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Links #165

Posted in Current Events, History, Links, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged animals, Arizona, cops, crypto-moralism, drugs, Egypt, Florida, hysteria, imaginative fiction, internet, LGBT rights, Louisiana, Middle East, nanny state, Never Call the Cops, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, politicians, propaganda, psychology, Rome, Russia, Tennessee, United Kingdom, universal criminality, video, Washington DC on September 1, 2013| 18 Comments »

There’s a certain color someone uses that I won’t mention that tells me someone’s been demonized. Everything that I talk about is based on numbers, is based on studies, which is what you do…when you’re a scientist. – Jerry Mungadze

Another good week for general links, though I’m glad it wasn’t quite so heavy on topical ones; if I start getting too many more of those I’ll have to expand to two TW3 columns, and I’m really not anxious to do that yet. Our leading contributor for the week was Jesse Walker, with everything down to the first video; that one and “cat physics” were supplied by Mike Siegel. The second video is just footage from a probe on the Martian surface of Phobos eclipsing Deimos, and was provided by Antonio Lorusso; the links between the videos are courtesy of Popehat (“science”), Aspasia (“nanotechnology”), Brooke Magnanti (“tentacles”), Franklin Harris (“haters”), Cthulhuchick (“Azathoth” and “canyon”), Mistress Matisse (“menstruation”), my husband (“allergies”), Mike Riggs (“presence” and “prohibition”), Dean Clark (“taboo”), Cop Block (“never call cops”, “legless” and “bicycle”), and Radley Balko (“SWAT”).

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That Was the Week That Was (#335)

Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, Arkansas, asset seizure, blogging, brothels, Cambodia, Canada, cell phones, censorship, Chauvinism, China, Coming and Going, Confined and Controlled, consensual crime, cops, cult of the child, Deafening Silence, dehumanization, dirty, diversion programs, drugs, East Asia, end demand, Europe, evidence, Eye of the Beholder, Florida, gangs, Gullible's Travels, Hall of Shame, harm reduction, hotels, hysteria, internet, Iran, Ireland, Italy, King of the Hill, Latin America, law, lawheads, LGBT rights, Lying Down With Dogs, Middle East, Moloch, nanny state, neofeminism, North Carolina, Obfuscation via Dysphemisms, Oklahoma, Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs, Opting Out, Policing for Profit, porn, prisons, prohibitionist myths, red-light districts, rescue industry, Russia, screening, serial killers, Sex Lies and Busybodies, sex offender registry, sex work is work, Sold Out, sporting events, streetwalkers, Surplus Women, Switzerland, Texas, That Old Black Magic, The Public Eye, Uncommon Sense, Under Every Bed, United Kingdom, universal criminality, Universally Criminal updates, violence vs. sex workers, Virginia, Washington (state), What Were You Thinking?, Wisconsin, Wise Investment, witchcraft, Worse Than I Thought, yellow journalism, Zurvivor on August 31, 2013| 17 Comments »

The Olympics are always a chance for hosts to do some moral cleansing, and drive away undesirables by brute force. – Scott Long

Lying Down With Dogs

“The lawyer of a man convicted of building and promoting pornographic websites [in Iran] says a death sentence against his client has been converted to life imprisonment…blogger Saeed Malekpour will spend the rest of his life in jail…” There aren’t too many other countries barbaric enough to sentence a man to life in a cage for “dirty” pictures, but I can think of at least one other.

The Eye of the Beholder (June Updates)

“The [Arkansas] Senate passed a bill…that would ban non-traditional…body art procedures, particularly scarification and dermal implants…”

Wise Investment

Pay attention, sex worker activists:

The children of three women who were murdered by Robert Pickton have filed lawsuits against the police and the serial killer…They allege the Vancouver police and the RCMP failed to properly investigate reports of missing women and failed to warn women in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside that a serial killer was likely at work, despite having evidence implicating Pickton in the disappearance of sex workers as early as 1997 and 1998…

Surplus Women

The suspicious deaths of two prostitutes…has sparked a major investigation…The bodies of Jill Lyons and Karen Nabors, who both worked as online escorts, were discovered in an apartment building in Vancouver. Ms Lyons, 45, was discovered dead in her own apartment on August 12…The body of Ms Nabors was discovered on August 25, also in her own apartment, and police…suggest…the 48-year-old was murdered…

Gullible’s Travels

Another ludicrous mini-panic from the clowns who brought you idosing, jenkem and vodka-soaked tampons:

“Parents, lock up your shower supplies”…is an actual quote from an announcement made…at a middle school just outside of Richmond, VA…of…a new practice called “shamboiling”…where shampoo is brought to a rapid boil and then the fumes are inhaled for a hallucinogenic effect…one thing is certain…shamboiling is catching on quickly and…is potentially deadly…The Sheriff’s department is urging parents to check their shampoos for [ammonium lauryl sulfate] and to take the necessary precautions to keep these chemicals away from children…

Here’s the debunking on Snopes.

Universal Criminality

A perfect example of how laws against consensual behavior are used by repressive governments to harass those they dislike:

Police have detained a Chinese-American…on suspicion of visiting a sex worker in Beijing as authorities crack down on bloggers. Charles Xue [AKA Xue Manzi], who has over 12 million followers on Sina Weibo…regularly reposts reform-minded content…Among those questioning the motive behind the arrest was the editor of the state-run Global Times newspaper. “Cannot rule out the possibility that authorities are arresting Xue Manzi…to give him a hard time,” Hu Xijin wrote…in a blog posting that later disappeared…

Sex, Lies and Busybodies

Yet another “sex trafficking” opportunist exposed:

The founder of…anti-human trafficking NGO Sisha, Steve Morrish, announced…he was stepping down from his position due to a raft of allegations accusing him of financial impropriety…Sisha’s alleged financial problems were revealed publicly…on August 8 in…the Cambodian blog Penhpal. The posting alleged that money donated to Sisha…“has instead been siphoned off to pay for the NGO’s operating expenses”…

Moloch

Is this idiotic enough yet? Can we stop now?

A 10-year-old girl…identified as “Ashley,” was charged by police for aggravated sexual assault…[for] playing doctor…a neighbor saw the children and called the mother of a 4-year-old boy…[whom] Ashley was inappropriately touching…Ashley’s mother…was not allowed to sit-in on the 45-minute questioning of her daughter…

Gail Dines threatens Radisson hotels

Confined and Controlled

If this were intended to increase sex workers’ range of options, it’s would be fine; however, it’s clearly intended as a confinement system: “Several communities in Italy have launched a campaign to ban street prostitution and reintroduce brothels, which have been banned since 1958…”

Worse Than I Thought

As I predicted last year, the cancer keeps spreading:

…[new] legislation…in North Carolina….increases punishments for sex traffickers, i.e. pimps, as well as for purchasers, i.e. johns. It also focuses on “treating minors involved in prostitution as the victims they are, instead of criminals,” [the bill’s sponsor] said…”The legislation also offers hope to women who escape a life of prostitution by allowing them…relief to expunge their criminal pasts once they get treatment and help”…[another law] requires pimps to register as sex offenders…

As I’ve explained before, “safe harbor” laws are bullshit that help almost nobody; “treatment” means (usually religious) “re-education”, and a “pimp” means just about anyone prosecutors decide to railroad.

Obfuscation Via Dysphemisms

Tulsa cops continue to justify persecution of adult women by pretending they’re “trafficked”: “Human trafficking has developed into a booming enterprise in Oklahoma…on a given night, the Vice Unit may deploy undercover police officers to respond to as many as 40 online advertisements posted by ‘escorts’ in preparation for prostitution stings that sometimes uncover cases of human trafficking…” Note the misplaced scare quotes, around “escorts” rather than “trafficking”.

The Public Eye

Jessica Land interviews Dr. Melissa Ditmore, a prominent academic ally, on her research, The Encyclopedia of Prostitution and Sex Work, sex worker projects and organizations, and international issues.

That Old Black Magic

Here’s an interesting article on the connection between harlotry and witchcraft:

…Prostitutes were widely believed to be specialists in erotic magic, especially the use of philtres to sway the feelings of those around them…For example, a woman may resort to a binding spell, to handicap rivals in the trade or lock down a steady client…These women were also sought by those outside the trade for their magical expertise. Those in troubled marriages might consult a prostitute to concoct a love potion to rekindle the affections of a wayward spouse…

King of the Hill

Most of this CNN story is the usual lurid “sex trafficking” rubbish, but I want to call attention to a fascinating new development: “king of the hill” stories are now specifically claiming their subjects are the “third-busiest area for sex trafficking in the United States” (see also “Under Every Bed” below) rather than just “one of the busiest” or “in the top ten”. As usual, the Department of Justice is credited for the “statistic” despite the fact that neither it nor any other agency keeps any kind of state-by-state “trafficking” statistics. I suspect the “third largest” designation arose through confusion with the claim that “human trafficking is the third-largest criminal enterprise” (though that one’s been upgraded to second), but it will be interesting to see how many claim to be the “third largest” before anyone in the mainstream media starts to awaken.

What the Hell Were You Thinking? (TW3 #135)

A new Irish company named Safe IQ “develops safety products and services for sex workers…and raises awareness of the need for [them] to have the same protections as other workers.” Here’s its first product:

Ugly Mugs for Android is a [free] mobile phone app that automatically screens incoming and outgoing calls and text messages and alerts the phone user if the…number…is listed in the UglyMugs.ie database…When a sex worker encounters a dangerous person, they [sic] can report the incident to the ugly mug scheme, and a warning will be made available to all sex workers…

Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs (TW3 #312)

Only a hopeless lawhead could imagine that closing red-light districts will make prostitution go away:

Hundreds of sex workers confronted the mayor of Indonesia’s second-largest city…angrily denouncing the closure of the Klakah Rejo district…The crowd later tore down a “Prostitution-Free Town” billboard erected by officials…”What’s going on?”…the mayor [said]…”We’re trying to help but they are refusing.” Surabaya is also home to Dolly, reputedly the largest red-light district in South-East Asia. The mayor said that one and other red-light districts would be closed as the city aimed to be prostitution-free by 2014.

Under Every Bed

Wisconsin is one of “the top three states” for sex trafficking, according to…Michelle Mayefske… Not all prostitution is trafficking. Some women, referred to as “renegades,” simply decide to sell sex and are not controlled or managed by anyone, but “that is very, very rare,” she said…“Gangs are now turning from drugs to human trafficking…[because] drugs can be sold only once and then they’re gone, whereas…a woman or a child can be sold over and over and over…Georgia, California and Wisconsin have the highest rates of sex trafficking in the United States, so we are in the top three”…

1) This is the second time I’ve heard this “renegade” bullshit; neither I nor anyone I asked knows where it comes from. 2) I think Mayefske is extremely confused about the concept of “sale”. 3) She needs to talk to Florida.

Chauvinism

Veteran human rights activist Scott Long argues that activists who compare Russia’s anti-gay purge to the Nazi campaign against Jews are not only wrongheaded, but missing the most obvious comparison:

If Western gay…activists want to know what Putin’s decree will mean in practice: ask a sex worker…Before every big sporting event, the same rhetoric reverberates: Prostitutes are going to take over this town…The predictions are nearly always couched as concern for “trafficked” women, but they…come down to…anxieties over nuisances to “normal” neighbors, and…the reputation of the host city…What major sporting events bring is not an “explosion” in prostitution, but an explosion in repression…not in evil Russia, but in liberal Canada and the UK, countries that value human rights, except for sex workers, who aren’t human…Yet in London, few powerful voices opposed the Olympic rollback of sex workers’ freedom — and certainly few LGBT activists…

Deafening Silence

“The treatment of sex workers in Cuba, including confinement for the purpose of ‘re-education’, was raised by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women…the…committee said it was “deeply concerned” about Cuba’s reluctance to address the issue of prostitution…” The United States’ confinement and “re-education” of sex workers, however, causes the committee no concern at all. Funny how that works.

Sold Out

…two of the largest and most well funded LGBT rights groups in the US have stayed quiet about Manning…whose revelations about the US Army’s actions epitomize social justice in action…the [silence of the] Human Rights Campaign and GLAAD…has been deafening… the HRC…[has] the financial backing of…Lockheed Martin…Booz Allen Hamilton…[and] Northrop Grumman…GLAAD has…Goldman Sachs…and Verizon…

Coming and Going (TW3 #331)

Kate Zen takes a long, thorough look at Texas’ “prostitution diversion” program and its founder, Kathryn Griffin; she examines the program’s lack of any of the normal benefits of such schemes, its close relationship to the rescue industry, its pervasive Christian moralism and its ignoring all of the actual reasons women turn to prostitution in favor of a sin and victimization narrative.

Policing for Profit

Federal and state law-enforcement officers poured into Tukwila [Washington]…seizing three motels whose operators are suspected of participating in illegal drugs and prostitution…U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan…said that the three hotels…have accounted for 17 percent of all calls for police services in the past year…investigators believe the owners actively profited from criminal activity…Durkan said…[her] office will…actively use…seizures to force compliance…

Uncommon Sense (Extra Edition)

Though most English-language media is pretending Zurich’s tippelzone scheme is something new, it is nothing of the kind; this article lists a number of other cities in Germany, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands with similar setups.

Zurvivor (Extra Edition)

…Donald Hill was acquitted…on a charge of [paying]…Alexis Wright, after a judge ruled prosecutors were not able to prove that money was exchanged. The ruling could affect any additional charges of individuals alleged to have engaged Wright’s services…

Opting Out

An example of why “porn filters” are a spectacularly bad idea:

A man using the British Library’s wi-fi network was denied access to…Hamlet because the text contained “violent content”…the…library said the fault was caused by a newly installed wi-fi service from a third-party provider. One security expert said the incident highlighted the “dysfunction” of internet filters…Prof Ross Anderson…[said] internet filters were “pointless” and that it was “completely inappropriate” to have one in the British Library…

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Extra Edition

Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged A War for Peace, Acting and Activism, activism, Ad Absurdum, Africa, agency denial, An Example to the West, Argentina, avails laws, Backwards into the Future, BDSM, Big Sister, brothels, California, condoms, consensual crime, cops, Cuckoo Advertising, disability, Do As I Say, East Asia, Europe, FBI, Florida, genitalia, Germany, Girls Girls Girls, halfway whores, Hall of Shame, harm reduction, Here We Go Again, Hollywood, hysteria, Iceland, India, Indonesia, internet, Islam, Kansas, Lack of Evidence, language, Latin America, law, License To Rape, Malawi, male prostitutes, Nasty Words, neofeminism, New Orleans, North Carolina, politicians, porn, prohibitionist myths, PSA, rape, sex offender registry, sexting, Shazam!, Skin To Skin, So Close and Yet So Far, streetwalkers, stripping, Swedish model, Switzerland, teachers, Terminology, The End of the Beginning, Tyranny by Consensus, Uncommon Sense, underage, video, virginity, Zurvivor on August 27, 2013| 46 Comments »

Morality cannot be determined by genitals. – Masruchah

Here We Go Again

“The Inside of the White Slave Traffic”, from 1913. Enjoy, and marvel at how little the “sex trafficking” narrative has changed in a century.

Terminology

Here’s a glossary of the many types of sex workers in 1920s Berlin, including streetwalking dominatrices with extremely specific specializations:

The very first thing foreigners noticed in Berlin was its thousands of prostitutes, on the streets, in hotel lobbies, and seated at cafés and clubs. How many women made their living selling sex in Berlin during the Golden Twenties is impossible to calculate, but estimates range from a low of 5,000 to the oft-published figure of 120,000 (not including the city’s estimated 35,000 male prostitutes). It all depended on one’s definition of the term…Altogether there were seventeen distinct varieties…

License to Rape

A New Orleans police officer who was…booked with forcible rape was indicted…on additional sex crimes…Desmond Pratt Sr., a longtime homicide detective, was indicted on one count of sexual battery of a 15-year-old in 2001 and one count of carnal knowledge of a juvenile in 1997 or 1998…

Acting and Activism

Here’s actress Jada Pinkett Smith’s entry into the clueless celebrity division of “sex trafficking” fandom: “Rape for Profit”, a “documentary” based on the premise that “there is a growing problem in major U.S. cities where girls as young as 12 years old are bought and sold as many as 15 times a night to service the desires of men. Experience the shocking truth and follow several heroes as they fight this modern-day slavery and stop the next generation of buyers…” Yes, this was released in 2013, not 1913; I know it’s hard to tell.

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

You’ve got to admire his chutzpah:

The…mayor [of Salvador Mazza, Argentina]…Carlos Villalba…was arrested…during a raid on a brothel as part of a case investigating human trafficking…[protestors] demanding that the mayor resign…threw eggs at the building where the town officials were meeting, and even traded blows with a group of municipal employees…the mayor said he believed he was at a family home…not in a brothel…

Lack of Evidence (April Updates)

A plan by the Education Agency of Prabumulih, South Sumatra, to include virginity tests as part of its high school admission requirements has drawn the ire of legislators and education experts, who say that such an exam is a violation of personal space and an obstruction to a student’s right to an education. H.M. Rasyid, the chief of Prabumulih’s Education Agency…[said] increasing instances of premarital sex and prostitution among female students prompted the move…

Public Service Announcement

Kansas City FBI agents have scrutinized allegations that an online relationship led to Councilman Michael Brooks being blackmailed into getting city tax dollars for a community event that never occurred…Brooks is a married father of four and a Baptist minister…[who] went to the FBI to report…[that a] woman he was involved with tried to extort $60,000 from him…[after] they…exchanged lurid pictures…

Nasty Words

Regular readers know that I dislike grotesque euphemisms for genitalia and sex acts, but love the history of language; apparently the latter is stronger than the former, because I thought y’all might appreciate these two charts of slang terms for both male and female genitalia over the past 800 years. The Timeglider platform takes a bit of getting used to, but I figured it out in a few minutes so I’m sure you can as well.

Big Sister

Emasculated Icelandic journalist is absolutely shocked to discover that prohibition of consensual behavior doesn’t work any better in Iceland than it does anywhere else; he goes to a “champagne club” and pays for a stripper, then when he leaves claims to have been “flooded with a range of emotions from disgust, anger and shame, but they settle at simply feeling sullied.” Retired call girl and blogger tells him that he isn’t fooling anyone but his neofeminist overlords, and maybe not even them.

Girls, Girls, Girls!

San Francisco’s celebrated, unionized and worker-owned peep show the Lusty Lady will close its doors…on September 2^nd…due to a lease dispute…the group had negotiated a lower rent…months ago. A new lease was signed and notarized by the co-op but not immediately returned by the landlord. After a few months paying the lower rent, the landlord apparently reneged and went back to the higher rent, which the club didn’t have room for in their budget. The landlord put off new negotiations until [August 19^th, then]…notified [them that] they had to be out…[in] two weeks…”if someone out there has a miracle up their butt” they are encouraged to reach out to the Lusties at LustyLadyPR@gmail.com…

Uncommon Sense (TW3 #11)

…Zurich…unveiled a sex drive-in which local authorities say will enable them to keep closer tabs on prostitution…the nine so-called “sex boxes” are located in a former industrial zone…[and] will be open daily from 7:00 pm to 5:00 am, and only to drivers, who must be alone in their vehicle if they want to pass the gate…they will have to follow a marked route along which up to 40 prostitutes will be stationed. Once they have negotiated a rate, they will drive to one of the…boxes…[which] will be equipped with alarms, allowing the prostitutes to make rapid contact with police if they are in danger…Zurich has spared no effort to encourage the prostitutes and their clients to leave the city centre and use the new site, making it as pleasant as possible…To avoid putting off clients, city authorities said they had no plans to install video surveillance or deploy police at the site permanently. Social workers and security guards will be on hand, however…

Older press releases say most local hookers support the plan; as Laura Agustín points out, however, any attempt at regulation creates some bottleneck:

…whenever this sort of plan arises…numerous street workers simply refuse to transfer their activities to the regulated zones, which are always far away from bustling areas if not in downright deserted ones. Instead, they move into some other commercial/residential neighbourhood, where the cycle begins again…

An Example To the West (TW3 #39)

…over…100…teenage boys…whose mothers are [sex workers]…will be part of 14 [soccer] teams [in Kolkata]…the winners of the tournament, organised by DMSC, will receive soccer-related gear. Surojit Bhattacharya and Bishwajit Nandi, two children of sex workers left August 2 for Poznan, Poland to represent India in the Homeless World Cup that began August 10…

So Close and Yet So Far

I don’t know if anyone at the American Jewish World Service read my critique of Ruth Messinger’s statements about sex work and “trafficking”, but they’ve prepared a splendid document called “Sex Worker Rights: (Almost) Everything You Wanted To Know But Were Afraid To Ask”, in which neither I nor several other activists could find a single fault (and believe me, we were looking). Bravo, AJWS; welcome to the ranks of true allies!

Backwards Into the Future (TW3 #41)

Malawian lawyers recognize “avails” laws as relics of the “white slavery” hysteria; why can’t American ones get that?

…no provision in the Malawi Penal Code criminalises the selling of sexual services…yet…some police officers in Malawi appear to be operating under the assumption that sex work is illegal…based on an interpretation of [a] section…which prohibits a woman from living on the earnings of prostitution…The [law]…can be traced back to 1912…[and] unsubstantiated allegations of women being trafficked to colonies for the purpose of prostitution…

Tyranny By Consensus (TW3 #51)

There has been a development in the porn industry’s lawsuit to overturn the Los Angeles “condoms in porn” law:

…Judge Pregerson has decided that condoms in porn do not violate the First Amendment…[but] much of Measure B does violate the Constitution…he has…[removed] the County’s ability to [charge a fee for,] suspend or revoke [a filming] permit…[or] conduct warrantless searches of producers…a fine or criminal penalties could not be imposed without a judicial hearing. The Court also…[found] that Measure B does not define adult films sufficiently since…activities such as kissing…could possibly transmit disease…

Skin To Skin

Tauriq Moosa on sex workers and the disabled:

…sex workers’ services shouldn’t only be recognised in the light of people with disabilities, but people with, say, psychological hangups, and so on…This doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with people who choose sex workers because they “can’t get” anyone without paying for it – just as people don’t “resort” to online dating…seeking out sex workers is nothing to be ashamed of; it’s not wrong, or indicative of being a failure, deviant or a slightly off human being. However we find fulfilment, as long as we are not harming others, shouldn’t be an issue and we should celebrate that there are people, like sex workers, helping and facilitating this…

The End of the Beginning

The North Carolina law banning registered sex offenders from commercial social networking sites…that children can use is unconstitutional because it’s vague and violates free speech, the state Court of Appeals ruled…unanimously in vacating the additional felony conviction of a registered offender…[who] created a profile…on Facebook…

A War for Peace (TW3 #321)

First she had no last name, then we were told it was “Tyler”; now as the Topless Tunisian announces she’s leaving Femen, I think we’re at last getting the real one:

Amina Sboui…was arrested in Kairouan [on] May 19…after she tagged the word FEMEN on the wall of a cemetery. The group then held several protests to support her…but now that she’s been released after more than two months in prison, Amina has decided to leave FEMEN, calling it “Islamophobic”…[she also said] “I do not know the movement’s sources of funding. I repeatedly asked Inna [Shevchenko]…but she refused to give clear answers…What if it was Israel that funded it?”…

Ad Absurdum

I find the repeated usage of the word “victim” herein to be especially grating:

Kaitlyn Hunt…was arrested again…Under the conditions of a pretrial court order, Hunt was forbidden from contacting the victim…[and] was offered a plea deal to lesser, nonsexual charges…[but] the state attorney’s office withdrew that offer…following allegations that Hunt repeatedly met with the victim and sent sexually explicit photos via the Internet…

More Harm Than Good

Given that Sam Woolfe believes that sex workers are dominated by “pimps, drug dealers and traffickers”, that we’re diseased and too stupid to care for our own health, that our work is “degrading”, and that legalization increases “sex trafficking”, one has to wonder what the “legalization” he advocates would look like. And given that he apparently had the time and inclination to fill his head with bogus studies and made-up statistics, one is at a total loss to understand why he wasn’t able to locate the readily-available debunking of the garbage he spouts in this asinine article, or to simply consult with someone who actually knows something about the subject before writing it.

Cuckoo Advertising

Ashley Madison is at it again, and the credulous media are still swallowing their ads as “press releases”. This time it’s ABC-TV’s Good Morning America show, opening wide for the claim that the average woman who joins the site is in bed with some “lucky” dude about 36 hours after joining; hiding in that comparatively-minor assertion’s shadow is the whopper that 40% of the site’s members are female (though in all fairness, we don’t know how Ashley Madison defines the words “member” and “female”).

But Brandon Wade of Seeking Arrangement is not to be outdone; he wrote a “press release” touting the claim that 40,000 of the aspiring sugar babies on his site are teachers, and got the Daily Caller to buy it…thus plugging into the teacher fantasies of many a would-be sugar daddy, of whom there are undoubtedly more than a few among the Caller’s readers.

Zurvivor (TW3 #334)

…Alexis Wright…doesn’t have to answer questions from prosecutors at the trial of alleged client…Donald Hill…Justice Roland Cole ruled Wright didn’t have to testify after her attorney argued her testimony could open her up to prosecution on new charges, including federal crimes and perjury…

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Links #163

Posted in Current Events, History, Links, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged animals, Australia, blogging, censorship, cops, East Asia, Egypt, Europe, games, Georgia, Hollywood, Iceland, imaginative fiction, India, Indiana, Japan, LGBT rights, Middle East, nanny state, Nevada, Never Call the Cops, New York, Pennsylvania, politicians, Prohibition (alcohol), South Africa, surveillance, teachers, Texas, United Kingdom, video, Vietnam, weaponry on August 18, 2013| 15 Comments »

Perhaps now that the arms race on the street has resulted in criminals equipping themselves with gravity, police should be issued with the Strong Nuclear Force so as to keep their edge. – Clark Bianco of Popehat

The internet has rebounded from a run of slow weeks with a vengeance, swamping me with a deluge of good stories and links. While this column is flexible enough to absorb the surge, the “That Was the Week That Was” feature has a fixed length of ≈2000 words, and I can only trim the stories down so much before they turn into plain links. Generally, stories that appear up to Wednesday night or Thursday morning make it into that week’s TW3, but this week I had my quota by Tuesday morning, and by Thursday morning I had enough for another column! As you read this I’ve already posted this coming Saturday’s TW3, and the overflow will go into an extra edition on Tuesday the 27^th. Our top contributor was, as so often happens, Radley Balko, with everything down to the first video and “don’t wave at cops”. But two others provided three links each, namely Mike Siegel (“39 stats”, “rhinoceroses” and “testes”) and Jesse Walker (“Area 51”, “terrorist” and “1776”); Grace clocked in with two (“ring” and “never call the cops”). The first video (via pws) is a mini-horror film (from the creator of Ju-on) which is no less effective for its brevity, and the second is a demonstration of why government control of weapons is doomed. The other links were supplied by Gideon (“Batman”), Franklin Harris (“waiter”), Luscious Lani (“spontaneous combustion”), Pee-wee Herman (“where no man”), Nun Ya (“26¢”), Amy Alkon (“journalists”), Glenn Greenwald (“non-compliance”), and Stacy Swimme (“Iceland”).

From the Archives

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That Was the Week That Was (#333)

Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged A Working System, Above the Law, Across the Pond, activism, adolescence, Africa, agency denial, Arizona, Australia, Backpage, Broken Record, brothels, California, censorship, contraception, cops, Crime Against Society, Do As I Say, drugs, end demand, homosexuality, hysteria, internet, Ireland, Japan, Japanese Prostitution, Korea, language, law, LGBT rights, Madonna/whore, Malawi, marriage, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Monsters, Mumbo Jumbo, New Jersey, New Orleans, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oops, Oregon, pregnancy, prohibitionist myths, Puppet Show, rape, rescue industry, scams, serial killers, sex education, sex offender registry, Shazam!, slavery, Sold Out, South Africa, streetwalkers, Surplus Women, The Immunity Syndrome, The Public Eye, The Widening Gyre, transgender, Under Every Bed, underage, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers, Which I Doubt, Wise Investment on August 17, 2013| 10 Comments »

The quick blow job is for [affluent white women’s] husbands…So in your mind it doesn’t affect you, but the wrong mouth on your husband’s dick could affect you. – Deon Haywood

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

He went home; she’s locked in a cage.

An on-duty Oregon State Police detective was caught…with a prostitute in a bush…Richard Narvaez, 50…was placed on suspended leave without pay…cited and released, the…woman…was arrested on probation violation warrants and on suspicion of public indecency and prostitution…

A Working System

Note the bottleneck effect:

Armed robbers posing as clients…have launched a series of raids on brothels [in Sydney], targeting eight premises in the past three weeks…one of the gang enters…to book a…session…then…[is] joined by up to three others armed with guns or knives…Police…believe the number of attacks might be even greater because [unlicensed] brothels were reluctant to report crimes…

Crime Against Society (August Updates)

Women With A Vision responds to anti-whore propaganda:

The Times-Picayune’s…articles…dubbed “Uneasy Street”, are an…example of…[sensationalism]…that leads to increased criminalization of marginalized communities…The video…claims that once sun sets…“An even darker world emerges”…There is a darker side to Tulane Avenue. But it’s not the one shown. It’s the stories of mothers, daughters, friends, and wives struggling to survive in a city that has offered them little resources. It’s women dealing with substance abuse or addiction. It’s women who cannot be hired by traditional employers simply because they are transgender. It’s the women who have been too busy struggling to be able to get a formal education to make them employable. It’s the stories of human beings, worthy of dignity, respect, and far more than this series of articles has afforded them…

See “The Public Eye” for an interview with WWAV’s director, Deon Haywood.

Oops

Tumi Megalane, 32, of Tshwane, South Africa, said she had the shock of her life when she found her boyfriend [Ronny Mokoena], who is a pastor, at a brothel…[then] learned that he was married…the pastor told his wife that Megalane was a prophet, who was helping him with spiritual guidance.

Surplus Women

A…37-year-old [Detroit woman]…is in critical condition after she was discovered beaten…burned and possibly sexually assaulted…less than 24 hours before and…a mile away…a 22-year-old woman was discovered in the same condition…Both women are prostitutes…

A third woman was found in the same condition a few days later, on August 3^rd. Interestingly, Fox News did not feel compelled to identify the victims as sex workers in the headline, and the New York Daily News doesn’t mention the third victim’s profession at all.

TANSTAAFL

…a trio of Bay Area teens [Nazario Cruz and Jose Urias, both 19, and an underage girl]…posed as a young woman whose fantasy was to have sex while rolling around in…cash…When the victims would arrive…the suspects…would rob them…Three robberies have been confirmed so far…One of the victims allegedly stole $2,000…from his job in order to roll around with the fictitious woman…

The Immunity Syndrome

American hypocrisy says it’s fine to pay people not to have sex:

A 2010 study in Malawi, supported by the…Gates Foundation, shows…conditional cash transfers successfully reduced sexual activity amongst teenagers…Mississippi…[resembles] Malawi…in its high rate of teenage sex and pregnancy…partly…[because] sex education in Mississippi is oriented around abstinence…Can we pay Mississippi teenagers to stop having sex…And to have safe sex if they do?…

Above the Law

Police forces are being ordered to face up to corruption by officers who commit sexual offences against vulnerable women and young people…169 officers…are under investigation for predatory sexual behaviour…ranging from rape to voyeurism…the former partner of…[one] who was jailed last year…speaks out against his actions…

That cops rape women, especially sex workers, isn’t news because it happens constantly; such stories only become newsworthy when the cops are held accountable to some degree, as in this item from Cape Town: “A…police captain will appear in…court…for allegedly raping a prostitute…[she] managed to escape from [his] vehicle and took down the registration number…”

The Widening Gyre

Another bizarre “sex trafficking” rumor debunked by Snopes:

In August 2013 [a] warning about sex traffickers with Slavic…accents posing as door-to-door booksellers was spread via social media sites such as Facebook …The story was false. That there are ”pushy” door-to-door book and magazine sellers about doesn’t mean those vendors are looking for children to abduct…into the sex trade, nor is it suspicious that such salespeople might ask…questions about children in the area. The latter is simply a…sales technique for locating potential customers for children’s books, and being ”pushy” is hardly an unusual quality for those who engage in…door-to-door sales…

Snopes reports that the story appeared in Gilbert, Arizona, Winona, Minnesota and all over Missouri. The company running the sales program believes the rumor started in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma; since that’s a suburb of Tulsa, this should surprise nobody.

Wise Investment (TW3 #31)

Do politicians really just not get it?

…a federal judge ruled [that a New Jersey law]…conflicts with federal law and likely is unconstitutional as well…[the] law…[would have penalized] anyone who knowingly publishes or disseminates any ad for a commercial sex act that includes the depiction of a minor. The law was challenged…by Backpage.com…[which] notes that federal courts in Tennessee and Washington have issued permanent injunctions against similar laws in those states…

Japanese Prostitution (TW3 #131)

New evidence [demonstrates]…that Japan’s…army directly managed Asian women for sexual slavery, dealing a fresh blow to Tokyo’s denials of responsibility…a diary that a Korean manager of Japanese brothels wrote…between August 1942 and December 1944…shows that the Japanese army received revenue-related reports from military brothels, examined the bodies of sex slaves and regulated the relocations of sexual entertainment facilities…[Professor] Park Han-yong…[said] “This diary is a historical record that shows the Japanese military…[was] involved in the forced mobilisation of Korean women for sexual slavery”…

Under Every Bed

If real freedoms weren’t being endangered by these yokels, this absurd language and looking-glass logic would be hilarious:

Human flesh is being sold for sex…and it’s happening online…”It was a rarity to see a prostitution case anywhere in North Dakota. Now, my agents are telling me they’re beginning to see it with some regularity,” says…Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem. There’s no way to tell exactly how many people are involved in human trafficking. The best estimates say about 100,000 children may be victims in the U.S. And…there’s no reason to believe it’s not happening here…

Monsters

Dwayne Jones was relentlessly teased in high school for being effeminate until he dropped out. His father not only kicked him out…at…14 but also helped jeering neighbors push the youngster from the rough Jamaican slum where he grew up. [On July 22^nd Dwayne, now 16]…was…beaten, stabbed, shot and run over by a car when he showed up at a street party dressed as a woman…

The Public Eye (TW3 #318)

Here’s another interview with Carol Leigh, this time in a small but mainstream publication; the more interviews like this Americans see, the harder it will be for the prohibitionists to spread lies about us. And here’s one in Tits and Sass with Deon Haywood of Women With a Vision, talking about activism, human rights and whorearchy.

Which I Doubt

Remember how I’ve said that prosecutors ignore women’s statements that they don’t have pimps so they can repackage ordinary hooking as “sex trafficking”?

The Brooklyn DA…[told] prosecutors…not to make written records of early interviews with sex-trafficking victims…so the information could be withheld from defense attorneys…“When these girls first come in, they often deny they have been hit or pimped. We were told not to write down those statements,” a law-enforcement source said…

Marie Duplessis

Dr. Laura Agustín on imagery of the “fallen woman” in La Traviata, a topic she has discussed more generally before: “…Violetta always has a scene on the floor to drive home her moral abjection…People who fall get back up right away; if they can’t, they are too injured. In Violetta’s case the injury is moral…”

Sold Out

A gay therapist explains “Why Queers Should Care About Sex Offenders”:

…sex offenders are referred to as participating in deviant sexual behavior, having deviant sexual fantasies, and being inherently “deviant” themselves…The same methods historically used by the government to imprison and pathologize homosexuality and gender variation are being used today to justify the extreme marginalization, lifetime institutionalization, and oppression of people who have violated sex laws…[including] public nudity, [urination or] masturbation, peeping, photographing or videotaping without consent, consensual sex with a 17-year-old, sexting, and downloading unlawful pornography…At one point, the idea of the predatory, untamable homosexual was…widely held…the very fact that a man…[desired] another man was reason enough to criminalize his existence…While mainstream…perception of queer people is shifting, it affirms monogamous sex between married…gay and lesbian adults. Gender variation and other forms of sexual desire and behavior…still face condemnation…

To really drive the point home, read the comment thread as well.

Puppet Show (TW3 #329)

Laura Lee explains why Ruhama shill Rachel Moran could never have been a Dublin sex worker:

…Moran and I worked in Dublin at the same time, the early nineties. I worked in the same brothels, for the same escort agencies and had regular contact…with the same women, she says she stood on street corners with. One of those…is now a prominent activist…[who swears]…that she has never set eyes on Moran until her book launch…Moran…should know…[the names of brothel owners, but doesn’t; she] says that in seven years of sex work she never met one client who showed her a shred of empathy or kindness. That’s incredible. Because in all of my time there, I met some lovely guys…the language employed by Moran…is literally like she is reading from a script…a…co-activist…confirmed that Ruhama…offered her money to “turn” and campaign for their side. In fact, they offered her a book deal and a tour too, exactly as Moran has now…

The activist Laura speaks of (who prefers to remain anonymous) also told me the same thing over a year ago.

Across the Pond (TW3 #330)

Anyone who actually professes to believe that laws can make a major city “brothel-free” should be disqualified from office on grounds of stupidity:

…officials are putting together “exit” services to help the dozens of sex workers who face having their place of work closed down…Edinburgh’s decades-old policy of licensing saunas…appears to be coming to an end. A police raid in June led to seven individuals being charged with brothel-keeping and living off immoral earnings…A local newspaper…[quoted] one prostitute…[as] saying: “I just can’t get my head around why they want to close us. The police could end up putting women at risk of getting raped, or murdered like in Ipswich”…

Don’t be afraid, unnamed sex worker; Ipswich claims to have “eradicated” street prostitution!

More than 220 teenagers…at risk of slipping into the dangerous world of the sex trade have had their lives rescued since the launch of Ipswich’s prostitution strategy…street prostitution and kerb crawling has been eradicated from the town…however off-street prostitution and sexual exploitation remains an issue…

In truth, of course, they’ve merely pushed it so far underground that the danger has been increased even more, which is the only thing prohibition ever accomplishes.

Broken Record (TW3 #332)

It’s even worse than I suspected; the victims of the Sturgis “sting” were entrapped by “age-regressed photographs of women who now are adults”. The state has charged people with imaginary crimes against nonexistent people for years, but this kind of pseudoscientific quackery is a new low.

Mumbo Jumbo

“Trafficking” mythology gets more farfetched all the time; embedded in this mixture of agency denial porn, arse-backward bootlicking and cheerleading for bullshit “safe harbor” laws is the claim that many of the underage sex workers arrested in the vast “Innocence Lost” boondoggle “may also be charged for possessing the cocktail of drugs that traffickers use to create dependency and compliance in the children they sell.” This is the first I’ve heard of this magical mind-control philter, but I’m sure it won’t be the last.

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Links #162

Posted in Current Events, History, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Tyranny, tagged California, Canada, cops, drugs, FBI, Florida, internet, Mississippi, propaganda, Russia, surveillance, Tennessee, Texas, United Kingdom, video on August 11, 2013| 54 Comments »

Is there anyone incapable at this point of seeing what the United States has become? – Glenn Greenwald

Another week, another crop of links. Our top contributor, as so often happens, was Radley Balko, who provided everything down to the first video: Peter Sellers reading the lyrics to the Beatles’ “She Loves You” in a Doctor Strangelove voice. If you enjoy or (or else just can’t resist), you might also want to watch him reading them as a Cockney, and Irishman and an upper-class twit (thanks to Szusa, who also provided “letter to Hitler”). The second video is propaganda from 1954 which tried to convince Americans that one’s house stands a better chance of surviving a nuclear attack if it’s clean and painted; nine other hilarious propaganda films from all over the world can be found here. The links between the two videos were provided by Mistress Matisse (“honor”), Jesse Walker (“road stealing”), Mike Siegel (“lard”), Penn Jillette (“nothing so dumb”), Joyce Arthur (“exact change”), Michael Whiteacre (“murder charges”), Popehat (“DEA”), and Laura Lee (“Satanists”).

From the Archives

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Links #161

Posted in Current Events, History, Links, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged adolescence, Africa, animals, Canada, Central Asia, child "protective" services, comics, cops, disease, drugs, games, imaginative fiction, India, internet, Islam, Japan, Latin America, lawheads, Mexico, Michigan, Oklahoma, Pakistan, Pennsylvania, porn, slavery, Texas, Things We Choose To Do Together, universal criminality, video, welcome to our world, Wisconsin on August 4, 2013| 26 Comments »

I’m thankful that the police officer came out quickly, that we live in a city where we can depend on police to react quickly. – Chris Reeves

I’m mostly back to my normal schedule now, though only one week ahead so far; by the next Links column I should have a comfortable two-week buffer again. We’ve got the usual assortment of amusing, interesting and infuriating links this week, but a few words of explanation are in order for the videos. The first, “I Am Here”, is a project started by two Chilean university students, Violeta Pinda and Felipe Guzman, to call attention to stray dogs that people usually ignore. All they did was to attach balloons on which they wrote things like “scratch me”, “play with me” and “don’t leave me” to the dogs…but when creatures who were essentially invisible suddenly become visible, magic happens (and Maggie cries). The second video is an animation of XKCD’s unique comic strip “Time”, which changed every half hour for the first week and every hour thereafter, from March 25^th to the end of July. Everything down to the first video was provided by Radley Balko, the second video by Mike Siegel and the links between the two by Jesse Walker (“Sahara Sea”), Popehat (“baby prize”), Luscious Lani (“graffiti”), Kevin Wilson (“weapons”), PWS (“Detroit”), Lenore Skenazy (“school cops”), Brooke Magnanti (“whistleblowers”), and Antonio Lorusso (“child porn”).

From the Archives

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Links #160

Posted in Current Events, Fiction, History, Links, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged animals, cops, drugs, imaginative fiction, LGBT rights, Maryland, Never Call the Cops, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, propaganda, psychology, Russia, sexting, United Kingdom, universal criminality, video on July 28, 2013| 9 Comments »

The doctors told the amputee he might experience a phantom limb from time to time. Nobody prepared him for the moment, though, when he felt cold fingers brush across his phantom hand.

After three weeks, things are back to normal around here; however, I’m still scrambling to catch back up, so I hope you’ll forgive me for keeping this brief so I can get started on Tuesday’s column (yes, I’m THAT behind). Our top contributor was Radley Balko, with everything down to the first video; that was provided by Laura Lee, and the second one is a parody of it. The links between them were supplied by Tracy Quan (“sexting”), Harlot’s Parlour (“annoying”), I Am Curious Blue (“memories”), Stacey Swimme (“marijuana”), Carol Fenton (“never call cops”), Kevin Wilson (“vodka”), and Mike Riggs (“guilty”).

Man fights with drunk cop; SWAT team retaliates against his family.
Appreciate these horror photos, but don’t read the comments.
What would Jesus do?

From the Archives

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The Magdalene

Posted in Biography, History, Miscellaneous, tagged Catholicism, dirty, Hollywood, Ireland, Mary Magdalene, Middle East, rescue industry, sacred prostitutes on July 22, 2013| 17 Comments »

Then Mary wept and said to Peter, My brother Peter, what do you think? Do you think that I have thought this up myself in my heart, or that I am lying about the Savior? Levi answered and said to Peter, Peter you have always been hot tempered. Now I see you contending against the woman like the adversaries. But if the Savior made her worthy, who are you indeed to reject her? Surely the Savior knows her very well. That is why He loved her more than us. – The Gospel of Mary 9:5-9

Today is the feast day of St. Mary Magdalene, long identified in Christian folklore as a prostitute (repentant or otherwise). Now, there is no Biblical evidence to that effect; Luke describes her as a woman “from whom seven demons had come out”, presumably one of Jesus’ miraculous cures. In fact, the four canonical Gospels say virtually nothing about her prior to the crucifixion, though all four identify her as the person to whom the resurrected Jesus first appeared. But as I explained in “Mary Magdalene”, the canonical Gospels are not the only ones:

…Gnostics were driven from Christian congregations early in the 4^th century and their doctrines declared heretical in 388. Before this time there was no official consensus on which texts actually constituted the Bible, and among those used by Gnostic congregations (and subsequently excluded from the canon) were four more Gospels: Thomas, Philip, Mary and Judas, all but the last of which assign a much more prominent role to Mary Magdalene than the four canonical ones; indeed, the Gospel of Mary is actually attributed to her. These Gospels refer to Mary as Jesus’ “companion” and describe him as loving her more than his other disciples and often kissing her on the mouth; indeed, the Gospel of Mary identifies her as the unnamed “disciple Jesus loved” mentioned so often in John. These clear expressions of favoritism appear to have perturbed the male disciples, particularly Peter, who is said to have argued with Jesus about his allowing a woman to be not only equal to the male apostles, but actually preferred to them…

This argument is portrayed in Jesus Christ Superstar, though changed in two ways: the critic is Judas rather than Peter, and the criticism is about her being a hooker rather than a gender-hierarchy thing. The tradition of her being Jesus’ (perhaps sexual) companion seems to have survived the suppression of the books, and “in a sermon in 591 Pope Gregory the Great identified Mary Magdalene as a repentant harlot, possibly by identification with the ‘adulterous woman’ whom Jesus rescues from being stoned in the 8^th chapter of John.”

So even though Mary was never the patron saint of prostitutes (that role fell, interestingly enough, to Saint Nicholas), the legend that she had been a whore was a popular one; hence the application of her name to “Magdalene homes”, the asylums for the “cleansing” of ex-prostitutes which became popular in the 13^th century and then again in the 18^th. The most notorious of these were of course Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries, the last of which only closed in 1996; the long-awaited report on the atrocities committed therein was released only last February, and the nuns who ran them are still trying to evade responsibility. The legend also inspired me to have the sacred harlots in last week’s fictional interlude all take the first name “Magdalene”, just as regular nuns all take the first name “Mary”; in our world the Catholic Church officially repudiated that doctrine in 1969, but as you probably noticed a lot of things are different in the world where that story takes place.

But canonical or not, the legend is still a popular one; its only real rival is the theory that she was actually Jesus’ wife, and that one is of comparatively recent vintage (though its proponents claim it existed as a secret doctrine since the people it concerns were still alive). In movies, books and the popular imagination Mary Magdalene is still the whore (repentant or otherwise) who was closer than any other person to Jesus, and I think it very likely that it will continue thus for a very long time to come.

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That Was the Week That Was (#328)

Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Obituary, Perception, Tyranny, tagged Africa, agency denial, Arizona, brothels, Catholicism, censorship, China, cops, cult of the child, disability, domestic violence, escort review sites, Florida, Flush Criminalization, France, hysteria, internet, Ireland, law, lawheads, Legitimate Outrage, Madonna/whore, marriage, nanny state, neofeminism, New York, politicians, porn, prohibitionist myths, RIP Petite Jasmine, Saving Them from Themselves, sexting, Shift in the Wind, Skin To Skin, Still a Child, Sweden, Swedish “Feminism”, Swedish model, The Naked Anthropologist, True Colors, Unclean Situation, violence vs. sex workers, Wholesale Hypocrisy on July 13, 2013| 15 Comments »

Be the sort of victim people want, swallow the crap about not really choosing sex work, tell a few stories about bad clients and pray with the fervor of a convert at the altar of end demand and all the support you want is there, on their terms. – Jemima

R.I.P. Petite Jasmine

A Swedish sex worker rights activist was stabbed to death by her ex-husband on Thursday. Swedish “feminists” pretend to care so very much for sex workers that they’re willing to destroy our lives to “save” us from imaginary “degradation”; selling sex is not illegal, but if a sex worker dares to speak openly about her choice she will be punished in many ways other than imprisonment, such as by expulsion, eviction, police harassment and more:

Several years ago she lost custody of her children as she was considered to be an unfit parent due to being a sex worker. The children were placed with their father regardless of him being abusive towards Jasmine. They told her she didn’t know what was good for her and that she was “romantisizing” prostitution, they said she lacked insight and didn’t realise sex work was a form of self-harm. He threatened and stalked her on numerous occasions, she was never offered any protection…

Activist Jemima pointed out that “Jasmine could have been listened too, could have had custody of her kids, could have been flying off to international conferences and doing TV shows, instead of being prepared for burial, all she had to do was lie…be good little puppets who trot out the party line like defendants at a Stalin era Russian show trial and then the doors of rape crisis centers, domestic refuges and conferences open wide to you…”

Third Party

Another refutation of the myth that the presence of a camera magically protects sex workers from arrest: “Phoenix police arrested seven people at…a self-serve porn studio allegedly used to front a prostitution business…William James Hartwell…and six women were arrested during a raid on the studio…[after] a six-month investigation…”

Another Example of Swedish “Feminism”

This was a real banner week for Swedish “feminists”; besides enabling the murder of a sex worker, we also got this:

A professor in law at Stockholm University has called for legislation prohibiting parents from drinking alcohol in the company of their children. “It is a parent’s responsibility to be sober when they are with their children,” said Professor Madeleine Leijonhufvud…She compared the offence to minor assault which…carries a penalty of up to six months imprisonment. While the proposal is aimed at “everyday drunkenness” it in effect suggests that parents would not be able to share a glass of wine at dinner. “If you have a sick child and need to drive them to hospital then you can’t drink wine”…

Perhaps Sweden should just confiscate all children at birth and raise them in crèches? But then, of course, people would stop having them. And the feminists want even criticism of their tyrannical insanity to be criminal: “the Nordic Council of Ministers…[suggested]…the government…take action against…‘anti-feminist attitudes’…expressed in public…”

Saving Them From Themselves

A 15-year-old Florida girl was arrested…for shooting and possessing a photo of another teen girl engaged in oral sex with a teen boy…She was charged with a felony child porn count. “The two girls were friends, and one of them was dating the guy,” Detective William Lindsey [said]…”Possession of child pornography is [a crime] no matter what age they are… If she had taken a picture of herself in sexual conduct, she could be charged with child pornography”…

Wholesale Hypocrisy (TW3 #25)

The rather dull-witted and credulous Bonnie Erbe seems to genuinely believe in mathematically and sociologically impossible nonsense, but more shocking is her support for censorship despite her pretense of being a journalist:

…The Internet…provides an almost unfettered platform for…pimps to find, track and enslave girls and women in sex trafficking…local and federal authorities seem powerless to ban the sale of commercial sex online. Nor do they seem able to keep up with and control the horrendous amount of trafficking the Internet generates…experts point mainly to laws that predate the Internet and define places where criminal commercial sex acts take places as “houses of prostitution” or “brothels.” Today, no such places exist. Pimps — mainly men — find customers online and direct them to meet prostitutes, who work out of different motels or apartments or sometimes even their own homes…[in] a New Mexico case…two men…were [cleared of] running “an extensive multistate, online prostitution ring”…after a judge ruled that…their website did not constitute a house of prostitution, though it was used to recruit prostitutes and promote prostitution…It would seem easy to amend anti-prostitution laws to include a ban on websites for procuring commercial sex…

Because when governments ban things, they magically vanish!

Shift in the Wind

Those who were surprised at seeing an anti-criminalization article in The National Review must not remember that A) many “conservatives” at least claim to be for smaller government, and B) the magazine’s founder, William F. Buckley, was a vocal opponent of drug criminalization.

…the proscription of prostitution…continues to be a mystery to me. Sex remains one of the few things that a free person may give away gratis but which he is forbidden from selling. It is perfectly legal to sleep around in the United States — subsidized and panegyrized, even — and, as the growing parade of octogenarian billionaires’ wives demonstrates, it is both permissible and socially acceptable to sleep with someone in pursuit of regular material comfort…While the laws surrounding the issue remain such a dizzy and irrational mess, drawing a clear moral line through the morass remains nigh on impossible…To broach this topic in polite company is to invite someone…to parrot the banal old line that “nobody grows up wanting to be a prostitute.” At best, this is a red herring. Certainly, few people grow up wishing to be prostitutes. But there are an awful lot of careers that escape the dreams of children…It is no accident that prostitution, which was almost uniformly legal in the United States from the period of colonization up until the start of the 20^th century, was banned in almost every state within the same five-year period during which the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union managed to convince the nation that alcohol should be constitutionally outlawed…

Of course the comments are full of Puritans and trafficking fetishists, but there are a surprising number of truth-tellers there as well.

Legitimate Outrage

…Eliot Spitzer said he hopes he has changed since he was caught in a prostitution scandal that led to his resignation, as he attempts to revive his political career with a run for New York City comptroller. “I think the public will have to ask itself the question, ‘can we forgive him?’ I’ve asked for the forgiveness, I hope the public says ‘yes,’ based upon the record I have, based upon qualities I can bring to the office,” Spitzer told reporters…

Politicians are usually forgiven; those whose lives they destroy, not so much.

The Naked Anthropologist

Though New Scientist published only a very small part of what Dr. Laura Agustín says was a much, much longer interview, it’s still good to see mainstream magazines presenting her views and debunking the “sex trafficking” hysteria and anti-whore tyranny.

Unclean Situation

You know how the Magdalene Laundry orders (through their modern front, Ruhama) like to pretend that sex work is “human trafficking”?

Despite being funded by the HSE annually, including over €126,000 last year, St Patrick’s Guild informed the Adoption Authority last week that it no longer has the resources to staff the organisation. The agency, run by the Religious Sisters of Charity, had been accredited by the Adoption Authority to assist adopted people and natural parents through tracing, counselling and mediating…Between 1947 and 1967, St Patrick’s Guild…arranged for the export of 572 “illegitimate” children from Ireland to the US for adoption…Despite the agency’s admitted involvement in facilitating illegal adoptions, the Adoption Authority again reiterated its stance that it will not inspect the files to ascertain the extent of the agency’s involvement in such activity…

In other words, the nuns abducted children from their Irish mothers and sold them to Americans; if that’s not “human trafficking”, I don’t know what is.

Skin To Skin (TW3 #313)

The New York Times seems unable to write about sex work without dysphemisms like “so-called”:

…in France…disabled people struggle to have a sex life. But their desires are often disregarded, and while prostitution is legal here, soliciting potential clients and serving as an intermediary between prostitutes and clients are not. The issue of sexual surrogates came up in March, after the National Ethics Committee…issued a report criticizing the practice as the “unethical use of the human body for commercial purposes”…but…some legislators and associations of disabled people are demanding the legalization of sexual surrogates. “Prostitution is a fake debate; the goals are different,” said Pascale Ribes…[of] the Disabilities and Sexualities Group, an association defending sexual surrogates in France. “Sexual assistance is about allowing a disabled person who can’t access sexuality in a satisfying way to reconnect with the body”…

Advice to disabilities advocates: foolish reinforcement of whorearchy is not the way to go about winning your right to employ sex workers.

Flush Criminalization

More sophomoric “humor” from New York “authorities” working assiduously to destroy as many people’s lives as possible:

Police shut down…12 massage parlors…for alleged prostitution…arresting owners, managers and workers. The Brooklyn District Attorney’s office is investigating whether workers were “victims of human trafficking, being manipulated or held against their will”…and whether a central organization was controlling…the operations. According to DA Charles Hynes, all of the women…gave very similar stories about having children in Asia they needed to support. NYPD Commissioner was typically…tone-deaf in his assessment of the case. “We know people in Bay Ridge have back pain…but we don’t think that’s enough to sustain 19 massage parlors”…

That the DA seems to perceive the fantasy of a huge “sex trafficking” conspiracy as more credible than the simple fact that most sex workers have children to support, speaks volumes about his warped view of humanity.

Still a Child

This is no more ridiculous than defining a minimum age above that of majority for any other legal activity, such as drinking or sex work: “Somalia…has set the minimum age at 40 for anyone intending to practice as a journalist in the country…”

True Colors (TW3 #327)

Authorities in southern China have left…Ye Haiyan…homeless…Guangdong security agents abandoned her on the side of the road with her boyfriend…and 14-year-old daughter…”Zhongshan does not welcome you; Guangzhou does not welcome you either. I will break your legs if I ever see you again in Zhongshan,” one of the security agents said…

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