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Archive for November, 2016

Links #333

Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , on November 20, 2016| 2 Comments »

’Twas Steve’s idea.  –  Stan Lee

I’ve always thought of Medusa as a deep, tragic and highly sexual being rather than just a monster, so I found this week’s video fascinating.  The links above it were provided by Tushy Galore, Tim Cushing, Science Hooker, Mistress Matisse,  Dave Krueger, Franklin Harris, and Gideon, in that order.

From the Archives

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In the News (#691)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 19, 2016| 2 Comments »

The war on drugs plays out as a war on the millions of people who use drugs.  –  Editors of the BMJ

Think of the Children! 

So what if the church, school & playground are closed?  Sex rays contaminate the buildings so the children are dangerously “sexualized” when they come in later!

There’s a club in Brentwood [Missouri] where you can get tied up and whipped, right next to both a church and a preschool…These parties happen one Saturday night a month in the American Legion Hall…near St. Mary Magdalene…The legion hall shares a driveway with the Elaine Rossi Academy for Children.  A playground sits directly behind.  The…event is called FLOG…[a snitch claims] her fear is the alcohol at the events, leading her to question whether the participants are really consenting…but Susan Wright…with the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom…said…FLOG’s rules [state]…You must leave if you’re intoxicated…she points out FLOG is a nonprofit club, not a business, that would be subjected to liquor laws…The pre-school next door…said they are aware of FLOG and that the monthly event does not take place at a time when there would be anything going on at the school…

License to Rape

Just protecting and serving:  “…a civil court jury ruled that Chicago [cop] Scott Korhonen sexually assaulted a 20-year-old black man with a screwdriver.  The taxpayers will pay $4 million to the victim.  They will also continue to pay…Korhonen’s salary, because he gets to keep his job…”  For more cop hijinks from Chicago, see the next item.

Droit du Seigneur 

Do as they say, not as they do:

…Chicago [cop] William Whitley…was arrested…for sex trafficking of a minor and production of child pornography…[for paying] girls as young as 14…for sex at parties, at his apartment, and even in his car with his partner present.  Whitley was also found to have taken graphic photos of the girls…a federal investigation into him was launched in September 2015…after the 14-year-old was arrested on outstanding warrants after being picked up in an FBI-orchestrated prostitution sting…Whitley…admitted to having sex…with…her…but claimed that he did not know she was underage…His file reveals at least 28 complaints against him, going back as far as 1991…

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic God kills kittens

This is the kind of sick mind that believes in “porn addiction”:

A Christian pastor in Minnesota offered advice to a grieving husband whose wife suffered a miscarriage, suggesting his “struggle with lust and pornography” somehow contributed to the couples’ loss…Piper went on to insist god punishes people for their sins, and that “discipline” from god may “come in the form of harm, even death, to others that we love, as well as ourselves”…

Pyrrhic Victory

Watch what you say, comrade:

The FBI has signed a contract with Dataminr, a company that sifts through the Twitter newsfeed to identify issues and trends in real time. Dataminr will…give the FBI the capability to search the complete Twitter firehose in real time, using customized filters…the FBI will now have access to all messages written on Twitter, and will be able to search through the messages for key words and phrases, providing a level of social media monitoring that had been unavailable until now.  They will be able to use Dataminr’s proprietary algorithms and geolocation tools to sift through the entirety of messages posted by Twitter’s 317 million average monthly users worldwide…the FBI noted that social media platforms are used by…“criminal organizations to further their illegal activity”…Criminal activities could include communication…Twitter’s Developer Agreement…states specifically that surveillance of Twitter users is prohibited in situations that would normally require a court order or subpoena.  It also specifically bans any use of Twitter API or Twitter content by a government entity…

Remember, sex workers are “criminals”, so sex worker groups are “criminal organizations” and our ads are “criminal activity”.

Broken Record 

When there’s this much concentrated stupidity it’s hard to choose a heading, but I think this is probably the most interesting part:

…[pig and fetishist] Mike Ferjak says it’s important [for the continuation of the hysteria] not to doubt the validity of human trafficking survivor’s stories…Ferjak [fantasizes] victims are recruited at the mall, school or in online chat rooms under a false promise of a dancing or modeling career…their picture and description are posted on buyer boards like “Backpage”…then [literally] sold in our own [literal] backyards.  “When we saw the NCAA tournaments here earlier this year, Polk County saw a 45-percent increase in the number of persons being offered for sale”…He says that same spike happens during the 80/35 music festival, the Downtown Farmer’s Market and even the Iowa State Fair…Iowa is in the prime location for it due to interstates 35 and 80…

It’s not to hard to guess what this cornpone is doing while spinning his fantasies of raped teen girls.

Sex Rays

Scum like Webber imagine they have the right to treat whole neighborhoods like their private estates:

…conductor Julian Lloyd Webber says his prestigious neighbourhood has become blighted by vice dens.  The musician has launched a fight against the illegal brothels after his wife…cellist Jiaxin Cheng, was mistaken for a sex worker…

Don’t want to worry about neighbors?  Buy yourself a country house on some land, you pompous twit.

Change a Few Words (#625)

Though their condemnation of the drug war is still far too timid and they still give far too much respect to the idea that drug use is a social ill, it’s great to see so many physicians coming out against prohibition:

…the…esteemed British Medical Journal…followed [The Lancet in] urging governments to “investigate more effective alternatives to criminalisation of drug use and supply.”  The…editorial notes that consumption of psychoactive substances is an ancient and persistent aspect of human behavior and that attempts to suppress it have had horrendous consequences, including crime driven by artificially high drug prices, promotion of blood-borne diseases, deaths linked to unpredictable potency and unreliable quality, and “appalling violence”…Because doctors “have ethical responsibilities to champion individual and public health, human rights, and dignity and to speak out where health and humanity are being systemically degraded,” the editors argue, they “should use their authority to lead calls for pragmatic reform informed by science and ethics”…

Criminal laws “informed by science and ethics”?  LOL.

To Molest and Rape

Once again: if you think it matters whether a rapist cop was “on duty” or not at the time of the rape, you are part of the problem:  “…agents with the SC Law Enforcement Division arrested a…[cop who raped three] women…while on duty…William McKinley Littlejohn was [merely] charged with three counts of misconduct in office…” but

Prosecutors are recommending a…Wapato [Washington cop] be sentenced to [merely] six months on electronic home monitoring after he pleaded guilty to third-degree rape.  Travis Disney…raped a…woman he knew while off duty…Disney will have to register as a sex offender for 10 years…

Power Play

I can’t recall a more obvious case of a judge being intimidated into backing down from a ruling:

It looked like the courts would once again save us from prosecutorial overreach aimed at…Backpage—and in so doing, reaffirm the protection under federal law and the First Amendment that’s afforded third-party publishers of online content.  On Wednesday morning, Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Michael Bowman indicated that he would reject California’s case against Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer and two former site owners on charges of pimping, pimping a minor, and conspiracy.  In a tentative ruling, Bowman agreed with the defense that the federal Communications Decency Act prohibits the charges against Ferrer and co-defendants Michael Lacey and James Larkin…he wrote…”Congress has spoken on this matter and it is for Congress, not this court, to revisit”…[but mere hours later] the judge…said he won’t dismiss the pimping charges just yet and would like more briefings from both sides before deciding whether to make the tentative ruling final…

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To Molest and Rape (Extra Edition)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on November 18, 2016| 4 Comments »

I want people to realize…how truly common sexual abuses of power by police are.  –  Elizabeth Nolan Brown

You’ve probably noticed that though cops rape women on a regular basis, and always have since the first warlord called himself a “king” and recruited brutal thugs to enforce his whims with violence, the number of reports of such incidents has absolutely soared this year.  Beside the usual “To Molest and Rape” feature (formerly “Above the Law“) and other related features such as “License To Rape” (rapists pretending to be cops and cops raping under the guise of “searching” or the like), “Droit du Seigneur” (cops pimping and otherwise sexually exploiting women), and “If Men Were Angels” (religious & other non-cop “authorities” coercing women into sex), we’ve had several other special features like “Morality Lessons”, “The Public Morals” and a previous extra edition of “To Molest and Rape” back in June…all chock full of cops raping people.  And if you’ll look at my Links columns, you’ll note that “rapist cop of the week” is not an exaggeration; in a few weeks I’m going to count them up for my year-end column, and I expect the number to be well over 100.  So it didn’t surprise me in the least when Liz Brown reported that…

Nearly 1,000 U.S. police officers lost their badges over sexual misconduct between 2009 and 2014, according to a new analysis from the Associated Press—which calls this number “unquestionably an undercount.”  And around one-third of these incidents involved children or teenagers under 18-years-old, the news agency found.  Since the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics [intentionally] doesn’t keep track, AP turned to state-by-state police decertification records.  Forty-one states returned data on officers whose licenses were revoked for sexual assault or other forms of sexual misconduct.  But among these, some “reported no officers removed for sexual misdeeds even though cases were identified via news stories or court records.”  And California and New York—states with some of the largest law-enforcement agencies in America—were among the nine states (plus the District of Columbia) that either didn’t respond or did not revoke the licenses of officers fired for sex offenses…

“Unquestionably an undercount” is a gross understatement; 1000 in 6 years is only about 3/week, and given that for most of that period about two/week on average have been reported widely enough for me to catch them, the number has to be several times that high…and remember, it only includes the ones who were caught and fired, not the much larger number who either totally got away with it or were protected from consequences by the cop establishment.  As Liz mentions later, “A Bowling Green State University analysis of officer-arrest data from 2005 and 2011 found sex-related cases were the third-most prevalent.  A Cato Institute study of 2009 and 2010 data found sexual misconduct was the second most-common complaint against cops, behind excessive force…”  She then goes on to mention Jacksonville, Florida cop Michael Eugene Williams’ arrest for child porn after a 16-year history of complaints which somehow never resulted in his being prosecuted or even fired until November of 2010, and this:

Milwaukee [cop] Dominique Heaggan-Brown…is accused of sexually assaulting an incapacitated man, taking naked photos of people without their consent, and trying to pay for sex.  Heaggan-Brown also made headlines over the summer after fatally shooting…Sylville Smith as the man fled from a traffic stop, sparking protests around the city.  Heaggan-Brown has been suspended from the Milwaukee Police Department…

The sickness of our society is spotlighted by the fact that Heaggan-Brown was fired for the sex charges but not for shooting a man in the back, similar to the way that so-called “sex offenders” are turned into pariahs but people convicted of murder and mayhem are not, no matter how horrifying their crimes.  I’ve also noticed that rapist cops are raping more males lately, or else they’re being reported more; in addition to Heaggan-Brown there was this one:

A Salem [Massachusetts cop] who is the husband of the city’s police chief was [arrested]…after…[raping] a man in a station closet…Brian Butler was arraigned on charges of rape and indecent assault and battery…[after he raped] an intoxicated man who had been taken into protective [sic] custody in the early morning hours of Oct. 31…

And this one:

A Gwinnett County [Georgia] sheriff’s deputy resigned after he was arrested…on aggravated child molestation and sodomy charges…Michael Lomax is accused of engaging in a sex act with a 13-year-old he met on Grindr…Thirteen-year-olds can’t consent, even if they seek you out on Grindr…It’s…refreshing to note that the sheriff…didn’t try and equivocate on behalf of his deputy.  Part of the reason may be that Gwinnett County has seen a surprising number of its deputies – six, counting Lomax – arrested in the past five years.  Of the six, four were jailers accused of [raping] inmates…Duone Clark, who was charged with [raping] a transgender inmate, was sent to prison in 2014…

And this one, which is highly unusual:

…[in] Michigan…a man who served time at…Parnall [prison] claims that a baby-mad female prison counselor with whom he fathered a child used him as “a virtual sex slave, demanding sexual gratification at her whim”…Steven Moerman, was imprisoned on drug charges and receiving counseling for undisclosed mental-health issues.  Now out on parole, he’s suing the Michigan Department of Corrections, prison officials, and Gov. Rick Snyder over what he claims was repeated rape by prison counselor Susan Lee Clingerman…whom he says was undergoing fertility treatments in order to conceive a child with him…Moerman claims prison officials knew what was happening or should have known because another prison counselor acted as a lookout for Clingerman—who was banned from prison property in September 2014 and fired the following January…Clingerman claims she was having a consensual sexual relationship with Moerman, who fathered the child she gave birth to in April 2015…but…prisoners cannot legally consent to sex with prison employees because of the inherent power imbalance.  Thus, any prison guard, counselor, or other employee who has sex with a prisoner, no matter how theoretically willing that prisoner is, opens themselves up to liability for sexual assault.  Clingerman has already…[plead] guilty to a felony charge of misconduct in office as part of a deal that allowed her to stay off the sex-offender registry…

I wish there were some sort of pithy conclusion I could close with, but there isn’t; as long as violent, unaccountable thugs are given virtually limitless power over others to “enforce” moronic dictates against consensual behavior handed down by megalomaniac sociopaths with too much time on their hands, this will never stop or even be reduced in even the most minimal fashion.

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Skin in the Game

Posted in Perception, Philosophy, Q & A, tagged , , on November 17, 2016| 7 Comments »

Can a client be an ally?  A sex worker recently told me, “An ally who is not a client is a time-waster.  Self-interest is irrelevant.  The more people on our side, the better.”  But I worry that the people I’m supporting will like me less if they believe I support their struggle out of self-interest.  If you knew two male allies who were equally good at being allies, all things being equal, toward whom would you feel more warmly?  The ally who is or has been a client, or the one who never has been?  Or is the question truly irrelevant?

skin-in-the-gameAs a pragmatist, I don’t give a flying fuck why anyone supports decriminalization, just as long as he or she does.  If a billionaire software developer is an ally because he has some software he hopes to sell to decriminalized sex workers, or a politician backs decrim because it will save huge amounts of money wasted on law enforcement, or a celebrity backs it because she thinks it will attract sex workers to buy her albums or see her movies, what difference does that make to me?  Activists who demand ideological purity tests aren’t really interested in winning the War on Whores; they want a secret handshake club.

That having been said, an ally who has no “skin in the game” might be useful for a time, but what happens if his circumstances change?  If he’s not invested in the outcome, it’s just a hobby to him.  If anything, I think that allies who act out of enlightened self-interest are probably more trustworthy, because humans are humans and we all act out of self-interest at least to some degree.  People who pretend otherwise aren’t “pure”; they’re just hiding their real motives, and that makes me wonder what those real motives might be.  So while I welcome all allies, temporary or long-term, all things being equal I would prefer one who’s got as much to lose as I do if the prohibitionists aren’t stopped.

(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.)

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In the News (#690)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 16, 2016| 9 Comments »

There is no thought that a person should be able to have which lands them in jail.  –  Brian Shuster

Surplus Women 

Rolling Stone manages to do an entire article on serial killers who target sex workers without bothering to mention the reason so many do:  the criminalization that forces us to operate in the shadows:

The Killing Season, A&E’s upcoming documentary series about…unsolved murders of prostitutes…starts by looking into the Long Island Serial Killer investigation…but…is not just about LISK…the show…found there are likely many, many more predators who have been able to keep their killings sprees unnoticed.  “These guys aren’t getting away with murder because they are such geniuses,” [filmmaker Rachel] Mills tells Rolling Stone. “They have identified the perfect victims.  They know that those are the types of people that maybe they should go after because they don’t leave as much of a trace as a soccer mom who posts on Facebook”…families of…victims…[have] a hard time convincing law enforcement to take their concerns seriously…

Peeping Toms (#331)

Cops just love their “crackdowns” against queers, but in the current environment of tolerance they’re having to get more creative with their excuses:

Toronto police are helping residents…take back a park that has allegedly been used as a place for sexual activity at all times of the day.  Police said…they have laid 89 charges, mainly bylaw infractions, against 72 people…to clean up Marie Curtis Park…[cops], during their “plain clothes enforcement,” were solicited for sex in the park.  At other times, officers witnessed open sexual activity or men soliciting other men…police [pretend they] are not targeting any one particular group….[but] ninety-five per cent of those charged are men…the community wants the park to be a family friendly place where adults and children can enjoy the outdoors without fear of witnessing sexual acts.  There have also been complaints about litter left behind, including condoms…

Note the close resemblance to typical excuses for “stings” vs sex workers (including public sex and discarded condoms), the similarity of tactics and the typical dehumanizing language such as “take back” and “clean up”.

Above the Law (#405)

Once in a while a rapist cop gets his comeuppance:

A former Lake County [Florida] sheriff’s deputy convicted of [raping] a woman during a traffic stop on New Year’s Day 2014 has been sentenced to 12 years in prison.  Matthew Donnelly was sentenced [November 8th] and his attorney filed an appeal the same day…

Torture Chamber (#407)

What happens when government stops obsessively prohibiting things and treats prisoners like human beings:

While the UK and much of the world struggles with overcrowded prisons, the Netherlands has the opposite problem.  It is actually short of people to lock up.  In the past few years 19 prisons have closed down and more are slated for closure next year…Fewer than 10% [of Dutch prisoners] return…after their release.  In England and Wales, and in the United States, roughly half of those serving short sentences reoffend within two years, and the figure is often higher for young adults…A decade ago the Netherlands had one of the highest incarceration rates in Europe, but it now claims one of the lowest – 57 people per 100,000 of the population, compared with 148 in England and Wales…police…have shifted their focus away from drugs and…judges often use alternatives to prison such as community service orders, fines and electronic tagging…Angeline van Dijk, director of the prison service in the Netherlands, says jail is increasingly used for those who are too dangerous to release, or for vulnerable offenders who need the help available inside…critics…[pretend there are criminals hiding all over who haven’t been caught] and…many of…van Dijk’s staff are not happy about the lack of people to lock up…

The Public Eye (#449) 

Tyranny By Consensus (#528)

This isn’t the first time Weinstein’s been accused of financial shenanigans:

…The Free Speech Coalition…is taking aim at Weinstein and his nonprofit over…improper political spending.  FSC filed a formal complaint…charging that Weinstein’s spending push related to promoting measures such as the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, an anti-development initiative designed to curb building in Los Angeles, has been dubious…[and] constitutes a breach of the Internal Revenue Service’s requirements for an organization to maintain non-profit status, since much of the spending is not directly related to AHF’s own AIDS-related mandate…AHF has…spent in excess of $10 million on local ballot measures and lobbying…[and] almost $20 million on statewide ballot measures…while continuing to receive government grants and not paying taxes on pharmacy sales…[of] over $800 million annually…

Guinea Pigs (#623) 

Palantir is the same company which is helping cops spy on sex workers:

California’s secretive gang database, with information on hundreds of thousands of predominantly black and Latino men, uses a controversial overlay of…data analysis and surveillance technologies…they are being employed by law enforcement without public use policies or privacy safeguards beyond the database’s own rules.  The 19-year-old CalGang database has relied on facial recognition technology at least since the mid-2000s…Yet facial recognition, so imprecise that the Federal Bureau of Investigation accepts an error rate of up to 20 percent, is even more inaccurate when used to identify African Americans…at least one jurisdiction was allowed to employ a powerful dataset-linking program created by Palantir Technologies, a Pentagon contractor, and indicate that the CalGang Executive Board has considered using social media mining software…intelligence [is gathered] from stops by police, such as pulling someone over for a traffic violation or jaywalking.  Any information collected during those stops and uploaded into CalGang, including photos of an individual’s face…people [are] classified as gang-affiliated based on flimsy evidence, record keeping [is] sloppy and gang intelligence [has] been used for employment background checks in violation of federal law and CalGang’s own policies…

Change a Few Words (#625)

It’s good to see more and more doctors attacking the drug war:

Richard A. “Red” Lawhern, Ph.D. is a long-time advocate…for chronic pain patients…”Over the past 20 years, I have interacted with thousands of pain sufferers…In many of these people, prescription opioids have made the difference between total disablement or death by suicide, versus at least a marginal quality of life and function…During the last two years, I have increasingly heard from patients who are being subjected to a systematic campaign of medication denial and personal stigmatization by the mainstream medical establishment.     Patients who have been successfully and responsibly managed for years on prescription opioids are now being labeled as addicts and denied renewal of medication…Doctors are being driven out of pain management…by an over-zealous witch hunt headed by the…DEA…the most prevalent causes of opioid deaths are street heroin, a flood of imported fentanyl from China and Mexico, and the diversion of stolen or fraudulently obtained prescription opioids…Chronic pain patients did not cause the “overdose epidemic”…a quarter or fewer of overdose victims have a current medical prescription for pain relievers…

Virtual Unreality 

Prudes will turn anything related to sex into a problem:

Realistic sex robots are still a very long ways away — but realistic virtual reality sex has already arrived…we are already hearing about the potential for virtual sexual assault.  Last month, Jordan Belamire shared a now-viral story of getting groped during a multi-player VR video game, which she said “felt real, violating”…[prudes are freaking out about simulated] sexual encounters with [nonexistent electronic images designed to look like] children…[fetishists imagine] VR sex will become so technologically advanced that it is actually preferable to real world sex.  Kathleen Richardson…is…director of The Campaign Against Sex Robots…but she’s also [judgmental] about the nearer-term reality of virtual reality sex.  She believes that things like VR, and sex robots, encourage us to see other humans as property and decrease our empathy…The issue of acting out sexual assault on a purely computer-generated character is…fundamentally not all that unlike the sometimes hysterical worries that have come up with past technological advances — whether it be cybersex in AOL chatrooms, the proliferation of internet porn, or the advent of swipe-based dating…there is no evidence [violent video games] lead to real world criminal behavior…

The Pro-Rape Coalition (#635)

It’s interesting to see how much more critical mainstream media in the British Isles can be about anti-porn hysteria:

…a study by researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin was mentioned as evidence that porn causes changes in consumers’ brains…the researchers actually concluded that they could not prove if the people in their study had this type of brain before their exposure to porn, or if porn was responsible for changing the brain.  To generalise about this small-scale study of 64 Danish men is disingenuous…and the experience of men cannot be said to be exactly the same as the experience of women…It was also stated that there is research to show that women in porn are abused and mistreated, however…there is no large-scale, longitudinal research done with porn performers.  The closest to this was the Griffith study in 2013 which asked 177 female performers about their history of sexual abuse and their levels of self-esteem.  They reported lower levels of childhood sexual abuse and higher rates of self-esteem, social support, sexual satisfaction, and spirituality compared to the control group of non-porn performers…a statistic…claimed porn receives 30,000 hits a second –  but…comes from a Christian website that campaigns against porn…YouTube…receives a billion views a day…PornHub received just over 4 billion hits for the whole year.  PornHub also [reports] the average viewing time worldwide is about ten minutes each visit.  We must also ask how much time people spend watching Hollywood films, social media, or Netflix, and what kind of content they are consuming on there…

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Diary #333

Posted in Diary, tagged on November 15, 2016| 2 Comments »

selfiecamera_2016-11-05-12-48-38-054I think my car will soon be able to get to the airport by itself; it drove there and back three times in as many days last week (the first time Sol Finer drove it to pick me up, and the next two times I took friends there), then yesterday I had to go again!  Other than that, the week kept me so busy with little chores, tasks and annoyances that I wasn’t quite able to catch back up, and the election didn’t help at all.  But that finally broke near the end of the week, and a dear friend invited me over to her house Friday for an evening of inebriated cuddling on the sofa, which was blissfully relaxing and put me into a lovely frame of mind for the rest of the weekend.  I’m beginning to get my schedule together, and pretty soon I’ll know my tour dates for January; tentatively, I’ll be stopping in Portland, San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Tucson, Las Vegas, Albuquerque and Denver, so if you live in any of those cities and would like to see me please keep your eye on this space over the next few weeks.  And with any luck I’ll be able to get my new book out by then, too!

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Guest Columnist: Desmond Ravenstone

Posted in Guest Columns, Perception, tagged , , on November 14, 2016| 8 Comments »

Desmond Ravenstone is an activist and organizer with more than thirty years of experience, from his student days at Oberlin College, to the marriage equality movement in Massachusetts and the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom.  Knowing his reputation, I was very pleased when he became interested in organizing clients, and his efforts with COSWAC have exceeded my expectations. 

anonymous-clientIf I ever met Swanee Hunt, one of the leading prohibitionists in this country, do you know what I’d say to her?  “If you’re so concerned with stopping trafficking and moral uplift, there’s another area where you need to focus your efforts.  So many selfish and negligent people feel that it’s okay to pay off some stranger to act as surrogates in a vital relationship.  Sometimes they find some untrained, underage girl whom they can pay a pittance.  Other times, they connect with some ring that lures unsuspecting young women from other countries on the promise of ‘seeing the world’, only to be trapped in a house to satisfy their demands.  Clearly, this must be a form of trafficking.  After all, no one dreams of having to care for another person’s child.”  Many folks would find it offensive to have babysitters, au pairs, and nannies called “victims of human trafficking”.  But I’d also wager that parents would feel personally offended at being called “selfish and negligent” or compared to slave keepers.  They would argue rightly that, with the complexity of their lives and needs, they have important reasons to hire someone to watch or care for their kids.

The same holds true for sex work clients.  Some have been in loving relationships lasting decades, only to suddenly find themselves alone due to divorce, abandonment, disease or death.  Some have escaped abusive relationships and are now struggling to regain confidence and trust.  Some have difficulty finding intimacy due to disability, poor socialization, or questions about their own sexuality.  And some just need cathartic, pleasurable release without the baggage of expectations or judgement.  Knowing that isn’t enough, however; prohibitionists have painted a black-and-white picture of clients as heartless predators to be persecuted and shamed.  It’s time for clients to speak up, and to work together with sex workers for change.  That is why CoSWAC – Clients of Sex Workers Allied for Change – was started.

It began with Maggie’s July 18th blog post on the recent “johns sting” in Seattle, and her battle cry for clients to begin speaking up more for decriminalization.  As a longtime activist for sexual and personal freedom, I responded quickly; soon others joined in, and we began online discussions on how to get clients organized.  It was decided that launching a website, to provide information and a contact point for interested clients, was the best way to start.  As we began our plans, Dan Savage echoed Maggie’s call to arms at the end of August, so it was decided to speed up our efforts and launch the site as soon as possible.  Within two weeks, the CoSWAC site was public, and already attracting attention.  The most distinctive element of the website is a page where clients share their stories.  While they are predominantly from hetero male clients in the United States, there are also female and gay male clients, and stories from Australia, New Zealand, and Europe.  These stories shatter many of the prohibitionist myths around commercial sex, revealing an important dimension to our understanding, including narratives of emotional healing.

Ultimately, we hope to go further.  Right now, a smaller group is working on the process of creating a more formal structure – board, advisory body, and a framework for local groups.  We hope to encourage and empower more sex work clients to come out of the shadows, and work with sex workers and other allies towards decriminalization and other common goals.  As we grow and network with existing groups, we hope to provide more resources towards this end.  So, if you are a client, we encourage you to connect with CoSWAC.  Visit our website, and bookmark it to stay updated.  Share your story among the growing number being sent to us.  If you’re interested in helping us to build, let us know through the contact page.  Keep educating yourself on the issues around sex workers’ rights, and share that knowledge with those around you.  CoSWAC is here to provide a vehicle for clients to engage in the effort for the human rights of all involved in the commercial sex industry.  Get on board and pitch in!

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Links #332

Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on November 13, 2016| Leave a Comment »

I don’t have time to play this constitutional bullshit.  –  unnamed DC cop

What the fuck, 2016?  How many great songwriters are you going to take?  David Bowie, Prince, Merle Haggard and now Leonard Cohen?  No, don’t fucking answer that; I’m hoping you’ll get distracted for the next 7 weeks and forget to take any more.  Anyhow, the links above the video were contributed by Scott Greenfield  (“protect”, “hindrance” and “agency”), Jesse Walker (“democracy”), Laura Lee  (“necessity”), and Tushy Galore (“together”).

From the Archives

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In the News (#689)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 12, 2016| 17 Comments »

The reason it took so long was we kept looking for something we couldn’t find.  –  Joe DiSalvo

Election Day (#45) trump-the-circus-peanut

It was interesting, but not at all surprising, to look back at my comments after the last presidential election and discover that the issues literally haven’t changed at all.  Once again the world was subjected to Americans vomiting poison all over each other for over a year while flushing some two billion dollars down a colossal toilet of hate in a mad contest to convince the undecided that an unbalanced TV clown who has bankrupted more businesses than I’ve owned would be a better Chief Sociopath than a power-mad harpy who never met a non-Anglophone brown person she didn’t want to bomb, and vice versa.  We endured months of propaganda claiming that a word-salad-spewing orang-utan the color of a circus peanut candy could somehow manage the largest corporate complex on Earth even though he couldn’t successfully manage any of his own companies; that a robotic war criminal with the fashion sense of Kim Jong-un and the charisma of your average DMV functionary was somehow less evil than her public behavior would indicate because she has a vagina; and that people so disgusted with these two utterly repellent specimens of homo sapiens that they threw their support behind either a stoner hick with a loose-cannon running mate or a crackpot prohibitionist so deranged even she doesn’t actually know what she believes, somehow owed the Two-Winged Fascist Party their votes lest the madman beat the megalomaniac or vice versa.

Well, we all know how that turned out; Trump won the popularity contest in spite of his own best efforts to sabotage his campaign, which means we may soon be forced to endure the spectacle of a sitting US president defending himself against a slew of lawsuits and even criminal charges.  His cabinet suggestions are a veritable rogues’ gallery of tyrants and malefactors, including the psychopathic Joe Arpaio, who was finally ousted from his position as dictator of Maricopa County, Arizona under the shadow of pending federal criminal charges.

There was some good news, though; California, Nevada, Massachusetts and Maine legalized recreational cannabis, while Florida, Arkansas and North Dakota approved cannabis for medical use and Montana reversed an attempt by prohibitionist politicians to castrate access to medical cannabis in their state.  Prohibitionists convinced the bootlicking yahoos of Arizona to vote down recreational use, but a fat lot of good it’ll do them with weed being legal now in both California and Colorado.  Given that even the Texas legislature is considering legalization, it seems likely that the federal government will soon give up its evil and hopeless efforts to eradicate usage of the drug by destroying hundreds of thousands of lives.  In fact, it would be a smart move for Trump, one of the most hated men ever to win the Presidency, to reschedule marijuana and thereby basically end the most costly and devastating campaign of the War on Drugs, thus winning brownie points (sorry, y’all) with a large fraction of the people who hate him most while doing absolutely no damage to his reputation with his fanatical followers.

Also, Michael Weinstein’s bizarre one-man crusade to drive the porn industry out of California by allowing any individual to sue the makers of porn movies that don’t include visible condoms (thereby financially destroying the industry) has finally failed at last; while we probably haven’t seen the last of the fanatically-evil Weinstein, it appears that the voters of California aren’t going to give him the power he wants.  And perhaps the defeat of a mindlessly-restrictive prohibitionist law aimed at destroying one segment of the sex industry is a harbinger of flagging support for prohibition of other forms of sex work, just as expanding access to cannabis is a harbinger of failing support for prohibition in general no matter who is in the White House (especially given that despite Trump’s many horrible characteristics, this is the first time we’ve had a former sex worker as First Lady).

Like a Horse and Carriage

Taiwan appears set to become the first place in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage…Taiwanese lawmakers are currently working on three bills in support of marriage equality, one of which is already listed for review and could be passed within months.  Same-sex marriage also has the prominent support of President Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan’s first female head of state.  About 80 percent of Taiwanese between ages 20 and 29 support same-sex marriage…That’s seen as a reflection of Taiwan’s ready acceptance of multi-party democracy and other inclusive attitudes, as well as the fact that Taiwan’s 23 million people largely follow Buddhism and traditional Chinese religions that take no strong positions on sexual orientation…

For Those Who Think Legalization is a Good Idea (#558)

A possible move toward decriminalization in India:

A Supreme Court panel formed to look into the status of sex workers…has recommended that sex work be given legal recognition…Recommendations include that state authorities should issue ration cards to sex workers, that sex workers should be given voter identification cards, and that the children of sex workers should be given admission in government schools…The panel has also recommended that [programs for transition out of sex work] be made a right for those who seek it…The panel has also called for recommendations to amend the existing Immoral Trafficking (Prevention) Act…[including] changing the definition of brothel…not penalising those living on the earnings of a sex worker…deletion of the section on soliciting…and the doing away of the section on the removal of a prostitute from any place…among others…

Morality Lessons

We’re lucky to have such outstanding moral exemplars to “protect” and “lead” us:

The FBI reportedly ran 23 child pornography websites to try to ensnare users, according to an affidavit from the agency acquired by the…ACLU…It was previously reported that the FBI had seized and maintained the child pornography website Playpen to install malware on its users’ computers…[so as to] gain users’ identities and apprehend them.  But the…FBI had not revealed that it also operated the 23 other child porn websites until the new affidavit…the…websites…were hosted at a government facility…

To Molest and Rape rapist-cop-eutt-sharp

I’m pleased to see the actual word “rape” being used for rapist cops more often these days:

An Oklahoma County sheriff’s deputy was arrested for first-degree rape…Eutt Sharp was arrested on [October 29th] after a woman reported she was raped by an Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Deputy…

Of course, this probably has a little bit to do with damage control after Daniel Holtzclaw.

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic (#669) 

The defense of choice for sex offenders, plus ADHD:

During a trip to a tanning salon, a Saskatoon woman spotted something in the mirror while applying lotion — something she soon realized was a cellphone…a…police investigation…revealed videos taken of 18 other women, without their consent, while undressing in tanning salons around Saskatoon…Harley Zane Irwin…received a 12-month conditional sentence…after pleading guilty to 19 counts of voyeurism…Dr. Derek Doan, Irwin’s family doctor and psychotherapist, assessed Irwin as having Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).  A second doctor diagnosed him as having a sex addiction that resulted from childhood trauma.  Dr. Fred Reekie, a psychologist deemed an expert in the diagnosis and treatment of sex addiction, said Irwin is making strides in his treatment and has shown tremendous growth…

The Clueless Leading the Hysterical (#687) 

Because “I was wrong” isn’t in the cop vocabulary:

James Reed, the Illinois sheriff whose Halloween alert confused Crunch Choco Bars with THC…treats, now admits the error, reporting that…”was positive for containing cannabis.” In a press release issued last week, the Bureau County Sheriff’s Office says “the suspicious candy bars…were found to be imported from Japan, and the design on the wrapper is actually a Japanese Maple Leaf, which [does not in any way] closely resemble…a cannabis leaf”…Instead of apologizing for unnecessarily scaring parents and lending credibilty to the mythical menace of marijuana-infused Halloween candy, Reed offers lame excuses…claim[ing]…”attempts to locate [the candy] on the internet were unsuccessful.”  It is hard to imagine what those attempts entailed, since a Google image search for “Crunch Choco Bars” immediately revealed Reed’s confusion…this incident was a completely bogus scare, a fictional example of a nonexistent phenomenon.  Had Reed’s warning proved accurate, it would have been the first-ever documented case of cannabis candy distributed to trick-or-treaters in the two decades since California became the first state to legalize marijuana for medical use…

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Armistice Day

Posted in History, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged on November 11, 2016| 10 Comments »

We are the Dead.  Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.  –  John McCrae

One of the more peculiar eccentricities of my cognition is the way it tends toward the use of archaic terms and formats.  For some reason I’ve never quite been able to determine, I generally prefer older versions of things to newer ones; I love the romance of airships and trains over the sterile efficiency of airplanes, my favorite car (alas, currently parked at my ranch) is a replica of a 1929 Mercedes coupe, and whenever possible I cook from scratch.  My dress style tends toward the retro, my desk is a roll-top and my reticence to get new cell phones is legendary.  It’s rare that I read a book written after I was born or watch a television show recorded after I graduated from high school, and the astute reader has probably noticed that my writing style more closely resembles that of the 19th century than that of my native 20th.  So it’s probably not surprising that I’ve been heard to refer to Istanbul as “Constantinople” without a trace of ironic intent, and I always refer to today’s observance by its original name, “Armistice Day”, rather than the more new-fangled “Veterans Day”.

But while I will acknowledge most of these as examples of my charming eccentricity and can even laugh at myself about them, I will seriously defend my preferred nomenclature for this day.  It’s not only the fact that “Armistice Day” recognizes the actual reason for the memorial, the effective date of the armistice which ended the First World War 98 years ago today; nor is it the fact that some countries (such as France and Belgium) still refer to it by that name; nor the fact that the American use of the day to honor veterans both living and dead, whether they participated in a war or not, actually subverts the original intent of a day to honor those whose lives were senselessly lost in the greatest sustained campaign of carnage the world had to that point ever seen.  No, it’s that for me designating the day as “Veterans Day” is, frankly, somewhat jingoistic and uncomfortably fascist.  As longtime readers know, I have nothing against military men; if anything, I have kind of a thing for them.  But respecting individuals isn’t at all the same as participating in the creepy mandatory obeisance we’ve seen growing over the past few decades, and dedicating a day to the end of a war is a far different thing from using it to glorify the machinery of war.  As I’ve said many times before, the best way I can think of to honor veterans is to stop making so goddamned many of them.

Every year on this day, I’ve paid homage to the ancient and powerful relationship between warriors and whores, and I invite you to click on that link; the essay you’ll find contains more links to the earlier columns.  But given that after the end of the Cold War, the US government decided to instead devote itself to endless and mindless warfare against both its own people and those of foreign lands, I decided this year to make note of another bond between whores and military men:  our own government’s mad and evil campaign to destroy as many of our lives as possible for no reason whatsoever except the enrichment of the military/police-industrial complex and the self-aggrandizement of the evil sociopaths who declare themselves our rulers and believe they have the right to dispose of us as they will.in-flanders-fields-by-timmy-mallett-2012

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