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Archive for February, 2018

Managing Resources

Posted in Perception, Q & A, tagged , , , on February 8, 2018| 4 Comments »

I’m really a terribly vain creature, so I love compliments and being described with adjectives like “magnificent” and “incomparable”.  But there is one word I often see applied to me which, while it might have been true in the past, certainly is no longer:  that word is “tireless”.  Yes, it’s true that I’m still churning out a column every single day, but compare the average length today with the average length in 2011 or 2012 and I think you’ll see what I mean.  And not only are the columns shorter on average, they’re also less complex and I’m increasingly shying away from labor-intensive columns like harlotographies and reviews.  Furthermore, I no longer do written interviews because they take far too much time and effort, and while I’m flattered by offers to contribute to essay collections or present papers at academic conferences, I’m afraid those are far too time-and-labor intensive for me to be able to handle any more.  The truth is, I’m tired, y’all; in fact, exhausted would be a more honest appraisal.  Don’t worry, I’m not going to call it quits just yet; I figure I can handle another three years at my current pace before I need to take stock again (though of course, that’s little better than a wild-ass guess based on my rate of decline over the past eight years).  But if I’m going to last even that long I’m going to need to manage my steadily-shrinking resources.  In my twenties and thirties I was nigh-inexhaustible; I could keep going at whatever task I set myself until it was done, and was notorious for knocking out short academic papers in one or two sittings.  Even in my forties I was able to marshal my preternatural levels of nervous energy to create the monstrous edifice of prose you’re visiting right now; as I wrote six months ago,

When I first started The Honest Courtesan, I was releasing a decade of pent-up self-expression and trying to distract myself from a disintegrating marriage by burying myself in work (which is pretty much what I always did back before I realized what a tremendously stupid idea absolute sobriety was); now I’m older, wiser, sadder and wearier, and I just can’t maintain the pace I could then (which, to be honest, wasn’t really healthy back then either).  I’m worn thin and threadbare, and I need to devote more time and energy to paying work and to self-care (which includes spending quality time with people who love me)…

I’ve done pretty well on that account in the ensuing half-year, to the point where I’m giving myself permission to generally stop writing by midnight so I can get stoned, and even taking entire days or clusters of days off (though to manage that I need the excuse of spending it with someone I love).  And because I have been doing better, the change to my procedures heralded by this column isn’t quite so big as most of them have been in the past; I’m just going to ask y’all to please be more succinct when emailing me to ask for advice.  I understand that the problem motivating you to write may be a very painful and thorny one, and that you may feel the need to explain it in great depth; however, the longer the letter the more of a sense of anxiety I experience upon opening it, and the greater the anxiety the more likely I am to procrastinate in reading and answering it.  As a rule of thumb, if you can’t see the beginning of your email by the time you reach the end, it’s probably too long; I’m much less likely to feel overwhelmed by emails which fit neatly within a standard computer screen, and that in turn means you’re much more likely to receive a timely answer to your question.

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In the News (#811)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 7, 2018| 3 Comments »

I believe my goldfish is having an affair with my oven mitt.
–  Lenore Skenazy, mocking “sex trafficking” hysteria

Follow Your Bliss 

The naive believe the government propaganda that “child predators” are creepy dudes who hang out at playgrounds; in reality, they are largely people in positions of authority over their preferred targets:

A[n]…administrator on Bradford Safeguarding Children Board has been jailed for five years for a series of sex offences involving young boys.  Heathcliffe Bowen…was convicted of six offences which happened between 2013 and 2015.  Judge Jonathan Durham Hall…said Bowen…was a “predatory paedophile”…[who] had a “deep and entrenched interest” in underage boys and said he had “never shown any shame or remorse”…

Profound Mental Disabilities (#562)

Naturally, my skepticism about this case was wholly warranted:

A legal fight has reached the end of the line between a Florida dominatrix and a former client who claimed she drained his bank account and credit cards of more than $500,000 and took over ownership of his townhouse.  Orange County, Fla., Judge Keith White recently ruled in favor of Goddess Jude, who was sued by client Alex Abrams, granting her motion to dismiss and paving the way for her to recoup legal costs of defending herself.  Abrams…alleged that Goddess Jude should have been found liable for civil theft, unjust enrichment and conversion, as well of abuse, neglect and exploitation of elderly persons because he was above 60 years old when he first called on for her services…he…opened new joint financial accounts…and made her an authorized user on his credit card accounts…[then] transferred a…townhouse worth $100,000 to her.  After an apparent change of heart and claims of dementia, Abrams sought to recoup all the material assets he had given her…In November, a judge made a ruling…dismissing Abrams claims against Goddess Jude entirely — after Abrams and his attorney, who later withdrew from the case, failed to attend several depositions…A court hearing…over recovery of attorney’s fees and court-imposed sanctions has been set for March…

To Molest and Rape 

Typical cop engaging in typical and representative cop behavior:

The Bexar County [San Antonio, Texas] Sheriff’s Office…arrested a county deputy on an aggravated sexual assault of a child charge…[jailer] Clayton Saunders was placed on administrative leave…and a no-contact order was issued.  Further investigation led his formal arrest on [January 27th]…

Divided We Fall (#672)

Why does Gay, Inc never speak up for sex worker rights until it’s too late?

At a town hall meeting last summer, members of Toronto’s gay community, worried that a serial killer was operating in their midst, warned that the city’s sex workers might be particularly at risk.  That fear proved prescient…Dean Lisowick, a common face in the Gay Village and long-time sex worker, is believed to be the last known victim of alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur…[who] is also facing four other charges of first-degree murder for the deaths of Andrew Kinsman, Selim Esen, Majeed Kayhan and Soroush Mahmudi…

Checklist (#702)

Ladies, please stop using Uber.  They are training drivers to spy on us and rat us out to the pigs:

Uber wants its drivers to [spy on passengers and]…to alert [cops] if they [suspect a passenger is a sex worker]…over the past few years, Uber has enlisted its drivers in local and regional efforts to [persecute sex workers]…But the new initiative…targets all 750,000 active U.S. drivers and eventually will expand to other countries…Among Uber’s partners in the U.S. initiative are The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children…[Asstoon Kutcher’s vanity project] Thorn, and The McCain Institute…whose efforts to [hound sex workers to death] are led by [anti-human rights crusader “Cuckoo Clock”] McCain…

The Pygmalion Fallacy (#718) 

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

France’s first ever sex doll brothel has been opened in Paris and it has three silicone sex dolls ready for…rent…France changed its laws in 2016 to make paying for sex illegal, but the laws didn’t say anything about paying for sex with a silicone doll…The official XDolls site advertises that it has three different dolls on offer – Lily, Sofia, and Kim – complete with pictures of each.  The whole operation is shrouded in secrecy.  In fact, the official website doesn’t even offer an address for the brothel – other than to say it’s “somewhere in the 14th arrondissement” of Paris.  To find the location, would-be customers have to pay for a session with a doll, which comes at a cost of €89 for an hour, €149 for two hours, and €19 for the optional virtual reality addition…

Morality Lessons (#730) 

Moral panic + censorship = profit:

…a new bill being proposed in Virginia…would [try to] lock all pornographic sites from your phones and computers, and the only way to [legally] unlock them is to pay the state $20…[politicians] who proposed the bill [pretend] that by making pornography less accessible on the internet it will reduce the amount of human trafficking…

“The huckster behind this legislation [is an]…anti-porn crusader named Chris Sevier who tried to marry his computer in protest of same-sex marriage, was released early from an Iraq tour for mental-health issues, sued Apple over the dissolution of his marriage, and has been charged with harassing a teen girl as well as country singer John Rich.”

It Looks Good On Paper (#736)

What these “safe harbor” laws actually do is empower the cops to indefinitely  detain underage sex workers in “safe locations”, i.e. euphemized jails:

[Underage sex workers whom “authorities” deign to label] child sex trafficking victims would no longer be criminally charged for prostitution offenses under a proposed bill introduced this session in the [Washington] state House of Representatives…[cops] would be required to bring minors to one of…two “receiving centers,” or another safe location — instead of booking youth into detention for prostitution offenses…the proposed bill stops short of decriminalizing prostitution for minors, maintaining [cops’] ability to arrest youth [who don’t submit to rape or otherwise displease the pigs]…“But we’re not expecting that (the youth) would be put in handcuffs,” [lied] Val Richey, a senior deputy prosecutor in King County, who [relies on voter ignorance to advance his schemes]…

Stupor Bowl (#765)

Prohibitionists are trying to subvert our debunking of the gypsy whores myth by pretending the reason there’s no surge is that the “demand” for “victims” is  always sky-high:

As the Twin Cities prepares to host Super Bowl LII, planning has long been underway to address any accompanying uptick in prostitution or sex trafficking.  While people elsewhere have made claims that the Super Bowl is the biggest time for sex trafficking, a University of Minnesota report noted “the Super Bowl does not appear to have the largest impact.”  Different types of events — such as trade shows, holiday weekends and other sporting events — also generate an increase…with the public’s attention on the Super Bowl, those who work to help trafficked people in Minnesota are seizing the opportunity to get the word out about an issue that endures year-round…

Legal Is as Legal Does (#786) 

Under a “legalization” regime, sex workers are still persecuted using idiotic and arbitrary nonsense like “illegally subdividing a building”:

Police have arrested nearly 100 suspected sex workers…in one of Hong Kong’s biggest anti-vice crackdowns, raiding a building where flats had been illegally subdivided into more than 100 cubicles converted into brothel rooms…[they arrested] two women from Ukraine, one from Kazakhstan, 13 from Thailand and 59 female visitors from the mainland…at least two [criminal]…syndicates had arranged for the 99 suspects to work and provide sex services in the “one-woman” brothels…

Cooties (#787) 

It looks like at least some UK reporters are realizing that so-called “pop-up brothels” are just ordinary, mundane escort touring incalls rather than the tools of “sex trafficking” from cop wanking fantasies:

Sex workers…are behind…”pop-up brothels”…[they] tour the country and work out of short-term rental accommodation…For sex workers, there’s no manager taking a cut of their earnings like there is in a conventional brothel.  For clients, there’s no walking through the doors of a known brothel.  When [a sex worker] decides where she’s going, she either gets in touch with…friends she’s worked with in the past, or she gets in touch with other sex workers via private internet forums, looking for people who might be up for joining her on a trip…the pair then hire an apartment together for a long weekend…Then, they’ll use social media to find new clients in the area…Once they’ve got clients, they set up a rota (or work as a “duo” offering threesomes)…

Shame, Shame (#798) 

A culture more worried about the sexual applications of this than about the government’s ability to fabricate evidence with it is a culture overdue for collapse:

The grosser parts of the internet have a new trick: Using machine learning and AI to swap celebrities’ faces onto porn performers’.  The result?  Fake celebrity porn seamless enough to be mistaken for the real thing…And now that someone has made an app—drastically lowering the technical threshold would-be creators have to clear— it’s presumably about to become much more prevalent.  For reasons that are eye-poppingly obvious, these videos…are terrible…It’s a new frontier for nonconsensual pornography and fake news alike…And…If you live in the United States and someone does this with your face, the law can’t really help you.  To many [privileged] people on the internet [who have nothing more important to worry about], especially women, this looks a whole lot like the end times.  “I share your sense of doom,” [said pro-censorship activist] Mary Anne Franks…

The Widening Gyre (#801) 

I love Lenore Skenazy’s snarky treatment of these absurd stories:

…A worried South Bend [Indiana] mother thought two men might be trying to abduct her daughter at a local store. [Who cares? End of story.]  Police investigated it as a suspicious persons report.  [Because it wasn’t an attempted crime.]  Haley Craig says…“Was just at the T.J.Maxx in Mishawaka and there were men in there who attempted to steal Eva.  I believe there were multiple men inside the store who were in on it together. [And I believe my goldfish is having an affair with my oven mitt.]…Police can’t confirm the mom’s fears of an attempted abduction, but they say it’s still a worrisome situation. [No it’s not.]  What Craig said she experienced inside of T.J. Maxx definitely sounds scary. A strange man comes up to her and starts bombarding her with questions. [“Definitely scary” indeed. Never have I been spoken to by a strange person, EVER.]…“[He was] trying to divert my attention away from my daughter”…Craig said. [Because the easiest way to snatch a child is in public, indoors, steps from its mom, who, distracted by questions about the price of Progresso Lentil Soup, doesn’t notice her child is being dragged screaming down the aisle, past the customers and cashiers, into a parking lot filled with people, and off to sex traffic land]…

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Diary #397

Posted in Diary, Philosophy, tagged , , , on February 6, 2018| 3 Comments »

While work is always an effort, work that one loves and finds rewarding is also a source of joy and fulfillment (not to mention money).  So when one has a good week full of work, with generous and interesting gentlemen whose company one enjoys, there’s a kind of  pleasant tiredness at the end of it that goes beyond mere contentment and job satisfaction to a broader sense of a life well-lived.  And for someone like me, who has a lot of trouble getting her nervous system to settle into anything like “relaxation” even when she’s soaking in a hot tub, that’s a really nice place to be.  Obviously, it’s an ephemeral place, but that’s OK; though I hate to get philosophical (a terrible lie), the entire universe and everything in it is ephemeral to one degree or another, and all we can hope for is to maximize the nice parts while minimizing the bad ones.  That’s why I’m taking even more steps to increase the amount of time spent with people I love, while decreasing that spent in unpleasant pursuits.  And if you want to spend time with me (in or out of hot tubs), eating good food and enjoying good conversation and other adult pleasures, you know how to get in contact with me.  Why put it off?  You, too, can maximize the nice parts of your life, and I’m very good at helping people to do that.

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Not So Easy

Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 5, 2018| 3 Comments »

If I send away all the loose females, there will be no women left here at all.  –  Antoine Laumet de la Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, first governor of Louisiana

New Orleans is one of the older European cities in North America; in fact, this is its tricentennial year.  As I wrote in “Storyville” nearly eight years ago, the city…

…was founded on May 7, 1718…Besides being terribly primitive like all new colonies, New Orleans was hot, mosquito-infested and disease-ridden and therefore had nothing to recommend it to women, so [its founder] petitioned King Louis XV for help in 1721.  The monarch responded by releasing all the prostitutes in La Salpêtrière prison and deporting them to New Orleans, where they of course resumed their trade…In 1728, the Ursuline nuns started to import convent-raised middle-class French girls as wives for the middle and upper-class male colonists and continued to do so until 1751; these were called “casket girls” (filles à la cassette) because the French government issued them small chests of clothing.  Most of the female population were still either whores or former whores, but this concerned few people other than the priests; prostitution in New Orleans was neither regulated nor suppressed at any time during the 18th century…[once the] colony was…sold it to the United States in…1803…the puritanical Americans could not allow things to stand as they were, so though prostitution was still legal a series of regulations were imposed to allow the police to arrest streetwalkers for “vagrancy” or harass madams for “brothel keeping”…New Orleans’ first actual anti-prostitution law was the 1857 Lorette ordinance which prohibited prostitution on the first floor of buildings; it was soon declared unconstitutional…

By the end of the 19th century New Orleans had decided a policy of containment was better than one of harassment, and the result – a large and thriving entertainment district popularly known as “Storyville” and remembered today as the birthplace of jazz – brought so much money into the city that its government fought tooth and nail against Woodrow Wilson’s closing it down by executive order in 1917.  But a city whose native population is mostly descended from whores, and whose fortunes were powerfully augmented by whores, can never shake off that legacy no matter how hard it tries.  Although politicians prefer to pretend otherwise, they’ve existed in an uneasy truce with sex workers for a century now; despite what politicians might want, people come to the Crescent City for vice, and that is an economic fact of life.  For all of my life and probably longer, indoor sex work has been basically tolerated except for the occasional “sting” designed to provide the pigs with entertainment.  Prior to the ’80s, strip clubs were occasionally subjected to publicity-stunt raids, but could mostly avoid trouble by putting up with cops walking in like lords and helping themselves to free booze and money from the till; after the ’80s they were treated as the lucrative tax-paying businesses they are.  And the occasional attempts to “Disneyfy” the city (and there were many) always failed and were quietly shelved later by saner heads, or else just became part of the fabric of the way things were without actually accomplishing the sanitization politicians hoped for.  The last attempt, after Hurricane Katrina, resulted in the de facto exile of many thousands of poor black people and the invasion of the French Quarter, previously packed with locally-owned businesses, by national chains just like those in every other city.  But apparently they’re trying again, aiming to turn the infamous Bourbon Street into the “family friendly”, heavily-surveilled, police-state tourist trap it can never be:

New Orleans officials…are considering a [scheme] that would create one of the most extensive video-monitoring systems for any midsize American city…[it] would require every business with an alcohol license to install street-facing security cameras, and connect them to a real-time [surveillance] center overseen by [cops]…along with typically vexing civil liberties issues, the proposal has sparked concerns that surveillance will…suck the soul out of the place….[pigs claim] live streams and recorded footage from the cameras would be used primarily to solve violent crimes. But…[visitors] count on New Orleans following the Las Vegas rule — that what happens there will stay there…“We have a very vibrant public life, where people feel free to express themselves in public — and I’m not just talking about beads and lifting your top on Mardi Gras,” said Bruce Hamilton, a staff attorney with the [ACLU]…Louisiana branch.  “Everyone acts different when they know the government is watching”…The broad public safety plan announced last year, which included an early version of the camera plan, discussed taking steps to “reduce the culture of permissiveness” in New Orleans.  One of its ideas, to force bars to…close their doors at 3 a.m…has already been shelved after a flurry of criticism…

Another form of violent Puritanism, building for the past couple of years, was more fully implemented in the past couple of weeks, using the excuse of “sex trafficking”:

…The raids appear in tandem with the City Council and City Planning Commission’s (CPC) recent production and upcoming review of an “Adult Live Performance Venues Study,” (ALPV) which recommends…that clubs be closed, due to their [mythical] “secondary negative effects”, though it presents no hard data in support of this claim.  Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s office placed attorney Scott Bergthold on a $15,000 retainer to advise on the ALPV Study.  His firm, adultbusinesslaw.com, litigates against adult businesses on behalf of cities and counties…[the recent] raids, as with the October 2015 raids called “Operation Trick or Treat,” uncovered not one instance of human trafficking or the presence of underage workers…[strippers] who resisted were handcuffed and many described being ridiculed, degraded, and molested by cops.  In response to stripper’s protests of the conduct of all-male officers during the raids, they laughed and replied “You lost your right to decency when you became a stripper”…

But if “authorities” thought sex workers would meekly submit as we so often did in the pre-social media days, they got a rude awakening:

A Jan. 31 press conference about the Bourbon Street infrastructure redevelopment turned cacophonous when a group of gentlemen’s club workers and their allies staged a demonstration, drowning out city and tourism officials.  Holding signs that said “Why the celebration?? Strippers are out of work,” “We are workers, not political pawns” and simply “Can you not?”, a group of at least 70 workers gathered behind officials on the 300 block of Bourbon Street, blocked by a few scattered New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) officers.  As the conference began (and cameras rolled), workers began to chant, rendering officials’ statements almost inaudible…

And while the staid Times-Picayune newspaper and Church-and-crony owned local TV stations obediently parroted prohibitionist myths about magical pimps and passive “sex slaves” somehow mysteriously hidden in busy clubs, their competition such as the Gambit (above) and the Advocate were unafraid to side with sex workers:

Four of the eight French Quarter strip clubs targeted in raids over the past two weeks will be able to start serving alcohol again soon after reaching settlements with state officials…Two other clubs have permanently shut down.  The settlements were announced hours after city and tourism officials were interrupted as they tried to hold a news conference to announce that Bourbon Street was “open for business”…The raids…were touted as an effort to curb human trafficking, but they have not yielded any arrests for that crime, and officials have not provided any public evidence of that activity…protesters said the focus on the clubs was absurd, given the extent of drug use, prostitution and “flashing” that they said typically get a blind eye on Bourbon Street itself.  Chanting “save our jobs” and holding signs with slogans like “Bourbon Street is not Sesame Street” and “Entertainers’ rights are human rights,” the protesters argued the shutdown had done little but hurt their ability to make a living…

And stalwart supporter of sex worker rights Truthout (not to be confused with the prohibitionist Truthdig) took aim at the real reason for the raids:

…The strip club crackdown appears to be part of what locals call the “Disneyfication” of New Orleans.  Wealthy investors and developers took increasing interest in the city as it recovered from Hurricane Katrina, driving up property values and attracting rich transplants to the historic homes in and around the French Quarter.  This has led to calls to “clean up” the streets, which have long been home to artists, travelers, street musicians and sex workers…

For too long, sex workers have been thought of as safe targets of tyranny by cops and politicians who feel secure in the conviction that nobody outside the demimonde will side with us.  But that has changed since I was a Bourbon Street stripper myself; now we’re organizing and fighting back, supported by the millions of supporters we’ve won on social media.  No longer are we afraid to speak up, silenced by the threat of outing; no longer are sex workers entirely isolated and unsure of who our friends are.  And in the very near future, “authorities” all over the US will learn what those in New Orleans are learning right now:  we are a vital part of every human society, and in the long run we will win against the State’s crusade to enslave some of us and wipe the rest of us out.

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Links #396

Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on February 4, 2018| 1 Comment »

Spock:  Revenge, Captain?
Kirk:  Why not?

Apparently Quentin Tarantino has pitched an idea for a new Star Trek movie that he will direct.  Someone else has been hired to write it, which is probably for the best or else we might end up with something like this video, contributed by Jesse Walker.  The links above it were provided by Radley Balko, Adjective Girl, Wendy Lyon, Emma Evans, Scott Greenfield, and Korhomme, in that order.

From the Archives

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In the News (#810)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 3, 2018| 3 Comments »

Nothing about jackbooted cops storming into your room can be pleasant.  –  Tyler Dawson

Under Duress 

I find it mind-boggling that most people are surprised to find out that cops are habitual liars:

A…jury…convicted [an NYPD] detective of lying under oath in a trial that raised troubling questions about the prevalence of false statements by police officers in routine cases…Kevin Desormeau…concocted a story about witnessing a man deal drugs to two women on a street corner on a summer evening in 2014…Desormeau [testilied that he] intercepted the man after the transactions and arrested him…But videotape from security cameras showed that the man had been playing pool inside a nearby Caribbean restaurant at the time he was said to have been selling drugs outside…Desormeau and his partner…Sasha Neve, still face charges related to false statements in Manhattan in a separate case…Neve…was found guilty [in the current case] of official misconduct…But the judge…immediately struck down her conviction, [pretending] there was insufficient evidence…As both…left the courtroom, other [pigs] from their old [sty], the Queens gang squad, patted their backs in support…one…was overheard [oinking that] the case as a “witch hunt”…

Torture Chamber 

Stop faking!

An inmate in the Ascension Parish Prison has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Sheriff Jeff Wiley and his office over the teenager’s rape while in custody early last year.  Jacob Westbrook…[reports that] sheriff’s deputies [refused] to obey a judicial order to keep him in protective custody, and instead exposed him to “the very substantial risk of serious harm” from his alleged attackers…Westbrook had “sexual batteries” and “rapes” committed against him on two consecutive days in January 2017 by two 17-year-olds.  Westbrook was also 17 years old at the time.  “During each violent attack, plaintiff screamed for help and from the pain.  No deputies came to his aid…jail personnel failed to follow supervision of detainee policies and procedures and there was no video monitoring of this area of the jail,” the lawsuit alleges…

Whither Canada?

To their credit, the Young Liberals have been pushing for repeal of Canada’s version of the Swedish model since the law first passed:

…the Young Liberals of Canada…[are] pushing the rest of their federal party to discuss decriminalization of prostitution at the party’s convention in April…Since they were elected, the Liberals have claimed they’re reviewing Conservative-era legislation that reworked Canada’s sex work laws following the Supreme Court’s Bedford decision in 2013…[but] little has happened since…the present law…is poor public policy, is disrespectful to the top court’s judgment and – completely separate of either of these very good reasons to object to it – insulting to those who work in the sex industry and can make their own choices about what they do with their bodies and how they make money…

Juxtaposition (#422)

Before you decry this as symptomatic of totalitarianism, click the title link to see who else has arrested people for dancing near public monuments:

Five Britons are among a group of 10 foreigners arrested in Cambodia for “singing and dancing pornographically”, after a raid on a party in Siem Reap near the tourist destination of Angkor Wat.  They face up to a year in prison and could spend six months in detention before the case goes to court…one of the group…said they did not understand why they were being held, adding that they saw one of the arrested men vomiting in shock…

Wise Investment (#428)

Those who cannot remember the past, etc:

Advocates for sex workers are demanding Laval [Quebec] reverse its decision to push all massage parlours, strip clubs, and other erotic businesses to a small, industrial stretch of the city.  The new rules…further stigmatize and endanger the women involved in the sex industry, according to Sandra Wesley, the executive director of Stella, a Montreal-based support group for sex workers…[which] is demanding the city withdraw its new rules, or at least postpone their enforcement, so the women affected can have time to challenge them.  But according to the city, the rules are here to stay…that doesn’t mean sex workers will change jobs; it just forces them out of public view and into situations where they have to work from home or in unsafe areas…

Pyrrhic Victory (#609)

When it comes to mass surveillance, fascism beats communism hands down:

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has officially gained agency-wide access to a nationwide license plate recognition database, according to a contract finalized earlier this month.  The system gives the agency access to billions of license plate records and new powers of real-time location tracking…the data [comes] from Vigilant Solutions, the leading network for license plate recognition data…Vigilant…has amassed a database of more than 2 billion license plate photos by ingesting data from partners like vehicle repossession agencies and other private groups.  Vigilant also partners with local law enforcement agencies…collecting even more data from camera-equipped police cars.  The result is a massive vehicle-tracking network generating as many as 100 million sightings per month, each tagged with a date, time, and GPS coordinates of the sighting…

Droit du Seigneur (#614)

Given that Spitzer was a heavy prohibitionist while in office, outing him is justified:

A Manhattan judge has lifted the gag order placed on the ​former ​escort who [says]…Eliot Spitzer threatened to kill her, meaning she can now dish on the fallen pol’s sexual fetishes​ ​— ​which allegedly include being paraded around on a leash like a dog.  Judge Gilbert Hong issued an order…saying Svetlana Travis Zakharova is no longer subject to another judge’s February 2017 direction she couldn’t talk about her relationship with Spitzer while she was being prosecuted for extorting $400,000 from him…Hong also ruled that the NYPD has 30 days to return the former escort’s cell phone and iPad, which were seized when she was arrested in the extortion case…She’s since released recordings in which a man she alleges is the infamous pol threatens to kill her.  “You fuck​ing bitch!  You piece of shi​t.  And then you fuck​ing destroyed my life!” the man in the records can be heard saying.  “You know what’s going to happen to you?  You’re going to be fuck​ing dead.”  [Zakharova’s lawyer] says that as soon as Zakharova returns from Russia — where she’s gathering more recordings — she’s coming for Spitzer…

To Molest and Rape 

A “correctional officer” in a “correctional institution”.  Makes you wonder what “authorities” perceive as “correct”:

In the early months of 2017, a correctional officer at a jail near the Tennessee-Alabama border routinely cornered a female inmate in the jail library, raping and eventually impregnating her before the assaults were discovered…Caleb Shane Hopkins…[has confessed to repeatedly raping] Jessica Fowler…Once other jail officials learned Fowler was pregnant, she was transferred to the Tennessee Prison for Women before giving birth, prematurely, in December.  She remains imprisoned, unable to have any prolonged access to her child…[who] is currently with [her] parents…[she] is suing Hopkins for $1 million and Moore County for $300,000.  However, there are no federal limits for damages in a case like this, so a judge could award a higher amount…

I hope she bankrupts both the rapist pig and the county.

Opting Out (#759)

Naturally, Cassandra McNeill was warning about this years ago:

MindGeek, the biggest internet pornography company in the world…[pretends] it will not snoop on the sexual preferences of 25 million people in the UK under new age verification laws.  However, MindGeek also [admits it] plans to collect a trove of information on users, including their names, addresses, date of birth, as well as their online activities on other websites.  From April, as part of the Digital Economy Act, anyone wishing to view pornography online will have to prove they are over 18 years old…Among the companies developing solutions is MindGeek, which…also runs some of the most viewed pornography sites in the world, including PornHub…its age verification system, AgeID…will require users to sign up with an email address and password, then use a third party mechanism to prove they’re over 18.  User will then use AgeID to access pornographic sites around the web; AgeID will log which sites are visited…

Stupor Bowl (#769) 

It’s a good sign that headlines like this are now fairly common:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement joined in the pre-Super Bowl hype…[about] a…human trafficking spike that experts…agree doesn’t exist…The Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women, a coalition of NGOs, wrote in 2014 that public figures often use this sort of hype to justify their own interests, whether it’s anti-immigration sentiment or support and funding for [police violence against sex workers]…

Stalkers in Blue

Oh, honey, I hope you don’t really believe this doesn’t happen in Florida:

An NYPD [cop] offered to let a Brooklyn woman slide on a pot possession bust if she lifted her shirt and showed him her breasts…Jasmine Campbell…was arrested for possession of marijuana and resisting arrest — but…not before…Javier Munoz mistreated her…Campbell, 25, spent the night in jail before she was released without bail and the ordeal caused her to miss a college midterm in her senior year.  She said she was not able to take a makeup exam, and got a lower grade in the class…Campbell said her friend insisted to cops that the weed was his, but they cuffed and processed her, anyway…Campbell said she has since been pulled over by other officers who have been sexually inappropriate.  “It’s a constant thing going on in New York with the cops that they’re just using their badges to, I guess, sexually harass women…That’s why I’m so glad to be going to law school in Florida.  I don’t even want to live here anymore”…

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Imbolc 2018

Posted in Holidays, tagged , , on February 2, 2018| 3 Comments »


The Celtic goddess Brigit, like so many other pagan deities, was turned into a Christian saint; this is a photo I took last July at one of her many shrines in Ireland.  This day is sacred to her, and to the flame with which she awakens the world from winter.  Sometimes things that seem dead are just waiting for the right conditions to awaken; may all the things that do so in your life be good ones. Blessed Be!

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In the Street

Posted in Perception, Q & A, Tyranny, tagged , , , , on February 1, 2018| 7 Comments »

While I am in total agreement about the decriminalization of prostitution, there is one area that leaves me unsettled.  Indoor sex workers are out of view and can cause no real adverse ramifications on any that may be nearby.  But outdoor workers could create discomfort to those within their view and certainly can result in problems for nearby businesses.  I have never been a fan of the police and certainly do not like what they do to minorities or the socially disadvantaged, yet as a business owner I can also understand their views as well.  Is there a compromise?

Humans living in close quarters always have adverse impacts on each other; there’s little that can be done about that unless both parties are willing to sit down and talk things over like reasonable adults who respect each other’s rights.  Of course, that’s not encouraged in our society, because if we did that instead of asking Big Brother to violently intervene, it would give Big Brother fewer excuses to meddle in everyone’s business, and we can’t have that.  When I was young and living in a small town, most people had little respect for the kind of whiny tattletale who calls the cops on other people instead of trying to handle disagreements themselves; however, that kind of attitude has gone the way of party lines and black-and-white television sets.  Nowadays, most people’s first impulse is to call in armed thugs who inevitably make things worse even when they don’t maim or murder someone or otherwise destroy their lives.  I’m willing to bet that if a business owner took the time and trouble to talk to street workers rather than talk about them to power-mad busybodies, it might be possible to reach some sort of compromise.  But once the pigs are whistled up, any chance of that is gone; would you trust the sincerity of someone whose first impulse was to send heavily-armed, emotionally-stunted, rapist thugs against you instead of talking like free adults?  Because I know I wouldn’t.

Lest you think me unsympathetic, please remember that I’m a property owner and businesswoman myself.  But while I understand people worrying about possible damage to their livelihoods, what does selling sex have to do with that?  You mean to tell me if a bunch of, say, loud drunks from a neighborhood bar were always pissing in your alley, or students from the local university were having non-commercial sex against the side of your delivery truck, or rude uptown types were letting their mutts shit on your doorstep, that you’d be somehow less impacted than if any of those people were making money from their activities?  There are already laws against vagrancy, indecent exposure, littering, loitering, etc that can be used to discourage those who don’t respect others’ rights and won’t respond to clear communication; it isn’t necessary to have a separate law criminalizing their motives for the annoying behavior.

(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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