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Rapists of the Week #6

February 19, 2024 by Maggie McNeill

To Molest and Rape (#1328)

Cops view alcohol as a means of facilitating rape:

A [typical and representative] Cheshire [cop] who [raped] a woman while responding to a 999 call at her home has been [merely] found guilty of misconduct…Jordan Masterson [committed the rape] on Tuesday 28 December 2021 a[nd she] report[ed him as soon as she sobered up]…she had called 999 to report a disturbance..[but was] drunk and her memory of the time was “hazy”…Masterson [claimed she wanted it]…

Sometimes they even facilitate the alcohol:

A [typical and representative Kentucky cop named]…Brent Hall [raped]…an “extremely inebriated” woman [in December 2020]…the woman was taken to the hospital, but Hall returned to her home with a…[bottle of vodka] 13 hours later [in order to get her drunk so he could rape her]…Hall told investigators after his arrest that the woman [wanted it]…

If Men Were Angels (#1376)

This will continue until fools stop teaching children unquestioning obedience to “authority”:

A [California] High School assistant wrestling coach has been arrested [for] molest[ing children]…more than a decade ago…Derek William Young…[molested at least] three ch[ildren, including at least one] under 14…and o[ne]…under 10…

Schadenfreude (#1386)

It’s heartening to see so many rescue industry profiteers exposed as the sociopaths they are:

A third woman has come forward…[to report that] International House of Prayer…Founder Mike Bickle…groom[ed] and sexually abus[e] her, beginning when she was 15 and Bickle was a 20-year-old…youth group intern…in Kansas City…Though the…[molestation] ended in 1976…she and Bickle re-engaged in the 1980s and had an inappropriate…relationship…when Bickle was [already] married…

To Molest and Rape (#1393)

Give aggressive thugs power over teens; what could possibly go wrong?

A [typical and representative Alabama cop named Jairo Alexander Castillo, who was assigned to spy on, harass, and intimidate students,] was arrested…[because he predictably molested] a student…

This is pretty typical, representative behavior for school-lurking pigs:

A [typical and representative thug paid to to spy on, harass, and intimidate Florida students has been] arrested…for [repeat]edly [molesting] a [15-year-old girl]…Christian Linan…[groomed the girl] on Snapchat, and…[manipulated her by claiming he was “in love” because] “she was mature for her age”…Linan [demonstrated his “love” by]…stalking…her…[and spying on] her mother….she never told anyone about [Linan]…until…she eventually told her therapist, and [then the cops]…

To Molest and Rape (ROTW #5)

Cops should not be allowed anywhere near legal minors:

…Indianapolis [cop] Paul Humphrey was charged…with [a number of]…counts [deriving from his seduction and molestation of the 15-year-old daughter of a family who thought he was their friend]…Humphrey was [the girl’s] soccer coach and her former boss when [she] worked for [his] lawn care business…“She felt pressured because he was a father figure and a cop”…and [during the period he was molesting]…her…he…installed [spyware] on [her] phone [to track her]…[once he] learned that…[she had reported the molestation,] Humphrey…attempted suicide at his lawncare business [by running] two gas-powered generators…[to] emit…carbon monoxide [into a small room, but his fellow cops revived him so they could arrest him]…

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

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Links #711

February 18, 2024 by Maggie McNeill

They just shot him down like a dog.  –  Bonnie Pigram

Mojo Nixon has gone to be with Elvis, but since I already featured his masterpiece in October ’21, please enjoy this one instead.  The links above it were provided by Jesse Walker, IncarcerNation, Phoenix Calida (x2), Franklin Harris, Walter Olson, and IncarcerNation again, in that order.

From the Archives

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Obituary, Philosophy, Tyranny | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

In the News (#1413)

February 17, 2024 by Maggie McNeill

People might [not] be sick of book bannings, but are they sick of having their money wasted?  –  anonymous Texas teacher

The Red Umbrella 

As long as sex work is marginalized, sex workers will be targeted for violence:

Non-[Irish] sex workers were targeted by a recent scam where a person or people pretended to work for a major advertising website and asked them to provide personal information…[when] the workers did not realise it was a scam and replied to the messages…a number of them were…threatened with physical or sexual violence.  Linda Kavanagh…[of] SWAI…said non-national sex workers were deliberately targeted…She said m[ost] workers don’t report threats, or actual assaults, to gardaí because they…[reasonably] fear they’re going to be blamed for the work that they do…

Panopticon (#1277)

Cops use their panopticon exactly as EFF predicted they would:

In 2022, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance that would allow the city’s police…to access footage from private security cameras [as long as they could invent a credible-sounding excuse]…the SFPD [is required to] compile quarterly reports detailing how many times it [abused the privilege]…The report released in January shows that in the third quarter of 2023…[64 pigs] spent a collective 193 hours and 19 minutes [rooting through] live surveillance footage…Police made 49 arrests as a result of surveillance, of which 42 were for narcotics…[only] four were for “theft/larceny,” and one was for [contempt of cop]…all of the r[oot-f]ests [centered on] just five [neighborhoods, one of them the Tenderloin]…the longest [root]ing session was during the Outside Lands Music Festival in August in Golden Gate Park, when [pigs rooted through] 42 total hours of live footage…in [defense of this creepy spying, the]…District Attorney…b[elch]ed [out] the [word]…”fentanyl”…San Francisco is [also]…rolling out new traffic cameras, which are more effective at filling government coffers than preventing traffic fatalities…

The Last Shall Be First (#1351) 

The time, money, and energy Americans are flushing down the “culture war” toilet is incalculable:

[Murfreesboro] Tennessee…must pay $500,000 as part of a settlement with the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups over an ordinance designed to ban drag performances…Last year, the Tennessee Equality Project…filed a federal lawsuit after leaders announced they would no longer be approving any event permit requests submitted by the organization…[due to what politicians absurdly labeled] “illegal sexualization of kids”…the city not only vowed to deny TEP permits but also decided later to update its “community decency standards”…to [include merely being gay as]…“obscene or harmful to minors”…Under the [settl]ement, the city…[mus]t also…repeal the ordinance and process any upcoming event permit applications submitted by TEP…

Thought Control (#1376)

Texas’ ice-pick self-lobotomization is becoming increasingly spasmodic:

In November…Conroe…Texas public school [board members]…decided…to g[ive themselves]…final say of what [books are] in libraries and classrooms….[since then] books are being removed to meet the preferences of individual board members, parents or other individuals through “internal review”…one teacher says…thousands of books from…classroom collections [were seized by] the district.  At the teacher’s school alone, over 550 books, equivalent to more than $7,300 were packed and moved out of…[class]rooms…over 30 library titles have been banned…[and] another ten books [are likely to follow]…later this month.  Within the past two school years, at least 125 of all the titles banned from the district libraries came from internal reviews…112 books have been prohibited from being on classroom shelves…last week, [one self-appointed censor demanded the removal of]…Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl, Geography Club by Brent Hartinger, Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok, American Girls by Alison Umminger and Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson…When [a] teacher asked what administrators…planned to do with the [seized] titles, [she]…was told…the books would await “disposal”…

Thought Control (#1389)

Too bad all authoritarian organizations aren’t so short-lived:

…Moms for Liberty experienced a meteoric rise at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, as local chapters sprang up to push back against coronavirus restrictions in schools.  The organization soon expanded to pushing book bans and o[ther censorship]…But…the local chapter in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, [has] shut down due to lack of interest…[and] participation also appears to be flagging for…the…organization’s first chapter…in…Brevard County [Florida; at a]…school board…meeting…to discuss a[n attempt to censor]…The Kite Runner and Slaughterhouse-Five…only one Moms for Liberty member showed up…and eventually snuck out of the room [when speakers compared the pro-censorship cult to the Taliban]…The national…organization…has started to see its [15 minutes ending]…as the group was rocked by a sexual assault scandal…

The Puritan Recrudescence (#1409)

Censorious politicians are vying to see who can make their new laws the most unconstitutional:

The U.S. Congress’ top anti-porn crusader, Utah Senator Mike Lee, [has] introduced a bill last week that would effectively outlaw all sex work…by classifying any consent influenced by a person’s economic circumstances as coercive…“This is, of course, the dream of the faith based ‘anti-trafficking’ folks — and SWERFs — who believe that no true consent can exist for sex work when money is involved,” [the Free Speech Coalition’s Mike] Stabile added. “It would essentially codify their white slavery panic into law”…

This warped attempt to infantilize women has been part of evangelical feminist dogma for some time, despite its self-evident absurdity.

The Last Shall Be First (#1410)

How defective does an adult need to be to think doing this to a teenager is OK?

A Utah school board member caused a social media firestorm when she publicly singled out and suggested a high school athlete was transgender with no evidence.  She later [uselessly] apologized…[long after her flying monkeys had] personally attacked the player, the student’s school district had to provide extra security for her, and the [politician] who wrote the state’s anti-transgender athlete bill [vomited out her own stupid opinion]…in violation of her own [law].  The post from Natalie Cline…set…off 16 hours of hateful speculation that continued even after she deleted it…

 

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, The Dark Side, Tyranny | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

The Space Age

February 16, 2024 by Maggie McNeill

As regular readers know, we don’t watch regular TV or “streaming”; when we want a TV series we buy it on DVD and then watch it at our leisure.  Typically, we watch an hour at dinner and then a couple before bedtime while the edibles kick in, and when we’re done with one series we move on to another.  And though we didn’t really plan it that way, lately we’ve been watching a lot of shows from the Kennedy era and immediately after.  The pattern was ushered in by Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955-1965), but since then we’ve watched Thriller (1960-1962), The Flintstones (1960-1966), and The Outer Limits (1963-1965).  I’m not old enough to remember any of these series from their initial runs, but I discovered and enjoyed all of them in syndication, then obtained the discs later; I think most of my favorite shows were discovered that way, years after their first broadcast, and a lot of them are from the ’60s and early ’70s.  But watching a number of shows from the early ’60s relatively close together has had a kind of synergistic effect, and I’ve found myself going through a phase of nostalgia for the period – its music, its movies, its cars, its fads, and other assorted bits and pieces of that odd little interlude, no longer the ’50s but not yet what we think of as the ’60s.  It won’t last long; in just a few days we’ll be moving on to more modern shows waiting in the wings.  But in the meantime, I’m rather enjoying feeling nostalgic for a time just before I was born, which I know only through the medium of recorded entertainment.

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The Rites of Throwback Thursday

February 15, 2024 by Maggie McNeill

Who but a government functionary would see nothing wrong with calling a two-week period a “day”?
–  “Vendetta (#512)”

Like Biblical literalists searching for the remains of Noah’s Ark [“sex trafficking” fetishists] continue their quixotic crusades to find victims and “pimps”, and they’re never daunted by the fact that the few who turn up aren’t actually very much like the characters in their scriptures.  –  “Phantasm”

Until mainstream feminism starts calling for decrim – not Swedish model or other BS falsely represented as decrim – they can fuck themselves.  –  “Beck and Call”

I think the naive and idealistic idea of sex as an actual good is just as harmful, and causes nearly as much societal ill, as the primitive and warped notion that it’s an active evil.  –  “Sex Neutral”

You cannot exorcise…thoughts which haunt you by repeating them endlessly in public as though they were real, demanding that others join you in these fantasies against their consent, and providing the police state with new excuses to oppress people based on your sexual fantasies.  –  “Can We Talk?”

One would have to contort one’s brain in a manner worthy of a Cirque du Soleil performance to ignore the facts that cops more heavily patrol poor and minority neighborhoods and actively look for people to arrest.  –  “As Always“

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Valentine’s Day 2024

February 14, 2024 by Maggie McNeill

As longtime readers know, Valentine’s Day is my least favorite of holidays, and I’m not particularly fond of the typical iconography associated with it, either (which is often weird or violent or creepy as hell).  So every year I try to share an exception, like this lovely lady with a not-terrible Cupid on a Victorian Era card.

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Mardi Gras 2024

February 13, 2024 by Maggie McNeill

Maybe the places where many of y’all live don’t observe it, but I still do. So Happy Mardi Gras, dear readers!

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Diary #711

February 12, 2024 by Maggie McNeill

Today is Lundi Gras (“Fat Monday”), the day before Mardi Gras (“Fat Tuesday”).  In New Orleans, those who can (and truth be told, many who can’t) start the party early today, or else get things ready for the party tomorrow.  I have even known die-hards who go out to their favorite spot on the St. Charles Avenue parade route to camp out overnight so as to beat the folks who don’t get out there until after dawn, but honestly, I think that’s a bit mental. Of course, I was always more of a Vieux Carre celebrant than a paradegoer, which works a lot better for a woman who has difficulty making it to her own kitchen by 8 AM, much less some crowded and possibly cold, rainy neutral ground somewhere in the Garden District.  It has now been 18 years since I’ve been to a Mardi Gras celebration of any kind, and noplace I’ve lived since even seems to know it exists (or else they call it by some Philistinism like “Pancake Day”, about which the less said, the better).  But to this day it feels very weird to me when businesses are open or people want to schedule things on Mardi Gras, and I don’t think that will change between now and that future day when I eat my very last piece of king cake.

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Links #710

February 11, 2024 by Maggie McNeill

He is now in hell for eternity as a traitor to his country.  –  Justin Mohn

Since I already shared “Brand New Key” three years ago, here’s Melanie’s second biggest hit in recognition of her passing.  The links above the video (discounting the first) were provided by Popehat; Scott Long and Dan Savage; IncarcerNation; Asawin Suebsaeng; IncarcerNation again; and Radley Balko, in that order.

From the Archives

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Obituary, Tyranny | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

In the News (#1412)

February 10, 2024 by Maggie McNeill

The U.S. government should not be funding and legitimizing a shady industry whose flagrant violations of Americans’ privacy are not just unethical, but illegal.  –  Ron Wyden

A Broker in Pillage

There are many ways for governments to steal things that don’t belong to them:

Louisiana…judges, like most in the country, issue fines and fees.  In other states, the resulting revenue is allocated in ways that prevent judges from personally benefiting from the money they extract.  But…thanks to a court-funding system with its roots in…Jim Crow…a portion of the fines and fees issued by Louisiana judges go into a fund that the judges themselves control…in recent years judges…have used these…funds…to pay for expenses ranging from the staff salaries and law library subscriptions to luxury cars and rooms at the Ritz Carlton.  In 2019, a federal court ruled that [such] use…created a conflict of interest…[but] the two rulings…applied to…New Orleans…the unconstitutional practice…persists in nearly every other district court in the state.  The Louisiana Legislature knows it is unconstitutional…The judiciary knows it is unconstitutional, too…And yet years later, state law remains unchanged…

Dirty Amateurs (#980) 

Amateurs are a menace to public health; they should be licensed and heavily regulated:

The number of syphilis cases in the U.S…increased by nearly 80% to more than 207,000 between 2018 and 2022.  Rates increased among all age groups, including newborns, and in all regions of the country.  In 2022, 3,755 cases of babies born with syphilis in the U.S. were  reported, which reflects an alarming 937% increase in the past decade…reasons for the increase…includ[e “abstinence only” sex education,] increases in…risky sexual behavior, decrease in condom use, ongoing social and economic conditions and reduction in…STI…services at the state and local level…

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic (#1186)

“Porn addiction” is still being used as an excuse for violent crimes:

A…man [in Solapur, India murder]ed his [14-year-old] son by forcing him to consume cold drinks laced with sodium nitrate…on January 13…Vijay Battu…was angry as his son was…poor at studies [and Battu blamed this on an imaginary “porn addiction”.  He confessed to poisoning him and dumping his body]…on the roadside…

The Last Shall Be First (#1350) 

The time, money, and energy our society is flushing down the “culture war” toilet is incalculable:

Transgender people in Florida could have their driver’s licenses revoked or face prosecution if they try to change their gender markers…Robert Kynoch, the [head DMV bureaucrat], issued a memo dated January 26 that said…”misrepresenting one’s gender, understood as sex, on a driver license constitutes fraud…and subjects an offender to criminal and civil penalties”…Kynoch [burbled at length about his beliefs regarding]…”innate and immutable biological and genetic characteristics”…and…”frustrat[ing] the state’s ability to enforce its laws”…Alejandra Caraballo, a civil rights attorney…who shared the memo on [Twitter], wrote…”if the language used in this directive is taken at face value, any trans person driving with a changed gender marker on their drivers license could be criminally charged with fraud…including tourists…This is a ‘show me your papers’ policy for trans people in the state of Florida”…

The Puritan Recrudescence (#1355)

There’s a reason I’ve repeatedly called this cult “dangerous”:

…many researchers and sex therapists worry that [anti-porn] online communities…often endorse inaccurate medical information, exacerbate mental health problems and, in some cases, overlap with extremist and hate groups…One of the central concepts in these communities is known as “nofap,” a…term [which] has come to encompass a set of unproven claims that not masturbating confers social and health benefits…While some figures in this space are [openly] religious, most frame their advice as science-based forms of self-improvement or as a cure for [the nonscientific concept of] pornography addiction…For those who believe [in it], the official NoFap LLC website suggests no masturbation for 90 days, during which the brain supposedly reboots like a computer.  Other claimed benefits of avoiding masturbation may include “superpowers”…

I Spy (#1381)

This has been going on for years, but the Times waited until they admitted it to say something:

The National Security Agency buys [“various types” of information about] Americans’ domestic internet activities from commercial data brokers, according to a…letter [issued] by the agency [under pressure from Senator Ron Wyden]…the revelation is the latest disclosure to bring to the fore [cop shops’ and spook houses’ abuse of a] legal [loophole by wholesale, warrantless]…purchase [of American citizens’]…data from brokers that would require a court order to acquire directly.  It comes as the Federal Trade Commission has started cracking down on companies that trade in personal location data…gathered from smartphone apps and sold without people’s knowledge and consent…

Stupor Bowl (#1392)

This type of article on the “super bowl sex trafficking” myth is no longer unusual:

This year’s Super Bowl takes place at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas…Nevada sex workers and their allies will be gathering at the stadium to protest Super Bowl sex stings and the myths that encourage them…This “Stop the Raids” coalition also held two days of workshops and community-building activities for sex workers over the past weekend…A decade ago, almost all reporting on “Super Bowl sex trafficking” seemed to be wholly credulous of law enforcement’s narrative.  From 2010 to 2016, 76 percent of U.S. print media stories on the subject “propagated the ‘Super Bowl sex trafficking’ narrative,” according to a 2019 paper published in the Anti-Trafficking Review.  Back in 2014—when Maggie McNeill challenged this narrative in Reason—questioning it was a pretty lonely perch.  In recent years, more outlets have been willing to push back against the official narrative, and pieces challenging it have appeared in such publications as Sports Illustrated, The Washington Post, Slate, Vice, and The Atlantic…

 

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

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