Last week, one of my readers told me that several camming platforms ban trans women. Here’s one example, from My Free Cams. At first I thought that perhaps these arseholes think that trans women are somehow “dirtier” or more intrinsically sexual than cis women, and therefore banning them would reduce the platform’s exposure due to FOSTA, or that the platform owners are just transphobic douchebags using FOSTA as an excuse to discriminate. As it later turned out, the policy isn’t a new one, and though my second guess was closer than my first it has nothing to do with FOSTA: the owners are indeed anti-trans douchebags, but their excuse is the same ugly fantasy used by toilet-law proponents, namely that predatory men might pretend to be trans in order to gain access to women-only spaces. And though I turned out to be incorrect in my surmise of their motivation, the very fact that I and many others assumed it was FOSTA-related demonstrates not only how jumpy this tyranny has made us, but also how easy it would be for bigots to hide their bigotry behind “concern for commercial viability” or “advice from our legal department” (I’m looking at you, Fetlife). Furthermore, it demonstrates why I so often say that fascism is much more effective at repression than communism. Fascist states can pressure businesses to do their dirty work (censorship, discrimination, etc) and then blame the companies for it; “Operation Choke Point” is a perfect example of this. Government says, “Oh, it’s not our fault those banks & credit card processors cut you off; we just gave them a list of undesirables. What they did after that was totally their own doing.” Ditto FOSTA: “Oh, we didn’t force those sites to censor y’all; we just passed a law that says every ambulance-chaser and attention-hungry DA in the country can sue or file charges against them if they don’t. Nothing to do with us.” So now sites which aren’t strictly adult-oriented are banishing sex workers, and sites which are strictly adult-oriented are doing bizarre, ugly flip-flops to try to “protect” themselves from disaster by enacting content restrictions that won’t do anything to protect them from the depredations of predatory government, but will certainly harm sex workers. And as is always the case, it’s the most marginalized people who are feeling it the hardest.
Archive for May, 2018
Nothing To Do With Us
Posted in Current Events, Perception, Tyranny, tagged censorship, Choke Point, Disaster, fascism, hysteria, law, porn, transgender on May 11, 2018| 4 Comments »
Approaching Infinity
Posted in History, Philosophy, Q & A, tagged Aphrodite, BDSM, Catholicism, drugs, paganism, psychology, Rome on May 10, 2018| 3 Comments »
I have an incurable, fatal disease: my doctors advise me to expect to live another 30-70 months. I’m not afraid of dying and in examining my life the only thing that really bothers me is the state of my spiritual life. While I was born and raised Catholic, I left organized religion as my mind matured and my path to access spirituality became intimate times with my lovers. I haven’t experienced that connection with something greater than ourselves since my wife left me on the mountaintop 10 years ago. Regular, long sessions with professionals have immeasurably improved and enriched my life but don’t reach that level. Tantra specialists offer a kind of enhanced FBSM but none seem to seek that connection to the infinite. Meditation, yoga, chanting, all are relaxing and enjoyable, but just don’t get me to that higher plane. Small doses of some recreational drugs have been useful in the past, but only in the context of the intimacy that comes with great sex. It’s my one and only spiritual life and it’s not what it ought to be. I’m not sure how to fix it, and don’t want to find myself on my deathbed with this deficit.
I’ve been mulling over how to best answer your question, and I don’t mind telling you that I’m not sure I can give you a good answer. The problem is that spirituality is so damned hard to pin down and define; religions have been trying for at least 5000 years and probably longer, and yet they all disagree on what exactly it is. Even the words we use to describe the spiritual dimension are maddeningly vague; we speak of “the ineffable”, “the supernatural”, “the unknown”, “the beyond” and the like. Since you were raised Catholic you may remember what the religious phenomena associated with the life of Jesus are called (in the context of praying the rosary): mysteries. And that term predates Catholicism; the “mystery religions” were a group of cults that flourished in the time roughly between the Golden Age of Greece and the fall of Rome, a time when the old functions of religion (social control and explanation of natural phenomena) were being replaced by newer institutions (non-religious legal codes and science). Classical civilization produced societies far more stable than any which had gone before, and the privileged classes were secure enough in their physical existence that they began to have the luxury of asking questions like, “Is this all there is?” and “What is the meaning of life?”
The mystery religions, more mystical outgrowths of traditional pagan religions, promised to answer these questions. Hinduism grew out of the old Vedic religion and Buddhism grew from Hinduism; in the West, cults arose around the Egyptian Isis, the Anatolian Cybele, the Persian Mithra and many others. All of these religions had various circles of initiation which the devout had to work to rise through; Christianity’s innovation (which caused it to rapidly supplant all others in Europe) was that there was only one circle, and every convert had access to all the mysteries right away. We all know them; transsubstantiation, the Trinity, the virgin birth, etc, logical impossibilities that could not be explained rationally and were supposed to be meditated upon in order to obtain salvation. The fall of Rome plunged Europe back into a precarious state again, and religion once again assumed its old roles until the Age of Reason gave the privileged classes back the freedom of not having to worry about where their next meal was coming from. The modern industrial age took that a step further, giving virtually everyone in developed nations that freedom to wonder, “What else is there?”, and of course the result has been the return of old mystery religions (such as evangelical Christianity) and the creation of new ones (such as Mormonism and Scientology), each with its mysteries, circles of initiation, transcendent experiences (such as speaking in tongues), etc. They all promise to answer The Question, and of course none of them do; oh, they provide the devout with explanations sufficient for many of their adherents, but if any of them could really provide a better answer to the ultimate question than “forty-two”, everyone in the world would’ve converted to that religion long ago and the Millennium would’ve arrived.
By now you may be beginning to get the idea that I don’t actually have an answer to your question, and on one level you’d be right; the truth, however, is that no priest, yogi, guru, prophet or adept in the world does either. And the reason they don’t is that there is no one answer; the point of The Great Question is not to be answered, but to be asked in the first place. In other words, the seeking of truth is the point in itself; it’s a limit approaching infinity, but as you and I both know any point along that journey is equally far from its infinitely-distant end. The observable universe is an infinitesimal particle of all that there is;
it’s elephants all the way down and all the way up, and all the way in every direction you can conceive of and an infinity of directions that you can’t, except for “elephants” read “math”. It is, by definition, utterly incomprehensible to finite beings such as ourselves; the only meaning in existence is the meaning we as conscious beings give it. So, while sex, drugs, religion, music and other temporal lobe phenomena may give one a sense or feeling of connection to the Divine, the truth is that we’re always connected; we’re just not always aware of it, because if we were we’d be unable to carry out the functions of mundane existence, and would instead merely lie physically inert while contemplating higher dimensions.
I said at the beginning of the previous paragraph that the point of the question is the process of answering it, and that’s not just inscrutable bullshit intended to cover the fact that I have no idea what I’m talking about; I meant it exactly as stated. Imagine yourself a passenger in a vehicle, travelling a road or railway around a majestic mountain; as the vehicle moves, you need to change your position within it to keep looking at the mountain. And life is like that, too. In your youth, sex provided the proper angle to see the mountain, but now it no longer does; you’re still looking out of the same window, and though you’ve tried others none of them have yet given you that which you seek. Perhaps the answer is larger doses of recreational drugs, or trying others you haven’t yet tried; perhaps you should try doing so in a ritualized setting, like a peyote or ayahuasca journey. I myself have achieved remarkable results with edible cannabis, listening to instrumental music. Perhaps you might try visiting sacred places, or exploring your own psychosexual landscape through kink, painting or writing. And here’s the good news: you can’t get this wrong. You needn’t worry about a deficit; I can’t promise you won’t feel a sense of disappointment or regret on your deathbed, because we all leave this world in the same way we enter it: in blood and pain, wholly ignorant of what comes next. But I can assure you that on a spiritual level, no one seeking as earnestly as you are can be considered to have any kind of spiritual deficit. The point of the question is to be asked, and you’re certainly asking. The point of the journey is the journey itself. And when the end of your biological life comes, and you move on to a different plane of existence, you will be able to do so knowing that you succeeded with flying colors in your mission on this one: to never cease asking questions and searching diligently for an ultimate answer neither you nor I nor any other sentient being can ever find.
(Have a question of your own? Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)
In the News (#836)
Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, asset seizure, Backpage, bogus studies, Broken Record, Capricious Lusts, censorship, cops, dirty, Disaster, Europe, Feminists and Other Puritans, hysteria, I Spy, Illinois, internet, Kentucky, left-right myth, License To Rape, Micromanagement, Negative Secondary Effects, neofeminism, New York, pathologization of males, prisons, psychology, Pyrrhic Victory, rape, Seizing Power, Signs, sporting events, stripping, surveillance, United Kingdom, Watershed on May 9, 2018| 7 Comments »
A lot of people under 18…are only considered “trafficked” because the law says so. – Raani Begum
Some people can’t seem to understand that while sex workers can help men to manage their sexual frustration, there is nothing we can do once they grow to believe they’re entitled to free sex and go down the twisted “incel” rabbit hole. I think Dan Savage does a good job of explaining that difference here:
…Sexual deprivation can make a person miserable, even suicidal…and, as a society, we seem fine with that. People who can’t get sex are often told that…no one has ever dropped dead as a result of being deprived of sex. (Loneliness, however, can hasten death; it may be a greater risk factor for early death than smoking or obesity)…sexually deprived people…who…identify as incels…[don’t] feel…depressed or blam[e] themselves…[they] are filled with rage and blame…women…And when an incel with social or mental health issues—issues that doubtless contributed to his being an “involuntarily celibate” in the first place—violently attacks women (men are often killed too), the online incel breaks into cheers…I don’t think throwing sex workers at violent, deranged incels will solve the violent, deranged incel problem. Our culture has to change in enormous ways to solve this problem…men have to stop being socialized to believe they’re entitled to women’s bodies…adults who do sex work of their own free will shouldn’t be stigmatized (or treated like criminals) and adults who hire adults doing sex work of their own free will shouldn’t be stigmatized (or treated like criminals). The former cultural transformation will solve the “incel” problem; the latter will solve the problem of sexual deprivation, i.e. involuntary celibacy…
Once again: coalitions of fundamentalist anti-sex groups are in no way “surprising”:
If you had told radical feminist and [writer for SWERF/TERF rag Feminist Current] Natasha Chart five years ago that she would be fired from her advocacy job for objecting to the prostitution of minors, she wouldn’t have believed…She opted to speak with The Christian Post…”because…there is a significant and influential portion of…mainstream human rights activist community that…believes…youth sex work[ers]…should [not be raped and caged by cops]”…Chart is a former Jehovah’s Witness…no one is served when trusted civil society institutions utilize their clout…to quietly further a “pimping agenda“…If this goes unaddressed it is only a matter of time before the sex industry is considered “respectable” enough to emerge from the shadows and begin openly sponsoring a political caucus, as is the case in the Netherlands and Australia…
Yes, this is a Christian publication masturbating at very great length about the “pimp lobby” and approvingly quoting Meghan Murphy.
Can we please stop pretending that Dart’s actions are anything other than a power & money grab?
Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart wants [to profit from]…a recent plea deal [by Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer]…Dart filed a motion…asking [a]…Judge…to require Backpage.com LLC and its attorneys to pay the county for its legal fees in connection with a legal battle that dates back to 2015, when the Dallas-based online classified advertising site obtained a preliminary injunction blocking the sheriff’s office from [threatening] credit card companies [to force them to stop] processing payments for the site…
Prohibitionists just can’t stop beating this dead horse:
Three local groups are hosting an outreach event to warn the community about the dangers and reality of human trafficking during the Kentucky Derby…If you spot [any of these] red flag[s, report the person to the cops]…Hotel guests with little luggage…”Do Not Disturb” sign used constantly on a hotel room door…Housekeeping services refused for many days…Adults with…cell phones…A person is vague about his/her profession…
Can you imagine these phone calls? “Hi, Officer Porky, I’d like to report a man with a cell phone who told me to mind my own business…”
US prisons are hotbeds of rape in every form:
Jeannette Reynoso dreaded visiting her husband at…Rikers Island…She knew she would wait hours to be processed, go through several metal detectors and be subjected to a search by dogs sniffing for drugs and weapons. But she never thought she would be…naked and in tears before two [screws raping her using the excuse of searching] …her body cavities for contraband…When she [resisted the supposed search]…the [screws] threatened to cancel her visits for 45 days…[among other violations] the [screw]…violently inserted two fingers into her anus…she was menstruating at the time…The search Ms. Reynoso described is prohibited in city jails. In state and federal prisons, strip searches of visitors are permitted with consent, but not cavity checks…Elias Husamudeen, the president of the [Porcine Propaganda Perpetrators]…[mocked] the [reports made] by the women in the lawsuits and [claimed that]…“People are coming in with weapons in their vaginas, up their anus and in baby bottles”…
Because every woman I know can fit a 0.44 magnum in her pussy and a knife up her arse, at the same time.
Surveillance beyond the wildest dreams of the Stasi:
In cities across the country, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations agents can mine local police reports using COPLINK, a data program little known outside law enforcement circles…The software ingests local police databases, allowing users to map out people’s social networks and browse data that could include their countries of origin, license plate numbers, home addresses, alleged gang membership records, and more…[“authorities” pretend] these databases and analytic tools helps ICE…tackle serious crimes, like child pornography and [the catchall] money laundering. But…ICE…agents are also involved in questionable immigration enforcement actions nationwide…
…the true targets of the [so-called] war on trafficking have been the marginalized, low income consensual sex workers whose livelihoods and ability to stay safe have long been dependent on the resources being scrubbed from the internet in the name of ending trafficking…It’s likely that these [“sex trafficking”] laws will be challenged in court and eventually overturned…Even the Department of Justice has said [FOSTA] could…be found to be unconstitutional…But while overturning these bills in court would be a good first step, it’s not enough. As long as consensual sex work is treated as functionally indistinct from abusive, forced or coercive situations, our laws will continue to punish some of the vulnerable people we claim to want to protect. Criminalizing and aggressively cracking down on all sex work pushes consensual sex workers underground and into unsafe environments…and…does little to discourage or combat people who profit from coercing others…In contrast, decriminalization…allows…sex workers to more openly and thus safely conduct business…A wide range of groups including Amnesty International, Freedom Network USA, Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women, Human Rights Watch, UNAIDS, World Health Organization, International Women’s Health Coalition and numerous sex worker advocacy and support groups have thrown their support behind…decriminalization…
Negative Secondary Effects (#817)
Normally, the pretended “secondary effects” are concrete things, not silly nebulosities:
[Prohibitionists] have been granted a judicial review against Sheffield’s strip club licensing policy in a move that could…have significant implications for other councils considering strip club licences. It could force them to take into account the [imaginary] impact on women and gender equality, rather than just the wellbeing of [actual people like the dancers who these prohibitionists want unemployed]…
Funny how nobody is crusading against businesses that employ mostly men on grounds of “gender equality”. Don’t men have an equal “right” to be forced out of high-paying work to appease prudish lunatics?
“What the new law does is it allows the FBI and law enforcement and individuals to sue platforms of any kind online for third-party hosts and content,” Barb Brents, a professor of sociology at UNLV, told KNPR…She explained that platforms like Craigslist and Backpage…are simply platforms for information and couldn’t be held responsible for what people posted on that format. But under the new law, people can sue them for what other people post…Brents said there is no real evidence that real traffickers are using those sites, but the sites are used by consensual sex workers. With them shut down or otherwise threatened…sex workers are losing an important screening mechanism…
And here’s a good introduction to FOSTA and its related tyrannies:
…Hillary Clinton would have signed it, too. It…has had an overwhelming bipartisan majority…FOSTA-SESTA does nothing but places liability on online platforms by asking them to tackle an enormous “real world”/not online problem…FOSTA-SESTA spooks online platforms into pre-emptively censoring free speech for fear of criminal liability, which has all sorts of horrible consequences for free speech…You can no longer share “explicit and vulgar content” on any Microsoft product, which means that no longer allowed to do anything sexual with anyone on their platforms, regardless…if…paid or unpaid…Here is an incomplete list of products and institutions that discriminate or ban sex work or adult products…
Diary #410
Posted in Current Events, Diary, Miscellaneous, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged activism, blogging, Maggie in the Media, United Kingdom, video on May 8, 2018| 2 Comments »
Last week was just as crammed full of the same kind of stuff as the week before, plus I’m trying to get as many columns in the pipeline as possible before I leave a week from today to visit the UK with Brooke Magnanti. So far it’s going well; if I keep up this pace I’ll have everything done through June 2nd by the time I land in London, with the exception of the next couple of diary columns (which I obviously can’t do that far ahead), two picture columns like the ones I did on my trips with Lorelei, and the news column for June 3rd (which I will be able to finish on the trip as long as I can average a paltry one item per day). You may have noticed that my news columns run 9 to 13 items; I’ve been artificially keeping them at 9 for the past couple of weeks so I can use a sort of toothpaste-tube effect to ensure I get all the May columns done by the time I arrive in London. That way, I don’t have to stress about it on my trip. Of course, the pipeline will be empty by the time I get back, but of late I’ve gotten pretty good at rebuilding the queue, so it won’t take long to get back up to my normal lead of 3 to 5 columns. If you’re interested in taking advantage of my special, you only have until Sunday; but if you just want to see me and hear my Jessica Rabbit voice you need look no further than the podcast below, recorded two weeks ago when I was in LA.
Eternity
Posted in History, Philosophy, tagged Day of the Dead, ethics, psychology, Thanatopsis on May 7, 2018| 8 Comments »
Regular readers know that I am not afraid of death, and in fact consider it a positive good. And so, though I understand why people might want to have a little extra time on this plane, I can’t understand ruining the quality of the whole merely to drag the end out for a few extra years. Nor do I understand the obsession with or demonization of a natural process; all things die, including nations, species, worlds, suns and even the observable universe itself. Furthermore, the idea that extending human life would also extend productive life is science fiction; even now people tend to “run out of steam” over time, and even though people in developed countries live longer on average than they once did, there’s no evidence that canalization of the brain takes place any later than it did in ancient times. What that means is, if you like working your arse off to support the decades-long retirements of a bunch of old dinosaurs whose cognitive norms formed a generation before you were born, just imagine how much you’d love it right now if 90% of the population were born before the Second World War, and a sizeable fraction of the people voting on stuff like sexual rights came of age in an era when it was still considered OK for humans to actually, legally own other humans. The current rulers of our world were mostly born in the 40s-60s, and their ideas provide ample proof of that; imagine how it would be if most of them had been born in the 19th century.
Even if you believe in souls (as I do), you have to recognize that most of the popular ideas about such life-forces (such as the belief that they are somehow connected to rotting corpses after death) are absurd, childish and impossible. There is no such thing as changelessness; there are only differing rates of change. The idea of a changeless entity existing literally forever is utterly ridiculous, and frankly, I think people who imagine they want to live forever – even as a disembodied soul – have not done much thinking about what eternity actually looks like. Compared to Eternity, the 15-billion year life of the current observable universe is exactly the same as Planck time. I don’t mean similar; I mean exactly the same. Indistinguishable. 15 billion years, or 15 trillion, or 15 googols of years (that’s 150,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000), or 15 googolplexes of years, are all exactly the same compared to Eternity. Eternity is an infinite amount of time, which means any finite number, no matter how incomprehensibly large, is exactly as insignificant in comparison to that as the tiniest number one can define. Eternal life wouldn’t be a gift; it would be a horror literally beyond imagining.
Links #409
Posted in Current Events, History, Links, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged comics, cops, Florida, imaginative fiction, Never Call the Cops, politicians, video, Wisconsin on May 6, 2018| Leave a Comment »
We don’t want…everybody [to go] back to their normal life.
– Mike Chitwood
I really enjoyed this clever video, courtesy of Franklin Harris, in which Avengers: Infinity War is recast with classic Hollywood stars. I can’t recall who shared the first link above the video, but the rest were provided by Jesse Walker, Nun Ya, Radley Balko (x2), and Scott Shackford, in that order.
- We must be gods.
- Stone-age seafaring.
- Lovecraft in porcelain.
- One of the earliest known viral media spectacles.
- NEVER CALL THE FUCKING COPS. Why is that so hard?
- Sheriff complains there are teens in his county who haven’t been arrested.
From the Archives
- Officials invite religious fanatic to speak about her dogma, feign surprise when she does.
- Sleazebag takes it upon himself to persecute strangers for consensual sex.
- Can people not see that “sex trafficking” hysteria is rooted in xenophobia?
- Another ridiculous tale of spineless women & pimps with magical powers.
- Why is everyone so willing to believe “fake news” about “sex trafficking”?
- Luckily, cops can diagnose us as “victims” no matter what we may think.
- This excellent article about anti-porn hysteria is also very droll at points.
- Encouraging prosecutors to file more charges for non-criminal behavior.
- A teen girl riding in a car now constitutes “evidence” of “sex trafficking”.
- Fanatic finds data disprove “sex trafficking”, decides we need new data.
- Assume any strange man who fucks you will try to remove the condom.
- What would they have said had she been arrested instead of murdered?
- Fetishists trot out more lurid wanking fantasies than usual for the RNC.
- They realized they could expand the panic by adding male “sex slaves”.
- Police state exploits technically skilled but naive kids to attack whores.
- Two piles of filth want to cut sex workers off from the banking system.
- PA politicians define women as imbeciles whose consent is immaterial.
- In which sex workers’ desire for individual rights is called “surprising”.
- I won’t answer controversial questions about groups I don’t belong to.
- Cops, Loki, amateurs, Princess Leia’s Stolen Death Star Plans & more.
- New surveillance weapons are usually used against sex workers first.
- A basic primer on sex worker rights, focusing on France & Belgium.
- Korean men are more honest about buying sex than Western men.
- Pig tricks desperate woman so as to expose her to public ridicule.
- Can a loving but pragmatic whore/client relationship really work?
- Despite all the Dutch anti-whore campaigns, it’s nice to see this.
- “Anti-trafficking” publicity stunts are growing ever more bizarre.
- A Truthout article echoes what I said in the original of this title.
- Serial rapist tries to reframe himself as a protector of children.
- Previous columns for May Day and May Eve (Walpurgisnacht).
- A petition against politicians who want to destroy the internet.
- Cops, idiocracy, Heracles, Ozymandias, Canada & much more.
- Rashida Jones & company are even worse than we thought.
- Neurological disorders cannot be cured by happy thoughts.
- Because one moral panic at a time isn’t enough any more.
- There can never be too many anti-Swedish model articles.
- The profound stupidity of lawheads is a marvel to behold.
- A week full of sexual violence committed by state agents.
- Another bullshit story touting bullshit “safe harbor” laws.
- “…the pattern of legislating over their heads continued…“
- A high-tech version of the “barcode tattoo” myth.
- Authoritarians say self-employment is immoral.
- The rescue industry is nasty from every angle.
- Whore-murderer seeks early release in Dubai.
- The War on Whores is the new War on Drugs.
- I really love it when they feed on each other.
- Public opposition to yet another toilet bill.
- Rapist cops of the week. Plenty of them.
- Another teen’s life destroyed for flirting.
- Another rapist preying on sex workers.
- It’s impossible to state this too often.
- “Johns” are the new “faggots”.
- Testing a new vertigo remedy.
- Booze, benzos and airplanes.
- Rapist fake-cop of the week.
- R.I.P. Charles Gatewood.
- The McNeill Rule.
In the News (#835)
Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged acting, Against Their Will, agency denial, animals, California, cell phones, Checklist, cops, Elephant in the Parlor, Hollywood, hysteria, India, law, Louisiana, Micromanagement, Moving Pictures, Not the Leading Players, porn, pragmatism, prisons, prohibitionist myths, psychology, rescue industry, robots, Scapegoats, surveillance, The Pygmalion Fallacy, The Widening Gyre, West Virginia on May 5, 2018| 8 Comments »
Today people can’t wait to participate in their own surveillance.
– Mike Spinney
When a headline asks a question, the answer is nearly always “no”:
…the thriller Traffik…has a horrifying story that revolves around the sex trafficking industry, as it follows an innocent couple who become caught up in a human trafficking ring…The film itself is not a true story, but it was inspired by true events. The movie’s plot sees a couple…go on a road trip, where they run into a motorcycle gang at a gas station. The gang have a woman with them who sneaks a cell phone into the [wife’s] purse…in the bathroom. This leads to the gang, who are connected to a sex trafficking ring, to track down the phone and terrorize the innocent couple. This event itself is entirely fictional…but the filmmaker drew inspiration from [what he falsely claims are] real life sex trafficking incidents near his home in Northern California…
Now you can be a useful idiot and violate strangers’ consent without even using a special app!
If you see someone who may be involved in human trafficking, report it by taking a picture and texting it to 909-ALERT-US (909-253-7887). Our…face recognition software automatically searches images in online escort ads for the photos provided. [If a match is identified, local vice squad will be notified]…
It searches online escort ads. Exclusively. So much for any pretense that this is abut anything other than persecuting sex workers.
Anyone surprised by this hasn’t been paying attention:
Authorities have arrested a former [cop] who is suspected of being one of California’s most prolific serial killers and rapists — the Golden State Killer…In the 40 years since the Original Night Stalker began his campaign of terror in Sacramento and moved south through the Bay Area and Santa Barbara and Orange counties, he had remained unidentified [due to his knowledge of police procedure]. Authorities say the attacker, also dubbed the East Area rapist and the Golden State Killer, is responsible for 12 killings, 45 rapes and more than 120 residential burglaries from 1976 to 1986…72-year-old…Joseph James DeAngelo Jr., has been charged by prosecutors…with eight counts of murder. He is being held without bail…The suspect was a police officer in Auburn during the 1970s but was fired after he was accused of shoplifting…He is suspected of committing some crimes while he was still on the force…
There is one terrifying detail this story omits:
For decades…the DNA of the “Golden State Killer” sat in evidence storage…Whoever the killer was, he apparently was not one of the millions of convicts, offenders and arrestees in the FBI’s national DNA database…police announced that they had…identified Joseph James DeAngelo as the Golden State Killer suspect using an ingenious technique that thrills law enforcement officials and disturbs privacy advocates…they checked the crime scene DNA against one of the genealogy sites that have lately become popular — databases filled with the profiles of people who have volunteered their genetic codes in the hope of discovering their relatives and ancestors…The suspected Golden State Killer was not in this database, either, but it didn’t matter. A distant relative of his was…and that person’s DNA partially matched evidence related to the serial killer. Instantly, the pool of suspects shrank from millions of people down to a single family. Detectives then used traditional investigative techniques to narrow the family members down to one suspect…Familial DNA searches…[have] an 83 percent failure rate [according to] a 2014 British study…
Another result of moral panics: evil people using the hysteria to cover their evil:
A West Virginia [woman]…who…claimed her 3-year-old daughter was abducted by sex traffickers was convicted in her murder. Lena Marie Lunsford Conaway…was found guilty…on charges stemming from the 2011 disappearance of her daughter, Aliayah Lunsford…Her two older daughters reportedly testified that she beat the little girl over the head with a board then put her body in a clothes hamper. They claimed the mom disposed of Aliayah’s body in a shallow grave in the woods. The toddler’s remains were never found…
The Leading Players in the Field, Not (#752)
The Los Angeles-based Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking will honor Mira Sorvino, Kate Bosworth, Gloria Allred, Rosanna Arquette, Andra Day and others at the organization’s 20th annual gala…The [paradigm] of human trafficking [has become more popular] in the last couple of decades, and Los Angeles in particular has become a major hub for the [rescue] industry…
It’s good to see this getting more attention lately:
An increasing number of stories…highlight the ugly reality of rescue homes, which [are]…less about rehabilitation and more about forced confinement. Doubts are now being raised whether [arrested] women and children…can indeed lead a protected life in these homes…
Unfortunately, it’s going to be an uphill climb; even this story about the abuses inflicted by the rescue industry still calls arrest & caging “rescue” and quotes the malignant sociopath Sunitha “100 clients a day” Krishnan, who runs a similar prison herself (a fact not mentioned in this story).
…I predict that historians of the development of artificial intelligence are going to see sexual gratification as one of the phenomenon’s great motivators. Evolutionary psychology can give us insight into how sex robots are going to develop and the ramifications they’ll have on society. Sexbots are usually woman-shaped gynoid machines…because heterosexual men drive the market for sexual products like prostitution and pornography. Across cultures, men desire more sexual partners, need to know someone for less time before they want to have sex with them, and have lower standards for a sexual liaison than women…Men don’t get pregnant and don’t lactate, and they have smaller, easier-to-produce sex cells than women. For a man, the cost of producing offspring is cheap…Women impose costs on men to gain sexual access for very good reasons…Pornography and prostitution are popular because they arrive at sexual end goals, or a reasonable facsimile, with more clarity and lower costs than in the mating market. The complications of courtship are driving improvements in sexual substitutes, like masturbation aids…These substitutes aren’t very good, and yet they are already competing with flesh-and-blood companionship…
No, not really. I can assure you that no Fleshlight Tina is “competition” for any man who can actually afford a sex worker. This psychologist is arguing that “I like what I get” is the same thing as “I get what I like”.
Naturally she’s doing this; she’s an intelligent woman:
Stormy Daniels is back in front of the cameras — on a porn set. Touting what appears to be Daniels’ first released sex scenes since the money scandal involving her and President Trump surfaced early this year, the porn site Brazzers teased graphic snippets online…They feature Daniels in the upcoming XXX video entitled Stormy’s Secret…
If you don’t understand what this is all about, try looking up “Napoleonic Code”:
In Louisiana, a proposal to strengthen the law against bestiality is facing unexpected opposition from conservative lawmakers who see it as an underhanded move to strike the state’s unconstitutional ban on sodomy. Creating a new, wide-ranging anti-bestiality law would untangle the offense from the ban on sodomy in Louisiana’s “crime against nature ” statute, prompting some lawmakers to label the measure a sly chess move. “This bill was written because the far left wants to undermine our other laws that protect family and traditional values”…said Sen. Ryan Gatti…one of 10 senators to vote against the bill…
Remember, this is a law struck down as unconstitutional 15 years ago.
Out of the Woodwork
Posted in Call types, Current Events, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged anecdote, Backpage, bad customers, censorship, end demand, FBI, Mentoring, pimps on May 4, 2018| 10 Comments »
Not all of the effects of the recent US government censorship drives are at the macro level, such as the castration or destruction of websites; some affect only individuals or smallish groups, but are still annoying and/or frustrating, and make work more difficult and less pleasant. I’ve read that some Backpage girls who formerly worked on the street are now getting harassing phone calls or texts from pimps and pimp wannabes, offering them beaucoups clients in the hope of enticing them into a relationship. And since the guys who used to use Backpage now don’t know where to go, they’re inflicting their ham-handed “Hey sexy” and untutored “qv* avail?” texts on sex workers who aren’t used to dealing with that (and in my case, lack the patience). But worst of all, these police-state shenanigans have emboldened toads who want to harass & frighten sex workers.
A week ago yesterday, I got one of the automatic emails produced by the booking form on my escort site, and as soon as I saw nonsense like “Desired appointment length: forever” I knew I was being harassed by a troll. And although I found his rather pathetic attempt to frighten me kind of amusing, I’m also aware that this sort of thing can be very disconcerting and upsetting to young, inexperienced escorts. So I’m sharing this because if anyone reading this gets similar messages, you’ll know they’re from losers and not get upset or scared. Anyway, below the gobbledygook he put into the fields for name, phone number, etc, I found this in the note field [all sic]: “you are a dumb whore. prepare for your site to be shut down immediately. Dumb whore check out cabuyerbeware.com that is my work. Your information has been reported and forwarded to the proper authorites in seattle washington, FBI feild office” Soon after I was done sharing this on Twitter for others to mock, I checked my emails again and found another one, clearly from the same lackwit, timestamped 41 minutes after the first; the note field contained this scintillating gem: “You are a whore. Your site will be taken down. You are a whore. THe proper authorities in the FBI field offices of seattle have been notified of your whore activities. good luck whore.”
First of all, it’s apparent this moron has absolutely no idea who he’s dealing with, else he’d realize that the FBI undoubtedly already knows who I am and has a fat file on me, including my website address. Secondly, the idiot apparently doesn’t get that the whole “buyer beware” scam is intended to scare clients, not sex workers, hence the name; of course they also want to scare whores, but indirectly. To threaten us directly is to make their lies about wanting to “save” us transparent, and they don’t want that. Thirdly, even if due to FOSTA my site’s domain name were to be seized by the feds at some point in the future (LOL at “immediately”), I would simply yawn & switch it over to the overseas domain name I’ve already prepared. In fact, just before seeing this childish wanker’s pathetic attempt to frighten me, I was completing the last step to move my actual site files to a new overseas host; I’m sure most ladies are taking similar steps to protect their professional sites. Lastly, it’s really quite pathetic that this wart seems to think that repeatedly telling me what I do for a living is some kind of insult; one wonders if he emails physicians with “You are a doctor” over & over.
It’s also possible this is the same fuckwad who texted me three days earlier from a Rhode Island number ending in 8550 (first name DeAndre, with listings on Verify Him as a psycho and harasser)**, ludicrously approaching as though he were a BDSM top and apparently expecting me to play along; he swore revenge when I humiliated him, and maybe he thinks this will accomplish it or at least make me nervous. That guy kept calling me “bitch” over and over just as this one repeatedly used “whore”, and the writing style and self-important delusions are very similar. But even if they’re different people (the two forms came from different IPs, so he was probably using a VPN and I can’t trace it to Rhode Island), the “bow to your king” dork is yet another example of the kind of loathsome vermin the government’s actions have caused to come crawling out of the woodwork. During this time a lot of sex workers are nervous & jumpy, with good reason; assholes will use that in an attempt to get off on terrorizing women. Don’t let them get to you, and even if you can’t help being frightened, don’t let them know you are or you’ll have a devil of a time getting rid of them.
*Quick visit, also known by the more vulgar term “blow & go”, is an extremely short (usually 15 minutes), very low-priced session favored by cheapskates.
**Ladies, if you think you may have been harassed by this nitwit and want his full info, email me.
Diary #409
Posted in Diary, tagged activism, advertising, blogging, Maggie in the Media, Presents on May 3, 2018| 5 Comments »
Whenever things in the demimonde go haywire, as with the recent ramping up of the US War on Whores, my own schedule gets much busier (as might be expected). Between interviews, consultations, answering questions from nervous sex workers, planning for moving this blog and my escort website offshore, joining Switter, dealing with the time-wasters & harassers these events have drawn out of the woodwork, modifying my upcoming article for the next print edition of Reason (on sale in about 3 weeks) and doing my regular paying work, I’ve also had to push myself harder to plan and write as many columns in advance as possible so I don’t have to stress about it so much while I’m in the UK with Brooke Magnanti. If you want to see me there, please let me know ASAP so we can schedule, and if you’re in the US you may want to take advantage of my “Two Out of Three” special. However, the week wasn’t all work work work; I received this lovely lilac dress and a very flattering casual top from Paddy from NY, some super-sexy black snakeskin tights from Cdk, and a very generous cash donation from a reader in the Netherlands who wanted to show his support during these dark times. Thank you all, and especially to my subscribers whose regular donations brighten my days; I couldn’t do this without y’all!
In the News (#834)
Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged A Procrustean Bed, advertising, agency denial, All Shapes and Sizes, All-Purpose Excuse, Backpage, censorship, Disaster, diversion programs, First They Came for the Hookers, genitalia, hysteria, illegal aliens, law, left-right myth, Legal Is as Legal Does, Maryland, neofeminism, New York, New Zealand, Permanent Record, porn, prohibitionist myths, racism, Rooted in Racism, Shame Shame, sporting events, Tennessee, Texas, The Peril, The War Goes On on May 2, 2018| 3 Comments »
FOSTA’s real purpose is making it easier to file lawsuits against online companies, while politicians pat themselves on the back. – Ron Wyden
A documentary glorifies the prohibitionist shitshow that is New York’s “sex trafficking court”:
…Judge Toko Serita…presides over Queens’s Human Trafficking Intervention Court…where she processes women who have been arrested on charges of prostitution…The women…are offered a choice: Instead of [being given constitutional due process]…they can [submit to]…a set number of [brainwashing] sessions. If, in six months, they have not been arrested again, the charges are dropped and the case is sealed…about 80 percent of the women take the [brainwashing] option…[less] than victims, Serita sees them first and foremost as…[objects to be processed. Filmmaker Stephanie] Wang-Breal…says…in the film’s notes: “Who am I to say she doesn’t have agency, who am I to say what she should be doing with her life?” [and yet she glorifies this grotesque denial of women’s agency anyway]…
Nobody involved in producing this mess stopped to question the court’s assumption that human beings are mere objects to be “processed”. You know, like in a food processor.
This procedure has come a long way in only three years:
Doctors in the US have performed the world’s first complete penis and scrotum transplant on a former soldier who had his genitals blown off after stepping on a hidden bomb while on tour in the Middle East. The 14-hour operation performed last month at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, was the most complex and extensive penis transplant ever attempted…The young [man]…received an entire penis, scrotum (without testicles), and partial abdominal wall from a deceased donor…It took a team of nine plastic surgeons and two urology surgeons…The surgery took place on March 26 and nearly a month on doctors seem confident of its success but will continue to monitor the patient’s recovery…
My friend Mark Bennett takes down Texas’ overbroad and mindlessly-draconian “revenge porn” law:
Mark Bennett, the Texas Tornado, took another law down for violating the First Amendment. This time, it was…the so-called “revenge porn” law. In Ex parte Jones, the 12th District Court of Appeals…held that the statute was facially unconstitutional. As has been argued from the day Mary Anne Franks began her efforts to create a criminal revenge porn statute, it clearly implicated the First Amendment’s prohibition against laws infringing on free expression, to which she merely screamed her denials and did her best to deflect by creating a fantasy interpretation of the First Amendment…The State argues…relying upon Franks’ and Danielle Citron’s “legal” arguments…that [such images fall] within a new concept of obscenity, “contextually obscene”. Except there is no such category outside of their imaginations, nor can anything be found obscene except by a jury…the court noted that the law failed to make any effort to narrow its prohibitions, which was a fundamental tenet of the Franks approach to criminalizing revenge porn lest anyone get away with it…
The hypocrisy of politicians sometimes defies belief:
Jack Johnson…became the first black heavyweight boxing champion after defeating Tommy Burns in Sydney, Australia, in 1908. Two years later, he defended his title against boxer James J. “Jim” Jeffries, who…was referred to as the “great white hope” by racist…fans who wanted him to…take back the heavyweight crown for whites…Jeffries lost the fight…[but] what racism could not do to Johnson in the boxing ring, it found other ways to accomplish. Johnson was convicted in 1913 of violating the Mann Act…the Justice Department…argued that Johnson’s relationship with a white woman was a “crime against nature”…criminalization of sex work in the US is rooted in racism, and modern campaigns do little to mask that lineage…The “white slavery” campaign of the early 1900’s…led directly to the enactment of the federal Mann Act, (a.k.a. the White Slave Traffic Act), in 1910. “[O]nce prohibition of sex work was in place,” writer Maggie McNeill has noted, “it was enforced disproportionately against poor people and ethnic minorities, especially black people, just as all prohibitionist laws are.” As Andrew Glass wrote for Politico, the first person prosecuted under the Mann Act…was Jack Johnson…That Donald Trump should look to a pardon for Johnson in the same month he signed…FOSTA…into law, is bitterly ironic…
New Zealand sex workers are furious that foreign prostitutes who come on temporary visas can advertise their services here despite it being illegal for them to work. High profile escort Lisa Lewis is one of several who have taken their complaints to Immigration New Zealand…calling for a harsher stance against migrant sex workers…She wants INZ to shift its focus from just deporting migrant sex workers to punish [advertising venues] that profit from helping the promotion of these illegal sex workers. Lewis said the increase in number of foreign prostitutes coming over has hit local sex workers in the pocket…
Currently in both Maryland and Tennessee, a criminal past — or even just being accused of a crime — often stands between people and a job. This is because many occupational licensing laws prevent ex-offenders from being able to obtain a license for the jobs they seek…these restrictions aren’t targeted at people whose criminal history relates to their desired career; instead, they can serve as blanket bans for those hoping to enter hundreds of professions including plumbing, cosmetology and interior design. By prohibiting wide swaths of people from licensure, these boards aren’t protecting health and safety — they’re just making it more likely these individuals will remain unemployed and unable to support themselves or their families…in some cases, people need only to be accused of a crime — not even convicted of it — for the board to deny them a license. Many of these bans are also permanent…In one instance in Tennessee…a woman convicted for prostitution over a decade ago learned she couldn’t become a radiation therapist…
I’m going to start using this heading for the many cases of people who lose their jobs due to a history of sex work; they currently appear under the overbroad “First They Came for the Hookers…”
If Trump truly cared about victims of human trafficking, he would put an end to his ongoing assault on immigrants. Statistics on the number of victims of human trafficking are notoriously unreliable because of widespread [ov]erreporting…Since Trump assumed the presidency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has used the fight against human trafficking as justification for its crackdown on undocumented immigrants. ICE arrests have surged by more than 40 percent…[which] has aggravated the fear of coming forward among undocumented victims of human trafficking, undermining the U.S. government’s own efforts to tackle the problem…
In other words, “Trump’s crackdown on migration is interfering with existing attempts to prevent migration”.
Here’s another article about FOSTA, which despite many good points expended so much effort in licking prohibitionist arseholes it nearly made me vomit. Since there are plenty of good articles which denounce censorship and promote human rights without sucking the dick of power, there’s not a lot of reason to bother with this one; however, if you feel compelled you’ll see this “journalist” ceding ground to prohibitionists and otherwise making ignorant, unhelpful statements all over the place. It starts in the lede, which proclaims that FOSTA was “a rare moment of bipartisan agreement”, a deeply stupid statements which ignores that the two main US parties have never disagreed on prohibition as a principle at any point in the past century, and that literally every single anti-sex work bill of the past two decades has had nearly-unanimous bipartisan support. The article misstates the case against Backpage, repeats prohibitionist lies, characterizes third parties as “pimps & traffickers”, downplays the breadth of opposition to internet censorship with phrases like “some argue”, and even claims that “FOSTA was pitched with a very specific (and noble) goal in mind”; apparently author Kate Knibbs believes that censorship, denial of human rights, and negating the agency and consent of half a million women are “noble”. I certainly don’t.
Before New Zealand Cracker – a classifieds website used by sex workers – was shut down by the FBI, Wellington woman Sarah (not her real name) says she received at least five enquiries from clients each day. Now, she is lucky to receive two a week through other advertising platforms. “It has totally ruined our lives”…the FBI seiz[ure of]…Backpage.com…[has produced] a global and profound disruption of the sex work industry, including in countries like New Zealand, where prostitution is legal. New Zealand Cracker was one of the many subsidiary sites Backpage.com hosted around the world. For more than a decade it was at the heart of New Zealand’s sex work industry – offering businesses and sex workers a cheap, effective way of connecting with clients. Its closure has, without warning, taken livelihoods away, leaving workers without the resources to operate their businesses or, in some cases, survive…
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