Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for June, 2016

The Cool Kids

Posted in Biography, Perception, Philosophy, tagged , on June 10, 2016| 4 Comments »

Suddenly some subtle entity
Some cosmic energy, brushed her like shadows.  –  Chris Stein, “Shayla”

barstoolWhen I was a child, I was definitely not one of the cool kids; I was a weird little know-it-all who saw things that the adults said weren’t there, told strange stories, and preferred to read rather than do anything else.  I was chubby, homely, had frizzy hair and a terrible overbite, didn’t have a lot of friends and was relentlessly teased by both boys and girls, including some of the ones who claimed to be my friends when the more popular kids weren’t around.  All in all, I was probably one of the last of my classmates one would’ve picked out as a future sex symbol.  An author?  Sure.  A public intellectual?  Maybe that too.  But a stunning beauty, respected activist and all around cool kid?  Anybody who would’ve predicted that would’ve been laughed out of the conversation.

I guess things started to change in my freshman year of high school.  I remember a picture my mother took of me with the girl across the street (who was the same age as me) on our 8th grade graduation night, and the difference was striking.  But a few weeks after that I got my braces, and by the time they were off about 16 months later my fat had vanished, my facial contours had changed completely and puberty had done some indefinable something to my self-confidence.  I was still fairly plain, but by my 14th birthday my figure (with the exception of my tits) was almost exactly the same as it is today: 5’5″ tall, 125#, 25″ waist, 36″ hips.  I could still fit into the clothes I wore then if I still had them (assuming they could stretch over my enhanced bosom).  By the time I was 15 some people of both sexes clearly seemed to find me attractive, and by the time I reached UNO a few months before my 17th birthday I could count on frequent passes from both guys and girls.  And yet, nobody ever referred to me as a beauty; I heard “cute” very often, and even “hot” or “sexy”.  But something deep inside me just couldn’t accept that, or maybe I thought it was because I was willing to put out; I jumped at the first marriage proposal I got at the ripe old age of 20, and paid for that bad decision for the next seven and a half years.

And though my self-esteem had taken a severe beating during my time with Jack, when I emerged on the other side and moved into my thirties, I noticed that something had changed.  My confidence, though above average in my late teens, had now become palpable.  People were now describing me with words like “striking” and “stunning” instead of “pretty” or “hot”.  And though I had been able to demand money for sex before, now I could depend on that for a living.  The effect snowballed, and though my confidence in my writing and speaking abilities trailed that in my looks by a number of years, that eventually built up as well.  But while people who’ve always been attractive and popular are very often not the nicest of folks, there’s a part of me that still believes I’m a homely weirdo that nobody would ever actually want, and she’s still enchanted and flattered and delighted by compliments and attention.  She tries to be kind and gentle to everyone who is nice to her, because she still clearly remembers what it was like when people were rough and unkind to her.  And though she’s still not quite sure how she got to be one of the cool kids, she’s absolutely determined never to use the perks of that status to hurt others.

Read Full Post »

Filtering Out the Poison

Posted in Q & A, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged , , on June 9, 2016| 10 Comments »

Do you still feel Gina and P411 are dangerous?  I disabled my p411 account because I am still worried, but I do not really know how to screen clients so I am wondering how I should go about it.  I live in a city where the cops target escorts frequently, and though I have never been arrested for prostitution, I have been in trouble for other things and cannot have any legal issues from this.

lady scientistI don’t think you need to disable your account; however, I wouldn’t assume any guy from P411 is automatically good, either.  I’ve written about screening a number of times; my personal favorite method is asking for references.  If you don’t trust references, there are other means of screening including  Date-Check, a helpful whitelist with a better track record than P411.  I’ve also written about several other methods, and here’s a good resource list compiled by a provider in New Orleans.  You should also look at the posts in my mentoring tag; some of them may make you nervous, but it’s better to be prepared.  And one final thing: if at all possible, get in touch with your local SWOP chapter.  This can be a very isolating business, and connecting with other local sex workers will not only help you to stay safe, but may also help you to find peace of mind and emotional support.

(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 (#644)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 8, 2016| 1 Comment »

The first seats at the table ought to be reserved for those from the sex work community– and everyone else should listen.  –  Benjamin L. Corey

Droit du Seigneur Milton Anthony

Not quite a rapist cop, but bad enough:

An Oklahoma sheriff requested a sexual relationship with one of his female employees in exchange for hiring her husband…Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation agents arrested Carter County Sheriff Milton Anthony at his office [on June 1st]…The female employee’s husband was hired shortly after the sexual contact started, and sexual contact between the sheriff and the employee continued for several months…When the woman tried to end the contact, Anthony allegedly insinuated he would alter her work hours and even fire her and her husband if she did not continue with their agreement.  The woman began saving the sheriff’s texts and recorded a conversation between her and the sheriff in April…

One Born Every Minute

I strongly suspect that these rapists are the same ones discussed in the original of this title:

…a Jane Doe plaintiff sued Internet Brands, parent company of popular networking site Model Mayhem, alleging that the site’s operators had violated California state law by failing to notify Model Mayhem users of the very real risk that they could be targeted by…a pair of…sex offenders that the plaintiff claims Internet Brands had known about for years before they — under the pretense of being a “talent scout” — lured her to Florida, where she was allegedly drugged and raped in Feb. 2011…the pair had been at this scheme for around five years, using Model Mayhem as a hunting ground for victims; not only sexually violating…[them] but then allegedly distributing video of the acts…the plaintiff points to a 2010 lawsuit filed by Internet Brands against the original owners for allegedly failing to disclose the potential for civil suits arising from the activities of these particular rapists…“Posting or emailing such a warning could be deemed an act of publishing information, but [the Communications Decency Act] bars only liability that treats a website as a publisher or speaker of content provided by somebody else,” reads the ruling.  “A post or email warning that Internet Brands generated would involve only content that Internet Brands itself produced”…This ruling…determines that the lawsuit against the company can move forward…

Universal Criminality

That whole “freedom of speech” thing was nice while it lasted:

Lancaster [Pennsylvania] police arrested 13 people after a recent crackdown on prostitution…12 men solicited an undercover Lancaster police officer posing as a prostitute during the sting…Charde Clawges…was charged with obstructing administration of the law because she approached the undercover officer and began yelling that she knew the woman was a police officer.  Police said Clawges and the undercover officer had prior contact…

Worse Than I Thought

“Sex trafficking” laws keep getting broader and scarier:

…advocates against…sex trafficking of minors, are celebrating the passage of [a draconian new Connecticut law]…Public Act No. 16-71 will require [hotels] to keep records of their guests’ receipts and transactions for a minimum of six months after the guest has vacated.  [Indoctrination] programs will be recommended for staff at hotels and motels to learn to identify the signs of human trafficking and report the suspected crimes…The [law] now [requires] a mandatory $2,000 fine for convicted buyers of sex and an automatic $2,000 fine for those who [hire] a sex worker in a motor vehicle…accused buyers…cannot…claim…that they did not know the age of the sex worker to avoid harsher penalties that come with trafficking minors…

Legitimate Outrage

Being an ignoramus is no impediment to a career in politics:

Another Republican lawmaker suggested women and girls are unlikely to become pregnant from rape or incest.  Idaho State Rep. Pete Nielson…expressed his doubts that post-rape pregnancies were medically possible…“It is a logical conclusion that any woman who got pregnant after such a despicable and gruesome act must have, in fact, enjoyed it even on a small scale, which eventually led to the obvious consequences…the brain and our emotions affect our bodies.  So, when a woman gets raped, if she experiences that as a trauma, she doesn’t get pregnant.  And you can say what you want, but when she does get pregnant after such a crime, that undoubtedly means that she liked it at some point, regardless of how strange or unbelievable that sounds.  Medicine and biology don’t lie.  They just don’t.”

Grow the Hell Up! (#139)

The bullshit is so deep in this, you’ll need waders to get through it:

…Up until her 18th birthday, that would have made Lexi a sex slave and the hotel sting her emancipation.  A social worker would have been summoned and the man who booked the room arrested for human trafficking.  But Lexi’s 20 now—too old to rescue unless she asks.  Instead, she’s cited for prostitution…Women and children involved in prostitution are now seen as victims instead of criminals…A vice squad goes after prostitutes.  A human trafficking unit looks for slaves and their captors…San Jose specifically has received annual grants ranging from $50,000 to $500,000 to pay for police overtime pay, cameras, binoculars, night vision monoculars, cellphones and phone number-reset software, body wire and other equipment for undercover ops…When a sting nets an adult instead of a minor, he adds, sometimes they just let them go…Still…commercial sex breaks laws police have sworn to uphold, so they can’t let them walk every time…

Traffic Circle (#429)

Theologian Benjamin Corey is quickly distinguishing himself as one of Christianity’s most outspoken sex worker allies:

…the stories of those in the sex work community are individual, varied, nuanced and complex, and do not line up with some prefabricated narrative where one size fits all…far too many in the anti-trafficking movement are not in dialogue with the sex work community…I hear voices expressing feelings of being silenced, discounted, stigmatized, ignored, and even parented by strangers who think they know what’s best for them– without even knowing them or their individual stories…What is happening today in the anti-trafficking/anti-sex industry movement would be offensive in any other context.  It’s a form of moral colonialism:  “Oh, hey– I’m here, I have moral objections to how you’re living, and I know exactly how your life needs to change without even listening to your story.”  The only reason why it’s tolerated in this context is because of the stigmatization associated with the sex industry– one that is often perpetuated by the very people who claim they want to help…

Dr. Corey’s work also appeared in this blog earlier this year when he debunked the “gypsy whores” myth.

All-Purpose Excuse

When men get caught in some kind of sexual misbehavior, the usual excuse is “sex addiction”.  I really hope “sex trafficking” doesn’t start providing an equivalent excuse for women:

The 15-year-old girl had only been a student at South Fort Myers High School…for two weeks when she went looking for her new crush in the boys’ bathroom.  She’d spent the prior two years in and out of treatment facilities…learning to cope with the horrors of the sex slave industry into which she had been trafficked at age 13.  So when…her crush…asked her for sex…[she] agreed.  But…someone started filming, and over the next hour as many as 25 male students were shown on school surveillance footage passing through the bathroom…Multiple boys had sex with the girl…Sixteen students were disciplined…Though the sex was described as consensual…the girl was not legally old enough to give consent.  And because of her troubled background, the teen’s mother and advocates have said this behavior, called promiscuous by many outraged community members, is actually quite common among sex-trafficking survivors…

Vendetta (#588) 13 billboard

It isn’t just morally-warped billionaires’ money going to vomit anti-whore propaganda all over the landscape, but yours as well:

Not content to spread false sex-work statistics in the media and legislature, Indiana activists and officials have now put up billboard advertisements to promote their anti-fact, anti-prostitution message.  One billboard—emblazoned at the top with “‘She looked 18.’  She’s not”—claims that 13-years-old is “the average age kids are first used in the sex trade.”  Any way you slice it, that’s simply not true: whether we are talking about the average age of entry into prostitution in general or the average age of minors engaging in prostitution, there’s no good evidence to back this assertion and a whole lot to suggest that it’s wrong. Even Polaris Project, arguably the most influential anti-trafficking organization in the United States, says that “this stat is not actually supported by any data“…The misleading ads are made all the more egregious because they’re paid for with taxpayer money.  The billboards were a project of the Indiana Protection for Abused and Trafficked Humans Task Force, a group that lists itself on Facebook as a “nonprofit” but is funded by the U.S. Department of Justice and headed up by U.S. Attorney Josh Minkler and Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller.  In addition to billboards, the group’s “Not Buying It” campaign also features ads on city buses and elsewhere…

Book Reviews (#630)

Another good interview with Chester Brown about his new book:

…Brown was last in the public eye in 2011 with Paying for It…a book that generated extreme reactions with its frank and dispassionate treatment of a [controversial] subject…and its advocacy for the rights of sex workers.  “I hadn’t been intending to do any kind of followup (to Paying For It)…I thought I would do a very different book”…Mary Wept Over The Feet of Jesus…is, as planned, a very different book.  Yet it’s a followup too, or at the very least a complementary companion piece.  Going back two thousand years and more in search of the roots of what Brown calls our culture’s “whore phobia,” the new book reinterprets a range of parables and stories from the Old and New Testaments, emerging with a thesis…that “Jesus was arguing that prostitution is a good thing, something that benefits society”…What specifically spurred Brown into writing Mary Wept was an interpretation he read of the enigmatic Parable of the Talents, in which seemingly the least responsible of three slaves entrusted with a master’s fortune – he literally spends his whole stake on prostitutes – gets rewarded…

To Molest and Rape

It’s rare to see a new outlet actually use the word “rape” in reference to a rapist cop:  “An Owenton [Kentucky cop] was arrested [on June 2nd] and charged with first-degree rape…Rufus Shearer…is being held at the Carroll County Detention Center…”

Turning Point

Kari Lerum, a UW professor I’ve worked with as an activist, discusses the wrongheadedness of opposition to decriminalization:

…with Amnesty International’s recent unflinching policy recommendation to decriminalize all adult consensual sex work…it is becoming increasingly difficult for naysayers to ignore the well-documented ways that sex workers are harmed by criminalization.  Amnesty’s position is based on many years of empirical research by leading health and human rights researchers, as well as calls by sex workers and advocates…for some individuals, no amount of evidence or logic will change their opinion that sex work is intrinsically wrong.  For them, decriminalizing any form of sex work – including adult consensual encounters – would send the unacceptable message that sex work is a legitimate form of income generation…I ask students to honestly reflect on how their life experiences might shape the way they approach the issue of exchanging sexual services for pay.  At the end of the course I ask students to revisit their feelings.  I have found that when given the opportunity to make space for their feelings and to evaluate the best empirical evidence…most students conclude that adult consensual sex work should be decriminalized…even if they still personally do not “believe” in it…I wish that I could also give this assignment to all policymakers and anti-sex trade activists…

Read Full Post »

Diary #310

Posted in Diary, tagged , , on June 7, 2016| Leave a Comment »

666Emboldened by my successful flights to and from Los Angeles, last week I bought our tickets for the Desiree Alliance conference in New Orleans.  But lest you think I’ve become reckless, I must point out that I still took a number of precautions.  First of all, I bought tickets for Jae and Vignette at the same time as mine, ensuring we’ll be on the same flight in case I need to dope myself up more than last time.  Also, I was careful to select nonstop flights both coming and going; unless a flight is unusually rough, the chance of vertigo is highest during takeoff and landing, so one of each is better than two of each.  Also, nonstop flights obviously result in less travel time, which means less risk of my meds wearing off too soon.  I was also careful to select flights with a “very good” rating; less turbulence, less bullshit and less chance of delay are all good things for me.  And as you can see from this screencap Vignette tweeted, the price was probably a good omen; after all, what would one expect when flying to a harlot convention in New Orleans with the Whore of Babylon?  But in all seriousness, I’m really looking forward to the conference; the last time I went to one, I was just beginning to realize how well-known I had become, and I was meeting many people in the flesh for the first time.  But this time, I’m going with a large group of close friends, and it is going to be a total blast, especially since it’ll be the first time I can show those friends some of the sights of my home town.  And that, dear readers, is well worth risking airsickness for.

Read Full Post »

No Moss

Posted in Current Events, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , on June 6, 2016| 3 Comments »

How does it feel, how does it feel?
To be on your own, with no direction home
A complete unknown, like a rolling stone.  –  Bob Dylan

Rolling Stone 6-16-16Rolling Stone magazine was born in the autumn of 1967, and for years was an icon of music and counterculture.  But sometime in the 1980s its reputation began to wane; it was repeatedly criticized as being stuck in the ’70s, and the political views it espoused, which once seemed to speak for so many, faded into irrelevance and self-parody.  In 2014 the sinking of its fortunes was accelerated by the publication of a badly-flawed, libelous piece of yellow journalism about a supposed gang rape that never actually happened, and the tone of anti-sex moral panic set by that fiasco has apparently become one of the dying rag’s editorial lodestars because last week it published a dreary recitation of prohibitionist bullshit from a lawyer for the US Department of “Justice”.  Let that sink in for a moment: the former champion of sex, drugs and rock & roll has been reduced to printing a hysterical anti-sex screed written by a mouthpiece for the US government which not only praises prohibition, defends the police state and attacks the world’s most respected human rights organization (which Rolling Stone has always lionized in the past), but does so via a tissue of lies so dense that I was literally able to find only four basically-truthful sentences in the whole thing (the 1st sentence, the ones starting “Amnesty argues” & “Amnesty also claims” under #2, and the sentence beginning “In discussions with Amnesty” under #5).

It would be pointless to attempt to deconstruct this mess; most of it is such blatantly false, repeatedly-debunked propaganda that nearly any of you could tear it apart as easily as I could, especially if you kept “Frequently Told Lies” open while doing so.  It opens by arguing that dysphemisms describe our profession more accurately than objective terms; quickly progresses to confusing legalization and decriminalization while mis-defining the latter; quotes debunked prohibitionist “research” while arguing that sex work magically violates every known economic principle; argues that the problems with legalization are actually problems with decriminalization; states that women who are poor or who have suffered sexual trauma are forever incapable of giving sexual consent; trots out the “age of entry” myth; descends into asinine navel-gazing about “rape culture” and “objectification” while simultaneously giving credence to the grossly-misogynistic “raping a whore is theft of services” trope; and winds up with a blatant argument that economic freedom is bad and women are moral imbeciles who need a paternalistic government to “regulate” our lives, sexualities and economic activities, concluded with an appeal to the Swedish model and a bunch of meaningless prohibitionist mottoes.  As the young people would say, “Go home, Rolling Stone, you’re drunk.”

If this, along with the trotting out of senile nonagenarian Christian evangelical politicians with white savior complexes, is the best the prohibitionist movement has to offer, its days are numbered.  These arguments are so obviously false and intrinsically unconvincing, even people who have never before heard of the Swedish model are able to immediately recognize them as tripe.  Of course, authoritarians don’t actually care about either truth or public opinion; they’re perfectly happy to demand people comply with their bizarre and evil notions upon pain of violence inflicted by armed thugs.  But the period in which the War on Whores, like its sibling the War on Drugs, could be seen by anyone without an agenda to enforce as anything other than a moral abomination, is rapidly drawing to a close.  It will be interesting to see which cultural institutions see the writing on the wall and take the side of human rights, and which line up with cops, moralists and profiteers on the side of repression.  And though I was never really a fan of Rolling Stone, I must say I’m disappointed (though not actually surprised) that it has chosen the latter.

Read Full Post »

Links #309

Posted in Current Events, History, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on June 5, 2016| 3 Comments »

Let me grab that pee-pee!  –  “Officer” Risel Martinez

Brooke Magnanti called my attention to this wonderfully dark, bizarre little music video, so here I am sharing it with you on account of I’m just that kind of gal.  The links above it are from Scott Greenfield, Clarissa, Carol Fenton, Whores of Yore,  Lucy Steigerwald, Radley Balko, and Mike Crawford, in that order.

From the Archives

Read Full Post »

In the News (#643)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 4, 2016| Leave a Comment »

We are workers, not victims.  –  Lily Hermarratanarapong

Safe TargetsRed Light Legal logo 

Most conversations around legal advocacy for sex workers tend to focus on a handful of big ticket items, like the fight for decriminalization or protecting sex workers from rapist cops…But there are a lot of smaller, and much more mundane, ways that sex workers can benefit from legal representation, whether they’re strippers going through custody battles, former escorts seeking a divorce, or cam girls looking to incorporate.  At long last, there’s an organization dedicated to helping sex workers find culturally competent legal representation–and thanks to the internet, it’s poised to have a pretty serious impact.  Red Light Legal was founded by Kristina Dolgin, a long time sex worker who enrolled in law school in the hopes of finding a way to help out her community.  Since the organization’s inception, the internet’s been integral to its operations: as a way of raising funds, spreading awareness about sex work law issues, and, most essentially, connecting with clients…

License to Rape

Prohibition turns every individual’s body into a “crime scene”:

A Canadian businesswoman…was sexually assaulted by three U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers during a motorcycle trip on May 14.  The three male officers were ostensibly searching her orifices for contraband, which they did not find…The 51-year-old woman…planned to ride with a female friend from Radium Hot Springs, British Columbia, to Elmo, Montana.  At the…border crossing, she was questioned by a CBP officer who wondered why she was visiting Elmo, which he described as “Indian country”…three [rapists] searched her motorcycle and her wallet, in which they found a perfectly legal interim motorcycle license that they deemed suspicious.  To resolve their suspicions, they said, she would have to remove her clothing and submit to probing of her anus and vagina…

Dirty Amateurs

Amateurs are a menace to public health; they should be licensed and heavily regulated:

…a…report…in the Lancet…found that today’s teens are growing up in a world where preventable and treatable health issues, such as HIV/AIDS and unplanned pregnancy, abound…For women between the ages of 10 and 24, unsafe sex is the fastest-growing risk factor for illness and death worldwide…the report’s researchers observed changes in this group’s health over 23 years.  At first, STIs didn’t even rank as a risk factor for death, but…reached number one by the end of the research period…

Bottleneck

Now just imagine if this was the law, and always available:

…the home addresses of several German sex workers have allegedly been leaked in a customized Google Map…the map…was promoted by [prohibitionist] groups…[and] remained live for several days.  “Publishing their addresses to anyone opens them up to forced outing and violence,” said Fabienne Freymadl of the Professional Association of Erotic and Sexual Services…“They might lose custody of children, lose contact with family and lose any other jobs they hold.”  The map displayed roughly 2,000 German addresses purportedly linked to the sex trade, which is legal in the country but nevertheless carries stigma.  Sex work activists say some of the information on the map was publicly available—like the addresses of legal brothels—but that independent sex workers’ home addresses were included as well…When sex work activists got wind of the map, they quickly mobilized to get it taken down…Those behind the map [pretend] that [no] personal addresses were published…

Held Together With Lies (#447)

Up by 27% from the last nonsense “estimate” less than two years ago:

The 2016 Global Slavery Index estimates that 45.8 million people are subject to some form of modern slavery in the world today.  The Index presents a ranking of 167 countries based on the proportion of the population that is estimated to be in modern slavery…

The number is derived in part by combining completely different phenomena such as prison laborers and sex workers.

Doubling Down

PBS once again demonstrated its prohibitionist bias by presenting an anti-whore propaganda show disguised as a “debate”:

Americans are split on whether prostitution should be legal, according to a new survey from The Marist Poll and PBS TV-series Point Taken.  Forty-nine percent of respondents in the new national poll said prostitution between two consenting adults should be legal, while 44 percent responded that it should be illegal.  Younger respondents were more in favor of legalization, with 58 percent of those under 45 supportive, compared to just 40 percent of those 45 and older.  Men were more in favor of prostitution legalization than women, at 54 percent versus 44 percent.  And Democrats and political independents were much more likely than Republicans to say it should be legal:  52 and 58 percent, versus 35 percent…around 40 percent of those who said prostitution should be illegal also said criminal charges were not appropriate.  And overall, some 63 and 60 percent said selling and buying sex should not yield criminal penalties…The two guests most opposed to decriminalization were a Kings College philosophy professor and a self-described “investor, author, and finance expert,” who cast [a black sex worker and former foster child who started out while underage] as a privileged activist…They came ready with ample…false statistics about the average age of entry into prostitution, the prevalence of sex trafficking in countries where prostitution is legal, and the compassion and prudence of the Nordic Model…”Legalization allows traffickers to hide victims in plain sight, which creates greater trafficking,” insisted the finance expert, against all evidence…

Worse Than I Thought (#532)

Politicians say not enough people’s lives are being destroyed for consensual sex:

…Under the JVTA, the presence of a single sexually-oriented ad posted by someone under 18 could trigger sex-trafficking charges for anyone involved with running the platform.  Rep. Ann Wagner…said…she hopes the Department of Justice (DOJ) will make more use of the advertising clause in the upcoming year…Wagner is just one of 37 legislators calling on the feds to be more [profligate] about using the 2015 federal sex-trafficking law…they stressed…greater focus on catching and prosecuting people who pay for sex…Lawmakers speak of this move as a way to bring justice to bear on “child sex traffickers.”  In reality, it allows for the escalation from misdemeanor solicitation charges to federal or felony human trafficking charges for anyone who offers—knowingly or unknowingly—to pay someone even one day under 18 for sex…And the government need not prove that a sex solicitor “knew the person [selling sex] had not attained the age of 18 years”…There also need not be an actual victim under this approach—an undercover officer posing online as a teenager will do just fine…

Served Cold (#537) 

This fascist group, with its CIA connections, is the most terrifying of all the rescue industry groups, and almost certainly the most dangerous to human rights on a global scale:

“This is a war.  This is a battle”…Mark Stott called the people of Utah County figuratively to arms May 25 at the “Time to Rescue” benefit concert.  Stott is the co-founder of Operation Underground Railroad (O.U.R.), a [fascist paramilitary] organization dedicated to rescuing women and children from sex trafficking around the world.  Headed by former Homeland Security Special Agent Tim Ballard, the 2-year-old charity [claims to have] rescued almost 600 victims and assisted in the arrest of almost 200 traffickers worldwide…Angela Brady Krois, organizer of the Time to Rescue event, wants to preserve…the innocent dreams of the women and children that are sold and used throughout the world…O.U.R…is in the trenches, infiltrating the sex-trafficking rings worldwide to literally pluck the children from criminals’ grasp…

Note that isn’t metaphorical; these lunatics literally conduct paramilitary operations in sovereign foreign countries that the CIA pressures to play along with them.

The Course of a Disease (#574)

Sometimes the changes are incremental:

In a landmark ruling, a Tel Aviv court declared…that prostitutes working from home or paying rent for a brothel could be acting legally…Judge Itai Hermelin determined the conditions under which operating a brothel is not an offense as part of a trial brought by the state against an establishment in east Tel Aviv.  Hermelin imposed restrictions on the operations of the Tel Aviv brothel.  However, these were subject to the state committing to avoid prosecuting sex workers who use their own apartments or locations that are rented by several women together for the purpose of prostitution, or at a location rented by one woman who then invites other women to share it…This is believed to be the first time a judge in Israel has underscored the freedom of women to engage in prostitution, as well as specifying their rights…He [wrote] “pushing these women onto the street violates their dignity in an unacceptable manner…interpreting the law in a way that criminalizes prostitution taking place in a building is unconstitutional and must be rejected”…the judge noted that the main criticism voiced by the sex workers speaking in court was directed not at their place of employment – which they described as discreet, safe and clean – but at the police.  “The attitude of the police was…degrading and harmful, sometimes bordering on violent abuse…There were repeated descriptions of women being chased out of buildings naked during police raids, with abusive language”…

An Example To the West (#626) 

Thai sex workers just love contradicting prohibitionist who claim they’re “victims”:

…Empower [is] a sex-workers’ rights organisation with an estimated 50,000 members.  Since the group’s founding in 1985, it has fought to improve the working conditions of women in the sex trade in Thailand…(Empower is short for “Education Means Protection Of Women Engaged in Recreation”)…less than 10 percent of sex workers in Thailand are “trafficked”—duped, tricked, or forced into their circumstances…A 2012 research report compiled by Empower details a host of abuses related to treating these women as trafficking victims, including widespread police entrapment, wrongful detention, extortion, invasive medical examinations, and unjust deportation…Empower has pushed the Thai human-rights community to reconsider its reliance on raids, rehab, and criminal prosecution as the go-to approaches to combat trafficking, fundamentally questioning whether the sex industry ought to be deemed illicit.  The organisation has become one of the leading voices in Southeast Asia and throughout the world…

Broken Record (#638) 

Canadian prohibitionists are desperate to cash in before the panic implodes:

The Formula One Grand Prix weekend in Montreal…brings thousands of tourists to the city, with many on the prowl for sex…[prohibitionists] in Quebec launched a campaign…called “Buying Sex is Not a Sport”…Lise Theriault, Quebec’s minister…for the status of women [vomited out the usual prohibitionist garbage]…Montreal as a Canadian “hot spot” for child sex tourism due to its proximity to the U.S. border…The average age of entry into the sex trade…is about 14 or 15…

To Molest and Rape

The people prohibitionists want in control of sex workers:

…A 2008 study in Cape Town showed that nearly half of street-based sex workers surveyed “have been threatened with violence by police”.  12% have been raped by police, and 28% have been asked for sex in exchange for release from custody…

Turning Point (#641)

On May 31st, Dan Savages’s guests included Emily Bazelon of the New York Times and my friend Mistress Matisse, talking about decriminalization.  If you’d like to listen (and why wouldn’t you?) download it here.

Read Full Post »

Two-dimensional

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, tagged , , , on June 3, 2016| 10 Comments »

Since a three-dimensional object casts a two-dimensional shadow, we should be able to imagine the unknown four-dimensional object whose shadow we are. – Marcel Duchamp

Most of y’all are probably familiar with the Kinsey scale of sexual orientation; it’s the 0-6 in the chart below.  Earlier this week, my attention was called to an article in Mic which promoted this new classification system, which expands Kinsey’s one dimension to two.  But while on the one hand it gives a slightly better picture of vanilla sexual response, it completely ignores both the kink dimension and the existence of responsive sexuality (the norm in about a third of women), and gives a place of precedence to ongoing sexual “relationships” despite the fact that many individuals aren’t interested in them:

purple-red scale

Given only this system to work with, I’d probably best be classified as a C4; I don’t ever develop what most people would define as “lustful feelings”, no matter how long I’m in a relationship or how attractive I find my partner.  Yet at the same time, that “C” description makes it sound as though sex is always a calculated and rather sterile decision for people like me, and that we can’t experience passion.  And that is 99 44/100% pure bullshit; anyone who’s ever seen me actually aroused can tell you that I’m very passionate indeed.  The people who designed this chart seem to believe that responding to sexual stimuli requires “lustful feelings”, which is roughly equivalent to saying that a car is non-functional because it requires a driver to start and operate it.

And then there’s this weird and narrow focus on vanilla notions of sexuality; obviously that isn’t spelled out in the chart legend, but the language strongly implies that when the designers say “sex” they mean intercourse, oral sex and other genital diddling designed to produce orgasm.  But many people’s sexualities aren’t like that at all; some people might be described as A, B or C where fucking is concerned, yet they’re D, E or even F with some sort of kink.  Furthermore, that kink might not even be something the majority would recognize as sexual, yet it gets the individual hard or wet and results in the same kind of gratification vanillas get from the old in-out (or some equally satisfying physiological/emotional state).  Expanding one dimension to two is not a big improvement, especially if one is going to use descriptors like “true orientation” while ignoring a lot of the human race.  As I wrote in “East is East and West is West“,

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…

One final note: I find the phrase “bonds stronger than friendship” (in the “B” description) extremely offensive.  For most people deep friendship can be a stronger bond than romance, which is why friendships so often outlast marriages.  The people (almost certainly men) who designed this chart are the same sort who come up with ugly phrases like “friend zone” and “friends with benefits”, who imagine relationships as fitting into some sort of linear scale where those containing sex and romance are objectively “better” or “higher” than those which don’t.  The reality of human sexuality is a whole world; describing it requires at least four dimensions plus time.  So though two dimensions of description is certainly an improvement over one, it’s hardly revolutionary; if anything, it’s kind of a slow start.

Read Full Post »

Whores’ Day 2016

Posted in Perception, Tyranny, tagged , on June 2, 2016| 5 Comments »

They’re losing, and they know it.  They’re going to double down on their efforts, and the number of pogroms will increase in order to “teach us our place”.  And that just means we need to hold the course all the more.  –  “Turning Point”

red umbrella groupForty-one years ago today, the sex worker rights movement began in earnest with the occupation of the Church of St. Nizier in Lyon, France.  And though our momentum was destroyed when the anti-sex feminists took over the mainstream feminist movement during the initial AIDS crisis, support for sex workers’ rights slowly increased; by the turn of the century legal restrictions were being loosened in many countries, and decriminalization became an attainable goal in others.  But as I wrote in “Awakening“,

Unfortunately, the prohibitionists are not stupid; they noticed that there had been a sea change in public opinion against interfering in private sexual arrangements between consenting adults, and so created the “sex trafficking” hysteria as a means of rallying the public behind criminalization again.  As the “Nation Strategy” of Swanee Hunt’s Demand Abolition organization states, “Framing the Campaign’s key target as sexual slavery might garner more support and less resistance, while framing the Campaign as combating prostitution may be less likely to mobilize similar levels of support and to stimulate stronger opposition.”  In other words, “since people now recognize it’s wrong for the government to stick its nose into private bedrooms, we have to pretend this is really about something else.”

The prohibitionists’ strategy was wildly successful; in collusion with the US government they set off a moral panic which has gripped almost the entire world for over 12 years now, resulting in a reversal of many of the gains activists had made, and a cascade of increasingly-horrible laws clearly designed to implement a “War on Whores” to replace the moribund “War on Drugs”.  But no moral panic lasts forever, and not everyone gets caught up the hysteria in the first place; as I predicted four years ago, wiser heads have slowly collected the evidence necessary to debunk every last prohibitionist claim.  That summer the wind started to shift in our favor again as organization after organization came out in favor of decriminalization, and last summer we passed our watershed moment when Amnesty International joined those voices.  Even the staunchly-prohibitionist New York Times has begun to see the light, and in the wake of Amnesty’s exhaustive pro-decriminalization report the prohibitionists are absolutely beside themselves with fury.  Already, those both in and out of government are ramping up the persecutions against us, but these are nothing but the temper tantrums of frustrated authoritarians.  On this 41st annual International Whores’ Day, we have more to celebrate than we’ve had in my entire lifetime:  We are winning at last.  And there’s not a damn thing the prohibitionists can do about it.

Read Full Post »

In the News (#642)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 1, 2016| 5 Comments »

[Emotional] manipulation is where censorship pulls its strength, and keeps the discussion of porn within the realm of saving women and children.  –  Violet Blue

Mea Culpa

I don’t often make errors worth noting in the blog, which may be why I never had this heading before.  But when I do, they’re usually because my VEWWY SEEWEEUSS thought processes failed to recognize a joke or parody as such; that was the case in Sunday’s “Links #308“.  Author Christopher Seaton explains:

When I write at Fault Lines I usually do so from a very serious perspective. This is because keeping the cracks in our criminal justice system visible and educating the public about the law is serious. When the weekend comes, we usually loosen our belts, let our hair down, and have fun. My mischief caught the attention of Maggie McNeill this week, and the whole story is a great lesson in communication…Maggie McNeill is one of the most interesting people on the web, if you don’t read her work regularly.  She’s a writer, an academic, and a sex worker.  This is not someone you want to get into a fight with when it comes to criminalization of conduct in any way, shape, or form.  It’s not that I’m afraid of a good verbal spar with Maggie, I just know my limits…so I tweeted Maggie and told her it was a joke…she replies with an apology and says she had no idea Fault Lines posted anything but 100% dead serious content…I also appreciate Maggie letting her readership know I’m not on the side of over-criminalization…

Aversions

Margaret Corvid asked several sex workers what made their favorite clients special:

…sex work is work, and my favorite clients are like a writer’s, or a plumber’s: they’re the ones who treat me with respect…our favorite clients are the ones that respect our screening processes, that pay us, that don’t bully us or stalk us or subject us to their racist rants while we, on the clock, smile and nod.  My favorites read my website properly, learning my hours, fees, services and how I prefer to be contacted.  They don’t whinge if I ask for a deposit, and they don’t request services I don’t provide.  They respect my time.  They don’t call with cocks in hand for free sexy chat, or show up early while I’m still lacing myself into my corset…

The New Victorianism

So this happened to my friend Maggie McMuffin:

A burlesque dancer from Seattle, Washington, was informed that she would need to change her clothing if she wanted to board a flight from Boston to Seattle because her shorts were deemed “too short” by the flight crew.  The crew felt that the shorts may be deemed inappropriate by families on the flight and should be changed as not to offend anyone…Maggie McMuffin says that she had successfully flown on a JetBlue flight from New York To Boston without incident in the same pair of “too short” black and white shorts earlier in the day.  However, when she approached the gate to fly her second leg of her flight back home to Seattle, she was informed the shorts were not appropriate and that she needed to cover up more, as there were families on the flight that may find the attire inappropriate.  JetBlue says they personally called and apologized to Maggie about the incident and refunded her for the shorts she was forced to purchase in the terminal while also providing the woman with a $200 credit to use on future flights as a “goodwill gesture”…

Mentoring

Paint By Numbers

Why hike or stand when you can motorcycle?

[An Oregon] woman is using her love for motorcycling to spread awareness about child sex trafficking.  Gwen Feero is a special education teacher who is preparing to bike to all four corners of the United States for what she calls the Freedom Ride.  She decided to make the more than 11,000-mile ride after overhearing a sex trafficking conversation in Portland…

I think my profession must be the only one in the world that people think they’re “experts” in after eavesdropping on a conversation between two other lackwits.

Thou Shalt Not (#413)

Because prohibition always works so well:

Six out of ten Norwegians support a proposal from the Norwegian Medical Association…to ban the sale of tobacco products to anyone born after 2000…NMA [fantasized] in January that Norway [could] create “a tobacco-free generation” by 2035…NMA president Marit Hermansen said in January that it is not a basic human right to begin using tobacco…Health Minister Bent Høie [said]…the government has no plans to take up any legislation that would lead to a ban of tobacco sales.

Broken Record (#579) 

I’m not sure which part is more pathetic: this ass insisting that there’s rampant “sex trafficking” in South Dakota, or thinking a vacation in Southeast Asia makes her an “expert”:

…you’d be surprised how many people don’t think sex trafficking is a thing that happens here…in South Dakota…one of my favorite things we have done so far is our work with Whittier Middle School…This is how sex trafficking numbers go down. These kids need a reason to believe that they are worth more than a number some trafficker puts on them.  Traffickers only have power when they find those that believe their worth is so small that it can be bought…

Sales Pitch (#626) 

Aphrodite bless Wendy Lyon for enduring Swedish cops’ self-congratulatory pig porn to bring us the parts that most show up their “model” for what it is:

Swedish super cop Simon Haggstrom – you’ll know him from his frequent visits to other countries to proselytise for the sex purchase ban – has now published his memoirs.  Only in Swedish, alas, but that’s why God made Google Translate.  Here are some of his views on how the law actually functions in practice…it provides the cops with “excitement” and plenty of wank material, in which they themselves play a starring role in the action…it hasn’t changed men’s attitudes.  It isn’t deterring them from paying for sex.  It isn’t stopping women from selling sex (indeed, they have to engage in a sexual act before enforcement will take place at all).  It is subjecting them to unwanted interactions with the police, up to and including detention, and deportation for those who refuse to accept the cops’ “help”…even Amnesty might be surprised at the clumsy, cringeworthy porn that Haggstrom illustrates his accounts with..Is it any wonder he’s such an advocate for the law?  Without it, he’d have to get off with only his imagination again.

Among other lovely bits, Haggstrom reveals that Swedish cops harvest sex workers’ used tampons as “evidence”; he includes a photo of such in the book.  Hooray for “feminism”!

Gorged With Meaning (#639)

Articles on sugar dating appear to be starting to shed the moral panic:

“Sugar Daddy” arrangements have existed for ages, and it’s unclear if they are becoming more common because the phenomenon is not well studied.  But experts say at the very least the internet has made these transactions far easier to arrange and negotiate…U.S. undergraduate students last year finished school with an average of $35,000 in student debt — a figure that has risen steadily every year…The average graduate debt load is $75,000, and some longer programs force students into much deeper debt.  Many students say their loans don’t cover the cost of living, and with rent skyrocketing in most major cities, they are left scrambling to make up the difference.  One graduate student at Columbia University in New York had a scholarship that covered almost all of her tuition, but not her living expenses.  She spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the potential impact on her job prospects…she plans to continue “sugaring” after she graduates to buy herself time to find a more traditional job and remain officially unemployed so she can defer repaying the roughly $70,000 in loans she had already racked up.  “There is a lot of moral panic about it,” she said. “But what are the real estate and academic funding situations that led to this?”…

Almost the only negative statement is a quote near the end from a fanatic who claims that violence magically arises from money.

The Pro-Rape Coalition (#641) 

Violet Blue exposes the connection between a number of recent anti-sex op-eds:

…under the guise of…objectivity and presenting a range of opposing views on pornography, the [Washington] Post ran its “In Theory” porn series…Out of seven articles, only one presents an opposing viewpoint…When the two essays that could be considered positive or neutral viewpoints were published, they were simultaneously published with anti-porn essays…The Washington Post not only deceived readers about the agenda of its “In Theory” porn series, the outlet also deceived readers about the sources of these writings.  For instance, its final day in the series featured an article by Haley Halverson which depicts the anti-porn movement as a cultural zeitgeist brought on by public common sense, thanks to the good efforts of The National Center on Sexual Exploitation.  What readers are not told is that NCSE is the re-branded faith-based group Morality In Media, Inc., which changed its name in 2015.  Halverson runs its PR department.  This organization is a thread connecting most of the Post’s authors…

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts