Nothing has appeared in the last couple of years to make [sex trafficking] estimates…more scientific than they were 10 years ago. – David Finkelhor
The reporter seems to be trying to hide what happened here:
…a Butte man was found not guilty of raping a woman in Missoula [Montana] in June 2015…Nicholas James Dolson…[met a sex worker via] Craigslist seeking sex. After the pair engaged in consensual vaginal intercourse, Dolson [anally raped her]…she…told him to stop but…he didn’t. Dolson [then] left [without paying her]…The day after their encounter, Dolson sent the woman a text message that [admitted he] had planned to have sex with her twice…and…leave [without paying]. Dolson…[pretended] what had happened between him and the woman had been consensual…[even though] he hadn’t…paid for their encounter as the two of them had discussed…
…The Amrita restaurant, which is set to open in Tokyo, has said that anyone 15kg above the average weight for their height will not be allowed to dine. The restaurant…will ask guests to check in their clothes and put on paper underwear when they arrive. Anyone who is thought to be above the average weight for their height will be weighed and ejected if deemed to be overweight…[spokeswoman] Miki Komatsu…[said] “If fat people are allowed in it could be miserable for some guests…We are aiming for a sort of Roman aesthetic, like the beautiful paintings you see in museums.” People with tattoos are also banned from the restaurant and diners are asked not to “cause a nuisance” by touching or talking to other guests.
In a surprising decision from Canada’s Supreme Court, the country’s top judges ruled that forcing a dog to perform oral sex is not, in fact, bestiality and therefore not necessarily illegal…The case…involves an unnamed man, accused of forcing the family dog to perform oral sex on his underage daughter. The man was convicted of a litany of sexual offences in relation to the abuse, and sentenced to 14 years in jail. On one charge of bestiality, however, he was acquitted on appeal…His lawyers contended that…the charge, which carries no formal definition in the Criminal Code, was linked to “buggery”…and therefore required penetration. The [prosecution]…argued that…any sexual contact with animals [is] wrong, abusive, and illegal…Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, a backbench MP…[predictably reacted by introducing] C-246, which would explicitly ban all sexual activity between man and animal…
Surveillance beyond the wildest dreams of the Stasi:
Motherboard used public records requests to extract 3,000+ pages of court docs…which revealed the full extent of the Mounties’ secret use of Stingrays…the fake cellular towers that let cops covertly track whole populations by tricking their phones into revealing information about them…in the USA, their manufacturers collaborated with federal law enforcement to swear local cops to secrecy, going so far as to drop cases rather than reveal the use of Stingrays, and, in a few known cases, lying to judges. Feds even raided local cops and stole all documents related to Stingrays before they could be entered into evidence. But even by those standards, the RCMP’s use of Stingrays is breathtakingly broad and out-of-control…They not only routinely use Stingrays to surveil regions in a radius of up to 2km…but…also retained this data indefinitely, creating permanent surveillance databases that recorded the locations and activities (including the calls) of literally millions of Canadians who had never come under any suspicion for any crime…
A huge victory for the adult video industry:
In a big victory for the Free Speech Coalition, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals…vacated and remanded a lower court’s July 2013 ruling that held that performer record-keeping for adult entertainment producers are constitutional…The 3rd Circuit…held that the inspection provisions of the statutes are facially unconstitutional under the 4th Amendment…
Even where sex work is legal, whore stigma is an ever-present danger:
A [political] candidate has quit after it emerged he owns a [suburban Melbourne] brothel called Paradise Playmates. Taiwan-born massage therapist John Min-Chiang Hsu resigned as the Liberal Party candidate for the Victorian seat of Calwell after his ties to the brothel were revealed…Hsu also owns a company called Beautiful Life Natural Therapies, which runs three Melbourne massage establishments: CBD Massage, Five Star Massage and Sabaydee Thai Massage Day Spa. It’s believed at least Sabaydee offers sexual services because it appears on a review website for sex work…Hsu…has denied owning the brothel but was unable to explain why
company records show it is registered to a man with the same name, address and date of birth as him…
…April Corcoran…handed over her 11-year-old daughter to a drug dealer for sex in exchange for…heroin…The alleged dealer is Shandell Willingham, who recorded
some of the sex acts on video…[and] faces charges of rape, gross sexual imposition…[child porn] and human trafficking. He’s already been convicted of drug crimes…The charges…to which [Corcoran] pleaded are enough to put her in prison for the rest of her life…
Danielle Rose, 25, took it upon herself to expose the ugly truth that it happens in her native Brooklyn. Her first documentary, In Our Backyard, depicts the unspoken world of sex trafficking through the emotional stories of recent survivors and the work of advocates fighting to end this form of modern-day slavery. A senior at Sarah Lawrence College, having never used a camera before, Rose set out to make a documentary film about it. She invested all her savings into the film and enlisted her friends and family to help her…Rose [said]…”my mom, who was a caterer, was friends with someone at the Brooklyn DA’s office and they got in touch with her to donate food for an anti-trafficking event…I knew nothing about using a camera but I started going out and filming…The subjects it touches upon are sex buyers, pimp culture, the music we listen to, and Backpage.com”…
This just keeps getting stupider with every iteration:
…Professor Noel Sharkey said he believes teenagers could lose their virginity to android sex dolls…and…warned that the robots may have damaging consequences for society…he insisted that robotic dolls could have as big an impact as online porn in the sex industry…”Sex robots are accessible now and certainly [will be common] within the next 10 years. I think there will be an age limit. Certainly there should be, but if your dad or mum had one, you could sneak in and use it…It’s not a problem having sex with a machine. But what if it’s your first time, your first relationship? What do you think of the opposite sex then…It will…stop…people forming relationships with normal people”…
Naturally, Baton Rouge couldn’t let itself be out-pruded by New Orleans:
Louisiana strip clubs will be barred from hiring dancers under the age of 21, under a new law…Bill sponsor…Ronnie Johns…[pretends] the provision will help to fight human trafficking…Debate was briefly derailed by a proposal from…Rep. Kenny Havard…suggesting strippers should be between 21 and 28 years old and less than 160 pounds. The amendment drew strong criticism. Havard called it a joke about overregulation…
At [the] press conference announcing the departure of Oakland Police Chief Sean Whent, Mayor Libby Schaaf…told a room full of reporters that Whent was resigning for “personal reasons”. The mayor said it had nothing to do with a scandal involving rookie police officers who sexually exploited a minor, or the suspicious death of a police officer’s wife and his subsequent suicide…But the mayor and other city officials are either not being forthright about the extent of OPD officer misconduct…at least fourteen Oakland Police officers, three Richmond Police officers, and four Alameda County Sheriff’s deputies had sex with the girl who goes by the [stage] name Celeste Guap…who…said she slept with cops as a form of protection [from arrest]…
*Credit Mistress Matisse
A Tale That Grew in the Telling (#641)
It’s so good to see “sex trafficking” lies now being attacked from multiple directions:
…The 1,000-victim figure comes from a questionable study commissioned by the Ohio Attorney General’s Office and published in 2010…The…FBI…[labeled] an average of 15 [minors as] victims of sex trafficking in Toledo each year, between 2005 and 2009. The study’s authors took that 15-per-year figure and applied it to all girls ages 12 through 17 in the state of Ohio…[yielding] an estimate of 202 girls per year. Then, the commission multiplied 202 by five, because a University of Toledo study claimed that each sex trafficking victim they interviewed knew an average of five more underaged minors “not known to law enforcement, but who were engaging in the sex trade”…
Rolling Stone is trying to cover its collective arse (or rather, that of whatever drunk editor approved the publication of a piece of anti-sex propaganda from a government stooge) by publishing a rebuttal from Amnesty International featuring those stupid things called “facts”. It’s too late, Rolling Stone; you’ve flushed whatever credibility you had down the anti-sex toilet. But maybe you can reinvent yourself as a magazine for fascist bootlickers and authoritarian apologists.
Re: No Moss
I suppose it’s the typical cognitive dissonance at work. I was quite surprised to see that initial article, mainly given RS’s staunch position of support for ending the Drug War and criminal justice reform. I suppose it’s possible the magazine could turn its back on those issues as well.
In this instance, better that they let an actual subject matter expert pen the rebuttal than offering some mealy-mouthed ‘apology’ from the editorial staff as in that UofVA scandal.
Some time ago, Belle Knox had an article published on RS.com. I wonder what would happen if you submitted something. It could be the pro-sex work parallel to Matt Taibbi’s political analyses.
Re: Japanese Hooters
So no fatties or Yakuza allowed because we want our restaurant to look like the sculptures and paintings they have at the museum every day? Who approved that business model?
“Hsu…has denied owning the brothel but was unable to explain why [April Corcoran] company records show it is registered to a man with the same name, address and date of birth as him…”
God! I laughed until I stopped. The Liberal Party in Australia is our conservative party. The lefties are the Labor party. Commies.
Hsu should have not been so gutless and taken a “So what? It’s legal.” attitude. Business is business, after all, and business is the business of the Liberal Party here in Oz.
“But what if it’s your first time, your first relationship? What do you think of the opposite sex then…It will…stop…people forming relationships with normal people”
Could someone please explain to me the difference between a “sex robot” and a vibrator. Where, exactly, do we draw the line?
As soon as you look closer at the people that promote this evil, it usually becomes clear that any kind of sex that cannot result in children is “bad”, according to them. I think this is because their main goal is to get more people that they can then impose their beliefs on. Same motivation for burning witches (many knew about contraception, apparently). Vibrators seem to mostly fly under the radar, possibly because they see women using masturbation aids as not that much of a problem.
The thing that fundamentally repulses me here is how they want to force people to have “normal relationships” (where they define what is “normal”). A more immoral invasion of self-determination is hardly possible.
Side note: AI that could be mistaken for a person in longer-lasting interaction is not even on the distant horizon, regardless of the nonsense the press regularly writes. I think that at least a credible simulation of sentience would be necessary for what these idiots claim. After having followed AI research for about 30 years now, I do not see that happen anytime soon, if ever.
In essence the “sexbot advocates” are arguing that an electromechanical facsimilie of a person could be manufactured that convincingly mimics human sexual, intellectual and emotional response; the Gynoid concept from Ghost in the Shell 2 in fact (minus the psychopathic part embedded in the actual plot of the movie).
What Maggie has argued is that, if that goal was realised, we would create an Artificial Person, with self awareness, the intelligence to pass a Turing test and then some, and effectively its own emotive responses too.
That’s much more sophisticated than a vibrator; it would be a companion, be sentient, and therefore arguably have the same rights as a biological person, a Human.
While true, current the AI research state-of-the-art does not suggest at all that this is even possible. It does point more in the other direction. This whole discussion is driven by assumptions that are baseless at this time. There is no ghost in the machine and there will not be one in there for a very, very long time and possibly forever. This physical universe puts some rather drastic limitations on what computing machinery can do and at least my intuition tells me that what a smart human being can do may be well beyond what physics seems to allow.
But it gets worse (or better…): Even if we had unlimited computing power, we still could not implement something on the level of smart human intelligence, as there is not even a credible theory how to do that. On the other hand, there are some theoretical results (incompleteness) that suggests smart human beings can do things that no computing machinery can do, completely irrelevant how powerful.
I’m currently writing Pro-Libertarian, Pro-Sex-work protest slogans, and thinking about a protest outside the capitol building. Some of these include:
“Throw all the politicians, bureaucrats, sheriffs, DAs, etc. in jail for life without parole.”
“Shouldn’t Strip Club owners decide the minimum requirements instead of dipshit politicians?”
“A message to sanctimonious moral crusaders: WHO’S DESTROYING WHOSE MORAL FIBER, YOU TWITS!?”
“Abolish every public sector union, from the Sheriffs Association to the Federation of Teachers.”
I did it again. I made a comment on a prohibitionist’s post. And now I’ve gone down the rabbit hole 🙁
Post after post, I have cited sources from you and other sex workers, and they’ve given me nothing.
I’ve tried. I’ve really tried not to get into this debate with these people. I’m never going to change their minds. My only hope is that I help some undecided person to come over to the side of decriminalisation.
If anyone wants to know exactly how the debate went down, it’s on George Takei’s FB page: https://www.facebook.com/georgehtakei/posts/1598312176864896?comment_id=1598837546812359 on an article about sex tourism in Laos (which seems kinda unbiased at first, until at the very end the author says in no uncertain terms that demand is the root of the ‘problem’)
I had a lot of respect for Takei for promoting tolerance of gays, but that’s over now.