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In the News (#767)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, Alaska, Backpage, Business As Usual, Buttons Bags & Banknotes, Choke Point, cops, disease, fantasy, Florida, games, hysteria, I Spy, illegal aliens, India, Kentucky, law, Missouri, Nebraska, neofeminism, Ohio, Oregon, Out of Control, pathologization of males, politicians, prisons, prohibitionist myths, Pyrrhic Victory, racism, rape, rescue industry, So Close and Yet So Far, Subtle Pimping, surveillance, The War Goes On, Torture Chamber, Total Eclipse of the Brain, Wyoming, yellow journalism on August 23, 2017| 5 Comments »

The federal government has no more business telling an adult where and how they can make their money than it does telling an adult where and how they can worship, study or spend. – Austin Petersen

Out of Control

People who deny this obvious fact are more interested in promoting an agenda than protecting society:

…There have been countless jokes and observations made about the root problem with political psychopaths being sexual frustration…problems are more complicated than any amount of sex could solve; but there’s also a trend…to dismiss the very idea of sexual frustration as a motivation for human behavior…It could very well be a coincidence that Richard Spencer has a mail-order bride, that David Duke has been divorced since 1984, that Steve Bannon and Rush Limbaugh have three divorces each, and that the twice-divorced Donald Trump does not sleep in the same bedroom as his current wife…There might be no pattern whatsoever to James Alex Fields Jr., Dylan Storm Roof, and Timothy McVeigh all being “confirmed bachelors” up to the date of their ghastly crimes…no woman should ever feel obligated to nanny some neurologically-dysfuctional pickle-polisher incapable of even quarter-ass effort at productivity. Their answer is hookers…How is it an improvement for someone to not break the law or a taboo when they turn themselves to a public nuisance at best in the process of legal and moral obedience? Why should the insipid lie of “there being someone for everyone” continue to be propagated in the face of such overwhelming evidence to the contrary?…

Pyrrhic Victory

When I was young, we were told one of the reasons communist countries were bad was that they had tightly-controlled borders:

Some senators are looking to…[implement] a host of new incursions into travelers’ and visitors’ privacy. Cyrus Farivar of Ars Technica “outed” the not-yet-introduced bill — titled “Building America’s Trust Act” [wtf] — since the supporting lawmakers have yet to formally announce their plans to make the US a worse country to live in, much less visit…more surveillance, more boots on the ground, and green lights for law enforcement agencies located anywhere within 100 miles of the nation’s borders…as well as walls, levees, fences…The law calls for the program to be put in place at all high traffic ports of entry (including major airports) within two years…Customs authorities will also be given power to demand biometric info from visa applicants and DNA will be collected from all detained immigrants, whether or not they’re criminally charged…From there, the law adds other politically-charged stipulations, like an entire subsection entitled “Stop Dangerous Sanctuary Cities Act”. Also of note: the bill would allow law enforcement to seize everything from cash to bitcoins if they’re suspected to be “criminal proceeds”…[and] strips away any mens rea protection from accusations of money laundering…

So Close and Yet So Far

It’s sad that even people who support decriminalization feel the need to promote myths, lies & insulting tropes:

…The Department of Health and Human Services says that almost 200,000 transactions are made annually in the United States in which minors are sold for sex…Missouri…has distinguished itself for its hard fight against this evil practice, creating a task force dedicated to eliminating trafficking from the state…But…we must consider whether in our zeal to purge the problem, we haven’t inadvertently created an environment in which this kind of market can flourish…This is what happens when the government tries to legislate an individual’s choices. We made the same mistake just over a century ago with Prohibition. In both cases, the government was simply trying to defend the innocent victims…But the resulting prohibition didn’t — and doesn’t — work. Then, just as now, prisons were clogged with otherwise innocent people who made a personal choice that didn’t hurt others and didn’t deserve to be incarcerated. Then, just as now, government expenditures skyrocketed in an attempt to enforce these laws. And then, just as now, outlawing certain activities created an underground that veiled the activities and made them far more dangerous…outlawing prostitution makes it impossible to control the spread of STIs, with their lifelong physical and emotional consequences…The solution…is…give adults the freedom to make their own choices about what they do with their own bodies…

I get that this dude is a politician and so has to dick-stroke potential voters. But the obsequious fawning to authoritarians about “government was simply trying to defend the innocent victims”, as nauseating as it is, would be bearable had he omitted pernicious lies about every single adult man in America paying to rape “child sex slaves” every week and whores being vectors of disease. I invite Mr. Petersen to contact me, and I’ll be happy to fill him in on the facts so future editorials are free of disinformation.

Subtle Pimping (#330)

More scumbags profiting from sex workers by promoting lies that harm us:

A new game is in development that will be used to combat the [magically & infinitely] growing problem of sex trafficking…Missing: The Complete Saga is set in rural India, where [prohibitionists pretend] thousands of girls and women are captured and forced into sex work every year…While the original Missing took the form of a top-down point and click story, the new game is a 3D role-playing adventure that follows the life of an Indian village girl called Champa…[prohibitionist] Leena Kejriwal…and her team are currently running a Kickstarter campaign to help fund development. Proceeds from sales of the game will go towards creating [brainwashing] programs and [prisons] for girls who…[are arrested by] police raids. In the game, Champa is targeted by sex traffickers who want to take her to one of India’s fast-growing cities…in real life, Champa would likely fail to escape the [magical] traffickers, who [are omnipotent and nigh-omnipresent]…The game is…also an attempt to [indoctrinate] boys, and to [make them feel guilty for being sexual while teaching them the misogynistic lie that sexual women are operating under a]…total lack of agency…

Torture Chamber

The State wants us to refer to these evil thugs as “correctional officers”:

Two former prison guards in Florida who were members of the Ku Klux Klan have been convicted of plotting to kill a black inmate in retaliation for a scuffle with another guard who also belonged to the [non-state-sanctioned] hate group. A jury…found David Elliot Moran and Charles Thomas Newcomb guilty of conspiracy to commit first degree murder after they were caught discussing their plans with an FBI informant…The third guard, Thomas Jordan Driver…pleaded guilty in March to one count of conspiracy to commit first degree murder and was sentenced to four years in prison…

Choke Point (#511)

This makes the end of “Operation Choke Point” official, after two and a half years of retreat:

…In a letter to Rep. Robert Goodlatte…chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd called Operation Choke Point “a misguided initiative” and confirmed that DOJ was closing those investigations, Politico reported…Boyd is understating the degree to which Operation Choke Point was unlawful and just plain creepy…Choke Point began as an extension of the Obama administration’s Financial Fraud Task Force, but the dragnet investigation was never given proper statutory authority by either the administration or Congress. In fact, details about Operation Choke Point were deliberately withheld from Congress at first…Targets…often didn’t have any idea why their bank accounts were being frozen or closed…

Need I point out that an oppression which was started by a memo and ended by a memo can easily be re-started by another memo? Since “Choke Point” was never declared unconstitutional by a court nor officially banned by a law, there’s nothing to stop future tyrants from simply bringing it back.

Buttons, Bags & Banknotes (#550)

The only interesting thing about Julie Bindel is the way that the media refuses to recognize her as a broken-down one-trick pony, despite the fact that virtually every article she writes is dedicated to advancing the prohibitionist wanking fantasy of an all-powerful “pimp lobby”. Bindel has written on virtually no other topic for more than three years; you can take a look at this new article (intended to drum up support for her upcoming book on – you guessed it – the so-called “pimp lobby”) if you want, but it’s the same agency-denying, paranoid-ranting reheated feces she’s been serving up for years. Proceed at risk of your own boredom and/or nausea.

The War Goes On (#712)

It won’t be much longer before no reasonable and educated person believes in “sex trafficking”, but of course the damage has already been done:

…Backpage…has been lied about by politicians for so long that many smart and otherwise savvy people seem to think the site is run by sexual-slavery-loving sociopaths. Anyone under that misguided impression—and anyone seeking to push back against it—should check out some new research published in the Wake Forest Law Review. In…”The Virtue of Unvirtuous Spaces,” Notre Dame Law School lecturer Alex F. Levy explores similarities between the Progressive Era’s pageantry around “white slavery” and the modern-day activists against the alleged “epidemic” of U.S. sex trafficking…In the late 19th and early 20th century, the focal point of this symbolic fighting was the dance hall. Now it’s online venues such as the classified ad sites Craigslist and Backpage. Levy finds that both campaigns are “pageantry: a kind of theater designed to satisfy people’s need to identify and fight bad guys without regard to nuance or long-term outcome”…

Total Eclipse of the Brain

Liz Brown ridicules the “solar eclipse sex trafficking” nonsense:

…What, you might wonder, is the theory here? Will sex traffickers be emboldened by the extra bit of darkness? Do they get extra aggressive depending on lunar phases?…In Kentucky, Allyson Cox Taylor, head of the state’s Office of Child Abuse and Human Trafficking Prevention, suggested that “people who weren’t trafficking before may decide…this is an opportunity to make money.” Apparently she thinks finding and forcing others to do your bidding is something that people just up and decide one day to do on a whim. In Bend, Oregon, several pre-eclipse seminars focused on how locals could spot the incoming sex traffickers…[including] “poker chips passing hands.” Eclipse-pegged sex-trafficking warnings have also shown up…in Ohio, in Wyoming, and in Nebraska…a few…suggest that sex traffickers will be lurking in the dark, waiting to snatch up children who get separated from their parents for even a few minutes. (In the midst of all this, however, behold the rarest of rare occurences: TV news and local police in Portland teaming up to announce that “they have no reason to suspect there would be a surge in human sex trafficking in the metro area”)…

Business As Usual (#757)

Even though there’s nothing here which wasn’t already covered in earlier articles on the topic (including mine), it’s good to see so many young “feminist” writers taking interest in the issue:

…In Alaska, as in every other U.S. state, it is currently legal for [cops and informants]…to [molest]…individuals [they want to accuse of a crime. Some states prohibit]…penetration [on paper, though not in practice]. Victims have recounted being threatened into [submitting to rape]…or finding themselves in legal trouble after providing sexual favors to a man presumed to be a client, but who is actually a cop…In many…spaces online, [sex workers]…have recounted the horror they face at the hands of police…In February, [Alaska state] Representative Matt Claman…introduced House Bill 112, which would close the loophole allowing [cops]…to [rape]…anyone under police investigation. Current Alaska law only classifies [rape of]…a suspect…as illegal once a person has been arrested…

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In the News (#757)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged Across the Pond, agency denial, Alaska, Backpage, Bad Girls, Bulgaria, Business As Usual, censorship, cops, dirty, disease, Guinea Pigs, hysteria, Israel, Kentucky, law, Pimping the Pimp, politicians, prohibitionist myths, propaganda, psychology, rape, rescue industry, robots, Russia, streetwalkers, surveillance, Swedish model, The Course of a Disease, The Immunity Syndrome, The Pygmalion Fallacy, The War Goes On, Total Eclipse of the Brain, United Kingdom on July 19, 2017| 2 Comments »

Give up hope — we’ll find you, too! – Je Suis Maidan

Bad Girls

Translation: some robbers employ female accomplices who pose as sex workers to attract victims:

Hundreds of thousands of UK tourists travel to Sunny Beach resort in Bulgaria, where pints are as cheap as 80p…But the flocks of drunk Brits are attracting criminals, the Foreign Office said. It added: “Tourists are targeted by thieves and pickpockets in Sunny Beach. There has been an increase in burglaries from hotel rooms.” Prostitution is not illegal in Bulgaria…but it is believed [by cops] to be linked to the criminal underworld…”We’ve received numerous reports of muggings and assaults of British nationals by prostitutes and their minders…Tourists have been victims of overcharging in strip clubs [and] threatened with violence if they don’t pay”…

This scam has existed for as long as there have been cities; the Romans referred to such women as gallinae (“hens”). To report this as “news” is like pretending the existence of pickpockets and panhandlers is. Also: Try buying something at any business in the US or UK and refusing to pay, and let’s see if you aren’t threatened with violence. The fact that the thugs you’ll be threatened with in those places are more likely to wear costumes doesn’t change the fact that you’re being threatened with violence.

The Course of a Disease (#8)

A watered-down disease culture, but a disease culture nonetheless:

…[Israeli] lawmakers [who happen to have vaginas]…announced they would present legislation punishing the clients of prostitutes…as the Justice Ministry wrapped up a year-long evaluation of the issue…The issue in recent months earned overwhelming support in the Knesset, with 71 lawmakers from both the coalition and opposition lending their support…Justice Ministry Director-General Emi Palmor ruled out leveling fines against those who paid for sex, saying it was not legally viable. However, Palmor said she was “very, very much in favor” of instituting gradual criminal penalties against those who pay for sex, beginning with a warning and building up to court-ordered “John school” attendance, and other criminal punishments…Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked…will then decide whether to pursue legislation that would both punish clients and set up [re-education] programs for the sex workers…

The Immunity Syndrome (#321)

The last “super gonorrhea” scare turned out to be bogus, and I strongly suspect this one is as well:

…the World Health Association is now warning of an globally spreading gonorrhoea superbug which is resistant to all antibiotics…Thus far there have been only three identified cases of people with a strain resistant to all antibiotics, so it’s far from too late for us to stop this becoming a pandemic, or for you to protect yourself…

Observation: three cases of a dangerous disease. Conclusion: “globally spreading” pandemic! Everybody panic!

Pimping the Pimp (#446)

With her exaggerated claims, naked opportunism, and ludicrous misuse of terminology, this woman reminds me very much of Annie Lobert of “Liars for Jesus”:

Elle Snow laces up her combat boots, prepared once again, to go to war with “The Game”…says Snow…”The [sex] traffickers like to move their victims frequently so they can’t get to know anyone and it’s harder for law enforcement to track them”…Snow…says she was 19 when she was first approached by an older man [named David Bernard Anderson] who…[coerced her into prostitution]…Anderson was one of many men and women following a set of carefully laid-out rules and guidelines for how to force women into prostitution. “What happened to me was called ‘The Game,’ this monstrous beast that is this world of sex trafficking…These guys have a complete structure, they have books, they have documentaries, they have podcasts”…Now Snow spends many of her days monitoring sex ads on online classified sites, looking for trends …”I’m looking for tattoos because traffickers like to brand their victims”…

Yes, Snow is intentionally conflating the street term “The Game” (which, like “john”, is used far more often among cops and prohibitionists than among streetwalkers, and virtually never by other sex workers) with “Game”, the pickup artist system. Anyone who’s ever researched the latter knows that it has nothing to do with pimping, but Snow doesn’t let that stop her any more than she lets the demonstrated falsity of that tattoo nonsense stop her from claiming that. Neither CNN nor her intended marks will bother to do any research, because they’re eager to hear more masturbatory fantasies they can pretend are about fighting evil rather than appealing to their prurient interests.

Guinea Pigs (#634)

New surveillance weapons are usually used against sex workers first, but it never stops with us:

In late June, someone launched a website called Je Suis Maidan, identifying people captured in photographs from Moscow’s June 12 anti-corruption protest. On July 7, the website also started identifying demonstrators who attended protests that day in regions throughout the country. Je Suis Maidan relies on the controversial app “FindFace,” which makes it possible to find a random person’s social-media page on Vkontakte [Russian Facebook] with a photograph of that person. Using images that appeared in the news media (including a gigapixel photograph published by the pro-Kremlin tabloid Life.ru), the website finds people through FindFace, listing their real names and Vkontakte pages…

The War Goes On (#705)

Politicians will keep persecuting Backpage until they find a new website to demonize:

Five members of Congress who [ride anti-whore hobbyhorses]…called on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to launch a criminal investigation of Backpage.com after a trove of documents revealed that the website hired a company in the Philippines to lure advertisers and customers…The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations…[claimed] in January that Backpage was removing offensive terms from its sex ads but allowing the ads, some with [imagined] child-trafficking content, to remain posted…

Some of the five named politicians are the same ones working to gut Section 230, thereby destroying the internet as we know it.

Business As Usual (#738)

Even though there’s nothing here which wasn’t already covered in earlier articles on the topic (including mine), its appearance in a mainstream and controversy-averse publication like Glamour is an extremely promising sign:

There’s a heated debate going on right now in Alaska between the police department and sex workers’ rights advocates over a bill that would make it illegal for [cops] to [rape or molest] sex workers before arresting them. If Alaska passes this bill, they’ll become the first state to outlaw any sexual contact between police and the people they’re [trying to entrap]…Advocates…[point out] that police catching sex workers in the act by engaging with them sexually is a human rights violation, and Amnesty International has made an official statement…that…“Such conduct is an abuse of authority and…amounts to rape and/or entrapment”…

Across the Pond (#744)

Here’s that vile use of “safer neighborhood team” to mean “vice squad” again:

After a [supposed] spike in complaints…[cops] are launching the new campaign which they hope will stop the sex trade in Redbridge…Sgt Matt Taylor…was quick to [hide the persecution behind the faddish claim]…that his detectives are targeting the pimps and criminals which organise and use the prostitutes, and not the girls themselves…“We want to [force] them…out of prostitution”…Sgt Taylor said police [pretend] the gangs are “organised”…Insp Lee Canter, the head of Redbridge Safer Neighbourhoods, commented: “I would like to send a strong message out to those who intend to use the services of sex workers as we will seek to prosecute you and if convicted your picture may be published in the local papers”…

Total Eclipse of the Brain

Though it’s too early in the implosion to tell for sure, we may have a winner in the “stupidest gypsy whore magnet” competition:

The eyes of the world will be on Hopkinsville [Kentucky] next month when a total solar eclipse brings tens of thousands of people to the small city. But law enforcement and activists are warning everyone of sex trafficking, a dangerous threat they hope does not become a reality…[profiteer] Amy Leenerts [claims]…“yes, it will definitely happen…it’s a human trafficking ring. And we expect that to probably end up in Hopkinsville”…The FBI is looking into the credibility of human trafficking threats during the eclipse. Meanwhile, the Christian County Sheriff Department is wasting no time preparing for the worst…

The Pygmalion Fallacy (#755)

One way to tell a moral scold’s head is inextricably embedded in his own rectal cavity: he claims supposed disastrous effects of whatever-it-is that are the exact opposite of those claimed by other moral scolds:

The Salvation Army has condemned…sex robots, warning that the technology could increase demand for people trafficked into the UK for sexual exploitation…rather than decrease demand for real sex workers…Kathryn Taylor, of the Salvation Army’s anti-[whore]…unit said…”In the same way that pornography normalises certain behaviours, the availability of sexbots could normalise a distorted power dynamic which devalues the other person involved when transferred to human interactions. This could encourage increased objectification of women and children and a lack of respect for their fellow human beings”…Prof Noel Sharkey…said compliant and uncomplaining sexbots could encourage objectification, abuse, rape and paedophilia…

You know, kind of like Agatha Christie novels and TV cop shows increase real crimes. It’s funny how prudes expect everyone to believe that human beings are only volitionless tabulae rasae when sex is involved.

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Links #364

Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged Alaska, animals, California, comics, cops, hysteria, imaginative fiction, Mexico, Nebraska, Never Call the Cops, nostalgia, Pennsylvania, politicians, video, Washington (state) on June 25, 2017| Leave a Comment »

People die in these circumstances. – Darci Tierney

I saw this video pop up a few days ago; someone decided to compile all of the silly window cameo jokes from the old Batman TV series, and it seemed an apropos feature given Adam West’s recent demise. The links above it were provided by Tim Cushing (“patience” and “bicycle”), Jillian Keenan (“happens”), Radley Balko (“partisanism”), Cathy Reisenwitz (“whatsoever”), Kevin Wilson (“game”), and Lenore Skenazy (“lucky”).

From the Archives

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Essays Elsewhere

Posted in Current Events, Perception, Tyranny, tagged Alaska, Anatomy of a Boondoggle, Business As Usual, cops, evidence, rape on May 26, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Most cops would never think of using [laws allowing them to molest sex workers] for nefarious purposes because sex workers are exploited “victims” that they’re trying to “rescue”. – Me

It’s been a while since I’ve had an article at Reason, but as y’all know I’ve been pulling out of my two-year slump and as a result, my productivity is increasing. So when I got the opportunity to get more eyeballs than usual on a topic I consider extremely important, you can bet I took it. The article appeared yesterday, and starts like this:

Once again, cops are arguing that they need to be allowed to have sex with suspects in order to investigate prostitution allegations. And once again, lawmakers and journalists are acting like exploitation and assault of sex workers by law enforcement is a rare occurrence, rather than a national epidemic. Most people would agree that the deception, the power differential, and the subsequent arrest of sex workers make such contact utterly unacceptable, even if they don’t think that it rises to the level of rape. Yet the behavior is common enough to bring police unions to its defense on a regular basis…

See, I can restrain myself and use less-inflammatory language when the need arises! For those who haven’t seen my work on Reason before, here are the previous ones:

How a Crusading Chicago Sheriff Convinced Visa and Mastercard to Screw Sex Workers (7/2/15)

No, Rhode Island Didn’t “Accidentally” Decriminalize Prostitution (8/24/14)

The Mythical Invasion of the Super Bowl Hookers (1/26/14)

Reason articles use headlines rather than essay-type titles, so these are longer than you’re used to seeing on my work (and they’re written by editors rather than by me). While we’re at it, this is as good a place as any to remind you on some other articles I’ve done for high-traffic sites:

Lies, Damned Lies and Sex Work Statistics for the Washington Post (3/28/14)

and

Treating Sex Work as Work in Cato Unbound (12/2/13), the lead essay in an online debate (including several follow-ups).

Anyhow, there will certainly be more, and I’ll certainly call your attention to ’em as they appear.

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In the News (#738)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged Advice for Clients, agency denial, Alaska, Arkansas, asset seizure, bad customers, bogus studies, Business As Usual, California, cops, drugs, Facebook, FBI, hysteria, I Spy, Italy, law, Michigan, Moloch, Nevada, Never Call the Cops, New Excuse, No Friend of Ours, Policing for Profit, prohibitionist myths, Pyrrhic Victory, racism, rape, sex offender registry, South Carolina, surveillance, The Public Eye, The Widening Gyre, To Molest and Rape, Twitter, Washington (state), yellow journalism on May 13, 2017| Leave a Comment »

In efforts to catch imagined “pimps”…officials have long considered the liberty and rights of…sex workers (and their customers) to be an acceptable sacrifice. The rest of us were really never far behind. – Elizabeth Nolan Brown

Moloch

How many kids need to be sacrificed to this obscenity before it’s enough?

South Carolina can continue to require…teens convicted of…sex crimes to appear on the state’s public sex-offender registry and wear an electronic monitor for the rest of their lives, the state Supreme Court ruled…A boy…who was 15 when he sexually assaulted a 5-year-old boy…challenged the law…The teen’s lawyer said being publicly branded a sex offender and electronically monitored for the rest of his life is too harsh a punishment, citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s ban on the death penalty for anyone under age 18. The justices, however, said the Legislature was well within its power to pass a law that treats juveniles and adults differently in criminal punishment, but establishes the same requirements for the registry [due to the pretense that it isn’t a punishment]…

No Friend of Ours

Nevada has caught up with Washington, Arizona & Florida as one of the most vile, loathsome fonts of anti-whore vomit in the US:

Reno Public Radio’s Noah Glick spoke with Crysta Price, one of the [fabulists who created yet another bogus] study…[they actually represent themselves as] data scientists [though they’re not dealing in actual data and instead just vomit out a lot of lies & “end demand” filth. Price pretends that]…Reno is in the top 6.5 percent, in terms of the per-capital [sic] number of individuals that are advertised for sex. And then Nevada itself is the number one state…if you have the same amount [sic] of demands, you’ll just see those individuals replaced with trafficked individuals…demand…is often the result of a lot of males with expendable income…where it’s in an entertainment-like experience, that can often filter them into purchasing sex in the commercial sex industry…

“Per capital”? “Entertainment-like experience”? “Filter them into purchasing sex”? Is this woman for real, or is she some sort of Marxist clown robot railing against “expendable income”? Perhaps she thinks the almighty state should “protect” these vegetable-like “trafficked individuals” by stealing all that extra income & giving it to creatures like her?

New Excuse

For over three years now, I’ve been saying that the War on Whores is the new War on Drugs. And here’s a perfect example of that:

In the high days of America’s militarized war on drugs, baseless and botched home raids have become a defining feature—with often disastrous consequences. Now we’re seeing the same sort of overzealous enforcement efforts in the fight against…prostitution. This week, Detroit police raided an innocent family’s home after receiving a [bogus] sex-trafficking tip and then seeing two teens enter the house. One of the teens was the family’s 13-year-old daughter, who…wound up face-down and handcuffed on the floor, along with the rest of her family, after cops cut through a locked gate…and entered with their guns drawn…Maria Navarete [reported that] police told her to “shut up, you have no rights” when she asked what was happening…Police apologized, [pretending] that a mysterious heroin-addicted woman in a local hospital said she and several underage girls had been held against their will and forced into prostitution…[at] the Navarete’s place…

Business As Usual

Why does it surprise people when cops fight for what they imagine to be their “right” to rape sex workers?

The Anchorage Police Department is fighting a pair of state bills that would criminalize cops who have “sexual contact” with people under investigation. The reason for the opposition, according to Deputy Chief Sean Case, is that…such a law would allow sex workers to avoid arrest, since it provides them with a way to check if a potential client is a cop…“If we make that act (of touching) a misdemeanor we have absolutely no way of getting involved in that type of arrest”…Case [pretends] the department isn’t interested in making arrests for sex work in general and is instead focused on sex trafficking…which raises the question of [why] police are…advocating for the need to have “sexual contact” with trafficking victims…The bills at issue are the result of activism by…Community United for Safety and Protection (CUSP), which [explains] that sex workers in [every] state [are routinely] subjected to sexual abuse by police during undercover busts…Initially, it seemed that the bills would have no trouble passing. “Police and prosecutors [lied] that police never engage in sexual conduct during stings anyways”…said [Tara Burns]. “Then right as the bill was about to be heard they changed their story and now claim that they need to engage in sexual conduct with sex trafficking victims in order to rescue them”…sex worker advocates say that every state needs bills like those proposed in Alaska that expressly define “sexual contact” with sex workers during investigations as sexual abuse. That said, these laws only go so far…As Maggie McNeill…told Vocativ, “No matter what the law says, cops will keep raping sex workers, either in stings or outside of them, for as long as our profession is criminalized because they know damned well there’s nothing we can do about it.”

The Public Eye (#617)

Once again, Caroline McLeod handled this interview like a champ; and once again, the “journalists” sullied her words by surrounding them with prohibitionist lies. I’m not even going to bother quoting this dreary mess, which includes the usual anti-sex vomit from the usual sex-hating liars.

To Molest and Rape

Arkansas lets dangerous, violent rapist walk free; guess his profession:

…[Rapist cop] Robert G. Retford pleaded guilty to a charge of 3rd degree sexual assault. He was sentenced to 6 years probation…Retford’s victim…asked to be identified and wants everyone to know what…that [rapist cop] did to her…During the second week of September 2016…two Johnson County deputies showed up at her home for a domestic dispute…Retford offered to take her away from the situation…he…assaulted her with…his police baton. Then…raped her and urinated on her. “After that he made me drink his urine,” Shanna said…”I think he’s scary, it scares me just talking about him…he should be in jail locked up and I don’t feel other women and girls out there are safe”…

The Widening Gyre (#663)

More racist infantilization of Nigerian sex workers in Italy:

…For most of these women, sex work is…slave labour, enforced by vicious gang leaders who threaten the women with physical violence and deportation if they refuse to comply…Father Vincenzo (Enzo) Volpe…the Sicilian priest who works with Sister Valeria to protect the women and offer them hope for a new life, estimates there are some 500 Nigerians working against their will on the streets and in the brothels. That’s [an impossibly] big number for a city with a population of only 1.3 million [but fetishists believe it anyway]…tens of thousands of Nigerian sex slaves have poured into Italy and more are arriving almost every day in rickety boats dispatched from the Libyan coast, seeking a better life in Europe…

Pyrrhic Victory (#677)

Seattle cops aren’t the only ones with a fetish for creepy surveillance:

…After Geofeedia’s highly publicized PR disaster, in which Chicago Police were found to have used the social media surveillance platform to track racial justice protests and gatherings, the social media monitoring company saw Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram cut off its data streams…A company called Babel Street [is letting violent busybodies get around that]…Seattle PD are one of many users of Babel Street software, and are soon to be joined by the US Secret Service…the FBI is also using Babel Street programs…Babel Street also seems to be making a substantial push into the private market…[mostly] sports stadiums and entertainment venues…Babel X has access to over 25 social media sites, including Facebook, Instagram, and to Twitter’s firehose…Babel X can also surveil millions of URL’s including the deep web. The software can instantly translate over 200 languages, and can set up geo-fences around areas of special interest, and has highly customizable filtering options including for hashtags, emojis, handles, names…keywords….numerical sequences like credit card or social security numbers…dates, times, data type, language, and—interestingly enough—sentiment…

“Filter for sentiment”. Let that sink in, and remember that when I started this heading five years ago some people claimed I was exaggerating.

Policing for Profit (#687)

Once in a very great while, the bad guys still lose:

James Slatic was never charged with a crime, but it took 15 months and a twisting legal battle before three different judges for him to get back the more than $100,000 the San Diego District Attorney’s Office seized from him and his family—including his daughters’ college savings accounts. On [May 5th] a California superior court judge [finally] ordered the San Diego District Attorney’s Office to return [the money]…it [stole] from the Slatic family following a police raid last January on James Slatics’ medical marijuana company…

Advice for Clients (#704)

A simple primer on interacting with sex workers on Twitter:

Imagine you’re walking through your local mall…and discover a friendly lady…holding out a tray of…whatever…do you stand around engaging her in small talk while she…attempts to work around you?…Do you insist that she let you have a few more since you’ll definitely be a regular customer…Do you offer her unsolicited advice on how to season the food?…

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In the News (#711)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged A Woman's Point of View, abortion, activism, agency denial, Alaska, Arkansas, Backpage, Business As Usual, Checklist, China, Cooties, cops, Florida, gangs, Gorged With Meaning, Hawaii, hotels, India, law, New York, Oregon, pathologization of males, Pimps Ahoy, politicians, prohibitionist myths, propaganda, Property of the State, racism, rescue industry, Safe Targets, Stupor Bowl, Surplus Women, teachers, Texas, The Mob Rules, The War Goes On, United Kingdom, Utah, Vendetta, violence vs. sex workers, Washington (state), Worse Than I Thought on February 8, 2017| 2 Comments »

[Sex worker] distrust of law enforcement…is well earned. – Kate Mogulescu

Surplus Women

Imagine the murder of any other businessperson being described as a “scuffle”:

A 25-year-old Ugandan woman was…stabbed to death [in Bengaluru, Karnataka] in a scuffle over payment for sex…Ishan…has been arrested for fatally stabbing Florence Nakayaki…the deputy commissioner of police…PS Harsha [said]…neighbours called the police on hearing screams…Harsha [otherwise repeated the murderer’s version of events as though it were fact, casting blame on the victim for asking for her fee]…

Worse Than I Thought

A perfect storm of stupidity, sex fantasy and authoritarian violence:

A plan that would expand capital punishment in Utah so that [people] convicted of aggravated human trafficking or child sex exploitation that leads to death could be executed…[was passed by a] law enforcement …committee…despite concern from both [politicians] and [normal people]…sponsor…Paul Ray [fantasizes that] human trafficking is a big problem in Utah, so…“I want to be able to pull down a cartel kingpin or somebody and put them on death row if women or girls are dying in their trafficking rings,” he [bloviated]…The proposal is only the latest effort by Ray to institute hardline death-penalty plans…

Property of the State

Authoritarians’ latest dodge for getting around civil rights: encouraging profiteers to file civil suits instead:

…Arkansas Act 45…bans dilation and evacuation abortions, the most common abortion procedure during the second trimester of pregnancy. Rushed from filing to law in less than two months, the legislation effectively blocks abortions after 14 weeks by making the safest procedure a felony. The earliest current abortion bans block the procedure after 20 weeks. With no exception for rape or incest, and a clause that allows a woman’s spouse or parent to sue an abortion provider, the law potentially allows the fetus’s [sire] to sue even in cases of spousal rape or incest, abortion rights activists say. The law could go into effect as early as spring…

Business As Usual

Prohibitionists just can’t understand why sex workers refuse to believe that clients and imaginary “pimps” inflict the most violence on us, and that the police are our “rescuers” from it:

…[politician’s wife] Chirlane McCray urged [sex workers]…in New York City to trust the police to investigate, prosecute, and punish [our sources of income]…”We are already hearing that victims are afraid to come forward for fear of being deported,” McCray said. “If you are being forced to engage in any sex against your will, we want to help you…Please, do not be afraid”…[but in reality] prostitution-related charge[s] can land a non-citizen in a database accessible to federal immigration agents…NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill described [his own cluelessness by thinking sex workers want our clients persecuted]…But [in reality, as] Immigrant Defense Project attorney Genia Blaser said, “the city has investigated sex trafficking by arresting people…for…sex work”…between 2012 and 2015, the NYPD arrested 1,300 people…for allegedly “loitering for the purposes of prostitution”…631 people were arrested and charged with practicing massage without a license last year, up from just 31 in 2012…91 percent of the 2016 cases are against non-citizens…

Safe Targets (#452)

A profile of Tara Burns, with emphasis on her activism in Alaska:

…“people in the media were saying that they were using [a 2012 Alaska] law to ‘save’ the poor trafficking victims” Burns tells me. But…“the law was only being used against us and not…to protect us…I was familiar with all of these different issues – police having sex with people and then arresting them, and people being turned away when they were trying to report crimes,” she tells me. After studying for a Master’s Degree in Social Justice at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and conducting her thesis, Burns resolved to fight for change – using her research to find out the percentages of people who had experienced this. “I brought that research to the Alaska legislature to tell them how their law was working and when I got down there I found out that I had to register as a representational lobbyist – so I was the first person in the history of Alaska’s legislature to be a representational lobbyist representing sex workers”, she explains. Now, Tara is a founding board member of the organisation Community United for Safety and Protection, which works for safety and protection in Alaska’s sex industry…

Checklist (#514)

More absurd “air hostesses vs pimps” nonsense:

…former flight attendant Nancy Rivard, founder of Airline Ambassadors, is trying to [indoctrinate] airline staff across the nation…[in] human trafficking [propaganda, using fake stats such as the fabricated claim that] U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 2,000 human traffickers and identified 400 victims last year…[and promoting myths about] the Super Bowl…[prohibitionists like Rivard fantasize that] sex work and human trafficking often go hand-in-hand…Airline Ambassador Sandra Fiorini, 69, testified before Congress in 2010 about [her BDSM sexual fantasies about]…girls…flying from Moscow to the United States…

Vendetta (#523)

A female “contributor” to GQ is paid to fellate Peter Qualliotine, the deeply misogynistic prohibitionist who runs Seattle’s “john school”, where he attempts to indoctrinate normal men in the dogma that their sex drives are pathological because women are too stupid to make sexual decisions for ourselves:

…Peter Qualliotine [is] a co-founder of the Seattle-based Organization for Prostitution Survivors [and a prohibitionist for many years]…In plenty of cities and counties around the country, men busted for buying sex get sent to a class known as “john school”—usually just a scared-straight afternoon with [propaganda] about STDs and jail time and the harms of prostitution…Peter had taught those classes and didn’t think much of their effectiveness. He had something [more grandiose] in mind…In class, throughout those first weeks, a number of the men showed with their body language that they [understood] the whole exercise was bullshit, a waste of their time. Several…made it clear that they [understood] it was nonsense that prostitution was a crime at all…

Naturally, Brooke Jarvis consulted no actual sex workers for the article, despite there being plenty of very public members of our community right here in Seattle.

A Woman’s Point of View

As with cannabis legalization, if enough of these are thrown at the wall one of them may eventually stick:

Hawaii lawmakers are considering decriminalizing prostitution…after House Speaker Joseph Souki introduced a bill…Transgender activist Tracy Ryan says she’s pushing the bill because transgender women in the sex trade are disproportionately impacted by criminalization laws… Souki says he takes no position on the bill, but he introduced it as a favor to Ryan. House Majority Leader Scott Saiki says this and a bill to decriminalize marijuana may be part of a push to reduce the prison population.

Gorged With Meaning (#639)

It’s so nice to see sex work treated as the normal thing it is:

…Portland State University’s (PSU) Women’s Resource Center… “supports the right of all students to seek and access safety in all aspects of life, including in the workplace. For students working in the sex industry, this can be a unique and isolating challenge.” Adrienne Graf is Portland State University’s Sexual and Relationship Violence Response Program Coordinator…and…created Portland State University’s Student Sex Worker Outreach Project…Graf’s been personally connected to sex workers since she was 18- or 19-years-old, when she first was starting her career in social work…“When I went into getting my Masters in Social Work, I was really intrigued and also disturbed by how social workers did and did not interact with the sex industry, and I became increasingly more involved in sex worker activism as a result”…

Pimps Ahoy

I predict we’re going to see a lot more rescue industry dudes pretending to have been reluctant pimps:

[Self-proclaimed] pimp turned do-gooder Kaushic Biswas…is now teaching the sort of women he once exploited how to cook their way out of sex trafficking… in the 1990s…Biswas earned big money as a pimp, managing and selling women for sex after they had been trafficked into prostitution. “Every night I broke down and cried…because I was part of the exploitation,” Biswas [fantasized]… “Sometimes they forced me to watch”…Biswas bought a plane ticket to Thailand to escape Mumbai, working once more as a chef, first in a 5-star hotel in Thailand, next under his mentor in Hong Kong…he found solace in a church and joined fellow believers…

Cooties (#703)

It’s always “gangs”. Because you know women are too stupid to use AirBnB for ourselves:

More than 30 “pop up” brothels each week are being opened in Swindon, with foreign prostitutes renting properties for a few days before moving on. Wiltshire Police said that every week, as many as 40 sex-workers, most of whom are eastern European, were advertising their services in the town. It is the latest in a spate of reports across the country of temporary brothels, where rooms are rented for just a few days before women are swiftly moved on to evade detection…[cops fantasize] many of the brothels [are]…linked to organised crime gangs which traffic women from Poland and Romania…

The War Goes On (#707)

The idea that women have free will is incomprehensible to the misogynistic sociopaths in “law enforcement”:

…The shuffling on Backpage is being watched closely in Miami-Dade, where prosecutors have been aggressive about going after pimps and traffickers, while [locking up women by pretending they’ve]…been coerced into selling their bodies…State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle dismissed Backpage’s widely publicized closing of its adult section closing as nothing more than a “shell game…They’ve all moved to the dating section…The same victims are being found there”…[this attitude among] law enforcement hasn’t gone over well with…some advocates for victims of [coercion]…“It’s a symbolic crusade,” said Kimberly Mehlman-Orozco, a criminology professor at Georgetown University…“They’re trying to get some accolades and look like the heroes”…

Stupor Bowl (#709)

Barely a peep out of these fanatics this year, and even then only at the last minute:

Sex trafficking tends to increase during the Super Bowl and this year is no exception, according to…Nita Belles…of…In Our Backyard…The Houston Police Department [claims to be]…busy with multiple…sex trafficking [cases]…Belle said…”If somebody’s coming here for the Super Bowl [and has sadfeelz about sex work they should rat people out to the cops]”…

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Links #326

Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged Alaska, animals, California, cops, drugs, Florida, Georgia, imaginative fiction, lawheads, Never Call the Cops, prisons, Stop faking!, video, Virginia on October 2, 2016| Leave a Comment »

I spent my life playing in pee. – David Wartinger

I must admit to having a soft spot for trivia geekery such as that displayed in this week’s video, provided by Kevin Wilson. The links above it were contributed by Scott Greenfield (“faking”), Tim Cushing (“sorry” and “ever”), Nun Ya (“protect” and “love”), Tushy Galore (“instead”), and Jason Kuznicki (“stones”).

From the Archives

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In the News (#677)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged advertising, agency denial, Alaska, Austria, BDSM, California, Challenge, Checklist, cops, France, Good Fantasy-Bad Reality, I Spy, Idaho, Ireland, It Looks Good On Paper, It's What They Do, language, law, Louisiana, neofeminism, politicians, Pyrrhic Victory, sex offender registry, Still a Child, stripping, surveillance, Swedish model, The End of the Beginning, Theatrics, Too Close To Home, underage, United Kingdom, Washington (state) on October 1, 2016| 2 Comments »

No woman is made safer by laws which deny her right to consent to sex. – Catherine Staples

Good Fantasy, Bad Reality

“Contracts” like this offer no protection and can actually be damning in court should something go wrong:

An Austrian sex worker has been convicted over the death of a sadomasochist client left to die with a noose and a shoelace around his neck in a Vienna hotel room…[she] only received a two-year suspended sentence…due to attenuating circumstances. The woman said the…client paid her…to help him lose consciousness by strangling him with the shoelace while he tightened a rope attached to the wall around his neck. She said the man had signed a piece of paper saying he assumed “complete responsibility for all risks and health damages” and that he was “fully aware that such a fetish can lead to death”…With his head in the noose, his face a different colour and his hands and feet twitching, the woman tightened the lace for a few seconds…She then eased it, got dressed and left, as agreed. But some 90 minutes later after the man failed to contact her, she began to panic…

Theatrics (#446)

A new low in prohibitionist vileness: using fake images of murdered sex workers to campaign for laws that will result in more violence against us:

…French [prohibitionist] organization Le Mouvement du Nid launched its own [fake] escort website, with help from McCann Paris…Girls of Paradise looks like a basic escort service. You can check out profiles and pictures, and opt to chat or call the women you’re interested in before arranging a date. But…each woman featured in Girls of Paradise is [supposedly] already dead…when clients initiate a chat or a phone call…they’re shown [fake] photos of the woman, beat up and bloody, or simply told that she isn’t available tonight because she was killed in a manner most grisly…Le Mouvement du Nid…seeks to…victimize [sex workers further by supporting the Swedish model]…Girls of Paradise will score a gold Clio…

You read that correctly: the sociopaths behind the Clio awards (the advertising industry’s Oscars) gave this ethical abomination a fucking award.

Checklist (#542)

Another state plans to “fight sex trafficking” with magical posters:

…Anchorage Mayor Ethan Berkowitz wants to require certain types of Anchorage businesses…to hang up posters [pretended] to combat labor trafficking…Berkowitz is seeking to update the city penal code on prostitution…to…reflect what he called “modern [propaganda]…surrounding prostitution and sex trafficking.” For instance, changing the word “solicitation” to “sexual exploitation” in city law…

Too Close To Home

Remember that this is a sheriff who imagines he has the right to destroy hundreds of people’s lives because he doesn’t like their sexual choices:

The former head of internal affairs for the King County Sheriff’s Office now seeks whistleblower protection after saying Sheriff John Urquhart made troubling comments about women and meddled in internal investigations involving female officers who complained of discrimination. Capt. D.J. Nesel recently testified that a county prosecutor threatened him prior to a court-ordered deposition in which he roundly criticized Urquhart…as a bitterly fought lawsuit involving discrimination claims against Urquhart and his office reached a boiling point. Urquhart has been ordered to testify as attorneys for the county fight to keep Nesel from divulging details of the sheriff’s comments…

Challenge (#615)

I am proud to call this incredible woman my friend:

A sex worker has won the right to have a judicial review over a law that makes it illegal to pay for sexual services in Northern Ireland. Laura Lee…for a legal challenge to the Human Trafficking Act at the high court in Belfast on Wednesday…A full hearing date for the judicial review will be set in 11 weeks’ time…Lee, a law graduate, had stated previously that she was prepared to go to the European court of human rights to challenge the law, which she and fellow sex workers [explain] discriminates against their rights to privacy, to earn a living and physical protection…

Pyrrhic Victory (#648)

Seattle cops have a positive fetish for illegal surveillance:

Beginning two years ago, but unbeknownst to the public—until now…the Seattle Police Department…acquired the ability to watch your social media posts in real time, using software that can place those posts on a digital map. This tracking software, which the SPD purchased in October 2014 from a CIA-funded company called Geofeedia, is designed to tell [cops] where you posted from and what you said. It can also show hundreds of other tweets, Instagrams, and other social media posts from anyone else in the vicinity, and then file all of that information into one big database. The secret purchase of the Geofeedia software—for $14,125—violated a Seattle law requiring a city official outside of the police department to be notified of such acquisitions…The secret use of the software…also violated the city’s 2013 surveillance ordinance, which requires “any City department intending to acquire surveillance equipment” to “obtain City Council approval”…SPD spokesperson Sean Whitcomb [lied] to The Stranger on September 23 that…”We are no longer using Geofeedia”…another SPD official…Brian Maxey said the department is now using software from a firm called Babel Street “to support lawful criminal investigations.” On its website, that company offers…the ability to “geo-locate the origin of e-chatter”…

Remember, Seattle ladies, we’re all “criminals”, which makes spying on us a “lawful criminal investigation”.

Still a Child (#663)

I’m pleased to see this lawsuit, but sad to see they felt compelled to employ ugly whorearchical bullshit to further it:

Jane Does I, II and III say the state of Louisiana is robbing them of their ability to express themselves, and doing so in a way that discriminates against their gender. These women are exotic dancers younger than 21, and therefore will be barred from performing in strip clubs in about a week…In a federal lawsuit, the dancers say the law violates the First Amendment by denying them freedom of expression, and violates the Constitution’s equal protection clause by unfairly targeting women…the law’s definition of strip club performers as “entertainers whose breasts or buttocks are exposed to view” fails to prohibit the same conduct by men who are between the ages of 18 and 21…the lawsuit cites comments by legislators to bolster its case for gender discrimination…[politicians] said the law was aimed at protecting young women…[but] the law is already endangering young woman. One plaintiff says she has witnessed pimps and prostitutes trying to use the new law…to “recruit entertainers who are now lawfully employed, but who will lose their jobs as a result of the Act.” Another plaintiff…says other dancers under 21 have told her they plan to switch to prostitution once they can no longer dance…

Oh, and CBS? I don’t think the law is trying to stop anyone from “bearing” breasts and butts; how would such a statute be enforced, mass mutilation?

It Looks Good On Paper (#666)

What this law actually does is empower the cops to indefinitely detain underage sex workers “for their own protection”:

Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday signed legislation decriminalizing prostitution for minors. By prohibiting law enforcement from arresting people under the age of 18 for soliciting or loitering with intent [but not for whatever other reason might pop into their piggy heads], Senate Bill 1322 [pretends to] shield…those young people from criminal penalties…While embracing the idea of treating young sex workers as [incompetent] victims [they can lock up at will], law enforcement groups warned that removing penalties would remove a crucial tool for [caging] young people and keeping them away from their [friends]…

The End of the Beginning (#668)

They’re only saying this because it’s true:

…A federal lawsuit filed [against Idaho] argues that retroactively imposing…requirements on sex offenders, in some cases more than two decades after they were convicted, violates the Constitution’s ban on ex post facto laws. Whether the courts agree will depend on whether they view registration and the burdens associated with it as a punishment…in August the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit concluded that Michigan’s Sex Offender Registration Act goes far enough beyond Alaska’s law that applying it retroactively is unconstitutional. The 6th Circuit focused on the act’s arbitrary classification scheme, residence restrictions, and burdensome reporting requirements—all features shared by Idaho’s law…

It’s What They Do

Are headline writers the most clueless people in news organizations, or does it just seem that way?

…[prohibitionist MP] Thangam Debbonaire [vomited out Swedish model poison and called for]…the Home Affairs Select Committee’s inquiry into prostitution – which recommended “soliciting” for sex be made legal – to be “redone” after its chair, Keith Vaz MP, was found to be paying rent boys for sex…[sex worker] Catherine Staples…replied by telling the MP her argument was helping to promote a negative stigma of her life choice, [correctly] calling her and fellow panelist, Dr Madeliene Coy, “anti-women’s rights”…

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In the News (#660)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, Alaska, censorship, cops, cult of the child, I’m Sure You Feel Safer Now, Illinois, Indonesia, Madonna/whore, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio, Paint By Numbers, pathologization of males, Pennsylvania, porn, Profound Ignorance, prohibitionist myths, psychology, rape, rescue industry, restaurants, sex offender registry, Social Construction of Eunuchs, sporting events, stripping, Stupor Bowl, Sweden, Tennessee, The Pro-Rape Coalition, The Public Eye, They Still Don't Get It, Thought Control, To Molest and Rape, transgender, United Kingdom, Virginia, Whatever They Need To Say, yellow journalism on August 3, 2016| 6 Comments »

Some people like to paint. Some people like to dance. Some people like to express themselves in an erotic way. – Sharron Cooks

Social Construction of Eunuchs

Sweden has been systematically working to emasculate its men for a generation, yet wonders why Swedes are having less sex:

…Swedish…Health Minister Gabriel Wikström said in the 20 years since the last survey into the country’s sexual habits, newspapers have been reporting that Swedes are having less sex…The aim of the new survey is to find out if that is true — and if so, why. Wikström said…“sex is not, and never has been, a purely private matter. Sex is also a matter of [public] health, and from that perspective, a political issue”…

I’m Sure You Feel Safer Now

…that police “investigated” this “sexual assault”:

Murfreesboro, Tennessee’s police…responded to a call reporting an alleged sexual assault by a toy and didn’t arrest or shoot a single person in the process. “A woman’s husband said she was sexually assaulted when she was squirted with water from a toy at a hibachi restaurant. The woman, Isabelle Lassiter, and her husband, James Lassiter, called the police but refused to file charges when they arrived…” The alleged perpetrator of the “sexual-style assault” was a plastic toy in the shape of a little boy used to entertain children at Wasabi Japanese Steakhouse. When the toy’s pants are pulled down, it squirts water in a manner Isabelle Lassiter found completely inappropriate for her “minor children and grandchildren” to witness…Unfortunately for the Lassiters, it appears the toy and the chef who introduced it to Ms. Lassiter at Wasabi won’t face any charges, as Tennessee’s statute on “sexual battery” requires the “sexual contact” in question be “for the purpose of sexual arousal or gratification”…

They Still Don’t Get It

This pompous ass seems committed to braying out of both sides of her maw:

…Unfortunately, a typical “rescue” is muddied by the erroneous criminalization, failed service provision, and revictimization of human trafficking survivors, as well as the infrequent conviction of their offenders. I became acutely aware of this reality after working with a victim…”Jessica”. I rescued her from her trafficker on Aug. 21, 2015, after witnessing him abusing her in front of a suburban mall in the middle of the afternoon in Virginia. She had been victimized on and off for fifteen years, having been shot in the leg, raped, beaten, and mentally abused…Despite having served on two different anti-trafficking task forces and having nearly a decade of experience in the anti-trafficking field, it was extremely difficult for me to find adequate services for “Jessica”…she ended up moving between domestic violence shelters (some with bed bugs), a mental health facility, hotels paid for from the discretionary funds of anti-trafficking organizations, and homeless shelters….law enforcement wasn’t able to incapacitate her trafficker, so about six months after her initial rescue, she was revictimized. Given the trauma bond that often exists between victims and offenders, it is common for sex trafficking survivors to return to their victimizer, especially when adequate services are absent…

Her “trafficker” was “abusing her in front of a suburban mall in the middle of the afternoon”, and this presumably middle-aged woman “rescued” her? How, pray tell? Did she rope the “trafficker” with her magic lasso? Pick the girl up bodily & fly off with her in her invisible plane, leaving the villain shaking his fist? Why were the police unable to “incapacitate” someone who supposedly committed a violent crime in front of (presumably) a dozen witnesses or more? And note the insidious “trauma bond” concept here again, which is nothing but psychobabble intended to negate the agency of women who make decisions of which “authorities” and “feminists” disapprove.

Whatever They Need To Say

Sometimes the land grabs are more subtle, even if reporters’ language isn’t:

The East London Strippers Collective (ELSC) is an ethical organisation of strippers and lap dancers in London and the UK…[who] seek to challenge societal attitudes towards strip clubs by creating their own working conditions and empowering dancers. [An event called]…RIP Shoreditch…will [take] place at 6pm on 14 August, with a funeral procession beginning in Rivington Street and ending at Red Gallery…they’re commemorating their favourite strip club – The White Horse – closing down after 38 years due to gentrification…Stacey Clare, co-founder of the ELSC [says]…this sort of thing is partly due to political and economic changes…”Gentrification is seeing so many genuinely alternative venues and spaces pushed out of East London, replaced by a sanitised homogeneous zone for the privileged”…It is, she says, “almost unbearable to work as a stripper nowadays” because of…licensing legislation that rigidly restricts the industry from growing or developing…

The Public Eye

Let’s hope many more reporters learn to feel ashamed of their attempts to shame sex workers:

At this year’s Democratic National Convention…Pennsylvania activist Sharron Cooks was one of 28 openly transgender delegates and two trans women-of-color delegates. She’s also a former sex worker. Unfortunately but unsurprisingly, it’s this last bit that The Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Jenice Armstrong chose to focus on…insinuating that having a former sex-worker as a Democratic delegate was somehow at odds with the party nominating its first female presidential candidate. Cooks, founder and chief executive of the nonprofit Making Our Lives Easier…handled the situation with grace…[but] the Inquirer columnist…kept pressing Cooks for more details about her past work. It’s only after the delegate evades her farther that the writer begins to “feel dirty” about her line of questioning…

The Pro-Rape Coalition (#35)

Republican candidate vows to “crack down” on porn. In other news, Pope announces he’s Catholic:

Donald Trump will crack down on internet pornography if elected president, vowing to appoint a commission to examine its “harmful public health impact”…the promise…is part of “The Children’s Internet Safety Presidential Pledge” from the group Enough Is Enough…The anti-porn commitment means he promises to “uphold the rule of law by aggressively enforc[ing] existing federal laws to prevent the sexual exploitation of children online, including the federal obscenity laws, child pornography laws, sexual predation laws and the sex trafficking laws”…

Profound Ignorance

Why do economists always make such dumb assumptions when studying sex work?

A new study, published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, examined the link between a prostitute’s age and the price she charges…Kitae Sohn…used prostitutes’ earnings to address a much broader scientific question, one that applies not only to paid sexual exchanges, but to everyday concerns that many of us obsess about at some point in our lives: What does the opposite sex actually find attractive in a partner?…Men do not have unrestrained choice in whom they marry or date, but they do get to choose whether or not to pay a prostitute for sex, and the amount they are willing to pay reveals something about what they most prefer…Sohn’s sample was very large, including 8,560 prostitutes from 15 different cities in Indonesia. As Sohn notes, Indonesia provides an ideal place to examine this issue, because prostitution is “quasi-legal”…the government…keeps official records on prostitutes’ income alongside incomes from other professions…When it comes to hiring the short-term services of a prostitute, men pay the most for women between the late teens and early twenties. Between the ages of 25 and 35, the price men are willing to pay for a prostitute drops precipitously…For each increase of a year in age, a prostitute’s hourly wage decreases 4.5 percent…Sohn argues that: “evolution influenced all humans, so we expect that future research will find similar results in other countries.” Supporting Sohn’s argument, the age preferences found in this research are quite consistent with findings using other methods in other societies around the world…

Because obviously Indonesia being both an Asian and a Muslim society could have no possible cultural impact on preferences. And obviously, all women tell the truth about their income to government busybodies. And all whores work by the hour. And all income is in the form of reportable wages. And…I think you get the picture. All other things being equal, most men do indeed prefer a younger-looking sex partner…and all other things are not equal, not by a long shot.

Paint By Numbers

Do whatever it was you were going to do anyway, but declare that you’re doing it to “fight sex trafficking”; stupid people will believe you and give you money:

Cory Bolduc wants men to fight sex trafficking, grow beards and buy his beard butter…He handcrafts beard butters from his Winnebago [Illinois] home and sells them online and at the Rockford City Market, and 12 percent of all proceeds go to Freedom Firm, a nonprofit that fights the sex trade in India. But Bearded Republic isn’t just about men’s grooming or charity, it’s about challenging men to take responsibility for their personal appearance and also [meddle in the lives] of others…the “beard movement” is redefining the modern man to be an empowered individual who expresses his individuality and lives by a moral code…

Stupor Bowl

Minnesota desperately tries to cash in on “sex trafficking” hysteria before it vanishes completely:

Law enforcement officials are bracing for a surge in internet sex trafficking when Minnesota hosts the 2018 Super Bowl…[they] anticipate hundreds of women and girls will be sold for sex around the time of the game…”There’s no doubt that when you have an increased amount of individuals congregating…you are going to have an increase in crime committed. It’s naive to assume it wouldn’t be,” Washington County major crimes prosecutor Imran Ali said. Before the Super Bowl…another major sporting event is drawing people to Minnesota — the 2016 Ryder Cup…Already at work is a task force…alarmed by sex trafficking ads spreading on internet sites. Authorities said more juveniles are being forced into the sex trade because the internet has expanded the market…”They’re targeting those that are mentally ill, are chemically dependent,” Ali said…Some experts argue the idea that Super Bowls attract a large commercial sex trade is a myth…

Despite the efforts of sociopathic “authorities” to convince the public that all sex workers are mentally ill addicts, we’re winning the narrative; note the decrease in gypsy whores from 40,000 to mere hundreds, and the now-obligatory disclaimer (though this one tries to dismiss our facts as mere opinion).

Counterfeit Comfort (#420)

At least this maniac didn’t manage to kill any of his victims, which doesn’t make the government any less culpable in these assaults:

…Jason Vukovich…is accused of tracking down [three] men on [Alaska’s] online sex offender registry, going to their homes and [attacking] them [with a hammer]…over three nights in late June…[in each case] the attacker called [the victim] by his name and explained he was there because [the victim] was on the sex offender list…If convicted, Vukovich could face 35 years total for the combined crimes…

Thought Control (Traffic Updates)

Amazon isn’t a library, but given its prominence this is still a censorship attempt:

Books that teach readers step by step how to control women and make money are readily available for anyone to buy on Amazon. Now an Albuquerque group is working to change that. As part of Human Trafficking Awareness Day, a local coalition of churches and non-profits started a petition…asking Amazon to stop selling a group of books they claim teaches people how to become a human trafficker…With the I-40 corridor, experts say the metro can become a hot spot for this type of crime. Christine Barber [is clutching her pearls over]…titles…such as Organized Game, Pimps: The Raw Truth…How To Get A Woman To Pay You…and How To Get A Fat Girl To Pay You…”a pimp is a human trafficker,” Barber [panted]…she had a booklet pointing out other “pimp” products sold on Amazon…like an air freshener or a pimp gnome…She said she’s not asking Amazon to stop selling all “pimp” related products, rather specifically to stop selling the “how-to” books that go into graphic detail about human trafficking tactics…

The worst part is that these morons have now given free publicity to idiotic “pimp”, “Game” and PUA books.

The Public Eye (#439)

I’m not sure what “awards” there are for whores outside of porn, but I’m always happy to see well-spoken and “out” sex workers like Charlotte Rose appearing on podcasts. ‘Nuff said, methinks.

To Molest and Rape

Yes, I understand the legal arguments. And no, putting extraordinary restrictions on people who have as much power as cops do is not remotely unfair or unconstitutional, considering that the institution of professional policing itself rests on very questionable constitutional ground:

A divided Ohio Supreme Court…declared unconstitutional a law that made it illegal for [cops] to have sex with minors simply on the basis of their profession. The court ruled 4-3 that the law arbitrarily added police to a ban on professionals having sex with minors that includes people with authority over children such as teachers or coaches…At issue was the 2012 conviction of…Matthew Mole, who…[raped] a 14-year-old boy…

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In the News (#652)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged A False Dichotomy, agency denial, Alaska, Australia, California, cops, dirty, escort services, Florida, hysteria, Ireland, Islam, Japan, Japanese Prostitution, License To Rape, New York, porn, prisons, prohibitionist myths, psychology, rape, Reaction Formation, South Dakota, statistics, Surplus Women, Swedish model, Texas, Thailand, The Course of a Disease, The Proper Study, The Scarlet Letter, The Widening Gyre, To Molest and Rape, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers on July 6, 2016| 3 Comments »

The criminalisation of sex workers should…end. – MP Keith Vaz

Japanese Prostitution

I’d be a lot more inclined to believe this as reported if A) it were in a more credible publication than the LA Times; and B) it didn’t quote a “sex trafficking” NGO:

Japan’s pornography industry has come under greater scrutiny after Tokyo Metro Police arrested executives of a well-known talent agency on suspicion of coercing an actress to engage in sex on camera. Human rights groups had been calling for action for months. Police announced…they had arrested the president of Marks Japan and two others on suspicion that they forced a woman into appearing in adult films by threatening to punish her financially…the Tokyo-based advocacy group Human Rights Now issued a report…charging that Japan’s pornography industry…violated the human rights of women and girls by blackmailing them…into work they didn’t want to do. Shihoko Fujiwara…of…Lighthouse: Center for Human Trafficking Victims, said…her group had received more than 100 complaints regarding forced participation in porn — and that the industry uses tactics similar to human traffickers…

Reaction Formation

This guy claims to be “religious”, so he’s spending a lot of time gawking at escort websites & then defacing them:

A religiously-motivated hacker using the title “ElSurveillance” has defaced nearly 40 websites that offer escort services and claims to be on the verge of leaking data on 100,000 registered users…ElSurveillance, who claims on social media to be from Morocco…asserted…”I strongly believe that our bodies are gifted from Allah (God) to us to look after and not to destroy. I always hated the idea of people selling their bodies for money which it gives a chance for the escort agencies to take advantage of these people who are in need”…

License to Rape

Prohibition turns the body of every citizen into a “crime scene”, which can be violated by cops at will:

…police in South Dakota have resorted to using catheters to extract urine samples from uncooperative [DUI] suspects. This procedure, while endorsed by the state’s top prosecutor, has been decried by critics as a potential violation of suspects’ constitutional rights…police performing the procedure don’t even anesthetize them beforehand…Courtney Bowie, legal director for ACLU South Dakota[said]…“It would be completely improper for people to place a catheter on an individual of the opposite gender…That would border on an unlawful assault, battery or rape.”

The cops are practicing medicine without a license, literally shoving tubes up people’s genitals, and the most the ACLU will say is that it’s a “potential” violation that “borders” on assault or rape, but only if the attacker were of the opposite sex. Because obviously, rapists never rape victims of their own sex, and even if they did it would be “proper”.

The Proper Study

This actually looks like a fairly decent study, but I can’t help being amused by the reporter’s apparent belief that many clients being married is some kind of surprise:

Almost half of men who paid for sex are in a relationship, including marriage…a quarter earned more than €60,000 a year…The findings are based on an online survey of 446 men as well as a smaller number of face-to-face interviews…the vast majority of respondents used the services of internet-advertised “escorts”…46.1% said they had bought sex a few times a year while almost 31% said they paid for sex once or twice a month. Just under 3% said they paid for sex every week. While some men reported paying for sex due to lack of self-confidence and shyness around women, others said…“they were living in ‘sexless’ or ‘loveless’ marriages with no physical contact, or because their relationship with their partners had broken down…Some respondents stated that sex with a sex worker is the easier, but also a ‘more honest’ and safer option than affairs or one-night stands…They worry about the possible negative effects of selling sex and state that they would not pay for sex with somebody who appears coerced or forced. This constitutes a stark contradiction to the image painted in the public discourse…where clients are described as sexual predators who do not care whether the person they pay for sex is an independent sex worker or a victim of trafficking.”

Surplus Women

And her police record is important…why, exactly?

…Anchorage police found [Jacqueline] Goodwin’s body in a Subaru after it crashed into a light pole…they charged the driver…Benjamin Wilkins, with murder, kidnapping, sexual assault, tampering with evidence and DUI…they…don’t know how long Wilkins had been driving around with the body…Goodwin’s past was riddled with…convictions related to drugs and prostitution…Wilkins…has a history of charges for driving violations…

A False Dichotomy (The Beat Goes On)

You’d think that Australian journalists would have the sense to go to Scarlet Alliance for commentary on sex work, but you’d be wrong; they lap up the noxious idiocy vomited out by “rescue” fetishists, just as they do in the US:

Dan…[is] an undercover rescue worker, searching for underage girls and trafficking victims…we talk of the girls he has seen rescued and the men who travel to Thailand to purchase them…research has shown Australian men to be among the largest contributors to sex tourism in southeast Asia…“These men…they’ve all got the same story…They think coming to Thailand for sex is going to fill a void in their lives…then they realise that the lifestyle they’ve chosen is empty and meaningless”…It’s easy to understand the emotional toll that such work takes on rescue workers…like Dan…“When we first meet…[the girls] they hate themselves…these girls were raped and abused”…Dan feels deeply for each of these girls, and his voice is often drenched with emotion as he talks about the damage done to young women at the hands of men looking to satisfy their own lust…“The more men that have had sex with them, the harder it is and the less worth they feel”…Dan can’t help but feel sadness for the men he meets…“They’re hurting men, they’re lost men, they’re men who’ve made decisions that have set them on a path of destruction”…Dan…understands that sex tourists need help to overcome their addictions — which in some cases, are killing them…

Boo hoo hoo, the clients are victims too! And the “rescue” fetishists! We’re ALL victims of evil, evil sex!

The Widening Gyre

Ever wonder where all those supposed “sex trafficking victims” are?

Due to the NYPD not updating their missing person’s list, City Councilman Andy King of The Bronx [negligently claimed] that 14 Bronx girls were missing since July of 2014 and [fantasized] that they were smuggled into a prostitution ring. NYPD and family members of the formerly missing girls came forward and stared that 11 of the 14 girls had been found or had returned home…publications like the Daily News and New York Magazine, ran with the story without verifying the details…

The Scarlet Letter (#576)

Why does a publication named Vice insist on publishing so much twisted, ignorant, anti-whore propaganda? This collection of prohibitionist lies, mostly from a prosecutor, reads like something one would find on a prohibitionist website:

Susan Kang Schroeder, prosecutor…for…Orange County [California, vomits out all kind of disgusting filth and writer Cole Kazdin eagerly licked it up]…public shaming is part of a larger program to prosecute sex trafficking…by limiting the supply of men willing to purchase sex…Southern California…draws a lot of sex traffickers…Most prostitutes…have a pimp and are trafficked. Very few are working as free agents…Some traffickers have social media pages…and they complain to each other, posting, “Don’t go to Orange County, they have a task force”…Schroeder says decriminalization…would backfire because then the DA wouldn’t be able to go after the traffickers. She says that many men who traffic women over 18 also have underage girls they force to work for them…Some of the girls are as young as 13…some have been “branded” by the men who traffic them: their names are tattooed on the girls’ faces…

Can’t you just hear Schroeder’s Hitachi going while she recounts her sick fantasies? Someone needs to be locked up, shamed, and put on a “sex offender” registry, all right, but it isn’t sex workers’ clients; it’s perverts like Schroeder. And please, Ms. Kazdin, if there are “sex traffickers” with social media pages, please share them; I for one would love to see that.

The Course of a Disease (#637)

This is not “decriminalization” as some sources are reporting; note that it still leaves the door open for the horror of client criminalization. But I’m cautiously optimistic, as the committee rejected a lot of prohibitionist lies out of hand:

The criminalisation of sex workers in England and Wales should come to an end, a cross-party committee of influential MPs has recommended…the home affairs select committee…said the Home Office should immediately change existing legislation so that soliciting is no longer an offence and brothel-keeping laws allow sex workers to share premises…the Home Office should legislate to delete previous convictions and cautions for prostitution from the record of sex workers, to make it easier for them to move into other forms of work should they wish to do so. It added, however, that those who use brothels to control or exploit sex workers should continue to be prosecuted. With regards to changing the laws on buying sex, the inquiry will continue, and the committee will seek further evidence on the impacts of recently introduced laws in Northern Ireland and France, as well the model of regulation used in New Zealand…

To Molest and Rape

If this is the way cops treat other cops, what hope do whores have?

In a lawsuit…Miami-Dade Police Officer Krystal Spence says her supervisor…Anthony Collins…routinely made lewd comments to her, grabbed her face multiple times and kissed her, followed her into the women’s bathroom, emailed Spence’s mother asking to date her daughter, and at one point trapped her in his office and touched her [vulva]…as early as 2011, she told her sergeant, Terry Williams, that Collins was making her feel uncomfortable. Williams “never addressed the situation”…Instead, she claims the harassment only got worse…On November 1, 2014, Spence says the incident was reported to the department’s Professional Compliance Bureau — Spence claims Internal Affairs told her “not to discuss the case”…[and] actively tried to “undermine” her complaint…in order to prevent [her] from contacting the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission or trying to sue…

In Texas, the victims of rapist cops are at least offered food, if not actual help:

According to a pending lawsuit, a woman who was sexually assaulted by a La Joya [Texas cop] while in custody was offered a taco instead of medical assistance after his supervisors watched the surveillance video….after “Autumn Renee” was booked and brought to her cell, [Felipe Santiago Peralez III] “began an all-night invasion” of her body…Peralez assaulted [her] for hours with his fingers and hands…[orally raped] her…and left her with severe bruises. According to a report from the Texas Rangers, Peralez is seen “engaging” with the victim 49 times while she was in custody…Peñitas [cop] Elizabeth Garza…tried to silence the victim with threats, telling her that “she should forget all about the incident and go on with her life, because ‘people come up missing all the time in the valley’.” Peralez was arrested a year later, after Texas Ranger Robert Garcia got wind of the assault and got his hands on the incriminating surveillance video…

To Molest and Rape (#651)

It’s good to see all this coming out, but I hope people don’t get the idea that this is unique to Oakland:

Rory Keller-Dean, [a sex worker] who was trying to keep her boyfriend’s car from being impounded, said…she was forced to perform oral sex on [Gary] Romero and six other Oakland [pigs]. “I thought I was gonna be dead. I thought they were gonna kill me…But then he hands me the keys to the Cadillac and tells me goodbye and not to say a damn thing.” Keller-Dean, who sued and was awarded $350,000 by the city, said that night in 1997 started two years of forced sex with Romero while he was on duty. In 2002, after the settlement, then Deputy City Attorney Barbara Parker said the city’s internal investigation corroborated many of Keller-Dean’s claims. Romero denied the allegations throughout, calling the sex consensual. Although she has tried to put her past behind her, Keller-Dean decided to share her story to support Celeste Guap…

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