Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for June, 2015

In the News (#545)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 10, 2015| 6 Comments »

I’m sorry, barista. I need to give this latte back. I didn’t see any joy from you while making it.  —  Cathy Reisenwitz

Book Reviews

Thaddeus Russell reviews a book on sex work during the Alaska gold rush:

…From Saloons, Prostitutes, and Temperance in Alaska Territory, the independent historian Catherine Holder Spude’s book on the rise and fall of gold-rush Skagway, we learn that women…used the proceeds from selling sex to open brothels and purchase substantial tracts of land as well as hotels, saloons, and numerous houses…historians have found that in the late 19th century the average brothel worker received from one to five dollars for every “trick” they turned, earning in one evening what women who worked as maids, department store clerks, or teachers made in a week.  In 1916 the U.S. Department of Labor, concerned by reports that respectable women were being lured into “the Social Evil” by high wages, surveyed a broad sample of prostitutes and found that they earned an average of $40 per week, which was roughly double what white, male, unionized construction workers were making…most madams not only paid their employees far higher wages than they would find in any other employment, but also provided clothing, birth control, health care, legal assistance, housing, and meals.  Few American workers of either sex have ever enjoyed such benefits…

Get Out of the 19th Century Often?

Men who think they can “abolish prostitution” by such ham-handed tactics are delusional:

On 28 May, 2015, the Nepalese Army imposed a strict 8pm curfew on entering and exiting the central Kathmandu, Tundikhel field where over…1000 people are currently residing in tents following the 25 April 8.1 magnitude earthquake, which killed over 8000 people and left hundreds of thousands of people displaced…Citing concerns that the field would be patronised by “prostitutes and thieves”, the army erected razor wire fencing across the field’s only public access point, causing distress to many residents of the field…Commander Bishun also said that the army was concerned that “prostitutes may enter the field and attempt to ply their trade to family men during the night”…Bishun agreed to allow access to the camp if all the male residents attempting to enter agreed to undergo a test for drunkenness, provide army guards with a copy of their identification and/or their names and contact details…and could explain the relationship they had with all women accompanying them…

Uncommon Sense

The Swiss government says it is against outlawing prostitution or the buying of sexual services, but has proposed measures to better protect sex workers and to fight against human trafficking…Experience from abroad shows that a ban on prostitution is not the solution, the government said.  Studies from other countries have shown that this usually leads to the criminalisation of prostitutes or prostitution going underground. Complementary measures usually produce more success…The situation in Sweden and the United States, both of which have partially banned prostitution, remains difficult…

Finding What Isn’t There

You know why?  Because there is almost never any evidence.  You know why?  Because the people accused of “trafficking” are almost never actually criminals:

Baltimore has become a hub for human trafficking because of its interstate highways and proximity to major airports, city and state officials say.  But few human traffickers are arrested, and even fewer are convicted…police have made approximately 800 prostitution arrests a year on average…but…charged only 10 suspects with sex trafficking since January 2013…and prosecutors dropped all charges in eight of the cases.  The only conviction was on a separate charge…

Is there a large US city that doesn’t have an airport and interstate highways?

The Widening Gyre 

Ninja pimps with mind-control powers don’t appear as often in the Canadian folklore as in the American:

…one year after [London, Ontario] police said a recruiter was working high school hallways — parents are reaching out for help like never before.  An agency that helps women trafficked for sex in London says requests for help…are off the charts…police…work…to identify and build relationships with…“potential victims,” who include women and girls that officers believe are being forced to sell their bodies, though they may insist they’re doing so by their own choice.  Last year officers identified three times the number of victims they did the year before…Const. Jim Pottruff…said…“I don’t have any evidence…but I’ve been hearing about it and I believe it’s true”…

Between the Ears (#334) lovely stupid sex toy

…the Lovely [is] a sex toy that’s been touted as “the fitbit, but for your penis”…[it’s] a stretchy silicone ring, which attaches around the base of your penis.  It also has a vibrator tucked inside…The product can apparently collect all kinds of data about your lovemaking skills – after you’ve finished, the Lovely app connects to your smartphone and provides you with a report, containing information on how many calories you’ve burned, your top and average speed, and even the g-forces you’ve exerted on each other’s respective pelvises…

Not Good Enough

The pill pushers just won’t stop until they can sell an ineffictive “cure” for something that isn’t actually a dysfunction:

The drug industry’s decade-spanning search for a female equivalent to Viagra took a major step forward…as government experts recommended approval for a pill [claimed] to boost sexual desire in women…side effects [include] fatigue, low blood pressure and fainting…the…”female Viagra”…has been plagued for years by concerns of lackluster effectiveness and safety issues.  The FDA has rejected the drug twice since 2010…FDA’s experts acknowledged that flibanserin’s effect is not very strong…women taking [it] reported between 0.5 and 1 more sexually satisfying event per month, compared with women taking a placebo…

The expense and trouble of a daily pill that can cause fatigue & fainting for half an extra orgasm per month, and these bozos actually think that’s worth it? I wonder how much payola that took?  Meanwhile, Tracy Clark-Flory writes about responsive desire (like mine) and how Flibanserin fits into conversation about it.

Bootlickers (#414) 

Now he asks:

Law enforcement spent countless hours working to shut down coffee stands in Snohomish County where employees were engaging in prostitution, and to make a case against…Sheriff’s sergeant Darrell O’Neill, who is accused of providing information to bikini baristas about police stings in exchange for sexual favors…But was all the effort put in to take down one corrupt sheriff’s sergeant worth the effort?…

A Mound of Filth

Most of this is about the mound of money being shoveled down the “sex trafficking” toilet, but this particular passage’s brazen assertion that the “Dream Project” is intended to brainwash women is quietly horrifying: “Kathleen Winn, executive director of the newly formed Arizona Anti-Trafficking Network, said…the first step…is…getting the women to see themselves as victims, rather than women who willingly sold sex.  ‘They don’t self-identify as victims’, Winn said. ‘It really is an education (for the women)’…”  Winn has previously been quoted as saying that phones and computers are a “curse” because they hinder parents from totally controlling adolescent’s lives:  “We even try to break up Internet businesses…We are looking for ways…[to destroy] Backpage.com…”

Making It Up As They Go

What coffee stands are to Everett, massage parlors are to Bellevue:

Two Bellevue spas are the target of a new city ordinance designed to get unsavory or problem businesses closed or cleaned up…Jolee Spa and Factoria’s Sunnyday Spa both were deemed “chronic nuisances” by the Bellevue police, opening both up for future fines and potential prosecution.  The “chronic nuisance” law went into effect in April as a tool to clean up prostitution and drug activity…”Prostitution in our city is not going to be tolerated,” said Bellevue Police Deputy Chief Mike Johnson. “We understand there’s quite a bit going on, so we’re doing our best to combat that”…

Allowing the police to designate any business a “nuisance”; what could possibly go wrong?

Bait and Switch

Try not to get sick when you read the vile propaganda vomited up all over these reporters by Grady Judd of Polk County, Florida, and his accomplice Gary Borders of Lake County; remember, these are nearly all young men who were tricked into talking to cops pretending to be women just a few years younger than they are.  Despite the slander and character assassination, these men are not criminals of any kind and certainly not “child predators”, not even in Judd’s warped mind.

The Widening Gyre (#534) 

GOOD:  Snopes debunks the “teen job sex trafficking scam” rumor.  BAD:  In the process they quote the Polaris project, whose “sex trafficking” propaganda is every bit as absurd:

Are human trafficking rings using job interviews to lure college student through invitations to interviews for a summer job?  Almost certainly, no.  While human trafficking is a real (and serious) problem, its facilitators deliberately target populations of people whose absence is likely to go unnoticed for a time.  We could find no incidents wherein job interviewees were drugged, kidnapped, and forced into sex work.  Criminals tend to target people they believe won’t immediately be marked as missing…Jill Bauer, Rashida Jones, Ronna Gradus - Edited

The Pro-Rape Coalition (#543)

Here’s another article on the prohibitionist documentary Hot Girls Wanted, featuring quotes from my friends Endza and Mistress Matisse:

The documentary Hot Girls Wanted, an expose of the world of amateur porn produced by Parks and Recreation star Rashida Jones, has rattled some sex workers…who feel the film is a negative and inaccurate portrayal of the industry…”Hot Girls Wanted was…very obviously planned to fulfill an agenda…to make the sex industry look bad,” said writer and activist Mistress Matisse…Jones has been criticized further for comments she made while promoting the film…referring to porn as a negative experience for actresses that “aren’t getting any joy from it”…”What I and other sex workers would like is realistic coverage of our industry,” said Endza, a college student and actress in BDSM porn films…

Read Full Post »

Diary #258

Posted in Diary, tagged , , , , on June 9, 2015| 11 Comments »

bed of rosesWell, there are all kinds of things going on right now, but I can’t tell you about most of them because they’re sort of behind the scenes.  Suffice to say that I’m making some changes which should increase my income, and among those changes is training in a few specialized skills that I previously lacked.  I know, I’m a terrible tease; you’ll just have to watch Twitter or inquire discreetly if you’re dying to know (especially if you think you might be interested in more than an academic fashion).  I’m starting to firm up the schedule for my tour to Oklahoma; right now it looks like I’ll be leaving Seattle on Sunday July 26th, spending the night in Boise or therabouts, ending up in Denver on the 27th, moving on to Wichita on the 28th & arriving at my ranch on the 29th.  But that’s not by any means set in stone, and I’m not exactly sure when in August I’m coming back (though it’ll probably be the week of the 11th).  There are also some developments on the activism front: beside my trip to Vancouver this coming Saturday for the Red Umbrella March, Mistress Matisse and I visited with a reporter over dinner yesterday, and on July 19th SWOP Seattle will welcome Kaytlin Bailey for an appearance in our variety show at the Highway 99 Blues Club.  Also, just yesterday I received a thumb drive that Grace sent from home with my book on it; I’ll be starting to work on that again right away.  I’m sorry it has taken so long; as part of my apology, please accept this picture from my old escort website, taken when I was a mere 34 years old.  It was also on the drive Grace sent; perhaps if y’all are very nice to me I may share others.  Yes, that’s teasing again; I’m afraid I can’t help it.

Read Full Post »

Guest Columnist: Bo Jensen

Posted in Guest Columns, Perception, tagged , , , , on June 8, 2015| 15 Comments »

Bo Jensen is a Danish scholar in the history of prostitution; several years ago he was commissioned by a sex worker group to study the size of the Danish sex industry in order to counter prohibitionist propaganda that the industry was “rapidly growing”.  Regular readers know I’m skeptical about low estimates of the fraction of men who buy sex, but Jensen makes a reasonable case for his 3% regular client figure (about half of my usual estimate) if one assumes that the relatively low number of sex workers and high turnover estimate are also correct.

Denmark has experienced an angry and confrontational debate on prostitution during the last 10 years.  According to several public opinion polls, 80% of Danes who have taken a position are supportive to sex workers and believe that prostitution is a job, but 20% believe that prostitution is a problem for society that must be reduced and criminalized in some way.  That minority managed to get the Swedish model introduced by the government, though it had essentially no chance of passing; the sex workers’ organization SiO mobilized the Danish population so effectively that the government was forced to take criminalization off the table in 2012.  But during that period, the scale and growth of prostitution was a central theme in the debate; prohibitionists claimed that sex work in Denmark was booming, and the rescue industry contributed fake numbers to “prove” it.

According to prohibitionists, virtually every aspect of prostitution is in alarming growth:  Trafficking is growing, child prostitution is growing, street prostitution is growing, the number of rapes and deaths among sex workers are growing, the hazards associated with the job are growing.  It’s hard to separate the facts from the moral panic, so myths replace knowledge and democratic debate is sabotaged; this led the public to demand that the extent of prostitution should be measured by an independent research unit.  To that end, Parliament asked The Danish National Centre for Social Research (SFI) to measure the industry’s size; at the same time, SiO asked me to do the same.  Remarkably, the two investigations reached similar results; this means that Denmark now probably has the world’s most correct and detailed statistics on prostitution.  Most countries have miserable statistics on the subject; take Sweden, for example.  No one knows how many sex workers there are in Sweden or how many there were before clients were criminalized, which means that no one knows if the Swedish model has actually decreased prostitution.  Some German studies claim that there are 50,000 sex workers in the country, others that there are 400,000.  Great Britain has the same problem.  In many countries the debate and political decisions are guided by false figures created to cause panic and to maximize the funding for the rescue industry.

So let’s have a look at the Danish figures for 2007.  16% of all adult men admit to having paid for sex, but most of those contribute to only 3% of the turnover.  About 3% of all adult men in Denmark (roughly 56,000 men in all) are frequent customers who buy sex regularly for many years; these high rollers pay for sex once every third week on average, and each spends on the order of 2,000 € a year.  In total, they buy sex 1 million times during the year, which gives the Danish sex industry an annual turnover of approx. 100 million €.  A million client visits a year averages to 2800 clients every day; since there are about 800 women at work on any given day, they average 3.5 clients each.  And since each only works about a third of the day, there are about 2400 active sex workers in the workforce at any given time (plus something like 100 transgender or male sex workers).  The figures shows that on average, each sex worker has 22 regular clients; I believe that something like this must be the case all over the western world.  Danish sex workers do not have extravagant earnings; their income is only good if you take into account that they work merely 20 hours a week.  At the same time it is evident that the industry does not have such a big turnover that there are room for gigantic profits to shady pimps or traffickers as claimed in headlines.

The Danish sex industry has very high turnover; most sex workers are only in business for a few years, and many migrant sex workers are here for only for a few months.  Because of this, about 4000 women altogether did sex work in Denmark during 2007, though the work force averaged only 2400 women at a time.  This is very important to consider when calculating the true size of the sex industry in a country, otherwise the estimates come out much too high; EU countries have agreed to include prostitution in the calculation of GDP, and the estimates are all too high because they are calculated from the total number of women working in the course of a year rather than the number working at any given time (for Denmark, 4000 vs 2400).  Sex work is not rapidly growing in Denmark; there was dramatic growth in the industry from 1970 to 2000, but after 2000 there was stagnation, then a drop after 2007 due to the financial crisis.

To all those who say that prostitution is impossible to measure because it is clandestine, I have to answer:  Clandestine prostitution isn’t so clandestine, once you have the proper insight.  And the way to get that proper insight is to listen to sex workers and recognize them as the true experts on their own profession.

Read Full Post »

Links #257

Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , on June 7, 2015| 2 Comments »

This is an abomination.  –  Leo Lech

This week’s video is from my ex-husband, Matt; I did say you’d still be hearing his name!  The links above the video are from Susie Bright (“birds”), Radley Balko  (the next 3 below Susie’s), Jolene Parton (“car”), and Emma Evans (“shoplifter”).

From the Archives

Read Full Post »

In the News (#544)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 6, 2015| Leave a Comment »

The assumption made by [neofeminists] is that sex workers are blind automatons, blithely wandering from one rape to the next, too blinded by the overwhelming glare of the “male gaze” and too fuzzy and confused in their stupid whore brains to differentiate between consensual sex and a violent, unwanted encounter.  –  Clare Bowden

Acting and Activism 

Tits and Sass does a good guide to the most loudmouthed and ridiculous Hollywood “sex trafficking” fetishists, including Susan Sarandon, Meg Ryan, Ashton Kutcher, Jada Pinkett-Smith and of course Mira Sorvino.rapist-murderer cop Richard J Aguirre

Surplus Women 

The only reason this cop is on trial for the rape and murder of a sex worker 30 years ago is that he just couldn’t give up the habit:

Shortly after Richard J. Aguirre appeared in court…in his Franklin County rape case…he…was arrested by Spokane police for the murder of a prostitute in 1986…The one time Officer of the Year and 27-year veteran of the force in Pasco has been charged…with first-degree murder…bail is set at $500,000…Aguirre voluntarily submitted DNA during the recent rape investigation and the sample…matched…DNA recovered from the [earlier case]…police interviewed Lawrence Cole, who grew up with Aguirre…The two men apparently frequented bars and strip clubs and solicited prostitutes at least once…After a night of drinking, Cole reported that Aguirre said he “hit a woman” and “choked her”…And when Aguirre walked away “he thought she was still moving.”  Detectives investigating the case determined it was likely [Ruby] Doss and her killer got into a struggle inside a manure pit after they had sex…She ran more than 250 feet before she was hit in the back of the head and forehead with an object.  [She]…was then strangled and the suspect returned to the pit to hide her fur coat, wig and earrings…

Follow Your Bliss (#38)

A [former underage sex worker]…says a lawyer who was supposed to take her to a shelter for abused girls instead raped her at a posh Dallas hotel…a lawsuit filed by the girl’s mother…alleges that Michael Harssema was…“employed and/or volunteering for Traffick 911,” an anti-trafficking organization…Traffick 911 officials deny any connection with Harssema…

Train Wreck (#48)

Looks like Nigeria’s getting into the “asset forfeiture” racket, too:

The Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Special Task Team on City Cleaning and Management in Abuja has arrested 3,000 commercial sex workers in the last 90 days…[they] have been handed over to the Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB) for prosecution and rehabilitation.  The task team also arrested 2,534 street hawkers and beggars…and…impounded 4,790 commercial motorcycles, 883 [motor tricycles], 645 unpainted commercial vehicles and 84 illegal commercial buses…

The More the Better (#135)

As is so often the case in articles about brothels, this one dips into grotesquery.  Even so, it makes a few interesting points about how brothels like Sheri’s Ranch are still thriving while other, less competitive ones are dying off.

Monsters 

A teenager in India was allegedly forced to have sex with his own mother in an effort to “cure” him of being gay, Gay Star News reports.  According to LGBT Collective, a gay rights group in Telangana…there are more and more reports of “corrective rapes” being carried out by members of the victims’ own families.  Often families will handpick a cousin to carry out the act…

An Example to the West (#331)

Nicaragua’s Supreme Court has made sex workers official representatives of the government and the judicial system.  A pilot group of 18 sex workers have been provided with technical and legal training to try to manage the most common conflicts that arise in their line of work…The vice president of the Nicaraguan Judicial System, Marvin Aguilar…[said] “We are the only country in the world that treats sex workers as ‘judicial facilitators’…We do not put them in prison for the sexual work.  There are countries close to Nicaragua in which sex workers are sought after like any other criminal so to be sent to prison.”

Naked Truth (#346) Much Loved

A prostitution-themed film from Morocco that had its premiere at…Cannes…in May has set off a furor there…the government last week banned the movie from theaters, the female stars received death threats and a male actor was attacked with a knife…Much Loved, by…Nabil Ayouch, includes scenes of prostitutes in Marrakesh partying, speaking raunchy Arabic and servicing wealthy Saudi clients…The movie became the subject of protests outside Parliament in Rabat and of heated discussions on social networks in Morocco and France.  Conservative Muslims view Much Loved as scandalous.  Moderate Moroccans are offended that the film’s dark portrayal of their country was shown at a prestigious international film festival…

Catastrophic Consequences (#407) 

MSP Jean Urquhart speaks up for sex workers again:

…When the highly successful tolerance zones for street prostitution were abolished in Edinburgh…sex workers reported a 95% increase in violence over 12 months…it is hard to understand how…threatening the key witnesses to trafficking and coercion – the clients – with a sex-crime record if they come forward would help with investigating and prosecuting [sex trafficking]…There is little evidence that the criminalisation of clients even achieves its proponents’ aim of reducing demand for sex work…What sex workers tell us would actually protect them would be to ensure their labour rights, including the right to work in a shared premises, to eliminate stigma and discrimination against sex workers, and to decriminalise sex work.

New Excuse

Elizabeth Brown on the War on Whores as replacement for War on Drugs:

…the “War on Sex Trafficking” that the federal government is waging will fail, just as the “War on Drugs” has failed…just as giving local police and prosecutors an urgent mandate to fight drugs led mostly to the prosecution of low-level drug users and dealers rather than big-time drug traffickers, the fight against sex trafficking—plus federal funding to do so, contingent on arrests and convictions—sets up perverse incentives to treat everyday prostitution as sex trafficking.  All over the country, we’re now seeing what would have been deemed “vice” work reframed as human trafficking stings.  And who gets swept up in these stings?  Willing, adult sex workers.  Their would-be patrons.  Petty pimps…under the new banner of human trafficking even relatively minor crimes related to sex work can come with serious felony status, a sex offender registry requirement and a mandatory minimum prison term…

Held Together With Lies (#447)

It’s difficult to believe that anyone could take this idiocy, which only starts with that “35.8 million slaves” nonsense, seriously.  Oliver Twist!  “Potential victims”!  Nail salons!  Unfortunately, all this foolishness is used to justify something very serious: mass incarceration.

…the Modern Slavery Act…[increased] maximum custodial sentences…from 14 years to life and offenders with prior convictions for very serious sexual or violent offences face automatic life sentences. “It gives law enforcement more flexibility, more powers”…Home Office minister Karen Bradley says the government has “succeeded” in putting modern slavery at the top of the agenda and is “determined to eradicate it”…

Traffic Circle (#542)

Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post “Fact Checker”, continues to hammer at “sex trafficking” myths:

…The sex trade is an underground industry, so on what basis would the revenues from the trafficking of children…in the United States be calculated so precisely…as $9.8 billion?…a…graphic posted on the Internet by Shared Hope International…says it…[came from] a 2005 International Labour Organization report…But that report contains no mention of a $9.8 billion figure for…the United States…only a broad estimate of about $13 billion…for “forced commercial sexual exploitation” for 36 industrialized countries (of which the U.S. represents about 30 percent of the population).  ILO officials say they have never given a breakdown by country…it…is…a fantasy, unconnected to any real data…One could certainly say that the underground sex trade in the United States likely is worth more than a billion dollars, but it would be a serious mistake to conflate that with human trafficking…

Welcome to the Future (#543)

…trafficking is being used as a flimsy justification to stigmatise sex workers…Trying to stay as inconspicuous as possible means that these women are forced to take unnecessary risks with their safety, thereby increasing the likelihood that they will be victims of a violent crime.  When this point was raised to the Justice Committee by Laura Lee…she was wilfully humiliated, effectively called a pimp, threatened with legal action, told to have sex with disabled people for free and otherwise completely disregarded…

Read Full Post »

Aloha, Oy!

Posted in Current Events, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , on June 5, 2015| 1 Comment »

Why would a prostitute decide to be a witness and testify against a pimp if she’s only facing a violation?  – Keith Kaneshiro

As I explained a month ago, “Hawaii was the last American state to criminalize prostitution…and since then…[has] tried to make up for the late start by coming up with some of the most grotesque anti-whore shenanigans imaginable.”  I thought we had seen the worst last year, when Hawaiian cops brazenly petitioned to be allowed to keep the legal right to rape sex workers which had been enshrined for years in Hawaiian law until discovered by a justly-scandalized legislator.  But cops have the astounding ability of continually increasing their own level of barbarity, and a few weeks ago we heard that they had actually charged sex workers with sexual assaulting the cops who had in reality assaulted them:

…Lawyer Myles Breiner, who represented several of the women, told the Associated Press that in at least one instance an officer disrobed and then took the woman’s hand and physically placed it on his genitals. “They’re experimenting with the limits of the constitution,” said Breiner. “Sex assault in the fourth degree is a non-consensual touching of a sexual nature.  How can you say it’s not consensual when the officers are going into these establishments intending to be touched?”…

hero cops arrest dangerous womanNow, this should come as no shock to anyone who’s ever heard of any of the myriad instances in which cops charge their victims with “assaulting a police officer” for scratching a cop’s knuckles with their teeth while being punched in the mouth, bleeding on their assailant’s uniforms or falling on their feet after being pummeled to the ground.  What makes it especially revolting is that the cops blamed this odious stratagem on their being forced to give up the right to rape their victims:

…now that Hawaii cops can’t sleep with sex workers in order to make prostitution cases, they must rely on explicit conversation about the transaction.  But most massage parlor workers know not to be explicit in this way.  Instead, they may simply gauge the situation and then start in on sexual action without hashing out the details first—aka, without getting consent.  That’s what allows these enterprising cops to charge sex workers with sexual assault…

In other words, “let us sexually assault you or we’ll charge you with doing the same to us.”  Lovely.  Unfortunately for these disgusting thugs, most people won’t give sexual violence a free pass anymore, even when it’s cops perpetrating it; that’s one of the reasons prohibitionism has shifted to Swedish-flavored “rescue” nonsense and cops pretend to be targeting men (“pimps and johns”) when they are in actuality still mostly targeting women:

…Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney Keith Kaneshiro wrote that his office was dedicated to “maintain[ing] its focus on prosecuting those who profit from prostitution and has worked with prostituted persons to accomplish this goal”…In January…Kaneshiro boasted about how his office had increased prosecution of pimps and traffickers…[by] relying upon the state’s current prostitution statute to “give police the necessary leverage to influence a prostitute to testify against her pimp…If she’s facing a crime and if she might do jail time, she might have incentive to cooperate with law enforcement”…coercive criminal charging is…ineffective.  Most sex workers do not have pimps or traffickers…the popular conceit, that sex workers are lured into the industry as children and then forced to continue sleeping with men until they finally escape, is simply not borne out by empirical evidence…Massage parlor workers may simply have no pimp to “give up.”  And instead, when faced with considerable criminal charges, are being forced to name any friend who helped them, whether that person gave them a ride to work or babysat their children…

In other words, “going after the pimps” simply means arresting and charging more women.  When the tactics are too heavy-handed, as they are wont to be in Hawaii, a public outcry like the one that resulted in the repeal of the rape-right may result; that’s what happened again this time:

Sex assault charges were dismissed Wednesday against 16 women who were arrested…during a Honolulu police prostitution sting…The decision to drop the charges has many wondering if the Honolulu Police Department conducted the operation without consulting with the prosecutor’s office first.  One legal expert says media coverage may have led to the decision.  “They may have been on the same page as long as there were no news stories on it…” said…Law Professor Ken Lawson.  “Either way, based on the nature of the charges and the facts of the underlining case, it was going to be dismissed anyway”…”It seems that HPD keeps looking for opportunities to have sexual contact with [sex worker] targets”…said Defense Attorney Myles Breiner…[who] represents several of the women…

Lion & UnicornThe dropping of the charges doesn’t even end this ordeal for some of the women who “were in the country illegally. Deportation proceedings for these women are now underway…”  Of course, the “authorities” try to cast such deportation as “repatriation” instead; they pretend the women were “sex trafficking victims” who never wanted to come to the US in the first place, so that it’s a kindness to give them a free ride back to where they came from.  This is typical of the looking-glass logic of Prohibitionland, where choice is called “slavery”, persecuting women is “going after the men”, and a sleazy rapist is defined as the victim of his target.  And for whatever reason, Hawaii seems determined to embrace such insanity as its brand and standard.

Read Full Post »

East is East and West is West

Posted in Biography, Perception, Q & A, tagged , , , , , , on June 4, 2015| 7 Comments »

Although you go through great lengths to conceal your lesbian interest and proclivities, how do you deal with the compartmentalization psychologically and intellectually when you have a session with a client while knowing in your heart that you are a Lesbian?  Although you probably have always known for quite some time, what are the mental techniques that you employ while doing your job as an adult companionship professional to protect yourself emotionally but also give yourself an outlet to whom you really are?

I must admit to being rather confused, amused and befuddled by virtually every part of this question, and I don’t think I was alone; Cabrogal replied to the first part with, “If Maggie’s in a closet it’s a glass one surrounded by neon lights with a painting of Sappho on the side.”  And he’s completely right; I’ve never (not since graduating from high school, anyway) made even the slightest effort to hide my bisexuality, and wrote an entire column on the subject when this blog was barely two months old.  I’ve referred to it repeatedly, featured lots of pictures of beautiful babes, and otherwise advertised my interest in my own sex to at least the same degree in this blog as I have in real life for over 30 years.  I don’t think I could conceal my lesbian side any less if I went around wearing a T-shirt with “DYKE” on the back and a picture of Melissa Ethridge on the front.  However, I’m bisexual rather than wholly lesbian; I have no aversion to males at all, and in fact was married for 14 years to a very dear man to whom I will gladly give a freebie (if he is so inclined) every time we find ourselves in the same city as each other.  We can argue about exactly where I fall on the Kinsey scale, but it’s certainly no higher than 4; to say that I “know in my heart that I’m a lesbian” is simply not a reasonable approximation of the truth.

The questioner’s misunderstanding of all this could merely be a case of leaping without looking; he might simply be a new reader who didn’t peruse much of my back catalog before asking.  But the rest of the query is not so easily explained; it derives, I think, partly from a lack of understanding of the differences between male and female homosexuals, partly from a desire to cram reality into a Manichean duality that doesn’t actually describe it very well, and partly from an underestimation of the degree to which individuals can differ from one another.  Human sexuality is not like a standard light switch, which has two and only two positions; it’s not even like a dimmer switch, with an infinite number of subtle gradations along one linear path.  It’s much more like a faucet, in which two kinds of water can be mixed to produce many temperature gradations while the intensity of the flow can also have many levels.  In fact, if you can imagine a shower where the water can be directed to come out of either the lower faucet or the shower head or a movable nozzle or jacuzzi jets, that might be a model a bit closer to the truth.  Though modern Westerners  like to pretend that everyone falls into rigidly-defined boxes of “straight” or “queer” which they occupy from birth until death and never leave, the truth is that this does not adequately describe many, perhaps most, people’s sexuality.  Kinsey understood that there are many gradations from “totally queer” to “totally straight”, and though most men seem to fall toward one of the ends, a large fraction of women fall toward the middle.  Whether this is nature or nurture is hard to say; any sex worker can tell you that a lot of self-declared straight guys fancy transwomen, or crave being pegged, or otherwise display a fascination with penises that would seem out of place in the standard “all or nothing” interpretation of male sexuality.  And women are, if anything, even weirder; we can apparently float all over the Kinsey scale in response to stimuli or environment, so I might be queerer right now than I was in 2013, and much queerer than I was in 1993, but not quite as queer as I was in 1985.  The only “compartmentalization” that occurs in many people’s sexualities, and virtually all women’s, is that imposed by the individual or the society in which he or she lives.

shower in Ciragan Palace IstanbulFinally, though I obviously can’t speak for anyone else, I find the last part of the question to be highly overstated.  All sex workers have to have sexual contact with at least some clients they find unattractive; it’s only a matter of degree.  So while a straight escort might find only most of her clients unattractive, and a lesbian one might find nearly all of hers so, I hardly think that the latter is going to result in some special kind of emotional trauma requiring special techniques to overcome.  I’m sure that lesbian sex workers probably do get pretty sick of seeing guys after a while, but given that most sex workers burn out eventually I hardly think that represents a unique level of emotional trauma.  And though some people certainly identify as “queer” before anything else, I’m not one of them; I don’t think my relative preference toward male or female sex partners defines “who I really am” any more than does my preference for science fiction over “realistic” fiction, probably not as much as my preference for kinky sex over vanilla sex, and certainly nowhere near as much as my sense of self as an individual.

(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.)

Read Full Post »

In the News (#543)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 3, 2015| 12 Comments »

In its moral simplicity and willingness to exploit its subjects, [Hot Girls Wanted] ends up resembling the genre it aims to expose.  –  Susan Shepard

Do As I Say, Not As I Do 

“A [Merseyside, England] police sergeant [named David Gibson] has been charged with misconduct after allegedly engaging in a sexual act with a prostitute while on duty…”

The Pro-Rape Coalition Ava Taylor

…Hot Girls Wanted…looks at five young women who were recruited off of Craigslist by an “agent” in Miami, Florida named Riley from Hussie Models.  It was directed by Jill Bauer and Ronna Gradus, whose previous documentary Sexy Baby, looked at an alleged cultural shift in the sexual landscape that, the women claim, was caused by adult entertainment…Writing in Vice, Susan Elizabeth Shepard notes that the team’s new film is actually an exercise in offering “unexamined statements and vague intimations about how doing porn harms women and watching it warps men”…one of the documentary’s subjects, ex-performer Ava Taylor …oozed a sense of entitlement…she wanted to make money and get famous fast…the dressed down and bespectacled Ava…claims to be out of sex work…[she] is angry and combative, hurling blame at producers, her agent, and even the testing system for adult performers.  On one of her Twitter accounts, she has repeated how glad she is to be out, and moving on with her life…However…two months after Hot Girls Wanted premiered, Ava was back in Los Angeles shooting brand new porn scenes…[she also] currently offers escort services online…

It Looks Good On Paper

The national “safe harbor” law is just as useless and dishonest as the state ones:

The average sex-trafficking victim is a 13-year-old girl, often forced into the illicit business against her will and fed illegal drugs to keep her tethered to her pimp.  These children need housing, education, jobs and hope for a future — not a criminal rap sheet, says U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar…President Obama signed a law championed by Klobuchar that…creates financial incentives for states to pass laws that ensure minors sold for sex aren’t prosecuted, but are instead treated as victims…

Wise Investment

…The latest hit to companies who are actively anti-sex industry is a lawsuit against the payment processor Square.  Xbiz reports that attorney William McGrane is taking them to court with the claim that the 27 business categories in…“Prohibited Businesses” are being discriminated against and having their civil rights violated under the policy.  According to McGrane, the majority of the types…listed are either too vague to be valid or are legal businesses, making it illegal for Square to discriminate against them…

Policing for Profit

When the cops raided Ginnifer Hency’s home in Smiths Creek, Michigan…”they took everything,” she told state legislators…including TV sets, ladders, her children’s cellphones and iPads, even her vibrator.  They found six ounces of marijuana and arrested Hency for possession with intent to deliver, “even though I was fully compliant with the Michigan medical marijuana laws”…Hency, a mother of four with multiple sclerosis, uses marijuana for pain relief based on her neurologist’s recommendation.  She also serves as a state-registered caregiver for five other patients…[the] judge dismissed the charges against her.  But when she asked about getting back her property… “The prosecutor came out to me and said, ‘Well, I can still beat you in civil court.  I can still take your stuff’…the Michigan House Judiciary Committee [is] considering several bills that would make this sort of legalized larceny more difficult…Annette Shattuck, another medical marijuana patient…was [robbed of]…bicycles, her husband’s tools, a lawn mower, a weed whacker, her children’s Christmas presents, cash (totaling $85) taken from her daughter’s birthday cards, the kids’ car seats and soccer equipment, and vital documents such as driver’s licenses, insurance cards, and birth certificates…

A Procrustean Bed (#339)

Another jurisdiction officially classifies women as passive objects without agency:

[Chicago] officials have launched a new alternative program for men and women charged with prostitution…the new court would help connect the women – and sometimes men – connect with social services so they can turn away from prostitution…“and turn their lives around”…Cook County Public Defender Amy Campanelli said, instead of prosecution, defendants will get mostly treatment and help from social service agencies. “They will learn how to break their pasts, and cut all ties with those who have abused them, or dragged them into living lives of desperation”…

The Roof Caves In

The US government knew about the now-infamous deceptions and malpractice within organisations run by Somaly Mam for years prior to the media exposés…last year.  Even so, Washington continued to see her as a “positive force in the anti-trafficking effort”, despite evidence that medical care at her shelters was not available and that her…NGO, Afesip, had “mismanaged” funds…A cable titled Somaly Mam Under Microscope sent to the State Department from the embassy in Phnom Penh on May 8, 2012, shows that the embassy suspected as early as 2006 that a key claim repeated by Mam over the years – that her daughter was abducted in 2006 in revenge for an Afesip raid on a Phnom Penh brothel in 2004 – was false…

Welcome to the Future

News media used to just report news; now they allow propagandists to make bogus predictions of disaster:

From 1 June, it will be illegal to pay for sex in Northern Ireland…The Immigrant Council of Ireland and…Turn Off The Red Light…will…call for similar laws to come into force in the south immediately…[because]  counties south of the border will become “more attractive for pimps, traffickers and thugs”…

And then gin up fake “statistics” to support their own predictions:

Pimps and prostitutes are moving into the border counties as a crackdown on the sex trade in Northern Ireland comes into force, campaigners have warned. There has been more than a 50 per cent rise in online sex trade activity in counties Donegal, Cavan, Monaghan, Leitrim and Louth in recent weeks, according to a study by the Immigrant Council of Ireland…Brian Killoran…of the ICI…said the Border counties now face being used as a “safe haven” for sex traders in the absence of a similar ban by the Dublin government. “The initial indications are that those who run prostitution have been feeling the heat of Northern Ireland’s new laws even before they came into force and have been switching their operations to the south”…

Yes, they’re actually claiming the laws had effects reaching into the future.

Monkey Business (#449) 

More than a year after the starting fight for legal personhood for the research chimpanzees Hercules and Leo, the apes and their lawyers got their day in court…A decision could set a precedent for challenging…the captivity of other chimpanzees—and perhaps other species…New York assistant attorney general Christopher Coulston…argued that [the judge] was bound by the previous decisions of two appellate courts, which had ruled that other Nonhuman Rights Project chimps didn’t qualify for habeas corpus…Both those decisions are controversial.  In one, judges decided that habeas corpus didn’t apply because the chimp would be transferred from one form of captivity to another—in this case, a sanctuary.  But illegally-held human prisoners have been released to mental hospitals, and juveniles into the care of guardians.  In the other appeals court decision, judges declared that chimps are not legal persons because they can’t fulfill duties to human society.  But that rationale arguably denies personhood to young children and mentally incapacitated individuals, as several high-profile legal scholars…pointed out…

Moving Pictures just as truthful as Jurassic Park

Because “trafficking” means anything we want it to mean!

Ed Smart…visited east Idaho…to attend a screening of a documentary about child sex trafficking…“When Elizabeth was abducted do we think of her being enslaved?…She absolutely was…she was assaulted once twice a day for almost every day of the nine months she was gone.”  Smart is now on a mission to rescue children from sex trafficking.  He’s working with Operation Underground Railroad….“Any time you have a resort area more than likely trafficking is going on there.  Any time there’s a big sporting event in the United States you can believe trafficking is going on.”  Operation Underground Railroad  has produced a new documentary called The Abolitionists.  It shows investigators rescuing endangered children and going after the adult perpetrators around the world…

Vendetta (#518)

It’s hard to tell the worst part of this “end demand” propaganda.  Is it the bullshit claim that women aren’t being arrested because they’re forced into “re-education” rather than jail?  The badge-licking description of cops hunting down people seeking to engage in consensual sex?  The Orwellian euphemism “recovering a victim” used to mean “arresting a woman”?  The cop bragging about how many women he’s arrested?  The pervasive denial of female agency?  The description of a prosecutor as a “defense attorney”?  Or the fact that neither warped billionaire Swanee Hunt (the architect of the fascist program Seattle is participating in) nor her “CEASE Network” front organization are mentioned at all, even though she paid for the policy change with grants?

Guinea Pigs 

What can one conclude about an article on “data analysis” that begins with mathematically-illiterate bullshit?

The average age of entry into prostitution in the United States is 14.  The kind of profit a pimp can expect to make on a child prostitute each year is $150,000.  Child trafficking operations spend about $45 million a year advertising their services on literally thousands of sites and millions of pages…Two computer science professors, Pedro Szekely and Craig Knoblock…have developed a new search tool  intended to…turn advertising against human traffickers.  The work is being funded by Memex, a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program aimed at developing the next generation of search technologies…The tool they’ve created combs through escort ads; downloads all relevant pages, including the ones those ads link to; discovers connections, folds the data into a repository; and provides query and analysis functionality to enable searching by law enforcement users…Currently, the database contains content from 50 million Web pages and 2 billion records; it’s growing at the rate of about 5,000 Web pages per hour…

Another Fine Mess (#527)

Why are amateurs so surprised that sex workers use ordinary business tools?

…in Zimbabwe…many people in the informal economy make use of [a South African cell phone payment service named] EcoCash and sex workers are no exception, with some carrying multiple phones.  “If I’ve got 20, 30 or 50 bucks and I’m not going to use it, I will put it in EcoCash,” says Ncube.  “Even if someone steals my bag, I will open my mobile wallet tomorrow and the money will still be there”…Officials…express surprise at the swift integration of mobile money.  Jessie Majome, a former deputy minister of women’s affairs, says…“Wow. Hi-tech sex work.  I’m struck how early they’ve adapted to that”…

Read Full Post »

The Revolt of the Prostitutes

Posted in History, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , on June 2, 2015| 4 Comments »

That is how we ended up in the church, without knowing how it would all end, without knowing if we would get out dead or alive.  But it was really the last thing that we could do to try and save our skin. – Maria de Lourdes

Protest at St. Nizier's 1975Forty years ago today, the sex workers of Lyon, France protested the unrelenting torment the cops inflicted upon them by occupying the Church of St. Nizier.  Despite its bawdy reputation in the English-speaking world, France has never been friendly to whores; beginning in the 16th century the French pioneered many of the laws and tactics used to harass us throughout the world to this day, and the Code Napoleon officially gave the police power to “control” prostitution (with results any regular reader could predict).  The severity of the maltreatment ebbed and flowed throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries until the government decided to revenge its humiliation at the hands of the Nazis on the bodies of sex workers, and France became officially “abolitionist” in 1960.

By August of 1973 the cops’ depredations had become so severe a street protest was organized, but it did not end well and the police were only emboldened to make things worse.  Early in 1975 they closed down the hotels de passe, cheap establishments where street workers took their clients, then proceeded to harry them with fines; the department decreed that each girl was to receive two or three fines per day, but because multiple cops were involved it could sometimes be five or more.  If a woman went to pay her fines, she was intentionally delayed in the police station for several hours so she would lose most of her night; if she didn’t pay she would be arrested and jailed, and her children abducted by the state if there were no relatives to take them.  Meanwhile, the tax department would present them with huge bills assuming numbers of clients that would fit comfortably in the masturbatory fantasies of “sex trafficking” fetishists.

Something had to give, and on June 2nd two sex workers named Ulla and Barbara led a group of 100 prostitutes to occupy a church in hopes of calling attention to their plight.  They had an ally in Father Louis Blanc, who secured the cooperation of several other priests; they planned to occupy the Church of St.Bonaventure, but the police found out and began to prepare for mass arrests of the protesters as they arrived.  Fortunately, Ulla was tipped off in time and diverted the protesters to St. Nizier instead; volunteers waited inside to direct each arrival out through the side doors while the cops waited outside in their cars, thinking they would wait until they could get a good crop of victims before springing their trap.  Father Blanc remembers, “The police officers looked as if they were having fun in their cars.  But after a while, they were having less fun because…’what is happening?’ We have disappeared!  In the meantime the prostitutes have entered the Church of St. Nizier, where there are no police.”  The priest at St. Nizier was Father Béal, and with his help over 100 whores were able to congregate there before the cops realized where they had gone.

By the evening of June 3rd, the news of the protest had spread across France, and over the next few days to other countries as well.  Sex workers all over France began to occupy other churches; in Paris 200 whores occupied the Chapel of Saint Bernard.  The media interviewed Ulla and other sex workers, allowing them to air their grievances for all to hear and they issued a “Letter to the People of Lyon” which read, in part,

…we haven’t taken up prostitution because we are depraved.  Prostitution is the only means we have found to deal with the problems of life…People regard us as “dirty” or “abnormal” women, but at the same time they say we are needed…Prostitution is not forbidden under French law and theoretically we are citizens like everyone else.  But because society is ashamed of the fact that it needs us, it treats us as criminals, people who can be subjected to the full repressive might of the police…

Most feminists of 1975 still actually supported women’s choices, and figures like Simone de Beauvoir spoke up for the sex workers; other activists protested outside the church in a show of solidarity. Their demands were simple; as stated in a pamphlet they circulated outside, “We will only leave the church once you have given us the guarantee that you will stop throwing us in jail each time you think there is a repeat offense.  Our children do not want their mothers to go to jail.”  The protesters told the media they wished to speak to Madame Giroud, then State Secretary for Women, but before the request could even be officially made Giroud refused, claiming this was not a women’s issue at all but rather the responsibility of the Minister of Interior; the latter politician, Michel Poniatowski, decided to reply with violence, and at 5 AM on June 10th ordered the police to remove the protesters from all of the churches.

In Paris and some other places, the removal was accomplished with the usual police tactics of smashing down doors and beating women with truncheons, but at St. Nizier they decided to use a trick.  A cop called Father Béal pretending to be a reporter who wanted to speak to Ulla, and when the church door was unlocked to admit the priest with his fake message, armed cops sprang from hiding; they pushed him aside and swarmed into the building 120 strong, accompanied by 20 dogs and equipped with tear gas.  Most of the women were simply ordered out, but Ulla and Barbara were beaten so severely they had to be hospitalized.  Father Béal lodged a formal protest against the violation of the ancient principle of asylum, but Poniatowski replied that police could enter anywhere when “public order” was disturbed, citing a law from 1905 in support of his actions.

Hooking vans in LyonBut despite the government’s refusal to peacefully grant the demands, officials must have been anxious to avoid similar embarrassment in the future; the harassment stopped, the cops with the highest numbers of sex worker arrests were reassigned to other duties, and the ludicrous tax bills no longer appeared.  By 1994 the culture had shifted sufficiently for “pimping” to be defined more narrowly, thus ending for a time the harassment of partners, roommates, adult children, etc with “avails” charges.  Of course, that didn’t last long, and regular readers have seen the tide once again turn toward repression in the form of the “Swedish model“, laws against “looking like a whore” and even repeated parking fines for the vans from which most street workers now operate.  But the protesters and their successors have not passively watched all this happen:

…the whores began holding regular meetings and soon formed the French Collective of Prostitutes, on which the English Collective of Prostitutes was later modeled.  Women in a number of other countries were also inspired to form groups, and a number of these came together with Margo St. James’ COYOTE to form the International Committee for Prostitutes’ Rights (ICPR), the organization whose work and example helped to win prostitution law reform in a number of European countries and provided an example which inspired similar campaigns in many other parts of the world.  In a way, the modern sex worker rights movement was born on that June 2nd in Lyon, so we celebrate it now as International Whores’ Day.

I’ve written about this occasion before, but the greater detail in today’s column was made possible by a French-language documentary being broadcast today on both Radio France and Radio Belgium; it was produced by Australian sex worker rights activist Eurydice Aroney, who called it to my attention about six weeks ago and reminded me of it again recently.  You can listen to the show at the link above, and Eurydice kindly provided me with this English translation of the transcript.  She and I both think it’s very important that sex workers know about the history of our movement; please help us accomplish that goal by publicizing the documentary and this column on social media!

Read Full Post »

Diary #257

Posted in Diary, tagged , , , on June 1, 2015| 2 Comments »

0531152328Last week was another behind-the-scenes busy one; though I was kept running and had to make the time to do even the basic writing I expect of myself, none of it but the decorating (which will probably be finished this week) was anything any of y’all would be interested in hearing about.  Well, maybe that’s not entirely true; part of the problem was that I got into a rather stupid funk over last Monday’s anniversary  and it combined with homesickness and a few other issues to agitate the Things under my mental stairs, so that they commenced a most frightful howling which only got louder over the weekend.  I’m feeling very tired and beat-up as of this writing (five hours before posting time), so I hope you’ll forgive me if I keep this short.  I have just three other things I’d like to say before wrapping up.  First, on Friday I was reminded of just what a wonderful ex-husband I have; I got in a minor car accident (my fault), and because I’m still on Matt’s  insurance until we do the divorce paperwork, it will probably increase his rates.  I put off calling him for hours because I expected him to yell at me for my carelessness, but when I finally did he took it in stride, said something to the effect that “these things happen”, and told me how much he appreciated my being such a decent & civilized ex-wife.  On Sunday, I was quoted in a Politifact column debunking the “average whore dies after seven years” lie, and readers in Vancouver, BC may be interested in knowing that I’ll be participating in the Red Umbrella March in your fair city on June 13th, accompanied by several of my activist friends.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts