The Honest Courtesan

Goodsex is any form of sex considered acceptable by the Party…all other forms…are considered sexcrime.  –  George Orwell, 1984

Eight updates from the sixth week of 2012:

Just Drawn That Way (July 21^st, 2010)

This is another of those “dog bites man” things which are only news because neofeminists have worked so hard to convince everyone that they’re not true:

New research is demonstrating what many people already knew from experience:  Women lose interest in sex over time, while men don’t…researchers Sarah Murray and Robin Milhausen…of the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, asked 170 undergraduate women and men who had been in heterosexual relationships for anywhere from one month to nine years to report on their levels of relationship satisfaction, sexual satisfaction and sexual desire…The participants reported being generally satisfied with their relationships and sex lives, but women reported lower levels of desire depending on the length of their relationship…In fact, relationship duration was a better predictor of sexual desire in women than both relationship and sexual satisfaction.  While the…decrease in female desire was small, it contrasts with male desire, which held steady over time…evolutionary theorists predict that male desire should remain perpetually high in order for them to produce many offspring, while female desire should decrease as their attention turns, historically, toward child-rearing…

…Hormonal changes that occur as couples move from the passionate early stage to the compassionate later stage…sometime between six and 30 months may also mediate changes in desire over time.  Pharmaceutical companies are currently researching the impact of testosterone on women’s desire, but so far, the results have been inconclusive…In an earlier study, Murray found that women who reported more realistic expectations about what sex would be like in a long-term relationship also had higher levels of desire than those with less realistic expectations.  “I think that individuals who expect to maintain the high level of excitement and passion that often exists in the first few months of a new relationship are setting up unrealistic expectations about what is to come and will be more disappointed when the desire and passion take on different forms,” she said…

I’ve frequently pointed out that both sexes need to view the others’ differing desires realistically: women need to either provide enough sex or expect that their men will get it elsewhere, and men who feel so driven need to hire professionals rather than entering into dangerous dalliances with amateurs.

Don’t Buy It (February 1^st, 2011)

In this column I provided links to a number of studies demonstrating that mega sporting events don’t attract increased numbers of prostitutes, but it never hurts to have a couple more.  Here’s a new one from the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW):

A widespread belief that major sporting events fuel sex trafficking is unsubstantiated and has a negative impact on groups that campaigners purport to protect, undermining anti-trafficking objectives…Activists opposed to sex work say large groups of men attending the Olympics, FIFA World Cup and U.S. Super Bowl competitions create a high demand for sex work causing large numbers of women to be trafficked…[but] there is no correlation between those beliefs and the actual number of trafficking cases found, the report titled “What’s the Cost of a Rumour?” said…“Despite increased scrutiny by the media, political figures and law enforcement, there is no evidence that large sporting events cause an increase in trafficking for prostitution,” Julie Ham, the author of the study, said…GAATW reviewed literature from United Nations (U.N.) agencies, government offices, academic researchers, anti-trafficking organisations, sex-workers rights organisations, non-governmental organisations and the media.

The claim sex work will increase is perpetuated in part because it is useful as a fundraising strategy, as a way to grab attention and be seen to “do something” about trafficking, and as a more socially acceptable guise for prostitution abolitionist agendas and anti-immigration agendas, the report said…[but] anti-trafficking campaigns that are based on unproven claims can…result…in increased criminal penalties and human rights violations against sex workers…[and] controls on women’s movements, intended to stop trafficking, can actually lead to increased trafficking…

Even better, the mythbusting website Snopes has now officially listed the rumor as false, which will greatly accelerate its demise among the internet-savvy portion of the population.

Not an Addiction (February 11^th, 2011)

Why must every strong urge now be described as an “addiction”?

…A new study shows…the urge for a Facebook fix is at least as strong as the lure of tobacco and alcohol.  The survey of 250 people was published…in the journal Psychological Studies, and revealed that sex and sleep were the two things most longed for during the day, yet the need to check Facebook was too hard for most to overcome…alcohol and cigarettes generated lower levels of desire than the urge to check social networks…

The fallacy here, of course, is the pretense that Facebook is a “substance” to which one can become addicted.  It isn’t; it’s simply a process by which many people communicate with their social groups.  The urge to check Facebook is nothing more or less than the desire for social interaction, which is extremely strong.  If checking Facebook can be an “addiction”, then all human interaction is an “addiction” and the word loses all meaning.

Backwards Into the Future (March 30^th, 2011)

South Africa, once the human rights pariah of the Western world, is now advancing in its treatment of sex workers while the United States moves backward into the sort of human rights model one associates with third-world dictatorships.  And now Kenya and Namibia are joining the list of African countries with a more civilized attitude toward sex work than that of the US:

…Nairobi is considering [decriminalization]…Mayor George Aladwa said…the council was working to harmonise by-laws with provisions of the new Constitution before allowing commercial sex workers to operate without restraint…“We will certainly find places to have them operate freely without any harassment.  These are people who have dedicated themselves to do their work, there is no need to continue harassing them”…

And though Namibia isn’t that far along, it’s still way ahead of the US:

The Director of Namibia’s largest sex-workers’ organization, Rights not Rescue, has called upon the government to decriminalize prostitution as an important step in the fight against HIV and AIDS.  Nicodemus Aochumub, better known as ‘Mama Africa’, [said]…“Government should decriminalize sex-work to [allow sex workers]…access to universal health care and to enable them to lay charges with the police without the fear of being arrested.  Discriminating against prostitutes will inevitably increase the HIV rate because they are helplessly exposed to abuse, even by police…How can we fight this deadly disease when law-enforcement officers take away condoms from the girls…They throw them away and tell us we don’t deserve to use condoms.  Some police officers force us into sex, otherwise we will end up in jail…We…are not free even 21 years after independence.  Prostitution is work and feeds many families,” emphasized Mama Africa…HIV infection among sex-workers has declined significantly in countries where prostitution is legalised.  Prostitutes in Germany, for instance, are registered with the legal and health authorities, are required to undergo regular medical checks and pay tax.

What Would Orrin Hatch Do? (April 17^th, 2011)

Is it so damned hard to just orient the computers so nobody can accidentally see what someone else is viewing?

…Libraries around the country are frequently troubled by the conflict of your First Amendment right to view “protected speech” and others who just have to watch pornography in a public library setting.  The most recent publicly exposed incident in Seattle occurred at the Lake City branch of the Seattle library system. Julie Howe said in a public email that her 10-year-old daughter was disturbed after looking over the shoulder of a man last month as he watched pornography at the branch…Andra Addison, spokeswoman for the Seattle Public Library, told the Seattlepi.com:  “…We don’t tell people what they can view and check out…Filters compromise freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment.  We’re not in the business of censoring information.”  However, in 2010 the State Supreme Court ruled in favor of a library that had taken a much less permissive attitude toward porn on its computers.  The court ruled that public libraries in Washington can filter Internet content to block things like pornography…Howe says she understands the predicament the library is in, but wants there to at least be signs warning patrons to watch out where they look…New Yorkers can [also] watch internet porn at the city’s public libraries thanks to a policy of free speech protected by the First Amendment, the New York Post reported in April…

Apparently, the Jefferson Parish Library is less averse to censorship; when I logged on there with my husband’s laptop on February 6^th, the first thing that popped up on my screen was a warning that I better not look at “adult” materials, or else.  So I made sure I viewed my red umbrella picture, just on principle.

A War for Peace
(May 12^th, 2011)

I have no real comment to make about this, but I figured my male readers might enjoy these pictures of Femen’s latest protest.

Girls, Girls, Girls!
(December 15^th, 2011)

There’s more than one way to skin a lawhead:

At least one Kansas City adult business is taking a creative approach to increasing attendance while attempting to follow tough new regulations limiting what its dancers can wear onstage.  Bazooka’s…now [features]…large, flat-screen televisions adjacent to the stage.  While a dancer performs live with her intimate areas covered, as the law requires, a video of the same dancer — with those areas exposed — appears on the screens…The latest strategy may help the business sidestep a new state law requiring “sexually oriented businesses” to close at midnight…Had the dancers exposed those areas in the flesh they would have broken the law, or at least forced the club to close at midnight.  But because they appeared on screen, [owner Dick] Snow said, they’re as legal as a general-interest movie.  “There is some full frontal nudity in these videos, but there’s full frontal nudity in every theater in the city,” he said.  Dick Bryant, an attorney who represents adult businesses, said, “The projection of the images of the nude dancers fully complies with the statutes and the U.S. Constitution”…A spokesman for the Kansas City Police Department said the department had received no complaints about Bazooka’s videos and said it did not appear that the establishment was violating any local or state laws…

Hark, Hark, the Dogs Do Bark (January 11^th, 2012)

Everyone whose mind isn’t hopelessly mired in neofeminist dogma knows that hormones cause most differences in gendered behavior, but a new study shows which genes are affected:

…a team of scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) has uncovered many genes influenced by…testosterone and estrogen that…govern several specific types of male and female behaviors in mice.  The UCSF team selectively turned many of these genes off one by one and found they could manipulate individual behaviors in the mice, like their sex drive, desire to pick fights, or willingness to spend extra time caring for their young.  “It’s as if you can deconstruct a social behavior into genetic components,” said Nirao Shah, MD…”Each gene regulates a few components of a behavior without affecting [others]”…Identifying how genetic differences in our brains account for the differences in our behavior may also be a starting point for understanding how to better address human mental illness and neurodegenerative conditions in which such gender differences exist.  For example, autism is four times more common in males than in females…

Of course, this won’t convince “true believers”, but every such discovery makes it harder for them to peddle their lies to others.

One Year Ago Today

“John Law” presents four short articles about cops and hookers.

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