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Back Issue #72

June 27, 2019 by Maggie McNeill

Government rhetoric about “protecting” whores from “exploitation” is…nothing but the latest politically correct rationalization for controlling us.  –  “The Rescuers“

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In the News (#948)

June 26, 2019 by Maggie McNeill

The state may not use a butcher knife on a problem that requires a scalpel to fix.  –  Judge John T. Nixon

Where Are the Victims?

It’s always a “gang”, even when it clearly isn’t:

Hu Shuangyan…was part of a[n imaginary] gang that [rented] flats [to sex workers] in Kent, Essex and London…[she and her parter Zhang Dongning] tricked estate agents by posing as employees of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei…[she] was also convicted of money laundering…

A couple is not a “gang”, and if there wasn’t a stupid law against renting rooms to people engaged in a legal trade, there would have been no need for them to lie.

The More the Better 

“Mommy whores” are good, but “gramma whores” are even better:

…grandmother-of-seven Abby Roberts is…working six days a week selling sex to make ends meet.  With disabled husband Sorren unable to work, the 58 year old spends eight hours a day…[working] via…webcam…[and] also shoots six adult movies a month…”As an average I work about eight hours a day.  Some people call me a workaholic but I just love it actually,” she says…that’s the way it has been for 18 years because when I fell in love with my husband I knew he had a very heavy disability”…She and Sorren…were regular swingers before he suffered a heart attack and was told he couldn’t have sex again…

If Men Were Angels

“Youth pastors” are as bad as cops:

A youth pastor at a Colorado Springs church has been arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting a child…Stephen Michael Houlihan…[of] Fellowship of the Rockies church, was booked June 8 on charges of sexual assault on a child by one in a position of trust, internet luring of a child, and obscenity…

Censor Chic (#894)

Google is now so big it isn’t even accountable to its own shareholders:

A shareholder resolution aimed at halting Google’s  efforts to bring a censored version of its search engine to China has failed.  Shareholders tabled a resolution to demand Google put the brakes on its controversial search engine efforts in China.  The program, internally dubbed “Dragonfly”, is…a censorship-friendly search engine with the capability to hide results at the behest of Beijing…Google chief Sundar Pichai…describ[es] China as an “important” market…

Whereas just not being evil (as Google used to claim in its motto) is not so important.

The End of the Beginning (#915) 

Maybe we’re about to witness the beginning of the end of these evil laws:

The Supreme Court of Alaska ruled on Friday that Alaska’s sex offender registration statute violated the due process rights of out of state offenders by requiring them to register as sex offenders without allowing them to be heard.  The court…concluded that the statute…was overbroad and violated due process because it did not provide them an opportunity to demonstrate they were no[t]…a threat to the public.  The court elected not to invalidate the ASORA but rather to allow…the individual who brought the case…to file a civil action in the state’s superior court in an attempt to prove that he no longer poses a risk…

Uncommon Sense (#916)

Because whores are morons whose lives and businesses must be micromanaged by governments:

A flurry of recent media reports have suggested the Prostitutes Protection Act (herafter ProstSchG) had failed to achieve its stated goals and would not sufficiently protect people engaged in prostitution.  Voice4Sexworkers…firmly rejects that notion:  The ProstSchG is well on its way to achieve all of the federal government’s desired goals and effects…Germany’s Basic Law…which grants the inviolability of one’s home…no longer applies to sex workers.  Occupational freedom…is being undermined through the registration procedures…It was clear from the outset that the law would be particularly problematic for people from countries where prostitution is illegal, such as Bulgaria or Romania.  If they register as sex workers in Germany, they risk receiving mail in their countries of origin, despite the promised option to have any related mail delivered to a different mailing address…Tax offices flout this provision knowingly and deliberately, and in doing so, they greatly endanger the lives of sex workers in their countries of origin…The entire construct of the ProstSchG is intended to deter people from entering prostitution and render sex work impossible in most places…

Opting Out (#926) 

Any non-politician would have given this up as a bad idea by now:

The government is under pressure to delay its controversial online pornography age verification scheme for a third time [from July 15th to October 15th], or risk “nefarious” companies “using this opportunity to harvest and manipulate user data”…the Digital Policy Alliance…[ex]plains that…unless the scheme is delayed there will be “less protection for public data”…

Here’s more detail on that from the Open Rights Group:

New age restrictions on pornography…are a “privacy timebomb”…[because in typical government fashion] the data protection in place to protect consumers is “vague, imprecise and largely a ‘tick box’ exercise”…The UK government claims the new measures are necessary in order to prevent children and young adults from accessing adult content online…[even though] the new rules are unlikely to prevent tech-savvy children from reaching restricted websites…

Watershed (#934)

It took prohibitionists two months to freak out over an article saying everyone has human rights:

Teen Vogue tweeted an article titled, “Why Sex Work Is Real Work,” and many clutched their pearls at the audacity of talking to teens about sex work…sex therapist Dr. Tlaleng Mofokeng[‘s]…central argument was that sex workers provide services that help people meet and understand their sexual needs in the same way that her sex counseling does…[prohibitionist] talking heads quickly posted their disdain:  “Why is a teen magazine promoting prostitution to their 13-year-old readers?”  Others falsely equated sex work with sex trafficking…One commenter pointed out that Teen Vogue is a part of Condé Nast in [a bizarre stretch] to falsely equate discussing sex work with pedophilia…Of course, Dr. Mofokeng’s article defends nothing other than the safe exchange of sexual services between consenting adults…Furthermore, scandalized reactions to teens learning about sex work are out of touch with reality.  About 40% of high school teens report to be sexually active, making conversations about sexual health and women’s issues crucially relevant in teens’ lives…

Dangerous Speech (#942)

Another deep dive into the facts of the persecution of Backpage:

…In the years before their arrest, Lacey and Larkin had successfully beat back charges like these in court.  They took refuge not only in the First Amendment but also in Section 230…Congress’ great gift to the internet….[which] wouldn’t exist without it.  After all, you can’t build or sustain a giant network if you’re getting sued every time a user says or does something objectionable…Lacey and Larkin…won case after case, with the support of Big Tech and civil libertarians alike.  But by the time the Feds descended on Paradise Valley that morning in the spring of 2018…the tech industry…had thrown them under the bus.  Their top lieutenant had flipped.  And Congress had used them as an excuse to finally accomplish what it had been trying to do for more than 20 years—tear a hole in Section 230…Silicon Valley had better hope they win.  United States v. Lacey is a dangerous case, with potential consequences far beyond the freedom of two aging antiauthoritarians…

There’s a lot of good info here, but watch for the writer’s bias; she seems to be a crypto-prohibitionist and it’s visible in a few places (such as calling Lacey & Larkin “digital pimps”).  That’s hardly unusual for Wired, which seems unable to publish an article about sex work that lacks major issues.

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Diary #469

June 25, 2019 by Maggie McNeill

Some of you may already know that my planned Florida trip sort of collapsed last week.  After days of adjusting my schedule to Eastern Time, I got up at 5:30 AM Thursday and went to the airport about 2 hours later…only to be told that there had already been four flights cancelled, and the flight I was scheduled on was so hopelessly overbooked I immediately sat down and picked a backup route.  When it looked like I’d be booted from that one as well I went to the website and tried to find another route, but there was simply no way; nearly every flight out of Seattle or into any of the major airports in Florida was hopelessly overbooked, often by as many as 8 or 9 seats.  And the few exceptions out of Seattle or into Florida didn’t match up.  So, I texted with Alex Andrews of SWOP Behind Bars and we decided the most sensible course of action was for me to stay put and appear by video; though the video link didn’t work out staying put turned out to be a good idea, because the flight they automatically rolled me over to (which would’ve been a redeye departing at 10 PM) was cancelled a few hours later.  I don’t know what was going on, but it affected multiple airlines and multiple airports; summer travel is always bad, but this was absurd.  I’m hoping nobody wants to go to Washington DC in August, so I don’t have this trouble when it comes time for Woodhull…but all the same, I think I’ll go a couple of days early to be sure.

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Joey the Player

June 24, 2019 by Maggie McNeill

Last week Alex Andrews of SWOP Behind Bars asked me to spread the word about this serial predator, or more specifically the effort to bring him down.  If you have information and would like to talk to the lawyer she describes below, please Twitter DM SWOP Behind Bars or see the lawyer’s contact info below.  If you’re not on Twitter, I can forward your email to Alex.  I’ve also attached all the info on this monster people have shared on Twitter; his email address and physical address are here, and a few of the many phone numbers he’s used here.  As you can see, there would be more than enough had he not cunningly chosen to target a group cops consider subhuman.

Joey the Player has been a predator in the sex worker community for many years; barely a month goes by without a horror story of his assaulting an unknowing provider.  Just last week there was an incident in Las Vegas.  And of course since sex workers were kicked off the internet in the FOSTA debacle, its been really hard to continue to warn each other about dangerous and abusive clients.  And because of criminalization – we can’t go report these horrific assaults to police because they would probably put a target on us, rape us themselves or do some kind of harmful cop shit that would make our lives harder than they are.  His victims  have been working on a strategy for a long time and SWOP Behind Bars wants to support their efforts, especially since most of his crimes have taken place in New Jersey and NYC.  If you have been victimized by this sleaze or have information and would like to talk (pro bono) to the lawyers, please contact Noam (nbiale@shertremonte.com) or Anna (aestevao@shertremonte.com) or call 212-202-2600.

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Links #468

June 23, 2019 by Maggie McNeill

I’m going to put a cap in your ass.  –  Phoenix “police officer” professionalism

I’ve been sharing a lot of vintage instrumentals lately, so here’s one you’ve undoubtedly heard (because it was ubiquitous in TV commercials, “Please Stand By” notices and other TV artifacts of the ’70s) but may not have known the name of before.  The links above it were provided by Scott Greenfield, Nina Hartley, Popehat, Eric Sprankle, Stacey Swimme, and Amy Alkon, in that order.

From the Archives

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In the News (#947)

June 22, 2019 by Maggie McNeill

News editors run sex trafficking hoaxes as fact…and…suggest there is an epidemic of paid child rape in America.  –  Rory Fleming

Forward and Backward (#581)

Rebranding “prostitution-free zones” as “human trafficking-free zones” doesn’t make them more constitutional:

Temple Terrace became the most recent government in the Tampa Bay area to declare itself a human TraffickingFree Zone.  It’s part of a [propaganda campaign] by an [“end demand”] organization…The cities of St. Petersburg, Clearwater, New Port Richey and Dade City have [jumped] on to the [bandwagon], as has Pasco County…After the [magical] proclamation…the organization [indoctrinated] all city employees in how to [snitch on]…sex [workers]…The U.S. Institute Against Human Trafficking, headquartered in Tampa, was founded about three years ago as a Christian nonprofit…In addition to its TraffickingFree Zones campaign, the institute runs a [private prison] in Central Florida for…[underage male] sex [workers]…

The More the Better (#585)

Prudes like to pretend sex work isn’t part of the entertainment field:

When Stormy Daniels announced her first gig as a stand-up comic in March, [prudish, envious] comedians recoiled…but in fact she’s one of dozens of current and former such stand-ups, and they’re part of a long tradition…The plots of many ancient Greek and Roman comedies revolved around prostitution (like Menander’s Sikyonioi and Terence’s Hecyra), and American comics performed in burlesque and vaudeville shows in the early part of the 20th century.  The comedians Margaret Cho and Roseanne Barr have been open about their sex-work pasts.  Aaron Berg…a former stripper and current stand-up, pointed to “a very strong history between burlesque and comedic timing”…Both universal and taboo, inherently ridiculous and emotionally fraught, sex is a staple of stand-up routines…Wendi Starling…a sex worker and comic, starts one of her bits, “I’m a terrible girlfriend but a great employee.”  Kaytlin Bailey…a former sex worker, current stand-up and communications director for Decriminalize Sex Work, said that sex workers and comedians occupy a similar role:  “You’re allowed to do things that normal citizens cannot.  You’re like a celebrated rule breaker.”  Even so, many sex workers told me that like Daniels, when they first entered comedy clubs, they weren’t particularly welcome…

Beside Kaytlin, I personally know two other sex workers who do stand-up.

Cops and Robbers (#712)

Funny, I don’t remember where in the Gospels Jesus told people to attack harlots:

On 2nd June…AGAP (LGBT Rwanda) was forcibly removed from its office which it has shared with a church in Gisenyi…since 2013…a [mob]…attacked the group in their office, throwing stones and shouting that LGBT sex workers must leave the neighbourhood “in the name of the gospel“.  The [mob] destroyed equipment and other belongings in the office, including equipment for HIV testing.  AGAP is now without premises in Gisenyi, and…LGBT people and sex workers no longer have access to local services…AGAP has called on the local legal authorities to take action…

Welcome To Our World (#789)

The state owns women’s bodies and controls what we can do with them.  Feminism!

The proposal to legalize surrogacy in New York [h]as [predictably encountered opposition from rich, powerful white women] including Gloria Steinem…[as in sex work, prohibitionists don’t like]…poor women [to have the option of earning]…the sizable payments it can bring [without having to be rich women’s maids or labor in sweatshops to make their clothes]…The bill [thus]…remains stalled in the Assembly, where several prominent female [politicians] have expressed [their desire to control all other women]…

Whither Canada? (#871)

Liberals not only lied about repealing the law; they’re actively defending it:

The judge who will decide if [Canada’s] new prostitution laws violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms must weigh [prohibitionist fantasies]…with…individual rights…[a prosecutor bizarrely claimed]…Michael Carnegie…said…”children exposed to [sex rays are magically]…harmed [if]…sexual services [exist anywhere in the world]”…Tiffany Harvey and Hamad Anwar[‘s]…lawyers say the law puts sex workers at risk by forcing them to do their work underground, therefore violating the workers’ charter right to security of the person…[to satisfy] the [prohibitionist fantasy] that sex work is inherently exploitative and harmful…Carnegie said…”it’s necessary to deprive people of their rights to protect the [fantasies and sadfeelz of prudes and control freaks]”…

If Men Were Angels (#914) 

“Pastors” are almost as bad as cops:

[The] pastor of a Southern Baptist church in…Harris County [Texas] faces charges of molesting a teenage relative, sometimes multiple times a day, over the course of two years…Stephen Bratton, who resigned from Grace Family Baptist Church [after he was accused, molested the relative]…from 2013 to 2015…Bratton’s…wife…[filed for] an emergency protection order…Bratton recently testified in support of failed House Bill 896 that would have abolished abortions in Texas and opened up the possibility that prosecutors could charge a woman who undergoes the procedure with criminal homicide…more than 700 people — mostly children — ha[ve] been victimized by hundreds of Southern Baptist church leaders since 1998…

To Molest and Rape (#926)

When a boss cop rapes, the victim is often underage:

Former St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Jack Strain has been arrested on two counts of aggravated rape, two counts of aggravated incest, one count of indecent behavior with a juvenile and a count of sexual battery…if convicted, Strain would face a mandatory life sentence…there are…four victims…and the times of the crimes spanned from 1975 to 2004, when Strain was sheriff…one of the victims was under the age of 12 and at least one was related to the ex-Sheriff…It’s unclear if any of [the] charges are related to Mark Finn…[whom] Strain began sexually abusing…more than 40 years ago, when Strain was a teenager and Finn was just 6-years-old…

Safe Position (#928)

Even my jaded self is impressed with the speed this is happening in New York:

A…candidate for district attorney…plans to single-handedly make the borough of Queens the first major metropolitan area in the country where sex work would, effectively, not be a crime.  If Tiffany Cabán wins…and actually puts her plan in place…it would mark one of the biggest successes for the [US] sex work decriminalization movement [so far]…Queens…[is] home to nearly 2.4 million people, roughly the population of Houston…[and is] one of the most heavily policed parts of New York…when it comes to sex work arrests.  The [DA’s] office has the power to decline to prosecute people that the police arrest for specific crimes — similar to how former Brooklyn district attorney Ken Thompson declined to prosecute possession of small amounts of marijuana in 2014…Cabán said that if she’s elected, “on day one it comes from being part of a memo to our district attorneys saying you will not prosecute sex workers, customers, and you will not prosecute under the promoting prostitution charges”…

Loose Cannons (#946)

“Sex trafficking” hysteria’s impending collapse has been helped along by the excesses of Florida “authorities”:

Bruce Colton, the chief elected prosecutor of Indian River, Martin, Okeechobee and St. Lucie Counties in Florida…aggressively pursued a…sex offender prosecution against Kaitlyn Hunt for dating a slightly younger girl while both attended high school together…earlier in his career…he…argued that…he should be able to prosecute kids as young as 15 as adults without any judicial hearing…Colton also personally decided that trafficking was central to the spas and massage parlors tied to the Kraft case, despite the lack of evidence for this.  But he does not need the evidence—or even a false confession—when he has RICO…Lixia Zhu, one of the massage parlor owners, currently faces 30 years on a RICO plea deal…[she] was coerced into signing…

The article then goes on to attack “sex trafficking” hysteria in general.  The times, they are a-changing.

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Summer Solstice 2019

June 21, 2019 by Maggie McNeill

The apparent path of the sun will reach its northernmost point at 15:54 UTC today, marking the longest day of the year and the beginning of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and the shortest day of the year & first day of winter in the Southern.  May all of your plans come to fruition in the fullness of time, and Blessed Be!

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Blind Spot

June 20, 2019 by Maggie McNeill

It makes partisans and other tribalists nuts that my positions are based in principles and probable results rather than tribe-membership & “sending messages”.  That’s why they (idiotically) try to shame me out of my positions instead of intellectually challenging them; no sooner do they think they “have my number” than I say, write or tweet something that the partisan brain is unable to process.  See, all tribalists have a blind spot:  they assume their own tribe, group, party, sect, etc is good and right and can be trusted with power, while their designated “them” group is wholly and completely bad and wrong and in need of Punishment.  So if I tweet about LGBT rights, but then say I think it’s wrong (not to mention a fucking waste of everyone’s time) to use the power of the state to destroy an anti-queer bigot, some people are completely unable to comprehend why I don’t see a cake-baker in Colorado as the Second Coming of Hitler.  The other day there was a big hulabaloo about that rich kid who didn’t get to go to Harvard because he made racist tweets a year and a half ago, and once again the partisans were confused that I retweeted tweets mocking the situation; tweets pointing out the incredible hypocrisy of politicians for saying “Should someone’s mistake at 16 destroy his whole future?” while also thinking it’s hunky-dory to put 14-year-olds on trial as adults; and tweets saying it’s a bit creepy that people now go trolling through others’ social media histories for the express purpose of ruining the target’s life, and institutions eagerly oblige the snitch.  Partisans don’t see the principles at stake here; all they see is a reprehensible person that they want to see hurt, so they completely forget that a weapon once given to the state can never be taken away.  Someone argued that in the kid’s case, the comments were made only 18 months ago and were therefore basically the present.  I replied, “If you think it’ll stop at 18 months, 18 years or even 18 decades, you haven’t been paying attention.”  Also: I’m quite sure a prosecutor wouldn’t accept, “But she would’ve been of age in 18 months!” as a defense.  Either people below the magic Instant of Shazam are helpless, incompetent “children” incapable of decision-making, or they aren’t; you can’t have it both ways without hypocrisy.  If it’s wrong for Christian bigots to use government violence against LGBT people, it’s also wrong for vengeful LGBT people to use government violence against Christian bigots.  But people don’t see it this way; oh, everybody tells their kids “two wrongs don’t make a right”, but they don’t really believe it.  What they believe in is us vs. them, and that it’s perfectly OK to use state violence against “them”…regardless of the consequences to everyone.

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In the News (#946)

June 19, 2019 by Maggie McNeill

The best way to avoid breaches of sensitive personal data is not to collect and retain such data in the first place.  –  Neema Singh Guliani

Lack of Evidence 

Stigma against sex workers invariably affects other women as well:

Sexual violence is a serious problem across the world, but in the last few years, it has taken a particularly strange form in…Kigoma [Tanzania, where]…scores of women have similar accounts of rapists breaking into their homes, covered in grease.  The first attacks of this kind reportedly occurred around 2014 and have increased ever since.  The attackers – known locally as Teleza, which refers to the fact that they cover themselves in oil – typically break into the homes of women in the night.  They are often armed and threaten violence, sometimes leaving the survivors with life-threatening injuries…Annagrace Rwehumbiza…says…“Initially these men only targeted single women, almost like they wanted to punish them for not adhering to the norms of society by getting married…At some point this changed.  Suddenly even married women were being targeted”…Many who have reported their rapes to the police have been branded as sex workers and not been taken seriously.  It was only when a group of survivors spoke out together in front of the press in 2016 that any action was first taken, though it was only temporary…

Universal Criminality

Ever wondered how bureaucrats came up with over 300,000 “crimes”?

To Molest and Rape (#755) 

Some Louisiana cops prefer to rape by proxy:

A Louisiana sheriff’s deputy…coerc[ed] a woman to perform a sex act on her 1-year-old son…Shaderick Jones…filmed…Iyehesa Todd…[after telling] her he wouldn’t arrest her for an open warrant she had for a traffic ticket if she performed a sexual act on her child…[the victim] has been charged with first-degree rape and…the Department of Children and Family Services [abducted her] child…

Legal Is as Legal Does (#841) 

The only sex workers excluded from New Zealand decrim are migrants:

Seven migrant sex workers have been deported from Dunedin, due to a section of New Zealand law…[which] encourages blackmail and exploitation, and which was last year called into question by the United Nations.  Those seven, along with at least two from Queenstown and 24 from Christchurch forced to leave the country since 2017, were deported due to Section 19 of the Prostitution Reform Act…[which] forbids migrants on temporary visas from engaging in sex work, though it is legal for New Zealand citizens and residents…

Out of Control (#844) 

What is wrong with doctors who do this?

A gynecologist who worked nearly 30 years at UCLA’s student health clinic, until retiring last year amid a misconduct investigation, is accused of sexually abusing patients…James Heaps…is charged with…sexual battery by fraud and…sexual exploitation by a physician…

The Prudish Giant (#873)

It usually starts with sex workers, but it never stops with us:

Makenna Kelly, a 13-year-old YouTuber who has attracted over 1.5 million subscribers to her “Life With MaK” ASMR channel, is vowing to quit the platform in protest against what she and her mother say are overly strict content guidelines that have resulted in several of her videos being removed…12 of her ASMR videos have been taken down in the past three months alone…[a video of her eating] honeycomb…attracted over 13.9 million views before it was removed [because a censor at YouTube got an erection from watching it]…ASMR…[is often censored on] YouTube…[because] the content is…viewed by [repressed] people [as] sexual [and YouTube fears that sex rays emitted from “bad thoughts” could magically travel through the internet and somehow “harm”] children…

Pyrrhic Victory (#932)

Remember all those face pics that CBP pretends are “encrypted” and “only kept for a brief time”?

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection…disclosed…that hackers have breached a database of travelers photos and license plates…[but refused] to say how many people…had their images stolen…In light of the fact that the CPB has been building an extensive photo database as part of its growing facial-recognition program, the privacy implications…[are] grave.  “This breach comes just as CBP seeks to expand its massive face recognition apparatus…[to include] social media identifiers,” said American Civil Liberties senior legislative counsel Neema Singh Guliani…

Loose Cannons (#939)

In which a four-hour interrogation by armed thugs is downplayed as “urging”:

[Cops lied to a] Chinese masseuse…[claiming they would] give [her] an apartment….food and education [and overrule federal immigration restrictions if she pretended to be]…a human-trafficking victim and [parrot whatever lies cops made up] against [her employers]…Over four hours, the masseuse would [be grilled by] three [cops], two [government-employed] social workers and a [government-employed] translator…The [interrogation was another part of the horrifying behavior of]…Martin County [cops in their effort to frame Chinese businesspeople as international gangsters]…Martin Sheriff William Snyder [is still pretending] the women are trafficking victims [even though they have repeatedly told cops they aren’t.  During the interrogation pigs oinked nonsense about a]…dream job [in addition to shaming and infantilizing an adult woman]…the masseuse [repeatedly told a Mandarin-oinking pig that]…she is not a victim but…is being treated like a criminal…She wants a lawyer…

Luckily for her, this masseuse was raised in a place where very few people are foolish enough to believe cops and other government operatives are on their side.

O, Canada! (#943)

Canadian cops love to harass and intimidate sex workers & call it “help”:

Sex workers and their advocates are criticizing [a recurring] police [intimidation campaign.  This time cops]…are talking to employees of hotels, bars, and other locations about how to identify sex workers and [rat them out to the pigs]…Sandra Wesley…of…Stella…said… “unwanted contact with police only increases [sex workers’] marginalization”…[cops] are also taking detailed notes on employees in strip clubs and massage parlours, including photographing tattoos and piercings…”The pretense that making databases of sex workers and raiding our workplaces and asking every hotel worker and taxi driver to denounce us to police [is intended] to protect us is absurd” said Wesley…

While cops pretend “sex workers…are only interviewed on a voluntary basis, and…given a stamp as an ‘efficient’ way of keeping track of who they’ve spoken to”, the truth (as usual) is much nastier:

…[cops] asked the women questions about their children, stamped their wrists and told them they were creating the database of sex workers…so they can identify them “when they inevitably turn up dead”…Wesley…calls the tactics dehumanizing and dystopian.  [Cops pretend] they’re not keeping [the] database [that they’re creating] and are mostly trying to identify [nonexistent] minors working at strip clubs…

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Diary #468

June 18, 2019 by Maggie McNeill

It’s always relaxing to go and spend the weekend at Sunset, but I’m going to have to figure out a way to get myself to actually write when I’m out here because I invariably neglect it in favor of watching movies, cooking, drinking, getting stoned and doing stuff to get the place in order.  I mean, look at this picture below and I think you will get the idea of what I’m talking about; how can a person be expected to focus on writing with a triple white Russian (with chocolate milk; maybe “brown Russian”?) on hand, a pig hanging around on the other side, and a friendly outside cat continually trying to jump on one’s lap?  It’s just not going to work.  But apparently, there’s a rolltop desk out in the garage, and it has been proposed that this desk could be cleaned up and moved inside so I can work on it as I do at The Den (where I also have a rolltop).  See, the people I bought the place from were kinda semi-hoarders, which is not unusual for folks who came of age during the Great Depression.  So actually, they left a LOT of things out here; most of them were just junk and we had to get rid of them in order to make use of the shop, garage and barn, and when we expanded the barnyard over the weekend we found lots more that will have to be removed for the safety of the animals.  For example, we keep finding old box springs and mattress springs buried just below the surface of the ground, interspersed with other metal rubbish, broken bottles, ceramic fragments, electrical transformers, car batteries…I have no explanation other than hoarding behavior.  But the yard is expanded and the animals now have more lush grazing area and trees, and there are now three proper gates.  We’re about to start the bookcase-building project, and once we hit the dry season next month it’ll at last be floor-repair time.  Now do you see why I have trouble writing out here?   

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