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Posts Tagged ‘Checklist’

In the News (#711)

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

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

Surplus Women

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

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

Worse Than I Thought

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

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

Property of the State

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

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

Business As Usual

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

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

Safe Targets (#452)

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

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

Checklist (#514)

More absurd “air hostesses vs pimps” nonsense:

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

Vendetta (#523)

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

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

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

A Woman’s Point of View

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

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

Gorged With Meaning (#639)

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

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

Pimps Ahoy

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

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

Cooties (#703)

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

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

The War Goes On (#707)

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

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

Stupor Bowl (#709)

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

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

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In the News (#710)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, An Example to the West, California, censorship, Checklist, cops, Facebook, fantasy, Finding What Isn’t There, Hungary, hysteria, India, internet, Ireland, language, Mexico, New York, Ohio, politicians, prisons, prohibitionist myths, rape, Real People, sex education, Shift in the Wind, Smoke and Mirrors, Something Rotten In Sweden, Stop faking!, Texas, That Old Black Magic, The Immunity Syndrome, The Mote and the Beam, The Public Eye, The War Goes On, To Molest and Rape, Twitter, underage on February 4, 2017| 5 Comments »

So what if…women…are doing this…of their own free will? – Rachel Moran

The Immunity Syndrome

Porn isn’t sex education, but Pornhub supports it:

Porn is often blamed for miseducating people about sex…[and] members of the adult industry often counter that porn is simply entertainment and shouldn’t be expected to teach the public about the birds and the bees — but now Pornhub, one of the world’s most popular tube sites, has decided to get in the game of sex education. On Wednesday, the site launched its new Sexual Wellness Center, an online sex-ed hub run by Dr. Laurie Betito…It has information about everything from the female reproductive system to sexually transmitted infections to testicular cancer. Betito will answer reader questions about love and romance…“[W]e wanted to provide our fans with a trusted educational platform they can utilize as their go-to resource for information and advice when it comes to sex,” said Corey Price, Pornhub’s vice president…

Shift in the Wind

While the prohibitionists continue to scream their filthy fantasies at the top of their lungs, thoughtful people are quietly coming to realize how truly awful anti-sex laws actually are:

To better control their working conditions, sex workers need the removal of punitive sex work laws, rights to security, and to be regarded as authorities in what does and does not improve their lives…Even though sex work was legalized in Hungary in 1999, sex workers continue to face mistreatment by police and other authorities…sex workers are routinely and arbitrarily fined, arrested, and detained under vague laws. Sex workers are also regularly targeted for administrative fines on unsubstantiated grounds, such as littering or violating pedestrian or traffic regulations, in order to meet police quotas…As a result of regulations that are impossible to comply with for the majority of sex workers…a significant proportion of sex work continues to takes place illegally, even though sex work is officially legal…In a 2011 survey…more than 10 percent of the 246 respondents had been [raped] by…police…and 43.4 percent…had experienced verbal or physical assault by authorities…

Smoke and Mirrors

Another of those cases whose reported details don’t add up:

Marcel RaAnthony Richard…is charged with human trafficking and compelling prostitution. If convicted, he faces up to life in prison…The teen, who is not being named because she is the victim of an alleged sex crime, has a history of using suggestive screen names and chatting online about sex with older men…The teen’s testimony…was peppered with “I do not recall” and “I do not know.” She was often unclear about dates, times and events…She testified Richard had posted classified ads on Backpages.com [sic]. The ads…included…photos of a woman that was clearly not the teen…she [also] testified that she was high when she first talked with police and…[some things she said then weren’t] true…police were unable to find any specific locations [she described] nor could they locate any of the other people that the teen said she came in contact with [while supposedly being pimped by Richard]…

Checklist

Huge sums of money given to cops to inflict violence on adults for consensual sex is, alas, not news these days. But the NYPD is being given a new list of “sex trafficking signs” that describe a very large segment of the population:

New York City…[is creating] a dedicated hotline that will allow [people to rat sex workers out to the cops]…the Vice Unit has been restructured, including the addition of 25 more detectives who will [actively hunt sex workers full-time and]…placing a greater emphasis on pimps and johns…Some of the warning signs people may exhibit are:

Signs of physical and/or sexual abuse

Lack of memory of recent events

Limited freedom of movement

Being unpaid or paid very little

Having limited access to medical care

Seeming to be in debt to someone

Working excessively long or unusual hours

Having high security measures in the work and/or living locations

Showing signs of fear, anxiety, depression, tension, or paranoia

Avoiding eye contact

Having a strong fear of authorities

Appearing malnourished or showing signs of repeated chemical exposure

Having numerous inconsistencies in his/her story…

Most of the US population is “in debt to someone”, and most women, minorities & young people will show signs of “strong fear” of pigs who are harassing & questioning them about personal matters, including so-called “inconsistencies” due to the disorienting tactics cops intentionally use during interrogation.

Real People (#422)

A profile of the woman who set up a home for retired sex workers in Mexico City:

After years of working the streets of Mexico City, Carmen Munoz wondered what happened to sex workers like her when they got old – so…for the next 13 years she lobbied the city authorities to provide a retirement home for elderly and homeless sex workers. With the support of several well-known artists, neighbours from the Merced and fellow sex workers, she finally persuaded them. The city gave them a large 18th Century building, just a few blocks from Plaza Loreto…It took a lot of work to clean up the building, a former boxing museum, but in 2006 the first women moved in. They named the shelter Casa Xochiquetzal, after the Aztec goddess of women’s beauty and sexual power…

To Molest and Rape

Stop faking!

A federal lawsuit brought by a Cincinnati woman against several guards and medical staff from the Warren County Jail [states that she]…was held at the jail in May 2013, after turning herself in on a four-year-old warrant for deception to obtain drugs…the jail’s nurses refused to give the woman her prescribed medicine for her epilepsy, causing her to experience seizures and withdrawal, leaving her debilitated in her jail cell…her jailers [then] Tased her, [stripped] her…turned off her running water and forced her to drink out of the toilet…[they then] held…[her] facedown…[and] at least two [pigs]…climbed on her and raped her…and…orthopedic surgeon said bone shattered on her shoulder was caused by blunt-force trauma consistent with sexual assault and would later have to be surgically treated…six days into her sentence, the woman was sent to the hospital by her tormentors, where doctors found sperm in her urine…one of the defendant nurses, Krys Lambert…said that the inmate was “playing” them, and even refused to give her medications after the jail doctor prescribed them…the guards covered the windows with black garbage bags to conceal the assault…

The Public Eye (#639)

Sex workers reaching out to the public via art:

Sex workers…are celebrated in We’re Still Working: The Art of Sex Work, a stellar exhibition at SOMArts Cultural Center [in San Francisco], on view through Feb. 25…Comprising pieces created by artists who, in one fashion or another, identify as sex workers, We’re Still Working presents an array of experiences in an industry condemned by the majority of Americans as immoral and threatening to public health and safety. To counter assumptions and harmful stereotypes about who sex workers are personally and professionally, co-curators Maxine Holloway and Javier Luis Hurtado selected the work of artists who deploy a heady mix of humor, anger and sarcasm in their respective practices, all in defiance of society’s judgement…

Something Rotten in Sweden (#662)

San Diego ramps up its anti-whore pogroms:

More than 400 people were arrested in a three-day statewide sweep aimed at [harassing & impoverishing sex workers]…”Operation Reclaim and Rebuild” also resulted in the [arrest] of 28 [underage sex workers] and 27 women…142 male suspects were arrested on suspicion of solicitation, 238 suspects on suspicion of prostitution and 36 male suspects on suspicion of pimping…”This operation sends a clear message to those who would pay for sex in San Diego County,” [vomited out] Chief Deputy District Attorney Summer Stephan…

Finding What Isn’t There (#672)

Are people really so stupid they can’t understand that calls to a hotline represent only the prevalence of beliefs, suspicions and paranoia, not actual crimes?

Reports of domestic human trafficking continued to increase in 2016…according to…the Polaris Project…Almost three-quarters of the calls were made in regards to [fantasized] sex trafficking [despite the fact that it’s only a small fraction of] labor trafficking…

The Mote and the Beam (#701)

More on the useful idiots who are trying to destroy the internet:

Lawsuits in New York and California are attacking an important tool protecting online free speech by alleging the interactive computer services…promote terrorism…Without Section 230 protections, innovators would not create online public forums for fear they would be held liable for terrorist attacks or every comment made on their websites…courts have repeatedly dismissed the actions citing Section 230, and rejecting allegations that social media companies provide material support. At least one of the cases filed against Twitter has been dismissed twice. The others are similarly unlikely to succeed…

The War Goes On

We’re seeing more editorials critical of the War on Whores:

Whenever a liberal feminist politician talks to a socially conservative politician, no doubt they’re conspiring to harass sex work. This truism revealed itself again as Sen. Dianne Feinstein…told…Jeff Sessions during his confirmation hearing that “human sex trafficking was the second largest criminal activity in the United States.” Human trafficking costs are estimated at $9 billion a year…Since the drug trade is worth $100 billion, and Medicare fraud is estimated at $60 billion, Feinstein’s estimate was not in the same league, never mind ballpark. She also repeated the debunked untruth that the “average age” of trafficking victims was 12-14 years. How many six-year-olds do you see strutting on Fourth Street? A Department of Justice study released in June 2016 concluded there could be as few as 4,500 underage youth in the sex trade, and only 15 percent had pimps. Feinstein’s fake statistics fuel the growth of sex trafficking laws that punish actual adult working women and their clients to satisfy politicians’ lust for power…

An Example To the West (#708)

As glad as I am to see this story getting wider press, the use of minimizers like “some” or “not all” to mean “the vast majority” really grates on my nerves, as does the ignorant assertion that sex work is illegal in most countries (totally false, though most do have laws which allow cops to persecute us). Bonus: white women like Rachel Moran and Ashley Judd coming to India to negate the voices of tens of thousands of women as “a tiny minority”. Note Judd’s incompetent parroting of Gloria Steinem’s moronic comments about “body invasion”, which makes it sound as though she shares arch-lunatic Sheila Jeffreys’ belief that intercourse is “unnatural”.

That Old Black Magic (#708)

It’s good to see at least a few judges recognizing these fantasies as such:

A mother accused of trafficking a Nigerian woman into the country and forcing her into prostitution has been acquitted after several inconsistencies emerged in the alleged victim’s evidence. The complainant had previously told a jury she underwent a “voodoo process” in her home country during which she swore she would not report the alleged trafficker, Joy Imasogie…the alleged victim told the jury that she had stopped working as a prostitute in 2008…However…evidence…showed that the woman continued to work as a prostitute after this date…The woman told [bureaucrats] she was still working as a prostitute and that she advertised her services on the internet. She also said she didn’t want help to leave that way of life. The judge also noted that the alleged victim was found in the same house as the accused’s husband and €14,000 in cash on a date after she said she fell out with Ms Imasogie…

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In the News (#708)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged A Tale That Grew in the Telling, abortion, An Example to the West, bogus studies, Broken Record, Checklist, cops, Florida, hysteria, I Swear To God, India, infidelity, Ireland, law, Lying Down With Dogs, Michigan, Monsters, Paint By Numbers, Perquisites, prohibitionist myths, rape, Russia, streetwalkers, stripping, Surplus Women, Texas, That Old Black Magic, The Mote and the Beam, To Molest and Rape, transgender, United Kingdom, video, violence vs. sex workers, witchcraft on January 28, 2017| 1 Comment »

[Jessica] McGraa’s death has prompted many to ask how we have created a climate in which sex workers call anyone but the police. – Frankie Mullin

Lying Down With Dogs

Melissa Ditmore on Russia’s terrible anti-whore policies:

Russian President Vladimir Putin…half [joked]…that…Russian sex workers are “of course the best in the world”…but…Russia’s regressive policies on sex work, LGBTQ people, and sex education are counter to good health. LGBTQ people are stigmatized and discriminated against and face grave violence, sex work is prohibited, the most effective HIV prevention strategies for people who use drugs are against the law, and comprehensive sexuality education is not offered in schools…

The Mote and the Beam

Liz Brown was the only non-prohibitionist invited to appear on this Al Jazeera show; in this article she discusses the incredible ignorance of the other panelists, who call for more laws without even knowing what the current ones say.

An Example To the West

Two thousand signatures:

The National Network of Sex Workers has released a statement challenging the conference being organised by the “The Coalition for the Abolition of Prostitution International”…The statement has been signed by over 2000 sex workers in India who reject the conflation of trafficking with sex work, and the conflation of sex work with violence. It calls for…an end to the use of morality to stigmatise and discriminate against sex workers…

Broken Record

The broadest “gypsy whore” claim ever:

…a new report from 2016 [redefines criteria to claim that] the number of human trafficking cases in [Florida] doubled in the last year…Florida’s reputation as a tourist destination means traffickers respond to the demand for sex tourism by trafficking victims to the state during tourist season…[prohibitionist] Bethany Gilot [publicly fantasized about]…the prevalence of sex tourism in the region…

I Swear To God

And yet “feminists” were perfectly happy when it was sex workers’ rights which were the forbidden topic:

…Donald Trump signed [an] executive order…reinstating a ban on international aid…to nonprofits that provide abortions or promote information on them, regardless of what other services they offer…A…group of more than 100 public health, women’s issues, and civil liberties organizations have already issued a statement opposing the return of…”the global gag rule”…[the policy is very much like] the anti-prostitution pledge…[which] stipulated that no grant money could be used…to “provide assistance to any group or organization that does not have a policy explicitly opposing prostitution”…

That Old Black Magic

I’m not sure which aspect of this is the stupidest:

A woman accused of trafficking a Nigerian woman into the country and forcing her to work as a prostitute has claimed that the alleged victim was having an affair with her husband…The complainant previously told a jury that she underwent a “voodoo process” in Nigeria during which she swore she would not report the alleged trafficker, Joy Imasogie…once in Ireland she had to have sex with up to 10 men a day to pay off a €50,000 “debt”…arising from her being brought to Ireland…Imasogie said sometimes the woman would come to her house to do her hair in exchange for food but denied making her work as a prostitute…she…also claimed the mother of the alleged victim was using voodoo to take her husband away from her but “did not succeed”…

Monsters

A 26-year-old Detroit man…[shot] a transgender woman in the face after paying her for sex. Jason Lamar Hogan was charged…with [attempted murder]…She escaped and got treatment at Grace Hospital…

Paint By Numbers

“Dumb ‘awareness-raising’ stunts” is going to be the funniest appendix in my history of “sex trafficking” hysteria:

The Crisis Center of Tampa Bay is urging you to drop an F-bomb. No, not the swear word. In this case, F stands for Friend…They’re using memes with a very serious message. It’s something we don’t like to think is happening in our community: kids forced to be sex slaves. But Florida is one of the top three states for human trafficking…Ken Gibson from the Crisis Center…says…“It’s little kids…who are being targeted by pimps”…

Checklist (#542)

Can this reporter actually be so credulous as to believe it takes 20 cops to check to see if a strip club is displaying the magical scrolls demanded by Florida politicians?

There was no dancing when deputies and code enforcement officers were at a strip joint called Icon. Except for the 20 or so officials, the club was nearly vacant…But the deputies didn’t mind the empty stage, as they were there to ensure that the club was in compliance with a new county ordinance requiring anti-human trafficking signs in adult entertainment establishments…

The nauseating sound of bootlicking is deafening.

Perquisites (#582)

Yawning.

…University of Louisville…director of basketball operations Andre McGee hired strippers and prostitutes as a way of gaining favor with high school recruits from 2010 to 2014. The scandal broke wide open in 2015, when Katina Powell, who was in charge of organizing the women to bring to campus, published a book detailing the racket, titled Breaking Cardinal Rules: Basketball and the Escort Queen…

Surplus Women (#614)

It will never be completely safe for any sex worker, or really any woman, to call the cops. But we need to give the cops far fewer excuses to force interaction with sex workers:

Jessica…McGraa’s death sent waves of horror through the sex work community across the UK. As an independent worker, advertising online, she was part of one of the fastest-growing sectors of the industry. Her story was close to home for thousands of people working in similar circumstances. How many of them would have called the police?…

To Molest and Rape

Once again: if you think it matters whether a rapist cop was “on duty” at the time of the rape, you are part of the problem:

Evan Cramer…pulled [a woman] over…for a minor traffic violation…[he said] she had multiple warrants out for her arrest and said she could avoid jail time if she [submitted to rape]…Cramer…then…[forced] the [woman] into his cruiser and [drove] her to a vacant lot where…he [raped her]…The woman then went to the hospital and reported the [rape]…

A Tale That Grew in the Telling (#705)

Though this is mostly just the usual idiocy, note that “children” is defined as “people under 26”.

There are likely more than 313,000 victims of labor and sex trafficking in Texas, and roughly a fourth of them are children and people under the age of 26 who have been forced into prostitution…[fetishists] from…University of Texas…[pretend these wild exagerrations represent] “a conservative understatement of the prevalence of human trafficking in Texas”…

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In the News (#704)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged Above the Law, Advice for Clients, agency denial, Amnesty At Last, Arkansas, Broken Record, Checklist, Colorado, cops, escort review sites, Florida, Having and Eating Cake, hysteria, Israel, Kentucky, Minnesota, neofeminism, Norway, Ohio, Out of Control, porn, prohibitionist myths, propaganda, Repeat Offenders, rescue industry, Rhode Island, Saving Them from Themselves, semen, So Close and Yet So Far, sporting events, stripping, Stupor Bowl, Swedish model, teachers, To Molest and Rape, Traffic Jam, Twitter, Wisconsin on January 14, 2017| 6 Comments »

I *personally* could wreck the careers of a dozen politicians. And there are roughly half a million whores in the US. – Me

Advice for Clients

Mistress Matisse offers advice on the oft-asked “how do I find an escort” question:

…Look to social media…Now that so many review boards have been taken down, social media is the best way to find a good independent escort…I’m not saying “no social media” equals “bad escort”…there are lots of good escorts who don’t have much of a social-media presence. But if you want to get to know a little about who someone is before you meet them, that’s just how you do it now…

Saving Them From Themselves

I’m sure he did it to “protect” them:

A fired Kentucky high school principal took students’ phones so he could steal porn images and trade them online…Stephen Kyle Goodlett…was indicted…on federal charges of possessing and transporting child pornography…after a 20-year-old woman learned that naked images she had taken for her boyfriend when she was 15 had been uploaded to a porn trading website in Russia…the IP address of the device that uploaded the images matches an account registered by Goodlett…[who claims] that he has an addiction to porn…

Above the Law

This says he reduced the sentences if they gave him sex; I suspect it was more like “I’ll increase your sentence if you don’t”:

An Arkansas judge has resigned after allegations he granted leniency to female defendants in exchange for sexual favors…judge…Timothy Parker of Eureka Springs, has denied the charges but submitted his resignation on Dec. 30, one day before his term in office was to end…

So Close and Yet So Far

You’d think someone who claims to support sex worker rights could refrain from parroting Swedish propaganda or pretending that human rights are debatable:

…decriminalizing child prostitution is crucial to stopping trafficking…and…some also believe that decriminalizing sex work for adults may be best. In 1999, Sweden decriminalized the selling of oneself for sex, while still keeping it illegal to…pay for sex, essentially putting the burden where it belongs, on the traffickers and their customers…Some even call for prostitution to be decriminalized, or even legalized, across the board. In 2003, New Zealand did just that…international trafficking is less of a concern because of New Zealand’s isolated geography. Whether decriminalization or legalization of sex work for adults will ultimately keep them safer is still a widely-debated topic…

On the Simultaneous Having and Eating of Cake

Another court continues the trend of classifying strippers as employees:

A prohibition under Wisconsin law against employers docking an employee’s pay “for defective or faulty workmanship” applies to the exotic dancing industry, a federal judge ruled…Dawn Stevens sued the Oval Office Gentleman’s Club, claiming the “fines” it subtracted from her pay for giving dances that didn’t meet the club’s standards were barred by state law. The club made deductions for “failing to fully remove all clothing, except for underwear, by the end of the first song when dancing on stage; spending too much time in the dressing room; and not dressing according to the Oval Office’s dress code,” among other violations…

Stupor Bowl

It’s almost sad to see these losers trying to cash in with debunked bullshit a year ahead of time:

Minnesota’s fight against sex trafficking is gearing up for the February 2018 Super Bowl in Minneapolis…conventions and large gatherings…attract traffickers who see potential for higher demand of their services. [Totally bogus] research has found that online ads for adult services increase for big events — many of which advertise trafficked women…Minnesota is in a better position than previous hosts to tackle the issue…[because it] leads the nation on addressing sex trafficking, and its practices are looked to as a model for other states…

Broken Record (#510)

Cows still cause “sex trafficking”!

Authorities are on high alert for human trafficking as crowds come to Denver for the National Western Stock Show…Deputy Shay Haney with the Adams County Sheriff’s Office [fantasizes] the large number of tourists coming to the show can attract human traffickers…[cops] are working to check websites…to identify [women’s pictures they can jerk off to on the public dime]…

Checklist (#542)

Apparently, Florida “authorities” didn’t think their magical posters resulted in enough people being caged, so they’ve added a website:

Attorney General Pam Bondi announced efforts…to spread [hysteria about] human trafficking…[by] launching a new website…digital signs will be displayed throughout the Tampa International Airport, encouraging travelers to visit the new site for tools to [make themselves paranoid so they rat each other out to the cops]…

Out of Control (#554)

Unsatisfied with merely sneaking or throwing, this enterprising pervert invented a spooge-squirting system:

A West Virginia man admitted to masturbating at least 12 times in public shopping center parking lots, filling syringes with semen and following women into stores while squirting them on the back with the fluids. Timothy Blake…was arrested…in Marietta, Ohio [after]…A woman [reported the incident and police]…were able to track Blake down through security footage…“The defendant stated maybe [squirting women with semen-filled syringes were] his way of having sex with these women”…

Amnesty At Last

Imagine a reporter adopting this tone in a story about an NAACP chapter leader who was publicly promoting a policy that police should cooperate with the KKK to “protect” black people:

The coordinator of [Providence, RI]’s Amnesty International chapter has been expelled, after nearly 40 years of service, for publicly disagreeing with the group’s stance on decriminalizing sex work. Marcia Lieberman…disagreed [that women have sexual agency and fantasizes that Amnesty’s]…policy…would embolden “pimps and johns” who were exploiting “mostly young women and girls…we did not believe it should be legal for [adults to have consensual] sex”…Lieberman wrote a letter to the editor of The Providence Journal…reiterating her opposition to the [civil rights of adults]…and in support of…police [harassment of those adults]…

Traffic Jam (#575)

How many moronic prohibitionist plays can the market bear?

If the demand for sex trafficking were to end, would the supply end too? Recently defected from a sex trafficking ring, Amber Cregg has immunity, and a story to tell. Will she cooperate and aid the side of justice, or will she continue to her deep allegiance to her former pimp? Join the Joint Religious Legislative Coalition, and the all-youth cast of blank slate theatre, for this original play on human sex trafficking…

The name of the play is Bottom. I’m not even gonna go there.

Repeat Offenders (#637)

Even when it isn’t garment-related, “rescuers” invariably want to push sex workers into some kind of menial crafting work:

Modern slavery is all around us—even if we don’t always see it…one group in Tel Aviv is fighting against it to save lives and the environment. A.I.R.—which stands for “Act, Inspire, Restore”…combines social purpose with an eco-friendly upcycling business to spread awareness about the black market activity and to give former prostitutes the skills and supportive community they need for a second chance at life. Founded by Swiss couple Tabea and Matthias Oppliger, A.I.R. turns [garbage] like pallets into custom wood furniture…they currently work together with eight former sex workers who have signed on for a one-year training program to help them reintegrate into society…

Where “reintegrate into society” means “menial domestic labor”.

To Molest and Rape

Such a long and wordy euphemism for “rape”:

A [Norwegian cop] may lose his job over allegations that he used his role as an officer of the law to get sex from a number of women…One victim…needed to report a stolen car trailer to the police. Later that same day, she was sent 70 text messages from the [cop pressuring her for sexual contact]…he also encouraged the woman to send photos of herself so he could “enjoy them”…The following day…he…went to the woman’s home [uninvited and raped her]…

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In the News (#702)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, An Example to the West, Backpage, brothels, California, Canada, cell phones, Checklist, cops, Dark Corners, dehumanization, drivers, fantasy, hysteria, illegal aliens, Imaginary Evils, Imagination Pinned Down, India, It Looks Good On Paper, law, Madonna/whore, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, One Born Every Minute, Paint By Numbers, politicians, Power Play, prohibitionist myths, racism, rape, serial killers, Skin To Skin, Surplus Women, surveillance, Texas, The Pygmalion Fallacy, To Molest and Rape, Traffic Circle, underage, United Kingdom, Utah, Washington (state) on January 7, 2017| Leave a Comment »

We can’t…afford to waste public safety dollars on a problem that doesn’t exist. – Springfeld News-Leader editorial board

Surplus Women

The two “real” women are named, but sex workers are subhuman so “teen hooker” is good enough:

Khalil Wheeler-Weaver, 20, is under investigation for the slaying of a teenage Philadelphia hooker whose burned body was left inside an abandoned building in Orange, N.J…Wheeler-Weaver…is already accused of strangling two other women: Joanne Browne…and…Sarah Butler…

Imagination Pinned Down

She has “big chunks of…memory gone”. So she just filled the spaces with blatant lies:

Ontario’s first director of its anti-human-trafficking office brings to the job…first-hand insight, [claiming to have] lived through the experience herself. “I was trafficked at 13,” Jennifer Richardson says…“I actually…have pretty big chunks of my memory gone…When you think of kids at 13, that’s the perfect stage to offend against children in this way…when you look at the stats worldwide, that’s one of the … stats that stays the same, no matter what country you look at the literature in: 13 1/2 is the average age of entry in every country”…

Obviously, among the missing “chunks” are basic arithmetic skills & the ability to read studies.

The Pygmalion Fallacy (#30)

Well, at least this new version doesn’t look as ridiculous as the prototype did:

Kissenger is a rubbery-looking dock that humans put their phones in. It has a tactile surface they depress with their meat. The movements are then transmitted in realtime over the internet, so that a replica of them may be experienced by another human…There’s an app that goes with it so the humans can interact on a audiovisual-discursive level at the same time…”High precision force sensors are embedded under the silicon lip to measure the dynamic forces at different parts of your lips during a kiss. The device sends this data to your phone, which transmits it to your partner over the Internet in real time. Miniature linear actuators are used to reproduce these forces on your partner’s lips, creating a realistic kissing sensation. Kissenger provides a two-way interaction just like in a real kiss“…

Skin To Skin

There are a large number of valid criticisms of this lawsuit, most especially the fact that it’s pushing for legalization rather than decriminalization. But every attack on the edifice of criminalization helps to hasten its eventual collapse:

Russell Greer…has Mobius syndrome, which means he can’t move his eyes from side to side or close his lips…He says he suffers from anxiety and depression, and has found intercourse to be healing…His only choice—other than taking Amtrak or a plane to Nevada…is to illegally pay for sex in Salt Lake City…On Oct. 18, 2016, Greer…filed a lawsuit against city, county and state officials…for violating his constitutional rights by upholding laws that make sex work illegal…But in his quest to legalize prostitution in Utah, Greer stumbles into territory regarding sex-worker rights, arguments over decriminalization and language that highlights just how complex, nuanced and fraught the struggle over privacy and sexual rights continues to be, despite recent landmark legal decisions that opened the door to same-sex marriage and polygamy legalization…

Dark Corners

Keep in mind that despite many huge and expensive raids, the UK has never found more than a single-digit number of cases of genuine exploitation; these are actually just immigration raids cloaked under the pretense of “rescue”:

…97 people have been arrested in the U.K. on suspicion of immigration offences after raids on 280 nail bars in London, Cardiff and Edinburgh…the majority of those arrested [are] Vietnamese nationals. The [pogrom] also [arrested] people of Mongolian, Ghanaian, Chinese, Nigerian, Pakistani and Indian origin….[as] part of a Home Office…campaign named “Operation Magnify”…targeting [migrant-owned businesses] to “root out illegal working”…[using the excuse of so-called] modern slavery…The Home Office stated that victims of trafficking [of which none were found] will be offered support, while “those who have no right to be in the UK will be removed”…

Traffic Circle

Remember how last Monday I predicted public funds for anti-whore hate groups would start to dry up?

State legislators have…started to [fear-monger] about the dangers of human trafficking in Missouri…[but] such cases are incredibly rare in Springfield…We may feel in our gut that there’s more trafficking going on in Springfield than we know about…but we should understand that our instincts don’t equal facts, and…we’re not a community that can afford to waste public safety dollars on a problem that doesn’t exist…

Paint By Numbers (#593)

On the one hand, I’m disappointed that stupid “sex trafficking” stunts are being recycled. On the other hand…well, see for yourself:

Kyle Pipes wore a thin cotton dress with a blue paisley print pattern. Pipes, a minister at Eastern Hills Bible Church in Manlius [New York went around in drag]…as part of the national Dressember campaign…[while cross-dressing] Pipes [also fantasizes that] there’s over…30 million people enslaved worldwide…

I guess the dress makes it easier for him to reach under & wank to his “sex slave” fantasy whenever he feels the need.

To Molest and Rape

Once again: If you think it matters whether a cop was wearing his magical clown costume when he raped someone, you are part of the problem:

A Texas [cop] was arrested [for]…repeatedly sexually assaulting his girlfriend’s 13-year-old daughter…the mother…discovered that the 13 year old had been texting lewd photos to…Jesus Gonzalez at his request…the girl revealed…that Gonzalez had sex with her more than 20 times between September and mid-December. Gonzalez told the teen that he wanted to marry her…

“I want to marry you” is an even older line than “I’m going to rescue you”:

A…Vancouver police detective, who in 2015 received a special citation for his work on a sexual exploitation investigation, has been charged with sexual exploitation. Det. Const. James Fisher was arrested…and faces three counts of sexual exploitation, one count of sexual assault, one count of breach of trust and one count of attempt to obstruct justice…He was the lead investigator in…human trafficking investigation[s]…

It Looks Good On Paper (#677)

This is nothing but a partisan wanking fantasy; what this law actually does is empower the cops to indefinitely detain underage sex workers “for their own protection”:

Beginning on Jan. 1, prostitution by minors will be legal in California…teenage girls (and boys) in California will soon be free to have sex in exchange for money without fear of arrest or prosecution. This terribly destructive legislation was written and passed by the progressive Democrats who control California’s state government…Immunity from arrest means law enforcement can’t interfere with minors engaging in prostitution — which translates into bigger and better cash flow for the pimps. Simply put, more time on the street and less time in jail means more money for pimps, and more victims for them to exploit…

One Born Every Minute (#681)

I hope this rapist scum is both bankrupted and imprisoned:

The Washington State Attorney General’s Office…filed a most unusual consumer protection lawsuit — charging a Seattle man with running a scheme for nearly a decade where he set up a fake talent agency for adult entertainers in order to trick women into posing nude and having sex with him. Michael-Jon Matthew Hickey is accused of creating a fictitious business and using deceptive ads with bogus employment offers to find his victims…Hickey offered and advertised commercial services solely for his “own personal gain” and to “satisfy his sexual desires” with no intention of following through on the promised services to help these women find jobs. Hickey…is charged with numerous violations of the Washington Consumer Protection Act and the Commercial Electronic Mail Act…In October, Hickey was charged with three counts of rape. He’s currently behind bars in the King County Jail in Seattle…

Checklist (#685)

Ladies, please heed my warning against using Uber unless you actually want to be “rescued” into jail:

A teenage girl is [in jail] after an…Uber driver helped rescue her from a suspected sex trafficking ring. While he didn’t know it at the time, he was taking a young girl, her pimp and another person to a job. But when they started openly discussing their plans in the car, the driver knew he had to [rat them out to the pigs]…Kevin Avila…picked up three female passengers…“I saw her legs are really long and she was a really young girl,” he said…The conversation turned to the how-tos of solicitation…Avila dropped off his passengers, then called police…He listened in depth and…even know what room they were going to…

Add to our list of “signs of sex trafficking”: having long legs. It’s a wonder I’m not “rescued” every time I leave the house.

An Example to the West (#698)

Can you imagine American feminists criticizing a cop’s anti-whore fantasies?

Vishwas Nangre-Patil…has always been known for being progressive…Which is why his patriarchal misogyny at a recent press conference…came as a shocker [to people who don’t understand what progressivism actually is]. Announcing a crackdown operation against sex workers he wanted to know why they can’t work hard. “They should be [forced] to make and sell pickles and papads instead of their bodies,” he [bloviated]…An activist [responded]…“Will he be able to match the corporate markets that sell papads and pickles? And we are not even talking about matching a sex worker’s daily income here.” All ears sir for your response. Hopefully you’ll give the patriarchal conservatism a rest…

Power Play (#701)

The author of this article believes in a lot of the “sex trafficking” mythology, but seems to basically understand that going after websites is asinine:

…California Attorney General Kamala Harris filed new criminal charges against Backpage.com [officials]…after a Sacramento judge tossed out earlier pimping charges…While most advertisements posted in the “Escorts” section on Backpage.com likely come from [sex workers, fetishists pretend many]…sex traffickers…are posting others…If Backpage.com closes, the commercial sex advertisements will most likely be displaced to an alternative online platform…this crusade against Backpage.com is futile and could actually further inhibit America’s anti-trafficking efforts…while the majority of current cases may involve Backpage, this could simply be because the website is the primary [site] being used by [pigs to deceive people]…

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In the News (#696)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged A Tale That Grew in the Telling, A War for Peace, agency denial, BDSM, California, Canada, Checklist, cops, Do As I Say, evidence, fantasy, games, Georgia, hysteria, I’m Sure You Feel Safer Now, Imaginary Evils, Kenya, Lack of Evidence, language, law, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, pizza!, prohibitionist myths, psychology, rescue industry, restaurants, serial killers, streetwalkers, Surplus Women, teachers, Texas, The Implosion Begins, The Widening Gyre, Think of the Children!, Train Wreck, underage, Unintentional Hilarity, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers, Washington DC, yellow journalism on December 7, 2016| 10 Comments »

You can’t change your life [after a prostitution arrest], because you got people who just want to ride around and randomly take people to jail for nothing. – Erika Elias

Think of the Children!

“Concerned parents” is a euphemism for “busybodies”:

A [gang] of [busybodies pretend] their quality of life is being affected after [one of them] discovered a business selling adult services was operating in their street…The owner of the house, Nigel Sanders, said…”I have a girlfriend who is a professional dominatrix, she comes to visit me in Exeter and on some occasions she may have found it convenient to see someone for services in…the [house]”…[one of the busybodies] said it made her feel uncomfortable that [people were having consensual sex close to where the products of other consensual sex acts were living]…

Lack of Evidence

As long as these laws exist, all women are vulnerable to persecution by cops:

Erika Elias…was waiting for a ride outside a Columbus, Georgia, trailer-park last month when a local [cop]…spotted her. Because Elias had been been picked up for prostitution nearby previously, and the neighborhood is one where cops regularly make prostitution arrests…Ryan Vardman…arrested [her] for “loitering for the purposes of prostitution” and [she] now faces nearly two months in county jail…The criteria for this crime is entirely subjective: does a cop think you look like someone selling sex?…

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

“…Toledo [cop]…Michael E. Moore, Sr…was indicted by a…grand jury on two counts of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor and two counts of compelling prostitution…[after he] paid for sex with a girl, who was at the time between 13 and 14…”

A War for Peace

Femen’s main purpose seems to be the generation of irony from hypocrisy:

The founder of the Canadian chapter of…FEMEN…Kseniya Chernyshova was arrested in midtown Manhattan on Nov. 11…[for] “sexual intercourse in exchange for $300”…The Ukrainian-born Chernyshova…has been trying to [stop other] women [from making money the same way she does]…

Surplus Women

Why can’t reporters write about the murders of sex workers without lurid bullshit?

It has been 10 years since a suspected serial killer prowling the streets of Atlantic City claimed Molly Dilts, 20, and three other women, Kim Raffo, 35, Barbara Breidor, 42, and Tracy Ann Roberts, 23. The women, whose lives had unraveled under the weight of drug addiction, worked as prostitutes in the shadow of the resort’s neon-lit casinos. Over five weeks, the killer took them one by one, dumping their bodies in a brackish, trash-strewn drainage canal…The killings spawned lurid headlines around the nation for months…Before drugs took hold of their lives, the four…were mothers and daughters…

A man who implies that sex workers can’t be “mothers and daughters”, and who apparently views women as only having worth in our relationships to others, has the nerve to call similar reporting on the same subject “lurid”.

The Widening Gyre

It’s fascinating to see fetishists convincing themselves their fantasies are real:

New details are emerging about the kidnapping of Northern California mom Sherri Papini, who was able to provide basic descriptions of the two Spanish-speaking women she says abducted her. Authorities say the motive for the kidnapping is still unknown, but one private investigator says there are signs that sex trafficking could be involved.

Another caption below this piece claims Papini was “branded”, which as longtime readers know is total bullshit. This smells to me like a troubled woman looking for attention by faking her own “sex trafficking” abduction. The “Spanish-speaking women” seem kin to the imaginary dark-skinned men usually featured in such hoaxes.

Train Wreck

It looks like Kenyan articles about sex workers can be just as weirdly stupid as Nigerian ones:

The increasing number of commercial sex workers touting for business at the Central Business District in Nakuru during the day is scaring away potential investors and customers…the Nakuru Business Association [pretends]…that the twilight girls some who are under age, strategically position themselves outside business premises disrupting human traffic to shops…The commercial sex workers are now considered as a big hindrance to normal operation of business in the city…

So now “disrupting human traffic” is a bad thing? Please tell this to the “end demand” people.

Checklist

Fetishist admits her “information” is bullshit, yet teaches it anyway:

Sex trafficking in the United States is a “hidden epidemic”…an [opportunist]…told Longview [Texas patsies]…during a workshop. “No one is an expert in this yet,” said Traffick911 Director of Programs Lindsey Speed…”as soon as we learn the way pimps do their business, they change it up”…Speed [fantasized about]…sex trafficking and how people can spot signs of potential victims…Speed offered up [nonsense] statistics about the industry…

Traffick911 is a coalition of Christian groups best known for claiming that their imaginary bogeymen can be chased away by saying prayers over highways.

Unintentional Hilarity

Quite possibly the stupidest prohibitionist argument of the year:

Pokemon Go is a game in which you capture little monsters inside balls and trade them for candy or use them to fight other Pokemon to gain points…But, as with prostitution, when you look more closely at Pokemon Go, you see a nastier side. In the game, I lure and drug beautiful little wild animals in their natural environment to calm them for capture, then bombard them with ever stronger Pokeballs in which I eventually confine them…I put Pokemon in my collection, inspect their vital statistics and, if it suits me, sell them to an authority figure (the Professor, a wise old white man) in return for candy. Or I may keep them, send them to battle others and get them hurt in the process. Like a pimp lures and (sometimes literally) captures a woman in prostitution and then rents her out to men to control and enjoy…

Yes, she’s actually comparing living adult women to imaginary cartoon monsters and apparently implying that “pimps” have magical entrapment abilities. Also, some clients refer to seeing sex workers as “The Hobby”, not “The Game”. But prohibitionists never let actual facts contaminate their bizarre, sex-hating beliefs.

Imaginary Evils (#348)

A deep look at the Maoist cult whose members were at first called “slaves” by the media:

When Aravindan Balakrishnan was growing up, in Kerala…his mother often warned him not to curse people when he was angry…she believed that her eldest son possessed occult powers, and nicknamed him Black Tongue; later, as an adult, Balakrishnan would boast that he could set people aflame by looking at them. He was a good student, and won a British Council scholarship…to study at the London School of Economics…By 1967, Balakrishnan had suspended his studies at the university and joined the Communist Party of England. He…later…persuaded a small group of people—including Chanda Pattni, a classmate from Tanzania, whom he later married—to follow him. Together, they founded their own party, the Workers’ Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought…Eventually, they moved in to a communal house in Clapham, South London…Balakrishnan enforced control by encouraging rivalries among the women and keeping them financially dependent. He warned them that if they strayed, an invisible machine would punish them. He called it JACKIE, an acronym of Jehovah, Allah, Christ, Krishna, and the Immortal Easwaran—the last of these being a scholar and spiritual teacher from Kerala. If any of the women tried to flee, Balakrishnan said, JACKIE would zap them with lasers. If they had disloyal thoughts, JACKIE would make the household appliances go haywire…

A Tale That Grew in the Telling (#574)

Americans disapprove of teaching kids about sex, but they’re all for filling their heads with stupid anti-sex propaganda:

Dozens of teachers gathered in [California]…to learn about how to [indoctrinate]…students in fifth to eleventh grades [in “sex trafficking” propaganda]. Tiffany Lavoie, a [fetishist, lied that]…”The average age of a victim of human trafficking in the United States is eleven to fourteen years old. Some studies say fifteen…my mom trafficked me from the age of three until I was 13″…Lavoie said her goal is not to scare kids about strangers…

Bullshit; that’s exactly her goal. And more importantly, to scare their parents & “authorities” so she can keep making money off of this moral panic.

I’m Sure You Feel Safer Now (#693)

Liz Brown has discovered a rather revolting pattern in US vice cops’ recent behavior:

One disturbing new trend I’ve noticed of late is undercover cops posing not just as vanilla sex-buyers or women looking to get cash for sex but as prostitution clients with unusual kinks or women demanding payment in things like cheeseburgers. Then, after a sex worker or would-be client is arrested by undercover officers, the police—and the media segments that parrot them—are sure to highlight the more…mockable and attention-grabbing…elements of the bust…In [one] case, they set up a sting wherein sex workers advertising online were asked to oblige an undercover cop’s fetish request, which involved gummy worms in some way. But the gummy-worm fetish part has no bearing on whether the elements of the crime of prostitution are satisfied, so it’s hard to see why [cops] would include it but for their own amusement or to ensure that the sting would be irresistible to the press afterward (or both)…

The Widening Gyre (#694)

I’m glad this happened; it isn’t until moral panics start disrupting the lives of the well-connected that they finally end:

A man who said he was investigating a conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton running a child sex ring out of a pizza place fired an [“assault rifle”] inside the Washington, D.C., restaurant on Sunday…Edgar Maddison Welch…was charged with assault with a dangerous weapon…the pizza place has been hammered by thousands of threats and bizarre, unsubstantiated tales about child sex trafficking online for weeks…two women, who declined to give their names, [were found] banging on the patio…in late November. The women were looking for the alleged tunnels used to traffic children. “All of this is an underground tunnel that…transport them back and forth so they can can do these rituals,” said one of them. “They are putting a lot of curses and spells over the city”…

The tie-in to the Satanic Panic makes it even better.

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Count the Idiocies

Posted in Current Events, Perception, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, Bait and Switch, Broken Record, Check Your Premises, Checklist, Count the Idiocies, fantasy, Gateway, language, lawheads, Profit from Panic, prohibitionist myths, sex rays, Wyoming on November 4, 2016| 4 Comments »

Even after all these years reporting on the moronic garbage vomited forth by cops, politicians, “rescue” profiteers and other prohibitionists, I’m sometimes still flabbergasted by the incredible density with which these idiocies can be packed into one story. Here’s a recent example from Cheyenne, Wyoming (population approximately 60,000), which like so many small US cities is desperate to cash in on “sex trafficking” hysteria, with unintentionally-hilarious results. Instead of breaking up the article with my comments as I usually do, I’m just going to post a version edited down to highlight the stupidest parts, with footnotes below.

The market for paid sex acts here isn’t just during Cheyenne Frontier Days¹…prostitution is an ongoing issue in Cheyenne, and it appears to have gone unaddressed for decades²…“One of the things we wanted to show during Frontier Days was whether or not it was associated with the Frontier Days traffic”…District Attorney Jeremiah Sandburg said… “all of the johns were local; most of the girls were local…We didn’t have anybody that appeared to be coming in associated with Frontier Days”³…he came away [from a sting] shocked by what he saw⁴…“the amount of criminal activity going on just a few blocks from this courthouse on an otherwise bright, sunny evening with a lot of people around”⁵…Cheyenne Police Chief Brian Kozak said…“We…need…to try to rescue women or adolescents and juveniles (from the sex trade)⁶…when you pull up Cheyenne (on sex trade websites), you can just see there is definitely a problem here that we need to address”⁷…Kozak said local hotel operators approached him, concerned about the crime prostitution was bringing into the community⁸, and he also learned from the FBI and Denver law enforcement that with intensified enforcement down there, pimps have been moving their sex workers into other areas^{9, 10}…with less enforcement…“Our police officers here in the Cheyenne Police Department have had more training in human trafficking than the FBI agents have had,” he said¹¹…The chief said… “it’s kind of relaxed, because we don’t want to place any trauma on the potential victim”¹²…John A. Cruz Jr., 23…[was accused] of offering to pay an undercover agent $150 to have sex with a fictitious 12-year-old boy described in an online advertisement as “young and eager”¹³…Even though no children have been rescued from sex trafficking in Cheyenne, that doesn’t mean it’s not happening here¹⁴…“Definitely you could tell from the traffic online that there is some desire here to have sex with a minor, which is disgusting and definitely something we want to intervene in,” Kozak said¹⁵…it’s extremely difficult to get prostitutes to disclose whether they’re involved in sex trafficking, but most are and are just too fearful of their pimps to speak up¹⁶…Sandburg said… “once you build that rapport with them, they’re more likely to…open up to you about the fact that they are part of sex trafficking”¹⁷…Sandburg said the image of the “happy hooker,” or someone like the character portrayed by Julie [sic] Roberts in Pretty Woman, is much rarer now than people might think or realize¹⁸…Most times, a woman’s pimp has something they’re holding over the woman’s head…“The mother has no idea where her child is, and she is told by the pimp that she has to go do these sex acts for money, and if she doesn’t cooperate, she doesn’t get to see her kid”¹⁹…women might get to a point where they appear to be independent, willing operators…but there’s likely a pimp somewhere taking his cut²⁰…“So it’s important for the public to realize that even though she might appear to be the ‘happy hooker,’ as it were, there’s very likely a pimp someplace, and he’s got a lot of control over her,” he said²¹…the Zonta Club of Cheyenne posted flyers in restrooms with contact information for the National Human Trafficking Resource Center²²…Misti Fisher…said…“We live off of two highways”²³…Fisher said she’s not convinced the women arrested in Cheyenne’s stings are, in fact, willing operators. “How do we really know that?” she asked²⁴…Zonta currently is accepting entries for its third annual art contest to raise awareness of human trafficking²⁵…Another group trying to raise awareness of human trafficking in Wyoming…is…called Gifts of Grace. The group has put together a special screening of a documentary…“The Abolitionists” follows a group of former CIA agents as they rescue children trapped within child sex slavery²⁶…CEO Tyler Schwab…[said] “Wyoming should care about child sex trafficking because it is modern-day slavery, and it is happening closer than you think”²⁷…

27 items is quite a tally for a long-but-not-unusually-so specimen of modern yellow journalism. Not all of the items are idiocies; some are flat-out abominations, but in the interest of clarity I’ll count them together.

1) Gypsy whores!

2) Have these people never heard the phrase “the world’s oldest profession”?

3) The capacity of politicians to pretend that being proven wrong actually means they were right is a kind of nauseating marvel.

4) An adult man “shocked” by the existence of streetwalkers needs to be confined in a rest home for his own good.

5) Only a few blocks from the courthouse! OMG, SEX RAYS!!! EVERYBODY PANIC!!!!!

6) Where “rescue” = “arrest”.

7) When one defines ordinary activity as “crime”, it magically becomes a “problem”.

8) Because whores carry criminals in our trunks & leave them behind when we go.

9) Adult women are far too stupid to drive the 100 miles from Denver to Cheyenne on our own.

10) Am I the only one who finds the juxtaposition of dysphemisms like “pimps” and “johns” with polite terms like “sex workers” hilarious, especially in an article which repeatedly denies that sex work is work?

11) If country-boy coppers in a cowtown like Cheyenne really have more hours of training than FBI agents, that sounds suspiciously like a boondoggle to me.

12) Because tricking, brutalizing, threatening & caging people for their work isn’t traumatizing.

13) For the truth about how these “fictitious minor” stings actually work, please see “Bait and Switch“. Note the age of the cops’ victim, a young gay man who was probably seeking the company of a peer.

14) “Even though no aliens have been seen landing in Cheyenne, that doesn’t mean it’s not happening here.”

15) Where “intervene in” actually means “invent”; see #13 above.

16) This is a popular, self-reinforcing, misogynistic lie; whatever a woman says is declared to be a falsehood inspired by fear of a nonexistent “pimp” who is never found. Because we’ve been known since Biblical times as timid, delicate creatures, you know.

17) Cops and prosecutors are so delusional that they actually believe they can “build rapport” with sex workers by spying on us, deceiving us, wasting our time, terrorizing us, driving our clients away, and generally disrupting our income. And that once they do so, we’ll confirm their wanking fantasies of “pimps” and “sex slaves”.

18) Admit it; you knew Pretty Woman was going to be mentioned in here. But we got a bonus; they refer to The Happy Hooker as well!

19) Some cops aren’t satisfied with the existing myths, and invent some of their own as they go along. This is the first time I’ve heard this one, but I bet it won’t be the last because others will parrot it.

20) The “invisible pimp” trope is one of the most insidiously insulting and misogynistic, because A) it’s impossible to prove a negative, and B) it wouldn’t matter if such a person existed in the first place.

21) This is Shitbag Sandburg’s attempt to negate the testimony of countless sex workers by convincing the Incredibly Stupid that every last one of us, including me, have a “pimp” hidden away somewhere “controlling” our actions while Sandburg masturbates furiously thinking about it.

22) Another iteration of the “magical bathroom sanctuary” trope.

23) Highways cause sex trafficking! End demand for them!

24) Fisher is clearly unacquainted with the concept “burden of proof“.

25) But of course it is.

26) That would be this one about a really scary paramilitary organization with CIA connections.

27) No sermon in the “sex trafficking” cult is complete without a recitation of the Profession of Faith.

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In the News (#685)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, All About the Men, Blunt Instrument, brothels, Canada, Checklist, China, clowns, condoms, cops, drivers, fantasy, language, Missouri, One Born Every Minute, Panopticon, porn, prohibitionist myths, Pyrrhic Victory, racism, rape, robots, Send In the Clowns, Sex Lies and Busybodies, Surplus Women, surveillance, Texas, The Pygmalion Fallacy, The Swedish Pimpocracy, To Molest and Rape, United Kingdom, video, violence vs. sex workers on October 29, 2016| 6 Comments »

If you don’t like that someone has sexual needs that you don’t understand…that is your problem. – Ryan Thomas

The Swedish Pimpocracy

It’s illegal to pay for sex in Sweden, unless you film it for everyone to see:

…Swedish health minister Gabriel Wikström…is championing…a…fairtrade perspective…for porn…“In which way has it been produced, and is there consent? Then you can move forward in minimizing porn that is misogynistic and produced under bad conditions”…

Sex, Lies and Busybodies

Why do so many losers want porn movies to be condom commercials?

A British university is offering to pay young couples £400 to be filmed having sex in a bid to promote the notion that using a condom does not “kill the mood.” Coventry University is looking for three couples aged between 18 and 25 to have sex on camera. They will be filmed in “natural settings” such as student accommodation and a car. It will be “tastefully shot” and use “real couples in loving, consensual relationships,” according to the academics behind the project…Dr. Katie Newby said the videos aim to show that sex can still be fun and sexy even when stopping to put on a condom…The project is being financially backed by the government-funded Medical Research Council…

I make more than £400 about half the times I have sex, and not much less than £400 the other half of the times.

Pyrrhic Victory

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”

Imagine a security camera that can…spot drivers who are texting when they should be watching the road, potentially passing on this information to law enforcement officials that can then issue a ticket…Security cameras with this level of visual intelligence are…worrisome. Hikvision cites the case of a senior citizen who became lost and was located using the facial recognition built into its cameras. But a camera that can find a lost child or identify a criminal suspect can just as easily be used for invasive government surveillance, like the case of protesters targeted through facial recognition…

Any Old Port

The real reason people get addicted:

Blunt Instrument

“Safe house” in this context means “jail”:

…[Houston pigs] began a major [pogrom against] the…sex trade…Ying Wen was arrested during an early-morning raid and charged with money laundering…Wen was the owner and operator of Hana Top Spa…Three young women, [fantasized by furiously-masturbating cops as] victims of human trafficking, were removed and placed in a safe house…crime stats over the last three years…show [no increase]…But [myths] of problems near the spa persist…

Note the language representing human women as inanimate objects: “removed and placed in”. If you have the stomach, read the original for the pompous DA claiming that sex workers are liars and comparing us to filthy insects.

All About the Men

As I’ve written many times, prostitution is a “crime” defined entirely by motive; if a woman has sex for any other reason than profit the same exact behavior is not criminalized, but if she has that motivation in her mind her “legal” acts are magically transformed into “illegal” ones. Given this bizarre and evil belief that it’s OK to criminalize certain thoughts in the service provider‘s head, it’s not really surprising that prohibitionists also obsess about what’s in the service buyer‘s head as well; most of the propaganda on this is pretty horrifying and better reflects the prohibitionists’ views of sex and women than it does the buyers’. So it’s really nice to see an article like this, in which a sex therapist thoroughly debunks prohibitionist propaganda about clients by setting forth the many reasons men see sex workers, as revealed by hundreds of sex workers and clients and supported by research.

Surplus Women (#445)

Nothing they can do to this monster would come close to what I’d do to him:

A banker tortured a prostitute for three days, then slashed her throat and hid her body in a suitcase…Rurik Jutting…filmed himself subjecting Sumarti Ningsih, 23, to a horrific ordeal after fuelling himself with booze, cocaine and Red Bull…He forced [the] terrified…Sumarti to lick a toilet bowl before he cut her throat with a serrated knife. But she did not die immediately so he dragged her to the shower where he sawed through her neck. Sumarti was one of two Indonesian sex workers killed by Jutting in his luxury [Hong Kong] flat…His second victim, Seneng Mujiasih, 26, was killed five days later. Her throat was also cut…

The Pygmalion Fallacy (#445)

One would think that so-called “futurists” would have the sense to put their “predictions” far enough in the future that they won’t be disproved quite so soon:

David Levy…says, ‘The very first primitive sex robots will arrive next year…but it will take at least a decade before truly sophisticated sex dolls go on sale.” The breakthrough point is likely to be when celebrities start to have sex with the dolls, says Levy…”When somebody like Tom Cruise goes on the record and says, ‘I had sex with a robot,’ the whole world will notice”…

Checklist (#633)

Sex workers: Uber now wants its drivers to spy on us and rat us out to the pigs. I suggest you start using Lyft instead:

An organization that fights [sex workers]…is [colluding with] taxi and ride share drivers. The partnership between “Ending Child Slavery at the Source” and Uber will [indoctrinate] drivers to [harass]…sex [workers]…Faiza Mathon-Mathieu…hopes the transportation industry can…report people they encounter [to the cops]…“They don’t necessarily know that they’re victims…they are not going to…be seeking help,” said Mathon-Mathieu. This group hopes Uber drivers will use their interaction with [sex workers] to [betray them]…Guidelines developed by [prohibitionists]…will help these ride share drivers detect someone [to rat on]…“Youth with name or symbols tattooed…if they have multiple phones”…

One Born Every Minute (#645)

Another sleazy scam artist raping aspiring sex workers:

A Kansas City-area man is accused of duping dozens of women into having sex with him on camera as “rehearsal” for pornographic movies. Federal prosecutors announced a 21-count indictment…against…Mario Antoine…[who] is accused of creating online aliases as a talent manager, photographer and videographer and claiming to work for fictitious companies in the pornography industry. Investigators say he promised to pay the women thousands of dollars…[and] when the women complained about not being paid, Antoine forwarded images of the sexual activity to their employers or significant others…

Saving Them From Themselves (#678)

Pro Libertate featured an absolutely scathing denunciation of the district attorney, cops and other “authorities” who worked to turn a group of ordinary teens into “sex offenders” and are being challenged by the parents of one of their victims. I’m not going to quote it because it really needs to be read in its entirety, but I will say that the author not only correctly characterizes the “officials” as sexual perverts, but includes lovely lines like “They lied, of course. That’s what police officers are trained to do.”

Send In the Clowns (#682)

And here some of you thought the clown thing was kind of off-topic for me:

…the recent uptick in creepy clown sightings has correlated with a significant uptick in the demand for clown porn…Now, in a move as disturbing as it was inevitable, Porn.com has purchased ClownSex.com in hopes of cashing in…

Between the Lines (#683)

I’m not getting lazy; I just knew that Liz Brown would do such an awesome job on this, I didn’t feel there was any point in even attempting it myself:

The results have been pouring in from Operation Cross Country X, the FBI’s tenth annual, nationwide sex sting targeting what the agency [pretends is] “underage human trafficking.” Each year, FBI agents across America team up with [cops]…state attorneys…and others for a few days of posing as people buying or selling sex…This year…According to the FBI, “82 sexually exploited juveniles” were recovered and “239 pimps and other individuals” arrested. The average age of the minors was just under 16…the bulk of OCCX efforts involved cops contacting adult female sex workers while posing as customers and then arresting them, if not also seizing the women’s money and throwing them in jail…nearly three-quarters of all arrests were for simple solicitation or prostitution…Regardless how old someone selling sex is or how willing their involvement, anyone accompanying them may be arrested as a “pimp”…In Mississippi, a man from out of state who was visiting his 22-year-old daughter was arrested for promoting prostitution because…he was…aware she was doing it…I’ve identified approximately:

534 arrests for prostitution

163 arrests for attempting to pay an adult for sex (solicitation)

145 arrests for charges such as pimping, pandering, promoting prostitution, or contributing to the delinquency of a minor

14 arrests for attempting to pay an undercover-cop pretending to be a teenage-girl for sex

10 people arrested on human-trafficking charges

9 people arrested for “keeping a bawdy place,” in conjunction with massage-parlor prostitution businesses in Virginia…

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In the News (#681)

Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged adolescence, agency denial, Arizona, Australia, Bogeymen, Challenge, Checklist, clowns, cops, drugs, end demand, fascism, Gullible's Travels, holidays, hysteria, Illinois, Ireland, Kentucky, law, Madonna/whore, Making It Up As They Go, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nebraska, Never Call the Cops, New Mexico, Ohio, One Born Every Minute, Pennsylvania, prisons, prohibitionist myths, psychology, rape, Rough Trade, Saving Them from Themselves, Send In the Clowns, sex offender registry, sexting, Stop faking!, Swedish model, The End of the Beginning, The Lesser of Two Evils, Torture Chamber, underage, Vendetta, violence vs. sex workers, Washington (state), Whore Madonnas on October 15, 2016| 8 Comments »

We see no constitutionally adequate basis to criminalize sex solely because one consenting adult pays another. – Hayley Gorenberg and Richard Saenz of Lambda Legal

Rough Trade

Be careful out there, my sisters in Philadelphia:

Philadelphia police say a predator who’s attacked female prostitutes earlier this year may be responsible for two more recent attacks…the most recent incident occurred Oct. 1 when a man on a bike propositioned [a street worker] for sex…the man choked her until she lost consciousness…Police believe the same man also accosted another prostitute at gunpoint Sept. 19. He took her to an alley and [raped] her while holding a knife to her face. Police believe the same man attacked a prostitute with a brick then stabbed [to death]…on July 16. She died. The same man, often arriving on a bike, is believed to have attacked at least one other prostitute, slashing her throat April 19.

Finley Fawn’s case has been resolved!

The Lesser of Two Evils

As I’ve pointed out before, most laws governing sex work prior to the late 19th century were aimed at drawing lines between harlots and “good” women, rather than at advancing a quixotic crusade to “eradicate” the ineradicable. Here’s a list of garments prostitutes were required to wear in various medieval European cities:

Beaucaire: a mark on the left arm…
Berne: red cap.
Bristol: striped hoods.
Castres: a man’s hat and a scarlet belt.
Florence: gloves and bells on the head…and high-heeled slippers.
Languedoc: a cord belt.
Leipzig: yellow cloak trimmed with blue.
London: striped hoods.
Mantua: white cloak and badge on chest…
Marseilles: striped tunic.
Milan: black cloak.
Nimes: a sleeve of a special colour.
Pisa: a yellow headband.
Strasbourg: black and white sugarloaf hat.
Toulouse: a mark on their sleeve.
Venice: yellow scarf.
Vienna: yellow scarf.
Zurich: red cap.

Saving Them From Themselves

Never call the cops for any reason whatsoever:

A man [in Australia] who found out that his 15-year-old stepdaughter was sexting her boyfriend proceeded to download the evidence to bring it to the school and the police to ask them to intervene…Now [Ashan Ortell] has been convicted on child pornography charges and placed on the sex offender registry…for eight years…

Frankly, I’m glad this idiot got what he deserved. If anything, anyone who would report his own daughter to the pigs for the “crime” of having a sexual relationship deserves much worse than 8 years on the registry.

Gullible’s Travels

Even if this were true (which it isn’t), it’s a testament to the entrenched stupidity of authoritarians that they refuse to see that binge drinking on US university campuses only became common after the drinking age was raised to 21:

A growing number of college are banning hard liquor on campus in a move to curb extreme drinking — but students are still getting their party on, and some are adding an extra element of risk to their binges…the phenomenon dubbed “drunkorexia”…University of Houston Professor Dipali Rinker said in a study of 1,200 students, he found up to 80 percent were restricting calories, overexercising, purging or using laxatives in combination with binge drinking…

Bogeymen

No, the sex trade in Ireland is no more “controlled” by “gangs” than it is in the US. This is little more than a cop wanking fantasy of there being “bad guys” to target, aided and abetted by the pathological liars at Ruhama:

Five major vice gang members are behind three-quarters of the sex-for-sale business in Ireland, according to data taken from the most popular website used to advertise prostitution. One gang this week has links to 80 advertised women and more than 10 transgender prostitutes, who can each make €1,000 a day. Ireland’s multi-million euro vice trade is set for a massive blow as a new law to make it illegal to buy sex is due before the Dáil this week…

But just for fun, ask yourself: If there really were mobsters behind all the sex work in Ireland, would they want decriminalization or increased criminalization? Did the Mafia like the end of Prohibition? And what happened to Mexican drug cartels’ profits when Washington & Colorado legalized cannabis?

The End of the Beginning

This is what happens when you don’t fight tyrannical laws from the beginning:

A federal class action…challenges a Mississippi statute that requires people convicted of having anal sex to register as sex offenders. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of five Mississippi residents who say they were convicted under various sodomy prohibitions, including the “unnatural intercourse” law, and Louisiana’s “crime against nature by solicitation” law…the [registration requirement] is discriminatory and unenforceable in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas invalidating all state laws against gay sex as unconstitutional…

You know why they can get away with this despite Lawrence? Because the Great Unwashed said nothing when federal courts established the precedent that the horrific persecution and ostracism inflicted on “sex offenders” are not punishments, but merely side effects of a record-keeping process.

Torture Chamber

Stop faking!

[In 1993] Anthony Gay…pled out to violating probation because of a “strong arm robbery.” Gay was convicted of the robbery and hence the violation after nicking a hat and $1, resulting in a sentence of 7 years in prison…he was warehoused at the notorious…Tamms Correctional Center in Illinois [where]…”his actions…driven by his mental illness, resulted in years of solitary confinement and additional criminal convictions, chiefly due to a series of assaults on guards, including throwing feces and urine out of the food slot in his cell door. By 2013, his sentence had been increased to 97 years and his release date pushed back to around 2091…he practiced self-mutilation, even to the point of cutting out one of his testicles and hanging it on a cell door in 2010“…He was literally crying out for help, and no one listened, save for his lawyers who managed to…convince…the court that the sentences Gay racked up while at Tamms had been improperly stacked…his new release date is set for August of 2018…Tamms has closed shop because its blatant incompetence and overindulgence in costly solitary confinement of people like Gay…

Making It Up As They Go

Seattle pretends to be “liberal”, but it’s home to vile bullshit like this:

Escape to Peace launched…a…center for survivors of sex trafficking in Bellevue on Oct. 6….Carol Loya was inspired to create the non-profit after a 2012 mission to Thailand, during which she was shocked to see and talk to young…sex work[ers]…At any given time in King County, 300-500 underage girls are being trafficked. The average age of entry is 12-14 years old, with some as young as 8 or 9…

Yes, they’re actually claiming that Greater Seattle has 20% of all coerced underage prostitutes in the entire US.

Checklist (#612)

More “beauty salon sex trafficking” idiocy from Ohio:

…100,000…cosmetologists throughout the state of Ohio…are now the latest allies in the fight against human trafficking…In Ohio alone, it is estimated that more than 1,000 girls and boys, between the ages of 12 and 17, are involved in the sex trade. Last year, Ohio’s state cosmetology board approved a requirement that human-trafficking awareness training become a mandatory part of obtaining a cosmetology license…[fetishists fantasize that] traffickers or so-called pimps may take a victim to a hair salon in order to change their appearance to avoid detection…If stylists see anything suspicious, there are things they can do like get a license plate number and call police…

In a police state, even your hairdresser may be spying on you.

One Born Every Minute (#645)

I’m pleased for the very small part I played in helping to expose this rapist:

Matt Hickey…has been charged by the King County Prosecuting Attorney with three counts of rape in the second degree. The charges…contain allegations from three women, including two women The Stranger wrote about earlier this year…who said Hickey told them he was working with a female porn recruiter, and asked them to audition for them…Not long after the first piece came out, three more women came forward to accuse Matt Hickey of rape. These women told The Stranger that Hickey got them blackout drunk and raped them while they were unable to consent. Hickey denied all of the allegations…

Vendetta (#664)

A look at the aftermath of one of the private pogroms bankrolled by billionaire sociopath Swanee Hunt:

Cory Walcott, was chair of the Military Science Department at the University of Nebraska Kearney until he was busted in a highly-publicized national sting…Prosecutors have now announced they are dropping the charge against Walcott and another man, Maurice Briggs…Their arrests were both part of the “National John Suppression Initiative”…[in which] police departments across the country pose undercover as either sex workers or their clients, arrest a lot of adult men and women for things like prostitution and solicitation, then put out splashy press releases about all the “sex trafficking arrests” they’ve made…the ultimate arrest/rescue breakdown for Lincoln?

no underage or adult sex-trafficking victims discovered

no force, fraud, or coercion discovered

four women, ages 23 to 36, charged with misdemeanor prostitution

five men charged with misdemeanor solicitation of prostitution

one man charged with felony solicitation of prostitution

one man charged with marijuana possession…

Send In the Clowns

The most interesting part of the clown panic isn’t the hysteria itself (which is kind of a yawn to anyone who’s studied such panics before), nor the copycats trying to get attention by mimicking the imaginary bogeys (ditto), but the bizarre things one finds in news stories about clown incidents. One story says “Three ‘juvenile clowns’ were taken into custody in Albuquerque, New Mexico, under the influence of marijuana“; Holy Reefer Madness, Batman! One wonders what the Kentucky man who “fired a semi-automatic rifle at a woman walking her dog because he thought she was a clown” was under the influence of; like some others, this story tries to blame the clown hysteria on Stephen King, specifically a new production of It which I doubt has anything to do with the panic. Then there’s this Massachusetts Halloween haunted house which features “scary clowns” among its attractions, reassuring the public that “they would know if there was a clown impersonator among them.” Self-important Australian “experts” pronounced the hysteria “dangerous” and “sinister” after it spread to Perth and to cities in Victoria (one wonders why they haven’t opined on the far-more-serious “sex trafficking” hysteria). But those all pale beside the horrifying statements made by cops in (wait for it) Arizona:

The Phoenix Police Department reports five juveniles ages 14 and 15 were charged with scary clown threats. Mesa police [arrested] two juveniles…[one maniac said] “I would call it a hate crime.” To prevent copycats, [pigs] and county prosecutors are taking a zero tolerance approach. “Every image, every text, every mention will be investigated,” said [Commissar] Nik Rasheta…prosecutors plan to prosecute anyone else making scary clown threats to the full extent…[propaganda operatives] say don’t think social media will be a shield to make scary clown threats. Authorities have the technology to see who’s posting and spreading them…

Challenge (#679)

Lambda Legal has honored the commitment it made to sex worker rights last year by filing an amicus brief in the ESPLERP case:

…At the heart of Lambda Legal’s most groundbreaking victories and continuing mission is self-determination, including bodily autonomy. When the Supreme Court struck down laws criminalizing same-sex relationships and gay identity in Lawrence v. Texas, it rightly rejected assertions against us that “public health” justified sodomy laws. The movement for reproductive justice, from which we draw key legal precedents, similarly fights for facts over fiction when government tries to limit the right to contraception, abortion, or other similar personal decision-making. Lawrence explained that the constitutional right to liberty protects all of us when we make our own decisions about adult, consensual sexual intimacy…sometimes relationships are transactional…consider prenuptial agreements, surrogacy, and hook-up websites; the fact that money is involved does not obliterate constitutional protections for marriage, parenting or sexual intimacy. All of these truths animate Lambda Legal’s position that the government may not constitutionally criminalize consensual adult sex solely because it is bought and sold.

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In the News (#677)

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

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

Good Fantasy, Bad Reality

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

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

Theatrics (#446)

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

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

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

Checklist (#542)

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

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

Too Close To Home

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

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

Challenge (#615)

I am proud to call this incredible woman my friend:

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

Pyrrhic Victory (#648)

Seattle cops have a positive fetish for illegal surveillance:

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

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

Still a Child (#663)

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

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

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

It Looks Good On Paper (#666)

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

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

The End of the Beginning (#668)

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

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

It’s What They Do

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

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

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Posts Tagged ‘Checklist’

Visit my bookstore

This Month

Old Posts

Call me

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Contact Maggie

A Few References

Boring but necessary legal stuff