On Monday of last week I had another beauty treatment, then went out of town on a 2-day gig from Tuesday to Thursday. This in itself wouldn’t be especially noteworthy except for the fact that it seems like every time I’m out of communications range for more than a few hours, some kind of big disaster happens (in this case, the raid on Backpage) that I then have to stay up late struggling to catch up with. It’s almost as if the universe were trying to tell me something (in which case I apologize in advance for the category 5 shitstorm which will no doubt ensue the day after I croak). Fortunately, I had something on Friday evening to take my mind off of things: a lovely and generous gentleman took Jae, Vignette, Lorelei and me to see a local production of Man of La Mancha, which happens to be among my favorite musicals (the irony was not lost on him, and I daresay he enjoyed our company more than the show). And while we were in the lobby, Lorelei spotted a poster for an upcoming show that she says we simply must see together; I’m really enjoying having a musical-theater-viewing pal, and we’re working on a list to share (“You haven’t seen such-and-such?” she says. “Oh, I’m sure you’d like thingamajiggy” I reply.) We’ll try to take as many selfies as possible in the process, though we somehow forgot to get one on Friday (a damned shame given that we all looked spectacular, if I must say so myself). So here’s one I took on the immensely boring three-hour wifi-less ferry ride Tuesday evening instead.
Archive for October, 2016
Diary #328
Posted in Diary, Music, tagged activism, blogging on October 11, 2016| 1 Comment »
Guest Columnist: Science Hooker
Posted in Guest Columns, Perception, Philosophy, tagged internet, Madonna/whore, Mars, STEM, United Kingdom on October 10, 2016| 12 Comments »
I recently became aware of Science Hooker, and I was so impressed I immediately asked her to do a guest column. She was able to achieve what in my youth I wanted to achieve, but couldn’t, and that makes her even more awesome in my estimation.
Fucking science.
Science does not need to be dry.
Safe.
Boring.
Middle and upper class.
Clean.
Even though people fitting these values dominate it.
Serve my science as a double shot in a sleazy bar.
“What was your name again?”
Learning and ability is not about background.
It’s about will, thought, curiosity, stubbornness and passion.
Science Hooker is about science for ALL.
Nerves jostle my stomach stepping onto the podium, adjusting the mic. Hundreds of academic faces, mostly white, mostly men, mostly upper middle class, peer at me from the cavernous dark. Mars rover tools. I’m here to talk about Mars rover tools, about how ultrasonics enhance performance. The focus envelopes, I calm…. begin. A significant part of my confidence in academia traces back to me fucking for a living. Honing those social skills. Escort, prostitute, courtesan, whore; the label has never seemed important. I remember perching on the radiator in a cold Edinburgh flat, nervous energy bubbling through me and a client due to arrive any minute. The doorbell chimed, the focus enveloped, calm… begin.
I’ve never been ashamed or embarrassed about escorting. Why should I? There was so much learning. So much living. I was an escort in Edinburgh, Scotland, and was studying part time at the Open University of Scotland, a truly fantastic institution for social mobility. I gained a 1st in a geoscience BSc and was half way through an MSc when offered a PhD with the UK Space Agency, investigating the loss of the Mars atmosphere into the rocky crust and what lessons we can take from this in respect to climate change on Earth. I’d never studied full time, nor physically attended an institution. The integral snobbery, bigotry and discrimination is real.
Many academic peers are surprisingly religious, mass on Sunday sort of thing. Their attitude to open discussions of prostitution backgrounds is full of the usual “saddening”, “terrible” and “disgusting”, coupled with trite ignorant sentiments such as, “Well, at least that is behind you know, or I hope it is, otherwise I don’t know what to say”. The idea that there could be any positive life or value within the confines of escorting is anathema. The message clearly announced that sex workers do not belong in academia unless they are very repentant, and acknowledge that their life was very sad, and how grateful they are to have transcended into the academic’s world. Fuck conforming to fit in with this scene.
Science Hooker is my reaction to this elitist, insular environment of privilege. It started in December 2015 as website, Twitter and Facebook platform where I simply shared fun science, but with an “escort” slant, which probably tasted daring and risqué to most academics. The few thousand followers were mostly academics. Yet, the project has evolved since the early days, becoming less timid. A regular blog slot was provided by The Huffington Post, with a relatively free hand regarding content; this has been a powerful platform to engage larger audiences. Following a Huffington article I wrote on prostitution, the House of Commons invited me to a panel discussion on reforming prostitution laws; it suddenly felt like Science Hooker could make an impact. A short film was produced as a Cairn Productions-Science Hooker collaboration about my science research. Thousands of academics followed, hundreds of professors; but still, I felt Science Hooker was pointless in a way. Sharing academic content with academics is preaching to the converted. It is not outreach. It is not real science communication. Added to this, a dozen other platforms are doing the exact same format of science dissemination. I found myself asking: why am I doing Science Hooker? What is the goal? Where is it going?
The answer is still forming. Fermenting. Recently, large numbers of sex workers have followed, sharing their content, thoughts, jokes and issues. I am glad of this demographic shift. Interestingly, the extent I engage with the sex work community correlates with a proportionate decline in academic followers; a price worth paying, but informative about attitudes, and reinforcing my previous conclusions. There has been a mixture of positive and negative reactions to Science Hooker. Recently an academic pulled their copyright and association with a mineral reference book I had been working on with other students because they had stumbled over Science Hooker and my escort history. This was no loss, academics are plentiful; we simply replaced his contribution and took the incident as a perfect example of bigotry and exclusion in the sciences for those from alternative backgrounds. At the other end of the spectrum, Science Hooker recently got nominated by a post-doctoral fellow for the Annie Maunder medal from the Royal Astronomy Society for public outreach. Science Hooker generates impact, disparagement, respect, hatred, encouragement and dismissal in a messy bundle of reactions.
Science Hooker ethos has always been about making science accessible and understandable to all, yet the tangible application of this goal is difficult. How does one achieve this in any concrete sense? Initially the accessibility I had in mind was all about explaining science, but now I feel it has morphed to include smashing down ivory walls of the academic tower, or at least graffiti them up a bit; highlighting discrimination, denial of access and judgemental hatred to sex workers in relation to formal science, education and academia. A new project on the drawing board just now is called “Ask a scientist!” I am collecting a network of scientists from a wide range of disciplines willing to answer public questions in a 1-1 personal way. There will be two functions. Anyone will be able to search for a scientist from a database, read about their history and motivations, their area of research and contact them directly via email. Alternatively, people will be able to ask a question on the website, and any scientist can choose to respond and answer it, or not. Possibly different scientists will forward different viewpoints and a conversation will develop. I hope so. Once this has been trialed successfully, it would be interesting to create another database called “Ask a sex worker”, again, with the aim of developing conversation, connection and mutual understanding. I firmly believe it is through knowledge of each other that stigma dies.
The university is ending my funding soon, and I won’t have finished the PhD in time. I don’t know what will happen, with me, or with Science Hooker. I may even return to escorting. Life is uncertain. I am unpredictable. Science Hooker is fluid. We can all only play with the cards in our hand, make a difference where opportunity and circumstance allow. So why not visit Science Hooker? See what it’s all about.
Links #327
Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged adolescence, Arkansas, Canada, cell phones, Connecticut, cops, drugs, imaginative fiction, Massachusetts, Never Call the Cops, politicians, Things We Choose To Do Together, video on October 9, 2016| 1 Comment »
I’m just making sure they don’t kill you. – John Walker
Since I’ve been taking a lot more selfies than I used to, I figured a selfie-themed creepy short would be appropriate. The links above it are from Jason Kuznicki (“kitty”), Dave Krueger (“ironic”), Kevin Wilson (“never”), Tim Cushing (“unions”), and Charles Hill (“together”).
- Paging Edgar Allen Poe.
- I’m holding out for the Hello Kitty MDMA.
- It’s like RAY-AY-AIN on your wedding day…
- Why is “never” such a difficult concept to grasp?
- Still think it’s a good idea to let cops have unions?
- What part of “any reason whatsoever” is so hard to understand?
- Government is just a word for the things we choose to do together.
From the Archives
- Any teen who won’t behave as adults want to make her behave, must be manipulated by another adult.
- Writer can’t conceive that “sex trafficking” doesn’t exist on anything like the scale it’s purported to.
- Cops raping sex workers is so ubiquitous, non-cop rapists often pose as cops to facilitate the crime.
- Houston determined to win pissing contest, no matter how ludicrous the claims it has to make.
- Cops, hamsters, politicians, TSA, Burger King, tombstones, sex therapists, hysteria & more.
- Rapists sue because names were revealed, thus warning potential victims.
- At UM, there are circumstances in which refusing sex is against the rules.
- Working It magazine, center of the Portland stripper’s rights movement.
- A few highlights of an expose of “sex trafficking” fraud Chong Kim’s lies.
- In which NPR edits a “debate” to make prohibitionists sound less loony.
- The actual probability that a US woman is raped in her lifetime: 2.6%.
- Lawheads are completely unable to comprehend the bottleneck effect.
- How can I help a troubled sex worker who doesn’t seem to want help?
- Even real coerced prostitution doesn’t look like “sex trafficking” myth.
- Obviously, “victims” always go around bragging about their “abuse”.
- Robert Fullinwider meticulously rips Rachel Moran’s drek to shreds.
- If the market is “definitely there”, why didn’t they find any victims?
- Seoul only persecutes whores to please its masters in Washington.
- Facebook backs off of its “real name” crackdown on drag queens.
- Over the last 150 years, rights for sex workers have diminished.
- “Sex trafficking” has become an all-purpose excuse for tyranny.
- Matthias Lehmann debunks lies about German prostitution law.
- The sheer wrongness of this infomercial cannot be overstated.
- Trying to define “sex” is like trying to twist a rope out of sand.
- Such a lot of stupid writing on something that will never exist.
- Take a good, hard look at who the “feminists” are in bed with.
- One can never have too many anti-Swedish model editorials.
- Just how stupid is the “sex trafficking barcode tattoo” trope?
- Is it normal for my husband to want me to dress like a slut?
- The tide of public opinion on sex work is beginning to turn.
- I’m awaiting apologies from those of you who doubted me.
- How, pray tell, does one “commit tax and unemployment”?
- On my then-upcoming trips to New Orleans and Seattle.
- A new version of the Masonic theory of Jack the Ripper.
- Portland strippers help draft new laws about stripping.
- Preparations for bringing Jae home from the hospital.
- The War on Sex Trafficking is the new War on Drugs.
- I guess Dick Cady is pretty credible, for what he is.
- Escorts describe first day at work in Reddit thread.
- Cam girl Sasha Pain supports Ferguson protesters.
- My third list of men who speak up for sex workers.
- Cops, horror, Gilgamesh, cyborgs and much more.
- Expanding the panic by adding male “sex slaves”.
- Another fake “sex trafficking victim” exposed.
- Man minds his daughter while mother works.
- Lots more on New York’s “trafficking courts”.
- “Prostitution free zone” law repealed in DC.
- UK moves to censor political speech online.
- Rapist cops of the week, 2014 and 2015.
- Sweden’s “liberal reputation” is bullshit.
- What’s Dutch for “bottleneck effect”?
- Another case of the missing word.
- I have the most awesome friends.
- Sex Addiction, A Critical History.
- Rocco Siffredi’s porn academy.
- Well, that didn’t take long.
- Nope, no hate here.
- More gypsy harlots.
In the News (#679)
Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged An Ounce of Prevention, Backpage, brothels, California, censorship, Challenge, clowns, cops, Crying for Nanny, disease, Do As I Say, Dutch Threat, Egypt, Fever Dream, Girls Girls Girls, hysteria, King of the Hill, Lack of Evidence, law, Mississippi, Netherlands, New York, politicians, prohibitionist myths, racism, rape, red-light districts, restaurants, robots, Seizing Power, Send In the Clowns, Shift in the Wind, South Carolina, stripping, Tennessee, Texas, The Pygmalion Fallacy, To Molest and Rape, Uncommon Sense, United Kingdom, Utah, virginity on October 8, 2016| 4 Comments »
Political opponents of [Backpage] like to imagine that without it, sex trafficking and the sexual exploitation of minors would simply cease. – Elizabeth Nolan Brown
Of course they didn’t accuse him of faking:
Ten men, including a South Carolina police chief, have been arrested in an undercover prostitution sting…Chief Freddie Lorick Sr…told officers he needed medical treatment and was taken to a local hospital. It’s unclear whether he has been released…
There have been a few close approaches, but this could be the most promising yet:
British man could become the first person in the world to be cured of HIV using a new therapy designed by a team of scientists from five UK universities…presently the virus is completely undetectable in the man’s blood, although that could be a result of regular drugs. However if the dormant cells are also cleared out it could represent the first complete cure…
While the feds actively persecute some sex workers…
The federal government is again suing a Mississippi strip club, saying its owner still discriminates against black strippers…Danny’s Downtown Cabaret…managers require African-American strippers to work exclusively at the neighboring Black Diamonds club or pay extra to work at Danny’s. The suit alleges patrons at Black Diamonds were allowed to grope strippers in a building where air conditioning sometimes didn’t work…
This double dose of stupid reminds me of those old Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup commercials: “Hey! You got your robot whore fantasy in my blow job cafe fantasy!” “No, you got your blow job cafe fantasy in my robot whore fantasy!”
An entrepreneur who hopes to open London’s first “fellatio cafe” has revealed his staff will be made up entirely of sex robots…Bradley Charvet…claims the sex-bots will be programmable to a person’s needs and will soon be seen as “totally normal”…
An interesting article on getting funding for sex worker rights projects:
As human rights and social justice funders, we try to reach those people who are most marginalized and excluded from services and protection. Those who are least empowered, least resilient, and hardest hit by inequality. But one group that ticks all those boxes is systematically excluded from funding opportunities: sex workers. Why are not more funders stepping into this gap? What makes even human rights funders so hesitant to take on the human rights of sex workers?…
Lack of Evidence (Extra Edition)
Future generations will marvel at their ancestors’ deeply weird obsession with female virginity:
An Egyptian MP has called for women to be forced to undergo virginity tests before being admitted to university…Elhamy Agina called on the Minister of Higher Education to issue a mandate requiring him or his officials to enforce the virginity tests…Agina reportedly [said]: “No one should be upset by this decision. If you’re upset then that means you’re scared that your daughter is in an ‘urfi’ marriage behind your back.” Urfi marriages can be entered into without the approval of a bride’s guardian and can only require two witnesses, resulting in a cultural perception among some segments of Egyptian society that they are covert or secret marriages…
We’re not hearing quite as much of this “highway” bullshit as we used to:
…Chattanooga and Tennessee have become a focal point [sic] in the war against sex trafficking. The effort has involved not only agencies such as the TBI and local law enforcement, it also has…made its way to Congress with the End Modern Slavery Initiative from Bob Corker, the…U.S. senator from Tennessee and former Chattanooga mayor. As the geographic intersection of Interstates 75, 24 and 59, Chattanooga provides an easy path for pimps to transport their victims around the Southeast…That’s especially true for traffickers from Atlanta which, in 2014, was ranked as the No. 1 city in the country for sex trafficking…
A win for Backpage on one front:
The Supreme Court announced…it has declined to hear an appeal from…Chicago…sheriff [Tom Dart] who was ordered to cease threatening credit card companies about doing business with…Backpage.com. The justices let stand a lower court order that forbids…Dart from contacting Visa and MasterCard in his effort to [censor] sex [workers’ ability to advertise online]…
However, see “Crying For Nanny” below.
ESPLERP vs. Gascon reaches a court which could potentially do something:
…ESPLERP…filed a brief in the United States Federal Ninth Circuit appealing against the Northern California District Court’s judgement dismissing ESPLERP v Gascon…Maxine Doogan [said]…“[The judge] acknowledged that Lawrence v Texas defined a constitutional right to privacy in individuals’ sexual conduct, and also acknowledged that morality was not a basis to deny that right, but then found flimsy legal arguments to deny that right…“Lawrence v Texas made it clear that governments may not intrude into the private lives of consenting adults by criminalizing their sexual behavior” said Mike Chase, longtime human rights activist…Contributions to support the court case can be submitted through…www.litigatetoemancipate.com…
State agents raided the Dallas headquarters of…Backpage and arrested Chief Executive Officer Carl Ferrer on Thursday following allegations that adult and child sex-trafficking victims had been forced into prostitution through escort ads posted on the site. Ferrer…was arrested on a California warrant…[issued by] California Attorney General Kamala Harris…on felony charges of pimping a minor, pimping, and conspiracy to commit pimping….Harris…is running for the U.S. Senate in next month’s election…
Here’s more from super ally Liz Brown.
Felicia Anna on the “My Red Light” scam:
…I’ve already talked about this project before…the mayor…proposed…that this brothel would be the first brothel without pimps. A complete bullshit story, since first of all there are very few girls that actually have a pimp…and since this brothel has just as much chance of renting their windows to a girl with a pimp as any other brothel…there are hardly any abuses to begin with, as the numbers from the city of Amsterdam themselves prove…unlike how people (like the mayor for example) often claim…the mayor [is] trying to frame the current brothel owners as the bad guys…so he can have an excuse to close down the other brothels…only 6 sexworkers showed an interest in working in this brothel at all…
As I expected when I wrote yesterday’s column, the clown panic continues to spin out of control:
A Livonia [New York] man was charged with falsely reporting an incident after he allegedly edited a clown image into a photo of [a local] Park…posted it on his Facebook page and then warned people to keep their children out of the park…Hooper…told his Facebook followers “the clown had then run away when he snapped the picture”…Hooper was charged with third-degree falsely reporting an incident…the charge is a misdemeanor…
In New York, making up idiotic stories to frighten the stupid is only a misdemeanor, but in Texas it’s a matter of national security:
..a 14-year-old [Houston] student has been charged…[with] making a terroristic threat. The student is accused of threatening “to shoot up an HISD school with his clown friends” on social media…”We can’t ignore it,” said HISD Spokesman Jason Spencer. “We [completely lack the adult capacity to control our own actions or use any discretion whatsover]…
Just in case you think my editorialization there is a bit extreme:
…”This clown crap is really getting on my nerves,” [suburban Dallas cop] Latrice Pettaway wrote on Facebook Monday night…”Pop a cap in the first clown you see. Someone needs to just hit one and the rest of these fools will learn”…police spokesman Shane Kizer said….said shooting people dressed like clowns is “absolutely not” how the department wants the public to respond to viral reports of clowns…
And Utah cops agree with Kizer: “Police in Orem, Utah would like to make it clear that neither they, nor you, can legally shoot random clowns…“
Send In the Clowns
Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged clowns, cops, Florida, hysteria, Maryland, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Send In the Clowns, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia on October 7, 2016| 12 Comments »
After a thorough investigation I have concluded that there are no creepy killer homicidal clowns in Rolla, Missouri. I did hear about a mime stuck in a box though that may still need assistance. – Adam Meyer
Proving once again that it’s impossible to overestimate the extent to which hysteria will spread, the Great Clown Panic of 2016 absolutely exploded this week. Less than 24 hours after “Clowning Around” was published, I had so many new clown stories that they would have dominated any single news column, and I was afraid if I divvied them up between news columns I’d soon start to fall behind and end up publishing them weeks late. So here’s another full column of clown madness, and perhaps now I’ll be able to keep up. I’m really impressed with the rate this is growing; is it wrong of me to wish that clown hysteria would overtake & replace “sex trafficking” hysteria?
Schools in Reading [Ohio] canceled classes Friday after a woman reported being attacked by a clown overnight…just hours after Colerain Township police arrested a junior high school student on charges related to an online clown-related threat…The woman told police the clown told her: “I should just kill you now” and “students and teachers (will) wish they were never born at the junior and senior high school today”…Reading schools superintendent said the homecoming parade and game will go on Friday as scheduled. The homecoming dance will still take place on Saturday, and there will be extra police at all events…
Naturally, once clown hysteria started to spread, enterprising young people started using it as a way of getting days off from school. And just as naturally, moronic adults have responded by utterly losing their shit:
…several [Austin, Texas] schools have investigated social media threats made by people dressed as clowns against the schools or claims of clown sightings on campus….Police Chief Eric Mendez described the kind of threats he’s seeing: “Some of the threats can be ‘we’ll be at your campus on this date or at this time, we’re going to be there to do harm to people, we’re going to be there to kidnap people.’” Mendez says they can’t [react like rational humans]…and have responded by beefing up security around campus….police are enlisting the help of the Austin Regional Intelligence Center, trained at tracking down terroristic threats…
This being 21st-century America, what used to be called “stupid kids being stupid” is now called “terrorism”.
…a 13-year-old girl in Virginia and a 14-year-old boy in Houston have been charged with crimes related to recent reports of scary clowns…the girl asked a person posing as a clown on social media to kill one of her teachers…[and] has been charged with one count of threatening to kill by electronic message…the boy used the image of a clown to threaten a school. He is charged with making a terroristic threat…
And it’s not only cops, but also people one would think would know better:
Philadelphia police say they have identified a 13-year-old girl who made so-called “clown threats” toward local schools…the girl told them this was a “prank” committed with a friend at her school, and she never had any intent to harm anyone…”She should pay for what she did. She should be punished,” said [a moral retard apparently interviewed at random by local news media]…Frank Farley, a psychology professor at Temple University, says a new line has been drawn when it comes to what’s considered an innocent prank. “I don’t think pranks that threaten lives are innocent anymore. This nation in 9/11 was invaded from the outside, and we’ve had terrorist incidents since then”…
Apparently, Dr. Farley is attempting to establish his expertise in psychopathology by demonstrating that he himself is a sociopath and therefore knows whereof he speaks. One has to wonder if he’s related to another sociopathic psychologist of the same name. But this article doesn’t stop with academic police-state apologists; it also reports that cops in New Jersey have blamed the hysteria on a fictional “movie production” which nobody else seems to have heard of. And naturally, cops in the vicinity of St. Louis, Missouri can’t pass up an opportunity to use their “concerns” as an excuse to threaten more people, especially kids:
In response to clown-related threats…some area school districts are adding to their security presence…Pevely Police Capt. Tony Moutray said…when police responded to one report of a clown sighting, they encountered armed “clown-hunters” who had heard about the sighting on social media…He’s planning to step up police [intimidation tactics] on Halloween…
If there really are idiots setting themselves up as “clown hunters”, there’s good reason for actual clowns to be concerned:
…In Johnstown, Pennsylvania…”members of the Classic Clowns Club have been alarmed by news reports in which police have asked anyone who sees a clown to call 911. The troupe members often travel in costume, and worry that…someone [will] notice…a van full of clowns and call…the police”…In Oakland, Maryland, the Times-News informs us, members the Ali Ghan Shrine Club’s clown unit are “giv[ing] some thought about laying low for a while.” The Shriner-clowns are still doing daytime events, but they have withdrawn from one nighttime parade and are thinking about dropping out of another.
But as so often happens, the only truly dangerous clowns are the police:
The scare has reached the point when police agencies—in this case, the Tennessee Highway Patrol—are tweeting things like this: “THP says watch for clowns trying to lure children in to the woods. They are possibly predators. Call 911…“…no one since this scare began has corroborated a single account of a clown trying to lure a kid anywhere…they said they were “promoting awareness”… In Putnam County, Florida, the sheriff’s office [posted the picture at right]…on Facebook…In Paw Paw, West Virginia…Police Chief James F. Cummings posted notices around town [saying]…”If someone sees you dressed like this they have the right to defend themselves…if you run around in a clown suit, you should probably expect for citizens to beat you (for their own protection), then get arrested by police”…
But while most cops in the country are only too happy to use clown hysteria as an excuse to threaten and arrest people or at least swagger around and pretend to be important, one single detective (Adam Meyer of Rolla, Missouri) actually took the time to investigate local reports, and didn’t even feel compelled to inflict violence on the hoaxers or otherwise “send a message” by destroying their lives:
I spoke with a young man…who claimed that he was assaulted by the crazy creepy clowns…he told me that he lied…He quickly admitted that he had not been assaulted, stabbed, threatened, mean mugged or even given a stern talking to by any clown whatsoever. He had not seen a clown, creepy or not, of any kind…I ended up tracking down the young aspiring cinematographers, who will remain nameless…the person who made the recording…introduced me to the clown who was in the video. Needless to say, I survived the encounter…They’re both just normal guys who were playing a joke on [some] girls…
Given that I’m writing this on Monday evening and you’re reading it on Friday, don’t be at all surprised if you see more reports under this heading tomorrow, and next Wednesday, and…
False Compromise
Posted in Perception, Q & A, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, end demand, law, neofeminism, Norway, Sweden, Swedish model on October 6, 2016| 4 Comments »
I was wondering if it might be to big a jump for Americans to go from fearing sex to seeing it as a normal human activity; might not the Swedish model be a shorter step? Decriminalization is best of course, but is it to much of a shift from criminalization to make all at once?
Proponents of the Swedish model want you to see it as a sort of compromise position; that’s how it was sold in Canada, where the Middle of the Road is practically the national symbol. But it’s actually nothing of the kind. First of all, the Swedish model has never been adopted any place where sex work was already criminalized; it always results in the criminalization of behavior that was not previously criminalized. Even if it were to be adopted in some US jurisdiction, the oft-heard claim that the model “decriminalizes the seller” is a blatant lie. Because prostitution is a misdemeanor, arrested sex workers are usually charged with whatever the cops and DAs can think of to get a more serious crime, such as “promotion of prostitution” (ie pimping) or even “sex trafficking” if the cops’ victim was working with another whore; these laws are still in place under the Swedish model (described therein as “going after the pimps and traffickers”), and because there is no lesser prostitution charge the impetus for cops to level such serious charges against ordinary sex workers is actually increased. But there’s another, more insidious and dangerous effect of the model: it establishes the legal precedent that adult women who behave in a way of which the state disapproves are not merely criminal, but incompetent. As I explained in my essay, “Treating Sex Work as Work”:
[The Swedish model] is solidly rooted in an archaic and sexist view of women as particularly fragile and vulnerable, and…posits that paying for sex is a form of male violence against women. This is why only the act of payment is de jure prohibited: the woman is legally defined as being unable to give valid consent, just as an adolescent girl is in the crime of statutory rape. The man is thus defined as morally superior to the woman; he is criminally culpable for his decisions, but she is not…the law has been demonstrated to increase both violence and stigma against sex workers, to make it more difficult for public health workers to contact them, to subject them to increased police harassment and surveillance, to shut them out of the country’s much-vaunted social welfare system, and to dramatically decrease the number of clients willing to report suspected exploitation to the police (due to informants’ justified fear of prosecution). Furthermore, these laws don’t even do what they were supposed to do; neither the incidence of sex work (voluntary or coerced) nor the attitude of the public toward it has changed measurably in any country (Sweden, Norway and Iceland) where they have been enacted…a Norwegian study found that banning the purchase of sex had actually resulted in an increase in coercion)…and…despite the hype, the truth is that even operations framed as “john stings” or “child sex slave rescues” end up with the arrest and conviction of huge numbers of women; for example, 97% of prostitution-related felony convictions in Chicago are of women, and 93% of women arrested in the FBI’s “Innocence Lost” initiatives are consensual adult sex workers rather than the coerced underage ones the program pretends to target…
And we haven’t even touched on things like Norway’s “Operation Homeless” (in which the cops sent letters to sex workers’ landlords, telling them they could be prosecuted as “pimps”, so as to get the women evicted); the forcible collection of “evidence” from the “crime scene” (i.e. sex workers’ vaginas); and the expulsion of student sex workers who refuse to pretend that they’re “victims”.
Tl;dr version of the preceding: “No”.
(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.)
In the News (#678)
Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, brothels, Business As Usual, California, cops, Count the Idiocies, Do As I Say, Droit du Seigneur, drugs, Dutch Threat, escort services, evidence, Florida, Harm Magnification, Having and Eating Cake, hysteria, If Men Were Angels, Iowa, Kentucky, Lack of Evidence, language, Netherlands, New York, Of Course It Is, Oregon, Philippines, pimps, pizza!, prohibitionist myths, propaganda, racism, rape, red-light districts, Saving Them from Themselves, sexting, South Carolina, stripping, They Still Don't Get It, To Molest and Rape, Too Close To Home, transgender, United Kingdom, Washington (state), Where Are the Victims? on October 5, 2016| 1 Comment »
[Sex workers] report…violence more often from law enforcement officials than from any other group. – Alexandra Lutnick
As long as these laws exist, all women are vulnerable to persecution by cops:
…a 40-year-old statute in the [New York] penal code…allows the police broad discretion in arresting anyone they deem to be loitering for the purpose of engaging in prostitution…The law is vague enough to make almost any posture vulnerable to suspicion. You could be arrested while talking to two men on a corner; while talking to someone through a car window; while walking down the street with a bottle of Korbel; for going to your job selling sofas; if it happens that you have worked as a prostitute before; just for wearing something [a cop] decides is too provocative…the Legal Aid Society of New York has handled so many of these cases of wrongful arrest, particularly among transgender women who are black and Hispanic, that…it filed a federal civil rights suit…on behalf of several plaintiffs…challenging the constitutionality of the law. Between 2012 and 2015…nearly 1,300 people were arrested in New York City under the loitering law. More than 600 were convicted, and close to 240 served some time in jail…five precincts…were responsible for more than two-thirds of the arrests, each [ruling over]…neighborhoods that are predominantly black and Hispanic…
I love it when they feed on each other: “North Charleston Police arrested Deputy Jason Mitchell at a motel…[after he] contacted [an] undercover cop by phone after seeing a [fake] post on Backpage.com…”
She “thought she was helping her friends” in the same way I “think” I’m Maggie McNeill:
A transgender woman and her partner who helped bring prostitutes to the UK from abroad have been spared jail by a judge, who said the couple believed they were “helping” their friends. Brazilian former sex worker Angel Gomes and her civil partner Leon Foster ran an organised prostitution ring for four years…they helped to bring in Gomes’ friends from the transgender community in South America, where they were already selling sex…the couple paid for travel expenses and sex aids including condoms. The business traded under the name “Kelly Shemales”…
In other words, it was an ordinary escort service specializing in transwomen.
Prohibitionists want these guys to “protect” us from pimps:
…Oak Grove [Kentucky] Police Sgt. Benjamin R. Walden [was arrested as a violent pimp after]…the state police…found that three adult women were being held against their will and forced to have sex with men at a…motel…Walden…[also] faces…charges…including first-degree sodomy, first-degree rape…assault…terroristic threatening and intimidating a participant in a legal process…Also arrested in the case were Michael Helton…and Kiersten Napodano…[Dennis] Cunningham, the Oak Grove police chief…described Walden as a “good officer”…
An Iowa county attorney has threatened to brand a teen a “sex offender” because she sent a friend photos of herself scantily clad, the girl’s family [reported] in federal court. The photos…depict a 14-year-old girl, named only as Nancy Doe in the lawsuit, in her underwear. In one photo, she wears a sports bra, and in the other she is topless with her long hair covering her breasts…But the photos emerged again last spring when two male students were caught printing them off using a school printer, along with other photos of nude or partially nude male and female classmates…The school district turned the photographs over to the Knoxville Police Department…the girl’s parents wondered “what the fuss was about,” as the images…”were less ‘racy’ than photographs they see in fashion magazines and on television every day”…To escape…criminal charges, the students [were forced] to participate in a “diversion program” that required them to engage in community service, complete a [brainwashing program] on the [imaginary] dangers…of “sexting,” give up their laptops and cell phones for an unspecified period of time, and submit a written confession about their conduct to juvenile court services…When the Does refused to fill out the questionnaire or to enroll Nancy in the diversion program, [county attorney] Bull continued to threaten her with criminal prosecution…
Let’s play “count the idiocies”:
Prosecutors from around the world say the fight against sex trafficking is moving online as traffickers use popular websites to advertise sexual services…an international sex trafficking summit in Waikiki that drew prosecutors from Asia, the US and Canada…victims are often unwilling to cooperate with investigators because they have endured a history of abuse…Jackie Lacey, Los Angeles County’s district attorney [bloviated moronically]…“It’s not like in the 80s and 90s where women were on the street. It’s all done by social media, cellphones, emails, text messages.” Michael Ramos, president of the National District Attorneys Association, said he plans to push for legislation in the US to make it illegal to use websites to solicit illegal sex and to hold internet companies accountable for sex trafficking on their platforms…“It’s just so easy right now…Instead of having prostitutes out on the corner like they used to in a red light district, now they just go online, they hit a button, and it’s like ordering a pizza”…Sonia Paquet, a Canadian prosecutor…said…“If we go on the internet site, we see the girls naked”…
1) “Sex trafficking” as a dysphemism for “sex work”. 2) Women are too stupid to post our own ads, so male “traffickers” must be doing it. 3) Streetwalkers have always been a minority of sex workers, even in classical times. The fraction has dropped from about 12-15% in the “80s and 90s” to maybe 8% now, hardly a vast shift. 4) Women who deny cop/prosecutor BDSM wanking fantasies must be “victims” who are “unwilling to cooperate” because of phantom abusers, not because cops & prosecutors are evil fucks out to destroy their lives; 5) It’s already illegal in the US to “solicit” for prostitution, whether online or off. 6) Courts have repeatedly declared that Section 230 protects websites from being “held accountable” (a moralistic euphemism for “scapegoated”) for third-party content. 7) Is anyone actually stupid enough to think he can get an escort just by “hitting a button”? 8) Do these assholes really expect people to believe getting a date with someone like me is easier than driving over to a stroll? 9) Pizza! 10) Ms. Pacquet unwittingly reveals the real issue with all this posturing & mouth-foaming: pictures of naked women, as always. Ten idiocies in 13 sentences is a pretty high score, even for prosecutors.
On the Simultaneous Having and Eating of Cake
This is actually an excellent analogy:
…As a stripper, the club does not pay you. There is no hourly wage you earn to stand around waiting for someone to ask you to take your clothes off…people believe strippers are independent contractors because they think that the money they pay for dances is given to the club, which in turn is doled out to the dancer in the form of a stipend or salary…but…it is exactly the opposite…Money paid for dances is paid to the dancer, who pays the club an agreed-upon rate for the privilege of conducting her business there. In essence, she is paying rent, or leasing space from the club for commerce…This is how many hairdressers operate their businesses…That hairdresser is running their own business out of that chair, which they pay rent on. Their calendar is their livelihood, and they might even be able to set their own rates based on their level of skill and expertise…they have certain branding to display and house rules they have to play by, and they have to pay rent to their landlord. But beyond that, they are the owner of a business and have their own customers that will often follow them if they move salons…
Not even close; the majority of sex businesses worldwide are controlled by sex workers. This level of ignorance is truly astonishing:
A social investment fund has agreed to operate several brothels in Amsterdam’s red light district…The Start Foundation helps vulnerable people find jobs…and…has now agreed to buy four buildings from the city council which had been taken over as part of the city’s [gentrification] efforts for the district…the 14 windows will be rented out to a new foundation called My Red Light…[which] describes itself as “the first sex company in the Netherlands and Europe in which sex workers have control”…Sex worker lobby group Proud has described the project as deceptive. “Lots of sex workers want to be their own bosses but they never get a permit”, [said] spokeswoman Yvette Luhrs…
Sometimes even a little bit of “authority” is enough:
…Mark Alan Laverdure…[was charged in Oregon with 27] counts of…sexual abuse…[against] 5 [underage] female victims…from March 2003 through June 2014…there [may be] additional victims…Laverdure had once been employed with the Native American Youth and Family Center (NAYA)…
I find it darkly amusing that amateurs are so shocked by this:
…the scandal isn’t just about [Celeste Guap], now known by her [legal] name, Jasmine Abuslin…“If you step back from it, how is it possible that this many [cops] could be engaged in this kind of activity over this period of time and she be the only one?” [Abuslin’s lawyer Pamela] Price [said]…Former victims say this type of police sexual misconduct is not a one-off…FBI [pig] Marty Parker [defends rapist cops by pretending most are impostors]…
If you want to understand the depth of Parker’s treason vs her own gender, compare the number of real-rapist-cop reports which appear under “To Molest and Rape” and “Above the Law” with the number of fake-rapist-cop reports under “License To Rape“.
Cops love to claim they’re “helping” and “protecting” women when they molest or rape us:
…Florida…Trooper David Gonzalez was [only] charged with [simple] battery…after…he…pulled [a woman] over…and said, “you really look good tonight,” before directing her to move her car to a side street…he [then]…took her cell phone and added himself to her Snapchap account…[then] took a selfie with the woman, and…sent it to her friends “to see if she thought he was cute”…he…began hugging the woman “because she looked nervous”…then kissed her neck and reached under her shirt to grope her breast…After the woman reported Gonzalez…investigators began monitoring Snapchat communications between the two….[he told her] “I wanted to treat you with respect and do away with you(r) insecurities about yourself”…
Male readers: do you think you’d only be charged with simple battery if you did that to a woman?
The Philippines’ new president is carrying the “War on Drugs” to its logical conclusion:
…President Rodrigo Duterte said Friday that he would like to kill millions of drug addicts in the Philippines, defying international criticism of his country’s [more severe version of the same] war on narcotics [they all participate in] and escalating his brutal rhetoric with a reference to the Holocaust. “Hitler massacred three million Jews…there’s three million drug addicts. There are. I’d be happy to slaughter them.” Killing that number of drug users would “finish the problem of my country and save the next generation from perdition,” he said…
…The sheriff of King County, Washington, John Urquhart, said [on a poplar Seattle radio show that] my article was not unfair and even “partially true”. What he objected to was the supposedly naive and “unicorn-ish” view it took toward prostitution clients; the idea that it was law enforcement, rather than the press, that sensationalized the story; the implication that finding prostitution customers online is safer than out on the streets; and the suggestion that King County could have acted differently considering existing laws…Urquhart [said] “You’re asking me not to enforce state law.” Nobody is asking that. But there is a huge amount of prioritization that goes into police work, and solving crimes where there are actual victims and public-safety concerns should take precedence. Which probably means not concocting elaborate, expensive, and years-long sting operations in order to entrap adults engaging in consensual sexual exchange and then misrepresent this as some sort of major blow against a sinister syndicate of international sex traffickers…
Please, please read the whole thing, unless you’re squeamish at the sight of a metaphorical evisceration.
Diary #327
Posted in Diary, tagged activism, fantasy, Maggie in the Media, sex toys on October 4, 2016| Leave a Comment »
So last week was a kind of quiet one; it started with a lovely evening with Lorelei Rivers, listening to the soundtrack for Hamilton (which I am extremely impressed with despite not actually being a fan of hip-hop). The only other really noteworthy points of interest (from your point of view, anyway) were an interview for an article on the dangers faced by sex workers, and a lingerie shopping trip with a couple of fellow whores (courtesy of a very generous gentleman). OK, I can see the guys perking up at that one; yes, sometimes our lives really are like y’all fantasize (though we certainly did NOT have a pillow fight in Victoria’s Secret or fall into a lesbian three-way in the fitting room at Nancy Meyer). Sol pronounced the black set I bought from the latter shop “incredibly hot”, but I’m afraid I couldn’t take a selfie that would show it all off, so if you want to see it you’ll have to take advantage of my very generous special (running until Thanksgiving) and specifically request I wear it for you. Yes, I know I’m an awful tease, but here’s a little something I got from Victoria’s; I don’t really like most of their stuff, but this one caught my eye. And since my lingerie drawer is really now kind of overfull, I guess I’ll have to move all the big things like corsets and catsuits into the closet with my full-length nightgowns. And one of these days I’ll have to rearrange my sex toys so I can actually get to them without everything falling on the floor.
Clowning Around
Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, tagged Alabama, clowns, Georgia, hysteria, Massachusetts, North Carolina, psychology, Send In the Clowns, South Carolina on October 3, 2016| 4 Comments »
coulrophobia [kool-ruh-FOH-bee-uh] noun – an abnormal fear of clowns.
Unless you’ve been off the internet for the past month, you can’t have missed that the perennial clown panic is much bigger this year. I featured links to stories in Links #322, #323 and #324, and I could’ve put some in the next two editions had I not already been saving up for this column. There have been so many, in fact, that I decided that they should have their own feature, and in the process of writing this I realized that this panic has much more in common with “sex trafficking” hysteria than the mere fact that they’re both phantasms whose only root in reality is that real people sometimes consciously imitate the unreal characters in the myth.
For the past three years, I’ve noticed news articles describing sightings of menacing phantom clowns every September and October. In September of 2013 there was a panic which started in Northhampton, England and spread to Haslingden in November; in October of 2014 the hysteria appeared in Bakersfield, California and spread to other nearby cities before leaping a third of the way around the world to northern France. I say “phantom” because in each case, the reports could not be corroborated and the horrifying harlequins left no physical evidence which investigators could find. Of course, teenage boys and young men imitated the original reports, but they were mere copycats and the panics have usually started far from the hoaxers’ haunts. But while previous panics have usually been limited to a fairly small geographical area and have been relatively short-lived, this one started earlier than usual (late August), has already endured for over a month and has spread far beyond its origin in the Carolinas. Reports from Georgia were deliberate hoaxes, as were reports from Huntsville and Decatur, Alabama (where cops blamed the threats on Juggalos); the latter were especially ridiculous because in our hair-trigger, afraid-of-one’s-own-shadow country they resulted in actual “lockdowns” at high schools and warnings at Auburn University. That last-linked article contains a number of links to articles about the hysteria in Alabama, where it seems to have reached epidemic proportions; this article contains still more (including self-important cops referring to dumb teenage pranks as “terrorism”). In contrast, the panic in Maryland was fairly tame, and though Georgia was not even on the same order of magnitude as Alabama, it did inspire an 11-year-old girl to bring a knife to school to “protect herself and her family” from the fearsome funnymen (naturally, she was criminally charged with “possession of a weapon on school grounds”, because THE CHILDREN!TM). Then last week, sightings (some of them apparently hoaxes) were reported in Virginia, Florida and Colorado; the district attorney of Weld County, Colorado, apparently unburdened with even the slightest capacity for self-examination, claimed that “Impersonating a clown for nefarious purposes…is a felony and could carry with it a jail sentence of up to 18 months.”
In preparing to write this article, I dug around a bit and discovered that there were a number of similar panics before the first one I recorded in 2013: this very thorough article mentions Chicago, October 2008; Madison, Wisconsin in June 2000; and several areas around the US in 1990 and 1991. Wikipedia’s article “Evil Clowns” also mentions Phoenix, Arizona in 1985 and Honduras in 1995. But apparently the first big clown panic began in Boston in May of 1981, then spread to other cities in Massachusetts, to other cities in New England and Pennsylvania by June and eventually as far as Kansas City, Nebraska and Colorado. And though many have speculated that the modern “scary clown” motif owes its origin to Stephen King’s novel It, that hardly seems likely given that it was first published in 1986, five years after the New England clown panic (if anything, Maine resident King was probably inspired by the then-recent panic rather than vice-versa). No, I think it much more likely that these phantom clowns are kin to grey aliens, Sasquatch, Nessie, witches, faeries, demons, nymphs, satyrs and all the other mysterious beings with which humans have reported encounters since primeval times, yet are never captured and vanish without a trace whenever a concerted effort is made to discover them.
Links #326
Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged Alaska, animals, California, cops, drugs, Florida, Georgia, imaginative fiction, lawheads, Never Call the Cops, prisons, Stop faking!, video, Virginia on October 2, 2016| Leave a Comment »
I spent my life playing in pee. – David Wartinger
I must admit to having a soft spot for trivia geekery such as that displayed in this week’s video, provided by Kevin Wilson. The links above it were contributed by Scott Greenfield (“faking”), Tim Cushing (“sorry” and “ever”), Nun Ya (“protect” and “love”), Tushy Galore (“instead”), and Jason Kuznicki (“stones”).
- Stop faking!
- “Sorry I tased you.”
- To protect and serve.
- What real love looks like.
- Holy shit. NOT. FUCKING. EVER.
- What you can do instead of calling the cops.
- Because laws are more important than people.
- Roller coasters may help people with kidney stones.
From the Archives
- China & Vietnam recently abandoned coerced “re-education” for whores, but the US is embracing it.
- Sex work under “legalisation” is still conceived of as a crime for which the law makes allowances.
- If the campus rape rate were truly 1 in 5, no one would send his daughter to a coed university.
- Feinstein thinks the way to keep people “safe” is to spy on them & destroy their civil liberties.
- Anyone who thinks $250k a year is a huge amount for a small business is an ignoramus.
- Dr. Marty Klein at last makes public statement vs “sex trafficking” hysteria.
- Cops think tricking, raping & caging women is good way to “develop trust”.
- 90% of whores worldwide prefer to work illegally than submit to licensing.
- Unannounced intimidation visits from cops are so helpful to sex workers.
- Are politicians stupider than other people, or does it just seem that way?
- Another jurisdiction classifies women as passive objects without agency.
- Unlike US counterparts, Canadian media are not all politicians’ lap dogs.
- I’ll bet this delusional ignoramus thinks he’s being “fair” and “sensible”.
- How can I have a healthy relationship if I can’t trust men not to cheat?
- Peechington Marie on the lack of media concern for black sex workers.
- All it takes to be a “sex trafficking expert” is to lie with a straight face.
- Sex rays are so insidious they can even radiate from pieces of plastic.
- Much of the “sex trafficking” hysteria has descended into self-parody.
- Cops, TSA, cows, laws, potatoes, cigarettes, censorship & doughnuts.
- Are the sex rays produced by bestiality different from other sex rays?
- Nasty pest skitters out of its nest to vomit poison in others’ territory.
- The prohibitionist shitshow that is New York’s “sex trafficking court”.
- Symbiosis between government and big business is called “fascism”.
- I’m sick of being threatened with violence every time I turn around.
- Just in case you thought only American politicians were this foolish.
- But not, alas, despite the orders of Seoul’s masters in Washington.
- This is jaw-droppingly stupid even by Washington state standards.
- I recharge my super-batteries with wonder treats and super-sleep.
- Will Vice ever ditch the anti-whore bullshit and support our rights?
- A few tips to the media about how to ethically report on sex work.
- What would it matter if Farley’s latest nonsense claims were true?
- Glasgow is the center of official anti-whore sentiment in Scotland.
- A retrospective of my columns for September 2011 and 2012.
- How many moronic prohibitionist plays can the market bear?
- As is typical for outsiders, this reporter just doesn’t get it.
- Why can’t I get a girl by myself instead of paying for sex?
- The media attitude toward sex worker rights is changing.
- German prohibitionists are being given more airtime.
- Cop busted for dating a whore instead of raping her.
- “Authorities” have no idea how moronic they sound.
- Another monster who thinks whores are disposable.
- 7 famous people who did sex work in their youth.
- Have I told y’all yet today that I love Liz Brown?
- Goats, karma, cops, headlines and much more.
- Never call the cops for any reason whatsoever.
- It’s always nice to be backed up by academics.
- Cops charge “victims” with various sex crimes.
- Jillian Keenan is proving herself a worthy ally.
- Let’s hope we see many more cases like this.
- I hope this is available outside of India, too.
- We are living in the past of Fahrenheit 451.
- The internet allows extreme specialization.
- “Recovered” means “abducted and caged”.
- File this one under “100% predictable”.
- My first talk about traveling to Seattle.
- Somaly Mam’s comeback scheme.
- Another robber posing as a client.
- The deadly threat of underboob.
- A lawsuit against 8 Minutes.
- Rapist cop of the week.
- King of the hill!
- It’s growing!
Visit my bookstore
This Month
Old Posts
Call me
Become a Blog Patron
If you want to donate but don't want a recurring charge, you can send any amount you like via PayPal to my email address (see below). Be sure to include a note so I can thank you!Contact Maggie
Boring but necessary legal stuff