The Honest Courtesan

Be wary of people in the media trying to sell you on the idea that sex traffickers, hate criminals, migrant caravans, and Momo are coming to get you.  –  Robby Soave

Surplus Women

Naturally this monster preyed on whores; the state put them directly in his path:

A [North Carolina] jury sentenced Seaga Gillard to death…for the hotel-room fatal shootings of a pregnant woman and her boyfriend…Gillard…and co-defendant Brandon Hill targeted [sex workers]…robbing and sexually assaulting them…across the Triangle…prosecutors placed a long string of victims on the stand, nearly all of whom described the same scenario:  advertising themselves on Backpage or PlentyOfFish, expecting a single customer but finding two at the door, being tied up with phone cords, robbed and sexually assaulted…Details that spun out of that testimony painted a cruel picture of Gillard: ordering a woman to remove her clothes and then twirling a gun inside of her, instructing another women to show her teeth and then putting his gun to her mouth…

HIV Cure (#31)

For just the second time…a patient appears to have been cured of infection with H.I.V…The news comes nearly 12 years to the day after the first patient known to be cured, a feat that researchers have long tried, and failed, to duplicate.  The…success now confirms that a cure…is possible, if difficult…Both milestones resulted from bone-marrow transplants given to…treat cancer…Bone-marrow transplantation is unlikely to be a realistic treatment option in the near future.  Powerful drugs are now available to control H.I.V. infection, while the transplants are risky, with harsh side effects that can last for years.  But rearming the body with immune cells similarly modified to resist H.I.V. might well succeed as a practical treatment…

Out of Their Tree

While some politicians are beginning to side with sex workers and others are pretending to, the majority are still unreconstructed prohibitionists and a few, like Los Angeles councilwoman Nury Martinez, are dangerous authoritarian fanatics.  Last week, this nut bar talked about going on a whore hunt with the pigs, then vomiting out her totalitarian wanking fantasy that all sex workers should be considered children under the law:

…What became very apparent to me is that the girls they were calling prostitutes were children…the women we were…actually children…we need to stop calling them women…they’re children….[and] victims…We want…to…help prosecutors go after these guys and…put [sex workers] away for good…

This is not the first time Martinez has spoken in favor of legally nullifying the human rights of people who have consensual sex, which she has called “sickening”.  Martinez is pro-universal surveillance, pro-censorship, and pro-asset seizure, and supports the State treating the poor who dare to go out in public as though they were plague rats, so I’m sure she has a long, bright political future ahead of her as a “progressive” political star.

False Witness (#752)

Those who wish to manufacture “sex trafficking victims” can use exactly the same methods:

For years, a group of outcasts in Beatrice, Neb., were convinced they had brutally raped and murdered an elderly woman named Helen Wilson one night in February 1985, even though they couldn’t remember any of it.  That was only [the fantasy dreamed up] by the detectives and [pushed on them by] the police psychologist at the Gage County Sheriff’s Office…[who claimed the group had magically] repressed the traumatizing memories.  The [pig-enabling] psychologist, Wayne Price, assured them the memories of the murder would probably come back in dreams…[eventually he brainwashed] three of the six suspects — [Ada] Taylor, Debra Shelden and James Dean [into] wholeheartedly believ[ing] in their [nonexistent] guilt.  But for at least one of them, Joseph White, it was a different story.  Convicted on nothing more than his friends’ false memories and dreams, he would spend the next 20 years seeking to prove his innocence — a pursuit that finally came to an end [last] week [when]…the Supreme Court upheld $28.1 million in damages to the wrongfully convicted, now known as the Beatrice Six.  The judgment comes as a result of a civil rights lawsuit that White filed in 2009, the same year the group was pardoned and declared innocent beyond all doubt after DNA evidence exonerated them.  They had collectively served more than 70 years in prison…

Uncommon Sense (#774)

The GMB follows up on the support for sex worker rights it first announced 18 months ago:

The GMB union has launched a new adult entertainment branch, which will invite members from across Scotland…The sex workers who fought for the creation of the branch now hope to shape future prostitution legislation…Rhea Wolfson, GMB organiser for Glasgow, was instrumental in setting up the branch.  She [said]…”Sex work is work and it should be safe…People are waking up to the reality that if sex workers are treated differently then that is discrimination”…The GMB’s adult entertainment branch is open to anyone in the adult entertainment industry, including strippers, burlesque and go-go dancers, video cam workers, people who make pornography – any form of sexual labour…

Wise Investment (#779)

Sex workers, clients & everyone else harmed by “prostitution stings” needs to keep suing over them:

…Sandipkumar Patel was wrongly accused of soliciting sex from a massage parlor during [the recent]…prostitution…busts in South Florida….the Martin County Sheriff’s Office [maliciously pretended] Patel…was connected to the operation because [they claimed] he owned a blue, four-door Porsche [parked] in the parking lot…Patel…doesn’t own a Porsche.  Later [pigs admitted] the car actually belonged to a woman with the same last name….Patel…says his life, and his family’s life, has been turned upside-down [due to pigs’ releasing names and pictures for the specific intent of publicly shaming people who by law are presumed innocent]…The David Golden Law Office [is representing Patel] to sue the Martin County Sheriff’s Office…

Stalkers in Blue

With modern surveillance and data processing, no woman is safe from cops:

Adrian Trevor Moore was a [cop in Western Australia who]…pleaded guilty to 180 charges of using a secure police database to access the information of 92 women he had met, or interacted with, on dating websites including Tinder and Plenty of Fish.  A third of the women were checked by Moore multiple times over several years…Defence barrister Mark Andrews [claimed]…Moore[‘s violation of almost a hundred women’s privacy was OK because he] was motivated by “curiosity”…But…Magistrate Geoff Lawrence…said a jail term was necessary…”people can’t trust the public officials…they [should] lose confidence in the system”…

Saving Them From Themselves (#846)

Another bad law giving prosecutors more ways to charge teen sexters rather than simply exempting them:

…a bill that would [offer prosecutors less punitive charging options for]…teen sexting passed off the floor of the Washington State House, but not without resistance from Republican representative Brad Klippert, who spent a lot of his time screaming about the depravity of anal sex and other acts after legislators rejected his amendment…Noel…Frame’s bill would prevent kids from being charged with a felony for possessing naked photos of themselves.  Minors sharing… photos…could [still] be charged with a…misdemeanor [unless the subject is]…12 and under [even if the sharer is the same age]…Brad Klippert, a school [pig] and Pentecostal preacher…[wanted to] only…protect…kids who sent nudes that didn’t offend his delicate sensibilities…

Take a look at the video, and consider that this screaming lunatic is both a fundie preacher and a pig, whose job is (no surprise) spying on and lording it over high schoolers.  McNeill-Rule examples like this are the ones who decide whether to hurl life-destroying charges at teens for normal adolescent sexuality:

The Clueless Leading the Hysterical (#918) 

Robby Soave correctly classes “sex trafficking” as an absurd moral panic:

Palm Beach County finally unblocked Youtube on its school computers…after falling for the…Momo…hoax…[that] a shocking number of journalists are guilty of spreading…but this should surprise no one…people of all ideological persuasions should beware the frequent spread of nonsensical, sensational, conspiratorial, and utterly false news stories—everything from obvious fakes like Momo to the slightly more robust yet equally absurd contentions that sex trafficking and hate crimes are ever-worsening epidemics…the media, particularly local media, falls for these kinds of hoaxes all the time.  Every year around Halloween, news outlets prey on parents’ unreasonable fears of sex offenders abducting their kids, or malicious strangers feeding them poisoned candy, even though neither of these things ever happen…Sometimes the hoax gets an assist from the police or schools…Trump promoted a Washington Examiner article about ranchers finding prayer rugs at the souther border, an indication that…Muslims…were entering the country illegally…At the Conservative Political Action Conference…Sara Carter…[repeated] a reboot of something called a pharming party; Politico‘s Jack Shafer has debunked its existence over and over again…the so-called sex-trafficking epidemic…has been carefully refuted…over and over again…

Top Cop (#918)

Could it be that sex work decriminalization will actually be an issue in the next presidential election?  Though Swedish model devotee Copmala Harris is lying through her teeth when she claims to support decriminalization, the very fact that she thinks claiming to support it will get her votes says something.  Believe it or not, the chronically-stoned Rolling Stone actually seems to have hit on one of the reasons:

…Given the newfound visibility of sex workers’ rights, and the overlap the movement has with women’s rights and workers’ rights as a whole, the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates are in the position of having to address an issue that has previously been on the margins of the national conversation.  But it’s unclear how many of them plan to do that…A major driving force behind this increased visibility has been the backlash to SESTA/FOSTA, a controversial piece of legislation that was [pre]tended to combat sex trafficking on websites like Backpage…[but] had the opposite effect…

Meanwhile, in Vice, sex worker Liara Roux wrote:

…you can’t be upset at people for being single-issue voters when that issue is their literal survival.  If Democrat[s]…are worried about our complaints, they would be better served by making sure there is better policy around sex work in the Democratic platform than by asking sex workers to stop fighting for their survival.  We are asking to stop the bleeding.  Hell, we are asking for people to even acknowledge the wound.  This shouldn’t be considered a high bar…a Democrat who believes in increased criminalization will sign the death warrant for countless sex workers.  A Democrat willing to examine their mistakes and work towards decriminalization, decarceration, and destigmatization will help just as many people survive…

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