cult of the child | The Honest Courtesan

Posts Tagged ‘cult of the child’

Opting Out

Posted in Current Events, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, censorship, cult of the child, hysteria, internet, law, nanny state, Opting Out, porn, United Kingdom on August 30, 2013| 92 Comments »

This essay first appeared in Cliterati on July 28^th; I have modified it slightly for time references and to fit the format of this blog.

The moral panic over porn has been ramping up for some time now, so it was inevitable that it would eventually engender state action; no government can long resist its sick compulsion to control its subjects’ lives in still another way, and when some useful idiots are practically begging for “protection” from scary pictures and naughty words, it’s like offering an alcoholic a tall, cold glass of rum punch on a blisteringly hot day. But UK Prime Minister David Cameron says this isn’t censorship because the internet is dangerous, and besides it’s “for the children!”

Every internet user in the country will be asked whether they want to have access to pornography, David Cameron will say, as he warns that hardcore images are “corroding childhood”. A joint British and American “task force” will…tackle obscene websites, while Google and other search engine providers will be required to draw up a “blacklist” of the most depraved and illegal search terms …The initiatives…also include…measures to stop children accidentally stumbling across explicit but legal pornographic images in public places…The six biggest companies providing access to wireless internet in cafés and railway stations have all signed a deal to block legal pornography where children could view it. The roll-out of “family friendly Wi-Fi” is expected to begin from the end of August…

Though the majority seem to recognize this censorship for what it is, and some point out that it can’t even work as promised, I’ve already heard others asking how this is a big deal, since adults will be able to “opt out”. But that’s not every time they sign on to the internet; it’s only once, when service is established. In other words, the decision is kept permanently in the records of their ISPs…records government can have for the asking, and which prosecutors can trot out at “sex crime” trials as evidence of their “perversion”, and which police may be granted powers to study for the very type of witch hunt authorized by another section of the PM’s initiative. As for the concept of “family friendly wi-fi”…have you ever tried to use filtered internet service? Cameron and other censorship advocates like to pretend that so-called “porn filters” only do what their name implies, but that’s far from the case; they usually block any- and everything containing certain taboo words, which includes a great deal of medical and psychological information, GLBT and sex worker rights resources, and people, places and companies whose names contain banned syllables such as “sex” or “cunt”. At the Desiree conference last month I discovered that even my blog, which is not remotely pornographic but does discuss sexual topics, was blocked by the filter at a donut shop in Las Vegas. But at least I can guess why mine is caught in the net; some companies are blocked for no discernible reason, and getting themselves unblocked is incredibly difficult. And then there’s the slippery slope; I hope I’m not the only one who shudders at the phrase “illegal search terms”.

But as important as they are, censorship issues aren’t the only reasons to oppose this horrible nanny state expansion; as I’ve pointed out before, such schemes inherently infantilize women. Dr. Brooke Magnanti writes:

…many such discussions treat women exclusively as victims or potential victims, with no more control over their own lives than toddlers. With the endless ongoing campaigns to ban boobs in the Sun or ban whatever type of porn is being presented as a cause for panic this year, no one ever asks – what if we ban this, and attitudes towards women don’t improve? What then? Because there are plenty of places with considerably less sexual freedom and access to porn than here, and they are not exactly bastions of gender equality either…

Censorship, as Robert Heinlein famously observed, is “like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can’t eat steak.” It is dangerous tyranny to restrict the activities of adults to those which our self-appointed masters determine to be appropriate for children, and (as any sex worker or drug user could tell you) impossible to stop people from seeking out avenues of pleasure by banning them. After five years of trying, Australia gave up its plans for a national porn filter last November; even the notoriously-puritanical United States seems to recognize that putting the djinni back into his bottle is impossible. The UK should heed these examples and shut down this ill-considered pipe dream now, before it has resulted in the waste of millions in addition to all of its other bad effects.

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Mumbo Jumbo

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, Perception, tagged agency denial, bogus studies, cult of the child, hysteria, internet, Minnesota, Mumbo Jumbo, neofeminism, pathologization of males, prohibitionist myths, psychology, survivors, Tennessee, underage, witchcraft, yellow journalism on August 13, 2013| 42 Comments »

Foolishness is indeed the sister of wickedness. – Sophocles

If you haven’t heard about the “teenage exorcists” yet, take a look at this short interview from Vice in which the girls helpfully explain that you can “catch” demons by having sex with prostitutes because “Satan can’t just go into anybody that he wants to. He has to have a legal right.” Apparently, they think harlots are licensed agents of the Devil, which A) would probably surprise Jesus, and B) seems to mean they’ve got us confused with witches, and witches with Satanists. But since they also seem to confuse demons with STIs and mental illness with mythical metaphysical monsters, this is not really very surprising.

Now, most people in the general public and nearly all of my readers may chuckle over the earnestness with which these sheltered young women declaim their outlandish beliefs, but it wasn’t so long ago that the same news agencies who seem inclined to mock them now were reporting stories of gigantic Satanic conspiracies with a straight face. Furthermore, those same agencies, and probably many of the same reporters, accept and repeat the ridiculous stories of the “trafficking” hysteria with the same level of credulity these girls display in discussing demons; as I’ve pointed out before, the “trafficking” narratives are practically identical to those of the Satanic Panic, except that the shadowy all-powerful organizations abducting hundreds of thousands of nubile virgins from their families are now called “pimps” instead of “cultists” and are supposed to be motivated by evil greed rather than evil religious fervor. There is the same focus on lurid BDSM sex, the same impossibly-high numbers of victims and sex acts per night, the same claims of vast criminal organizations, the same inability to catch any of the supposed perpetrators and the same total lack of physical evidence. In Sweden, Satanic cults, “sex trafficking”, “repressed memories” and “patriarchy” are part of one seamless narrative, and in the rest of Europe “trafficking” cults are said to control their victims with black magic.

So really, it was inevitable that the black magic connection would reach the United States as well; “trafficking” rhetoric has grown increasingly wild and bizarre for over a year now, and the age of the supposed victims has been slowly creeping down toward the range of those in the daycare sex abuse branch of the larger Satanic hysteria. I haven’t seen a whole story devoted to it yet (though that’s just a matter of time), but hints are starting to appear in typical “sex trafficking” stories. For a long time now “pimps” have been credited with preternatural powers of persuasion, but this is the first time I’ve seen it cross over into the quasi-supernatural:

…Sheila Simpkins McClain’s life was fractured by violence. At around age 14, McClain left home and became involved in prostitution…Now, years later, McClain has dedicated much of her life to working with women who are coming out of situations similar to hers. She’s the assistant resident manager for Magdalene in Nashville, Tenn., and an intervention specialist with End Slavery Tennessee…Pimps, McClain says, can almost hypnotize young women…McClain helps to break that spell…

Yes, McClain does use the qualifier “almost”, but the reporter also uses the word “spell” in the next line despite the fact that hypnosis is neither magical, nor can it induce a person to do anything she is strongly opposed to doing. The general public, however, believes otherwise, and it is clear that the idea McClain is trying to project is one of paranormal power. There is no way to tell whether she believes this herself or whether it’s just a useful lie; she also claims that the internet has increased the ability of pimps to control whores, when even a large fraction of cops and other political prohibitionists recognize it’s the exact opposite (which is why they’re so desperate to persecute online ad sites that make it much harder for them to catch a large number of hookers by raiding a single brothel or stroll).

That story appeared on NPR, which abandoned its façade of journalistic skepticism a long time ago; this one from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune doesn’t even make the pretense of it. Author Christine Stark (a staunch disciple of Dworkin who has referred to animal testing as a “system of prostitution”) uses “trafficking” as a direct synonym for “prostitution”, utterly denies that sex workers exercise any agency whatsoever, and vomits out a number of bogus “statistics” such as the astonishingly-ridiculous claim that 98% of sex workers are homeless. But while these are typical rhetorical devices in these anti-whore, anti-male screeds, even Melissa Farley might hesitate to make the revolting claim with which Stark concludes her deranged attack:

…Duluth harbor is notorious among Native people as a site for the trafficking of Native women from northern reservations…to be sold on the ships and in Duluth and Superior. Native women, teen girls and boys, and even babies have been sold for sex on the ships…

As I’ve pointed out before, the common lie that the “average prostitute enters the trade at 13” automatically implies that a huge number of underage hookers are literal babies. But because most of the people who repeat this idiocy are far too stupid to understand that, I don’t think most of them actually believe that large enough numbers of men want to rape infants to support a commercially-viable enterprise; Christine Stark does, though, and is willing to say so in print. How the disappearance of all these babies is covered up (even in a marginalized population) she cannot say, but it’s not difficult to see the resemblance between Stark’s sex-trafficked infants and those the Satanists were supposed to have produced in droves by impregnating young girls, then wiping their memories and returning them to their homes. And if one can believe that the magical hypnotic powers of “therapists” can “recover” memories, it certainly isn’t that much of a stretch to believe in the magical hypnotic power of “pimps” to erase them. Or the magical power of demons to possess someone via sex. Or the magical power of teenage girls to drive said demons out.

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That Was the Week That Was (#328)

Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Obituary, Perception, Tyranny, tagged Africa, agency denial, Arizona, brothels, Catholicism, censorship, China, cops, cult of the child, disability, domestic violence, escort review sites, Florida, Flush Criminalization, France, hysteria, internet, Ireland, law, lawheads, Legitimate Outrage, Madonna/whore, marriage, nanny state, neofeminism, New York, politicians, porn, prohibitionist myths, RIP Petite Jasmine, Saving Them from Themselves, sexting, Shift in the Wind, Skin To Skin, Still a Child, Sweden, Swedish “Feminism”, Swedish model, The Naked Anthropologist, True Colors, Unclean Situation, violence vs. sex workers, Wholesale Hypocrisy on July 13, 2013| 15 Comments »

Be the sort of victim people want, swallow the crap about not really choosing sex work, tell a few stories about bad clients and pray with the fervor of a convert at the altar of end demand and all the support you want is there, on their terms. – Jemima

R.I.P. Petite Jasmine

A Swedish sex worker rights activist was stabbed to death by her ex-husband on Thursday. Swedish “feminists” pretend to care so very much for sex workers that they’re willing to destroy our lives to “save” us from imaginary “degradation”; selling sex is not illegal, but if a sex worker dares to speak openly about her choice she will be punished in many ways other than imprisonment, such as by expulsion, eviction, police harassment and more:

Several years ago she lost custody of her children as she was considered to be an unfit parent due to being a sex worker. The children were placed with their father regardless of him being abusive towards Jasmine. They told her she didn’t know what was good for her and that she was “romantisizing” prostitution, they said she lacked insight and didn’t realise sex work was a form of self-harm. He threatened and stalked her on numerous occasions, she was never offered any protection…

Activist Jemima pointed out that “Jasmine could have been listened too, could have had custody of her kids, could have been flying off to international conferences and doing TV shows, instead of being prepared for burial, all she had to do was lie…be good little puppets who trot out the party line like defendants at a Stalin era Russian show trial and then the doors of rape crisis centers, domestic refuges and conferences open wide to you…”

Third Party

Another refutation of the myth that the presence of a camera magically protects sex workers from arrest: “Phoenix police arrested seven people at…a self-serve porn studio allegedly used to front a prostitution business…William James Hartwell…and six women were arrested during a raid on the studio…[after] a six-month investigation…”

Another Example of Swedish “Feminism”

This was a real banner week for Swedish “feminists”; besides enabling the murder of a sex worker, we also got this:

A professor in law at Stockholm University has called for legislation prohibiting parents from drinking alcohol in the company of their children. “It is a parent’s responsibility to be sober when they are with their children,” said Professor Madeleine Leijonhufvud…She compared the offence to minor assault which…carries a penalty of up to six months imprisonment. While the proposal is aimed at “everyday drunkenness” it in effect suggests that parents would not be able to share a glass of wine at dinner. “If you have a sick child and need to drive them to hospital then you can’t drink wine”…

Perhaps Sweden should just confiscate all children at birth and raise them in crèches? But then, of course, people would stop having them. And the feminists want even criticism of their tyrannical insanity to be criminal: “the Nordic Council of Ministers…[suggested]…the government…take action against…‘anti-feminist attitudes’…expressed in public…”

Saving Them From Themselves

A 15-year-old Florida girl was arrested…for shooting and possessing a photo of another teen girl engaged in oral sex with a teen boy…She was charged with a felony child porn count. “The two girls were friends, and one of them was dating the guy,” Detective William Lindsey [said]…”Possession of child pornography is [a crime] no matter what age they are… If she had taken a picture of herself in sexual conduct, she could be charged with child pornography”…

Wholesale Hypocrisy (TW3 #25)

The rather dull-witted and credulous Bonnie Erbe seems to genuinely believe in mathematically and sociologically impossible nonsense, but more shocking is her support for censorship despite her pretense of being a journalist:

…The Internet…provides an almost unfettered platform for…pimps to find, track and enslave girls and women in sex trafficking…local and federal authorities seem powerless to ban the sale of commercial sex online. Nor do they seem able to keep up with and control the horrendous amount of trafficking the Internet generates…experts point mainly to laws that predate the Internet and define places where criminal commercial sex acts take places as “houses of prostitution” or “brothels.” Today, no such places exist. Pimps — mainly men — find customers online and direct them to meet prostitutes, who work out of different motels or apartments or sometimes even their own homes…[in] a New Mexico case…two men…were [cleared of] running “an extensive multistate, online prostitution ring”…after a judge ruled that…their website did not constitute a house of prostitution, though it was used to recruit prostitutes and promote prostitution…It would seem easy to amend anti-prostitution laws to include a ban on websites for procuring commercial sex…

Because when governments ban things, they magically vanish!

Shift in the Wind

Those who were surprised at seeing an anti-criminalization article in The National Review must not remember that A) many “conservatives” at least claim to be for smaller government, and B) the magazine’s founder, William F. Buckley, was a vocal opponent of drug criminalization.

…the proscription of prostitution…continues to be a mystery to me. Sex remains one of the few things that a free person may give away gratis but which he is forbidden from selling. It is perfectly legal to sleep around in the United States — subsidized and panegyrized, even — and, as the growing parade of octogenarian billionaires’ wives demonstrates, it is both permissible and socially acceptable to sleep with someone in pursuit of regular material comfort…While the laws surrounding the issue remain such a dizzy and irrational mess, drawing a clear moral line through the morass remains nigh on impossible…To broach this topic in polite company is to invite someone…to parrot the banal old line that “nobody grows up wanting to be a prostitute.” At best, this is a red herring. Certainly, few people grow up wishing to be prostitutes. But there are an awful lot of careers that escape the dreams of children…It is no accident that prostitution, which was almost uniformly legal in the United States from the period of colonization up until the start of the 20^th century, was banned in almost every state within the same five-year period during which the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union managed to convince the nation that alcohol should be constitutionally outlawed…

Of course the comments are full of Puritans and trafficking fetishists, but there are a surprising number of truth-tellers there as well.

Legitimate Outrage

…Eliot Spitzer said he hopes he has changed since he was caught in a prostitution scandal that led to his resignation, as he attempts to revive his political career with a run for New York City comptroller. “I think the public will have to ask itself the question, ‘can we forgive him?’ I’ve asked for the forgiveness, I hope the public says ‘yes,’ based upon the record I have, based upon qualities I can bring to the office,” Spitzer told reporters…

Politicians are usually forgiven; those whose lives they destroy, not so much.

The Naked Anthropologist

Though New Scientist published only a very small part of what Dr. Laura Agustín says was a much, much longer interview, it’s still good to see mainstream magazines presenting her views and debunking the “sex trafficking” hysteria and anti-whore tyranny.

Unclean Situation

You know how the Magdalene Laundry orders (through their modern front, Ruhama) like to pretend that sex work is “human trafficking”?

Despite being funded by the HSE annually, including over €126,000 last year, St Patrick’s Guild informed the Adoption Authority last week that it no longer has the resources to staff the organisation. The agency, run by the Religious Sisters of Charity, had been accredited by the Adoption Authority to assist adopted people and natural parents through tracing, counselling and mediating…Between 1947 and 1967, St Patrick’s Guild…arranged for the export of 572 “illegitimate” children from Ireland to the US for adoption…Despite the agency’s admitted involvement in facilitating illegal adoptions, the Adoption Authority again reiterated its stance that it will not inspect the files to ascertain the extent of the agency’s involvement in such activity…

In other words, the nuns abducted children from their Irish mothers and sold them to Americans; if that’s not “human trafficking”, I don’t know what is.

Skin To Skin (TW3 #313)

The New York Times seems unable to write about sex work without dysphemisms like “so-called”:

…in France…disabled people struggle to have a sex life. But their desires are often disregarded, and while prostitution is legal here, soliciting potential clients and serving as an intermediary between prostitutes and clients are not. The issue of sexual surrogates came up in March, after the National Ethics Committee…issued a report criticizing the practice as the “unethical use of the human body for commercial purposes”…but…some legislators and associations of disabled people are demanding the legalization of sexual surrogates. “Prostitution is a fake debate; the goals are different,” said Pascale Ribes…[of] the Disabilities and Sexualities Group, an association defending sexual surrogates in France. “Sexual assistance is about allowing a disabled person who can’t access sexuality in a satisfying way to reconnect with the body”…

Advice to disabilities advocates: foolish reinforcement of whorearchy is not the way to go about winning your right to employ sex workers.

Flush Criminalization

More sophomoric “humor” from New York “authorities” working assiduously to destroy as many people’s lives as possible:

Police shut down…12 massage parlors…for alleged prostitution…arresting owners, managers and workers. The Brooklyn District Attorney’s office is investigating whether workers were “victims of human trafficking, being manipulated or held against their will”…and whether a central organization was controlling…the operations. According to DA Charles Hynes, all of the women…gave very similar stories about having children in Asia they needed to support. NYPD Commissioner was typically…tone-deaf in his assessment of the case. “We know people in Bay Ridge have back pain…but we don’t think that’s enough to sustain 19 massage parlors”…

That the DA seems to perceive the fantasy of a huge “sex trafficking” conspiracy as more credible than the simple fact that most sex workers have children to support, speaks volumes about his warped view of humanity.

Still a Child

This is no more ridiculous than defining a minimum age above that of majority for any other legal activity, such as drinking or sex work: “Somalia…has set the minimum age at 40 for anyone intending to practice as a journalist in the country…”

True Colors (TW3 #327)

Authorities in southern China have left…Ye Haiyan…homeless…Guangdong security agents abandoned her on the side of the road with her boyfriend…and 14-year-old daughter…”Zhongshan does not welcome you; Guangzhou does not welcome you either. I will break your legs if I ever see you again in Zhongshan,” one of the security agents said…

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Ad Absurdum

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged Ad Absurdum, age of consent, agency denial, consensual crime, cult of the child, dating, dirty, disease, Florida, harm reduction, law, lawheads, LGBT rights, Shazam! on July 12, 2013| 24 Comments »

This essay first appeared in Cliterati on May 26^th; I have modified it slightly to fit the format of this blog.

Reductio ad absurdum is a form of argument which follows the logical consequences of the thing argued against until they reach a point the opponent must agree is false, ridiculous, harmful or otherwise undesirable. Laws against consensual behavior could easily be defeated by such arguments were those who support them open to considering their possible consequences; unfortunately they never are, and so the laws are enacted and those harmful consequences must happen in fact to real human beings before most people will even begin to consider that they should be repealed. It takes even more than that to move the really staunch prohibitionists, especially those whose power or livelihood depends upon criminalizing as much of the spectrum of human behavior as possible; no matter how awful the consequences of their beloved laws, no matter how great the costs in money and ruined lives, no matter how damaging to the fabric of society or destructive to the principle of justice, they will just keep chanting “the Law is the Law” or “society needs to send a message” or “perhaps you want to legalize murder as well” while shutting their eyes, ears and hearts to the evil their policies cause. The chief weakness of the reductio ad absurdum technique is that some people are unable to recognize absurdity when they see it, or else unwilling to admit it when they do. And when the situation involves sex and adolescents, some people will adamantly refuse to acknowledge the wrongfulness of even the most outrageous outcomes:

…Kaitlyn Hunt, 18, faces two felony counts of “lewd and lascivious battery on a child”…after the parents of her 15-year-old girlfriend pressed charges…Kaitlyn Hunt’s mother, Kelley Hunt-Smith, wrote in [a] statement posted to Facebook…”They were out to destroy my daughter. [They] feel like my daughter ‘made’ their daughter gay”…police arrived at the family’s home Feb. 16 and put her daughter in handcuffs…Indian River County [Florida] Sheriff Deryl Loar said that age difference, not sexual orientation, determined prosecution…”If this was an 18-year-old male and that was a 14-year-old girl, it would have been prosecuted the same way,” Loar said…The state attorney’s office has offered Kaitlyn Hunt a plea deal which includes two years’ house arrest and a year of probation, which would stay on her adult record and limit her career choices…

I have absolutely no doubt that the sheriff is telling the truth, but that only increases the absurdity rather than acting as a defense as he seems to believe. Age of consent laws are currently justified by the pretense that they “protect” girls below that age from adult “sexual predators”, but that was neither their original rationale nor is it the way they’re usually applied: 80% of young men prosecuted under these laws have an established, consensual relationship with the so-called “victim”, and fewer than half are more than six years older; 55% of them are under 21, and 75% under 24. In other words, the great majority of such prosecutions are initiated to eradicate and punish boyfriends of whom the girl’s parents do not approve; as in the case at hand, the age difference is merely a convenient excuse.

But while one might (justifiably or otherwise) raise the specter of teen pregnancy or venereal disease to object to a heterosexual relationship, one would be hard-pressed to find such grounds for a lesbian one; though a few STIs (namely vaginosis, chlamydia, herpes, HPV, trichomoniasis and pubic lice) can be spread from woman to woman, several of these could also be contracted via behavior that even the most bloodthirsty prosecutor would hesitate to use as the basis for a criminal charge. And really, does anyone believe that the younger girl’s parents were truly concerned about the possibility of their daughter contracting a disease whose name they probably can’t even spell? If so, would Kaitlyn’s providing a clean blood test have caused charges to be dropped? OK, I’m indulging in a bit of reductio ad absurdum myself there, but I think y’all can see what I’m driving at. None of the possible negative side effects of this relationship, whatever they might be, justifies destroying a young girl’s entire life; morally infantile rubbish like “it’s the law” or “we mistreat everybody equally” is even worse. And if those of us who are sane can agree that these laws create monstrous injustices when inflicted on young women, perhaps we can also agree that they’re just as horrible when inflicted on young men.

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Still a Child

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, Tyranny, tagged adolescence, age of consent, agency denial, consensual crime, cult of the child, law, lawheads, nanny state, Netherlands, psychology, Shazam!, Still a Child, underage on July 1, 2013| 55 Comments »

Adulthood is the ever-shrinking period between childhood and old age. It is the apparent aim of modern industrial societies to reduce this period to a minimum. – Thomas Szasz

A few months ago, when Amsterdam raised the legal age for prostitution from 18 to 21, one sex worker commented that this was a good idea because a woman of 18 is “still a child”. Now, I’m not going to rehash the obvious arguments which made the rounds when the prohibitionist fad of raising the legal drinking age to 21 seized America like some kind of suicidal mania; nor will I point out that any sane and reasonable person must recognize that selecting leaders, driving a car, getting married and joining the military all have more serious effects on both the individual and society as a whole than the specific reasons one might choose to have sex; nor explain that narrowing a legal bottleneck invariably results in more people doing whatever-it-is illegally (except insofar as I just mentioned them). Instead, I’d like to briefly consider this bizarre legal fiction that a person capable of reproduction can nonetheless be a “child” in any meaningful way, and to wonder how far this trend can go before it collapses into complete absurdity.

The delusion that some adults are actually children is a fairly recent one, dating back only to late 19^th century. In “The Shape of the Spoon” I quoted psychologist Robert Epstein on why it’s so spectacularly stupid and destructive:

…the whole culture collaborates in artificially extending childhood, primarily through the school system and restrictions on labor…This infantilization makes many young people angry or depressed…we have completely isolated young people from adults and created a peer culture. We stick them in school and keep them from working in any meaningful way, and if they do something wrong we put them in a pen with other “children.” In most nonindustrialized societies, young people are integrated into adult society as soon as they are capable, and there is no sign of teen turmoil. Many cultures do not even have a term for adolescence…But [in the West] young people can’t own things, can’t sign contracts, and they can’t do anything meaningful without parental permission—permission that can be withdrawn at any time…American teens are subjected to more than 10 times as many restrictions as mainstream adults, twice as many restrictions as active-duty U.S. Marines, and even twice as many as incarcerated felons…What’s more, since 1960, restrictions on teens have been accelerating…

I’m not saying that young people should be given adult responsibilities at about 13 as they once were, and I certainly don’t think Epstein is either; what I am saying is that referring to teenagers as “children” and pretending that label represents anything other than a legal fiction is not only counterproductive and generative of psychopathology, but also inevitably gives rise to the evil absurdities I regularly mock by comparing them to young Billy Batson turning instantly into a super-powered adult with the magic word “Shazam!” The idea that equal-to-four-year-olds suddenly become equal-to-forty-year-olds at a mystic ritual moment is idiotic in every respect, but nowhere is it more ridiculous than in the area of sex: “…it is the hormones of puberty that drive young people to have sex, not knowledge or culturally-induced ‘sexualization’, yet Americans are committed to the self-destructive delusion that if we keep teens in ignorance about sex they’ll stay ‘innocent’ and never think of having it themselves…” That quote is from “Too Young To Know”, wherein I address the issue of prostitution by legal minors:

There is no material difference between sex for compensation and sex for social reasons except that those who fall into the latter are less likely to use condoms or good judgment. So, the state needs to pick an age of consent and stick to it, thus eliminating criminalization of motives for having sex. This is not to say that the state shouldn’t set some higher age at which a brothel or escort service can legally hire a girl, as long as the state recognizes that doing so means that the only sex work an underage teen can do will be on the street, and that the law isn’t going to stop her if that’s what she intends to do…

But obviously the rulers of Amsterdam are far wiser than some sex-addled harlot, and obviously have some foolproof magical means of absolutely preventing women below 21 from working, just as they effectively stop every single “illegal” whore from doing so now.

Ahem.

Anyhow, is there actually any factual basis to the notion that some biological adults are somehow childlike in any way that could be reasonably declared a valid cause for restricting their rights to some degree? Well, kind of, but not in any sense where the numbers 18 or 21 would be significant. A lot of brain research suggests the frontal lobes aren’t fully mature until about 25, so maybe we should prohibit university-age people from voting, drinking, marrying or doing meaningful work (most especially enlisting in the military). But still other research suggests the brain isn’t fully mature until the 30s or even 40s, so perhaps we had better declare anyone below 40 “still a child”. Or maybe that should only apply to men; a recent highly-publicized “study” by television network Nickelodeon (which I’m sure was conducted with unimpeachably-rigorous scientific methodology) trumpeted that while women mature at 32, men don’t do so until 43. Obviously, we need to declare people younger than those ages “juveniles”, restrict their sexual and labor choices and try them in special juvenile courts.

The fact of the matter is, the brain keeps changing throughout life; while it’s getting more powerful in some respects it’s weakening in others, and any increase in maturity after 30 is offset by a loss of adaptability and plasticity. It is the height of fatuity to declare that the rights of some biological adults should be restricted due to incomplete brain development, because some fail to attain by 50 the cognitive abilities others have at 15. The only fair measure of adult competence is experience, and the only way to gain that experience is by doing; that cannot be accomplished in a playpen. Perhaps we need to return to the medieval practice of dividing growth into thirds: people are given some limited responsibilities at 7, assume self-governance at 14 and take on full citizenship at 21. But however we divide it, one thing is clear: only an imbecile equates a person of 16 with one of 12 or 6, and no law grounded in such imbecility is worthy of obedience or even serious consideration.

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That Was the Week That Was (#325)

Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Philosophy, Q & A, Tyranny, tagged Above the Law, Africa, agency denial, Another Small Victory, Australia, bogus studies, brothels, Canada, censorship, Central Asia, China, Colorado, consensual crime, cops, cosmetic surgery, Creepy Coppers, cult of the child, Deafening Silence, dirty, disease, Do As I Say, Europe, evidence, FBI, Florida, Follow Your Bliss, France, hysteria, illegal aliens, internet, Iran, Islam, Korea, Lack of Evidence, Latin America, law, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Middle East, Mind Reading, Minnesota, nanny state, Nevada, New York, Not To Be Taken Internally, Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs, Pimping the Pimp, pimps, politicians, porn, Presents, prisons, Profound Ignorance, prohibitionist myths, racism, rape, Rome, Russia, Rwanda, screening, sex offender registry, Somehow I Doubt..., streetwalkers, surveillance, Sweden, Texas, The Crumbling Dam, The End of the Beginning, The Enlightenment Police, The More the Better, The Widening Gyre, Think of the Children!, TSA, underage, United Kingdom, vaccines, video, Virginia, Washington (state), What If They Threw a Party?, Where Are the Protests?, Where Are the Victims?, Zurvivor on June 22, 2013| 23 Comments »

The idea that [no coerced prostitutes] ever indicate their plight to any of the hundreds of thousands of men who make up their clientele, or that if they do none of those men reports it to police, is simply fantastical. No one with any experience of real live human beings could possibly believe it. – Tim Worstall

Think of the Children!

…For the past two decades, parents who’ve lost children in horrible ways have tried to memorialize them in law…But…support for… “apostrophe laws”…is waning…recession…made officials…hesitant to increase costs…from…more prisoners and longer sentences…the drop in the crime rate…made tougher laws…less politically compelling…[and] the lower-hanging fruit has been picked…

Lack of Evidence

“A [West Australian] businesswoman claims…police have stopped her repeatedly…in the crackdown on street prostitution. Rebecca Williams says…officers…[demanded] to know what she was doing and [checked] her identification…” Of course she’s wholly clueless, protesting that she doesn’t “look like a prostitute”.

Must…resist…snark…

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

A [Las Vegas] police officer is facing five counts of soliciting…while he was investigating crimes of prostitution…Investigators followed [Peter] Connell for months and witnessed him…visiting the apartment of Mary Anne Moore, who had previous prostitution arrests…

Somehow, I Doubt He Thought This Through

A man…dialed 999 to complain about a prostitute’s looks…[saying] he “wished to report her for breaching the Sale of Goods Act”…Officers…sent…a letter warning him about wasting police time…

The Enlightenment Police

A young Muslim woman miscarried after being attacked by two Parisian champions of women’s rights: “first [they] tried taking her headscarf off and later cut off her hair…After she screamed out that she was pregnant, one of the attackers started kicking her in the stomach…[shouting] that the veil was no longer acceptable in France…”

The Crumbling Dam

This article entitled “Faith Groups Oppose Legal Prostitution Because They Care About Women’s Lives” is just the usual collection of sin-and-degradation prohibitionist control freak myths; the comment thread, however, is a thing of beauty.

Mind Reading (November Updates)

Why do so many politicians think sex overrides the Constitution?

Pierce County [Washington] might make it illegal for suspected prostitutes and their customers to attempt to detect undercover officers…by “exposing oneself or asking another to do so; by asking to be touched sexually; or by requesting to touch or touching another sexually”…

Where Are the Protests?

Notice what words we aren’t seeing here:

Agents from the Department of Homeland Security raided [several] 7-Eleven shops in New York and Virginia…Nine store owners and managers have been arrested on charges of harboring and hiring undocumented immigrants…the raids are a part of an investigation into human smuggling, identity theft and money laundering…authorities described the alleged situation as a “modern day plantation system“…

Not To Be Taken Internally

…Suyima Torres…[died 10 hours after receiving buttocks injections] at…Cuerpos Health and Aesthetics on April 11…she…was rushed to the hospital…by the center’s owner, Ruth Planas…the Venezuelan doctor who performed the surgery…is thought to have fled the country…Torres died only 16 days after…20-year-old Dailen Garcia, received butt implants from the same facility…[and] was hospitalized …for vision problems and bleeding lungs…

Presents, Presents, Presents!

Reader George sent me a copy of Meet the Fokkens and a gift card, with the suggestion I use it to buy the movie Diamond Men (which I did). Thank you so much, George!

Above the Law

Texas jailers…”repeatedly raped and humiliated female inmates”…[who’ve now] sued Live Oak County and its…jailers Vincent Aguilar, Israel Charles Jr. and Jaime E. Smith…All three…were arrested in August 2010 and charged with sexual assault…Smith and Aguilar are in…prison…”these guards would withhold food and water, engage in physical abuse, restrict privileges and verbally and emotionally abuse the women – even threaten to kill them in order to compel their compliance”…

The Widening Gyre

In which we learn that nail parlors are havens of “sex trafficking”:

…the advocacy group ECPAT estimates 100,000 minors are forced into prostitution or pornography each year — but no one knows how vast the problem is because it’s under reported and underground, said Kathy Maitland of the Michigan Abolitionist project…”It’s the second-largest-growing activity in our country”…She says Michigan is especially vulnerable because of a large agricultural industry…and its location along an international border…Lt. Wendy Reyes…said…”If we had more manpower we…could get online…and find these victims”…trafficking is often linked to online and street prostitution, ethnic restaurants, masseuse businesses, pornography and nail salons…iEmpathize founder Brad Riley…called…the proliferation of pornography…a “super fuel” that promotes trafficking…

Beside the usual rampant illogic, mathematical illiteracy, blatant racism and “King of the Hill” foolishness, you’ve got to love Wendy’s claim that cops need to web surf all day to “find victims”.

The More the Better (TW3 #27)

French footballers Franck Ribery and Karim Benzema go on trial in Paris…accused of paying…Zahia Dehar…for sex in 2008 and 2009…Algerian-born Dehar, now 21, has since become designer Karl Lagerfeld’s muse and protégée, launching her own lingerie line…State prosecutors have requested that the case be dropped, however, arguing the footballers did not know Dehar was a minor…

Follow Your Bliss (TW3 #44)

“A…top [TSA] officer…[named Miguel Quinones] was arrested on child pornography charges after items were seized from his locker at Manchester-Boston Regional Airport…” As explained in the referenced column, the TSA is well-known for attracting pedophiles.

Q & A (TW3 #134)

“Twenty-two female escorts were arrested last week during a two-day sting in…Denver…The women were advertising on two websites — DenverBackPage.com and Preferred411.com…” Despite the involvement of the FBI’s lugubriously-named “Innocence Lost” project, note that verified professional adult escorts were targeted via P411; these cops had no illusions they might find “trafficked children”. In fact, the sting was enabled by one creating a fake profile and then arranging several “coffee dates” with escorts and asking for “OKs”, which the escorts gave in violation of P411 rules; their accounts were suspended for their negligence in enabling predatory monsters to hurt other sex workers. Ladies, ONLY give OKs to men you actually see behind closed doors; how can you possibly know whether a man is dangerous if you’ve only seen him in public?

Profound Ignorance (TW3 #310)

A scathing demolition of the horrendous “study” which claimed legalized prostitution increases “sex trafficking”, and also of the “sheer implausibility of the claims that 30% of all prostitutes are trafficked…”:

The…scare campaign…over “sex trafficking”…becomes a complete and total mess…because [campaigners confuse]…the transport of unwilling people…into forced prostitution…and…the illegal movement of willing people across borders to enter the sex trade…people from poorer countries…wish to…move…to richer countries. And such is the system of immigration laws that many of them will be unable to do this legally…

Cathy Reisenwitz also had a few things to say:

…The Guardian recently quoted UK solicitor general Oliver Heald QC describing “victims” of trafficking as people who pay a lot of money to escape their home countries and then are forced to pay it back…That’s not slavery, it’s indentured servitude, and it accounts for two-thirds of immigrants to America from the British Isles in the 17th century. Anti-prostitution and anti-immigration campaigners have hijacked the term “human trafficking” to describe any instance of a person crossing a border to do sex work…It requires buying into the rather insulting idea that women aren’t capable of choosing to leave their homes and do sex work abroad…once you establish that women aren’t capable of making their own choices, you can justify taking all kinds of rights and liberties away from them…

The End of the Beginning

Corrections officials are refusing to remove a sex offender’s name from the state’s public database, defying [the] order…[of] The Court of Appeals [which] ruled…that [Robert Merle Haines Jr.] should not be named on the…registry because [it] did not exist at the time of his crime and registration would be a form of retroactive punishment, which the Maryland Constitution doesn’t allow. Corrections officials say federal…requirements prevent them from complying with the ruling…

Meanwhile, in Minnesota:

…Minnesota’s Sex Offender…Task Force…[is] redesigning the…program…each of the state’s 687 committed sex offenders [costs]…about $120,000 a year…with…50 more…each year…The task force came into existence as part of a lawsuit filed by the committed sex offenders, who argue the…program is unconstitutional because…no one is actually treated and released, thereby creating an indefinite incarceration system even after the offenders have served their criminal [sentences]…

Another Small Victory (TW3 #317)

As expected, the “anti-prostitution pledge” was struck down in the SCOTUS. This is not actually a victory for sex worker rights in the big picture; it was decided wholly on first-amendment grounds and the “allies” were at best ones of convenience. If you’d like to read more about the details and implications, I recommend Melissa Gira Grant, Popehat and Mike Siegel.

“The Ionian Dance” by Sir Edward John Poynter (1895) was recently rediscovered after being “lost” since 1915. It depicts a scene from ancient Pompeii.

Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs (TW3 #318)

If anyone really believes this is anything but an attempt to save face, I have some lovely beachfront property for sale:

For the first time, the State Department on Wednesday declared China and Russia among the worst offending countries…a designation that will lead to sanctions against both…the…2013 report on Trafficking in Persons (TIP)…officially downgraded China, Russia, and Uzbekistan to the lowest possible rating…along with Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Sudan, and Zimbabwe…

What If They Threw a Party and Nobody Came? (TW3 #321)

The prevalence of dangerous strains of the human papillomavirus…has dropped by half among teenage girls in recent years, a striking measure of success for a vaccine…that was introduced only in 2006…The magnitude of the decline…surprised…experts because only about a third of teenage girls in the United States have [received]…the full course of three doses. By comparison, vaccination rates in…Denmark…Britain [and]…Rwanda…[have] reached 80 percent…

Deafening Silence

When this happens in India, it’s a media circus; in Sweden…{cricket sounds}: “Six teenage boys aged 15 to 17 were convicted on Friday after raping a 15-year-old girl in…Stockholm…The case was the third…gang rape to take place in the Stockholm area…this year…”

The Mills of the Gods

Despite the annoying visuals and a few clumsy phrases in the first third, this is an excellent argument against prohibition of sex work.

Where are the Victims? (TW3 #322)

A novel attempt to use New York State’s sex trafficking law…ended with mixed results…as the men were convicted…of promoting prostitution and of money laundering, but…acquitted of…sex trafficking…The law defines trafficking based on the methods the pimps use to control the prostitutes, rather than whether the prostitutes view themselves as victims…prosecutors…presented an expert to testify that women working as prostitutes are often not aware that they are victims. But three of the women themselves testified for the defense…and…were upset…at the…[suggestion] they were not to be believed…

Consider for a moment the incredibly dangerous precedent a prosecution victory would have set; state “experts” would be allowed to define any person as a victim in any crime regardless of that person’s viewpoint.

Zurvivor

“The owner of a Lawrence [Massachusetts] massage parlor coerced employees to perform sex acts on…customers, some of whom were videotaped without the clients’ knowledge…Authorities said Barron used the videotapes to blackmail employees to keep working for her…” Dear ethically-challenged sex business owners: Stop videotaping clients, you moron. See, there’s this thing called “evidence”…

Pimping the Pimp

More egregious use of “pimp” mythology to justify Nevada’s draconian “sex trafficking” law:

Because of their age, they will have difficulty working inside most [hotels]. For most, that means hitting the streets under the eye of a pimp and more experienced prostitutes. And the more they must rely on the pimp, the more difficult it is to pry them from his clutches…So when Assembly Bill 67 surfaced…earlier this year, the police welcomed it as a way to send a message to pimps that there would be a higher price to pay for running young girls…

Once again: teens don’t turn to sex work because a “pimp” abducts them from their loving families, and 84% of them have never as much as met one.

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That Was the Week That Was (#323)

Posted in Biography, Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged A War for Peace, A Whore in Church, Absolute Corruption, activism, Africa, agency denial, asset seizure, Australia, Backwards into the Future, Bangladesh, Banishment, Birth of a Movement, Bone of Contention, brothels, Bullies With Badges, Central Asia, China, condoms, Connecticut, cops, cosmetic surgery, cult of the child, Dirty Amateurs, disease, Do As I Say, evidence, fantasy, FBI, Florida, gangs, guest columnist updates, harm reduction, Hollywood, hysteria, India, internet, Iran, It Looks Good On Paper, Japanese Prostitution, law, LGBT rights, Middle East, Namibia, Nebraska, Nepal, New York, New Zealand, Not the Leading Players, Not To Be Taken Internally, Obfuscation via Dysphemisms, Oklahoma, orgasm, pimps, politicians, porn, prohibitionist myths, rape, rescue industry, See No Evil, sex offender registry, Sex Workers vs Trafficking, slavery, Somehow I Doubt..., South Carolina, South Dakota, Spain, streetwalkers, surveillance, Sweden, Tennessee, The Scarlet Letter, Traffic Jam, True Colors, Turkey, Under Every Bed, underage, United Kingdom, Whorearchy on June 8, 2013| 16 Comments »

We whores are sure these politicians are not our sons. – sign carried by protesters in Istanbul

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

“The FBI seized and ran a child pornography website for two weeks in November 2012…in an attempt to identify its more than 5,000 customers…”

The Leading Players in the Field, Not

Nepal’s Supreme Court has accused a prominent anti-trafficking group of detaining a woman against her will so she could undergo counselling for being a lesbian…The court ordered the release of the woman from a centre run by…Maiti Nepal…which has been championed by…Joanna Lumley and…Demi Moore…The group’s founder, Anuradha Koirala, was awarded a “CNN Heroes Award”…in 2010…and Moore hosted a television programme called “Nepal’s Stolen Children” highlighting the organisation’s work…

It Looks Good On Paper

When “whore as criminal” and “whore as victim” collide: “…a [Nebraska] human trafficking bill…would [have given] immunity from prosecution to [minors]…arrested for prostitution…Amanda McGill…offered an amendment that…would place [them]…under the jurisdiction of a juvenile court…[for] treatment…” Because indefinite commitment is so much better than a criminal charge.

Dirty Amateurs

“Sweden…[is] the…STD…capital of Europe…half of young Swedes don’t use condoms when having sex with a new partner and…30 percent…use no contraceptive…at all…”

Somehow, I Doubt She Thought This Through

A woman…in Connecticut [called] police to complain about how she was being treated by a pimp…they did not find the pimp…but…did find…Jennifer Lowery with a…customer. Police charged Lowery with prostitution and 60-year-old Ricard Burford…with patronizing a prostitute…Lowery told them she…decided to conduct some business while waiting…

See No Evil

Melbourne artist Paul Yore is likely to be charged with producing child pornography following the seizure of several of his art works…which allegedly depicted sexual acts with children’s faces superimposed on them…Yore described the…seizure as “very small fragments of a collage of…thousands of different objects…basically junk I’ve been collecting”…

Not To Be Taken Internally

…Apryl Michelle Brown had black-market silicone injections which turned out to be BATHROOM SEALANT…“My body had a massive allergic reaction…the only way doctors could save my life was to amputate my buttocks…hands and feet”…

A Whore in Church

A profile of a former sex worker who’s assisted me with research on a number of occasions:

…Mary Setterholm…was a teenaged prostitute…[she] will graduate from Harvard Divinity School (HDS) with…a plan to help others find their way back from the edge of despair…She married young and had five children. The union was rocky and abusive. Once divorced, she returned to prostitution as a…way to take back some control…In 2003, a meeting with an inspiring nun named Sheila McNiff helped Setterholm to confront the abuse she had suffered as a child at the hands of clergy, and guide her back to education…Setterholm…[founded] Serenity Sisters…[a] support group…for exploited women and recovering prostitutes…She hopes to enter a Ph.D. program…expanding on her…thesis work, which explored the way prostitutes have been used in religious teachings as a stand-in for deviant or disbelieving members of society…

A War for Peace (TW3 #11)

…Over the last 30 years…Iran is…moving in the [sexual] direction of Britain and the United States…Declining birth rates…signal a wider acceptance of contraceptives…the country has experienced the fastest drop in fertility ever recorded in human history…the average marriage age for men has gone up from 20 to 28 years old…and…women…five years later than a decade ago…The rate of divorce…has also skyrocketed…[previously] sex workers were virtually invisible…Now…there [are] close to 85,000…in Tehran alone…

Bullies With Badges

…Adam was, until recently, making a living as a self-employed web designer in South Carolina…he was hired to make a porn site…[with male] masturbation videos…after the site had been online for…24 days, Adam’s home was raided by [a SWAT team] and all of his computer equipment was seized…Adam [said] “the [customer] was [allegedly]…paying guys to let him give them blowjobs and film it…it definitely wasn’t…on the site…I wasn’t expecting four armed guys to bust into my mother’s home and steal all of my assets. They’ve…ruined me…”

Note that Adam wasn’t charged with anything; the police stole his entire business to be indefinitely held as “evidence” of someone else’s misdemeanor.

Whorearchy (TW3 #19)

This story about yet another Spanish city’s war on streetwalkers is not really noteworthy, but I love this picture which illustrates it.

Traffic Jam

Remember the supposed “child sex trafficking ring” run by “Somali gangs” that federal prosecutors were all puffed up about last year?

…every defendant who has gone to trial has either been acquitted or had their conviction thrown out. The government’s case was weakened when…a key witness…refused to testify, saying he is afraid for himself and for his family. So prosecutors charged Abdullahi Farah with two counts of contempt of court and obstruction of a child sex trafficking case. He was convicted…in April…and…is facing a maximum of 20 years…for the obstruction conviction…and…life in prison [for contempt]…Legal experts say…it’s almost unheard of for prosecutors to come down so hard on one of their own witnesses…

Considering that “agents said Farah gave conflicting accounts and sketchy details” and the judge “said he had problems with Farah’s credibility”, I think the truth is obvious: sleazebag prosecutor Van Vincent tried to pretend a bunch of petty thugs were a gigantic conspiracy, but drew a judge who wouldn’t roll over for him and is taking it out on the only available scapegoat. Consider the prospect of life in prison for a contempt charge, and then tell me the US isn’t a police state yet.

Japanese Prostitution (TW3 #21)

An American alibi-ya:

Paladin Deception Services, the self-proclaimed…”Leading Fictitious Reference Provider,” can “put together almost any fictitious scenario that you require”…Our agency can provide you with…testimonials over the phone in the local area code that you require. We’re confidential, professional, innovative, and affordable. Most importantly, we keep it legal…For only $54 (and $19.95 for each additional month), you get set up with a phone number, alibi verification and even options including…creation of a fictitious boss…

Backwards Into the Future (TW3 #21)

A United Nations Special Rapporteur has recommended that provisions relating to sex work in Namibia be repealed, stating that the “stigma, discrimination and violence” suffered by sex workers…often discourages them from accessing public services…[and hampers] efforts to reduce the spread of HIV-AIDS…Magdalena Sepúlveda states that…criminalisation of sex work…creates a climate…that fosters further violence and discrimination…

Birth of a Movement

Melissa Gira Grant published a short photoessay on sex worker participation in the current demonstrations in Istanbul, in earlier demonstrations in Madrid, New York and Mexico City, and in the Lyon church-occupation that launched the sex worker rights movement.

True Colors

…On 30 May 2013…Ye Haiyan was detained by police after being assaulted at her home…[she] is an advocate for the rights of sex workers and people living with HIV/AIDS…[who] has been consistently targeted…because of her work…[she] managed to send out a series of messages on Twitter appealing for help…

Bone of Contention (TW3 #29)

Once again: aren’t the late-night noise and public sex to which residents object illegal even if no money is exchanged?

…politicians have called a roundtable meeting…to look for ways to control street prostitution in South Auckland. The meeting…may lead to amending or abandoning a bill…to give…the Auckland…police powers to arrest both prostitutes and clients who engage in commercial sex in a banned area…

The Scarlet Letter (TW3 #52)

Marc Randazza thinks of a clever way to attack “revenge porn” sites:

Adult entertainment attorney Marc Randazza filed two civil cases against revenge porn site UGotPosted.com on counts of distributing child pornography and failing to comply with 18 U.S.C. § 2257…the site posted…“sexually explicit images” of 14-year-old Abigail Talley’s [genitals]…2257 requires individuals or entities hosting adult content to inspect a government-issued form of ID to determine the name and age of every performer featured and to keep records of such information…had the defendants complied, it would have been apparent that the plaintiff was a minor…Despite the ongoing case, and intervention by an FBI agent…the defendants have yet to…remove the photos…

Sex Workers Against Trafficking (TW3 #139)

The main tip-off on…two sisters kidnapped from Dhaka…came from a sex worker in Pune, who contacted one of her relatives in Kolkata, who in turn contacted the girls’ relatives in Bangladesh…these girls had allegedly been lured with false promises and kidnapped by a…close acquaintance…[who] sold them to a brothel…

Banishment

Government actors issue a warning of a problem created entirely by government actions:

…Kyle Evans with the Murfreesboro [Tennessee] Police Department…said sex offenders tend to congregate at hotels…”It meets the statutory requirements for them when they can’t live elsewhere”…The TBI confirmed 16 convicted sex offenders listed their home address at the Regal Inn…[and] said there is nothing illegal about hotels renting to sex offenders…

Absolute Corruption

…Twenty-five years after it first indicted [Jesse] Friedman, the Nassau County [New York] District Attorney’s Office…could completely exonerate him. Out of a dozen major child-sex-ring cases that roiled the country between 1984 and 2005, Jesse’s is one of the last convictions still standing…in November of 1987…postal inspectors intercepted…child pornography addressed to [his father]…police admitted that not one of the 30 children they…interviewed…reported any kind of abuse. But…they kept re-interviewing the children—some as many as 15 times, and often for hours at a stretch…The children began to buckle, telling tales of extraordinary abuse…the Friedmans’ computer class was [claimed to be] a nonstop nightmare of coerced sex acts, where Arnold and Jesse abused kids…in plain view of other students…playing “naked leapfrog,” sodomizing kids as they jumped from one to the next…[children were supposedly] molested an average of six times during every one of the 20 90-minute classes they took…

Natural Processes

…Of those who report their rapes, around 4–5% also describe experiencing orgasm. But the true numbers are likely much higher…[one] child therapist…[wrote on Reddit]…“There have been very few studies on orgasm during rape, but the research so far shows numbers from 10% to over 50% having this experience…In professional discussions, colleagues report similar numbers”…Despite what many rapists would like to believe, arousal does not mean that an assault was enjoyable or that a victim was asking for it…our bodies respond to sex…entirely without our permission or intention. Orgasm during rape isn’t an…expression of pleasure. It’s…a physical response…like breathing, sweating, or an adrenaline rush. Therapists commonly use the analogy of tickling. While tickling can be pleasurable, when it is done against someone’s wishes it can be very unpleasant experience…[yet] the one being tickled will continue laughing…

Under Every Bed

The supposed penetration of “sex trafficking” into every nook and cranny of the U.S. continues; notice the Profession of Faith in the first one:

Sex trafficking is real in South Dakota and won’t…be tolerated…”I still think there are a lot of naive people…who don’t feel it happens in their community but it is happening in their community,” Dawn Stenberg…of the Junior League of Sioux Falls…said…awareness…includes…hotel employees watching for young women who frequently come through their doors, and banks watching for suspicious transactions…[such as] “backpage.com transactions. They see a lot of that illegal activity through that,” Stenberg said…

If that kind of surveillance state doesn’t scare you, consider instead the rather disgusting sexual fantasies of Florida cops and bureaucrats: “Orange County announced the creation of a task force aimed at stopping human trafficking in central Florida…Some of the victims…forced into prostitution are as young as 12 years old…most of the victims are children…Kathy…was 11 when she was sold to sex traffickers before being rescued by the FBI…”

Obfuscation via Dysphemisms (TW3 #319)

Tulsa, OK continues its wicked crusade to charge whores with felonies via “use of a computer to violate state statute”. And just for good measure, they also charged one of them with the “crime” of owning a house. Don’t read the comments unless you want to feel ill.

Guest Columnist: Kelly Michaels

Kelly appeared on the Sex With Timaree podcast to speak about her “Whoremom” project; please give it a listen and spread the link around!

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That Was the Week That Was (#322)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged acting, agency denial, Arizona, Ashley Madison, Banishment, Between the Ears, Big Sister, bogus studies, brothels, Bullies With Badges, Catholicism, censorship, China, cops, Creating the Crisis, cult of the child, dirty, domestic violence, drugs, end demand, Europe, First They Came for the Hookers, Florida, Follow Your Bliss, France, hysteria, I’m Sure You Feel Safer Now, Iceland, Illinois, India, internet, Islam, Jill Brenneman, law, lawyers, Middle East, Moloch, Neither Addiction nor Epidemic, neofeminism, New York, Objectification Overruled, Ohio, Original Sin, pathologization of males, pimps, politicians, porn, prohibitionist myths, psychology, rape, rescue industry, Schadenfreude, sex offender registry, shame, statistics, Swedish model, Tennessee, The More the Better, United Kingdom, Utah, violence vs. sex workers, Washington (state), What a Week!, Where Are the Victims?, Wisconsin, Worse Than I Thought, yin and yang on May 31, 2013| 16 Comments »

Porn is not addictive. Sex is not addictive. The ideas of porn and sex addiction are pop psychology concepts that…have no legitimate scientific basis. – David Ley

Interview: Jill Brenneman

Jill has largely retired from activism, but has written a guest post about the Cleveland kidnap victims on Amanda Brooks’ blog: “…Gina DeJesus, Michelle Knight, and Amanda Berry…likely have many years of very costly medical expenses and the need for equally costly psychological help…Like me, their lives were interrupted at a young age. Now they have to move on with the physical and emotional issues…and…rebuild their lives…”

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic

Once again, Dr. David Ley tells it like it is:

…when people buy into the belief that porn is addictive, it changes the argument…sex and porn aren’t the problems…one part of this issue is an attack on aspects of male sexuality, including masturbation and use of pornography…which society fears…

Moloch

Though this was first published nearly a year ago, this updated version appeared last week:

…even though experts and studies have denounced the [sex offender registry] as ineffective, the battle cry of its supporters is still, “If it saves one child…!”…There is no evidence that [it] has done that at all. However, many, many thousands of children have had their lives made a living hell because of it…parents on the registry…are subject to the whims of local and state laws, including severe restrictions on where they may live…Vigilantes have murdered registrants, leaving their children fatherless…and…children [as young as]…nine…have been [registered]…Registered 12-year-olds aren’t even rarities…in Wisconsin…a district attorney did everything he could, and bragged about it, to have a 6-year-old prosecuted and targeted…for “playing doctor.” Some of these children find escape only in suicide…

I’m Sure You Feel Safer Now

New Yorkers are so very fortunate to have brave, dedicated professionals protecting them from dangerous criminals:

…Catherina G. Scalia, 47…was arrested after she…gave [an] undercover cop a massage…without a license…She’s also accused of unauthorized practice…[and an] offer for additional services…Scalia disputed the charges at her arraignment…”They keep framing me. I am broke. I am jobless. All these arrests are entrapment”…When CNN…profiled Scalia and her hot dog truck a year ago, Scalia asserted she was a stripper, not a prostitute…

Bullies With Badges

…Anael Ibanez…[was arrested] for distributing pornographic material and exploiting prostitution [in] Syracuse [Utah]…the only ones who actually watched the sex show [Ibanez arranged] were a couple of undercover police officers and…[a man they] charged with sexual solicitation. Four sex show performers also were arrested…and…charged…SWAT team members were dispatched to clear the theater…[they] broke a glass door…to gain entry…Ibanez works for a janitorial company…and had access to the theater after hours…

Yes, they dispatched a SWAT team to bust adults having sex.

Sleazier Than Thou (TW3 #18)

May must be Ashley Madison’s slowest month, because it’s always the one in which owner Noel Biderman makes some claim like this: “…its membership registration spiked [last] week following Sunday’s…season finale of The Simpsons…[Biderman] said new registrations surged a whopping 230% this week after…a frustrated Marge Simpson stumbled onto…’Sassymadison.com’…”

First They Came for the Hookers…

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

In June 2011…Reema Bajaj…was accused of prostitution…in June 2012 [she] pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor charge…Although she kept her Illinois law license…she…had trouble attracting clients. Earlier this month, she dissolved her law practice…and…sued three local lawyers: a former prosecutor who worked on her case, Calvin Campbell; one of her own former defense attorneys, Timothy Johnson, who is now law partners with Campbell; and a “John Doe” defendant. Bajaj alleges that the three lawyers circulated nude photos of her, causing her emotional distress and hurting her ability to generate business…

I hope she wins, restarts her practice and specializes in defending sex workers, since she knows firsthand how difficult it is for us to get justice in America.

Where are the Victims? (TW3 #28)

Because you know, “false consciousness” and all:

To hear the testimony of the women who worked for them, Vincent George Sr. and his son were not the violent and manipulative sex traffickers that prosecutors described, but, rather, the heads of a happy extended family…Bridgette Carr, director of the Human Trafficking Clinic at the University of Michigan Law School, said it was…“not shocking” that women would assist the defense, and may actually be evidence of how effective the pimps were in manipulating the women…

Worse Than I Thought

The cancer has now spread to Tennessee:

…12 new laws…include harsher criminal penalties on traffickers…and the creation of a state trafficking task force…a statewide study in 2011 documented incidents of sex trafficking… authorities will be able to prosecute those paying for sex – the “johns” – as traffickers…[thus allowing] for…termination of parent rights…

Read that again: Tennessee is going to call clients “traffickers”, charge them with a felony and steal their children. In other words, they’re going to punish fake “child trafficking” with the real, state-sanctioned variety.

Creating the Crisis

The largest study on domestic violence ever done demonstrates that the MRAs were much closer to the truth than the feminists: men and women commit partner abuse at roughly equal rates. 23% of women and 19.3% of men have been physically abused by a partner, while 28.3% of women and 21.6% of men have physically abused one. Lifetime rates of abuse are higher among women, while past-year rates are higher among men. 41% of women and 43% of men reported emotional abuse. Motives were similar in both sexes. Here’s a short summary of the findings; the full report is available at the first link.

Follow Your Bliss (TW3 #50)

Being an official busybody for an oppressive regime is hard work!

Despite China’s ongoing sexual revolution… anyone found to be producing and distributing obscene material can get three years in jail…[this] requires many pornography censors…[like] 70-year-old Liu Xiaozhen…[who said] “You have to watch even if you don’t want to”…

What a Week! (TW3 #52)

As bad as American prohibitionists are, at least most of them aren’t murderous:

Unidentified gunmen have shot dead at least seven women and five men at a [Baghdad] brothel…[near] where alcohol shops were attacked last week…The attackers apparently…[used] silenced weapons, as residents…said they did not see or hear anything out of the ordinary…Zayouna is an upscale…district…where a number of brothels have opened in recent years…

Between the Ears (TW3 #133)

…Ethicists and feminists are concerned [about]…a drug that can amp up female sexual longings…Male-sexual-enhancement drugs…are about…improving blood flow to the penis…while research so far suggests that most women need more than mere physical arousal…To stoke female desire with pharmacology, then, you need to get into the brain…some feminists anticipate that the marketing of these drugs will pathologize normal losses of desire…when in fact…[they] may result from stress or relationship problems that should be addressed in other ways…

I agree. If female desire were mostly about hormones, placebos wouldn’t be as effective as testosterone; in fact, they are often more so. Nor is this a problem limited to women, as Dr. Marty Klein discusses in the linkback.

Banishment

Florida’s “sex offender” residence restrictions are so bad that a small, isolated settlement named “Miracle Village” has become a haven for them. Meanwhile, David Vitter (who has been the center of several sex scandals) is trying to keep them from getting food stamps:

…This…will…contribute to the continuing cycle of trapping the same individuals in the criminal justice system. All released felons have difficulty gaining employment…those with sexual offenses face even more impediments due to the public registry and the myriad of restrictions placed upon [them]…Studies…show that, denied benefits, there is a higher rate of return to drug use and crime…anything gained financially from a reduction in the food stamp program will just show up as increased prison costs…

But wait, there’s more!

A network of…internet companies is mining data from sex-offender sites…[for] an extortion racket [which demands] up to $499 for removing names…and other personal data…SORArchives.com, Offendex.com and Onlinedetective.com did not take down individual profiles after payments were made and launched online harassment campaigns against those who balked at financial demands or filed complaints…the websites [also] list individuals…who no longer are required to register and…include names and addresses of people who never have been arrested or convicted of a sex crime. The…operators ensure that anyone in their databases can be found easily [via] Google…[and] have prominently profiled specific individuals, published their home and e-mail addresses, posted photographs of their relatives and copied their Facebook friends onto the…websites…

Original Sin

Pope Francis…urged mobsters…to abandon their evil ways, particularly…trafficking rackets…”I think of the great pain suffered by men, women and even children, exploited by so many mafias”…He decried the crime syndicates for “making them do work that makes them slaves, prostitution”…Francis…has branded human trafficking as one of the most terrible evils plaguing the world…

Big Sister (TW3 #317)

This pro-censorship Guardian article isn’t nearly as interesting as Jezebel’s response to it, written by revolting neofeminist toady “Lapdoug” Barry:

There’s a campaign afoot in Iceland to seriously restrict underage access to hardcore porn…the argument that porn is a form of free expression smells…a lot like the sort of bullshit the multibillion-dollar porn industry shovels…the porn industry does not have the interests of Icelands [sic] malleable adolescent minds at heart when it argues that limiting access to its productions is tantamount to government censorship…

The biggest lie of several here is that the porn ban is intended to “protect adolescents”, when in fact it was specifically sold (as part of the Swedish model) to “protect” women. But let’s give Lapdoug’s argument the benefit of the doubt; if he’ll agree to let his writings be censored by a government agency for a trial period (twenty years or so should suffice), I’m sure people who respect human agency far more than he does can be counted on to give a nationwide censorship regime all the consideration it deserves.

The More the Better (TW3 #317)

Are people really so stupid they believe it’s totally different now?

[James Lipton]…of…Inside the Actors Studio used to be a pimp…the youthful 86-year-old admitted…that he had pandered “a whole bordello”…in 1950s Paris…”The French mecs didn’t exploit women. They represented them, like agents”…Lipton…added that…he was against people paying for sex. “I think if you can’t earn it on your own, then you don’t deserve it.”

Because obviously celebrities are morally superior beings qualified to judge what others “deserve”.

Objectification Overruled (TW3 #320)

Pathetic middle-class white British feminists are at it again:

The UK’s main supermarkets could be exposed to legal challenges…if they refuse to remove magazines and newspapers with naked women on their covers…In a letter published in the Guardian, 14 equalities lawyers say…retailers are vulnerable…under sexual discrimination law…A campaign launched by UK Feminista and…Object aims to put pressure on Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Asda and WHSmith to remove lads’ mags from their shelves…[they] threaten…a test case and will support employees uncomfortable with images of naked and near-naked women…

This is a load of rubbish and they know it; such a precedent would mean that anyone could bring a case against any product she finds “offensive”, for example Catholics suing to have birth control removed. But lest you think this idiocy is limited to Britain:

…the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has unanimously passed a proposal…to ban the display of bikini-clad mannequins outside lingerie shops…With Mumbai recording the second highest number of rapes in the country, [law sponsor Ritu] Tawade said the display of inadequately clothed mannequins was indecent and could lead to “wrong acts” by men…corporator Sunil Prabhu backed her…”I agree…that such scantily clad mannequins do invite unwanted attention of men and the resulting surge of sex crimes”…

Schadenfreude (TW3 #320)

Yet another rescue industry “hero” is exposed as a con artist: “[Andy Conner]…the [Washington state] Sheriff’s Deputy who funded a charity to help young women escape prostitution…is on administrative leave while the King County Sheriff’s Office investigates allegations that thousands of dollars may have gone missing…”

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That Was the Week That Was (#321)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged A War for Peace, activism, Africa, Against Their Will, Arizona, Australia, avails laws, Backwards into the Future, bad customers, BDSM, brothels, Cambodia, Canada, censorship, cops, cult of the child, dirty, disability, disease, diversion programs, drugs, East Asia, end demand, evidence, Georgia, Good News-Bad News, Hard Numbers, hysteria, India, Islam, law, Madonna/whore, Malawi, Neither Addiction nor Epidemic, neofeminism, New Jersey, New Zealand, No Other Option, One Born Every Minute, Original Sin, Oscillation, pimps, politicians, porn, Profit from Panic, prohibitionist myths, Prudish Pedants, psychology, rape, rescue industry, sex rays, sex work is work, South Africa, streetwalkers, Tennessee, The Crumbling Dam, The Immunity Syndrome, The More the Better, Think of the Children!, Traffic Jam, vaccines, violence vs. sex workers, What If They Threw a Party?, yin and yang, Zimbabwe on May 25, 2013| 31 Comments »

If they would just remove the police from skulking around and arresting those of us who just want to earn a living from a mutually consenting activity, they could actually focus on these terrible things. – Rachel Wotton

Old Folks At Home

Damned amateurs are always screwing everything up:

A man, 75, and a woman, 66, suspected of using cocaine and running a prostitution ring out of their apartments…have been arrested after residents complained about vagrants, drunks and addicts…James Parham and his neighbor Cheryl Chaney…admitted providing prostitutes — mostly young women with crack cocaine addictions — to…younger neighbors…

Backwards into the Future

The Commission for Gender Equality…called for…decriminalisation of sex work [in South Africa]…[CGE commissioner Janine] Hicks said decriminalisation would…allow sex workers to report brothel owners who were involved in trafficking or hiring children…

Meanwhile, in Malawi:

…Centre for Human Rights Education, Advice and Assistance (CHREAA)…in association with the Southern Africa Litigation Centre, recently conducted…research that shows…a vast majority of sex workers are regularly abused [robbed and raped] by the Police…[executive director Victor] Mhango said…sex workers…are at liberty to call the toll free number 8000333 where they can be assisted… “Sex workers deserve to be protected by the law just like any other Malawian as enshrined in the Constitution,” he said…

Against Their Will

Here’s the way rescue industry group International Justice Mission tells it:

…General Sun Ro…led his team of police and IJM support staff to rescue these young women from a brothel where they had been sold and exploited for sex. “You are now no longer oppressed,” General Sun Ro began, urging the young women to take advantage of the opportunities, vocational training programs and aftercare services available to them as sex trafficking survivors…

And here’s the reality. Obviously, the general doesn’t consider beatings and gang rape by the police to be forms of oppression.

Prudish Pedants

…a federal district court in Georgia ruled that a series of stories written or edited by Frank McCoy were obscene, and thus he violated 18 USC 1462 in “transporting” obscene works…the subject matter is…definitely…extreme [“the sexual abuse, rape, torture and murder of children”]…but…McCoy…had a distinguished English professor testify on his behalf that the works had “serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value”…the judge disagreed…

Oscillation

Another example of how neofeminists play fast and loose with the facts:

A few months ago, a post…[stated] that [when]…junior high…students were asked what they would do if they woke up “transformed into the opposite sex,” the girls showed mixed emotions but the boys [said]…”Kill myself”…the source [was]…The Gendered Society by Michael Kimmel…[whose] reference [was] a 1984 book called The Longest War: Sex Differences in Perspective…the claim…seemed to have no basis at all, other than one comment…The Gendered Society…briefly acknowledges that women’s earnings are driven down by family-related work interruptions–but still treats gender gaps in pay and advancement almost entirely as…discrimination…[it] uncritically repeats tales…that girls’ self-esteem “plummets” in junior high school–without mentioning that they have been strongly disputed…by mainstream psychologists…The Gendered Society also [claims that] the United States…”has the highest rate of reported rape in the industrial world–about eighteen times higher than England”…[but] according to United Nations statistics, in 2010 the reported rape rate in the U.S.–27.3 per 100,000 people–was slightly lower than in England and Wales, at 28.8 per 100,000…if it is indeed the most balanced gender studies textbook available–which may well be true–that says a lot about the rest.

The Immunity Syndrome (TW3 #19)

…the “sex superbug” that “could be worse than AIDS” which was supposedly “found in Hawaii [and] California” turns out to be just another media-promoted terror story. “The [gonorrhea] super-strain…[which] infected a female Japanese sex worker in 2011…has been found nowhere else,” [reported Jonathan Weiss of MedicalDaily.com] The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have affirmed that the bacterium has failed to appear anywhere else in the world beyond the single case in Japan…

The Crumbling Dam (TW3 #20)

This includes far too much “whore as victim” rhetoric, but it’s a step:

[Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario] Police Chief, Bob Davies…[announced] it will be new police policy to not release the names and addresses of individuals involved in prostitution type charges. Moreover, the police department will make a major shift away from enforcement against women (or men) involved in the sex trade. Instead officers will be trained to engage and identify the underlying factors that drive women into a lifestyle of selling sex and then connect them to agencies…which can assist individuals out of the sex industry…

Traffic Jam (TW3 #21)

…Project ROSE—a collaboration between the Phoenix Police Department…and a number of local service organizations–[conducted] a three day raid targeting sex workers…Advocates have distributed “know your rights” information amongst communities who may be affected…[and] a…protest…[was held] Thursday May 16…in front of the “command post” at Bethany Bible Church…Arrestees…with no prior arrests for sex work, no outstanding warrants, and no…drugs at the time of arrest…have the option of “diversion” to Project ROSE or incarceration on a prostitution charge…[which] in Arizona can be a death sentence…

Few arrestees qualify for the “diversion” program, and of those who do only a third complete it.

Think of the Children! (TW3 #23)

“A weekend festival in [Baltimore] that promised classes on bondage, role play and other sexual techniques has been canceled after the new operators of the Clarence H. Du Burns Arena decided the erotic exposition was not appropriate at a facility also used for children’s sports practices…” Obviously, the sex rays emitted from all these dirty people would contaminate the structure, inducing the dreaded Premature Sexualization in the innocent little moppets who entered the building later.

Good News, Bad News (TW3 #30)

Rebecca Davies…and…other sex workers and supporters…will protest against the 2011 Prostitution Bill which is expected to be re-introduced and to demand full decriminalisation…Ms Davies said…the Bill would make WA the most dangerous place in Australia to be a sex worker…licensing, where employee’s full names were available for clients to see, could risk their safety and privacy…only about 10 per cent of sex workers would comply…Sex workers had to advertise a landline phone number, not a mobile, as one of the conditions – a restriction not placed on any other industry…

The More The Better (TW3 #32)

They are likely Hamilton [New Zealand]’s biggest brothel keepers, with 500 girls on their books in the seven years since they began their foray into the sex industry. Tattooed, shady characters with underworld connections? Far from it. She’s the secretary of the PTA and…he’s a well-spoken former musician…the pair own a small…software development business…Hamilton’s two best-known brothels, and soon, a private swingers club…

Zimbabwe (TW3 #33)

This article about Zimbabwe’s repeated “crackdowns” on whores (and the way they keep netting amateurs) is mostly familiar ground and silly stereotypes, but does include two points of interest: one, that “legislator Tabitha Khumalo has…threatened to expose fellow legislators who have gallivanted with those she calls ‘pleasure managers’ if they refuse to back [decriminalization]”; and two, that the Open Society Foundation’s 2012 study of the six nations with similar policies of “harassing and [physically] abusing…sex workers” included Zimbabwe along with Kenya, Namibia, Russia, South Africa, and [wait for it] the United States.

Profit from Panic (TW3 #40)

Hey, kids, be the first in your neighborhood to be “trafficked”! Have fun! Win prizes!

Students at Colonial Middle school [in Memphis, Tennessee] have spent the last few weeks learning about the growing problem…of sex trafficking including prostitution…“I think its [sic] appropriate for middle school because if you look at the statistics of human trafficking the majority of people that get pulled in are between the ages of 12 to 14”…[said teacher Jennifer Shiberou]…

What If They Threw a Party and Nobody Came? (TW3 #42)

…In Australia, which began use of the HPV vaccine in 2007, cases of genital warts in young women aged 12 – 26 dropped 59 percent, and 39 percent for men…The…vaccine caused quite the uproar here in the States. The usual antivaxxers hated it because, well, it’s a vaccine, but there was also mainstream fear-mongering, as well as being demonized by the conservatives, who said it would lead to promiscuity. That last is pure nonsense; in fact, a new study shows no significant increase in sexual activity in young women who have had the vaccine over those who have not…

No Other Option (TW3 #46)

Here’s another good interview with the amazing Australian sex worker Rachel Wotton, who specializes in disabled clients and founded the charity Touching Base. Its only sour note is at the end, where interviewer Wendy Syfret seems determined to drag “trafficking and degradation” mythology into what is otherwise a very positive piece.

Hard Numbers (TW3 #311)

…Steph Key…[introduced] another attempt to decriminalise sex work after her previous bill failed by one vote in November. The new legislation would give sex workers and their employers the same access to the WorkCover scheme as other…businesses…retains laws that make sex work by a person aged under 18, or with a client under that age, illegal…wipes clean past sex work convictions …makes it illegal to discriminate against a person who is or has been a sex worker…[and] removes laws against living off the earnings of a prostitute…

According to Because I’m a Whore, this bill is much better than the last one and has the support of sex workers; if passed, South Australia would be the third place in the world to have true decriminalization.

Original Sin

The “Trafficking in America Task Force” looks at first like any other silly rescue industry NGO, but a little digging reveals some really bizarre stuff, including the assertion that the true cause of “sex trafficking” is PORN!

Statistics show that many times it starts with pornography…One look as a child, continued looks as a teenagers, perhaps buying sex for the first time as a young adult, expecting your female partner, girl friend, or wife to act as the prostituted women act. When they don’t your relationship turns to self gratification rather than intimacy. You ay [sic] turn to violent sex with those you buy…Then…you want to pay for younger victims — and — you — are — stuck — in a — cycle…when you look at pictures of women you are branding us as objects for your own pleasure, objects of no value. We are human beings…Jesus said, “I did not give you a spirit of fear — but a spirit of power, and of love, and of SOUND MIND.” Ask him to help you…Addiction to pornography is a type of emotional and mental trafficking…

A War for Peace (TW3 #313)

I’m beginning to think her mother is right:

…Amina Tyler…passed through heavy security and checkpoints to enter the city of Kairouan, where police were preventing hardline conservative Islamists from holding an annual conference. There she unveiled her bleach [sic] blonde hair and cutoff jeans, scrawled “FEMEN” on the wall of a cemetery near the city’s main mosque, and attempted to take off her clothes…The protest enraged local residents who converged on her, and police took her into custody…Her mother, Wafa, [said] her daughter needed help and was being treated by a psychiatrist…

One Born Every Minute (TW3 #319)

…Shatabdi Saha, a banker…with the Usha Multipurpose Cooperative Society…conducts…sessions…[in spotting counterfeit] because…many customers had started palming off fake notes…for their services…”If customers give them counterfeit notes, it’s a great loss for them,” [said] DMSC secretary Bharati Dey…unlike others, sex workers cannot go to the police to report such fake notes. “The police will start harassing them instead of helping them”…

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic (TW3 #319)

…the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) announced it will no longer fund research based on DSM…for the simple reason that [it] is irrelevant to determining the cause and treatment of psychological problems…it…doesn’t point to the actual causes…that drive and maintain disorders…[its] categories are not discrete…and…it…fails to account for comorbidity…this fifth edition is just moving a few deck chairs on a sinking ship…Soon we’ll need to…lower the lid, hammer it down, and bury the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

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Tales from the Dark Side

Posted in Current Events, History, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged BDSM, censorship, cops, cult of the child, dirty, fantasy, FBI, hysteria, neo-Victorianism, New York, pathologization of males, porn, psychology, rape, social purity, Tales from the Dark Side on May 9, 2013| 31 Comments »

An inability to tell fantasy from reality would normally be considered evidence of psychosis, but in law enforcement it’s a job requirement. – Maggie McNeill

Since at least the time of Plato, the natural world was generally viewed in Western thought as corrupt, foul and bad; this idea entered Christianity via Gnosticism and dominated philosophy until the advent of the Romantic Era in the late 18^th century. Anything of the natural world (including, of course, sex) was to be looked down upon and avoided wherever possible; the things of the mind and spirit were what was important, and those who wished to appear superior to others removed themselves from the natural world and eschewed the “pleasures of the flesh” (at least in public). The Romantics, however, rejected all that; they taught that the natural world was innately good, that childhood “innocence” (i.e. closeness to the natural state) was a thing to be cherished, that primitive people were “noble savages” and that “natural” living was purer and better than “artificial”. This was decidedly a minority viewpoint; the growing middle class of 19^th-century Europe and America still saw untamed Nature as rather nasty, and those who lived closer to it than they (in other words, the working class) as inferiors to be “improved” by curing them of their dedication to physical pleasures such as sex and liquor.

But humans are not known for logical consistency, and the bourgeois less so than most; as the Victorian Era wore on, some elements of Romantic philosophy were absorbed into the common weltanschauung, even when they contradicted other aspects of it. For example, the “innocence” of children became the center of a veritable cult despite the fact that adults were expected to behave in an incredibly artificial manner, and “natural” foods and medicines were all the rage in the “social purity” crowd because they were believed to excite the (natural) physical passions less than highly processed ones! But if the Victorians’ beliefs were incongruous, those of the neo-Victorians are even worse: while they reject the belief that sex is innately bad, they also believe against all reason and evidence that it’s something like a radioactive material which must be handled with special and elaborate precautions or else it becomes the single most destructive force on Earth. They imagine that engaging in sex for the “wrong” reasons, or without the benediction of elaborate rituals of consent, or with people separated from one another by more than a very few years of age, is terribly harmful. They believe that merely taking pictures of the taboo act creates a kind of Gorgonic icon which drives its viewers mad, and that the mere existence of such images harms women and children who are not even in close proximity to it. And they fervently assert that it is so incredibly dangerous to the sacred “innocence” of “children” (a term which refers not to true children, but to a ritual category which actually includes some adults), for strangers to even imagine sexual contact with them causes such tremendous harm that those who indulge in these Forbidden Thoughts deserve penalties greater than those for violent assault, followed by lifelong social ostracism.

Needless to say, most of this has only the most tenuous basis in reality, and some of it none at all. But the desire to describe Nature (especially sex) as “good” or “bad” is a very strong one, and for the neo-Victorian mind to accept sex into the “good” category it must be ritually purified by amputating all of its darker aspects, branding even the discussion of them as “violence”, and even pretending that they aren’t even sex at all. This belief flies in the face of reality; sex, fear, dominance and violence are inextricably bound together, and only by living in a state of complete denial can someone pretend that the only valid, “healthy” and legal sex is that which is so sanitized and neutered that it resembles the real thing about as closely as a hamburger does a heifer. Even many unadventurous people have a few rather dark fantasies or repressed turn-ons, and a few have fantasies that if acted upon would be evil indeed (as my friend Philippa used to say, “good fantasy, bad reality”). But the mere existence of violent, dark fantasies does not indicate a corresponding plan to carry them out; probably 99% of all sexual fantasies are never acted upon, and when it comes to those involving unquestionably evil acts I’m sure the percentage is higher still. Furthermore, the mere discussion of such fantasies with others does not constitute a conspiracy to turn them into reality. But in a world where prosecution for thoughtcrime has become a grim reality, it might be wise to restrict such discussions to fully-anonymized online accounts and to encrypt any files referring to the fantasy; otherwise you could end up like Gilberto Valle:

…agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation took Officer Valle into custody…after they uncovered several plots to kidnap, rape, cook and eat women…the officer’s estranged wife recently contacted the F.B.I. to report that…[he] viewed and kept disturbing items on his computer…[though he] never followed through on any of the acts he is accused of discussing. His lawyer…said the officer committed no crime. “At worst, this is someone who has sexual fantasies…There is no actual crossing the line from fantasy to reality,” she added…

At first I leaned toward believing the allegations, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that these were almost certainly no more than extreme fantasies used by a vindictive ex to put him away; the only reason I had given the story as much credence as I did was that it’s very easy to believe a cop capable of acts of extreme, non-consensual sadism. Then just a few weeks ago, I went from “almost certain” to “dead certain”:

A high-ranking police official…and a former high-school librarian were charged…in a plot to kidnap, torture and kill women and children, federal prosecutors said. Richard Meltz…and Robert Christopher Asch…were held without bail…Peter Brill, an attorney for Mr. Meltz, said his client “had no interest or intention of hurting anybody…it was never anything other than a fantasy”…An official said the case against the men grew out of an investigation in which a former New York Police Department officer was charged and convicted in a plot to kidnap, rape, cook and eat women. The former officer, Gilberto Valle, was convicted in March and is awaiting sentencing.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard of an organized interstate gang of serial killers who plot capers for months on the internet without ever carrying a single one out. I think it’s pretty obvious that what the defense attorneys in both cases said is true: these are men with a very extreme BDSM fantasy who are being sacrificed to further the dominant cultural myth that sex can be purified, sanctified and tamed.

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