting better; all that’s happening is more people recognize it for what it is.
Personally, I do it by filling my time with hobbies like collecting toys and getting into political debates with my co-workers. I vote as often as I can and have a strict ‘no incumbents’ rule, however I recognize I lack the intelligence and charisma (and probably physical strength) to go beyond that. If it weren’t for those hobbies and a slim hope that at some point the metaphorical logjam will break and actual change and progress will occur, I might not be able to get out of bed in the morning.
The superficial answers include surfing, caring for my pet rabbits, listening to punk rock and immersing myself in books and RPGs. They were probably crucial to my survival during the nine and a half years of despair that followed my burnout as an activist and the implosion of my sanity.
Unfortunately my ongoing means of coming to terms with a world going to hell is probably useless to anyone else and usually comes across as a load of woo-woo mystical bullshit.
Somehow, since October 2012 – through life experience, mental illness or just dumb luck – I’ve learned to step out of my self. To experience an altered state of consciousness in which there is no longer a distinction between me and everything else. The breakdown of subject/object awareness.
What that does is reveal a very different kind of universe. One in which all my internal tensions and external frustrations come together and resolve each other. Where everything is what it is and is perfect.
That doesn’t change the fact that the world is full of stupidity and injustice and I feel compelled to keep bashing my head futilely against it all. But it somehow makes it right. It’s the way it should be. Just like my own inevitable extinction.
If that comes across as Panglossian then I’ve definitely failed to communicate. In fact it’s something I don’t think I’ll ever be able to communicate.
Ask Google.
There seem to be a variety of old laws on the books making ill-defined “public indecency” illegal. This depends on jurisdiction, of course. When “cruising” actually involves having sex (hand/blowjobs are sex) in public, that is and always has been illegal pretty much everywhere.
Of course, police can always go for “intent” or “conspiracy” to break the law even when no lawbreaking has actually taken place. Their job is to protect the public, to ward against antisocial behaviour. And if that involves a little old-fashioned poofter bashing, why, so much the better!
1) Somebody needs to ask Sarah Ditum why sex work is any of her goddamned business. OK, it offends her. I get that. Now, Gay men offend all kinds of people. Not people I care to associate with, but I don’t care to associate with the likes of Ditum either. So how is she not exactly like an intolerant Bab-tist bigot? And if you asked her, how high to you think her blood pressure would spike?
2) About Amsterdam; the Dutch authorities probably ARE genuinely surprised that illegal prostitution has risen. Regulation happy nitwits are almost always taken by surprise by the totally predicable consequences of their little schemes. Anti-smoking Crusaders are perpetually astonished that high cigarette taxes result in a black market in smuggled cigarettes. And after years of thinking that they were hypocrites, I have concluded that they live in such complete echo-chambers that they never hear any dissenting voices, and they really ARE this stupid.
And yet they’re still there, in power and making rules, while you’re here fulminating at a keyboard.
Because people WILL keep voting for A) Democrat Progressives (who like to have a law for everything, and then make exceptions for The Right People) and B) Republican Establishment ninnies (who are Democrat Lite) and so that is the choice we get. The Libertarian side of the Republicans is making (glacially slow) progress, and you have the Christers to contend with. The Democrats don’t even have a populist side, really, and the Democrat establishment tends to co-opt any beginnings with blinding speed (watching Shrillary pretend to be Populist is particularly nauseating).
The Progressive “Experts know best and will tell you how to live a good life” thing is losing momentum, but it can’t come to and end soon enough for me.
I sure hope you’re right, but as with Maggie’s faith in the imminent implosion of trafficking hysteria you seem to see an end that remains beyond sight to me. From where I sit it’s still getting worse.
No. Their hopes died when they failed to disarm the populace. Their dreams of a National Health were waning, so they rushed through Obamacare, figuring to fix it later, and now it’s an albatross around their necks. They are slowly losing state assemblies, and those states that are going even a little Libertarian are clearly doing better. Think of them as the Eurpoean Aristocracy; once the Industrial Revolution moved the creation of wealth from the land to the manufacturies, they were dying. It still took a while.
It won’t be solved in a single election cycle, or even ten. But it is shifting.
Hmm, I wouldn’t think a few policy setbacks would discourage them.
The mark of a true ideologue is that when their ideology fails it’s always because it hasn’t been imposed strictly enough.
Ah, but WHICH policy setbacks is important. I can’t say this often enough; they failed to disarm the populace. That has always been an absolutely CRUCIAL step towards despotism (and lets face it despotism is where worship of The State inevitably goes). This bunch of self-annointed are the WEAKEST would-be aristocrats in recent memory. They don’t have the backing of the military because they openly despise it. They are losing control of the media, amd never HAD control of the press. We who oppose them don’t have to resort to Samizdat. They can only close down opposing messages in limited areas like college,campuses, and there they regularly lose the resulting lawsuits.
The Plantation Aristocracy could push matters to the point of Civil War. These idiots can’t do that much. They wouldn’t get half the military. They might get the paper-pushers, and THAT’s questionable. They’ve armed their regulatory goons, but goons don’t do well in open country against people who shoot for fun.
Oh, they’ll go down fighting, or at least bitching and moaning. And like the European Aristocrats they will join one of the next bunchs of would-be rulers. But their ascendency is over, unless we despair at the last ditch.
To be honest the emphasis US Libertarians place on firearms ownership has never made any sense to me – despite being a former gun owner who was heart-broken to give up his rifles when the laws were tightened here.
It’s not as if small arms are going to bug authorities that can call on any of several heavy weapon armed state militias. Their prevalence and frequent abuse just gives them more excuses to crack down. Why outlaw guns when you can blow away whoever you like by pretending you think they’re armed? And it’s you as a taxpayer who is footing the bill for the arms race between cops and citizens (I’m pretty sure the US is the only OECD country that equips its police with AFVs).
The idea that a well armed civilian militia can protect liberty might have had some credibility in 1776 but in the 21st Century it seems like an anachronistic Hollywood fantasy to me.
am armed populace can cause even a full bore military crakdown one hell of a lot of grief. Look at what happened in the Warsaw Ghetto with just a scattering of guns. Add that in the U.S. Oir would-be “betters” don’t have the military on their side, and the armed goons of the regulatory agencies aren’t well trained for combat, and an armed citizenry gets damned important.
Yes, the cops are getting lots of neat toys. They don’t really use them all that well, and most of the abuses you read of take place in cities that haven’t – yet – given jp on “gun control”. I will be fascinated to see what happens to the crime stats in DC once the panjandrums admit they have to let people buy guns. Everywhere gon controls have been losened the Statists have predicted blood in the streets. Hasn’t happend yet. Where the people are armed, crime DROPS – at least so far. May be an artifact of am aging population, but the predicted RISE in gun deaths simply hasn’t happened.
The authorities COULD call on heavily armed National Guard units … Which are for the most part made up of citizens who don’t love the Authorities much. If there wasn’t a clear threat to the general welfare, I have to wonder how that would go….
Check out the Wikipedia entry on The Battle of Athens. It’s most instructive.
I’m pretty sure the Jews in Warsaw didn’t have permission from their rulers to own guns and I don’t really think gun ownership is an explanation for their resistance – which was utterly crushed within a month by police and third rate troops who just happened to have access to heavy weapons. The Nazis lost about 20 to over 10,000 on the Jewish side.
Err, cp, have you compared the homicide rate in the US with every other OECD country? I don’t think ‘blood on the streets’ is a particularly OTT piece of rhetoric under the circumstances.
Violent crime is dropping everywhere (after climbing steadily from the 50s to the 90s). There’s a lot of debate among criminologists as to why – with the reduction of environmental lead contamination the clear favorite – but gun ownership ain’t even on the radar.
In Australia we were averaging a couple of random public mass murders with firearms per year (as opposed to mass murders within families) up until the tightening of gun laws. In the 19 years since then we’ve had none.
Someone with access to guns is more likely to kill himself with them than anyone else and the next most common victims are his family members or intimate partner. Gun homicide in self defence is way down the list (except in movies). As far as I know the US is the only country in the history of the world that regularly sees infants kill people.
It’s probably not high gun ownership per se that explains the US homicide rate. Switzerland provides a counter example to that. But I think the attitude that guns solve problems rather than cause them – as promoted by Hollywood and the NRA – is a big factor.
Can’t speak to Austrailian stats. I do observe that, with one exception (the Gabby Giffords shooting) every mass shooting in the U.S. In the last thirty years has taken place in an an area where the public are not allowed to be armed. Sometimes it was law, sometimes it was policy of the property owner, but with that one exception, all of themass shootings took place in “Gun Free Zome”s.
My point about the Warsaw uprising wasn’t that they did well in the end. It was that, without much in the way of weapons at all, they held out a damnsight longer than the Germans expected. Now, imagine what they could have done with weapons. In point of fact, you don’t really have to. The Arabs have had several pointed object lessons aboit how tough a bunch of armed Jews can be. And good on the Israelis.
All I can say is that if you are not a good deal more scared of your government than you are of the idea that your neighbors might be armed, I can’t get my head into your headspace.
I don’t think the Israelis would have done so well if they’d been armed only with privately owned small arms.
I’m certainly more bugged by my government than by my neighbours (though I’m even more bugged by my government’s corporate paymasters – a notable blind spot among US Libertarians). I just don’t think arming every kid on the block is going to make me safer from them. Quite the contrary in fact. It’ll just make me more likely to become collateral damage if the government decides to come down on them.
I wrote earlier that an ideologue is someone who always thinks the answer to any failure of his ideology is to apply it more fanatically.
I think the notion that the answer to gun crime is to further liberalise the possession of guns fits the bill.
IF the spread of more liberal gun laws had had the effect of raising the level of violent crime in the U.S. as was predicted, I would no longer advocate the liberalization of gun laws. It didn’t. IF the tightening of gun control laws in the U.S. had a traceable positive effect on the level of violent crime, I would at a minimum reconsider my position. It doesn’t. Given the existing trends, and the fact that the Gun Control lobby in the U.S. has spent the last several decades predicting bloodbaths that don’t come about, my personal concerns are fairly simple;
The second amendment to the constitution states “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”. The Supreme Court, which has the job of interpreting the Constitution and its amendments, has consistently ruled that this is an individual right, which is hardly surprising since the debates on the bill of rights (which are extensively documented) made it clear that the men who voted it into existence intended it to secure the right of the people to own military grade firearms. Therefore, the people who advocate struck gun control laws must amend the Constitution to get them. If they re unwilling to make the attempt (and for the most part they are) they are scofflaws, which makes me suspicious of their motives.
A government that will not obey its own laws concerns me more than the idea that some idiot neighbor of mine may buy a machine gun.
“Think of them as the Eurpoean Aristocracy”
Arguably, the American Revolution was actually a counterrevolution – rich people founding a new nation based firmly on the right of property, and discarding all those feudal archaisms such as a lord owing a duty to his people.
The Libertarians are making ‘glacially slow’ progress because they’d either have to sell themselves the way other candidates do (honestly, I’d like to see some strategic subterfuge in their campaigning), or they will have to go outside the system to seize power and make the changes they want to see. To do the latter would require legions of followers and probably top-down organization to be effective. Since that is anathema to Libertarians, they’ll continue to stand on the sidelines whining about how things ought to be while everyone else laughs all the way to the bank.
The Libertarians are making glacially slow progreess, because one of the great merits of our political system is that it does not move quickly. If it did, the Progressives would have had us gone Full Socialist (that’s like Fully Monty, but you never get to dress again) some time around 1972.
For a long time I did also suspect maliciousness. As I have now seen the inner workings of some large corporations and even a bit of one government, I agree that these people really are stupid and have no clue that they are.
“Incompetent and unaware of it” explains a lot. Add the big egos that come from giving small people power, even only a little bit, and the effect amplifies massively.
I have also come to the conclusion that anybody that wants power is automatically and universally unfit to wield it.
It’s probably a bit unfair to assume that corporate managers who do stupid things are stupid people. Organisations in general – corporations, religions, parties, bureaucracies, armies, countries … – are a whole lot dumber (and more immoral) than the sum of their parts. They tend to force their component members into stupidity and immorality or replace them with those who can be so forced.
I have said for a while that the hysteria over teen sex is basically spite and envy on the part of the old.
I agree with that, and it would help if the old didn’t constantly overestimate just how much sex, and how early, the teens are having.
I have to say that I’ve never walked into a strip-club and felt any power there for myself to wield over it’s gorgeous denizens… I would rather liken it to a chicken stumbling into a room filled with foxes. Even the cash in my pocket is a poor shield, since it disappears rather quickly.
Neofeminism cannot concede anything to reality. Ditum goes so far as to actually deny that male dancers exist.
Hey, she’s on course then. Once she can deny any men exist she’ll have nothing left to complain about.
Disgusting how the feminists in the quote above frames the natural desire of a man to touch a woman as an act of posession. A simple, personal impulse must be made onto a political act of oppression.
It’s amusing that in Saskatchewan they use the excuse of human trafficking to ban stripping (which is perfectly legal under the federal law) while places of illegal prostitution like massage parlours and escort agencies remain legal and licensed. So sex workers who used to be strippers because they didn’t want to have sex will now have to choose between selling real sex or working at McDonalds.
I believe you meant to say Sarah Ditmars is a “rabid feminist” not a “rapid feminist.” Not that she can’t be both!
Reading Ditmars’ piece, her description of a lap dance sounds so much like a submissive’s sex fantasy that I suspect her feminism might have some subconscious fantasy fuel going for it. Deep down, she wants to liberally worship a pole, but her ideology won’t let her, so when she writes about women who are forced to submit to male privilege in the dens of iniquity that are strip clubs, she has no trouble at all describing their “ordeal” in vivid detail … her subconscious has been working on that for a long time …
Er … “literally worship a pole” not “liberally worship a pole” … not that she can’t do both!