I know I was busy last week, but if you asked me to tell you what I did I would mostly draw a blank. Oh, I worked some and wrote some and helped friends some, but it was for the most part composed of such a host of little things that none of them actually stood out…except for Wednesday night, which was one of those lovely multi-hour duos in which everything goes just perfectly and one retires later with a deep sense of satisfaction and the feeling that all is right in one’s world. On Sunday Jae and I rode on her motorcycle with Dykes on Bikes at the front of Seattle’ Pride parade; we then walked back along the route and marched all the way again with SWOP Seattle. After that we floated about all afternoon with friends and went home tired and happy. I would’ve loved to post a picture of Jae & I on the bike, but she vetoed the ones I didn’t veto until there were none left for me to use; I therefore went with this one of me with a friend (who shall remain nameless) who decided to go to Pridefest in drag. And though my friend is a great guy and an ally to sex workers, this shot kind of symbolizes what Pride has become; it’s gone from a counterculture celebration thumbing its nose at The Establishment, to an Establishment celebration welcoming “respectable”, monogamous, vanilla gay folk with straight jobs to the big table while largely excluding all the queers who still deserve the name (including trans people, kinky folk and polyamorists) and actively ignoring sex workers. So yeah, Pride is pretty fake and commercial now, but I enjoy Christmas despite its commercialization as well. And now that picket-fence gay people have their state-approved marriage, perhaps they’ll no longer be able to put off the other sexual minorities they’ve been throwing under the bus for the last decade and a half.
Archive for June, 2015
Diary #261
Posted in Diary, tagged activism, bisexuality, LGBT rights on June 30, 2015| 11 Comments »
Back Issue: June 2012
Posted in Miscellaneous, tagged blogging on June 29, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Nobody ever sees them come or go, and nobody knows where they sleep or work; the high cost and low availability of hotel rooms at such events has no effect on these mysterious harlot nomads, who move like shadows, live in invisible tents and caravans and then vanish into the dust like Bradbury’s Autumn People until the next mega-competition. – “Broken Record”
In these retrospectives, I’ve sometimes mentioned the style of the columns, the way they “feel” to me when reading or referencing them. And by the time June 2012 rolls around, they feel completely “normal” to me; I don’t imagine these would read a lot differently if they were written today. When I refer back to an essay from this period, I often think, “Damn, that was that long ago?” because I clearly remember writing or posting it. I can remember details of nearly every column this month, the last before the weekly schedule settled into the form it would occupy until just a few months ago. Oh, the monthly patterns
still persisted; this month’s harlotography was “Rhodopis“, its fictional interlude “A Haughty Spirit“, its favorites “My Favorite TV Dramas” and “My Favorite TV Comedies“, and its holidays “The Birth of a Movement“, “Father’s Day” and “Litha“; there was also a Q & A column and the longer answer to a more complex question in “Coming Out“.
With my second anniversary coming up, the subject of blogging itself was on my mind; “Quite Contrary” and “How Not To Get Your Comments Posted” are on that topic. “The Odor of Socks“, “First They Came for the Hookers…“, “Willful Ignorance“, “Imagination Pinned Down“, “Yellow Fever“, “The Schizoid State“, “The Swedish Cult” and “Broken Record” are all looks at prohibitionists or their tactics, and “Reframing” is on a closely-related topic. Rounding out the month: a new entry in my “Hall of Shame“; a comparison of life-traumas with landforms (“Driskill Mountain“); a discussion of how American political parties are simply a case of “Pick a Color“; an explanation of how prohibition leads to “The Suppression of Virtue“; and a reminiscence on my lifelong love of astronomy and space travel in “Ad Astra“.
Links #260
Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Obituary, Tyranny, tagged acting, cops, LGBT rights, United Kingdom, video on June 28, 2015| 3 Comments »
PFFFT-FRACK! POP—SPROING-GING – Don Martin
Today’s the 46th anniversary of the Stonewall Riot, the beginning of the gay rights movement; I’ll say more about that in my column for Tuesday (and I think you’ll like the picture). But today’s video is from Jesse Walker, and the links above it are from Saladin Ahmed, Skye, Franklin Harris, Mistress Matisse and Walter Olson, in that order.
- As one does.
- The artificial leaf.
- R.I.P. Patrick Macnee.
- How many people have cops murdered this year?
- An alphabetical listing of Don Martin’s sound effects.
From the Archives
- Cops, cell phones, menstruation, poop, big government, super powers, Hello Kitty, censorship, socks and the police state.
- “Pleasures of the Harbor”, “Nobody’s Sweetheart”, “Down in the Alley”, “The Grisettes Song” and “Sempre Libera”.
- Does the New York Daily News have editors qualified to recognize an incoherent mess when they see it?
- FBI myth: crack experts at hunting dangerous criminals. FBI truth: lazy pickers of low-hanging fruit.
- Ugly bandwagon-jumping hastens the day when the public is sick of “sex trafficking” nonsense.
- People rotting for decades in prison on bogus “sex trafficking” charges won’t be laughing.
- Cop defines sex worker as “a person who has been probably raped at age 8 if not earlier”.
- Kissing, government, cops, headlines, death, umlauts, bureaucrats & more.
- Should be pasted to forehead of everyone who believes in magic formulae.
- Using “trafficking” myth to restrict migration isn’t usually so transparent.
- It’s such a pleasure to see someone admit this in the mainstream media.
- Selling Sex: Experience, Advocacy and Research on Sex Work in Canada.
- How little you’d have to change to make this about the war on whores.
- Why can’t Tom Flanagan see the moral panic is already well underway?
- Company which uses exploited labor moralizes about one that doesn’t.
- Sex workers don’t deserve to be stigmatised & don’t want to be pitied.
- Idiot complains job program helps women find lucrative, flexible work.
- A short biography of Marie Duplessis, the real “Lady of the Camellias”.
- FBI helps cops harass coffee shops because the baristas wear bikinis.
- Tanzanian police torture, rape and assault sex worker, among others.
- Silvio Berlusconi sentenced to 7 years for unproven victimless crime.
- The ridiculous things that constitute “trafficking” in the Netherlands.
- There were a few Magdalene Laundries in the United States as well.
- The inevitable result of letting “authorities” investigate themselves.
- Christopher Ryan corrects Hugo Schwyzer on “social construction”.
- A prime example of Americans’ criminal ignorance about sex work.
- Politician pretends closing a red-light district will “end prostitution”.
- New Zealand tells Uncle Sam where he can stick his “report card”.
- Why do amateurs care if pros do something better than they do?
- If you thought ultrasound requirements for abortion were bad…
- Jezebel swallows the “trafficking town” myth like a big, slimy…
- How “Gay, Inc” abandoned anyone who isn’t “normal” enough.
- Try to imagine an editorial like this in an American newspaper.
- Some choice words for that “sex working grandmothers” story.
- In which danah boyd takes a few more steps toward the light.
- How service disputes are handled when a profession is legal.
- I do keep telling you that the “gypsy whores” myth is bogus.
- New Jersey gets an early start on “gypsy whores” hysteria.
- How can I make sure my escort experience is enjoyable?
- Gee, I can’t imagine why the police took these paintings.
- Sex workers are dehumanized by calling us “networks”.
- Frantic pearl-clutching over sugar babies from Jezebel.
- More hysteria over structural sex ray contamination.
- Tracy Quan on strange and unpleasant bedfellows.
- The Czech Republic creates a sex work bottleneck.
- Never call the cops for any reason whatsoever.
- A 3000-word mound, reeking to high heaven.
- DA willfully lies about exonerated prisoner.
- Archaeologists discover an ancient brothel.
- Why Gabriela Leite likes the word “whore”.
- Whores leave cooties in rented beds.
- A revival of the Myth of the Wanton.
- My views on a certain video.
- R.I.P. Richard Matheson.
- Pimp cops of the week.
- The bus trip from Hell.
In the News (#550)
Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged A Tale That Grew in the Telling, Above the Law, agency denial, brothels, Buttons Bags & Banknotes, Canada, Challenge, Chauvinism, Check Your Premises, cops, dirty, Do As I Say, end demand, Florida, hysteria, Minnesota, Mumbo Jumbo, Neither Addiction nor Epidemic, neofeminism, O Canada!, Ohio, porn, psychology, rape, sex rays, Surplus Women, surveillance, Texas, Think of the Children!, underage, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers on June 27, 2015| 5 Comments »
“Show us your humanity!” is more belittling and damaging than “Show us your tits!” – Conner Habib
Because ordinary English words can emit sex rays, too!
After being taken out of his classroom for two months, a famous Los Angeles teacher, Rafe Esquith, is filing a claim against the L.A. Unified School District…Esquith…was removed from the classroom and put on paid leave…while the district investigates him for misconduct…[because] he made a joke to his class that prompted a complaint from another teacher…that if the class couldn’t raise enough money for their Shakespeare play then they might have to perform some of it naked, like the king in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn…Superintendent Ramon Cortines [said] that the inquiry includes “serious issues that go beyond the initial investigation”…Esquith is well-known and renowned globally. H e is the recipient of the president’s National Medal of Arts and is the only K-12 teacher to receive that award. Many of his books, such as Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire, are bestsellers…
A former police chief, an attorney and six other area men are facing gross misdemeanor charges of soliciting prostitution…following a sting…Baxter Police Chief Jim Exsted…said the operation…is the first step toward uncovering the major players in sex trafficking in the Brainerd lakes area…
The idea that a Backpage sting could “uncover the major players” in anything is so hilariously stupid it’s almost unbelievable. But down in Florida, it’s a bit different:
A woman is facing a felony prostitution charge after she was found in a hotel room with a Tallahassee Police Department sergeant…Afton Chewning…was found with 49-year-old TPD Sgt. Brian Davis in a Days Inn motel room…Davis turned himself in…on a misdemeanor charge of solicitation…[and] has filed a plea of not guilty…
Felony for her, misdemeanor (which he’ll certainly escape) for him. Nice.
Four sex traffickers who brought more than 50 Hungarian women into the country and sold them as part of their highly lucrative vice empire…in…London are facing years behind bars. Most of the victims came into the country voluntarily to work in the sex industry, promoted themselves on adult websites and kept half of their earnings…
A Tale That Grew in the Telling
This story on another creepy facial-recognition surveillance tool contains the following incredible claim: “In the United States, more than 800,000 children are reported missing every year, and nearly half end up living on the streets. Seventy percent will become sex trafficking victims, most within their first 72 hours of living on the street…”
Chillicothe, Ohio…has crept…into headlines…[as] the place where women go missing and wash up dead. In little over a year, at least six women have disappeared from the town of only 21,000. Four of their bodies have been found, almost all of them dumped in creeks or streams flowing away from the town…Most of them were hooked on drugs, and many moonlighted as prostitutes to fund their addictions…Some of them even knew one another. The similarities between the victims and the crime scenes have Chillicothe terrified that a serial killer is on the loose…
Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic
In a new book, Sex Addiction: A Critical History, New Zealand academics Barry Reay, Nina Attwood and Claire Gooder claim that porn addiction is mythical; a product of “social opportunism, diagnostic amorphism, therapeutic self-interest and popular cultural endorsement”. Reay argues that there’s little scientific basis for the classification of porn use as an addiction. Instead, our sex-negative culture, click-bait media and flourishing therapy industry have combined to create a fanciful and frightening condition…
Conner Habib has written year’s best essay about prohibition so far:
I’ll refer to anti-sex-work and anti-porn campaigners here…as “anti-sex bigots”…because sex is what makes sex work so special for them. Sex makes this line of work a singular profession, mystically distinguished from other jobs. But…there is no substance to their arguments. Their tactics are strung together not with understanding or data, but with hate. Their bigotry is visceral, and their goals are clear:
1. Distort and destroy consent.
2. Create a framework of good vs. evil.
3. Cherry-pick voices.
4. Play the victim while holding the power.
5. Create apocalyptic urgency.
This list might sound like an exaggeration to outsiders. To sex workers, it’s exhaustingly and overwhelmingly familiar…
Apparently it isn’t just whores who have the power to grant demons “permission”:
Pat Robertson…told a woman her son’s “hatred and mental issues” might be brought on by demons, which in turn were brought on because she brought a Ouija board home one time. “You can open the door to demons…There was one lady I heard about who was demon-possessed [because]…she had gone to an X-rated movie and done all these sex things”…
Tits and Sass has a pretty good rundown of the key players in the recriminalization of sex work in Rhode Island. Well worth your time on the principle of “Know thine enemy”.
O, Canada! (All Traffick, All the Time)
At least Canadian media have the sense to put “rescue” in scare quotes:
Windsor police “rescued” two sex workers from harmful situations as part of a provincewide investigation into the sex trade…On June 17-18, human trafficking and vice units from more than 20 different police services across Ontario investigated whether sex workers were involved in human trafficking or exploitation…This latest investigation was the third phase of Operation Northern Spotlight, which is designed to open up lines of communication between police and sex workers…
Buttons, Bags & Banknotes (#423)
Bindel can’t possibly be as delusional as she pretends to be; her slipshod list of “pimp lobby” members proves that. So what is she really up to?
Julie Bindel is…now raising money for a book she’s writing, to…“outline the emergence of a powerful lobby — the sex workers’ rights movement — that works in favour of a total decriminalisation of the sex industry”…Bindel’s project is…part of anti-sex-work eradicationists’ ongoing drive to paint all sex workers speaking out for their rights as pimps and punters in disguise. (A reporter who attended one of Bindel’s talks at a Stop Porn Culture conference last year wrote that her “presentation on ‘the politics of the sex industry’” was “a succession of tabloid-style personal attacks on pro-sex industry activists, academics, escorts, and performers, complete with photos seemingly lifted without permission from their social-media profiles”)…
Hortense Mancini
Posted in Biography, Harlotography, History, tagged bisexuality, Catholicism, courtesans, France, infidelity, Italy, marriage, naturalness, pragmatism, United Kingdom on June 26, 2015| 1 Comment »
How infinitely one of Your own Sex ador’d You, and that, among all the numerous Conquest, Your Grace has made over the Hearts of Men, Your Grace had not subdu’d a more intire Slave. – Aphra Behn
Some women are whores out of necessity, some by circumstance and some by nature, but Hortense Mancini carried whoredom in her blood. She was an especially wild, bold and lusty whore from a family of whores, and a number of her descendants followed in her footsteps. The fact that she, her family, her clients and her lovers were all noble as well does not change her essential whorishness, as we shall see; it did, however, ensure that her assignations, adventures and escapades would be recorded for posterity.
Hortense (or as her father called her, Ortensia) was born in Rome on June 6th, 1646; she was the fourth of five daughters borne by Girolama Mazzarini to her husband, Baron Lorenzo Mancini, who dabbled in astrology and black magic and died rather suddenly in 1650. Fortunately, Giraloma’s older brother Giulio had joined the clergy, become active in politics, and risen to the rank of both cardinal and chief minister to Louis XIV of France (where he was known as Cardinal Mazarin); she therefore packed up her brood and moved them to Paris, where she hoped their powerful uncle would find them rich and influential husbands. And that he did; Laure married Louis de Bourbon, duc de Vendôme; Olympe married Eugène-Maurice of Savoy-Carignano; Marie was the first love of the young Louis XIV, but was married off to Prince Lorenzo Colonna of Italy; and Marie Anne married Maurice Godefroy de la Tour d’Auvergne, duc de Bouillon. But Hortense was the most beautiful and most favored by her uncle, so it’s unsurprising he turned down the suit of the penniless Stuart who was only a few months later restored to the throne of England as Charles II. The cardinal then offered Charles a dowry of 5 million livres to make Hortense Queen of England, but Charles refused; this, however, does not mean he never got to bed the girl he was so enamored with; he just had to wait a few years.
Three months before her 15th birthday, Hortense was married off to Armand Charles de La Porte, Duc de La Meilleraye, one of the richest men in Europe; unfortunately, his miserliness and prudishness matched his wealth and he was also mentally ill. Among his more bizarre behaviors were searching Hortense’s room for hidden lovers before locking her in at night, having his maidservants’ front teeth knocked out to make them unattractive, and vandalizing art to eradicate the genitals of human figures. But this doesn’t mean he was uninterested in sex with his wife; within five years she had borne him four children. Still, one can only imagine the dreariness of sex with such a man; sometime in 1666 she began a lesbian affair with Sidonie de Courcelles, and when he discovered them he sent them both to a convent (from which they escaped after tormenting the nuns for a while). Finally, her brother helped her to escape her awful husband just a week after her 22nd birthday; he hired an escort to take her to Rome, where she moved in with her sister Marie (now the Princess Colonna). King Louis was still very fond of Marie, and as a favor to her he granted Hortense an income of 24,000 livres. She also became the mistress of the Duke of Savoy, whom her uncle had turned down as a suitor ten years before; he gave her a house, where she lived until his death in 1675. At that point, two things happened: the Duke’s jealous widow evicted her, and her husband managed to get a judgment freezing all of her income, including the royal pension.
Hortense was desperate; she only knew one way to get money, and nobody wanted to cross her powerful and vindictive husband. In stepped Ralph Montagu, the English ambassador to France; he secured her passage to England (she made the voyage in male drag) and an introduction to her former suitor, Charles II…and Hortense did the rest. By the summer of 1676 she had displaced Louise de Kerouaille as chief mistress, securing thereby an income of £4,000 (English money, inaccessible to her husband). His Majesty did not much mind her lesbian affair with Anne, his 16-year-old daughter by Lady Castlemaine (except for the time they had a fencing match in their nightgowns in St. James’s Park); her affair with Louis I of Monaco, however, was another thing entirely. He even cut off her income, and though he relented on the money less than three days later, he did not restore her to her position (which was again taken up by Louise de Kerouaille).
History does not have much to say about Hortense’s lovers after the King, except for a lesbian affair with the writer Aphra Behn. After Charles’ death her income was continued by his brother James II, whose wife Mary was her cousin; even after James was deposed in 1689, Queen Mary II continued to support her (though at a lower level). She spent her time running a salon in her home, and died of drink (or suicide, depending on whom one believes) on November 9th, 1699; she was 53 years old. Her long-estranged husband then added a creepy epilogue to her story by claiming her body and taking it around France for months before finally allowing it to be buried in the tomb of her uncle, Cardinal Mazarin.
Back in the first paragraph I mentioned that several of Hortense’s descendants followed in her footsteps. Her son, Paul Jules de La Porte, duc Mazarin et de La Meilleraye, had two children, a son and a daughter. The son, Guy de la Porte, had a great-granddaughter who married Prince Honoré IV of Monaco in 1777 and thus became the ancestress of the current Prince. But the daughter, Armande, married Louis de Mailly, Prince d’Orange and became the mother of five beautiful daughters, of which four would later become mistresses to King Louis XV of France; she herself became the mistress of the King’s chief minister, the Duc de Bourbon. For some women, whoredom is only skin deep; some have it in their blood, and others are whores to the bone. But Hortense Mancini was a whore down to her genes, and I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that many of her descendants are still plying the trade in one way or another to this day.
Purely Sexual
Posted in Perception, Q & A, tagged infidelity, marriage, psychology, yin and yang on June 25, 2015| 6 Comments »
I recently started dating a man who talks about marrying me, but prefers open relationships. I get that men like variety, but what I don’t understand is what is the wife or girlfriend there for? If men want to connect with a new soul and crave such connection, what makes me any more sexually special than the next new soul he connects with?
Most men, and many women, don’t need to “connect with a soul” to be interested in sex with someone, and desire for sex outside of one’s primary relationship doesn’t usually result from “craving a connection”; most often, it’s just plain sexual attraction. When I was married to Matt, he would sometimes hire professionals while he was traveling; I also enjoyed some of the sex I had with clients or with other whores, and on a few occasions we had threesomes with girls either he or I (preferably both) found attractive. But none of those trysts were motivated by the kind of connection we had with each other; they were just sexual, and therefore posed no threat to our relationship. Eventually, he lost interest in me sexually, but that wasn’t due to another woman; furthermore, we still have a strong emotional bond and care very much for one another despite no longer having a sexual relationship. The inconvenient fact is that sexual desire isn’t directly linked to emotional connection; at the beginning of a relationship they usually are, but in the majority of cases it doesn’t stay that way for more than a few years. Every woman would like to believe she’ll always be the one her husband is most sexually attracted to, but that’s not usually the way it happens; the attraction which inspired him to choose her as his primary partner is emotional and/or spiritual, and may grow stronger even as his lust for her weakens with time and familiarity. Really, there’s nothing wrong with that; it’s why many an elderly man still deeply loves his wife long after her physical charms have faded. In short, it’s entirely possible that your man may find another woman he finds more sexually attractive than you, but it’s highly unlikely that would in and of itself present any serious threat to your bond with him.
(Have a question of your own? Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)
In the News (#549)
Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged Above the Law, agency denial, Backpage, cops, Crying for Nanny, dirty, Dysphemisms Galore, Florida, Follow Your Bliss, hysteria, Illinois, Indiana, Innocence Never Had, language, Madonna/whore, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Orleans, New Zealand, Passive Voice, porn, rape, Rough Trade, sex rays, Sex Rays (updates), streetwalkers, stripping, Surplus Women, The Public Eye, Theatrics, Torture Chamber, Traffic Circle, underage, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers, Wisconsin on June 24, 2015| 3 Comments »
We all know that a bullet doesn’t leap out the barrel of a gun of its own volition. When law enforcement departments tie themselves up in shibari-style grammatical knots to imply that it did, they only undermine their own credibility even further. – Rhiannon Starr
…A…jury found Rajat Sharda guilty…of sexually assaulting a woman in August 2013 after the on-duty officer came across the woman and her boyfriend having sex in a vehicle…Judge David Ricciardone sentenced him…to 5 to 7 years of imprisonment, followed by ten years of probation…
A jury…found [Terry Speaks] guilty of killing and dismembering a stripper he lured from a New Orleans French Quarter bar along with his ex-girlfriend…Margaret Sanchez…the couple lured her from the club where she was working, killed her, cut her up and then drove the body parts to Mississippi where they dumped the pieces. [Jaren] Lockhart’s head, lower legs and left thigh washed up on…beaches in June 2012, triggering an investigation that eventually led authorities to Speaks and Sanchez. Sanchez’s trial has not yet been scheduled…
Here’s a profile of sex worker Kitty Stryker, in Cosmopolitan of all places. Better yet, it’s part of a continuing series. Hey prohibitionists: We’re winning. And there’s not a damned thing you can do about it.
This wouldn’t “shock” anyone with the approximate timidity of a sheep, especially considering it’s at least the third example we’ve seen of this same inane gimmick:
Those who approached what appeared to be a working vending machine…were in for a surprise when they found it filled with an image of two young girls available for purchase. Rather than candy or soda, the machine contained informational fliers about sex trafficking in Milwaukee as part of an awareness campaign…called “Children Are Not For Sale.” The fliers highlighted warning signs to look for…Last year’s campaign, called Unlucky Thirteen, was named after the average age of trafficking victims…[a nearby prohibitionist vomited out]…”If you see something, say something” [and] “Milwaukee has been considered a hub for human trafficking”…
Gary is essentially a suburb of Chicago; “cross-border trafficking of prostitutes” therefore actually means “escorts driving across town”:
The Lake and Cook County sheriffs announced a joint initiative Friday to end cross border trafficking of prostitutes between Chicago and Gary. Sheriff John Buncich and Cook County Sheriff Thomas J. Dart said…they have formed a task force to arrest pimps who shuttle sex workers among clients in the Indiana-Illinois border…Dart singled out Backpage for allowing its classified advertising website…to be used in Indiana and Illinois for illegal activity. He said human traffickers use the Internet to lure women into prostitution and force them to set up Facebook pages to lure their friends as well…
Yes, that’s the “Facebook pimps” myth again.
Three [guards] at an Alabama county jail were caught coercing female inmates into nude dancing for them in exchange for doughnuts and cell phones…this…seems to be merely the latest in a string of indignities and abuses—some fatal—inflicted on prisoners at Alabama county jails. Madison County is facing three federal lawsuits filed by the families of former inmates who died while in custody….of conditions that shouldn’t be fatal: gangrene, a broken bone, and constipation…Sexual abuse, either at the hands of [guards] or simply ignored by them, also seems to be a major problem…
I’m honestly not sure why this was controversial; nobody can deny it’s true:
…Bree Olson was…a Penthouse pet and the star of hundreds of adult movies…she posted [this] admonition to aspiring porn stars on Twitter…[many] adult performers…applauded Olson’s message…But it also generated some controversy…Olson insists that she has no problem with the porn industry itself, and that her experiences there were largely positive…the worst part…is…that…sex workers are frequently the target of discrimination, even long after they’ve left the industry…
Another mainstream article tearing down “sex trafficking” hysteria, this one from a sex worker:
…It is well documented that one of the largest and most conservative lobbies in Washington—Shared Hope International—is behind much of the so-called anti-trafficking policy in the U.S., policy with politically and socially vested interests in conflating sex work with sex trafficking. It is no secret, of course, that the religious right opposes prostitution on purely moralistic grounds. Regressive ideologies of gender and sexuality contribute to the belief that prostitution is moral bankruptcy for women and, furthermore, that Godly salvation is the only path to “restoration.” As a result, sex workers—and other so-called sexually deviant women, often poor women—are scapegoats for anxieties surrounding sex and sexuality more generally. Perhaps less well known is the link between lobbyists, anti-trafficking non-profits, allocations of federal grant money for academic research, and the subsequent propagation of sexual danger narratives…
Imagine American cops making a statement like this:
Children as young as 12 are working in a hidden Auckland sex scene, according to new research…none of them are protected by the Prostitution Law Reform Act and they often work in unsafe circumstances. Natalie Thorburn interviewed 10 underage sex workers for her Masters of Social Work (MSW) at the University of Auckland…Some of her participants had parents that had been suicidal or mentally ill and others claimed they were abused by the organisations set up to help them, including claims of sexual assault…Allegations of underage prostitution in Auckland have been made in the past…Police said they treated such allegations seriously but could not find any underage prostitution. “The reality is we can find no evidence to support that child prostitution is happening, anywhere, at this point in time,” said Counties Manukau West Area Commander Jason Hewett…
Police in the United States have fatally shot 455 people so far this year. The phrase they would use is that 455 officer-involved shootings occurred. That term is so ubiquitous that it even has its own acronym: OIS. It’s vile to reduce the loss of a life to three euphemistic letters. However, it’s not the only strange language in many press releases from US police departments. Certain rhetorical devices are frequently used to deflect attention away from officers who shoot civilians…Three linguistic sleight-of-hands are wheeled out with wearisome predictability. The first is suggesting the victim is to blame…The second…is to avoid explicitly stating that a police officer fired the fatal shot…The third…is to describe the gun as if it acted independently of an officer…D. Brian Burghart, the founder of Fatal Encounters…agrees. “The grammar of officer-involved homicides is Orwellian. It’s amazing the gymnastics these cops and media will perform to make the officers passive actors in these dramas”…
Ignorance of the law creates train wrecks like this:
A group of [self-declared] teen sex trafficking victims are appealing the dismissal of their lawsuit against Backpage.com…the Communications Decency Act immunizes Web services companies from liability for crimes by users…[but] the plaintiffs’ [lawyers]…allege that Backpage…violated a host of laws…the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other digital rights advocates…[pointed out] that requiring Backpage to face the lawsuit would cause online platforms to become “more expensive, more restrictive, and ultimately less available for individual expression”…
Who are the “sex traffickers” again?
A 25-year-old male “transporter” with all of three days on the job, and no real background check. And a 17-year-old girl who wound up in foster care partly because she had fallen victim to forced prostitution. When the eight-hour drive was over, the [girl] had been victimized yet again, and the driver was under investigation for rape…Our Kids, the organization that oversees foster care and adoption services in Miami-Dade and Monroe counties under contract with the Department of Children & Families, declined to discuss the 17-year-old, whose case was being managed by the Family Resource Center, an Our Kids subcontractor…the man…got his job…partly upon the recommendation of another FRC employee, a case worker, to whom he is related…
Diary #260
Posted in Diary, tagged activism on June 23, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Last week was, in a word, intense. From Wednesday morning until Saturday evening I barely stopped at all, but absolutely none of it was bad; I spent a lovely evening with a new friend, learned a couple of things about myself, got a makeover, picked up a new skill, and then spent Sunday evening unwinding. In fact, I unwound so successfully that I let my Links column go up incomplete yesterday; it’s not something I generally allow to happen, but this week should be less hectic (though I’d welcome a few more dates to fill it in some!) This is as good an opportunity as any to call your attention to SWOP-Seattle’s sex worker variety show, coming up in only four weeks; I’m going to be the emcee and I’m excited to be introducing a few ladies you may know, including our headliner Kaytlin Bailey and my very own girlfriend Jae. All in all, things are picking up nicely, and should be in full swing by the time I leave for Oklahoma around July 26th. Remember, if you’d like to see me on that trip you only have a few weeks left to contact me!
Links #259
Posted in Current Events, History, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Tyranny, tagged animals, California, cops, drugs, France, genitalia, Michigan, New York, Ohio, politicians, South Dakota, United Kingdom, video on June 22, 2015| 1 Comment »
Eventually, the item believed to be Napoleon’s penis was bought in an auction… – Ishaan Tharoor
As so often happens these days, I got occupied last night and was unable to finish setting everything up by deadline. Sorry about that! The video below is from Mike Siegel, who also contributed “accidentally”; Radley Balko gave us “headline”, Skye “transit”, Lenore Skenazy “camping” and Popehat “call out”.
- Headline of the week.
- New York’s shadow transit system.
- The beginning of the end of pot prohibition.
- Cop murders teen for flashing his headlights.
- Cops have intense standoff with lawn ornament.
- Cops abduct children because the family was camping.
- Don’t accidentally call them, either. Or call out to them.
From the Archives
- Cops, Batman, carnivorous plants, altruism, bullies, surveillance, concrete, Scooby Doo, New Zealand, registries & Penn Jillette.
- Despite annoying visuals and a few clumsy phrases, an excellent argument against prohibition of sex work.
- I don’t know what’s more pathetic, Rachel’s idea of “big events” or her mathematical illiteracy.
- Cops, games, Florida, robots. language, kink, schools, science fiction & Soviet Funk.
- A teacher who describes note-passing as “scary”? The jokes write themselves.
- When this happens in India: media circus. In Sweden: {cricket sounds}.
- Dear unethical sex businesspeople: Stop videotaping clients, you idiots.
- “Pimp” myths used to justify Nevada’s draconian “sex trafficking” law.
- Debunking the moronic claim that sex work is immune to economics.
- Sex workers who espouse Marxism or misandry are self-defeating.
- Why you shouldn’t ask me to argue with individual prohibitionists.
- Amateurs refuse to understand that prostitution laws affect them.
- Woman miscarries after attack by two women’s rights champions.
- In which we learn that nail parlors are havens of “sex trafficking”.
- Why do so many politicians think sex overrides the Constitution?
- There is no magic formula which can protect a whore from a cop.
- Several criticisms of an especially-revolting “end demand” sting.
- US tries to pretend “Trafficking in Persons” report is apolitical.
- The “anti-prostitution pledge” is struck down in the SCOTUS.
- New York defines people as crime victims against their will.
- Tennessee moves to criminalize smoking during pregnancy.
- Another P411 security breach betrays 22 escorts to pigs.
- What about clients who really need a woman to orgasm?
- More cracks in the “sex offender” registration regime.
- Man dials 999 to complain about a prostitute’s looks.
- Authority figures use their influence to coerce sex.
- My two previous columns for the summer solstice.
- AHF unveils whore-shaming propaganda graphic.
- The trial of Franck Ribery and Karim Benzema.
- The campaign against Operation Choke Point.
- The prevalence of HPV has dropped by half.
- More evil clownishness from Rhode Island.
- The aftermath of Somaly Mam’s downfall.
- Researcher says there’s no “typical” client.
- Another excellent essay from Felicia Anna.
- A re-education camp by any other name…
- Support for “apostrophe laws” is waning.
- Noah Berlatsky on Chong Kim and Eden.
- Another of the TSA’s many pedophiles.
- The science of sexual assault via fraud.
- Meet the Fokkens and Diamond Men.
- Canadians heckle prohibitionist lies.
- Libertarianism happens to people.
- Lost erotic painting rediscovered.
- This is absurd on so many levels.
- Another warped view of touring.
- My visits to Tucson & Las Vegas.
- Still more fatal butt injections.
- The Naked Football Club.
- The danger of fast food.
- Rapist cops of the week.
- Do as I say, not as I do.
- A letter from Aella.
- The missing word.
- Anti-C36 rallies.
- Bacchus ladies.
Summer Solstice 2015
Posted in Holidays, tagged holidays, paganism on June 21, 2015| 3 Comments »
The apparent path of the sun will reach its northernmost point at 16:39 UTC today; this is the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere and the shortest in the Southern. Happy Litha, dear readers, and Blessed Be!
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