This essay first appeared in Cliterati on May 25th; I have modified it slightly to fit the format of this blog.
Though human beings have developed a highly technological society based on scientific principles, the great majority of them are still immersed in magical thinking. I don’t merely mean a few irrational beliefs which we recognize as irrational; everyone, including the most die-hard skeptics, have such beliefs, and there’s nothing wrong with that as long as we recognize them as irrational and proceed accordingly. What is not harmless, however, is basing laws and policies on primitive superstitions such as the idea that inanimate objects can be evil, that talismans or inscriptions can grant power over others or turn evil actions into good ones, and that innocuous actions which violate cultural taboos can render a person ritually impure. Many of the systemic evils of modern societies (such as the drug war, censorship and police brutality) spring from one or more of these beliefs, and the “taboo” principle is the source of most of the harmful laws and social stigma surrounding sex work. But today I’d like to discuss another magical belief, the principle of contagion, and demonstrate how it generates some truly bizarre and harmful discrimination against sex workers.
The principle of contagion is the one which underlies most sympathetic magic; it is the belief that once an object has been in contact with something or someone, it is forever affected by that thing. This is why old-style barber shops in New Orleans used to offer to put newspaper on the floor to catch one’s cut hair; superstitious people feared allowing the clippings to come into the possession of an enemy, who might use it to inflict harm via black magic. Similarly, relics of saints are believed to share in the saint’s holiness. It is this belief which underlies the absurd behavior I mock as fear of “sex rays”:
The dirtier and more “illicit” the sex, the more intense the sex rays …BDSM and swinging produce concentrations that can contaminate surrounding objects, and sex work produces such intense levels that sex workers cannot be allowed near children ever again for the rest of their lives. Even objects we handle (including money and virtual objects such as emails) must be kept far away from “children” (including young adults), and the danger is so great that kids inadvertently exposed to the dreaded rays must be quarantined from other kids…
But it isn’t only children who are believed to be harmed by the contaminating touch of harlots; adult human beings in the 21st century actually behave as though commercial sex inflicts some magical taboo radiation into bedclothes and other surroundings, while amateur sex does not. Nobody is disturbed by the knowledge that any hotel bed one occupies has previously been shagged in by complete strangers, but apparently sex workers carry pernicious and undetectable cooties which we deposit everywhere we work, and which cannot be removed from bedding without washing it in holy water and soap made from the fat of virgin lambs:
The owner of budget hotels in…[England] has admitted prostitutes have used his properties…Tony Burlingham…said he was taking action to tackle the issue, but said the law made it hard for hotel owners to do so…“One in five hotel bedrooms have got a prostitute in them. Police have taken the crime off the street and have moved it into [hotels]”…selling sex behind closed doors is legal, as is buying sex…“What we have done is turned the internet off and have put car park restrictions on”…He said switching off the internet aimed to stop prostitutes in his rooms [going online]…and…limiting the number of cars would prevent pimps from parking in the car park…
For now, let’s just ignore the absurdity of calling sex work a “crime” in one sentence while admitting it isn’t in the next; let’s just wonder how any sane, modern adult believes that sex for pay in a hotel room is somehow intrinsically different from “free” sex in the same room. The principle of contagion is even more obvious in this story about Airbnb, a website which allows people to rent their homes to strangers for short periods of time. A person would have to be hopelessly naïve to imagine that none of these renters ever have sex in their beds, yet when money is exchanged for the exact same activity we get this:
Hookers are using…Airbnb…to turn prime Manhattan apartments into temporary brothels…One apartment…belongs to publicist Jessica Penzari…But when a hooker got slashed by a client in the…apartment over the price…Penzari got a call from cops…Airbnb put her up in the swanky InterContinental hotel in Times Square for two nights…and also paid to change her door locks, clean her apartment and replace her pillows and other belongings…Airbnb said…“we have zero tolerance for this activity”…
They replaced her belongings…why, exactly? Because of contamination by sex rays or malignant magical microorganisms, obviously. The story (or others like it) inspired this incredibly loathsome scheme:
…The landlords of swanky Manhattan buildings are hiring private investigators to smoke out tenants who use Airbnb to illegally rent rooms – including to prostitutes and drug users…investigators respond to ads featured on the online home-sharing service…[then] gather evidence — including photos, receipts and copies of keys — to [enable] landlords [to] evict [them]…Landlords [supposedly] hire the private investigators after [busybody neighbors] complain…about…unfamiliar visitors in the building…[Vincent] Parco also uses a team of attractive women — who sometimes pose as hookers — to catch the…tenants…It’s illegal for tenants in New York to rent out apartments while they’re not on the premises…
When this story broke, some sex workers questioned why it was necessary for the hired rats to pose as honest sex workers, if any subletting is illegal. The reason, of course, is whore stigma; if the fake renter was pretending to be a sweet, virginal secretary, a judge might side with the tenant against the sleazy, spying landlord and his hired snoops. But let the fake pretend to be a whore and all sympathy goes out the window; after all, no measure is too extreme to prevent filthy strumpets from contaminating real people’s beds with their invisible cooties.
We live in a time which has created the art of the absurd. – Norman Mailer
Some of my readers say they need to keep a dictionary handy while they read my essays. That works fine for regular words, but sometimes I use metaphors that may be a bit obscure nowadays. Do most of y’all remember paint-by-number kits? Do they still sell those? For those who have never seen one, a kit consists of a board on which is a line drawing, and each area contains a number corresponding to one of the containers of oil paint that come with the set. One simply paints each area with the proper color, and if properly done it looks (almost) exactly like the picture on the box; if clumsily done, it at least resembles the picture. “Sex trafficking” stories are a lot like that; most of them start out with the same basic outline, and then the copyist reporter simply fills in the details by the numbers. If done properly, it almost looks like something a third-rate journalist might turn out, but if done clumsily …well, it’s easier to show you.
Many Morris County activists are counting the days to…Super Bowl XLVIII…but not for love of football. They’re already working to reduce the human trafficking that inevitably happens when tens of thousands of tourists assemble…
Our would-be artist, Lorraine Ash, must think that little reversal is very clever; unfortunately, the brainpower she devoted to it would have better been spent on a few minutes of research. Had she done so, she would have discovered things like this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and even this…which prove that the word “inevitable” is about as far from the truth as it’s possible to get. Oh, dear; I do believe Lorraine mistook the “6” for a “9” and used the wrong color here. But no matter; let’s see how she does on the next one:
…“There are four times as many people enslaved today than there were in the 1800s,” said Linda Michalski…campus minister at Benedictine Academy…“The value of a slave has actually decreased …Frederick Douglass was sold for $792. Today, somebody is sold for $70 in our country in the 21st century. How can this be?”
Well, at least here she’s only quoting, so someone else looks like a moron instead of poor Lorraine. The pretense that “trafficking” (which is highly illegal) can be compared in any valid way with chattel slavery (which can only exist where there are laws and social structures to support it) is a common, if especially idiotic, claim of the “trafficking” fetishists, as is the use of novel definitions for the word “sold” which do not actually involve transfer of property. But in this case, the apples-and-oranges comparison of the sale price of a chattel slave with some apparently-random sum of money (a streetwalker’s fee, perhaps?) is so deeply stupid it even confuses a high-school religion teacher. But let’s move on to the next number in the pattern:
…Michalski and…other activists…want people to understand that human trafficking…is real and happens in New Jersey.
A flawless execution of the Profession of Faith! And then she puts her own artistic touch on the classic “100,000 to 300,000 trafficked children” myth by attributing it to the Department of Homeland Security instead of the usual FBI or Department of Justice. Estes & Weiner sure do work for a lot of government departments, don’t they? And what “trafficking” masterpiece could be complete without a “King of the Hill” section?
…New Jersey is a big destination state for traffickers because of its ports and because…trains and buses leave from here and go all over the country. There are three airports in the area. Also, because of I-95, it’s very easy to move people through New Jersey and all the way down to Florida…
Trains and buses and airplanes! And an interstate highway, even! Why, no other place has those! What were the madmen who laid out New Jersey thinking to allow so many dangerous things all in one locale? Well, we know what they weren’t thinking of: THE CHILDREN!!!!!
But wait, it gets worse:
There is a prevailing notion that human trafficking does not happen in Morris County because of its wealth, according to Maria Vinci-Savettiere…“The demographics don’t matter…Trafficking is happening here.”
One Profession of Faith per story is enough, Lorraine; your attempts to look more-credulous-than-thou are rather transparent.
“Our focus is on radically changing the way we view the issue,” said Beth Hyre, spokeswoman for the League [of Woman Voters]. “According to law enforcement, our children, our grandchildren, the children we teach, and the children we supervise and mentor are prime targets for traffickers. Our complacency that the issue doesn’t directly affect us enables predators.”
Yes, Lorraine, we’ve got it. People think that trafficking doesn’t happen in New Jersey, but it does, and every single child in the entire state should be kept away from cars, trains, buses, airplanes and football games. You can stop repeating the same color now.
The public also is invited to stand for a maximum of nine hours Oct. 27 with Stand Against Human Trafficking, a gathering on the Morristown Green. Each hour signifies 3 million people enslaved worldwide, according to organizer Yvette Long of the Morris County Human Relations Commission…
Are they going to sway back and forth singing “Kumbaya” as well? Because I don’t think it’s possible to have a really effective lawn-standing session without singing “Kumbaya”.
The New Jersey Coalition Against Human Trafficking…is planning a Super Bowl Hotel Outreach in September…“We’re asking hotel management to accept materials…set protocols, and train their staff to spot human trafficking,” said [Melanie] Gorelick, the group’s facilitator…“A lot of times it would be the janitors or the cleaning people who would see a victim…What if a person comes in through a back door? The front desk wouldn’t even see that person”…
But wait, what about the bars of soap emblazoned with subtly huge red labels? WHAT IF THE TRAFFICKERS ARE HIDING IN THE LAVATORY, MELANIE? Without handy hotline numbers, how can they be stopped then? Didn’t think of that, didja Miss Smarty-Pants?
Well, I think you get the picture; too bad most of those who read this story without my helpful annotations won’t. Like most people who attempt painting by numbers without a modicum of skill, some rudimentary sense of proportion and at least a minimal level of judgment, the results are, to the educated viewer, not exactly what their creator intended.
The children of three women who were murdered by Robert Pickton have filed lawsuits against the police and the serial killer…They allege the Vancouver police and the RCMP failed to properly investigate reports of missing women and failed to warn women in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside that a serial killer was likely at work, despite having evidence implicating Pickton in the disappearance of sex workers as early as 1997 and 1998…
The suspicious deaths of two prostitutes…has sparked a major investigation…The bodies of Jill Lyons and Karen Nabors, who both worked as online escorts, were discovered in an apartment building in Vancouver. Ms Lyons, 45, was discovered dead in her own apartment on August 12…The body of Ms Nabors was discovered on August 25, also in her own apartment, and police…suggest…the 48-year-old was murdered…
“Parents, lock up your shower supplies”…is an actual quote from an announcement made…at a middle school just outside of Richmond, VA…of…a new practice called “shamboiling”…where shampoo is brought to a rapid boil and then the fumes are inhaled for a hallucinogenic effect…one thing is certain…shamboiling is catching on quickly and…is potentially deadly…The Sheriff’s department is urging parents to check their shampoos for [ammonium lauryl sulfate] and to take the necessary precautions to keep these chemicals away from children…
Police have detained a Chinese-American…on suspicion of visiting a sex worker in Beijing as authorities crack down on bloggers. Charles Xue [AKA Xue Manzi], who has over 12 million followers on Sina Weibo…regularly reposts reform-minded content…Among those questioning the motive behind the arrest was the editor of the state-run Global Times newspaper. “Cannot rule out the possibility that authorities are arresting Xue Manzi…to give him a hard time,” Hu Xijin wrote…in a blog posting that later disappeared…
The founder of…anti-human trafficking NGO Sisha, Steve Morrish, announced…he was stepping down from his position due to a raft of allegations accusing him of financial impropriety…Sisha’s alleged financial problems were revealed publicly…on August 8 in…the Cambodian blog Penhpal. The posting alleged that money donated to Sisha…“has instead been siphoned off to pay for the NGO’s operating expenses”…
A 10-year-old girl…identified as “Ashley,” was charged by police for aggravated sexual assault…[for] playing doctor…a neighbor saw the children and called the mother of a 4-year-old boy…[whom] Ashley was inappropriately touching…Ashley’s mother…was not allowed to sit-in on the 45-minute questioning of her daughter…
If this were intended to increase sex workers’ range of options, it’s would be fine; however, it’s clearly intended as a confinement system: “Several communities in Italy have launched a campaign to ban street prostitution and reintroduce brothels, which have been banned since 1958…”
…[new] legislation…in North Carolina….increases punishments for sex traffickers, i.e. pimps, as well as for purchasers, i.e. johns. It also focuses on “treating minors involved in prostitution as the victims they are, instead of criminals,” [the bill’s sponsor] said…”The legislation also offers hope to women who escape a life of prostitution by allowing them…relief to expunge their criminal pasts once they get treatment and help”…[another law] requires pimps to register as sex offenders…
Tulsa cops continue to justify persecution of adult women by pretending they’re “trafficked”: “Human trafficking has developed into a booming enterprise in Oklahoma…on a given night, the Vice Unit may deploy undercover police officers to respond to as many as 40 online advertisements posted by ‘escorts’ in preparation for prostitution stings that sometimes uncover cases of human trafficking…” Note the misplaced scare quotes, around “escorts” rather than “trafficking”.
Jessica Land interviews Dr. Melissa Ditmore, a prominent academic ally, on her research, The Encyclopedia of Prostitution and Sex Work, sex worker projects and organizations, and international issues.
…Prostitutes were widely believed to be specialists in erotic magic, especially the use of philtres to sway the feelings of those around them…For example, a woman may resort to a binding spell, to handicap rivals in the trade or lock down a steady client…These women were also sought by those outside the trade for their magical expertise. Those in troubled marriages might consult a prostitute to concoct a love potion to rekindle the affections of a wayward spouse…
Most of this CNN story is the usual lurid “sex trafficking” rubbish, but I want to call attention to a fascinating new development: “king of the hill” stories are now specifically claiming their subjects are the “third-busiest area for sex trafficking in the United States” (see also “Under Every Bed” below) rather than just “one of the busiest” or “in the top ten”. As usual, the Department of Justice is credited for the “statistic” despite the fact that neither it nor any other agency keeps any kind of state-by-state “trafficking” statistics. I suspect the “third largest” designation arose through confusion with the claim that “human trafficking is the third-largest criminal enterprise” (though that one’s been upgraded to second), but it will be interesting to see how many claim to be the “third largest” before anyone in the mainstream media starts to awaken.
A new Irish company named Safe IQ “develops safety products and services for sex workers…and raises awareness of the need for [them] to have the same protections as other workers.” Here’s its first product:
Ugly Mugs for Android is a [free] mobile phone app that automatically screens incoming and outgoing calls and text messages and alerts the phone user if the…number…is listed in the UglyMugs.ie database…When a sex worker encounters a dangerous person, they [sic] can report the incident to the ugly mug scheme, and a warning will be made available to all sex workers…
Hundreds of sex workers confronted the mayor of Indonesia’s second-largest city…angrily denouncing the closure of the Klakah Rejo district…The crowd later tore down a “Prostitution-Free Town” billboard erected by officials…”What’s going on?”…the mayor [said]…”We’re trying to help but they are refusing.” Surabaya is also home to Dolly, reputedly the largest red-light district in South-East Asia. The mayor said that one and other red-light districts would be closed as the city aimed to be prostitution-free by 2014.
Wisconsin is one of “the top three states” for sex trafficking, according to…Michelle Mayefske… Not all prostitution is trafficking. Some women, referred to as “renegades,” simply decide to sell sex and are not controlled or managed by anyone, but “that is very, very rare,” she said…“Gangs are now turning from drugs to human trafficking…[because] drugs can be sold only once and then they’re gone, whereas…a woman or a child can be sold over and over and over…Georgia, California and Wisconsin have the highest rates of sex trafficking in the United States, so we are in the top three”…
Veteran human rights activist Scott Long argues that activists who compare Russia’s anti-gay purge to the Nazi campaign against Jews are not only wrongheaded, but missing the most obvious comparison:
If Western gay…activists want to know what Putin’s decree will mean in practice: ask a sex worker…Before every big sporting event, the same rhetoric reverberates: Prostitutes are going to take over this town…The predictions are nearly always couched as concern for “trafficked” women, but they…come down to…anxieties over nuisances to “normal” neighbors, and…the reputation of the host city…What major sporting events bring is not an “explosion” in prostitution, but an explosion in repression…not in evil Russia, but in liberal Canada and the UK, countries that value human rights, except for sex workers, who aren’t human…Yet in London, few powerful voices opposed the Olympic rollback of sex workers’ freedom — and certainly few LGBT activists…
“The treatment of sex workers in Cuba, including confinement for the purpose of ‘re-education’, was raised by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women…the…committee said it was “deeply concerned” about Cuba’s reluctance to address the issue of prostitution…” The United States’ confinement and “re-education” of sex workers, however, causes the committee no concern at all. Funny how that works.
Kate Zen takes a long, thorough look at Texas’ “prostitution diversion” program and its founder, Kathryn Griffin; she examines the program’s lack of any of the normal benefits of such schemes, its close relationship to the rescue industry, its pervasive Christian moralism and its ignoring all of the actual reasons women turn to prostitution in favor of a sin and victimization narrative.
Federal and state law-enforcement officers poured into Tukwila [Washington]…seizing three motels whose operators are suspected of participating in illegal drugs and prostitution…U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan…said that the three hotels…have accounted for 17 percent of all calls for police services in the past year…investigators believe the owners actively profited from criminal activity…Durkan said…[her] office will…actively use…seizures to force compliance…
Though most English-language media is pretending Zurich’s tippelzone scheme is something new, it is nothing of the kind; this article lists a number of other cities in Germany, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands with similar setups.
A man using the British Library’s wi-fi network was denied access to…Hamlet because the text contained “violent content”…the…library said the fault was caused by a newly installed wi-fi service from a third-party provider. One security expert said the incident highlighted the “dysfunction” of internet filters…Prof Ross Anderson…[said] internet filters were “pointless” and that it was “completely inappropriate” to have one in the British Library…
Another of the greats has passed on. Though his name is less familiar to the general public than those of many far less talented and far less influential authors, virtually everyone has seen and appreciated screen versions of his work; he wrote almost half of the best Twilight Zone episodes, most of the Vincent Price “Poe” movies of the early ‘60s and many other films you may know (including the thrice-filmed I Am Legend). And since I can’t possibly do his memory justice in this small space, here’s a proper tribute from regular reader Franklin Harris.
Archaeologists recently uncovered an ancient brothel attached to a gymnasium and restaurant in northern Greece…It was likely built in the second century BCE, which means it had been a going concern for about 250 years when an earthquake…shut [it] down forever. Put another way, this brothel operated longer than the United States has so far…
N.B.: I used this title because Greece was under Roman rule at that time.
“Nordic Choice Hotels…has announced the removal of pornography from its television channels. ‘We believe it is a natural part of our social responsibility to not support an industry that contributes to…trafficking,’ said [CEO] Torgeir Silseth…” There was no statement from Nordic Choice about shutting down their whole chain because many so-called “trafficking” victims work in hotels, but I guess one has to have priorities.
“Silvio Berlusconi was given a seven-year prison sentence and banned from holding public office for life…after an Italian court found him guilty of abuse of office and paying for sex with…underage prostitute…Karima El Mahroug…” Berlusconi and the girl both deny having had sex, and even if they had it would’ve been completely legal had no money changed hands because she was 17 at the time.
…What really sucks about sugar baby relationships is that most of the arrangements don’t seem like they’re entered into freely; they’re a desperate response to a shitty set of circumstances — a lack of job opportunities, lack of job abilities, and last, but not least, the insanely high cost of college education…the site even targets advertising to women who search “help with college tuition”…
The Author Formerly Known as Morning Gloria has a history of this sort of neofeminist prohibitionism disguised under a thin veneer of sex-positive platitudes, and that’s not even counting her apparent belief that the law of conservation of energy somehow proves that “America is…fucked up.”
A bikini-barista stand owner who twice before has been accused of lewd conduct recently managed to get a…[cop] to warn her of any undercover surveillance…Carmela A. Panico, and Sgt. Darrell L. O’Neill…were charged with conspiracy to promote prostitution…at seven Java Juggs and Twin Peaks espresso stands…The FBI assisted with the investigation…
Yes, the FBI actually helped bluenoses harass coffee shops because the waitresses wear bikinis.
…In…[the] Globe & Mail, paid typist and self-confessed plagiarist Margaret Wente [published]…”Legal Prostitution? Are We Nuts?”, [in which she] brings her swollen puritanism to bear on the current Supreme Court case…Calling prostitution, “the most exploitative, degrading work on Earth” Wente opposes the “feminists and other progressive types”…who are endeavoring to make it less exploitative and degrading…What she doesn’t acknowledge…is that prostitution is already legal in Canada…
New Jersey law enforcement officials expecting a rise in forced prostitution leading up to the 2014 Super Bowl said…efforts to crack down on criminals and help victims will span the entire state…New Jersey is believed to be a major entry point for human trafficking due to its dense and diverse population and convenient access from New York to Philadelphia…
…I can go out…get hopelessly drunk and jump into bed with Mr. A. Random…the chances are any form of protection will go out the window, as will any form of valid consent. As a society, we deem that okay, because everyone does it, right? If I go to a hotel, meet Mr. A. Random in the middle of an afternoon, spend a couple of pleasant protected hours and get paid for it – pearls everywhere are clutched and horror levels soar. But in my second example, I’m safer. I know his name, his phone number, where he is staying and I am…surrounded by people…
“The Prague Assembly has approved a bill to regulate prostitution…[both brothels and individual] prostitutes would have to apply for a licence…prostitutes would have to be over 18, without criminal record and…would have to undergo regular medical check-ups…” The bill’s author claims its intent is “to divide legal prostitution from the illegal.” It’ll do that, all right, but not in the way he seems to think.
…at…fourteen, Diana [O’Hara] entered the gates of the Good Shepherd Laundry in Buffalo, New York with the label of “incorrigible”…talking was allowed only when the nuns clapped their hands…[a misbehaving girl would be]…locked inside [a] closet…[or] an old [rat-infested] shower room with stone benches [sometimes for days]…followed [by] a severe beating…to “make her strong”…
Hugo Schwyzer is still pretending that men’s preference for young women is “socially constructed”; Christopher Ryan corrects him:
In a recent column at The Atlantic…Hugo Schwyzer asks us to consider, “What would happen if men stopped chasing much younger women?”…he’s not talking about pedophiles…[but rather] men like Johnny Depp, who is apparently dating a woman in her late 20s, while he’s just hit the big 5-0…Schwyzer argues…that this isn’t…happening in response to…innate biological desire…despite the overwhelming…evidence…Schwyzer cites [only] a 2007 study done in Sweden…[which] actually says the opposite of what he thinks it does…Schwyzer somehow knows Depp’s…attracted to his 27 year-old girlfriend because…she’s powerless and he’s intimidated by less “malleable” women of his own age….[this] attempt to shame consenting adults out of what he considers to be inappropriate relationships strikes me as quite the opposite of an informed feminist perspective…
…a last-minute amendment to Ohio’s budget…requires an ultrasound and 24-hour wait before birth control… “Pregnancy” in the context of the informed-consent requirements now means “any fertilized egg”…so…“the disruption of implantation of a fertilized egg” now counts as an abortion. Prescribing birth control is, in Ohio, a ticking time-abortion…
At least 200 Nigerian girls are trafficked every month to Russia…the crime…declined in Western Europe following strict laws on illegal migration…to curb the menace…[so] attention…shifted to Eastern Europe…you will be shocked at the extent of resistance [to being “rescued”] from the girls. We tell them Russia is not a destination for prostitutes yet they still come…the parents of those trafficked encourage…their children…
Parents’ outrage at an advertisement for a swingers party at a [Victoria] children’s play centre has forced the local council to close the business…the centre’s owners [had] said they would repeat the event every month at Casey Kids Playhouse once they found six other couples…a local mother…[who] had booked her son’s fourth birthday party there…[said] ”I am disgusted…This is so morally wrong, not to mention unhygienic”…
I just can’t stop laughing at the word “unhygienic” in that context.
Jesse Friedman…was properly convicted and should not have his status as a sexual predator overturned…[claims] Nassau County district attorney…Kathleen M. Rice…Mr. Friedman’s lawyer, Ron Kuby, and…Andrew Jarecki, [director of Capturing the Friedmans]…[said] the report was a biased whitewash by the office that originally botched the case…“Rice has made a craven, but not surprising, political decision in failing to admit to the wrongdoing of the…D.A.’s office and former sex crimes chief Fran Galasso, in the face of overwhelming evidence of Jesse’s innocence,” Mr. Jarecki said. Mr. Kuby said that the district attorney’s office had fought Mr. Friedman’s efforts at every turn and that this was just more of the same…“Fortunately, the conclusion of this bogus reinvestigation clears the way for the Friedman team to return to court”…
This is how service disputes are handled when the profession is legal: “Sunset Thomas…the…onetime cast member of…Cathouse…and [retired] porn star…[who works] at the Chicken Ranch in Pahrump [Nevada, is being sued by regular client Robert Proffitt for]…$2,200 for services he alleges were not rendered…”
Jack Vettriano paintings worth £500,000 were seized from a former brothel boss in a police crackdown on vice…detectives…smashed into the home of Ian Haig, 70, whose brother Charles, 73, runs a…sauna in Edinburgh. Vettriano…regularly visited Scorpio sauna…in the 1990s and painted…girls working there. He gave paintings to Ian Haig as a thank-you before he became one of Britain’s most successful artists…Police [claim the paintings are]…potential evidence…
The presence of thousands of brothels and hundreds of thousands of prostitutes has heightened competition and pushed prices down steeply in the German sex trade…Prostitution became legal in Germany in 2002, and the open sex trade has taken off in the years since…It’s been estimated that more than 1 million men pay for sex in Germany every day. One of the classic arguments for legalizing prostitution is that recognizing and regulating the world’s oldest profession would improve the conditions of sex workers. Instead, recent reports paint legalized prostitution in Germany largely as a failure…Despite the critics’ claims of atrocious conditions brought on by legalized prostitution in Germany, there are many who don’t want to go back to the days when the trade was cordoned off in the black market…
This is a prime example of American criminal ignorance about sex work; consult the title link for a thorough debunking.
Being the bloodsuckers that they are, they prey on innocent, unsuspecting people and try to find a way to ply their wares. – “Major” Nick Clark
The one small mercy (and believe me, I really had to stretch to find one) of neo-Victorianism is that we haven’t heard much of the myth of the wanton lately. For those who may not even remember it, this is the formerly-universal belief among men that:
…the lust of women is stronger than that of men, and that women thus draw men into sin; the widespread interpretation (though certainly not the original meaning) of the story of the Fall is that Eve’s offering Adam the apple is symbolic of her tempting him into carnality, and to this very day Muslim men pontificate from the pulpit (and on the internet) about the greater lustfulness of women. The Classical Greek philosophers taught that woman was like an animal always in heat, and the mythology of every part of Eurasia is full of temptresses, seductresses, succubae, enchantresses, whores and other wanton women whose entire reason for existence seems to consist of luring men into sex…
The idea generally fell out of favor in the West during the Victorian Era, and though it experienced a brief revival in some circles during the sexual revolution I had thought it largely out of fashion again except among some sex-positive feminists who insist that the ladies are generally just as randy as the gents despite the inconvenient fact that women never seem to want it enough to pay for it, and almost never to behave in any other way that demonstrates the voracious sex drive typical in most men. Yes, there are some individual women whose sex drive is greater than that of some individual men (especially among the beaten-down variety so common in the modern West), but the fact that there are mountains whose peaks are closer to sea level than the bottoms of many valleys does not invalidate the general statement “mountains tend to be higher than valleys”. Yet every once in a while, we see somebody playing fast and loose with cherry-picked statistics and calling it “groundbreaking research”, usually to sell a book:
…Even to the most casual observer of human history, it isn’t news that women’s sexuality has been feared, suppressed and lied about. But What Do Women Want? Adventures in the Science of Female Desire by journalist Daniel Bergner uses groundbreaking sex research to show the ways in which our supposedly enlightened society still has female sexuality backward — completely, utterly, profoundly…gender stereotypes have shaped scientific research and blinded researchers to evidence of female lust and sexual initiation throughout the animal kingdom, including among humans. It reveals how society’s repression of female sexuality has reshaped women’s desires and sex lives. Bergner, and the leading sex researchers he interviews, argue that women’s sexuality is not the rational, civilized and balancing force it’s so often made out to be — that it is base, animalistic and ravenous, everything we’ve told ourselves about male sexuality…In fact, he argues, “one of our most comforting assumptions, soothing perhaps above all to men but clung to by both sexes, that female eros is much better made for monogamy than the male libido, is scarcely more than a fairy tale”…
I totally agree that women’s sexuality can be base and animalistic, that it isn’t all that well-adapted to monogamy, and that a lot of the reason it appears otherwise (and that so many women are functionally asexual) is cultural pressure. But to say that this means that the female sex drive is as ravenous as men’s is to ignore that male sexuality is also shaped and suppressed by cultural pressure, especially from women, and that functionally asexual men are extremely rare. Here’s a comical video showing what the world might look like if women really were as horny as men:
Very few people nowadays believe this nonsense, but there’s a limited form of it which seems to be crawling out of the woodwork again: the notion that while “good” women (Madonnas) are sexually pure, “bad” women (whores) are predatory succubae always on the prowl for “good” men:
…Alabama state Sen. Shadrack McGill…[said] a number of strippers had come to his work [and] even to his home in the middle of the night…his “Facebook was hijacked and women sent me pictures of themselves half-naked”…McGill’s wife, Heather, decided that she had enough and…posted a message to his Facebook page: “I am very blessed to be the wife of a God fearing, hard working, ministry minded, loving father and husband and it is not just my right but my duty to lovingly serve him by protecting him!…We have children that look at our face books [sic] from time to time! Shame on you! You know who you are. Next time everyone will know who you are!! For I will publicly share your name before we ‘unfriend’ you”…
And when we ravenous harlots aren’t stalking “God-fearing” men (to ruin their paladinhood, no doubt) we’re attacking their wives:
…Anna Burgese, the…wife of a wealthy…Philadelphia homebuilder, claims in [a] federal lawsuit that as many as 10 prostitutes pounced on her in the…lobby [of the W hotel in Miami Beach] on Jan. 19. They mistakenly believed that she was encroaching on their turf…Instead of helping Burgese catch the attackers, the suit contends that the “prostitute-friendly’’ hotel put the women in a taxi to facilitate their escape…over the past decade, Miami Beach’s prostitution rings have taken on a more sophisticated and sinister side, involving sex-trafficking and women from Eastern European countries, known as “B-girls,’’ who fleece deep-pocketed tourists…Burgese claims that the assault was unprovoked and that the prostitutes threw her face-first against a stone wall in front of hotel employees. Her husband…fought the women off with his crutches…
How fondly I remember those sinister old times, getting together in huge gangs of “high-priced escorts” to beat up aging debutantes at the W in New Orleans! And sometimes, just for an extra-sophisticated change of pace, we’d all sashay in formation over to the Windsor Court to slash the tires of Rolls-Royces and Ferraris, or perhaps to the Hyatt Regency to ride up and down in the glass elevator, running out at each floor to scrawl obscenities on people’s doors with lipstick and dump room service leftovers into the ornamental pool in the lobby. And every time guests would complain, the “prostitute-friendly” staff would whisk us off in taxicabs with “Born To Be Wild” blaring on the stereo. What carefree days those were, before all these God-fearing enemies of trafficking appeared to beat us off with their crutches and “unfriend” us on Face Books! I swear, it just makes a girl want to join the packed crowd down at the nearest male stripper club to lose herself among all the hundreds of other base, animalistic and ravenous hussies.
You think we should tell this “lobby group” that Australian governments already know they’re lying, or just let them waste their money? “A sex industry lobby group in Tasmania is pushing for the introduction of laws which penalise the clients of prostitutes…Dr Christy Giselsson from the Nordic Model Australian Coalition, says the group believes changing the focus of the legislation would reduce the demand for sex workers. ‘For example in Sweden it’s been shown to halve street prostitution’…” In any case, someone definitely needs to tell this reporter that Swedish Model proponents are NOT “sex industry lobby groups”.
Another example of politicians wasting other people’s money to fight a legal sex business: “Fighting plans for a brothel at Narellan last year came at a cost of almost $60,000 for Camden Council but councillors described the battle as a fight they had to have…Mayor Greg Warren (pictured) said the council’s position to refuse the sex premises reflected the concerns of the community…owner Greg Hall said the money…could have been better spent on community projects. ‘There are thousands of places it could have been spent than to waste it in court for a decision we all knew was going to get through anyway,’ he said…”
School officials in a Detroit suburb announced they may search student cell phones and laptops, in an effort to tackle the problem of teenage “sexting”…The rule did not result from any particular incident, but was “just a matter of being proactive,” [said] Rich Machesky, Troy’s assistant superintendent…Students could refuse a search request…in which case the district would contact the child’s parents instead…The ACLU is concerned over how broad the policy is and whether school officials would then hand off students’ phones to the police…While sexting is not illegal…kids who text can be prosecuted under child pornography laws and can be sentenced with 20 years in prison if convicted. Even having sexually explicit photos on your phone is a four-year felony…
Because obviously nude pictures are far more dangerous to “children’s” lives than spending 20 years in prison.
Anyone who’s ever lived in New Orleans knows about Hubig Pies, tasty little treats which come in a large variety of flavors and put other commercial snack pastries to shame. Unfortunately, their century-old factory burned down before dawn on July 27th and it may be quite some time before it’s rebuilt. This video may be of interest to my readers because it provides an extended example of the “Yat” dialect spoken by a woman who sounds like a very typical New Orleans character.
Two stories from different Australian states demonstrating the weird situations that arise from legalization. The first is from Queensland, and updates an item from the original column: “A sex worker has won an anti-discrimination case against motel owners in a Queensland mining town who refused to rent her a room…[she] had stayed at the motel 17 times in two years until [the] owners…discovered…she was bringing clients to her room…[her] lawyer argued many people used the telephone or internet at the motel for business, and a bed was no different.” The owners argued that the worker’s activities were “disturbing” other guests, which is of course nonsense if she had been there 17 times before without incident. Furthermore, how is paid sex any more “disturbing” to other guests than giveaway sex?
The second item is from a town in Victoria, where sex work is legal but “brothels” (the term is defined so loosely it can mean virtually anything police want it to mean) must be licensed:
Police suspect an illegal brothel has been operating in a residential street…[in] Bendigo…[they] raided a house…and took a woman back to the station for questioning…“We believe she’s a sex worker involved in an illegal brothel at that address,” [a detective] said. “We’re waiting for a Chinese interpreter to come so we can interview her”…[a neighbor] was concerned about the well-being of the [sex worker]…“She’s very friendly – a lovely young lady.”
According to a comment on the story, Bendigo is practically the only city in Victoria without a brothel, which may explain why its government feels the need to harass women on technicalities.
A New Zealander was so desperate to fund his dream to compete in the London 2012 Olympics that he opened a brothel…[after] Logan Campbell…lost his bid for Olympic glory in Beijing in 2008, he was too strapped for cash to take his [taekwondo] career to the next level and train full-time…So…to make the $200,000 he needed to go to London, he opened a 14-room brothel in Auckland. Campbell…wants to repudiate the perception that he was a pimp selling women on a street corner. New Zealand decriminalised prostitution in 2003. “I sold the brothel so I don’t really want to talk about it now, OK?” he said. “It’s a legal business in New Zealand. It’s completely different from other countries in the world…No one was forced into the industry, and they’re not doing it because they are in poverty because we have a really good welfare system”…
It’s a start; now we need to work on getting similar sentences for the thousands of real cops who regularly do the same thing. Note the incredible concluding sentence: “A man who faked being a Texas law officer and demanded free sex from a prostitute has been sentenced to 35 years in prison…The woman submitted to [Raul Garza III] but later called police when he allegedly wanted suggestive photos of her 10-year-old daughter. Garza…testified he never committed a crime and just refused to pay the prostitute.”
Most of this overblown and sensationalistic article is just repetition of the usual “sex trafficking” myths and exaggerations combined with the characteristic cop-culture strutting and bragging, but it’s notable for the accusation that the Department of Justice is “ignoring child sex trafficking victims” because it isn’t creating enough of them to support the hysterical predictions. That sound you hear is me clapping quite slowly.
While it’s nice to see an article actually leading off with the truth about sex work around major sporting events, I feel I must comment on this historian’s absurd exaggeration:
…Georgina Perry, who works at Open Doors, a support project…[for] East London prostitutes…says the Olympics are never good for the sex trade. “All the studies show there’s no increase in sex workers,” she says of past Olympics…Gone, it seems, are the good old days for your average harlot when the best athletes gathered. “Prostitution was a huge deal in the ancient Games,” says historian Tony Perrottet, author of The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games. The original festival attracted 40,000 sports fans — all male — to the remote religious sanctuary. “Brothel owners … brought in teams of beautiful girls from around Greece, Egypt and Asia Minor.” Any good prostitute would try to get to the Olympics, and earn in five days what would normally take her a year to make…
This is nothing but another permutation of the stupid “50 clients a night” idiocy. It is simply not physically possible for any full-time whore to make in 5 days what she could make in 360, unless perhaps she came from some rural district where she usually only got one client a day, managed 12 per day at the Olympics (difficult but doable), and charged six times her usual fee.
Cash-strapped Nadya Suleman…has turned to various X-rated money-making ventures to help pay the bills – all with the encouragement of Orange County (Calif.) Child Protective Services. “They’re on my side–they’re supporters,” Suleman [said]…“It’s ironic. Once I talked with a CPS worker in regards to the adult stuff, she was like, ‘Are you really doing that?’ Well, it’s not illegal. More power to you!’ So it was almost like a green light–like, ‘Do what you need to do to take care of your family’”…A rep for the Orange County…Social Services Agency…[said] “The law allows a wide latitude in parenting styles and in parenting vocations. I don’t think that anybody would ever want it any other way. So as long as children remain free from harm or danger…then the Social Services Agency would not become involved.”
Unless the mother is a whore, of course, which automatically makes her less fit than Octomom.
Prior to the 2009 Sex Purchase Act, Norway had one of Europe’s smallest and least organized markets for prostitution. Women…voluntarily…sold sex…without the interference from any pimp. The introduction of the law has made this process more complicated, according to a report in the Stavanger Aftenblad…”The women are very vulnerable towards the police and to a greater extent on the network and support that pimps can offer,” said [researcher] Guri Tyldum…”The criminalization intended to demonstrate that prostitution is not wanted in Norway. The risk is that the most dangerous and serious form of prostitution that remains,” she said…Norway’s Ministry of Justice has announced an evaluation of the sex purchase act.
This is not only what we’ve said for over a decade, it’s the inevitable result of putting the desire to “send a message” above the needs of real people.
I felt really exposed. It didn’t hit me until the first moment where the scene called for me to expose myself, because what came over me was such shame. Which was weird, because they weren’t my breasts, and it was what I had signed up to do….I started to cry, and if you look closely at those scenes when I’m opening my blouse, I’m smiling, but not in my eyes…I was just feeling really emotional and trying to hide it.
Boo fucking hoo. Women like this (Jessica Alba is another one) piss me off to no end. If you’re such a prudish twit you supposedly “cry” from partial nudity with FAKE TITS, I have a suggestion: restrict yourself to playing nuns, and leave the sex worker parts to grown women.
Good news for Simon Walsh, but I have to wonder how this would have turned out had the same thing happened in America:
A man who was tried this week…for possessing images of “extreme” sexual acts has just been cleared on all counts…David Allen Green, solicitor and legal correspondent for the New Statesman, said: “This was a shameful and intrusive prosecution which should never have been brought. It was bad law to begin with, but a good man has had his sex life examined in open court for no good reason. There are serious questions for the CPS to answer about bringing this prosecution.”
Government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction in stolen goods. – H.L. Mencken
As an organism which is at best symbiotic with (and in the overwhelming majority of cases parasitic on) society, government is a non-producer; its only means of support is to drain money from those who are producers. When a government is small and efficient, the funds thus consumed go to providing useful functions such as public works, territorial defense and a means of adjudicating disputes; in the typical case, they also support a hopelessly inefficient bureaucracy, pay thugs to enforce leaders’ arbitrary whims on the people, and line the pockets of functionaries at every level of government (not to mention their cronies ostensibly outside of the government). But in the case of pathologically bloated modern regimes, the primary usage of stolen resources is the funding of yet more growth and increased means of stealing still more money; in other words, the theft itself becomes the primary function of government rather than a means of enabling some useful (or at least mostly-harmless) function. Expressed more succinctly, proper governments eat to live, but tyrannical governments live to eat.
The process by which lean, minimal government feeds is best described as leeching; it’s slow, gradual and so minimally intrusive a healthy host may not even notice the drain. The feeding of a typical government is more like that of a lamprey; it debilitates its host and causes serious, permanent damage. But an overgrown monster-government is like a rapacious predator which tears its prey to pieces and scatters fragments everywhere, ruining that which it does not consume. Minimal governments can survive on reasonable taxes, fees, monopolies or the like; most governments require all of those plus fines, tolls, tariffs, unfunded mandates and political contributions. But the Oriental despotism under which we now exist requires still more, and therefore has given itself the right to openly steal the assets of citizens. Usually, this is accomplished by accusing the victim of violating some arbitrary rule against a consensual behavior which it has defined as a “crime” and demonized to the point where the sheeple accept that definition.
In the UK, this is usually accomplished by targeting “brothels”. When the businesspeople so pillaged own actual brothels (especially more than one), the media can be counted upon to disseminate pro-robbery propaganda, as in this January 31st article in which the Evening Chronicle describes the victim as the owner of a “sleazy brothel empire”, laments that the government was “only” able to steal £42,212 of her “ill-gotten gains”, and describes her business as a “debauched operation” which the police robbed by perpetrating a scam…though the paper bizarrely applies that label to her business (which provided a valuable service to willing customers) rather than to police trickery which benefits only the police. Furthermore, the media chooses to ignore the fact that this same law is used to victimize escorts who share premises, stealing their property and life savings while ignoring violent (but poor) criminals.
When using prostitution as an excuse for banditry, US jurisdictions prefer to pander to neofeminist “end demand” rhetoric and “human trafficking” hysteria by robbing the clients of streetwalkers instead:
Police in eight states participated in prostitution stings over the past 10 days, coordinated by Cook County [Illinois] Sheriff Tom Dart…there were 565 arrests – including 314 men allegedly soliciting sex. A total of 227 people were arrested on prostitution charges and other misdemeanor counts, and two more were arrested on human trafficking charges. The roundup was all part of what Dart calls the “National Day of Johns Arrests.” Twenty law enforcement agencies in eight states ran sting operations…If the johns are all convicted, fines will be in the neighborhood of nearly $475,000. While prostitution is often characterized as a victimless crime, the sheriff’s office says that is not true. Dart’s office says customers of prostitutes “perpetuate a violent, exploitative industry,” and if there were no johns, there would be no abusive pimps and traffickers either. “Large sporting events, such as the Super Bowl, bring out competitiveness in all of us, including, unfortunately, pimps and sex traffickers…In the days leading up to and including Super Bowl Sunday, my office coordinated with 19 other[s]…to send a strong message that our communities refuse to tolerate the sale of human beings for sex.”
Obviously, Sheriff Dart is perfectly OK with the sale of human beings for government profit. But whether the melodramatic rhetoric is quasi-Victorian or neofeminist, it serves the same purpose: rationalizing armed robbery by denying women’s agency and casting the perpetrators as “protecting” women from “exploitation” (except government exploitation, of course). Nor do these authorized crime syndicates limit themselves to stealing cash and automobiles from clients; the hysteria over “human trafficking” has allowed them to grab even juicier prizes from innocent bystanders:
A southern California flight school owner faces the loss of his two-year-old business, along with the Cessna 172 he rented to a well-known customer. The Jan. 20 seizure of N5283E…[was] the fourth…of a light aircraft involved in the smuggling of people, rather than drugs, since 2010…Denney Marsh, owner of Hemet-Ryan Flight School…said [local business owner Lino] Rodriguez-Chavez, arrested Jan. 20 after allegedly picking up three men from a Motel 6 and driving them to Imperial County Airport, had taken flight lessons at the school…“He’s not somebody who just showed up at the door like the newspaper said,” Marsh said. “I have no idea how to prevent this…Oddly enough, the building that I’m in stores seized airplanes,” Marsh said. “I frequently send my pilots down with 83E to bring back other airplanes for storage that they’ve seized”…Marsh…is not optimistic he will ever see it again. Federal officials have offered few options: Marsh can file a motion with the federal court that, if he loses, is not subject to appeal. Or, he has been told, he can post a $5,000 bond and apply for a hearing, with no guarantee the aircraft will be returned…
Of course, it’s accusations of drug trafficking which net the largest profits; a quarter-million dollar aircraft is small potatoes compared to a million-dollar motel:
Imagine you own a million-dollar piece of property free and clear, but then the federal government and local law enforcement agents announce that they are going to take it from you, not compensate you one dime, and then use the money they get from selling your land to pad their budgets—all this even though you have never so much as been accused of a crime, let alone convicted of one. That is the nightmare [faced by] Russ Caswell and his family…in Tewksbury, Mass., where they stand to lose the family-operated motel they have owned for two generations. Seeking to circumvent state law and cash in on the profits, the Tewksbury Police Department is working with the U.S. Department of Justice to take and sell the Caswells’ property because a tiny fraction of people who have stayed at the Motel Caswell during the past 20 years have been arrested for crimes. Keep in mind, the Caswells themselves have worked closely with law enforcement officials to prevent and report crime on their property. And the arrests the government complains of represent less than .05 percent of the 125,000 rooms the Caswells have rented over that period of time. Despite all this, the Caswells stand to lose literally everything they have worked for because of this effort by federal and local law enforcement officials not to pursue justice, but rather to police for profit.
The list of “crimes” which excuse police robbery will inevitably grow; they’re already stealing cars for selected misdemeanors, and more are coming soon. Imagine losing your stereo over a noise complaint, your car for speeding or your house for fighting with your spouse, and then realize that even if you don’t break any laws at all the SCOTUS ruled seven years ago that it’s perfectly OK for politicians to steal your home for the “crime” of being in an area their developer buddies want to build something on. The precedents for these abuses are already well-established, and they aren’t going to stop until the peasantry wakes up and takes a stand against its bandit overlords.
One Year Ago Today
“Legislators Gone Wild” describes out-of-control politicians defining first as last, freedom as slavery, zygotes as citizens and yours truly as a double murderess.
The Lord told me it’s flat none of your business. – Jimmy Swaggart
Twenty years ago today, the California Highway Patrol pulled over a white Jaguar in the town of Indio for driving on the wrong side of the road. The driver explained that he had pulled over to give a ride to a young woman who was standing on that side, and was in the process of pulling back over when he was stopped. And the cops might’ve accepted that, or given him a ticket and gone on their way, except for two things: the woman was a known prostitute named Rosemary Garcia, and the driver was well-known televangelist Jimmy Swaggart. Nor was this Swaggart’s first time caught with his hand in the crumpet tin; four years earlier it was another streetwalker in a seedy motel on Airline Highway in Metairie, Louisiana. That earlier scandal had almost ended his career, and the second one sharply curtailed his comeback. But let’s not put the car before the whores, as it were; the story makes more sense told chronologically.
Jimmy Swaggart was born in Ferriday, Louisiana on March 15, 1935, just six months before his cousin, rock and roll legend Jerry Lee Lewis and a year before another cousin, country star Mickey Gilley. He married Frances Anderson when he was only 17 years old and was a father at 19, despite the fact that he had neither residence nor income. The Swaggarts lived an itinerant existence as Jimmy preached in small rural Louisiana churches, bringing in roughly $30 a week and staying wherever people would let them. But showmanship ran in the family, and by 1957 Swaggart was popular at revival meetings all over the South. He entered Bible college, began recording Gospel music albums in 1960 and was ordained by the Assemblies of God after graduating in 1961. He soon had his own radio show, and by 1969 it was popular throughout the Bible Belt. That was the year he founded his Family Worship Center in Baton Rouge, bought an AM radio station and started a weekly 30-minute television broadcast which was later syndicated. His television ministry quickly expanded; in 1978 the show grew to an hour, and in 1980 went from weekly to daily. By the mid-1980s his broadcast appeared on more than 250 television stations across the U.S. and pulled in about $150 million dollars a year.
Cousin Jimmy had come a long way from sleeping in church basements and preaching from the backs of trucks, but instead of rejoicing in his good fortune and helping other struggling preachers as Christian morality demands, Swaggart instead grew jealous of his position and schemed to bring down rival Assemblies of God televangelist Marvin Gorman, whose television show was becoming increasingly popular. In 1986 Swaggart discovered (possibly through the use of a private detective) that Gorman had a mistress, and exposed him to the AoG Presbytery with claims of “several affairs” (though Gorman only confessed to one). Gorman was defrocked, his TV ministry collapsed and he was forced to file bankruptcy; as one might expect, he wanted revenge. So, he hired a private detective named Scott Bailey and assigned his son Randy to assist him, and the two set out to discover whatever Swaggart might have to hide. It didn’t take long; early in 1987 they discovered that he regularly employed the services of Debra Murphree, a $35 streetwalker who worked out of the Travel Inn on Airline Highway. On a day when Bailey expected Swaggart to visit Murphree, Randy Gorman rented another room and secretly took pictures of her clients coming and going; when Swaggart arrived Randy snapped his picture entering the room, then let the air out of his tires and called his father (who lived only a few minutes away). The elder Gorman confronted Swaggart when he emerged and promised he wouldn’t release the pictures if Swaggart would publicly apologize to Gorman, admit to the Assemblies of God that he had lied about the affairs and use his influence to have Gorman reinstated.
But for some reason, Swaggart never made good on his end of the deal, and in January of 1988 Gorman told Swaggart his time was up. On February 15th Gorman contacted the AoG Executive Presbytery, the same officials who had defrocked him two years earlier, and exposed Swaggart’s transgression; they initially suspended him for three months, then travelled with him on his private plane to AoG headquarters in Springfield, Missouri to set the matter before the church’s national leadership. One would think Swaggart would be contrite and penitent, but this was not the case; an evangelist who was on that flight later reported that “Swaggart was VERY contemptuous of them. At one point…he stood up and wagged his finger in their faces and said…[words to the effect that] Swaggart spoke for God, and the AofG did not.” The national leaders were so offended by Swaggart’s arrogance they increased the suspension to two years, and so it was that on February 21st, 1988 Swaggart made his now-famous “I have sinned” speech and temporarily stepped down from the pulpit.
Murphree was interviewed repeatedly by news media and admitted to the odd fact that though Swaggart had seen her many times, he had never had sex with her; instead he had paid her to pose while he masturbated. This dovetailed with Swaggart’s admission to the AoG leaders that he “suffered from a lifelong addiction” to pornography, which certainly surprised no one who knew anything about reaction formation considering his vocal anti-porn stance. In July she got an illustrated interview in Penthouse; Jack had a subscription (delivered to my flat so his mother wouldn’t know) and I remember several details of that feature. One is that Murphree was, well, skanky-looking, which in conjunction with some of the things she reported he wanted her to do and talk about tells me he viewed their interaction as degrading to himself, and wanted it that way. Another is that he was extremely cheap; though her normal price was $35 he wouldn’t pay her more than $20 because he didn’t want to actually touch her. And as is typical of men in a state of deep sexual frustration, he had disgusting fantasies about things he probably would never actually do, such as asking if he could have sex with Murphree’s nine-year-old daughter. Penthouse paid $210,000 for her story, of which the IRS stole three-quarters.
Meanwhile, Swaggart had returned to the pulpit in May, at the end of the original three-month suspension; the AoG leadership responded by defrocking him for disobeying their two-year ban, and Swaggart countered by making his Family Worship Center and TV ministry non-denominational. The defiant move came at a heavy cost; he had already lost considerable following due to the scandal and was a national laughingstock (mocked by celebrities from Saturday Night Live to Ozzy Osbourne), and the break from AoG sent him into a downward spiral. By the end of 1988 he had lost 80% of his viewership, and in September of 1991 a New Orleans jury found that Swaggart had defamed Gorman with false allegations of adultery, and ordered him to pay $10 million in damages. Still, the fallen icon was determined and charismatic, and soon after that verdict he preached to a standing-room only crowd in San Diego. But a week later he picked up Rosemary Garcia in Indio…and that’s where we came in. She said he asked her to guide him to a hotel with in-room porn, and as she later told reporters “He’s the same guy who cries on TV for all these people to feel sorry for him…to give him all their money. For what? So he can come give it to us. That’s pretty good.” There was no tearful apology from the repeatedly disgraced televangelist this time; instead, he stood before his congregation and issued the statement which forms today’s epigram. His quick-thinking son Donnie immediately announced that his father would be temporarily stepping down as head of the ministry for “a time of healing and counseling.”
One might think that would be the end of the road for Swaggart, but as the adage tells us “you can fool some of the people all of the time.” In 1995 he founded the SonLife radio network, which according to Swaggart’s website “is heard nationwide on over 78 stations and around the world via the internet.” In 2009 he launched SonLife Broadcasting Network, “a Christian Television Network which airs nationally and internationally to a potential viewing audience of over 80 million.” And though he’s not the force he once was, there’s no doubt that he’s still a multi-millionaire with millions of adoring fans. As Larry Niven would say, there ain’t no justice.
One Year Ago Today
“Hooker Humor” should be self-explanatory. And beige.
Why is it constantly necessary to do something to people? If we can’t do something for them, when are we going to learn to let them alone? Or must this incessant interference, this meddling, this mauling and manhandling, go on in the world forever and ever? – Samuel Milton Jones, mayor of Toledo, Ohio c. 1900
Today’s column is yet another collection of short articles on whores which have appeared in the news media recently; what can I say? If the mainstream media would talk to us as often as they talk about us public ignorance (and with it official persecution) would’ve been swept away long ago. This first item is paraphrased from an article in The Telegraph of Monday, October 25th:
For Their Own Safety
Spanish streetwalkers along a rural highway outside Els Alamus near Lleida in Catalonia have been ordered to wear fluorescent yellow bibs or pay fines of 40 euros under road traffic laws; police claim the sex workers on the LL-11 road are not being specifically targeted because of what they do but because they pose a danger to drivers. The prostitutes are in breach of a 2004 law which states that all pedestrians on major highways and hard shoulders must wear the high visibility garments. A spokesman for the regional police force said: “In the past couple of months the prostitutes have been fined for two reasons: for not wearing the reflective jacket and for creating danger on the public highway.”
Despite police claims, the order comes suspiciously soon after recent legislation in Els Alamus which bans prostitutes from soliciting in public urban areas; Mayor Josep Maria Bea has been accused of mounting a campaign to drive the sex workers out of the area. An estimated 300,000 women work as prostitutes in Spain, where prostitution is not illegal but “living off the avails” is. Streetwalkers on roadsides outside towns and cities are a common sight across Spain, and a recent survey found one in four Spanish men admitted to having paid for sex.
Charlie Sheen, well known as a regular patron of hookers, was in the news again recently for going on a cokehead rampage and scaring the hell out of the working girl who was with him at the time. The following article was paraphrased from a New York Post article of October 26:
Charlie Sheen Trashes Hotel Room
Charlie Sheen, who left rehab only two months ago, allegedly trashed his room at The Plaza Hotel in the process of attempting to find his wallet and cell phone while high, authorities said.
Hotel security called police just after 2 a.m. after a prostitute called the front desk from the famed Eloise Suite and reported that Sheen had gone on a rampage and then passed out on the bed. Tables and chairs had been thrown around the room and a chandelier was also damaged, sources said; the damage to the luxury suite reportedly totaled about $7,000.
The star of the TV show Two and a Half Men was accompanied to New York Columbia Presbyterian Hospital by his ex-wife Denise Richards, who was staying in a separate room on the hotel’s 18th floor, sources said. Sheen was discharged from the hospital Tuesday night and is slated to return to rehab; he was only a week away from completing his probation, but told cops he was “out partying” and drinking and had snorted cocaine before he started tweaking, the source said. Sheen’s rep later claimed the actor was taken to the hospital after an allergic reaction to medication. Sheen was not injured, but checked himself into the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation.
Apparently, Sheen noticed his wallet and cell phone were missing soon after returning to the room with the escort and flew into a rage, sources said. The girl then called the front desk and reported that she feared for her life; a source for Life and Style magazine said, “Charlie was incoherent but started screaming slurs at the cops. They recognized him immediately and gave him two options: they could take him to the hospital or take him down to the station. Charlie chose the hospital.” NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said no complaints were made and there was no arrest. Sheen was not expected to face any criminal charges.
Ah, cokeheads; once they start tweaking they get paranoid and then it’s best just to leave. I think it’s worth noting that if a hotel room was trashed by a coked-up non-celebrity, both he and the hooker would’ve been taking a ride downtown rather than offered a ride to a hospital. However, I’ll forgive Charlie because he’s the only famous man I can think of who had the balls to refuse to apologize and beg for forgiveness when caught with whores in the past. And when he was being sentenced for using a prostitute, the judge asked him why a man like him would have to pay for sex; Charlie replied: “I don’t pay them for sex. I pay them to leave.” Perhaps the judge is living in a fantasyland where men can get sex for free, but Sheen is smart enough to realize that only hookers come without strings.
Two Arguments About “Trafficking”
On October 20ththis column was published in the Huffington Post; I’m not going to quote it because it’s just the usual farrago of lies claiming that suppressing prostitution is a good way to control the bogeyman of “human trafficking”, but following the link is worth your time for several reasons. The first is that the author, a graduate student at NYU (which could just as accurately called “PCU”) who clearly wouldn’t know a call girl if one sashayed up and snogged her, is obviously repeating the latest, trendiest party line from her PC articles and texts, which happens to be “Nordic Model” propaganda. The second is that the comments (including one from yours truly) is almost unanimously anti-prohibitionist and condemnatory of the lies this silly little girl thought she could spread with impunity (judging by her increasingly flustered responses to the comments). Though Huffington Post tends to be very pro-personal rights and has printed a number of pro-prostitution columns in the past, it still pleases me to see so many people recognizing that a woman’s right to control her body does not exclude sex.
Even more heartening is this article entitled “Sex Trafficking: The Abolitionist Fallacy” which one of the commenters linked; it was written last year but is still perfectly topical. Its author, Ann Jordan, is the director of the Program on Human Trafficking and Forced Labor at the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, American University Washington College of Law. She is thus a respected expert in the REALITY of sex trafficking and a staunch anti-abolitionist; she even co-authored a letter to the U.S. federal government asking it to reconsider its prohibitionist policy, though as you might expect that has fallen on deaf ears. Still, it’s good to know that there are at least a few bona fide experts who recognize the prohibitionist propaganda for what it is and are willing to say so loudly and publicly.
Escorts.com Raided by FBI
The Philadelphia offices housing Escorts.com (a popular escort advertising site) and HotMovies.com, an adult video-on-demand provider, were raided by 100 FBI agents on Wednesday morning (October 27th). The FBI tried to pretend that the raid was pursuant to pornography charges and most sources of this story make that claim, but local cops who assisted in the raid leaked the information that “it was conducted in connection to an investigation into a prostitution ring.” The Philadelphia bureau of the FBI would not confirm this, but reiterated previous reports that no one was charged or arrested in connection with the raid. They also said that no news would be forthcoming from the FBI; “Any information about the raid will only come from the U.S. Attorney’s office, not our office,” said the chief agent. “And it will probably not be today, or for quite a while.” The PR officer for the US Attorney’s office in Philadelphia said even less; “Our office does not confirm or deny the existence or non-existence of investigations,” she said. CBS affiliate CBS Philly is reporting, however, that the raid was related to a prostitution ring investigation, but had no other information.
Clearly, somebody in the FBI wants to look good to the lowbrows, bluenoses and neofeminists right before election day; “prostitution ring” is cop jargon for an escort service or internet escort review and/or advertising site. By calling it a “ring” rather than a business, they hope to convince ignorant people that the escorts and owners are criminals (as in the term “drug ring”). If any of my readers advertise on Escorts.com, I suggest you cancel your ad immediately and do NOT under any circumstances see any clients calling from that ad. The FBI now has your information and will almost certainly be attempting to “sting” you so they can make a big show of arresting “human traffickers”.
Another Porn Influence
In yesterday’s column I talked about how fads which first appear in porn often work their way into the mainstream (such as complete removal or pubic hair). Well, here’s the latest example: Labioplasty, in other words cosmetic alteration of the labia. I decided to link the article rather than paraphrasing it because I want to use it to make another point: Note that the author makes the ignorant but increasingly common mistake discussed in my column of September 25th, using the word “vagina” to mean “vulva”. She keeps using the term “vagina sculpting” when she obviously means “vulva sculpting”; nobody can see what her vagina looks like without gynecological tools. There is such a thing as vaginoplasty, but it’s a different operation altogether and has nothing to do with appearance.
I am not bound to please thee with my answers. – William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (IV,i)
It’s time for me to answer reader questions again; keep ‘em coming, I’d like to make this a monthly feature! This first one was imbedded in a long and fairly boring neofeminist diatribe:
If being a prostitute isn’t shameful, why don’t you use your real name and picture?
1) Because there are far too many rabid lunatics like you around and I love my husband far too much to give any of you a chance to make his life more difficult.
2) Because I don’t trust the self-proclaimed “authorities” any more than I would trust a dog to guard a steak.
3) Because if I put a legal name and a distinctive face to my words I defeat one of my chief points, which is that prostitutes are no different from any other women. If you know what I look like you also know what I don’t look like, and if you know my real name you also know what it isn’t; that allows you to mentally push me away, to pretend that I’m different and that you don’t know anyone like me. But if I hide my identity I could be anybody: Your sister, your daughter, your friend, your neighbor or that nice lady you always see in the grocery store. And that’s exactly what I want, because even if those women are not me they could share my profession. We don’t have horns, cloven hooves or pointed teeth and we don’t abduct your children to sell them to “traffickers”; I guarantee you that unless you live in a town with under 1000 people there are at least a couple of us around, and if you live in an average-sized city there are dozens of us around, and there’s a good chance you know at least one of us by sight. Let that sink in, and I hope it makes you very, very nervous because maybe then you’ll wake up out of this nightmare your brain appears to be trapped in.
What percentage of men see prostitutes?
It depends on who you talk to; estimates vary wildly, but the ones that sound about right to me claim that about 6% of men directly pay for sex “frequently”, 20% “occasionally”, and 69% at least once in their lives. Considering that something like 67% of men have had extramarital sex at least once, those figures seem pretty credible to me.
What I find amazing is that so many people are so obtuse about the role prostitutes play in male infidelity. Since only about 15% of married women cheat, many silly people conclude that either the men are lying when they say they have and/or the women are lying when they say they haven’t, because “all those men must be cheating with somebody.” Just Google a few studies on infidelity and you’ll see what I mean; many commenters on such articles and even some of the educated idiots who compile the studies are so blinded by their monogamist bias that they are compelled to reach the incredibly naïve conclusion that each philandering man is paired up with one and only one adulterous woman, leading to the erroneous conclusion that either the male figures are too high or else the female figures are too low. None of these pundits can see the obvious explanation right in front of their faces; most male extracurricular activity is with prostitutes, each one of whom accounts for dozens of men! In my busiest period (2000-2001) I alone had an average of 16 clients a week, at least 75% of them married. And that’s just ONE whore; I can assure you the escort population of New Orleans could easily handle the 77% of straying husbands who weren’t paired up with straying wives. This is actually good news for everyone; male readers can relax in the knowledge that, contrary to what the scare stories want you to believe, most wives really don’t cheat. And female readers can take comfort in the fact that even if your husbands do get sex from somebody else, 77% of them are doing it with women who have absolutely no desire to break up anyone’s marriage.
Why does it matter what hotel I get to meet a provider? If I get a cheap hotel they don’t want to see me, but if I get an expensive one, there’s no problem. Why is that?
There could be several factors at play here. Part of it may be what I discussed in my column of October 9th: If a man does not want to pay for a good hotel it could mean he cannot afford a good hotel, which means that the escort’s fee is also dearer to him than to a more affluent client and he will be more likely to try to get his “money’s worth” from her, thus making him far more demanding. Also, allowing clients to hire cheap hotels attracts a poorer clientele with higher disease rates and less to lose socially if they cause trouble.
Another factor could be the escort’s belief in magic formulae (as discussed in my column of August 21st); some whores seem to believe that cops are too cheap to rent good hotel rooms and therefore cheap rooms are more suspect. Nothing could be farther from the truth; police departments love to waste public money on prostitution “stings”, and the cost of even an expensive hotel room pales into insignificance beside the cost of taking a dozen cops off of real police work for hours so they can play sadistic sex games and ogle hookers. And that’s assuming they actually have to pay for the rooms in the first place; some hotel chains let cops have rooms for free in the belief that it builds goodwill with them, and those with bluenosed management may actually let cops modify their rooms for “stings” because they want to discourage escorts from coming there once the word gets out. Actually, in my experience mid-range hotels tend to be the worst; cheap ones have a “reputation” the cops want to avoid and some expensive ones refuse to allow police shenanigans because their upscale customers rightfully consider such activities objectionable and low-class. If you were a businessman paying $500 a night at a five-star hotel, would you want a mob of cretinous thugs playing “cops and robbers” down the hall from you?
Finally, snobby whores or those in the early stages of platinum pussy syndrome may think themselves too good to visit a Motel 6 or Super 8. For myself, I wouldn’t see men who were staying in such places for the reasons already discussed in the first paragraph of my answer, but if a local client felt uncomfortable with an incall and merely wanted to rent such a room for a rendezvous I wasn’t too particular about it unless the place was a scary fleabag like the London Lodge or Tulane Motel.
You said most escorts don’t worry any more about getting HIV or other STDs by giving uncovered blow jobs, but what about colds, flu and other “regular” diseases? Isn’t your risk of those higher without a condom?
As I discussed in my column of September 7th, the risk of oral transmission of HIV or hepatitis B is vanishingly low, and most other diseases have visible signs. And while cold and flu-type diseases are transmitted easily even when there are no obvious symptoms, mere skin-to-skin contact involving hands, faces and other such areas will spread those diseases even if the man wears a condom from start to finish. If you’re in bed with a guy you’re going to be exposed to his “common germs” no matter what precautions you take. But since this does happen, I suspect escorts build up an immunity to such common pathogens; as a call girl I was in close contact with men from around the world, and I was sick less often than at any other time in my life. I’ve never noticed escorts getting colds or whatever any more often than anybody else; in fact it seems to me that the people who get sick the most are the ones who are constantly “sanitizing” their entire environment with antibacterial products, thus robbing their bodies of the low-level exposure needed to build up antibodies.
That having been said, I did notice that I suffered from one particular condition more often when I was working than at any other times, and that was sore throat (and even laryngitis on a few occasions). Part of this may simply have been due to abrasion during “deep throat”, but I suspect it was sometimes due to unknowing poor hygiene on the part of the client. Think about it; we all know that the hands are the “germiest” parts of the body, and we’re told to wash our hands after using the toilet. But I doubt many men wash their hands before urinating, so the bacteria on their dirty hands are transferred to the skin of their penises. Thus, unless a man is freshly bathed when he visits a whore (or his wife for that matter) the exterior of his penis may in turn transfer that bacteria to the woman’s throat during oral sex and thereby cause minor infections.
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But it isn’t only children who are believed to be harmed by the contaminating touch of harlots; adult human beings in the 21st century actually behave as though commercial sex inflicts some magical taboo radiation into bedclothes and other surroundings, while amateur sex does not. Nobody is disturbed by the knowledge that any hotel bed one occupies has previously been shagged in by complete strangers, but apparently sex workers carry pernicious and undetectable cooties which we deposit everywhere we work, and which cannot be removed from bedding without washing it in holy water and soap made from the fat of virgin lambs:
When this story broke, some sex workers questioned why it was necessary for the hired rats to pose as honest sex workers, if any subletting is illegal. The reason, of course, is whore stigma; if the fake renter was pretending to be a sweet, virginal secretary, a judge might side with the tenant against the sleazy, spying landlord and his hired snoops. But let the fake pretend to be a whore and all sympathy goes out the window; after all, no measure is too extreme to prevent filthy strumpets from contaminating real people’s beds with their invisible cooties.
