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Posts Tagged ‘Feminists and Other Puritans’

In the News (#1593)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 29, 2025| Leave a Comment »

We do not need to be the board of censorship of Alabama.  –  Ron Snider

Feminists and Other Puritans (#1177)

Once again:  this alliance is neither new nor “bizarre”:

…[Prohibitionists] who…identify as “radical feminists”…have long-utilised anti-trafficking legislation to push for restrictions on sex work.  Fighting “sex trafficking” is also a popular crusade for [fundamentalist] Christian groups, who view sex work as depraved moral behaviour…At times, these two groups have joined forces in a…[not at all] “unlikely alliance” to pursue these ends…We at GAATW have noticed that many organisations from both camps have recently expanded their use of anti-trafficking frameworks to also advocate for the abolition of surrogacy and [persecution of trans people]…GAATW has broadened its own fight by forming new alliances with social justice movements beyond trafficking, sex work and migration…to counter the increasingly organised and well-funded attack on the rights of sex workers and people who act as gestational surrogates…

Thought Control (#1516)

A few sane judges are the only obstacles to the mad emperor’s reign of terror:

…the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island [has] struck down the Trump [regime]’s [unconstitutional] attempts to dismantle the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).  The decision was issued in response to a lawsuit filed by the Attorneys General of 21 states…[the mad emperor wanted] to take away…shared access to books in rural and remote areas…and…countless [other] library services…to…terminat[e]…the agency’s grants…halt…data collection and research, and…[sack] nearly all of the agency’s staff….the…court ruling [correctly recognized] that those actions were arbitrary…capricious and [illegal]…and permanently prohibits the [mad emperor] from t[rying again] in the future…

No Escape (#1538)

The inevitable result of giving sexually-aggressive thugs total power over women:

…women [locked] in a San Francisco jail were…forced to undress in front of [screws] while [the leering thugs]…filmed them with their body-worn cameras…17 women [have] filed a claim with the city…[while cops tried to excuse the violation as a “]search[“]…

Aladdin’s Satellite (#1555)

Isaac Asimov once described computers as “high-speed morons”; they do whatever they’re told to do very fast, without judgment:

Elon Musk is a better role model than Jesus, better at conquering Europe than Hitler, the greatest blowjob giver of all time, should have been selected before Peyton Manning in the 1998 NFL draft…[can] “drink piss better than any human in history,” and is a better porn star than Riley Reid, according to [MechaHitler, Twitter]’s sycophantic…chatbot that has seemingly been reprogrammed to…choose Musk as being superior to the entire rest of humanity at any given task…It is…pretty funny…but…also an example of how big tech companies…regularly put…their thumbs on the scales of their…chatbots to distort reality and to obtain their desired outcome.  “Elon’s intelligence ranks among the top 10 minds in history, rivaling polymaths like da Vinci or Newton,” one…answer reads…

Thought Control (#1558)

Alabama censors are still trying to force obedience by illegally choking off library funds:

A two-year [censorship] battle…at the Fairhope Public Library is…flar[ing up] again…as the…[highly-politicized] Alabama Public Library Services board [is once again trying to illegally withhold] tens of thousands of dollars in state funding…John Wahl, chairman of the…board…[bloviated] “I…should control the content that children are exposed to…[regardless of what] parents…want”…Read Freely Alabama…has criticized the [rogue boards’s actions, saying]…“It’s a slap in the face to the taxpayers of Fairhope…The money was appropriated for our library by the legislature”…

Thought Control (#1579)

It took seven years for people to start fighting wannabe censors:

In a stunning rebuke of the [pro-censorship cult], Moms for Liberty…candidates failed to win a single contested race across the United States in the November 4, 2025, elections…all 31 M4L-endorsed candidates…in [races where anybody at all ran against them] were defeated, marking the first total shutout for the organization since…2021…the…elections confirmed…[that] voters across party lines are increasingly rejecting the [bizarre police-state] tactics that defined Moms for Liberty’s national strategy…and…are tired of outrage politics in schools…

Torture Chamber (#1584)

This will continue until screws face criminal charges for each and every assault on prisoners:

Even in a system known for its brutality, [the gang murders of] Robert L. Brooks and Messiah Nantwi stood out.  Both men were handcuffed…[and literally] torture[d to death]…resulting in criminal charges against 20 of the [murderers] and sending officials scrambling to try to portray the episodes as unacceptable aberrations.  But…New York…state prison guards [routinely]…restrain…[victims before] assaulting them…thousands of…times…in the past decade…guards [routinely]…punch…kick…[and] stomp…on prisoners, smash…their fingers in cell doors…[hit their testicles] with batons, and even waterboard…them…[and] the rate…has been climbing steadily for the past decade…[especial]ly in…the past three years…

 

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Tweets for the Tweet

Posted in Miscellaneous, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 23, 2024| Leave a Comment »

 

 

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Throwback Thursday Created Woman

Posted in History, Miscellaneous, Perception, tagged , , , , , , , on January 18, 2024| Leave a Comment »

It isn’t at all surprising that evangelical feminists conspire with evangelical Christians to make normal people’s lives as miserable as possible; they’ve been doing it for as long as there’s been such a thing as “feminism”.  –  “Feminists and Other Puritans”

I personally could wreck the careers of a dozen politicians.  And there are roughly half a million whores in the US.
–  “In the News (#704)”

I’m really getting pretty damned sick of the infantile “enthusiastic consent” trope, which promotes a fairy-tale view of human sexuality in which the only possible reason for having sex is “fun”, the only acceptable form of consent is throwing oneself into sex with the wild and totally senseless abandon of a teenage wererabbit on coke, and all enjoyment of the act must be “fair” and “equal” (but how something so subjective is to be measured, we aren’t told).  –  “Candyland“

The prohibitionist sexual fantasy of “pimps” hanging out at every playground is so sick that one has to wonder how anyone higher on the evolutionary scale than a cop could possibly take it seriously.  –  “Raising Ignorance“

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Guest Columnist: Rikki de la Vega

Posted in Guest Columns, History, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 6, 2023| 2 Comments »

Rikki de la Vega is a writer and activist in Boston. She has written 17 books of erotica and erotic science fiction through Sizzler Editions. Her nonfiction book Prudery and the War on Sex (from which this is excerpted) is due for publication by Digital Parchment Services sometime in April 2023.

Among the indictments included in the Declaration of Sentiments, issued in 1848 from the Seneca Falls Convention on women’s rights, was this condemnation of male privilege:  “He has created a false public sentiment by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated but deemed of little account in man.”  We still face this gendered double standard today, where men suffer far fewer consequences for sexual license, and women much more.  Many first-wave feminists, as they were strongly influenced by the religious attitudes of the time, believed that the answer was to insist on male chastity.  But another branch of the movement was convinced that a radically different approach was needed, that of empowering women to insist on equal partnerships based on mutual choice, affection and pleasure.  This was the Free Love movement.

Most people these days associate the phrase “free love” with the hippies of the 1960s and their unbridled approach to sexuality.  The original movement, however, was focused more on the legal, religious and social strictures that went hand in hand with marriage at the time.  Marriage in the nineteenth century meant women were subsumed under their husbands, with no legal identity or rights; divorce was also difficult to obtain, and virtually impossible for women even in cases of abuse by the husband.  Free Love advocates proposed the alternative of “free unions” of consenting partners, without the need for any legal or religious sanction, and likewise dissolved by mutual agreement.  The freedom they were calling for was freedom from archaic and oppressive laws and attitudes which kept women in bondage, as well as perpetuating the link between marriage and social or financial status.  Free Love advocates also affirmed women’s right to sexual pleasure, and of decoupling sex from reproduction by promoting the use and availability of contraception.  This was controversial primarily because it went against the Cult of True Womanhood’s view that women were (or ought to be) only interested in sex as a means of fulfilling the goal of becoming mothers, but also because birth control was seen as obstructing God’s design.  While the movement to promote birth control availability was separate from the Free Love movement, there was considerable overlap between the two, due to their commonly shared belief that women should have more choice and independence around sex and procreation.

Two other movements that intersected with Free Love, and one another, were the political Left and the freethinkers.  Utopian socialists such as the followers of Robert Owen, as well as various stripes of anarchists, often saw the oppressive marriage and divorce laws of their day as part of capitalist and state oppression, and many Free Love advocates embraced radical political views.  The freethought movement’s rejection and critique of religious beliefs and institutions, and their devotion to free and rational inquiry, led to at least an open discussion of Free Love ideals, and acceptance of them in practice as well as theory by many of their leaders.  One of the earliest and most vocal advocate for all three of these was Frances “Fanny” Wright, a Scottish-born intellectual, writer and activist who had established one of the first utopian socialist communities in Nashoba, Tennessee, and gave public lectures on labor rights, freethought, Free Love and women’s equality at a time when it was considered taboo for women to speak in public at all.  The Free Love movement’s overlap with both anticlerical freethought and political radicalism was one reason why so many feminist leaders regarded them as something of a liability.  But more pronounced was the entrenchment of Social Purity advocates within the drive for women’s suffrage and their mischaracterization of the Free Love agenda.  British feminist Elizabeth Wolstenholme had scandalized more conservative women’s rights activists with her free union with Benjamin Elmy, a freethinker and feminist like herself.  While she was initially recognized for her tireless efforts, British historian Laura Schwartz of the University of Warwick notes: “Wolstenholme became the subject of an orchestrated campaign against her continuing public association with feminist organisations.”  In the United States, mainstream feminist leaders turned against Victoria Woodhull for openly stating in a public address in 1871:  “Yes, I am a Free Lover. I have an inalienable, constitutional and natural right to love whom I may, to love as long or as short a period as I can; to change that love every day if I please, and with that right neither you nor any law you can frame have any right to interfere.”

While it may be argued that the Free Love movement did influence other feminists of their time to demand substantive reforms in marriage and divorce laws, the influence of the Social Purity wing still predominated well into the twentieth century.  This is exemplified by British suffragist Christabel Pankhurst’s 1913 book on sexually transmitted disease, The Great Scourge and How to End It, which insisted that votes for women be linked to the imposition of “chastity” for men and the ending of prostitution, dismissing questions about the role of poverty in pushing women into commercial sex, and not once mentioning the use of condoms (which were not only available at the time but often distributed by various armies to their soldiers).  To her, the spread of syphilis and gonorrhea was the result of a male conspiracy, and women needed political power to rein in men’s sexual appetites.

This division within first-wave feminism over responding to the sexual double standard runs along a continuum between two poles which I’ll call restrictive (as in restricting options for sexual expression, especially for men) and expansive (as in favoring an expansion of such options, especially for women).  It goes on into the second wave and beyond, fueling conflicts over how feminists respond to sexual imagery and literature, sex work, transgender issues, and the inclusion of men in the movement.  This is not to say that every feminist neatly fits on one pole or another, but their place on a spectrum depends upon a number of attitudes and approaches.  The first is the attitude towards gender, and especially men.  There is a tendency for those leaning towards the restrictive pole to uphold the gender binary, to describe gender in collective or even essentialist terms, and especially to view men with skepticism at best and outright hostility at worst (sometimes even ignoring the contributions of men to early feminism, such as John Neal, Marquis de Condorcet, Frederick Douglass, and John Stuart Mill).  When you consider the focus on sexuality issues, it would seem that the restrictive tendency has embraced the old-fashioned stereotype that: “Men only want one thing from women, so watch out!”  But it is more specific than that; the restrictive attitude is that men are likely to link sexuality with dominance, aggression and even violence.  Hence Robin Morgan’s maxim: “Pornography is the theory, and rape is the practice” – even when careful studies show no link between viewing porn and acceptance of sexual violence.  In contrast, the expansive view embraces a more fluid, nuanced and individualistic view of gender, affirming transgender and nonbinary people, as well as seeing that men’s attitudes and behaviors fall on a continuum and can change with education.

The second pair of tendencies is based on how each group tries to achieve their goals.  The restrictive side tends to seek to protect women from real or perceived harms, often through laws that prohibit or punish; the expansive side tends to favor efforts that empower women to find the solutions that would work best for their individual situations.  This difference also shows how the two sides tend to analyze and understand a problem.  The restrictive side takes a more simplistic approach; they see something as bad, they want to do away with it, so they embrace a single approach (such as the Dworkin-MacKinnon model ordinance on pornography, or the Swedish model for dealing with prostitution) and hang onto it for dear life.  By contrast, the expansive side tends to take a more nuanced and pluralistic approach; they will look at the issue, the factors behind it, and the consequences of various approaches, sometimes advocating a more multifaceted strategy that addresses the matter more holistically, such as providing nonjudgmental harm reduction for street-based sex workers, including changing the law towards decriminalization so that sex workers have better tools to deal with the issues in their lives.

The irony that seems lost on members of the restrictive group is how easily political and religious conservatives appropriate their tactics and language.  It should come as no surprise, considering the conservative tendency to adapt in order to gain and maintain their hold on politics, not to mention the tendency of both conservatives and restrictive feminists to see women in almost infantilized terms.  By contrast, the expansive feminist group’s dedication to individual autonomy puts them more in the position of critics to any political administration regardless of ideological label.  Indeed, it would seem that the expansive group is the one which is ultimately more skeptical of government, and thus less likely to be co-opted as their restrictive counterparts appear to have been.

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In the News (#1238)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 21, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Here I stand, I can do no other.  –  Rikki de la Vega

A Broker in Pillage

Unlike other government departments, the IRS doesn’t even bother to accuse people of actual crimes before robbing them blind:

…Institute for Justice client Lyndon McLellan saw the…IRS…reach…into his bank account [to steal] his life savings without warning or cause in 2014.  McLellan [owned] a small convenience store…in Fairmont, North Carolina…he…worked long hours and rarely took vacations…Yet federal agents accused him of violating so-called structuring laws because his business frequently made bank deposits in amounts under $10,000…the[y stole] more than $107,000…”It took me 13 years to save that much money,” he says.  “And it took fewer than 13 seconds for the government to take it away”…

All-Purpose Excuse

“Sex trafficking” is a convenient excuse for any tyranny:

The Manitoba government is tabling a bill…[which] would require hotels and people operating on online accommodation platforms, such as Airbnb, to keep a record of guests’ information, including their names and addresses…and…to hand over that information to police…on…demand…without a warrant…[politician Rochelle Squires tried to justify this incredible violation of civil rights by vomiting out the words] “human trafficking”…and “children”…

Feminists and Other Puritans

It’s nice to see someone whose name isn’t Maggie McNeill writing about this:

…the worst form of prudery and repression is that which comes from those who also claim to be feminists…Women’s rights activists have been divided about sex from the beginning.  In the nineteenth century, the “free love” movement, which promoted birth control and sought to replace traditional male-dominated marriage with consensual unions of equal partners, butted heads with the “social purity” movement obsessed with controlling men’s lust as a way of eradicating such “evils” of prostitution and venereal disease…Those leaning towards the equality pole welcomed and worked with men who agreed with their goals, like Frederick Douglass and John Stuart Mill.  Those on the protectionist side, however, viewed men with skepticism, and demanded that they prove their worth by swearing to be chaste and “chivalrous” towards women…Not far off from contemporary pledges to not use porn or “end demand for sex trafficking”!  If the women who worked for social purity back then sounded like religious zealots, it’s because they were…

The Puritan Recrudescence

Politicians are increasingly convinced that they’re allowed to redefine legal concepts as they wish:

A strange new bill introduced by Oklahoma [politician] Rob Standridge would make it illegal to knowingly give “obscene material” to a “vulnerable person,” explicitly including unhoused people…SB 1522 [also includes] an unconstitutional redefinition of…“obscene material” as “any description, exhibition, presentation or representation, in whatever form, of nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement or sadomasochistic abuse”…Such supposedly obscene materials would include “book, magazine, newspaper, pamphlet, poster, print, picture, figure, image, description, motion picture film, record, recording tape, CD-ROM disk, magnetic disk memory [sic], magnetic tape memory, videotape, computer software, video game,” and other unspecified media to be determined by the authorities.  Despite his seeming concern for the moral hygiene of the unhoused, Standridge recently opposed a new homeless shelter, making statements conflating Oklahoma’s unhoused population with “sex offenders” and calling them “a public safety risk”…

Stalkers in Blue (#987)

Another cop demonstrates what he is:

A Bay Area [cop] has been charged with masturbating in front of a family that called police during a fraught domestic violence call…Matthew Dominguez…“milled around the home…keep[ing] the daughter in view of his Body Worn Camera”…Dominguez [later]…unzipped his pants and began rubbing his crotch…[in full view of the mother and] daughter…Dominguez [kept] follow[ing the daughter]…around…The mother and daughter then went to find…the father…who…[also] “saw…Dominguez…with his erect penis in his left hand”…

Blunt Instrument (#1012)

This would be a much better article if it didn’t pretend that prohibitionism is a solely a phenomenon of the “right wing”:

For the past year, low-income Asian women in Newmarket [Ontario] have been engaged in a fierce battle with [politicians]…working to close down their massage businesses by claiming that the workers are both disreputable criminals and sex trafficking victims…in January…the town council imposed a set of regulations requiring massage businesses to get a new type of licence…[under] threat…[of] fines of $4,000 to $5,000 per day…the town…[is] using a fake anti-trafficking campaign…with zealous support from [the usual suspects]…thanks to centuries of racism and employment segregation in North America, body rubs are associated with crime, sex work, and people of colour…Newmarket town council declared their intention to create new rules that would drive out the businesses that they defined as “appeal[ing] to sexual appetites,” and the “brothels” that town councillors claimed were “hosts for human trafficking.”  Their…plan was to get rid of suspected sex work by tightening the rules so that only businesses whose workers have formal educational certifications from Canada could get the newly [inven]ted Personal Wellness Establishment Licence…[such] certifications can take years…and tuition can cost thousands of dollars…

Repeatedly claiming that prohibition in Canada is “right wing” when Trudeau and his party eagerly promote it is tantamount to pissing on the readers’ legs and telling them it’s raining.

Torture Chamber (#1182)

The government needs to be buried in lawsuits before this will stop:

[Young men] at a South Carolina…[prison are locked in cages] with feces on the floor, mold on the walls, and cockroaches in their food, according to a new lawsuit…the kids — who range in age from 13 to 19 – are [also] subjected to routine violence by [screws and] other [prisoners]…[screws also] use solitary confinement — in cells with no natural light — as a way to “protect” them from violence…some[times for]…months [at a stretch], and there [are] no meaningful educational or mental health services for the[m]…the…[prisoners] are disproportionately Black and from families that live below the federal poverty line…

Once again: it does not help young victims of governmental brutality to infantilize them as “children”.

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In the News (#1177)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 6, 2021| Leave a Comment »

[SWERFs] talk…about sex workers as if they were malnourished dogs in an ASPCA commercial.  –  Ellis Brooks

Why I Wait

This same nonsense pops up every 2 to 3 years:

…Young people are turning away from “sex positivity”.  Or maybe it is “young women”…or feminists, and does that include SWERFs and TERFs?  Or maybe it’s Generation Z…In any case, people are talking about generation-size numbers of people turning away from “sex positivity” towards…“Sex neutrality”? “Sex negativity”? (The Sex Singularity? The Void?)  You will not get much more clarity from the latest source of anti-“sex positivity” discourse…[a] New York Times opinion piece, “Why Sex-Positive Feminism Is Falling Out of Fashion,” by professional…opinionator Michelle Goldberg.  The piece oozes with Goldberg’s joy at…the news that hordes of humans are turning away from unfashionable, gross El Sexo…To demonstrate this…imaginary trend which anyone who has spoken frankly with actual sex-having humans might be very tempted to identify as her own wish fulfillment fantasy — Goldberg cherry-picks three secondhand, anecdotal examples…

Zeitgeist

Well well well, at least one ACLU chapter is finally stepping up to the plate:

…the New York Civil Liberties Union issued the following statements: “The New York City Council must…reduce the size, scope and power of the NYPD. This must include disbanding the outsized and militarized Strategic Response Group…[which] regularly kettle, arrest, and brutalize protesters”…“Dismantling the NYPD’s abhorrently corrupt Vice Squad is a public health and public safety imperative,” said Jared Trujillo, policy counsel at the NYCLU. “Vice…officers use their badges to exploit, sexually harass, and otherwise terrorize sex workers, survivors of trafficking, massage workers, and their clients”…After years of demands to reduce NYPD funding, Mayor de Blasio and New York City Council…instead added an additional $200 million to the NYPD expense budget in June.  This follows accounting slights of hand including transferring, but not reducing the presence of, policing in schools from the NYPD to the Department of Education, and making empty promises to cut spending on overtime, which the NYPD has repeatedly blown past…

To Molest and Rape (#1154)

Cops will use any excuse politicians give them to commit violence:

The [cop] who murdered Sarah Everard used Covid laws to [intimidate her into submitting to what she thought was] arrest…before raping her, strangling her and burning her body…Wayne Couzens…used the [tyrannical] Covid-19 lockdown…as a…[tool] and…witness[es said and did nothing due to obedience conditioning]…

A spokespig oinked that if a woman is afraid of a cop who is trying to arrest her she should just run away (because they totally won’t call that “resisting arrest”), or call the cops to summon more cops to cover up for the one she’s afraid of.  Seriously.

To Molest and Rape (#1166)

Sows are just as disgusting and predatory as their male counterparts:

Two [typical and representative] New Jersey [cops] who [masturbated to] nude photographs of [a five-year-old] girl…have been indicted…Jeffrey Reitz…was previously charged in December 2019 with two counts of possession of child [porn, and]…Andrea V. Knox…was [newly] indicted…

Feminists and Other Puritans (#1172)

A very good essay on how anti-sex “feminism” is bigotry:

SWERFs are indistinguishable from evangelical zealots…both…believe sex work must be eradicated.  Both treat sex workers as subhuman, dismissing our voices unless we’re prepared to kneel and repent for our sins.  Both view us as children incapable of making our own decisions and both view themselves as saviors, denying us our humanity while pretending to save it.  Their collective activism is committed to destroying our livelihood while upholding systemic discrimination against us.  They spread disinformation to gain support.  They want us in prison because they want us to be punished.  And…they pretend this is for our own good.  They have deluded themselves into believing that their hatred is heroic…And whenever the subject of sex work comes up in a political or cultural context…they call upon people like Catharine MacKinnon…

You Were Warned (#1172)

The 100% predictable result of a deeply-stupid court ruling:

In response to Australian court decisions holding media companies legally liable for the comments by [internet randos], CNN has blocked access to some of its Facebook pages from users in that country…[in response to the bizarre ruling,] representatives from CNN asked Facebook to implement the ability for outlets to disable all comments for their Australian pages…Facebook…[refus]ed to do so, leaving them only with the option to moderate individual comments…[which would be extremely] time-consuming…CNN is the first media outlet to cut Facebook access in the country, but they’re certainly not going to be the last…

I’m sure many in Australia will pretend this is CNN’s fault.  Again.

To Molest and Rape (#1176)

Such a vague way to say “child molestation”:

A [New Jersey cop]…has been charged with having sexual contact with a child…Mark Stinnard…was arrested Monday and charged with [molesting] a child…[and both making and possessing] child pornography…[spokespigs thought it was very important to oink that]…Stinnard…“[was] not [wearing his magical clown costume when he molested a kid]”….

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In the News (#1172)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 18, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Catherine MacKinnon lives in a small world…where there can be no woman who gets to make decisions about her own life.  –  Scott Greenfield

Feminists and Other Puritans (#671)

“MacKinnon has come out from under her rock to explain why OnlyFans isn’t really a woman’s choice“:

[Catharine MacKinnon believes that] if you don’t see the evil [of sex work], it’s only because the evil has blinded you to the evil…the idea that [women can] choose [it] is anathema.  It can’t be true because no one would make such an undignified choice…Maggie McNeill would disagree with this characterization, rather vehemently I would guess.  As would many others, including those who have taken advantage of the opportunity presented by OnlyFans…But to the MacKinnons wielding their axes as they destroy barrels of demon rum, save us from reefer madness, and prevent helpless oppressed women from doing as they choose with their bodies, there are only exploited victims because no women would ever choose to live in a way that fails to meet MacKinnon’s approval…

Pyrrhic Victory (#1020)

The glassholes are back, only worse:

Facebook’s new camera glasses…are not called Facebook Glasses — they are called Ray-Ban Stories..because they are made in partnership with Ray-Ban…Knowing that Facebook is discussing building facial recognition into these things curdles the stomach…The privacy features for the glasses wearer are decent; privacy features for the rest of the world? Not so much…Your data and images may be safe from the prying eyes of Mark Zuckerberg, sure, but the real danger here is…the fact that you’re walking around wearing barely perceptible spy glasses, taking videos and photos of anyone you want, likely without them noticing…The sleek Wayfarer frame design means that unlike Google Glass or the flashy bright yellow Snapchat Spectacles, these look very much like regular sunglasses…

You Were Warned (#1046)

Australia’s rulers seem even more eager to destroy the internet than US rulers:

Australia’s High Court…has ruled that Facebook users are responsible for the content of complete strangers who post defamatory comments on their posts…the…ruling…is just a small part of a larger case brought against Australian news outlets, including the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, and The Australian, among others, by a man who said he was defamed in the Facebook comments of the newspapers’ stories in 2016…Dylan Voller…was [tortured by screws]…at a [prison for legal minors] in 2015 when undercover video of kids being…abused [by screws] was captured and…[bootlickers on Facebook] fabricate[d] stories about [Voller]…to imply that…he…somehow deserved the treatment…Voller’s full case against the media companies can now go forward…The High Court ruling is arguably one of Australia’s dumbest in recent memory…

I Spy (#1064) 

Pigs want to root around in people’s social media in order to destroy their lives:

LAPD…has directed its [thugs] to [demand] the social media information of every [person] they interview, including individuals who are not arrested or accused of a crime…the “field interview cards”…reveal that LAPD [thugs] are [demanding]…Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social media accounts, alongside basic biographical information…the Brennan Center for Justice…conducted a review of 40 other…US [cop shops] and was unable to find another…that [admitted to] social media collection on interview cards…LAPD…us[ed] the cards to falsely label [victims] as gang members…and prosecutors have previously used Facebook photos and “likes” to make dubious…allegations of criminal gang activity…LAPD also shares data with federal [cop shops and spook houses via] “fusion centers”, and [also feeds the data into] “predictive policing” [scams]…

The Implosion Begins (#1163)

Everyone who spread “sex trafficking” hysteria contributed to this atrocity:

…a former Marine beset by delusions of child sex trafficking [based on propaganda spread by the government and anti-sex groups for two decades]…massacre[d]…a Florida family…Bryan Riley…[happened to see] Justice Gleason mowing his lawn with his 11-year-old daughter in the yard…an[d cast the girl as a character in his delusion] named Amber who was suicidal and being held by a supposed sex trafficking ring that God had told him to confront.  In fact, no one named Amber lived at the home and Gleason repeatedly told Riley that before asking him to leave their initial encounter…Riley left angrily…[then] left his home around 1 a.m. Sunday and went to the Gleason home…because, Riley later told detectives, “God told me to kill everyone and save Amber cause she’s a victim of sex trafficking”…The 11-year-old girl survived the attack despite being shot multiple times…her family huddled in a bathroom after Riley shot his way into the home, killed their dog and then attacked everyone hiding there…The victims are Gleason…his…girlfriend, Theresa Lanham; their baby boy, Jody…and…Lanham’s mother [Catherine Delgado]…

It seems likely that even the imaginary “trafficking victim’s” name was derived from government-backed hysteria: “Amber”, as in “Amber alert”.  Also: the sheriff in the story, Grady Judd, has for years eagerly promoted the same ugly propaganda which shaped Riley’s delusions to justify his pocket police state.

Dangerous Speech (#1171)

This is little more than a delay in a case the government cannot win fairly:

Judge Susan Brnovich has granted the [Backpage] defense’s motion for a mistrial. “I, at the beginning of this, gave the government some leeway…Yet, in the [government’s] opening and with every witness thereafter, it seems, the government has abused that leeway”…The opening statement from federal prosecutor Reggie Jones “was close to causing mistrial,” she said.  Then, despite agreeing “to minimize the focus on child sex trafficking” from then on out, the government continued to harp on it.  And despite being told that witnesses could only talk about Backpage’s general reputation if it was tied to communication with specific defendants in this case, government witnesses like Sharon Cooper “talked about the reputation of Backpage untethered from communications with the defendants,…I will call the jury in to dismiss them and then we will set a date a couple weeks out to talk about when we can reconvene”…

To Molest and Rape (#1171)

“Having inappropriate behavior” is a really awkward way to say “molesting”:

A [typical and representative] Ashland [Tennessee cop] has been arrested for [molesting] a minor [girl]…Benjamin Moore…was…[also] charged with…official misconduct…and…tampering with evidence…

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In the News (#1061)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 5, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Scholars who pathologize sex workers in the classroom grant the state license to mete out gratuitous violence in the streets.  –  Rahsaan Mahadeo

Maggie in the Media

I was recently interviewed on an Australian sex worker radio show named Behind Closed Doors; it was originally supposed to be only one show, but Kitty, Dean & I were enjoying ourselves so much we just kept going and did a two-parter!  Here it is in podcast form (Part One & Part Two); I hope you enjoy listening as much as we enjoyed talking!

The Course of a Disease

The Swedish rot has reached Eastern Europe:

Since July 1, in Latvia…[prostitution is technically not] illegal  as politicians have been unable to reach a compromise on this issue…The only [criminalization] proposal has been submitted by the party alliance Attīstībai/Par! (AP!) and its sets forth punishing only the buyer of the prostitution services and not the person providing them.  The proposal is to be reviewed in the Interior Ministry. Following this process, the ministry plans to bring the draft law for discussion in the government…

The Notorious Badge

Critics just can’t resist inserting their own dumb beliefs about whores into even good reviews:

Alice, the feature debut from Australian writer-director Josephine Mackerras, is…a leftfield take on female empowerment…Alice…discovers that her husband has cleaned out their accounts and stopped paying their mortgage; a bit of digging later and she discovers the money has been spent on prostitutes…With the bank threatening to foreclose on her home and a huge sum to pay…Alice agrees to work for the very escort agency her husband favoured; there is quite simply nothing else that will keep the roof over her head…Mackerras’s take on prostitution won’t be for everyone, and it does sugar-coat the profession somewhat, but it’s a sympathetic and often gutsy portrait of a woman doing what she must, and surviving, even thriving…

Acknowledging that selling sex is pragmatic and lucrative is “sugar-coating”.

Feminists and Other Puritans

An excerpt from The Feminist War on Crime by Aya Gruber: 

…The feminist penal regimes implemented in the 1980s and 1990s are now entrenched institutions overseen by prosecutors…administrators, and for-profit actors with vested interests in their continued survival.  Politicians are certainly not apologizing for VAWA…[and] plenty of feminists…remain committed not just to upholding the existing feminist crime control regimes and closing “loopholes” in them but also to creating new ones—new antitrafficking laws, revenge-porn laws, laws against hosting prostitution ads, [etc]…Campus antirape sentiments have proven a boon to prosecutors eager to implement strict versions of affirmative consent…and expand pro-prosecution trial rules…some of the most ardent prison critics…proceed as if there were a carve-out to the mass incarceration critique for sexual misconduct—including, or perhaps especially, intoxicated sex or sex without affirmative consent—even though there is no such carve-out for aggravated assault, drug dealing, or even murder…

Wise Investment (#1024)

In every country, sex workers, clients & everyone else harmed by “prostitution stings” needs to keep suing over them:

Liberal scholar [and long-time critic of the Chinese Communist Party] Xu Zhangrun has hired two lawyers to prepare legal action against police who accused him of soliciting prostitution…Xu was dismissed by Tsinghua University in Beijing…after he was taken away by police who [claimed] that the…scholar had solicited prostitutes in the southwestern city of Chengdu last year.  Xu, who had taught at Tsinghua for 20 years, was sacked because of “moral corruption”…The law professor…[hired] lawyers Mo Shaoping and Shang Baojun, and former human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang…to represent him…in an attempt to overturn an administrative ruling b[ased on a]…confession…police [pretend he made but]…Xu [denies]…

The Cop Myth (#1045)

Sociologists may at last be admitting their role in creating the police state:

Now is the time for sociology to reckon with its role…in the production of a criminal legal system subsidized by Black captivity, dispossession, debt and death…Any academic attempt to distinguish between “good policing” and “bad policing” or “overpolicing” and “underpolicing” makes policing itself not just theoretically possible, but legitimate…The University of Minnesota has already committed to cutting ties with the Minneapolis Police Department.  Now it and other sociology programs around the country must take the next step by canceling carceral curricula…According to an American Sociological Association report, “criminology/delinquency” was the highest-ranked specialization sought by employers…in 2019.  Courses like “Deviant Behavior,” “Criminal Behavior and Social Control”…and “Juvenile Delinquency” not only legitimize state violence, but also employ academics…sociologists fail to consider how “deviance,” “delinquency,” “criminal” and “terrorist” still conjure up racialized images that cops…and [spooks]…use…to…justify the killing of people of color…

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic (#1060)

Blaming bad behavior on an imaginary “addiction” is the opposite of accepting responsibility:

[Pennsylvania politician] Mike Folmer [was convicted on child pornography charges despite]…pleas [that the]…judge [should let him skate because Jesus]…Folmer [was]…sentence[d to 2 years in prison]…8 years on probation…[and] sex offender [registration] for 15 years…[his] defense attorney [also made the bizarre argument that he should be let off easy because he is a career sociopath]…“He had an addiction to pornography,” [attorney Brian] Perry said…Folmer [demonstrated his megalomania]…to the judge…[by comparing himself to] King David…

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In the News (#836)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 9, 2018| 7 Comments »

A lot of people under 18…are only considered “trafficked” because the law says so.  –  Raani Begum

Capricious Lusts

Some people can’t seem to understand that while sex workers can help men to manage their sexual frustration, there is nothing we can do once they grow to believe they’re entitled to free sex and go down the twisted “incel” rabbit hole.  I think Dan Savage does a good job of explaining that difference here:

…Sexual deprivation can make a person miserable, even suicidal…and, as a society, we seem fine with that.  People who can’t get sex are often told that…no one has ever dropped dead as a result of being deprived of sex.  (Loneliness, however, can hasten death; it may be a greater risk factor for early death than smoking or obesity)…sexually deprived people…who…identify as incels…[don’t] feel…depressed or blam[e] themselves…[they] are filled with rage and blame…women…And when an incel with social or mental health issues—issues that doubtless contributed to his being an “involuntarily celibate” in the first place—violently attacks women (men are often killed too), the online incel breaks into cheers…I don’t think throwing sex workers at violent, deranged incels will solve the violent, deranged incel problem.  Our culture has to change in enormous ways to solve this problem…men have to stop being socialized to believe they’re entitled to women’s bodies…adults who do sex work of their own free will shouldn’t be stigmatized (or treated like criminals) and adults who hire adults doing sex work of their own free will shouldn’t be stigmatized (or treated like criminals).  The former cultural transformation will solve the “incel” problem; the latter will solve the problem of sexual deprivation, i.e. involuntary celibacy…

Feminists and Other Puritans

Once again:  coalitions of fundamentalist anti-sex groups are in no way “surprising”:

If you had told radical feminist and [writer for SWERF/TERF rag Feminist Current] Natasha Chart five years ago that she would be fired from her advocacy job for objecting to the prostitution of minors, she wouldn’t have believed…She opted to speak with The Christian Post…”because…there is a significant and influential portion of…mainstream human rights activist community that…believes…youth sex work[ers]…should [not be raped and caged by cops]”…Chart is a former Jehovah’s Witness…no one is served when trusted civil society institutions utilize their clout…to quietly further a “pimping agenda“…If this goes unaddressed it is only a matter of time before the sex industry is considered “respectable” enough to emerge from the shadows and begin openly sponsoring a political caucus, as is the case in the Netherlands and Australia…

Yes, this is a Christian publication masturbating at very great length about the “pimp lobby” and approvingly quoting Meghan Murphy.

Seizing Power (#679)

Can we please stop pretending that Dart’s actions are anything other than a power & money grab?

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart wants [to profit from]…a recent plea deal [by Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer]…Dart filed a motion…asking [a]…Judge…to require Backpage.com LLC and its attorneys to pay the county for its legal fees in connection with a legal battle that dates back to 2015, when the Dallas-based online classified advertising site obtained a preliminary injunction blocking the sheriff’s office from [threatening] credit card companies [to force them to stop] processing payments for the site…

Broken Record (#733)

Prohibitionists just can’t stop beating this dead horse:

Three local groups are hosting an outreach event to warn the community about the dangers and reality of human trafficking during the Kentucky Derby…If you spot [any of these] red flag[s, report the person to the cops]…Hotel guests with little luggage…”Do Not Disturb” sign used constantly on a hotel room door…Housekeeping services refused for many days…Adults with…cell phones…A person is vague about his/her profession…

Can you imagine these phone calls? “Hi, Officer Porky, I’d like to report a man with a cell phone who told me to mind my own business…”

License to Rape (#806)

US prisons are hotbeds of rape in every form:

Jeannette Reynoso dreaded visiting her husband at…Rikers Island…She knew she would wait hours to be processed, go through several metal detectors and be subjected to a search by dogs sniffing for drugs and weapons.  But she never thought she would be…naked and in tears before two [screws raping her using the excuse of searching] …her body cavities for contraband…When she [resisted the supposed search]…the [screws] threatened to cancel her visits for 45 days…[among other violations] the [screw]…violently inserted two fingers into her anus…she was menstruating at the time…The search Ms. Reynoso described is prohibited in city jails.  In state and federal prisons, strip searches of visitors are permitted with consent, but not cavity checks…Elias Husamudeen, the president of the [Porcine Propaganda Perpetrators]…[mocked] the [reports made] by the women in the lawsuits and [claimed that]…“People are coming in with weapons in their vaginas, up their anus and in baby bottles”…

Because every woman I know can fit a 0.44 magnum in her pussy and a knife up her arse, at the same time.

Pyrrhic Victory (#810) 

Surveillance beyond the wildest dreams of the Stasi:

In cities across the country, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations agents can mine local police reports using COPLINK, a data program little known outside law enforcement circles…The software ingests local police databases, allowing users to map out people’s social networks and browse data that could include their countries of origin, license plate numbers, home addresses, alleged gang membership records, and more…[“authorities” pretend] these databases and analytic tools helps ICE…tackle serious crimes, like child pornography and [the catchall] money laundering.  But…ICE…agents are also involved in questionable immigration enforcement actions nationwide…

Watershed (#815)

When stuffy NBC News publishes an article which openly calls for decriminalization, you know things are changing:

…the true targets of the [so-called] war on trafficking have been the marginalized, low income consensual sex workers whose livelihoods and ability to stay safe have long been dependent on the resources being scrubbed from the internet in the name of ending trafficking…It’s likely that these [“sex trafficking”] laws will be challenged in court and eventually overturned…Even the Department of Justice has said [FOSTA] could…be found to be unconstitutional…But while overturning these bills in court would be a good first step, it’s not enough.  As long as consensual sex work is treated as functionally indistinct from abusive, forced or coercive situations, our laws will continue to punish some of the vulnerable people we claim to want to protect.  Criminalizing and aggressively cracking down on all sex work pushes consensual sex workers underground and into unsafe environments…and…does little to discourage or combat people who profit from coercing others…In contrast, decriminalization…allows…sex workers to more openly and thus safely conduct business…A wide range of groups including Amnesty International, Freedom Network USA, Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women, Human Rights Watch, UNAIDS, World Health Organization, International Women’s Health Coalition and numerous sex worker advocacy and support groups have thrown their support behind…decriminalization…

Negative Secondary Effects (#817)

Normally, the pretended “secondary effects” are concrete things, not silly nebulosities:

[Prohibitionists] have been granted a judicial review against Sheffield’s strip club licensing policy in a move that could…have significant implications for other councils considering strip club licences.  It could force them to take into account the [imaginary] impact on women and gender equality, rather than just the wellbeing of [actual people like the dancers who these prohibitionists want unemployed]…

Funny how nobody is crusading against businesses that employ mostly men on grounds of “gender equality”.  Don’t men have an equal “right” to be forced out of high-paying work to appease prudish lunatics?

Disaster (#832)

Judging by the breadth of responses from all over the political map, FOSTA may have been a serious miscalculation on the part of the government:

“What the new law does is it allows the FBI and law enforcement and individuals to sue platforms of any kind online for third-party hosts and content,” Barb Brents, a professor of sociology at UNLV, told KNPR…She explained that platforms like Craigslist and Backpage…are simply platforms for information and couldn’t be held responsible for what people posted on that format.  But under the new law, people can sue them for what other people post…Brents said there is no real evidence that real traffickers are using those sites, but the sites are used by consensual sex workers.  With them shut down or otherwise threatened…sex workers are losing an important screening mechanism…

And here’s a good introduction to FOSTA and its related tyrannies:

…Hillary Clinton would have signed it, too.  It…has had an overwhelming bipartisan majority…FOSTA-SESTA does nothing but places liability on online platforms by asking them to tackle an enormous “real world”/not online problem…FOSTA-SESTA spooks online platforms into pre-emptively censoring free speech for fear of criminal liability, which has all sorts of horrible consequences for free speech…You can no longer share “explicit and vulgar content” on any Microsoft product, which means that no longer allowed to do anything sexual with anyone on their platforms, regardless…if…paid or unpaid…Here is an incomplete list of products and institutions that discriminate or ban sex work or adult products…

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In the News (#671)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Q & A, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 10, 2016| 3 Comments »

Our perception of what makes a service “safer” isn’t always universal.  –  Lux Alptraum

Bad Jobs

Like something Melissa Farley would make up, only true:  “A new survey shows 90% of social care workers [in Ireland] have experienced violence in the workplace…75% experienced physical assaults – some on a daily basis…”

Somehow, I Doubt She Thought This Through

Never call the cops for any reason whatsoever, especially if you’re a whore:

A prostitute was arrested after she told police a clients handcuffed her and robbed her of $2,000 in cash and her belongings…At some point after the man paid her…he pulled out a police [badge], claimed he was a [cop] and handcuffed her with fake cuffs…He took his $190 off the hotel room dresser, swiped $2,000 in cash…and…the woman’s $1,000 iPad Mini, a $40 backpack and a $100 MetroPCS phone…Police arrested the woman and charged her with prostitution…However, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office declined to prosecute the case…

Above the Law  creepy-cop-neil-hempsall

There’s nothing here saying he harmed or threatened any of the sex workers he looked up, but of course there’s no way to know that given that he stalked them by looking up their fucking police records:

A disgraced cop who used his force computer to contact sex workers…was allowed to keep his job…[Neil Hempsall] admitted four charges and escaped with a community order…[the prosecutor said] “He…had been using the services of sex workers and accessing their record on the police computer system”…There was…[also] evidence he was tracking down a former lover…

The Pygmalion Fallacy (#46)

I can’t help laughing at pathetic losers wanking to their fantasies of superhuman sex robots, but the ones who suffer reaction formation from such fantasies elicit a mixture of pathos and disgust:

According to a [soi-disant] expert in the field, we’ll need to be careful we don’t get addicted to artificial-intelligence lovemaking.  Joel Snell is an [academic who fantasizes]…there’s a real risk linked to the robots…because they’ll offer great sex at any time of the day and night…it’ll never be able to turn you down.  “People may become obsessed by their ever-faithful, ever-pleasing sex robot lovers,” he warned.  “People will rearrange their lives to accommodate their addictions”…

Bonus stupid anti-sex trope: “sex addiction”.

Lack of Evidence (Extra Edition)

It’s a sign of our culture’s deeply-sick sexual attitudes that people still believe in “virginity tests”:

[Dear Dr. Petra, my boyfriend is] like me…a virgin.  But when he checked my vagina he said he could tell I wasn’t a virgin and he doesn’t feel able to be with me until I can be truthful.  I don’t know how to convince him that I am a virgin and don’t know what signs he can see that tell him I’m not…I’m now worried I might be mistaken about myself…[Dr. Petra Answers:] I’m sure everyone reading this [is]…wondering what the circumstances were that led up to him checking your vagina?…You may have told him to get better educated about virginity and women’s bodies.  You might have told him his actions felt alarming and controlling…You could have said he clearly had no idea what he was talking about.  Any or all of these responses would have been reasonable.  And all of them are a good enough reason…to end the relationship without further discussion…There will be other people who are kinder, more sexually informed, more respectful, better communicators and won’t subject you to virginity checks…

Cardboard Cutouts

Note that 1.5% is my standard estimate of coercion among Western sex workers:

This week new statistics on human trafficking in The Netherlands where presented by the Dutch National Rapporteur Human Trafficking [and]…the city of Amsterdam…the Dutch Rapporteur reported…1,321 possible victims of trafficking…66%…from the sex industry…these are not proven victims, but simply people of whom other people (police, marshals, city officials and social workers) have (slight) suspicions about that perhaps they could be victims…if…there are about 827 possible victims in prostitution, and the total amount of sexworkers in The Netherlands are estimated at around 20.000…it would come down to about 4,1%…only 102 possible victims in prostitution where reported in Amsterdam…[which] would come down to about 1,5% of all the sexworkers in Amsterdam…what’s interesting is to compare the suspected victims with the actual number of victims that annually actually press charges…in 2015…33 victims actually [pressed] charges for human trafficking, which is almost the same as the year before (29 in 2014) and the year before that (32 in 2013).  In short, quite a bit lower than how many people are being reported as “possible” victims…

Feminists and Other Puritans

Once again:  NO, a coalition between two different fundamentalist groups to fight what they perceive as a common enemy is in no way “surprising”:

…the surprising nexus between radical feminists and Christian Right culture warriors has been with us a long time.  In the 1980s, anti-porn feminists like Catherine McKinnon and Andrea Dworkin teamed up with anti-porn conservatives like Edwin Meese, leading to the passage of laws censoring sexual speech in the name of protecting women.  In the last decade, anti-prostitution feminists have joined forces with fundamentalist Christians to prosecute sex workers under the aegis of sex trafficking laws.  And now, some essentialist feminists – pejoratively nicknamed TERFs, for “Trans-Exclusive Radical Feminists” – have provided the pseudo-philosophical basis for fundamentalist Christians’ anti-transgender laws…[while] TERFs…approvingly cite…anti-trans [Christian]…right-wing scholars and writers…Feminists…and…Conservatives don’t oppose porn because they want to protect women; they oppose porn because they oppose sexual licentiousness and free sexual expression.  Just like they oppose protecting trans people because transgender reality scares them, disgusts them, or offends their outdated theologies.  A similar shell-game has recently arisen in the context of sex trafficking…This was a deliberate deception on the part of anti-sex activists like the anti-prostitution group Demand Abolition.  As exposed by The Washington Post in 2014, that group’s internal document said that “framing the Campaign’s key target as sexual slavery might garner more support and less resistance, while framing the Campaign as combating prostitution may be less likely to mobilize similar levels of support”…

Hey, Jay Michaelson:  I appreciate your mentioning my work, but the standard practice when doing so is to name the author rather than just the publication, and to include a link to the piece cited.

Guest Columnist:  Kaytlin Bailey

My friend Kaytlin Bailey, on coming out to her father:

…I was afraid to tell him about my having been a prostitute because he was a great dad.  I didn’t want him to think one had anything to do with the other.  I didn’t want to burden him with this indulgent, selfish secret because I feared the images that “your daughter was a prostitute” would conjure might break him, even when his various tours of duty didn’t…We talked for hours, never addressing my prostitution directly. We got tipsy, and…he said…that he was proud of me, and that I could always come home.  “No matter what.”  I could see he wasn’t angry.  He was nervous for me the same way he’s always been…

Go read it.  Please. playing-cowboy-in-cartagena

They Never Learn

Since this self-aggrandizing fascist wankfest hasn’t sold as a TV show, they made a pilot movie:

“Just like the book Uncle Tom’s Cabin brought awareness to slavery and helped start a civil war, this movie can instantly turn that dial of public awareness to sex trafficking,” [fantasizes] director Chet Thomas.  Toward the beginning of The Abolitionists, a film with a limited release…the audience is introduced to “Batman”…a flawed hero with a troubled past who now works largely in the dark of night, protecting the vulnerable from unimaginable horrors…Batman…spent 15 years laundering money for drug cartels in Latin America…[until he had] a Christian epiphany…Nowadays, he works undercover, largely with a former Homeland Security officer named Tim Ballard.  The two of them set up sting operations worldwide that result in the capture of those who sell children as sex slaves…The directors of the documentary…also are working on a TV show.  They say they have enough video — taken with cameras disguised as sunglasses, pens and phones — for 25 episodes…Ballard’s organization, Operation Underground Railroad, has rescued 573 children worldwide and put 160 criminals behind bars…

Choke Point (#610)

The government-encouraged gentrification of the internet is tightening the noose on sex workers:

Lately, it seems like every website wants to see my ID.  Facebook was the first…then Airbnb started asking me to submit both a Facebook account and legal identification…And now Twitter’s opened up its verification process to all sorts of users—provided, of course, those users are willing to send the staff a copy of their legal identification…this push towards a verified internet…makes me concerned that the next iteration of the social media sites that have been essential to the destigmatization of sex work…won’t be quite so amenable to sex work…It should be relatively obvious why a tweeting escort would want to avoid providing her legal information…but even practitioners of legal sex work such as porn and stripping might not be too keen on the idea…it’s…possible that the potential chilling effect on sex worker voices is more than just an unintentional side effect…

The End of the Beginning (#668) 

A reminder that in most of the US, the situation is still worsening:

When he was 18, David Clark had sex with a 14-year-old.  In 1982 he pleaded guilty to sexual misconduct…and was sentenced to four years of probation.  The following year, the state legislature passed a law that retroactively required Clark to register as a sex offender.  In 2009 he was arrested for failing to register…He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison.  Last week a federal appeals court [pretended] there was nothing constitutionally amiss about this series of events, because the law threatening to put Clark behind bars is [supposedly] not punitive…retroactive application…violates the Constitution’s ban on ex post facto laws…[but politicians and courts pretend that] forcing sex offenders to register is not a punishment…

Of Course It Is

It’s nice to know that at least a few reporters get this:

…TV stations plastered [Celeste Guap’s] image on newscasts.  Reporters hounded her for interviews and shared images from her social-media accounts on their websites.  During this time, Guap was [using heroin]…to cope with depression related to her [sexual abuse by cops]…last week…Florida deputies arrested Guap and charged her with felony battery…How did the Bay Area media react to this news?  At least four local outlets — including KTVU, SFist.com, ABC 7 and KRON — published Guap’s true identity and legal name, along with a “mug shot” from Florida jail…some local journalists are arguing that Guap’s case already was widely publicized, so it was OK to disclose her legal name…Bullshit.  The only reason her story is news…is because she was an underage victim of sexual assault [by cops]…And her legal name and identity should be protected as such…and…what the hell was Guap doing [in Florida] in the first place?…She’s a witness to…crimes committed by numerous Bay Area [cops, including]…human trafficking, statutory rape, interfering with a police investigation, illegal use of a police computer system, and pandering…she’s…trapped with a $300,000 bail and detoxing from hard street drugs cold-turkey, and…experiencing [jailhouse] harassment from [jailers]…

It’s What They Do

Thanks, Iain, but we don’t want to be “legalized and regulated”; we just want to be left the Hell alone:

The politician in charge of the Commons committee reviewing the laws on prostitution is caught in a prostitution scandal.  It is right for Labour MP Keith Vaz to resign as chairman of the Commons Home Affairs committee for the time being…But beyond that, Jeremy Corbyn is right about it being “a private matter”…Mr Vaz has done nothing illegal.  Even the “poppers” he was alleged to have taken are a legal stimulant.  But a lot of people seem to believe that Mr Vaz should now stand down as an MP simply because he was unfaithful to his wife…Yet…people have always had affairs…gay men should surely not be forced do disclose their sexuality if they feel uncomfortable about doing so…Some of the criticism has clearly come from supporters of what is called the “Nordic model” who believe that the buying of sex should be illegal.  But this story vividly illustrates the problems associated with changing the law to criminalise men who purchase sex…I can’t really understand why the sale of sexual services should ever be illegal unless it involves trafficking, pimping, compulsion or other forms of coercive behaviour.  The Vaz case – if the allegations are true – demonstrates why prostitution should be legalised and properly regulated.  So long as it is underground, the sex trade will remain in the hands of the criminals and blackmailers…

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