Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for October, 2017

In the News (#784)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 21, 2017| 1 Comment »

“Sex addiction”…is a steaming pile of quackery invoked by those unwilling to take responsibility for their actions.  –   Angela Mollard

Friday the Thirteenth 

Deviant Ollam, who designed our “McNeill/Matisse 2020” T-shirts, tells hackers why they should support sex workers:

Sex workers face many of the same stigmas that hackers do.  In addition to being misunderstood by the general public so often that they may choose to not even self-identify publicly unless they are in “safe” environments and surrounded by their own kind, the mainstream portrayal of such groups of people is riddled with the most ostentatious and over-blown stereotypes…If we search for the word “hacker” what are we going to see for the results?…Black hoodies and balaclavas everywhere.  The stock image sites are among the worst offenders, as always.  But that’s what editors (and, by extension, their readership) sees in their mind when they hear the word “hacker.”  By and large, we are seen as scary, malicious, and out to cause mayhem.  Let’s try a google image search for “prostitute” now…Is it much of a surprise to anyone that the trope of the “at-risk street walker” is far-and-away the most returned image?…I put it to you that the “prostitutes” in these photos are no more representative of the sex work population than the “hackers” in the earlier images are of our own community…

Enabling Oppression

I’m glad a few people recognize how loathsome it is to use talk of “slavery” to oppose human rights:

…The click bait power of slavery and human trafficking, often encouraged by sensationalist headlines such as “victims branded like cattle”, operates to obscure real problems.  This is tied up with how we label people.  People entering the UK illegally, for example, are characterised as one of two types: either they are seen as undesirable migrants, or else as victims of slavery.  Our use of such labels – “slave”, “trafficking victim”, “refugee”, “migrant” – highlights our need to distinguish between those who deserve protection and those who don’t…the continued use of the idea of slavery to invoke an emotive response…promotes overly simplistic solutions – such as awareness raising campaigns…

Paint By Numbers

“Dumb ‘awareness-raising’ stunts” is going to be the funniest appendix in my history of “sex trafficking” hysteria:

Men, women and children took to the streets of Newcastle to make a stand against human trafficking.  With their mouths taped shut, more than 100 people dressed in black walked in single file through the city centre down to the Quayside on Saturday, stopping briefly to make a silent demonstration at the Monument…One of the Newcastle Walk for Freedom organisers, Rachel Jobes…said: “When we say this is a crime that’s happening under our noses we aren’t exaggerating.  We [fantasize] there have been trafficking victims in nail bars, held as slaves in parts of our city and we [masturbate to thoughts of] people…sexually exploited on the streets where we walked”…

Available Weapon

How can people read this and still think prostitution laws are a good idea?

…in Henrico County, Virginia…the number of female inmates at the county jail has more than doubled in the past year…due to…an intensifying police crackdown on sex workers and on people with drug dependence issues…[prosecutor] Michael Feinmel…claims that…these people are a nuisance to the public…or pose an immediate danger to themselves.  But this isn’t true.  Henrico County vice cops go out of their way to arrest these women…They troll online ads, reach out to sex workers pretending to be customers, and rent rooms at local motels where they can lure these women in order to arrest them…They do this under the guise of fighting “human trafficking,” but it’s just punishing women who sell sex…

Moloch (#572)

State actors keep trying to crucify a young man after their first attempt to destroy him failed:

Zach Anderson, the young man…whose harsh punishment for consensual sex with an underage teenager he wrongly believed was 17 made headlines around the country in 2015, has been arrested for violating his probation…He stopped by for dinner at his parents’ home.  His younger brother was present, and incidentally, so was the brother’s friend.  The brother thought this friend was 19 years old, but he turned out to be just 17.  Anderson, unfortunately, is not allowed to have contact with anybody under the age of 18, except his own siblings.  There was one other thing.  Anderson works on the tech team at his local church.  Recently, a 17-year-old girl joined the church staff as an intern.  While Anderson has never met or spoken with her, the fact that they volunteer on separate teams at the church is a violation of his probation, according to officials who issued a warrant for his arrest last week…Possible outcomes range from dismissing the charges to extending probation, putting Anderson on the sex offender registry, sending him to prison, or any combination thereof…

Guinea Pigs (#634) 

Don’t feel left out, amateurs; they’ll get around to you next:

PornHub…uses a tagging system to categorize all its content…But videos already outpace humans’ ability to keep up and tag everything, and so the site is turning to help from software…using facial ID tech not unlike that which Facebook, Amazon, and other media entities apply…There’s nothing illegal about making…from porn…[but] it’s…not a line of work one really discusses in-depth with the neighbors.  Performers, especially amateurs, may well prefer to keep their public, working persona separated from the name and identity they use in private life…[so] this particular use of facial recognition is a privacy disaster in the making…A video that has been uploaded and tagged on PornHub won’t necessarily stay on the service, but will instead travel the internet — and bring the performer’s auto-tagged name along with it.  There’s also the entire challenge of revenge porn…although the site has tried to make it easier for victims to report content and have it removed, it still exists on the site until or unless someone flags it…

To Molest and Rape 

Rapist cops don’t limit themselves to women:

A…Pennsylvania…[cop] will serve no more than two years — and possibly less than one — for [repeat]edly raping two boys and threatening to kill them.  David Turkos…accepted a plea agreement in June on misdemeanor charges…His two victims came forward as teenagers and told police that Turkos began sexually abusing them in 2001, when they were 6 and 4 years old…Turkos threatened to hurt their mother and pets or take away their toys if they revealed the abuse.  One of the boys told police that Turkos choked him and used zip ties to restrain him during the abuse, and…held a hand over his mouth to muffle his screams.  “I hope you die — you’re a piece of crap,” Turkos told one of the boys…Turkos frequently pointed his gun at the brothers to frighten them…

The Puritan Recrudescence (#645)

Say what you like about Larry Flynt, but he’s a dedicated foe of tyranny:

…Larry Flynt is offering “up to $10 million” to anyone who produces information that leads to President Donald Trump’s impeachment and removal from office.  He lays out the offer in a full-page ad in the Sunday edition of The Washington Post…

The Pygmalion Fallacy (#671)

I may soon need to come up with a heading for stories that combine “sex addiction” nonsense with “sex robot” nonsense:

…sex experts say vibrators–no matter how technologically advanced they become—will never surpass human intercourse.  What’s more, they say any addiction to automated sex is downright impossible.  “The term addiction is often misused,” Dr. Kat Van Kirk…says…”A true addiction would mean the behavior would negatively affect the person’s day-to-day life…and using it to the exclusion of intimate live partner play.”  She says there’s “absolutely no research” to indicate vibrators’ addictive properties…Nicolette Heidegger…said that her clients often raise the question—a result of our collective 21st century fear that sex dolls…could one day replace actual intimacy…between humans…But “the fact of the matter is that there is no empirical data to support the claim that you can become physiologically or biologically addicted to a sex toy”…

The Maze of Consent

Attempts by “authorities” to negate the consent of adult women via psychobabble won’t stop with sex workers:

Forced into sex with large groups of strangers, stripped of their freedom and ferried from house to house by their controlling pimps, the story of how a group of vulnerable young women were turned into modern day slaves is brutal and uncompromising…thanks to the efforts of Greater Manchester Police officers the women were eventually freed and the gang who had trafficked them jailed…Why had these women – alone, afraid and forced into degrading and unsafe sex…never tried to escape their pimps?…police in Manchester turned to a leading expert in trauma to help them understand.  His report…paints a bleak picture in which the victims of the case were portrayed as being “brainwashed” into “childlike dependency” through controlling behaviour…Dr Michael Korzinski…[fantasized that] “Trafficking robs the victim of the most basic modes of relating to reality”…

Between the Lines (#782)

The Unsinkable Liz Brown looks at this year’s “Operation Cross Country”:

The FBI just wrapped up its 11th annual “Operation Cross Country,” a massive multi-day vice sting conducted under the guise of stopping sexual predators…The media will largely lap up this sensationalist pageantry, as it has in previous years.  And once again, everyone will ignore the real victims of Operation Cross Country: the vulnerable women and girls tricked, frightened, robbed, detained, arrested, incarcerated, and otherwise mistreated by police and federal agents as part of this sick charade that claims to help them…[they] have any money they have on then taken by the cops…may spend days in jail (and away from families or day jobs) before even going to court…have their names and mugshots plastered all over local news and online (sometimes in conjunction with degrading details and comments from cops); and…face court fees, fines, and a criminal record…

Do As I Say, Not As I Do (#783) 

If you get caught paying for sex, you may be charged with “sex trafficking”.  But cops?

In an Oakland case…most were let off the hook, including three…whose cases were dismissed last week…NYPD [cop]…Raul Olmeda was indicted this week for allegedly paying a teen girl to have sex with him on multiple occasions and filming the sexual activity…Denver Police Department…[cop] Zachery Phillips…was recently given a 15-day suspension without pay after admitting to an encounter with a sex worker…The woman…was…charged with prostitution and possession of a controlled substance…in Cleveland…Mark Reilly is back on the job after spending 10 days in jail for paying for sex…In Vermont, police dispatcher Earl Benway was charged with paying for oral sex and leaking information to the sex worker he paid…And, finally, Abraham Flores Galvan…in Tunnel Hill, Georgia…was caught in his own colleagues’ sting operation [last] Thursday.  Galvan responded to an online ad posted by [wanker cops pretending]…to be a teenager under age 18…

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic (#783) 

Weinstein has inadvertently made it possible to publicly attack “sex addiction” as malarkey:

…I am not a sex addict but my attendance at an SLAA meeting was part of a six-week investigation I undertook into sex addiction for a British newspaper.  Posing as a PR girl who went out several times a week to pick up men, I sought help via a psychotherapist, a phone counsellor and one of the world’s most reputable rehab clinics.  My conclusion?  That “sex addiction” — the malady Harvey Weinstein claims is responsible for his deplorable behaviour — is a steaming pile of quackery invoked by those unwilling to take responsibility for their actions…

Read Full Post »

The Cop Myth

Posted in History, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , on October 20, 2017| 10 Comments »

“To Protect and Serve” has got to be one of the most effective propaganda campaigns of all time.  The police as an institution are not, and never have been, intended to “protect” the citizenry, and they certainly don’t “serve” it; the only things they “protect” are the status quo and entrenched interests, and the only people they “serve” besides themselves are politicians.  Note that the generalized term for police isn’t “citizen defense”, “crime prevention” or anything like that; it’s “law enforcement”.  The purpose of the police is to “enforce” laws, no matter how evil, unjust and destructive those laws might be; to “enforce” a law is to coerce people into obeying it via the threat of violence, and to make an example of some citizens by inflicting violence on them before they’ve been proven guilty of anything.  Expressed another way, the police are terrorists; their job is to inspire terror of violating the whims of politicians by inflicting violence on people who are legally innocent of any wrongdoing.  This is clear not only from their demonstrable behavior (including the fact that they are rarely held accountable to the laws themselves), but also (in the United States) from multiple court rulings that the police have no duty to protect citizens.  I’ve argued this many times, so I’m not going to repeat myself; instead, I’m going to quote this essay by Alex Vitale I read yesterday:

…TV shows exaggerate the amount of serious crime and the nature of what most police officers actually do all day.  Crime control is a small part of policing, and it always has been.  Arrests for serious crimes are a rarity for uniformed officers, with most making no more than one a year.  When a patrol officer actually apprehends a violent criminal in the act, it is a major moment in their career.  The bulk of police…take reports, engage in random patrol, address parking and driving violations and noise complaints, issue tickets, and make arrests for drinking in public, possession of small amounts of drugs, or the vague “disorderly conduct”…Even detectives (who make up only about 15 percent of police forces) spend most of their time taking reports of crimes that they will never solve—and in many cases will never even investigate…It is largely a liberal fantasy that the police exist to protect us from the bad guys.  As the veteran police scholar David Bayley argues:  “The police do not prevent crime…Experts know it, the police know it, but the public does not know it.  Yet the police pretend that they are society’s best defence against crime and continually argue that if they are given more resources, especially personnel, they will be able to protect communities against crime.  This is a myth“…Bayley goes on to point out that there is no correlation between the number of police and crime rates…The reality is that the police exist primarily as a system for managing and even producing inequality by suppressing social movements and tightly managing the behaviors of poor and non-white people: those on the losing end of economic and political arrangements…This can be seen in the earliest origins of policing, which were tied to three basic social arrangements of inequality in the eighteenth century: slavery, colonialism, and the control of a new industrial working class.  This created what Allan Silver calls a “policed society”, in which state power was significantly expanded in the face of social upheavals and demands for justice.  As Kristian Williams points out, “The police represent the point of contact between the coercive apparatus of the state and the lives of its citizens”…

As Vitale points out, none of this is obscure or even controversial among historians, criminologists and other scholars; the only reason it seems so is that the Great Unwashed, indoctrinated to obedience in state-run schools, lack both the desire to question authority in the first place and the critical thinking skills necessary to analyze the issue even if they did.  Authoritarian societies rely on the great majority being controlled by fear, pandered to by lies and kept docile with bread and circuses, while the egos of the brighter and better-educated minority are stroked by telling them they’re part of an elite who must have power over the masses for their own good.  

Read Full Post »

You Get What You Pay For

Posted in Perception, Q & A, tagged , , , on October 19, 2017| 4 Comments »

Why on earth would anybody pay for sex instead of going to a bar/club & getting it that way for a lot less?  What’s so special about these “high-end” services?

Getting sex from random amateurs is fine if you’re a single, socially adept vanilla with plenty of free time, no unusual or embarrassing needs, and no need for discretion who doesn’t mind the possibility of STIs, weird drama or the potential for unwanted phone calls, etc later.  Most men aren’t in that position.  What you’re paying a sex worker for is competence, professionalism, cleanliness & discretion.  If you’re OK with fucking incompetent, indiscreet, unpredictable amateurs with questionable sanitary habits, go for it.  But remember that free pussy is the most expensive kind.  An experienced sex worker provides quality, cleanliness, expertise, punctuality and the kind of company you want, when you want it, instead of having to cater to someone else’s unpredictable needs.  A guy who contacts me spends a few minutes in the contact and screening process, then gets a lady of known high quality for however long he can afford.  A dude who gets to bars doesn’t know how long it’ll take and gets an encounter of unknown quality, unknown strings & possible STIs.  It’s true that sometimes you can find something really valuable for $10 at a junk shop, but it takes time & you can’t count on it.  This isn’t rocket science; it’s a simple case of “you get what you pay for”, which is why we’ve been popular with gents since prehistory.

(Have a question of your own?  Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)

Read Full Post »

In the News (#783)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 18, 2017| 4 Comments »

I am not sure when being a selfish, misogynistic jerk became a medical disorder.  –  David Ley

Do As I Say, Not As I Do 

When another man pays an underage sex worker, she’s a “sex trafficking victim”.  When a cop does it, she’s an “underage hooker”:

A Bronx cop was busted for having sex with an underage girl and recording their encounters — even after the investigation started and his home had been searched…Raul Olmeda was arraigned on a 67-count indictment…[because] five times between January and April…[he] paid the teen for sex…police found out about them while conducting a sex trafficking investigation…Olmeda’s lawyer, Stuart London, said…”This isn’t numerous underage women.  This is one underage woman, and we don’t know her credibility at all”…

The Daily News changed the last word of the headline after people jumped on them for the language, but you can still see it in the URL.

The Proper Study

It looks like Scott Cunningham has finally done a good one:

In a groundbreaking study, researchers at Baylor and West Virginia universities have found evidence indicating that Craigslist’s erotic advertising site may have prompted a 17 percent decrease in female homicides throughout the United States, principally because sex workers were able to use the free advertising service to move into a safer indoor environments and screen clients more carefully…The study, which has been submitted to a peer-reviewed economics journal, offers…evidence of what sex workers have been saying for years: that having the ability to advertise online for their services allows them to work in safer indoor environments and screen out violent clients.  The new study reinforces previous research showing a decline in sexual violence in regions where prostitution has been legalized or decriminalized…the researchers also did an analysis of how many more police officers would need to be hired to reduce the female homicide rate by the same percentage that Craigslist’s free service apparently did.  They concluded that this would require an additional outlay of 200,832 police officers, costing the U.S. an added $20 billion per year.  “Craigslist, in other words, saved 2,150 female lives at a profoundly lower social cost,” concluded the three authors, Scott Cunningham…Gregory DeAngelo…and John Tripp…

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic 

If Weinstein brings down the “sex addiction” scam, he’ll have inadvertently done some good in the world:

…While there’s no official confirmation of where Weinstein is headed or what type of therapy he may be getting, experts…said that…he’s not a sex addict.  And most say there’s no such thing as sex addiction…Holly Richmond…said…”There is no such thing as sex addiction”…[Dr. David] Ley says…“We see this parade of men getting caught…then they claim their behavior is the result of this alleged disorder when we all know these were men who were abusing their power and privilege…after 40 years…there is still no published evidence that this treatment works…This is an exploitative industry that loves to capitalize on these celebrity sex addiction scandals so they can get referrals”…

Yellow Fever

Like the New York Times, the BBC has discarded whatever credibility it once enjoyed:

Basis Yorkshire was set up to support sex workers across Leeds in 1989.  Over that time, we have worked closely with sex workers across the sex industry to provide safety, information and support…We believe the BBC documentarySex, Drugs and Murder; Life in the Red Light Zone has done a great deal of damage to the stereotypes of sex workers in Leeds (and across the country) by portraying the women in a highly sensationalist, voyeuristic way.  The footage often none-to subtly focuses the shot on drug paraphernalia and rubbish in their home, or the area they work in – giving deliberately unpleasant, grubby feel to the program and the women that are featured…The program could have been made about a group of women with complex needs and had the same content – but…[instead] focuses only on women who have severe addiction issues, or on complex, even at times violent, social situations, rather than allowing viewers to see the diversity of women we work with (or indeed the diversity of the lives of the women they chose to film)…

Skin To Skin

A “feminist” calls other women “toilets” for ministering to disabled men:

“Men with disabilities are a hugely important group served by sex workers” [tweeted] Amy Alkon…Check out the, paternalism, uh, maternalism [in the response] here, from social psychologist Dina McMillan…


All-Purpose Excuse

Meanwhile, Oakland allows cops whose actions DO qualify as “trafficking” under law to get away scot-free:

Following a controversial Aug. 16 raid of a West Oakland home by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, Oakland Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick said repeatedly that the operation was part of a criminal human trafficking investigation…but…the raid hasn’t resulted in a single criminal prosecution…the only person arrested, Santos de Leon, is facing civil immigration charges and could be deported..ICE has recently begun to classify the act of providing shelter and other assistance to unaccompanied minors who recently immigrated to the United States as “human trafficking,” and is charging adults, often close family members, with the crime…by providing assistance to ICE for the raid, OPD violated Oakland’s sanctuary city policies…Kirkpatrick made false statements on several occasions — including in emails to city councilmembers, statements at a town hall meeting, and through several OPD press releases — about the raid…The statements included a social media posting from OPD asserting that the arrest was related to “sex trafficking”..and that…victims were rescued by ICE and received services.  But there is no evidence to back up those statements…

Signs 

The dysphemisms are thick in this one:

Students at Quinnipiac University’s law school [who have never done sex work] have [indoctrinated] nearly 1,000 of Connecticut’s hospitality industry workers on how to recognize and report the [mythical] signs of sex trafficking…Taylor Matook [said]…“we have a narrative.”  By [filling the heads of] hospitality workers with [sexual fantasies, prohibitionists]…hope to [create an army of stool pigeons]…to stop…sex [workers from making a living by turning them in to the pigs]…Theresa Leonard…founder of a ministry [fantasizing about] eradicating sex [work] in Connecticut, said…“It’s amazing to me how few women [agree with my claim]…that they were exploited or trafficked”…

The Prudish Giant (#641)

People sometimes ask why I’m not on Facebook:

Leila is a sex worker.  She goes to great lengths to keep separate identities for ordinary life and for sex work, to avoid stigma, arrest, professional blowback, or clients who might be stalkers (or worse).  Her “real identity”—the public one…joined Facebook in 2011.  Her sex-work identity is not on the social network at all; for it, she uses a different email address, a different phone number, and a different name.  Yet earlier this year, looking at Facebook’s “People You May Know” recommendations, Leila…was shocked to see some of her regular sex-work clients.  Despite the fact that she’d only given Facebook information from her vanilla identity, the company had somehow discerned her real-world connection to these people—and, even more horrifyingly, her account was potentially being presented to them as a friend suggestion too, outing her regular identity to them.  Because Facebook insists on concealing the methods and data it uses to link one user to another, Leila is not able to find out how the network exposed her or take steps to prevent it from happening again…When Leila queried secret support groups for sex workers, others said it had happened to them too…

This isn’t new; I first heard about it about a year or so after starting this blog.

Morality Lessons (#689)

No, this isn’t the same huge child porn site run by the FBI; this is a different one:

The world’s largest child sexual abuse forum, “Childs Play” is running in the darkweb. [Nowegian newspaper] VG exposed…[that Australian police are] behind the website’s continued operation…Under the supervision of Jon Rouse, detective inspector, and investigator Paul Griffiths, thousands of members have shared photos and videos of children being sexually abused…Some members of the forum got together in person to commit child abuse, which they filmed and shared on the forum…the police deny they are responsible for what was shared on [their own website] while they ran it…

Morality Lessons (#703)

A Utah politician’s bizarre anti-porn antics continue:

For the past 14 years, Utah has made do without a “porn czar.”  The position—officially known as the “Obscenity and Pornography Complaints Ombudsman”—has been vacant since 2003, though it was never officially eliminated.  Now state Sen. Todd Weiler…may revive it, even as the Utah attorney general suggests legislators strike it from the books.  Weiler has been on an anti-porn crusade for several years now.  He’s the architect of a 2016 declaration to declare porn a public health crisis (which passed the state legislature unanimously) and a proposal passed earlier this year to encourage “porn addicts” to sue porn platforms…Weiler “says he became convinced that the obscenity and pornography complaints office may be needed because of an ad campaign attacking Cosmopolitan magazine as illegal porn”…

I kinda hope the “Cosmo is porn” nonsense continues; maybe it’s push the magazine into siding with sex workers.  Weiler is also the dangerous loon who claimed sex workers “force” cops to rape us.

Checklist (#755)

The real purpose of this scheme is to cut sex workers off from the healthcare system:

Arizona State University College of Nursing and Health Innovation Assistant Professor Samantha Calvin spoke at the 14th Annual Human Trafficking and Social Justice Conference in Ohio last month…Calvin focused on human trafficking in the clinic setting, red flags to look for, questions to ask and what to do if someone is identified…

You may recall that ASU, home of Dominique “Body Fluids” Sepowitz, is a major hotbed of “sex trafficking” propaganda and source of several bogus studies made to order to support both the hysteria and carceral “solutions” to the nonexistent “problem”.

Of Course It Is (#758)

I hope none of you find this even remotely surprising:

Charges that Oakland [pig] Giovanni LoVerde sexually assaulted an underage girl were dismissed…after Alameda County prosecutors dropped the case…Several other Oakland [swine] were not criminally charged in the case, but twelve were disciplined by the department, and four were fired.  Some…still work at OPD despite social media evidence they sexually exploited the girl or ignored signs of wrongdoing…many more Northern California [pigs] were implicated in the sprawling sex crimes scandal, but few have faced criminal prosecution.  The dismissal of the case against LoVerde ends, for now, the Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley’s effort to prosecute five Oakland cops — three former and two current — as well as a former Contra Costa County sheriff’s deputy and a former Livermore police officer who all exploited the girl…

The Widening Gyre (#778) 

Watching “sex trafficking” hysteria spin out of control is deeply gratifying:

…School officials in Ohio are on alert following reports of a drone…at Windemere Community Learning Center in Akron over the weekend… several witnesses [claim to have] heard a voice coming from the drone, attempting to coax the children off the playground”…This bizarre story is not questioned by the media, because whether or not the threat is real, doesn’t matter…of course, the advice given to parents is always the same — just as it has been in all the reports of “near” abductions by sex traffickers at the local store (that never actually occurred): PARENTS, NEVER LET YOUR KIDS OUT OF YOUR SIGHT!…

Read Full Post »

Diary #381

Posted in Diary, tagged , , on October 17, 2017| 1 Comment »

Last week was one for cleaning up, fixing up and setting straight.  Grace spent it totally revamping the wellhouse (tank, plumbing and electrical) and repairing a water-pipe leak that had caused considerable damage to the bathroom subfloor; I made some long-delayed updates to my professional website and, as you saw yesterday, finally got around to adding a bookstore to this site.  Those of you who don’t know me personally may not understand how a woman who could build this cyclopean edifice of a website over seven and a half years could somehow be so intimidated by procedures that she could leave important tasks hanging for months or even years, but maybe it would help you to understand if I told you that I started thinking about doing this blog in 2007; it took me three years to actually start it.  And people who visit my Den of Iniquity will tell you that there have been no important changes in a year, and no major ones in two years.  See, I don’t really like change in my environment or procedures; once I get things the way I like them, they tend to stay that way until Doomsday.  That’s one of the reasons I was so upset by the move from Oklahoma to Washington; even though I knew it was the right thing to do, I’m just not easily able to cope with change on that scale.  And so Grace is in charge of putting things to right at Sunset; all I have to do is tell her what I want done, answer any procedural questions she has, pay the bills as they come in and throw fits about delays and cost overruns (and truth be told, Grace could probably do without that last).  If I were wealthy, I’d probably have a whole entourage of assistants to deal with stuff for me; alas, such is not to be.  And so I get to things when I get to them, unless a crisis forces my hand or someone I love prods me to deal with them before that.  And I guess that will have to do.

Read Full Post »

Maggie’s Store

Posted in Miscellaneous, tagged , , on October 16, 2017| 1 Comment »

Did you notice that just over a week ago, I changed the picture at the top of the right-hand column to the cover of my new book, The Forms of Things Unknown?  That wasn’t just a cosmetic decision; I did it to draw attention to the fact that I now have an onsite store of my own!  I’m not very good with computer stuff, so even though I decided to do this soon after the book was published and solicited (see what I did there?) some advice on how to build it from a gent knowledgeable in such things, it took me until now (and a bit of arm-twisting by Lorelei) to get around to actually doing it.  Really, PayPal makes it pretty easy; I’m just very easily overwhelmed by complex protocols with which I’m unfamiliar.  But anyhow, if you just want a regular paper or Kindle copy of the book, it’s easiest just to go through Amazon.  But if you’d like an autographed copy of either this one or Ladies of the Night, or one of the signed and numbered copies with unique sketches by Chester Brown (and signed by both of us – there are only four left!) just click on the little picture to visit my store, and don’t forget to add a note telling me how you’d like the book inscribed!  Later I plan to add other merchandise to the store, but for right now let’s just be glad I was able to get it set up in the first place; you could encourage me (and help support my activism) by buying something today, and leaving a review on Amazon too.  Just sayin’.

Read Full Post »

Links #380

Posted in Current Events, Fiction, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on October 15, 2017| 1 Comment »

Whenever I use the toilet, all the horses break down my door and rush into my bathroom so they can intently watch me.

In this video, members of the band The Academic take advantage of a flaw in Facebook’s livestreaming software to record a song with their own past selves; it’s really quite interesting.  The video was contributed by Kevin Wilson, as was “horror”; the other links above the video were provided by Radley Balko (“pigs” and “together”), Conner Habib (“promises”), Jesse Walker (“books”), and Clarissa (“surprise”).

From the Archives

Read Full Post »

In the News (#782)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 14, 2017| Leave a Comment »

In the rush to “save” people, little attention is paid to sex workers swept into…prison and a lifetime of punishment.  –  Victoria Law

Lack of Evidence

Hey amateurs, you want to avoid being profiled as sex workers?  Fight for decrim so persecution of this sort is illegal:

…There just seems to be something about a woman that takes care of her appearance being by herself in certain locations that rubs people up the wrong way.  As though it is completely out of the question that she could be in a luxury hotel by herself as a result of her own  successes…As though a woman wearing makeup couldn’t possibly have an interest in history, culture, and world issues…I have received plenty of lecherous looks from males thinking that I was on sale, and disapproving looks from females about my lack of self-respect.  To feel eyes burning into you, silently judging you because of this untrue and ignorant assumption is probably one of the most humiliating feelings in the world…and almost makes you feel ashamed as if you were actually there soliciting…

But no, it’s much better to draw pathetic lines between yourself and sex workers, and to bloviate about how insulting it is to be mistaken for one of us.

Much Ado About Nothing

Reporter makes poor attempt to hide his envy under a veneer of pearl-clutching:

A firm offering X-rated holidays has brazenly advertised packages featuring orgies with prostitutes on a ‘”drug friendly” Colombian island.  Two videos advertising the resort show men arriving for unlimited sex, drugs and alcohol…On the second day of the four-day sex fest clients will have half an hour with 16 women at once – and organisers say customers will be able to find their “true self”…

Celebrities (#31) 

Breaking news!  Las Vegas shooter ate food the day of his crime!

A US official has said investigators believe the Las Vegas shooter may have hired a prostitute in the days before the shooting, and they are interviewing other call girls as they look for clues into his motive…The official said a note containing a series of numbers was found on a nightstand in Paddock’s room at the Mandalay Bay hotel after the shooting…

Mass shooters are always men.  20% of men hire sex workers at least occasionally. So why is this news?

Bogeymen (#317)

Why you should be wary of talk about “going after pimps”:

The Netherlands…new prostitution policy will include a pimp ban, criminalizing any pimp without a license…Some news…are reporting that…”illegal pimps” will not just be fined, but even will get jail time…the list of people that could be considered “people who financially profit from prostitutes without a license” is very long.  For example, my bookkeeper financially profits from prostitutes, and he doesn’t have a prostitution license.  Or for example my mother, whom I frequently send money to, to support her…chauffeurs who drive around escort girls…security guys, who protect prostitutes from harm, they also don’t have a prostitution license…there are a lot of people who profit from prostitutes financially without a license.  But that doesn’t make them bad people.  In fact, many of these people help us.  But that just might be exactly the plan…to make our work much more difficult…

Sex Rays

Because sex rays can piggyback on radio waves, obviously!  “Seattle radio host Mitch Levy put out a statement…about leaving his job with KJR Radio…[after being] arrested in a prostitution sting in September…”  If every man who ever paid for sex were forced to quit his job, the entire economy would collapse.

Out of Control (#410) 

What is wrong with doctors who do this shit?  It’s not like they can’t afford escorts:

Already in jail on 11 criminal sex charges, a New Mexico psychiatrist and the medical center where he worked face a civil lawsuit from 12 women who say he forced them to discuss their sex lives and perform sex acts on him under the guise of therapy…Dr. Alan Emamdee…was charged with six counts of criminal sexual penetration, five counts of criminal sexual contact, and denied bond…Plaintiff T.T.B. says that Emamdee told her he could help her regain custody of her children if she would give him oral sex, which she did.  “He told T.T.B. that he would withhold medications and would negatively impact her custody proceedings if she did not continue to comply with his demands”…After she refused his request to meet him at a hotel for sexual intercourse…Emamdee “wrote a note indicating T.T.B. had reverted to…dissociative identity disorder, negatively impacting her custody proceedings.”  Some of his requests were bizarre…

Moving Pictures (#564) 

One day, “sex trafficking” propaganda flicks may be cult favorites like Reefer Madness:

The movie Trafficked follows the [fictional] story of three young girls from India, Nigeria, and American who are trafficked and try to escape…[has-been] actress Anne Archer…spoke at this year’s Human Trafficking Summit as a…[propaganda mouthpiece]…“It’s written by [“sex trafficking” profiteer]…Siddharth Kara…who [fantasizes]…that there are…46 million slaves in the world today, generating profits that exceed $150 billion per year for their exploiters…That’s more than Nike, Google, and Starbucks combined”…

To Molest and Rape 

Never let them anywhere near your kids, either:

…cops Brandon Wood and Kenneth Betts…are charged with felony sex offenses for allegedly abusing Scouts in a program for youths interested in law enforcement …a…mother’s statement…support[s] allegations in a lawsuit filed by another former Explorer that the police department tried to cover up sexual misconduct in the program…Curtis Flaherty…[who] was commander of both the Explorer program and the Public Integrity Unit, which [works to cover up police misconduct, called the mother and told her to keep quiet after]…Betts…sent inappropriate text messages to her daughter and attached “half-dressed” and sexually suggestive pictures of himself…

Between the Lines (#741)

It’s fitting that the first we hear of this year’s “Operation Cross-Country” is from economically-depressed West Virginia, where pervert cops and FBI thugs ganged up to ruin the lives of women for trying to survive:

Five women were arrested on misdemeanor prostitution charges [on October 5th and 6th] in Harrison County as part of an annual nationwide FBI initiative…Operation Cross Country [is a nationwide anti-consensual sex pogrom held] each autumn [under the pretense of “rescuing”] underage victims of prostitution…

Check Your Premises (#771)

The real result of “sex trafficking” laws:

…after more than seven years behind bars, 32-year-old LeeAnn walked out of federal prison.  But she’s not a free woman — she will spend the rest of her life on the sex offender registry.  Her crime?  Letting a girl shower in her mother’s apartment, giving her a clean change of clothes and holding the girl’s $40 while she had sex with a man in another room.  These are normal actions in the daily life of sex workers trying to keep themselves and each other safe.  But the girl turned out to be 14 and, in the eyes of the federal government, these acts constitute sex trafficking of a minor.  It didn’t matter that the girl had told LeeAnn that she was 17.  It also didn’t matter that LeeAnn, who was addicted to various drugs and also engaged in sex work, never made money from the girl’s actions…19-year-old Hope Joy Mae Zeferjohn…was sentenced to 71 months in prison for aggravated human trafficking of a minor…[because] she introduced the 14 year old to 26-year-old Anthony Long…It…didn’t matter that the younger teen had never actually met Long and that no commercial sex had taken place.  Zeferjohn was charged with nine felonies…

Read Full Post »

Your Turn

Posted in Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , on October 13, 2017| 2 Comments »

So today is Friday the 13th again; as longtime readers know, it’s the day I ask people who aren’t themselves sex workers to stand up for us.  As I wrote back in January:

…I’ve given many suggestions for how to do that over the past seven years, but this year I’m going to be a little more specific about the help I’d like you to give, and it’s twofold.  First, very simply, is to give sex workers money; we had an extremely rough autumn [2016] thanks to the quadrennial national madness, and every sex worker and organization is hurting right now.  The second way, if you’re American, is to call your senator or representative (especially your senator) to say how displeased you are about the persecution of adult sex workers and clients.  You won’t get to talk to the politician, but their office staffs are usually quite small so a few dozen phone calls in one day on the same subject will make an impression on the staff, and that may get through to the politician in a report…

Things have grown even worse since then; the pogroms are getting worse and more frequent, and the US Congress has come up with  veritable deluge of horrible anti-whore laws, not the least of which is SESTA (which could, in addition to harming sex workers and clients, destroy the entire internet as we know it…and no, that isn’t hyperbole).  Though the sex trafficking hysteria is dying, moral panics get worse as they collapse, and even after the panic is history the tyrannical laws it engendered will still be there for “authorities” to destroy lives with, just as the 20th-century criminalization laws lasted for decades after the demise of the “white slavery” hysteria which spawned them.  If you have an internet platform or the freedom to speak on the subject, you might take a look at this list of suggestions for arguments you can make; you won’t get to say any of that out to a politician’s secretary, but swaying members of the general public is important, too.  And I can’t possibly emphasize enough how important your donations are for me, for other activists, for sex worker organizations like SWOP, SWOP Behind Bars and ESPLERP, and even for individual sex workers you might choose to book an appointment with today (if you like, you can even tell ’em I inspired you to contact them).  Please give generously, speak out, and otherwise use this occasion to let sex workers know that you’re on our side against the millions of thugs and fanatics lined up against us.

Read Full Post »

I Do Not Consent

Posted in Current Events, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , on October 12, 2017| 5 Comments »

So last week NBC News tweeted this vile, disgusting example of primitive leader-worship so obsequious it may make you vomit; everyone involved in this, or who thinks it’s wonderful, deserves to be ruled by fucking emperors again.  The childish need for all-powerful, superhuman heroes to tell you what to do is exactly what put Trump in power.  It’s exactly why the US is busily engaged in murdering people all over the world.  It’s why you’re groped before you can get on an airplane.  It’s why cops are murdering innocent people in the street without any repercussions whatsoever.  It’s why you no longer have the civil rights so many fought so hard for.  It’s why the US cages five times as many people as civilized countries do.  It’s why you have Gestapo asking for your fucking papers every time you turn around.  THIS; naked fascist authoritarianism.  And you know what?  I totally wouldn’t care if it didn’t affect me.  You are a free individual who has the absolute right to bow and scrape before an inhuman monster merely because she has a vagina if that’s what you like; go for it.  The problem is that you want to drag me along with you and I DO NOT CONSENT.  I don’t consent to authoritarians and fascists spying on me, robbing me, and threatening me with violence every time I try to do anything they don’t like.  I don’t consent to having my life, my sexuality, my substance use and even my fucking food intake monitored by “authorities” or “experts”.  And I don’t give a shit whether those control freaks have penises, vaginas, both or neither.  Evil is evil, tyranny is tyranny, and I DO NOT CONSENT, now or ever. 

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »