Against Their Will

Posts Tagged ‘Against Their Will’

That Was the Week That Was (#33)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Q & A, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged A Moral Cancer, A Tale That Grew in the Telling, adolescence, Africa, Against Their Will, agency denial, An Enormous Big Nothing, archeofeminism, Australia, bad customers, Blackball, California, Cambodia, Childish Things, comics, Convenient & Inconvenient Victims, cops, Damned If You Don't, dating, drugs, East Asia, FBI, hysteria, India, Legalization a Good Idea?, Madonna/whore, Nevada, New York, oral sex, Presents, prohibitionist myths, rescue industry, sex work is work, Shifting the Blame, sisterhood, stereotypes, streetwalkers, They Still Don't Get It, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers, Zimbabwe on August 18, 2012| 11 Comments »

The truth is always easy to write. – Chi Mgbako

Damned If You Don’t

Because “prostitution” is defined purely by a motive, charges depend solely on the statements of cops and are often directed against any convenient victim:

…Guillermo Cuadra says…an apparent prostitute asked him, “Do you want a fuck?” as he was stopped at a traffic light [in Miami. He said “no” but she signaled another cop anyway]…and…Cuadra…was…ordered into a motel parking lot where…cops pulled him out of the car, pushed his face into gravel, stepped on him and handcuffed him, then…[broke his] left upper arm, [tore] his shoulder ligament and [caused] nerve damage to his elbow and hand…[when] Cuadra [complained about his arm one of them]…responded, “Fuck you…” Though he had just $3 in cash on him…the city falsely charged him with “solicitation of prostitution, allegedly offering the undercover police officer $60″…

The charges were later dropped, and Cuadra is suing. If you’re wondering why the cops were so stupid as to claim he offered $60 when he only had $3, it’s because “police reports” are just boilerplate, with the details written long before the actual “sting”. See also “Zimbabwe” below.

Updates

An Enormous Big Nothing

Reader Casey Nelson shared this story of his own experience as the target of “sex trafficking” hysteria:

…I’m 50+ years old, white, a businessman and have lived in Cambodia for more than 18 years. I’m married to an Asian woman…and have two beautiful children – a 9 year old girl and 7 year old boy…though they are not distinctly Asian, they are darker than me and not 100% European in appearance…[one Sunday while on an outing] I noticed a woman…taking photos…She held up her camera, pointed at it and said…“Photo you, internet, you pedo…for police,” in a distinctly Italian accent. I said something like “These are my children.” She just shook her head and started to raise her camera again. I said, “You want police?…I’ll call police”…her mind [was] probably…twisted by the constant stream of sensational, repetitive and often wildly-overstated stories of western pedophiles and abused children in Cambodia. And not only by the western press but by NGOs that profit from it and feed the beast with exaggerated stats and a constant stream of rehashed horrors stories that keep the funds flowing…I figure that when my photo turns up on some Italian website as another pedophile operating…in Cambodia, it will also include a story of my powerful police connections that were on their way to protect me and how she had to flee for her life…

There’s a lot more; I urge you to read it in its entirety as yet another example of the fallout from moral panics.

Convenient and Inconvenient Victims

An excellent essay on victimhood from law professor Chi Mgbako:

When many people think of typical victims of human rights abuse, they often conjure up stereotypical images of passive and powerless people…waiting to be saved. The biases underlying these notions can lead some human rights advocates to favor “perfect victims” in advocacy and publicity campaigns, and…to disregard injustices faced by other marginalized individuals who may inspire more ambivalent and complicated responses from the public. The privileging of “perfect victimhood” is misguided because all people have human rights regardless of subjective determinations of “worthiness”…the danger of the…construct is illustrated by two examples: Anti-prostitution advocates who privilege abuses experienced by victims of trafficking over violence faced by those voluntarily involved in adult sex work; and society’s failure to view economically disenfranchised black men as victims of the devastating ‘war on drugs’…

For another excellent essay on human rights being independent of “worthiness”, consult Ken White’s “Deserve’s Got Nothing To Do With It”.

A Moral Cancer

The adult obsession with adolescent oral sex isn’t at all creepy or perverse: “The popular notion that teenagers …are experimenting with oral sex en masse is being challenged by new data…[which shows they’re] about as likely to engage in oral sex before intercourse as they are to have intercourse first…”

May Q & A

Another view of the issues that can arise when a whore falls in love and tries to give up harlotry in order to be faithful to her man, courtesy of Cathryn Berarovich writing in The Gloss.

Against Their Will

As many as 45 sex workers…[escaped from a social institution in Jakarta and]…are currently being pursued by the police…30 [visitors] …were turned away at the entrance gate by 3 guards because it was not visiting hours yet…[then broke in and] urged the inhabitants to escape with them…one of the [intruders]…who was suspected [of being] the sex workers’ pimp was arrested…those social institution inhabitants would undergo guidance in terms of social, mental, physical, and other skills…

Obviously, they were forced to escape by the “pimp”; clearly they couldn’t have wanted to ~~flee a brainwashing attempt~~ be trafficked away from their rescuers of their own free will.

Blackball

I’ve explained how escort services blackball bad customers, and now the UK is introducing a nationwide plan to do the same. But Douglas Fox of Harlot’s Parlour has some reservations:

…Although in this “article” it is claimed that local sex work projects have operated ugly mug schemes for twenty years, real sex workers…have operated them for as long as there have been sex workers…in theory [the plan] should work nationally…however…[it] relies on local [outreach] projects…who…work only with…street workers…[and] have little or no contact with the vast majority of sex workers…The scheme also relies heavily upon the co operation of the police. Sex workers do not trust the police, with very good reason…Although the new…scheme promises that sex workers can report crimes anonymously through their local project, the real advancement would be if sex workers were able to report crimes against them…directly, with out fear of arrest or harassment. One is tempted to suggest that the first ugly mug listed…should be the police themselves…

Presents, Presents, Presents!

Thanks so very much to Chester Brown for sending me a copy of his graphic memoir Paying For It. And as if the gift itself were not cool enough, he autographed it AND drew a cartoon just for me on the title page! I’ll tell you about the book in an upcoming column, probably around mid-September.

They Still Don’t Get It

Another stenographer who fancies herself a journalist presents yet another collection of prohibitionist myths vomited out by cops. This one’s especially fascinating in a train-wreck sort of way:

…21 suspected prostitutes [were] arrested during a two-day sting by the regional Street Enforcement Team…Federal grant money was used [because]…the focus was finding underage prostitutes and their pimps. None were found…prostitution activity in the community …is a mix of local women desperate for money…and an emerging trend of younger Northern California women who work for pimps and target Reno, especially during special events…“Before, it would be older, local women just trying to get a motel room and a rock to smoke,” said [Sgt. Ron] Chalmers…“Now they are younger, from Sacramento being run by their pimps. We are trying to help these women, and provide victim services,” he said…

This one has it all: the “gypsy whores” myth, conflation of escorting and streetwalking, internet demonization, “trafficking” mythology, agency denial, a demonstration of the flaws of legalization (the stings were in Reno, Nevada, not far from legal brothels), illegal diversion of federal funds, whore as addict, victim and nuisance all at once, “rescue” as an excuse for criminalization and even Maslow’s Hammer!

Zimbabwe

Here’s a hint, ladies: if you want this to stop, you need to campaign for decriminalization because whores look just like other women:

Hundreds of Zimbabwean women are protesting in Harare against a spree of arbitrary arrests by local police…[who] are detaining any women they see out after dark for soliciting…police said they have only been arresting commercial sex workers. Human rights groups, however, claimed hundreds of women have been arrested every week…Inspector Sabau said the crackdown…would continue as long the constitution prohibits prostitution…

Childish Things

Dr. Paul Maginn of the University of Western Australia says it’s time for people to get over their childish attitudes toward sex work:

…the stereotypical image of a sex worker…is a woman forced to work on darkened streets…to feed her drug habit and pay her pimp…[but] the world of sex work is much more complex…Some work…out of economic necessity. But don’t we all work to pay the bills? Some people are coerced or part of forced trafficking. However…research suggests the proportion of these…is very low…Yet we tend to let our minds be overtaken by…those who seek to initiate moral panics about sex work…and other forms of so-called ‘abnormal’ sexual practices, such as homosexuality …Effective policy is based on hard evidence, not media stereotypes or moralistic posturing by politicians or religious groups…

Metaupdates

A Tale That Grew in the Telling in October Updates (Part Three)

This article on a Brooklyn “john school” is like many others CNN has published since it turned completely yellow, but it’s interesting in three respects: first, that the title calls it a “trafficking class”; second, that it states ordinary men cannot tell adult women from prepubescent children; and third, that they’ve once again lowered the “average age of entry”:

…Rhonnie Jaus, the chief of the Sex Crimes Bureau, said the class attempts to sensitize and educate the men on the dangers of prostitution to both the John and the prostitute. “You think you’re having sex with an adult, and it…could be…a trafficked child brought from China…” [Assistant DA Grace] Brainard emphasized that most girls enter prostitution between the ages of 11 and 14…

If the average prostitute starts at 12.5, that means there are two girls out there who started at age two to balance my entry at 33. Clearly, basic arithmetic is not a requirement for a government position in Brooklyn.

Shifting the Blame in TW3 (#12)

Has anyone else noticed how the search for the Long Island Killer ground to a halt as soon as they recognized he was probably a cop?

…There are arguably lots of reasons why Suffolk County investigators have had a difficult time tracking down the so-called Long Island Serial Killer (or killers, there is much debate) including the condition and age of the bodies…and the difficulty of getting sex workers and their johns to work with active investigations. But the Post today argues that at least part of the blame can be placed on the local PD not wanting to give up any PR glory to the Feds: “Despite repeated signals by the agency that it was ready and eager to deploy units, Suffolk brass have ignored the FBI in an effort to retain control of the high-profile case”…

Chimeric phrase of the week: “sex workers and their johns.” Kind of like “African-Americans and honkies.”

For Those Who Think Legalization is a Good Idea in TW3 (#29)

Indian sex workers again demonstrate their awesomeness:

The Board of All India Network of Sex Workers has taken exception to an affidavit filed by Ministry of Women and Child Development… “Sex workers expressed strong reaction about the affidavit filed by the Ministry of WCD before the Supreme Court that sex workers are devoid of dignity and that all sex workers should be rehabilitated by all means,” AINSW said in a statement…”Human dignity cannot be robbed by the state based on occupation, caste, creed or economics”…

This Week in 2011

“Blackball” (noted above) was followed by an example of prohibitionist cockroaches fleeing from light, a survey of my “Top Ten” columns at that time, a two-part examination of whores who think they aren’t and short articles on anti-streetwalker laws, diseased amateurs, selective partisan blindness, and a small sex worker victory against Google, plus cops harassing strippers while ignoring serial killers, the absence of “trafficking” in New Zealand and ignorant sexologists.

This Week in 2010

My first Friday the 13^th, film review and miscellanea columns, escort service callers and client behaviors that drove me up the wall, “The Clipboard Effect” and “The Empress Theodora”.

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That Was the Week That Was (#29)

Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged abortion, Africa, Against Their Will, All Shapes and Sizes, An Ounce of Prevention, Australia, Birth of a Movement, Bone of Contention, brothels, censorship, cops, dirty, disease, East Asia, Europe, fantasy, Feminine Pragmatism, First They Came for the Hookers, France, gangs, genitalia, hysteria, India, Indonesia, internet, Iowa, law, Legalization a Good Idea?, Lying Down With Dogs, Much Ado About Nothing, Neither Addiction nor Epidemic, neofeminism, New Zealand, Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs, pimps, porn, prisons, psychology, rape, rescue industry, robots, Singapore, Sisters In Arms, stereotypes, streetwalkers, stripping, Swedish model, Thailand, The Camel's Nose, The Course of a Disease, The Pygmalion Fallacy, Traffic Jam, transgender, TSA, underage, vaccines, video, yin and yang on July 21, 2012| 31 Comments »

Those who would criminalise prostitutes seem oddly keen to eliminate true voices of experience from the discussion. – Brooke Magnanti

All Shapes and Sizes

Res ipsa loquitur:

…Jonah Falcon was stopped…by the TSA at the San Francisco International Airport…because of a bulging package hidden in his pants…the world’s largest recorded penis…[which is] 9 inches flaccid, 13.5 inches erect…”[A] guard…asked me if I had some sort of growth…I said, ‘It’s my dick’…He gave me a pat down but made sure to go around [my penis] with his hands. They even put some powder on my pants, probably a test for explosives”…

The Camel’s Nose

Congress’ new strategy is to enact SOPA piece by piece so it doesn’t attract so much attention; though the Intellectual Property Attaché Act is mostly cultural imperialism like the “Trafficking in Persons Report”, it also creates yet another unelected “czar” with dictatorial powers. Luckily, a group called the Internet Defense League (whose members include Public Knowledge, Reddit, Mozilla and the Electronic Frontier Foundation) was launched on July 19^th; its purpose is to monitor threats to internet freedom and then spread the word and organize mass resistance (like the protests that stopped SOPA) whenever necessary.

Lying Down With Dogs

It’s always interesting to see how closely American anti-whore rhetoric resembles that of nations which are not exactly advanced or Western:

Lusaka Province Minister Gerry Chanda [rejected] calls by some members of the public to legalise prostitution…[because it] is illegal…cannot be tolerated…[and] is alien to Zambia…Inspector-General of Police Stella Libongani described sex workers as a “public nuisance” and warned them with arrest if found loitering on the streets…

Bone of Contention

So, aren’t vandalism and indecent exposure already illegal for everyone without a special law just for whores?

More than 40 [street sign] poles have been bent, buckled or broken in the past 18 months in one area of south Auckland, New Zealand… “Prostitutes use these street sign poles as dancing poles,” said [a member of the city council. The claim appears in a pamphlet]…detailing frustrations of residents and businesses struggling to cope with [streetwalkers and calling]…on parliament…to give Auckland Council powers to ban sex workers from certain areas…other…incidents [include]…a transvestite [ramming] a supermarket trolley into a woman’s car before lying across the bonnet, and a school-bus full of children observing a transvestite changing her dress…

Sisters in Arms

Considering America’s grotesque inflation of penalties for every conceivable “crime”, what will happen if abortion is eventually recriminalized?

…38 states have passed laws that create a crime for causing the death of a fetus…23 of which apply at the earliest stages of pregnancy. What we have now is a what Professor Angela Davis calls a “prison industrial complex”: a system of for-profit prisons so hungry for more inmates that it drives immigration policy, and pays off judges to fill jail cells with children…[and] so bloated that rural economies have become dependent upon the influx of inmates…since the 1970s, the rate of incarceration for women has increased over 700%. We have lawmakers admit that they believe that women should face “serious” criminal penalties for having abortions. We have so dismantled the right to privacy that state-mandated technological surveillance can literally invade women’s bodies. We have Kafkaesque bedside interrogations and arrests of women who fall down stairs when they admit ambivalence about…single motherhood…two women…are [now] facing murder trials for losing pregnancies…Bei Bei Shuai…[and] Rennie Gibbs…

Against Their Will

A new report by two Indian authors has poked holes into the “raid, rescue, and rehabilitation” schemes…targeting sex workers. The report, titled We Have the Right Not To Be “Rescued”…says, “Contrary to the purported goal of assisting women, the anti-trafficking projects…often undermine HIV projects…causing harm to women and girls.” The report alleges that [police raids on] brothels…are often violent. Cases of sexual assault and rape and sodomy have also been reported during such actions…Research from Indonesia and India has indicated that sex workers who are rounded up during police raids are beaten, coerced into having sex [and]…placed in institutions where they are sexually exploited or physically abused. The raids also drive sex workers onto the streets, where they are more vulnerable to violence…

An Ounce of Prevention

It looks as though an AIDS vaccine is finally within reach:

…a 2009 clinical trial in Thailand…tested Sanofi’s ALVAC, a weakened canary pox virus used to sneak three HIV genes into the body, and AIDSVAX, a vaccine originally made by Roche Holding’s Genentech that carried an HIV surface protein. Both vaccines had poor showings in individual trials…[but] the…combination cut HIV infections by 31.2 per cent…Preparations are under way for a follow-up trial testing beefed-up versions of the vaccines among heterosexuals in South Africa and [homosexual] men…in Thailand…

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic

Dr. Marty Klein not only explodes the myth of “sex addiction”, but also explains why it’s such a destructive paradigm:

…“Sex addiction” is a special weapon now used…to ignore science…ignite fear [and]…legitimize anti-sex moralism and bigotry. And psychologists, judges, legislators, and the media are buying it…the sex addiction movement…did not arise from…sex therapy or any other sexuality-related field. Rather, it was started in 1983 by Patrick Carnes, who…claims no training in human sexuality. “Sex addiction” has been adopted enthusiastically by the addiction community, and to a lesser extent by the marriage and family profession—the latter historically undertrained and uncomfortable with sexuality…Of course, the media loves it, decency groups love it, and those who identify as some other kind of addict…love it, especially if they’re fans of the Twelve Steps…

If you still think some people are really “addicted” to sex, Dr. Klein suggests you take the Sexual Addiction Screening Test (SAST). You may be surprised how high you score, but you shouldn’t be; “sex addiction” rhetoric pathologizes normal sexual feelings and behaviors. As Dr. Klein points out, what the test really measures is whether you grew up in a sex-negative culture. The article is well worth reading in its entirety, especially for its debunking of inane claims about “brain areas” and “erototoxins”.

Much Ado About Nothing

I guess the media must be bored with hooker “scandals”, because this report of T-men paying for women with government funds didn’t make the news; we’re told they won’t even lose their jobs because the activity “didn’t include underage prostitutes or human trafficking.” You know, just like 96.5% of the sex work persecuted in this country doesn’t.

The Pygmalion Fallacy

Here’s a trailer for a new documentary named The Mechanical Bride, narrated by the legendary Julie Newmar.

The Birth of a Movement

In the process of critiquing a French miniseries about the maisons closes, Dr. Brooke Magnanti has some illuminating comments about the historical reality ignored by the creators of the melodrama:

…Prostitutes moved between brothels and changed names often to avoid detection…the notion that girls…could not, and did not, shop around for management is absurd…the drama is an uncomfortable union of modern agendas superimposed on a historical setting. Since it’s in the past, there are no inconvenient contemporary sex workers to show the complex reality of prostitution and spoil the abolitionist fantasy…

First They Came for the Hookers…

If prohibitionists really want to “rescue” sex workers, why do they keep trying to stop us from getting other jobs?

…Harmony Rose…has been featured in more than 200 pornographic videos…[but] has…left the adult entertainment industry…and [is] training as a volunteer EMT…in Roanoke, VA…Fire Chief Rich Burch learned about Rose’s previous career…[and] contacted the…County Attorney…[who] noted, “Anything that results in public ridicule of the volunteer squads…must be avoided”…[and] that Burch “supports the decision of the volunteer chief if she decides to terminate the membership of [Rose].” The community, however, seems to be on Rose’s side. Of the over 500 comments that appear under the story on WDBJ’s Facebook page, nearly all support Rose’s continued work with the rescue squad…

Metaupdates

For Those Who Think Legalization is a Good Idea in August Updates

As in Canada, Indian politicians feel compelled to defend tyranny by opposing court orders to decriminalize prostitution:

The Supreme Court…agreed to examine [the federal government’s] plea that sex workers should not be allowed to operate…”with dignity” as suggested by a panel…[the] solicitor general [argued]…that any such endorsement…would go contrary to the…Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act which bans prostitution in toto…He also wanted the bench to remove…Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee from the panel…[the defense argued] that the Act only prohibited brothel activities and…pimps…[and that] if a sex worker carries out the activities on her own volition, [they are] not…illegal…

Traffic Jam in TW3 (#21)

Emi Koyama examines the increasing redefinition of “sex trafficking” into a “gang-related” activity, including this ridiculous “pimp classification” system dreamed up by cops and prohibitionists. She persuasively argues that “What is ignored in all of these discussions of the (racially coded) evils of ‘gangs’ is that many young men…become gang members and engage in its criminal activities for many of the same reasons many young women…[enter] the sex trade: poverty, failure of social and child welfare systems and public education, lack of viable economic opportunities…what is the moral difference between a young woman who is told to go out and sell sex, and a young man who is told to go out and sell drugs? And yet, the mainstream anti-trafficking discourse would have us believe that the young woman is an innocent victim but the young man is an evil criminal…”

Feminine Pragmatism in TW3 (#23)

It’s like watching someone repeatedly hitting her own fingers with a hammer:

Nadya Suleman…allegedly signed a contract…[with] T’s Lounge…in West Palm Beach, Fla…But after some teasing by a T’s staffer on TV, Suleman bailed on the deal, and now plans to make her…debut at a rival strip club instead. That’s grounds for a lawsuit…[because] the…contract…barred Suleman from being booked at any other strip club within 50 miles, 90 days before or after her gigs at T’s…Suleman’s manager maintains the contract was not valid, because T’s never forked over…[the] deposit fee…

Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs in TW3 (#27)

First Guyana, now Singapore; let’s hope this list gets much longer: “The Singapore government has lashed out at the United States over its human trafficking report…[due to] a number of ‘inaccuracies and misrepresentations’…”

The Course of a Disease in TW3 (#28)

Sex workers aren’t the only ones angry over the French women’s minister’s prohibitionist crusade:

…How disappointing…that Vallaud-Belkacem’s most publicised policy announcement to date has been a pledge to “see prostitution disappear”…cynics would consider Vallaud-Belkacem’s grand plan a naive one, and typical of those that give radical governments a bad name. Working girls in Paris…accused her of trying to drive a relatively well regulated industry underground…[and] Muslims…[hoped for repeal of] the crassly tagged “burqa ban”…Rather than presiding over job losses for…women, Vallaud-Belkacem should be…working to try to improve the lot of all women…

This Week in 2011

“Head Games” describes the ways some clients try to control calls, and “July Miscellanea” featured items on a snooping gadget, another politician’s underwear photos, a woman getting plastic surgery to look like a drag queen & the suspension of the “anti-prostitution pledge” for domestic organizations. “A Girl Who Can’t Say No” explains why I invest so much time in my work; “Social Construction of Eunuchs” examines people willing to sacrifice their childrens’ happiness to “social construction of gender”; “Concubine” is a fictional interlude that you may find a bit disquieting; “Bootlickers” uses a campaign against bikini baristas to illustrate public collaboration with tyranny, and “J’accuse” was my first column on Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

This Week in 2010

“What’s In a Name?” explains the many reasons whores use stage names; it was followed by “Couples” (a two-part column about couple calls), then “Modern Marriage”, which examines the reason for the high divorce rate. “The Trick” was my very first fictional interlude, “The Myth of the Wanton” discusses the belief that women are more lustful than men, and “Just Drawn That Way” looks at the complex motivations behind female sexuality.

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That Was the Week That Was (#20)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Philosophy, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged Above the Law, Africa, Against Their Will, An Example to the West, Australia, Bad Fantasy-Good Reality, bisexuality, brothels, Canada, cops, dirty, disease, drugs, East Asia, end demand, End Demand (updates), ethics, Europe, Femme Fatale, Hard Numbers, harm reduction, hysteria, India, Ireland, Latin America, law, Law of the Instrument, Legal Is as Legal Does, Lying Down With Dogs, Madonna/whore, Malaysia, Middle East, Neither Addiction nor Epidemic, New York, pimps, Presents, psychology, rape, robots, sisterhood, stereotypes, streetwalkers, stripping, Texas, The Crumbling Dam, The Pygmalion Fallacy, Turkey, Uganda, underage, video, Vietnam, violence vs. sex workers on May 19, 2012| 24 Comments »

A fool is very dangerous when in power. – Denis Fonvizin

Two new items, twelve updates and one metaupdate.

End Demand

More Bizarro behavior from Zimbabwe:

A Zimbabwean politician has…[suggested] the spread of HIV can be curbed if women…deliberately make themselves…unattractive. Morgan Femai…said the measures were required because men were finding it difficult to resist well-dressed, attractive women…“…I propose…a law that compels women to have their heads clean-shaven…they should also not bathe because that is what has caused all these problems.” Senator Femai also appeared to suggest female circumcision would help stop the spread of disease…“Women have got more moisture in their organs as compared to men so there is need to research on how to deal with that…because it is conducive for bacteria breeding”…another…Senator, Sithembile Mlotshwa…recently suggested men be injected with drugs that reduce their libidos. She also called for prisoners to be given sex toys to satisfy their sexual desires.

You may laugh or cry, but are these suggestions really any more stupid than Western “end demand” rhetoric?

Femme Fatale

“…67 year old…Robert Gene got multiple lap dances during his time at the Red Parrot in El Paso, [but]…suffered from a heart attack, which the strippers failed to notice…employees tried to give Gene CPR but were unsuccessful in reviving him…”

Updates

Lying Down With Dogs (November 24^th, 2010)

Another example of the strong resemblance between anti-whore policies in the US and Uganda:

…police authorities in…Gulu…raided [a sex worker drop-in centre] and arrested two staff and three members of the Women’s Organization Network for Human Rights Advocacy (WONETHA)…This raid…appears to be part of a deliberate strategy by the Gulu Police to play tough…[it] is in direct violation of the rights of…human rights defenders at WONETHA…“they are accusing us of promoting prostitution…of sleeping with other women and recruiting girls into prostitution.” All five arrested advocates were finally charged with “Living off the earnings of prostitution,” an accusation that they vehemently denounce…

Compare with attacks against Backpage and other advertising venues for “facilitating prostitution”.

Law of the Instrument (August 26^th, 2011)

“It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail,” wrote Abraham Maslow; Wendy Lyon writes at length on how Irish authorities who desperately need “human trafficking” cases to justify their crackdowns are using the label for everything from undocumented immigration to attempted rape.

The Crumbling Dam (October 14^th, 2011)

Organized persecution of Canadian whores continues to crumble in the face of the recent court decisions; under the embattled law, even a landlord who knowingly rents an apartment to a hooker could be prosecuted for “brothel keeping”, but one Vancouver charity openly violates it anyway:

…Janice Abbott, CEO of the Atira Women’s Resource Society, said tenants of…housing complexes for low-income women are entitled to the same rights as any other renter…even if they are sex workers…when Atira opened Bridge Housing in 2001…there was no conscious decision to create a safe…space for women to do sex work…[but] Atira decided not to question the women’s guests… “They’re paying rent and it’s their home and they get to do everything all the rest of us take for granted in our homes, which is have guests come and go, among many other things”…

The article also mentions that “…the City of Vancouver has proposed a new…policy…indicating that consensual adult sex work is not an enforcement priority for the police and that their priority should be ensuring the safety of sex workers.” Apparently, Toronto feels the same way:

…The Toronto Police Service confirmed…the force has put “on hold”…sweeps in which female officers pose as street prostitutes to arrest men willing to pay for sex…spokesman Mark Pugash said…the decision…is based on the force’s reluctance to use “finite” resources to arrest people when so much “uncertainty” currently surrounds prostitution laws…[however] investigations into illegal massage parlours, brothels and escort agencies will carry on as usual…City Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti…[criticized] the policy…”When you’re sleeping with a prostitute, you’re probably sleeping with 150 guys at the same time”…

It’s good to see officials brushing aside politicians spouting the “dirty whore” myth to justify imposing their personal morals on others.

Bad Fantasy, Good Reality (October 27^th, 2011)

Another female academic dares to tell the truth about prostitution in East Asia:

Kimberly Hoang…won the American Sociological Association’s…award for her doctoral dissertation on sex work in Vietnam. The winning entry, New Economies of Sex and Intimacy in Vietnam, was based on 15 months of ethnographic research in Ho Chi Minh City, where Hoang worked as a bartender and hostess in four bars that catered to different groups of clients…Hoang’s research “highlights not just the structure and practices of sex work in Vietnam, but demonstrates how it serves as a vital form of currency in Vietnam’s political economy.” In her nominating letter, [sociology professor Raka] Ray called the dissertation “a stunning piece of work” by “an absolutely fearless and creative thinker,” adding that Hoang had done “the sort of fieldwork few others dare”…

Neither Addiction nor Epidemic (December 4^th, 2011)

Contrary to what you may have heard, the upcoming 5^th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) does not greatly increase the number of things labeled as “addictions”; in fact, it entirely eliminates the word “addiction”: “Instead, they are labeled ‘use disorders’…[because the] group thought the word…was less pejorative and stigmatizing.” I’m willing to bet it’s also to put a stop to pop psychologists’ labeling everything an “addiction”:

Despite substantial pressure…the…workgroup rejected proposals to recognize addictions to sex, food, the Internet, and caffeine…[workgroup chairman Charles O’Brien, MD] said…emphasis on scientific justification precluded listing them…”We looked at sex addiction, but there was no science at all. None.”

Another positive change is the replacement of DSM-IV’s false dichotomy of “drug abuse” and “drug dependence”:

…research conducted in recent decades pointed to substance-related problems as occurring on a continuum, such that the abuse-dependence distinction was purely arbitrary…[a new] requirement [is] that the patient…demonstrate craving for the particular substance…[which is] the key symptom that separates addiction from mere heavy use…

Legal Is as Legal Does (December 14^th, 2011)

Here’s a generally objective article on prostitution in Turkey which demonstrates the problems of legalization. The country has licensed brothels since the late days of the Ottoman Empire, but it will surprise none of my readers to hear that 97% of Turkish harlots prefer to work illegally than to be registered and subjugated to politically-connected brothel owners who keep their employees in conditions virtually indistinguishable from slavery. This government-approved abuse is now being used by Islamist politicians to justify closing all brothels and forcing the girls onto the street, thus establishing the state as their pimp by setting them up for fine-garnering police “crackdowns”.

Presents, Presents, Presents! (December 29^th, 2012)

This week, Rob Arthur sent me a copy of his book You Will Die, and a reader who prefers to remain anonymous sent me a DVD of The Wicker Tree, writer/director Robin Hardy’s “re-imagining” of his classic, The Wicker Man. My sincere thanks to both of you for thinking of me!

Above the Law (March 8^th, 2012)

The police have always used sexual assault as a weapon of oppression, but in the US the tactic was generally reserved for sex workers; however, as police brutality and immunity from prosecution have increased, amateurs have been on the receiving end as well. Female Occupy protesters are now reporting being repeatedly groped by cops:

…No doubt it’s partly…to brutalize those you think are weak, and more easily traumatized. But another reason is, almost certainly, the hope of provoking violent reactions on the part of male protestors…Soldiers who oppose allowing a combat role for women almost invariably say they do so not because they are afraid women would not behave effectively in battle, but because they are afraid men would…become so obsessed with the possibility of women in their unit being captured and sexually assaulted that they would behave irrationally. If the police were trying to provoke a violent reaction on the part of studiously non-violent protestors, as a way of justifying even greater brutality and felony charges, this would clearly be the most effective means of doing so…

An Example to the West (April 3^rd, 2012)

In the US, “feminists” encourage police to persecute sex workers; in India such behavior provokes protest marches:

Women’s groups and progressive organisations in India are shocked that Ms. Anu Mokal, a pregnant sex worker in Satara, was beaten up by police inspector Dayanand Dhome on April 2, along with her friend Ms. Anjana Ghadge. Three days later, on 5^th April, she suffered a miscarriage…[the women] were bringing dinner for their friend…in the…hospital…[when] Dhome accused them of soliciting and when they refuted it abused them and called them liars. Dhome and his subordinates started beating…[and kicking] them and said that women like Anu are a ‘shame’. Her pleas that she was four months pregnant fell on deaf ears…Women’s organisations are outraged that…no action has been taken against the policemen…Anu…feels that the [incident is]…not taken seriously because she is a sex worker. In fact, the police had the audacity to tell these women that sex workers cannot be mothers…

Hard Numbers (April 20^th, 2012)

While Western Australia continues its self-destructive drive toward the Swedish Model, South Australian politicians apparently comprehend the concept of “evidence” and are moving toward decriminalization:

…Status of Women Minister Gail Gago and former minister Steph Key [spoke about]…Bills aimed at decriminalising prostitution. Ms Key aims to introduce her Bill…on May 31 – the eve of International Whores’ Day…It would decriminalise all forms of prostitution…but retain soliciting as an offence where it occurred in the presence of other people…Minors would be banned from sex work and there would also be provisions making it an offence to practise unsafe sex…Ms Key believes there is growing support for the move…

The Pygmalion Fallacy
(May 6^th, 2012)

It’s good to see that at least one tech writer has his eyes partially open on the subject of sexbots; though this article by Sebastian Anthony still buys “sex trafficking” myth, it at least understands that any gynoid real enough to please a normal man (as opposed to one with a robot fetish) is also real enough to be considered a sentient being with rights.

Mother’s Day (May 13^th, 2012)

After a journalist made shockingly clueless statements about the Secret Service prostitution scandal, Christopher Ryan (co-author of Sex At Dawn) published a reaction which echoes many of the same points I made in this column:

NPR’s Scott Simon…suggests that the real scandal may be the original decision to hold the Summit…in Cartagena…”Why were world leaders meeting in a place with legalized prostitution?”…there are a host of very ugly realities often associated with prostitution…But all these things are mitigated by legalization, and Simon wasn’t suggesting the meeting shouldn’t have been held in a place where prostitution exists, but in a place where it’s legal…Simon asks, “Would you want someone you love to live that way?” No, probably not. But…I wouldn’t want someone I love working in a steel mill or a coal mine, either…nor…sent off to distant deserts…in defense of jingoistic abstractions…But nobody’s proposing that we make industry [or] the military…illegal…we gain nothing from legally prohibiting the expression of human nature, and what we lose is…the opportunity to…mitigate the damage…If someone you love chose to work as a prostitute, would you rather she had legal and medical protection, or would you prefer she be forced into the shadows…That’s the question we need to be asking.

Metaupdates

Against Their Will in August Updates (Part Two) (August 4^th, 2011)

Add Malaysia to the list of countries the US State Department encourages to violently persecute whores: “In 2008 the US…gave Malaysia the lowest rating in its annual Trafficking In Persons Report…Now nearly all brothels…have been shut. Sex workers are forced to work in dangerous and difficult conditions on streets throughout the capital. For its violent efforts to suppress the sex industry the US Government raised Malaysia to tier 2 level in its 2009 TIP report.”

One Year Ago Today

“A Procrustean Bed” explains how a new Massachusetts law defines women as helpless infants and men as international gangsters.

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That Was the Week That Was (#3)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged A Moral Cancer, Against Their Will, brothels, California, Canada, censorship, condoms, crypto-moralism, dirty, disease, genitalia, harm reduction, hysteria, India, law, libraries, Madonna/whore, neofeminism, New York, porn, psychology, rescue industry, restaurants, Sex Lies and Busybodies, So What Else Is New?, stereotypes, stripping, violence vs. sex workers, welcome to our world on February 11, 2012| 25 Comments »

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. – Charlotte Bronte

Five stories from the third week of 2012.

Twice As Interesting

It’s not too often a story attracts my attention both as a librarian and as a harlot, but this one from the January 18^th National Post did:

Instead of a book, patrons of Ottawa’s city libraries will have a chance to check out a stripper, a prostitute, a Somali refugee, a judge, an HIV-positive man, a Peking Opera performer, a woman born as a man, a police officer…a bipolar man [and many others] as part of a Human Library program. Billed as “real people, real conversations,” the Ottawa Public Library is bringing dozens of people with diverse experiences into its branches, encouraging patrons to check them out for a 20-minute, one-on-one chat…Human books cannot be placed on hold…Patrons peruse the list of options like an old-fashioned card catalogue and ask to check out the title. While the event’s message is diversity and dialogue, there have already been complaints about including a stripper and a sex trade worker, said Elaine Condos, the acting city librarian… “Books are about information and information comes in many, many formats, and a human book is a unique way of presenting information…The role of the public library is to provide access to information,” Ms. Condos said. “People will have an opportunity to have a one-on-one conversation…for 20 minutes and ask them questions about their experiences.” It is being billed as an event for adults and conversations will take place in open areas of the libraries. “These are conversations, not presentations,” she said of the stripper and prostitute. “I don’t think we want the pediatric neurosurgeon to do any demonstrations either”…

It’s sad that bigots felt compelled to complain, but can you imagine a stripper and a hooker being included in such an event in the US? Not in this decade!

So What Else Is New?

This item from the January 19^th Huffington Post isn’t really news because it’s what researchers have said for years:

Many women swear they have one, but a new review of 60 years of sex research shows science still can’t definitively find the G-spot. Researchers have used surveys, imaging scans and biopsies of women, all trying to locate and define the presumably orgasmic area on the vaginal wall known as the G-spot. Based on a review of 96 published studies, an Israeli and American research team came to one conclusion. “Without a doubt, a discreet anatomic entity called the G-spot does not exist,” said [lead author] Dr. Amichai Kilchevsky …The G-spot was named in honor of the late Dr. Ernst Gräfenberg, who in 1950 described a particularly sensitive…spot…a few centimeters in from the vaginal opening…toward the front of a woman’s body…[but though] a majority of women believe a G-spot actually exists…some of those women also say they can’t locate it.

…Kilchevsky doesn’t think women who claim to have a G-spot are crazy…”What they’re likely experiencing is a continuation of the clitoris,” he said. G-spot skeptics often point out that the tissue of the clitoris extends into the body, behind it where the G-spot would be located…Barry Komisaruk…of…Rutgers University…advocates calling it the…G-region…instead. “I think that the bulk of the evidence shows that the G-spot is not a particular thing. It’s not like saying, ‘What is the thyroid gland?'” Komisaruk said. “The G-spot is more of a thing like New York City is a thing. It’s a region, it’s a convergence of many different structures”…pressing on the area…also presses the urethra and a structure called Skene’s gland, which is analogous to the male prostate. “Each of those areas have different nerve sites,” said Komisaruk. “I think there’s good enough data that a lot of women feel that that is a particularly sensitive region”…

I’ve always adhered to the “back of the clitoris” theory myself, mainly because it’s consistent with my own experiences.

Update to “A Moral Cancer” (March 6^th, 2011)

Crypto-moralists just love pretending that their puritanical agendas are really about physical (rather than spiritual) health, and always disguise their desire to control others’ lives as “for the public good”:

…The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine…put up [a series of] graphic cellulite-filled billboards around Albany [New York on January 17^th]…The group claims cheese products play a big role in the epidemic of childhood obesity, and want the Albany city school district to cut cheese from its lunch menu…

Well, if they’re doctors promoting health, they must know what they’re talking about, right? Wrong. Their name and hype has fooled the media for 25 years, but in reality they’re a fanatical animal-rights group with ties to PETA which relies primarily on scare tactics and gross-out ads in its continuing attempt to impose veganism on everyone, and less than 5% of its members are physicians. Its founder is a psychiatrist with no background in nutrition, and the American Medical Association has repeatedly tried to inform the public that the PCRM is a “fringe organization” which uses “unethical tactics” and is “interested in perverting medical science.” Sort of reminds you of trafficking fetishists, doesn’t it?

Update To “Against Their Will” (July 23^rd, 2011)

Prostitutes “rescued” against their will generally fight their “saviors” and attempt to escape from “rehabilitation centers” at the first opportunity, but at least one “rescue” organization has figured out how to get around this issue: they simply abduct the women’s children instead.

“How many nights of safety can you give a child?” is India Partners’ tagline for its campaign to rescue children of sex workers in India. More than 2.3 million girls and women in India are believed to be working in the sex industry against their will. In addition, there are at least 5 million children of sex workers in India. India Partners is working with an organization in Mumbai to rescue the children of trafficked women and relocate them to loving safe homes outside the red-light districts.

Children in red-light areas are vulnerable to abuse, trauma and second-generation prostitution. During the day, children are often left alone while their mothers are sleeping. At night, some are drugged and put under the bed while their mothers work the trade. Anandalay, a safe home for daughters of trafficked women, provides the rescued girls with education, food and excellent accommodation under the committed care of a houseparent couple. If the child’s mother is still living, she is granted supervised visits.

One couldn’t ask for a finer example of doublethink; we are told that these women are “trafficked” and working “against their will”, and that the solution is to further victimize them by stealing their children. The brainwashed supporters of this filthy scheme are assured that the children are “loved” by their jailers, because obviously those degraded whores (oops, I mean “exploited victims”) can’t possibly have any maternal feelings. But hey, India Partners isn’t completely inhumane; they magnanimously allow their victims to occasionally stare at their kidnapped babies under the watchful gaze of armed thugs.

Update to “Sex, Lies and Busybodies” (January 27^th, 2012)

From a January 18^th AP release:

Some of the most prominent purveyors of porn say they’ll start packing up their sex toys and abandoning the nation’s Porn Capital if authorities really do…police their movie sets and order that every actor be outfitted with a condom…[on January 17^th] the Los Angeles City Council voted 9-1 to grant final approval to an ordinance that would deny film permits to producers who do not comply with the condom requirement…the council has called for the creation of a committee made up of police officials, the city attorney, state health officials and others to determine how it might be enforced. “It’s going to be interesting to see how…they…try to enforce it…[and] fund it…” said Steven Hirsch…of…Vivid…”Ultimately I think what they will find is people will just stop shooting in the city of Los Angeles…”

…Other industry officials condemned the measure as an unneeded [and unenforceable] exercise in political correctness…”The only thing that the city could potentially achieve is losing some film permit money and driving some productions away, but you can’t actually compel an industry to create a product that the market doesn’t want,” said Christian Mann…of Evil Angel…The ordinance would require filmmakers pay a permit fee…to pay for surprise inspections at film shoots…Mann said smaller productions involving only a handful of people can probably fly under the radar and just ignore the permitting requirement. Larger ones, he said, will likely just leave town…

Raise hands, anyone who didn’t see this coming. The porn industry has no choice; in order to survive it has to produce a product consumers want, and if it can’t do that in Los Angeles it will do it elsewhere.

One Year Ago Today

“Not an Addiction” explains what an addiction actually is, why it’s impossible to be addicted to sex and how the myth of “sex addiction” is used to promote moralist agendas (and dating websites).

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October Updates (Part Three)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged A Tale That Grew in the Telling, Against Their Will, archeofeminism, bogus studies, brothels, California, censorship, condoms, cops, dirty, disease, drugs, East Asia, ethics, Give It a Rest, Hollywood, hysteria, Korea, law, neofeminism, pimps, porn, prohibitionist myths, psychology, sisterhood, stage names, stripping, To Spite Their Faces, Tyranny by Consensus, underage, United Kingdom on October 4, 2011| 10 Comments »

The trouble with this country is that there are too many politicians who believe, with a conviction based on experience, that you can fool all of the people all of the time. – Franklin Pierce Adams

The last part of our monthly roundup of short news stories that remind me of past columns.

A Tale That Grew in the Telling (April 2^nd, 2011)

Like children playing a game of “Chinese Whispers”, fanatics repeat statistics that were weak or bogus to begin with, warping them into more and more fantastic shapes with each iteration. The Estes & Weiner study used very questionable methodology to state that “100,000-300,000 American children and youth are at risk of sexual exploitation” based on such perilous circumstances as having their own cars or living near the Canadian or Mexican borders. “Youth” was undefined, but included people old enough to work legally in bars or strip clubs, so I’m guessing they meant the 18-20 range. The authors also included statistics which showed that the average underage prostitute enters the trade at 16, then in their text erroneously stated the average as 12-14, absurdly contradicting their own data!

These shaky statistics were then distorted again and again; “at risk” became “currently involved in”, “sexual exploitation” became “sex trafficking”, “children and youth” became “children”, and the wildly erroneous underage prostitution guess was added to the mixture to produce the often-heard myth that “100,000-300,000 children are trafficked for sex in the United States, and the average age at which they enter prostitution is 12-14”. But it didn’t stop there; oh, no! Soon “each year” was added, and the idea that child prostitutes started at 12-14 was replaced by the idea that the average “child sex slave” is currently 12-14. By March the fanatics were stating that “100,000 – 300,000 children between the ages of 12 and 14 years old are victims of the child sex trade in this country”, and now it’s taken another step; this absurd article (which was called to my attention by regular reader Iain D) claims that there are 27 million people “trapped in modern-day slavery” (for comparison, that’s 5 million more than the entire population of Australia and almost half that of the UK) and that “The average age of sex workers is a saddening 12-14 years old.” Shades of Melissa Farley! Actually, I’m glad their declarations are growing so outrageous; not only is it a fascinating sociological study, it also accelerates the day when the whole house of cards comes crashing down. Already, “human trafficking” researchers themselves are talking about a “credibility gap” in even official government “human trafficking” figures, so it’s only a matter of time before this hysteria goes the way of the “Satanic Panic”.

August Updates, Part Two (August 4^th, 2011)

In this update to the earlier “Against Their Will” I reported South Korean whores’ massive protests against the persecution inflicted on them to satisfy American state department propaganda. Here’s a short item published in Huffington Post on September 22^nd, which features eight pictures of a recent protest by 1600 workers; note the odd inclusion of the pejorative “pimp” (presumably used to mean “brothel owner”) as I pointed out in the previous article.

Give It a Rest (August 18^th, 2011)

The organized crime rackets which do business as “the police” in Texas continue their campaign of terror against scantily dressed women; this time, forty cops in Edinburgh, Texas literally committed armed robbery of a strip club (as reported in The Monitor on September 12^th):

About 40 police officers descended on [Jaguars Gold Club]…looking for drugs…[they] did not find any…but took about $1,500 in cash and another $8,000 worth of club “tokens”…Jaguars’ owners filed suit against the city Aug. 26, accusing it and [Police Chief Rolando] Castañeda of attempting to strong-arm the all-nude club out of business. They ask for monetary damages and for property seized by police to be returned.

For years, the club…sat outside the city limits. But as Edinburg expanded, it eventually annexed the property…[which now] violates several of the city’s development codes. But because it first existed in rural Hidalgo County, the establishment is grandfathered in and may continue to operate…Jaguars’ owners maintain its problems came “Once Castañeda assumed the position of the city’s police chief…unable to close down Jaguars on zoning grounds, he began a campaign to eradicate” the club…[It] began in late May, when three marked police units staked out the nude club for three nights…to intimidate potential customers…[then in] August…dozens of officers swarmed the club…zip-tied each person’s hands…and handcuffed Tony Hadaway, the club’s manager…Beyond taking the cash and club tokens, officers allegedly seized laptop and tablet computers, backpacks and one manager’s wallet. Hadaway asked officers to keep an inventory list of the seized items, which “they declined to do and have never done,” the lawsuit states. A second manager’s wallet was seized and never returned…

In other words, the city invaded and stole the land on which an established business already existed, and because it can’t force that business to abide by its arbitrary rules has simply decided to force it out of operation instead by frightening away its employees and clientele and robbing the owners blind. So much for the “rule of law”.

Tyranny By Consensus (September 1^st, 2011)

In this column I reported the latest attempt by Michael Weinstein and his “AIDS Healthcare Foundation” to force porn performers to use condoms whether they like it or not, even if such use would create more problems than it solved. Following that article regular reader Marla posted a very informative comment in which she called attention to this video called AHF: Follow the Money which reveals a few things Weinstein would prefer people didn’t know:

Michael Weinstein of AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) is a man with an agenda, and it’s got nothing to do with public health…Weinstein opposes government funding of research to cure AIDS; instead, [he] wants those billions of government dollars to be diverted toward treatment and prevention services, the kind that he and his organization provides. Michael Weinstein and AHF even sued Pfizer over Viagra, alleging it encouraged risky sexual behavior…after Pfizer turned down his multi-million dollar funding request…Weinstein is an opportunist who shamelessly exploits the misfortunes of others. When news hit that a single adult industry performer had tested positive for HIV, Weinstein revealed his plan to make the world a better place by demanding that adult performers be required by law to wear condoms. And which AHF supporter provided the picket signs for AHF’s protests outside the Hustler Hollywood store? LifeStyles Condoms. Want to know the key to Weinstein’s real agenda? Follow the money. Michael Weinstein sure does.

I have maintained since the beginning of this “controversy” that the porn actors themselves should be allowed to decide what’s best for them, so you may be interested in the viewpoint of porn actress Lorelei Lee on Weinstein’s latest shenanigans, published in Tits and Sass on September 19^th. She explains how the AIM system (which was closed down by a lawsuit from AHF) kept performers safe, and points out that:

…at least half of the positive HIV tests that Weinstein touts as being ‘proof’ of the need for a condom mandate occurred due to circumstances in the performers’ private lives. Mandatory on-set condom use would not change this…six positive tests in ten years, among thousands of performers in hundreds of thousands of shoots, strikes me as a shockingly low number…we don’t know how safe or unsafe we are as adult film performers because we don’t have comparable statistics from other populations.

Her conclusion says it all: “How dare Michael Weinstein claim that we as an industry have shown a disregard for each other’s health and safety? His is the only outrageous disregard I’ve seen exhibited lately.”

To Spite Their Faces (September 6^th, 2011)

Leftover second-wave feminists are desperately trying to keep women from moving forward, rediscovering their femininity and abandoning the sex war aggressively promoted by neofeminists for decades. So it’s no surprise that feminist journalists have tried to trash Dr. Catherine Hakim’s reputation in order to discourage women from reading her new book, Erotic Capital, which advises them to use their natural advantages. What’s sad is that, as reported in this column, the Guardian gave two of them a pulpit from which to spout their hatred. Fortunately, the Sunday Times had more sense and invited Dr. Hakim to write a response to those criticisms; it was published in the Sunday Times Style magazine on September 11^th under the title “Know Your Assets”, but since no online copy is available Dr. Hakim kindly provided me with this copy, which I have stored in PDF form for my readers.

One Year Ago Today

“All in the Family” examines the relationships between escorts and their relatives, which range from the strained to the supportive.

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August Updates (Part Two)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged Against Their Will, brothels, condoms, cops, dirty, Dirty Whores, disease, East Asia, ethics, hysteria, Korea, law, sisterhood, stereotypes, Tennessee, United Kingdom on August 4, 2011| 9 Comments »

Among all the world’s races, some obscure Bedouin tribes possibly apart, Americans are the most prone to misinformation. This is not the consequence of any special preference for mendacity, although at the higher levels of their public administration that tendency is impressive. It is rather that so much of what they themselves believe is wrong. – John Kenneth Galbraith

Stories about the facts behind popular American lies.

Conjuration (May 9^th, 2011)

Politicians are always inventing imaginary victims of the moral panic du jour, but they’re usually more subtle about it than these cops from Tennessee:

According to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI), Coffee County is one of four major locations across the state for human sex trafficking. However, not a single report from the Tullahoma Police Department…indicates any human sex trafficking incidents. The TBI report released in June suggests that [the four] counties each have more than 100 cases…during the past two years. The numbers were gathered from an anonymous… survey the bureau distributed to law enforcement agencies…although the Tullahoma Police Department and Coffee County Sheriff’s Department were listed as survey participants, officials aren’t sure who – if anyone – received the e-mailed survey. “We’re unaware that anyone from this office participated…” said Police Chief Paul Blackwell. “We haven’t found any record that indicates Tullahoma has even one case of human sex trafficking.”

Blackwell suggests it’s highly possible that some agencies interpreted the definition…as something else…“Historically, we have not had anything within the past two years that gives any indication of…trafficking”…TBI Director Mark Gwyn…calls human sex trafficking “sexual slavery at its worst” and went on to explain that “…traffickers are difficult for law enforcement to investigate and a challenge to prosecute” and calls for harsher penalties for the crime. “Human trafficking and sex slavery in Tennessee is more common that [sic] previously believed possible…children are moved from city to city in the state and sold as prostitutes. Tennessee, simply because of its geographical position to Atlanta and the large number of interstates that cross the state, is conducive to a traveling business. Many times those promoting prostitution transport the child victims to large entertainment events or sporting venues where people are traveling through or visiting the state…The report states human sex trafficking is often confused with prostitution…

Hmm, I wonder why human trafficking is often confused with prostitution? Because the two are purposefully conflated by prohibitionists, maybe? Or could it be because while there really aren’t many “sex slaves” anywhere (much less in Tennessee), people like Mr. Gwyn encourage those under them to conjure victims out of thin air? When one realizes that Tennessee “authorities” imagine there can be hundreds of “trafficking victims” in their state (rather than <50 coerced underage prostitutes as statistics indicate), one can understand how those devoid of critical thinking skills can believe there are 300,000 of them in the country. Two final points: notice the thoroughly-discredited “sporting event sex slaves” myth and Tennessee’s entry in the “largest center of human trafficking” contest.

Dirty Whores (June 24^th, 2011)

As I explained in this column, “95-97% of STDs are spread by the good, ‘clean’ members of the general population who can legally screw anybody they like without even the most cursory or sporadic health checks,” and promiscuous non-prostitutes have a venereal disease rate twice that of streetwalkers. Here’s a Daily Mail article from July 18^th reporting on the newest threat to public health…the over-50 crowd:

…For the past few years the Health Protection Agency…has been warning about the staggering rise in STIs among baby-boomers. Its latest figures show chlamydia infections have increased by…138 per cent since 2001. Genital herpes is up…142 per cent in ten years, while gonorrhoea is up…14 per cent since 2001. Cases of genital warts…have risen by 62 per cent in the past ten years…and the diseases themselves are becoming more ferocious. Just last week, Swedish scientists announced the discovery of a strain of gonorrhoea that had become resistant to antibiotics. Of course, in numbers, infections among young adults and men who have sex with men are still far greater. But by putting our heads in the sand about this new, rapidly growing group, we are risking the health of a generation…

These older adults were in secure, stable relationships during the Eighties – their first sexual experiences were in the relatively safe years before HIV…even existed…[because of] the Pill…this generation felt free to experiment…[but have never] been the target of public-health campaigns to warn them of the dangers. Indeed, some patients are almost affronted when I suggest they always use a condom…But STIs do not discriminate between 16 or 60-year-olds – we all need to be much more careful.

Note that unlike Americans, British authorities admit that sex workers are not an important vector of STIs. Perhaps we sex workers should start spreading propaganda about “dirty amateurs” and insisting that y’all undergo weekly “health checks”. Not that we’d do it if we could, but it would be a lot closer to reality than the “dirty whore” myth.

Against Their Will (July 23^rd, 2011)

South Korean prostitutes are battling for their rights, and many are willing to commit suicide rather than be “rescued” by cops doing the bidding of the American government; the following is edited from a July 6^th MSNBC story whose Korean writer is weirdly obsessed with the word “pimp”, no doubt due to ingestion of toxic levels of American propaganda:

The…prostitutes of Yeongdeungpo start the day as if preparing for a siege, stocking their brothels with flammable liquid…large, red-lettered signs warn police that they’re willing to die to protect their livelihoods. “We can turn on the gas and light the flames,” said…47-year-old…Sohn. “We know that we don’t have much chance of winning … but we’re ready to die fighting.” Nearly seven years after tough laws began driving thousands of South Korean prostitutes out of business, the sex workers of the Yeongdeungpo red-light district in Seoul are fighting back, spurred by what they say is an unprecedented campaign of police harassment. Since April they’ve staged large, sometimes violent, protests…which…have been unusual in their size, organization and fury…at a recent protest, about 20 topless women covered in body and face paint doused themselves in flammable liquid and had to be restrained from setting themselves on fire.

“We are the people who eat, sleep and live here. Where can we move?” prostitute Jang Se-hee said in an interview inside a large tent where sex workers were discussing how to resist police. The 36-year-old Jang…said her earnings have plunged from as much as $9,200 a month to about $3,700 since police began harrying the brothels in April…Many brothels have suspended business because of the crackdown. Signs in those still open show their occupants’ defiance: “We will die here,” they read, or “I will pour fuel on my body and die gloriously”…Prostitution was banned in South Korea in 1961, but police rarely enforced the law…About 259,000 people, 70 percent of them male customers, have been arrested since the new laws took effect in 2004. Nearly 4,000 prostitutes have left their brothels, while 1,800 remain, and seven of the country’s 35 major red-light districts have disappeared, according to police records…South Korea runs nine support centers offering vocational training and psychological counseling to former prostitutes where they can work for a monthly salary of about $460 to $920, according to government officials. Many women, however, find it hard to adjust to new lives and to resist the better pay of sex work. Despite the social stigma, they drop out of the centers and return to prostitution.

Why on Earth would a woman prefer to make $9200/month working for herself than $920/month working for the government? It’s just unfathomable! The story tries to blame the new crackdowns on a 2002 brothel fire, but that’s a contemptible lie for American readers; the truth is that Korean prostitutes are being harassed, hounded, impoverished, driven from their neighborhoods and deprived of their livelihoods to satisfy American ideas of “morality”, as explained in this July 21^st article from The Chosunilbo:

The U.S. Trafficking in Persons Report 2011 published on Monday depicts South Korea as a “source, transit, and destination country for men and women subjected to forced prostitution and forced labor.” But…experts say some of the allegations are unfounded. South Korea is in Tier 1, which groups countries that fully comply with the international minimum standards…[but] many foreigners who come to South Korea for jobs or marriage, are actually forced into prostitution or labor, the report says…it says South Korean women are also forced into prostitution in the U.S., Canada, Japan, and Australia, as well as at home. [It] claims an increasing number of teenagers in South Korea suffer sexual exploitation, more than 95 percent of which is arranged online [and] South Korean men are still clients of child prostitutes in Southeast Asia…But an official with the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family said, “The number of brothels has dropped as a result of consistent crackdowns in red-light districts under a special law in 2004. We protect sex trafficking victims through nationwide counseling centers and other support facilities”…The report recognizes the South Korean government’s anti-trafficking efforts but accuses it of failing to enforce laws strictly or mete out stern punishment…

In other words, the United States has pressured South Korea to close down brothels and imprison more people, and as a result women are being harassed literally to death. How long will this madness continue before other large countries demand the U.S. stop interfering in the affairs of smaller sovereign nations, especially when that interference results in grievous human rights abuses?

One Year Ago Today

The second part of “The Only Working Girl in New Orleans”, which tells of the only time I was ever arrested.

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Posted in Current Events, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged Africa, Against Their Will, agency denial, brothels, China, Congo, cops, dirty, East Asia, end demand, ethics, hysteria, India, law, lawheads, Philippines, psychology, rescue industry, stereotypes, sweatshops on July 23, 2011| 23 Comments »

What ever crushes individuality is despotism, no matter what name it is called. – John Stuart Mill

Imagine this scenario: you’re at work one day; maybe it’s a job you really like, maybe it’s one you just tolerate because it’s better than the alternatives, and maybe it’s one you hate but keep working at because the money is good and you’ve got bills to pay. So you’re just minding your own business, dealing with customers or whatever, when suddenly a bunch of armed police thugs smash the door down, start pointing guns at everybody, arrest your customers and boss, handcuff you and your fellow co-workers and shove you into a van. While this is going on you notice that there are some people with the police who are dressed in plain clothes and appear to be foreign. The police eventually lock you and your co-workers in a cell and one of the foreigners then tells you all that you’ve been “rescued” from your job because the business owner was “exploiting” you. Now, if you hate your job in the first place you might even agree about the exploitation bit, but you’d probably still be pretty angry about being arrested and scared half to death by the goon squad’s commando tactics. And even if you did hate the job, how do you think you’d feel when the foreigner told you that they didn’t have any comparable work lined up for you, but that you would soon be transferred to a “rescue home” for an indefinite period of time and while you were there you would be taught to sew so you can be forced to work in a sweatshop at less than a tenth of your previous salary?

Don’t answer yet; now imagine that some of your coworkers who liked the job begin to protest, and are told that they don’t know what they’re talking about, that you’ve all been “programmed” to think you were working voluntarily but you “really” weren’t no matter what you remember. You are informed that your “exploiters”, meaning every customer and member of management (including the cool manager who buys pizza for everyone on Fridays and the nice old man who always tells you about his grandchildren) are evil monsters who are going to prison for decades and that you are expected to testify against them in a kangaroo court; if you refuse you will be sent to a “deprogramming” facility where you will be psychologically tortured until you agree to say whatever your “rescuers” want. In the meantime, nobody is allowed to call friends or family to let them know where you are, because the “rescuers” have no way of knowing which of you are “brainwashed” and you might call gangsters or something. Finally, sometime in the next few days, you find out the whole thing was cooked up as a publicity stunt to please a foreign government (the one the foreign “rescuers” came from) in order to seal some kind of political deal. How do you think you’d react? Obviously you’d be angry, probably furious. You’d probably join with the others in demanding a lawyer, transportation back to work and an apology, and if a reporter or social worker was sent in to talk to you you’d probably give her an earful in hopes of raising a public outcry. You might even join in a riot to overpower your guards and escape.

Well, for many women in a number of countries (including The Philippines, India, the Republic of the Congo and the United Kingdom) this isn’t just a theoretical question because it’s happening quite often, and as you might suspect these women are pretty angry about it – often angry enough to become violent, just as you or I might be in their situation. I’ve mentioned before that the rescue industry has become a major social problem in many developing countries, especially in the Far East; if you think I’m exaggerating with the above scenario take a look at this protest video from the Asia-Pacific Network of Sex Workers, then read on to the following examples which, as happens so often, came to my attention through Laura Agustín’s blog of July 12^th.

The first of the cases is from the Philippines, May of 2009 and is unusual in that the “rescued” women were not actually prostitutes but operators for a paid “cybersex” service; apparently the reporter thought this sounded a bit too benign, so he referred to it as a “cybersex den”:

Fifteen girls, rescued by police and National Bureau of Agency (NBI) men [on April 23^rd] from a cybersex den operated by two Swedish nationals, have escaped from the Department of Social Welfare Development office in Cagayan de Oro City…after mauling the duty security guard. The girls then flagged down a passenger jeepney and forced its driver to bring them away from the DSWD office…Senior Superintendent Noel Armilla…of the…Police Office, said the girls would not be charged or arrested because they are not facing any charges. Armilla, however, said they would have to locate the girls because they would need them to testify against two Swedish nationals and four Filipinos, who have been arrested for allegedly operating the cybersex den…

It takes some serious doublethink to be able to use the word “rescued” in conjunction with arresting and confining non-criminal adult women against their will. Nor is their violent reaction unusual, as we can see in this story from India, last October:

…sex workers rescued on Wednesday and sent to a shelter in the city began a violent clamour last morning…At 9 am, all 21 sex workers stomped out and created a ruckus. They broke off the grill and engaged in a fight with the management. “The rescued sex workers began insisting on going back…” [the shelter manager] said…”In major raids, initially such things happen…In an earlier raid, when 46 girls were brought, the same thing had happened…They are programmed to lie, so we don’t have correct information about them…They even lie about their origin.”

“Lie” in this context obviously means “tell us things we don’t want to hear.” Then there was this report from January 1^st of this year:

Police from China flew to the Democratic Republic of Congo in November…They found 11 Chinese women who had been promised decent jobs in Paris by traffickers but ended up working in a Chinese-owned karaoke bar in…Kinshasa…After a joint raid by Chinese and Congolese police…the women decided to stay…saying it was easier to make good money there than in China…”They make 100 US dollars for receiving one guest – half of the money goes to their boss and they keep the other half”…the women…were [also] able to take cheap goods from China to Africa after visits home and sell them for big profits…

Yes, you read that correctly: the “trafficked sex slaves” made more per client than German brothel girls, could go home at will and were allowed to conduct side-business as well. The horror! The most recent episode was again from the Philippines, reported June 29^th:

A hundred female sex workers…and five foreigners were arrested, in raids on three night clubs in Angeles City Tuesday night…“The women don’t really consider it a rescue,” said [the NGO manager] who led the raids. “They kept cursing us, and tried their best to escape”…She said she assumed that some of the rescued women were below 18. “Or they were taught to say they’re 18,” she said…the successive raids in Angeles City’s red light district bolstered the US government’s recognition of the Philippines’ commitment to combating human trafficking. The Philippines has been taken off a watch list of the US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report and elevated to Tier 2, a category of countries that do not fully comply with anti-trafficking standards but are making efforts to do so…

The total disregard for these women’s autonomy is deplorable; the few underage ones (if there were any) are said to be so stupid that they can’t even think of passing themselves off for 18 without being “taught” to say it, even though every teenager in the West can think that up all by himself. This story is at least honest about the real motives of the Filipinos, though; these women were “trafficked” from their workplaces into jail due to U.S. pressure; their wishes were ignored and they were treated like commodities, handed over as gifts to the U.S. State Department like slave-girls given by a local king to the Roman governor.

One Year Ago Today

“The Numbers Game” is a column about why women in general and escorts in particular lie about our ages and weights, and the effect this has on both the business and the male brain.

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