Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for February, 2019

Community

Posted in Perception, Q & A, tagged , , , , on February 28, 2019| 2 Comments »

How do I connect with other escorts in my area?  The few that I have reached out to for references, haven’t appeared to be too keen on continuing a conversation past the reference subject.  A point in any direction for support, friendship etc would be much appreciated.

I don’t believe there are any sex worker organizations in your immediate area, but the easiest way for you to start finding other sex workers to talk to would be Twitter.  If you follow me (@Maggie_McNeill) you will see that I interact with and retweet LOTS of other sex workers, some of whom may live close to you.  You can then follow other people and interact yourself, and even make good online friends (some of whom you may later meet IRL).  It’s a very good idea to do this; though it’s lucrative and flexible, sex work can be very isolating, especially in a criminalized regime.  And when you get overwhelmed by all the bullshit lies told about our work in the media, it’s good to have other ladies you can get a reality check from.  Twitter’s also a good way to keep up on what’s happening in our world; people post information on bad clients, stings, activist events, etc.  I think you’ll find it’s exactly what you’re looking for.  There is currently considerable concern that due to FOSTA Twitter may kick sex workers off as so many other platforms have, so you may also with to join Switter and also get contact information (phone, email, etc) from the friends you make so that if catastrophe happens you won’t be cut off.

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

Read Full Post »

In the News (#916)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 27, 2019| 3 Comments »

Harris’s contempt for sex workers lies at the heart of her hypocrisy.  –  Stephen Lemons

Feminine Pragmatism 

Wherever there are men making money, there will be enterprising women working to get some of it:

…Mongolia’s mining boom started in the early 2000s and mining now accounts for around 20 per cent of Mongolia’s gross domestic product.  The growth…has created a spike in internal migration to mining areas – most notably Ömnögovi…The coal route from the Tavan Tolgoi coal deposit to the Chinese border is synonymous with sex work fuelled by the mining industry…In contrast to the stigma…in the city…the border area [i]s accepting and open…four or five women travel to the border area with a driver and rent a ger (a traditional round felted tent) to stay…If [truck] drivers don’t have cash, they pay in fuel: 40 or 50 litres of diesel for one act, 100 litres for one hour.  The women then resell the fuel when they can…Ulaanbaatar…is [by contrast] a harsh environment for women working in the trade…sex [workers] in…sauna[s] in the capital…[are beaten by] police and customers…ultra-nationalists target sex workers on the street and shave their heads to disgrace them…

Despite the obligatory “sex trafficking” disinformation and nonsense sprinkled throughout, the article is not a bad look at sex work in a part of the world few Westerners know anything about.

See No Evil (#25)

Are the Japanese the only people left on Earth who can tell fantasy from reality?

The United Nations has proposed an international initiative…to tighten…restrictions and prohibition of…child pornography…However…child pornography…”is defined…as ‘any representation of a child engaged in real or simulated explicit sexual activities…includ[ing]…visual material such as photographs, movies, drawings and cartoons…including when…such material represents…non-existing children”…

Blunt Instrument

Massage parlors are popular targets of “anti-trafficking” pogroms because they’re low-hanging fruit:

One South Carolina [politician] is working to shut down massage parlors…Mandy Powers Norrell proposed legislation that could close those places for good.  “It will give labor, licensing, and regulation the authority to close them down and prosecute any [women] found there,” [she bloviated]…

Policing for Profit

Cops will never stop doing this as long as the state keeps giving them pretexts:

…In case after case, [motorists were robbed by cops claiming]…the cash was found near drugs.  Yet few…ever were arrested.   They were caught in one of the most aggressive [robbery] operations in [South Carolina, where the]…police…[stole] nearly $50,000 from…motorists over a two-year period…$135 for every person living in Nichols.  That’s six times more per resident than any other police department in the state…

An Example To the West (#636)

Ugandan sex workers demand their rights:

Human and women rights activists have appealed to Members of Parliament not to criminalise prostitution as they debate and pass the pending Sexual Offences Bill of 2015…”These arrests are mostly carried out to solicit bribes from sex workers and harass them.  Few of them get to trial.  The provision, is therefore, unnecessary since it is unenforceable,” [said] Macklean Mary Kyomya…of Alliance of Women Advocating for Change…activists brandished placards reading…”outlaw poverty not prostitution…rights not rescue…my body, my business”…

Secret Squirrel (#686)

Conditioning squares to accept intrusive monitoring of every aspect of their lives:

…Devices worn on employees’ bodies are an increasingly valuable source of workforce health intelligence for employers and insurance companies.  It’s fueling a boom in the use of wrist-borne health and fitness monitors such as those made by Fitbit, Garmin and Apple…the information is not covered by federal rules that protect health records from disclosure.  And when it’s combined with data such as credit scores, employees are giving up more insights about themselves than they realize…In general, employees in such programs [“voluntarily”] sign up for digital health monitoring.  They are lured by cash, reduced premiums, or reimbursements for co-payments and deductibles…Fitbit is moving aggressively to sign up companies.  It added a call service that [nag]…workers…via text messages and phone calls…whose data shows they are falling short of their [assigned “fitness goals”]…

You amateurs really think being spied on like this is OK?  No wonder fantasies of whores “enslaved” by exploitative bosses who spy on their every move are so popular; it’s just amateurs projecting their work conditions onto us.

Pyrrhic Victory (#697)

The dystopian future of Minority Report has arrived:

The use of PredPol—a predictive policing software…is far more widespread than previously reported…PredPol claims to use an algorithm to predict crime in specific 500-foot by 500-foot sections of a city, so that police can…surveil specific areas more heavily…PredPol [has] contract[s or] negotiation[s]…with…South Jordan, UT; Mountain View, CA; Atlanta, GA; Haverhill, GA; Palo Alto, CA; Modesto, CA; Merced, CA; Livermore, CA; Tacoma, WA; and the University of California, Berkeley…Los Angeles, Elgin [CA], Oakland [CA], Richmond [CA]…Milpitas [CA]…Santa Cruz, CA; Morgan Hill, CA, Fairfield, CA, Los Gatos/Monte Sereno, CA; Campbell, CA; Salinas, CA; Alhambra, CA; Lansing, MI; Seattle, WA; San Francisco, CA; Columbia, SC…Manhattan, KS…Little Rock, AK; Kent, England; Reading, PA; “and many more”…Predpol explicitly encourage[s] police departments to dedicate their resources towards petty crime…Shahid Buttar, the Director of Grassroots Advocacy for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)…[explains] it’s impossible to expect unbiased results from predictive policing technology, because the data it analyzes is structurally biased.  Predictive policing is “driven by…data that itself reflects longstanding and pervasive bias…If you overpolice certain communities, and only detect crime within those communities, and then try to provide a heat map of predictions, any AI will predict that crimes will occur in the places that they’ve happened before”…

The Spiral of Absurdity (#743) 

“Sex trafficking” fetishists are still masturbating to the fantasy that emojis are part of some mysterious pimp “code”:

Bay Area prosecutors were trying to prove that a man arrested during a prostitution sting was guilty of pimping charges, and among the [supposed] evidence was a series of Instagram DMs he’d allegedly sent to a woman…with high heels and money bag emoji placed at the end…[a hired gun claiming to be] an expert…in sex trafficking…[fantasized under oath that] the high heels and bags of money supported the interpretation that the defendant was accused of sex trafficking, essentially translating to “wear your high heels to come make some money.”  Another message from the defendant included the crown emoji, which was said to signify that the “pimp is the king”.  Ultimately, the ruling didn’t hinge on the interpretation of emoji, but [that didn’t stop prosecutors from trying to destroy lives based on the masturbatory fantasies of people who’ve never done sex work in their lives]…

Uncommon Sense (#745)

Yet another registration regime fails miserably, as we keep telling y’all:

Only 76 of the reportedly 200,000 women (0.038%) who work as prostitutes in Germany have registered for state services [and of course politicians can’t understand why]…sex workers [can] register for state-run health insurance, pensions and unemployment benefits…[but the price after a new and paternalistic] law was enacted…in 2017 [is] regist[ration with pigs, mandatory “counseling”, prying into their private lives by social workers and compulsory] regular health [inspections]…most prostitutes…register under some different professional category in order to continue working anonymously…

The Pygmalion Fallacy (#848)

Never underestimate the human capacity to obsess about things that don’t exist:

…sex robots are rapidly becoming a part of…national [fantasies] about the future of sex and relationships….a number of companies are currently developing [human-shaped sex toys]…with a few already on the market…A 2017 survey suggested almost half of Americans think that having sex with robots will become a common practice within 50 years [the same fraction who think Donald Trump is intelligent and genetically-modified foods are dangerous].  As a [pompous windbag]…I’m interested in the legal and policy questions that sex robots pose…How will [masturbating] with a sex [doll] affect the human [soul]?  Would sex with a child[-shaped toaster] be ethical?…

These articles are so deeply stupid, I just can’t take them at all seriously any more.  Despite the claims in the title, “sex robots” are not here, and never will be in the form envisioned by both fetishists and prohibitionists.  And the dolls (that’s all they are, silicone dolls) which people insist on incorrectly calling “robots” are inanimate objects which raise no more “ethical issues” than a Baby Alive or a tablet computer.

Held Together With Lies (#858)

We haven’t seen this concentration of ludicrous claims in a couple of years now:

[The rescue industry] is the business of stealing freedom for profit.  [Sex workers labeled against their will as] victims of trafficking are deprived of their basic human rights, dehumanized, brutalized and objectified [by police]…Human trafficking business is [fantasized] to generate $100 billion annually, more than Apple, Starbucks, Microsoft, and Nike combined…there are 40.3 million victims of human trafficking globally…we [masturbate furiously while fantasizing] that there are countless victims, some only young teens…in our own communities…Sex trafficking data is scarce and has many gaps, due to [our making it up as we go]…

As usual, ridiculous numbers are slung about in self-contradictory fashion, mis-citing sources (the 40.3 million fantasy is from the NGO “Walk Free Foundation”, not the ILO as claimed) and claiming knowledge while admitting there is none.  So naturally I had to correct the wording a bit.

Top Cop

Another example of the odiousness of the police-state operative Hillary fans have anointed as their savior:

It’s the hypocrisy, stupid.  That’s what pundits from The Nation to the Washington Post fail to grasp about the onetime romance between former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown and California Senator and Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris.  Harris’s apologists would have people believe that discussion of the relationship, which occurred two decades ago when Brown held the powerful post of Speaker of the California Assembly and Harris was a lowly deputy district attorney in California’s Alameda County, is sexist, racist, or both.  Viewed in light of Harris’s ongoing war on sex workers, however, her advantageous liaison with Brown indicates that she has no problem applying different rules to herself than she does to others…Maggie McNeill [said]…“I have absolutely nothing against the fact that she used her sexuality to get by in the world…What I do have a problem with, is that having gained that power, she used it to attack other women for doing the same thing”…

Disaster (#909)

The successors of Tumblr:

…with Tumblr’s strict adult-content ban…kinky bloggers fled the site–searching for, and trying to build, new communities.  One of the fastest growing of these sites is relative newcomer newTumbl, which has gained about 40,000 blogs since it launched on December 31.  True to its name, the site closely resembles Tumblr–at least the NSFW parts that are now banned…MojoFire, a site created by members of the BDSM community but aspiring to host all types of content, has not yet launched.  Yet others were already in the works before the Tumblr porn ban and have seen a large influx of refugee bloggers.  For instance, Pillowfort–another site meant for a broad community–has been straining with the arrival of former Tumblr users, forcing it to limit new sign-ups…MakeLoveNotPorn…[has] provided a hub for user-generated “social sex” videos since 2009…

Read Full Post »

Diary #452

Posted in Diary, tagged , , , , , on February 26, 2019| 5 Comments »

I thought last week seemed slower than it should’ve been, since the snow was over and the weather is warming up.  So I checked my Eros ad, and discovered that it was not online because someone over there decided my ad (which has been on the site in much the same form for years) violated some of their new and ever-changing “publishing standards”.  This has become the new normal for US escorts; all of our advertising sites are being murdered, committing suicide, dropping dead of sheer terror or else lobotomizing or castrating themselves.  Eros is in the latter category; although it has periodically installed some new and ninnyish changes over the past few years, ever since FOSTA it has gone completely bonkers, inventing new and increasingly-incomprehensible rules and then declining ads for failing to adhere to them, yet refusing to tell advertisers what rule was broken other than “it’s a picture” or “it’s text”.  So all one can do is to guess, make changes based on the guess, resubmit the ad and then wait a day or two for Eros to either post it or decline it again.  I’ve been watching friends deal with this for the past year, and I reckon it was finally my turn; luckily, I’m a good guesser and got it right in only two tries (taking almost a week).  If you’ve had this problem yourself and can’t understand why they won’t tell you what’s going on, I suggest you familiarize yourself with both the text of FOSTA and the prosecution’s rhetoric in the Backpage persecution.  The law now prohibits “knowing” faciltation of sex work, and the government has claimed that Backpage’s telling advertisers WHICH words and pictures were prohibited constitute “knowing” facilitation (this is phrased as “Backpage told pimps how to disguise their sex trafficking ads”).  So Eros is whistling past the graveyard, thinking that the government won’t simply change the rules again when they feel like it.  And the sooner I can broaden my media exposure to the point where Eros (and every other ad platform) is superfluous to my income generation, the happier I’ll be.

Read Full Post »

Back Issue #68

Posted in Miscellaneous, tagged on February 25, 2019| Leave a Comment »

Controlling pimps who steal whores’ money…really aren’t that rare…they just…wear uniforms or judicial robes rather than garish outfits with silly hats.  –  “Pimps“

Read Full Post »

Links #451

Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on February 24, 2019| 4 Comments »

Facebook might call the cops on you because a bot thought you seemed sad.  –  Elizabeth Nolan Brown

Here’s another of those strange, wonderful Sesame Street videos; I’m honestly not sure how this one escaped being shared here before, but oh well.  The links above it were provided by Emma Evans, Dave Krueger, Radley Balko, Mistress Matisse, Elizabeth N. Brown, and Angela Keaton, in that order.

From the Archives

Read Full Post »

In the News (#915)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 23, 2019| 3 Comments »

Speaking for myself and my…Jamaican family, we wish to categorically dissociate ourselves from [Kamala’s] travesty.  –  Donald Harris

Rough Trade 

Cops wait a year to arrest a dangerous, violent serial rapist.  Guess why?

…a 31-year-old [Dublin] tradesman…imprisoned, stripped, beat…and [raped a sex worker], who escaped out a window and ran naked onto a main road, where she flagged down a taxi…he al[so] pulled clumps of hair out of a second prostitute’s head and raped her, as well as robbing both women.  Judge Bryan Smyth [gave him]…bail [anyhow.  The first attack took place]…in June, 2016…and…the second…in [sic] February 4, 2018…

Amsterdam

Note that this positive article appeared on CNN, one of the major pushers of “sex trafficking” hysteria:

Amsterdam…isn’t as liberal for sex workers as many believe.  Sex work has been legal in some form in the Netherlands since 1830, but it was recognized as a legal profession in 1988.  In 2000, a law made the job subject to municipal regulation, requiring a license to operate and following certain rules set by a municipality…so each can differ.  For example, they can decide how many licenses to give out…The only places that have decriminalized sex work are New Zealand and the state of New South Wales in Australia.  In both places, sex work is not penalized through punitive laws, and regulation are premised on worker health and safety, as with any other profession…The reform in New Zealand…reduced violence against sex workers, increased their comfort in reporting abuse to the police and improved police attitudes toward sex workers, according to the country’s Ministry of Justice.  Research also showed that decriminalization in New Zealand resulted in sex workers being better able to refuse clients and insist on condom use. One study showed that decriminalization has the potential to reduce discrimination as well as denials of justice…

To Molest and Rape 

It’s rare and surprising to see the acts of a rapist cop actually called “rape”:

A…Wilmington [Delaware cop]…was charged with second-degree rape at the conclusion of a four-month [attempt at a cover-up]…Thomas R. Oliver Jr…on October 16, 2018…pulled up alongside a woman and told her to get into the front seat of the vehicle.  Oliver exposed himself to the woman, and told her she had active warrants for her arrest, but he would allow her to leave if she [sucked his disgusting pig dick]…Oliver grabbed the victim by the head and [orally raped her]…

The End of the Beginning (#772) 

Maybe we’re about to witness the beginning of the end of these evil laws:

“Sex offenders are not second-class citizens,” writes U.S. District Judge W. Keith Watkins in a recent decision overturning two provisions of the Alabama Sex Offender Registration and Community Notification Act (ASORCNA)…The lead plaintiff…pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges of indecent exposure in the early 1990s, when he was living in Wisconsin.  He received a six-month suspended sentence for each charge and was not required to register as a sex offender, even after moving to Alabama in 1994.  But 14 years later, Alabama expanded its registry, forcing Doe to comply with ASORCNA’s numerous demands and restrictions under threat of imprisonment.  Among other things, that meant his driver’s license was marked with the phrase “CRIMINAL SEX OFFENDER” in bold red letters…Judge Watkins ruled that Alabama’s branding of registered sex offenders’ identification cards is a form of compelled speech prohibited by the First Amendment…Another aspect of Alabama’s “debilitating sex-offender scheme” is a requirement that people in the registry report “email addresses or instant message addresses or identifiers used”…”An offender must report to the police every time he connects to a Wi-Fi spot at a new McDonald’s, every time he uses a new computer terminal at a public library…Every time he walks into a new coffee shop, he must determine whether opening his laptop is worth the hassle of reporting”…the demand for information about online activity applied to…the…plaintiffs even though their offenses had nothing to do with the internet or children…

Lack of Evidence (#805)

All cops or prosecutors will need to do to get around this law is say the magic words “sex trafficking”:

San Francisco’s [largely-cosmetic] policy protecting sex workers is now being pitched on the state level.  California Sen. Scott Wiener…introduce[d] legislation Monday that would prevent law enforcement from arresting and charging sex workers who come forward as victims or witnesses to serious crimes [unless they decide to charge the sex workers with “trafficking” instead].  The proposed law, SB233, would also prevent [cops] from using condoms as probable cause to arrest a sex worker…Wiener said…“We want to [fool]…sex workers [in]to feel[ing] safe in reporting crimes”…

San Francisco, which as the article states first enacted this “policy”, took only two months to get around it by declaring a “sex trafficking” exception and forming a vice squad specifically intended to “abate” sex workers.  You know, like a disease.

Overdue

Another example of our culture’s obsession with form over substance:

They used chopped-up chalk as fake crack cocaine and cloaked their white skin in blackface makeup.  Then the two [pigs] hit the streets of Baton Rouge, hoping to fool interested drug buyers in the predominantly black neighborhood into believing they were dealers.  “Not only do they not know we’re cops — they don’t even know we’re white!” then-Detective Frankie Caruso told the Advocate newspaper in 1993, the year the undercover blackface operation took place.  Now, 26 years later, the Baton Rouge Police Department is apologizing for the tactics after a police yearbook photo of the two disguised cops surfaced, marking the latest blackface scandal to ensnare authority figures and the first this year involving undercover police…

They’re not apologizing for intentionally destroying lives, or for specifically targeting black people for something that shouldn’t even be illegal; nope, they’re just apologizing because they did so inappropriately.

Safe Position

Though these legislative “studies” are useless, perhaps they’ll normalize the topic:

Bella Robinson…and her organization, COYOTE – RI, are working with Brown University and advocating for a new bill…sponsored by Rep. Anastasia Williams [which] proposes a commission to study the health and safety impact of sex work laws.  “Crackdowns against sex workers…[are because] we prioritize [religious] morals over the safety of people involved in the sex industry,” said Meghan Peterson, a Brown University researcher…one prominent opponent…is Donna Hughes, [architect of the]…[re-]criminalization [of sex work] in 2009…

The Pygmalion Fallacy (#868) 

At least they’re not calling this an “escort service”:

…the advertising for Doll Next Door brings a host of questions about how this latest trend in sexual services will be regulated in Edmonton, if at all…the service offers customers the choice of a two-hour booking or overnight rental with one of five doll models…the doll is then sent in discreet packaging to the customer’s home or a specified hotel…Kelly Jenny, a sex therapist at Insight Psychological, said she can see the benefits associated with sex dolls, but says they can also be used [as magical transformation devices] to objectify women…

Pyrrhic Victory (#894) 

More on Amazon’s campaign to end privacy forever:

…Amazon…Ring products come with access to a social app called Neighbors that allows customers to not just to keep tabs on their own property, but also to share [accusations]…with the rest of the block…Forming decentralized 19th-century vigilance committees with 21st-century technology has been a toxic move, as shown by apps like…Nextdoor, which tends to foster lively discussions about nonwhite people strolling through various suburbs.  But Ring stands alone as…an avowed attempt to merge 24/7 video, ubiquitous computer sensors, and facial recognition, and deliver it to local police on a platter.  It’s no surprise then that police departments from Bradenton, Florida, to Los Angeles have leapt to “partner” with Ring…

Just a reminder that the word for such authoritarian corporate/government “partnerships” is “fascism”.

The Prudish Giant (#895)

Facebook can’t even follow its own “standards”:

For years, King Cake Snob…has used visitor feedback to choose the best king cakes in various categories in the lead up to Mardi Gras.  So…the site decided to build some interest with a sponsored Facebook post…featuring ten tiny plastic king cake babies — all of which were, as usual, in the buff.  However, though the image remains up, Facebook decided to flag it as ineligible for a paid “sponsored” post…“This ad isn’t running because it includes an image or video depicting excessive skin or nudity…This kind of material is sensitive in nature”…

Top Cop

Copmala tried to sell her dad’s heritage for political coin, and he’s not happy:

United States (US) presidential hopeful Kamala Harris faced scathing criticisms from her father for attributing her support for the legalisation of marijuana to her…heritage.  “Half my family is from Jamaica, are you kidding me?” Kamala Harris responded when asked if she smoked marijuana during an interview…Donald Harris has “categorically” disassociated himself and his family from “this travesty” and slammed his daughter for stereo-typing her heritage for political gain.  “My dear departed grandmothers as well as my deceased parents must be turning in their grave right now to see their family’s name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected…with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker…in the pursuit of identity politics”…Harris [said]…

Legislators Gone Wild (#909) 

This story just keeps getting uglier and filthier:

Former Lyon County Sheriff Al McNeil was the largest campaign contributor to the End Trafficking and Prostitution political action committee before the 2018 election, campaign finance records show.  McNeil made contributions totaling $1,499.  Each of McNeil’s two contributions were under $1,000, which avoided mandatory reporting before the election under state campaign finance law…

Worse Than I Thought (#914)

Condemning consenting adults to the “sex offender” registry is the latest “monkey see, monkey do” fad:

Pennsylvania…[politician] Kim Ward wants…a change to state law that would require those convicted of [any sex work related “crime”]…to the…sex offender…[registry]…

Read Full Post »

Double Dip

Posted in Miscellaneous, tagged , , on February 22, 2019| 1 Comment »

I’m going to be spending a lot of time promoting The War on Whores and my other projects this year, and frankly, I’d like to get ahead on my budget so there’s less financial pressure on me while I’m doing all that.  So I’ve decided to rerun not one but two of my specials from last year at the same time!  For the rest of the winter (ie, until March 19th) you can take advantage of whichever of these specials strikes your fancy; as bargains, they’re pretty comparable.  I got really good response from my “Two Out of Three” special, so let’s remind y’all of that one first:

…I’ll give you an extra half-hour when you book an hour-long date and an extra hour when you book a two- or three-hour date.  And if you book four hours or more, I’ll only charge you my social rate instead of my full rate!  If you look at the math, you’re basically getting a date of any given length for about 2/3 as much as it would normally cost (up to a whole weekend, after which it starts to flatten out)…

The other option is a special on a rate I call my “Day Tripper“, which seems to have slipped beneath most people’s radar though it’s quite a good deal; you get 7-10 hours of mixed private and social time for only 2/3 of the cost of an overnight.  Yes, that fits neatly in with the “Two Out of Three”, but that’s the normal rate; for the special, you don’t get a price break but I’m willing to travel anywhere in the United States to do one.  If you live in Seattle or within three hours of travel from here, I’ll knock $200 off the price instead.  If you’d like to take advantage of ether of those, email me and we’ll discuss scheduling.  Of course, you could also set up a screening of my movie and get me to come to your city that way; one way or the other, I won’t complain.

Read Full Post »

Peeking Out

Posted in Perception, Q & A, tagged , , , , on February 21, 2019| 3 Comments »

I retired from sex work about 4 years ago, and I’m in university studying the health system and health policies.  Nobody in my life knows about my history and I do not discuss it.  However, I wish to do my graduate studies in social policy and rights focusing on sex worker policy, so I am thinking it might be time for me to start to “come out” to some people.  I am about to meet a lecturer on my current degree, who is helping me with my graduate application.  I am planning on coming out to her about my history; I think she will be supportive, but I am very nervous.  Any advice you can offer me, I would appreciate so much.

Obviously, we need as many sex workers and sex work alumnae to be out as possible, and I’ve written on the subject before (as have others I’ve collected in my tag “Coming Out”).  However, there’s no doubt it can be harmful to some.  My main concern would be, can this woman you want to come out to harm your academic career if she reacts badly?  And has she given you any indication that she won’t?  Because more than anything else, those are the important factors; there’s a very good reason most people who come out voluntarily are in a position where very few others have power over them.  My thought is, if this woman has publicly expressed support for sex workers, and she cannot easily derail your career, it’s probably OK to come out to her (especially since you want to focus on sex work policy).  But if she could possibly harm you and has never expressed any public pro-sexwork sentiments, I would choose another person to come out to first, and see how that goes before proceeding with your advisor.

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

Read Full Post »

In the News (#914)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 20, 2019| 6 Comments »

Perhaps being a victim of privacy invasion will help Jeff Bezos realize the evils of what his company is enabling.  –  Glenn Greenwald

Rough Trade 

Despite this being an insultingly-low sentence, it’s doubtful he’d be convicted at all in the US:

A man has been sentenced to a suspended jail term after he raped a Canberra sex worker during an appointment…Aaron John Miller…and the woman agreed…[on a 2-hour] session…[with] various extra services…The woman explicitly said she would not permit a particular activity.  However, during the appointment Miller went outside the bounds of their agreement…Police identified him through his credit card and when interviewed he said he had engaged in the offensive conduct because he got carried away [while drunk]…

Theatrics (#765) 

Fake “sex trafficking” ads dreamed up by prohibitionists demonstrate the depravity of their lurid masturbatory fantasies about our lives and work.  Here’s one a reader recently captured in Atlanta airport.  Note that the white girl in the fake “ad” appears to be about 11, and that the hand of the “client” is dark-skinned.  “Sex trafficking” mythology is rooted in racism, and racism still permeates the sick minds of those obsessed with it.

Little Boxes (#792)

Court rules that a law which allows cops to arrest women but not men “does not discriminate based on gender”:

…the New Hampshire Supreme Court…upheld the convictions of three women who were arrested for going topless on a beach in 2016.  In the 3-to-2 ruling, the court decided that a city ordinance in Laconia, N.H., that bars women [but not men] from exposing their nipples did not discriminate based on gender…

The Course of a Disease (#799)

While the US medical establishment obediently parrots “sex trafficking” hysteria, European medical groups are increasingly following the lead of Médecins du Monde, The Lancet and UNAIDS:

[UK] nurses are calling for prostitution to be decriminalised.  They argue sex workers are more likely to access health care such as regular STI checks.  And they would be able to report violent clients to police without fear of arrest…Bristol nurse Lou Cahill has ensured it will be debated at the Royal College of Nursing’s annual conference in May.  Her motion seeks to decriminalise the trade…[and] the union will demand a law change if the motion is passed…

Worse Than I Thought (#819)

You just can’t keep an out-of-control prohibitionist down:

…Lauren Book’s human trafficking bill had [an idiotic] idea: allow [opportunists] to sue [whichever] hotels [had the deepest pockets by claiming they once had sex there]…[Obviously] the powerful hotel lobby [had no choice but] to kill [something that would’ve allowed unscrupulous lawyers to treat them as ATMs, but]…Book…is back with a new version of the bill…[which] does not include allowing [opportunistic nuisance lawsuits]…but…does require hotels [to indocrinate] their employees [in misogynistic surveillance techniques]…and…Creates a registry of [people who have consensual sex or are related in any way to sex workers]…

The War Goes On (#867) 

I hope you amateurs are enjoying the changes to the internet your silence helped to create:

…As the use of online dating sites continues to increase, so will opportunities for unsuspecting people to be tricked into dangerous situations by human traffickers.  But the companies that own and operate these sites can do something about it.  We are gathering signatures to petition the Match Group, owners of the popular dating sites, Tinder, Plenty of Fish, OkCupid, Match, and more, to implement [surveillance] features to help keep [magical ninja pimps] off of their platform…sex traffickers have long learned it’s [sic] benefits for tricking young people into sexual exploitation…

Yes, Polaris (with pigs in tow, as usual) is now coming after your dating apps and websites.  Because though it usually starts with us, it never stops with us.

Vendetta (#868)

Another pogrom to enable a sociopathic billionaire’s twisted psychodrama:

A nationwide [entrapment pogrom] intended to curb [consensual] sex…by targeting [peaceful] people trying to [arrange consensual] sex netted more than 390 arrests since last month, 38 of them in Cook County.  The [bizarrely-named] National Johns Suppression Initiative, the 17th [pogrom] of its kind since 2011, spanned 14 states and ran from Jan. 13 to Feb. 3…[pigs] placed [fake] ads on “more than a dozen…websites [people use to arrange consensual sex with other adults]”…and…led to at least 372 [peaceful men] arrested nationwide, including 21 charged with soliciting a [cop pretending to be an adult woman engaged in ageplay]…another 23 people arrested during the sting are also facing human trafficking charges [for being associates of sex workers.  At least] thirty-five [sex workers] were [also arrested]…

Elephant in the Parlor (#872) 

As long as transactional sex is criminalized and stigmatized, it will be used as a weapon against women:

Since August 17, [Maria] Butina has been [cag]ed at the Alexandria Detention Center…she spent her 30th birthday in solitary confinement, in…a seven-by-ten-foot room with a steel door, cement bed, and two narrow windows, each three inches wide.  She has been allowed outside for a total of 45 minutes.  On December 13, Butina pleaded guilty to conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent of the Russian Federation.  She faces a possible five-year sentence in federal prison…But…The government’s case against Butina is extremely flimsy and appears to have been driven largely by a desire for publicity.  In fact, federal prosecutors were forced to retract the most attention-grabbing allegation in the case—that Butina used sex to gain access and influence…Despite the lack of evidence…prosecutors—abetted by an uncritical media willing to buy into the idea of a Russian agent infiltrating conservative political circles—were intent on getting a win…

If Men Were Angels (#897) 

The problem isn’t Catholicism, Christianity or even religion; it’s teaching kids to blindly submit to authority:

Debbie Vasquez…was 14…when she was first molested by her pastor in Sanger [Texas]…It was the first of many assaults that…destroyed her teenage years and, at 18, left her pregnant…In June 2008, she paid her way to Indianapolis, where she and others asked leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention and its 47,000 churches to track sexual predators and take action against congregations that harbored or concealed abusers…Southern Baptist leaders rejected nearly every proposed reform.  The abusers haven’t stopped.  They’ve hurt hundreds more…In the decade since Vasquez’s appeal…more than 250 people who worked or volunteered in Southern Baptist churches have been charged with sex crimes…since 1998, roughly 380 Southern Baptist church leaders and volunteers have faced allegations of sexual misconduct…They left behind more than 700 victims, many of them shunned by their churches…Some were urged to forgive their abusers or to get abortions.  About 220 offenders have been convicted or took plea deals, and dozens of cases are pending…More than 100 are registered sex offenders.  Some still work in Southern Baptist churches today…

Pyrrhic Victory (#903) 

While Amazon keeps supporting the fascist surveillance state, Bezos demands his privacy be exempt:

…Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos…published emails in which the [National] Enquirer’s parent company explicitly threatened to publish intimate photographs of Bezos and his mistress…unless Bezos agreed to a series of demands involving silence about the company’s conduct.  In a perfect world, none of the sexually salacious material the Enquirer was threatening to release would be incriminating or embarrassing to Bezos: it involves consensual sex between adults that is the business of nobody other than those involved and their spouses.  But that’s not the world in which we live…The prospect of naked selfies of Bezos would obviously generate intense media coverage and all sorts of adolescent giggling and sanctimonious judgments…The…Enquirer  was…actively devoted to Donald Trump’s election…while Bezos, as the owner of the steadfastly anti-Trump Washington Post, is viewed by Trump as a political enemy…the NSA, FBI [and] other agencies…have a long…history of [such spying], which is why…Democratic adoration for those agencies, and the recent bipartisan further empowerment of them, was so disturbing…one of the stories we were able to report using the Snowden documents…is an active NSA program to collect…browsing records of porn site and sex chats, of people regarded by the U.S. Government as radical…in order to use their online sex habits to destroy their reputations.  This is what and who the NSA, CIA and FBI are…[which is] deeply ironic…because Amazon…is a critical partner for the U.S. Government in building an ever-more invasive…surveillance state.  Indeed, one of the largest components of Amazon’s business, and thus one of the most important sources of Bezos’ vast wealth and power, is working with the Pentagon and the NSA to empower the U.S. Government with more potent and more sophisticated weapons, including surveillance weapons…

Top Cop

Kamala Harris is now telling her brainwashed fans that she was a “progressive” prosecutor:

The 1990s were among the most punishing decades in the recent  history of American justice.  Zealous prosecutors competed to put the most people behind bars, and politicians were eager to pass new laws to extend sentences.  In San Francisco, Terence Hallinan was one of the only prosecutors in America bucking the trend.  A legendary civil rights activist, defense attorney…and…outspoken advocate for marijuana legalization, Hallinan rode a wave of discontent…to become San Francisco district attorney in 1995.  He swiftly fired senior prosecutors…and called drug use a victimless crime…Yet Hallinan…was expelled in 2003 after just two terms in office, despite San Francisco’s notorious liberal bent.  An up-and-coming young career prosecutor named Kamala Harris…carefully cultivated a base of support among [cops]…wealthy donors, and [other authoritarians]…Far from the “smart on crime” mantra she touted in her successful bid to become California’s attorney general…Harris’s first campaign reflected familiar tactics in an era of booming mass incarceration…

Pyrrhic Victory (#912) 

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

San Francisco’s government does not own an all-seeing network of surveillance cameras that watch people as they go about their daily business.  However…if officialdom wants to find out what people have been up to, it has access to thousands upon thousands of surveillance cameras that record exactly that.  In many cases, private residents and businesses installed these cameras themselves and offered access to [the pigs]…the modern surveillance state…is largely driven by good intentions, private fears, and innovative entrepreneurs vying for government contracts.  A map and dataset of 2,753 cameras owned by private and public operators in San Francisco was published last week by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)….”The District Attorney refused to reveal the locations of an additional 510 cameras,” notes EFF…A small number…are official government surveillance cameras…a few are [repurposed] red-light cameras…Two hundred and forty-nine of the cameras are maintained by the Union Square Business Improvement District (USBID)…But the vast majority—2,406 never-blinking lenses—[we]re…installed by private businesses, individuals, and associations…

Stupor Bowl (#912)

Virtually the only people who still profess to believe this nonsense are cops and politicians:

…[prohibitionist propaganda claimed] Atlanta was supposed to be a bastion of sex during Super Bowl week, with both…sex work…and sex trafficking…on the rise.  Yet sex workers say that [as is typical for sex mega sports events] neither seemed to be occurring at higher levels than usual in Atlanta.  The lack of sex trafficking wasn’t surprising:  The claim that sex trafficking increases during the Super Bowl is a many–times–busted myth.  But I wondered why sex workers weren’t raking in the cash.  According to them, the sex trafficking stings, particularly an FBI anti-trafficking operation in beginning on Jan. 23, were partly to blame…

Only partly; I can assure younger sex workers that the Super Bowl and similar events have never been good for business, for reasons that should be obvious.

Read Full Post »

Diary #451

Posted in Diary, tagged , , on February 19, 2019| 4 Comments »

While the snow was on the ground (and the cars, and a lot of other things) it was remarkably quiet; for days I barely heard any traffic noise, and my neighborhood at least was blissfully spared the periodic nuisance of testosterone-addled cops blaring their sirens to run red lights in the middle of the night.  And strangely, my emails and other channels of communication were also fairly quiet.  But as soon as the snow started melting, everything started back at once, and I was inundated with correspondence and other stuff to do.  But one of those things was planning future showings of The War on Whores, so that’s good; we’re already looking at screenings in Orlando, FL, Minneapolis, MN, and Washington, DC, and would love to hear from you if you can help us show it in another city!  Finally, it shouldn’t be much longer before I release The Essential Maggie McNeill, now that someone else has taken over producing the cover.  See, I told you I was serious about letting others taking care of the stuff I’m not good at, so I can just concentrate on being Maggie McNeill.

Read Full Post »

Older Posts »