Even as the “sex trafficking” panic implodes, those who…use…it as an excuse for violence have redoubled their efforts. – “Before It Gets Better”
If you are a regular reader, you’ve probably noticed that I’m no longer writing new essays for those occasions I’ve observed with polemics for the past decade. As I wrote last March, “It’s time for older activists like me to move into a more advisory role…[and] as part of that shift, I think it’s time for me to stop writing new essays on this topic, lest I grow irrelevant due to repetition.” And so, as I have already done on every other such occasion this year, I present a collection of statements I’ve previously made on this topic:
Most people are far too frightened of reality to admit that their government wantonly enacts laws and procedures whose specific and intentional purpose is to destroy the lives of anyone it has designated an “enemy of the state”.
– “The Body Count”
This jihad is no more “well-meaning” than the Drug War, alcohol Prohibition, Jim Crow or any other campaign of government violence against individuals and civil rights. – “Malice Aforethought”
A…large…fraction of the violence committed against sex workers is committed directly by armed agents of the state, often though not always under the excuse of “gathering evidence” for our “crime” of having impure thoughts about otherwise-legal sex. – “Against Violence”
The State…wants to send “messages” against [sex,] drugs and many other forms of pleasure; against free thought, free speech and free movement; against self-determination and self-ownership; and most of all against the dangerous idea that it does not own you and has no right to control your body, your mind or your possessions. – “Sending Messages”
Until our society grows up and stops believing in ridiculous fairy tales about magical sex acts and ritual purity, sex workers will continue to be treated as disposable. – “December Seventeenth”
The state, Western religions, and carceral “feminists” teach that a woman who has sex for practical reasons rather than emotional ones is robbed of her “purity”, and that an “impure” woman would be better off dead. – “On December Seventeenth”
We…honor our dead not merely by weeping for them, but by fighting for the day when no more of us have to die for a sick and twisted fantasy of governmental control over the private choices of individuals. – “Honoring Our Dead”
“End demand” and Swedish model proponents…respond to copious evidence that the approach harms sex workers by denying it, insisting that the harm is actually good…or simply dismissing it as a “price worth paying” for their fanatical dream of a society in which sex is entirely under government control.
– “End Violence, Not Demand”
The propaganda which drives this moral panic paints all prostitutes as pathetic, childlike victims suffering from mental illnesses which render us unable to make decisions for ourselves, thus justifying our abduction, imprisonment, deportation, robbery and rape. – “A Day Against Hate”
The laws criminalizing our profession allow weak-minded men (and even some women) to convince themselves that since we are “criminals” we don’t deserve to be treated like human beings. – “The Red Umbrella“
