Endings to be useful must be inconclusive. – Samuel R. Delany
It’s a good thing that this year wasn’t nearly as hard for me personally as the past three were, because it has been absolutely catastrophic for sex workers as a group. And since we’re the canaries in the civil liberties coal mine, that presages bad times on the horizon for everyone, especially (but not limited to) marginalized communities, who always suffer most when government declares war on human rights. When FOSTA was enacted and a full-scale attack on Backpage was launched back in the spring, whores and our allies warned the rest of y’all that it was only the beginning of an all-out assault on the internet, which politicians in the US and Europe have been trying to bring under government control for a quarter-century now. And if FOSTA isn’t reversed, that assault will succeed; its censorship provisions have already frightened dozens of web platforms into shutting down, and those which haven’t are either self-lobotomizing or attempting to turn their sites into massive walled gardens, like AOL writ large across what was once a free and open internet. It’s inevitable that new platforms will appear in countries which are interested in neither US sex hysteria nor European attempts to police human emotions, suppress speech and enrich corporate copyright holders, but in the meantime things may get a lot worse before they get better. So I suggest you enjoy your parties tonight and resolve to persevere in the coming year, because I don’t think it’s going to be very much fun for anybody.
A Michigan woman says hundreds of men solicited her for sex within just a couple days…because her number ended up on an escort [advertising] website…Her phone holds nearly 300 texts and some voicemails from men looking for attention. Susan said she didn’t even know most of the sexual lingo in the texts…one of the texts referenced a website called “Skip the Games”…the family emailed the site administrator numerous times and asked them to take the number down. They had no success [until they copied a TV station in]…on an email…
The Providence [Rhode Island] Board of Licenses revoked the [Foxy Lady] strip club’s licenses [less than a week before Christmas because] Providence Police arrested three dancers at the club last week [for refusing to give pigs sex]…at least 200…employees are suddenly out of work…Mayor Jorge Elorza [slandered] the club [claiming it was] running a “full-on prostitution ring”. The attorney for the club, Fausto Anguilla, has [pointed out that] police…never proved that sex was occurring inside the club’s private rooms. Several dancers…[told reporters] management at the club is strict with its no-prostitution rules, and cut ties with dancers who were caught having sex in the private rooms…
A [privately-owned prison for] juvenile [prisoners]…in northern Minnesota is accused of failing to stop the sexual abuse of minors in its care, according to two federal lawsuits…[which] detail two separate [coercive] sexual relationships between teenage girls and employees dating back to 2014, both resulting in criminal convictions…
“LEGAL ‘NYMPH’,” blared the front page of [the December 13th] Toronto Sun. “Law student faces good character hearing over double life as an escort.” Except — as the story about prospective lawyer Nadia Guo made clear near its top — what the headline described was not the case at all…No one complained about her escort job. Instead, the complaints made to the Law Society of Ontario concerned Guo’s conduct as an articling student in the latter half of 2015…the piece by courts reporter Sam Pazzano…[also revealed her stage name], “Dawn Lee”…the Sun ran a correction to its front-page headline [the next day]…But Toronto Star columnist Rosie DiManno ran her own piece …that led with Guo’s sex work, printed her work name in its first sentence, and expressed apparent surprise and disappointment that the Law Society chose not to [persecute] her…for [doing work to pay for school]…
A federal jury in St. Paul has convicted all five people charged with conspiring to traffic hundreds of Thai women for sex…nearly three dozen other [people were charged]…all but five [made] plea…[bargains]…Prosecutors said victims, some of whom testified during the trial, were misled as to how much they truly owed and were threatened if they tried to leave the business…U.S. Attorney Erica MacDonald described the case as one of the largest trafficking networks ever dismantled…
I’d be a lot more inclined to believe there was serious exploitation here if we hadn’t heard all this before, especially the practically-impossible claims of client numbers. Remember, migrant sex workers are far less likely to be deported if the agree to sing the state’s song, so there’s no real way to know how much of this is true and how much hype.
…Congress…authorized a [bipartisan] national [crusade to] arrest…sex [workers’ clients] and approved the use of secret wiretaps in misdemeanor prostitution cases…as part of the massive “Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act“…through a secret vote of the sort civil libertarians have long opposed…based on the false idea that customers of…adult sex workers [magically] drive demand for minors. All state and local cops, prosecutors, and judges are to be [encouraged]…to [steal the] asset[s of sex workers and clients]…In addition, Congress “clarif[ies] that commercial sexual exploitation is a form of gender-based violence,” whatever that means…The House…passed the bill via “voice vote,” a process under which there’s neither a record of how members voted, whether they were present for a vote, nor how many total members actually voted…One provision essentially creates a new federal crime initiative by directing resources and money to fight “sextortion”…
Jessica, a 23-year-old transgender woman living in Queens…[was arrested on] July 8…and charged…with “loitering for the purpose of engaging in a prostitution act”…[the “evidence” cops listed was that she] was wearing “a mini skirt and a blouse which showed cleavage”…Loitering arrests increased more than 180 percent between January and October…last year…More than half of the…arrests occurred in Queens, where attorneys say they’re concentrated in…immigrant-heavy neighborhoods…This increase in loitering arrests follows a class action lawsuit backed by the Legal Aid Society of New York that challenges the constitutionality of New York’s law on loitering for the purposes of prostitution…recent loitering complaints noted that defendants were wearing “black cowboy boots” and “light blue short [sic], a red tank top and tan sandals”…
A new unit that San Francisco police created to [harass sex workers]…is facing opposition from advocates…the Sex Workers Abatement Unit…has resulted in an uptick in the number of sex workers who have been arrested in the Mission…[and reinforces] a hostile environment where “women are forced into more isolated, unfamiliar areas where attacks are more likely…sex workers who are victims of violence are intimidated and running from police,” [Rachel] West [of US PROS] said. West argued that the unit undermines a police policy from last December that [supposedly] prevents sex workers who are the victims of certain crimes from being arrested for performing sex work. The policy [gives lip service to the fact] that “the criminalization of sex work is one of the primary barriers to reporting violence to law enforcement”…
I’ve spoken out against these hollow “policies” before; they are not binding and can be reversed as easily as they were granted. They’re not a serious effort to respond to sex workers’ concerns; they’re just meant to shut us up.
Mariatu was 15 years old when her widowed mother died and she ended up sleeping rough on the streets of Freetown where she fell into commercial sex work. Not long after, she was arrested for “loitering” and, unable to pay a police bribe, spent six months in an adult jail. Now 22, she is desperate to escape a life marked by suffering, violence and exploitation and is appealing to the state to provide more support to Sierra Leone’s sex workers who are stigmatised by society and suffer unfair treatment at the hands of the legal system. She spoke to the Guardian before the online launch of a documentary to mark the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers which…examines their treatment by [cops]…who…exploit…them for sex and money…
Last Saturday I drove out to Sunset for Christmas, and didn’t return until early Wednesday evening; normally I don’t like doing things on Boxing Day, but Grace and Chekhov had some things to do starting early yesterday so I didn’t want to get in their way. It was a lovely, relaxing holiday; on Sunday evening we got blissfully high and just lay around talking and listening to Christmas music, then on Monday I cleaned up the house while the others went to town for last-minute supplies. We had several guests for Christmas dinner, and one brought some lovely spiced rum infused with THC (which delivered quite a kick when added to eggnog and I will definitely be asking for more when this bottle is done). My mood was so positive it wasn’t even disrupted by having to chase a certain naughty pony who found a weak spot in the fence and decided to make it her personal escape hatch (the spot was patched and I’ve asked Chekhov to do a more permanent repair this week). Grace is also about to start on the floor repair, and after that the next project is building bookshelves so my collection can finally be properly displayed for the first time since we left New Orleans. Sunset isn’t my dream home, and we still have a lot of work to do before I can really be proud of it. But it’s all mine with nothing owed, and it’s a cozy place I can retreat to as often as I like. And that’s worth more than all the silly dreams I’ve ever wasted tears over.
As tourists shopped for Christmas gifts in the brightly lit Westlake Center, sex worker and performance artist Vee Chattie sat half-naked in the rain on a towel…[covered in] fake blood…poured…from a vessel marked “FOSTA-SESTA“…A few bicycle cops rode up to make sure they weren’t actually bleeding. A passerby asked if they were okay. Another stopped by to voice his agreement…these Seattleites showed more human concern for Chattie than many show for sex workers on a regular basis. It was effective performance art…
…As a Black trans woman I see progress, but not that much…we have a government fighting against our very existence…Are we gonna go back to the Stonewall days where you need to have on two male articles [of clothing]?…I will never go back to those times, I’m sorry. When I had to be Eddie Morales, it was for survival. When I had to do sex work, it was definitely survival. Because even working a part-time job for a non-profit where I’m saving lives was not paying me enough to sustain in life…And we’re still seeing that today in not-for-profits. We’re being tokenized…We can systematically turn people off when we let a government ordain what femininity looks like, what women’s rights looks like, what protection looks like…
Rape and sodomy charges against the son of Franklin County Sheriff Pat Melton were dismissed by a…grand jury…Patrick Melton…[raped the drunk] victim on July 7 at his residence on University Avenue in Lexington [Kentucky]…The woman…tried to squirm, push and kick Melton…[and] multiple witnesses confirmed the victim’s statements that she was intoxicated and passed out prior to the [rape]…
…the “Nordic Model”…is often touted as a compromise between the criminalization or decriminalization of sex work, and one that decreases prosecution against sex workers—but, like all criminalization approaches to the regulation of sex work, the Nordic Model is underpinned by a moralistic framing of sex work that is inherently harmful, to sex workers and to society at-large…it applies an oversimplified macro-economic framing of supply and demand to an industry that consists of fundamentally discrete, personal and often isolated or irregular interactions. December 17 is the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers—and we’re demanding an end to “End Demand”. Here are three reasons why…
More than half of youths involved in [what is now labeled] child prostitution in Japan’s three biggest metropolitan areas last year had shown no signs of delinquency, attending schools normally and having never had criminal records, a survey shows. The finding suggests it has been increasingly difficult for parents and teachers to detect a change in the attitude of juveniles, the National Police Agency said…[yet still insisted on describing them as]…victimized…[even though] most…were involved in [sex work]…for financial reasons, with 84.5 percent saying they wanted “money for leisure and other activities,” while 5.7 percent and 2.6 percent pointed to “living expenses” and “tuition,” respectively. Other reasons included “out of curiosity” and “invited by friends”…
“Compensated dating” has existed in Japan for decades, but Japanese “authorities” have only started imposing a “crime and victimization” narrative on the activity within this decade.
Facebook gave more than 150 companies, including Microsoft, Netflix, Spotify, Amazon, and Yahoo, unprecedented access to users’ personal data…[the] New York Times…obtained hundreds of pages of Facebook documents, generated in 2017, that show that the social network considered these companies business partners and effectively exempted them from its privacy rules. Facebook allowed Microsoft’s search engine Bing to see the names of nearly all users’ friends without their consent, and allowed Spotify, Netflix, and the Royal Bank of Canada to read, write, and delete users’ private messages, and see participants on a thread. It also allowed Amazon to get users’ names and contact information through their friends, let Apple access users’ Facebook contacts and calendars even if users had disabled data sharing, and let Yahoo view streams of friends’ posts “as recently as this summer,” despite publicly claiming it had stopped sharing such information a year ago…
The article then goes on to list the denials & prevarications of Facebook and many of its “partners”.
[Prohibitionist profiteer] Bob Rodgers [said] “The Super Bowl doesn’t cause sex trafficking…Conferences and conventions, like so many we have in Atlanta, don’t cause sex trafficking. It is already occurring in every metro Atlanta county and it will still be happening when the Super Bowl leaves”…
London cops have been slammed for using unmarked vans to test controversial and inaccurate automated facial recognition technology on Christmas shoppers…in…Soho, Piccadilly Circus, and Leicester Square…the tech will be attached to vans and run for eight hours on each day…In May, a Freedom of Information request from Big Brother Watch showed the Met’s facial recog had a 98 per cent false positive rate…a subsequent request found that 100 per cent of the so-called matches since May have been incorrect. A recent report from Cardiff University questioned the technology’s abilities in low light and crowds – which doesn’t bode well for a trial in some of the busiest streets in London just days before the winter solstice…
According to Tumblr, its new adult content bandoesn’t effect [sic] images of “female-presenting nipples” that involve medical situations, are related to political speech, or appear in artwork. Tumblr itself, however, apparently can’t come up with four examples of [nipple pictures]…its porn filter actually allows…Tumblr’s staff account published a message aimed at “clarify[ing]” the new policy…[including] a gif providing several examples of nudity that is “still permitted within our policy”…but…when Gizmodo posted the gif to Tumblr ourselves, it was immediately flagged as a potential violation and hidden by the…filter. When the images…were uploaded individually, two of the four examples…were similarly flagged and hidden…In recent days, the platform has allegedly flagged a picture of a finger, historical bus photos, and Great British Bake-Off gifs…
In 2002, a major report predicted an AIDS catastrophe in India. The country would have 20-25m…cases by 2010…But 2010 came and went…That victory – India’s biggest public health achievement – has remained uncelebrated…[because] the people…[who] were crucial in guiding India away from its seemingly inescapable destiny [were] the country’s sex workers…Ashok Alexander spent a decade at the helm of [Avahan,] the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s campaign against HIV. In his book, A Stranger Truth: Lessons in Love, Leadership and Courage from India’s Sex Workers, he says the miracle would never have happened without [them]…Avahan opened drop-in centres where…[sex workers] could unwind, have a hot shower and rest on a mattress on the floor. There was also the chance to be checked for sexually transmitted infection by a doctor without fear of being identified and stigmatised. For Avahan, the centres were a way of collecting the women in one place to be able to give them the information, support and condoms they needed…Avahan…had a presence in 550 towns in just two years; within three, it had become the world’s largest privately sponsored HIV prevention programme…The women knew what was best for them. All Alexander had to do, as he says, was tap into “the strength inherent in even the most marginalised of people if they are enabled to come together in a common cause”…
A murdered escort known as a party girl by her “posh friends” told them she was an IT consultant to cover up her double life as a sex worker…Christina Abbotts…charged $2,500 [a night]…She was beaten around the head 13 times in a brutal attack and strangled, allegedly by a banker who was a regular customer…Zahid Naseem…is accused of the 29-year-old’s murder, at around midnight on her birthday…she…[used] the [stage name] Tilly Pexton…
$2500 for an overnight is a fairly typical rate for “high end” escorts; this detail is not noteworthy in any way. It’s only purpose is to appeal to prurience.
A former high school athletic trainer in Montana accused of sexually assaulting up to 100 boys during a nearly 30-year span has been arrested on multiple counts of child pornography possession…James Eric Jensen…78…groomed and sexually assaulted up to 100 male students, prompting an admission of guilt…after at least 18 victims were identified…Jensen…promised to increase the physical prowess of the teen athletes as young as 14 with a training regimen that he dubbed “The Program” and included routine clinical exams that escalated to massages to oral sex and digital anal penetration…the…incidents…occurred outside the statute of limitations…[but] Jensen [also] had images of child pornography…[which] were discovered after a housekeeper at a retirement community…where Jensen lived told police she saw images of nude boys on his computer…
…Hertz rental cars [has entered a]…partnership with Clear, the biometric face and fingerprint scanning company you’ve seen at airport security checkpoints…At the…Atlanta International Airport this month, you can check out and drive off in your rental car with just a scan of your face (or a fingerprint reading)…if you’re a Gold Plus Rewards program member who’s signed up for Clear…The Fast Lane service will expand to 40 other airport rental locations in the next six months…The rental car scans come less than a week after Microsoft president Brad Smith warned about the dangers of facial recognition tech…government misuse…stem[s] from this convenience. Granted, the Hertz use-case is fairly harmless. But that’s how it always starts…
…the Fourth International Congress of Love and Sex With Robots had the rug pulled out from under it when co-conference Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology abruptly canceled its own event in what it [hilariously and self-importantly] called “a tragic moment in the history of human civilization”…Even before its demise, Love and Sex With Robots was shaping up to be something less than a remarkable affair. The conference appears to have been a nonstarter going back months. Springer Nature pulled the plug on the planned publication of the conference proceedings when it learned back in July that only about 10 papers had been submitted for the planned two-day conference…As of last week, only five academic papers appeared on the schedule, including one paper by Adrian David Cheok in which he apparently asked 15 people if they would like to have sex with a robot…
…the Electronic Frontier Foundation…filed hundreds of Freedom of Information Act…requests…[to investigate] Vigilant Solutions, the largest private company selling [Automated License Plate Reader] technology and data…173 entities (largely police departments and sheriff’s offices, but also some federal agencies) in 23 states scanned a total of 2.5 billion license plates in 2016 and 2017…99.5 percent of scans belonged to cars that weren’t associated with crimes…on average, each agency was directly sharing this information with 160 other jurisdictions at various levels of government…Vigilant…[also] sells access to this dataset to an undisclosed list of entities. What that means is even if your plates were shot in Georgia, your location data may be accessible to cops in say, Illinois. Or it may be bought by private companies or Immigration and Customs Enforcement…
(ICE) announced…that federal authorities have arrested 170 immigrants who came forward to sponsor migrant children in government custody. This is the result of a new, fun rule the Department of Homeland Security put into effect…[which] allows immigration authorities to examine the criminal background and legal status of anyone who attempts to sponsor the unaccompanied minors — usually parents or close relatives already in the country. They can even check the papers of any other adults living in their home…It’s a masterclass in evil: Use defenseless children as bait to lure immigrants to the authorities…109 of the immigrants arrested had no criminal record. The remaining 61 had criminal records, but ICE wouldn’t specify [whether they were]…violent offenses…
The article is marred by the fact that author Stephen Robinson, who apparently opposes locking people in cages for things that aren’t violent crimes, praises scumbag prohibitionist Kamala Harris…whose entire career is based on locking people in cages for things that aren’t violent crimes and then using them for slave labor.
Google…made a pretty clear statement about how its facial recognition technology will and won’t be used for the time being…civil rights groups as well as its own investors and employees have urged [Amazon] to stop providing its facial recognition technology to police…
…APROSEX falls somewhere between a social network, support group, and day-care system. The women check in on one another to make sure they’ve reached and left their dates safely, take turns watching each other’s children during night shifts, and meet…to vent about work and clients. APROSEX counts about 150 members…Two years ago, the women of APROSEX decided it was time to unionize. Once they were a legal entity, they’d have a fighting chance to demand basic workers’ rights and challenge the criminal code. Under a 2015 public-safety law—colloquially known as the “gag law” and widely considered draconian—sex workers can be fined from €600 to €10,400 (roughly $680 to $11,800) for committing “obscene acts” or, more vaguely, for “disobeying authority” in public spaces close to places frequented by minors…Last year, law enforcement reported an average of 1.3 women per day for prostitution, 60 percent of whom were fined…
Six decades after his heyday, Tom Lehrer remains as funny and topical as ever, as evidenced by his “Christmas Carol” from 1959. The links above the video were provided by Emma Evans, Dave Krueger, Jesse Walker, Jillian Keenan, Jesse Walker again, and Tim Cushing, in that order.
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