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Archive for March, 2017

The TSA…[is] an expensive, intrusive show, put on by poorly trained, poorly managed and…dangerously out-of-control actors.  –  Scott Greenfield

License to Rape

The TSA joins cops in the elite group who can rape, sexually assault & molest citizens without consequence:

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration has declined to say exactly where—and how—employees will be touching air travelers as part of the more invasive physical pat-down procedure it recently ordered.  But the agency does expect some passengers to consider the examination unusual.  In fact, the TSA decided to inform local police in case anyone calls to report [a TSA agent sexually assaulting her]…The physical search, for those selected to have one, is what the agency described as a more “comprehensive” screening, replacing five separate kinds of pat-downs it previously used.  The decision to alert local and airport police raises a question of just how intimate the agency’s employees may get…

Criminal defense attorney Scott Greenfield had this to say about it:

…Put aside, for the moment, that TSA agents are not law enforcement officers, but rather the nice folks who you last met inquiring whether you wanted to supersize, now wearing blue shirts to create the impression of important authority…the way to improve [their inept performance] is to direct these pizza lovers to engage in conduct that would, under most other circumstances, constitute crimes.  Why isn’t it a crime?  Because it’s consensual, travelers having consented to their children, their spouses, themselves, being touched on any part of their body…by electing to travel by airplane a privilege, not a right.  Hey, you could walk across country.  Is it TSA’s fault you chose to fly?…

Follow Your Bliss  

What better job could there be for a queer sadist with control issues?

…John Smyth…stands at the center of a widening scandal of sadistic abuse of dozens of boys over three decades…Smyth…“quoted from the Bible and told me I had to bleed for Jesus,” said a…victim, who attempted suicide on his 21st birthday, after Mr. Smyth promised him “a special kind of beating” for the occasion.  “When he was done, he would lean in towards me and put his face on my neck telling me how proud he was of me,” said the man…Some of the victims received up to 100 strokes at a time for masturbating, having indecent thoughts or looking at pornography — beatings that caused some to faint or bleed for up to three weeks…Smyth was removed from the trust in 1984 and sent to Zimbabwe, where he set up similar Christian summer camps for…boys…In 1997, Zimbabwe’s prosecuting attorney arrested…Smyth on a charge of culpable homicide in the death of…a 16-year-old boy who was found dead at the bottom of the swimming pool of one of Mr. Smyth’s camps…a year later all charges against him were dropped…In 2002…Smyth moved to South Africa, where new accusations of abuse have surfaced in news outlets in recent weeks…

Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs

The story is the same the world over:

Dozens of sex workers and human rights campaigners gathered in Kiev on [Sex Worker Rights Day] demanding the [decriminalization] of prostitution in Ukraine.  Some 50 activists holding red umbrellas and wearing red plastic helmets staged the first-ever march through the capital…the protesters held placards reading “Sex work is work”, “We stand for decriminalisation of sex work”, and “My work is my choice”…there are some 80,000 sex workers in Ukraine who feel vulnerable — particularly to police abuse…[Yuliya] Dorokhova said…“women…have to hand police their…earnings as ‘protection’ money”…to avoid fines and…beating[s]…

Capricious Lusts

Another study shows what’s already been shown over & over again:

Paul Bisschop of SEO Amsterdam Economics…compare crime data for nine Dutch cities with tippelzones and 16 cities without.  The data from 1994 to 2011 include measures of sexual, drug-related and violent crime…The authors provide “causal evidence” of a 32 to 40 percent reduction in rape and sexual abuse within two years of a city opening a tippelzone…

No Friend of Ours

More evil prohibitionist drivel from Nevada:

A state lawmaker has proposed that Nevada give cities and counties the explicit authority to shut down hotels where prostitution arrests are repeatedly made…John Hambrick [fantasized] that his bill would help curb human trafficking…at by-the-hour hotels that work with or overlook [unlicensed] pimps operating at their establishments.  “I’m trying to get to a situation where communities can be safe and not have to worry about the scourge of human trafficking,” Hambrick said…

Monsters 

In which the Daily Fail pretends to care about transwomen so it can print torture porn pics:

A transgender woman was brutally beaten to death by a group of thugs who dragged her from her home and attacked her in a sickening transphobic attack.  Dandara dos Santos…was…kicked, punched, and hit with shoes and a plank of wood…in Fortaleza…Brazil.  Harrowing footage of the attack shows Dandara begging the savage attackers to spare her life, but her…attackers simply lift her into a wheelbarrow and roll her away to a back alley where she was beaten to death amid cheers and laughter…

Dysphemisms Galore 

One wonders if the author has similar sadfeelz about the “forced smiles” of people in other retail & customer service jobs:

…hundreds of women who are trafficked to Hong Kong from mainland China, Southeast Asia, Europe and South America for forced prostitution in the city’s brothels, bars, spas and pornography industry, [prohibitionists pretend]…Many victims do not speak out for fear of being punished by their traffickers, some of them linked to the powerful Triad organised crime group.  Others are afraid of being deported home or criminalised for being in the possession of fake papers arranged by their pimps…cocaine, marijuana and other drugs are used by clients and forced on the girls…

Because sweet, innocent women never snort coke or smoke weed, not ever.  And it’s funny how all the actual studies, ignored by this single-interview-based article, repeatedly find what activists keep saying: sex work in Asia, like everywhere else, is work.

Don’t Call It Trafficking 

It’s never called “trafficking” when the government or a crony does it:

Tens of thousands of immigrants detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement were forced to work for $1 day, or for nothing at all — a violation of federal anti-slavery laws — a lawsuit [explains].  The lawsuit, filed in 2014 against one of the largest private prison companies in the country, reached class-action status…after a federal judge’s ruling.  That means the case could involve as many as 60,000 immigrants who have been detained.  It’s the first time a class-action lawsuit accusing a private U.S. prison company of forced labor has been allowed to move forward…At the heart of the dispute is the Denver Contract Detention Facility…in Aurora, Colo., owned and operated by GEO Group…detainees at the…facility are forced to work without pay — and that those who refuse to do so are threatened with solitary confinement…

Morality Lessons (#689)

Remember this the next time politicians tell you that the point of anti-porn laws is to “protect children”:

Justice Dept. lawyers are asking a federal court to drop a case against a dark web child porn site because it says it [will] not reveal how it used a browser exploit to target thousands of unsuspecting visitors to the site…because the government is “unwilling to disclose” how it carried out the hacks, it has “no choice but to seek dismissal” of the case…Playpen…[was] a dark web site accessible over the Tor anonymity network…[the FBI] seized the server…[and] continued to run the website for almost two weeks…[it used] malware…to deanonymize the users of the Tor browser…[and] gather…IP addresses…which should have been protected by Tor…

Morality Lessons (#703)

Yeah, it’s porn making men less interested in marriage.  Horrible divorce laws couldn’t have anything to do with that:

A joint resolution in the Tennessee General Assembly condemning pornography as a “public health crisis” that is making men less interested in marrying passed unanimously in the Senate…without any discussion…It calls for education, policy change, prevention and [bogus] research [specifically designed to “find”] negative effects of pornography…

I’m sure that “call for education” doesn’t include actual sex education.

All-Purpose Excuse (#718)

Hey Democrats, are you ready to disavow this lunacy you helped create & abandon it to the GOP?

The shadow government led by former President Barack Obama is working overtime to delegitimize President Donald Trump and his administration…Why is Obama remaining in Washington D.C. and moving his top adviser Valerie Jarrett into his new mansion?…the mainstream media is ignoring Trump’s massive sex trafficking busts…the MSM…appear to be censoring stories that expose child sex trafficking and pedophiles…could the shadow government’s coup against Trump be tied to child sex trafficking?…Hillary and Bill Clinton’s [have] ties to sex crimes…there are people at the top tied to child sex trafficking…our corrupt MSM [has a] sick scheme to protect pedophiles and cover up sex trafficking…

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As I’ve often said, MRAs and feminists are basically the same critter.  Both groups have a small fraction of thoughtful individuals who are genuinely interested in examining the ways in which society treats their gender unjustly, both have a larger minority who are bat-shit crazy and suffer from delusions of persecution, and both are mostly made up of unhappy individuals looking for something to believe in.  The more unhinged members of both groups are obsessed with kindergarten notions of “fairness”; for feminists this usually looks something like, “Waaaaah, it’s not FAIR that men tend to be bigger and stronger than women, and that women don’t usually make as much money as men merely because we actually want lives and aren’t willing to sell our souls to corporations!  Waaaaaaaaaah!”  And for MRAs it usually looks something like, “Waaaaaaaah, why do I have to pay women to fuck me?  It’s not FAIR that men usually want sex more than women, so women can put conditions on men having sex with them!  I should be able to have all the sex I want without paying or jumping through hoops, Waaaaaaaaaaaah!”  Most of the time, whiny-baby feminists avoid me because I’m a whore and therefore anathema to their weltanschauung, but often whiny-baby MRAs will approach me online because they’re laboring under the serious misapprehension that because the deranged feminists hate me I must be on their side (Republicans and Democrats often make the same Very Stupid Error, but that’s a discussion for another day).  Well, on Wednesday one such individual got on my last nerve, and so I decided to carpet-truth-bomb him thus:

Hi, welcome to this place called “physical reality”.  Here, matter is organized into many different forms with varying degrees of scarcity.  Naturally, scarcer resources are more prized.  So there’s a field of study called “economics”, which studies how sentient beings interact with each other in order to get the resources they need by trading other resources they have more of.  Resources are not distributed “evenly” or “fairly”; for example, the sun has a whopping huge supply of helium (it’s a waste product there), while on Earth it’s scarce and getting scarcer.  This isn’t because of “capitalism” or “patriarchy” or “privilege” or anything else; it’s just the nature of physical existence.  I as a sentient being found something I have a lot of, namely sex appeal, and I trade on that to get things I otherwise have a lot of trouble getting & holding on to, such as money.  If you don’t have anything you can trade, sell or negotiate with to get something I want or need, you won’t be able to get what you might want from me, just like if I can’t get the money the grocery store wants, I won’t be able to get the groceries I want from it.  This is reality.  Learn it.  What you need to do is stop bitching about life being “unfair” (no shit) and find something you have that others want & will pay you for, such as labor.  That’s all.  Everybody is in that boat.  Sex is a resource, and so is money.  One can be traded to get the other, just like any resource can be traded to get other things.  The end.

I honestly can’t comprehend how anyone over the age of 8 can fail to comprehend that the world isn’t “fair” and can never be; the only way it could be would be for everything to be reduced to a thin haze of hydrogen spread evenly through a static universe.  Some people have more of one resource and some of another; that’s why commerce was invented.  And even though some individuals do have more resources and advantages than others, most individuals are still lacking in other areas (which is, of course, why commerce works in the first place).  Yes, I have more than my “fair share” of sex appeal, intelligence, personality force and general health…and far less than my fair share of other nice things, such as emotional stability, consistent orgasmicity, the ability to navigate formal systems, the ability to sleep more than three hours without sedation and the ability to move around and position my body any way I like without becoming violently ill (and that’s by no means a complete list).  Money can’t make up for any of those defects, but it can purchase workarounds for many of them, and my sex appeal can get me money.  And that to me seems like a far more adult, realistic and practical life-strategy than sitting around whining that it isn’t “fair” that I can’t enjoy air travel, vibrators and many other things large numbers of people take for granted.

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I emailed a lady whose ad I found online, asking if she was still in my area; she replied with in a few hours, listing her rates and asking for a 50% deposit for my desired session time.  This was to be paid from a PayPal cash card and she said she would contact me shortly after she  had verified the money to make meeting arraignments.  But she didn’t answer the question I actually asked, whether she still in the area (I’ve noticed some ladies move around a lot).  I used Tineye to look up her pics, but they don’t appear to be stolen.  Does any of this sound like a scam to you?

In a word?  Yeah.  I know that pretty, new girls can be very tempting for guys, especially if they don’t charge much.  But the fact of the matter is, most reputable, dependable escorts these days have an established online presence.  They’ve got their own websites, ads and posts on local escort boards, Twitter accounts and other such signs that they’re real professionals rather than scammers, cops, thieves, amateurs or flakes; in short, they leave footprints online as any real, solid entity would.  I mean, take me for an example; if you Google “Maggie McNeill” you’re going to find my blog, my Twitter, my escort site, YouTube videos, articles, interviews, my book, and even hit-pieces criticizing me…and that’s just on the first page.  Click on “images” and you’ll see over 20 pictures of me (not all of ’em flattering…*sigh*)  Go to my Twitter & you’ll find I’ve been there since December 2011, and that I have over 12,000 followers and over 132,000 tweets.  This blog has existed since July 2010, and I have reviews on ECCIE going back to that same year.  And while I’m an especially-prominent case, even less well-known ladies are going to have something; as a test I just Googled a half-dozen of my friends with the words “Seattle escort” after their names, and every one of them came up with plenty of results, more than enough to convince anyone that these are bona fide sex work professionals rather than who-knows-whats hiding behind fake pictures.  It may be that the lady you contacted is both well-known and well-reviewed, and has a prominent online footprint, but beyond the Tineye search which turned up nothing (which itself seems weird; a Google reverse image search on a few of my pics turned up matches on my website, Twitter & some scraper sites) you don’t seem to have made any effort to check her out, so I can’t say.  But I will say this:  nobody who isn’t well-established can generally ask for deposits and expect to get them, so if your gal is as much of a ghost as she appears to be (and again, I only have your word to go on), she’s either incredibly overconfident or trolling for guys too horny to bother with due diligence.

(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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[“End demand” makes sex work] less safe, [it makes] it harder to make money; how would you help any individual with that approach?  –  Sola

The Swedish Pimpocracy 

The key to understanding Swedish law: the government thinks it owns the citizens:

Sweden’s government…backed the reintroduction of compulsory military service for men and women born in or after 1999.  The country’s armed forces is planning to add 4,000 recruits a year in 2018 and 2019…“We have had a difficult time manning the war units on a voluntary basis and it has to be addressed in some way.  Therefore, it is necessary to reactivate conscription,” Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist [said]…

And yest Sweden calls sex work “slavery”.

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic soi-disant-addict-michael-wilson

So why can’t drug addicts get out of 20-year prison sentences for “possession”?

…Michael Wilson…[was]  sentenced…on four counts of possession of child pornography…to 20 years in prison, with all but three years and six months suspended…Testimony from defense witnesses centered around Wilson’s decades-long struggle with pornography addiction and the steps he has taken for treatment and medication…psychiatrist  James Sellman…has seen Wilson as a patient since July 2016…Sellman described the changes in brain chemistry that occurs in pornography addicts, including…abnormal levels of dopamine in the brain…Wilson previously attended group therapy in Florida for sex addiction, but Sellman said pornography addiction differs from sex addiction…

Just so you understand: everything Sellman says here is pure quackery, especially the pretense that high dopamine levels mean something other than the fact that the person really enjoys whatever he’s experiencing. That’s not a pathology, except in the minds of puritans for whom pleasure is an evil.

Watershed

When even an article that feels compelled to quote a violent prohibitionist ends up sounding pretty sympathetic to sex workers, you know things are changing:

A council of 160 current and retired sex workers from the Seattle Sex Workers Outreach Project…[is] joining other regional chapters of the organization in pushing for decriminalization of sex work…[which] would mean less stigma for sex workers, and allow them and their clients to inform police about sex trafficking without fear of prosecution.  The demand for sex workers’ rights is hardly unique to the United States.  Ever since more than 25,000 sex workers gathered in India on March 3rd, 2001, sex worker communities around the world celebrate March 3rd as “Sex Workers’ Rights Day”…Increasingly, movement to decriminalize sex work also has the support of major global organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO), Amnesty International and UNAIDS…

Paint By Numbers

Do whatever it was you were going to do anyway, but declare that you’re doing it to “fight sex trafficking”; stupid people will believe you and give you money:

Fly Fishing Collaborative provides sustainable livelihood that prevents children from entering sex-slavery through the building of Aquaponics Farms globally and justice initiatives locally. We’re able to build Aquaponics Farms globally and fund local justice initiatives through the purchase of our FFC Branded gear and guided Fly Fishing Trips.

Property of the State 

I don’t think legislators can make a law immune to judicial review or subsequent repeal:

A “personhood” measure that aims to criminalize abortion…in Iowa could be on its way to the state senate floor.  The bill…would give a fetus “the same rights and protections guaranteed to all persons by the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of the State of Iowa,” and the laws of Iowa…The bill…would prohibit the Iowa Supreme Court from having appellate jurisdiction over its provisions, if it becomes the law.  Iowa lawmakers would not be able to modify the law to “to create or recognize a right to an abortion”…

Business As Usual 

Journalists love to pretend that this is somehow unusual, when in fact it’s the norm:

Michigan has a law on the books that grants the police immunity from prosecution if they…[rape] a prostitute during an investigation.  Michigan is the only remaining state we know of which still grants that immunity, but that might change….Bridgette Carr…of the…University of Michigan Law School, is working with Rep. Gary Glenn…to draft a bill that would get rid of that exemption.  Carr first became aware of the exemption a couple of years ago, when Hawaii was “phasing out their exemption”…[because] Carr [is a badge-licker]…she does not believe the law was created with any bad intent…

As I’ve explained before, the only thing unusual about this “exception” is that it’s actually spelled out in law.  In fact, cops routinely rape, molest or sexually assault sex workers during stings, and are almost never disciplined for it much less prosecuted.

Between the Ears (#545) 

There is literally no information, absolutely none, that this stupid gimmick could record which could conceivably improve anybody’s sexual enjoyment in any way:

The i.Con Smart Condom, which markets itself as the “world’s first smart condom,” is actually a ring that fits over a boring, dumb condom and claims to track the exercise of your man bits, as well as detect chlamydia and syphilis.  The ring, first announced last July, is currently available for preorder on British Condoms for £59.99 (about $74, AU$97) with an unknown release date.  But…the company says it won’t take your money until the product has a firm release…

The Pygmalion Fallacy (#573)

Does anyone else find it deeply ironic that sociopathic anti-sex control freak Kathleen Richardson had to PAY to get someone to publish this deeply disturbed screed? (That’s what “sponsored feature” means.)

…men are routinely encouraged through pornography, prostitution and popular culture to view women as sexual objects.  In turn male technologists do not produce neutral technologies, but ones that are shaped by their privileges and preferences…sex robots [are] a further extension of this dehumanised idea of women.  With sex dolls, women are reduced to their sexual attractiveness…That’s why I founded the Campaign Against Sex Robots…One of the horrors of 21st century is the decriminalised and growing commercial sex trade…Prostitution and even rape are involved in the marketing strategies of sex dolls and robots…

To Molest and Rape 

“Gain access to” = “break in”.  “Seek the services of” = “attempt to rape”.

Two gardaí have failed to get High Court orders halting an internal Garda disciplinary investigation against them over an incident where they allegedly attempted to gain access to an apartment seeking the services of a prostitute…David Naughton and…Wesley Kenny…became involved in a fracas with two [men] and the dispute was broken up by other gardaí…the plaintiff[s]…had attempted to force entry to an apartment allegedly looking for prostitutes [and the men stopped them]…

Guinea Pigs (#690) 

Palantir is the same company which is helping cops spy on sex workers, and gave California cops a facial recognition database of black and Latino men:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is deploying a new intelligence system called Investigative Case Management (ICM), created by Palantir Technologies, that will assist in President Donald Trump’s efforts to deport millions of immigrants…Palantir…[was] founded by billionaire Trump advisor Peter Thiel…ICM allows ICE…to access a vast “ecosystem” of data to facilitate immigration officials in both discovering targets and then creating and administering cases against them.  The system provides its users access to intelligence platforms maintained by the [DEA, ATF, FBI]…and an array of other…law enforcement entities.  It can provide ICE agents access to information on a subject’s schooling, family relationships, employment information, phone records, immigration history, foreign exchange program status, personal connections, biometric traits, criminal records, and home and work addresses…

The Public Eye (#718) 

Have I ever mentioned that besides being a top-notch whore, friend and activist, Savannah Sly is also a very talented musician?

Monsters (#718) 

What the hell is going on in my native state?

Just one day after we reported on the murder of Ciara McElveen…Mic is reporting on the murder of Jaquarius Holland, another Black trans woman in Louisiana…Holland was only 18 years old. 18 years old…[and] is the sixth Black trans woman reported murdered this year…all of them…women of color…Holland’s friend Chesna Littleberry has set up a GoFundMe to pay for funeral expenses…The GoFundMe uses both “she” and “he” to describe Holland because her family still used “he” pronouns for her…

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Lastimg_20170304_232349 week was SASS, and though I didn’t help in planning this year I did volunteer at the kissing booth at the Harlot’s Ball on Saturday night, where quite a few lucky gents and a few lucky ladies got to sample my legendary kissing prowess for a teeny price (and in public, yet!) to benefit SWOP.  I also contributed one of the last remaining special copies of Ladies of the Night with a unique Chester Brown sketch in it as a raffle prize; there are now only four left, so if you want one you need to speak up!  And speaking of my books & Chester’s art, the cover art for The Forms of Things Unknown is now in the hands of the finish artist, who is coloring it, placing the titles & other text and preparing it to become an actual book cover.  She should have it back to me in about two weeks, after which all that remains is for me to submit all the files, examine the proof and then let you know the book is ready!  That should be right around a month from now, so keep your eyes open.  That’s all I have to tell you this week, but big things are a-brewing and I’ll keep you posted as they reach fruition.

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pin-dancing-angelsProhibitionist fanatics are fond of telling us that the “vast majority” of whores are “trafficked sex slaves”, passive and “voiceless” vegetable-like entities who are reduced to this state by the magical potions and mind-control powers of evil “pimps” and then posed like sex dolls for uncaring “johns” to use.  They even bizarrely reverse the actual statistic, claiming that “98%” of us are these pathetic creatures, despite the enormous evidence to the contrary.  But let’s forget about studies for a few minutes; let’s ignore the fact that no normal man would want to have sex with a cowering, bruised, malnourished, dirty lump of flesh, and that any real sex worker can tell you how much time, effort and money we need to expend so as to look as pretty, happy, healthy and enthusiastic as possible.  Let’s ignore the fact that for prohibitionist claims to work, literally every single man in the US would have to be fucking a “trafficked child” every single week of his life.  Let’s forget about the literally hundreds of requests I’ve gotten from men asking how they can avoid “pimped” escorts, the thousands of requests for reassurance every young-looking sex worker has to field before she matures to a point where she’s assumed to have agency, and the inescapable fact that very young sex workers often lie up about their ages in order to minimize this chronic annoyance.  Let’s even ignore the fact that highly-publicized pogroms sold to the public as “sex trafficking investigations” virtually never turn up anyone coerced, and even when they do the number is tiny and the cases look essentially nothing like the propaganda.  I just have one question for the prohibitionists:

Where are they?

Where are all of these “trafficked sex slaves”?  And where are the “pimps”?  Show me some of them, please.

See, I can show you thousands of Twitter accounts, blogs and essays from sex workers; I can provide photos of absolutely enormous crowds of sex workers protesting against criminalization of our work, especially in the countries prohibitionists claim to be “hotbeds” of “sex trafficking”.  I even know ladies who’ve worked under really shitty conditions, exploited and coerced by husbands or boyfriends…and they all support decriminalization.  But all the prohibitionists can produce are a handful of show ponies like Rachel Moran and Theresa Flores, whom they parade around endlessly to recite their lurid tales of rape and beatings in front of crowds of gawking yahoos who then go home to masturbate.  Almost none of these so-called “survivors” can produce an arrest record, the name of a “pimp”, an old ad under which they were supposedly “sold for sex”, or any corroborating evidence whatsoever; what’s more, their tragedy porn always takes place conveniently years or decades in the past, long enough for the evidentiary trail to have been washed away by their bucketfuls of crocodile tears.  And you know why?  Because these supposedly “trafficked” hordes are nothing but the products of fevered religious imaginations, phantasms that not only never existed but never could exist because they break every known law and fact of physics, biology, psychology, sexuality, sociology, statistics, history and common sense.  They are nothing but angels dancing on the head of a pin, nonexistent entities whose existence is propounded by evil and sociopathic “leaders” as an excuse for tyranny and a distraction from their complete inability to actually solve even the simplest problems of the real world the rest of us are forced to inhabit.

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WARNING: The video attached to this story contains strong language.

Most of you are probably familiar with how Pandora works; one chooses a song or artist to base a “station” on, and the program plays selections that are like it (based on how other people who like the core artist or song react to those other pieces).  One can fine-tune the station by selecting thumbs up or thumbs down on the selections the program chooses.  Anyhow, regular readers may remember that I have a Tubular Bells station (which I play during incalls) and a Beatles station; I have several others, but the station I play while enjoying cannabis edibles is based on the music of the young woman in the video below (this song is one of my favorites of hers).  The links above it were provided by Jesse Walker,  Mistress MatisseFranklin HarrisTim CushingMolly CrabappleKevin Wilson, and Walter Olson, in that order.

From the Archives

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Anti-sex-trafficking…is a zero-tolerance movement rooted in fear propaganda that uses police power, public shaming, creepy reeducation, and increased surveillance.  –  Savannah Sly

Feminine Pragmatism 

An absolutely fucking brilliant act of harlotry:

One crafty [woman] from China…[convinced] 20 boyfriends to buy her 20 new iPhone 7s, which she then sold for enough money to put a down payment on a house.  Using the pseudonym Proud Qiaoba, a blogger gave a detailed description of how the hustle was performed by a colleague of hers, dubbed Xiaoli…the BBC reported it has been able to authenticate the claims…Xiaoli…sold 20 iPhones to a mobile phone recycling plant for $A23,200 ($17,815) and then used that money for her house deposit…

Decentralization

Another anti-establishment group throws sex workers under the bus in an attempt to curry favor with the overlords:

Following [illegal threats]…from [a power-mad] Illinois [politician]…Visa and MasterCard ceased doing business with BackPage…[because] bitcoin was a perfect workaround, the decision had an unintended side effect that may have actually helped make the job of modern day slave traders even easier.  The tried-and-true investigative techniques that had been until that moment employed by law enforcement and banks to help prevent human trafficking were largely rendered null and void as the pedlars of human cargo embraced bitcoin.  Then, in December 2015, a [prohibitionist named]…Timea Nagy, addressed a room filled with financial executives from some of the largest banks in Canada and made a plea…asking them to modernize the way they track the financial transactions that power human trafficking…

Note that this pro-bitcoin site is obsequiously positioning itself on the side of pigs and government surveillance, and blatantly casting sex workers as passive, infantilized victims of imaginary “pimps”.  It’s enough to make one vomit.

The Public Eye savannah

A short interview with a dear friend, the superlative Savannah Sly:

When I first met Savannah Sly in…2015, she was working to fight bills in the Washington State Legislature that aimed to increase punishments for buyers of sex.  Sly, then volunteering with the Sex Workers Outreach Project-Seattle (SWOP-Seattle) and wearing cat ears, cited a slew of facts on the harms of such policies from multiple sex-work studies…A year later, the New York Times ran a big story questioning whether prostitution should even be considered a crime, and Amnesty International published a position on sex work that concurred with Sly’s: Criminalizing sex-buying also puts sex workers…in harm’s way.  Much of this newfound recognition for sex workers’ rights can be traced to the activism of sex worker advocates like Sly, who refused to shut up when uninformed lawmakers attempted to crack down on sex work…

With Friends Like These…

Brothel owners who promote “diseased whore” myths and “sex trafficking” lies to further their own interests are the worst kind of scum:

Tracey Smith has been the manager of Butterfly’s Massage Parlour in Alexandra Parade for 10 years.  Butterfly’s recently came under fire after a BBC investigation said it had hired girls as young as 15 to clean its rooms and hand out leaflets – claims Tracey says are “completely false…The girls who work here clean their own rooms…and…Any leaflets advertising Butterfly’s have never shown a woman – the only image they ever have on them is of a butterfly…The girls work here voluntarily, they are never forced to work…We have regular health checks for the girls and regular inspections from the council and the police.  We have a no drugs policy and if we think a girl might be an addict of any sort she cannot work here…We have had girls come to us who have gone to work at other places and realised…they were going to be trafficked”…

Checklist

Gee, I can’t imagine why a teenager would want a fake ID:

…the North Alabama Human Trafficking Task Force wants everyone to know the signs of this crime…When you’re out, [spy on] the children [and teenagers] around you…poor health, anxious demeanor and even tattoos…other “red flags” of human trafficking victims [include]…Inability to make eye contact…will not speak to [a stranger] alone [after years of “stranger danger” indoctrination]…Lying about age or false ID…

The Widening Gyre (#314) 

Missing woman was last seen with a member of a gang who commit violence against women at twice the rate of the general population; naturally, her family blames imaginary bogeymen instead:

It’s been six weeks since 20-year-old Wichita…college student Toni Anderson went missing.  Her parents…[imagine] their daughter is a victim of human trafficking…the morning of January 15…[she made] a text exchange with a friend, saying she had been pulled over [by] a North Kansas City [cop]…After that, she was gone…

Monsters chyna-doll-dupree

Another woman senselessly murdered:

A transgender woman was shot dead…outside a shopping center in New Orleans East, according to a relative who identified the victim as Chyna Doll Dupree…Neighbors said they heard eight to 10 gunshots…Dupree is a drag performer…[who] has toured in shows across the country…[she] had recently arrived from her current home in California to celebrate Mardi Gras with friends and family…

The End of the Beginning (#661)

Another step toward getting rid of these tyrannical and unconstitutional laws completely:

A few years ago, Marc Pepitone was arrested at a park in Bolingbrook, Illinois…for walking his dog there…A law enacted more than a decade later made it a crime for sex offenders like Pepitone to be present in “a park, forest preserve, bikeway, trail, or conservation area under the jurisdiction of the State or a unit of local government”…a state appeals court overturned Pepitone’s conviction after concluding that the law he broke “is unconstitutional on its face because it bears no reasonable relationship to protecting the public”…

See also the second item below.

The Pygmalion Fallacy (#679) 

If this is a “brothel”, then a room with a foosball table in it is a “stadium”:

A brothel, filled with only sex dolls in Barcelona, boasts “appointments” with its “staff” for 80 euros per hour.  Lumidolls…claims to be the first establishment offering this service in Europe.  Options of doll include “Lily, Katy, Laiza and Aki”, who are all of varying height and aesthetics; such as anime Aki and “big boobed” Katy.  Clients can request in advance how one of the four dolls will be dressed…the dolls are “poseable” and feature three orifices…

The End of the Beginning (#686) 

More good news about bad laws:

The Supreme Court on Monday appeared likely to strike down a North Carolina criminal law that bars people on the state’s sex offender registry list from “accessing” social networking websites…[which] have become “crucially important” places for political communication — with Justice Elena Kagan noting, “The president now uses Twitter”…The state’s lawyer, Senior Deputy Attorney General Robert Montgomery, responded that the law doesn’t bar those on the registry from the entire internet…[and cited] a 1992 case, Burson v. Freeman, in which the court upheld a 100-foot buffer zone barring political activity outside polling places…Justice Anthony Kennedy replied…that if Burson is the state’s only case supporting its argument, “[Y]ou lose.”  Montgomery provided no other case.

All-Purpose Excuse (#717)

“Sex trafficking” fetishists are becoming increasingly unhinged:

At Townhall.com, sex-crime [profiteer]…Liz Crokin accuses the mainstream media of “ignoring Trump’s sex trafficking busts.”  In Crokin’s reality, “authorities have arrested an unprecedented number of sexual predators involved in child sex trafficking rings in the United States” since Donald Trump took office on January 20.  “There have been a staggering 1,500-plus arrests in one short month; compare that to less than 400 sex trafficking-related arrests in 2014 according to the FBI,” Crokin writes.  This is, as Trump would put it, “fake news.”  Every part of it.  For starters, the 2014 data she links to is far from a complete account of U.S. sex-trafficking arrests that year.  It reflects incomplete state-level arrest numbers…and…does not include…arrests by federal agencies such as the FBI and…ICE…many of the [supposedly post-Trump] arrests Crokin includes in her tally—arrests that include mostly women selling sex and men trying to engage in consensual adult prostitution—are part of annual sting operations, were the result of investigations in the works long before Trump took office, and/or had absolutely nothing to do with federal law-enforcement directives or activities…

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I told you that I was going to be doing a lot more hands-on activism, and…you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.  –  “The ‘Active’ in ‘Activism’

Inimg_20170302_202514 the two years since I moved to Seattle, I’ve been a lot more hands-on in my sex worker rights activities; whereas in the past I mostly just wrote about the subject, now I also speak in public, give lots of interviews, participate in protests, speak to politicians and try to amplify as many other voices on the subject as possible.  And when I sat down to write this year’s column recognizing Sex Worker Rights Day (which is today), I realized that it’s no longer possible to cleanly divide my private life from my activism.  Whereas seven years ago most of the people I dealt with regularly had no idea I was a sex worker, now it would be much easier to count the number who don’t than the ones who do.  Those few friends who aren’t whores themselves certainly know I’m one, as do the majority of the professionals I deal with (my accountant, my hairdresser, my doctors, my manicurist, etc, etc), and even when strangers ask what I do for a living I generally tell them; the few exceptions are usually when I’m in a social situation with a friend who isn’t out to the others in that situation, or when dealing with people who might hassle me if they knew the truth (like officials).  Indeed, very few people now call me anything but Maggie; it was actually a little odd to hear Grace using my legal name when she came to visit at Christmas.  But this really isn’t surprising; if anything, it’s the natural outcome of the mission I took on when I started this blog.  I wanted to demystify the demimonde, to shine light into the shadows that let prohibitionists spread their lies about us so successfully.  As I’ve said so often in interviews and speeches, the movement for gay & lesbian rights didn’t start to gain traction until enough queer people were “out” that most people realized that they knew and perhaps even loved someone queer; it will be the same for sex worker rights.  And while I don’t blame any sex worker living under a criminalized or “legalized” regime for keeping her silence, it’s imperative that those of us who have less to lose be as “out” as we can manage under our individual circumstances.  I have no spouse to embarrass, no children who could be taken from me, no family I’m not already estranged from, no future career plans that could be torpedoed by an employer discovering my history of harlotry.  And while no sex worker is safe while any of us are considered criminals, I have less personally to lose than many others and so I’m proud to be both visible and respected for my work, without shame or fear.  The tide has turned and the wind is shifting; sex workers are more visible than we’ve ever been, and nobody without power hunger, profit motive, or a personal ax to grind is in favor of criminalization any more.  In a way, the “sex trafficking” hysteria was an early symptom that we’re winning; since our opponents couldn’t credibly portray us as villains any more, they turned to casting us as victims.  And now that narrative, too, is failing, as reasonable people everywhere realize that criminalization makes things worse for those in bad situations.  The day is coming when the prohibitions will start to fall like dominoes, and when it does I’ll be even more proud to know that I was one of those who helped knock that first one over.

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Getting Started

I am a 24-year old in the US who has been interested in becoming an escort for a while, but I don’t know how to get started.   How does one screen clients to make sure they aren’t dangerous (including cops)?  I see your escort booking form asks for occupation & references, but what if they don’t have them?  When is the appropriate time to talk about what sexual acts they are looking for?  Where is the best place to start advertising?  I just wish I had a step by step guideline.  I wrote to a girl who’s highly reviewed in my area, but the response came from a guy in another state who said he is her “persona management.”  He said that he books her clients, a woman does the screening and, they spend over $3000 per month on advertising for her.  If I were to join they would take a percentage but I would be responsible for getting to all of my appointments.  Have you ever heard of people doing this?

First, absolutely DO NOT make any deals with people you’ve never met.  While there are still agencies, they’re going the way of the dodo in most markets and as a former service owner myself I’m telling you that you don’t need them (especially ones that try to hard sell you from the get-go with fancy talk of thousands of dollars a month in advertising).  Frankly, this sounds to me like a scam, especially since you’re an unproven quantity at this point.  The best thing for you to do (especially now that Backpage is kinda crippled) is to find your local escort boards and join.  If you have a little seed money, it’s a good idea to get some professional pictures right away; if you don’t, find a friend you can trust who takes decent pictures to do your first ones, then after you get a couple of gigs you can hire a pro.  You definitely want to make sure you like the work before you invest too much.  As for screening, references are the best way to go for a beginner; as you go on you’ll talk to other girls and learn more tricks, including whitelists like Date-check and blacklists like Verify Him.  It’s not a good idea to talk explicitly about sexual acts up front; this is partly because of cops, but also because some guys just want to jerk off while talking to you and you don’t want to give them free wanking material.  Please check out my Mentoring tag, and the “Mentoring” section of my FAQ page; there’s a lot of stuff there and I think you’ll find many of the posts useful (including a number of them on screening).  But probably the best all-around advice I can give you is to buy and read Amanda Brooks’ Internet Escorts Handbook; it’s a small investment and you’ll get a lot out of it.

(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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