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Posts Tagged ‘Cops and Condoms’

February Updates (Part One)

Posted in Current Events, News, Perception, Philosophy, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 12, 2011| 19 Comments »

No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change. –  William Shakespeare, Sonnet 123

As so often happens, a number of stories have come up recently which remind me of past columns; this time there were so many that I’ve divided them up into two parts.

Cops and Condoms (August 6th)

I’ve written on a number of occasions about the self-destructive male aversion to condoms and the absolute necessity for vigilance on whores’ part to prevent clients from pulling some sneaky trick to get inside a girl “bareback”.  I’ve also pointed out that even most streetwalkers are scrupulous about condom use.  This story published on the Fox News website on February 2nd (thanks to regular reader Joyce for the link!) illustrates the reason why clients and hookers both should insist on proper protection:

A 45-year-old Denver woman was arrested Tuesday [February 1st] and accused of knowingly spreading HIV while allegedly working as a prostitute…prosecutors say Frances Woodke — who has known for years that she is HIV positive — offered sex to an undercover police officer for $23.  Woodke is being charged with two misdemeanors — prostitution and solicitation for prostitution — and a felony count of prostitution with knowledge of AIDS…the woman has pleaded guilty twice before to attempted prostitution with knowledge of AIDS — spending time in prison for the charges in 2000 and again in 2008, according to the Denver district attorney’s office.  “It’s going to be difficult for us on the law enforcement side to identify people she put at risk — if there are people she put at risk,” said Lynn Kimbrough, a spokeswoman for the Denver district attorney’s office.

What the DA’s spokeswoman is alluding to in the last sentence is that we don’t know that Woodke ever offered any of her clients unprotected sex; she may not have.  But I think it should be obvious that any whore desperate enough to offer her services for pocket change would probably find the lure of extra money for “bareback” irresistible if any man were insane enough to make such an offer.  And though the chance of female to male HIV transmission via intercourse isn’t all that high, the chance does exist and such a careless man, if infected, would then be free to carry HIV to any other girl he hired.  Girls, never go “bareback” with a man to whom you aren’t deeply committed no matter how generous the offer (if you’re a professional) or how much you “love” him (if you’re an amateur).  And guys, please think with the big head when seeing hookers and insist on protection yourself – and if your date offers unprotected intercourse, RUN!

Election Day (November 2nd)

If Kristin Davis had managed a miracle she be Governor of New York right now, but alas, she didn’t get enough votes even to keep her Anti-Prohibition Party alive.  And though she can restart the party later by petition, this article which appeared in the New York Daily News last Tuesday (February 8th) tells us what she’s doing in the meantime…and it sounds fishy:

Kristin Davis…plans to use her notoriety to help victims of sex trafficking.  She’s starting a nonprofit called Hope House to provide shelter and social services for women in need.  Before serving a four-month prison term for prostitution, Davis claims to have run the highest-grossing escort service in U.S. history, supplying call girls to the likes of Eliot Spitzer.  She ran for governor last year on a platform of legalizing prostitution, pot and gambling.

Because of her prominence, she says that “hundreds” of women who have suffered in the sex industry have come to her to tell their stories and seek help.  To her dismay, she found there were few places to direct them…Hope House will offer women food, shelter, security and medical care, ranging from HIV testing to drug treatment and psychiatric counseling, Davis says.  Her plan is to open the full-scale shelter by 2013.  She says a 24-hour emergency help line, similar to suicide hotlines, should be up within the next few months.  Ultimately, Davis hopes to build the organization into something larger and more ambitious…

…Will people be surprised to see an advocate for legal prostitution crusading against its evils?  They shouldn’t be, according to Davis.  She says her critics “don’t understand the disparity between a woman who chooses to work and women who have been forced.”  Her old agency represented what she calls the “‘Pretty Woman’-ish,” professionalized side of the sex trade — a slice she says accounts for “5% of the world of prostitution…I never forced a girl to do anything,” she explains. “It’s a completely different business model.”

Kristin, Kristin, Kristin.  I understand you have a need to reinvent yourself, and your idea of a charity to help coerced girls appears to be a noble one.  But you know damned well that there aren’t enough trafficked girls to support anything “larger and more ambitious” than a shelter; maybe if you extend your help to subsistence level hookers, drug addicts and teenage runaways selling sex to survive you might have something.  Please, don’t feed the trafficking hysteria by requiring whores to claim they’ve been “trafficked” or coerced in order to earn your help; just needing help should be enough, even if that need was the result of a girl’s own poor choices.  And finally, don’t throw the rest of us under the bus with idiotic exaggerations; 5%?  You know damned well it’s about 60%, so let’s not launch yet another deception-fueled “rescue” organization when you could do something real and good.

Harm Reduction (January 13th)

In this column I talked about the principle of harm reduction, which holds that because humanity is not perfectible laws which attempt to eradicate vices are not only doomed to fail, but actually create worse evils.  Early Christian thinkers understood this and obviously Reverend Paul Turp does as well, as reported in this story published in The Independent on January 30th:

…Reverend Paul Turp – the inspiration for Father Adam Smallbone in the BBC comedy Rev…this weekend strongly criticised a London council for attempting to “impose a moral code” on residents and visitors by outlawing lap dancing, sex shops and adult cinemas in the area.  Hackney council voted last week for what it called a “nil” policy, banning any new strip venues from opening and holding out the likelihood that four existing clubs will lose their licences as they come up for renewal.  The policy was approved despite more than 66 per cent of people who took part in a public consultation on the plans saying “no” to the ban.

Reverend Turp…said he was “hugely disappointed” with the decision, adding that it will “push the business underground, resulting in more women working dangerously on the streets” and will add to the people who turn to his church for help.  The clergyman, who provides refuge for 17 homeless people, as well as caring for alcoholics, addicts and prostitutes, said: “The council have created a problem where there wasn’t one to begin with.  They deliberately disregarded the views of the people.”

The local authority’s clampdown on strip clubs derives from the 2010 Policing and Crime Act, which gives councils greater authority in the licensing of strip clubs…[and] removes sex establishments’ rights of appeal if licence renewal is refused.  Bill Parry-Davies, a solicitor who is representing two of the existing clubs, said the local authority had abused its powers and plans further legal moves to challenge the ban:  “Hackney’s policy seems ideologically driven, regardless of its consequences in the real world.  It’s regressive.  People fought to protect women by introducing licensing.  The courts will want to look very closely at a policy which seeks to deny a licensee’s right of appeal and the courts’ jurisdiction in such a manner.”

…Mr Turp warned that, unless overturned legally, the policy was likely to lead to danger for strip club workers and disruption for members of the public:  “A wretched mistake has been made.  Hackney 30 years ago was a very dodgy place.  I remember the struggle to get these places licensed.  Now they are well run and safe.”

Maybe we need to get the Reverend Turp to do a lecture tour in the States; perhaps some self-professed “conservative” politicians would be more inclined to listen to common sense if it came from a clergyman.

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Cops and Condoms

Posted in Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on August 6, 2010| 16 Comments »

Thou rascal…hold thy bloody hand!
Why dost thou lash that whore?  Strip thine own back;
Thou hotly lust’st to use her in that kind
For which thou whipp’st her.  –  William Shakespeare, King Lear IV.vi.

As I mentioned in my column of August 4th, many cops seem to have some kind of weird issues with condoms.  I suppose it springs from the more general lunacy that only “bad girls” use condoms, which is of course why in the developed world the incidence of all sexually transmitted diseases is as much as 5 times higher in promiscuous amateurs than in professional girls.  This dangerous prejudice is certainly the basis of police claims that a woman carrying condoms in her purse constitutes “evidence” of prostitution (New Orleans police procedure is to refer to such condoms as “prostitution paraphernalia”), but it goes far beyond that; in my experience and that of other girls, many cops seem to consider the very existence of condoms to be a personal affront to their masculinity.

Many men become completely irrational where condoms are involved.  The general consensus seems to be that condoms interfere with their full enjoyment of intercourse, and though health officials deny it vehemently how could it be otherwise?  Besides, I’ve had plenty of men whom I trust (and who were not trying to convince me to let them ride bareback) tell me the same thing.  But even if it’s true, why in the world would any sane, educated man want to risk unprotected sex with a whore?  Yet they do, and constantly; I daresay any working girl will tell you that at least one out of six customers (some girls say as many as one in three) will try to talk her into unprotected sex.  Some even offer more money for the privilege; I let my girls know that I would instantly fire anyone I caught consenting to this.  Venereal diseases and HIV are nothing to take chances with, and venereal warts nearly always lead to cervical cancer later on.  But despite these things being common knowledge, and despite the false but popular stereotype of the “dirty whore”, some 16-33% of men are willing to risk serious disease in order to increase their sexual pleasure for a few minutes.  We hear it over and over again:  “It’s like taking a shower with a raincoat on,” or as Englishmen say “It’s like eating a sweet with the wrapper on.”

As soon as a client started this stupidity with me the kid gloves came off; in response to the oft-repeated line “I trust you,” my usual response was “Well, you shouldn’t; you don’t know where I’ve been.”  If necessary, I would add “Remember, any girl who agrees to let you have her without protection has probably already agreed to the same thing with lots of other guys.”  That usually shut them up, but sometimes I had to go beyond that to “It’s this or nothing.”

So, given that cops are men first, it stands to reason that they would be just as averse to condoms as other men.  Other men, however, are not in a position to turn that aversion into de facto public policy.  The very fact that cops use condoms as evidence against prostitutes tends to discourage the more ignorant type of streetwalker from carrying them, and groups ranging from health officials to AIDS prevention charities to prostitutes’ rights activists have complained about cops’ incredibly irresponsible habit of confiscating as “evidence” the free condoms distributed to streetwalkers.  The collective belief of the police that persecution of victimless misdemeanors is more vital to society than prevention of disease is certainly no more imbecilic than the ordinary man’s disregard for his own health and that of his wife, but it affects many more people.  In other cases cops seem to take sadistic glee in destroying condoms; the whore-turned-activist Gloria Lockett described two separate incidents in which cops searched her car, found boxes of condoms, and methodically punctured each one with knives before letting her go while laughing, “Let’s see you use those now!”

During my time as a stripper in late ‘90s New Orleans, the cops came up with a no-win game involving condoms.  A plainclothes vice cop would approach a woman he suspected of being a prostitute and ask, “Do you have a condom?”  If she answered in the affirmative he would arrest her for prostitution, and if in the negative he would arrest her anyway and claim she had offered to have sex with him without a condom (a felony offense if she tested positive for hepatitis, HIV or venereal disease).  This odious practice only stopped because they were getting far too much bad publicity from arresting ordinary housewives or even professional women who in their ignorant little minds “dressed like hookers.”  One such incident involved the mother of one of the other strippers with whom I was friendly; the poor thing almost became hysterical when her mother called her from Orleans Parish Prison to tell her daughter she had been arrested as a streetwalker!  But even though the condom question was later forbidden, the tactic itself was still used for several more years; I once had one of these scumbags try me in an elevator with “Are you working?”  Luckily I recognized the pattern and understood the peril of answering with a simple yes or no, so I directed a withering gaze at him and in my haughtiest tone huffed, “Excuse me, but I don’t ‘work’!”

I have been told by a number of cops (some of whom had engaged my professional services) that the majority of them dislike or even look down on vice cops, whom they consider sleazy.  Obviously I have no way of knowing whether this is true or not; the speakers may have merely been projecting their own feelings onto most other policemen.  But if it is true, I can see why; I imagine most cops like to think of themselves as the “good guys”, and would therefore have difficulty identifying with men who enjoy tricking people, victimizing women and raiding video stores to steal porno movies.  And enjoy it they do; the stories above demonstrate this, as does my arrest (described in day-before-yesterday’s column).  And if that weren’t enough, I also heard it directly from a retired vice cop.

He made an appointment for incall (in other words, he came to my place) and paid as soon as he walked in the door.  Then since it was a hot day and he looked flushed, I offered him some iced tea.  We were standing in the kitchen while he drank his tea, when he said “I need to be honest with you about something; I’m a cop.”  I must’ve turned white, because he immediately followed that with, “Oh, don’t worry, I’m not here to arrest you; I’m retired.”  That made me feel slightly better, but it was still a damned uncomfortable situation.  Still, I had a job to do and he could already arrest me just for taking the money, so I put on my best professional manner and tried to break the instant ice-pack by asking what sort of police work he had done.

Then he dropped the second bomb.  “Vice.”

“If you were a vice cop, what the hell are you doing here?” I asked with commendable restraint.

“My wife is sick and doesn’t want sex any more, but I still need it,” he said.  “We’re human too, you know.”

“I don’t doubt that, but you made a career out of persecuting women who were trying to make a living providing exactly the service you are now trying to buy.”

He laughed.  “You don’t think we believe in that, do you?  It’s just a game.  Most vice cops wouldn’t give a damn if prostitution were legalized, and most hire hookers just as often as the next guy.”

“Then turn around and bust them the next time the department decides it’s time for a crackdown.”

“We don’t usually do it in the same place,” he said, then repeated “It’s just a game.”

“Not for the girls,” I said.  “Your ‘game’ can have serious consequences for them.”

“We can’t help that,” he said.  “We do our jobs, just like you do.  So why don’t we get to it?”

Some calls are barely like working at all; others are hard, draining work.  This one was as difficult as anything I’ve ever done professionally, not only because I considered the client morally reprehensible but also because the whole time I was working on him, he kept up a constant monologue of all the tricks and scams in which he had participated to catch whores.  It didn’t take me long to get his number; his so-called “honesty” was in actuality sadism.  He had derived sadistic enjoyment from deceiving whores, getting sex from them and then arresting them, and now that he was retired the only way he could get a similar pleasure was by hiring a girl and then regaling her with his disgusting war stories while in bed with her.

I wasn’t at all surprised when he called again a few weeks later, nor when he requested a different girl, nor when Cynthia (to whom I gave the call with a warning about him) called me back to tell me that he started telling her about his vice cop career in the initial phone conversation.  After that I basically put him off; I wasn’t going to subject any other girls to that, and I couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t grow increasingly more sadistic with time, but neither did I want to get him angry by turning him down cold.  So, I would pretend to assign the call while actually doing nothing, then call him back after a while to say there was nobody new available (he wanted a different girl each time, of course).  But even if his sadism alone weren’t enough excuse for me rejecting him as a customer, there was one more reason which (since you’ve read this far) probably won’t surprise you in the least:  He had, in addition to everything else, tried to bribe and trick both Cynthia and myself into letting him have us without a condom.

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