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That Was the Week That Was (#29)

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

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

All Shapes and Sizes

Res ipsa loquitur:

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

The Camel’s Nose

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

Lying Down With Dogs

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

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

Bone of Contention

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

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

Sisters in Arms

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

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

Against Their Will

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

An Ounce of Prevention

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

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

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic

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

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

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

Much Ado About Nothing

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

The Pygmalion Fallacy

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

The Birth of a Movement

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

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

First They Came for the Hookers…

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

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

Metaupdates

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

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

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

Traffic Jam in TW3 (#21)

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

Feminine Pragmatism in TW3 (#23)

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

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

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

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

The Course of a Disease in TW3 (#28)

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

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

This Week in 2011

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

This Week in 2010

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

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That Was the Week That Was (#28)

Posted in Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged Above the Law, agency denial, Argentina, Australia, Between the Lines, brothels, California, censorship, cops, Decentralization, disease, drivers, East Asia, ethics, Europe, Facebook, FBI, France, Greece, Harm Magnification, Held Together With Lies, hysteria, Imagination Pinned Down, imaginative fiction, India, Kansas, Latin America, lawheads, nanny state, New York, Not For Everybody, Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs, pimps, Presents, prohibitionist myths, psychology, Rooted in Racism, semen, Sex Lies and Busybodies, sex offender registry, stereotypes, streetwalkers, survivors, Sweden, Swedish model, The Course of a Disease, The Prudish Giant, underage, violence vs. sex workers, Welcome to Our Updates, welcome to our world, Where Are the Victims? on July 14, 2012| 42 Comments »

We should all take care not to become part of the hype producing machinery that continually presents opinions or ideology as ‘facts.’ – Ann Jordan

Welcome To Our World

The government just can’t resist trying to control anything involving sex:

[A lesbian who]…is trying to conceive a child…wants to use…sperm from a man she trusts. But…under federal regulations, the donor must undergo…expensive and time-consuming [tests] so…she…is suing…Jane Doe wants to…get pregnant on her own, without paying for a fertility clinic or a sperm bank, and without government interference…But the FDA does not permit…informal transactions. A donor is required to have his blood and urine tested in a medical setting within a week of every body-tissue transfer…

Where Are the Victims?

They’re only women, and therefore incompetent to know what’s best for them:

…Father and son accused pimps Vincent George, Sr., and Vincent George, Jr., had an unlikely cheering section in a Manhattan courtroom today — the very five admitted prostitutes who they’re accused of threatening and coercing. “We are not victims!”…the…women shouted at reporters…the son’s lawyer, David Epstein [said] “They came in and out of Manhattan by themselves, they had their own houses and bank accounts, and they could have left anytime they wanted.” John Temple, who heads the Manhattan DA’s human trafficking program, counters that phone taps prove both the dad, 55, and the son, 33, built up a million-dollar escort business by keeping their five women terrified virtual prisoners…six limo drivers accused of ferrying the women to their assignations are also charged.

Harm Magnification

Yet another case of government interference magnifying harm:

…On July 3 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first “rapid home” test for HIV…[which may] prevent…more than 4,000 new HIV infections in its first year of use alone…[but] the…approval…did not occur until…24 years after the FDA received its first application…[until recently it] forbade [any] tests…[other than] those…performed in a clinical setting…Out of concern that some people might respond…irrationally to the extremely valuable information a home test could provide, everyone was deprived of that option…imagine the number [of infections] that could have been averted if a rapid home test…had been approved five years ago. Or ten. Or 15…

Decentralization

Despite government efforts to quash bitcoin it’s still going strong, and one writer suggests it might help in the Greek monetary crisis:

…the drachma is not Greece’s only [non-euro] option…an alternative currency could emerge or an already existing one could be adopted. In some parts of Greece social entrepreneurship, technology, and skepticism of politicians have already…created an environment where cryptocurrencies could become increasingly popular…The most prominent of these…is bitcoin…[which] frees those who use it from political uncertainty [and] fiat policies, and is less affected by international money markets than traditional currencies…There have been reports of more Europeans using bitcoin as their confidence in political solutions diminishes…

Rooted in Racism

Obviously, the NIJ is unacquainted with William of Occam: “An overwhelming majority of human trafficking cases involve sex trafficking, according to a recent study issued by the National Institute of Justice…Nearly all identified sex trafficking victims were female and 70 percent of suspects were male…” In other words, cops arrested a bunch of people and labeled them “victims” or “perpetrators” almost purely on the basis of gender, then a “study” was done to justify the assignments rather than recognizing them for what they are: rubbish based in the sexist notion that women are incompetent victims.

The Prudish Giant

A former Facebook executive wants to outdo Google by linking an anti-whore campaign to an expansion of the number of people condemned to “sex offender” registration: “Facebook’s former chief privacy officer is bankrolling an anti-human trafficking ballot measure that…would toughen penalties for sex trafficking and add those convicted of the crime to the state’s sex offender registry. Most significantly, it also would require all registered offenders to surrender their “Internet identifiers” to law enforcement, including user names and email accounts…Chris Kelly…has contributed $1.6 million to the initiative since December…” The campaign is based largely on lies such as “Every girl sold on the street today is also being sold on the Internet”, a triple-whopper which 1) equates performing a service with chattel slavery; 2) uses passive voice to imply girls do not choose prostitution when in fact over 86% do; and 3) bizarrely defines 25% as “every”.

Presents, Presents, Presents!

A new reader who found me via The Agitator sent me a copy of Prince of Darkness this week, but I only have his real name and I’m not sure if he posts under that or uses a screen name. I hope he reads this and emails me so I can thank him properly!

Not for Everybody

Though Argentina has its own problems with “survivors” agitating against improved rights for sex workers, at least they aren’t pushing for increased criminalization yet:

In Argentina, women who [have] sex in exchange for money have splintered into two groups. The one group…who call themselves “sex workers” to reflect their choice to work in the profession, is finalizing a bill…for…greater rights…The other group…prefers the term “prostitutes,” insisting that they are victims…of the industry…[they propose] policies that offer subsidies and create alternative employment opportunities…

Sex, Lies and Busybodies

Australian prohibitionists just won’t let go of that Queensland mining bone:

…police officer Inspector Paul Biggin says while sex workers have also been a major beneficiary of the [mining] boom, there are growing concerns about women being brought in from overseas and exploited by criminals…”A lot of…women come from Asian countries and they’re the types…that certainly do get exploited because of their poor education or the fact that they’re easily tricked,” he said… few women…have reported any mistreatment. “A lot of times they don’t because there is a fear factor involved,” he said.

Translation: “poor Asian women are stupid”. And the reason they don’t tell him what he wants to hear must be “fear”; after all, he can’t possibly be wrong.

…Jules Kim, the migration project manager at Scarlet Alliance, said…”Using ‘doesn’t speak English’ as an indicator would not be applied to any other profession…English skills are not tied in to education levels at all so someone could be highly educated and yet have poor English skills.” Ms Kim says the extent of the problem in mining communities has been exaggerated…

The Course of a Disease

It’ll be interesting to see what other workers’ rights this eventually leads to: “Swedish prostitutes won the right to claim benefits, including sick days and parental leave…’As long as sex workers pay their taxes, they should have the same access to sick-leave benefits and parental leave as anybody else,’ [said social insurance director] Joakim Jarnryd…’We don’t make any moral judgments’…”

Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs

US officials hoped to silence whore’s voices by barring them from attending the International AIDS Conference in Washington on July 22^nd-27^th, but India’s Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee had other ideas and organized a “hub” which will be digitally linked with the main event. Andrew Hunter of the Asia [Pacific] Network of Sex Workers said, “We are holding this Global Hub…in India because sex workers are not allowed entry into the U.S. to attend the main AIDS conference. This event will allow us to participate as well as give sex workers from around the globe a chance to still contribute to important discussions…”

Health officials have long criticized US anti-whore policies as destructive, and a new report released for the conference by the Global Commission on HIV and the Law has gone even further, as explained in this article by Cheryl Overs:

The report of the Global Commission on HIV and the Law…recommends the repeal [of] laws that prohibit consenting adults from buying or selling sex, including those laws that have the effect of prohibiting commercial sex such as laws against “immoral” earnings, “living off the earnings” of prostitution and brothel-keeping. It calls for an end to police harassment and violence against sex workers and a prohibition of mandatory HIV and STI testing…It also recommends withdrawal of the Pepfar anti-prostitution pledge. This marks a significant advance for sex workers’ struggle for sex work to be decriminalised and recognised as an occupation…

I’ll have more to say about this article in my upcoming column of the 27^th.

Above the Law

What makes this news rather than a typical abuse is that the cops are being prosecuted: “A Kansas City police officer has been…accused…of having sex with two women in exchange for not arresting them. One woman told police she was working as a prostitute, and the other said she had outstanding warrants and marijuana in her motel room when she met Jeffrey Holmes…prosecutors in neighboring Platte County charged another Kansas City police officer with misappropriating about $75,000 from his elderly mother…”

Held Together With Lies

This thorough debunking of the oft-repeated claim that “human trafficking is the third most profitable business for organized crime” by Ann Jordan and Lynn Burke was published over a year ago, but only came to my attention this week:

…Evidence for this claim either does not exist or is impossible to locate. Despite the efforts of the authors and two professional reference librarians to locate the original reliable source, the research only turned up similar statements and not one article was uncovered that contained any evidence to support the claim…it is not unusual to hear statements that claim to be about trafficking but are really talking about smuggling…It would certainly make more sense to say that smuggling is the third largest source of organized crime profits…

Imagination Pinned Down

Compare to the outrageous claims made by other FBI agents about “human trafficking” cases they claim to have been personally involved in:

A former police officer who retired from the FBI…has written a book about seeing legions of angels guarding the Pennsylvania site where a hijacked airliner crashed [on September 11^th, 2001]. Lillie Leonardi…remembers the burning pine and jet fuel stinging her nostrils. She said she also remembers a smoldering crater littered with debris too small to associate with the jetliner or 40 passengers and crew on board…”That’s when I started seeing like shimmery lights…and it was kind of misty and that’s when I first saw, like, the angels there,” Leonardi said…[she] kept it to herself for the better part of two years [but] as…[symptoms of] post-traumatic stress disorder [surfaced] she began telling a close circle of friends and colleagues what she saw…

Metaupdates

Reading Between the Lines in TW3 (#26)

The San Francisco Bay Guardian interviewed an escort who was targeted by the recent “Operation Cross Country” because somebody thought she looked under 18. The article also revealed the ratio of adult sex workers to underage ones arrested in the Bay Area: 61 adults to 6 “children” (i.e. 16- or 17-year-old women). 10 to 1 is a very poor ratio considering that about 3.5% of all hookers are underage and the cops were specifically targeting youthful women.

The Course of a Disease in TW3 (#26)

“Hundreds of…sex workers protested in Paris…against plans to make soliciting prostitution illegal…France’s minister for women’s rights, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem…[has said] she would seek to make prostitution disappear by punishing those who pay for sex…but her remarks unleashed a hail of criticism from sex workers’ unions, which argued that punishing clients would drive business underground, endangering prostitutes…”

This Week in 2011

The last column of my first year was a two-part interview with my husband using reader-supplied questions, and the first of my second year explains why streetwalkers are a “Bone of Contention” among activists. “Housewife Harlotry” demonstrates that transactional sex is an important part of marriage, “The Proper Study” is a short history of prostitution research and “Sisters in Arms” looks at the inevitable result of laws which infantilize women.

This Week in 2010

Though I’d write “Streetwalkers” a bit differently now, it still has some good points to make. “Wanna Date?” asks whether it’s really possible to draw a sharp line between dating and whoring, and “Madonna and Whore” discusses the infamous duality and shows how girlfriends straddle it. Finally, “Do You Party?” looks at my deep hatred of cocaine.

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Polly Adler

Posted in Biography, Harlotography, History, Perception, The Dark Side, tagged archeofeminism, brothels, consensual crime, cops, courtesans, drugs, Hollywood, law, neofeminism, New York, porn, Prohibition (alcohol), rape, stereotypes on July 12, 2012| 9 Comments »

If I was to make my living as a madam, I could not be concerned either with the rightness or wrongness of prostitution, considered either from a moral or criminological standpoint. I had to look at it simply as a part of life, which exists today as it existed yesterday…The operation of any business is contingent on the law of supply and demand, and if there were no customers, there certainly would be no whorehouses. Prostitution exists because men are willing to pay for sexual gratification, and whatever men are willing to pay for, someone will provide. – Polly Adler

One thing that must strike anyone who has read extensively on the history of prostitution is the way that mainstream writers are so often tolerant, sympathetic or even enthusiastic about whores of the past (even into recent times), yet so judgmental of those who have worked in the last few decades. In “Courtesan Denial” I stated that “I suspect that they are lawheads engaged in a process of doublethink designed to protect their minds from having to deal with the fact that the EXACT SAME profession which was legal and respected in many preindustrial cultures is illegal and demonized in ours.” But in the past 19 months I’ve come to realize that theory is inadequate for the simple reason that even past whores whose work was illegal in their own day are often glamorized; the dividing line seems to be not the Industrial Revolution or the advent of large-scale prohibitionism about a century ago, but rather the appearance of second-wave feminism. Harlots who lived before the advent of the feminist saviors are given a free pass (like Dante’s “virtuous pagans” of pre-Christian times), but their modern sisters should “know better” and are thus condemned as infidels for rejecting the anti-sex work Gospel. Of course, that doesn’t explain why so many people celebrate the fun times of violating alcohol Prohibition while demonizing modern drug use, but a theory has to start somewhere.

Case in point, Pearl “Polly” Adler (April 16^th, 1900 – June 11^th, 1962), a Russian Jew who was sent to New York ahead of her parents (Morris and Gertrude Adler) and eight younger siblings in 1914. When the First World War interrupted her family’s plans to join her, young Polly was forced to support herself by working in a sweatshop that made corsets; though she tried to attend school at the same time, it just didn’t work out that way. At the age of 17 she was raped by a foreman she was dating, and after an abortion decided that since she was “ruined” anyhow she might as well profit by it. She made good contacts in the Broadway theater crowd and soon moved in with an actress and part-time working girl; in 1920 that roommate introduced Polly to her first client, a bootlegger named Tony, who kept her in an apartment on Riverside Drive. Before long she was providing space and management for other girls, and thanks to her wit, charm, intelligence and business acumen she was soon clearing $100/week ($1100 in 2012 money).

That modest initial success grew by leaps and bounds; by 1924 she was known as the “Queen of Tarts” and opened her best-remembered brothel, the Majestic, at 215 West 75^th Street. The building featured hidden stairways and secret doors so clients could escape in case of a police raid, which was necessary because it was more than just a place where men went to have sex; it was a club where patrons of both sexes came to drink, play cards or games, and enjoy conversation, and Adler made as much money selling bootleg gin as she did collecting her cut from the girls. The place was lavishly decorated and the walls were lined with books, many recommended by members of the Algonquin Round Table (including Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker), who became regulars soon after it opened. Other regulars included actor John Garfield, boxer Jack Dempsey, mayor Jimmy Walker and gangster Lucky Luciano. Her place was so well-known that she could not escape being shut down eventually, but she bribed her way out of trouble and simply moved the operation elsewhere…eleven times by the end of the decade. It is very likely that bribes and kickbacks to cops and politicians constituted her largest operating expense.

After the stock market crashed in October of 1929, Adler’s fortunes began a slow decline. In 1930 she was subpoenaed to testify before the Seabury Commission, a probe of a huge conspiracy by cops, prosecutors and judges to frame innocent people (often for prostitution) so they could be robbed of their life savings under threat of imprisonment. Because she knew that testifying would probably not be a good idea for her she fled to Miami, where she remained until she grew homesick and tried to sneak back into town in May of 1931; informants sold her out immediately and she was hauled before the Commission the next day. Not that it did the investigators any good; Adler claimed (perhaps conveniently) a poor memory, and provided almost no information of worth. And though the Commission ended with the fall of many of her political connections, it actually made her business easier because she no longer had to pay out so much in graft – a godsend in the deepest part of the Great Depression.

Still, getting re-established wasn’t easy, and gangster Dutch Schultz became Adler’s business partner (bankrolling the venture in return for half the profit). The two were friends, and Schultz often hid from his rivals or the police at her brothel. This caused her considerable stress, because she was terrified that she or her girls (of whom she was extremely protective) would be killed by assassins trying to “hit” Schultz. Still, the period proved fairly lucrative for her, and she once again attracted a celebrity clientele (including then-rising star Milton Berle). She was only arrested twice in the next five years, but the second time – at 5 a.m. on March 5, 1935 – actually stuck. The police had carried out an expensive, protracted, modern-style investigation as part of mayor Fiorello La Guardia’s campaign against “incorporated filth”, and she was charged with “maintaining an objectionable apartment” (at 30 East 55^th Street) and “possessing a motion picture machine with objectionable pictures”. Public sympathy was with her; a New York Daily News editorial thundered, “It is this crusading against personal and private habits and instincts — the sex instinct, the deep rooted human fondness for gambling — which is futile and sickening, just as the prohibition of liquor was.” But the evidence was steep and so, in an early example of plea-bargaining, she pled guilty to the bawdy house charge on May 6^th in exchange for dismissal of the more serious obscenity rap. She paid a $500 fine and was sentenced to 30 days, of which she served 24; she spent the time scrubbing floors on the order of a warden who declared she must be taught the value of “honest work”.

Polly was back in business by the end of July, but things were never the same again; clients’ tastes were becoming more utilitarian, and upscale, full-service brothels like hers were declining in popularity. She was arrested for the 17^th time on January 15^th, 1943; that was the last straw for her. A year later she left New York (for only the second time in 30 years) and moved permanently to Los Angeles, where she fulfilled her lifelong dream of an education and obtained a university degree in 1949. She then set to work on her memoirs, which were ghostwritten by the novelist Virginia Faulkner and published in 1953. The book, A House Is Not a Home, became a bestseller and was made into a movie starring Shelley Winters which was released in 1964; unfortunately Polly did not live to see it, since she died of cancer in 1962.

But while the book is terribly honest and shows both good and bad aspects of “the Life” equally, the censors wouldn’t allow anything positive to be said about whores and so the finished film bears only a vague resemblance to it. What remains is essentially a 98-minute morality play on the evils of harlotry, populated by fallen women who are victimized by men’s lust and so get addicted to drugs and/or commit suicide while “Polly” stands helplessly by; though it appeared over a decade before the advent of neofeminism, the anti-sex crowd couldn’t have written a better screed. Oh, well, at least the people illegally drinking were depicted as enjoying themselves, even if the girls violating a still-current prohibitionist law were not.

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That Was the Week That Was (#27)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged A False Dichotomy, acting, Acting and Activism, Africa, Australia, Backwards into the Future, brothels, Dirty Amateurs, disease, drivers, East Asia, Europe, fantasy, Feet of Clay, First They Came for the Hookers, Good News-Bad News, Higher Education, Hollywood, hysteria, If It Were Legal, Latin America, law, lawheads, Nevada, New York, Nigeria, Norway, Oklahoma, Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs, porn, prohibitionist myths, sex education, sex offender registry, sex work is work, stereotypes, stripping, Swedish model, The Course of a Disease, The More the Better, The Notorious Badge, The Widening Gyre, underage, video, Vietnam on July 7, 2012| 29 Comments »

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results. – Rita Mae Brown

Twelve updates and four metaupdates.

Acting and Activism (January 8^th, 2011)

Yet another actor tries to prop up a sagging career with a flying leap onto the “trafficking” bandwagon: Hong Kong action star Jackie Chan is going to Myanmar this week on a…mission to help combat child trafficking…UNICEF announced…that…Chan will…meet with officials of the Social Welfare Ministry and…police…

Backwards Into the Future (March 30^th, 2011)

Add Vietnam to the list of countries which aren’t known for their spectacular record on human rights, yet are doing better on the issue than the US:

The Vietnamese National Assembly recently [voted to stop detaining] thousands of sex workers in so-called rehabilitation facilities where they were held without right of appeal and forced to work (including for private companies) without pay…justice advocates…are hoping that drug detention centers…will follow soon…

Saddest Story of the Month (May 17^th, 2011)

Well, it’s not quite as bad as arresting someone for moving out of a dumpster...

A new law…is forcing convicted sex offenders to…move into tents. More than 40 sex offenders at the Hand Up Ministries in Oklahoma City had to move out of trailers on the ministry’s property. The new state law limits the number of sex offenders who can live in one dwelling. Ministry founder David Nichols said without a place to live, many offenders won’t register and could go back to prison…”I don’t think that it’s going to lessen crime any. I think it’s going to increase crime”…

Nichols is correct, but don’t expect the fanatics to listen.

A False Dichotomy (June 22^nd, 2011)

So here’s a thing in the Guardian (I hesitate to call a short collection of captioned photos an “article”) about “sex trafficking” in Burkina Faso. Though the author claims that “thousands of girls and women are trafficked from Nigeria to the African hub of Ouagadougou,” and that “many are lured by promises of jobs as hairdressers or nannies,”I was struck by two things: one, that the pictures look to me like any pictures of street or brothel workers in poor countries; and two, that the captions belie the claims of “trafficking”. The caption for the third picture reads, “Juliette, also from Nigeria, has been working at Mercy’s for six years. The 45-year-old sends money home each week to support her four children who live in Benin City.” In other words, she has enough disposable income to support four children, and is free to send it home. The caption for the 12^th (and last) picture tells us that “trafficking victims” are free to attend a church whose pastor lectures on the evils of the sex trade, and the one for the 5^th is the most telling: “At Mercy’s, women work seven nights a week and pay 2,000 CFA (£2.60) each day to rent a room. Men pay the women 5,000 CFA. This Burkinabe girl has turned up at the brothel looking for work.” In other words the rooms cost these “victims” less than half the price of one call (similar to the rates paid by American hookers), and local girls view it as a worthwhile place to work without being “forced” into it.

If It Were Legal (June 26^th, 2011)

Remember that bogus study who authors were so ignorant they equated an increase in ads with migrating whores, and claimed that 0.4% of something constitutes a major fraction? Well, partisan prohibitionists are using it to blame Republicans for “sex trafficking” despite a greater rise in ads during the Democratic convention:

…Huffington Post and Jezebel are running with stories claiming that GOP convention-goers are “hands down” the biggest clients at area strip clubs during political conventions. Along with strip club attendance, conventions also increase prostitution…and child sex trafficking…HuffPo continues…“A Baylor University study found that…conventions ‘increased the count of Craigslist sex worker ads by a substantial amount’”…researchers…found that sex ads increased by between 29% and 44% over their baseline level during 2008′s Republican convention in Minneapolis. Ads increased by between 47% and 77% in Denver, the site of the Democratic convention. Further, the study pointed out that a plurality of convention attendees are members of the media…

Dirty Amateurs (August 17^th, 2011)

MTV had the good sense to protect itself against STD-based liability claims from the cast members of Jersey Shore; there oughta be a law that these damned dirty amateurs get checked weekly by a government doctor, and arrested if they test positive.

Higher Education (December 11^th, 2011)

Something tells me that Professor Kubistant needs to find a regular escort:

A Western Nevada College student claims…that her human sexuality instructor required students to masturbate to pass his class, made them keep sex journals for class discussion, was obsessed with women’s orgasms and told the class “that he will increase their sexual urges to such a height that they won’t be able to think about anything other than sex”…Kubistant told the students that their final exam would be an assignment…which had to address such topics as early sexual exploration, sexual abuse, loss of virginity, homosexual experiences, promiscuity, cheating, arousal, climaxes, masturbation, sexually transmitted diseases and fetishes…

The Course of a Disease (February 16^th, 2012)

While groups like the soi-disant “European Women’s Lobby” produce ridiculous “end demand” tripe, European sex worker groups are producing ads like this:

It’s also available in 16 other languages.

Feet of Clay (April 5^th, 2012)

It’s nice to see the attacks on Nicholas Kristof continuously increasing:

…In a magnificent essay, “Be Aware: Nick Kristof’s Anti-Politics“, Elliott Prasse-Freeman…summarises Kristof’s oeuvre into a number of precise strokes: “By playing on his audience’s orientalist, classist and racist fantasies, Kristof fabricates legible narratives out of snapshots of distant worlds. He then crafts stunningly simplistic solutions to the seemingly irrevocable problems that plague those backwards places”…

And if you like that one, here are plenty more.

The Notorious Badge (April 9^th, 2012)

Sarah Woolley’s excellent article from XOJane explains “Why I Wince Through Hollywood Sex Scenes and Not Porn”:

…if some actors exaggerate their distaste for nudity it’s because they’ve seen what happens to the women who enjoy themselves without penance…And so, a romantic, soft lit, topless scene from a chick flick can unsettle me in ways that a supposedly degrading, adult movie rarely manages to accomplish…I’m not saying that those who willingly participate in uncomfortable scenes are victims because…they get the last say on that matter. However, I would rather watch the person who isn’t trying to numb things out with a bottle of vodka. I’m not naive enough to think that sex workers are free from shitty days at the office but, given their job description, I’m less likely to be watching someone wary of getting their front bottom out, than if I were watching a mainstream actress in a sex scene…If a sex worker speaks out on slipping standards it is correct to condemn the appropriate parties but it is usually an entire industry that is maligned in the process. If a mainstream actor brings a drink on set in brown paper (keeping the latter to hyperventilate into later) we applaud her for her craft and possibly chuck an award her way…

First They Came for the Hookers… (June 5^th, 2012)

Bubbles Burbujas on the problems with “pole taxes”:

…Connecting funding for victims of sexual assault to strip clubs is the primary reason I don’t like these taxes. It is absolutely offensive to have the government tell us that we—or, rather, our customers—are responsible for rape and domestic violence, and that we should be taxed specifically for that purpose…While strip clubs are certainly a luxury expense…There is…no guarantee that the taxes will be collected from patrons since the tax is on the clubs, not the customers. This means there’s a good chance that the fees dancers pay to work will go up to cover the club’s tax bill…Tracy Clark-Flory wrote about the latest round of state pole taxes at Salon, and spoke with anthropologist Judith Lynne Hanna…[who has criticized] the faulty “secondary effects” studies that blames strip clubs for increasing crime and breaks it down for the propaganda it is. I wrote about the myth of secondary effects here after the Texas Supreme Court’s decision came down, and it’s good they’re being exposed for the shoddy research they are…

The Widening Gyre (July 6^th, 2012)

The inherent racism of “trafficking” mythology isn’t usually as obvious as it is in this June 8 cartoon.

Even though the law’s supporters say “We simply cannot have drivers knowingly profiting from the sex trade, willingly taking prostitutes from john to john, job to job,” we’re also supposed to believe this:

Cabbies can pick up all the scantily clad women they want without worrying about being charged with promoting prostitution, Mayor Bloomberg declared…“There’s no penalty for transporting a prostitute or decoy, but only for knowingly engaging in a sex-trafficking operation”…the mayor said…City Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras…sponsor of the legislation, said such fears were overblown because her bill was targeted at a small number of cabbies involved in hooker rings…“It’s not the majority of drivers. However, when you have a young girl being driven to 30, 40, 50 johns a night, it is a very big problem.”

Obviously third-grade math skills and a sense of the size of one’s own city are not requirements for a position on the New York city council.

Metaupdates

Good News, Bad News in TW3 (#10) (March 10^th, 2012)

As per my epigram, an example of governmental insanity in Western Australia:

…leading urban planning expert…Paul Maginn said the government’s …reform bill…would do little to move prostitution out of the suburbs. “If you look historically…the sex industry is quite adaptive…they’ll still continue, it’s not going to be eradicated”…Maryanne Kenworthy, owner of the Langtrees brothels in Perth and Kalgoorlie, supports Mr Maginn’s claim…”This government is trying to stamp out escorts, which no country in the world has successfully done…Instead, the industry is going to go completely underground…How many of WA’s 4000 sex workers are going to get a commercial industrial area to work out of? None, they can’t afford to, it costs half a million dollars just to get council approval”…

The More the Better in TW3 (#11) (March 17^th, 2012)

Zahia Dehar isn’t doing too badly for a “trafficked child”: “There aren’t many fashion designers who can say they got their starts as underage prostitutes. But Zahia Dehar…first earned her fame as the center of a high-profile sex scandal involving three elite European soccer players in 2010…[then] crossed over into fashion, earning praise from Karl Lagerfeld and a cover shoot for V‘s Spain edition…”

Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs in
TW3 (#25) (June 23^rd, 2012)

It’s good to see at least a few small countries standing up to Uncle Sam’s bullying:

The Guyana Government today denounced the latest installation of the US State Department report on trafficking in persons…“The Report fails to establish not one single fact. The Task Force notes several inaccuracies and misrepresentations in the Report that must be addressed. What is clear is that the architects of this Report have not made significant progress in improving the veracity, coherence and validity of their annual assessments. The Ministerial Task Force denounces the Report since it comprises unsubstantiated generalisations and repetitive uncorroborated claims. The Task Force strongly recommends that the US State Department seek to improve its methodology, establish proper baselines to guide comparisons, avoid use of anecdotal claims and develop a consistent, understandable, transparent and logical tier ranking system if countries are to benefit from these rituals…”

The Course of a Disease in TW3 (#26) (June 30^th, 2012)

Wendy Lyon takes a detailed look at the report which inspired Norway’s minister for social affairs to call for the Swedish Model to be scrapped; she discovers that besides the problems we’ve already discussed, the model literally forces sex workers into the street and promotes pimping.

One Year Ago Today

“Imaginary Lines” argues in favor of loosened immigration restrictions, and points out how the current situation helps to drive “trafficking” hysteria.

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Half-Armed

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, tagged agency denial, anecdote, blogging, brothels, cops, dirty, ethics, Europe, hysteria, illegal aliens, language, neofeminism, Netherlands, prohibitionist myths, psychology, stereotypes, Swedish model, Twitter on July 5, 2012| 63 Comments »

“My dear Watson,” said he, “I cannot agree with those who rank modesty among the virtues. To the logician all things should be seen exactly as they are, and to underestimate one’s self is as much a departure from truth as to exaggerate one’s own powers.” – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter”

I’m not an egotistical person; I know I have lots of faults. But neither am I delusional; I know that I’m relatively bright, have a good memory and that my personality is unusually dynamic. Because of these factors it’s very, very difficult to win an argument with me; I have a tendency to steamroll anyone who tries. I don’t start arguments, but by Athena I sure finish them. This is the most important reason I refused to get involved with any man after Jack until I could be sure he was A) uninterested in starting arguments; and B) could hold his own against me if one started despite our best efforts. Dr. Helena once asked me what kind of man I wanted, and I replied, “One who can say ‘SHUT UP, MAGGIE!’ if necessary, and make it stick.”

Now, though many of my readers probably guessed all that, random people who haven’t (or won’t) read my essays may not. If they’re laboring under prohibitionist delusions about whores being pathetic, weak, damaged women who can’t stand up for themselves (which, as anyone who’s ever spent any time on a hooker board knows, is about as far from the truth as it’s possible to get), they might expect me to retreat from forceful confrontation by well-adjusted prudes like themselves. This occasionally brings on attack via Revealed Truth about the evils of sex work or “trafficking”; when it’s in the comments here I usually just employ my screening process so as to avoid subjecting my readers either to annoyance or to the unlovely sight of my eviscerating someone with my Medusan agony blade (figuratively speaking, of course).

On Twitter, however, it’s different; I was ingrained from a young age with the principle that it’s rude to ignore people, so when I’m in what I perceive as a public space (rather than my “home” here) I find it difficult to simply ignore drive-by comments directed at me. Since I hate arguments I start out politely and often finish the same way; sometimes the commenter reveals himself to be a troll or buffoon and I can excuse myself in good conscience within a few “tweets”. But other times I am confronted with someone who seems to imagine herself (and it’s nearly always a “her”) some sort of crusader going into battle against the great Sphinx, and to believe that I will surely flee from the light of Divine Wisdom as revealed to her by the Holy Polaris Project or the Prophet Melissa. But since I refuse to take anything on faith or to accept arguments from authority, and they never have any actual facts, they enter these battles of wits only half-armed at best. I still start out polite, but as they continue to reply with nothing other than the equivalents of “nuh uh,” “sez you,” “my mommy says so” or “you’re going to make Baby Jesus cry,” I tend to get a lot more ruthless.

Here’s a recent example, an argument with a proponent of increased regulation of the Amsterdam sex industry; I’ve combined my 140-character replies together and eliminated a few tangential interchanges. The first was my reply to her statement that she had nothing against sex workers who worked by choice, but that draconian measures were needed to prevent coercion:

Huge fractions of the human race are coerced every day. What about lawsuit threats? What about psychological manipulation of family members? Threats issued by creditors? Threats of complaints by neighbors? And governments are the worst “coercers” of all; what are laws backed by threat if not coercion? These things are ALL coercion. To pretend that it’s somehow magically different when a woman is a sex worker is disingenuous.

She then asked why I was opposed to anti-trafficking laws, and I replied:

The whole “trafficking” paradigm is flawed, as pointed out by @LauraAgustin and many others. People cross borders to work; labeling them as “trafficked” (i.e. passive objects of cargo) denies them agency and imposes a simplistic model on a complex human interaction. If “authorities” want to end exploitation of migrants they need to STOP pretending these people are helpless children and reform immigration laws, requirements for work visas, labor rights, etc. Criminalization of immigrants only enables exploitation. In all forms of labor INCLUDING sex work, only rights can stop the wrongs.

She then made a comment that criminalization deters “trafficking”, followed by a snide comment about how she thought it was “hilarious” that American sex workers “think you know better than Dutch police and officials”; my reply:

Criminalization isn’t EVER a solution. And sexworkers DO know our own subject better than cops and politicians in ANY country.

Her reply (verbatim and sic):

no, you dont know better than cops especially and politicians in any country, thats delusion of grandeur, seriously.

As you might imagine, such abject badge-licking ticked me off:

Yes, I DO know better than cops & politicians IN MY OWN FIELD. Drs know better than them in medicine, engineers know better than them in engineering, teachers know better than them in teaching, etc. Cops and politicians are not gods, nor even superior beings. To imagine they are is not only delusional, but dangerous to the liberty & rights of everyone.

After a pause she replied that it was “disturbing” that I “deny sex trafficking”; the accusation had the tone of an accusation of blasphemy. My final reply:

“True Believers” usually do consider it “disturbing” when their beliefs are questioned. People who care about truth aren’t afraid of questions; only those with need to believe myths are. Just because there are presents under your tree does NOT mean they were left there by Santa Claus. The fact that some phenomenon exists in some way does NOT prove any and all “explanations” presented for it. The fact that some people are abused or coerced does NOT automatically mean the entire “sex trafficking by international criminal cartels with millions of victims” paradigm must be true. There are other explanations; those who reject them embrace a religion, not science.

That pissed her off so much she finally stopped replying and blocked me, obviously so my heretical words could no longer sear the purity of her eyeballs. But I wasn’t done for the day yet; oh, no! Just a few hours later well-known prohibitionist mouthpiece Stella Marr decided to address me directly, which is pretty brave for her; usually she prefers to skulk about in places she doesn’t think I’ll read, calling me a “pimp” (like Donna Hughes, she uses the word to mean any sex work manager or agent of either gender). On this particular occasion Stella started by calling me a “liar” for my column “The Odor of Socks”; at first I tried to take the high road, telling her how she could modify her behavior so as not to alienate sex worker rights advocates. But she just kept replying to nearly everything I said by calling me a “liar”, “bully” or “pimp” until I got her into a corner by responding to her Swedish Model cheerleading (“It is not tyranny, Scandinavia is the most civilized part of the world, with the most sexual freedom stop #lying”) by linking to that morning’s column, “The Swedish Cult”, and to the item about Sweden trying to force men to pee sitting down. Faced with points she couldn’t refute she claimed I was making her feel “threatened” because I was a madam, and asked me to please stop replying. I told her I’d stop replying if she did, but she just kept it up, apparently assuming I’d eventually give in to her repeated requests that I stop replying first. Eventually, she realized I wouldn’t relent, but it had gotten quite ugly by that point.

Though the general consensus was that I was more than sufficiently provoked to justify my reaction, I’m still not proud of myself for letting her get me that upset; usually I can stay cool and rational even when badly provoked. But I guess there’s just something especially infuriating about a halfwit having the nerve to attack someone completely out of her intellectual weight class, responding to all my attacks with the rhetorical equivalent of flailing arms and then expecting me to back down when she eventually realizes she’s in way over her head.

One Year Ago Today

“Honolulu Harlots” is the story of the tolerated brothels in World War II-era Hawaii, and the power struggle which eventually doomed them.

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That Was the Week That Was (#26)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged Australia, bad customers, Bad Fantasy-Good Reality, Bell Hook & Kettle, Between the Lines, brothels, Canada, censorship, Check Your Premises, Coming and Going, cops, Counterfeit Comfort, dirty, East Asia, Europe, FBI, France, Google, Hooters Japanese Style, hysteria, Illinois, internet, Japan, law, Louisiana, My Favorite Updates, neofeminism, New York, Norway, pimps, porn, psychology, restaurants, serial killers, sex offender registry, stereotypes, streetwalkers, Surplus Women, Swedish model, Texas, The Course of a Disease, underage, United Kingdom, Vietnam, What a Week!, Yellow Fever, yellow journalism on June 30, 2012| 69 Comments »

No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority. – Joseph Addison

We’re halfway through the year already! Here’s a new item followed by eight updates and four metaupdates.

Feeding On Their Own

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (one of the goons behind the toothless threats against Backpage and a major promoter of the “gypsy whores” myth) has accused Google (which gave $11 million to anti-whore groups) of failing to enable Abbot’s snooping. I’m not really concerned with the conflict itself; I’m just glad to see two supporters of trafficking hysteria at each other’s throats. Maybe Abbott will be too busy fighting Google to persecute as many consenting adults as usual, and if this costs Google a lot of money they’ll have less to give to prohibitionists this year. Let’s hope this becomes a trend; perhaps Martha Coakley will sue CNN next.

Updates

Reading Between the Lines (November 11^th, 2010)

The last time the FBI diverted federal funds to conduct local prostitution busts under the guise of “fighting sex trafficking” I had a full report to dissect, but this time they’re playing coy; though press releases for “Operation Cross-Country 6” crow about the “rescue” of 79 “children” and the arrest of 104 “pimps”, no mention is made of the hundreds of adult women who were no doubt arrested as well (over 800 of them if the proportions are similar to those of the last raid). As for those “children”: most underage whores are about 17 so the majority of these probably are as well, though we’re only told they were “as young as” 13 (which would be true if only one was). Statistically, 66 of these “child sex slaves” have never even met a pimp, so where did 104 “pimps” come from? The answer is that most of them are probably male or transgender prostitutes, cast as “pimps” to fit the narrative. I’ll write more on this when more complete data becomes available, but in the meantime here’s an analysis of local reports compiled by the ever-thorough Emi Koyama.

Hooters, Japanese Style (December 15^th, 2010)

Japanese cops are adopting American-style prudishness and repression:

…police…arrested five employees affiliated with a restaurant chain that features female staff members in revealing clothing. Nikkan Gendai…sees the bust as another example of the demise of another popular form of salaryman entertainment…Attired in bikinis that expose their midriffs, the girls perform dance routines…and shake their hips as they take food orders…“After these girls get off work, they’ll attract stalkers,” says lawyer Toshi Okabayashi…“Since this type of employment could also develop into a hotbed for prostitution, the police cannot overlook these places.” The lawyer adds that these recent arrests are intended to set an example…

I’m not sure why the police should be concerned with “hotbeds of prostitution” when the trade is essentially legal in Japan; that “set an example” bit is chilling.

Check Your Premises (March 10^th, 2011)

Another man convicted of “child pornography” for taking photos of a woman with whom he was legally having sex:

…Marshall Hollins had a 17-year-old girlfriend…perfectly legal in Illinois, where the age of consent for sex is 17. Yet because Hollins took pictures…he was convicted of three child pornography offenses and sentenced to eight years in prison…the Illinois Supreme Court rejected Hollins’…arguments…While 17 might be old enough to have sex, the court said, allowing the event to be photographed entails additional risks that arguably require another year’s worth of maturity and wisdom…dissenting Justice Anne M. Burke noted…that…”all five photographs…are extreme closeups of the couples’ genitals,” including neither faces nor “visible identifying marks such as scars or tattoos”…

So in the American mind, the “risk” of creating an unidentifiable “dirty” picture outweighs that of creating a human life.

Surplus Women (September 27^th, 2011)

This rather bizarre item from The Sun presents a sympathetic view of an accused serial killer, but dismisses the three Winnipeg sex workers he may have murdered in a single phrase. Well, at least it doesn’t dwell in lurid and loving detail on the women’s profession as an equivalent American article would.

Bell, Hook and Kettle (December 6^th, 2011)

Though the Salvation Army claims that whores are all “victims” who need rescue, it apparently feels differently about homosexuals:

…In talking to…Serena Ryan and Pete Dillon on their Salt and Pepper radio show [audio here]…Major Andrew Craibe, a media relations director for one of the [Salvation Army’s] Australian branches, had this exchange with the hosts:

Ryan: According to the Salvation Army, [gay people] deserve death. How do you respond to that, as part of your doctrine?
Craibe: Well, that’s a part of our belief system.
Ryan: So we should die.
Craibe: You know, we have an alignment to the Scriptures, but that’s our belief.

The doctrine they’re referring to is…the Salvation Story: Salvationist Handbook of Doctrine, which borrows heavily from Romans 1:18-32…the Salvation Army has officially distanced itself from Craibe’s remarks…

The Course of a Disease (February 16^th, 2012)

The Norwegian body politic may yet fight the Swedish cancer into remission:

Norway should rip up a law that criminalizes sex buyers, Oslo’s social affairs chief believes, as a new report shows a marked rise in violence against prostitutes…Anniken Hauglie [said]…”The reality is that the law has made it more difficult for women…It’s our political responsibility to take this feedback seriously”…the Pro Sentret report indicates that the law has…made prostitutes much more susceptible to violence at the hands of their clients as the sex trade moves further underground…Many of the women also said the new law had scared off many of their more reliable customers, while troublesome and violent clients were relatively undeterred…

The fact that the ban hasn’t decreased prostitution may also help: “In 2011, the number of prostitutes…rose by 28 percent compared to the previous year, according to…Pro Sentret, the country’s official help centre for prostitutes…”

Meanwhile, in France:

…Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, the [French] women’s rights minister…said in an interview that she would be organising a conference of experts on how to contain the sex-trade and human-trafficking… “Since the 19^th century and…Josephine Butler, Britain and France have been the core countries in the international mobilisation against prostitution. I really hope that these common roots are still alive”…

I hope so, too; though Josephine Butler was against prostitution personally and promoted the idea of whores as “victims”, she also opposed the idea of using laws to control or “abolish” it.

Yellow Fever (June 18^th, 2012)

If you thought 20 clients a night was a bit hard to believe, and 35 a night wholly absurd, how do you feel about 50?

Tamara Vandermoon…ran away when she was 12, the same age she turned her first trick…before she knew it she was prostituting herself up to 50 times a night, the money going to her pimp or to feed [her] drug habit…When it comes to child and adolescent sex-trafficking in the United States, the FBI ranks Minneapolis-St. Paul among the top 13…With its tangle of highways…its year-round sporting events and frequent conventions, millions pass through on any given day…many teens who wind up in the sex trade are runaways targeted by men who coerce or threaten them through physical or psychological abuse…

It would be hard to imagine a more ludicrous collection of myths and fallacies in one short article. Besides the turgid client count there’s the ridiculous belief that a large number of highways constitutes evidence that a city is a “sex trafficking” hub, the myth that sporting events attract whores and the lie that most teen whores are recruited by “pimps”, and that’s just in the first six bite-sized paragraphs (before it descends into badge-licking, “trafficking” platitudes and “end demand” rhetoric). I almost feel I should stand up and applaud.

My Favorite TV Dramas (June 27^th, 2012)

William Shatner gets it, even if the former mayor of Ilfracombe doesn’t:

Star Trek actor William Shatner…[appeared on] the BBC show Have I Got News for You…When he mispronounced the town’s name, guest panellist Charlie Brooker said he had made it sound “deeply sexual” and Shatner replied: “The place is laced with prostitution.” [Paul Crabb, Former Mayor of Ilfracombe] emailed Shatner’s agents: “As Captain James T Kirk, Mr Shatner has been to places where no man has gone before, however, [this]…clearly shows he has never been [here]. If he came, we could show him that there is no prostitution in Ilfracombe”…In an email…Shatner replied that prostitution “commonly means sex for something of value…I would be hard pressed to believe that sex was not being had in Ilfracombe for something of value, perhaps a lengthy marriage, children or a valuable career. In any event, my apologies for having singled out Ilfracombe as a potential haven for prostitution…”

N.B: With 10,840 people, Ilfracombe might have as many as 15 whores.

Metaupdates

Counterfeit Comfort in TW3 (#8) (February 26^th, 2012)

Louisiana just won’t give up trying to destroy people’s lives:

A new Louisiana law requires sex offenders…to state their criminal status on their Facebook or other social networking page…[it] builds upon existing sex offender registration laws, in which the offender must notify immediate neighbors and a school district of his or her residency near them…The law states that…[a registrant] “shall include in his profile…an indication that he is a sex offender or child predator and shall include notice of the crime for which he was convicted, the jurisdiction of conviction, a description of his physical characteristics… and his residential address”…

In other words, he’s “required” to provide lunatics with detailed instructions to make it easier to murder him. No doubt other states will follow Louisiana’s lead, despite the fact that onerous sex offender notification requirements are known to increase the risk of re-offense by socially isolating the registrant.

Coming and Going in TW3 (#17) (April 28th, 2012)

Anna Gristina finally left prison Tuesday evening after her bail was reduced to a more reasonable figure:

…A Manhattan judge signed…Anna Gristina’s $250,000 bond package, clearing the way for her to be released with an ankle bracelet…Gristina, 44, is a mother of four who tends to rescued pigs…but prosecutors say she also was the madam of an upscale sex service for 15 years…Gristina has said she was merely starting a matchmaking service, not peddling prostitutes…

Tracy Quan published an interesting article on Gristina’s defense which points out, as I have before, that the line between matchmaking and “pandering” is a purely arbitrary one.

Bad Fantasy, Good Reality in TW3 (#20) (May 19^th, 2012)

Dr. Kimberly Hoang was not satisfied with merely publishing the truth about Vietnamese sex workers in her dissertation; she also gave an interview to Vietnamese media:

…Dr Kimberly Kay Hoang…[said] “Most people assume that women engaging in the sex industry do so because they are kidnapped, forced, or coerced into sex work…However, few studies have been able to furnish empirical evidence to support these claims…Legalizing this work would provide women with the same legal rights as other working people”…

What a Week! in TW3 (#22) (June 3^rd, 2012)

As part of the process of licensing what will be Australia’s largest brothel, Urbis think tank did a study on the effects of brothels on neighborhoods. Its findings?

There is not a definitive relationship between the opening and expansion of…brothels and any increase in crime.

There is no proven correlation between decreases in property value and the location of sex premises in an area.

There is no evidence that anti-social behaviour in inner city areas can be attributed to the clients or staff of sex premises.

So, sex industry premises, much like other contentious uses such as funeral parlours, can cause a level of discomfort for some members of the community. At the same time, the sex industry has a role to play in the social and economic vibrancy of cities and sex premises are a legal and legitimate land use.

One Year Ago Today

“June Q & A” defines my own terms “archeofeminism” and “neofeminism”, discusses the Indonesian “Obedient Wives Club” and offers assistance to a man who has difficulty achieving orgasm with a partner.

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Q & A (June 2012)

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, Q & A, The Dark Side, tagged agency denial, anecdote, BDSM, bisexuality, brothels, condoms, dating, disease, East Asia, ethics, fantasy, pragmatism, psychology, sex work is work, stereotypes, yin and yang on June 29, 2012| 28 Comments »

I have answered three questions, and that is enough. – Lewis Carroll, “Father William”

Enough for one column, that is; if you have one, send it along for next time.

I’ve been seeing a working girl I really like, and I think she likes me too, at least enough that she felt comfortable scheduling a day-long sightseeing trip with me in a few weeks. But I have my suspicions that she may not be doing this work out of her free will (i.e., she may be trafficked or otherwise forced into this). She works from 10 am until midnight 6 days a week, and is certainly not keeping the entire donation; she has both a boss and an operator who takes the appointments. She’s Asian and speaks virtually no English, and has been working only for a few weeks. She has very few possessions and sleeps in the same apartment where she works, and another girl works from a second bedroom while the operator works in the living room. I’d really like to help this girl because I think she’s too sweet to be in whatever situation she’s in. Could you give me some advice on how to approach the subject and how I could help her?

In “A False Dichotomy”, I pointed out that only the Paris Hiltons of the world freely choose to work; the rest of us have to do something, and our choices are limited by our abilities, temperament and opportunities. If any of those factors are unusually narrow, choices can be very constrained indeed; furthermore, a person may elect to temporarily perform a job he would not otherwise choose because it opens a door to greater opportunities later. This last is especially true for immigrants from poor countries; lack of education, language barriers and the high cost of migration present formidable obstacles to employment, so upon first arriving in a country a person might indeed take a job he doesn’t really care to do as a stepping-stone toward something better. For men, that’s often agricultural or other manual labor; for women it’s often domestic or sex work.

Could your lady friend have been coerced in some way? Anything’s possible, but nothing you’ve written points to that. You seem to think her hours are long, but I worked the same number per week and so do lots of people in sales jobs. You say she isn’t keeping her entire fee, but I’m sure you expect the operator to be paid and her employer to make a profit; I daresay you don’t keep all the money that passes through your hands at work, either, but that doesn’t mean you’re “trafficked”. And you say she has few possessions, but since she speaks virtually no English and has only been working a few weeks, it’s likely she hasn’t been in the country much longer than that, and would therefore have only those things she could afford to transport…which probably wasn’t much.

She may have incurred a debt to migrate; she may even be paying a rate of interest you or I would consider usurious, or be subject to other unpleasant conditions…but I could say the same thing about medical interns. None of that means she did not choose her situation as the best available one, nor that she regrets her choice. As I pointed out in “Thought Experiment” (which I strongly urge you to read), you have to give her the same respect as you would give anyone else; if you wouldn’t interfere in the affairs of a waitress, clerk or barber, you shouldn’t do it to a whore, either. You’ve scheduled a day-long trip with her, and since you like her you’ll undoubtedly continue to visit her after that; if she is genuinely in trouble and sincerely wants your help, she will eventually find a way to ask you for it. But if she doesn’t, you have to allow her the dignity of her own choice, even if you don’t like that choice.

I met an escort for the first time about 10 months ago and saw her again 3 months ago, and in the meantime she and I have exchanged emails; besides scheduling visits we also discuss personal things, and I find myself attracted to her (not just physically). I’m aware that from her perspective being polite and friendly (and sounding interested in her clients’ activities and interests) is good for business, but is there any way to tell the difference?

For women there’s a third possibility between “just being nice because it’s her job” and “sexually interested”: it’s “genuine like”. Men tend to be (not always, but usually) dualistic about women; either they’re attracted or they aren’t. But women often like men as people without feeling a sexual attraction, hence the dreaded “friend zone” men complain about. There were a lot of my clients I enjoyed talking to and socializing with, even though I would never have had sex with them had money not been involved. It’s really impossible for me to tell from a distance which group your escort belongs to, but while you’re trying to figure it out it’s important for you to remember that her affection could be sincere without being romantic.

What are your views on group sex when it is all male and you are the only female? I’m not sure how to handle the situation or what the best way to go about it would be.

My feelings about group sex where I’m the only woman are a lot like my feelings about being whipped: I’m really excited about it beforehand and get very turned on thinking about it after it’s over, but while it’s going on I’m mostly concentrating on getting through it. I know that may seem paradoxical, but sex is strange that way; sometimes the fantasy is a lot better than the reality. So don’t be disappointed if it falls short of your expectations; it’s still an amazing experience and fun to talk about later. When it’s one guy and multiple women things are a lot easier, because most women don’t mind a little kissing and touching or rubbing against other women even if they’re not really bisexual; they get caught up in the moment so (as the expression goes) “it’s all good”. But when it’s one woman dealing with a group of men she’ll be the focus of the whole thing, and while that’s exciting and exhilirating it’s also exhausting! Obviously that’s much less so if some of the guys involved are bisexual, but that’s really a different situation so for purposes of simplicity let’s just assume these are all strictly hetero guys we’re talking about.

Experience has taught me that even two at the same time is a handful, and three is about the practical maximum a skilled girl can work on at once. Yes, four is theoretically possible because you’ve got two hands, but you’d be surprised how much more difficult it is than three unless you have no gag reflex at all and the guys don’t mind pressing awfully close to one another. If you’re dealing with more than three guys it’s probably best to do it “train” or gang-bang style, with men taking turns rather than coming at you simultaneously from all directions. In a situation like that the action should occupy the center of the area, so the others can watch from the sidelines.

However, if you’re actually going to interact with more than one man simultaneously (i.e. true group sex rather than a “train”) it is absolutely imperative that you can trust at least one of them to protect your safety; it’s very easy for the one entering you vaginally or anally to slip off the condom while your attention is elsewhere, but if one of the men really cares about you he will also be watching to make sure that doesn’t happen. Men can be incredibly foolish when it comes to condoms; roughly a third of them will happily enter a whore or other promiscuous woman without any protection whatsoever, and since the most serious common disease today (HIV) is much more easily transmitted from man to woman than vice-versa, you have a lot more to lose than a would-be condom sneaker does. Even if you’re taking them on only one at a time, I would still advise you to have at least one out of four you can totally trust; even nice, normal guys can get caught up in the heat of the moment and turn into a pack, and you need to have a couple there who can be counted on to keep their heads just in case some of the others get carried away.

One Year Ago Today

An essay demonstrating that the “sex trafficking” hysteria is “Rooted in Racism”.

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Broken Record

Posted in Current Events, Perception, Tyranny, tagged Broken Record, brothels, cops, ethics, Europe, fantasy, Greece, harm reduction, hysteria, law, propaganda, sporting events, United Kingdom on June 26, 2012| 32 Comments »

Propaganda must be limited to a few simple themes and these must be repeated again and again. – Adolf Hitler

Back in antediluvian times we had these plastic discs called “records”; they were a lot like CDs except bigger and usually (though not always) black. They held a lot less music than CDs do, and because they were played via the barbaric expedient of actually dragging a diamond-tipped needle along a long spiral groove etched into their surfaces, they were subject to damage which might cause the needle to jump grooves (thus skipping portions of songs) or even worse, to jump backward and thereby play the same phrase of music over and over and over and over and over and over again until one either moved the needle or became infuriated enough to hurl the disc against the wall, shattering it into a number of vinyl shards.

OK, so I’m kidding just a bit; most of my readers are old enough to remember vinyl records, and even those who aren’t have probably seen them in movies or at your parents’ houses. But when I was trying to think of a title for this essay and “broken record” leaped to mind, it occurred to me that some of my readers under 30 might not have an instant understanding of the phrase as we senior citizens do. It was a common expression at one time: “he sounds like a broken record” was immediately understood by almost everyone to mean that the person so described tended to repeat himself both mindlessly and endlessly. In this case, it’s the moronic gypsy whores myth: you know, the claim that there is a Lost Tribe of Gomorrah some 40,000 or more strong who are “trafficked” around the globe in pursuit of major sporting events. Nobody ever sees them come or go, and nobody knows where they sleep or work; the high cost and low availability of hotel rooms at such events has no effect on these mysterious harlot nomads, who move like shadows, live in invisible tents and caravans and then vanish into the dust like Bradbury’s Autumn People until the next mega-competition. Repeated debunking has no more effect on those who repeat this nonsense than it would on a skipping record; they’ll just go on and on and on in the same old groove until jarred out of it by physical force.

Perhaps that force is on the way, at least for the London Olympics; though the BBC has generally embraced trafficking hysteria, it must be given credit for publishing an article by Mario Cacciottolo which references several of the studies I’ve linked in the past and includes passages like this:

…Tessa Jowell, who once told the Commons about her determination to combat sex trafficking at London 2012, now admits that “current intelligence would suggest that we are unlikely to see large scale trafficking into London as a result of the Games”…Jowell also says that it is “hard to know” whether the lack of evidence for Games-related trafficking “was a result of the measures that were put in place” by her officials “or whether the threat simply hasn’t materialised”…[and] a Met Police Authority report on SCD9 published in October 2011 said the “intelligence currently held does not support any increase in prostitution in the Olympic Boroughs and actually shows a decrease in some locations”…Conservative London Assembly Member Andrew Boff has compiled the Silence on Violence report which also says there is “no strong evidence that trafficking for sexual exploitation does in fact increase during sporting events”. He also says raids on brothels were increasing as the Olympics approached…Sarah Walker, of the English Collective of Prostitutes, echoes this view, saying recent frequent police raids on east London brothels represent a pre-Olympics crackdown…Another group representing sex workers, x:talk, is calling for a moratorium on arrests, the detention and deportation of sex workers until the end of the Olympics…

Dr. Brooke Magnanti also wrote on the subject, but because she is a retired call girl herself and doesn’t have to be politically correct, she didn’t mince words or quote weaselly politicians as the BBC article did:

You might be wondering…why there isn’t sex trafficking during these events. The answer is simple. Criminals may be criminals, but organised crime does not exist for the purpose of being evil. It exists to make loads of tax-free dosh. Does it make financial sense for sex trafficking to occur at these events? With London rents skyrocketing around the venues, with the Home Office plans to tighten border security, with the police already well misinformed about the magnitude of the trafficking problem, you’d have to be mad to pursue this as a business plan. There was perhaps a time, back in the 90s, when sex trafficking in some parts of Eastern Europe might have netted you some cash if you already had the distribution network, but it’s not the case now. Add to that a large proportion of the UK native population willing and legally able to exchange money for sex and you’d be laughed out of Dragon’s Den for even suggesting it as a goer…

In spite of all this, we are still treated…with the same old guff such as stories that sex trafficking ‘almost doubled’ during the Athens Olympics. In this particular case, ‘almost doubled’ means that the number of reported incidents was 181, a 90% increase over the previous year. So yes, they did ‘almost double’. However…in the year before the Athens Olympics, the reports of sex trafficking at 95 represented 0.45% of all prostitution in Greece. And after the Olympics? 0.86%. Less than 1% of prostitutes in Greece were trafficked both before and after the Olympics…Let’s say in the year 2008, there was 1 death in all of Scotland from a vending machine falling on someone. Then let’s say a year later, in 2009, there were 2 such deaths. While it would be technically true to say that the number of vending machine accidental deaths ‘doubled’, is this a fair representation of the data? Is this a significant trend that is likely to continue?…The change from 1 to 2 in a given year seems clearly attributable to chance…

She then goes on to point out that when police are given extra money and told to find “trafficked women”, but there are few or no trafficked women to find, they harass consensual sex workers instead. Hence, x:talk’s call for a moratorium on arrests which was mentioned in the BBC article, Magnanti’s article above and another in The Guardian which quoted her. X:talk has drafted a petition asking the Mayor of London and police officials to stop this pointless, dangerous political exercise and leave sex workers alone, at least until the end of the Olympics, and I’d like to join x:talk and Dr. Magnanti in asking that you consider signing it. Perhaps together we can jar the needle out of the groove for now, at least until the next time the record is placed on the turntable for the next major sporting event.

One Year Ago Today

We often discuss the advantages of decriminalization for sex workers, but “If It Were Legal” examines ways in which it would benefit clients and academics.

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That Was the Week That Was (#25)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Q & A, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged A Narrow View, Above the Law, Africa, agency denial, Amsterdam, bad customers, brothels, California, censorship, Congo, cops, Cosmopolitan, cult of the child, East Asia, end demand, escort review sites, ethics, Europe, Forward and Backward, harm reduction, hysteria, Illinois, internet, Ireland, Japan, law, Law of the Instrument, lawheads, Little Boxes, massage, Middle East, Naked Truth, neofeminism, Netherlands, Nevada, Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs, rape, Reframing, Rough Trade, See No Evil, sex education, Social Construction of Eunuchs, Spain, streetwalkers, stripping, Sweden, Swedish model, The Course of a Disease, The Immunity Syndrome, The More the Better, underage, United Kingdom, video, violence vs. sex workers, Wholesale Hypocrisy, Wyoming on June 23, 2012| 34 Comments »

There is nothing so absurd that it cannot be believed as truth if repeated often enough. – William James

Sixteen updates and two metaupdates.

Rough Trade (Part One) (July 25^th, 2010)

Ah, synchronicity; the same week this early essay was featured on Debatbond to introduce the topic “Can a prostitute be raped?”, two California lawyers presented their own views on the subject in court. Representing the “no” position:

Prosecutors dropped rape charges…against…Michael Stanford…[Defense attorney Roberto] Dulce said…the alleged victim was a prostitute and…the sexual contact between her and Stanford was consensual…In a dispute over money, the woman accused Stanford of rape…Dulce said he had witnesses who would testify that they, too, had engaged in sex with the woman…

Yet she didn’t accuse the other “witnesses” of rape, probably because they didn’t rape her. I think we can guess what happened; “dispute over payment” means he cheated her, but since Fresno isn’t Cartagena he got away with it. The story says the charge was dropped because “the alleged victim could not be found for Stanford’s trial”; she was probably afraid to go into a building full of cops. It might have been different in Modesto: “[Judge Linda McFadden]…denied a motion to overturn a grand jury indictment against…police officer…Lee Freddie Gaines…The alleged victim…testified…that she was working as a prostitute…[when Gaines] handcuffed her and demanded oral sex…”

Amsterdam (November 1^st, 2010)

Despite a total lack of evidence, Dutch police and anti-whore politicians keep beating the “sex trafficking” drum:

…Amsterdam…plans to force brothel owners to submit a business plan to the city describing what measures they are taking to ensure sex workers are healthy and not being exploited…in recent years both the city and national government have become increasingly critical of the industry. [They claim] many prostitutes are victims of human trafficking or coerced by pimps…

It’s impossible to prove a negative (“whores are not coerced”); that’s why the burden of proof is supposed to be on the accuser. And greater legal restrictions will only force whores into the shadows, providing greater opportunity for coercion as they always do.

December Q & A (December 28^th, 2010)

Not even doctors and scientists are immune to idiotic male-ego-boosting myths:

…A stem cell expert is looking to treat sex workers with their bodies’ own stem cells, so they can have tight, toned vaginal muscles…“The idea…was tried…by a team of scientists in Japan. They recruited commercial sex workers who wished to give up the trade and get married…” said Dr Himanshu Bansal…The clinical trial involved mostly young women, some of them mothers, who were worried that their vaginal muscles were too lax…

I hate to break this to you, guys, but your penises are not as big as babies. Not even close. No amount of sex, commercial or otherwise, can loosen the vaginal muscles; only babies do that. Notice that “some of them mothers?” The truth is “most of them.”

I Really Shouldn’t Even LOOK at an Issue of Cosmopolitan (January 18^th, 2011)

I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s willing to say out loud that Cosmo’s “sex advice” is ludicrous; Ben Reininga writes “Ridiculous Tips for a Miserable Sex Life”, which this month features his hilarious picks for Cosmo’s 44 most ridiculous tips of all time. Enjoy.

A Narrow View (April 29^th, 2011)

An organization of young Chicago sex workers fights for their rights against a system which treats them as infantilized victims:

When youth who live on the streets and work in the sex trade…are victimized…often the institutions that are supposed to help them…do more harm than good. [Leaders of]…the Young Women’s Empowerment Project…said, “We don’t dictate a young person’s future and make decisions for them, we support them to make it on their own”…While many organizations dealing with sex workers aim to help them leave sex work, YWEP maintains that it is a valid individual choice and practices a harm reduction philosophy…

Social Construction of Eunuchs (July 18^th, 2011)

Apparently forced feminization of little boys isn’t enough for Swedish neofeminists any more:

…Vänsterpartiet, [a feminist socialist party,] tabled a motion that would require office washrooms to be genderless with a sit-down-only requirement…Party speakers cited medical research they said shows men empty their bladders more efficiently while seated…[which] reduces the risk for prostate problems…[motion author] Viggo Hansen…[said] the move does not represent an attempt to meddle in the bathroom habits of citizens…

Wholesale Hypocrisy (October 12^th, 2011)

It’s always refreshing to see judges slap witch-hunters down:

Instead of presenting prostitution-related charges against former University of New Mexico President F. Chris Garcia and others to a grand jury this week, prosecutors are now discussing the future of the case…[after] Judge Stan Whitaker…ruled that neither a website, an online message board nor a computer amount to a “house of prostitution or a place where prostitution is practiced, encouraged or allowed”…Garcia’s attorney, Robert Gorence…last month called on District Attorney Kari Brandenburg “to…[exonerate] Dr. Garcia” after owning up to “the mistake she made when she bought in to APD’s flawed investigation and exaggerated charges…[Garcia] never received a penny from any such activities nor did he control or direct the activities of women who advertised as escorts”…

As another legal expert stated, “Connecting people to do whatever they want to do is not illegal, it never has been.” And as Melissa Gira Grant succinctly put it, “Data is not prostitution.”

Forward and Backward (November 22^nd, 2011)

While American prohibitionists continue to demand that whores’ advertising be censored, Spain has moved into the 21^st century: “…the Spanish parliament reversed a 2010 ban on advertising by…prostitutes and brothels…[in order] to stimulate Spain’s poor economy. The sex industry spent approximately €40 million annually on advertising, according to a 2007 report…” Perhaps if the economy continues to worsen, American politicians may eventually wake up; this is, after all, the same reason alcohol Prohibition was repealed in 1932.

The More the Better (January 9^th, 2012)

This article about University of Wyoming students who work as strippers is not only fairly sensible, but includes these encouraging words from Women’s Studies (!) professor Susan Dewey:

“It is a reality that some women see sex work as a form of liberation…in recent years…trafficking has become conflated with sex work…I have many students who will use [the] terms prostitution and trafficking synonymously, interchangeably. This is very, very problematic because when you say to someone ‘you do not have the right to do something legally’ that’s one thing…but when you say to a person ‘you think are making a choice but you’re actually not, because no person with self-respect would make that choice,’ that’s a real problem.”

The Course of a Disease (February 16^th, 2012)

This week Scottish Labour MP Rhoda Grant was defeated in her attempt to fast-track Swedish Model legislation without allowing opponents to speak:

The proposal…must now go out to consultation, instead of taking a quicker route through the Scottish Parliament. Ms Grant argued a previous attempt to pass such a law meant the issues had already been aired…A similar proposal in 2010 was opposed by ministers, who feared it would push the sex trade underground. Critics of such legislation believe that making workers in the sex trade less visible to the authorities would place them in greater danger…

Here’s an example of how different the US and UK can be sometimes: one of the groups opposed to client criminalization is the Association of Chief Police Officers. Dr. Brooke Magnanti’s excellent essay on the issue concludes with the eminently-quotable line, “It’s time we started acting like grownups and stopped pretending that making something illegal makes it cease to exist.”

Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs (March 3^rd, 2012)

The new “Trafficking in Persons Report” has been released; Algeria, Central African Republic, Congo, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Kuwait, Libya, Madagascar, Papua New Guinea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen and Zimbabwe are now on Tier 3, “Countries whose governments do not fully comply with the minimum standards and are not making significant efforts to do so” (those “standards” are defined by the US via methods it neither discusses with anyone else nor even explains). Several other countries were raised to Tier 2 after they stepped up pogroms against whores (as Malaysia did in 2008), and Israel was promoted to Tier 1 (probably due to its flirtation with the Swedish Model).

The Immunity Syndrome (March 5^th, 2012)

Parents in Onalaska, Washington are reportedly “furious” that a school principal honestly answered students’ questions in a sex education class; apparently, the parents expected her to lie, and one of them said that talking about sex in a sex education class is “just the same as raping somebody.”

Above the Law (March 8^th, 2012)

The British government has finally admitted that cops are allowed to trick women into having sex while spying on them: “[Home Office Minister Nick] Herbert said it was important police were allowed to have sex with activists because otherwise it could be used as a way of outing potential undercover officers…” In other words they’re allowed to do whatever they like, including rape, in order to accomplish whatever it is they want to do.

Little Boxes (April 29^th, 2012)

The inevitable result of trying to make artificial distinctions between consensual behaviors:

The owner of a [Las Vegas] massage business…says she’s losing crucial business because of a [new] city law requiring her to close at 10 p.m…”If we don’t get an extension, I’ll be closed within a month…The daytime does not pull in what we need to cover. It is barely paying the rent for that space and utilities.” Mayor Carolyn Goodman said changing the ordinance for the Johnsons would set a precedent for more than 50 other “massage establishment” licensees…

As I’ve said before, “attempting to define sexuality…as being in the… ‘legal’ category rather than the…‘illegal’ one is a tacit acknowledgement that such lines of demarcation are valid and that government has the right to draw them…even if one wins the battle, the government can simply re-draw the line to include one’s entrenched position.” The Johnsons are learning that the hard way.

Naked Truth (May 23^rd, 2012)

I’m going to use this title for articles written by current or former sex workers in mainstream sites or publications. This time, two outstanding pieces by Tits and Sass contributors: “The Ways We Don’t Talk About Wealth” by Charlotte Shane in The New Inquiry, and “Can Sex Workers Transition to a Cashless Economy?” by Susan Shepard (AKA Bubbles Burbujas) in Forbes.

Reframing (June 20^th, 2012)

My friend LilyRose sent me a link to this “reframed” trailer, which is exactly the opposite of the Mrs. Doubtfire one and just as clever:

Metaupdates

Law of the Instrument in TW3 (#20) (May 19^th, 2012)

Think about these stories next time you hear some “authority” blathering about how “trafficking” has increased. The first one comes via Wendy Lyon: “A 30-year-old man…[was] charged with an offence under the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act…[after] travelling to Ireland [to meet] a child, having…communicated with that child on two or more previous occasions with the intent of doing an act that would constitute sexual exploitation…” And here’s another one from Minneapolis, Minnesota:

[Mickey Cupkie]…has been charged under Minnesota’s new Sex Trafficking law for having sex with two teen prostitutes, ages 15 and 17…The girls were runaways, says Minneapolis Police Sgt. Grant Snyder…He says pimps picked the girls up…and then placed an add [sic] on Backpage.com…Ramsey County Attorney John Choi says he hopes the charges send a message to the Johns…

Said message being, “’trafficking’ means whatever we want it to mean, and if girls act alone we’ll just invent pimps and ‘traffickers’ to fit the narrative.”

See No Evil in TW3 (#21) (May 26^th, 2012)

Even Sweden gets it right once in a while: “Swedish news outlet The Local reports that their Supreme Court has overturned the conviction of manga translator Simon Lundström on child pornography charges…The court’s decision reflects the viewpoint of free speech advocates…that sexually explicit manga images are…not child pornography…”

One Year Ago Today

“Lola Montez” was one of the most colorful courtesans of the 19^th (or any other) century.

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Fictional Interlude: A Haughty Spirit

Posted in Fiction, tagged Africa, Aphrodite, archeofeminism, bisexuality, brothels, Europe, fantasy, imaginative fiction, pragmatism, psychology, rape, sisterhood, yin and yang on June 15, 2012| 17 Comments »

Do thou restrain the haughty spirit in thy breast, for better far is gentle courtesy. – Homer, Iliad (IX, 315-317)

Last June I published “A Decent Boldness”, in which I introduced Aella, a young Amazon warrior of the mythic past; the story proved so popular a number of readers requested a sequel. Well, the Muse has finally inspired me with another of her adventures; if you haven’t read the first story yet, I urge you to do so before proceeding with this one because it’ll make a lot more sense that way.

Hecate take me for my damnable overconfidence!

Phaedra wanted to go by ship, but I said no, I hate the cursed things, and though your home be on an island I want to make as much of the journey safely on land as possible. My four years at the brothel had allowed me to earn not only wealth, but also knowledge; once word of my presence got around Tartessos a group of kindly scholars began to frequent the place, and I was as interested in learning from them as they were from me. When I heard that the ancient homeland of my people lay just on the other side of the Pillars of Herakles, I yearned to visit it before returning to our modern domain on the eastern shores of Tethys; and truth be told, had I not had that excuse I would have found another to avoid being cooped up for weeks in close quarters on a frail thing of wood with a lot of rude, smelly men.

I convinced her to ride with me as far as Rehoboth or Graea, where we could surely book a comparatively-short passage to Crete; I painted a lovely picture of riding along beaches, eating fish and crabs from the sea with the good wine and cheese we brought along, sleeping beneath the stars and sharing laughter and kisses away from the prying eyes of crowds. I dismissed her concerns of dangerous beasts and even more dangerous tribes, boasting of my ability to defeat man or lion. Eventually she agreed, and the first two weeks were just as I promised.

And now here I lie, gazing helplessly into the barbarian camp where my dearest friend awaits rape, slavery and perhaps torture, and it’s all my fault! Why did I leave her alone while I explored those ruins? My time in the soft city has dulled my wits and clouded my judgment, and I forgot that in the wilderness there is too much danger to leave a girl like Phaedra for long without a vigilant sword at her side. Damn you, eyes, for these annoying tears! I need you clear that I may assess the situation, hopeless though it may be; I doubt even Queen Myrina and her honor guard could slay so many men without being overwhelmed. So if Amazon steel will not serve me, perhaps a warrior’s cunning will; Metis, inspire me with a plan!

What’s this? Though I did not see her brought hither, my time in Man’s World has taught me enough to know the chief will have claimed her for himself, and there is some kind of ruckus at his tent. Though their babble is as strange to me as Tarshi once was, an argument sounds the same in any tongue…and one that ends with a sword through the gut is serious indeed. But what could spur a leader to kill his own man so abruptly? Did he attempt to steal treasure? Ah, I know; he attempted to sample treasure, or at least the chief thought he did. Phaedra is very beautiful, and he wishes to keep her all to himself; though there are already many women in the camp, her fair skin and shining grey eyes make her unique. And that gives me an idea; may my ancestresses forgive me, but I can think of no other way.

First, I must prepare our escape; would that I could find and extract Phaedra as easily as I locate our horses among these inferior nags! The rest of the camp is at dinner, and the guard is inattentive; may Themis be more merciful to his soul than his people were to my friend. If I leave the paddock gate open, some of the horses may wander away now and bolt if any commotion starts, and that will mean fewer pursuers. Fortunately, this terrain provides plenty of cover behind which to secure our mounts. My helm, shield, breastplate and greaves need be packed away, and my sword, bow and quiver will hang from the pommel securely enough; my face, my wits and a long dagger strapped to my thigh will be my only weapons this night, and my mother’s talisman and the grace of the blessed goddesses my only armor. They have already granted me one boon: though the barbarians stole woman and horses, they missed our packs where we had wedged them between rocks to protect them from the blowing dust.

Now for the hard part: though it is a good thing Phoebe will not rise for hours yet, it means having to find what I need in the dark. Ah, this isn’t so difficult after all; this flimsy gown Phaedra insisted I bring to present myself at her mother’s house is so much softer to the touch than my other clothes, I can find it with my fingers! If only the rest could be so simple. I’ve been watching the way the women of the brothel behave for four years now; have I learned enough to imitate it? Best to test it before entering the lion’s den; here’s another guard looking for the one I permanently relieved of duty a little while ago.

Quiet, my heart! Cease pounding so, or he will surely hear! The dagger is within easy reach should my attempt at seduction (what a strange word!) fail. Now to step out where he can see me…no, mustn’t strike a defensive stance! He must think I’m just as useless as the women of his tribe. He’s suspicious; of course he is! He isn’t an idiot! This is transparently a trap, and surely no sane creature could…sheath his sword and approach unarmed, mumbling barbarian gibberish. A smile and a beckoning finger…and he joins his comrade on the shores of the Styx. Perhaps my plan may work after all; it seems that any possibility of coupling with a woman causes these men of the West to completely take leave of their senses.

Still, there’s no need to test it more than is necessary; my stealth will carry me to the leader’s tent with far less chance of failure. Slit one more throat, dodge two women, hide for interminable minutes behind some jars while a group of children tarry before dispersing…then wait while a sentry moves on, and here I am at my destination. I can hear Phaedra’s voice; the chief apparently knows enough Cretan to suffice for trade, and she is trying to negotiate herself out of the situation by promising a reward if he returns her to me. He seems to find it funny; has she told him I’m an Amazon? It’s impossible to tell.

I want so badly to rush in and cut the dog down where he stands, but I’m no fool; as a chieftain he will be at least my equal in fair combat, and the melee will surely draw his guards. No, this has to be done with finesse…so I let the guards think they’ve overheard me, and pretend to be frightened (o, the humiliation!) when they “capture” me, crying out loudly enough to ensure the leader hears as well. When he steps out, I catch his eyes with as smoldering a look as I can manage…and he takes the bait, ordering his men to bring me in.

Phaedra’s eyes go wide in horror, but that lasts only for a moment as I rush to her in unfeigned joy and hug her tightly, slipping my dagger from beneath my skirts and placing it between her thighs. She starts slightly, and I whisper “You’ll know when” before allowing myself to be jerked around roughly by our barbaric captor. What follows is the hardest battle of my life; I have to force down my loathing, compel myself to keep smiling, to keep chatting, to somehow subtly convince him that his lust for me is greater than his lust for my beautiful friend…to succeed in a form of bloodless combat I have never before attempted.

Victory! Astarte be praised! The fool at last imposes himself on me, pushing me back upon the bedding to enter me; I distract him with a great cacophony of moans, encouraging him to ever-louder noises himself while beckoning to Phaedra for my blade. He dies with a shout indistinguishable from his other bestial noises, and I roll him off of me in disgust. Shush, my love; we must needs flee in haste and utmost silence. It is the work of a moment to slide under the back of the tent, and apparently Nike is satisfied with the four men I have already sent her this night, for we meet no more on the way to our steeds. The sun is high before we dare stop for a short rest, and has set again before we make a hidden camp far above the shore. But my exhaustion and saddle-soreness, and the cold fare on which we must dine, are all made bearable by the admiration in my dear friend’s eyes, and the songs of praise that pour from her lips until I drop off into a well-earned sleep.

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