[Sex workers are] not helped by campaigns which [call] us…“prostituted women” who don’t have any ability to properly consent anyway. – sex workers of St. Kilda
The phrase “human trafficking” now means “any behavior I don’t like”:
Not a single same-sex couple can reproduce together. It behooves us to analyze the ways that same-sex marriage demands other people’s children as a “civil right” and in so doing invariably denies both women their own children and children their right to a mother and a father…Gay families are compromised by their need to tear apart other people’s families using the oppressive force of the state and its legal apparatuses…People use their children in all kinds of ways. Except these are often other people’s children and they did not have to be conscripted to a life of distortion and play-acting. These children are never the result of same-sex couples’ accidental pregnancy…All gay families are created by or because of someone else’s family being destabilized…The new social justice dictum is that society owes LBGT people the flesh and blood of other people’s children because they are “married” now. Let’s be honest. Love does not make a family in this case. Human trafficking does.
Author Rivka Edelman works hard to get libertarians on her side by invoking the specter of state violence, but this strategy depends on the reader swallowing the rather bizarre assumption that all children placed for adoption got there by being stolen from their birth mothers. It is absolutely true that the state has a fetish for stealing people’s children, but I sincerely doubt that the majority of adopted children (or even a large minority) are available because of such actions. Furthermore, the rationalization she employs to separate same-sex adoptive couples from heterosexual ones, namely that straight couples could theoretically produce children of their own, is an exercise in absurdity; if gay couples should be denied the right to adopt because they can’t biologically produce offspring, infertile couples would have to be denied for precisely the same reason.
Article goes on and on about how awful it is that “sex trafficking victims” are burdened with a criminal record, yet never questions the premise of burdening anyone with such a record for peaceful, consensual activities. Oh, and it quotes the usual lies, too.
…no matter how hard she tried, Nicole, who was lured into the brutal world by an abusive boyfriend when she was a teenager, couldn’t get her record expunged…But that system is starting to ease up for trafficking survivors…It’s a welcome reprieve considering that sex trafficking is the fastest-growing business of organized crime…An estimated 293,000 youths alone are at risk of being sexually exploited in the U.S. Nailing down precise figures remains a challenge due to a lack of funding and the fact that victims are too fearful to come forward. Compounding the issue is the fact that police often can’t detect the difference between someone who has been forced into the sex trade and a consensual sex worker…
A construction worker thought to be the boyfriend of a murdered prostitute has been arrested at his home in [Hong Kong]…the 62-year-old had a relationship of several years with Zheng Shurong, 44, who was found dead in her…flat…with a curtain chord around her neck. Zheng’s 19-year-old daughter called police after loosing contact with her mother…
It looks like Twitter may be heading in the same direction as Google, PayPal, LinkedIn, et al:
According to SunTrust Robinson Humphrey tech analyst Robert Peck, Twitter is preparing to purge an estimated 10 million porn-posting users. Ditching such a large chunk of users sounds drastic until you do the math: Twitter claims to have 302 million monthly users, so getting rid of the explicit posters will only account for about 3 percent of its total—although that’s just counting the users and not their followers…One week after Twitter’s revenue forecast was reported to be below expectations and deemed a “nightmare earnings scenario,” Nielsen, a global television and digital data company, pulled its advertising campaign after discovering paid promoted tweets on pornography-associated pages…A Twitter spokesperson told Adweek they “are committed to providing a safe environment for brands to build their business, and our product team is working to fix the issue.” But…how the company intends to fix the issue is a growing concern within the adult industry…
Scott Greenfield explains how useful idiots are trying to subject all human interaction to criminal law. Here’s the text he quotes and discusses:
…the American Law Institute (ALI) has undertaken a review of the sexual assault provisions of the Model Penal Code. The undersigned members of ALI are concerned about the direction the project has taken…If there is political consensus on anything in the United States today, it is the consensus that our government has overcriminalized and overincarcerated the American public…§1519 is a bad law — too broad and undifferentiated, with too high maximum penalties, which give prosecutors too much leverage and sentencers too much discretion. And…in those ways, §1519 is unfortunately not an outlier, but an emblem of a deeper pathology in the federal criminal code…the current ALI draft is an extreme deviation, focused on expanding criminal sanctions for sexual behavior and expanding the problems…equating silence with unwillingness, as Section 213.2(2) does, “patronizes” or “infantilizes” women, treating them as if they were incapable of expressing their own desires…
Another anti-gay “authority” figure is revealed as a closet queer:
Until 2 p.m. on Monday, the “Our Church Staff” section of St. John’s Lutheran Church and School’s website described Reverend Matthew Makela as an associate pastor who enjoys, “family, music, home improvement, gardening and landscaping, and sports.” Screenshots obtained by Queerty from a source who asked that his name be withheld shed light on some of the Reverend’s other favorite past times — namely nude make out sessions and sex with other men…how someone behaves between the sheets is really nobody’s business but his own, except when he’s actively doing damage to others. We’ve seen it time and time again. The lawmaker who spends his days fighting against gay rights and his nights cruising for bottoms, or the ex-gay activist who isn’t quite as ex-gay as he’d like everyone to believe…Makela…doesn’t just preach Jesus’ love and help with bake sales. He also uses his position of authority and respect in his community to broadcast his self-loathing view on same-sex attraction…
A call for a return of the policy which enabled Robert Pickton to slaughter women virtually at will:
Residents of Vancouver’s Kensington-Cedar Cottage neighbourhood are petitioning the city to crackdown [sic] on prostitution in residential areas and establish a red light district…It’s not clear where he wants the red light district located, but [instigator Ewart] Aitken says organizers hope to meet with city officials in coming weeks…
…Apip-Acam, a [rescue industry NGO]…describes [La Jonquera, Spain] as “one of the main centers of the prostitution industry and the trafficking of women for sexual exploitation in Europe”…Many women here insist that they are not working for pimps or being exploited by trafficking gangs, and that this is the only way they can make a living. Of the 111 women working in the open in La Jonquera that Apip-Acam has contacted, only six have signed up to a program for victims of trafficking and sexual exploitation…[yet Apip-Acam still pretends that] “all of them are subject to extreme control and domination by small family clans”…
Remember how Tom Meagher, the husband of a woman who died because “authorities” don’t give a shit about whores, supplied the quote from which this subsection title was drawn? Well, he’s become a prohibitionist now, and the sex workers of St. Kilda have something to say to him:
As street based sex workers from St Kilda we have come together to urge you to reconsider your position endorsing the campaign “We Don’t Buy It” and to share with you some of the implications it has for us as sex workers…we…are…subject to laws and policing operations that target us and our clients. And this really makes it harder for us to best look after our safety…our justice system…is more of an injustice system, and as you pointed out so well, this tragically not only affects us, but our whole society. To report crimes committed against us we risk being charged ourselves and being known to police for further profiling and harassment…seeing your passion for justice…[for] all, including sex workers, co-opted into a campaign which does just the opposite of this is hugely disappointing and upsetting…Any campaign which calls to end sex work or stigmatises our clients ends up further stigmatising and dehumanising us as well, and ultimately serves to take away our agency and increases violence towards us…
I kind of feel sorry for “sex trafficking” fetishists from Omaha; since their city appears to have just one largish sporting event, they keep tapping its anemic body to feed “gypsy whores” hysteria:
Hotel workers in the Omaha area are undergoing training on how to spot women and minors being forced into prostitution…Experts say high-profile events, such as the College World Series in Omaha, bring a higher risk of sex trafficking occurring at lodging facilities…Coalition member Shane Fagan said signs hotel staff should keep an eye out for include lodgers with a small amount of luggage, an unusual collection of wigs or IDs inside a suite, prepaid debit cards and girls who are unsure of what city they’re in.
How could one fit “an unusual collection of wigs” in a small amount of luggage?
The idea that “not happening in front of this camera” = “eliminated” is a product of the same level of cognition that allows a toddler to conclude that if he can’t see you, you can’t see him either:
Security cameras installed…[in] “red light districts”…in Ho Chi Minh City’s Go Vap District have helped eliminate prostitution there…After seeing these cameras installed…potential guests do not dare enter…Such devices also help detect and prevent thefts and other social evils…police…[hope] the presence of such cameras [will force sex workers to]…give up the trade…
The outcome was a foregone conclusion, and the lawyers who orchestrated this shitshow knew it:
A federal judge in Massachusetts dismissed a lawsuit brought against…Backpage.com over posting ads for the sexual trafficking of minors…the judge correctly concluded that Backpage.com couldn’t be sued for running the ads, relying largely on Section 230 (47 U.S.C. § 230), the law that immunizes websites from liability based on user-generated content…The plaintiffs in the case of Doe No. 1 v. Backpage.com, LLC are young women who were allegedly sold for sex as minors via ads placed on Backpage…[they] brought various claims against Backpage.com even though it did not have a hand in creating or posting the ads…the court rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that Section 230 did not apply to civil actions…[and] explained that it found EFF persuasive in arguing that the chilling effect of extending this exception to private actions would be particularly serious because they would not be subject to the filter of prosecutorial discretion and the heightened standard of proof present in criminal prosecutions…
What, not 50 or 100 per day? Slackers.
The 18-year-old South Jersey woman arrested last month on charges she recruited a girl to be a prostitute was herself a victim of the…human trafficking ring recently broken up by federal and state investigators…the men who ran the prostitution ring forced a 14-year-old girl to have sex with up to 10 men a day…and…used violence and threats to control the girl and the 18-year-old…woman, who was also forced to become a prostitute…
About the first item, I wonder what they hate the most. The fact that gay people are allowed to raise children or that it allows women to not be burned with their unplanned pregnancy (and therefore circumventing the just punishment for their shameful sin.)
I know several gay and lesbian couples. The gay men that have children either arranged for a friend to bear the child, or simply adopted one that a friend didn’t want to keep. The lesbians didn’t adopt at all, they just went out and picked up a guy in a bar.
I wonder if the people quoted have similar issues about adoption by straight couples, or about surrogacy arrangements.
I think many people just come up with ”rational” excuses for their prejudice. Whatever fits the flavor of the day and whatever suits the people they are trying to convince. This quote looks especially contrived.
I was thinking infertile couples should have priority over gay, because gay couples are not biologically prevented from having children. However, it is rare that both partners are sterile in a hetero couple, so they have the same possibilities for surrogacy in either case.
About Vancouver, the difference is now that they cannot prosecute sex workers anymore. This would make it more difficult to force them into a specific area. Police are already doing stings against clients every now and then but it doesn’t really do much to relocate workers.
However, if they made at least some places where clients would be guaranteed not to be prosecuted it would encourage the workers to go there and it would improve their safety somewhat.
“It’s a welcome reprieve considering that sex trafficking is the fastest-growing business of organized crime…”
It helps when you continously expand the definition of “sex trafficking” to include consensual behaviors. Then the rate of increase of trafficking just becomes how quickly you can convince the blogosphere and police spokesdroids to call old behaviors that have always been there newly branded trafficking activities. The rate of increase in trafficking can then be ramped up at will to serve any propaganda purposes you desire.
A “small amount of luggage” is me on *any trip I take*, seeing how I hate waiting for my luggage to come down the ramp. I hit the ground and I’m gone. Have I been having sex with prostitutes behind my back?
That pretty much describes Roger from American Dad!
banishment-he doesn’t care where they go as long as they leave his neighbourhood-NIMBYism at its finest
Crying for nanny-if they had waited until the latest anti-trafficking bill in the states passes, would they have likely been more successful? Doesn’t it have a provision to attack Backpage and other similar sites?
No, it would’ve made no difference, because the law itself is unconstitutional & will be found so in the challenge which is ready to file by ACLU & EFF. The politicians behind these laws know they can’t stand, but since they don’t personally have to foot the bill for defending their asinine political statement, they don’t give a shit. They get to tell their slackjawed followers that they tried to “do what’s right”, but were defeated by “activist judges”.
just like out gov’t. They know C-36 is in contravention of the charter and will be struck down in time. But its not their money and they can tell the fundamentalists that they did what they could but the activist judges wouldn’t let them do the right thing. but in the mean time they get to ruin many more innocent lives. I apologize for using so many of the same terms but their are only so many ways to describe absolute stupidity.
Not sure if you are talking about the original Banishment column or the Vancouver petition news.
If it’s the later, people making this petition don’t understand prostitution law and the conflict between municipal regulations and federal criminal law. These residents want their city to make a Red Light for street prostitutes. This is itself incompatible with the new Canadian law, where it is illegal to organize protitution to any significant extent.
The only way authorities can control it is in an unofficial way, by choosing to ignore the crime if it is done in certain areas. Even if a tolerated area is designated by the city, it is still a federal crime and many clients and workers will avoid these so-called safe places anyway.
The Prudish Giant: One reason why I don’t use Google’s products with YouTube being the exception. (Or for that matter, Twitter.)
Rivka Edelman does not acknowledge the obvious implications of her truism that “These children are never the result of same-sex couples’ accidental pregnancy.” Some accidental pregnancies result in children that are nevertheless wanted, loved, and cared for. Other accidental pregnancies produce unwanted children. Some unwanted children have the very good fortune to be loved and cherished by same-sex couples.
Be Careful Who You Rape
In the photo he’s holding a sign that states “Most Men Never Buy Sex”. He’s got that exactly backwards. All men always buy sex. The currency is just not cash. It’s drinks in a bar, it’s dinner and a movie, it’s fixing her car, it’s spending time with her in any way, etc., all of which are of value. All of which, I think (Maggie probably has a better idea), can result in arrest if the deal is “fix my car and I’ll have sex with you.”
I always laugh at guys who brag “I never paid for it in my life.” I then explain the concept of “the zipless fuck” from the book The Fear of Flying. That’s where two people meet, immediately have sex, and then go their separate ways. No buying of drinks, or lunch, etc., just immediate sex with a stranger you’ll never see again. That’s they only “free sex” there is. Everything else involves an investment of some kind, even if it is only time (time, our most valuable commodity), which is clearly payment; just not in cash.
Anyone who doesn’t understand this simple truth needs some education in economics.