[Prohibition] directly and indirectly contribute[s] to lethal violence, disease, discrimination, forced displacement, injustice and the undermining of [human] right[s]. – Johns Hopkins/Lancet Commission
Bad Girls
Better headline: “Sex worker kills drunk, violent client who tried to fuck her bareback“:
A Cook County [Illinois] judge sentenced a 23-year-old prostitute…to 15 years in [prison]…for the murder of…Al Filan…[Alisha] Walker and another woman who was not charged went to Filan’s home on Jan. 18, 2014…It was Walker’s third encounter with Filan…[but this time he was drunk and] insisted on unprotected sex, the women refused and the three got into a heated argument…Filan punched [Walker] when she tried to retrieve [her] $300 [fee]…Filan’s autopsy reports revealed him to have a .208 blood-alcohol content. She…stabbed him in self-defense and left his bloody body on his kitchen floor without calling for help…
I’m not going to defend killing somebody (she stabbed him 14 times) over $300, but this kind of violence is the inevitable result of all criminalization of consensual behavior.
The Last Shall Be First
There are so many of these toilet bills being flung about now*, it’s hard to keep track of them all:
The American Civil Liberties Union…Lambda Legal, and Equality NC…[announced] a federal lawsuit…challenging North Carolina’s HB 2…passed…last week in a rushed special session…[to]…ban…all…nondiscrimination ordinances statewide…The…measure…[also] requires restroom access in public facilities…[be] based on birth assigned sex regardless of a person’s gender identity and lived gender. It also jeopardizes the more than $4.5 billion in federal funding that North Carolina receives for…schools under Title IX, which prohibits…discrimination against transgender individuals…The North Carolina League of Municipalities, Attorney General Roy Cooper, and [a number of] major companies…have announced their opposition to the law…
*Exactly in the way monkeys fling poop.
Change a Few Words
They’re advising a “gradual” shift. Because it wouldn’t do to stop murdering and caging people and destroying lives all at once:
A group of 22 medical experts convened by Johns Hopkins University and The Lancet have called…for the decriminalization of all nonviolent drug use and possession. Citing a growing scientific consensus on the failures of the global war on drugs, the experts further encourage countries and U.S. states to “move gradually toward regulated drug markets”…Their report comes ahead of a special UN General Assembly Session on drugs to be held next month, where the world’s countries will re-evaluate the past half-century of drug policy and, in the hope of many experts, chart a more public health-centered approach going forward…the last time the UN held a special session on drugs, in 1998, it set itself the goal of a “drug-free world” by 2008…The commissioners cite research showing that “of an estimated 246 million people who used an illicit drug in the past year, [only] 27 million (around 11%) experienced problem drug use..The idea that all drug use is necessarily ‘abuse’ means that immediate and complete abstinence has been seen as the only acceptable approach”…
Above the Law 
A pig rapes an extremely-drunk woman, but journalists still won’t call it rape:
A Baton Rouge [cop] has been [given a paid vacation]…after a woman accused him of [raping] her in August following a traffic stop…Brad Bennett…[pulled] the victim and her roommate…over…[and arrested] the…roommate…on a DWI…the victim was not allowed to drive herself home [because she was drunk, so]…Bennett drove…her home…[and raped her while] she was impaired…she [was drunk so she] remembers little of what happened…
First They Came for the Hookers…
It never stops with us, ladies:
A teaching assistant has been sacked by a primary school after parents discovered photographs of her modelling underwear. Gemma Laird, 21, says she was told the school did not want pupils “thinking it is acceptable to be a model”…the headmistress said…”people would lose respect for the school if they found out…She made me feel dirty and like I was a prostitute. It’s ridiculous”…
Still think it’s a good idea to draw those lines between you and us? Because once you do, there’s nothing to stop somebody else from moving them so you’re on the “bad girl” side.
The Widening Gyre
Another “stripping causes sex trafficking” wankfest:
…The Portland metro area has become a hub of child sex trafficking in part due to the large volume of legal adult entertainment venues…Northwest Family Services’ “Deceptions” curriculum was created at the request of law enforcement in Vancouver, Wash. Vancouver Police realized that sex trafficking had become an epidemic in Pacific Northwest…middle and high schools…
This is modern policing: scaring kids with bogeymen and lies, and representing their sexual fantasies as “realizations” about objective reality.
Lower Education
The indispensable Liz Brown takes a long, thorough look at how the US government is attempting to regulate sex under the guise of “fighting discrimination”:
…Not so long ago, the U.S. criminalized pretty much all sex outside of marriage. As these laws have been struck down by courts or allowed to settle into obsolescence, it would seem that sexual liberty has been vindicated as an important American value. But while the courts have been busy ushering the government out of our bedrooms, it’s been creeping right back in under new pretenses. Gone is the language of morals, tradition, and order—the state now intervenes in our sex lives bearing the mantles of safety, exploitation, and sex discrimination…
Paint By Numbers
Even in the world of stupid “sex trafficking” publicity stunts, this one is painfully stupid:
Models were walking and dancing down the aisle, each wearing shirts that said “One less,” as lively tunes played…Foundations for Freedom [founder] Dana World-Patterson…said she…felt the show is a fun way to raise money for eradicating human trafficking…She explained the meaning behind the “One Less” t-shirts they wore, saying children enter the sex trade as young as age 10…journalist Eric Von also emceed, saying…Milwaukee has experienced a large increase in child sex trafficking cases and the average age is 13. “An article recently described Milwaukee as the ‘Harvard school of pimpism’”…
From “the Harvard of sex trafficking” to “the Harvard of pimp school” to “the Harvard school of pimpism”. “Sex trafficking” tropes just get more and more hilarious with each iteration.
False Witness
Still think you don’t live in a police state?
…teachers and school administrators [are being taught]…an abbreviated version of the Reid Technique, which is used across the country by [cops, rent-a-cops]…insurance-fraud investigators, and other people for whom [accusing people of crimes] is part of the job…trainees [are taught that] patterns of body language—including slumping, failing to look directly at the interviewer, offering “evasive” responses, and showing generally “guarded” behaviors…supposedly reveal whether a suspect [is] lying…Reid teaching materials [never] refer to “students” or “kids.” They [are] always “suspects” or “subjects”…The training [includes] tricks to provoke a response that might [be interpreted as] guilt…John E. Reid and Associates has been marketing its methods to school systems…in eight states…Young people tend to be…vulnerable to false confession…[a study showed] forty-two per cent of the juveniles who were exonerated had falsely confessed, compared with only eight per cent of adults. Nearly twice as many eleven- to fourteen-year-olds falsely confessed as did fifteen- to seventeen-year-olds.
Other research has shown that Reid training influences the perception of juveniles by the people who use it…Reid-trained police [are] less aware of the developmental differences between adolescents and adults than police who did not receive the training…Reid-trained [cops] tend…to believe that adolescents [are] just as capable as adults of withstanding psychologically coercive questioning, including deceit…
Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic (#450)
“Sex addiction” is the defense of choice for upskirt photo takers who get caught:
[Steven Johanowicz]…was convicted of felony crimes…for recording an upskirt video, and secretly videotaping a woman in a shower, and was sentenced to three years probation…[cops] also found three hundred [self-recorded] upskirt videos in Johanowicz’s apartment…Johanowicz says he lost his long-time position at Chazen Museum as a result of his actions. He’s in therapy for…sex addiction…
Birth of a Movement (#526)
An Italian city copies France by criminalizing “looking like a whore”:
Scantily-clad prostitutes in Salerno will now face fines of up to €500 for “violating urban decorum”, a move ushered in by mayor Enzo Napoli following a spike in the number of sex workers in the city centre…The fines are also a way of trying to deter prostitutes…By encouraging the scantily dressed women to cover up, it is hoped that they will become less attractive to clients and be less visible to citizens and tourists…
Lying Down With Dogs (#539)
All the most enlightened, free countries use US-type anti-sex work rhetoric:
Several provinces and cities where prostitution is popular were chosen for a pilot project that aims to prevent the crime and reduce its effects on the community…all establishments that traditionally draw prostitution – hotels, bars, dance halls and massage parlors – will be relegated to a specific area. Lê Văn Quý, deputy director of the HCM City Social Evils Prevention Department…[said] it made the businesses easier to manage, and would help ensure public order…The intent of the project was not to encourage prostitution, but to gradually eliminate it…
Too Close To Home
King County prosecutors aren’t yet done destroying people’s lives for having consensual sex:
King County prosecutors contend…Phillip “Skip” Dehennis was an active member of [TRB]…Investigators contend hundreds of women brought to the United States to work as prostitutes…[an undercover pig paid sex workers, then wrote reviews cops now claim were] fake…[in order to get] himself invited to “meet and greet” parties…
So now 12 supposed “victims” have mushroomed into “hundreds”; I guess the cops figure that since they can’t produce even one “victim”, they might as well go for broke. They’re also now claiming the reviews used to get into good standing on the boards were fake, an impossibility on this particular board because the ladies in the fake reviews would’ve raised the alarm. No, this rapist just fucked escorts under false pretenses in order to exploit them in an evil scheme to harm their customers and destroy their livelihoods, and all with the blessings of the sheriff’s office.
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You’ve probably noticed that these “back issue” columns have grown much shorter; it’s because three years ago, my procedures were changing so that a large fraction of each week was taken up by columns of a predetermined type. The weekends, of course, were news and links columns; Wednesdays featured Q&A columns (this month’s were “Second Look” and “Quack, Quack“) and Fridays reprints from my columns in Cliterati (this month’s were “Vulnerability” and “A Fate Worse Than Death“). You’ll notice that there are only two of each of those rather than four; that’s because holidays (in this case International Sex Worker Rights Day, the Vernal Equinox and Easter) and monthly features (in this case the harlotography “Tullia d’Aragona” and the fictional interlude “Mercy“) pre-empted them. 
Diaries wouldn’t become a weekly feature for another year, but this month had one in “Comfort Zone“; there were also representatives of one regular (“My Favorite Short Stories“) and two semi-regular (“Struttin’ My Stuff” and “Book Review: SuperFreakonomics“) features. And once all that’s out of the way, there aren’t a lot left to describe. “Puppet Show” reveals the prohibitionist use of shills and sock puppets to make themselves seem more numerous; “No Friend of Ours” explodes the myth of Nevada’s whore-friendliness; “Checklist” looks at the absurdity of “signs of sex trafficking”; “Banishment” discusses the return of an old punishment for “sex offenses”; “Watershed” speculates about the possibility of a reversal of the anti-sex worker trend; “Original Sin” explores the origin of “sex trafficking” hysteria in religious beliefs; “Absolute Corruption” profiles one tragic victim of the last major moral panic, and “Dutch Threat” examines Dutch politicians’ attempt to undermine the sex industry there.
