This machine is pumping fluid into my veins as we speak. – Shaquille Dukes
Apparently five years of living in Seattle is not enough for me to have heard of this, but I’m not terribly ashamed because Chekhov, a font of local knowledge who first moved to Seattle in 1978, had never heard of it either. It does actually serve as a kind of goofy real-life metaphor for the city, though. The links above it were provided by Marijke Vonk, Boatfloating, Franklin Harris, David Wraith, Emma Evans, and Lucy Steigerwald, in that order.
A “sponsored” article is one that the paper was PAID to print; in other words, it’s an ad disguised as a news story so as to trick the public into accepting it as credible. This one is an ad for the Dolan law firm, whose owner, Christopher Dolan, is an ambulance-chaser attempting to capitalize on “sex trafficking” hysteria by recruiting professional “victims” for lucrative FOSTA-enabled lawsuits against websites, hotels, truck stops and anyone else he thinks he can rob. It would be bad enough if this tissue of ludicrous lies ($150 billion a year! $650,000 a year for every “pimp”! 14% of all US minors are “sexually enslaved” every year, which means 210% of all US minors since the hysteria began!) were labeled as an ad, but the only clue – which virtually no non-proofreader will catch – is that little word “sponsored” hidden in the url. So much for “journalistic ethics”.
Marshae Jones [of] Birmingham…was indicted…on a manslaughter charge…Jones didn’t fire the shots that killed her unborn baby girl…Ebony Jemison [did that]…but the charge against Jemison was dismissed after…she…shot [Jones] in the stomach…[pigs encouraged the grand jury to blame the victim rather than the assailant because] “It was the mother of the child who initiated and continued the fight which resulted in the death of her own unborn baby”…
Pomona…California [sow]…Angela Torres [role-]plays a sex worker…She has [done it] nearly 1,000 times and says she does it [because she gets off on destroying the lives of unsuspecting men]…“a lot of those dating sites have shut down, a lot of the girls who worked online and worked in hotels have now been forced out into the streets,” [oinked pig] Jesse Hedrick…“if we deter these Johns, then prostitutes…won’t be making a lot of money,” [gloated] Torres. “It will deter them from [paying their rent and buying food for their children, which will make them more desperate. We hope they’re raped and murdered so we don’t need to see them any more]”…
A Cambodian court jailed a [fraudster] for two years…for his role in making a [propaganda film] about sex trafficking…Rath Rott Mony[‘s propaganda film], titled “My Mother Sold Me”, included a…[sexual fantasy] of a poor Cambodian girl who was sold into sex work, prompting authorities to question those involved…the girl and her mother [admitted they] were paid $200 to lie in the documentary…Judge Koy Sao…ordered Mony to pay $17,500 compensation to two of the mothers, Keo Malai and Tep Sreylin, who appeared in the film. The two [revealed] Mony had promised to help solve a land dispute and open a shop for them if they made up the story about their daughters…the U.S. embassy in Phnom Penh expressed concern over [its ability to spread “sex trafficking” propaganda if Cambodia keeps prosecuting rescue industry lies]…Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch said [the imprisonment of one propagandist is a bigger human rights issue than vicious fraud which drives a hysteria impacting millions of women, including those condemed to] Cambodia[‘s notorious Prey Speu “re-education” camp in order to satisfy US prohibitionists]…
A programmer created an app…that…remove[s] clothing from the images of women, making them look realistically nude…DeepNude…uses a photo of a clothed person and…swaps clothes for naked breasts and a vulva…DeepNude…appears to work best on images where the person is already showing a lot of skin…Since [whitebread feminists] discovered deepfakes in late 2017, [most of] the media and politicians focused on the dangers they pose as a disinformation tool. But [clueless prudes still think] the most devastating use of deepfakes has…been in how they’re used [on pictures of] women…
The solution to this problem isn’t increasing the censorship powers of the already-bloated police state as carceral feminists are demanding; it’s fighting the idea that a woman’s body is something to be ashamed of.
Illinois’ new governor delivered on a top campaign promise…by signing legislation legalizing small amounts of marijuana for recreational use, the 11th state to do so and the first to implement a comprehensive statewide cannabis marketplace designed by [politicians]. Legalization in Illinois also means that nearly 800,000 people with criminal records for purchasing or possessing 30 grams of marijuana or less may have those records expunged, a provision minority lawmakers and interest groups demanded…
I don’t know about you, but I find the reporter’s writing “the first to implement a comprehensive statewide cannabis marketplace designed by [politicians]” as though it were a good thing is extremely funny.
More than 80 per cent of refugees…locked up in one Libyan [concentration camp] have tuberculosis due to overcrowding and poor conditions…at least 22 have died…the bodies of Christians who died in [the EU-funded] Zintan [concentration camp] were not being buried, partly because the local community insists the cemetery is only for Muslims….some [migrants] hav[e] been [locked up] for two years…roughly 6,000 people [are] currently locked up indefinitely in detention centres run by the Libyan Department for Combatting Illegal Migration (DCIM)…[which is funded and trained by] the EU…
Technology…already [used] in authoritarian China…[is] also gaining a foothold…in [authoritarian] America…police departments…are turning body cameras]…into a means of constant surveillance. Evolving software applications will let police record every encounter and match up a citizen’s face with a database…California [politicians are] consider[ing] Assembly Bill 1215, which would ban police agencies from using facial and biometric tracking devices as part of their body cameras…the next step…[is] tying facial-recognition software into security cameras that are practically everywhere…Police admit that they want to use these cameras as part of wholesale dragnets, by scanning everyone at public events and not only those that they suspect of having committed a crime…This is far more intrusive than those checkpoints in totalitarian countries where people must constantly show their papers. In this emerging Robocop world, every American will always be identifiable to the authorities simply by walking around in public…
The [American Hotel & Lodging Association] vowed…to [harass and persecute] sex [workers using] its properties, in part by training every employee on [incredibly vague] warning signs for [sex work] and how to [rat them out to the pigs]…The announcement…comes after two women who [claim] they were forced into prostitution as teenagers filed a lawsuit against three Philadelphia hotels, alleging the businesses ignored and profited from the sexual slavery happening on their premises…
The single biggest fallacy in Randianism is the notion that the great industrialists of the past succeeded by their own genius. They didn’t; every single one got wealthy due to crony deals with politicians, “officially”-granted monopolies, protectionist laws, subsidies, etc; in other words fascism, not the free market. I’m an agorist; I believe all human interactions should be voluntary exchanges, and that nobody has a right to insert themselves into others’ voluntary arrangements. But crony capitalism warps markets with collectivist violence, making them evil. Let’s take one modern example, far more subtle than bailouts, subsidies or “regulations” so complex it takes a full-time legal department (such as big companies have and small ones don’t): the copyright scam. Basic copyright is a good concept; it allows creative people to make a living from their creations. Without it, nobody could afford to be a full-time creator because the unscrupulous would constantly be stealing their work. But look at how collusion between government and giant media corporations (especially Disney) have warped this good concept into a sick means of fascist corporations making billions from the intellectual creations of people who have been dead for decades. Mickey Mouse and many other characters should have entered the public domain years ago, but the collectives which “own” them paid off enough Congresscritters to ensure that won’t happen, and the process will continue indefinitely until something is done about it. But what could be done? Well, If I were dictatrix, I’d set copyright at life plus 21 years, so any minor children of a creator who died young could enjoy those rights until majority. But anything longer stifles future generations from doing new things with those creations (as Disney himself did with public-domain characters created by others). I’d also bar corporations from owning copyright; only human creators (including teams of specifically-named individuals) could have that. Of course, the creator could license his creation to a company, as Charles Moulton licensed Wonder Woman to DC. But 21 years after the creator croaks? It’s all over, including the licenses. Under my system, everything John Lennon did solo (post-Beatles) would’ve come out of copyright a couple of weeks after George Harrison died in ’01, and Harrison’s work would now have only three years left. But the collective Beatles creations would still be protected until 21 years after the last Beatle shuffles off this mortal coil. Superman would’ve entered the public domain two and a half years ago, 21 years after Jerry Siegel’s death (his co-creator, Joe Shuster, died in 1992); imagine what stories new creators could soon write about him or about Batman (out of copyright this coming November in my system).
The “creative team” structure leaves a loophole, but I think it’s a sensible one that could allow a creator to care for loved ones after his death. All a creator would need to do is give equal creative credit (at the time of publication; retroactive attribution would not be allowed) to the person he wanted to protect. So if Lennon had given Yoko Ono official equal credit on all or some of his post-Beatles work, the music so credited would still be under copyright until 21 years after she croaks. A clever creator could even give equal credit to their kids on individual works (one book or album per kid, that sort of thing). And it would last until 21 years after that “co-creator” died, but there would be no such thing as collectives of investors who never even met Walt Disney profiting from his genius 52 years after his death. This wouldn’t kill companies; for example, Disney would still hold rights to all from their ’90s revival, probably for decades to come, and they’ve got plenty of money to keep licensing new characters ad infinitum. But no more resting on laurels, and no more using the power of government to stop other people from doing exactly what 19th and 20th-century creators did.
People call me heroic, but I don’t feel heroic; I usually feel as though what I’m doing is the only possible choice, or at least the only moral one. – “Divided We Stand”
For as long as I’ve written this blog, I’ve been pointing out several times a year (especially on July 4th and November 5th) that the US “was born with an ugly birth defect which doomed it from the start, and the monstrous doppelganger which grew like some loathsome fungus inside of its carcass would not be worthy of saving even if that were possible. Nor are the majority of modern Western nations any better.” European nations, including the US, grew and enriched themselves by invasion, land theft, pillage and enslavement of less-advanced peoples, and even after they disavowed that racist, colonialist history they have continued to be every bit as shitty to those formerly-subject peoples, albeit obliquely and under the guise of beneficence. It’s absolutely true that up until recently virtually all peoples, regardless of skin color, religion, time period or level of advancement, grew and enriched themselves by exactly those same means, but only the Western ones developed an intellectual tradition, generally known as “Western liberalism”, which allowed free and open discussion of ideas and paid lip service to basic human rights while continuing to allow their rulers to behave in the same abominable manner as rulers always have and always will behave. If anything, the tradition has encouraged rulers to behave even more abominably than in the past by simply thinking up some bullshit excuse for the evil and then feigning offense when called on it. For example, less-advanced peoples could be conquered by labeling them “savages” and pretending that more-advanced (i.e. white) people were only trying to “help” them by enslaving them. Europeans proclaimed they had a “right” to steal the land of non-Europeans by a pettifogging bit of legalistic chicanery called the “Doctrine of Discovery“, and that it was OK to exterminate them when they resisted conquest (in much the same way that modern cops charge their victims with “assault on a police officer” and “resisting arrest” for daring to defend themselves when they’re beaten, raped or tased). Modern rulers claim “legitimacy” by a long series of Byzantine pretenses and procedures no more moral, just or rational than “Divine Right of Kings” was, then claim that their subjects somehow agreed to obey due to something called a “social contract” by virtue of being born within a particular set of imaginary lines the rulers drew on a map; the fact that nobody can “choose” when, how or where to be born is pretended to be irrelevant, and the rulers claim the “right” to inflict violence – including assault, maiming, robbery, rape, child-abduction, locking them in a cage for decades and even murder – if the subject violates any of a vast, confusing, vague, broad, and ever-increasing body of arbitrary rules called “laws” which are invented by the rulers as excuses to expand their own power, destroy their enemies (especially rebellious subjects) and suppress everyone who isn’t a member of the ruling class.
This edifice of bullshit has achieved its highest development in the fascist semi-republics which are incorrectly labeled “democracies”; most people believe that they’ve acted freely as long as they’re given a “choice”, even if that choice is between two equally-awful representatives of entrenched political parties who agree on every important issue and make a huge and dramatic show of opposing each other on a few cosmetic ones. Similarly, the lie of “choice” is used to brutalize, cage and banish refugees from countries ruined by centuries of European exploitation and decades of proxy warfare (yes, that includes the “War on Drugs” and the “War on Terrorism”), as if “stay in your native country and watch your children starve while you’re being raped” is some kind of valid choice. We’re told that Africans trying to reach Europe and Latin Americans trying to reach the US in search of a better life (you know, the same reason Europeans came to North America) are “illegals” who deserve to be caged in brutal conditions until they die of preventable diseases; that those who assist them are “criminals” (usually “human traffickers”); and that deporting them is “rescue” and “helping them get home to their families”. If you want to participate in this vast charade on the off-chance of sparking some kind of butterfly effect which will eventually make things marginally better, please do so with my blessing. I, however, prefer not to get into the mud with the pigs; all I can do is follow my moral compass so that even if things don’t get better, at least I know that I had no part in making them worse or excusing the multitudinous sins of the powerful.
People whose brains and morals haven’t been totally warped by partisan politics don’t write off…horrors just because The Other Side started them. – Elizabeth Nolan Brown
A Chinese madam linked to a[n imaginary] “Snakehead” people smuggling ring, who [provided clients and an incall for migrant sex workers]…in…Scotland…was [sentenced to] 27 months…Yen Huang, 62…was [snitched on by racist busybodies at]…a bank in Dundee [after she went into the bank with] a 48-year-old [migrant] woman…Police…[had branded] the woman…a victim of human trafficking [so they arrested her]…and…she…[is] now [in prison] in England, waiting to be [deported]…Huang…eventually abandoned her claims to have been just a cleaner with “no connection” to…prostitution, and…[instead] claimed she herself was victim of human trafficking…brought to the UK…by “Snakehead” [an imaginary criminal cartel out of racist “Fu Manchu” style fantasies]…
According to Diane Gramley, head of the American Family Association’s (AFA) Pennsylvania chapter, the 1969 Stonewall uprising wasn’t caused by queer people fighting against police harassment, it was caused by police trying to rescue a young transgender boy who was being sexually abused by the bar’s queer patrons. Gramley [told her fantasy] on a recent broadcast of Stand in the Gap, a radio show produced by the American Pastors Network…Gramley [also] said…“Pride is definitely a menace to children…because they use these Pride events to desensitize us to the dangers of their lifestyle”…By claiming that police were trying to rescue a sexually abused transgender youth, Gramely continues to [advance the myth that cops exist to “help” people and to] repeat the old canard that LGBTQ people are pedophiles who groom and sexually prey on young children, “turning” some of them gay, bi or trans…
A “young transgender boy”? How interesting, considering that people like Gramley claim that being trans is a “lifestyle” rather than a characteristic, and therefore deny that any young person can actually be trans.
[A pig oinked that] it was time to consider stopping drivers using the residential…Rosary Road [in] Norwich…”to prevent kerb crawlers doing laps” [even though cops admit this won’t have any affect on street work]…residents…[say they are] not bothered by kerb crawling traffic [though some virtue-signaled that they have read the propaganda about]…”women who are being exploited in all this”…
Click the subtitle link to see what happened the last time this Stupid Cop Trick was tried.
As the next Olympic host, Japan has become the focus of…global [hysteria over] child prostitution…with [profiteers] working to [spread disinformation] on “hidden crimes” they [pretend] have a symbiotic relationship with mega-events. Major sporting events attract troves [sic] of [rescue industry]…organizations…looking to cash in by exploiting [public ignorance about sex work in order to convince them that sex workers are] vulnerable children…Despite [a total lack of evidence for any issues]…Japan is far from immune, according to It’s a Penalty, a Britain-based [prohibition]ist group. “It does exist here, it is just that [the evidence says the opposite]” said Sarah de Carvalho, founder and CEO of IAP…
As of January 2018, teenagers in Colorado who use their cellphones to exchange nude selfies can no longer be prosecuted for “sexual exploitation of a child.” But that change, which state legislators approved after [considerable pressure from sane, normal people]…came five years too late for “T.B.”, a 15-year-old boy who in 2012 and 2013 swapped erotic pictures with two girls [his own age]…the Colorado Supreme Court upheld [destroying] T.B.’s [life by condemning him to]…sex offender [hell] for at least 20 years. The majority conceded that its decision “may strike some as [insane but typical police-state violence]”…but T.B. violated the law that applied at the time, the court said, so he is out of luck. Two dissenting justices argued that their colleagues had misread the statute and that the majority’s interpretation [was completely devoid of anything resembling justice]…
Louisiana State Police have acquired a new tool to help solve child porn cases: a dog named Maggie who’s trained to sniff out even the smallest electronic devices that might be used to store images and videos, including memory cards and flash drives. At a press conference [pigs and politicians bloviated a lot of nonsense about magic pictures and infinitely-growing problems]…
…If you speak out in favour of decriminalisation of sex work as a member of the UK anti-trafficking sector, you risk losing partnerships, allies and funding. But…unless the sector comes to a united understanding on sex work and the laws surrounding it, we risk trafficking being used as a rhetorical tool which harms some of the most marginalised women in our communities. The major divide on this battlefield is between those promoting decriminalisation of sex work and those pushing the “sex buyer law”. Tackling trafficking for sexual exploitation is often used as the reason to support this law…This approach can feel instinctively right because it punishes the buyers. I don’t know a single sex worker who likes their clients. I’m sure there are some, but they are few and far between…
The author is clearly delusional. First off, she refuses to recognize that “trafficking” is and always has been specifically a “rhetorical tool which harms some of the most marginalised women in our communities”, because that’s exactly what it was intended to be; it paints sex workers as “victims” so damaged by the supposed “trauma” of pragmatic sex that we don’t know what is good for us and can therefore be disregarded. And anyone so out of touch with reality that she imagines the sex workers she “knows” (already an absurd assumption because whores aren’t generally honest with self-appointed saviors) are in any way representative of the great majority who wouldn’t even consent to talk to someone whose avowed purpose is the disruption of their entire profession, is too lost in her own navel to even bother correcting.
…people who did not conform to traditional gender norms were a part of daily life in the Old West, according to Peter Boag, a historian at Washington State University and the author of Re-Dressing America’s Frontier Past. While researching a book about the gay history of Portland, Boag stumbled upon hundreds and hundreds of stories concerning people who dressed against their assigned gender…He was shocked at the size of this population, which he’d never before encountered in his time as a queer historian of the American West…Boag expanded his research beyond the Northwest, but limited it to towns west of the Mississippi, and the period of time from the California Gold Rush through statehood for all the Western continental territories. It wasn’t that this time and place was more open or accepting of trans people, but that it was more diffuse and unruly, which may have enabled more people to live according to their true identities…“My theory is that people who were transgender…saw the West as a place where they could live and get jobs and carry on a life that they couldn’t have in the more congested East”…
For years, U.S. propagandists have spread scare stories about trafficked children being housed in warehouses and forced to sleep on mats or rickety cots, with inadequate nutrition, zero privacy, and a lack of basic sanitation…[but actually] it’s the U.S. government that is doing that…ferreting [abducted] children off to secretive warehouse locations where neon lights shine 24 hours per day. Kids are crowded into large cages where they sleep on shared mats—or sometimes concrete floors…denied soap, toothbrushes, and medicine, amid outbreaks of lice and flu…Some sociopaths argue that abusing children is necessary to send a message to their parents…but…that innocent children should not suffer for the sins of their parents has long been a principle civil societies agree on…As Ken White writes at The Atlantic…“The sheer effrontery of the government’s argument may be explained, but not excused, by its long backstory”…Like civilian criminal counterparts, [Trump and company are] essentially threatening to keep on kidnapping and traumatizing kids until Democrats meet their demands…
Regular readers know that summer is not a good time for my nervous system; there’s just too much light for far too many hours a day, and when it’s light outside until almost 10 pm my brain doesn’t even start winding down until after midnight. But though moving to Seattle meant having to endure about an extra hour of light in the summer than I did when living in the South, it also means less frustrating heat and readily-available cannabis edibles with which I can force my brain to relax. That doesn’t help me in the hours when I have to be moving around doing stuff, but fortunately this past week was a busy one, and when my mind is busy I notice the anxiety less. Besides some pleasant work, I got to spend Wednesday evening watching Doctor Who (and four episodes of Good Omens) with Lorelei, Friday evening helping a friend move, and Saturday and Sunday evenings at events for Thaddeus Russell (you can hear me at the very end of an upcoming live podcast in which Thad talks with Katie Herzog of The Stranger). Add to that the fact that I went into the week on the heels of an exceptionally good weed trip, and ended it on another that I hope will be just as good (I’m writing this Sunday evening and the edibles haven’t kicked in yet), and that tomorrow I’m heading to Sunset for the long weekend, I’m in a really good headspace right now…and for the week after the summer solstice, that’s practically a miracle.
Queer bigots are the most revolting bigots because theoretically they should know better, considering that LGBT people have been violently persecuted for centuries and that only ended in the US in this century, years after I started sex work (and still hasn’t ended in much of the world). But anti-sex work queer people are a strange, ignorant bunch who seem to live in an echo chamber where same-sex attraction was always acceptable to the establishment, and queer folk are exactly like straights except for whom they “love”. They seem to have no idea that most sex workers are LGBT; that they owe their rights to an anti-cop riot started by sex workers; and that only a few years ago queer people were targeted by the same kind of persecution and propaganda campaigns as sex workers and our clients are now, right down to state-imposed “conversion therapy” (called “diversion” for women and “john school” for men). And let’s not even talk about the lesbians who hate transwomen. There is something deeply wrong, twisted and pathetic in sexual minorities who eagerly call for the persecution, rape and destruction of other sexual minorities, but in the young ones at least I believe this sick attitude thrives largely because they simply don’t know their own history and therefore feel perfectly at home sucking up to cops and other “authorities” who were beating, robbing, caging and humilating (if not murdering) their elders within their own poorly-remembered young lifetimes. Last week I was forced to mute a number of belligerent young butch dykes (mostly from Tasmania of all places) who seem to think it’s perfectly OK for cops to hunt sex workers’ clients; they were all shockingly ignorant of the history of LGBT activism, but one of them actually seemed to believe that the chief civil rights struggle faced by gay men in my lifetime was…are you ready?…that they “weren’t allowed to marry”. I am not making this up. Persecution by cops? Losing jobs? The AIDS epidemic? Nope. Just that they couldn’t get a government fucking license and force bigots to participate in their disgustingly-extravagant displays of conspicuous consumption. Look, I know the young tend to be ignorant and the old tend to be inflexible, but Suffering Sappho, I don’t think I was that ignorant anytime this side of puberty. And if you think there’s something wrong with my not wishing to see any peaceful humans attacked by steroidal thugs, especially for their consensual sexual arrangements, then get the fuck off of my lawn.
The witch Thiana Gian seems to be a nice sky. – Paul Simon, kinda
I discovered another clever YouTube channel this week; this one is from a young woman who uses Google translate to translate the lyrics of various songs into several different languages and then back into English, and then sings the results. She has lots of examples, but this one is straightforward and not overlong and gives a good sample of what the others are like. The links above it were provided by Scott Greenfield, Jesse Walker, Angela Keaton, Matt Welch, Violet Blue, and Mike Siegel, in that order.
Layleen Polanco…[an] Afro-Latina transgender woman was found dead in solitary confinement [on June 7th] at Rikers Island Jail. Polanco was being held on $500 bail owing to misdemeanor charges for a prostitution-related offense, in addition to the lowest-level drug charge. The New York medical examiner has not yet [invented] the cause of her death…Decrim NY…[said] “Polanco’s death was caused by an all-too-common overlap of three aspects of the criminal legal system: She was criminalized for sex work. She was held on $500 bail for misdemeanor charges. And she was placed in solitary confinement”…hundreds of people gathered in downtown Manhattan to pay tribute to Polanco and to join in her family and the broader LGBTQ+ community’s calls for answers…
A Florida [cop]…has been fired and arrested after…he tried to lure a Polk County child for sex…Okaloosa County Sheriff’s [deputy]…Cansas Sadler, Jr., came in contact with the 9-year-old girl through an online game called, “The Wolf”…[and] pretended to be an 11-year-old named, “Jade” [as cops so often do to their intended victims. Sadler]…engaged in a sexual conversation…and…ask[ed] the child if she wanted to have sex with a 31-year-old man named “Jason”…then, he [sent her a dick pic]…and…[asked her] to take pictures of herself [to] send to him…the suspect [eventually] called the 9-year-old but the little girl’s mother answered the phone and…call[ed] the cops…[who] traced Sadler’s IP address…
U.S. [bureaucrats] approved a second drug to [capitalize on what is defined by profiteers as] low [in comparison to men] sexual desire in women…bremelanotide…will be marketed by Amag Pharmaceuticals…under the brand name Vyleesi…it’s a shot that comes in an auto-injecting pen that…would [be] use[d] about 45 minutes before [planned] sex…A spokeswoman for the company said it plans to start selling the drug in September and will announce its price closer to the launch…the FDA said about 25% of patients treated with Vyleesi benefited from an increase in sexual desire score, compared with about 17% who took a placebo. [This net 8% increase in “desire” was paid for with a] 40% [rate] of…nausea…13% needed medications to [stop throwing up]…8% [of the test group] discontinued due to nausea…the National Women’s Health Network…urged women not to use Vyleesi until more is known about its safety and effectiveness…
So these idiots want women to give themselves a shot and then wait 45 minutes for the outcome, which is 5x as likely to be puking than it is to be horniness. A nice present would be far more effective, without the vomit.
…[Since] FOSTA…it can seem like two parallel internets have formed: one ostensibly “free” of sex work, and another, hand-built in the margins by workers now excluded from mainstream platforms…This has especially significant consequences for the more vulnerable sex workers…In the wake of FOSTA, there has been a growing focus on sex worker-led technology companies, set up to address the workers’ own needs…Lola Hunt and Eliza Sorensen, based in Melbourne, have launched several technology platforms serving sex workers through their company, Assembly Four. One is Switter, a social media network for sex workers; another is a paid advertising platform called Tryst Link. Neither are hosted in the US, to avoid FOSTA exposure…the Assembly Four team has been “completely bootstrapping” its work…because they haven’t yet been able to receive venture capital funding…getting merchant facilities from banks or the means to accept payments…has been a “nightmare”…
The Kitsap County [Washington] Sheriff’s Department…[lied about] a large-scale operation…Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office [bloviated that]…”a significant military/U.S. Navy Nexus was identified” [meaning there’s a naval base nearby and sailors often go to massage parlors. Pigs also oinked that]…they rescued human trafficking victims [when in reality they merely arrested 4 migrant women ranging in age from 51 to 61]…
…police departments around the country are encouraging [peasants] to register their doorbells to police [so the cops can use them at will to spy on anyone coming or going from their houses]. Right now there’s no such program in Huntsville or Madison [Alabama. “Crime” rhetoric and a lying sentence fragment, then pigs hilariously claiming] …they respect citizens’ rights to privacy…
A new effort by California [polticians] to permit a safe injection facility to be built in San Francisco has been put on hold until next year apparently due to struggles getting it through the State Senate…last year state [politicians] crafted a bill that would guarantee…people running a permitted SIF in San Francisco wouldn’t be arrested by local or state police…but when it got to Gov. Jerry Brown, he vetoed it. In his veto letter, he argued that…drugs [are bad]…
[A pig’s self-aggrandizing, evidence-free tall tale of] the rescue [of a “child” of indeterminate age] illustrates [the level of “evidence” accepted by mainstream reporters when writing about] Thorn…[the fascist surveillance corporation] cofounded in 2009 by actors Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher…Thorn…was named one of eight projects that will share in $280 million from TED’s philanthropic offshoot, the Audacious Project…Thorn initially worked to pressure technology companies to [censor] more…more recently, it shifted to…a more [profitable] strategy of producing and operating new technology for use by…the [police state]…Thorn…offers a[nother] way…[for cops to use] facial recognition…[to] endanger…privacy…[starting by putting every sex worker in the world into a database for pigs to root through]…
Those who wondered why I was skeptical of WIRED‘s recent article about Backpage: this gullible, swallow-whatever-an-authority-figure-says-about-sex-work-no-matter-how-stupid approach is typical of their treatment of the topic.
Because of Kraft, what would have been a police blotter entry in local newspapers has made international headlines…[thus drawing much-needed outside attention to the] fates of the women [violated, attcked, robbed and caged by cops]…The [persecu]tion that became State of Florida v. Robert Kraft…began when…a [busybody] Florida Department of Health inspector, Karen Herzog, [snitched to pigs] about…Bridges Day Spa…[claiming] proof of human trafficking [consisting of]…a “refrigerator filled with food and condiments”…[even though] Herzog’s state inspection report…attached two photos of a refrigerator that would not look out of place in any workplace kitchen…[after the busts, pigs oinked to reporters that]…“these women…are not citizens and don’t have residency cards, and so they’re afraid…of being deported,” [said lawyer Tama] Kudman…“Well, at [Orchids of Asia], every [masseuse] was not only either a resident or a citizen, but they were in their 30s and 40s. These were not children. These were women who held multiple massage and cosmetology licenses. [The truth] couldn’t have been further from the stereotype that they were trying to paint when this case first occurred”…[owner Hua] Zhang [is] a 58-year-old…grandmother who has a master’s degree…The Martin County Sheriff’s Office is attempting to [steal her]…home, as well as the homes of her son and cousin…“When you start using slogans like human sex trafficker, prostitute, john, these [terms] have a lasting effect on the people that they’re used against,” Kudman said…“our state attorneys and our sheriffs have to be more careful with their allegations before they destroy people’s lives”…
Despite a slightly-Swedish-scented undertone, the article isn’t bad for the mainstream media.
When I was in my teens and early twenties, I had trouble with the concept of an LGBT “community”. Obviously I understood why people might want to socialize with other queer people in bars or clubs (it would certainly make dating easier), but the idea of only patronizing LGBT-owned businesses or whatever seemed no more sensible to me than the notion of Christians only trading with other Christians or sci-fi fans only doing business with the people they might hang out with at cons. As I aged I began to realize how fortunate I was to have such an accepting group of straight friends, and realized that in other parts of the country more uptight than sexually laissez faire New Orleans, a queer “community” could be a lifesaver. Of course, that was before the ascendancy of Gay, Inc; the change of the official LGBT motto from “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it!” to “We’re just like yooooooouuuuuu!!!”; the nauseating pageant of corporate rainbow flags every June; and the transformation of Pride from the commemoration of an anti-cop riot (50 years ago today, though you’d barely know it from Big Gay’s shameful lack of interest in the anniversary) to a “family friendly” celebration of picket fences, Hallmark-card-ready sentiments, conspicuous consumption, and NO SEX (because that’s apparently not what “sexual orientation” means). But if you still cling to the concept that because one of your preferences is similar to one of the preferences of a bunch of assholes you don’t even know, that makes them “your people”, you may want to read this:
LGBTQ Americans want cops and corporations to participate in pride parades by an 8-to-1 margin, a landslide of support that breaks from a vocal faction of protesters, according to a new survey conducted by Whitman Insight Strategies and BuzzFeed News. The nationwide poll also found most LGBTQ people mistakenly think they occupy much more of the population than they actually do (y’all, it’s nowhere near half the country)…Support for welcoming cops at pride was about three-quarters across a wide range of demographics — male, female, gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual, white, and nonwhite. People of color, who made up 21% of all survey respondents, support cops in pride events by 77% to 8% (15% say it makes no difference either way). Support was slightly lower among LGBTQ people who have not come out (56%), queer/nonbinary people (57%), and those under 30 years old (70%). As for corporate floats at pride, 76% welcome them in the festivities, while just 9% oppose…
What this tells me is that ignorant, bootlicking sociopaths are just as common among those who want to stick their body parts into other people of their own sex as among those who want to stick their body parts into people of another sex. Worldwide, cops are still the major perpetrators of violence against queers, and in the US they are still very dangerous to a large fraction of the LGBT population, especially transwomen, sex workers (most of whom, as I often point out, are LGBT) and black people. Having cops at Pride is nothing less than spitting in the face of those who are persecuted by them every fucking day; it’s basically saying “We picket-fence gays have our seat at the Big Table thanks to our eagerly throwing the rest of y’all under the bus to win it, so fuck all of you.” Sorry, I’m not part of any “community” with opportunistic fascists, and those who are can take their cop-packed, state-worshipping, white, vanilla, bourgeois “Pride month” and use it as an immense butt plug, preferably without lube.
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