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Posts Tagged ‘cult of the child’

The Forest for the Trees

Posted in History, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , on January 14, 2014| 10 Comments »

One of the hallmarks of a panic is that you don’t realize it’s a panic when you’re in the middle of it.  –  Debbie Nathan

Dan and Fran KellerTwenty years after the end of the Satanic Panic, its last few victims are finally being released from prison and in some cases even declared innocent, an extraordinary measure because it requires an organ of the State declaring that its predecessor was not only wrong, but committed a grave injustice.  In just the past few months we’ve seen the release of the San Antonio Four and Fran and Dan Keller; only one more victim of a strictly-Satanic case remains in prison, Frank Fuster in Florida.  There were, however, other hysteria-tinged cases near the end of the panic whose prosecutors avoided “Satanic” language because they saw the writing on the wall, and some of those victims (like Joseph Allen of Ohio) are still slowly dying in cages.  From the safe distance of a generation, reporters – some of whom are young enough to have been peers of the children forced by cops, prosecutors, and other fanatics to make horrible accusations – are now writing stories confidently declaring that the ritual abuse never happened and branding the hysteria a “witch hunt”.  But while I obviously agree with them, I find it both sad and telling that not a one of these reporters so smugly declaring their predecessors gullible have dared to denounce their generation’s revival of the panic, “sex trafficking” hysteria.  Last week, Slate published a column on the Kellers (and the panic in general) entitled “The Real Victims of Satanic Ritual Abuse”, and I’d like to share an excerpt with you.  I don’t think you’ll need much imagination to see how this applies equally well to the current popular hysteria, but to help you I’ve replaced words like “Satanists” with more general terms like “conspirators” [in brackets]:

…Why did psychotherapists and investigators conclude that these fantastic allegations were true?  Because at the time, pretty much everyone else in America did…hundreds of children, usually after lengthy sessions with coercive therapists, came forward to say that they…had been [subjected to bizarre mistreatment such as being transported]…to random cities for sexual abuse, or countless other bizarre stories…Media poured attention on the claims…As televangelists prayed for deliverance from Satan’s scourge, talk show “experts” claimed that every imaginable form of abuse was happening on a massive scale in America and that [conspirators were hiding everywhere…media figures] claimed…that more than a million [villains] were plying their evil trade in America right at the very moment…[books about the panic] appeared in libraries and therapists’ offices…“It sounds laughable,” says Debbie Nathan, an investigative reporter who co-wrote Satan’s Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt about the panic and is now a director for the National Center for Reason and Justice… “Children symbolize the good things about culture, the innocence and purity, the future of the culture,” says Nathan.  When a culture feels under threat in some way, fear and anxiety focus on the safety of children…The fear…was perpetuated by both ends of the political spectrum…Most if not all of those involved believed they were acting in the best interests of the children—which meant that any healthy skepticism was interpreted as anti-child.  But extensive investigations revealed little to no truth to the…panic…Michelle RemembersEven so, people still believed…[“experts”]…testified that [organized sexual victimizers] are real, that they are widespread…Common sense and level-headed investigation would have found [these] claims incredible if…panic hadn’t lent a “distorted lens of hysteria” to the picture…

I look forward to reading articles like this about “sex trafficking” hysteria in the late 2030s (there’s a fair chance I’ll still be around; I’d be in my early 70s), but it’s a safe bet that the reporters mocking or marveling at it will be just as oblivious to the absurdity of whatever moral panic is going on then as today’s reporters are to the absurdity of “sex trafficking”.

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Innocence Never Had

Posted in Current Events, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 8, 2013| 81 Comments »

This essay first appeared in Cliterati on September 29th; I have modified it slightly to fit the format of this blog.

Detail from The Sistine Madonna by Raphael (1512)I’ve often written about the Cult of the Child, that strange remnant of the Victorian Era which teaches that children (and their definition of the term extends far beyond that Nature uses) exist in what cultists term “innocence”, a state which they seem to equate with “purity” and Divine grace, but which in actuality means ignorance and sexual repression.  It’s easy to tell when a writer adheres to this strange belief system: she tends to depict teenagers as blameless angels absolutely nothing like any young person who exists in the real world, seems unable to remember what she and her friends were like when they were that age, and expresses surprise and confusion when a young person resists being treated like a convict, an infant or a potted plant:

A 15-year-old prostitute has left a Tulsa [Oklahoma] shelter and is back on the streets, saying she prefers the illegal sex-trade business to her home life, [police] spokesman Mark Woodward said…”She was in protective custody and doesn’t want any help…There is no indication of a drug history.  That’s the life she preferred.  There is no telling how much money she was making….She doesn’t like her family, and she didn’t want us to contact her family,” he said…

The story treats this as though it were something remarkable, but it is nothing of the kind; the majority of underage prostitutes (or as they’re now labeled, “sex trafficking victims”) in the US have been in the “foster care” system at one time or another, and in the UK about 90% of teen sex workers who are forced into the system will escape at the earliest possible opportunity (though their agency is denied by the myth-makers, who claim they are “tracked down by their traffickers and disappear from care”).  So entrenched is belief in the incompetence of young people, and so tenacious the need to believe in their asexuality and “innocence”, that child cultists prefer to imagine young sex workers as doggedly pursued by ninja “pimps” who can undetectably spirit them away from houses and institutions without ever getting caught, rather than recognize the obvious fact that they simply prefer self-reliance to regimentation, surveillance and virtual (or actual) imprisonment.  As I wrote in “Too Young To Know”:

With rare exception, teen runaways leave home for a reason; they’re not lured away by “bad influences” or abducted by “traffickers”, but rather pushed away by factors such as physical or sexual abuse or parental rejection of their homosexuality or transsexuality.  But because our laws define people under 18 as chattel, they can be arrested by cops and forced back into the situation from which they fled, or else sentenced to “child welfare” systems so horrible many of them return to the street as soon as possible.  Child labor laws keep them from getting regular work (and such work would expose them to capture by police anyway), which leaves them with roughly three alternatives:  theft, begging or prostitution; the latter is nearly always the easiest and most lucrative…the child cultists want to believe teenagers could never think of prostitution on their own, but this is total nonsense; teen runaways don’t need to be forced or indoctrinated into a form of exchange which predates the human species, and in fact (as revealed by a recent DoJ-funded study) 90% of them are not.  Yet, nearly all current programs for dealing with teen prostitutes are based on exactly the opposite assumption, and if such a girl denies she has a “pimp” she is assumed to be lying.

The latter assumption is even more destructive than you may realize:  it is entirely possible that some of these girls would be content to remain in custody and even submit to the (usually religious) brainwashing procedures such programs generally include, were it not for the repeated pressure from “authorities” to identify a “pimp” who exists only in their twisted minds.

Teenage Bad GirlThe notion that young adults are more like children than they are like other adults, with its corollaries that they are ignorant, incompetent and infinitely malleable, is of very recent vintage; throughout most of human history people assumed adult responsibility as soon as they were able (usually about 14), and there was no such thing as “adolescent rebellion”.  As psychologist Robert Epstein explains, “infantilization makes many young people angry or depressed…they can’t do anything meaningful without parental permission…and…the more [they] are infantilized, the more psychopathology they show.”  Teens who are at least treated well are usually content to put up with the restrictions, the arbitrary rules and other such annoyances in exchange for the privilege of living at home and not having to work, but those who are abused and/or rejected see no reason to do so…and who can blame them?  Once they get a taste of self-ownership, even at the cost of a dirty, dangerous, precarious life in the street, is it any wonder they reject attempts to cage and collar them again?  The dogma that most of them are “controlled” by “pimps” is literally 180 degrees from the truth: they reject institutionalization precisely because they aren’t used to being controlled by anybody, and have no desire to be.

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Halloween 2013

Posted in Holidays, Philosophy, tagged , , , , , , on October 31, 2013| 33 Comments »

Proof of our society’s decline is that Halloween has become a broad daylight event for many.  –  Robert Kirby

sexy HalloweenFor the fourth time since I’ve been writing this blog, we’ve come around to my favorite day of the entire year – All Hallows Eve, which also happens to be my birthday.  This is the forty-seventh time I’ve seen this particular day (the first one hardly counts, since I arrived less than ninety minutes before the Witching Hour), and though I no longer observe it with the wild exuberance I did in my youth I still look forward to it every year, and still enjoy all the little rituals by which we celebrate it.  In last year’s Halloween column I listed a number of “spooky” columns which might put y’all in the mood, and this year I decided to expand those recommendations into a full column:  Monday’s “Trick or Treat“, which you really should read if you haven’t yet.

Unfortunately, Halloween has in our culture become merely a ghost (pardon the jest) of its former self; it is now largely an adult celebration, just a second carnival out of place in mid-autumn rather than where it belongs in the dead of winter.  Today’s children are completely cheated of the holiday as it was meant to be celebrated; as I wrote in “The Day of the Dead“,

…our decaying society is far too obsessed with “safety” to let the kids be kids.  It’s a peculiar paradox:  the Child Cultists enshrine an idealized, romanticized view of childhood “innocence” to the point of trying to force it upon young adults who have long since grown out of it, yet are so frightened of the imaginary haunts their timid souls see in every shadow that they cheat actual children of the joys of childhood…And though we once understood that an annual dose of controlled fear and mild chaos helped children to cope with the existence of Mortem Imperator Mundi in much the same way vaccines protect them from disease, we have forgotten the former (and many of us the latter as well)…

Now, more than ever, we need Halloween.  Death will claim us all soon enough; it’s both foolish and counterproductive to waste one’s life trying to escape the inescapable, and to suck all the marrow out of its bones in a futile attempt to delay the inevitable.  Today is the day to flirt with the Reaper, to dance on one’s own grave, to play with skulls and to have fun with the gruesome…because the more familiar one is with something, the less terror it holds.  And the less we fear death, the freer we are to enjoy everything life has to offer.

Happy Halloween, Dear Readers, and Blessed Be!

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Everything Old is New Again

Posted in Current Events, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 25, 2013| 38 Comments »

This essay first appeared in Cliterati on September 22nd; I have modified it slightly to fit the format of this blog.

History, it is said, repeats itself.  And while the parallels are never exact, they are often pretty damned close.  Witness, for example, the new Victorianism which has engulfed Western society:

…we have become shockingly hypocritical about sex and grant our governments tremendous power to suppress it while simultaneously spending tremendous amounts of time and money on it…We have revived Victorian ideas of government-enforced temperance and “social progress”, and the…“Cult of the Child”…which…preaches that children [including adolescents] are as emotionally fragile as soap bubbles and the merest hint of sexual imagery…can cause irreversible trauma…is…pressed into service for sex issues which have nothing to do with children…prohibitionists [have resurrected] the late Victorian “white slavery” moral panic under a new name, “child sex trafficking”, and [wield] it as a bludgeon against adult whores…lest anyone balk at treating adult women as children, there’s a Victorian answer for that as well; prostitutes are  abnormal, defective “victims” of men who have to be protected from our own choices, which are clearly irrational.  Similarly, trafficking fanatics classify brown people as…too stupid and unsophisticated to move between countries on their own without being “trafficked” by gangsters, so by the Victorian “white man’s burden” philosophy they need to “save” these poor victims, whether they want to be “rescued” or not…

Traffic in Souls (1913)But while the racist, colonialist, prudish, censorious and paternalistic attitudes we see around us, especially in speeches by politicians and articles from the mainstream media, are straight out of the late 19th century, at least the language used is still modern, isn’t it?  Well…not quite.  In recent decades we’ve seen the return of tortured, obfuscatory euphemisms and circumlocutory, polysyllabic abortions used in place of clear words and direct phrases, and nowhere is this more true than in prohibitionist anti-sex work screeds larded with cumbersome, politicized passive-voice constructions such as “prostituted women” or even “women victimized by systems of prostitution”.  And in recent months, it’s been growing steadily worse; yellow news stories steeped in purple prose extol the supposed “horror” of sex workers’ lives in lurid detail, women are described as utterly helpless and hopelessly naïve, and sexual behavior is described in phraseology that would not seem out of place in a hellfire-and-damnation revivalist’s tent.  And really, that’s not surprising; the equation of all prostitution with “sex trafficking” goes back to the 1880s, and one of its chief originators at that time, The Salvation Army, is also one of its chief proponents now.  The “trafficking” mythos is deeply rooted in Protestant Christianity’s obsession with “pure and pious womanhood”, and even when there is no Christian group involved in a prohibitionist scheme the same themes of sin and degradation echo through their rhetoric, even if translated for a non-Christian audience.

To be sure, some of them are very subtle, contenting themselves with merely denying that sex work is work, equating all sex work with survival streetwalking and using Victorian phrases like “selling their bodies”.  Others absurdly state that “prostitution is not a victimless crime”, deny sex workers’ agency (“When you are bought and sold for sex…does that make it a freely made choice?”), misdirect attention from the real issues with simple-minded morality plays featuring demonic pimps and heroic cops, and ignore the coercion implicit in the “diversion programs” they tout.  Still others feature cops using language that sounds plagiarized from penny dreadfuls: “[The Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics] is committed to dismantling organizations involved in the seedy world of prostitution and ultimately human trafficking.  Our agency…[is] determined to make a positive impact in a dark world that troubles the soul. Women that are used as a commodity sickens ones hear [sic].”  But others aren’t nearly as restrained:

The struggle against human sex trafficking in Israel has made appreciable progress in the past decade.  Mass media have better informed the public of the severity and dimensions of this vast criminal enterprise…The Sinai fence and more effective border patrolling has appreciably, though not totally abrogated the tacit understandings between the IDF and Beduin [sic] smugglers that annually brought thousands of sex slaves into Israel’s brothels…girls as young as 13, are coerced by the ravages of poverty, incest and rape…into sexual servitude.  Procurers and their underworld bosses subjugate them in lives almost never truly rehabilitated by even the most valiant and dedicated social welfare agencies…tens of thousands of [men]…continue to buy women’s bodies in order, as they commonly express it, “to make them do whatever I want”…the purchase of sex is about power, not about sex, about societal toleration of the abuse of women’s bodies – and souls…

If not for the uniquely modern idiocy that sex isn’t sex, one could easily mistake this for a description of a Victorian or silent-film melodrama, complete with bearded Bedouin slave traders (no doubt carrying their struggling captives on camels); note also the revoltingly misogynistic assertion that whores are “fallen” women who can “never truly [be] rehabilitated”, a common Victorian prostitute-motif which persists in modern “sex trafficking” myth and is echoed in theSalome by Jean Sala characterization of rape as uniquely destructive, a “fate worse than death”.

But the myth of the harlot as a passive, pathetic victim of the Almighty Phallus is a comparatively recent one; for the majority of the past two millennia (and for centuries before that among the Jews), we were cast by prudes and religious fanatics as powerful figures akin to witches, vile temptresses sent straight from Hell to seduce godly men into wrongdoing.  A few of their modern successors still prefer that sort of rhetoric, and demand that whores be made into outcast pariahs who can be persecuted by the “authorities” at will:

…New Port Richey [Florida]…Police Chief Kim Bogart…suggested the city consider crafting an anti-prostitution ordinance that makes it easier for police to arrest known “ladies of the night.”  He’s hoping the ordinance would be worded so that if such a woman even waves or makes a certain gesture to someone, it would be justification for arrest…Councilman Jeff Starkey took aim at the city’s prostitution problem.  “It’s unbelievable how brazen these nasty, nasty, nasty women are”…he said…

Of course, before we were witches and temptresses we were priestesses; many ancient religions believed that sacred whores were a way for men to connect with their goddesses.  The practice still existed in the early Christian era, much to the chagrin of early Church fathers (who had inherited the long Jewish tradition of hatred for whores).  Our last (and most fiery) example of retro anti-whore rhetoric derives its inspiration from that time period:

…Preaching from 1 Corinthians 6:15–7:5, [Russell] Moore likened the present-day cultural saturation of pornography with the first-century pagan practice of temple prostitution.  “The temple prostitution of Corinth has been digitalized and weaponized…and brings with it the kind of illusion and anonymity that the temple prostitutes could never promise…there are digital harems of prostitutes, available and pushed upon every single population in the United States of America and increasingly every single population in the world,” Moore said…

As I’ve said before, if I’m going to be insulted and lied about I’d rather be cast as a powerful succubus than a weak and deluded victim.  Given the choice between two ridiculous stereotypes from the past which have somehow held on into the 21st century, I prefer to be a living weapon so dangerous she must be arrested on sight than an infantilized defective who needs to be locked up because she’s too stupid to know what’s good for her.

(This essay was inspired by Dr. Laura Agustín‘s “tweets” about how silly prohibitionist language has become lately; she and Mistress Matisse provided most of the featured examples.)

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Sex Rays

Posted in Current Events, Perception, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on October 18, 2013| 15 Comments »

This essay first appeared in Cliterati on September 15th; I have modified it slightly to fit the format of this blog.

radioactiveWhat, you didn’t know that sex produced radiation?  It’s true!  Adult sexual activity is so dangerous to the “purity” and “innocence” of “children” (sorry for all the scare quotes) that any adult who has sex should be kept away from all children at all times.  Sex rays, you see, induce the dreaded “premature sexualization”, without which “we would all grow up in a blissful, chaste state and never, ever, ever be interested in dirty, nasty sex”.  The dirtier and more “illicit” the sex, the more intense the sex rays:  regular missionary-position marital sex conducted once per month or so while the wife looks at the ceiling and thinks of England produces such a low concentration that ordinary walls can stop them, but BDSM and swinging emit concentrations that can contaminate surrounding objects, and sex work produces such intense levels that sex workers cannot be allowed near children  ever again for the rest of their lives.   Even objects we handle  (including money and virtual objects such as emails) must be kept far away from “children” (including young adults), and the danger is so great that kids inadvertently exposed to the dreaded rays must be quarantined from other kids.

Obviously, if people really believed this nonsense, they’d demand their own children be taken away and placed in the care of nuns.  But they certainly act as though it were true, to the point that (especially in the US) terms like “family-friendly” are euphemisms for “totally sexless”.  If any openly-sexual person (especially a sex worker) has anything at all to do with children, or even non-child-related sacred cows like breast cancer research, you can bet there will be a hue and cry in which words like “disgusting”, “inappropriate” and “creepy” will figure prominently.  Sex workers often have their children abducted from them  by prohibitionist regimes on the grounds that having consensual sex makes them “unfit parents”; the children are then handed over to either abusive spouses (as in both the linked cases) or sexually abusive “foster parents”.

Nor is it only fundamentalist Christians, repressed bureaucrats and the gullible, hysteria-prone masses who practice this anti-sex bigotry; some people who pretend to be educated and might even call themselves “sex-positive” are right along with them.  Take the staff of Jezebel, for example; though they proclaim themselves “feminists” and even adopt some sex-positive trappings such as enthusiasm for sex toys and (some) porn, in reality they feel a deep ambivalence for sex workers which bursts forth every so often.  I once wrote that “I think of them as something like a gaggle of debutantes volunteering at the local homeless shelter because they think it’s the right thing to do, but unable to really disguise their disgust for the ‘icky people’.”  Here’s a recent example in which writer Tracie Morrissey’s belief in “sex rays” is blatantly obvious:

…Farrah Abraham tweeted a link to her Amazon wish list, asking fans to purchase her more than $13,000 worth of gifts—and they did.  Now the reality star/“sex tape” star has replenished her list, asking for some more furniture, kitchen appliances, and odds and ends for her home…Creating an Amazon wish list is a common practice among porn stars, strippers, and escorts…[Abraham’s list includes]…clothes…dining room furniture…a laptop…a sleeper sofa, a juicer, a Pyrex measuring cup, etc.  The saddest thing of all though, is her request for a $52 crib mattress and $12 mattress cover.  It’s like, either keep your kid out of your weird sugar daddy arrangements or at the very least, get her the good, expensive shit.

Farrah Abraham with daughterYou know who else has Amazon wish lists?  Lots of people.  And you know who else gets gifts from strangers who admire their work?  Many, many entertainers and celebrities, including relatively minor ones like yours truly.  So, if Penn and Teller get a present from a fan, is it a “weird sugar daddy arrangement”?  Or is it only female entertainers?  If someone sends Neil Gaiman a gift to thank him for the pleasure he gave the sender, is that “creepy” and “bizarre” as Mamamia opined (“Who would actually fork out their hard-earned cash for such a thing? Does it make people feel good about themselves?”), or is that only reserved for female writers like Maggie McNeill?  Because, O ye Jezzies and MMs, this is beginning to look awfully…well, sexist.  Perhaps this is a Madonna/whore thing?  Is it only because Abraham currently does sex work that this is somehow suspect, and therefore I’m in the clear?  Or does my having sold sex in the past eternally condemn my Amazon Wishlist to skeeviness in the eyes of those who write for blogs like Jezebel and Mamamia, even if the readers who send me nice things have never seen me have sex?  Both websites seem to take issue with the fact that some wish list items are inexpensive; do they think the fun of gift-giving should only be reserved for the affluent?  Or is this somehow intermingled with sex work in their minds, so that an economical present somehow equates to cheap sex?  One would think, considering their rather insulting belief that a woman’s sexual skills aren’t worth paying for, that they would be less offended by the cheap gifts than the expensive ones, but that would require at least the rudiments of rational thought.  And that, I’m afraid, is something in very short supply in the brain of anyone who believes in anything as ludicrous as sex rays.

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Whimsical Notions

Posted in Current Events, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 3, 2013| 33 Comments »

Perhaps one day our culture will grow up enough to stop trying to tell adult women what we can do with our bodies and adult men what they can do with adult women, but in the meantime military men…will continue to seek us out despite the whimsical notions of those who think Nature can be controlled by legislation.  –  Maggie McNeill

PentagonSome of the worst of all lawheads, those most wedded to the farcical concept that reality can be shaped by the declarations of authorities and most detached from the actual consequences such declarations may have, exist in the rarefied atmosphere of high-level military command.  Even politicians have to be somewhat concerned about the consequences of their decisions, at least when those consequences are apparent to those they rule; after all, if things get bad enough they can be voted out of office.  But military commanders can only be removed from above, not from below; so as long as they please their own masters (which at the very top, means the political establishment), they can count on a long and distinguished career no matter how miserable the troops are or how much morale damage, physical and psychological harm, and  friction with allies their orders may cause.  Moreover, while a politician cannot readily insulate himself from the complaints of those harmed by his ill-considered diktats, it is only too easy for the Top Brass to shut themselves off from the troops and to ignore their responsibility for the results of their stupidity and shortsightedness.

The prevailing belief in the United States is that sex is unnatural.  Now, if asked, most who aren’t totally steeped in religious fanaticism will say the opposite, that sex is normal and natural.  But they don’t actually believe this; what they believe is that children are born “pure” and asexual, and remain so indefinitely until they are “sexualized” by outside contamination which ruins their sacred “innocence”.  Furthermore, they believe that even adults deprived of external sexual imagery or interaction will remain relatively uninterested in sex until such time as the government declares it’s acceptable for them to have it, and that sex without a government license is always harmful to women unless it’s completely buried inside a childish romantic fantasy.   The average American believes that “illicit” (i.e. unlicensed) sex is not only “harmful” in some way he cannot adequately explain, but also excites desire in some way that “good” sex does not, leading to “addiction”, “exploitation”, “negative secondary effects”  and other vague bugaboos for which not the slightest proof exists in reality.  Of course, regular readers know the opposite is true; porn and readily-available prostitution decrease rape and other social ills rather than increasing them, and men deprived of sexual stimulation become erratic and unhealthy  rather than lapsing into a docile, effeminate and celibate state.

A well-run military establishment would recognize that if there really is an “epidemic” of sexual assaults within the corps, the way to solving it is not to embrace moronic feminist assertions that “rape is caused by rage, not lust”, nor to “crack down” on assaults as though servicemen were unruly children in need of being “scared straight”.  No, Toru Hashimoto was right (though he seems unable to grasp the whole “consent” thing); military men do need “legal facilities for releasing sexual energy” in order to avoid problems which in extreme cases can grow into violence.  Unfortunately, the US military establishment is not well-run, and the Pentagon is far more concerned with promoting the government’s current political agenda than with the health and well-being of the troops, and so we get idiocy like this:

The U.S. military is cracking down on troops who support businesses connected to human trafficking, blocking airmen from spending money at so-called “juicy bars” and reminding all personnel of the prevalence of the problem businesses around bases in South Korea.  Leaders in the region have issued a series of directives to remind troops that prostitution and human trafficking are illegal…the three-star general in charge of the 7th Air Force in South Korea issued a stern warning…that…“Airmen…shall not provide money or anything of value to an employee or establishment…for the primary purpose of obtaining…company or companionship”…The prohibitions include paying fees to play darts, pool or other entertainment or buying a drink or a souvenir in exchange for an employee’s company …“disreputable establishments” near Air Force bases…take advantage of people, usually young women, and force them to work in bars.  The employees are subjected to debt bondage and forced to sell themselves as “companions”…

juicy bar protestOf course, we know the truth about this so-called “force”, and understand that for the military to deny these young women the right to make a living by the most lucrative means available to them   keeps them in poverty and may, like “end demand” schemes everywhere, force them into worse situations.  This destructive and wrongheaded policy helps nobody but the politicians who wish to pander to the whimsical notions of fanatics, but harms a great many people:  the young men deprived of an outlet for their natural sexual urges; the young women in host countries deprived of the best means of income available to them; the other young men and women subjected to sexual assault by those whose judgment and self-control has been eroded by a policy no less inhumane than starving them and depriving them of shelter; the businesses cheated of income from a large segment of the population in their areas; and the lower-echelon officers and NCOs who will be blamed for the damage caused by the refusal of their superiors to face reality.

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Paint By Numbers

Posted in Current Events, Perception, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on September 26, 2013| 116 Comments »

We live in a time which has created the art of the absurd.  –  Norman Mailer

Vermeer by numbersSome of my readers say they need to keep a dictionary handy while they read my essays.  That works fine for regular words, but sometimes I use metaphors that may be a bit obscure nowadays.  Do most of y’all remember paint-by-number kits?  Do they still sell those?  For those who have never seen one, a kit consists of a board on which is a line drawing, and each area contains a number corresponding to one of the containers of oil paint that come with the set.  One simply paints each area with the proper color, and if properly done it looks (almost) exactly like the picture on the box; if clumsily done, it at least resembles the picture.  “Sex trafficking” stories are a lot like that; most of them start out with the same basic outline, and then the copyist reporter simply fills in the details by the numbers.  If done properly, it almost looks like something a third-rate journalist might turn out, but if done clumsily …well, it’s easier to show you.

Many Morris County activists are counting the days to…Super Bowl XLVIII…but not for love of football. They’re already working to reduce the human trafficking that inevitably happens when tens of thousands of tourists assemble…

Our would-be artist, Lorraine Ash, must think that little reversal is very clever; unfortunately, the brainpower she devoted to it would have better been spent on a few minutes of research.  Had she done so, she would have discovered things like this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and even this…which prove that the word “inevitable” is about as far from the truth as it’s possible to get.  Oh, dear; I do believe Lorraine mistook the “6” for a “9” and used the wrong color here.  But no matter; let’s see how she does on the next one:

…“There are four times as many people enslaved today than there were in the 1800s,” said Linda Michalski…campus minister at Benedictine Academy…“The value of a slave has actually decreased …Frederick Douglass was sold for $792.  Today, somebody is sold for $70 in our country in the 21st century. How can this be?”

Well, at least here she’s only quoting, so someone else looks like a moron instead of poor Lorraine.  The pretense that “trafficking” (which is highly illegal) can be compared in any valid way with chattel slavery (which can only exist where there are laws and social structures to support it) is a common, if especially idiotic, claim of the “trafficking” fetishists, as is the use of novel definitions for the word “sold” which do not actually involve transfer of property.  But in this case, the apples-and-oranges comparison of the sale price of a chattel slave with some apparently-random sum of money (a streetwalker’s fee, perhaps?) is so deeply stupid it even confuses a high-school religion teacher.  But let’s move on to the next number in the pattern:

…Michalski and…other activists…want people to understand that human trafficking…is real and happens in New Jersey.

A flawless execution of the Profession of Faith!  And then she puts her own artistic touch on the classic “100,000 to 300,000 trafficked children” myth by attributing it to the Department of Homeland Security instead of the usual FBI or Department of Justice.  Estes & Weiner sure do work for a lot of government departments, don’t they?  And what “trafficking” masterpiece could be complete without a “King of the Hill” section?

…New Jersey is a big destination state for traffickers because of its ports and because…trains and buses leave from here and go all over the country.  There are three airports in the area.  Also, because of I-95, it’s very easy to move people through New Jersey and all the way down to Florida…

Trains and buses and airplanes!  And an interstate highway, even!  Why, no other place has those!  What were the madmen who laid out New Jersey thinking to allow so many dangerous things all in one locale?  Well, we know what they weren’t thinking of:  THE CHILDREN!!!!!

But wait, it gets worse:

There is a prevailing notion that human trafficking does not happen in Morris County because of its wealth, according to Maria Vinci-Savettiere…“The demographics don’t matter…Trafficking is happening here.”

One Profession of Faith per story is enough, Lorraine; your attempts to look more-credulous-than-thou are rather transparent.

“Our focus is on radically changing the way we view the issue,” said Beth Hyre, spokeswoman for the League [of Woman Voters]. “According to law enforcement, our children, our grandchildren, the children we teach, and the children we supervise and mentor are prime targets for traffickers.  Our complacency that the issue doesn’t directly affect us enables predators.”

Yes, Lorraine, we’ve got it.  People think that trafficking doesn’t happen in New Jersey, but it does, and every single child in the entire state should be kept away from cars, trains, buses, airplanes and football games.  You can stop repeating the same color now.

The public also is invited to stand for a maximum of nine hours Oct. 27 with Stand Against Human Trafficking, a gathering on the Morristown Green.  Each hour signifies 3 million people enslaved worldwide, according to organizer Yvette Long of the Morris County Human Relations Commission…

Are they going to sway back and forth singing “Kumbaya” as well?  Because I don’t think it’s possible to have a really effective lawn-standing session without singing “Kumbaya”.

The New Jersey Coalition Against Human Trafficking…is planning a Super Bowl Hotel Outreach in September…“We’re asking hotel management to accept materials…set protocols, and train their staff to spot human trafficking,” said [Melanie] Gorelick, the group’s facilitator…“A lot of times it would be the janitors or the cleaning people who would see a victim…What if a person comes in through a back door? The front desk wouldn’t even see that person”…

bad dogBut wait, what about the bars of soap emblazoned with subtly huge red labels?  WHAT IF THE TRAFFICKERS ARE HIDING IN THE LAVATORY, MELANIE?  Without handy hotline numbers, how can they be stopped then?  Didn’t think of that, didja Miss Smarty-Pants?

Well, I think you get the picture; too bad most of those who read this story without my helpful annotations won’t.  Like most people who attempt painting by numbers without a modicum of skill, some rudimentary sense of proportion and at least a minimal level of judgment, the results are, to the educated viewer, not exactly what their creator intended.

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Crippling Thought

Posted in Miscellaneous, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 23, 2013| 100 Comments »

The danger of crippling thought, the danger of obstructing the formation of the public mind by specially suppressing…representations is far greater than any real danger…from such representations.  –  George Bernard Shaw

broken wingsThe last week of September is Banned Books Week, an occasion which interests me as a librarian, as a sex worker and as a steadfast supporter of individual liberty.  The urge to ban books is the urge to control thought, and the only way to control thought is to cripple it, to stunt its growth, to break its wings so badly it can no longer fly free.  Furthermore, the belief that the state or collective has the right to do this is an abomination; it is nothing less than the dogma that the state owns every individual, body and soul, and has the right to torture or maim those individuals as it pleases.  In last year’s “Thought Control” (which I urge you to read if you haven’t yet), I wrote:

…the urge to censor is a mental illness…In earlier times…people imagined “evil” as some sort of tangible thing that could affect everyone around it…though that sort of booga-booga nonsense would be laughed out of the conversation now if expressed directly, it still sells quite well as long as it’s expressed  indirectly by referring to unproven “negative secondary effects” or burbling inane and incomprehensible neofeminist drivel about how all women are as mystically interconnected as a hydra’s heads.  And of course…anything (no matter how repressive and totalitarian) can be sold to the Great Unwashed if it’s depicted as being intended to “protect” children, with “protect” in this case…[meaning] “lock into a permanent passive and vegetative state”.  Young people, we are told, can somehow be “harmed” by encountering ideas and concepts that they are “not ready for”, like the protagonist of an H.P. Lovecraft story driven mad by the blasphemous cosmic truths he discovers in some forbidden eldritch tome…

The stupidest part of this whole moronic belief system is that these “forbidden ideas” aren’t cosmic truths about man’s utter insignificance and the impending awakening of horrific multidimensional entities which regard us as nothing more than troublesome insects to be exterminated; hell, even I might be convinced that keeping that sort of knowledge from the easily-panicked masses would be a good idea.  No, these supposed threats to sanity and spiritual health, these books (and movies, and websites) which are so horribly dangerous that the amelioration of the peril they present justifies abrogating civil rights and choking off the air of free thought, these cognitive gorgons which will surely petrify any child (or, often, woman) who has the bad luck to encounter them due to insufficient censorship by their Wise and Benevolent Rulers…are nearly always about sex.  You know, the thing every macroscopic organism on Earth (and even some of the microscopic ones) already knows about.  The reason every creature reading this even exists in the first place.  The process that excessive ignorance of is incredibly more dangerous than knowledge of.

In our sad, sick and twisted society, the desire to suppress knowledge and images of sex is so powerful that those afflicted with it are willing to devote tremendous amounts of money and manpower in a futile quest to that end; they are willing to deny millions of women income and freedom, to expose all women to much greater chances of rape, to risk the death of their children from disease, and to cripple the greatest tool of communication ever devised.  This is not rational behavior; it is a mental illness, and for sane people to give in to the censors merely exacerbates their condition and locks all of us up into a vast Bedlam with them. The Interior of Bedlam by William Hogarth (1763)

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That Was the Week That Was (#338)

Posted in Call types, Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 20, 2013| 12 Comments »

Abolitionism does not solve the problem of violence which…stems from the criminalization of sex workers and migrants, and the lack of rights that goes with it.  –  Sonja Dolinsek

Couples

Eve Ray on clients:

…clients of sex workers are regarded in many quarters as the scum of the earth…[so] it is hardly surprising that clients are so reluctant to speak out.  Yet talk to sex workers and they will tell you that their clients come in all shapes and sizes…not all clients are men…for my birthday we decided to…book…a girl from a local escort agency for some three in a bed fun…So I am a sex worker’s client…The girls we saw were bright and attractive and fully aware of what they were doing…Two Women and a Man by Giorgione (1510)We paid them well and they provided us with what we wanted.  It was…a business transaction of benefit to both parties. No coercion, no exploitation, no rape…

Whores and Wives

An Australian woman left her husband upon discovering his affair with a hooker, so she of course blamed our profession and published a stereotype-laden defamation of it.  Here’s an eloquent rebuttal:

…In…Sad Reality Behind Pretty Woman Tale, Louise O’Neale…claims…sex workers are home wreckers, men’s “chattels”, that we’re… “commodified”, “dehumanised”…packages to be bought and sold…She also argues we are sexual deviants…who require professional help.  I think O’Neale has watched too many Hollywood movies…feminists have spent decades…telling [us] how we should feel about our work, or [telling] others on our behalf how we feel about our work…They claim to be experts; they’ve got it dead wrong…

Good Fantasy, Bad Reality

Prosecutors must have dropped the claim that the girl was “mentally deficient”:

[Edward Bagley] was sentenced to 20 years…for holding a young woman captive as a sex slave for six years…he…also agreed to pay about $123,000 toward future counseling and medical care…Bradley Cook…received a 20-year sentence and…$123,000 in restitution…[for] sex trafficking…[and Dennis] Henry…was sentenced to 10 years, $123,000 in restitution and lifetime supervision…Marilyn Bagley…is to receive probation and [Michael] Stokes and [James] Noel five years each…

Sweden’s Ultra-progressive Views on Women

A pub in…Sweden has been cleared of discrimination charges after bouncers denied entry to several women of Asian appearance in what owners claimed was an attempt to cut down on prostitution…the court ruled…[the] owners had a “legitimate reason”…

An Educated Idiot

SWOP-NYC and SWANK…have significant questions about the “research” carried out by Sudhir Venkatesh…[and reported] in January 2011…in Wired Magazine…he made many outlandish, salacious, and false claims about…sex workers in NYC…he said he had “followed” 270 sex worker subjects…but none of our membership had ever been contacted by him nor knew of anyone who had been…Claims…regarding the dates, locations and numbers of people…were wildly inconsistent.  His conclusions…were easily shown by other researchers and commentators to be incorrect.  Other conclusions such as the fiction that “there’s usually a 25% surcharge” to have sex without a condom not only bore no relationship to reality but also endangered sex workers…We were so concerned by what we uncovered that in October 2011 we wrote a letter to the Columbia IRB…

Make Up Your Damned Mind!

Cops “fight” violence against sex workers by subjecting them to violence:

A [California] task force…arrested or cited 23 people…on charges of prostitution or soliciting a prostitute…police mounted the three-day sting operation [after]…investigation into the rape and robbery of two prostitutes…led police to…the realization that victims rarely report the crimes for fear of being prosecuted…[Sgt. Kurt] Hixenbaugh said he decided to organize the recent crackdown to suppress the illicit market…“If we can make business bad, then we can put a dent in the activity,” he explained…

Hixenbaugh’s moral retardation is exceeded only by his ignorance of economics.

Dr. Schrödinger and His Amazing Pussycat

Weird science, truth vs. fact and all that kind of stuff:

Head Games

Slixa has published a number of excellent articles lately, but last week its management let a real clunker through:  a manipulative hobbyist giving advice on how to haggle.  After an outcry the editors removed the article, apologized and printed this rebuttal from Tizzy Wall:

…Tommy…advocated using review writing and being an active member of the hobbyist community as a bargaining chip to see if prices are negotiable…[but his] tips are less effective (and ethical) than he would like to believe…There is an implicit threat that comes with, “I am a loud, influential voice in a community that can affect your livelihood”…it seems as though he gets a thrill out of violating boundaries and feeling as though he has somehow tricked a provider for his benefit…The underlying message…is that providers aren’t worth what they charge…

Against Their Will (August Updates)

People attempting to leave a country without government permission are now classed as “victims”:

Philippine authorities have intercepted 10…human trafficking victims…who were bound for Russia to illegally work there…The Philippines has been trying to impress the United States with its anti-human trafficking drive in order for Washington to lift the Tier 2 ranking it gave…in its 2013 Trafficking in Persons Report…officer-in-charge Siegfred Mison said the incident should again serve as a warning to…workers against attempting to leave without the required overseas employment permits…

One Born Every Minute

A man…claimed he could use his penis to rid a woman of ghosts that had taken up residence in her vagina…Huang Jianjun was arrested…after he [charged] A Xin [$3000 for removing]…evil spirits…[via] sexual intercourse…Jianjun insists that he never had sex with…Xin and that he can’t get an erection due to diabetes…Meanwhile… “Godman” Asaram Bapu, 73, revered by millions across India for his sermons on “enlightenment”, has been charged with raping a 16-year-old schoolgirl…he…claimed he is physically incapable of rape but…medical tests show him to be in good shape…

Tyranny By Consensus (October Updates)

Here’s a concise explanation from Nina Hartley about why condoms in porn are an incredibly bad idea:

…It takes about two hours to shoot a good hardcore scene. Condoms were never intended for that kind of industrial use…[they] roll down, come off, dry out, split and otherwise fail on sets about 30% of the time…and…no matter how lubricated and how designed, [they] create more internal friction on a woman’s intimate anatomy than human skin, with which it’s evolved to tolerate contact.  All-condom players…tend to turn up at clinics with raw internal tissues and multiple surface infections.  This we call “condom rash” and it’s more than an annoyance…if your insides are compromised by friction burns and low-grade bugs…you’re that much more vulnerable to whatever might be turned loose should a condom fail…

Presents, Presents, Presents!Minneapolis Madams

Ed says hiI’ve received three gifts in the past two weeks: Chester Brown sent me his book Ed the Happy Clown, Korhomme sent The Encyclopedia of Prostitution and Sex Work and Aspasia sent Minneapolis Madams.  Thank you all so much!

Profit from Panic

Rescue industry schemes aren’t usually this blatant:

If you are interested in creating positive brand awareness…advertising at the Global Online Counter Child Trafficking Conference is the ideal platform…We have various opportunities which will leave a strong impression of your brand in people’s minds and make your company stand out as a leader in supporting organizations…to prevent…child trafficking…Our…sponsorship packages…include a number of marketing opportunities…to…showcase your social responsibility…and…align yourself with the Global Online Counter Child Trafficking Conference brand…

Bullies With Badges

“Human trafficking” is rapidly becoming a catchall excuse for tyranny, like drugs and “terrorism”:

…the Environmental Protection Agency…[conducted] an armed raid of gold mines near Chicken, Alaska…while investigating a supposed violation of…the Clean Water Act…The EPA said…it…sent in armed men because it had been given information by…State Troopers regarding “rampant drug and human trafficking…in the area.”  That explanation was debunked by a spokeswoman for the state troopers, who said they did not advise the EPA to raid the mine and that there was no evidence of drug and human trafficking…

Broken Record

The same lies, repeated over and over and over…

MSPs fear that next year’s Commonwealth Games could lead to an influx of victims of human trafficking to Scotland…Myria Vassiliadou…has urged the Scottish Government to make people who procure sex and consumer goods from victims its top anti-trafficking priority.  Studies have shown that authorities must be vigilant to human trafficking during large sporting events…

Studies have, of course, repeatedly shown exactly the opposite.

Worse Than I Thought

The cancer reaches Michigan:

…Glenn Anderson…has introduced five bills…to more heavily punish…human trafficking…“The Polaris Project…was extremely helpful in shaping this legislation” [he said]…Anderson’s bills…Allow for assets…to be forfeited and dispersed to…law enforcement…criminalize the failure to report knowledge of…trafficking…[and] add convicted…traffickers to the Sex Offenders Registry…Overland Park Arboretum statue

See No Evil (TW3 #37)

A fresh effort is underway to bring criminal charges over a bare-breasted statue…The American Family Association…plans…petitions to empanel a grand jury to again investigate whether the sculpture at the Overland Park Arboretum violates state obscenity laws …Phillip Cosby…last year petitioned a grand jury…but failed to secure an indictment…

On the Simultaneous Having and Eating of Cake

…a federal judge ruled…that…strippers…deserve…at least the minimum wage…The ruling came in a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of current and former dancers at…Rick’s…[in Manhattan]…the…chain…argued that its dancers [are] independent contractors, more akin to stand-up comedians than fry cooks.  But [the] judge…said the list of rules Rick’s laid down could be described as “micromanagement”…

Hollow Claims

“The German Prostitution Model: Reducing Violence Against Sex Workers” is a fairly self-explanatory title, but this short, yet thorough essay also sharply criticizes the Swedish model and those (like the European Women’s Lobby) who labor under the idiotic delusion that there could ever be a world “free from prostitution”, and are willing to subject real women to police violence in pursuit of that mad fantasy.

Due Consideration (TW3 #137)

Australia, are you really sure you want to go down the “tyrannical laws named for dead children” path?

…”Zoe’s law”…which could classify a foetus as a person in New South Wales…would allow grievous bodily harm charges to be brought against those who hurt a foetus of more than 20 weeks’ gestation…Melanie Fernandez…of the Women’s Electoral Lobby Australia (WELA)…said…”This…kind of precedent has been used as a…starting point to roll back abortion right in other places, such as states in America”…Portway's cage

Tales from the Dark Side

“[When] prosecution for thoughtcrime has become a grim reality, it might be wise to restrict…discussions [of cannibalism fantasies] to fully-anonymized online accounts...”  And, I might add, to avoid actually obtaining the equipment one would need:

Geoffrey Portway’s attorney says the man’s “fantasy world” posed no actual threat of harm to a child.  But the…[Massachusetts] man pleaded guilty…to child pornography charges along with solicitation to commit a crime of violence…and the locked, soundproof basement with a metal cage…bondage equipment and a child-sized coffin serve as evidence…Two other men — one a puppeteer at a Florida church — have also been convicted as a result of the online chat sessions…[about] plans to rape, kill and eat children…

Legitimate Outrage (TW3 #329)

Scott Long on the way politicians like David Vitter and Eliot Spitzer suffer far less than the whores whose names get dragged through the mud along with theirs:

…Spitzer…[made] life miserable for both sex workers and clients.  As…Attorney General, he let…Equality Now goad him into a years-long campaign of harassment against a travel company that marketed sex tours…as Governor, he signed an…“anti-trafficking” law…that massively increased penalties for [buyers]…while maintaining penalties for sex workers…But what folks hate Spitzer for is having bought sex, not the repressive policies he promoted.  Paying women is offensive; persecuting them, fine.  Called out for “immorality”…he actually had the nerve to cite his crackdown on consensual activities in his own defense…In 2008, a jury convicted…Deborah Jeane Palfrey not of prostitution, but of money laundering…and “racketeering”…Palfrey killed herself before sentencing…And [her client David] Vitter stays in the Senate…

Whatever They Need To Say (TW3 #337)

…in connection with the attack on Madaripur brothel on August 28…Borun Begum, a sex worker…filed a case…against 35 identified and 1965 unidentified people…[including] general secretary Milon Bhuyan…women affairs officer Mahmuda Akter and Islahe Qawmi Parishad leader Raju Hujur…She…sought compensation for…valuables worth [$385,000] and…properties worth [$64,000]…Parimal Sarkar…filed a case…against 37 identified and 300 unidentified people…seeking compensation of [$77,000]…for [vandalism of] 30 houses…

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That Was the Week That Was (#335)

Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 31, 2013| 17 Comments »

The Olympics are always a chance for hosts to do some moral cleansing, and drive away undesirables by brute force.  –  Scott Long

Saeed MalekpourLying Down With Dogs

“The lawyer of a man convicted of building and promoting pornographic websites [in Iran] says a death sentence against his client has been converted to life imprisonment…blogger Saeed Malekpour will spend the rest of his life in jail…”  There aren’t too many other countries barbaric enough to sentence a man to life in a cage for “dirty” pictures, but I can think of at least one other.

The Eye of the Beholder (June Updates)

“The [Arkansas] Senate passed a bill…that would ban non-traditional…body art procedures, particularly scarification and dermal implants…”

Wise Investment

Pay attention, sex worker activists:

The children of three women who were murdered by Robert Pickton have filed lawsuits against the police and the serial killer…They allege the Vancouver police and the RCMP failed to properly investigate reports of missing women and failed to warn women in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside that a serial killer was likely at work, despite having evidence implicating Pickton in the disappearance of sex workers as early as 1997 and 1998…

Surplus Women

The suspicious deaths of two prostitutes…has sparked a major investigation…The bodies of Jill Lyons and Karen Nabors, who both worked as online escorts, were discovered in an apartment building in Vancouver.  Ms Lyons, 45, was discovered dead in her own apartment on August 12…The body of Ms Nabors was discovered on August 25, also in her own apartment, and police…suggest…the 48-year-old was murdered…

shampoo adGullible’s Travels

Another ludicrous mini-panic from the clowns who brought you idosing, jenkem and vodka-soaked tampons:

“Parents, lock up your shower supplies”…is an actual quote from an announcement made…at a middle school just outside of Richmond, VA…of…a new practice called “shamboiling”…where shampoo is brought to a rapid boil and then the fumes are inhaled for a hallucinogenic effect…one thing is certain…shamboiling is catching on quickly and…is potentially deadly…The Sheriff’s department is  urging parents to check their shampoos for [ammonium lauryl sulfate] and to take the necessary precautions to keep these chemicals away from children…

Here’s the debunking on Snopes.

Universal Criminality

A perfect example of how laws against consensual behavior are used by repressive governments to harass those they dislike:

Police have detained a Chinese-American…on suspicion of visiting a sex worker in Beijing as authorities crack down on bloggers.  Charles Xue [AKA Xue Manzi], who has over 12 million followers on Sina Weibo…regularly reposts reform-minded content…Among those questioning the motive behind the arrest was the editor of the state-run Global Times newspaper.  “Cannot rule out the possibility that authorities are arresting Xue Manzi…to give him a hard time,” Hu Xijin wrote…in a blog posting that later disappeared…

Sex, Lies and Busybodies

Yet another “sex trafficking” opportunist exposed:

The founder of…anti-human trafficking NGO Sisha, Steve Morrish, announced…he was stepping down from his position due to a raft of allegations accusing him of financial impropriety…Sisha’s alleged financial problems were revealed publicly…on August 8 in…the Cambodian blog Penhpal.  The posting alleged that money donated to Sisha…“has instead been siphoned off to pay for the NGO’s operating expenses”…

Moloch

Is this idiotic enough yet?  Can we stop now?

A 10-year-old girl…identified as “Ashley,” was charged by police for aggravated sexual assault…[for] playing doctor…a neighbor saw the children and called the mother of a 4-year-old boy…[whom] Ashley was inappropriately touching…Ashley’s mother…was not allowed to sit-in on the 45-minute questioning of her daughter…

Gail Dines threatens Radisson hotels

Gail Dines threatens Radisson hotels

Confined and Controlled

If this were intended to increase sex workers’ range of options, it’s would be fine; however, it’s clearly intended as a confinement system:  “Several communities in Italy have launched a campaign to ban street prostitution and reintroduce brothels, which have been banned since 1958…”

Worse Than I Thought

As I predicted last year, the cancer keeps spreading:

…[new] legislation…in North Carolina….increases punishments for sex traffickers, i.e. pimps, as well as for purchasers, i.e. johns.  It also focuses on “treating minors involved in prostitution as the victims they are, instead of criminals,” [the bill’s sponsor] said…”The legislation also offers hope to women who escape a life of prostitution by allowing them…relief to expunge their criminal pasts once they get treatment and help”…[another law] requires pimps to register as sex offenders…

As I’ve explained before, “safe harbor” laws are bullshit that help almost nobody; “treatment” means (usually religious) “re-education”, and a “pimp” means just about anyone prosecutors decide to railroad.

Obfuscation Via Dysphemisms

Tulsa cops continue to justify persecution of adult women by pretending they’re “trafficked”:  “Human trafficking has developed into a booming enterprise in Oklahoma…on a given night,Melissa Ditmore the Vice Unit may deploy undercover police officers to respond to as many as 40 online advertisements posted by ‘escorts’ in preparation for prostitution stings that sometimes uncover cases of human trafficking…”  Note the misplaced scare quotes, around “escorts” rather than “trafficking”.

The Public Eye

Jessica Land interviews Dr. Melissa Ditmore, a prominent academic ally, on her research, The Encyclopedia of Prostitution and Sex Work, sex worker projects and organizations, and international issues.

That Old Black Magic

Here’s an interesting article on the connection between harlotry and witchcraft:

…Prostitutes were widely believed to be specialists in erotic magic, especially the use of philtres to sway the feelings of those around them…For example, a woman may resort to a binding spell, to handicap rivals in the trade or lock down a steady client…These women were also sought by those outside the trade for their magical expertise.  Those in troubled marriages might consult a prostitute to concoct a love potion to rekindle the affections of a wayward spouse…

King of the Hill

Most of this CNN story is the usual lurid “sex trafficking” rubbish, but I want to call attention to a fascinating new development:  “king of the hill” stories are now specifically claiming their subjects are the “third-busiest area for sex trafficking in the United States” (see also “Under Every Bed” below) rather than just “one of the busiest” or “in the top ten”.  As usual, the Department of Justice is credited for the “statistic” despite the fact that neither it nor any other agency keeps any kind of state-by-state “trafficking” statistics.  I suspect the “third largest” designation arose through confusion with the claim that “human trafficking is the third-largest criminal enterprise” (though that one’s been upgraded to second), but it will be interesting to see how many claim to be the “third largest” before anyone in the mainstream media starts to awaken.

What the Hell Were You Thinking? (TW3 #135)

A new Irish company named Safe IQ “develops safety products and services for sex workers…and raises awareness of the need for [them] to have the same protections as other workers.”  Here’s its first product:

Ugly Mugs for Android is a [free] mobile phone app that automatically screens incoming and outgoing calls and text messages and alerts the phone user if the…number…is listed in the UglyMugs.ie database…When a sex worker encounters a dangerous person, they [sic] can report the incident to the ugly mug scheme, and a warning will be made available to all sex workers…

Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs (TW3 #312)Indonesian protesters tear down insulting sign

Only a hopeless lawhead could imagine that closing red-light districts will make prostitution go away:

Hundreds of sex workers confronted the mayor of Indonesia’s second-largest city…angrily denouncing the closure of the Klakah Rejo district…The crowd later tore down a “Prostitution-Free Town” billboard erected by officials…”What’s going on?”…the mayor [said]…”We’re trying to help but they are refusing.”  Surabaya is also home to Dolly, reputedly the largest red-light district in South-East Asia.  The mayor said that one and other red-light districts would be closed as the city aimed to be prostitution-free by 2014.

Under Every Bed

Wisconsin is one of “the top three states” for sex trafficking, according to…Michelle Mayefske… Not all prostitution is trafficking. Some women, referred to as “renegades,” simply decide to sell sex and are not controlled or managed by anyone, but “that is very, very rare,” she said…“Gangs are now turning from drugs to human trafficking…[because] drugs can be sold only once and then they’re gone, whereas…a woman or a child can be sold over and over and over…Georgia, California and Wisconsin have the highest rates of sex trafficking in the United States, so we are in the top three”…

1) This is the second time I’ve heard this “renegade” bullshit; neither I nor anyone I asked knows where it comes from.  2) I think Mayefske is extremely confused about the concept of “sale”.  3) She needs to talk to Florida.

Chauvinism

Veteran human rights activist Scott Long argues that activists who compare Russia’s anti-gay purge to the Nazi campaign against Jews are not only wrongheaded, but missing the most obvious comparison:

If Western gay…activists want to know what Putin’s decree will mean in practice:  ask a sex worker…Before every big sporting event, the same rhetoric reverberates:  Prostitutes are going to take over this town…The predictions are nearly always couched as concern for “trafficked” women, but they…come down to…anxieties over nuisances to “normal” neighbors, and…the reputation of the host city…What major sporting events bring is not an “explosion” in prostitution, but an explosion in repression…not in evil Russia, but in liberal Canada and the UK, countries that value human rights, except for sex workers, who aren’t human…Yet in London, few powerful voices opposed the Olympic rollback of sex workers’ freedom — and certainly few LGBT activists…

Deafening Silence

“The treatment of sex workers in Cuba, including confinement for the purpose of ‘re-education’, was raised by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women…the…committee said it was “deeply concerned” about Cuba’s reluctance to address the issue of prostitution…” The United States’ confinement and “re-education” of sex workers, however, causes the committee no concern at all.  Funny how that works.

Sold Out

…two of the largest and most well funded LGBT rights groups in the US have stayed quiet about Manning…whose revelations about the US Army’s actions epitomize social justice in action…the [silence of the] Human Rights Campaign and GLAAD…has been deafening… the HRC…[has] the financial backing of…Lockheed Martin…Booz Allen Hamilton…[and] Northrop Grumman…GLAAD has…Goldman Sachs…and Verizon…

Coming and Going (TW3 #331)

Kathryn Griffin finger pointingKate Zen takes a long, thorough look at Texas’ “prostitution diversion” program and its founder, Kathryn Griffin; she examines the program’s lack of any of the normal benefits of such schemes, its close relationship to the rescue industry, its pervasive Christian moralism and its ignoring all of the actual reasons women turn to prostitution in favor of a sin and victimization narrative.

Policing for Profit

Federal and state law-enforcement officers poured into Tukwila [Washington]…seizing three motels whose operators are suspected of participating in illegal drugs and prostitution…U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan…said that the three hotels…have accounted for 17 percent of all calls for police services in the past year…investigators believe the owners actively profited from criminal activity…Durkan said…[her] office will…actively use…seizures to force compliance…

Uncommon Sense (Extra Edition)

Though most English-language media is pretending Zurich’s tippelzone scheme is something new, it is nothing of the kind; this article lists a number of other cities in Germany, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands with similar setups.

Zurvivor (Extra Edition)

…Donald Hill was acquitted…on a charge of [paying]…Alexis Wright, after a judge ruled prosecutors were not able to prove that money was exchanged.  The ruling could affect any additional charges of individuals alleged to have engaged Wright’s services…

HamletOpting Out

An example of why “porn filters” are a spectacularly bad idea:

A man using the British Library’s wi-fi network was denied access to…Hamlet because the text contained “violent content”…the…library said the fault was caused by a newly installed wi-fi service from a third-party provider.  One security expert said the incident highlighted the “dysfunction” of internet filters…Prof Ross Anderson…[said] internet filters were “pointless” and that it was “completely inappropriate” to have one in the British Library…

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