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Archive for June, 2019

Help!

Posted in Perception, tagged , , , , , , on June 10, 2019| 1 Comment »

As the Beatles said in a song that isn’t the one this column is named for, “I get by with a little help from my friends”.  And that’s what this is; a request for a little help from you, my readers and friends.  Of course, the most helpful help is usually monetary, but I’m aware that many of you may be suffering from giving fatigue lately; therefore only the FIRST of these requests is for monetary help.  The other two won’t cost you a cent, though the second one will cost you some time; the third only requires a change in the way you do things.

First, as is not unusual with GoFundMe projects, mine is stalled at just over the halfway mark.  So if you haven’t contributed yet, please do so by clicking here!  And if you already have, please consider doing so again, or subscribing to my blog by clicking one of the handy buttons in the margin.  So far, your contributions have enabled the burning of DVDs (which should be delivered to us this week), getting The War on Whores onto Amazon (where you can watch it for FREE if you’re a Prime member), and doing several sponsored screenings for groups which couldn’t otherwise afford it.  Please keep us going so we can get on iTunes and keep doing those sponsored screenings (next ones are coming in Florida in only two weeks)!  And even though I’m not allowed to advertise gifts directly on GoFundMe, there are indeed gifts and you can see them here.

Second:  speaking of Amazon, their algorithms dig up things a lot better if they have more reviews; would you please consider reviewing The War on Whores, The Forms of Things Unknown and/or Ladies of the Night for me?  More reviews could result in more sales, and more sales not only means more money, but more exposure.  Since all the items are linked by my name, increased attention to the books could also mean increased attention to the film, which will get the message out that much more.  And since the film is being considered “adult” by search engines, that’s extra-important in these days of shadowbans, hidden content and de-weighted search results intended to bury anything sex-industry-related where it can’t disturb the sleep of prudes and prohibitionists.

And that brings us to number 3.  Due to Twitter shadowbanning sex workers (removing us from search results, etc) my follower count has been stalled for a very long time.  So what I need is for those of you who follow me there to consider replacing some or most of your “likes” with retweets.  “Likes” are nice, but they don’t put my tweets in front of more eyeballs, and since I’m fortunate in having a very large fraction of my followers come from outside the demimonde, retweets allow my tweets to be seen by people who might not otherwise have seen them.  More viewers = more readers = more exposure for my writing, speaking, etc, including The War on Whores.  And because of that war, we whores need all the support we can get.

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Links #466

Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Obituary, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 9, 2019| 2 Comments »

It’s a good day for a chokehold.  –  “Officer” Reuben Carver

Dr. John, the legendary New Orleans musician, died this week.  Actually, “institution” would be a more apt term; in many Crescent City circles, saying you didn’t like his music would be fighting words.  Those of you who never lived there will probably recognize this song (suggested by Jesse Walker), which was his biggest hit.  The links above it were provided by Kevin Wilson, Furrygirl, Christian Britschgi, Mirriam Seddiq, Cathy Reisenwitz, and Amy Alkon, in that order.

From the Archives

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In the News (#943)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 8, 2019| 2 Comments »

The[se] cops were nothing but video voyeurs.  –  John Wesley Hall

Where Are the Victims?

In which renting rooms to people in a legal trade is pretended to be a “crime”:

Angus Binnie took out…leases o[n] flats in Dundee…then advertised them for short term rental on various websites – and charged itinerant prostitutes massive fees of up to £600 a week…He said he took no part in the administration of the sex workers and therefore had no control over them or their finances…

While that’s a high rate, the women weren’t forced to take it.  Most decent hotels charge more than £600 a week, ask lots of nosy questions and spy on guests; are they to be criminally charged and slurred by the media as “raking it in” as well?  And naturally the reporter couldn’t be bothered to interview any sex workers, who would’ve pointed out that it’s the government’s own busybody “regulations” that enable such jacked-up rates by making “legitimate” landlords afraid to rent to sex workers.

So Close and Yet So Far

The New York Times has been prohibitionist for so long, it can’t write an article about decriminalization without filling it with errors, lies and stupid anti-sex tropes.  While the article starts with some solid facts and good quotes from activists like my friend Kaytlin Bailey and a pro-decrim politician, it then goes on to equate decriminalization with legalization and the Swedish model (as prohibitionists so often do); prominently quotes prohibitionist propaganda under the pretense that supporters of a powerful, violent police state deserve “equal time” with supporters of human rights; and repeats outright lies about sex work, decriminalization and the Swedish model.  In Professor McNeill’s journalism class, this might squeak by with a D minus.

On the Simultaneous Having and Eating of Cake

Given the success of strippers’ lawsuits against clubs, this was inevitable:

Two former sex workers filed a class-action lawsuit…against Sheri’s Ranch in Pahrump, claiming that the brothel should have treated them and other women as employees instead of independent contractors…The plaintiffs…also claim that Sheri’s Ranch is violating the federal Fair Labor Standards Act by taking 50 percent of the workers’ tips…[they are also charged for] expenses, including the cost of meals, daily rent at the houses and the cost of a mandatory weekly medical exam, among other things…Many former brothel workers…complain that deducting the cost of rent and meals from their pay causes them to quickly end up in debt…As evidence of the brothel’s control over sex workers [one of the federal tests for whether a worker is an employee] the lawsuit cites a requirement by Sheri’s Ranch that the women remain locked down on the property for one to three weeks at a time, unable to leave the premises…

Sheri’s is also notorious for taking away women’s laptop computers and personal medications, dispensing the meds at dose times as though it were a hospital.

Guinea Pigs (#634) 

Don’t feel left out, amateurs; they’ll get around to you next:

…a Chinese programmer based in Germany [claims to have] created an elaborate facial recognition system to identify performers in adult films…he claims…the system…can now successfully recognize the faces of nearly 100,000 adult performers…[by] cross-check[ing] porn performers’ images…with those of women on…social media platforms…the system was developed specifically so [loser dudes] could identify whether their female partners were performing in these films…

The anonymous busybody soon recanted:

An anonymous programmer based in Germany…says he’s…deleted the project and all its data, but that’s not an act of altruism.  Such a project would have violated European…GDPR privacy law [which] prevents this kind of situation…just collecting the data is illegal if the women didn’t consent…Women in the US have some protections too…California has strong privacy legislation that would block this type of data collection…

Is Angela Chen honestly so hopelessly naive that she believes these laws magically “protect” anyone?  People who invest hundreds of hours in inventing systems to doxx sex workers don’t give a shit what the “law” says; furthermore, in the US, it’s the government which has built gigantic databases of sex workers’ private information (yes, even in that magic wonderland of “privacy protection” which Google and Facebook call home).

An Example to the West (#699)

More than five years after filing suit against this bad law, Mexico City’s whores may finally win:

…Mexico City…[politicians]…voted 38-0, with eight abstentions, in favor of a bill to remove a line in the civic culture law which said prostitutes and their clients can be fined or arrested if neighbors complained…the new law recognize[s] that people had the right to engage in sex work…exploitation and trafficking by crime gangs…subjected to sex trafficking…Trafficking in Persons Report [blah blah blah]…

I’m sure the prohibitionists are not going to be happy that their artificial moral panic is starting to be used to justify the exact opposite of what they intended it to accomplish, further criminalization and persecution of sex workers.

Soap Opera (#746) 

I wonder where Theresa Flores will get a real job once “sex trafficking” hysteria collapses?

…Bars of [magical anti-pimp] soap with red stickers that list information and the national human trafficking hotline phone number…aimed at [imaginary] adolescents [too stupid to remember the numbers 9-1-1], will be distributed to every hotel and motel in New Jersey on June 15.  The Church and Community Abolition Network has joined the SOAP Project, or Save Our Adolescents from Prostitution, and together are working to get information to the [imaginary] teens enslaved as sex workers.  They have chosen to target hotels because [that gives them the best publicity]…One of the sessions will be held in Wayne, where SOAP was launched 10 years ago by [fabulist and opportunistic profiteer] Theresa Flores…

Amsterdam (#812)

I’ve been trying to figure out why the Dutch government has been pretending it wants to protect sex workers from gawking tourists:

Walking tours of the Red Light District in Amsterdam are set to cease come January 1, 2020.  According to the translated official statement from the Dutch government, “Tours along the prostitution windows cause a lot of bustle in the Red Light District and are not respectful towards sex workers”…The Prostitution Information Center (PIC) doesn’t agree and hopes to stave off the attempt to shut down their community-led walking tours…Founded in 1994 by Mariska Majoor, a former sex worker, the organization’s mission is to inform the public about the realities of the industry and the concerns of its workers…For over a decade, the PIC has organized educational walking tours in which former sex workers lead small groups around the Red Light District.  They once hosted around 22,000 visitors annually but attendance has reduced in recent years due to steep competition from commercial tour companies.  Unlike other tours of the Red Light District, the PIC experience is an informative and heartfelt tour rooted in respect for sex workers and the community…

European governments love silencing sex workers by pretending to be “concerned” for our welfare.

Spotlight (#847)

Violet Blue on the real purpose of Asstoon’s fascist organ, Thorn:

Silicon Valley’s biggest companies have partnered with a single organization to fight sex [work] — one that maintains a data collection pipeline, is partnered with Palantir, and helps [cops] profile and track sex workers without their consent…Thorn (“digital defenders of children”)…[uses] dubious [methods]…Of Thorn’s 31…partners, 27 target adults and vow to abolish consensual sex work under the banner of saving children from sex trafficking…Thorn’s…product…Spotlight scrapes [escort ad] websites and forums [and hands all the data it collects to the pigs]…Spotlight is terrifying and practically purpose-made for abuse.  And Thorn supported FOSTA…Thorn and its partners like Polaris Project are working closely with companies like Palantir to nonconsensually track sex workers and everyone they come in contact with…”Civil liberties lawyers are seeking a case to challenge the constitutionality of Palantir’s use,” Bloomberg wrote, “but prosecutors and immigration agents have been careful not to cite the software in evidentiary documents.”  Paromita Shah, associate director of the National Lawyers Guild’s National Immigration Project told Bloomberg, “Palantir lives on that secrecy.”  And so, by extension, do Thorn and Polaris Project…

The article also discusses the increasing damage from FOSTA and also Prostasia’s plans to act as a watchdog of Thorn, Polaris and others of their ilk.  It’s well worth reading in its entirety.

Guinea Pigs (#919) 

Keep licking those boots, local media; legal expert analysis is downplayed as “critics say”:

…[clear] misuse of a “sneak-and-peek” arrest warrant may end up clearing [Robert] Kraft…of two misdemeanor counts of soliciting prostitution.  The warrants have been around since the 1970s but became an increasingly popular [end-run around the 4th amendment due to courts completely abdicating their duty to protect civil rights] following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.  They allow [cops] to do [unconstitutional] searches without notifying the occupant of a home, business or other private space [while courts pretend not to see]…“It’s completely uncalled for,” said John Wesley Hall, former president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers…”the[se] cops were nothing but video voyeurs.  They have no justification…This was an abuse of prosecutorial power and an abuse of police power.”  At least two Palm Beach County judges have concurred…

O, Canada! (#934)

Canadian cops now want to get the public to help them spy on sex workers, as US cops do:

A new national…toll-free phone line, launched…by [a prohibitionist group calling itself] the Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking, [claims to] offers support to…victims…[but in reality] the information collected through the hotline w[ill] be shared [with cops] and used…for raids that may lead to arrests and possible deportations…“We are concerned the hotline will become a tip line for law enforcement,” said Elene Lam of Toronto-based Butterfly…Jenny Duffy of Maggie’s Toronto Sex Workers Action Project said human trafficking and sex work have been so widely conflated that sex workers and racialized groups are already targeted by law enforcement agencies under the guise of anti-trafficking initiatives.  “This hotline encourages the public to now surveil the movements of this group and report them…putting them in further harm, and further hindering workers from accessing key public services”…

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Starfish

Posted in Perception, Words, tagged , , , , , on June 7, 2019| 4 Comments »

People who define sex work as the selling of a body, or who say sex isn’t work, are telling you a lot about their own sex lives.  I mean, think about it; what does it say to you for a person to claim they believe sex consists of a woman lying passively in bed like a doll while a man “accesses her body cavities”?  What would you conclude about the sexual experiences of a person who claimed to believe that sex required no labor at all from the woman, but was simply done to her, with the man as the only active party in the transaction?  And yet, when I made this simple point last week, I was inundated with angry responses from prohibitionists trying to “explain” that I was wrong (and a misogynist, natch) because sex really does involve a woman lying there like a cadaver, with a man “masturbating into her orifices”.  I got similar responses from almost a score of prohibitionists, who thus boosted my tweets while amply proving my point over and over again (even after I suggested they stop digging).  Too bad the general public is just as ignorant as they are and are therefore unable to see through their embarrassing self-exposure as easily as those of us in the demimonde can. 

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Still Consenting

Posted in Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , on June 6, 2019| 1 Comment »

I’ve got an article on sex work, money and consent in the new print edition of Reason, and I think y’all should show your support by picking one up!  But if you have neither subscription nor newsstand handy, here it is online.  A sample to get you started: 

…In the realm of sex, consent has been elevated to the level of a sacred word.  But in practice, most of us believe in a host of exceptions…Many if not most of these exceptions involve sex, money, or power, so it’s not surprising that sex work—which involves all three—inspires some truly absurd mental gymnastics on and around the concept of consent.  Statists, both in and out of government, like to play Kafkaesque games with the idea of consent.  We are told by a certain type of feminist that consent must be explicitly verbal, ongoing, and “enthusiastic”.  They say it must be tiresomely re-ascertained over and over and over again, no matter how clearly it was expressed in the first place.  Modern Puritans, meanwhile, claim that people who engage in “deviant” sexual behavior (including sex work, BDSM, and—until very recently—homosexuality) are suffering from “Stockholm syndrome,” “trauma bonding,” or “false consciousness” and thus cannot consent to things they claim to enjoy because they are not in their right minds.

But the most bizarre of these tortuous mind games, popular among radical feminists for years but gaining momentum today among “progressives,” is the idea that if a person is paid to do something he wouldn’t do for free, that constitutes “coercion” or even “violence”.  As Reason‘s Elizabeth Nolan Brown pointed out a few years ago, “In Seattle, sex must be a ‘leisure activity’ for both parties or it’s nonconsensual, according to one area prosecutor.”  Brown was writing about Val Richey, a senior deputy prosecuting attorney for King County, Washington, who argued that all sex workers are victims of rape because someone paid them “essentially to turn a ‘no’ into a ‘yes.'”  This dogma is deranged.  Richey doesn’t do his job for free; does that mean he is coerced, too?  This contradiction doesn’t seem to occur to anti–sex work crusaders, because they’re unwilling to accept that sex, like every other part of the material world, is not distributed “evenly” or “fairly”…

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In the News (#942)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 5, 2019| 1 Comment »

I don’t know where the justice is.  –  Roger Byard, on prosecuting a mother for an infant’s unexplained death

Blunt Instrument

The government’s latest sleazy trick: attacking with civil suits rather than criminal charges, because the burden of proof is reversed:

Los Angeles prosecutors said…they hope a civil lawsuit will [bankrupt] two San Fernando Valley massage parlors they accused [without evidence] of being fronts for…human trafficking rings.  City Attorney Mike Feuer said his office filed the lawsuit against the…owners…[and] the landlord of the strip malls where both are located.  Prosecutors are seeking a permanent injunction against the spas, as well as financial [loot]…the city attorney’s office accused Xiaoxi Ding and Hongshan Wang of running a “sophisticated prostitution ring at both locations”…

Targeting landlords with “pimping” charges is a typical prosecutor trick to avoid having to prove anything, and  “Sophisticated prostitution rings” is the most popular cop excuse for raping sex workers.

Original Sin

Why bother with the hard work of getting a degree and doing peer-reviewed research when you can just PRAY and Jesus will magically make you a “sex trafficking expert”?

Beth Grate…started learning [fantasies] about human trafficking when a family visited her…church…She went on to found and head…a chapter of the Michigan Abolitionist Project….She attended and spoke at programs about human trafficking…and…[st]alked [sex workers in] neighborhoods…She is working toward earning certification as a human trafficking international subject matter expert, a new program that is being developed [by unnamed parties]…Victims of trafficking are usually Americans with ages ranging from one to 70 years old…“I believe in Jesus Christ. I was sitting with the Lord and I said, ‘Why can’t I find my niche? God put in the idea I wasn’t supposed to have a narrow niche, but a broad spectrum ministry…People don’t think it’s happening here…it’s [fantasized] in every county of Michigan…Traffickers can live in your neighborhood”…

Property of the State 

Do not EVER talk to the pigs.  Just shut the fuck up except to demand your lawyer:

When Addeline Brindle woke up on March 29, 2018…her 3-month-old baby, Tre’Velle…[was dead] in the bed beside her…Mansfield, Ohio, police…[interrogated the traumatized 19-year-old at] the hospital…and she [foolishly] told them that she had used cocaine two days before…six months later…she was charged with involuntary manslaughter, reckless homicide, endangering children, and possession of cocaine…Her attorney, John Boyd, pushed for probation…[but] Judge Brent Robinson [grunted]…“[Oink oink] drugs [are bad]…and [I am] going to [make you] suffer”…But…medical experts who reviewed the baby’s autopsy report…said…it was unclear whether his death stemmed from his sleeping situation, or from an undiagnosed medical condition…the prosecutor and judge used Tre’Velle’s death to send a message about [defying the police state]…In the past…many…deaths were attributed to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, a catch-all diagnosis…But in recent decades, thanks to [expansion of the carceral state]…forensic pathologists have shifted away from SIDS and toward [blaming the mother]…

Innocence Never Had (#602)

People are so unwilling to let go of the “pimps & hos” myth and the “enslaved children” wanking fantasy, that even when they question a few of the elements they can’t let go of the rest:

…In 2017, nearly 25,000 runaways reported to NCMEC and nearly 3,600 were likely victims of sex trafficking.  Of those, 88 percent came from the social services system…The most common reasons for [kids to be abducted by the State]…were neglect (62 percent) and drug abuse by one or both parents (36 percent). [But so-called] drug abuse can be as simple as failing a single voluntary drug test.  Neglect can mean as little as missing homeschooling paperwork, or even  letting a child eat sweets before dinner…Once the child is in the system, it can be exceedingly difficult for the parents to get their child back…Pimps are…skilled at developing dependency in their victims…Their main targets are children aged 12-14…“When law enforcement takes these kids back home, many times these kids walk right back out the door on their own and right back into the clutches of these offenders,” said [NCMEC bureaucrat Robert] Lowery…himself [a former pig]…

It absolutely true that most underage sex workers [not “sex trafficked children”] come from the “foster care” system, and that the system is a police-state abomination which destroys lives without adequate reason.  But they average 16-17, not 13; only a very small number [about 10%] have “pimps”; they run away again because the foster homes are very often more intolerable than street living, not because of ninja “pimps” with magical mind-control powers; and NCMEC is a dangerous anti-sex organization which hides its agenda behind “protecting children”.  Its claims about “likely victims” are pure nonsense with absolutely no basis in statistics; in fact, they even contradict NCMEC’s own published statistics.  But I guess none of that matters when there’s money to be made, a police state to enlarge and exciting fantasies of 13-year-old “sex slaves” to be wanked to.

To Molest and Rape

Good riddance to bad rubbish:

A [typical and representative] Jackson [Mississippi cop who] repeatedly [raped] a 15-year-old in the back of his patrol car committed suicide shortly after news broke about the abuse…James Hollins.[tricked the girl into thinking he was her friend and then demanded sex. In typical pig fashion, he did not kill himself in a dignified and private manner, but instead shot himself in his car with a gun stolen from another cop]…on I-220 [on the afternoon of May 27th, resulting in a massive rush-hour traffic jam as cops closed] both lanes of the interstate…for over two hours [while unsuccessfully trying to figure out how to pin the shooting on someone else. Hollins raped the girl]…several times a week over…six month[s and made]…several sexually explicit videos of the [assaults]…The teen’s mother caught on…and…reported it to the police chief…[who gave Hollins a paid vacation]…

Saving Them From Themselves (#775)

“Attack[ing] the autonomy and self-ownership of all young people” is exactly what this was intended to do:

Maryland’s highest court will soon decide whether a 16-year-old girl, “S.K.,” can face child pornography charges for taking a video of herself performing…consensual oral sex on an unidentified male [and sending it to] two close friends and [a snitch]…who [ratted her out to the pigs]…S.K.’s attorney, Public Defender Claudia Cortese, [naively] argued that the statute in question was not intended to punish minors…”the prosecutor [lied that] the state was not ‘trying to [send a message but]…is just trying to help her” [by sexually traumatizing her and branding her mentally ill for normal teen behavior]…

Dangerous Speech (#917)

I wish I could be more optimistic, but the government keeps demonstrating that it doesn’t really care that its war on thought is wholly and incontrovertibly unconstitutional:

Four national non-profits dedicated to protecting civil liberties and personal freedom…have lodged…amicus briefs with the federal court in Phoenix in support of a recent motion to dismiss by defendants in the Backpage case…the DKT Liberty Project, the Cato Institute and the Reason Foundation — joined forces in one brief, asking the court to grant the motion to dismiss.  Meanwhile the ACLU of Arizona submitted its own amicus curiae, focusing on the First Amendment implications of the prosecution…At the heart of the case is the government’s assumption that the ads in Backpage’s adult section for putatively legal services…were actually selling illicit sex.  But as the motion to dismiss and the amicus briefs point out, that is not an assumption that the First Amendment allows prosecutors to make…the First Amendment, and…the…charges under the Travel Act, require a specific knowledge and intent to promote the specific illegal act in question…And yet, prosecutors are not claiming that the defendants ever saw the…50 ads…which the government says it can connect to illegal acts.  Obviously, Lacey and Larkin were not engaged in the mundane task of reviewing ads for publication.  And most of the 50 ads the government cites were published after the two men sold their interest in the company in 2015…

An Avalanche of Bullshit (#929)

Is there anything fetishists won’t try to link to “sex trafficking”?

…the U.S. Department of Justice is now subpoenaing records related to the Floridian entrepreneur and small-time Republican donor Li “Cindy” Yang…her husband and parents, several former members of her staff, her colleague on the National Committee of Asian American Republicans, and several other Chinese Americans…Yang—who built up and then sold a spa and massage chain in South Florida—had in recent years launched G.Y. U.S. Investments, an endeavor that helped Chinese business owners navigate U.S. regulations and make contacts, investments, and operational inroads here.  As part of this consulting business, Yang sometimes offered clients access to events at Trump’s private club in Palm Beach and to other Republican parties.  Prosecutors say some of these events were ticketed fundraisers…and non-citizens are prevented from donating to U.S. political campaigns…people are already spinning wild tales about what we supposedly know about Yang—that she funneled money from China to Trump, and that she earned her money from human trafficking…

Rough Trade (#934)

Imagine this actually going to trial in the US:

Nikki Cox…thought…she [would not be believed by] police…after she was sexually assaulted by a client, who booked with the name Alex, in February last year.  But Alex was on [May 28th] handed a partly suspended sentence of 15-months in jail — of which he must serve two months — for one count of aggravated sexual assault, to which he pleaded guilty in April…Nikki has told her story…because she felt the chance of her assault being taken seriously enough to result in an arrest, let alone in a successful prosecution, was microscopic…

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Diary #466

Posted in Diary, Philosophy, tagged , , , on June 4, 2019| 6 Comments »

I would think it’s obvious to anyone who isn’t a complete moral imbecile that when one voluntarily accepts responsibility for a living creature, human or not, one is then responsible for the health and well-being of that creature.  It’s not a toy to be thrown away when one tires of it, and yet – as anyone who has ever lived on a farm or similar property can attest – many people do exactly that.  They get some kind of pet and then, when they decide on some whim that they don’t want it any more, they just drive it out to the area of the nearest farm, ranch, or stable and dump it.  Sure, they could contact some kind of animal welfare organization and ask for help rehoming the pet, but that’s too much like work for these entitled turds; it’s so much easier just to put the poor trusting beast in the car, take it for a ride, and then dump it off without any regard for the fact that it has absolutely no ability to take care of itself.  Well, week before last somebody did exactly that at a farm belonging to a neighbor of my friend Winnie; the lady went out in the morning to find a kunekune, a small breed of pig from New Zealand, making friends with her horses.  It’s about 80 pounds full-grown, so Winnie asked me if we had room for it out at Sunset and Grace, being an animal lover (who happens to have a special fondness for pigs), of course said yes.  So I bought a large dog kennel at the local Goodwill and Chekhov came to fetch him last Wednesday.  I named him Orville, and I’m happy to report that he seems very happy at Sunset.  He and Shiloh immediately became friends, but since all llamas are temperamental and Jonathan is a complete drama queen, he carried on frightfully the first day and has since been giving the little porker a wide berth.  It won’t last; he played “keep away from Shiloh” the entire first week she was there, but now they’re inseparable.  I can’t say I’m personally all that fond of pigs, but I’m told he is extremely friendly and clearly has the deportment of a house pet, so I’ll probably get used to him pretty quickly.  And if Jae can have a miniature horse, it only seems fair for Grace to have a miniature pig.  Besides, crazy cat ladies are pretty common; a crazy cat, dog, chicken, llama, pony and pig lady is much rarer.

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Links #465

Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 3, 2019| Leave a Comment »

I’ll kill your fucking dog.  –  Doug McLeod

Regular readers know that I’m a fan of instrumental pop and electronica, but you may not realize how long I’ve been a fan.  So here’s one song I loved as a child; note that this is the original Gershon Kingsley version from Music To Moog By (1969), not the shorter 1972 Hot Butter cover version which became a worldwide hit.  The links above the video were provided by Popehat (x2), Tushy Galore, Mike Siegel, Dave Krueger, and Jillian Keenan, in that order.

From the Archives

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Galvanized

Posted in History, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on June 2, 2019| 1 Comment »

When we eventually win our rights back we will, in a strange way, have our oppressors to thank for it.  –  “Cornered Animals”

Contrary to popular American belief, no French government since the Revolution has been friendly to sex workers who catered to the middle and working classes, and after the Second World War mere oppression escalated into outright hostility; eventually, however, the French cops’ and politicians’ attacks on sex workers grew so incessantly violent that 44 years ago today they protested by occupying the Church of St. Nizier in Lyon.  The occupation lasted only a week before the cops dispersed it with their usual methods, tear gas and horrific beatings, but the seed had been planted and sex worker rights organizations popped up in many countries; these groups won many victories in their first 30 years, until prohibitionists started to counterattack with lies, propaganda and huge amounts of money.  Since its beginning in 2004, the synthetic “sex trafficking” hysteria (a recycling of the deeply-racist late 19th & early 20th century “white slavery” hysteria which resulted in the imposition of many awful laws in the British Empire and full criminalization in the US) has undermined sex worker rights in much of the world and spawned an immense, expensive and vicious War on Whores in the United States, following in the footsteps of the equally-ruinous War on Drugs which has eroded civil liberties, turned the police into an occupying army and destroyed the lives of millions.

Then early last year, the prohibitionists achieved what they thought would be a definitive victory:  they persuaded and bribed the mob of moral imbeciles we call the US Congress to nigh-unanimously pass a blatantly-unconstitutional censorship law called FOSTA-SESTA intended to bankrupt, harm and kill sex workers and turn the entire internet into a walled garden controlled by the fascist coalition of Washington politicians, Hollywood media companies and a few hand-picked internet giants such as Facebook, Google and Amazon.  But as I noted just a few weeks after the law’s passage, it has had the opposite of its creators’ desired effect:  rather than silencing sex workers, it has frightened the quiet majority of our profession (including the less-criminalized branches like strippers) into raising their voices in support of the minority who have always been vocal.  Rather than convincing the public that our violent suppression was some kind of good, it has instead galvanized public support to a level never before seen in the US, and media outlets which actively supported the hysteria for over a decade are now publishing debunkings of prohibitionist propaganda and editorials in favor of decriminalization.  Rather than being seen as a holy tool of salvation for imaginary “sex slaves”, FOSTA-SESTA is being widely questioned, ridiculed and even attacked by reporters, commentators and even comedians.  And perhaps most tellingly, politicians who up until recently coudn’t even be bothered to accept that sex workers have basic civil rights are now actively calling for decriminalization.  As I wrote last year, “the tyrants have…inflicted so much brutal violence that even the sheep are fighting back alongside bitches like me who have never submitted obediently to the control of our self-appointed masters.”  And it’s about fucking time; maybe even Gay, Inc will eventually pull its swollen head out of its collective rectum and support us as it should have all along.  It will be neither an easy fight nor a quick one, but neither was the struggle for LGBT rights and look how far that’s come.  I don’t know if I’ll be around to see the end of that struggle which began in France over 40 years ago, but many of you reading this will.  And I’m perfectly satisfied with that.

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In the News (#941)

Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 1, 2019| 2 Comments »

The justification that [cops need to be allowed to rape sex workers because] “it’s hard to prosecute otherwise” is like the justification that waterboarding is necessary to obtain confessions.  –  Tom Kelley

Anatomy of a Boondoggle

As I’ve told you for a decade, cops raping sex workers is so accepted in Pennsylvania the state actively defends cops who do it:

…A [recent] investigation into…prostitution [entrapment] stings in south-central Pennsylvania has found several recent cases that raise questions about whether [cops] needed to go as far as they did to make an arrest and successfully prove the crime beyond a reasonable doubt…On several occasions, [pigs] took off all, or most, of their clothes.  In one case, a woman masturbated a [lying pig] for “several minutes” before [the rest of the herd busted in to terrorize her]…Prostitution is one of the lowest-level offenses in the crimes code.  Several of these cases ended with someone being sentenced to probation or ordered to pay fines and court costs…The Pennsylvania Superior Court [declared that] someone [did not] need…to actually have sex to be found guilty of prostitution in 1980…

The Scarlet Letter

Why do these puritans insist on pretending that the literally prehistoric practice of shaming constitute a “modern” approach to intentionally harming people for wanting consensual sex?  This article on Alabama’s new bill to legalize client shaming interviews a soi-disant “trafficking expert” who salivates and makes furtive movements in his pants pockets while vomiting out nonsense about how the sex trade magically disobeys every known law of economics and sociology, how one of the most powerful human motivators is somehow “skyrocketing”, how he should be the person who defines what constitutes “free speech”, and how 1/12 of the US population now consists of “sex slaves”.  Pay especial note to his fascination with the claim that over a third of those “sex slaves” are boys.

Storyville (#51)

Just as Louis XV supplied New Orleans with women by deporting whores, so George III did for Australia:

When the Lady Juliana arrived in Sydney in the winter of 1790, it was 11 months since the ship departed England.  Hundreds of colonists gathered to greet the ship they believed was bringing them desperately needed supplies for the near-starving colony…But…instead of food and livestock, the ship had carried more than 200 women…While the arrival of the Lady Juliana did little to alleviate the starvation crisis in the colony, the ship did bring long-awaited letters from loved ones and news from England…Every man on-board…indulged in a sexual relationship with a convict woman, so — not surprisingly — most of the women either arrived in Sydney pregnant or gave birth at sea…

To Molest and Rape 

The government calls this “border protection”:

A Border Patrol agent has been arrested and charged with three counts of sexual assault and three counts of aggravated assault…Steven Charles Holmes [raped a woman]…he [stalked via] a dating app…After checking into Holmes’ past, the Tucson Police Department said, “The investigation uncovered multiple victims with similar reports occurring from Jan. 2012 to Jan. 2019″…

Watershed (#836)

When the stuffy Boston Globe publishes an article like this, you know things are changing:

Prostitution in America has been thoroughly and purposefully  conflated with trafficking, leading to a prohibition of many kinds of sex work in most parts of the country.  These laws are based on a false morality which claims that all sex work is, by definition, coerced, and that no…woman…can consent to sell sex for money…There’s a solution to this…backed by scientific research and data, and one that’s already in place in other countries.  The best way to fight human trafficking is to decriminalize all sex work.  [The claim that] all sex work is trafficking…became popular in the late 19th century…and…began as a racist backlash against nonwhites and immigrants, marked by campaigns against “white slavery”…Politicians still use trafficking to score cheap points with both liberal voters — who see sex work as misogynist, coercive, and oppressive — and conservative voters — who see it as sinful…

The Widening Gyre (#869)

Here’s another entry in the “sex trafficking” scare story invasion of Twitter.  What makes these especially funny is that there has never been a single case of an adult woman abducted by so-called “sex traffickers” from any public place, much less a crowded shopping mall.  But get a load of the number of number of retweets and faves, for a tweet from an account with 343 followers who apparently dabbles in sex work.

Disaster (#925)

Given that lingerie companies have always profited from sex workers while refusing to stand with us, I’m sure you can understand why I’m gloating over this:

A number of swimwear and lingerie brands have spoken out against a new policy on Instagram which is causing them to have lower engagement and, consequently, to lose money…Facebook (Instagram’s parent company) [announced]…that they would be working to reduce “the spread of posts that are inappropriate but do not go against Instagram’s community guidelines”.  It went on to explain that “sexually suggestive posts” would be limited in the explore and hashtag sections of the app, but that it would still appear in your feed if you follow the account.  This means that accounts which post images deemed “sexually suggestive” will be less visible to accounts that don’t follow them – and they are therefore less likely to be discovered by new customers, which is how a lot of smaller swimwear and lingerie brands grow their audience and sales…

Rooted in Racism (#931)

White people’s latest racist trick: trying to scare African people out of migrating:

Forty-one [cops]…in Sierra Leone have received [indoctrination] on how to [label ordinary behavior]…human trafficking.  The [propaganda claims that]…thousands of young girls and boys are trafficked into sexual slavery or forced labor in Sierra Leone…[even though] there has been no conviction of trafficking in persons in the country.  This is in part because officials [were]…not [yet] sufficiently trained in [how to call just about any behavior] human trafficking [for purposes of]…prosecut[ion]…The [indoctrination] is…funded by the US Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration.

Note that buried lede way down in the last sentence.  Talk about following the money…

Yellow Fever (#937)

Spain’s new prohibitionist government, like its cronies, just makes shit up as it goes:

[Spanish anti-migrant spooks] have arrested 12 people [using the excuse of]…human trafficking…[they also arrested eight sex workers.  Pigs then oinked a lot of moralistic pap about]…illegal sexual activities, [negating the sex workers’ agency and misgendering transwomen]…All of them were advertised…in…a…thousand advertisements…ringleaders…deceived with the promise of a job…

Reporters using words like “ringleaders” and “illicit” or “illegal” sex always reminds me of this.

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