This isn’t just a few rogue agents or “bad apples”. – Daniel Martinez
Only bootlickers think the “cashless society” is a good thing:
…for the business of stripping, the end of cash is causing a crisis. A club makes the majority of its profits in credit card charges at the door, the bar, and the private rooms; the cash that flies around has always belonged to the strippers…without cash…club[s are]…free to exploit. Cash handed directly to a dancer gets pocketed, but credit card charges are skimmed—and because workers are more or less off the books, we have no recourse to contest absurdly high fees. When a customer pays several hundred dollars to spend time in a dark room alone with a dancer, the club takes a 70 percent cut…When the customer runs out of cash bills and doesn’t want to pay the exorbitant fee at the club’s ATM (which is often, conveniently, broken) the club will take roughly 30 percent out of every dance dollar—plastic bills representing the cost of a lap dance. That’s on top of a roughly $100 nightly fee that dancers pay in order to work…cash allows sex workers access to reliable and untraceable income, it makes it possible to avoid the discrimination inherent in the banking system, it allows us to hide our work from outside scrutiny…
Gentrification is one of the most common motivations for persecution of sex workers:
…members from South India AIDS Action Programme (SIAAP) [spoke]…at a discussion on “Sex work is work: Rethinking labour, consent and agency”. The stigma around sex workers further marginalises them, said Shyamala Nataraj…“State governments often claim to rescue sex workers from red light zones. If you follow the issue carefully, you’ll observe that the rescue will shortly be followed by a real estate venture in the area”…
…decriminalization like what [every single sex worker activist, every academic who has actually studied the issue and every human rights group want] is the worst option. More permissive sex work laws are associated with more sex works of all kinds…attract[ing] more traffickers [from prohibitionist sex fantasies]…Decriminalizing also does not protect willing, adult sex workers…because [surveillance, outing, and rape & persecution by cops constitute “protection”]…The better alternative is legalization…[including] a thorough background check and [compulsory, ongoing invasion of sex workers’ privacy by bureaucrats and rapist cops]…
“Written assurance” is like a “restraining order”:
A man in Pakistan has been arrested [for the murder of] his transgender daughter…19-year-old [Maya]…had left home and was living with friends in the city of Peshawar. Her family attempted to [lure] her [back to their] home on [June 29th]. Maya’s friends, concerned for her safety, contacted the police….[who] allowed family members to take Maya [back] to the city of Nowshera…Aurangzeb Akbar, the teenager’s father, provided the police with a written assurance that he would not harm his child. Maya’s bullet-ridden body was discovered just hours later…beside a river bank…Police…are…reportedly searching for Maya’s uncle and brothers…
A cop in Lowell, Massachusetts, has been charged with rape after…he repeatedly [raped] a 16-year-old homeless girl in her tent [after threatening her with nonexistent arrest warrants]…Kevin Garneau…is facing up to 40 years in prison…[after a] grand jury indicted him…Garneau’s police department didn’t learn about [his raping homeless girls]…until January — nearly three years after the [rapes]…and [rewarded him with a paid vacation]…up until the indictment…
“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time“:
Members of a secret Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol agents joked about the deaths of migrants, discussed throwing burritos at Latino members of Congress visiting a detention facility in Texas…and posted…vulgar illustration[s]…group members responded with indifference and wisecracks to…a news story about a 16-year-old Guatemalan migrant who died [in a cage] in May…the…group…boasts roughly 9,500 [typical and representative] members from across the country…The patrol…[has] approximately 20,000 [pigs in all, so the group represents half of them]…Perhaps the most [typical and coppish] posts target Ocasio-Cortez. One includes a photo [manipulation]…of a smiling President Donald Trump forcing Ocasio-Cortez’s head toward his crotch…
Please, rescue industry, keep attacking the institution that most promotes your narrative:
…The credibility of the TIP Report must first and foremost be grounded in the integrity of the government issuing the report…U.S. policies are deliberately eroding protections for the most vulnerable among us. Not only is this approach ineffectual to reduce human trafficking, this puts the United States’ standing as a leader on human rights in question…the United States is increasingly denying human trafficking survivors’ access to T Visas, which were explicitly created to [bribe people to sing as directed by prosecutors]…the administration’s zero tolerance and the “Remain in Mexico” border policies…empower…traffickers…
Tyranny always starts with despised minorities, but it never stops with them:
Over the past two years, an estimated 1 million Muslim Uighurs have been rounded up and [imprisoned] in…”re-education camps.” It’s extremely difficult to report from the Uighur homeland of China’s northwestern Xinjiang region. Journalists are followed wherever they go and prevented from visiting certain places or speaking with locals. So we posed as tourists and snuck in wearing hidden cameras. Twice. What we witnessed was an Orwellian state unlike any place on earth. We got a chilling, up-close look at how the Chinese government is using the world’s most advanced surveillance technology to spy on every aspect of Uighur life, and how Uighur men are taken away by the police in the middle of the night. Most disturbingly of all, we learned how many Uighur children are being separated from their families and brought up by the state — as if they are orphans. They’re prevented from speaking in their native tongue and indoctrinated with Party propaganda. The goal of all this is clear: the total erasure of an entire religion, culture and ethnicity…
The concept of “human rights” becomes incomprehensible to Americans in proximity to the word “sex”:
..pervert-friendly…Tiffany Cabán…pimps and johns…gigantic brothel…sex tourism…[quote from CATW]…sexually transmitted diseases, drug use and depression…denizens of cathouses…epicenter of sex work in New York City…disgrace…normalizing hooking…troubled people…unhealthy…Teen Vogue…is urging youngsters…as young as 13…to dump their professional goals…shame…protect[s]…kids from being used…violence is caused by…pimps and buyers of human flesh…dangerous and soul-crushing pastime…
Since this “article” is basically just one big ball of stupid, I simply extracted all the especially-pompous puritanism so you could get a whiff without having to dive into this burning dumpster.
How fitting that all you vs the read on the rapist cop’s jacket is, “Lice!” A similar scourge.
The woman who wrote the legalization vs decriminalization article, aside from quoting prohibitionist propaganda, seems genuinely and unforgivably confused about what decriminalization actually is. “Illegal but not punishable” isn’t what we’re after here. It’s “not illegal”.
If you don’t understand the issue, don’t write an article on it.
Please, whenever you use the phrase “dumpster fire”, and especially when you use the .gif, make sure to credit Driftglass of the Professional Left [proleftpodcast.com] [@Mr_Electrico on Twitter]. He deserves the credit for that wonderfully pungent term, and since the Merriam-Webster Dictionary decided not to credit him when they added it, other folks ought to.
Non-writers have some really dumb ideas about term-coinage. Do you have any clue what writing would look like if people actually followed that dumb suggestion?
“Godwin’s law” (credit Mike Godwin)
“rescue industry” (credit Laura Agustin)
“useful idiot” (credit Lenin)
“copacetic” (credit Eubie Blake)
“War on Whores” (credit Maggie McNeill)
and so on, and so forth, half a dozen times or more in any given article.
Language is a tool for communication, not a mechanism for constant congratulation like parents clapping every time a two-year-old manages to make it to the toilet.
Glad I’m not the only one who thinks that a cashless society is a bad thing. What’s going to happen when the Internet suffers from its version of the 1983 Video Game Crash? (Something that is on the horizon, and will hit with little-to-no warning.)