The adult community lost a unique and intriguing personality this week with the death of veteran performer Jack Hammer XL…Hammer was…a former Marine who pursued his love of bondage and “sexual demolition” on his own website…this physically powerful performer also was a practitioner of Brazilian jiu jitsu, Muay Thai and crossfit…the 53-year-old…died at home unexpectedly of natural causes…The XL in Hammer’s name was not for “extra large”…it was the number 40 in Roman numerals…the year in his life that he started in porn…
A Dallas [escort service] owner was sentenced…to nearly four years in federal prison for agreeing to [provide very ordinary escort services]…to a group of [pigs pretending to be decent human beings looking for company]…Helen Kim…[took a] plea…[to avoid decades in a cage on made-up charges]…a number of foreign-born commercial sex workers [were arrested and deported in a scam involving]…about 50 [perverted pigs]…
On the night of February 20-21, Jessyca Sarmiento was killed at her workplace in Bois de Boulogne. She was struck by a car traveling at high speed….[which] did not even stop or slow…down…the attack [appears] deliberate. Her murder is part of an increasing wave of attacks against the sex workers community in France after the “Swedish model” of clients’ criminalisation took place. In the last 6 months, at least…10 sex workers were murdered…
On[ly one] in 15 men [admit] that they purchase sex occasionally — a 2% drop since [Swedish criminalization was implemented] in Ireland…77% of men [are to frightened to tell the truth even though 50% of men have paid for sex at least once, because]…purchasing sex is now a criminal offence in Ireland…[prohibitionist organization] Ruhama, [run by the same nuns who enslaved women in the horrific Magdalene laundries, was]…behind [the bogus study]…
Jacksonville [Florida]…Mayor Lenny Curry…sign[ed] into law…a new bill that places tougher regulations on strip clubs [using the fashionable excuse of] sex trafficking…[prohibitionists vomited out “King of the Hill” fantasies about]…the bill [which raises]…the [minimum legal] erotic dance performer age from 18 to 21…increases the license fee for strip clubs…requires that everyone who works in a club…be [indoctrinated i prohibitionist sexual fantasies, and requires]…all clubs…to keep a file of everyone who’s danced there [so cops know which women they can rape with impunity. The prohibitionists masturbated furiously while gasping that]…Jacksonville is a hub for human trafficking because it’s surrounded by water [and] has an airport and…interstate [highways]…
A group of 40 [prohibitionist] NGOs…hit out at…[plans by the government of] Malta…to decriminalise prostitution [instead of imposing Swedish criminalization]…The [prohibitionists are angry that]…the…government [is following]…science and [facts rather than anti-sex religious beliefs]…”How can…the…government [not] want…to continue facilitating [our control]…and objectification of women’s bodies?” the [prohibitionists whined]…
A national organization that advocates for the decriminalization of sex work announced…that it has withdrawn a petition it filed…before the D.C. Board of Elections to place a bill to decriminalize prostitution in the nation’s capital on the D.C. ballot in November. Decriminalize Sex Work…said strong opposition…by a coalition of local sex worker advocacy groups prompted it to withdraw the proposal…
[Politician] Cristina Garcia…has no…expertise in sex work issues and…introduced [a sex worker surveillance bill without reading it]…she…[will] not entertain withdrawing [it, instead vomiting out idiocy about]…”basic training to identify human trafficking”…she has sponsored other bills mandating “human trafficking” training for “hotel workers”…”We want to i[ndocrinate]…folks t[o rat people out to the cops],” she added, confirming the suspicions of adult performers that AB2389 is a law enforcement bill disguised as a workers’ safety bill…
Clearview AI…has been testing its facial recognition software on surveillance cameras and augmented reality glasses…under a division called Insight Camera, which has been tested by at least two potential clients…its website…was taken offline after BuzzFeed…was able to link it to [Clearview]…by comparing the code from Insight and Clearview’s respective log-in pages, which both shared numerous references to Clearview…
Sex. In America an obsession. In other parts of the world a fact. – Marlene Dietrich
The only thing that inflames American prurience as much as people having sex is people not having sex. Americans spend vast amonts of money on sex aids and medications such as Viagra, and even try to medicalize normal female sexuality that “experts” deem insufficient; however, they also spend similarly on “treatment” for sexuality that other “experts” deem excessive. They devour porn, both the overt form and the softer type rolled into movies, television shows, and especially the extreme BDSM torture porn presented as “sex trafficking” propaganda…which facilitates the bllions spent on harassing other people for consensual sex. And though we’re still not done with a moral panic claiming that prepubescent “sex slaves” are one of the world’s largest criminal industries because they’re raped by literally every single adult male in the US every single week, we also regularly see articles about a supposed “sex drought” (that presumably doesn’t include all those rapes of “child sex slaves”). The latest iteration of the latter nonsense appeared in the Washington Post under this “OOOOH It’s SCARY, Kids!” graphic:
For anyone who knows anything about sexology, those four little words in the lower left corner speak volumes. As I’ve written many times, the GSS is notoriously unreliable on sexual matters because it’s an in-person survey. A number of sexologists, myself included, consider it almost wholly worthless on sexual topics. As I wrote just two months ago, “These surveys don’t find anything about what people are actually doing sexually; what they measure is people’s relative comfort with the question, which is a horse of a different color.” In other words, we don’t actually know that fewer people are having sex, only that fewer people are reporting sex to strangers in lab coats. And that may have a lot to do with our government’s war on sex, in which paying for it is cast as “wrong”, therefore underreported; an example of the idiocy of such surveys can be demonstrated by the fact that a Swedish government “study” claimed the number of men who had ever bought sex decreased by 41% between 1996 and 2008…which would have to mean that a huge percentage of those who had paid for it must either have died or moved out of Sweden in a 12-year period, because even if they had not hired a whore since the ban that wouldn’t erase their previous experiences.
Elizabeth Nolan Brown had (as usual) some good comments to make on this micropanic, incluing quotes from a couple of people whose names aren’t Maggie McNeill pointing out that the GSS is kinda crap. There was a passing reference to the fact that social researchers are wedded to the fantasy that most sex happens in “partnerships” (which it doesn’t and never has), so they blame the less-sex on people partnering later, which is baloney. They make the same dumb “explanation” about lower sex reporting in Japan. If there is any truth to the claim that young men are having less sex rather than merely reporting less sex, it’s probably because so many men under 30 have no worthwhile jobs and the government is scaring them out of buying sex from pros. Their lack of ambition turns off amateurs, and their lack of money turns off pros and amateurs. But whatever shortage there is, is undoubtedly magnified by their being more ashamed than ever to report hiring sex workers.
Defend Europe, an anti-immigrant group that attempts to disrupt humanitarian search and rescue missions in the Mediterranean Sea, recently chartered a boat that was stopped in a Cyprus port, where several members were arrested for forging documents and engaging in potential human trafficking…members were stopped in and deported from a sea port in the self-declared Turkish state of Northern Cyprus…after spending two days in detention for document forgery and potential human trafficking of 20 Sri Lankan nationals who were aboard the C-Star, the campaign’s ship…Refugee Rights Association advocate Faika Pasha…[said] some of the Sri Lankans on board reported having paid a trafficker to be taken to Italy and confirmed that five Sri Lankans remained in Cyprus to claim asylum…
Senator Cory Booker…introduced legislation that ends federal marijuana prohibition…The Marijuana Justice Act would…Remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act…Cut federal funding for state law enforcement and prison construction if a state disproportionately arrests and/or incarcerates low-income individuals and/or people of color for marijuana offenses…Prevent deportations of individuals for marijuana offenses…Provide for a process of expungement [and resentencing] for marijuana offenses at the federal level…
…this Swedish model strips women of agency and autonomy and regards men as morally superior to women because they remain culpable for their decisions, whereas women are not…People who cry crocodile tears over prostitution and claim that it demeans sex workers seem to ignore the countless office workers, electricians, plumbers, janitors and garbage collectors who…work…out of sheer necessity to provide for their families. How is their job any less demeaning than sex work and, more pertinently, why is sex work demeaning in the first place?…the people making these accusations are ashamed of their own bodily functions…Pathology is not determined by what some find offensive…sex workers are the only women who are honest about female sexuality and about the real standing relationship between men and women at any time in history…
…Zoe Katz, the captain of USC’s women’s tennis team, is accusing the university of not only ignoring her protestations that her boyfriend Matt Boermeester didn’t assault her, but threatening her for speaking up. Boermeester, a redshirt junior kicker, was suspended from USC in February after a neighbor [claimed to have seen] the football player…assault Katz a month earlier. That claim was repeated to a coach and then to the university Title IX office…The following “six-month”…inquiry took the form of “repeated interrogations” plagued by “agendas, intimidation and falsehoods,” Katz wrote in a two-page statement…The allegations closely resemble those made in a lawsuit against Colorado State University–Pueblo by athlete Grant Neal, who was found responsible for rape after his girlfriend, an athletics staffer, said their sex was consensual…
…University of Minnesota researchers for the first time have studied the demand for commercial sex in Minnesota and who the typical client is. A 121-page report…uses a national study to estimate that 26,000 Minnesota men — 1 percent of the state’s men — may have purchased sex in the past year, while 380,000 men — 14 percent — have done so at least once…Researchers, who combed through court records and media reports and interviewed more than 150 experts statewide, found that most sex buyers in Minnesota seek quick and anonymous sex with young-looking girls or women…
Yes, these idiots are claiming that the average sex worker subsists on three clients per year (and that’s not even counting all the “trafficked children”). But then, what can one expect from a “study” that doesn’t bother to interview the people being studied, but instead just records the wanking fantasies of cops & other prohibitionists?
…according to a checklist provided to hotel employees by the Department of Homeland Security, I displayed at least three “general indicators” of human trafficking…Few or no personal items when checking in…The same person reserving multiple rooms…“Do Not Disturb” sign used constantly. Oh, and the fellow activist who paid for my hotel room? They hosted get-togethers in their suite throughout the weekend…another red flag: “Constant flow of men into a room at all hours”…several…are so vague or subjective that…[they] could lead to invasions of privacy and false accusations…
Human trafficking is “brutal, savage and criminal,” Pope Francis said…“I want to call everyone to make a commitment to seeing that this perverse plague, a modern form of slavery, is effectively countered”…After reciting the Angelus with thousands of people gathered in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Francis asked them to join him in praying a “Hail Mary” so that Jesus’ mother would “support the victims of trafficking and convert the hearts of traffickers”…
Cambodia’s premier Hun Sen…ordered a Christian [rescue industry group]…to be shut down, after it featured in a recent CNN report that…featured three girls who were [supposedly] rescued from the sex trade by Agape International Missions (AIM)…American pastor Don Brewster [has repeatedly refused to accept studies that show only a small number of Cambodian sex workers are now minors, and] was quoted [to that effect on CNN]…Hun Sen and [others pointed out that]…an early version of CNN’s online report…described the girls as Cambodian, when in fact they either spoke Vietnamese or Khmer with a thick Vietnamese accent. CNN later removed the word Cambodian from their headline…
…the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act of 2017…would amend the Communications Decency Act in order to hold websites liable for “publishing information designed to facilitate sex trafficking.” It was introduced…by Sen. Rob Portman…and…sponsored by a bipartisan group of 19 senators…The Internet Association, which represents Silicon Valley giants like Facebook, Twitter and Amazon, said…that the act would unfairly make companies responsible for what third parties publish on their sites…Sen. Ron Wyden…[said] “Section 230…is…the legal basis for all of social media and it has been vital to the expansion of affordable internet access throughout the country…This proposal takes a wrecking ball to that foundation without so much as a committee hearing. It is yet another example of the technical ignorance of Congress threatening the jobs, lives and economic opportunities of millions of Americans.”
Cheyenne police say the solar eclipse passing over Wyoming on August 21 could be a hotbed for sex trafficking…Sgt. Tim Meyrick [fantasized that] “In this region, a pimp will make approximately $1,000/day per girl”…[while] Kevin Malatesta [masturbated while drooling] “…prostitution…has a much darker side to it”…
Three people have been arrested on suspicion of human trafficking after a car transporting a 17-year-old girl was stopped in Preston…the…girl, who is from Romania, is now [in jail]…
…Prajwala…headed by Dr. Sunitha Krishnan, is [a prison compound in which] hundreds of women and girls [abducted by cops] from brothels around India [are locked up for brainwashing]…The facility, funded by several [wealthy white prohibitionists], is surrounded by 20-foot high walls with barbed wire atop; its address is not publicly listed. Dr. Krishnan explained that this level of security was needed [to keep] the women [imprisoned there from escaping with the help of friends outside]…What is surprising is that a number of women wanted to go back to their previous life as a prostitute…
Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee…signed into…law…a bill that…allows victims of human trafficking to clear prostitution convictions, even if the person convicted has been found guilty of committing other crimes…the “new measure states any motion filed to vacate a prostitution conviction must prove ‘by a preponderance of the evidence’ that the applicant’s conviction, along with any other crimes committed, was a result of being a ‘victim of trafficking, promoting prostitution in the first degree or promoting commercial sexual abuse of a minor’”…
U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren…and Marco Rubio…introduced legislation to aid financial institutions in identifying and reporting instances of [sex work]…so that offenders can be prosecuted…The End Banking for Human Traffickers Act would direct federal banking regulators to work with law enforcement and financial institutions to combat the use of the financial system for [sex work]…The bill would further increase collaboration between law enforcement and experts in financial crimes by adding financial intelligence and regulatory officers to the President’s Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, and require the Task Force to…strengthen anti-money laundering programs…
…[In] conversion therapy…psychiatrists would attempt to suppress same-sex behaviour…by redirecting it toward the heterosexual norm. In other words, the dominant culture sought to impose itself on sexual expression deemed morally objectionable…”John school” has now replaced conversion therapy as a form of state-sanctioned brainwashing that attempts to label purchased sex as a repugnant, unnatural vice…john school engages in psychological repression…Ottawa Citizen…editor Tyler Dawson accurately refers to these therapy sessions as “creepy re-education nights run by the Salvation Army”…For anti-prostitution activists, it’s not enough that johns change their behaviour: they must also change their preferences. Men are told not only that their sexual choices are wrong, but that no “normal” adult would engage in this kind of depravity…advocates of john school continue to stigmatize paid sex between consenting heterosexual adults in private in the same way that the state once stigmatized sex between consenting homosexual adults in private…
More than half of Korean men have paid for sex at least once in their life, a government report showed…Nearly 26 percent of them had engaged prostitutes in the past year and did so 8.46 times per year on average. The majority of men who had paid for sex, or 53.8 percent, first did so when they were aged between 20 and 24, followed by those aged 25-29 (27.6 percent), 30-34 (10.2 percent) and those under 20 (3.9 percent)…According to a survey of 174 sex workers, 75.6 percent of them were in their 30s. Nearly 48 percent of prostitutes first turned to prostitution in their 20s, while nearly 22 percent began as teenagers…
…In the last 10 years we have had more free pornography at your fingertips than ever before, to a point where people are no longer learning about sexuality…This is something that is made for a purpose, this is not an example of what sex is, this is people having sex for entertainment…Now, a child, an 11-year-old child, anyone at any age could go to a myriad of places on the internet and be exposed to endless amounts of content…8- or 9-year-olds are not able to properly process what this is. Especially when it’s not just, “Here are two people kissing and some standard sex.” It’s some crazy stuff. And I think now that people…are…seeing these examples, regularly, for years and years and years, of what they believe to be sex…
“Our collective focus on police shootings overshadows the reality of what is going on for women on a daily basis,” said Jacqueline Robarge of Power Inside…”The way the police engage women, especially Black women and sex workers, creates a culture of violence. The police use a variety of tactics, including harassment, physical and sexual violence, medical neglect in police custody”…The DOJ investigation prompted by [Freddie] Gray’s killing revealed a number of instances in which Baltimore police officers extorted sex from women they alleged were engaged in prostitution or drug-related activities. The women’s complaints were poorly and partially investigated, if at all, with little or no consequences for the officers involved…a 2014 study by Johns Hopkins University found that 6 percent of…Baltimore [sex workers] had been [raped by cops]…within a given month. In Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color, I summarize the sizeable body of research revealing that the police sexual violence found by the DOJ in Baltimore, and committed by now infamous Oklahoma City police officer Daniel Holtzclaw, is alarmingly commonplace across the country…
…Cisgender men, trans folks and anyone who is gender-nonconforming are not going to receive help from these organizations because they don’t fit the stereotype of the sex-trafficking victim in a way that lets these “rescuers” be rescuers. The involvement of government in the suppression and oppression of trafficking survivors also cannot be overlooked…government sanctioning of the maltreatment and exploitation of trafficking survivors is an example of how the current…rescue system is allowed to proliferate…An astonishing 80 percent of survivors who go into [one particular Midwest] shelter end up getting kicked out with a “red dot” status, which means they can’t come back or even engage in any other services…Amber Paulina of Seattle…shares…how two church elders, with no experience or education, opened a residential facility for trafficked girls. She was forced to call the executive director “Mom” and her husband “Dad” — they called all the girls their “daughters”…Amber was grilled about her masturbation habits and was forced to write book reports on “famous” survivors like Rachel Lloyd. “I made bracelets for five bucks a pop that were flipped over at nine bucks a pop en masse at anti-trafficking events and at local boutiques. All material donated. ‘Made by trafficking survivor’ bracelets. All the time. For money. Unpaid,” Amber says…
Florida [pigs] have charged a [desperately poor] woman with prostitution after she agreed to perform a sex act on an undercover detective for $25 and chicken McNuggets…Alex Direeno was being held…without bond at the Manatee County Jail on charges of prostitution, possession of drug paraphernalia and on outstanding warrants…It’s unclear whether Direeno has retained an attorney.
“Retained an attorney”? Really? With what currency? The $25 they promised her, then stole as “evidence”?
[Sleazy] vice [pigs] in Metro Atlanta say Backpage.com is still a marketplace for prostitution, despite the fact that Backpage removed its adult escort section…in January…[stenographer] Mark Winne spent days [masturbating while following] the DeKalb County…Vice Unit and [is parroting cop propaganda about] how Backpage is still the go-to website for sex trafficking…[Head] Vice [pig] Curtis Williams told Winne that ads for prostitution…simply moved to elsewhere on the site…Winne…asked [one of the cops’ victims], “How come you turned down that officer’s offer of help?” “Cause I don’t want it!” She said…
“Offer of help”. Is Winne a grown man and university graduate? This is the level of critical thinking I’d expect from someone who still believes in the Easter Bunny.
According to…opponents of sex work decriminalisation, there are basically two types of women involved in selling sex: a small but vocal minority of…”sex workers” who entered the industry out of choice, and a much larger number of “prostituted women” who were coerced or forced by financial necessity. Anyone who offers a public opinion on the sex industry based on their own personal experience is assumed to belong to the former category. Even having an awareness of the policy debate is seen as evidence a sex worker is middle-class, educated and therefore unrepresentative of most women in the industry. As such, their opinions can be ignored. It’s argued that the silent, suffering majority don’t have the resources, capacity or inclination to argue about legislation, so other people must speak on their behalf. This is a rather convenient solution to the dilemma faced by decriminalisation opponents: the majority of sex workers who do speak out strongly disagree with them…this supposed dichotomy between unrepresentative, autonomous sex workers and silent prostitution victims is a rhetorical sleight of hand. In reality, freedom of choice is rarely an all or nothing sort of thing…Campaigning organisations…smeared by Nordic model advocates as representing a “pimp lobby” – are [largely] made up of women who…sell sex because it’s the least bad course of action available to them…
A high-profile Danish campaigner for children’s rights was prosecuted…under people trafficking laws, shining a spotlight once more on the country’s crackdown on asylum, as Scandinavian countries compete to make themselves unattractive destinations for refugees. Lisbeth Zornig, the country’s former children’s ombudsman and a well-known author, was fined DKr22,500 (£2,328) – the maximum demanded by the prosecutor…for allowing a family of Syrians to hitch a ride with her to Copenhagen. Her husband was fined the same amount for taking the family into his home for coffee and biscuits, and then driving them to the railway station, where he bought them tickets to Sweden. “This was a political trial, using me and my husband to send a strong message: don’t try to help refugees,” Zornig said…
A [Connecticut cop] was fired after an investigation found he was linked to a sex trafficking operation…Jermaine Dunbar…broke several department policies including improper associations, truthfulness, conduct unbecoming to an officer, neglect of duty and insubordination…two suspects [were] arrested for various charges including narcotics, illegal weapons possession, promoting prostitution and human trafficking…one of the suspects is Dunbar’s family member and another is a friend…Dunbar was at the…home where two 16-year-old girls were given drugs and having sex with men. One girl said she had sex with Dunbar but…he…was not criminally charged…
Police [in Thailand] are gathering evidence to bring criminal charges against those who posted a video clip of two students having sex on a teacher’s desk in a school classroom…the patents have accused their children’s friends of posting the video…anyone caught posting obscene material on the internet can be imprisoned for up to five years…
On February 16 this year, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women held a deliberation on the topic of women’s rights in Japan….[including] a proposal that sales of video games and manga depicting sexual violence be banned… Would [this] prohibition…help bring about more respect for women’s rights in Japan? Our answer…is a resounding “No”…Fictional sexual violence in manga and video games does not actually violate people’s human rights, so prohibiting these media in order to preserve women’s rights would be meaningless…
Keith Bickford…of the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office…[fantasized aloud] about the gruesome realities of sex slavery in our own backyards…“Some of the girls…were having sex with someone…20 to 25 times a day…that could be a lot of horrible things happening to these children…“In [Bickford’s] mind, it’s ‘You’re mine for an hour or half-hour, so I can do whatever I want to,’ ” he explained of [his own] brutal mentality…Pimps target areas where they know children hang out most. This can be the shopping mall, the park and even where we tend to think they are most safe – at school…“I think the youngest, I believe who was in Georgia, was about 8 or 9,” he [fantasized]…
I’ll bet he doesn’t even wait until he gets home after one of his “talks” to wank; probably does it in the men’s room right there.
…The anti-sex trade laws have caused many negative, allegedly unintended consequences. According to a 2012 UN report, “police crackdowns from 2004-2009 resulted in [the] arrest of approximately 28,000 sex workers, 150,000 clients, and 27,000 sex business owners”, and 65,621 arrests were reported for 2009 alone…Police raids are often carried out very violently, and in November 2014, a 24-year old single mother died after jumping out of a motel room to escape arrest by an undercover police officer posing as client. In stark contrast to their usual reporting, most Korean media remained distinctively silent about the case. The continued repression has forced an increasing number of sex workers to work underground, resulting in lower incomes, poorer working conditions, and an increase in violence perpetrated against them. Sex workers worry more about police raids than about screening their clients…
Small circular viewing holes expose the faces of hundreds of children, each symbolizing a stolen childhood. The art piece, “Peep,” sheds light on the shadowy human trafficking industry in peep show style…Created by Bay Area artist Jonathan Fung, “Peep” draws attention to the often overlooked issue…[through] a metaphor for the commodification of human beings…Tens of millions of people are kidnapped and forced into labor and sex slavery to meet the needs of the…human trafficking industry…thriving in the Bay Area, which FBI named one of the top 13 destinations for child sex trafficking…more and more people are forced into ruthless modern day slavery every day. Human trafficking remains a growing trend and shows no signs of stopping…
“No signs of stopping!” My goodness! Soon there won’t be enough free people to buy all these “modern-day slaves”!
…a group of OSU-Tulsa students is trying to tackle [“sex trafficking”]…and a new course helps train them to identify and save victims…Their professor, Dr. Denni Blum…teamed up with [cops & rescue industry profiteers]…to make this class possible…Oklahoma has seen 168 reported cases of human sex trafficking over the last three years – 50 of them were children. Experts say traffickers target girls between 12 and 14, and once pulled into the sex trade their life expectancy is only seven years…
I can see I’ll have to address this in my OSU Tulsa video lecture this year.
In a new nationwide poll from YouGov, six percent of respondents said they have been paid for sex in the past, and seven percent have paid someone else for sex. Men and women were equally likely to have accepted payment for sex, but just one percent of the women said they had paid for it themselves, while 12 percent of the men said as much…
…venture capitalist Michael Goguen admitted in court papers…that, yes, he paid the first $10 million of a $40 million contract to the woman he had a sexual relationship with for 13 years…but, no, she was never his “sexual slave” and he only agreed to sign the unusual contract because he worried about a “shakedown” featuring “false and libelous claims” of abuse. But then Goguen failed to pay up. Some $30 million remains on the contract today. Both sides agree on that, at least. And so now…Amber Laurel Baptiste, has gone to court…Baptiste’s breach of contract lawsuit…accused Goguen of “sexually, physically and emotionally” abusing her. She alleged that she endured the treatment because Goguen promised to free her from the human traffickers holding her in perpetual debt…Goguen admitted that they had an unusual sex life, but he claims it was entirely consensual…
On Friday, the Cranston [Rhode Island] Police Department issued a news release announcing the results of a sting operation that, in its own words, was aimed at “targeting human traffickers, specifically those victimizing juveniles”…no fewer that eight law enforcement agencies were involved in this operation…[which] led to only one arrest for trafficking and one arrest for pandering. Instead, the biggest result of the operation appears to have been the arrest of fourteen “johns”…and fourteen other people for prostitution…By humiliating and charging johns for seeking consensual sex and by giving prostitutes arrest records in the name of “helping” them, these operations misleadingly purport to crack down on human trafficking, when their major effect is just to make the lives of prostitutes more difficult and dangerous, driving sex work even deeper into the shadows…
One day after a Seattle police officer was…pulled from duty for his conduct at a local strip club, King County prosecutors filed pimping charges against the club’s manager and owner. Prosecutors [claim] Dancing Bare owner Jerry A. Woodhead and manager Michael “Mickey” Woodhead were caught in a sting operation…Police…used at least two informants. [A] detective said the investigation uncovered prostitution and drug use at the club, and showed that dancers were prostituting themselves to pay “house dues” to the Woodheads…The detective said the Woodheads were considering increasing the amount of money “collected for the prostitution” so they could earn more themselves…
If the causal link between coercion and victimhood is the reason why prostitution is harmful and should be banned…this can be argued to be the case with most…professions on earth. – Phuong-Mai Nguyen
At adult cabarets across Costa Rica, entertainers…are noticing an interesting demographic trend: With greater frequency, men old enough to be their grandfathers are among their admirers. Such was the conclusion presented by Paula Ruiz Guevara, an investigative journalist from national newspaper La Prensa Libre…Through statistical research, field investigations and interviews with psychologists, social workers, prostitutes, and sociologists, Ms. Guevara’s work paints an interesting portrait of an aging population whose appetite for sexual commerce has not diminished…
A couple found guilty of having sex on a public beach in Florida face 15 years behind bars…Elissa Alvarez, 20, and Jose Caballero, 40, were charged with lewd and lascivious exhibition…The couple claimed they were not actually having sex…Both Caballero and Alvarez will now have to register as sex offenders because the crime happened in front of children. The couple were arrested July 20, 2014, after witnesses recorded video of the couple grinding on the beach and called 911 to complain…Assistant State Attorney Anthony Dafonseca said…it was important to prosecute Alvarez and Caballero to let the public know such behavior wouldn’t be tolerated…
…at the shelter, known as Casa Ruth…[a “rescued” sex worker from] Nigeria…shares a tidy apartment…with a half-dozen other women…They work together in a sewing cooperative run by the shelter called Newhope…”They can make money not with their bodies, but through their creativity,” said Sister Rita Giaretta…Dozens of safe houses run by Catholic nuns have sprung up in recent years…
“Marijuana candies, sold on the street as ‘Uncle Tweety’s Chewy Flipper’ and ‘Gummy Satans’ are taking the country by storm.” That’s the breathless opening sentence of a news story posted on the website of D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), the infamous anti-drug organization that sends police into schools to teach kids about the dangers of drug use. After I called to inquire about it, D.A.R.E. removed the story immediately without commenting…topkeasnews.com [the story’s original source] is a satire website…D.A.R.E. still receives funding from the Justice Department, the Department of State and numerous other government agencies and corporations. For the past month, that funding has been used to spread the message that marijuana is a “third world drug” that causes teen pregnancies and leads to “primal aggression,” and to promote demonstrably false claims about people killed by marijuana edibles…
A CBS News investigation has found sexual misconduct in the ranks of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is “significantly” higher than other federal law enforcement agencies…In April, one agent in Arizona was indicted for sexually assaulting a 5-year-old child…Between 2012 and 2014…there [were]…more than 35 sexual misconduct cases against agents…in the last six years, at least 21 customs or border patrol agents have been indicted or pleaded guilty to sexual offenses…ranging from sexual assault, to possession of child pornography and child molestation…
…Kansas is one of just five states in the nation that do not regulate the massage therapy industry. While most states require masseuses to pass background checks, attend accredited massage schools or obtain certain certification…massage therapists in Kansas go completely unchecked. Such was the case with Chen Li, 50, and Guihong Xiao, 45, who were arrested Tuesday after an investigation into allegations that sex crimes were occurring at their business…Li, charged with felony promoting the sale of sexual relations and aggravated human trafficking, and Xiao, charged with felony promotion, misdemeanor selling of sexual relations and two counts of aggravated human trafficking, have been down this road before…AMTA Kansas lobbyist Stuart Little said if Kansas regulated its massage industry, and if a background check were required to own a massage business or perform massage therapy, Li and Xiao may have been prevented from setting up shop again…
…To a certain extent, all of us are coerced into doing what we are doing, since none of us is 100 percent free to do what we individually want. Freedom is never absolute, and as members of a society, we all have to sacrifice, compromise, or adjust ourselves to suit the situation…criminalizing prostitution creates double incrimination…30 percent of exotic dancers and 24 percent of street-based sex workers who had been raped identified a police officer as the rapist. Up to 17 percent of sex workers interviewed reported sexual harassment and abuse, including rape, by police. They had been forced to strip or engage in other sexual conduct while in police detention…we also need to accept the fact that…Many of them choose this profession voluntarily because it fits their life style and personality, or because it is economically efficient, without any pressure. In the last few months, I have been part of a volunteer group helping to deliver tea and coffee to sex workers in the Red Light District of Amsterdam. I started the job with the idea that all these people are victims, and I could not be more wrong…Sex work is exactly that, work. And what well-intended people should do is to protect those who are forced to enter the industry, and support those who are the boss of their life, regardless of who they choose to be…
Sex workers who were filmed for A&E’s 8 Minutes, which says it provides resources for women who want to get out of sex work, allege that the production lied to them…they wanted help getting out of sex work, and were never given any of the promised assistance. When reached, a representative for the network said the show is no longer on the air and, thus, they have no comment…
If someone were trying to pass laws that would directly impact your job, your income, and your life…you’d hope that your input…would be heard. – Seattlish
[Thursday] morning a group of 10 people from Sex Worker’s Outreach Project Seattle…and the Gender Justice League traveled to Olympia to attend a public hearing in the Senate Law & Justice Committee on SB-5277…& SB-5041…which together seek to increase the penalties for patronizing a prostitute…Although testimony was allowed by several people in support of SB-5277, and by a lawyer speaking on behalf of clients, the meeting was adjourned before the Sex Workers themselves were allowed to testify. The members then attempted to get meetings with Senators Kohl-Welles & Padden, but were unsuccessful. They were told they have 24 hours to submit written testimony to the committee assistant…
Moron writer refers to something only criminalized a century ago as “one of the oldest crimes in history“. You just can’t make this stuff up. “Police Officer Abel James…was charged with patronizing a prostitute in Brooklyn…”
Investigators…say business has boomed in recent years from clients who want their sweethearts investigated for…habits and secrets…The trend is partly driven…by [publicized]…examples of online daters embellishing their profiles, and of scammers using dating sites to lure people into false romances…Google [searching]…is like a gateway drug to professional snooping…“It’s the new prenuptial,” Jeffrey Schell of Kassel Investigations in Boise, Idaho, said…Except the “party being investigated doesn’t have to…agree”…
…the residents of Ulker Street [in Istanbul] used…a slang called Lubunca…[whose] earliest traces…can be found…as the Ottoman Empire was waning…Lubunca was found in spaces where men engaged in sex work, such as bathhouses…[in] the late 1980s and early ’90s…Lubunca became more prevalent, along with trans sex work…“A lot of the vocabulary…overlaps with Romani,” [linguist Nikolas] Kontovas says…“Sex acts are one of the largest categories, if not the largest…There’s also tons of vocabulary for money,” he says, and for what he likes to call fun, like alcohol and cigarettes…[now] Lubunca has evolved into a slang used by some gay people who are not trans and are not sex workers…as a way to exhibit one’s identity…
…Michael Wenham…[stabbed] Karolina Nowikiewicz…to death in [an]…unprovoked attack at her flat…Wenham…was recovering from unsuccessful [penis enlargement] surgery…[and] still had a dressing on his penis which had affected his sex life with [his] wife…Wenham…called in sick to work before…buying a [prepaid cell phone,] Stanley knife, disposable gloves and plastic sacks which he used in the killing. When the first [sex worker] he tried was unavailable, he booked…Ms Nowikiewicz…Attacking her from behind, he sliced open her neck, cutting through her major arteries and her spinal chord…[he then] washed himself in the bathroom, placed the bloody knife in a drawer…went outside and called the police to admit to what he had just done…there was no evidence of sexual assault, consensual sexual activity or even arousal. Karolina was chosen because her job made her an easy target…
Trumball, Conn…police officer William Ruscoe began a drastically reduced 30-month prison sentence for handcuffing and raping a teenage girl in his home…Ruscoe…blamed his crime on financial problems that made it hard to support his wife and two children…During a sentencing hearing Ruscoe pleaded with the court to give him a downward departure in sentencing from the 6-year prison term he agreed to in his plea bargain…The…victim was part of the department’s Explorer program, which provides educational training for young adults on the purposes, mission and objectives of law enforcement…
…Many hoped this would be Canada’s chance to emulate New Zealand, where…decriminalization [has improved health and safety]…Instead…Bill C-36 has…[reproduced] many of the statutes struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013…[and also made] it a crime to purchase sex…and…advertise the sale of sex…If abolishing prostitution is the goal for some Canadian legislators, precedent suggests that the new measure is unlikely to succeed…instead of taking this opportunity to pass truly meaningful reforms, Canada has merely replaced one flawed policy with another.
…Tae Bum Yoon…[was arrested for the murder of] Ashley Benson…in an eighth floor stairwell of the DoubleTree Hotel in [Portland]…It wasn’t the first time they had met, and evidence suggests they had some type of disagreement over money owed…
Though the content of “5 REAL (And Absolutely Shocking) Reasons Men Hire Prostitutes” actually is pretty real (though not remotely shocking), what I found most interesting was that writer Suzanne Jannese said about the most recent absurdly-lowball figures on the fraction of men who have paid for sex, “The stats surprised me—they were higher than I had expected…” One wonders how Ms Jannese thinks we even pay the rent.
This essay first appeared in Cliterati on November 30th; I have modified it slightly for time references and to fit the format of this blog.
Ignorance and misinformation are the norms in mainstream articles about sex work, especially when the author and/or sources have prohibitionist inclinations. But since misinformation constantly rains down like a tropical monsoon from the vast cloud of obfuscation (formed from equal parts of prohibition, secrecy and stigma) which perpetually hangs over the demimonde, even sex workers and authors who are typically well-informed about sex are very likely to be drenched in it. And when that happens, we shouldn’t be surprised if the resulting article is all wet. Behold “Why Are So Many Young Men Paying for Sex?” from the November 24thTelegraph:
Last week, a report revealed that 1 in 10 British men have paid for sex…the same report…also found that those most likely to have paid for sex in the last five years are single men aged 25 to 34. The research…led lead researcher Dr Cath Mercer of UCL to conclude: “The picture that emerges does not necessarily fit the stereotype of the lonely older man … men who pay for sex are more likely to be young professionals”…
Nope, nope and nope. First of all, the absurd claim that only some tiny fraction of men pay for sex – numbers used to typically hang in the low teens but due to “end demand” propaganda are now often below 10% – says a lot more about ant-sex stigma and poor methodology than it does about the reality of sex work. Here’s how I explained it in an article I wrote over a year ago for Slixa:
…on sensitive topics carrying criminal penalties or heavy social stigma, the results [of such surveys] are less than solid; negative opinions of…dependability on such matters range from “unreliable” to “useless”. The fact of the matter is that human beings want to look good to authority figures (like sociologists in white lab coats) even when they don’t know them from Adam, so they tend to deviate from strict veracity toward whatever answer they think the interviewer wants to hear…claims about the fraction of men who have ever paid for sex have always been absurdly low, more closely resembling the fraction of the male population who hire sex workers occasionally (say, while on business trips) than those who had ever tried it even once. To get an idea how far off the claimed numbers are, let’s look at a typical figure for the last [couple of decades]…13%. Now, just for giggles, let’s pretend that this is the fraction of men who admit to paying for sex once a year rather than once in their lives. According to the National Taskforce on Prostitution, roughly 1% of American women have sold sex as a job for at least part of their lives; my own calculations (based on comprehensive figures from New Zealand) indicate that less than a third of that number are doing it at any given time. So if 1/3 of 1% of women are sex workers, but only 13% of men buy sex annually, that would mean we all average 39 appointments a year…less than one per week. I’ll give you a minute to catch your breath and wipe the coffee off of your computer screen before I remind you that what [such studies] actually claim…is far worse; that’s supposed to be the number who have done it at least once in their lives, not once a year, which would mean we should all be averaging, say, ten appointments per year or less…
My go-to figures are that about 20% of the adult male population – fully twice the new figure – pay for sex occasionally (not “have ever” as stated), and that about 6% of them pay regularly. Given what I wrote about stigma sharply reducing the number who’ll admit to paying, I suspect you can guess where the idea that those “most likely to pay are 25 to 34” comes from; it’s the demographic most likely to admit to paying rather than the one that’s actually most likely to pay. I think it’s safe to suggest that younger people are much more likely to read my blog or those of other sex workers, and to be familiar with our arguments for the goodness and importance of sex work; therefore, it’s not remotely “shocking” that they are more likely to recognize the importance of admitting the truth about paying for sex in order to combat the propaganda that “sex buyers” are abusive, abnormal perverts.
The article then goes on to interview one escort who says her experience upholds the claim that more clients are young; big deal. I could just as easily pretend that my experience that the average client is in the 45-55 age group “disproves” the research. Different escorts attract different types of clients; I billed myself as “the thinking man’s companion”, and lo and behold I attracted a lot of doctors, lawyers, scientists and engineers. That’s a demonstration of the power of marketing, not proof of what the market in general looks like. Another idea put forth in the article is the popular belief that more men pay for sex now and that the demographic has widened; this, too, is supported by the experiences of one escort, and it is equally wrong. To be sure, the internet has made advertising easier, thus allowing some escorts to attract a broader demographic than might previously have been possible. But that is not the same as saying that those men were previously not customers; they were merely someone else’s customers. Even if there has been an increase in the past decade, this does not necessarily represent a true increase; rather,
…it would merely be a rebound toward normal levels from a probable low in the 1970s due to the high availability of “free” sex at the time. Kinsey found that 69% of men in the 1940s had paid for sex at least once in their lives, and though the tendency of more recent studies to generate lower numbers is due partly to poor question design and partly to underreporting due to increased social stigma since the 1980s, it’s certainly possible and even likely that the increased availability of “free” sex had some impact…during the Victorian Era nearly every middle- or upper-class man saw whores occasionally, and there were many more of them; roughly 5.5% of the female population in a typical 19th-century European or American city worked in the trade at any given time, as opposed to less than 0.3% today. But as more women entered the industrial workforce in the 1910s and 1920s and premarital sex became far more socially acceptable over the same period, both the number of prostitutes and the demand for their services began to drop to today’s unusually-low level…
In other words, if more men are buying sex now it’s probably due to the fact that the “free” stuff has become scarcer, scarier and more socially expensive in today’s prudish, rape-obsessed, anti-sex climate infused with ridiculous concepts like “sex addiction”, which this article mentions as though it really existed. There’s also a reference to the media myth that young Japanese people are abandoning sex, which the author could have dispelled by a short visit to my blog. Oh, well, at least he gives one sensible person the last word:
…Dr [Chauntelle] Tibbals offers a caveat to the notion that young men paying for sex is a modern phenomenon: “There are endless historical circumstances…Sex workers were an integral part of westward expansion in the US, for example, or in the lives of people in the military…I wouldn’t say that the ‘lonely old men’ idea is outdated so much as it was always off mark.”
Alas, I doubt many reading the article will pay much attention to that; every young generation loves to think it invented extramarital sex, and every older generation loves to condemn them as though it were really true.
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