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That Was the Week That Was (#39)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged Above the Law, activism, agency denial, Amazingly Stupid Statements, An Example to the West, Arizona, Backpage, bad customers, Bad Fantasy-Good Reality, Birth of a Movement, brothels, California, Cambodia, Canada, censorship, Coming and Going, condoms, cops, cosmetic surgery, dirty, drivers, East Asia, end demand, Europe, Forward and Backward, France, harm reduction, hysteria, India, Japan, Japanese Prostitution, Korea, law, Neither Addiction nor Epidemic, neofeminism, Netherlands, New York, Not To Be Taken Internally, Parting of the Ways, Pennsylvania, prohibitionist myths, psychology, rape, Real People, Shift in the Wind, sisterhood, stereotypes, streetwalkers, Swedish model, transgender, underage, video, Washington DC, Worse Than I Thought on September 29, 2012| 15 Comments »

It’s not about promiscuity, which makes you sound square; it’s not about prostitution, which makes you sound dirty; it’s about sex-trafficking, which makes you sound like you’re on the side of the angels, know-nothing though they might be. – Michael Wolff

Amazingly Stupid Statements

“Just Don’t Call It Slut-Shaming: A Feminist Guide to Silencing Sex Workers” is a funny and dead-on-target lampoon of neofeminist anti-whore rhetoric in the form of a mock primer. Definitely a must-read.

Cracks in the Dam

Canadian courts slap down another government attempt to stop sex workers from claiming human rights:

The Supreme Court of Canada has upheld the right of a non-profit group representing women…in downtown Vancouver’s sex trade to challenge the country’s anti-prostitution laws on constitutional grounds. The ruling means the Downtown Eastside Sex Workers United Against Violence Society can go back to B.C. Supreme Court to pursue a case it launched five years ago…

The government’s argument against the suit relied on the sophistry that one of the parties in the suit (Sheryl Kiselbach) was no longer affected by the laws due to being retired, and that the other party (the DESWUAVS) could not be affected because it was an organization, therefore neither had the right to sue. But the judge realized that the government’s claim that streetwalkers had to bring such suits individually was absurd, and ruled in favor of the group. It’s not only good news for sex workers, but for other marginalized Canadians as well:

…[attorney] Katrina Pacey…explained [that] “This would provide a real opportunity for marginalized people, people with mental health issues, people with HIV, prisoners, refugees, children to form a collective organization whereby they then have the support and capacity to bring these cases forward, as a community”…

Japanese Prostitution

The bad economy and political tensions between their countries have combined to make things increasingly difficult for Chinese whores in Japan, creating a dangerously unbalanced buyer’s market:

…“Rumors have been spreading that Chinese girls have been beaten up by Japanese Johns, and some of them are even begging off on transactions with customers they don’t know out of fears for their safety,” says “pink” journalist Yasuhiro Ebina. “Many Chinese women tend to be blunt and unsociable, but of late they are forcing themselves to smile, and have been primping themselves to improve their appearance. Before a deri heru (out-call sex) service might have charged an additional 8,000 yen for honban (the “real thing,” i.e., intercourse), but now they’ve knocked as much as 5,000 yen off the total price”…women from Shanghai tend to be proud and many refuse to dispense oral sex, but over the past week they are now even providing lip service bareback. And some ladies from Dalian or Harbin are even allowing customers condom-free rides…

Forward and Backward

The stupidity, it burns! “…[Washington, D.C.] police lieutenant Jeffery Carroll told residents at a neighborhood meeting…that [a perceived] jump in [street] prostitution may be related to the surge in construction activity and increase in construction workers in the neighborhood. Carroll told residents that prostitution activity typically takes place between midnight and…6:00 a.m. The recent surge has come between 3:30 and 7:30 a.m. or else at around 3:30 p.m….which police say could correlate to changes in construction shifts…”

Not To Be Taken Internally

Yet another poor fool has died from allowing a non-doctor to inject filth into her arse in a non-medical setting:

…52-year-old Morris Garner…who has had gender changing procedures and goes by the name Tracey Lynn Garner, is charged with depraved-heart murder in the March death of 37-year-old Karima Gordon, of Atlanta…Gordon became ill within 30 minutes of leaving Garner’s house in Jackson after…injection [of a silicone-like substance into her buttocks] but decided to try to make it home to Georgia before seeking medical treatment…[investigator Lee McDivitt]…said her chance of surviving the injections was small, anyway…”The [medical examiner] told me…[that when he] cut the victim open…this material ran all over the floor, all over their shoes, all over the place”…

What I can’t understand is why so many of these self-proclaimed cosmetic surgeons are transgendered.

Above the Law

Once again: As long as government actors have excessive power over individuals, this will keep happening: “…Pittsburgh Public Schools police officer…Robert Lellock…was arrested…[on] 23 counts of crimes including corruption of minors, child endangerment and sex crimes…” Lellock allegedly raped several 13-14 year old boys, ensuring their silence by a combination of threats to kill their families and rewards of marijuana and class-skipping privileges.

An Example To the West

You may remember that DMSC had formed its own football (soccer) team for the children of Calcutta sex workers; well, two of the boys were picked for a world championship team: “Two sons of sex workers from India’s eastern state of West Bengal will play soccer…in the Indian…team for the Homeless World Soccer Cup 2012 in Mexico…’This is a big achievement in integrating children of sex workers with the mainstream sports community,’ said Dr Samarjit Jana of DMSC.”

The Birth of a Movement

This Guardian article is mostly about sex workers’ reaction to the socialist scheme to inflict the Swedish model on France, but it also contains interesting information on French hookers’ efforts to circumvent busybody laws and the sleazy tricks cops use to harass them.

…The “white van women”…embody the French state’s difficult attitudes to prostitution. As in the UK, prostitution itself…is not a crime. But…[a] 2003…law [forbids being]…in a public place known for prostitution dressed in revealing clothes. To get round this, women started working in private vans. Selling sex inside a vehicle was not breaking the law. But police are now using any means to crack down on the growing number of sex-work vans, namely parking tickets and tow-trucks…some…owe thousands of euros in parking tickets and pound-release fines accrued each month…

Shift in the Wind

An excellent op-ed against “end demand” rhetoric appeared last Sunday in, of all the unexpected places, The New York Times; I’ll bet Nick Kristof isn’t happy:

…policy makers have started to push to eradicate all prostitution, not just the trafficking of children into the sex trade. Under the catchphrase “no demand, no supply,” they advocate increasing criminal penalties against men who buy sex — a move they believe will upend the market that fuels prostitution and sex trafficking…[but] the “end demand” campaign will harm trafficking victims and sex workers more than it helps them…End-demand advocates’ prototypical victim — an abused teenage girl…forced into the sex trade…does exist. But they disregard the fact that individuals, including boys, men and transgender people, enter the sex trade for a variety of reasons. The pimped girl who has inflamed the public’s imagination needs government services and protection, not to be made into a symbolic figure in an ideological battle to eradicate the entire sex industry, which, like many other sectors, includes adults laboring in conditions ranging from upscale to exploitative, from freely chosen to forced…despite their righteous anger, the end-demand crowd is quick to dismiss what many sex workers actually have to say. Some activists have gone so far as to brand those who criticize their campaign as “house slaves” unable to recognize their own oppression…

The writer is being polite; Melissa Farley’s actual term was “house nigger”. The article goes on to strongly criticize the Swedish model, flatly stating that it has failed to reduce prostitution and explaining how it harms women; it reports that most abuse of sex workers is by police rather than clients or “pimps” as claimed by the prohibitionists; and it discusses real solutions very much like those advocated in this blog. The article is not long, and well worth your time.

Worse Than I Thought

Proposition 35 is so awful (Chorus: How awful is it?) that even trafficking victim advocates oppose it:

…The opponents, who range from a South Bay nonprofit to a co-author of California’s current law against trafficking, say that, instead of helping, Proposition 35 will set back their work by years. Chief among their concerns is the measure’s focus on hefty penalties rather than a collaborative attack on the problem…That approach, they say, ignores the victims…[they] also condemn the discrepancy between penalties for labor and sex trafficking…Most victims don’t end up in the sex trade…yet Proposition 35 provides for lower penalties for labor victims…

The Phoenix Pharisees

The Maricopa County sheriff’s office only “treats prostitutes as trafficking victims” when they find it convenient: “…Over the course of a month, detectives made 37 arrests on suspicion of prostitution-related crimes…in an unincorporated area of the county tucked between Tempe and Guadalupe…suspects made contact with an undercover deputy, who secured an offer of sex for money and then used a code word as a signal for other deputies to storm the hotel room…” “Code word?” “Stormed” the room? Their pomposity would be hilarious if they weren’t ruining the lives of real women.

Thoughts On My First Conference

I’m the third interviewee in this video. It’s not very long, but I still figured y’all would want to see it.

Parting of the Ways

This Guardian op-ed presents Michael Wolff’s opinion of the Backpage-Village Voice split; though he has no love for Lacey and Larkin he has even less for Kristof and company, and the article provides the interesting tidbit that some of the anti-Backpage campaign was funded by the Church of Scientology in revenge for the Voice’s relentless attacks on it.

Metaupdates

Bad Fantasy, Good Reality in TW3 (#7)

Cambodian cops are learning to parrot their American masters quite well:

Chan Sreynuch, the owner of Mikasa Coiffure and Beauty…was arrested…on suspicion of human trafficking, according to the national military police spokesman Kheng Tito…According to him, Sreynuch would lead young women — often aspiring singers and students — to her salon, then connect them with wealthy businessmen…Three of her manicured and coiffed callgirls were also detained…[and] sent to Phnom Penh Municipal Hall’s rehabilitation centre for “re-education”…

Coming and Going in TW3 (#12)

“Anna Gristina…has pleaded guilty to promoting prostitution…[she] will be sentenced…to time served and probation as part of a plea deal. The judge warned the Scotland-born woman she could also be deported…”

An Example To the West in TW3 (#14)

“Workers in the [Korean] sex industry called…for the scrapping or revision of anti-sex trafficking laws…[which limit their] rights to sexual autonomy and their freedom to enjoy a free sex life as adults…another sex worker surnamed Kim submitted a petition…for…judgment on whether the laws are constitutionally acceptable…”

Real People in TW3 (#21)

British prohibitionist Julie Bindel interviewed the Fokkens sisters, the elderly Dutch whores about whom a documentary was recently made; unsurprisingly, she only reports the negative parts and dismisses the “rosy picture the twins paint of prostitution” as just a kind of weird twin-thing. Of course she is pleased to report that the Fokkens say legalization has been bad for Dutch hookers (largely because of the exaggerated tax assessments European officials commonly use to persecute sex workers), but cannot or will not comprehend that no sex worker rights organization in the world supports Dutch-style legalization.

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic in TW3 (#29)

If you’re impressed by those brain studies that “prove” porn, sugar, the internet or whatever is “as addictive as cocaine”, you need to consider the study which won this year’s Ig Nobel Prize in neuroscience “for demonstrating that brain researchers, by using complicated instruments and simple statistics, can see meaningful brain activity anywhere — even in a dead salmon.”

This Week in 2011

My columns on Mabon and Banned Books Week were followed by others on misuse of the word “vagina”, the fallacy of “empowerment”, dehumanization of whores, dominatrices in the news and women’s views of male sex workers.

This Week in 2010

My first Mabon column, the problems caused by unsatisfied male sex drives, my sex-related pet peeves, one of my earliest columns on “sex trafficking” hysteria and an angry reply to it, the growth of opposition toward prohibition and my announcement of the Himel decision.

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Links #116

Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, censorship, China, Colorado, cops, dirty, drugs, East Asia, Facebook, harm reduction, Japan, law, Malaysia, Ohio, politicians, psychology, sex offender registry, video, yin and yang on September 23, 2012| 40 Comments »

Governments which have a regard to the common interest are constituted in accordance with strict principles of justice, and are therefore true forms; but those which regard only the interest of the rulers are all defective and perverted forms, for they are despotic, whereas a state is a community of freemen. – Aristotle

Radley Balko is back to blogging regularly at The Agitator again; he restarted over the past couple of weeks but made the official announcement yesterday in a post which contained this fantastic and link-rich mini-rant: “Stop quoting Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in defense of your censorious bullshit. In fact, stop quoting Oliver Wendell Holmes for anything. He was a racist, eugenicist, authoritarian asshole. I’ve never understood why progressives have thought so highly of him, back then, or now.” Balko was in top form this week, contributing every link down to the video via his Twitter feed. The video (which is here due to its coolness) comes via EconJeff, who also supplied the first two links below it.

A swarm of cops with an attack dog and a SWAT team equipped with a tank, a helicopter and tear gas are dispatched for “high risk operation” of arresting a corpse.
Congress literally doesn’t know what it’s doing.
Cop shoots man in the back for jaywalking.
The inherent sadism of prohibitionism.
Freedom for me but not for thee.
Paul Bunyan undressed here.

The New Yorker gently mocks Facebook for banning that Adam and Eve cartoon I featured last week.
How the future happened.
The magnitude of the mess we’re in.
Three congressmen praise Scientology.
Malaysia declares V-neck shirts to be gay.
Mentally ill man tased to death for shoplifting.
A powerful, yet simple fable about faith in authority.
Presenting the politician berry: all style, no substance.
Sometimes you learn really awkward things about people after they die.
Absolutely horrific account of how “sex offender” laws destroyed one man’s life.
US government declares that male football players can subsist on the same amount of food as petite, sedentary girls.

This ad in favor of Colorado’s upcoming measure to regulate marijuana like alcohol is especially effective for anyone who knows what usually happens to dogs in drug raids:

How ambitious and sleazy prosecutors literally made a federal case out of an internecine squabble among the Amish.
The Secretary-General of the UN is against free speech, except for whatever kind governments decide to allow.
“If the ice-cream store goes under, who knows what happens?“
Police chief says people who use banned drugs are terrorists.
He really puts himself into his art.

(Thanks to Walter Olson for the third item below the video, Tracy Quan for the fourth, Popehat for the fifth, Nun Ya for the sixth, Mike Siegel for the seventh, Luscious Lani for the eighth and Cthulhuchick for the ninth. The second-to-last one above the picture is from Lenore Skenazy, the last from Baylen Linnekin and the picture itself from Eapen Thampy of Americans for Forfeiture Reform.)

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That Was the Week That Was (#38)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged Above the Law, activism, agency denial, animals, archeofeminism, Aversions, California, cosmetic surgery, dirty, drugs, East Asia, Europe, Feminine Pragmatism, Florida, Follow Your Bliss, harm reduction, hysteria, law, lawheads, marriage, My Readers Write, Naked Truth, neofeminism, Oklahoma, Philippines, porn, pragmatism, psychology, rape, rescue industry, Scapegoats, sisterhood, stereotypes, Swedish model, Switzerland, The Last Shall Be First, The Pro-Rape Coalition, tits, transgender, Uncommon Sense, underage, We Told You So, welcome to our world, Who Did Your Tits?, Worse Than I Thought, yellow journalism, yin and yang on September 21, 2012| 31 Comments »

Beware of billionaires who want to save your life. – Mark Leno

Modern Marriage

Brooke Magnanti on Catherine Hakim’s new book:

…people are still marrying, still making that leap into the conceptual and statistical improbability of ’til death do us part. And where does that leave affairs, clients of sex workers, enjoyers of porn and the rest of us?…When many couples choose to remain childless, or have no familial wealth to pass on, why are we still doing this, anyway? Those questions and a lot more are what drives the narrative of…The New Rules: Internet Dating, Playfairs, and Erotic Power. In it, [Catherine Hakim]…calmly dissects the differences between the cultures where it’s okay to throw a strop at the first sign of relationships going off piste, and those where adultery is not only usual but expected…

Aversions

In a way, this is one of those “dog bites man” things, unless I’m the only one who’s ever noticed that most women are more sexually open when they’re very turned on:

…A small Dutch study…indicate[s] that arousal overrides feelings of disgust and facilitates a woman’s desire to do something that a woman who is not aroused might find flat-out repulsive…Daniel R. Kelly, an associate professor of philosophy at Purdue…explained that disgust is an “extension of our immune system” that helps prevent people from getting infected by making them wary of things, like bodily fluids, that…make people vulnerable…David Buss, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas…[said] “Women show far more disgust and especially sexual disgust, than men…It helps to protect women from having sex with the wrong men, such as men who might communicate diseases…show signs of a high ‘parasite load’…have poor hygiene and so on,” he said. What is interesting about the new Dutch paper, the two experts agreed, is that it suggests the mission to avoid the potentially “dangerous” parts of sex takes a backseat when women are aroused…

Who Did Your Tits?

Color me unsurprised: “Letting women ‘test drive’ larger breasts before a boob job…[by] wearing a heavily padded bra for two weeks while doing ordinary tasks…[has led to them picking] 30 per cent larger [implants] than they first planned – at least one additional cup size.” Despite claims from insecure women that they hate having big tits, the fact is that many women wish they had gone bigger, and most do so if the implants need to be replaced.

My Readers Write

This could be considered an update to “Welcome To Our World”, “Neither Cold nor Hot” or the “All in the Family” update in last week’s TW3, but the fact that it was written by regular reader Aspasia (in her own blog) trumps all that:

Jezebel ran two articles…that…highlight the hypocrisy of much of their readership…The first…“How to Tell Your Parents You’re A Prostitute”…[is followed by a] comment thread…rife with the moralizing pearl-clutching of feminists who claim to be supportive of women’s choices…Three days later, came [another] article…[which] criticizes certain choices made by women…and…[was] roundly condemned in the…comment thread…but…[the second author]…merely [did] what the average Jezebel reader does whenever sex workers…are discussed: stripped a whole group of women of their autonomy, projected her own standards onto them, and criticized their choices…

Uncommon Sense

Prostitutes in…Geneva have formed [Switzerland’s] first sex workers’ union, citing foreign competition and the high cost of rent…[it will be] called…the Sex Workers’ Syndicate [and]…aims to operate alongside the organisation Aspasie, which has advocated for prostitutes in Geneva since 1982. Aspasie primarily concerns itself with the health and well-being of sex workers, while STTS was mainly founded to address prostitutes’ financial concerns and working conditions…

I reckon that’s good news, though I’m a bit wary of the protectionism implied in that first line; if foreign women are excluded, it could potentially create a bottleneck. Of course, the government is working on one of its own:

Switzerland has long been criticised by the international community for allowing prostitution by teens as young as 16. The government has proposed changes to the criminal code which would make it a crime to hire or sell the services of a prostitute who is younger than 18…[due to] a Council of Europe convention it signed in 2010…young sex workers would not be prosecuted for their actions – only those who seek or sell their services would be held responsible…

The age of consent in Switzerland is 16, but once again we see the magical thinking that money somehow taints sex and the complete lack of consideration about what will happen to those girls once their agency is denied and their once-legal trade is semi-criminalized.

We Told You So

More of this, please:

[A Philippine “anti-trafficking” NGO named] the Visayan Forum Foundation (VF) [has been] accused of fraud by…USAID…At least…$5 million…meant to fund the group’s projects…[is] missing…the warrant that led to the search…said…the foundation…may be in possession or control of “falsified private documents which were used and are being used to defraud…donors”…

Scapegoats

“…Carlos Romero…was arrested…and charged with misdemeanor sexual activity with an animal, by officials in Ocala, Fla., but believes the real outrage is that the Sunshine State is ‘backwards’ towards zoophilia…The victimized animal is a 21-month-old miniature donkey named Doodle he purchased two months ago…” Whatever you may think of Romero’s preferences, ascribing human sexual hang-ups to a donkey in heat is beyond absurd.

The Last Shall Be First

It’s good to see bigots like this criticized by peers and spotlighted by the media:

An Oklahoma County judge is refusing to let men planning sex-change operations switch to feminine names. District Judge Bill Graves has denied name changes in two such cases so far…[ruling] both times the requests were made for a fraudulent purpose…His position…has generated criticism of him at the courthouse. Five other Oklahoma County judges who handle name change requests…routinely grant them in transgender cases.

His reason for this prejudice? Science!

Graves…has concluded a person cannot really change…sex because the person’s DNA stays the same…“A so-called sex-change surgery can make one appear to be the opposite sex, but in fact they are nothing more than an imitation…petitioner has not even had the surgery…To grant a name change in this case would be to assist that which is fraudulent…Genesis 1:27-28 states: ‘So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth …’ The DNA code shows God meant for them to stay male and female.”

You can always tell a legitimate scientific argument by its quotation of Genesis.

Above the Law

As long as bureaucrats have excessive power over individuals, this will keep happening:

[An]…investigator with Florida’s Department of Children and Families has been arrested for “bribery by a public servant, official misconduct, and falsifying records” after he told a woman under his supervision that he would hide the results of her drug-positive urine test if she would have sex with him. When [she] refused…Andrew Thomas threatened to report her to her probation officer…[he] is the third Florida DCF employee to be charged this year with a sex-related crime. In August…Peter Crane…was charged with…molesting two five-year-old girls. In June…Jean Lacroix…was charged with having sex with a teen who was part of a prostitution ring composed exclusively of foster children…

Naked Truth

Fortunately, most of the journalists who contact me are looking for informed commentary on issues rather than a sex-work story they can twist to fit their own agenda, but Charlotte Shane does an excellent job of skewering the twits who pester non-activist sex workers to “get their real stories”. If you’re not a journalist or academic you’ll enjoy reading this, but if you are either of those you need to read it.

Worse Than I Thought

California’s “Proposition 35” defines virtually all normal sex as “prostitution” and a lot of normal behavior as “coercion”, lists anyone who has anything at all to do with “coerced prostitution” as a “sex trafficker”, and condemns individuals so labeled to decades of prison, lifetime “sex offender” registration and theft of all their property by the state. It’s so awful, in fact, that even bona fide coerced prostitutes are against it: “Anabelle sees herself as a victim of sex trafficking. Stories like hers are driving Proposition 35…But Anabelle isn’t supporting [it]…and her arguments — and those of sex workers and their supporters — paint a very different picture of a law that could hurt the people it’s supposed to protect.” And if that article’s not enough to convince you, how about this slide show?

Metaupdates

Follow Your Bliss
in TW3 (#16)

Another pervert claims to “help” teenage runaways so he can help himself to their sexual favors:

The founder of [a charity for homeless youth named “Stand Up For Kids”] has been charged with repeatedly sexually assaulting a child over a three year period. Richard Koca, Sr., 69…faces seven felony charges of sexual assault on a child by a person in a position of trust…The charges…were…sealed…by court order…after KMGH’s report…investigators are preparing for the possibility that more potential victims could come forwarding the case…the organization’s website was no longer accessible online today, and calls to the headquarters went unreturned…

The Pro-Rape Coalition in TW3 (#30)

Sex work-positive journalist Susannah Breslin interviews two porn producers (one of them Ira Isaacs), two actresses and a lawyer about the potential effects of the ramped-up porn prosecutions promised by Mitt Romney should he be the winner of the quadrennial popularity contest.

Feminine Pragmatism in TW3 (#32)

No matter how carefully and thoroughly I scan for items of interest, a few things always slip through the cracks. While reading about Nadya Suleman using the money from her porn flick to lease a new house, I encountered the sentence “She spent the summer begging for money from fans and offering dates for cash.” Wait, what? Sure enough; the linked article is from August 6^th:

…Nadya Suleman…has opened a profile on the dating website WhatsYourPrice.com, TMZ reports…Although some would consider Suleman’s latest venture a dip into the prostitution pool, Gawker’s Louis Peitzman outlines, “yes, there’s something a little sketchy about selling yourself online, but it’s not prostitution unless they’re paying for sex…”

You’ve got to laugh at the moronic mental gymnastics with which some people justify their childish attempts to draw sharp, static lines between complex, fluid behaviors. Octomom’s done stripping, porn and sugar baby work, but she’s not a whore, noooooo. And neither is she a pathetic victim like the rest of us “prostituted women”; according to the house-leasing article,

“It has been the most empowering, liberating thing I have ever done,” Suleman told…Dr. Drew about doing porn. “There is nothing I won’t do to take care of my family…I had full control and power over my choice. I take full accountability and I’m proud of it.”

So there you are, ladies; in order for your equally-pragmatic choices to be considered valid, you first have to have 14 fatherless kids you can’t support.

This Week in 2011

A two-part guest column from veteran sex worker rights activist Norma Jean Almodovar was followed by criticisms of people who ask questions but refuse to accept the answers and sex workers who waste energy in internecine squabbles. “Uncommon Sense” (linked above) was then followed by a look at clueless neofeminist whining and a tale of the Ouled Nail.

This Week in 2010

The week began with my three-part column on the intersection of BDSM and whoring, which was followed by columns on why many escorts shun black clients and the physiological differences between genetic women and post-op transsexuals. I also told the sad story of an escort I called “April” and published my very first (two-part) Q & A column.

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The Young and the Brainless

Posted in Current Events, Perception, Tyranny, tagged cops, East Asia, fantasy, hysteria, internet, stereotypes, streetwalkers, Texas, underage, Young and the Brainless on September 20, 2012| 10 Comments »

Faith prefers the absurd to the plausible. – Mason Cooley

As I pointed out in “Numerology”, the fraction of hookers in Western countries who are underage is extremely small (about 3.5%), and though the ratio is slightly higher in developing countries it’s still always a small minority. So why is it that there is such a huge pretense among the anti-whore crowd that this isn’t true? It’s for the same reason that they pretend the great majority of us are coerced (even though only about 1.5% are) and that a huge fraction of us are streetwalkers (even though less than 15% are): as I’ve said in several interviews, educated adult escorts making six-figure salaries are terrible “poster children”. We simply aren’t pathetic, and don’t inspire outrage, sympathy and a desire to “do something” among normal people. To be sure, the rabid anti-sex crowd is probably even more incensed about us than about the victims because we have the temerity to be well-adjusted and successful and to say that prostitution isn’t degrading or traumatic, and there’s nothing a true believer hates more than to see a “sinner” who isn’t suffering; most normal people, however, sensibly find it difficult to get worked up about discreet adult call girls. So despite the rarity of the “trafficked child” in real life (even among teen streetwalkers, only about 10% are coerced in any concrete way), that’s what the cops and the media harp on again and again and again; it’s as though every student the public ever heard about was a sickly kindergartener with severe separation anxiety. Here are a few examples, all from the first week of this month; I’ll start with one from Thailand, where journalists aren’t as completely “on board” as the American media with the propaganda that teen girls are always helpless victims:

…four girls engaged in prostitution were arrested by more than 10 police officers…in…Bangkok…after reports were received of underage females engaged in prostitution…the four girls told police they were all high school students…[who] had been convinced or advised by friends to become prostitutes, because they did not have enough money to go out at night…The police will conduct a thorough investigation to track down the real providers behind the illegal prostitution operation.

Though the girls revealed their exact motivation and the exact way they got the idea, the cops refuse to believe them; there MUST be some “real provider” who forced them into whoring, because “innocent children” couldn’t possibly come up with the idea on their own. It’s a textbook example of Maier’s Law: the facts do not conform to the theory, and must therefore be discarded. It’s exactly the same in Dallas, Texas, though US reporters are far more credulous:

…In a city known as a national hotbed for prostitution, a special Dallas police unit is trying new approaches to identify and save underage girls being lured into the street life. Officers have adopted what they call a “victim-centered approach,” making a list of every known juvenile prostitute and probing their pasts and ways to keep them out of trouble. And they’re making a new push to use the Web — where for years traffickers have had almost free rein — to find girls and help them before it’s too late. “We can make survivors out of victims,” said Lt. Fred Diorio, the head of the department’s Crimes Against Children unit. “That’s what we’re trying to do. That’s the goal.” It’s a difficult one to achieve. While Dallas’ effort has won acclaim for devoting extra resources to combat juvenile prostitution, officials and experts say web trafficking makes it harder to identify the girls and weed out the pimps. The girls are also sometimes reluctant to help prosecute their pimps and get them behind bars…

That first sentence is about the only accurate and truthful statement in the whole story; Dallas has so many whores it’s a buyer’s market with depressed prices. I don’t think I have to point out the myths and fallacies in the rest (from “the scary internet is full of sex traffickers” to “all prostitutes have pimps”), but the pompous megalomania inherent in the cops’ claims to magic mind-control powers is worth noting. And it doesn’t let up:

In June, the police staged a sting they called “Operation Brick and Mortar” — a reference to how the physical building where prostitutes and pimps once congregated had largely migrated to an online setting…

What in Aphrodite’s name is any of that supposed to mean? Do the cops believe that there used to be a big “pimp and ho” brothel and social club somewhere that was digitized like something in Tron?

…Catherine De La Paz, a veteran detective, was in charge of picking out ads she thought might offer juvenile prostitutes. Police dialed numbers and contacted each of the 99 ads she picked…they eventually…detained 23 people for prostitution. Just two were under 18 years old…

If the real purpose of this scheme was “rescuing” coerced underage prostitutes, I think even a cop would have to admit it was ineffective. But since the real reason is persecuting hookers no matter what the age, it’s all good. The rest of the story talks about a new gingerbread house under construction in Dallas and theoretical software to magically detect juveniles via stolen pictures on the internet, but it’s conveniently “years away” so there’s plenty of time for them to think up another politically correct excuse to justify whore-hunting by then.

But Texas cops are amateurs at writing lurid “white slavery” porn compared to those in Florida:

Fifteen-year-old C.G. was hanging out with friends in Tampa…when she met a man…who offered her a ride home…but…[took her to] Orlando…[and] force[d] her to become a prostitute. Authorities say that…teenage girls across the country are forced into the sex industry. Sometimes, they end up in Central Florida because of the area’s conventions and special events, which make it a lucrative region…The FBI estimates 293,000 children are at risk of becoming victims of sexual exploitation in America…While the national average age of a child involved in prostitution is 12 to 13, in Florida it is 10 to 11 years old…The youngest victim local DCF officials could recall: an 8-year-old from Central Florida…

And so on, and so on, ad nauseam. Note the appearance of the gypsy whores myth and the misrepresentation of Estes & Weiner’s high-end guess as an “FBI estimate”, and the latest step in the development of the age myth: we’ve already seen 12 to 13 described as the average age of underage whores rather than the average age of entry, but the innovation that it’s even lower in some places is new; apparently these math-illiterate cops and reporter believe that there are hordes of 3-year-old “sex slaves” coming into the trade to replace the ones graduating at 18. Funny thing, that; this foolish excuse for a reporter parrots these ludicrous claims, yet the only actual cases the cops can give details of involve older teens (imagine that). Does anyone out there honestly believe that if Florida cops had really found an 8-year-old working as a hooker, it wouldn’t have made international news and become the premier “sex trafficking” horror story for the duration of the panic? Of course it would have, and had the reporter pressed the cops for details she would’ve discovered that they had only heard the story, but that the detective who worked the case was the buddy of the former partner of a guy who transferred out last year and I think he moved to Wyoming. This goes beyond simple gullibility to criminal negligence; only a total retard could believe these ridiculous tall tales. But as long as the public accepts everything “authorities” say with the approximate degree of skepticism a toddler affords to the Tooth Fairy, this moral panic will be followed by an endless succession of others, each as absurd as the last.

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Links #115

Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged Africa, animals, cops, dirty, drugs, East Asia, Facebook, hysteria, Korea, left-right myth, stripping, Texas, video on September 16, 2012| 37 Comments »

Of government, at least in democratic states, it may be said briefly that it is an agency engaged wholesale, and as a matter of solemn duty, in the performance of acts which all self-respecting individuals refrain from as a matter of common decency. – H.L. Mencken

Since this link feature developed from my guest-blogging on The Agitator, it’s only fitting that Radley Balko usually outscores everyone else as a source of links; since I don’t really think he “tweets” or “retweets” that much more than most of the other people I follow, perhaps he and I just have similar ideas of what’s both interesting and worth calling attention to. This time around every link down to the video is from his Twitter feed, plus the video itself; the first two below the video are courtesy of Lenore Skenazy, and the last two before the cartoon are from Grace.

“Drinking to escape” usually isn’t quite so literal.
Cops murder unarmed man, then destroy the video evidence.
Woman faces 20 years in prison for massaging horses without a license.
If you think Democrats are any less anti-science than Republicans, you’re wrong.
No matter how many times I see a story like this, it never fails to bring tears to my eyes.
If Obama was that unhappy with the ambassador, couldn’t he have just murdered him with a drone or something?

If you’ve ever wondered what it would look like if a seagull carried off a camera while it was running, this is the video for you.

So, is the dirty little pervert going onto the “sex offender” registry?
Another mother arrested for the “crime” of letting her kids play outside.
Tired of conflicting claims about US federal spending? Here’s the chart for the past 35 years, per capita and adjusted for inflation.
Neighborhood association sues a 4-year-old girl because her playhouse is too pink.
Old boyfriends are sometimes hard to get rid of, but this is ridiculous.
What contempt for the First Amendment looks like.
Police chief imprisoned for robbing stripper.
Yet another awe-inspiring nun.
The longest-lived organism on Earth is over 100,000 years old.
NASA engineers predict a fusion drive will be feasible in about 50 years.
The New Yorker was temporarily banned from Facebook for “violating nudity standards” with this cartoon. Seriously.
Insurance companies want to charge you for accidents you haven’t had yet.
…then after the Twinkies, they move on to the harder stuff, like Chocodiles and Ding Dongs.
Roberts, not Smithee.
Police suspect fowl play.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Philadelphia persecutes man for cleaning up dangerous eyesore, demands he put all the rubbish back.

(Cartoon via Ms. Samantha; following items via Deep Geek, Jesse Walker, Melissa Gira Grant, Pee-wee Herman, Mike Siegel and Amy Alkon.)

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That Was the Week That Was (#37)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Obituary, Perception, Tyranny, tagged abortion, Against Their Will, agency denial, All in the Family, Australia, bad customers, Bottleneck, Brazil, Broken Record, brothels, Capricious Lusts, censorship, cops, East Asia, Follow Your Bliss, Hard Numbers, harm reduction, He or She?, How Old is Oldest?, hysteria, India, Latin America, law, Malaysia, Naked Truth, neofeminism, porn, Prudish Pedants, psychology, rape, rescue industry, See No Evil, sexting, Sisters In Arms, sporting events, stage names, streetwalkers, transgender, TSA, underage, video, violence vs. sex workers, Washington DC, welcome to our world on September 15, 2012| 56 Comments »

You need to tailor your response to the reality. You should not tailor your response to the hype. – Ann Jordan

R.I.P. Robyn Few

The founder of SWOP-USA died Thursday (September 13th) at the age of 54 after a long battle with cancer. She became an activist for HIV and medical marijuana in the early 1990s, but prostitution was at that time simply a way to pay the bills ; that changed after she was targeted for her activism by FBI and arrested in June of 2002. In October of the following year she founded SWOP-USA on the model of SWOP Australia, and just two months later helped Dr. Annie Sprinkle organize the first Day To End Violence Against Sex Workers. Biographical details are scarce, but I’m trying to get a proper obituary together for her for this Monday.

Updates

He or She?

Sometimes, men’s transgender paranoia is so severe it can lead to violence:

…20-year-old Christian Ariel Romero met [a] 41-year-old [transgendered prostitute]…and…offered [her] money for sex, Montgomery County police said…[but] when Romero discovered his companion was a man, he…repeatedly stabbed the victim…The judge set bail at $500,000, which [Romero’s lawyer] called harsh…“The defendant is a person who’s 20 years old, never done anything wrong in his entire life. And the person who is on the other side is…a prostitute…with a track record, a history…”

As is typical in stories involving transgendered people, everyone dances around pronouns and facts are sparse or contradictory; the reporter says the victim was a “man” but she may have been a pre-op transsexual. And the lawyer’s insinuation that the victim somehow deserved a murderous assault is “NHI” thinking at its most repellent.

All in the Family

Robin Hustle has a great deal more patience than I do; if I had a story of coming out to parents who were in denial about my sex work, I certainly wouldn’t tell it on Jezebel. The article is intelligent, well-written, right on and even funny, but of course the comments are largely what you’d expect (starting with the very first one, which basically accuses her of lying). No thanks; I learned my lesson with Feministe.

Follow Your Bliss

A disproportionate number of perverts, rapists and pedophiles have been discovered in a job which allows them to grope and fondle women and children with impunity in public. Golly gee, who could’ve predicted that?

Crystal Ball

As I predicted, a few journalists are beginning to question the “sex trafficking” hype; though this article reprinted from Christian Science Monitor overstates the credibility of some of the fanatics’ claims and quotes professional victim Stella Marr at length, it also interviews prominent trafficking hysteria critic Ann Jordan, criticizes celebrity opportunists like Ashton Kutcher and flatly states that the scare-figures are wildly exaggerated:

…the…statistic…that there are 100,000 to 300,000 sex slaves in the US – figures repeated by interviewers, blogs, TV hosts and…movie stars…are wrong…the number of actual sex-trafficking victims has been estimated by the US government to be in the tens of thousands, but even those numbers have been criticized as unfounded and far too high; between 2008 and 2010, federally funded human-trafficking task forces opened 2,515 suspected incidents of human trafficking for investigation. Among those cases, only 248 suspected sex-trafficking victims under the age of 18 were identified…Hype over such high and inaccurate numbers of “child sex slaves” leads to a misguided response at best…At worst, it siphons financial resources away from preventing other sorts of human trafficking…[and] undermines solutions to problems…that lead to exploited youth in the first place…

Bottleneck

Cause: Making it essentially impossible for brothels to operate legally. Effect: Lots of illegal brothels.

…Elena Jeffreys said when sex work was decriminalised 16 years ago, local councils were given the job of regulating the industry…but…they are now knocking back brothels on moral grounds…”Their job is to regulate the sex industry, not just to blanket knock back every single (brothel) application they get. There’s some local councils in NSW that have never approved a brothel application and then they wonder why there’s brothels in their suburb that are unapproved”…Ms Jeffreys said there were more than 6000 sex workers in the state and most people would have lived near a brothel or a sex worker at some point without knowing it…

Capricious Lusts

I don’t think I’ve ever seen an American sex worker activist (other than myself) make this enlightened point:

…Controversial model-actress [Gehana Vasisth] recently tweeted that she wanted to open a…high class hygienic brothel where men could come and satisfy themselves…with professional, medically certified commercial sex workers…According to Gehana, legalising prostitution and pornography in India – like it is in the West – will help reduce crimes against women drastically. “If men can satisfy their carnal desires without any restriction, rape and other crimes against women will be reduced,” she explained…

Metaupdates

How Old is Oldest? in June Updates (Part Three)

Over a year after the controversy which caused his break with Psychology Today, evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa is back with a new blog entitled E pur si muove on a relatively new website named Big Think. And though his debut is not without controversy even there, Kanazawa’s “about” blurb states:

E pur si muove is about science. Science is the accumulation of pure knowledge for its own sake; it has no other goals or purposes. In science, only logic and evidence are the arbitrators of the truth; nothing else matters. No scientific conclusions can ever be good or bad, desirable or undesirable, sexist, racist, offensive, reactionary or dangerous; they can only be true or false. No other adjectives apply. If the truth offends people, it is our job as scientists to offend them. In the memorable words of David Hilbert, Wir müssen wissen, wir werden wissen. If what I say as a scientist is wrong, because it is illogical or lacks credible scientific evidence, then it is my problem. If what I say offends you, then it is your problem. Get over it. Prepare to be offended.

And really, that’s pretty much my attitude in this blog as well; I wish Dr. Kanazawa the best of luck with his new site and hope Big Think proves to be more dedicated to free speech than Psychology Today has proven itself to be.

Hard Numbers in TW3 (#16)

Whenever it looks like something might be decriminalized (such as brothel ownership in Brazil), you can bet the police will launch as many “crackdowns” as possible before their window of opportunity closes:

On the eve of June 14…armed members of [Rio’s] Police…and public prosecutor’s office arrived at a brothel called Centauros…[where] they arrested prostitutes, management and the owner, seized documents, computers…used condoms…and…$150,000…in cash. The owner…spent a week at a maximum security prison. The prostitutes were released the same night and found work at other upscale brothels…Quite a lot of drama when you consider that prostitution is not actually a crime in Brazil…But as Rio de Janeiro prepares for its turn on the global stage – as the host of the World Cup in 2014, then the 2016 Summer Olympics – the city is taking drastic action to keep its thriving sex industry out of the spotlight. Rio has already shuttered 24 sex establishments…and…another 33 venues have been threatened or harassed by the police…It’s the biggest crackdown…in a generation…according to anthropologists Thaddeus Blanchette and Ana Paula da Silva, who have been studying prostitution in Rio since 2004 and have authored almost 20 academic papers on [the subject]…

Prudish Pedants in TW3 (#18)

Keep in mind, California is still under a SCOTUS mandate to reduce its prison population, yet this persecution for profit continues:

Fetish filmmaker and distributor Ira Isaacs’ sentencing was put on hold last month because federal prosecutors intended to present evidence to support…a two-level increase in sentencing…[for] federal crime[s] where the defendant knew or should have known that a victim involved in an offense was a “vulnerable victim”…presumably [this means] an actor or actors involved in films deemed obscene…prosecutors have recommended that Isaacs serve a term of up to seven years and three months in prison, as well as a three-year term of supervised release and a $10,000 fine…[the court also stole] all of his websites…copyrights…computers, servers, props and video equipment.

Against Their Will in TW3 (#20)

Another win-win situation ruined by busybodies:

…The Malay Mail reports [that a] car wash in…Kuala Lumpur…had formed a partnership with a local massage parlour, enabling customers to redeem free sex from the brothel as part of a customer loyalty scheme…police stormed the parlour and found several stamped loyalty cards that had been used by customers…officer Emmi Shah Fadhil [said]…“To get the extra ‘offer’, customers must send their cars for washing nine times within a certain period…The tenth car wash will entitle them to free sex.” The parlour would usually charge between 130 and 180 Malaysian Ringgit ($40-$55) – cheaper than the $65 price for a full-service car wash. Prostitution is illegal in Malaysia. As a result of the raid, nine Vietnamese women aged between 18 and 28 were arrested.

Actually prostitution isn’t illegal in Malaysia; only public solicitation is. However, for the past four years the Malaysian government has been engaged in a campaign to violently suppress brothels under the guise of “fighting human trafficking” in order to win a pat on the head and a “good doggie” from the US State Department.

See No Evil in TW3 (#24)

An anti-sex fanatic’s crusade to criminalize a lump of bronze continues:

…a bare-breasted sculpture in an Overland Park arboretum has triggered a grand jury investigation into whether the city is promoting obscenity to minors. The artwork, titled “Accept or Reject” and donated by Chinese artist Yu Chang, depicts…what the artist statement says is the incomplete identity expressed in one’s digital self — critics contend it promotes “sexting” to children…”The statue appeals to an unwholesome obsession with a sexual act” [said petition sponsor Phillip] Cosby…who calls sexting “the most under-prosecuted crime in America”…

Anybody who claims that any crime (other than those committed under color of authority) in America is “under-prosecuted” is certifiably insane.

Sisters in Arms in TW3 (#29)

If abortion is criminalized, do people really want women who get them imprisoned? Or will this turn into another Swedish Model-like agency-denying thing which only persecutes abortion providers (and maybe men who urge or pay for them)?

Broken Record in TW3 (#32)

Here’s a long but must-read essay by Georgina Perry of Open Doors, a London health organization serving sex workers; she explains how Olympic “sex trafficking” hysteria was amplified by politicians, the police, the media and others, and collapsed when one especially vociferous NGO lost its main source of funding:

For the last three years I’ve been…relegated from a professional considered knowledgeable in her field, to a noisy troublemaker, determined to rail against received wisdom. I’ve had the data I assiduously collect, analyse and make public quoted back to me by law enforcement agencies, the media and NGOs but with clumsy interpretations skewed to strengthen a particular rhetoric…as the 2012 London Olympics drew inexorably towards us, the whole of the UK suddenly became an expert on my job…[the]experience…left me cynical and at times speechless at the sheer effrontery of those who stood to gain from talking up a story that…is not, has not and is unlikely to ever be a reality…

Naked Truth in TW3 (#35)

Melissa Gira Grant was interviewed on “Behind the News with Doug Henwood” on public radio station KPFA in Berkeley, California this past Thursday; she talked about the rescue industry, agency denial and the neofeminist anti-sex work agenda (starting at 30:00).

This Week in 2011

How “feminist” laws infantilize or pathologize women, how Arianna Huffington panders to hysteria, how politicians judge others but never themselves, and why only some religions have freedom. Also, an Algerian tribe in which prostitution was normal and accepted and an essay on whores in the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

This Week in 2010

The importance of caring for husbands sexually, the woman known to history as “The Yellow Rose of Texas”, a few book reviews, a story I wrote when I was 18, “whoredar”, and a little about my lesbian experiences.

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Links #114

Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged animals, California, China, condoms, cops, East Asia, France, Google, Madonna/whore, psychology, rape, streetwalkers, video on September 9, 2012| 37 Comments »

Tyrants are always assassinated too late. – E.M. Cioran

I apologize if this column is a bit short this week; I was so busy in Atlanta that I didn’t have as much time to look around for them as I usually do. However, I think you’ll find these interesting; the three before the video are courtesy of Radley Balko, the video itself was provided by Deep Geek, and the first six links immediately after it arrived via Jesse Walker, Cthulhuchick, reader Krulac, Brooke Magnanti, Jack Shafer and Franklin Harris, in that order.

Cops hold down 75-year old woman on floor as they murder her dog with a shotgun; police chief claims it was “for her protection from a dangerous animal”.
The best part of this story for those who understand a little French is learning that the town of Condom is located on the River Baise.
Chinese toddler’s karaoke tantrum ends in bloodbath.

The political ad Google tried to censor:

If there was a huge knife fight involving every American president, who would win?
Judge uses pop-therapy talk to blame victim for being sexually assaulted by a cop.
California: the land of the fee and the home of the ban.
How dictators have evolved with the times.
Welcome to our world.
Meta-uncertainty?
Where Magazine needs to have a talk with its art director.
Enabling a rapist cop cost the city of Anchorage $5.5 million.
My prediction: if this really does happen, it’s going to be crap.
Huffington Post headline compares sex workers to bloodsucking parasites.
Naomi “Stopped Clock” Wolf’s new book is so dumb (Chorus: How dumb is it?) that…here, I’ll let some neuroscientists explain.
Various prudish busybodies offer their busybody opinions on the number of sex partners a woman can have (in her life) before turning into a ruined slut.

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That Was the Week That Was (#36)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Philosophy, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged Against Their Will, agency denial, Australia, Bad Girls, Bad Jobs, Bottleneck, brothels, Canada, cops, dirty, East Asia, end demand, escort review sites, ethics, Europe, fantasy, France, harm reduction, Hollywood, homosexuality, hysteria, India, Knights Erroneous, Korea, law, My Favorite Updates, Nevada, O Canada!, psychology, Real People, rescue industry, Sex Lies and Busybodies, sex work is work, Shift in the Wind, Something Rotten In Sweden, stripping, Sweden, Swedish “Feminism”, Swedish model, The Course of a Disease, The Naked Anthropologist, video on September 8, 2012| 21 Comments »

We should…be open for the possibility that prostitutes are harmed, not because prostitution is harmful, but because society at present seriously wrongs prostitutes. – Ole Moen

The Naked Anthropologist

Dr. Laura Agustín recently uploaded this video of a talk she gave in 2010 which synopsizes in just a few minutes a number of her most important observations on the roots of “sex trafficking” mythology, agency denial, the rescue industry and more. Her influence on me and many other writers on this subject cannot possibly be overstated, and if you don’t read her blog you really should.

Updates

Madonna and Whore

A new study looked at escort board postings and concludes what I and other escorts have said many times and people like Melissa Farley deny: that many clients really feel a sense of emotional intimacy with some escorts:

…Christine Milrod and co-author Ronald Weitzer analyzed 2,442 postings on…a sex provider review site…Approximately one-third included a discussion about emotional intimacy between sex workers and their clients…“In recent years, we have come to see a gradual normalization of independent escort prostitution, where sexual encounters have come to resemble quasi-dating relationships,” stated…Milrod. “Our study shows that regular clients of a particular sex provider often come to experience feelings of deep affection, which can progress into an authentic love story”…The study uncovered feelings ranging from “counterfeit intimacy” to “authentic emotional bonds” between many prostitutes and their respective customers…

Bad Girls

This is one way to deal with an extortionist, though the idiot is lucky he wasn’t arrested as well. What I’m wondering, though, is why she stuck around after he called the cops? “Police in Ann Arbor [Michigan] say they took a call from a man who was upset that the price he agreed to pay for prostitution services had increased…the…19-year-old woman he had contacted online…upped the cost after taking his money…the woman was arrested and the man wasn’t…[after they] gave vastly different accounts of what happened…”

Bad Jobs

Here’s a new slideshow of the “most stressful jobs in America”; notice that NO sex work jobs are on the list, despite prohibitionist claims of PTSD and other such nonsense.

Real People

“Marc McAndrews…visited the legal brothels in 11 Nevada counties over a period of five years [to create]…the book Nevada Rose, which documents these brothels and their workers, owners and customers. What he uncovered was a view of prostitution that didn’t adhere to culturally appointed preconceptions: of sex work as a living as humdrum as any other…” Unfortunately the article credits the Nevada brothel system, reserving the typical insults and libel for independents. But you’ve got to start somewhere, and this is a big improvement over the typical New York Times “sex trafficking” lies.

Another Example of Swedish “Feminism”

It’s hilarious to watch Swedes trying to reconcile the “whore as criminal” and “whore as victim” myths:

Prostitutes in Stockholm are using short-term rented apartments to sell sex, which is proving to be a difficult case for police…and a bitter pill…for the holidaying homeowners…who…are completely unaware of what’s going on…One woman…[said] “It felt disgusting. I wanted to just burn the bed and move house…[but] when you get a little perspective on things – I’m not actually the victim here. I think of how the girls have ended up as prostitutes, whether they’ve been exposed to people smuggling and how they live today”…

Against Their Will

It would be difficult to imagine a more bizarre combination of agency denial and plain arse-backwardness than this:

Four sex workers were allegedly abducted by an armed gang from a rehab centre…police have registered a case of kidnapping…the gang members were [allegedly] Mumbai-based pimps, whom the girls telephoned and asked to be “rescue’’ from the rehab centre run by an NGO…they were rescued from the flesh trade by the…police and were accommodated at the rehab centre…six months ago…Other sex workers…said life is hell at the centre. “A prison would be better than this,” said a 24-year-old inmate. “Given a chance, we too would like to leave”…

The reversed scare quotes around the two uses of “rescue” are especially striking; their literal rescue by friends or associates is scare-quoted, while the use of the term for abduction and imprisonment is not.

Sex, Lies and Busybodies

Yet another “sex trafficking” liar is exposed:

…William Hillar…was sentenced…to 21 months in prison…for…his scheme to pass himself off as a colonel in the U.S. Army Special Forces…Hillar was also ordered to pay restitution of $171,415 and perform 500 community hours at the Maryland State Veterans Cemeteries……the FBI said Hillar fabricated a gruesome tale that his own daughter had been kidnapped, forced into sex slavery, sodomized and tortured before being hacked to death with machetes and thrown into the sea. He further claimed that this experience and his life story was the basis for the 2008 film “Taken”. The significant press attention…generated free press for his business. Hillar admitted…his daughter…was [actually] alive and well…

Knights Erroneous

Speaking of “sex trafficking” liars: “Ashton Kutcher [in Delhi to film a Steve Jobs biopic]…posted a photo that has him posing with about a dozen…victims of sex trafficking [supplied by rescue industry NGO Apne Aap]…”

My Favorite TV Comedies

“…the cast of the 1990s Nickelodeon series The Adventures of Pete & Pete was reunited…before a packed and ardent crowd at L.A.’s Orpheum Theater for…a…three-hour celebration of the deepest children’s show — and one of television’s best shows — ever.” The article includes an interview with the creators, who explain that a great deal of the show’s unique style derived from the fact that their background was in producing advertising spots rather than situation comedies, so they didn’t know what they were “supposed” to do.

Shift in the Wind

As I pointed out, the public health community almost universally backs decriminalization, and apparently that support has reached the bioethics field as well:

…one of the latest…articles in the…Journal of Medical Ethics…bears the provocative title “Is Prostitution Harmful?” Unsurprisingly, Norwegian academic Ole Martin Moen says No. “More and more of us…believe that sexual encounters need not be deeply personal and emotional…if casual sex is acceptable, then we have few or no reasons to reject prostitution.” Dr Moen demolishes…nine objections to legalised prostitution…but perhaps most interesting from a bioethical standpoint are his assumptions…First, that [if] sex…has no special value, it is unlikely that arguments against selling it will stand. Second, that a utilitarian calculus is the best way to determine the ethics of prostitution…Third, that contemporary attitudes towards homosexuality are appropriate precedents for assessing the moral value of prostitution. Back in the 20s and 30s, homosexuality was deemed to cause people severe psychological problems. But we now know that this was due to social stigma. Homosexuality was also associated with disease, drug use and violence. But we now know that this was due to social and legal oppression. Similarly, Dr Moen suggests, if we destigmatise and liberate prostitution, these issues will disappear among prostitutes as well…

Bottleneck

Behold the inevitable result of trying to stop sex work:

Korean communities in Australia are campaigning…for a crackdown on Korean prostitutes who have entered the country on working holiday visas…The association of Korean communities said Korean prostitutes are a national disgrace. “…Korea’s reputation is being tarnished as they see the country as an exporter of prostitutes,” said an association spokesman…Since the Korean government launched its crackdown…in 2004…many sex workers have moved to Australia, Japan, the United States and other countries…Accordingly, the number of crimes involving Koreans staying on such visas is rising at an alarming rate in Australia and other countries…72…felonies, including murder and rape, committed against or by Korean working visa holders were reported in Australia in 2009, while no such crimes were reported in 2005.

One can’t help wondering if the Korean community’s bigotry is not part of the reason Australian politicians keep claiming that thousands of Asian women are “trafficked”, despite a total lack of evidence .

Metaupdates

Something Rotten in Sweden in November Updates (Part One)

Emi Koyama does it again with this convincing economic analysis demonstrating not only that “end demand” schemes don’t work, they actually increase the amount of prostitution among low-end (street) sex workers:

“End demand” approach to addressing human trafficking continues to gain traction, as law enforcement agencies across the country hold the third “National Day of Johns Arrests”…I have in the past pointed out why “end demand” policies are harmful…and even provided a further explanation for the economics of “end demand” policies. But recently I had an…exchange with someone who…helped me explore a possibility…that “end demand” approach to prostitution, which seeks to reduce demand for commercial sex through public education, prosecution, public humiliation, and other means, may increase prostitution, rather than decrease it…

The nutshell version: As demand drops, so does the price. But because survival and near-survival sex workers are already making barely enough to live on, they are therefore forced to work longer hours and see more clients in order to make ends meet. If any of my readers is an economist and can either confirm or find flaws in Koyama’s analysis, please let me know.

The Course of a Disease in TW3 (#28)

This is really good news; intellectuals are respected and influential in France:

Some of France’s leading intellectuals have poured scorn on the government’s goal of eradicating prostitution…a collection of academics, artists and writers suggest efforts to get rid of the world’s oldest profession are bound to fail…Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, the minister for women, caused a stir in June when she announced the new government would attempt to end the sale of sex…the intellectuals…argued that talk of “abolishing” prostitution was based on “two debatable assumptions: that charging for sex is an affront to women’s dignity and that all prostitutes are all victims of their bastard clients…A women who prostitutes herself…is not necessarily a victim of male oppression. And the clients are not all horrible predators or sexual obsessives who treat the woman as disposable objects.” Among the signatories to the article were philosopher Elisabeth Badinter, writer Regine Desforges and film-maker Claude Lanzmann…

O, Canada! in TW3 (#31)

Politicians just can’t resist trying to drum up moral panic, even in soil as unfertile as the largely pro-decriminalization British Columbian academic community:

Recruiters could show up at B.C. colleges and universities this year looking for students to work as strippers, says the province’s minister of advanced education, Naomi Yamamoto. “The [adult entertainment] industry itself has a reputation of exhibiting some risky behaviour, and we don’t want our students exposed to that,” she said, “especially if [it means] aggressively recruiting at our campuses”…She said the issue came to her attention through news stories about the trend in Windsor, [Ontario]…She added that she could not direct institutions to bar adult entertainment companies from job fairs but is “strongly recommending” that they reject any requests for space…A representative of the Camosun College Student Society, Madeline Keller-MacLeod, said she would resist the presence of adult entertainment industry representatives on campus… “Our members are particularly vulnerable to any economic opportunities,” she said…

Ask yourself: what sort of warped mind could produce the phrase “vulnerable to economic opportunities”?

This Week in 2010 and 2011

Three different columns featuring lyrics and video links for songs about whores; two columns defining various terms used by hookers; a short history of New Orleans’ famed Storyville and a biography of one of its most famous madams; and an analysis of why politicians persecute whores. We also see that genitals come in “All Shapes and Sizes”, that a picture really can be worth “A Thousand Words”, and that many feminists will cut off their noses “To Spite Their Faces”. Plus: my very first update column; another one featuring items on trafficking myths, an odd breach of confidentiality and prohibitionists using feminist and Marxist rhetoric; and another with items about fornication laws, sex rays, Michael Weinstein and a less-fortunate counterpart of the client from today’s first item.

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Q & A (August 2012)

Posted in Miscellaneous, Q & A, tagged brothels, East Asia, escort review sites, Europe, genitalia, internet, law, Malaysia, psychology, sex work is work, yin and yang on August 31, 2012| 24 Comments »

It is easier to judge the mind of a man by his questions rather than his answers. — Pierre-Marc-Gaston, Duc de Lévis

Got a question? Email me at maggiemcneill@earthlink.net and I’ll do my best to answer it!

How do I let my regular escort know that I truly value and appreciate her personality without coming off as creepy or patronizing? I don’t want to send her mixed signals, but I do want to show her that it’s her brain and her heart that keep me one of her regulars and not just her vagina.

Just tell her. Don’t make a big deal about it, but the next time you’re having a conversation with her while on a date, just say something like, “See, this is why I like you so much!” She’ll understand. Another good way is to find out if she has an Amazon wishlist or the like, and get her a present that leans in the direction of mind & personality; for example, if she has both a bottle of perfume and a book on science or politics there, get her the book. That will say “I appreciate your mind” as loudly as anything.

I’m a recent university graduate in Malaysia and can’t bring myself to apply for a normal 9 to 5; I’m simply not that interested in the profession I was educated for. Now I find myself toying with the idea of becoming a harlot; how would I go about setting myself up in this business? How much can a freelance prostitute make? I know there are some inherent risks and dangers that come with the job, but I can only assume the higher end of the spectrum not only pays more, but is also somewhat safer, am I too naive to believe this? What is the long term prospect for a girl like me? And how do I keep my working life completely out of any circle that I, my family or my friends move in?

If you were in a Western country I could speak more authoritatively, but the best I can do for Malaysia is to give you a general answer. According to my reference prostitution is legal there as long as you don’t solicit in public; however, the United States has been encouraging your government to violently persecute sex workers, so it’s impossible to tell how that might impact your work in the near future.

That having been said, I suspect some things will still be the same; escorts advertise via websites nearly everywhere in the world, and always make far more than other entry-level jobs (usually as much as early-career lawyers if they work full-time and are good at it). You’re not naïve in thinking higher-end sex work is safer; every methodologically sound study ever done shows it, and simple reason will demonstrate why it is so (better class of clients, less exposure, relative invisibility to police, etc). Long term prospects are like those in any job: if you are good at the work and apply yourself, making sound and sensible business decisions, you will tend to do well unless some unpredictable circumstances intervene. As for keeping your personal and professional lives separate, that depends on careful planning. Maintain a high level of privacy with your family, and don’t allow them to “drop in” on you without prior contact; don’t see clients any place family members are likely to go, and don’t give enough details in your professional life (including pictures showing your face) to allow anyone to connect your two personas.

I have two suggestions for your next step: Get Amanda Brooks’ Internet Escort’s Handbook, which will help you decide whether the work is really right for you. Also, do some research on local escort websites; see what the other girls are saying, how they advertise, what they charge, what their concerns are, etc. After you do those things I think you’ll be in a position to make an informed decision. Either way, good luck with whatever career you decide to pursue!

I was wondering if you have any advice (or columns) for an aspiring plus size courtesan? I’ve done some escort work before (when I was thinner) and though I’m trying to work towards losing weight I’d like to start working sooner rather than later if possible.

I’ve never been in that group, but I know it’s not really an issue; there are a lot of guys interested in BBW escorts! The important thing is to clearly advertise yourself that way, and make sure your pictures are current and accurate so no nasty men can play games by claiming you misrepresented yourself. I believe that there are some BBW-specific sites, but I’ve seen them on general escort sites as well.

In your experience, are tall men more endowed than those of average height?

There’s no correlation at all between height and penis size. In fact, one reason porn stars often look so huge is that a short actor’s penis looks bigger in proportion to his body than that of a taller man with the same endowment.

Do you have any resources about pleasing men? I think Western women don’t go further than your typical Cosmo article on 134 ways to please your man, which I would assume is different from the way girls in Southeast Asia do it; the best description I found was that they “treat them like kings.” So what is the difference?

Pleasing a man doesn’t require tricks, tips or a manual; all it takes is paying attention and a true desire to please. Nine men out of ten will TELL you exactly what they want, but a lot of Western women react to such suggestions with, “Ick, that’s nasty; I’m going to try this ridiculous Cosmo suggestion instead.” WTF? Here they have men telling them exactly what will turn them on, and they shun it in favor of ridiculous antics that, if they really worked, would appear in every porno movie. I wrote about this in my early column “A Whore in the Bedroom”; what it basically boils down to is, concentrate on what turns him on even if it does nothing for you, and even if you think it’s ridiculous or disgusting or “degrading”. That’s the real “secret” of both the stereotypical Asian girl and the successful whore: she will say “yes” when the typical Western woman will say “no”. And considering that women are much more sexually flexible than men are, a woman often finds herself turned on by something she never cared for before, precisely because it excites the man she loves.

My boyfriend suffers from erectile dysfunction – the erections don’t last long and when he has to put his penis into me, it just goes soft; I wear sexy underwear and had Brazilian waxing done, but nothing seems to help. He is 36, in generally bad shape, has circulatory problems and his diet is based on pizza and Coke. I try to persuade him to walk more or ride the bike, and to change his unhealthy habits, but is there anything else I can do?

I suspect his circulation problem is the major culprit, but his poor physical condition and diet probably don’t help, either. Also, the Coke may very well have a lot to do with it: in the United States, soft drinks are sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, which (in addition to its many other bad effects) raises uric acid levels; this stiffens arteries, thus raising blood pressure, impairing circulation and discouraging the body from producing nitric oxide, the chemical which triggers erection. I don’t know if soft drinks in Europe are made with this thoroughly nasty stuff, but if I were you I’d read the ingredients on a can to see.

If his soft drinks do contain HFCS, he needs to switch immediately to some other beverage that doesn’t such as coffee, tea, flavored water, etc. Even if the soft drinks are sweetened with sugar, cutting them out would certainly help him lose weight because sodas add calories without making one feel full. Keep working on getting him to exercise; your doing it with him should make the prospect more attractive, especially if it’s something fun like bike riding or swimming. He should also talk to his physician, and if the doctor just tries to “patch” the issue by giving him Viagra, you need to speak up: in a 72-year-old man erectile difficulty is to be expected, but in a 36-year-old it’s a sign of major problems which will almost certainly lead to other health issues and should therefore not be ignored.

Getting a man to change his habits isn’t easy, but I’m sure he’d love to have stronger, more dependable erections again so that’s a factor in your favor. Once things start to improve, you can also encourage him to keep it up by demonstrating in a practical way how happy you are with the results. Good luck, and please let me know how things turn out!

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Small Choice

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, China, cops, drivers, East Asia, ethics, hysteria, Korea, law, marriage, pragmatism, psychology, rescue industry, Small Choice, sweatshops on August 28, 2012| 56 Comments »

There’s small choice in rotten apples. – William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew (I,i)

Newsweek magazine, like its rival/soul sister Time, has been degenerating into yellow journalism at least since the term “moral panic” was coined in 1972; the primary reason is probably the rise of television news in the 1960s. By the 1980s several of my English teachers were declaring it was no longer a credible source, and by the early ‘90s its main function seemed to be supporting prohibitionism by publishing disinformation-laden scare stories about sex, drugs, kids, stuff kids like, and drug-using kids having sex. One favorite target is the internet, but that’s not surprising considering it’s the reason for the plummeting revenues of the past few years, which eventually resulted in the magazine’s sale to an entrepreneur on August 2^nd, 2010 for the price of $1. Not long after that it merged with the Daily Beast, which considering the latter’s own credibility issues hasn’t exactly helped. Case in point, this recent article which claims to be about “human trafficking” in China, but actually appears to be an extended ad for the rescue industry. It’s not the worst thing Newsweek has published lately, but it lies somewhere in the space between “Why Are Obama’s Critics so Dumb?” from January and “The John Next Door” from July of last year.

Steven Kim, an American businessman…may be the world’s leading expert on the market for North Korean brides…[while] living in China, overseeing the manufacture of chairs…he heard about a secret church that catered to…South Korean businessmen…Kim…became a regular attendee…and…began to assist North Korean refugees…[by providing] safe houses, food, clothing, and money; eventually he organized secret passage across China to third countries…Many of them turned out to be women fleeing from the Chinese men who had purchased them…

If the rest of the story continued like that you wouldn’t be reading it here. But apparently Kim’s religious devotion, the four years he spent in a Chinese prison after he was caught, and the potential for massive profits in the rescue industry drove him to shift his focus from helping people who wanted to escape, to interfering in the lives of those who don’t:

Today he runs 318 Partners, a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to rescuing trafficked women in China…The only practical escape route for fugitives from North Korea is through China, and…roughly 80 percent of those thousands of refugees are women and girls who have become “commodities for purchase”…Ever since the one-child policy went into effect in 1979, Beijing has enforced it through fines, imprisonment, forced abortion, sterilization, and…infanticide. The policy has had its intended effect of slowing the rate of expansion of China’s population. But there has been an unwelcome side effect: an unnaturally high male-to-female ratio…The result is an epic surplus of bachelors…[who] are often desperate—for companionship, for sex, for household help…

Chinese men want wives; North Korean women want to escape North Korea to the relatively-better conditions of China. Therefore marriage brokers have arisen to put them together; the system is no more foolproof at making good matches than the biochemical-infatuation system prevalent in America, but nobody’s proposing that women be “rescued” from that. When observed through the distorting lens of “trafficking” rhetoric, however, it becomes something else entirely:

…a chain of “suppliers,” “wholesale providers,” and “retail sellers” has developed…suppliers lure women from their homes with promises of a lucrative trip to China…if trickery fails, recruiters have been known to resort to kidnapping…wholesaler[s]…escort the women past Chinese ID checks to a safer place farther from the border…some of the women are sold directly to Korean-Chinese men who live in the region. From the woman’s point of view, this is usually the better option. Life with a Korean-Chinese man, in a community where the Korean language is spoken, is preferable to life with a Han Chinese man who speaks only Mandarin and whose culture and food will be unfamiliar. Other brides…are resold to retailers…[who] in turn sell the women to their clients…for between $1,200 and $1,500…depending upon her age and appearance.

As I pointed out in “Creating the Crisis”, horrible political situations (such as North Korean tyranny or the government-created gender imbalance in China) are bound to create brutal, coercive environments where bona fide human trafficking or even chattel slavery can thrive, and I have no doubt that crimes such as those described here really are committed in some instances. But how many of these transactions are based in fraud or violence and how many in women taking a calculated risk to get out of North Korea? Does denying women agency and applying slave-trade dysphemisms really help outsiders to understand why men might conduct this sort of business and women go along with it? The next paragraph struggles valiantly to make the women look like helpless victims, but careful reading reveals the truth:

At some point the woman realizes what is happening to her. She then has two choices: go through with the marriage or try to escape. This is not really a choice. The woman is on her own in a strange country…Most accept the inevitable and agree to be sold. They reason, not illogically, that life with a Chinese husband, even an abusive one, is preferable to arrest, repatriation, and automatic imprisonment in a North Korean labor camp for illegally leaving the country…

Why does a “slave” need to “agree to be sold”?

…Because the woman has no official identity papers, the marriage cannot be legally registered. Such pseudomarriages may be voluntary—at least in the sense that the woman has the theoretical option of turning down a man’s offer. But it is wrong to consider it a true choice. It is “a means of survival or livelihood,” says Lee Keum-soon, a senior researcher with the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul…In many cases, she says, a voluntary marriage is indistinguishable from a forced marriage. The woman’s few alternatives may include prostitution or online stripping. A woman who cannot speak Chinese would not be able to work in a restaurant or a store. The North Korean woman “would quickly realize that there was no alternative but to establish a live-in relationship with a Chinese man…as a relatively safe means of staying in China.” If a woman has relatives in China, they often urge her, not without reason, to strike a bargain with a Chinese man who will feed and house her in exchange for her labor and sexual favors…

If you can’t see the problem here, you need to reread “A False Dichotomy”. By these standards, how many life-choices are “true” ones? Do Chinese farmers “choose” to live in a country with no available women? Do the so-called “traffickers” choose to live in government-destroyed countries with few means of getting ahead? Obviously these women feel that staying in China, even under these conditions, is preferable to returning to North Korea, just as many people consider working in a sweatshop preferable to working on a farm. It doesn’t help poor, disadvantaged people when educated, successful ones try to shut down some of their extremely limited options for the “crime” of failure to rise to Utopian levels.

As is typical for this type of article, it then descends into a long, lurid personal narrative designed to appeal to the reader’s emotions; in this case the writer willfully conflates the actions of “traffickers” with the brutality and corruption perpetrated by police and government officials in both countries. It then returns to Kim, who admits that many of the “trafficked” women he endangers by his meddling tell him to get lost, but when he does manage to talk one of them into leaving with him he “sometimes asks the rescued women to pledge to pay back $1,000 of the costs once they get to Seoul and receive financial help from the South Korean government.” In other words, he convinces them to allow him to illegally smuggle them out of their current situations and into another country, then charges them for the privilege. Sound familiar?

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