Mainstream feminism rejects sex work as an acceptable choice. So…I don’t describe myself as an adherent to a political philosophy that wants to eliminate me. – Mistress Matisse
…They All Love Jack: Busting the Ripper [is] more than 800 pages in length…Michael Maybrick was a hugely popular singer and composer in the Victorian era, who is virtually forgotten today – for reasons that Robinson believes are no accident…Maybrick was close friends with Sir Arthur Sullivan and the painter Frederick Leighton, among many other prominent public figures. Both Sullivan and Leighton were Freemasons, as was Michael Maybrick. He was…on the Supreme Grand Council of Freemasons, whose members also included the Prince of Wales…Maybrick was 47 at the time of the murders; a bachelor and, [author Bruce] Robinson believes, homosexual…
Yes, it’s a new version of the Masonic theory.
When you’re a cop, rape becomes “official misconduct”:
A [Tennessee cop]…who resigned amid allegations of [raping prisoners]…pleaded guilty…to one count of official misconduct…Judge John Dugger sentenced Jeff Sowers to 18 months in jail…Dugger denied a request by Sowers’ attorneys for judicial diversion, which would have allowed for Sowers’ record to be expunged after his sentence…
…a recent report claims intimacy between robots and humans will be more common than that between two people by 2050. The work, written by futurologist Dr. Ian Pearson, purports that engaging in virtual sex acts will be as prevalent in 2030 as our engagement with porn today, and that the majority of people will own sex toys that employ an alternate reality in some way come 2035…
…Over the last 150 years, rights for sex workers have…diminished, according to West Virginia University journalism professor Alison Bass. In her book Getting Screwed: Sex Workers and the Law…Bass surveys the history of laws regulating prostitution in America and abroad. In the past and today, Bass finds, sex workers have been marginalized by stigma that portrays them as immoral, dangerous, even diseased figures. But while the stigma hasn’t changed, the laws have—in many cases…for the worse…
Lawheads are completely unable to comprehend the bottleneck effect:
Entrepreneurs in Amsterdam who want to open a brothel must speak at least one common language with the sex workers they rent space to, according to a…ruling handed down by the European Court of Justice. The court [claimed] the decision as…a way to guarantee the safety of the women, [reduce] human trafficking, and…help prevent pimping…and [pretended it] was…not discriminatory in any way…the court also noted the Council of State’s notion that the seeming overreach in authority was meant as a protection of public order, and that being able to converse with a sex worker allows a brothel owner the possibility of stopping child prostitution…
Because nobody would care about a headline reading, “Man minds his daughter while mother works”:
A Michigan man held his 9-month-old daughter in a motel room while the baby’s mother had sex with another man for money…Derohn Wilburn…is charged with…felony promoting prostitution and misdemeanor child endangering…Melissa Coleman…is charged with misdemeanor child endangering and prostitution…police released the baby to a family member. She was unharmed…
…Moran is not content to offer her particular life-story…She also sets herself up as the Universal Prostitute, a woman whose experiences define prostitution and trump the “experiences” of anyone else — sex worker, academic, or otherwise — who views prostitution differently than she does. She is not content to let her story speak for itself but instructs the reader on the proper conclusions to draw, and engages in arguments based on her experiences and “research”…Moran writes: prostitutes are “coerced” into prostitution (pp. 49, 227); they have no “choice” (p. 161); they have no “free will” (p. 201); they act out of “desperation” and “destitution” (pp. 43, 96)…Moran…[claims] she didn’t consent to prostitution because “it is not possible to consent to a lifestyle you don’t comprehend” (p. 50). Yes it is. People do it all the time. “I didn’t know marriage was going to be like this!” “I didn’t know how stressful being a parent would be!” “I didn’t know military life would be this tough!” [She claims] she didn’t consent to prostitution because she wasn’t an adult and children can’t consent (pp. 50-51). Yes they can. Society frames laws that say people below certain ages can’t “consent” – to contracts, to mortgages, to sexual relations, and the like – but the “no consent” here is a legal fiction…a sixteen year-old girl who finds prostitution utterly repulsive, revolting, and disgusting, and who is “desperate to escape,” yet who passes up on an opportunity to get out of the trade because she’s unwilling to be bound by any rules, is a person who’s made a choice— a bad choice, to be sure, but a real choice…Moran…speaks of allowing herself to be coerced (an odd locution) into prostitution by her boyfriend. What did her boyfriend do? Did he beat her? Did he threaten her? No, he “suggested” that she turn tricks; he “encouraged” her (pp. 47, 186)…Moran seems to think you haven’t acted freely unless you are as happy as a lark with what you’ve chosen (p. 227); that you are not self-determining unless you are “controlling the totality of your life” (p. 175). These are just fundamentally unserious engagements with the notions of freedom and self-determination. We always act under constraints, we never control the totality of our lives, and we are often unhappy with what we’ve chosen, just less unhappy than with the alternatives…
Sweden’s “liberal reputation” is bullshit:
…a recent report by the United Nations…concludes that a rising level of racist violence and “Afrophobic” hate crimes in Sweden are “an extensive social problem”. “There continues to be a general Swedish self-perception of being a tolerant and humane society, which makes it difficult to accept that there could be structural and institutional racism faced by people of African descent,” says the report…The country’s official [lie] of equality and respect for human rights “blinds” it to the racism faced by African-Swedes, it says. Hate crimes against the 200,000 or so black people…in Sweden increased by more than 40% between 2008 and 2014…with more than a fifth of incidents last year involving violence…
On the Simultaneous Having and Eating of Cake (#505)
On Working It, the magazine at the center of the stripper labor rights movement in Portland:
…Each magazine brings together about 50 pages of writing and art by sex workers from around the country. In addition to permanent sections including “Client Hall of Shame” “Best/Worst Tip$” “Tales from your Shift” and art, each volume of Working It has a theme…After Danzine went dormant, [Matilda] Bickers and Portland’s sex worker activism also went relatively dormant. [SWOP] took over Danzine’s bad date list. In 2005, Bickers and her friends tried to start a dancer union — “but that failed miserably, and I was really burnt out for a while,” Bickers says. In the following years, Bickers worked at strip clubs and…graduated from Portland State University. “I kind of never stopped doing sex worker activism,” Bickers says…
Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic (#550)
The history of the concept of sex addiction is a complex, somewhat contentious one…I’ve often cited the concept back to the initial writings of Patrick Carnes…Now, three New Zealand historians have contributed a wealth of astounding, rich and often surprising information to the issue…Sex Addiction, A Critical History…represents a remarkable detailing of the troubling, often hidden, history of this concept…Reay and his coauthors found powerful writings by Hatterer from the 1960’s and 70’s, where he blamed a sexually addictive process for sexual excesses. Powerfully, they detail [Dr. Lawrence] Hatterer’s disturbing history of treating homosexuality as an illness, and the way he treated homosexuality “like an alcoholic”…in his writings…from its inception, the concept of sex addiction has been applied to treatment of homosexuality as an illness…
If You Want Something Done Right…
I have the most awesome friends:
…Mistress Matisse…heard about Heather’s experience and was determined to help. Through other sex workers she tracked Heather down, called her and booked a flight to West Virginia. She showed up at Heather’s door…organized fund-raising, lined up medical assistance and connected Heather with nonprofit help. This isn’t a new role for Matisse. She’s worked as a sex worker in various capacities since she was 19. But as she’s gotten established in Seattle, she says, “I have gotten to the point in my career where it is in many ways self-sustaining.” As a result, she’s had more time to devote to activism. Matisse was there to help Heather because she’s made it her business to help sex workers who are in crises. I talked to Matisse about her activism, her work with Heather and why sex workers are the best ones to help sex workers…
Here’s an NPR show which purports to present a “discussion” of the Amnesty International position statement on decriminalization, but which was designed from the get-go to promote prohibitionist propaganda by stacking the panel three to one (Swanee Hunt, Rachel Moran and Andrea Powell) vs. Maxine Doogan. Unfortunately for the antis, Maxine had logic and facts on her side and acquitted herself quite well. What you won’t hear: Sol Finer of SWOP-Seattle called into the live show and Moran absolutely lost her mind, screaming and shouting at Sol in such a clearly unbalanced manner that the tirade was edited out of the archived version of the show. So much for NPR’s commitment to the truth.
As The Stranglers pointed out in 1979, when they equated the situation in Sweden with Australian racism and the totalitarian, pro-corporate, anti-sex regime of Joh Bjelke Petersen’s Queensland.
Re: Amnesty at Last
So, has someone been able to produce a transcript of what was edited out if NPR has chosen not to?
Surely there must be someone at NPR with the integrity to provide this for us.
Alternatively, there must be someone at NPR with the lack of integrity to provide this for us.
In Australia it’s traditional for sound engineers to make compilations of outrageous and embarrassing out-takes for distribution to other crew members at the end of the year Christmas party.
Sol was in my living room five minutes ago and I forgot to ask her. I will ask later today if she has any ideas.
In Re JTR… Uuggh. Hasn’t it been conclusively proved that the Maybrick Diary is a modern forgery? IIRC, the ink contains nigirosine, which wasn’t available until 30-odd years later.
It is my practice to regard all new Ripper “discoveries” as bullshit until such time as they’re accepted by a large fraction of professional criminologists, which none ever have been.
I’ve often wondered why the London Torso Killer of the same time as Jack the Ripper is so often ignored. That killer always struck me as possibly even worse then the Ripper! Furthermore, I wonder if the truth isn’t something like the Ripper was just your ordinary everyday psycho (possibly someone like Aaron Kosminski) while the Torso murders were something more insidious. Perhaps that is why the newspapers focused on the Ripper and didn’t appear to focus on the other killings.
I hardly think the official attitude of mainstream psychiatry to homosexuality prior to the mid-70s is relevant to whether or not such a thing as ‘sex addiction’ exists. Until 1977 it was routine for Sydney courts to refer ‘criminally insane’ (by definition) recidivist homosexuals to Chelmsford Private Hospital where they would be subjected to involuntary aversion therapy, psychosurgery and deep sleep therapy. Many were permanently disabled and several died as a result. Even now the DSM defines homosexuals who are uncomfortable with their sexuality as mentally ill.
I find Ley’s suggestion that Hatterer’s then APA-endorsed position on homosexuality is somehow a sinister reflection on the origins of ‘sex addictionology’ as disingenuous as his suggestion that quack therapists are ‘largely outside the traditional mental health system’.
Even among mental health professionals ‘addiction’ is a very poorly defined word (as are many mental health terms) that covers a wide range compulsions, urges and tendencies, few of which have definable physiological correlates (again, this is typical in the field of mental health). Anyone who has tried to give up an addictive substance will be aware that physical dependence is only one facet of addiction and usually not the most intractable one.
The argument over whether or not ‘sex addiction’ exists is therefore semantic and cannot be objectively resolved.
Frankly, I’d be inclined to credit the alleged addict. If someone claims they’re addicted to sex (or train spotting or a cup of tea after dinner) then their practices are probably compulsive and problematic to them, so I’d agree they’re addicted. If, on the other hand, someone else called them a sex addict and they disagreed …
Dutch Threat
I would think the ability to talk a common language is also required for trafficking and pimping. How could a pimp control his workers if he can’t communicate with them? It’s obviously just an anti-immigrant law.
Who said a pimp needed to actually communicate with workers? That’s why they have those barcode tattoos and the workers are just beaten into submission like chimps or circus elephants. [/sarc]
I was amused by the notion that one can only tell the difference between an adult and a child if you speak the same language.
And then there’s the complete fiction the law believes in that you can ever tell with 100% certainty. Nothing changes between seventeen-and-364-days and one day later, and documents can be forged or just plain wrong.
From trying to estimate the age of no-paper illegal immigrants in Europe, apparently even if you go at it with specific medical insight and technology, you end up with a window of error of 2 (!) years, i.e. the estimate can be up to a year too low or too high. Tat probably means you will have a larger window of error if you try to do it by talking to people as a non-MD …
Cop: Oh, sorry. You see, she was 17 years, 364 days, and 23 hours old. No different from a first grader.
It looks in that Cleveland case of the guy looking after the baby while the mother works, the issue is that the kid was in the same room, and additionally both parents were running a bit of a scam (thus the police attention in the first place)
Assuming everything printed is correct, of course, which is a risky assumption when the law and sex are both involved.
While I don’t think this should be “child endangerment”, it’s a poor choice, I feel.
Using pictures of another woman in one’s Backpage ads is false advertising, though, and raising your prices when the customer shows up and enforcing payment through intimidation is a crime. That part is a reasonable bust, but what’s the odds that that’ll be almost no part of their subsequent legal trouble.
The Pygmalion Fallacy:
As a side-note: The real-world definition of “Futurologist” is “verbal idiot with one or several grand visions”. Another stellar example is Ray Kurzweil, the nil-whit who came up with the term “singularity” for an event where AI starts to “grow exponentially” in power. Given that we do not even know whether AI is possible at all in this universe (my take is that it is likely not) that is of course complete nonsense.
Some level of AI is definitely possible, because we’ve done it. But at the mental level of a flatworm. We haven’t even managed to produce something as dumb as an insect. I suspect we will get to that point.
But human-level? We don’t even remotely understand how the human mind works. We don’t even understand the problem enough to know how hard it would be to make an artificial human mind.
And what’s the point, anyway? We have humans. Most modern AI research is not focused on that goal anymore anyway. It’s focused on making smarter tools for humans to use. That seems a lot more useful.
As to smarter-than-human intelligence — nobody’s proved that is even possible. Computing devices start running into the limits of physics and math rather quickly. Computer CPUs are already running into physics limits that don’t seem all that tractable; furthermore, a lot of real-world problems are simply non-computable and you have to essentially use educated-guesswork just like humans do.
Well, here the PR nonsense of some “researchers” comes in. What we have is properly called “automation”. Calling it “AI” suggests the wrong thing. But sure, if you want to call something flatworm-level “AI” (and apparently you assume a flatworm has some sort of natural intelligence….) then I was talking about “strong AI” or “true AI”.
Apart from that, I fully agree.
In particular, it seems that the human brain is the most potent computing machine possible in this universe, or a close approximation. The problem is that communication limits size and power consumption (and extraction of waste heat) limits what you can do.
But even at the estimated computing power of a human brain, it is completely unclear how it could manufacture intelligence. What is also conveniently overlooked is that human-level intelligence does only manifest itself with consciousness, and there we do not even have any theory how it could be created. (For that matter, I am pretty sure a dog or cat also has some level of consciousness….) For intelligence, we at least have mathematical constructs for some (few) things it can do. But they do run into fundamental physical limits at problem-complexities smart humans can still solve.
Incidentally, observation strongly suggests that intelligence and consciousness are linked and may be aspects of the same thing, something that is conveniently overlooked in most AI discussions. The worst are currently the neuro-“sciences”. Fundamentalist physicalists that do not even notice that what they believe is religion, not science.
As we saw in an earlier exchange on this blog, it’s worse than that.
Some AI advocates insist consciousness can be created artificially, despite the fact they are unable to even define it. Or, rather, they adopt Daniel Dennett’s approach and pretend to define its non-objectifiable aspects away.
These people use a head-in-the-sand approach, because observable facts trash their pet theories. That is not since at all.
I usually just use this simplified (and incomplete) version, as it can be stated without much explanation and is pretty self-evident. You are entirely correct that is is worse.
The problem, is that we cannnot envisions a form of intelligence that would greatly surpasses our own. If such a thing exists, it might be right next to us and we would not even notice it. It might also operate on a timescale greatly different from our own and be unobservable.
I suppose it’s possible to construct a form of AI that would autonomously improve itself to such an extant that it would surpass our own. But that would be beyond our control and we couldn’t understand it once it actually exists.
That assumes there is a discrete and objective quality called ‘intelligence’ that can be linearly quantified rather than a bucket of abstracted capabilities that we choose to put differential values upon.
If you were to measure ‘intelligence’ purely in terms of capacity to win at chess that day has already passed. If it includes the capacity to produce great art it’s hard to see what progress is being made at all.
Besides what cabrogal answered, this type of “self improvement” is a myth.
At the moment we do have absolutely nothing in Computer Science that would do this. Even if you go to purely mathematical theory, fundamental self-improvement of a theory working on itself does not work. It runs into hard, theoretical limits like incompleteness and that a system that can understand and explore another one will need to be complexer than the other one.
Another point on which I heartily agree, Celos.
I recently read a book that provides a welcome antidote to that kind of thinking, A Skeptic’s Guide to the Mind: What Neuroscience Can and Cannot Tell Us About Ourselves by the neuroscientist and (importantly) philosopher of science Robert Burton.
In a similar vein, if somewhat less epistemologically rigorous, is Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience by Sally Satel and Scott O. Lilienfeld.
Thanks for the references, I think I will have a look.
As to the “sexbots” thing: I do suspect virtual-reality devices and remote-controlled toys will play a role in allowing a degree of sexual intimacy between people who are geographically separated; phone sex is popular today for the same reasons, and adding more features and greater interactivity to that will probably occur. But that’s still human on human interaction.
It’s likely that some sex workers will do the same things.
But with a robot, rather than just a device controlled by another human? Until we develop human-level AI, which is really far off, I don’t think so. Don’t believe anyone who thinks it will happen in our lifetimes; that goal has remained “50 years out” for pretty much the entire history of AI research, as we keep finding that the problem is harder than we thought.
What is it that set Moran off in the show? I didn’t get to listen to the live version.
It seems that every year brings an new identification of just who ‘Jack the Ripper’ was; recently we have had ‘DNA evidence’ of a link…
Just to go off on a tangent a bit; the BBC series Ripper street is set in Whitechapel, starting about 6 months after the last victim (Mary Jane Kelly) was found. It’s a combination of police procedural and wild west show. The cops are still frustrated by their inability to catch Jack; there are frequent references to him. The three protagonists, Inspector Reid, Sgt Drake and Captain Jackson all have secrets and dark things in their past. Each episode is reasonably accurate in scientific terms; the sets are sumptuous, curated even. Meanwhile Long Susan is the madam in charge of her cathouse—and they do refer to it as a ‘cathouse—and she too has secrets. The levels of brutality and gore are amazing at times—and that’s just the cops, no kid gloves then.
After two series, the beeb decided to dump it; the audience figures weren’t good enough. Following an outcry, Amazon picked it up; series 3 has just been broadcast in the UK (on the beeb!), with the promise of two more series to follow.
You can see each episode as portraying different aspects of seamy (realistic) Victorian life; pornography, the ‘white slave trade’, molly houses, corruption,orphanages, religiosity etc. while advancing the main characters’ back stories. Ripper Street is set in the east end of London, but filmed in Dublin; you might recognise Kilmainham Jail and Trinity College.
On one level it’s simple Victorian brain candy; on another, there’s lots of impressive and curious historical detail. I didn’t know what a Stanhope was before this; do you know what it is?
I hope it’s better than other UK police procedurals I’ve seen. Your hint that everyone having secrets is an important plot element doesn’t auger well. Reminds me of Broadchurch. More typical British small town soap opera than procedural. Coronation Street Cops.
Until the 1980s Australian police procedurals were uniformly appalling too. I’m not sure if audiences demanded more realism or whether screenwriters got sick of sugar coating thugs with badges, but it’s like the whole genre transformed itself overnight. Maybe it was the screen adaptation of David Williamson’s 1971 play The Removalists that put a bit of spine into the studios. I suspect many US sex workers would see the authenticity in Williamson’s characterisation of cops.
The ‘police procedural/wild western’ was a comment by one of the creators. It’s nothing like modern procedurals. The ‘secrets’ are part of the back story, to explain some of the motive and actions for what happens. Just try it.
Do you know what a Stanhope is?
Only because I looked it up when I read your first comment.
Nope. It’d be unprecedented for cops to ask permission before killing someone – especially a cop killer.
One of the first episodes of Bellamy had cops involved in the car chase of a suspected armored car robber (later revealed to be innocent). One cop car was written off without serious injury to the cops. The suspect abandoned his car and ran into bushland with two pumped up cops in hot pursuit on foot. When Bellamy arrived the cops were just emerging from the bush without their man and he began to berate them for giving up the chase. They revealed he didn’t get away but “fell off a cliff” (smirking to each other). Bellamy gave them a look of contempt but that was as far as it went (in the series Bellamy himself routinely bashed suspects).
I forced myself to watch the entire series on DVD, just to update my understanding, you understand, nothing to do with Long Susan. Despite being an American character, the actor is actually Swedish.
The scene about the Sgt asking permission isn’t quite as I described; the Sgt says to Reid something along the lines of, “When he is caught, we may kill him, may we not?” It’s more of a statement rather than asking permission.
An example: a young constable is knifed in the back, paralysing him. He’s thrown in the Thames. The culprit is a renegade Pinkerton who works for the baddie. The cops in the station house are all very upset, and after the body is recovered the station sergeant asks Reid if, when the culprit has been apprehended, if they, the station cops, may kill him. Ever seen that in a procedural?