It always amuses me to hear pompous folk making disparaging remarks about cynicism. They call it “sad” or “foolish” or even “stupid”, demonstrating that they have absolutely no idea of what they’re talking about and are afraid to admit the truth about the world. In truth, there is absolutely no conflict between cynicism and idealism, and if someone portrays them as opposites they’re merely demonstrating their inability to separate the physical realm from the spiritual. If you’ve been reading my work for a while you may have noticed that despite my dyed-in-the-wool cynicism, I am quite idealistic. This does not mean I swing back and forth between the two, nor that my cynicism results from “disappointed idealism”; I learned to see the world as it is, rather than as I would like it to be, around the time I stopped believing in Santa Claus. What it means is that I recognize the actual meaning of the word “ideal”, and understand that it’s the people who expect the world to conform to their own personal view of morality who are the sad, foolish, naive ones. Though I expend tremendous effort to do what is right, and to speak truth to power, and to fight the evils which seek to reduce all individual souls to cogs in the machine of “society”, I labor under no illusion that my efforts will change the world in any permanent fashion; even if a culture arose which accepted all that I believe as sacred truth, that culture would be as mortal as any other and would eventually be replaced by another awful one. The secret to balancing realism and idealism is understanding that morality is independent of results or even recognition. I know when I die, tyrants and other control freaks will make an effort to bury my writing & activism along with my ashes and reduce me to “dead whore”. And even if that effort succeeds, it won’t matter because I don’t do what I do for recognition or reward or even the belief that I can make the world a better place; I do it simply because it is right. Even if mortals forget what I stood for, the gods will remember. And even after they forget, the fact will still remain as an infinitesimal but beautiful part of the fabric of time, long after the earth and sun are nothing but scattered debris recycled into other worlds.
Archive for January, 2019
Its Own Reward
Posted in Perception, Philosophy, tagged ethics, psychology on January 11, 2019| 7 Comments »
Targeted
Posted in Diary, Perception, tagged censorship, Twitter on January 10, 2019| 12 Comments »
When I woke up Tuesday morning and checked my email, I found this ridiculous message from Twitter; it appears some Trumpist got his little fee-fees hurt by this comment and so tattled to Twitter, which responded in bizarrely disproportionate fashion by locking my account for a WEEK. In case you’re wondering what this message (which you’ll note was a reply, not a general-audience tweet) is about, it was in reply to someone who stated that the federal employees forced to work without pay due to the so-called “shutdown” should go on strike. As I told Elizabeth Nolan Brown, “‘Targeted harassment’ of a government building of the most powerful Empire on Earth?…I had no idea I was so formidable.” Despite the absurdity of the situation, it may be a harbinger of what sex workers have been worried about since FOSTA passed early last spring: more eagerly-censorious companies like Facebook have been quick to throw sex workers under the bus, leaving Twitter as the last of the big social media outfits to tolerate us; this may be a sign that those days are coming to an end, and we may soon be purged from there as we have been from every other major social media platform. I’ll be back tweeting as normal Tuesday morning, but in the meantime I’ve established a backup account to tweet from (and to build up just in case Twitter starts purging sex worker accounts), and I’d appreciate it if those of y’all who are on Twitter would follow me there as well.
Diary #445
Posted in Diary, tagged blogging, The Essential Maggie McNeill, The War on Whores on January 9, 2019| 6 Comments »
Christmas is over and carnival has begun, which means my nails have gone from red to purple and my wardrobe from autumn & Yuletide to late winter colors (and once February arrives, that even includes pink). Yeah, I’m pretty persnickety about seasonal colors; as a kid in New Orleans I always wished for seasons, and now that I have them I intend to observe them. On a different subject, we’re just about done with the editing of my documentary, The War On Whores; we’re premiering it at this year’s SASS (less than two months away!) and then we’ll be opening up for screenings. So if you have a group which might like to sponsor a screening in your city, you might want to start thinking about that. And I might want to start thinking about getting off my derriere and putting the last touches on The Essential Maggie McNeill, which I’ve shamefully neglected since September for no reason I can adequately explain to my own satisfaction. Such is the life of a neuroatypical writer sans externally-imposed deadlines; I’m trying to learn not to beat myself up about it.
In the News (#902)
Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged activism, Backwards into the Future, California, censorship, China, Disaster, diversion programs, Divided We Fall, Gorged With Meaning, If Men Were Angels, Imaginary Victims, internet, Israel, It Looks Good On Paper, LGBT rights, Macedonia, Ohio, porn, pragmatism, prisons, rape, shame, Shift in the Wind, Swedish model, The Course of a Disease, The Mote and the Beam, underage, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers, When Ambulance-Chasers Run the Hospitals on January 8, 2019| Leave a Comment »
All the excitement and hand wringing about [sex robots] was…pointless because [they] just don’t exist. – Mark Hay
“Youth pastors” are as bad as cops:
The head pastor of a Methodist congregation in Orange County [California]…was charged…with two counts of molesting a girl under 14 years old…John Rodgers McFarland…was arrested…Dec. 18…San Diego County prosecutors filed two counts of lewd acts on a child…stem[ming] from incidents in 2012 and 2013…Police in Fountain Valley, where McFarland worked as a pastor at a Methodist church for 26 years, said there is “evidence that McFarland abused other victims during his time as a pastor in Fountain Valley and Huntington Beach”…He was the head pastor from 1988 to 2014 at Fountain Valley United Methodist Church, and a pastor at Surf City Church in Huntington Beach from 2009 to 2014…McFarland was also the youth pastor at San Dieguito United Methodist Church in Encinitas from 1978 to 1981…
Backwards into the Future (#425)
I wonder how long it will be before the US abandons “re-education” for sex workers and clients?
China looks set to abolish a controversial system that lets police arbitrarily detain sex workers and their clients for up to two years without trial for “compulsory education”. The “detention and re-education for those involved in prostitution” program, which has existed for 27 years, was recommended for abolition…by the Legislative Affairs Commission…scholars, legal practitioners and members of the public…have long lobbied for the change on the grounds such administrative detention is unjust, extrajudicial and particularly punitive. Sex work will remain punishable …by a penalty of up to 15 days’ detention. The parallel custody and education system [h]as…[since] 1991…authorized police to force sex workers into various forms of long-term “education” which included morality lessons, written confessions, forced labor and other humiliating activities designed to “remove evil habits”…
More and more, the media in many countries are siding with sex workers:
On December 17th, sex workers…and…activists from Macedonia held the 11th annual “Red Umbrella March” in Skopje…The Macedonian march was organized by STAR-STAR, the first sex workers collective in the Balkans…participants demand changes to in the Criminal Code which has remained unchanged for three decades since the fall of Communism…with exception to increasing penalties for sex workers…
Why does Gay, Inc never speak up for sex worker rights until it’s too late?
…a darkening wave of internet censorship…started when Congress passed the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) in March…Long before these laws were passed though, sex workers and advocates spoke out against them, [explaining] that their terms were vague and overreaching and would…decimate the digital platforms that have specifically provided a space for workers to meet, vet clients, and engage in consensual business in an online environment far safer than working on the street…The sex workers’ fears did materialize. Craigslist immediately deleted its Personals section…and Backpage…was seized by the FBI. Multiple sex work forums disappeared immediately…harming and isolating queer people…Over the past few months alone Recon, a fetish dating site for gay men, saw their Youtube temporarily suspended…Naked Boys Reading saw their Facebook page temporarily banned…In October, Facebook was revealed to be blocking many LGBTQ+ ads as part of its new advertising policy…Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, has also appeared to be censoring the queer community with algorithms that, intentionally or otherwise, flag queer content at a higher rate than non-queer content…
I wish writers would stop these pandering claims that censorship attempts are “well-intentioned”:
…a string of civil lawsuits [has] intended to pin liability on online platforms for allegedly providing material support to terrorists. Several federal trial courts dismissed such suits [last] year, but some of these cases are on appeal and plaintiffs have filed several new ones. If these suits are successful…platforms would have little choice to become much more restrictive in what sorts of speech they allow…these cases…threaten the availability of open online forums and Internet users’ ability to access information. That’s why EFF filed legal briefs in 2018 asking two different federal appellate courts to dismiss material support cases against social media platforms…So far, courts have been quick to toss out these material support lawsuits…As well-intentioned as these cases are, they pose a threat to…online communities…[they] threaten Internet users’ and the platforms’ First Amendment rights…[and] jeopardize one of the Internet’s most important laws, Section 230…
Censorship and prohibition are not, and by their very nature cannot be, “well-intentioned”. They are attempts to control other people’s minds, bodies and lives and are thus intrinsically evil no matter how they’re excused by authoritarians.
It’s good to see so many journalists recognizing how dangerous the War on Whores has become. This Forbes article on “The 9 Most Important Sex Trends Of 2018” includes the following:
…FOSTA-SESTA…opens internet platforms to liability for…user-generated content, creating a major legal risk for sites used to facilitate sex work…[and] adds to the popular, yet false, conflation of sex work with sex trafficking…The law has led to the shutdown of a number sites, groups, and forums sex workers used to facilitate their operations…[and] share safety information…and…has also…accelerated a wave of sexual censorship online…FOSTA-SESTA “is causing major havoc,” argues [sexologist Jill] McDevitt, for “anyone who uses the internet to read, research, or express themselves sexually in any way”…[experts] are worried that Twitter, the last major bastion of sexual speech online, may fall to this wave of censorship in the new year…
As I’ve pointed out many times, “safe harbor” laws only protect “perfect victims”, not real ones:
The Summit County Juvenile Court in Ohio didn’t follow the law when it allowed a 15-year-old girl who was a human trafficking victim to be tried as an adult in the robbery and murder of the man who trafficked her, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled…The high court, however, upheld the girl’s conviction and sentence to prison for the rest of her life…[claiming] Alexis Martin couldn’t prove that the judge’s decision to bind her over to adult court would have changed if the juvenile court had [actually followed the “safe harbor” law as it was required to do]…
Universities must stop ignoring the plight of a growing number of students turning to sex work and should start offering non-judgemental support, campaigners demand. Students and experts have accused institutions of “simply burying their heads in the sand” over the issue…many universities are…actively blocking groups trying to support students involved in sex work. In one case a student…sex work[er] was evicted from her home and threatened with expulsion by her university…The English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP)…have fought a number of cases recently where universities have threatened to throw out students if they do not stop doing sex work…
The Course of a Disease (#884)
Israeli prohibitionists are trying to criminalize all sex work:
The Knesset approved the first reading of a bill limiting the Israeli access to…sites presenting adult-related materials…the bill demands web-service providers to send a message to house-holds with internet access asking if they wish to have such sites blocked or not…Should they decline the offer they will be asked to provide personal information [which will then be shared with the government] proving that they are adults and are the ones paying for the service…The Knesset also approved adopting the Nordic Model…which…is…a state intervention on people’s right’s and bodies as well as a criminaliz[ation of] human activity that will be very hard to prevent…
Smartass Replies To Dumbass Texts
Posted in Miscellaneous, tagged advertising, bad customers on January 7, 2019| 3 Comments »
Due to last year’s upheaval in escort advertising, the number of dumb, no-useful-information texts I receive has expanded dramatically; some of them are creepy and abusive, while others are just ridiculous time-wasters. But since yesterday was the beginning of carnival season, I thought it might amuse y’all to see some of the recent replies I’ve given to such texts. I’m presenting them without direct context, but I’m sure you can figure out what kind of question or statement many of these were in reply to. Please understand that none of these guys made even the most minimal good-faith effort to approach me as one would approach a professional whose services one wished to engage, and also that the ones containing a time reference were answered the following morning.
Strange, but this does not look like screening information. It’s not your name, it’s not your references, it’s not your email address, it’s not your occupation. So I’m not sure what it’s doing there.
If you can’t be bothered to read the website, I can’t be bothered to see you.
Yes, of course it’s me. Who else would it be?
Do you see a price for half an hour on my website?
Try rubbing it on your own.
The answer is going to keep being “no”.
Why have you sent me a picture of a dead fish?
I suggest you learn some manners before attempting to contact women.
Don’t even bother looking at my website, because I’m not going to see you.
Wow, you’re even stupider than I had at first imagined.
Then obviously you know how to proceed.
Not until you learn to read.
If you have to ask that question, this is probably not the pastime for you.
In other words, you’re a time-waster and wanted to get phone time with me without paying.
You should expect that I’m an escort, as advertised.
The idea that there are many “just like me” out there is exactly the reason I’m not seeing you.
I make plenty of money without dealing with morons like you.
If you won’t follow my simple requests when you’re trying to get to see me, there’s no way you will respect my boundaries in person.
You’re kidding, right?
You are clearly a hasty idiot and I don’t see hasty idiots.
Do you honestly think cops can’t say that?
I suggest you go watch some porn instead.
“What’s up” is all on my website.
If that is the first question you ask a lady, I have no interest in seeing you.
Sorry, I have no time for rude assholes who think that they can circumvent my procedures.
I do not “hang out”, and if I did it certainly wouldn’t be at 5:30 in the morning.
Go away. Get your wanking material somewhere else.
You don’t get to answer my question with a question.
I’m never “free”, and certainly not at 3:30 in the morning.
The predictability of morons like you is fascinating.
Dude, seriously? Do you think I don’t have your number saved? Get lost.
Are you seriously asking me that question?
You sound like you are trying to pick up some amateur at a bar.
I don’t care what you look like or how hard you are.
You did not answer my question. That does not speak well of you.
I should think my answer is self-evident.
None of this is information that I need for screening. Please consult my website.
Sure, you can send me 80 via cash app and I will insult you for being a stupid cheapskate.
Yes, of course I’m a whore. But you already knew that and so did I, so what was the point of saying it, Captain Obvious?
What is that, your age or your IQ?
I told you to get lost. Scram. Vamoose. Go play with yourself.
I’m not even going to ask you why you texted me in the first place, because I’m sure the answer will be stupid.
Little Christmas 2019
Posted in Holidays, tagged carnival, holidays on January 6, 2019| 1 Comment »
If you don’t understand why I post a picture of a sexy witch on this occasion, I suggest you consult my column from four years ago today, which also (not by coincidence) contains links to the columns for the previous four years. That should give you all the information you need to understand why I’m wishing some of my readers a Merry Christmas, some a Good Epiphany and others a Happy King Day, and welcoming all of you to the Carnival season!
Links #444
Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged animals, cops, Georgia, hotels, Mississippi, Never Call the Cops, Ohio, Oregon, pregnancy, prisons, racism, Stop faking!, Texas, Things We Choose To Do Together, video on January 5, 2019| Leave a Comment »
The medical examiner recorded over 59 entry wounds into Mr. Robinson’s body. – Paul Howard
I know you’ve probably asked yourself many times, “What songs go through Maggie’s head when she’s really stoned on weed and she hasn’t started any other music yet?” Well, wonder no more, because this one came into my brain on the evening of Christmas day. The links above it were provided by Elizabeth N. Brown, Tim Cushing, Mike Siegel, Christian Britschgi, Tushy Galore, and Tim Cushing again, in that order.
- Stop faking!
- Phoning Mom while black.
- I hate it when this happens.
- Government is just a word for the things we choose to do together.
- Cop rewarded with 2-week vacation for shooting 2 people while drunk.
- Crime: accused of assault. Penalty: summary execution by firing squad.
From the Archives
- If there’s a Hell, those who pimp whores’ corpses are going to the bottom.
- Despite a good start, this is a typical “whores are mindless victims” mess.
- The government’s excuse for flushing the remains of the 4th Amendment.
- She has “big chunks of…memory gone”, so she filled the spaces with lies.
- Empowering cops to indefinitely detain underage whores for “protection”.
- How many kids need to be sacrificed to this obscenity before it’s enough?
- Pathetic “sex trafficking” fetishists recycle a failed propaganda campaign.
- Every attack on the edifice of criminalization helps to hasten its collapse.
- Scumbags profiting from sex workers by promoting harmful lies in India.
- It’s hilarious watching cops try to regain control of runaway moral panic.
- At least this new version doesn’t look as ridiculous as the prototype did.
- Do they think everyone in the shelter will be contaminated by sex rays?
- Another example of how people’s memories can be rewritten by others.
- Let’s hope Snopes will start doing more to debunk “sex trafficking” lies.
- It’s both fascinating and horrifying to watch a culture lobotomize itself.
- Laura Agustín’s new novel dramatizes the problems faced by migrants.
- Prohibitionist seems to understand that going after websites is asinine.
- Cops, Darwin, decay, lost cities, tarot cards, Matthew Hopkins & more.
- This is a supposedly rational adult with power to inflict violence at will.
- Whores in the Global South are much better at activism than US ones.
- Liz Brown presents her picks for the best sex work writing of the year.
- Can the “anti-pimp personal hygiene product” trope get any stupider?
- Can you imagine US feminists criticizing a cop’s anti-whore fantasies?
- Another attempt to censor the internet, from an unfamiliar direction.
- A sow spins tragedy-porn for her audience’s masturbatory pleasure.
- Don’t take Uber unless you actually want to be “rescued” into jail.
- $750,000, no strings, to spread propaganda & infantilize women.
- Public funds for anti-whore hate groups will soon start to dry up.
- Cops, copyright, psychopathology, dominoes and much more.
- Sex workers are subhuman so “teen hooker” is good enough.
- More evidence that “free” pussy is the most expensive kind.
- I hope this rapist scum is both bankrupted and imprisoned.
- Immigration raids cloaked under the pretense of “rescue”.
- Previous columns for New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.
- It’s good to see a few realistic movies about sex workers.
- Better headline: “Most moronic & childish sentence ever”.
- This is a man who claims he wants to “protect” women.
- Another exercise in cop-fellation & myth-regurgitation.
- How my 2012 predictions looked in 2017 and 2018.
- Predictable in the current Neo-Victorian climate.
- Could this bootlicking be any more pompous?
- Attack of the cross-dressing prohibitionists.
- Dr. David Ley on sex workers and therapy.
- The true intent of “brothel keeping” laws.
- Rapist cops of the week, 2017 and 2018.
- Still think you don’t live in a police state?
- It’s just so lovely having Grace nearby.
- Two similar cases in just a few weeks.
- A lovely holiday season.
- Die young, stay pretty.
In the News (#901)
Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, animals, cops, domestic violence, drugs, Facebook, fantasy, Fever Dream, harm reduction, hysteria, India, Israel, law, lawyers, Legalization a Good Idea?, Louisiana, Madonna/whore, McNeill's Law, Mississippi, neofeminism, New York, Pennsylvania, politicians, porn, propaganda, rescue industry, Scapegoats, Swedish model, Tennessee, The Course of a Disease, The Crumbling Dam, The Red Umbrella, The Widening Gyre, violence vs. sex workers on January 4, 2019| 4 Comments »
Efforts to abolish sex work…since the 1860s have one thing in common—failure! – Paul J. Maginn, Raven Bowen, and Maggie O’Neill
If amateur women weren’t so busy trying to ruin sex workers’ lives, they could learn a lot from us:
…Why don’t more people outside the sex industry organize against the dangers of sexual or intimate abuse in the way that sex workers do? It’s not because sex workers have more resources or support. In part, it’s because so many women outside the sex industry still believe that [women] are responsible for the abuses committed against them because they stepped outside of respectable behavior and “should have known better”. Sex-work communities are often more resilient against these messages…Sex-worker feminism shows us that our safety and freedom should never be conditional, and that we have to come together—on the corner, online, at marches, and beyond—to prevent sexual abuse and resist its insidious effects on us…
A Bossier City [cop]…has been arrested for filming himself having sex with an animal…Terry…Yetman’s residence [was searched for undisclosed reasons, possibly involving domestic violence and]…detectives found pornography involving sexual acts with an animal…The investigation is still open and may result in additional charges [if the cops can figure out what kind of animal is involved]…
We’re not hearing quite as much of this “highway” bullshit as we used to:
The newly opened Together Cafe…in Chattanooga…is…dedicated to [harassing sex workers]…Every dollar [of profit after the considerable overhead of cafes]…will go toward [creating prohibitionist propaganda]…Chattanooga has become a focal point…for…sex trafficking because of its geographic intersection of Interstates 75, 24 and 59, which provides an easy path for pimps to transport their victims around the Southeast…the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation [repeats the impossible masturbatory fantasy that] that one in four children who run away will be propositioned by a sex trafficker within 48 hours of leaving home and every year 1.2 million children worldwide are trafficked for sex…the average age of a child sold for six is 13 years…
This is not the first coffee shop “rescue” scam we’ve heard of. Note that the language about Chattanooga, interstate highways and “pimps” is plagiarized verbatim from pig propaganda at least two years old.
The international law firm DLA Piper has signed on to represent Safehouse — the nonprofit organization attempting to launch a supervised-injection site in Philadelphia — pro bono…the move gives Safehouse some added clout in the legal fight [against federal prohibitionists]…Although Philadelphia’s mayor and district attorney support the opening of a privately funded supervised-injection site, federal authorities have threatened legal action…DLA Piper’s decision to represent Safehouse “demonstrates there’s an ever-increasing group of lawyers who respectfully disagree with the U.S. Attorney’s position,” said Ronda Goldfein…director of the AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania…DLA Piper, which has offices in 40 countries, is also representing the pharmaceutical giant Purdue Pharma…[against a nuisance lawsuit] brought by New Jersey’s attorney general over its marketing of…Oxycontin…
This article by three academic allies covers a lot of ground, but starts here:
In 2015 British journalist Suzanne Moore wrote a piece lavishing praise on US hip-hop star Nicki Minaj…the…piece…celebrated Minaj’s agency and hypersexuality…[yet] Moore…shudders at the idea that women—especially middle-class women—would engage in real forms of sex work…she…seems to be[lieve] that sex workers come from lower-class backgrounds and lack agency, business acumen and even intellectuality…
For Those Who Think Legalization is a Good Idea (#863)
…Days after it passed in the lower house of India’s Parliament in July, two United Nations experts said the bill leans too heavily on the criminal justice system. Without more of a “human-rights based and victim-centred approach,” the UN special rapporteurs on human trafficking and modern slavery warned, India “risks further harming already vulnerable individuals”…In major Indian cities like Kolkata, Hyderabad, and Sangli, sex workers are well organised and politically engaged. Yet no sex worker groups were consulted during the drafting of the legislation…[which like all “sex trafficking” laws] promotes a dangerous idea that everyone in the sex trade is either a victim or a criminal…
Posts on Facebook are spreading quickly, claiming women are attempting to lure other people into sex trafficking at stores in the Mid-South…Memphis [Tennessee] and Southaven [Mississippi] police…said no one has made any official reports…One woman [claimed] she was shopping at…Walmart…when she was approached by two women inside the store…[who] the[n]…followed her back home…[yet]…she didn’t call police…[an]other post…shows a picture of two women…[and] claims they were trying to lure women into sex trafficking [by] taking pictures [of women, like the poster did]…
The Course of a Disease (#884)
The Knesset is set to pass a landmark law against prostitut[es] making hiring sex workers a crime…The new law will make Israel the 10th country to institute what is called the “Nordic Model” of [persecuting sex workers]…the law…offers the Justice Ministry the option of instituting other punishments, such as “John Schools,” meant to [indoctri]ate [people in anti-sex propaganda]…The law…[also] budgets NIS 90 million over the next three years for the [brainwashing] of [captured sex workers]…the “Nordic Model” [was] first adopted in Sweden in 1999. In recent years, others passed similar laws, including Ireland, France, Canada, Norway and some states in the US…
So far, only Sweden, Norway, Iceland, the two Irelands, France and Canada have adopted the Swedish model; that’s seven, plus one is eight. And no US states have adopted it, though of course that’s among the smaller lies in this authoritarian screed (another claims the average sex worker dies at 46).
As long as sex work is marginalized, sex workers will be targeted for violence:
Alexander Popenkov, who is trained as an MMA fighter, and his wife, Maryana Kayumova, both 25, trolled online sex [worker] ads for victims [to] set…up phony appointments…on victims they [knew would]…be easy targets and vulnerable…Popenkov and Kayumova savagely beat and robbed at least eight women [in Manhattan], most of whom are Russian immigrants…[They] were arrested on charges including burglary and robbery and released on $35,000 bond each. [Prosecutor] Danbee [Kim] asked [Judge Maxwell] Wiley to hike the defendants’ bail to $500,000, arguing that they had threatened numerous victims to discourage them from coming forward…[but] Wiley [refused because their victims were just whores]…
Diary #444
Posted in Diary, tagged blogging, drugs, holidays, psychology, Sunset on January 3, 2019| 3 Comments »
Just a few days after returning to Seattle, I went back to Sunset for the New Year and enjoyed several glorious days of doing mostly nothing, a pastime I cannot enjoy sober; however, since I was not sober for very much of the period between Sunday evening and yesterday morning, everything worked out just fine. The Yuletide season ends Saturday and the carnival season begins Monday, and I’m already planning to return to Sunset for Imbolc, at which time I’ll make a big pot of gumbo. And with any luck, the floor will finally be repaired by then and we can move on to the bookcases. How much longer will it be before I consider the place presentable? I’m not sure; I know what projects need to be done, but these things always take longer to finish than I expect because most people don’t pursue their goals with the single-minded fixation of a jitterbug on meth…and fortunately for my mental health, I’m finally beginning to learn that I don’t have to either.
The Problem With Prophecy
Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, Tyranny, tagged Backpage, blogging, censorship, cops, hysteria, prohibitionist myths, propaganda, rescue industry on January 2, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Prophecy is not an exact business. – “Cassandra’s Mirror”
My January 2012 prediction on the future of sex trafficking hysteria was right on schedule up until 2017, and then, unfortunately, started to fray and become more difficult to interpret (as so often happens with prophecy). On the one hand, articles critical of the hysteria have become far more common, just as I originally predicted, and the passage of FOSTA seems to have served as a bucket of cold water on a large number of American journalists; it’s now not at all unusual to see articles calling for decriminalization, attacking the War on Whores and even openly labeling the moral panic as a scam intended to justify censorship of the internet and persecution of sex workers and our clients, families and associates. It is clear even to many of the stupider members of our society (including some cops) that the intentional destruction of Backpage has harmed sex workers, driven many of us to the street, and dramatically increased violence, and the increasing absurdity of “sex trafficking” scary tales involving litter and meaningless non-incidents at retail outlets has forced even cops to deny some of the more extreme and idiotic elements of the mythology. The “Super Bowl sex trafficking” myth is all but dead, and it’s now relatively safe for politicians to support decriminalization. Unfortunately, the US government, billionaire sociopaths like Swanee Hunt, and Hollywood nitwits like Ashley Judd and Ashton Kutcher continue to double down on the fading hysteria, expending huge sums of money and investing their considerable influence on the Very Stupid to artificially prolong the moral panic beyond its natural shelf-life. One year ago today I wrote (quoting myself from a year earlier):
…by [2020] ([2021] at the outside), we’ll be able to get through a day without having to hear fetishists like Nick Kristof non-consensually foisting their nasty wanking fantasies of gang-raping traumatized 13-year-olds in bondage upon us. Cops and politicians may still prattle about it for a while, but once they realize nobody actually cares any more, that will soon fade away…it may take a year or two longer than I originally predicted, so let’s say…around the end of 2021). And…remember that even after the moral panic is over, “the laws spawned by the panic will still exist and will continue to be used to destroy the lives of sex workers and our clients and families until decriminalization is achieved a decade or two from now…”
I’m still confident in that prediction; already we’re starting to see a few cops and politicians drifting away from the “sex trafficking” myth to return to the malodorous bosom of the “criminal whore” myth. And while the latter is just as conducive to oppression of sex workers as the former, it’s also far less effective in bamboozling the large number of people who understand that government has no place in the private lives of individuals.
Visit my bookstore
This Month
Old Posts
Call me
Become a Blog Patron
If you want to donate but don't want a recurring charge, you can send any amount you like via PayPal to my email address (see below). Be sure to include a note so I can thank you!Contact Maggie
Boring but necessary legal stuff