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Posts Tagged ‘harm reduction’

If Men Were Angels

Posted in Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , on June 19, 2014| 58 Comments »

If men were angels, no government would be necessary.  If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.  –  James Madison

Adam and Eve are Driven Out of Eden by Gustave Dore (1866)No scientifically-literate person would deny that human beings are animals, and no sane person would deny that we are not only imperfect, but unperfectible; it is literally impossible to remove all the flaws from any human being.  No accident of birth, no social pressure, no education, no surgery, no psychoactive drug, no holy book, no set of rules or procedures, no machine and no god can remove that flawed nature; we are born flawed, develop new flaws even while trying to correct old ones, and eventually die still flawed (and often because of those flaws).  The Christian myth of original sin may be based in this realization, but there is no baptism or consecration which will wash it away; we are stuck with it, and the best we can do is to recognize the truth and ask for others’ help in controlling the damage our flaws may cause.

Unfortunately, one of the most profound and dangerous of human flaws is our love for authority; the average human craves being told what to do by someone he perceives as superior to him, and the majority of exceptions to this are those who crave the power to tell others what to do.  And though a wisely-organized system would recognize this by limiting both the ability of all humans to exercise power over others, and the opportunity for individuals to surrender power to self-proclaimed leaders, we do not have a wisely-organized system for the simple reason that humans on the whole are not yet wise enough to design such a system.  Theoretically, democracy is supposed to do this, but humans’ love for titles, badges, costumes and Great Men has undermined every attempt since Classical Greece; whatever system is designed to put “the people” in power will eventually allow thugs and strongmen to arise, and no matter how carefully individual rights are protected the hoi-polloi will eventually rush to give up those rights for some perceived advantage (usually “safety”).  And when they do, the rights of the individualists are destroyed right along with those of the mob by the flawed and fallacious mechanism that all democracies to date have depended upon, majority rule.

Any human given power will eventually abuse that power if given the opportunity to do so.  Any human.  Let that sink in, because every argument for the “necessity” of government invariably ignores it.  Every single official, every single cop, every single judge, every single representative.  Every tax collector, inspector, legislator, minister, noble and king.  All of them, to a man, will abuse his authority if given the opportunity to do so; obviously, the solution is to limit and check the power of every single government actor and every group of actors so as to remove that opportunity.  But that is not what we do; in fact, the tendency is to do the opposite, increasing the power and decreasing the accountability of officials until we arrive at the situation illustrated every week in my TW3 and Links columns.  Nor are we satisfied with giving this kind of power to “official” authorities; oh no.  The human desire to be controlled by people who know absolutely nothing about them as individuals is unsatisfied with having the boots of elected officials, appointed officials, bureaucrats, hirelings and henchmen on their faces and bodies; they must also invite a host of ministers, gurus, celebrities, bosses, academics and other Pillars of the Community to stomp on their genitalia as well.

That last metaphor was not merely chosen for shock value; humans, as I said at the beginning, are animals, so although most do use their power for rational (if wrongful) purposes like enriching themselves or destroying their enemies, they also tend to use it for feeding their appetites:

…a minister…is facing 59 counts of first-degree sexual assault in cases against girls…as young as 13…Victor Barnard [led]…a cult-like faith community in central Minnesota…[and told girls he] chose [to rape that they were] to be “sacrificed to God”…

The Witches (1966)The writers of stories like this always pretend to be shocked, as though this were an aberration rather than the norm; for example, people point fingers at Catholic priests who molest boys as if the clergy of their religions were any different.  Atheists in turn point fingers at clergy, ignoring the fact the same kinds of abuses are committed at the same rate by secular authority figures.  If such incidents are rarer in some situations than others it’s merely due to lack of opportunity, not lack of desire.  Do you realize how many different headings on this blog cover variations on the theme of “authorities” abusing their power to get sex in one way or another?  “Above the Law” is the most obvious one, but there’s also “License To Rape”, “Droit du Seigneur” and “Follow Your Bliss”.  Furthermore, “Reaction Formation” and “Buried Truth” deal with “authorities” who work to punish others for sexual kinks they hide in themselves.  Spend some time perusing the stories filed under those tags, then tell me again how power-mad “authorities” are just a few isolated cases, and that it’s sane and sensible to keep giving them more power, more money and more control over every aspect of our lives.

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Friday the 13th

Posted in Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , on June 13, 2014| 23 Comments »

It’s time we let the prohibitionists know that if they want to pick on sex workers, we have a whole lot of brothers and sisters they’re going to have to face as well.  –  “Friday the Thirteenth Again”

Red Umbrellas by Georgio BisettiEvery year has at least one Friday the Thirteenth, and there can be as many as three in a year; next year will be that way, with the day appearing in February, March and November.  The longest time that can pass between two such days is 14 months, as noted in “The Last Thirteen for Fourteen“.  But this year we only have one, in the middle of the year, and that’s today.  Regular readers know what this means, but for those who’ve joined us since December, here’s how I explained it last September:

…from soon after the beginning of this blog, I’ve asked those of you who aren’t sex workers yourselves to speak up for our rights on this day.  The gay rights movement didn’t really take off until the friends and families of gay people got involved, and…we’re going to need [similar] help to make our voices heard.  We need all the sex workers (such as strippers, dominatrices and porn actresses) whose fields aren’t currently criminalized, and the sugar babies and other women who have informally or indirectly taken money for sex…We need all of the men who hire us at least occasionally…[and] all of the women who recognize that…laws which can be used to arrest us will also work to arrest you.  We need all of those who love porn, polyamory, BDSM or kink, because even though policing of sex usually starts with harlots, it never stops with us.  We need all of the public health and human rights experts who understand the necessity of decriminalization in light of their respective fields, all of the libertarians who recognize that governmental prohibition of consensual behavior is both indefensible and dangerous to individual liberty, and all of the feminists who recognize that a woman’s right to control her own body and make her own sexual and economic choices is the primary feminist issue.  And we need all of the decent human beings who don’t fall into any of those categories, but are simply disgusted by the idea of armed thugs arresting, humiliating and ruining people for the “crime” of consensual sex…

You could write a blog post, make an anonymous comment on an anti-whore news story, bring up the subject with friends, link or reblog this column…anything is a help!  If you don’t feel comfortable making any sort of public statement but still want to help the cause, there’s a “Donate” box in the right-hand column; you could also support my current speaking tour via GoFundMe or just buy a copy of my book.  There are also sex worker organizations such as SWOP, ESPLERP and the St. James Infirmary, or sex-worker-friendly organizations like Women With a Vision, that could use your contribution.  Whatever you do, please post about it in the comments and include a link if appropriate; I’ll republish every one next March together with whatever people do in February.  Above all, please remember that any contribution – loud or quiet, public or private, eloquent or laconic, lengthy or brief – is important and worthy, and everyone one will hasten the day when governments no longer believe it’s acceptable for them to persecute sex workers, our clients and our associates in any way they please.

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The Roof Caves In

Posted in Current Events, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on June 5, 2014| 14 Comments »

Ms. Mam and her foundation banked on Western feel-good demands for intervention, culminating in abusive crackdowns on the people she claimed to save.  –  Melissa Gira Grant

Half the SkyAfter the publication of “Continuing To Crumble“, all hell broke loose for Somaly Mam.  I must admit I was surprised at just how quickly and thoroughly it happened; I suspect a lot of “sex trafficking” skeptics in editorial departments were just waiting for something like this (which is a very good sign indeed).  The day after my essay, Somaly Mam announced that she was resigning from her position as head of her foundation, and this article by Anne Moore appeared in Salon:

This week’s Newsweek…[debunked] the figurehead of the so-called “modern slavery movement”…Mam claims to have rescued more than 4,000 girls from sex slavery, but questions about her stories still arise from former staff members, her former husband and those supposed former sex slaves…Mam’s…pernicious web of obfuscations and self-aggrandizements…keep women’s economic opportunities around the world hovering somewhere near deplorable…Many of her accolades…can be traced back to her friendship with New York Times columnist Nick Kristof.  As of press time he still lists the Somaly Mam Foundation as a “partner” in Half the Sky Movement, his blatant attempt (along with wife Sheryl WuDunn) to brand and therefore profit from economic and physical violence against women and girls in the Global South…Kristof may, eventually, claim to have been duped.  I believe he’ll be lying (again)…Mam can’t be held accountable for the impact of her tales as much as she can for establishing the culture of permanent victimhood…what…anti-human trafficking NGOs do…is normalize existent labor opportunities for women, however low the pay, dangerous the conditions, or abusive an environment they may be.  And they shame women who reject such jobs…What anti-trafficking NGOs are saving women from…is a life outside the international garment trade…

The next day, the Times itself – arguably the one organization most complicit in the spreading of Mam’s evil lies – published this piece by Melissa Gira Grant:

…Mam’s…portrayal of all sex workers as victims in need of saving encouraged raids and rescue operations that only hurt the sex workers themselves.  In 2008, Cambodia enacted new prohibitions on commercial sex, after the country was placed on a watch list by the State Department.  In brutal raids on brothels and in parks…women were chased down, detained and assaulted.  The State Department commended [this]…and removed the country from the watch list…Mam’s target audience of well-off Westerners, eager to do good, often knows little about the sex trade.  It doesn’t require much for them to imagine all women who sell sex as victims in need of rescue…When Mira Sorvino arrived with CNN last year to film sex workers undercover in Phnom Penh, Ros Sokunthy of the Women’s Network for Unity [WNU] told the Asian Correspondent news site that this approach was part of the problem:  “You show the face of the mother, who is so poor that she has to sell her daughter for money?  How does this help the daughter or mother?  It doesn’t.  It helps the NGO to make money”…A “hero” like Ms. Mam lets those who lift her up feel that they are heroes, too. They can be saviors simply by repeating her stories and swiping their cards.  Now Ms. Mam has been exposed before her donors and the Western media who anointed her and made fighting sex trafficking a kind of industry in itself, while sex workers suffered the consequences.  Will Ms. Mam’s supporters consider the price of what they’ve been sold?

And speaking of Asian Correspondent, here’s their article from the day after Grant’s:

…CNN…”poverty porn” [does] not sit well with…WNU…Ros Sokunthy…said rich donors would rather support anti trafficking groups with an…agenda to stop all sex work, than those that help sex workers and their children get out of poverty…Pisey Ly…[said that the Somaly Mam Foundation] “still [praises]…Somaly and…[does] not recognize the consequences of how [they]…impacted people”…anti-trafficking organizations tend to be against all sex work, not just…forced sex work…When consenting sex workers are arrested or “rescued,” their children suffer.  With their mothers gone and no money or food coming in, they must find work, even though they are children…

What about the Great White Savior, Nicholas Kristof, who as observed above is more complicit than any other individual in enabling Mam’s depredations against sex workers?  Over the weekend, he quietly removed her page from his website; the first picture above is what it looked like before, and this is what it looks like now: Half the Memory Hole

But if he thought the issue was just going to go away, he was sadly mistaken; it isn’t only sex workers who have been sick of his victim-pimping, snake oil and  outright lies:

…You mean, Mr. Helicopter Rich White Man Rescuer was ready to buy lurid, falsified stories hook, line, and sinker?  Who could have guessed!  Here’s a 2011 Kristof article lauding Mam and her story, in what has to be the most prototypical Kristof column.  Here’s another, on [Long Pros], entitled, “If This Isn’t Slavery, What Is?”  Oh, I don’t know.  Maybe something that actually happened…The history of prostitution reform in Progressive Era America tells a similar story.  There were Kristofs then too, freaking out about the white slavery traffic.  They wanted to hear the most lurid stories possible and then publicize them to make points about the evils of prostitution.  They didn’t bother fact-checking either.  And time and time again, these stories about young women didn’t pan out.  The impact of this movement was to make sex work illegal, making it far more dangerous, as it largely remains today.  The actions of women like Mam and useful idiots like Kristof just obscure the real problems of a lack of opportunity for women to have decent work and respectable lives in Cambodia and elsewhere, not to mention discrediting attempts to help solve real sex slavery.  But then Kristof has never been interested in people helping themselves  anyway.  He prefers saving brown people from themselves…

Fittingly, Kristof issued his “explanation” and “apology” (which as you might expect was neither) on International Whores’ Day; predictably, it was not so much an admission of rescue industry fraud as a lament that Mam’s well-deserved downfall will make it harder for other rescue industry operations to continue enriching themselves at the expense of sex workers:

…I don’t know quite what to think.  Somaly stands by her story, but she also resigned, which gives credence to the allegations…serious doubts have clearly been raised about her…but I’m reluctant to be an arbiter of her back story when I just don’t know what is true and false…Whatever the situation with Somaly, there’s no uncertainty about the larger issue of human trafficking in Cambodia…One risk is that girls fleeing Cambodian brothels will no longer get help.  Another is that the debate about Somaly’s back story will overtake the imperative of ending the trafficking of young teenagers into brothels.  Let’s remember that this is about more than one woman.

I suggest Kristof heed his own closing statement, though I know he won’t; he and other prohibitionists believe the feelings, beliefs and political agenda of a vocal  minority which includes himself, politicians, neofeminists and fundamentalist Christians take precedence over the needs of many millions of  sex workers, their clients, their children and everyone else they help. Prohibitionists aren’t literally “one woman”, but their numbers are tiny compared to those of the people they wish to control and overrule.  Furthermore, I hardly think Kristof need worry about the “sex trafficking” gravy train running off of the rails just yet:

For the first time, pastors and police joined together in…Cambodia…to discuss human trafficking….IJM staff led nearly fifty church leaders through a study on the Bible’s call to seek justice for the oppressed, and then [a cop]…shared about human trafficking and how church leaders can help their communities report the crime…One pastor encouraged her peers to think creatively about how they could work with police for good…The chief of the Cambodian anti-trafficking police…shared tell-tale signs of trafficking and advised pastors of the kinds of questions they can ask if they suspect a girl is in trouble…

The “sex trafficking” hysteria is beginning to implode, and the vultures will eventually need to find another carcass to feed on.  But there’s still a lot of meat left on this one, and they won’t leave until they’ve picked off every scrap.

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A Day for Whores

Posted in Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on June 2, 2014| 12 Comments »

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.  –  Mahatma Gandhi

Today is International Whores’ Day, the 39th anniversary of a protest in which…

…over 100 French prostitutes occupied the Church of St. Nizier in Lyon.  In a very real sense, today is the birthday of the sex worker rights movement; though Margo St. James had already founded COYOTE two years before, the French protests were the first ones large and vociferous enough to gain media attention, and led to the formation of the French Collective of Prostitutes (which in turn inspired the founding of the English Collective of Prostitutes and a number of other, similar organizations)…

Birthdays are a good time for taking stock, for looking at where one has been and where one is going.  Like humans, movements have good birthdays and bad ones; the first few anniversaries of that historic protest were good, until mainstream feminism betrayed us in the early 1980s by selling out to the carceral anti-sex crowd and hopping into bed with the religious right.  And though there were some dark days after that, the movement continued to grow throughout the ‘90s and early ‘00s despite every opposition.  Of course the prohibitionists struck back; they revived the old “white slavery” hysteria under a new name, and for years now they’ve seemed to have the upper hand in the public’s imagination with their lurid masturbatory fantasies of gypsy whores, weeping teenage “sex slaves” and leering “pimps” with magical powers.  At the same time, however, the internet has allowed sex workers to organize with each other and reach out to the public at a level we could only dream of when I first entered the business.  While politicians, cops and the more ignorant and authoritarian members of the general public have subjected the rights of sex workers, our clients and our associates to unceasing attack, at the same time health officials, human rights groups, and the more well-informed and freedom-loving members of the public have increasingly sided with sex workers in calling for decriminalization.

In “Back and Forth” I provided a snapshot of how things stood last summer, and I think it’s safe to say they’ve shifted somewhat in our favor since then.  Oh, one wouldn’t know it to look at the mainstream media; with a few rare exceptions the Fourth Estate has largely abdicated its role of exposing tyranny and instead dedicated itself to the worship of those in power.  Every moronic assertion about “sex trafficking” is slavishly parroted without a whisper of skepticism, every asinine lie about sex workers a cop vomits out is presented as gospel, every ridiculous prohibitionist “study” is reverently cited as ironclad proof of the necessity of “rescuing” us by either locking us up or starving us to death.  The horrible Swedish model has advanced in Ireland and France, was recently adopted as a “recommendation” by the European parliament, has been re-introduced in the UK after being sent packing once before, and is being touted by the Canadian government in a sleazy attempt to circumvent the court decision which struck down criminalization in Canada last December.  The week doesn’t pass that some US jurisdiction doesn’t come out with a new draconian law designed to save nonexistent “trafficked children” by shredding the Constitution and scattering its remains to the four winds; and even countries which have previously taken a more liberal view such as Germany, the Netherlands and Australia are now infested with prohibitionists demanding state control over adult sexual behavior.

The ranks of our allies, however, increase every day.  Over 560 organizations  advised the Parliament to adopt decriminalization over the Swedish model, and over 300 academics gave the same advice to Canada.  A few reporters are beginning to question “trafficking” mythology, and anti-criminalization articles by activists and allies are getting far more common not only in libertarian publications like Reason, but also others all across the political spectrum from Jacobin to Vice to Salon to The Economist to National Review.  It won’t be long before prohibitionists recognize that they’re on the wrong side of history, and begin to adopt the sort of delaying tactics they’ve used for decades against gay rights and are using now against the erosion of the drug war.  The fight won’t be over soon, not by a long shot.  But I predict that every year on this day, I’ll have ever-increasing amounts of good news to report. 

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That Was the Week That Was (#422)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 31, 2014| 12 Comments »

Preteens selling goodies, the police…lectured [her]…was unfair to establishments…like Starbucks.  –  Robert Fernandes

Juxtaposition

Popehat suggests we compare and contrast this:

Just days after Iran’s president denounced Internet censorship as “cowardly,” six young Iranians were arrested and forced to repent on state television…for the grievous offense of proclaiming themselves to be “Happy in Tehran,” in a homemade music video  they posted on YouTube…The arrest of the young dancers, and their televised public humiliation, angered Iranians at home and abroad…

And this:

U.S. Park Police arrested five people…at the Jefferson Memorial.  Their offense?  Dancing.  The dancers were protesting an appeals court ruling…that the national monuments are places for reflection and contemplation — and that dancing distracted…

Real People Maria Isabel

…Photographer Bénédicte Desrus spent six years…documenting Casa Xochiquetzal, a home in Mexico City for…retired sex workers…She only took photographs of the women who gave her permission and provided them with prints, which often inspired other women to participate…Desrus then teamed up with journalist Celia Gómez Ramos, who began interviewing and transcribing the residents’ stories.  They eventually decided to publish…as…Las Amorosas Más Bravas (The Toughest Lovers)…

Check Your Premises

…34-year-old…Vanessa Gumataotao of Sacramento…was arrested on suspicion of prostitution…as well as child abuse and endangerment for allegedly using [a] 17-year-old [boy] as her pimp.  The…boy was arrested on suspicion of pimping…

If It Were Legal

Too bad he lost the suit; this kind of ethical breach is unforgiveable:

A top London solicitor who had sex with a Chinese law student [and sex worker]…has lost his claim for damages after she told his daughter and colleagues about previous affairs.  The solicitor…identified only as AVB, sued the young sex worker, known as TDD, for breach of confidentiality…after she found information about past liaisons on his laptop.  Senior…Justice Tugendhat…said TDD broke a duty she entered when she accepted money for sex.  But…AVB…would not receive damages because although he experienced “some embarrassment” he “has suffered no real distress”…

Something Rotten in Sweden (July Updates, Part One)

Cops busting kids’ lemonade stands isn’t news any more, but this is a new low:

[San Francisco cops busted] two…lemonade stands…the 11-year-old proprietor of one…was informed that simply giving away the fudge brownies and lemonade the police forbade her…to sell would result in a $1,500 fine…Not long after police cleansed the…area of unlawful lemonade dispensaries…they returned due to complaints about “a live band.”  This stemmed…from a neighborhood tradition of setting up a drum kit during [a public event] and allowing local kids to keep the beat.  At the time the police showed up, the unlicensed live bandmember was…a toddler…

The Punitive Mindset

Because obviously, female guards’ delicate ladyfeelings are more important than men’s lives:

…Bradley Ballard, a…schizophrenic [inmate at New York’s Rikers Island] died…after he was confined to his cell…for seven days for making a lewd gesture at a female guard…Denied…his medication, the agitated inmate tied a rubber band tightly around his genitals…Ballard was found naked and unresponsive on the floor, covered in feces, his genitals swollen and badly infected.  He died at a hospital of…[massive systemic] infection…

Above the Law

Two [Atlantic City cops] have been arrested on charges they sexually assaulted a 16-year-old in separate incidents…Andre Corbin and…Ralph Pereira…were…[each] charged with…sexual assault…endangering the welfare of a child and official misconduct…

That Old Black Magic

A man was killed by a mob…in…Burkina Faso, after being accused of making another man’s penis “disappear”…a local mechanic…claimed that his penis had been “stolen” by the second man, who was not from the district.  The first man called the police.  But by then…the residents decided to lynch the man in the middle of the street…

I’ve mentioned West African “penis stealing” hysteria before in Links #141.

Traffic Jam (TW3 #51)

The acquittal of the 13 people “sex trafficking” fanatic Susan Trimarco implicated in her witch hunt provoked such an outcry among her disciples that two of the three judges were pushed into retirement, the third has been threatened with impeachment and the Argentine president swore to “reform” the judiciary because it is too objective and not sufficiently influenced by public opinion.  A higher court then convicted ten of the 13 defendants on charges of running an “evil network of sexual exploitation…with…international connections, and satanic rituals.”  Still think this hysteria is different from the Satanic Panic?

The End of the Beginning

The California Sex Offender Management Board…[recommends] that lawmakers…overhaul registration laws so that some offenders can be removed from the list after 10 or 20 years.  The list — which currently includes almost 100,000 registered offenders — is too large to be useful to law enforcement or the general public.  Under current laws, all sex offenders must register for life regardless of the offense they committed…[the list] includes…almost 900 [people] who have not committed a sex-crime in more than half a century…Ninety-five percent of sex-crimes are committed by individuals who are not on the registry, and the existence of the registry has not worked as a deterrent…

Comfort Zone (TW3 #320) Louie Gohmert

The endgame of “sex trafficking” hysteria:

…U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said the debate over…immigration reform is prompting undocumented minors to enter the United States… “And…you know that some get sucked into sex slavery,” Gohmert said…adding…“This administration, and this Congress also, is complicit in helping lure people into sex trafficking”…

The Course of a Disease (TW3 #349)

The [French] National Consultative Commission on Human Rights  (CNCDH)…has [rejected] the law…which seeks to punish “the purchase of sexual acts”…[The Commission] consulted many experts…and…[outlines] the three-point position of the committee:

  • “Chosen prostitution” is legal, so clients are not criminals.
  • Legal prostitutes should be easier for clients to access.
  • Victims of trafficking and exploitation need better support…

Hard Numbers (TW3 #351)

Mobs with torches are back in fashion, it seems:

An international association of Catholic nuns has launched a public awareness campaign to combat human trafficking and prostitution during the World Cup in Brazil.  The nuns will use social media, billboards and rallies…to draw attention to the heightened risk of exploitation…Sister Gabriella Bottani said…that for previous World Cups in Germany and South Africa, the level of “exploitation” had gone up by 30 per cent and 40 per cent respectively…Among past and upcoming initiatives will be…a torchlit procession in Brasilia…and handing out pamphlets at…beach resorts…

Naturally, the usual predators are taking advantage of the anti-whore hysteria:

…police…invaded…a building where…prostitutes operated…in [the suburbs of]… Rio…Without a warrant, police…[arrested] more than 100 women…and seized their goods.  Women were attacked and raped – police forced them to perform oral sex and put their hands on the women’s genitals…One woman…had…[her] whole week…[of] money…robbed, including any money to take the bus home…

Guest Columnist:  Sarah Woolley (TW3 #406) 

Amnesty International has urged Northern Ireland’s politicians to ditch plans to criminalise the purchasing of sex.  The human rights organisation wants a clause contained in a bill against human trafficking to be excised because…it would create a “hierarchy of criminal liability” among sex workers…Amnesty stressed it was not taking sides on the debate over sex work and prostitution, but said sex work and human trafficking were “two very complex social phenomena” that required different laws…

“Those who…sit on the fence do indeed side for a political party: The ruling party.” – Max Frisch

Sex Work is Work (TW3 #407)

Another blow against the absurdity of consensual crime:

…Italy’s national statistics office, will include estimated dealings from drugs, arms trafficking and prostitution in its GDP figures from now on…This move should increase Italy’s economy by at least 1.3 per cent in the first year, helping it to comply with EU rules on indebtedness, which limit member countries to spending no more than 3 per cent of their GDP…the calculation would also include revenues from contraband tobacco and alcohol…The Bank of Italy estimated the value of the criminal economy at 10.9 per cent of GDP in 2012…The move…is motivated by the EU’s desire to measure its member countries’ economies more closely…

Traffic Jam (TW3 #409)

…community members carrying information and harm reduction supplies were threatened with arrest and were not allowed to communicate with sex workers…who had been…forcibly transported to Project ROSE…[which has] come under intense scrutiny because of a long list of rights violations…advocates from the Best Practices Policy Project and SWOP Phoenix traveled to the United Nations to raise concerns about these abuses to the Human Rights Committee…a group of social workers, Social Workers United for Justice, is petitioning the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) and the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) to “demand an end to Arizona State University School of Social Work’s involvement with Project Rose” because it violates socials work’s core professional principles…

Gorged With Meaning (TW3 #410) Alyssa Funke

Unfortunately, not every outed sex worker has Belle Knox’s incredible strength and resolve:

Nineteen-year-old Alyssa Funke…bought a shotgun, drove to her family’s boat, and killed herself there on April 14.  Students at her former high school had outed her as the star of a “casting couch” porn video, and her parents say the subsequent online harassment contributed to her suicide.  Funke…did her first and only porn video…earlier this year…Soon after the video went up, Funke  started getting nasty Twitter and Facebook messages from students at her former high school in Minnesota, calling her a slut and worse…Funke’s parents said she had long suffered from depression, but they believe the harassment…played a major role in her [suicide]…

Belle also wrote an open letter to Alyssa after hearing of her death.

Deafening Silence (TW3 #413)

…discussion of whether the sex trade should be legalised [in China]…came to the fore…after Huang Haibo, a 39-year-old actor best known for his “nice everyman” roles, was arrested…for allegedly soliciting prostitutes…The news led to a surprising outpouring of sympathy on social media…after the crackdown in…Dongguan…[there were many] online comments like “Dongguan, hang in there” and “the public has your back”…

The Missing Word

Silly preacher, only politically-connected companies are allowed to do this:

A South Carolina pastor has been accused of turning his Bible College into a forced labor camp for foreign students.  Reginald Wayne Miller…made the teens toil for no or little pay for more than 50 hours a week while housing them in rooms without hot water, heating or air-conditioning.  He…threatened to revoke their student visas if they complained or failed to comply with his demands…Students reportedly told [federal] investigators that classes “were not real” and that the main focus of the school was to have them working full-time at its campus and Miller’s home…In 2006, [Miller] was…detained on charges of lewdness and prostitution for exposing himself to an undercover cop in a bathhouse…

Three Steps Back (TW3 #418)

A bill designed to help New Orleans police crack down on prostitution is headed to Gov. Bobby Jindal’s desk…The legislation…makes it illegal…to solicit money or rides with the intent to exchange it for sex acts.  Marjorie Esman [of the ACLU says the law]…does nothing that isn’t already covered by Louisiana law.  Esman also had problems with an earlier version…[that banned] solicitation for any purpose…which…would have effectively outlawed panhandling…the bill gives police a mechanism to [harass] suspected prostitutes…enough so they might move on…

The Mote and the Beam (TW3 #419)

The US House of Representatives passed all five of the “sex trafficking” bills before it; most of them are the usual political boondoggles, but one creates a “criminal advertising” crime to stack on people being railroaded for “sex trafficking”, and the most dangerous one allows the federal government to give even more money to local cops for sex work stings under the guise of “fighting sex trafficking”.  But the most shocking example of political hubris comes from Representative Randy Hultgren of Illinois, who seems to imagine that the U.S. Congress has the power to criminalize prostitution in foreign countries; he supports this with a lot of nonsense including the discredited Neumayer, Cho & Dreher report.

Blood on the Sand

…[Vanessa] Stiviano…is now the subject of a criminal probe…[due to] accusations that Stiviano sought money from Sterling to stop her from releasing more recordings…Stiviano’s attorney has denied she leaked the recordings that set off the scandal, saying a friend did it without her permission.

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Blood on the Sand

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, Perception, tagged , , , , , , , , , on May 30, 2014| 23 Comments »

This essay first appeared in Cliterati on May 4th; I have modified it slightly to fit the format of this blog.

In cinema and television, the goodies and baddies are usually distinctly different and in opposition to one another; the enemy of the baddie is a goodie, and anything done to bring down the baddie is automatically good.  But real life is rarely like that; in the real world, the enemy of a baddie is nearly always another baddie (often a worse one), and things done to bring down baddies often have such terrible implications for others that it really would’ve done less harm to simply let the baddie keep doing whatever it was he was doing.  As I’ve pointed out before, “Oppressions always start with those nobody is willing to defend.”   When civil rights are eroded to “catch” scoundrels, it’s never long before the precedent thus set is extended by stages to cover everyone; furthermore, when some awful behavior becomes acceptable for ordinary people who lack legal “authority” over others, it’s inevitable that government actors will start doing the same thing.  In the recent controversy over the leaking of billionaire Donald Sterling’s racist rules for his mistress,Sterling and Stiviano virtually all the media attention has been focused on his behavior, as though it were the whole story; in fact, nearly every person involved in the sordid affair has behaved abominably, and the episode is part and parcel of a deep illness in modern society.

Though many people have incorrectly cast this as an issue of censorship, it’s actually much more insidious.  As prominent free-speech attorney Marc Randazza explained,

The First Amendment protects you from the government punishing you because of your speech.  The NBA is a private club, and it can discipline Sterling all it wants…The First Amendment does not insulate you from criticism…Nevertheless…What happened to him may have been illegal and was morally wrong…In California, you can’t record a conversation without the knowledge or consent of both parties…We all say things in private that we might not say in public…Think about what [Sterling’s] public character execution means.  It means that we now live in a world where if you have any views that are unpopular, you…not only need to fear saying them in public, but…to fear saying them at all — even to your intimate friends.  They might be recording you, and then that recording may be spread across the Internet for everyone to hear…The Sterling story is not that we found a bigot and dragged him to the gallows in the middle of the marketplace of ideas.  The Sterling story is about how there is no more privacy.  We live in a world where you can share your intimate photos with your lover, and they will wind up on a “revenge porn” website.  We live in a world where our intimate conversations will be recorded and blasted to billions of listeners.  We live in a world where, say a gold digger can spy on her sugar daddy, and the world says that the creepy old guy is the bad guy…In this story, there are two villains.  Sterling represents the bad old days.  But Stiviano’s behavior represents the horrifying future…

Actually, I think Randazza grossly underestimates the number of villains here.  Since the entire media apparatus is already focusing on Sterling, I need not waste words on further commentary about him.  But what about his treacherous mistress, Vanessa Stiviano?  Let’s dispense with the “girlfriend” and “archivist” nonsense:  she is a courtesan, albeit an amateurish, unethical one.  She didn’t “fall in love” with him, and he wasn’t so impressed with her librarian skills that he gave her a Ferrari, two Bentleys, a Range Rover, a million-dollar Los Angeles duplex and $240,000 in cash.  Maggie the Librarian finds the claim that we share a profession preposterous, and Maggie the Whore finds the claim that we don’t equally so; both sides are outraged by her lack of professional discretion.  As an archivist she is duty-bound not to divulge private recordings, and as a harlot she is duty-bound not to divulge anything about her patron; if she has a moral issue with something he says or does, she needs to find another patron or another line of work.     

But there’s no evidence that she revealed the recording out of some high-minded principle of justice or primitive impulse to defend “her people” (Sterling’s comments were anti-black and Stiviano is half black).  Indeed, she claims that some other party stole the recording and sold it to the gossip website TMZ; if true, there are two more villains for our list.  However, Sterling claims that Stiviano released the tape herself in retaliation for his wife’s lawsuit against her (more next paragraph); specifically, it’s because Sterling and the LA Clippers basketball team (which he owns) have publicly embraced the suit and claimed that Stiviano “embezzled” her various fees and gifts.  Given that a settlement is already under negotiation to ensure that no more tapes are released, and that Stiviano appears to be shopping for a “kiss and tell” book deal, I find Sterling’s version far more credible.

About that lawsuit:  in this whore’s well-considered and experience-informed opinion, Rochelle Sterling launched it as a petty and ill-considered means of revenge against Stiviano, and her husband went along with it under threat that an expensive and embarrassing divorce would surely follow if he did not.  I say “petty” because the total value the wife seeks to steal from the mistress is a paltry $1.8 million; Sterling’s net worth is $1.9 billion.  In other words, she filed an aggressive and high-profile lawsuit for less than 1/1000 of her husband’s accumulated wealth…the equivalent of a middle-class wife suing an escort her husband saw once or twice.  In the past, wives had more sense than to risk the Streisand Effect by calling attention to their husbands’ dalliances; many now apparently lack the sense and dignity of their forebears, however, and have abandoned discretion entirely to the keeping of ethical sex workers.

The baddies listed so far represent only a miniscule fraction of the total number involved in this story.  Whether the tape was released by Stiviano herself or by this supposed third party she has declined to name, it was the existence of the tabloid media which made the release possible; however, those media are only commercially viable because of the public’s taste for the lurid and its jackal-like desire to watch and even participate in the humiliation or destruction of others.  If there were no audience for the salacious details of others’ private lives, no lust to fondle the dismembered bones of the skeletons in everyone else’s closets, there would be no tabloid press, no profitable gossip mills, and very little blackmail; unfortunately, we all have that shameful curiosity to some degree, so there will always be a ready market for stolen secrets.  At one time, discretion was the mark of a professional or a person of quality; now it’s increasingly becoming a quaint relic of the bygone past.  And though the mob may cheer when some awful person’s sins are exposed, it will react with equal exuberance when the blood on the sand is yours.

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A Sop To Cerberus

Posted in Perception, tagged , , , , , , , on May 22, 2014| 6 Comments »

The prudent Sibyl had before prepar’d
A sop, in honey steep’d, to charm the guard;
Which, mix’d with pow’rful drugs, she cast before
His greedy grinning jaws, just op’d to roar.
With three enormous mouths he gapes; and straight,
With hunger press’d, devours the pleasing bait.
Long draughts of sleep his monstrous limbs enslave;
He reels, and, falling, fills the spacious cave.  –  Virgil, Aeneid (VI, 566-73)

female surgeon with scalpel and forceps after the surgeryOne of the intellectual tools which is useful in cutting through propaganda to the truth behind it is the ability to recognize weasel-words, dysphemisms and other obfuscations wherever they occur.  Over three decades of fighting ignorance and lies I have honed this skill to a very high degree, but a scalpel used without wisdom is a poor tool; four years of hot war against prohibitionists may have begun to push me over the line from skepticism to cynicism, and to compromise my ability to know where and how deeply to slice.  Two weeks ago something happened which showed me that my surgery may be growing a trifle overzealous, and I think analyzing it will help me to keep my judgment as keen as my perception.  It started when I saw a column by Tina Dupuy entitled, “How to End Slavery in the U.S. (Spoiler: Decriminalize Prostitution)”, which begins like this:

Americans have warmed up to…marijuana being legal.  Most polls now report more than 50 percent of voters…are…OK with allowing grownups to indulge in a drug for the sake of indulging…So it’s time for a serious discussion about the decriminalization of prostitution…

And ends like this:

…We are not going to wipe out the sex trade.  We will not arrest our way out of having prostitution in our communities…No amount of public shaming, arresting or prosecuting will make us free of sex exchanged for money.  What we can do for those who are working in the industry is make it legal.  Give them back their rights and access to the courts to redress their grievances.  Decriminalize sex between consenting adults.  If we really believe in freedom, then let people live their lives and let sex workers work in the light of day…

Those are the parts nearly everyone else saw, focused on and cheered.  But as I wrote in “Which I Doubt” almost a year ago, “I sometimes feel as though I’m becoming the Eeyore of the sex worker rights movement, the resident wet blanket who reacts to every bit of seemingly good news cheered by other advocates by letting them know exactly why it’s not as good as they think it is.”  Because what I immediately homed in on was not the beginning or end of Dupuy’s essay, but this bit in the middle:

…slavery is…not just a relic of the 19th century.  A report last year by Australia-based Walk Free Foundation estimates there are currently 30 million slaves in the world.  They report 60,000 of them are in the United States.  We have two kinds of slaves in the United States and both are easily fixed by legislation:  illegal immigrants (another column for another time) and sex workers…

Naturally, my cynicism kicked in, I harrumphed in disgust and I copied the link into the outline for TW3 #420, planning to file it under “So Close and Yet So Far” with other examples of would-be allies who undermine their own cases by quoting prohibitionist dogma.  And that’s where it would’ve stayed had Mistress Matisse not included Dupuy in her tweet about the essay, which also had the effect of calling her attention to my reply that if she wanted to be an ally, she should talk to sex workers rather than prohibitionists.  She almost immediately tweeted me back with her email address, and we had a lovely email exchange in which she quickly convinced me that she wasn’t ignorant of the facts at all; it’s just that she knows her audience and editors (she’s a syndicated columnist) would not accept a decriminalization argument without a sop to Cerberus.  As she explained it, “I try to communicate radical (I think sensible) ideas by acknowledging the values and prejudices of [those] who read me every week.  And it’s not even my audience, the editors won’t publish it and I won’t get a chance to make my case.”

I very often forget that as a writer, I’m doubly privileged (ooh, that word!) in that 1) I don’t have an editor acting as gatekeeper to my free expression, because 2) I don’t have to earn a living with my writing.  In other words, I have the luxury of writing for myself, as a personal avocation, without the real and limiting concern for commercial viability; others are not so fortunate.  Of course, the other side of the coin is that my audience is far smaller than that of a syndicated columnist who has to cater to corporate sensibilities:  the Maggie McNeills of the world can speak honestly and bluntly about decriminalization, but fewer people are going to hear; the Tina Dupuys will be heard by a lot more people, but can’t be nearly so honest and blunt.  Both play an important role, and I need to be careful that I don’t vivisect a real but cautious ally under the mistaken impression that she’s a false one of the sort I collect under “With Friends Like These”.  It’s true that in most cases this kind of thing will do more harm than good, but it’s equally true that a wary dog won’t swallow medicine unless it’s thoroughly embedded in something the animal finds palatable.  I think I’m probably clever enough to learn to tell the difference, and I thank Tina for calling my attention to the fact that it exists.

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Available Weapon

Posted in Current Events, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on May 2, 2014| 7 Comments »

This essay first appeared in Cliterati on April 6th; I have modified it slightly to fit the format of this blog.

Neofeminists are fond of pretending that women are not individuals, but rather mere appendages of some vast gestalt entity for which the neofeminists are the designated mouthpieces.  Many of their arguments against sex work rely on the notion that the private actions of individual women somehow resonate across this vast, incorporeal, hydra-like entity and magically harm all women everywhere in the world.  Therefore, they argue, the state is justified in using violence to suppress sex work for the “greater good”.  As so often happens with arguments based on irrational beliefs, however, the truth is exactly the opposite; prostitution laws pose a real and serious danger to all women, not just sex workers.  As I explained in “Be Careful Who You Rape”,

…women who will take money for sex are indistinguishable from those who won’t up until the moment the deal is made.  So it’s inevitable that aggressive campaigns of persecution against the former will ensnare some of the latter.  When prostitution is criminalized to any degree, women who carry condoms, answer personal ads, wear sexy lingerie, go without lingerie, fail forced “virginity tests”, ask a cop if he’s a cop, “act sexy”, go out after dark without a male chaperone, or even just “look like a prostitute” are regularly arrested and charged withboot on the neck having sex for a reason some people don’t like…

If one is prone with a boot on one’s neck, it makes very little difference whether that boot is a left or a right one.  Yet political feminists are forever attacking the misogynistic schemes of “conservatives” while actively supporting the misogynistic schemes of their own party, despite the fact that they’re impossible to tell apart from the vantage point of the one beneath the boot.  Control of women’s bodies is one issue upon which all statists can agree, and the tactics employed by the Cult of the Allwomyn are indistinguishable from those used by the devotees of other deities:

The sharia police in…[Indonesia] have rounded up 15 young women after they were “caught” in a late-night coffee shop.  They have been accused of not wearing appropriate Muslim clothing and for loitering outdoors after midnight…Police chief Rita Pujiastuti [said]…it was believed that certain teenagers choosing to hang out in coffee shops until the early hours were involved in prostitution…police…also arrested…female beauty-parlor employees who were allegedly caught engaging in immoral acts…and…jailed without being given access to legal advice…

If you think this is the sort of thing that only happens in Islamic countries, you need to read the links in both of the block quotes above (not to mention my essay “Savages in Suits”).  But hey, you can’t make a morality omelette without breaking a few eggs, right?  Surely women should be happy to sit in jail for a few hours (or days, or weeks, or months, or years) if it serves the greater good of feminism (or Christianity, or Islam, or The Workers, or The Children!TM).  But speaking of children:

…Cirila Balthazar Cruz…gave birth to her daughter in November of 2008 at Mississippi’s Singing River Hospital.  Afterwards, Cruz, who grew up speaking Chatino–an indigenous language native to Oaxaca—was interviewed in Spanish…From Cruz’s very limited Spanish, the interpreter allegedly understood that Cruz was engaged in sex work…[she] was deemed an “unfit” mother, whose failure to learn English “placed her unborn child in danger”…we have no way of knowing how those details were possibly extrapolated from a conversation in a language that Cruz barely speaks…[but her] baby was taken away from her and placed with a foster family for an entire year…

Cirila Baltazar CruzThe article goes on to discuss the injustice of using inability to speak English as grounds for declaring a woman “unfit” to be a mother, but totally ignores the other excuse:  that she was a whore.  Note that Cruz may not actually be a sex worker at all; that may have been a misunderstanding deriving from her poor grasp of Spanish.  The mere accusation was enough, however, just as it was for Petite Jasmine  (whose ability to speak her own tongue, Swedish, was not a factor).  As long as prostitution is defined as a crime or a pathology, it can be used to draw lines between “good” women and “bad” women  regardless of whether “bad” is defined as succubus or victim.  And as long as the weapon of a prostitution charge is available, it can be used against any woman even if she’s never sold sex even once in her life.

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Guest Columnist:  Laura Lee

Posted in Current Events, Guest Columns, Perception, The Dark Side, tagged , , , , , , on April 14, 2014| 5 Comments »

For regular readers, this month’s guest columnist needs no introduction; Laura Lee is a sex worker and activist who lives in Scotland, but is active in the fight against criminalization both in the UK and in her native Ireland.   You can find many stories about her (and videos in which she appears) in the subject index, most of them under the subtitle “The Public Eye“.  I admire Laura for her incredible courage in coming out as a sex worker and facing down politicians both in committee rooms and on television, but for this essay she preferred to speak of the courage of others; I’d say she’s well qualified to judge that particular quality.

Laura Lee CNNIn the current debate raging about further criminalization versus decriminalization, sometimes it’s very easy to lose sight of the real people behind the statistics, those sex workers on the front lines.  This week in Perth, Scotland, some of the bravest women I have ever encountered took the stand to give evidence against a vicious rapist; their courage took my breath away.

I could summarize the circumstances surrounding the case, but I think the voices of the sex workers concerned are far more powerful.  With their kind permission, I will replicate some of the email correspondence I’ve had below, changing some personal details to maintain their privacy and right to anonymity.

Myself and a few other girls travel from Edinburgh/Glasgow up to a flat in Perth for shifts, one of girls phoned in a state.  She had let a punter in, he demanded money from her, when she said she didn’t have any, he raped her and punched her in the face very violently.  She cried through the whole attack, that was around November last year.  We begged her to report the attack to the police which she was adamant she was not going to do fearing her family would find out what she did for a living.

Early February I was working in the flat, and although there had been reports of a guy hanging around the flat all week, I’d calmed down by then and thought I was out of danger.  A punter called, he knew where the flat was and I assumed he was a regular.  He came into the flat, told me I could do things the easy way or hard way.  He had to say it twice as I couldn’t believe what I was hearing but knew I was in big trouble.

I told him I had no money (understand the other girls he raped were tiny, I body build, plus I’ve got teenagers and don’t appreciate cheek).  There was obviously a “don’t mess with me” stance which had taken over in me without my knowledge.  He threw me on the bed and spread my legs apart.  I knew he was going to rape me.  I screamed at the top of my lungs, he jumped off me and made a run for the front door, curling his fist into a ball as I ran after him to get the door shut, that was his warning to stay away as he fled.

Within 15 minutes I’d phoned the police and reported the crime.  Laura, I know what I work as makes people disgusted and they think I’m a lesser person because of that but I’m not, I’m proud, this job has supported me and my kids and given me a support system financially that a lot of single mums can only dream about.  I refuse to go to work to be abused, battered or raped.  I never signed up for that, I am proud of who I am and what I’ve achieved!!!!!

The police were lovely and very supportive, they had no clue that sex workers were even in Perth, my friend was asked by the police if she would approach other flats in Perth with the promise there would be no charges for the other girls, they were not interested in what they were doing as they wanted this lowlife caught.  After a bit of persuasion it turned out that another two girls had been attacked, anally raped and battered by the same guy which they identified.

I can’t forget what he said to me – “You can’t phone the police, you’re just a prostitute!!!!”

That will haunt me for the rest of my life.

Perth High CourtSo that’s their story.  One by one those women took the stand against the man who thought “you’re only a prostitute”.  Isn’t it time that we acknowledged that they are far from “just prostitutes”?  They are women, they are mothers, working to support their children and they deserve the full protection of the law.  The police in this case have been wonderful and very supportive of the women, and have now appointed a liaison officer so that they can report their worries in private.  He was found guilty last Tuesday, and will be sentenced on the 30th; let’s hope it’s a long, long one.

Too little, too late.  The time has come to acknowledge that whatever your moral judgment on sex work, those who work within the industry deserve to do so in safety.  Had these women not had such immense courage to go forward and report these crimes, who’s to know where it would have stopped?  We need to decriminalize sex work right now, so that every sex worker can work with others for safety, and so that the stigma and vulnerability attached to sex work can begin to be peeled away.  When this lady told me the rapist’s  words will haunt her for the rest of her life, I resolved to fight for decriminalization with a ferocity rarely tested.  That, at least, I can promise them.

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Whither Canada?

Posted in Current Events, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on March 21, 2014| 21 Comments »

This essay first appeared in Cliterati on February 16th; I have modified it slightly for time references and to fit the format of this blog.

Bedford victoryAs you probably know unless you’ve been living in a cave, three months ago the Supreme Court of Canada overturned the laws which made the legal activity of selling sex much more difficult and dangerous, just as similar laws in the UK, India, parts of Australia and many other countries do.  As I wrote in “What Next?” just two weeks after the decision, “there is nothing in it to prevent the imposition of American-style criminalization”:

Were this the United States, you can bet the legislature’s immediate response would be criminalization. However, it’s a little different in Canada…[which] has since the late 1960s maintained a [relatively] strong tradition…that “the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation”…On the other hand, the government has heavily invested its…case in neofeminist rhetoric, and recently adopted the Swedish model as its official position; several MPs have released long-winded “explanations” of the “fact” that women are permanent victims who shouldn’t be allowed to choose sex work.  There is little likelihood that a system proven to increase violence and stigmatization of sex workers would pass muster under Bedford, yet at the same time it would be rather embarrassing for the government to push for the direct criminalization of sex workers after proclaiming us too weak to avoid being controlled by morally-superior clients and “pimps”…

Once politicians started returning to work after the holidays, they immediately began to issue the predictable torrent of nonsense and panic-mongering.  The chief font of this flow of sewage has been Justice Minister Peter MacKay, who emitted the ludicrous (but typical) claim that Canada would become “a haven for sex tourism” (despite the fact that New Zealand and New South Wales have not), and the even more absurd statement that the sex industry is more complicated than the medical industry; he then pontificated on the “significant harms flowing from the sex trade” (ignoring the court’s finding that the laws he supports are the cause of those harms) and delivered a pitch for the abominable Swedish model (which, as pointed out above, could not possibly stand under the Bedford decision because it’s at least as harmful as the laws that were overturned, if not more so).  He also boasted that the new laws would be ready “well before” the court’s December 20th deadline.

Say NO to the Nordic Model in CanadaBut outside of Conservative Party enclaves, evangelical Christian churches and anti-sex feminist cults, there just isn’t much support in Canada for the puritanical pretense that consensual sex magically becomes violent and sinful merely because money overtly changes hands.  Young Liberals in British Columbia are pushing for their party to officially adopt a pro-decriminalization stance and have castigated Justin Trudeau and other party leaders who seem ready to get in the Swedish bed with the Conservatives.  The Vancouver City Council has “unanimously passed a motion to accept recommendations intended to increase safety and services for sex workers”.  British Columbia, Ontario, New Brunswick and Alberta are all declining to pursue ordinary prostitution charges, and Newfoundland has had virtually no new cases since the Himel decision in 2010.  Newspapers routinely print sex worker-friendly articles, and editorials like this one are typical:

You’d think the sky was falling with all of the misconceptions circulating concerning the recent Supreme Court of Canada decision striking down our prostitution laws.  No, the Supreme Court has not legalized prostitution…[which] was [already] legal…No, sex trade workers will not be flocking to your neighbourhood any more than they already have…They are already in many neighbourhoods…[seeing] clients in the warmth of their homes, apartments, condominiums and hotel/motel rooms…albeit illegally…because the use of any home, apartment or even a hotel room on a frequent basis for the purposes of prostitution violates the brothel prohibition.  No, the Supreme Court decision won’t increase the number of sex trade workers…Does anyone think…[they] decide to get into the business after a thorough study of the criminal law and the legal risks of prosecution?…No, the decision won’t increase the incidence of sex slaves and human trafficking…attempting to enforce a moral code by criminalizing prostitution, or the activities surrounding it, is a waste of resources…

There’s still no way to tell how long and winding a road Canada will have to traverse before it reaches the inevitable conclusion that Canadian courts, sex worker rights activists, the UN and organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are correct in saying decriminalization is the only moral and effective model for sex work; it may be mere months, or years, or decades, and the way may be littered with the corpses of failed attempts to re-criminalize it before the busybodies eventually give up.  But unlike the UK (which seems to be going in circles) or the US (which is insanely marching in the wrong direction), the Canadians at least seem to be on the right course.

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