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Posts Tagged ‘A Year Later’

I am the secret ingredient in a lot of healthy marriages, because when he’s seeing me, both of you are getting the amount of sex you want. – April Adams

Harm Reduction

As I always say, we save far more marriages than we wreck:

…if your husband is seeing me, it’s because he wants to stay married…Imagine if instead of me it was the babysitter, your neighbor, your best friend…I’m a professional.  I am discreet, but more than that I am discrete:  My time, attention, and sexuality are measured in hours, beyond which he is yours.  And importantly, I don’t love your husband and never will…I will never be a threat to your marriage because when I’m off the clock I don’t want anything to do with either of you…

Divided We Fall

I wish gay people stuck up for whores as often as whores stick up for them:

A gay man…in…Italy…who worked as a chef in a restaurant was often harassed by his manager…one night, his manager told him that he “had to prove to the rest of the staff [I] was not gay by having sex with a prostitute…I met Marta, a Romanian girl.  I explained her the situation and she accepted.  We went back to the restaurant, where my manager spoke with her and told her what she had to do…We then went to a room to have sex, but I could not manage…The manager then gave €40 to the prostitute while my colleagues started asking the woman whether I was gay or straight.  She replied I was fine, but they did not believe her.”  A few days after the episode, Marco decided to sue his manager…

Above the Law 

Cops say it’s not “fair” that they were fired, merely for gang-raping a teenage girl at gunpoint:

They were arrested for sexual abuse involving a minor, but now…[Illinois cops] Steven…Bonynge…and Seth Degelman [have filed suit]…the victim was “slightly under the age of 17.”  In other words, she was 16…Bonynge…used a weapon in the commission of the [rape]…

I’m Sure You Feel Safer Now

A man’s career is destroyed for seeking consensual sex:

Basketball analyst and former NBA player Greg Anthony was suspended indefinitely by CBS…after he was arrested on a charge of soliciting a prostitute in a Washington, D.C., hotel room…Anthony…issued a statement…apologizing to his wife, family and colleagues…Anthony was suspected of using a computer as part of the crime, and that his arrest was part of an undercover operation targeting prostitution.  The hotel is less than a mile from the White House…

What possible fucking difference does the computer or the hotel’s location make?  Does the reporter wish the audience to fear that the President was endangered by evil sex rays?

Broken Record

This would be hilarious except that the “authorities” are destroying real people’s lives in furtherance of a rather pedestrian wanking fantasy:

The Detroit Auto Show draws thousands to the Motor City.  And…that means…the demand for sex spikes…The Department of Homeland Security is fighting the transport of mostly young women, many of them underage, against their will.  “When you have a big international event like this…there is a sex trafficking industry that springs up around it,” [fantasized] Special Agent Michael Ball.  They are likely lurking at the bars and hotels…Pimps [use] websites like Priceline.com to book hotel rooms…websites like Backpage.com have…graphic catch lines like, “meat is fresh.”  Code, for someone new has been brought to town…Officials want you to be on the lookout for young people…[with] tattoos on the neck or thigh…

See also “A Mound of Filth” below.

Public Property

Dudes pretend responsibility for women’s abortions, because you know we silly women can’t make decisions like that for ourselves and are therefore totally dependent on male guidance.

A Tale That Grew in the Telling (#339)

This is mostly just the usual lurid “survivor” masturbatory fantasy (in this case intended to hawk a book), but it contains only the second instance I’ve seen of this literally impossible claim: “‘They…were queuing up outside…If I did 40 to 50 people, that would be nothing’…On one particular night, she says she had sex with 110 men before being violently sick…

Number Puzzle (#402)

And this is why I call Wendy Lyon “indispensable”:

…the Swedish police’s…2013 report…just repeats…the 2011 report…trafficking statistics are pretty much meaningless, because they only measure what officials detect and identify as trafficking, which doesn’t necessarily coincide with the actual amount of activity taking place that fits the legal definition of “trafficking”.  But…if this was a Dutch or German study showing a 95% increase in sex trafficking in a single year, don’t you think we’d be hearing all about it…[to paraphrase one statement]:  “In cases where women are exploited in prostitution in Sweden but not willing or able to cooperate with law enforcement, they may be deported, because we don’t want their kind here”…previous claims [were that] that traffickers avoid Sweden because they can’t make any money there.  15 years of the sex purchase ban, and police say that traffickers are still moving victims to Sweden in order to “maximize their profits”.  What does that tell you about how effective they think their law really is?…trafficking victims…[are] only [valuable] to Sweden…as a law-enforcement tool…the Swedish state uses them for its own purposes, and then discards them like unwanted goods…

One-line version: the Swedish model is a failure, and the Swedes know it.

Learning Curve (All Traffick, All the Time)

Remember the big “Super Bowl sex trafficking bust” the cops were crowing about last January?

TMZ, the New York Daily News and other media outlets face a federal action from a woman arrested in what they hyped as the “Super Bowl Prostitution Bust.”  Janice Lee…sales account manager for an international seller of wigs and hair products…[was libeled] when various media outlets reported the juicy details of a prostitution ring’s takedown…”The statements told defendants’ audience that Mrs. Lee is a whore; that she is a drug dealer; that she is part of a gang”…TMZ’s article…mentions that wig shops were among the “phony businesses” that pimps used to funnel millions in “sex profits”…In addition to saying that Lee belonged to “a small army of Asian hookers”…TMZ also published her picture…

A Mound of Filth

Here’s a heaping helping of the usual “trafficking” feces served up Arizona style, with lots of lurid detail for the salivating reader to masturbate to.  It does, however, have a few interesting details, such as “the Super Bowl…has been dogged by claims that it brings…a rise in underage girls for sale…an idea that even anti-trafficking activists now say isn’t grounded in fact.”  I like to think I had a major role in dynamiting that particular toilet.  Then there’s the “dog crate” trope:  “…She would have sex with as many as five men each day….[and] be kept in a dog crate for hours at a time…” Given that this one seems limited to Arizona, one must wonder why dogs and sex seem so inextricably linked in the minds of “authorities” there.Dominique Roe-Sepowitz  But the real money shot is from arch-fanatic Dominique Roe-Sepowitz:

…Roe-Sepowitz…said…women should be seen as trafficking victims even if they are not…controlled by a pimp…her belief, widely shared by other [prohibitionists], is that most women enter the trade at a young age…”I believe every adult (prostitute), I believe almost every single one of them was trafficked…Someone coached them into that life”…women can be being forced into prostitution by their life situation. She referred to it as “trafficked by circumstances”…

Business As Usual

As usual, the media and everyone else are pretending this is an unusual policy, when in fact it is the norm everywhere in the United States:

A police officer in Arkansas recently lost his job after he exposed a massive scheme that allowed officers to have sex with prostitutes and then arrest them…The way that Former Fort Smith…Sgt. Don Paul Bales’ department had it set up, cops would “prove” that they weren’t really police officers, by having sex with prostitutes…[Bales has sued to get] his job back…

False Witness

And those who wish to manufacture “sex trafficking victims” can use exactly the same methods:

Innocent people can be questioned by police in such a way that they end up convincing themselves that they’ve committed a crime.  And this belief can be so strong, they can sometimes follow that belief up with a false confession…a study…from the University of Bedfordshire in the UK…found that…“false memories of committing crime with police contact can be surprisingly easy to generate, and can have all the same kinds of complex details as real memories…All participants need to generate a richly detailed false memory is three hours in a friendly interview environment, where the interviewer introduces a few wrong details and uses poor memory-retrieval techniques”…of 30 students who were told they’d committed a crime in their teenage years…71 percent…ended up developing a false memory of the event…

A Year Later

Despite the Harper government’s best efforts to convince them otherwise, Canadians still don’t want the state butting into their consensual sexual transactions.  That’s the results of a new Forum Research poll…which shows…only 27 percent of Canadians support that law, while 52 percent oppose it outright…Even among Conservative supporters…only 37 percent support the bill, while more than four in ten oppose it.  When asked if they support legalizing sex work outright, 54 percent of the country is onboard, with a third disagreeing…

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While there’s a thick “rescue” sauce smeared all over [modern prostitution law], the “punish the dirty whores” attitude is still obvious.  –  Marijke Vonk

BDSM

BDSM carries a stigma nearly as heavy as that of sex work, and indeed is still criminalized, semi-criminalized or quasi-criminalized in many parts of the US.  But up until the recent release of DSM-V, it was also classified as a mental illness and could thus be used by “authorities” as an excuse for all manner of rights violations, including abduction of one’s children.  Here’s a thorough article in the Atlantic on the 30-year fight to “de-classify kink as a psychiatric disorder”, largely accomplished by the efforts of the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom.

Tyranny By Consensus

The Free Speech Coalition…denounced the AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s proposed California ballot measure over mandatory condoms on the porn set and said that, if enacted, the act would likely amount to a new “Prohibition” for adult filmmaking.  AHF’s statewide proposal not only would make condoms mandatory on the set, but it would require adult filmmakers to be licensed and subject them to additional record-keeping requirements beyond 18 U.S.C. § 2257…FSC CEO Diane Duke’s said that AHF’s proposal…would destroy the industry as most know it and drive existing producers underground…

Surplus Women 

A…Russian policeman who raped and murdered 22 women…has been jailed for life…Mikhail Popkov, raped and axed or stabbed the victims late at night in the Siberian city of Angarsk after offering to give them lifts in his police car…the victims…included a teacher, a shop assistant and several prostitutes…One had been decapitated and another’s heart had been removed, while it is reported he had sex with some of the bodies after killing them…Two other women managed to survive…but suffered serious injuries…[Popkov]  described himself as a “cleaner” who was purging the city of prostitutes…The murders [started in] 1994 [and ended abruptly]…in 2000, when…he became impotent and contracted syphilis…

The Widening Gyre Carmen Yarira Noriega Esparza

They actually thought “sex trafficking” was a more credible explanation than jealousy:

Residents in a block of flats were horrified when they complained that the water tasted “funny” – and were told that the unusual flavour was due to the rotting corpse of a young woman in the water tank…Carmen Yarira Noriega Esparza…was last seen leaving her gym in…Mexico City in February last year…Police are now focusing their enquiries on her relationship with a wealthy businessman who was paying the rent for her flat, and who she had recently dumped…The week before she was supposed to move out of the flat, she vanished and had not been seen since…A police spokesman said…”We had…been looking into suggestions that she may have been taken by a gang involved in the sex slave business.  It appears that was not the case.”

Backwards Into the Future (#137)

Sweeping laws that could see gays, prostitutes and drug injectors enjoy full rights while cutting back on what the media can say about them are in the offing…For example, it will be criminal for police to profile [them]…using their sexual activity…The groups want a policy which makes it possible to have them represented by their own in oversight bodies…They also recommend…a law that protects the confidentiality of their medical data…barring the media from identifying them and the places they work from.  This could mean it may be illegal to [out] prostitutes during police swoops or investigative pieces…

Stupor Bowl

Sign of the decline of the “gypsy whores” myth:  it’s only weeks before the Super Bowl and we’ve barely heard a peep from the Arizona moon-barkers yet.

Prostitutes and the people who pay for their services…could face harsher punishments.  Phoenix City Council members are set to discuss…a mandatory jail booking for anyone arrested…and requiring “John  school” for anyone convicted of soliciting a prostitute…A man who directs the current “John school” expects a surge in prostitution during the Super Bowl timeframe…”These are guys that are used to being in control…they’re used to having things their own way,” [Dr. Jon] McCaine [bloviated ignorantly]…It is unclear whether, if approved, the changes would be in effect by Super Bowl weekend…

Number Puzzle (#426)

This long, thorough article by Marijke Vonk on the facts about Dutch sex workers has a lot to recommend it, but I found these figures especially interesting:

–  90% don’t even know anyone who is being forced
–  93% like or are neutral about their colleagues
–  92% have never experienced violence at work
–  86% is happy or even very happy with their job
– they see 10 to 30 customers per week
–  84% like their customers
–  80% never experienced any trouble with a customer ever
–  90% feel unrepresented in politics
–  90% feel government does not protect their interests
–  95% claim politicians have no idea what is going on in the sex industry

On the Simultaneous Having and Eating of Cake (#441)

Two ex-dancers are suing the Portland strip club Casa Diablo for back pay and damages for alleged harassment—including unwanted touching—by patrons and the club’s employees.  Matilda Bickers and Amy Pitts…each performed at Casa Diablo for about two and a half years…[they] allege Casa Diablo—billed as the city’s only vegan strip club—failed to pay them a minimum wage, took a 30 percent cut of their nightly tips, and fined them as much as $40 if they showed up late and $70 for missing a shift.  Even their performances could bring penalties—for example, $10 if they didn’t undress quickly enough on stage…Portland…dancers, social workers and lobbyists are crafting legislation that may clarify employee status for Oregon dancers…

A Year Later

Imagine being such a control freak that you would be willing to disrupt your own life and do an unpleasant job solely for the opportunity to inflict violence on other people for having private, consensual sex in a way you don’t like:

…Joy Smith has decided, now that the controversial prostitution law is in full force in Canada, her job in Parliament is done…and…she will devote herself full-time to [prohibitionism]…She never intended to be an MP but rather a school principal…“I’m not a very good politician.  I’ve never been attracted to it but I’m really glad I did it…the reason I went to Parliament was to stop human trafficking.  What I want to do now is continue that work”…Smith [imagines]…that sex work can’t be consensual, that all prostitution is human trafficking…

A Tale That Grew in the Telling (#503)

Mark Draughn thought that stupid “trafficking hotspot” map looked familiarMcDonaldsTrafficking

“…The other data source is a map of every McDonald’s location in the United States.  Note that every single sex trafficking hotspot corresponds to a cluster of McDonald’s restaurants.  The conclusion is obvious:  McDonald’s food is turning our women into whores!…”

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Apparently learning when to use a turn signal is twice as complicated as conducting an undercover operation that jeopardizes women’s lives.  –  Samantha Allen lowest depression graph

Bad Jobs

I’ll just point out that sex work is an “amusement and recreation service”.  So much for “PTSD” and “90% would quit if they could”:

A study published last month…suggests that some jobs have much higher rates of depression than others…the…authors calculated the incidence of depression across 55 industries.  The highest rate of depression (16.2 percent) was found among bus drivers.  The lowest (6.9 percent) was…among those in “amusement and recreation services,” a broadly defined group that includes the sports, fitness, and performing-arts industries…

Feminine Pragmatism 

Part-time casual prostitution to supplement meager earnings has been a fact of female existence since at least Roman times, so this is not anything remotely like “news”:

…salaries for Japan’s flight attendants have slumped significantly over the past decade…This has lead to some stewardesses engaging in [casual prostitution]…“Girls willing to do it with a pilot passed their number to a person who was effectively a female pimp,” says [one] stewardess….other stewardesses may take up part-time work as party companions or bar hostesses in Tokyo’s ritzy Ginza district…

The Pro-Rape Coalition

Have I told you lately how much I love Elizabeth Nolan Brown?

So I was going to ignore this silly study about how pornography is serving as a widespread “marriage substitute” for young American men.  But it just keeps popping up on my radar…the study actually found [that]…the more hours of pornography a young man watched, the less likely he was to have a spouse…bachelorhood makes watching a lot of porn…more possible…than it is for people living with a wife and family…and…married individuals are less likely to self-report ample pornography consumption…Correlation does not imply causation. And “low-cost sexual gratification” probably isn’t the end of civilization as we know it.

Meanwhile, over at Slate, Jordan Weissmann goes into even more detail about why the study is, in his words, “deeply silly”.  You will not be surprised to know that the “researchers” used data from the General Social Survey, whose unsuitability for questions of this nature I have noted before.

Above the Law 

They just can’t call it rape when the rapist is a cop, can they?  Especially if his victims are whores:  “A Dallas police officer has been arrested for…using his position…to force prostitutes to perform sexual acts…David Kattner…will be [given paid vacation]…pending the results of the…investigation…

The Notorious Badge Jamie Dornan

What is it with actors presuming to judge sexual minorities they make big bucks playing on screen?

Jamie Dornan went to a sex dungeon for work.  He was preparing to play Fifty Shades of Grey’s…Christian Grey, and…found it underwhelming.  “I went there, they offered me a beer, and they did…whatever they were into…Then going back to my wife and newborn baby afterwards… I had a long shower before touching either of them”…

Jamie, I’m sorry to hear that your prudish sex life is so boring.  I’ll leave you with a message from my friend, Mistress Matisse:

…Guess what?  There were happily married people at that party doing BDSM.  Some of them have children, too, just like you.  How dare you take a role as someone who does BDSM and then blatantly insult the very people who allowed you into their party and let you observe them in their intimate moments?…I think it’s a shame the makers of 50SOG didn’t cast someone more emotionally mature and more secure in his own sexuality than this.  Perhaps Mr. Dornan is more like the character of Christian Gray than he’d like to think…

Banishment

The continuing crusade to treat “sex offenders” as subhuman:

…A registrant in Florida won a three million dollar scratch-off lottery…Timothy Poole…[is the subject of a] hue and cry…that he should, by any means possible, be denied his winnings…because he is a SEX OFFENDER.  Florida has no prohibition against any convicted felon profiting from lottery winnings, not even SEX OFFENDERS.  I am currently making book that Florida’s next legislative session will see a bill introduced that will do just that…Mr. Poole, since his release from prison in 2006, has maintained a record as spotless as the proverbial driven snow…None of that quashed the flood of outrage or deterred the cesspool of nasty headlines, articles, and commentary as to why he should not receive the money and how inherently wrong it is for him to have won it to begin with…

Dirty Laundry (TW3 #337)

Sadistic Irish judges think it’s funny to rob sex workers and our associates and give their money to an organization dedicated to destroying our entire profession:

…Dublin road engineer [Thomas Lyons] rented an apartment for use as a brothel…[he] has been given a suspended jail sentence and ordered to pay over €10,000 to…Ruhama, an organisation which [profits from the harassment of sex workers]…

The Course of a Disease (TW3 #341)

A rare example of criminalization blowing up in the faces of “authorities”:

A prostitute won a landmark victory against police [when] an Oslo court…ruled that police were wrong to claim taxes for the money she had made selling sex…the court queried whether the state should tax income from prostitution, given that related activity such as pimping and human trafficking are crimes…

Property of the State

A new proposed bill in the Missouri state legislature would require women…seeking an abortion to get consent from the man who is the father of the child.  Exceptions are allowed in cases of rape or incest, but [not]…if the woman is in an abusive relationship…

Or, presumably, if she just doesn’t know who the father is.

Because We Say So (TW3 #421) poverty tourism

Next Generation Nepal (NGN) has launched its…report showing that…orphanages in Nepal contain over 15,000 children, yet at least two out of three…are not orphans…many…are being used as poverty commodities to raise money from well-intentioned but naïve fee-paying foreign volunteers and donors…almost 90 percent of “orphanages” in Nepal are located in the top five tourist districts for this reason…the growing global phenomenon of voluntourism…has the potential to…cause considerable harm…

The Mote and the Beam (TW3 #428)

Remember, consensual sex work is usually defined as “trafficking” in the US; this law would felonize the posting of an ordinary escort ad:

A state representative wants to make it a crime to post an ad on the internet if the person posting it knows it could result in human trafficking.  It could be an ad anywhere – on websites such as Craigslist or Backpage, or even on a gas station bathroom wall…House Bill 152 would make that person guilty of sexual trafficking of a child; a felony that carries a penalty of up to life in prison…[sponsor] Elijah Haahr…says the idea is based on the SAVE Act…

Safe Targets (TW3 #439)

the relationship between law enforcement and sex workers in Alaska has supposedly altered in recent years…[due to dogma pretending that] sex workers[are] victims who need to be rescued…[but] a new report by Tara Burns titled People in Alaska’s Sex Trade: Their Lived Experience and Policy Recommendations…found…that…the role of the police has not changed that much…the law has been used against people selling sex (who are said to be trafficking themselves)…”In none of the documents I’ve examined since the law’s inception,” Burns says in the report, “has it been used to benefit a victim”…women Burns surveyed and interviewed see the police as a threat…More than a quarter of the women surveyed said they had been sexually assaulted by police; 9 percent said they had been robbed or beaten…

Theatrics (TW3 #446)

On December 19…[a spam] text message [landed] on mobile phones of [about 300,000] users [in Kathmandu, Nepal].  The…message…read “young boys and girls are available for commercial sex inside the Kathmandu Valley” and asked the recipients to call certain numbers for further details…the message was being delivered by Terre des Hommes…whose website says “it works against child exploitation”…[the NGO] defended the message…[as] “part of its campaign to aware [sic] the general public about child exploitation and end commercial sexual exploitation of children”…

Marching Up Their Own Arses (TW3 #450)

For a change, many outside the demimonde recognize anti-whore douchebaggery for what it is:

The retired cop used to interfere in sex worker’s lives by arresting them, now he just ambushes them with cameras…sex workers…rightly call [reality show 8 Minutes] “vile,” “gross,” “terrifying,” and “exploitative”…[Kevin] Brown was profiled in the LA Timesas founder…of Safe Passage OC, a group with a website that looks like it was made in 1998 and a moral worldview from at least a hundred years earlier than that…Volunteers only need to “attend a 16-hour course”…about half as long as it takes to get a learner’s permit in the state of California…

A Year Later

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[Sex workers] can’t be slandered, apparently, because our status is THAT low.  –  Mistress Matisse

Out of Control

This was obvious to anyone who’s actually known any actual men, and whose mind is not fouled entirely with “social construction” dogma:

Priests’ vows of celibacy may have led to paedophilia, the Roman Catholic Church in Australia has said…A group advising the…Church on how to deal with thousands of cases of child sex abuse said celibacy may be psychologically damaging for some priests…The…conclusions were quickly dismissed by the Vatican…

Think of the Children! 

The statute under which these people were arrested defines “near” as 100 feet:  “Eleven people…were arrested and charged with prostitution near a school…[in] Memphis…the…arrests were all within a mile and a half from [any of several schools]…Thierry Schaffauser

Lack of Evidence

On December 16th…Thierry Schaffauser, founding member of STRASS, was distributing leaflets and condoms when he was arrested [in]…Paris…He was accused of having spoken to a sex worker.  Two plainclothes police officers then committed acts of violence against him including strangulation…He was handcuffed …and taken to the police station…without being able to request…a lawyer.  The sex worker he was talking to…was also arrested…Homophobic and racist remarks were made during the arrest, incl. “it is because of people like you that mamas bring in African women for prostitution in France”…

Welcome To Our World

Not the late actor, but rather the president of a fundamentalist Christian group:

…Tony Perkins [claims]…his fight against gay rights is necessary to prevent an economic crash and [is] no different than saving someone from a burning building…the Family Research Council president…told [the Faith & Liberty podcast]…that gay rights present such a grave “threat to religious liberty” that the movement for LGBT equality will inevitably lead to “a rapid downward spiral of our nation, including our economy”…Perkins insisted that his anti-gay activism is motivated by love for the gay community.  Just as an onlooker would try to wake up a person sleeping inside of a burning building, Perkins explained, he is simply trying to tell gay people about homosexuality’s destructive nature…

Whores know all about people who “love” us and want to “help” us by denying our basic human rights, criminalizing our lives and locking us up in state brainwashing centers.

The Pro-Rape Coalition

In which David Horsey un-ironically uses the phrase “women performing like whores” in a fact-free anti-porn rant:

…Thanks to the Internet, Americans have been pushed, unwittingly, into a vast social experiment testing whether unfettered access to the most freakish and foul pornography will warp sexual relations for generations to come…Raunchy actually does not begin to describe the things that any kid can find with a few search words and a couple of clicks…It’s a quick descent into an endless display of photographs and videos…dominated by perverse male fantasies of women performing like whores for men whose sexual techniques appear to have been learned in a prison cell…This is soul-disturbing stuff most human beings have never seen or experienced before…

Because obviously whores aren’t women.  Would-be censors are fond of claiming that online porn is “dominated” by extreme stuff, and that it’s easy to find, but try it yourself sometime.

Imaginary Crises

Women who tell outlandish rape tales undermine the credibility of all women:

In a now-infamous…story in Rolling Stone, disgraced journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely asserted that at least five members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity gang-raped a freshman named Jackie at a frat house party…The Washington Post’s reporting now suggests that Jackie fabricated huge swathes of her gory rape tale, and that Erdely abrogated her duty to properly investigate it…the number of completely fraudulent rape allegations made by women on American college campuses is far from trivial.  With very little effort at all, The Daily Caller has found eight twisted, totally false and especially astonishing rape hoaxes proffered over the years by female college students.  In each case, the cruel hoaxes were initially accepted as true.  In some cases, real lives were ruined…

Surplus Women 

A man obsessed with the Yorkshire Ripper brutally attacked a prostitute and planned to carry out more murders than his idol…David Parsons, 21, bought a claw hammer because it was Peter Sutcliffe’s weapon of choice and used it to repeatedly bludgeon a…call girl he lured to his flat…he was spooked by her screams and fled…[then] told police:  “I have just tried to kill someone”…The victim…suffered head injuries and…psychological damage…Parsons pleaded guilty to attempted murder…[but] showed no empathy or remorse…[saying] “She is a prostitute, I am not even bothered”…

Profit from Panic 

The Global Alliance Against Trafficking in Women (GAATW) recently released its annual peer reviewed publication, the Anti-Trafficking Review…[this year’s] theme…is “Following the Money: Spending on Anti-Trafficking“…The majority of funding dedicated to anti-trafficking initiatives is spent in either prevention or prosecution…there has been little research undertaken into the…effectiveness of funded anti-trafficking initiatives…whether a person is recognised as a “victim” or “migrant” is defined by the media, who are influenced by…political expediency…

Above the Law 

A Louisiana [cop]…has been arrested…[for groping] a woman during a traffic stop…Michael Dayne Selders…touched her breasts…and private areas and tried to kiss her lips…Selders let her leave, saying “don’t tell anyone about this”…Selders [pretended that]…the woman initiated a hug, but denied wrongdoing…he’s [been rewarded with] paid [vacation]…

Meanwhile, in Tennessee:

…Nashville [cop Jonathan Mays] was arrested…for raping a prostitute…The victim had gone to police in June…[and they]…constructed a [sting] to catch Mays in the act…Once confronted, Mays tried to deny having any previous involvement with the woman, but later confessed to the [previous] incident…

The Naked Emperor

Chase Madar’s article about the horrific consequences of the US obsession with policing sex is quite good on issues like “sex offender” registration and the War on Whores…yet breathes not one word about “sex trafficking” hysteria, despite its condemnation of the Satanic panic.

Shift in the Wind

A TED talk about sex worker rights is definitely a step forward:

The Public Eye

Changing the narrative about sex work and battling the stigma  associated with the adult industry are among the primary goals behind a series of events [last weekend]…the Seattle chapter of the Sex Worker Outreach Project…[held] a three-day sex-work symposium to educate the public about consensual sex work, advocate for sex-worker rights and build community among a diverse group of practitioners.  “I hope people who have heard that all sex workers are victims and all sex work is exploitative will see…the adult industry is vast, complex, diverse and not inherently exploitative,” said Savannah Sly…

Property of the State

a…Wisconsin…woman [was] arrested for drug use…brought to court and twice refused lawyers (even though her fetus was given one), and then sent to jail for 17 days, where she was placed in solitary confinement, denied prenatal care even as she began cramping, and not given her thyroid medication for two days…Tamara Loertscher…refused to submit to in-patient treatment because…she…had stopped using drugs.  She was then jailed for contempt of court…the state of Wisconsin then informed her that it considered her a child abuser, which will prevent Loertscher from ever working again in her profession, as a certified nurse’s aide…

Bread and Circuses

They must have threatened him with decades in prison to secure this deal:

[Eric “Red” Omuro]…pleaded guilty…to facilitating prostitution by running a website that allowed sex workers to advertise services…it was the first federal conviction of a website operator for facilitation of prostitution…MyRedbook…allowed users to post and respond to ads offering services including massage, stripping, domination and sex in San Francisco and throughout the West Coast…the website generated more than $5.4 million in revenue…Omuro…agreed to forfeit $1.28 million in cash and property and the domain names…

Schadenfreude (TW3 #429) 

At long last, Seattle’s The Stranger owns up to its part in promoting Chong Kim’s lies and the movie based on them:

…Mistress Matisse, a professional dominatrix and longtime Stranger contributor…sent an e-mail to her editors here in late June referring to a potential lawsuit.  “You’re getting this e-mail from me because I want some answers,” Matisse began. “I believe that…filmmakers Colin Plank and Megan Griffiths”—the producer and the director—”have perpetrated a fraud in their movie called Eden. Allegations have been made, and it’s time for them to either double down—or fess up.  And as The Stranger played a role in promoting the film, it’s appropriate that The Stranger play a part [in] the truth being told about it”…She [discussed] with a lawyer “the possibility of a class-action lawsuit against the makers of Eden“…[but his]  opinion was that “it would be difficult to prove damages, because the prevailing sentiment of the legal system more or less goes along with us being either helpless victims, as in the movie, or just plain criminals”…

The article debunks Kim’s tragedy porn in great detail, but that wasn’t actually very hard because her own published narratives of her supposed “exploitation” in sex work have grown dramatically in the past decade; had the filmmakers bothered to do even the slightest bit of research they would’ve known she was lying from square one.  But hey, the lies are only about whores and our clients, so it’s all good.

Surplus Women (TW3 #445)

Hong Kong was shocked by another brutal murder [of a sex worker]…as the half-naked body of a 15-year-old girl was discovered bound and gagged at a local dump – just weeks after a British banker was charged with the killing of two escorts…Kwok Wai-ming…had hands and legs bound together with plastic strips and adhesive tape and might have died during a sex game…the girl was involved in compensated dating…and also posed for nude pictures for money…Police have arrested a 34-year-old former clerical worker after analysing security camera footage from buildings in the area…

The Public Eye (TW3 #450)

Nick Clegg today backed Liberal Democrat MPs who are opposing a ban on a list of erotic acts being shown in porn because they have been judged “harmful”.  Three days after a face-sitting protest outside Parliament against new curbs on what can be shown in internet video porn, the Deputy Prime Minister said…the state should not invade the privacy of people’s bedrooms…

A Year Later

The headline makes it sound like “heavily regulated” rhetoric, but what they’re actually calling for is decriminalization:

The Canadian Public Health Association is calling on the government to regulate the sex industry…under existing occupational health and safety regulations…The testimony [leading up to the new law] laid bare a bitter divide…over whether prostitutes are victims or whether they are making a free and valid career choice.  The government considers prostitution a crime against women, and [pretends it can be] stamped out entirely…

That bit about a “bitter divide” is more prohibitionist nonsense; virtually no actual sex workers support client criminalization, and the ones who claim to are a tiny minority of ex-whores paid by prohibitionists to be human sock puppets.

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This essay first appeared in Cliterati on December 14th; I have modified it slightly for time references and to fit the format of this blog.

Canadian Supreme CourtA year ago tomorrow, the Supreme Court of Canada decriminalized prostitution in every part of the country with its ruling in Bedford vs. Canada, which struck down the criminal laws (very similar to those in the UK) which attempted to “control” and “discourage” the sale of sex by making it more difficult and dangerous.  Unfortunately, though the judges ruled the only way they could ethically rule under the circumstances, they still allowed themselves to be swayed by prudishness and deference to busybody ideas about government control of the personal lives of individuals:  they voluntarily stayed their own decision for one year to give the government time to cobble together some new, equally-indefensible, equally-vile law to replace those the court was striking down.  There’s little doubt that the resulting hot mess, The Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act (or if you prefer something a bit less Orwellian, Bill C36), is merely a ridiculous rephrase of the rejected laws, combined with new, even more oppressive statutes, with the whole smothered in popular tinned Swedish sauce.  The government knows the law will never stand constitutional muster, and has known from the beginning; it simply didn’t care. The sole purpose of C36 was to delay the issue and “send a message”; even though it will certainly be struck down, that may take years, and the Conservatives will be out of power by then. In other words, they know they’ve lost and have now switched to a “long game” strategy, minimizing the political fallout by trying to ensure that the hot prostitution potato is in some other party’s lap next time the Supreme Court stops the music.  But Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne may have derailed that plan:

Just one day after a new and controversial federal prostitution law came into effect, the premier of Ontario is calling on her attorney general to look at the “constitutional validity” of the law…Kathleen Wynne said she is gravely concerned the new law will not protect sex workers or communities.  Wynne has asked Attorney General Madeleine Meilleur to advise her on the options available to the province, should it be found that the legislation’s constitutionality is in question…Wynne’s comments come as more than 60 organizations, including the Canadian AIDS Society and John Howard Society, demand the new laws be scrapped.  Now Magazine, an alternative publication in Toronto, has also said it will defy the new law, and continue to run advertisements by sex workers…Supporters of the new rules [pretend] the law will help reduce demand for prostitution…

Chronicle Herald editorial cartoon 7-9-14 by Bruce McKinnonBut even police state functionaries know that it will do no such thing; one cop interviewed in the Edmonton Sun said, “At best, it’ll be useless…at worst, it will make things worse than the old law.”  Politicians like Joy Smith are either entirely dishonest or entirely delusional when they call for the censorship and suppression of those who reveal the facts about prohibition and debunk prohibitionists’ propaganda and outright lies; fortunately, however, they are in the minority.  Most of the Canadian media and academia, and a large fraction of the population, understand that threatening people with violence and caging for consensual behavior is an abomination, and it’s inevitable that laws that enable such tyranny eventually go the same way as laws criminalizing BDSM, homosexuality, masturbation and other private sexual behaviors in which the government has no legitimate interest.

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