Coincidentally, this article about “financial abortion” came to my attention just the day before yesterday’s reader question did, but they both touch on the same subject: the oppressive “family court” and mandated-child support system. The article points out that while a pregnant woman has the right to “opt out” of the burden of unwanted motherhood by choosing abortion, the man who got her pregnant has no similar right; if she chooses to have the baby he’s on the hook financially for over two decades, even if she told him she was using contraception and he strenuously objects to fatherhood. Some MRAs, anti-abortion nuts and politicians have proposed that a man should have veto power over a woman he has impregnated, but this is obviously an abomination; every person owns their own body, and absolutely nobody else (and certainly not the state) has the right to control what that person does with their body. At the same time, it seems reasonable for a man to have some recourse against consent violation, so some have proposed that a man could legally sever all ties during the pregnancy, dodging his financial responsibilities by voluntarily surrendering his parental rights.
I’m not going to waste my time or energy in a fruitless Mars/Venus emotional discussion about men’s inability to keep their dicks in their pants, the responsibility for contraception, the “unfairness” of Nature, “But the children!” or any other insoluble malarkey. Nor do I believe for one second that a government which claims every citizen as property of the state and uses violent threats in an insane attempt to micromanage every aspect of its citizens’ lives, to the point where it is willing to lock people in cages to keep them from experiencing pleasure in a way it doesn’t approve of, or literally force unwilling women to endure the dangers and burdens of pregnancy and childbirth against their wills, would ever agree to let men out of a convenient noose and women out of a trap where they’re forced to rely on Big Brother and be tied to a useless man for two decades. Puritanical US “authorities” want sex to be as dangerous and consequence-laden as they can make it, which is why prostitution is criminalized, abortions & birth control are the subjects of so many ban attempts, and “family court” is a nightmare for everyone but the lawyers and bean-counters. The only thing I want to do here is to propose (not debate, sorry) a framework which a hypothetical free society (in which the rights to contraception and abortion were unquestioned) might use to resolve this dilemma.
The principle of self-ownership demands that the government stay completely out of the lives of individuals who have not committed violence against others, and that includes their reproductive lives. Therefore, the only just and ethical way of dealing with the situation is to simply recognize reality: the child is the chattel, sole responsibility and sole right of the mother. Up until the advent of DNA testing just a few years ago, there was no sure way to determine the male parent of a child anyway, so the whole concept of “legitimate fatherhood” hasn’t any more tangible connection to reality than angels dancing on pinheads (as any loving adoptive father or stepfather will tell you). Fatherhood in the social sense has absolutely nothing to do with DNA and everything to do with emotional and economic investment in the child, and the idea that someone can be compelled to love by court order is as vile as it is absurd. If the biological parents of a child want DNA tests, in other words if biological parentage matters to them, well and fine and may Hera bless them. But the outcome of such a test should have absolutely no legal weight; it should confer neither paternal rights nor paternal obligations. If a man wants the former, he can offer the mother the latter; if a mother wants the latter, she can offer any man (not necessarily the biological father) the former. If they both agree on the terms, a lawyer makes a contract and they’re done; disputes are settled in ordinary civil courts under ordinary contract law, with no special “family” mumbo-jumbo involved. No more custody battles; no more bureaucrats making intimate decisions for mothers. Just the recognition of biological reality and the removal of one of government’s most effective means of controlling the individual.
I’m a sex worker in love with a wonderful, kind, but very weak man who, after years and several children with an abusive, mentally ill wife is financially fucked and legally cornered by a Kafkaesque divorce court system. Jail might be in his future, if not suicide, and in the meantime court-ordered child support and other payments have left him literally unable to afford rent so he’s now homeless. I feel like I will have to decide to leave him because he can’t emotionally or financially survive the abuse by his ex and the court, and I can’t be in relationship with a broken person who feels entitled to a reality that will not come. Any advice would be appreciated.
Since he has allowed this to go on for far too long, whatever chance he might have had at the beginning has long since gone down the toilet; the only way he’s going to carve out even the most basic protection is to hire a top-notch divorce lawyer who will fight his ex’s no-holds-barred assaults with even more ruthless assaults. What could such a lawyer win for him? I have no idea, but at this point, he will be doing well to be left with some money to live on and protection from further spurious accusations. Of course, if he doesn’t even have enough money to pay rent, he can’t afford a lawyer. And that means you need to decide – I’m sorry, but there’s no nice way to say this – if this relationship is worth your emotional and financial investment. I believe you when you say that he’s a wonderful man, and that you love him. But I also agree with you that he’s weak, and has not fought this to win but to “roll over”. From what you describe in your very detailed letter, he made a long succession of mistakes in every single interaction with his ex from the very beginning, starting with his decision to fuck her in the first place. Does that mean he “deserves” what has happened to him? Absolutely fucking not. And yet, here we are. And you need to make decisions based in current reality, not romantic fantasies or might-have-beens or “if I won the lottery”. If you stay with this man you will be supporting him until his youngest child is out of university, and maybe even longer than that. Any legal fees will need to come from you. His housing and support will come from you. Whatever malicious fees the court levies on him? You. And he’ll expect you to provide all the usual emotional and practical labor as well, because beside being a man he’s too devastated to provide emotional support even to himself, much less you. I hear that you love him and he’s wonderful, but is whatever he gives you enough to justify that cost? He is already draining you like a vampire, emotionally, financially, sexually and even physically, and that will not stop unless you stop it.
I’m sorry, honey, I know this is incredibly painful, and I wish I had some good news or happy thoughts for you. The legal system of this country is designed to grind people into pulp, and your boyfriend obediently jumped into that machine on the orders of a dangerously unhinged woman. So now the only thing left for you to decide is whether to risk getting sucked in yourself by reaching into the gears on the probably-vain hope of pulling him out; to just stand there and be splattered by blood and gore as the machine does its horrifying work; or to wash your hands of the whole thing.
Norman Goldwasser, by day, is an Orthodox Jewish therapist at Horizon Psychological Services who compares homosexuality to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and misleads clients by claiming that their sexual orientation can be changed with his special brand of quack therapy, which is rejected by every respected medical and mental health association. By night…he solicits sexual partners on Manhunt, a gay dating App, using the profile “Hotnhairy72”…Goldwasser also had a profile on Bear Nation by the same name…
Doing Money aired tonight on BBC Two as the drama, based on real life events, explored the horrors of sex trafficking happening in the UK…Central character Ana (played by Anca Dumitra) was abducted off of a London street before being taken to Ireland where she was used a sex slave. The first ten minutes of the film saw Ana resisting her captors when they forced a “customer” on her…The story of Ana is based on the lived experiences of a woman who was held as a sex slave for 10 months and trafficked around both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
This is “based on real life events” like Roger Corman’s Vincent Price vehicles of the early ’60s were “based on” Poe stories.
Under Armour Inc. employees received an email earlier this year that upended a longstanding company practice: They could no longer charge visits to strip clubs on their corporate cards. Over the years, executives and employees of the sports-apparel company, including Chairman and Chief Executive Kevin Plank, went with athletes or co-workers to strip clubs after some corporate and sporting events, and the company often paid for the visits of many attendees…Strip-club visits were symptomatic of practices women at Under Armour found demeaning…
India’s Supreme Court has ruled that sex-workers have a right to refuse their services and seek redress when [raped]…The ruling came as the court overturned a 2009 Delhi High Court judgment that acquitted four people accused in a 1997 gang rape case. The four defendants were previously freed on the grounds the victim was “a woman of bad character who indulged in prostitution”. The Supreme Court restored the trial court’s conviction in the case and ordered that the four people accused must surrender within four weeks to serve the rest of their 10-year sentence…They also said if there was evidence to show that the victim was “habituated to sexual intercourse”, it cannot be inferred that the victim is of “loose moral character”. The…ruling [also] reverses a 2016 Supreme Court ruling which said that a sex worker cannot file a case alleging rape if their customers refused to pay…
Indian sex workers already had the right to refuse services; what this judgment does is eliminates the “But she was a whore!” defense for rape, which is not at all the same thing.
Motel 6 has agreed to pay $7.6 million to settle a class-action lawsuit filed by a Latino civil rights organization after the motel chain systematically shared guest information with [ICE]…The company will compensate Motel 6 guests who were questioned by ICE or [subjected to] deportation proceedings…[the] practice…le[d] to the arrest of at least 20 undocumented guests in Phoenix…It’s unclear how many…may be eligible for compensation…but…they may be numerous…
A human trafficking and prostitution sting in [Houston]…netted 75 arrests…[only 32 were men, 11 of which [cops decided to charge as] pimps…28 were woman [and the other 15 apparently were asexual organisms of some kind]…Sheriff Rand Henderson [bragged] he was “so proud” of [destroying people’s lives for desiring consensual sex or doing honest work for a living]…Henderson [fantasized that]…prostitution has evolved into human trafficking with most of the sex workers being trafficked individuals…
…An…immigration detention center is trying to avoid responsibility for sexual violence within its walls by arguing that the detainee “consented” to sexual abuse. E.D., an asylum-seeker and domestic violence survivor from Honduras, was sexually assaulted by an employee while she was detained with her 3-year-old child at the Berks Family Residential Center in Pennsylvania. At the time…E.D. was 19 years old…her assailant coerced and threatened her, including with possible deportation, while the defendants stood by and made jokes. Although the employee pled guilty to criminal institutional sexual assault under Pennsylvania law, the defendants contend that they should not be liable for any constitutional violations. Their argument rests in part on their [pretense] that the sexual abuse was “consensual” and that they should be held to a different standard because…Berks…is an immigration [prison]…rather than a jail or prison [for citizens]…there were 1,448 [incidents of rape or other] sexual abuse [reported to] ICE between 2012 and March 2018. In 2017 alone, there were 237 [incidents of rape or other] sexual abuse in immigration [prisons]…
Groups looking to [ban] prostitution in Nevada [refuse to stop trying to impose their will on]…Lyon County voters [who] reject[ed]…an advisory question to rescind the county’s brothel ordinance. [Prohibitionist] Brenda Sandquist…said…“The people of Lyon County — this is their normal. It’s that mentality – it’s normal that those brothels are there. To have them removed could be a little scary…They believe the lie of the brothel myth. That’s all they know…They just have to become more aware”…
[Cops] and [other prohibitionists fantasize]…that children and teens in Michigan are sold for sex, but it doesn’t happen the way many think. The most common myth…is…spread on social media. Someone [fantasizes about other shoppers]…in a store and goes online…to [share the fantasy. But cops find this inconvenient to dissemination of their pro-surveillance, pro-censorship myth that prepubescent]…Children are more likely to be targeted inside their own homes…”It’s someone who has [magically teleported] into your house, on your couch or in your kids bedroom via their smart device,” [fantasized sow Jolene] Hardesty…the most common age range for sex trafficking victims is 13- to 16-years-old…[cops also fantasize that criminal cartels have a]…recruitment process [which] spread from social media into schools…[yet] YWCA Jessica Glynn…said…Most of the cases she’s seen involve one victim and one suspect, not a chain of victims…She said the Hollywood portrayal of sex trafficking also makes it difficult to prosecute [sex workers and their associates as] traffickers…
It’s rare that I get to see Ghost Rider more than once in a month, but his visit this weekend was the penultimate in a series of social engagements starting at the beginning of last week which included celebrating the birthday of one of my friends on Wednesday (two days before her guest column posted), going to a play with Daedalus on Thursday, attending a dinner party at Savannah’s on Friday, then going with her and some other friends (including Lady Vi) to see Stormy Daniels on Sunday night. It’s a good thing my brain has re-adjusted to the season, because otherwise I’d have been wiped out! It was also one of those weeks wherein I was quoted in a number of articles, including this one by Stephen Lemons and another which will appear in Saturday’s news column. I’ve also been asked when I’ll be traveling next, and to where; the holidays always make that problematic, but I’m definitely going to try flying out of Seattle at least a couple of times this winter before I expect the rate to increase due to movie screenings and speaking events early next year. And that’s not even including Thanksgiving next week, which also means the start of my annual Christmas toy drive! If you’re unfamiliar with this tradition (which I’ve practiced in one form or another since I was a stripper in the ’90s), take a look at this description from last year, and be ready to hit the ground running a week from Friday!
Dedicating a day to the end of a war is a far different thing from using it to glorify the machinery of war. – “Armistice Day”
One hundred years ago today, at eleven o’clock in the morning, the armistice which ended what was at the time called The Great War went into effect, bringing to an end a conflict like no other that had ever been seen before. For over four years most of the advanced nations in the world (and their allies and colonies), spread across every inhabited continent, slaughtered each others’ citizens on an unprecedented scale, using all the weapons the Industrial Age had devised and a few new ones: roughly 18 million people were killed and 23 million wounded, and whole countries were redrawn or wiped from the map entirely. The monumental carnage was so traumatic it produced an entire “lost generation” and shaped art and literature for decades afterward; some idealists even believed that the horror was so great people would be shocked out of supporting warfare at all any longer, or else they absurdly chose to demonize the Germans as the font of all European conflict. These beliefs converged in the popular term “The War To End All Wars”, which more sensible heads were already mocking before the war was over; even its originator, novelist H.G. Wells, was using it ironically by the early ’30s. The ideas that humans could ever become sated with bloodshed, or that all violence springs from some evil “other” which need only be defeated to bring lasting peace to the world, are still popular among soft-headed naifs to this very day; they are close kin to the childish belief that the “right” people can be trusted with power over others. The truth, of course, is far darker; it is that no human can be trusted with power over others, and that humans with the power to inflict violence on their neighbors will always do so upon the flimsiest pretext. If there is anything that the past century has taught us, it is that the only war which will truly end all wars among humanity is the one in which the human species is finally obliterated.
There is no “[sex trafficking] marketplace”, but rather all sorts of people selling and buying sex for their own reasons, some of them miserable. – Laura Agustín
San Diego County may not remove children from their homes and subject them to highly intrusive physical examinations without parental permission, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has ruled…The case stems from an April 2010 incident involving Michael and Melissa Mann and their four young children. The Manns had apparently spanked at least one of the kids with a wooden spoon as a form of punishment…The county [abducted] the children…and [held] them in [custody]…while the parents went to court to regain custody…a doctor performed a 22-step medical exam requiring “blood samples and a gynecological and rectal exam…[including] separat[ing] the labia and look[ing] at the hymen”…County officials did not obtain a court order authorizing these examinations, nor did the parents sign off. Indeed, the Manns didn’t even know [that]…their kids [had been molested] until one of them said something about it later…
…Lady Lola Lightning…a 23-year-old [NYU] sophomore and Salem, Massachusetts native started playing with Periscope just five months ago….[and has] gathered a loyal following as a webcam model…she doesn’t use toys or do too many tricks; she just strips down and has a raw chat with viewers…along with her new job as a stripper in Brooklyn, she is able to pay for her entire tuition and living expenses without support from her family…
On October 15, 2018, a 28-year-old Australian-born Seattle resident named Jack Chapman, also known as Pup Tank, died…he…was…romantically linked to Dylan Ray Hafertepen, a well-known member of the Dom/sub pup play communities in San Francisco and, later, Seattle…Hafertepen[‘s]…Tumblr (as well as the Tumblr accounts of several of his pups) contained numerous images of their engorged scrotums, dramatically increased in size due to liquid silicone injections. In one picture, Tank’s testicles dangle outside of his basketball shorts, his nuts roughly the size of two dodgeballs…Since World War II, cosmetic surgeons and back-alley “pumpers” have offered liquid silicone injections as a quick and dirty form of plastic surgery…But such injections aren’t approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for cosmetic procedures because of adverse reactions. Sometimes they harden into painful masses that appear like wormy tumors under the skin. Sometimes the surrounding tissue gets infected…Other times, stray bits can travel through the bloodstream, causing [fatal] embolisms…Numerous articles have discussed trans women who end up disfigured or dead because of silicone injections by unlicensed pumpers. But few mention the pumpers who offer silicone injections for gay men…Tank died from “silicone embolism syndrome”…[which] led to “pneumonitis”…bleeding in the lungs…and eventually…death…
The article is very long and very detailed, and describes what looks to me like a very abusive BDSM relationship. But it wasn’t the emotional & psychological abuse which killed Chapman/Tank; it was misuse of a substance which has caused the deaths of many seeking quick, cheap body modification without proper medical safeguards.
Award-winning screenwriter Isa Mazzei did not have a welcoming introduction to the movie industry. “I’ve…never been more sexually harassed than trying to sell this film in Hollywood,” she [said]…Mazzei, a former cam girl, has written one of the hottest horror movies on this year’s genre festival circuit. Cam, which will debut on Netflix later this month, drags the audience inside the paranoia and perils of being an internet star. Her success in creating a believable yet terrifying online dystopia was bolstered by its roots in Mazzei’s real fears, including the risks of being harassed, hacked, doxxed or assaulted…Mazzei had to endure the sleaze of movie execs who believed they could harass and belittle her because of her previous sex work. Lots of them asked her to share details from her past life, some suggested she was only credited as the screenwriter as a gimmick to help the pitch, while one owner of a Hollywood agency went so far as to write an alternate ending to the semi-biographical movie that included himself and Mazzei inserted into the script…
The governor of…Dar es Salaam…launched an anti-gay crackdown…calling on [collaborators] to begin reporting homosexuals for round-ups to begin next week…homosexuality is illegal in Tanzania, with same-sex acts between men punishable by a maximum life sentence. “These homosexuals boast on social networks,” said [governor Paul] Makonda, a fervent Christian and loyal ally of President John Magufuli. “Give me their names,” he demanded. “My ad hoc team will begin to get their hands on them”…Anti-homosexual sentiment is rife in Tanzania…and…has increased since Magufuli’s 2015 election…AIDS clinics have also been shut down under Magafuli, accused of “promoting” homosexuality, while he has encouraged women to abandon birth control and have more babies…
…Films and television shows cast clients as either sinister perverts who slither around in the darkness…or drug-addled millionaires looking for more Barbie-lookalikes to fill their yachts with for the weekend…Sure, not every client is perfect. Some are far from it. I could share a horror story or two about some who…disregard [hygiene or] boundaries…But clients like these are, thankfully, rare. The majority of people who visit sex workers — whether they visit strip clubs, brothels, see private workers, or simply download some good, old-fashioned porn — are as normal and average as you and me. They have jobs, and hobbies, and families, and social lives, just like anyone else…I believe it’s the heavy stigma around sex work that carries over to our clients, too: it makes sense that someone who thinks sex workers are immoral and disgusting would also feel the same about the people who pay to spend time with us…the belief that our clients are bad people is damaging not only to our clients themselves, but to the sex industry as a whole…
The Drug Enforcement Administration [worked to drum up hysteria over] candy laced with marijuana and methamphetamine this Halloween. The DEA St. Louis Division says there has been no [actual] threat, but [authoritarians are using the existence] of drug-laced edibles [in states where cannabis is legal to frighten the ignorant]…signs of marijuana or meth-laced candy include unusual wrapping, appearance, unusual colors, odd smell…candy…that is unwrapped or unmarked…
There has literally never been a case of a kid getting drugged candy in his trick-or-treat bag. Not a single one. Every time the claim has been made, it turns out to be either an intentional hoax or some nefarious shit by the parents.
Police have posted notices at 18 massage parlors in Kent [Washington] saying that they will be shut down…after a monthslong [escapade involving vice cops getting happy endings at] businesses that they say were fronts for prostitution…some of the massage-parlor owners and employees have been charged with crimes and…[prosecutors] plan…to bring charges against any customers who engaged in prostitution…many of the businesses…were not licensed by the state and failed to follow regulations to protect the health and privacy of patrons…
“Fronts”. “Prostitution”. “Crimes”. “Engaged in prostitution”. “Regulations”. And it’s pretty hilarious to see thugs pretending to give a shit about people’s privacy while simultaneously plotting to destroy their lives.
A former WAFB employee who secretly recorded two female station employees using the restroom in 2017 was sentenced to four months in prison…Morgan McDermitt…must also register as a sex offender for 15 years. His wife, upon hearing the sentence…ran from the courtroom sobbing…Judge Beau Higginbotham initially sentenced McDermitt…to four years in prison…but then suspended all but four months of the sentence. In July, Higginbotham refused to accept a proposed plea bargain in the case that would have only placed McDermitt on probation…The judge asked McDermitt, who sought sex addiction therapy after his arrest, why he did not seek help before he was caught…
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton…[claimed to have] “shut down the world’s largest human trafficking marketplace”…The Texas attorney general’s office helped shut down the Backpage website, which is what another Paxton ad says. However, the federal government led the shutdown and officials in other states pitched in. Significantly too, we otherwise landed no confirmation that the Backpage site, which profited from ads about sex, also was the world’s largest trafficking marketplace–a classification that experts found dubious and unverifiable. All told, we rate this statement Mostly False…
…Pennsylvania [prisons will]…allow…book orders to resume through a new centralized processing center…The [censorship plan] was…[pretended] to eliminate drug smuggling into the prisons, [when in actuality all contraband comes in via screws]…[Chief Screw] John Wetzel said the new procedure was a response to criticisms by book-donation groups…The new policy…allows family and friends to order books to be shipped directly from publishers or bookstores to a secure processing center in Bellefonte, Pa., where staff will screen books five days per week. It also enables inmates to place orders directly from a hard-copy catalog…the book-donation groups still have concerns about how the new process will play out, including how the [prison system] will ensure the packages reach the inmates who requested them, intact with all supplemental materials…Sean Damon of Amistad Law Project, which led protests over the book prohibition…[is] not satisfied, as other new security measures — including the scanning and surveillance of incoming mail, and the photocopying of inmate legal mail — remain in place…
The recent publication of a hyperbolic study that purported to show an “astronomical” level of demand for sex workers in the Hawaii was punctuated by…Police…respond[ing] to a call regarding a purported threat of physical violence against [prohibitionist politician] Khara Jabola-Carolus…police concluded that there had been no physical threat…[what actually happened was that during] a conference call…one [prohibitionist claimed to]…hav[e] received a…text message [from Dominique Roe-Sepowitz which in turn claimed] that…some person or persons were “trying to get Jabola-Carolus fired”…
A state mandate now aims to [harass] sex [workers] in Minnesota through the state’s hotel industry. The law requires all hotel and motel employees to be [indoctrinated] in [anti-whore propaganda]. The training must be completed by Nov. 28. After that date, all new employees must be [indoctrinated] within 90 days of hire…the signs to look for [include] guest[s traveling light]…or [with their children]…“There might be signs in the room – for example, that they…request extra sheets and extra towels, [and enjoy their privacy]” said Minnesota [prohibitionist]…Beatriz Menanteau…
Those of you who follow me on Twitter may remember that on several occasions I’ve tweeted GoFundMe appeals for homeless sex workers, organized by a close friend of mine who does street outreach. Recently, I asked her to write something for me so that in future, I can point back to it to explain who it is I’m asking charity for. This lady is a Seattle sex worker who is well-known in our community, but prefers to remain anonymous for her activism. If you’d like to help her out (because she does 95% of this out of her own pocket), please let me know and I’ll arrange a way for you to donate to her important work.
Like so many things in this industry, it started with Kristen D’Angelo, who contacted me because her friend from Sacremento had a daughter living in Seattle. Kristen’s friend was concerned his daughter was working on the streets and was hoping to get someone to check on her; she (let’s call her Jess) was homeless, using drugs, and working on Aurora Avenue. Maggie and I ended up taking her out for dinner. More than anything, she was surprised that instead of being met with judgement and Jesus, she was met by peers with compassion and kindness (along with some screening tips for seeing clients). Shortly thereafter, I found out an acquaintance of mine had lost her housing, and she and her boyfriend were living out of their car. I would go see her once, occasionally twice, a week, bringing lunch or dinner, and we would eat together and talk. After a couple visits I starting meeting some of the people that they had befriended in their time on the streets. I was struck by the situations of the women there. To see women so vulnerable was terrifying…but I wasn’t sure what I could do. I asked them: what do you need? How can I help? While I don’t have a tremendous surfeit of disposable income, I could certainly spend $100 a week buying food for people that badly needed it. So I did.
Simultaneously, I was keeping in (more sporadic) contact with Jess. It wasn’t long before I was heading up to Aurora once a week (give or take) as well. Eventually I was out two or three nights a week talking to young women from Aurora to Belltown to SoDo, both in the jungle and working the streets. I found myself out at 7pm, 10pm, or midnight walking through the city, talking to people. Instead of being in Greenlake or Madrona, I found myself in places with appellations like the Batcave and Clowntown; I was under the viaduct and in tent cities along the highway. Within this world, it takes time to earn trust; there are always, to this day, some women that refuse to talk to me or that I have met five times but act as if they don’t know me…and that’s fine. For the ones that do talk, I hand out condoms and Narcan. I bring jackets, food, toiletries, clean socks, and camping propane tanks. I take girls to Planned Parenthood for panel tests; to emergency shelters; to drop them off at detox. Many of them, if you asked, would not identify as a sex workers, and if you called them a sex worker, you might get punched in the face. But, if you said, “if you give me a blowjob, you can sleep in my tent tonight.” Well, that’s an easy yes!! Whether they identify as sex workers or not, they know when they see me that religion isn’t coming into the conversation and I am not going to tell them what they should do or have to do. Giving these women autonomy in their decision-making is very important; even when, in my opinion, they may make a terrible choice, it’s theirs to make and I won’t try to take that away from them. Similarly, none of the things I hand out have strings attached; the only rules are I will not give out cash or buy drugs.
When I meet women that are open to talking, I may make some harm reduction suggestions or ask them what they need. Much of the time, I listen. Many of these women have suffered extensive trauma, have drug abuse issues (the desire to anesthetize a terrible situation is strong), or have mental health problems – or all three. In addition, there is the pervasive sense of hopelessness that comes with being utterly marginalized and, in effect, thrown away by society; just having someone listen and acknowledge you can be significant. It definitely isn’t the easiest volunteer path I could have taken. There have been multiple calls from girls that have been raped, assaulted, or robbed. I helped a girl that had been thrown out of a moving car by a client, and another girl that was pistol-whipped by her boyfriend. I’ve Narcan’d people through countless overdoses (if anyone ever needs to be resuscitated – I am a fucking pro). I’ve been hung up on by police when calling 9-1-1 for help and been told by the paramedics that they “can’t” go where they are needed. I’ve stepped over dead bodies and had rats the size of Boston Terriers leisurely swagger over my toes.
The other side is that there are happier stories. I paid out my own pocket for a girl to go to rehab because I believed in her when no one else did; she completed 90 days of treatment and moved back to her parent’s house in Minnesota. That was over a year ago and she is still clean and sober. Two girls had been living in and out of motels on Aurora and we worked together to get them into a low-income apartment; two other girls saw what they did and decided they could do it too. I’ve acted as an advocate for a girl that was brutally raped by a prominent Seattleite; I connected her with a lawyer and could not have been happier for her when she got a ridiculously large settlement. Money didn’t make the PTSD disappear, but it certainly put her in a situation where she could take time and heal. Unfortunately, the stories with (ahem) happy endings are exceptionally few and far between; the emotional labor can be intense, overwhelming, and exhausting. I’ve asked myself more than once why I’m not walking dogs at the Humane Society, and I have spent more hours than I can count crying on Maggie’s couch. But I very strongly believe that everyone needs some help now and then; if I can help someone make a more informed decision or turn a corner, then it’s worth it.
In the past few weeks I’ve seen a number of Facebook posts urging people not to wear offensive Halloween costumes, which got me thinking: Are you offended when “amateurs” wear “hooker” costumes?
I think the problem with the whole “offensive costume” thing is that, like nearly everything nowadays, it’s so incredibly overblown. I totally understand why people from marginalized groups (including, but not limited to, black people, Amerinds and sex workers) are annoyed and offended when people from majority social groups who have never done anything to help them (and indeed support political policies that hurt them) use caricatures of their identities as costumes; it feels patronizing and kind of dehumanizing. However, I draw the line at telling anybody else what to do, and I would actively fight any kind of institutional rules telling people what they can and can’t wear. If some clueless amateur couple wants to dress up as “pimp and ho” caricatures I will mock them, tell them they’re classless imbeciles, and probably even mute them on social media; however, I would not support some puritanical bean-counter telling them that they were not allowed to make asses of themselves thus. I’m of the “more speech” school; in other words, I think the most effective way of shutting down offensive anti-sex BS is to lob it back harder, as I do when I mock the “dirty whore” myth by featuring articles about sky-high STI rates among amateurs and declaring that they’re a public health menace who should be licensed and regulated. So if I felt really strongly about some nitwit wearing a “whore” costume, I’d respond by creating an even more over-the-top and offensive “amateur” costume.
The worst excess of the “offensive costume” controversy, though, is people telling little kids that they’re not allowed to dress up as heroes of different races for Halloween. If a little white girl wants to dress up as Moana, or a little Asian boy as Black Panther, or a little black boy as Batman, no adult has the fucking right to say anything about it…and frankly, I think it’s arse-backward anyway. If a little kid’s greatest hero is someone of a different race, I consider that a good thing, not something to discourage; it brings us one baby step closer to the day when we start judging people by the content of their character rather than by the color of their skins or the sounds of their surnames. And if a teenage girl wants to dress up as a famous whore like Calamity Jane or a fictional one like Inara from Firefly, not out of mockery but out of admiration, I have absolutely no problem with that.
The goal of sexual suppression is that of producing an individual who is adjusted to the authoritarian order and who will submit to it in spite of all misery and degradation. – Wilhelm Reich
…four masked men…knocked on the hotel door of a dominatrix in Queens, pushed their way in and tied her up at gunpoint before running off with an iPhone, cash and a debit card…The woman got a call from an unknown number she figured was a client; when she opened the hotel door, she expected her client to be on the other side…The four men, all wearing black hooded sweatshirts or jackets, forced their way in…when she opened the door around 5:45 p.m. They menaced her at gunpoint and bound her with duct tape before stealing the phone, cash, card and her state driver’s license…
The Federation des Femmes du Quebec (FFQ)…a well-recognised women’s rights organisation…took [the obvious]…stance…that women can make a free-will choice on their own to enter into the sex trade…The executive-director of Stella, a Montreal sex workers advocacy group praises the decision…[saying] said it recognises sex workers choices and their human rights…
They worked in brothels frequented by troops serving on the front line in northern France, but their role has been virtually erased from the history books. Thanks to a new Roundhouse art project, Cause and Effect, to mark the centenary of the end of the conflict, the wartime sex workers have been immortalised in a film with poet Hollie McNish …[who] worked with historian Clare Makepeace…to create War’s Whores, which details the “significant minority” of men paying for sex on the front line…McNish [said]…that one of the things that she found most poignant was the fact that so many men wanted to visit a sex worker if they thought they would die the next day…“It’s a much deeper thing than we give it credit for. The men thought they were likely to die the next day, the thought you’re never going to have someone touch you nicely again before you die, it must be horrendous”…she hopes that reigniting the memory of wartime sex workers will provoke conversations about the industry today…“It’s ridiculous…that we’re allowed to talk about violence and not about sex…That job has been shamed out of history, rather than just forgotten”…
Sex work has been illegal in Thailand since 1960 but government officials and law enforcement officers have long turned a blind eye…a series of high profile police raids has put considerable strain on that relationship and some sex workers fear the whole industry is in jeopardy…the country’s Tourism Minister, Kobkarn Wattanavrangkul [has] said “We want Thailand to be [Disnified]…we want the sex industry gone.” Her [statements parrot] those of the military junta that seized power in 2014…said Somai Jantawong, a…sex worker living in Chiang Mai…“If we are arrested or lose our jobs then it affects the whole family and the whole community. We are the drivers of development in this country, if you lock us up then you will have more people in poverty and more people without homes”…Havocscope, who chart black market crime statistics and data, estimate that the sex industry pumps $6.4 billion into the Thai economy. In fact, Friedrich Schneider, an economist at Johannes Kepler University in Austria, found that Thailand has one of the largest shadow economies in the world, accounting for 40.9% of real GDP in 2014…
From October 15 to 21, police arrested 20 [sex workers and associates] through the seventh edition of Operation Northern Spotlight…a Canadian law enforcement [sting] operation…to [harass] and [intimidate]…sex [workers]…This year’s operation [included]…the RCMP…and…62 [other cop shops] from Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Nunavut, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island…
Last spring, Emily Meade was getting ready to give a [fake] blow job [to a dildo] in front of a crew of people on the…set of HBO’s The Deuce…As Meade knelt down, a woman named Alicia Rodis, the network’s first-ever “intimacy coordinator,” was within eyeshot, watching the monitor. She had given Meade a pad for her knees, knowing that the hard floor would bruise them otherwise. Between takes, she offered mouth spray and flavored lubricant. And she had spoken with Meade before the scene about her concerns and relayed them to the director…Network executives found Rodis through Intimacy Directors International, a nonprofit she cofounded in 2016 that aims to normalize a set of standards and practices surrounding the execution of sex scenes on stage and on film…HBO has now adopted a policy whereby all of its shows and movies with intimate scenes will be staffed with an intimacy coordinator — either Rodis or someone like her…
Because hiring actual sex workers as consultants for this sort of thing would be crazy, and fucking amateurs can’t think of things like knee pads.
In recent years, we’ve seen the return of a strange, antiquated belief system that claims that masturbation results in weakness, loss of manhood, and psychological damage…Your Brain on Porn and Reboot Nation are…online groups who argue that masturbation to porn…results in neurological changes which desensitize a person’s brain to real sex, cause erectile dysfunction, and instill an addiction to…pornography…Brigham Young University…spent what appears to be a great deal of money to produce a public service advertisement against the dangers and “darkness” of masturbation…The Proud Boys…a group of young, nationalist males…claim…that masturbating makes men less likely to get dates…all of these concerns, both historical and modern, about masturbation are primarily focused on male masturbation…Wilhelm Reich…who wrote The Mass Psychology of Fascism…suggested that sexual suppression was a tool of fascism, a way to train young people to submit to authority, even in something relating to their own body…and…conservative religions…have a long history of condemnation of masturbation…
The San Diego City Council today gave the green light for $1.5 million in payouts to 17 dancers who…were violated [by cops] during raids at two strip clubs…The first settlement awarded $110,000 to one dancer. The second settlement awarded about $1.4 million to 16 dancers…[who] were held against their will and [molested]…by 10 [pervert cops]…Attorney Dan Gilleon, who represented 16 of the dancers, [said]…”The…settlement is a drop in the bucket compared to what the City of San Diego spent conducting the raids in the first place and then misleading the public for four years with painfully dumb legal denials and defenses…the City Attorney’s Office…arrogantly bullied the dancers and filed bogus defense after bogus defense until they realized they would not sell their legal charade to a set of jurors with common sense”…
…HotMilitaryGirls.com, a site that for years offered nude photos and videos of female servicemembers, has been shut down by its operators as the site’s legal counsel reviews its content…after [pearl-clutching prohibitionist politician] Claire McCaskill, [one of] the [chief sponsors of the censorship law FOSTA/SESTA]…called for the Defense Department’s inspector general to investigate the site…McCaskill’s office said in a statement that she lauded the news the site had [self-censored] but still sought [revenge on peaceful people for daring to be sexual]…
The three parties which run Amsterdam city council have drawn up a string of proposals for dealing with the city’s red light district and moving prostitution to a new location is one of the options…The area has been home to prostitution for centuries, because of its proximity to the docks, but the surge in tourism is causing both locals and prostitutes considerable problems, [politicians claim]…Many clients are now visiting prostitutes they find via internet or at a hotel rather than in the Wallen district. This means that many red light windows are now empty during the day and [prohibitionists have schemed for years to]…clos[e] them altogether…[politicians] now suggest giving licences for prostitution outside the red light district, so the women who work in window brothels can move to a new area, without the problems caused by tourists…Prostitution is a major tourist draw, but is this really the reason you want to attract people to visit?, said [prudish busybody] Socialist councillor Nicole Temmink…
Six of the NYPD cops accused of running a prostitution and gambling ring are in plea talks with prosecutors…the men were offered plea deals ranging from probation to 2-to 6-year prison sentences, but their lawyers didn’t want to accept so early in the case…
…[in downtown] Orlando…lightbulb-sized camera[s] affixed to…traffic signal poles…instantly send a live video feed over to Amazon’s facial “Rekognition” system, cross-referencing…face[s] against [a surveillance database]…In the US, there are no laws governing the use of facial recognition, and there is no regulatory framework limiting its law enforcement applications. There is no case law or constitutional precedent upholding police use of the tech without a warrant; courts haven’t even decided whether facial recognition constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment…[so of course cops are eager to] pilot…these systems [before their power is limited by laws or precedents…Amazon marketed its facial recognition tools to Orlando’s police department, providing tens of thousands of dollars of technology to the city at no cost, and shielding the Rekognition pilot with a mutual nondisclosure agreement that kept its details [secret from]…the public…In May, Orlando police reportedly finalized a deal to crowdsource neighborhood footage from residents of the city using [another Amazon] service called Ring, which uses…a doorbell camera…to[feed images] to Orlando Police…There is no automatic sharing of data between Ring and Rekognition right now. But Amazon would not…commit…to keep the data generated by each of these companies…separate…
[A cop] is caught in an act of sexual misconduct every five days, and that the majority of cases involve “motorists, crime victims, informants, students and young people in job-shadowing programs”…black women, girls, trans and gender nonconforming people, along with Indigenous, immigrant, and other people of color, make up the majority of people targeted for sexual violence by law enforcement agents…police sexual violence is consistently ignored by mainstream media and movements focused on police violence and sexual assault…[because cops] intentionally target people they don’t think will be believed…people who use drugs, trade sex, people who are precariously housed, disabled, LGBTQ—people who aren’t seen as ideal poster children for mainstream movements. Secondly, acknowledging sexual violence by [cops] as a systemic problem profoundly destabilizes the notion of police as protectors, an uncomfortable reality for movements deeply invested in law enforcement as the answer to sexual violence…
You see that blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reference to “people who trade sex”? That’s the only reference in a 1200+ word article about the one group which is targeted for sexual violence by cops more than any other, by a wide margin. In an article about how activists ignore rape victims who aren’t ideal poster children. The reek of hypocrisy is overwhelming.
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Coincidentally, this article about “financial abortion” came to my attention just the day before yesterday’s reader question did, but they both touch on the same subject: the oppressive “family court” and mandated-child support system. The article points out that while a pregnant woman has the right to “opt out” of the burden of unwanted motherhood by choosing abortion, the man who got her pregnant has no similar right; if she chooses to have the baby he’s on the hook financially for over two decades, even if she told him she was using contraception and he strenuously objects to fatherhood. Some MRAs, anti-abortion nuts and politicians have proposed that a man should have veto power over a woman he has impregnated, but this is obviously an abomination; every person owns their own body, and absolutely nobody else (and certainly not the state) has the right to control what that person does with their body. At the same time, it seems reasonable for a man to have some recourse against consent violation, so some have proposed that a man could legally sever all ties during the pregnancy, dodging his financial responsibilities by voluntarily surrendering his parental rights.
