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Posts Tagged ‘hysteria’

In the News (#505)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 17, 2015| 18 Comments »

While there’s a thick “rescue” sauce smeared all over [modern prostitution law], the “punish the dirty whores” attitude is still obvious.  –  Marijke Vonk

BDSM

BDSM carries a stigma nearly as heavy as that of sex work, and indeed is still criminalized, semi-criminalized or quasi-criminalized in many parts of the US.  But up until the recent release of DSM-V, it was also classified as a mental illness and could thus be used by “authorities” as an excuse for all manner of rights violations, including abduction of one’s children.  Here’s a thorough article in the Atlantic on the 30-year fight to “de-classify kink as a psychiatric disorder”, largely accomplished by the efforts of the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom.

Tyranny By Consensus

The Free Speech Coalition…denounced the AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s proposed California ballot measure over mandatory condoms on the porn set and said that, if enacted, the act would likely amount to a new “Prohibition” for adult filmmaking.  AHF’s statewide proposal not only would make condoms mandatory on the set, but it would require adult filmmakers to be licensed and subject them to additional record-keeping requirements beyond 18 U.S.C. § 2257…FSC CEO Diane Duke’s said that AHF’s proposal…would destroy the industry as most know it and drive existing producers underground…

Surplus Women 

A…Russian policeman who raped and murdered 22 women…has been jailed for life…Mikhail Popkov, raped and axed or stabbed the victims late at night in the Siberian city of Angarsk after offering to give them lifts in his police car…the victims…included a teacher, a shop assistant and several prostitutes…One had been decapitated and another’s heart had been removed, while it is reported he had sex with some of the bodies after killing them…Two other women managed to survive…but suffered serious injuries…[Popkov]  described himself as a “cleaner” who was purging the city of prostitutes…The murders [started in] 1994 [and ended abruptly]…in 2000, when…he became impotent and contracted syphilis…

The Widening Gyre Carmen Yarira Noriega Esparza

They actually thought “sex trafficking” was a more credible explanation than jealousy:

Residents in a block of flats were horrified when they complained that the water tasted “funny” – and were told that the unusual flavour was due to the rotting corpse of a young woman in the water tank…Carmen Yarira Noriega Esparza…was last seen leaving her gym in…Mexico City in February last year…Police are now focusing their enquiries on her relationship with a wealthy businessman who was paying the rent for her flat, and who she had recently dumped…The week before she was supposed to move out of the flat, she vanished and had not been seen since…A police spokesman said…”We had…been looking into suggestions that she may have been taken by a gang involved in the sex slave business.  It appears that was not the case.”

Backwards Into the Future (#137)

Sweeping laws that could see gays, prostitutes and drug injectors enjoy full rights while cutting back on what the media can say about them are in the offing…For example, it will be criminal for police to profile [them]…using their sexual activity…The groups want a policy which makes it possible to have them represented by their own in oversight bodies…They also recommend…a law that protects the confidentiality of their medical data…barring the media from identifying them and the places they work from.  This could mean it may be illegal to [out] prostitutes during police swoops or investigative pieces…

Stupor Bowl

Sign of the decline of the “gypsy whores” myth:  it’s only weeks before the Super Bowl and we’ve barely heard a peep from the Arizona moon-barkers yet.

Prostitutes and the people who pay for their services…could face harsher punishments.  Phoenix City Council members are set to discuss…a mandatory jail booking for anyone arrested…and requiring “John  school” for anyone convicted of soliciting a prostitute…A man who directs the current “John school” expects a surge in prostitution during the Super Bowl timeframe…”These are guys that are used to being in control…they’re used to having things their own way,” [Dr. Jon] McCaine [bloviated ignorantly]…It is unclear whether, if approved, the changes would be in effect by Super Bowl weekend…

Number Puzzle (#426)

This long, thorough article by Marijke Vonk on the facts about Dutch sex workers has a lot to recommend it, but I found these figures especially interesting:

–  90% don’t even know anyone who is being forced
–  93% like or are neutral about their colleagues
–  92% have never experienced violence at work
–  86% is happy or even very happy with their job
– they see 10 to 30 customers per week
–  84% like their customers
–  80% never experienced any trouble with a customer ever
–  90% feel unrepresented in politics
–  90% feel government does not protect their interests
–  95% claim politicians have no idea what is going on in the sex industry

On the Simultaneous Having and Eating of Cake (#441)

Two ex-dancers are suing the Portland strip club Casa Diablo for back pay and damages for alleged harassment—including unwanted touching—by patrons and the club’s employees.  Matilda Bickers and Amy Pitts…each performed at Casa Diablo for about two and a half years…[they] allege Casa Diablo—billed as the city’s only vegan strip club—failed to pay them a minimum wage, took a 30 percent cut of their nightly tips, and fined them as much as $40 if they showed up late and $70 for missing a shift.  Even their performances could bring penalties—for example, $10 if they didn’t undress quickly enough on stage…Portland…dancers, social workers and lobbyists are crafting legislation that may clarify employee status for Oregon dancers…

A Year Later

Imagine being such a control freak that you would be willing to disrupt your own life and do an unpleasant job solely for the opportunity to inflict violence on other people for having private, consensual sex in a way you don’t like:

…Joy Smith has decided, now that the controversial prostitution law is in full force in Canada, her job in Parliament is done…and…she will devote herself full-time to [prohibitionism]…She never intended to be an MP but rather a school principal…“I’m not a very good politician.  I’ve never been attracted to it but I’m really glad I did it…the reason I went to Parliament was to stop human trafficking.  What I want to do now is continue that work”…Smith [imagines]…that sex work can’t be consensual, that all prostitution is human trafficking…

A Tale That Grew in the Telling (#503)

Mark Draughn thought that stupid “trafficking hotspot” map looked familiar: McDonaldsTrafficking

“…The other data source is a map of every McDonald’s location in the United States.  Note that every single sex trafficking hotspot corresponds to a cluster of McDonald’s restaurants.  The conclusion is obvious:  McDonald’s food is turning our women into whores!…”

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Feminists and Other Puritans

Posted in Current Events, History, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 16, 2015| 16 Comments »

This essay first appeared in Cliterati on November 16th; I have modified it slightly to fit the format of this blog.

Salvation Army womenEvery time one reads an article that doesn’t mindlessly parrot “sex trafficking” hysteria or some other aspect of the anti-sex movement, yet isn’t written by a sex worker or ally, one can be sure there will be an obligatory sentence about how it’s “surprising” or “paradoxical” or whatever that neofeminists are in bed with evangelical Christians.  The only people who could actually consider this alliance to be anything other than wholly predictable are those who A) believe in the ridiculous “left wing-right wing” dichotomy which “was a poor fit to real political landscapes when it was first used in reference to the French Assembly more than 200 years ago and has become completely worthless since”; B) accept fanatical cults’ propaganda about their motives as truthful even if it demonstrably conflicts with their public behavior; and C) are completely ignorant of the history of the Anglo-American anti-sex movement.  My early essay “Traitors To Their Sex”  provides a brief sketch of this history, starting with the influential and charismatic Victorian feminist, Josephine Butler:

…who recognized that English law of the time…stripped prostitutes of their rights as Englishwomen and so campaigned tirelessly for the repeal of those laws for 16 years.  At the same time, Butler (like most Victorians) believed that women were essentially asexual, and so could not accept that any woman might freely choose to exploit the male sexual appetite in order to earn a living; the very idea was anathema to her rigid Christian thinking.  She therefore concluded that it was actually whores who were the exploited ones, childlike victims of male lust who had been forced into lives of “degradation” by male oppression…after the repeal of the Contagious Disease Acts in 1886 prostitutes were no longer the cause célèbre; when they refused to repent their whoredom and embrace “honest work” and conventional morality the feminists abandoned their sympathy like yesterday’s newspaper and declared war on our entire profession, vowing to abolish it entirely.  Butler founded the Social Purity Alliance…dedicated to imposing middle-class Victorian standards of chastity (i.e. repugnance for sex) onto men, and it was but the first of a host of similar organizations which sprang up on both sides of the Atlantic throughout the 1880s and ‘90s…middle-class “feminists” had shown their true colors and abandoned the drive to win rights for the disenfranchised in favor of one which aimed to restrict the rights of everyone…The purity crusaders used many propaganda weapons…but chief among these were disease scares and the “white slavery” hysteria…the unholy alliance of middle-class feminists and puritanical religious zealots managed to convince the public, the media and governments that there was a huge international trade in underage girls, abducted and forced into sexual slavery…The fact that there was absolutely no evidence for such a vast conspiracy made no difference whatsoever; the public devoured lurid stories of child prostitution, and…voluntary adult prostitution was banned or severely restricted under the excuse of combating involuntary prostitution of “children”…

In other words, though some early feminists (such as Mary Wollstonecraft and Olympe de Gouges) were individualists who were not at all anti-sex, feminism did not become a popular movement until it embraced a rigid, puritanical morality.  These “first wave” feminists were not merely anti-prostitution, but anti-pleasure; among other things, they campaigned against the “evil” of masturbation and drove the movement which eventually imposed Prohibition on the United States.  So although this early feminism died out in the Great Depression, it is wholly unsurprising that its legacy soon infected the “second wave” which flourished in the 1960s and ‘70s; by the mid-‘80s the anti-sex forces had not only taken over feminism, but had sought out and once again joined their old allies, evangelical Christians, in another loathsome attempt to impose a puritanical anti-sex regime on all of society.  Almost exactly a century after the first iteration of their social engineering crusade, they’ve brought back most of their old rhetoric (now blended with another morally-bankrupt 19th-century belief system, Marxism) and many of their old tactics, including “white slavery” hysteria (now called “sex trafficking”).

This is what a feminist's victim looks likeAs I’ve pointed out before, much of the language in “sex trafficking” and other anti-sex articles and essays is positively Victorian, and even when it isn’t the attitudes are.  Women like Julie Bindel and Meghan Murphy, who would almost certainly take exception with (or even ridicule) the notion that their attitudes fit more in the late 19th century than the early 21st, nonetheless expend considerable effort in arguing for massive censorship campaigns (even though they deny it) and trying to convince other women that only feminist thought leaders have the right to determine which kinds of sex constitute “rape” or “exploitation”, and that their individual consent is immaterial (the result of “false consciousness”, itself a 19th-century Marxist concept).  The “end demand” campaign backed by the Fawcett Society (itself founded in 1866) is based in the tired old Victorian conceit that men can be “taught” to dislike sex as much as prudish women do; furthermore, the recent revelation that the £45 “This is What a Feminist Looks Like” T-shirts hawked by the Society are made in Dickensian sweatshops reveals that middle-class white women’s trivial concerns still trump the serious problems of working-class and brown-skinned women, just as they did in the days when the sun never set on the Empire.  And I think we can all agree that the mind which can produce over 3100 words on whether porn can be “ethical” or “feminist” is one which could’ve been perfectly delighted with thinking up new venereal nouns or arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.  So no, it isn’t at all surprising that evangelical feminists conspire with evangelical Christians to make normal people’s lives as miserable as possible; they’ve been doing it for as long as there’s been such a thing as “feminism”.

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In the News (#504)

Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 14, 2015| 16 Comments »

The pain [US sex policing] produces in the lives of sex workers…is nothing short of depraved and barbaric.  –  David Masciotra

Rough Trade 

A middle-aged Dublin criminal who is classified as one of Ireland’s most dangerous sex offenders has been arrested in Spain…after fleeing Ireland more than 18 months ago…At least four prostitutes…were raped and robbed by the man between 2010 and 2012…They…were [drugged] and then…sexually assaulted…

Don’t Take My Word For It

Here’s an article on a San Francisco service called ManServants, which has polite guys that women can hire to do romantic but not-directly-sexual stuff for them, like conversation, wine-pouring and hand massage:

For men, hiring a stripper has always been about performing a certain type of masculinity as much as it is about enjoying an attractive woman’s body.  In much the same way, ManServants is a performance. Even among sexually adventurous urban-dwellers, it’s déclassé to post photos of your friend receiving a lapdance from a male stripper.  But a handsome man in a tux refilling her cocktail?  Instagram gold.  According to the women behind ManServants, women want to be adored…They want a touch of theatricality, and to feel the thrill of male attention without worrying about whether they are sending the wrong signals or will have to shoo him away at the end of the night…

Heads in the Sand

We like to think that education changes people for the better, helping them critically analyze information and providing a certain immunity from disinformation.  But if that were really true, then you wouldn’t have low vaccination rates clustering in areas where parents are, on average, highly educated…researchers decided to look at a number of issues that have become politicized, such as the Iraq War, evolution, and climate change. They find that, for these issues, education actually makes it harder for people to accept reality, an effect they ascribe to the fact that “highly educated partisans would be better equipped to challenge information inconsistent with predispositions”…

Scapegoats Lucky the pit bull

I’m sure you feel safer now that these dangerous criminals have been arrested:

A married couple from Indiana were charged with bestiality after police say they made a video showing the wife performing sex acts on their dog…[which was] discovered by a police detective in Fairfax County, Virginia, on the website Beastforum.  The [cop]…was able to determine that the posts came from Anderson, Indiana, and then forwarded the information to local police…Their pit bull, Lucky, [was abducted by cops]…If convicted, the Johnsons could face…two and a half years in prison and a $10,000 fine…

So What Else Is New?

…gynecologist Samuel Salama and his colleagues…have some evidence supporting the reality of female ejaculation.  Salama and his team have carried out the first ever ultrasound scans on women who express large amounts of liquid at orgasm. The results…have been published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine…the research showed that there are two forms of female ejaculation.  In the first form, a small amount of milky white fluid is expressed…by the Skene glands which drain into the urethra.  But other women [were observed] “squirting” a much larger amount of fluid…from the bladder…for two participants, there was no chemical difference between the urine and the squirted fluid.  But…samples of the other five women contained prostatic-specific antigen (PSA) which was not present in their first urine samples…

Dutch Threat

…the biggest mistake Jojanneke [van den Berge] made was to think that sex workers would keep silence, she seems genuinely surprised to be hearing from them and has not managed to keep her composure.  It used to be you could just make up stuff…Sex workers who didn’t fit into the role of passive victim were simply ignored.  But with twitter and other forms of social media, sex workers have a place to get their voices heard and they are noisy indeed!  Jojanneke has attempted to fight back against those unruly whores and tried to silence them, but mainstream media is picking up on this story…Jojanneke claims she has never talked to a happy hooker while in a conversation with a happy hooker.  I know at least four genuinely happy, well-educated women who decided to get into sex work out of their own free will who have talked to Jojanneke, but [she] continues to lie she’s never spoken to them…

An Example To the West (#343)

…In February 2008, Thailand passed the Prevention and Suppression of Human Trafficking Act.  Two months later…Fifty-four migrants from Myanmar suffocated and died while being transported…inside a cold-storage delivery truck…increased punishments, penalties and stricter border controls associated with combating human trafficking saw a change from open transportation to closed; and longer journeys resulted in diversions from normal smuggling routes to avoid checkpoints…The media portrays human trafficking in a one-dimensional way.  We see police carrying out raids and apprehending…women [who] are…stood over and herded like inanimate objects…countries such as New Zealand have reduced corruption and almost eliminated exploitation…by replacing prostitution under criminal law with labour and civil laws…

The Camel’s Nose (#344)

…Dutch Ruppersberger, the NSA’s personal Rep in Congress…has announced that he’s bringing back CISPA, the cybersecurity bill designed to make it easier for the NSA to access data from tech companies…he’s using the Sony Hack as [an excuse even though]…it wouldn’t have helped…Even if Sony had opened up its system to the government, it seems unlikely that the NSA would have magically spotted this hack and done anything about it…

Here We Go Again (#344)

Though she doesn’t mention it in the video interview I posted before, and it’s pretty far down in this Alternet article, apparently Jessica Pliley does mention the connection of “white slavery” hysteria to the modern “sex trafficking” hysteria in her book Policing Sexuality: The Mann Act and The Making of the FBI.  This review makes it sound very worthwhile, so I’m adding it to my wishlist.

Little Boxes (#350)

I’m not sure which is more ludicrous, the cops’ insistence that this is prostitution, or the cuddlers’ insistence that it isn’t:

Two professional cuddling services, one from Vancouver and one from Montreal, are snuggling up to Toronto…cuddling services have popped up throughout North America in recent years…[but]  controversy…has often followed, amid concerns these businesses lead to illicit activity…The Cuddlery and CuddleMe.ca both [pretend] their services aren’t sexual in nature…But [ex-cop] Dave Perry…said there are risks of sexual assault for both clients and employees with kind of service…

Ad Absurdum (#441)

“Victim”.  Can these people even hear themselves?

A 23-year-old high school teacher was arrested in Tuscaloosa [Alabama]…after police investigated an on-going relationship with one of her students…Jessica Bonnett Acker…was charged with engaging in a sex act or deviant sexual intercourse with a student under the age of 19…the victim was an 18-year-old male student…

The Notorious Badge (#452)

Is this dude for real?

…Jamie Dornan [said] …“I fear I’ll get murdered, like John Lennon, by one of those mad fans at the premiere…I’m a father now, and a husband.  I don’t want to die yet”…

He keeps waving his wife and child around as though he thinks they’ll ward him from contamination by those dirty sex rays.

Subtle Pimping (#503)

I’m not going to quote any of it because it’s vile even by her incredibly low standards, but here’s neofeminist lunatic Meghan Murphy on the subject of the pro-sex worker video game currently being developed in Canada.  A warning for those unfamiliar with her:  nearly everything the evil MM writes is the prose equivalent of a parody of The Exorcist, wherein MM’s head spins wildly about at dozens of RPMs, spewing horrifying volumes of noxious green vomit on everything within range.  It’s definitely not for the faint of heart or those with weak stomachs.

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In the News (#503)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 10, 2015| 13 Comments »

[Anita Sarkeesian]…has the same paternalistic views that many feminists have regarding sex workers—that they need to be rescued, saved; that they would never actually choose this line of work, but rather, were led or coerced into it by a man.  –  Princess Kora

Imagination Pinned Down

Note that as usual the supposed “sex slavery” was decades in the past, unsupported by anything remotely resembling evidence:

…Niki Cross…was forced into sexual slavery as a teenager.  She’s now sharing her story and…working with other victims.  “I didn’t realize I was being sold.  I just thought I was being raped over and over and over…at least 10 a day.”  Cross…was lured by a man to Akron, Ohio, with promises of a singing career.  Instead, she was chained in an attic, drugged and sold as a sex slave for a year, until she managed to escape one night…and…was taken in by Chrissie Murphy.  The two went their separate ways, until a friend of a friend recently reconnected them nearly 40 years later…

Subtle Pimping (#330)

Sex workers in video games are nothing new, but a game whose developers want to promote empathy for whores rather than just exploiting us as a game mechanic definitely is:  “[In] The Oldest Game, currently in development, [players assume] the identity of a sex worker in one of three Canadian cities…the objective…is to make as much money as possible while staying safe, which creates a difficult, no-win scenario…to show the very real constraints sex workers experience…”

Meanwhile Anita Sarkeesian, who has insulted and infantilized sex workers in order to promote her particular brand of pop-neofeminism, is getting a taste of her own medicine from a sex worker:

…Princess Kora…[has] found a way to profit from Sarkeesian’s detractors.  Two weeks ago, the 29-year-old PhD student and veteran sex worker launched an adult webcam series called “Boob Frequency,” a parody of [Sarkeesian’s YouTube channel] Feminist Frequency…Kora dresses in Sarkeesian’s typical uniform of hoop earrings and a plaid shirt, only she leaves most of the buttons undone and exposes a generous portion of her substantial cleavage…She also mocks Sarkeesian by “whining about exploitation and oppression”…hordes of Gamergate supporters have come flocking to her webcam channel…and…“Boob Frequency” has garnered several hundred subscribers…

Chauvinism (#335)

Russia has listed [transgender status]…fetishism, exhibitionism and voyeurism…as “mental disorders” now barring people from driving…because Russia has too many road accidents…Russian psychiatrists and human rights lawyers have condemned the move…Valery Evtushenko at the Russian Psychiatric Association…said some people would avoid seeking psychiatric help, fearing a driving ban…

Under Every Bed (All Traffick, All the Time)

The increasing grandiosity of the Bakken oil field trafficking subsection of “sex trafficking” mythology will probably get an entire chapter to itself in my book.  Here’s an “investigative series” which manages to run for an entire week  without actually investigating the topic, at least not by the usual meaning of that word; it’s just the typical hodgepodge of ridiculous, unsupported claims, wildly exaggerated numbers and cop wanking fantasies without the slightest shred of proof or even a single interview with an actual sex worker.  Truly astonishing, even by the low standards of yellow “sex trafficking” journalism.

A Mound of Filth

Even for Arizona, referring to the same old lies which have been circulating for years as “new statistics” is a pretty bold (not to mention stupid) move; some of the intended audience must recognize the claims as not remotely “new”, and even if they still believe such factors contribute to the erosion of the mythology:

New statistics show how big the problem is in Southern Arizona…A third of runaway girls are approached by a sex trafficker within 48 hours…the average age of victims…is just 13 years old…Human sex trafficking is a $9.8 billion business…During a sporting event like the upcoming Super Bowl…girls can be sold to as many as 45 buyers in a night…

Theatrics (#446) 

The dating app Tinder appears to be the new hub for aggressive moralists seeking to sexually shame others:

A group of young Melburnians say they are exposing paedophiles [sic] grooming underage girls on dating app Tinder by creating a fake profile…of a 15-year-old girl they called “Imogen”.  The group say they secretly filmed her conversations with men online where she tells them her [false] age and then subsequent face-to-face meetings…The creators [are all 21 or older, including the one who]…pretended to be “Imogen”…cyber safety consultant Susan McLean said the experiment [is]…”absolute stupidity.  I can see this ending terribly for everyone involved”…

One can only hope so.

A Tale That Grew in the Telling (#502)

Another good way to give lies weight in the minds of the Great Unwashed: embed them in an infographic. trafficking bullshit

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Wild-Eyed and Spittle-Flecked

Posted in Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 5, 2015| 15 Comments »

Nothing is more horrible than my self in the mirror of hysteria.  –  Karl Kraus

screaming womanAs I’ve often pointed out, moral panics don’t slowly subside; on the contrary, they pick up speed as they go, with the claims growing ever wilder and the official responses growing ever more extreme, until they fly apart and hurl debris in every direction.  In the terminal stages of such a panic, many of those who failed to voice their skepticism in the early days are at last moved to open their mouths; however, others double down and continue to vomit out whatever evil nonsense the hysterical narrative demands, with their eyes bulging and froth flying forth from their lips.  Domina Elle sent me this prime example of the genre in early December, but once I started trying to edit it down for inclusion in a news column I realized it deserved to be shared in all of its bizarre, moon-barking glory.  The lunacy starts with an egregiously mixed metaphor in the incredible headline, which declares “human trafficking” both a “highway” and an “empire”; Hamlet, eat your heart out.

Whether it’s for sex or labor, labeled human trafficking or slavery…human beings in this country still live and die toiling under force, fraud and coercion every day to fulfill criminals’ wealth, power and sexual fantasies.  And it turns out Denver is a human-trafficking hub, a place where newsworthy, exploited little girls combine with forgotten boys to make up a roughly $40 million industry…In the last 11 years, the FBI’s Innocence Lost National Initiative brought together more than 400 law-enforcement agencies nationwide to collaborate with communities to recover and assist more than 3,400 children…The initiative resulted in roughly 1,450 convictions…

Sexual fantasies are involved, all right, but they aren’t those of criminals; they’re in the sick minds of cops and FBI agents who are happy to destroy the lives of peaceful adults in order to fulfill them.  I’m not sure where that ridiculous “3400 children” number comes from, but the actual number of underage sex workers, mostly 16 or 17 (the real meaning of “exploited little girls”) who have been arrested (the real meaning of “recovered”) since the beginning of the lugubriously-named “Innocence Lost” pogroms is less than 1200, and a slightly-higher number of men charged with “pimping”; given that the conviction rate on these bogus charges is roughly 4%, that makes the number of convictions somewhere below 100.  Of course, that’s only pimping convictions; given that over 15,000 adult sex workers (all women; male sex workers are charged as pimps) were also arrested in these operations, 1450 convictions wouldn’t be at all surprising.  But to equate throwing adult women into prison (for having sex for taboo reasons) with locking up slavers goes beyond dishonesty into the realm of Stalinesque evil.

…Human trafficking stands as one of few issues in this country nobody can call “polarizing.”  It’s fucking horrible.  The end.  That the people we sell here in the United States think their circumstances are normal, are terrified to leave or don’t know they’re victims or survivors…doesn’t make this acceptable, it makes it…modern slavery…

Translation:  The “authorities” are the arbiters of what is normal, and if you disagree that you’re a victim or a “survivor”, we’re going to label you as one anyway and “rescue” you by subjecting you to a terrifying deception, tearing you away from your life and locking you in a cage until you learn to accept our opinion without question.

…No 13-year-old girl — the average age of recruitment for a female prostitute — or 12-year-old boy dreams of becoming a prostitute, raped 20 to 48 times a night…Seven years after recruitment, studies show he or she will most likely be dead…

Though the “average age” idiocy has remained the same, note that the number of clients (labeled “rapes” here) per night is now fluctuating wildly; some “trafficking” porn lists numbers as high as 110, while others claim numbers more within the bounds of reason, like 5.  This one splits the difference with a range of 20 (ridiculous) to 48 (wholly absurd but not an egregious violation of physical laws).  I’m still trying to track down the origin of the “average life-span of 7 years” myth; given that another commonly-circulated idiocy is that the average whore dies at 34, one wonders how fanatics can subtract 13 from that and arrive at 7.  But I guess math isn’t important when FEELS are at stake. And I’m not even going to comment on the saccharine pap that what children “dream” of has any bearing on adult employment opportunities.

“Regardless of what…some people actually experience in real life…There’s a lot of victimization, whether it’s rape, beatings, torture, you name it…isn’t it pretty reasonable to assume maybe people are being forced…to be in it rather than volunteering to be in it?”

Denver cop Dan Steele says you shouldn’t believe what actual sex workers tell you; his wanking fantasies involve raping and torturing whores, therefore we’re all enslaved.  Q.E.D.

…They’re sold on a circuit…[that] brings the exploited into towns for male-dominated events and operations such as conferences, sports games and construction or mining projects…

Note the denial of women’s agency; we “are sold” and “are brought” rather than travelling under our own power, because of course women are too stupid to make our own business and travel arrangements.  So was I “trafficked” on my tour “circuit” last summer?  Or did I magically gain the ability to use Priceline once I stopped “selling my body”?

…“We’re in the middle of the country, and that makes us a destination state but also a transit state,” says [“trafficking” profiteer Amanda] Finger.  “With I-25 and I-70 connecting us to the coast or to the borders, we sit right in the middle of a lot of action…”

King of the Hill!  Have you figured out yet that “trafficking” fans will claim anything as an excuse to declare a given city a “hub”?

…With a rough total of 1.5 million human trafficking victims at any given time in the United States alone…

Where does this number come from?  What relationship does it have to “300,000 trafficked children” and “30 million slaves worldwide”?  Does the author of this mess, Brandy Simmons, know or care?  Given the abysmal level of mathematical ability she demonstrated above, I somehow doubt it.

…Human trafficking is in your food, clothes, neighborhood, your favorite ethnic food restaurants…

Ethnic restaurants, natch.  But Brandy isn’t a racist, no sirree; it’s not her fault that McDonald’s doesn’t “traffick” people.  Except that it does.

…many cases…begin…with a simple call from someone whose “gut feelings” about a person or situation proved right…

They’re of course “proved right” by the cops arresting whoever’s accused.  So if you see something, say something!

…Some studies say an average sex worker will have 800 sex partners in a year…

That’s actually pretty reasonable; I averaged about 700 a year and street girls do more.  But does Brandy do the basic math to recognize it doesn’t jibe with her claim of 20-48 per night (i.e. 7300 – 17,500 per year)? Please tell me you don’t need me to answer that.

…“We have 12-year-old boys being recruited to be pimps, just like we have 12-year-old girls being recruited to be victims,” says [“trafficking” profiteer Brad] Riley…“When a 12-year-old has seen tens of thousands of images that objectify a woman, that [creates]…this appetite that’s not appropriate or healthy or respectful to women.  When that 12-year-old gets to be 25, it’s much easier for him to be a buyer, and a trafficker will prey on that”…

lurid sex trafficking adYes, Brad says sexy TV commercials cause “sex trafficking”; savor the neofeministy, end-demandy goodness.  Do we really need to research Brad to find out how he feels about porn, glamour modeling, or even miniskirts?  No, I don’t think so.  And I wouldn’t be shocked to find he’s anti-abortion as well; after all, we’ve gotta “protect” women from going down that human highway to the underground “sex trafficking” empire, even if we have to “traffick” them into prison to do it.

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In the News (#501)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 3, 2015| 9 Comments »

Sex workers are…the sacrificial offering that people outside of the industry are willing to make in an attempt to attain an impossible state of societal purity.  –  Clay NikiforukClay Nikiforuk

The Red Umbrella 

This excellent December 17th column by Clay Nikiforuk only came to my attention this week:

…Canadian law…C-36 [supporters]…talk of wanting to “end demand” for sexual services, and I wonder what that could mean.  Is there a lab somewhere cooking up a pill to end cravings for intimacy?  Or maybe an army of attractive sex robots are being programmed as we speak?  Ending demand seems like an imaginary Conservative wonderland, and no one wants to talk about the fact that it doesn’t exist and thus no one has any idea of how to get there.  In the meantime, prostitution abolitionists are content with an approach that…will result in nothing but violence against a marginalized group if these heinous laws are enforced…[prohibitionist] language suggests that sex workers are things to be purchased rather than lucid, valuable people who make choices, among others, to market and sell services…no sex worker sells their body.  They are not passive ragdolls, slaves for the enjoyment of ravenous perverts, as the pornographic imagination might wish to believe…they are complex and complete people who have their own stories and are part of communities.  They cannot be sacrificed for a supposedly feminist ideal that wishes to ignore, silence, and erase them…

A Narrow View

Ask yourself:  if the operators of “rescue homes” really have the best interests of “rescued” sex workers at heart, why must they invariably deny these women’s agency and reduce them to passive, doll-like creatures to be done to?

A St. Louis charity will open a home next year where a small group of women who are trying to escape from a cycle of prostitution and prison can rebuild their lives.  Christine McDonald has spent months visiting prisons searching for women…[to] be the first residents of the 10,000-square-foot home being opened by Magdalene St. Louis.  The women will live there two years and will have access to free food, health care, counseling and job training…director…Tricia Roland-Hamilton…said many people believe these women choose a life of prostitution, but they don’t…

The Widening Gyre 

An escort is murdered, and cops immediately pimp her corpse to promote their crusade by declaring her a “victim of sex trafficking”:

A Vancouver woman found murdered inside her…Portland hotel…was a victim of sex trafficking, according to…Police…Ashley Renee Benson’s…body was found in a stairway at the Double Tree [sic] Hotel…Benson’s family [said]…they didn’t know Benson was a sex trafficking victim until they heard it on the news…they didn’t notice anything different about Benson when they saw her on Christmas Day, just 21 hours before she was found dead…

The reason the family didn’t know she was a “victim” is because she wasn’t.

Checklist bingo prostitution

Baltimore hotels would be required to train their staffs to recognize signs of forced prostitution under proposed legislation that also would prohibit rooms from being rented for less than half a day.  City Councilman James B. Kraft said the anti-human trafficking bill is necessary to combat an “international plague”…[because] Baltimore …[is near] Interstate 95…Hotel staff may recognize individuals who frequently rent rooms…The victims may eat all their meals inside the room and only…pay in cash…

Original Sin

It’s unusual to see an evangelical break with the party line on “trafficking”, but refreshing to be cast as a powerful witch instead of a helpless “victim”:

…why it is that only clients should be criminalised, but not the prostitute?  The question that must be asked is who the victim is and who is the predator…Modern society generally deems the prostitute to be “hurt” or “harmed” because she is used by clients…This is a dangerous half-truth.  The prostitute is the woman of Proverbs 7 who is brash, rebellious, sly, and of a wicked bitter tongue…She victimises even strong men through her sexual immorality and wicked flattering words…While she may indeed be used by others for sexual gratification, she is a predator…Prostitutes are harlots – they seduce unsuspecting men who do not know about the moral dangers of indulging in sexual immorality…

Original Sin (#321)

Another self-proclaimed “authority” helpfully explains that porn causes “sex trafficking”:

…sex trafficking and exploitation exist…even [in] Utah…social media and easy global access have made it more simplistic [sic] for criminals to entice targets…young men and women…are more exposed than ever [due to online flirting]…chat rooms are still…the weapon of choice for criminals…Sgt. Jason Randall…[fantasizes about] minors being forced to engage in sexual acts…on pornographic…websites…Randall said he believes pornography is at the source of all the exploitation problems…“Pornography is just like drugs.  People can dabble in it and never get addicted to it.  But some people — it’s just taking that first hit of meth, and then they’re hooked…There’s no question that there’s a correlation between pornography and sex offenses”…

Highlight of the story:  a bureaucrat named Tammy Atkin wisely pronounces that nobody grows up and then makes a statement about what she’d like to do when she is 12.

Welcome To Our World (#327)

Fifteen people have been arrested in Beijing in connection with a prostitution ring which used websites to connect young mothers with men who paid to be breastfed by them…Wet nurses that serve adults are paid $2,600, nearly four times the monthly average…

Mumbo Jumbo

Sometimes the connection between “sex trafficking” hysteria and the Satanic panic is subtle, and other times…well, see for yourself:

Traffic Circle

It’s a small development, especially considering that the publication is Reason and the author is steadfast ally Elizabeth Nolan Brown; however, it’s still fantastic to see “Sex Trafficking Hysteria” as a heading in a national magazine article that treats both the hysteria itself and the bullshit used to promote it as what they are rather than deferentially pretending that there’s any doubt at all, as even most skeptical articles do.

Shame, Shame (TW3 #348)

“Cyber Civil Rights Initiative” is a front organization for Mary Anne Franks:

Illinois became the latest state to criminalize “revenge porn,” crafting what its creators hope will become a model for federal legislation…The…law…will punish offenders with one to three years in prison and up to a $25,000 fine.  “We believe [revenge porn] is a form of sexual assault,” [figurehead sponsor] Scott Drury [said]… “You could be someone working at Burger King, and now you’re a sex object.”  Carrie Goldberg…of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, which [wrote] the Illinois law [downplayed valid concerns about the unintended consequences of the vague, overbroad legislation]…

Property of the State

Note how the police state uses the mere existence of a sex worker’s child as an excuse to proclaim consensual sex a “felony”:

A woman was arrested for promoting prostitution while her 2-year-old was at daycare…Trishta Daniels [was ratted out by hotel employees and ambushed by cops upon] leaving her room…Police [abducted] the child and [trafficked her to] the Department of Children’s Services…

That Old Black Magic (#422)

West African “penis stealing” hysteria, now with whores!

A 23-year-old woman, Uche Agunta, who works as a prostitute confessed that her gang specialises in cutting off victims’ manhood during sex…[she] had har­vested about seven [penises] be­fore she was arrested…her method is to lure men into sex…and at the height of ecstasy, she would sneak out razor blade and cut off her partner’s manhood…for money rituals…

Follow Your Bliss (#424) White Slaves of Chinatown

…There’s something profoundly perverse about many of the “grim truth behind prostitution”…articles…Rescue stories read like erotica, but they sensationalise sex workers’ lives at their expense and commodify the experiences of actual victims.  They are obsessed with how many penises in filthy surroundings and rape by their stepfather and forced abortions and getting peed on and condomless blowjobs.  While sex workers and sex work activists want to talk about human rights, international law, respecting the agency of other adults and stopping violence, rescue fetishists get all flushed as they emphasise that thousands of women get raped with objects and are forced to drink buckets of sperm and they get tattoos so everyone can see they are a whore…The rescue industry exploits others for financial gain, which is morally reprehensible, but their non-consensual use of vulnerable women for their perverse sexual preferences is a grim truth about the rescue industry that really nobody is telling you…

Worse Than I Thought (#433)

As I predicted, this trope is becoming much more common:

Darlene Pawlik…was…sold into prostitution…before she reached legal adulthood…[she] found herself sold hundreds of times, bought by local businessmen, a city councilman, and a candidate for sheriff..[when she] found herself pregnant…[she] faked an abortion so she could leave the lifestyle.  She reached a new home and began a new, restored life and eventually became a nurse, business owner, married mother of 5 children, and pro-life advocate…

All conveniently far in the past and without names or evidence, natch.

Backwards into the Future (#439)

“Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!”

Vietnam will not see prostitution as a legitimate profession…[said] Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam…[he also pretended] that anti-prostitution measures [could somehow be considered]…human rights protection…The [repetition of political dogma]…came in response to a number of opinions from…officials who suggested that sex work should be legalized in Vietnam as it serves an essential need of people and such legalization would help improve the management of sex workers…

Subtle Pimping (#445)

…Jin Ohashi…is being questioned for his unethical way of taking photos [of]…Thai sex workers who don’t even know their photos were exhibited at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography…[Ohashi has] fondly and proudly talked about how he pretended to be a regular tourist and sneaked his camera into the brothels, where cameras are strictly prohibited.  He talked about his bravery of doing so against his local coordinator’s warning.  He even said, without the slightest nuance of guilt, that sex workers got panicked when his camera flashed and ran about trying to hide from him…the attitude shown by Ohashi indicates the less-than-human views he holds of the Thai sex workers…in [a] 2007 interview [he said]  sleeping dogs by the roadside and those girls had the same tension… whatever that means…Sandra

Monkey Business (#449) 

An orangutan named Sandra has become the first non-human animal recognized as a person in a court of law.  The Association of Officials and Lawyers for Animal Rights…had asked Argentine courts recognize the 28-year-old great ape’s right to freedom from unjust imprisonment…if the zoo does not challenge the decision within 10 working days, Sandra will be sent to a sanctuary in Brazil…The decision may have ramifications for other great apes.  In the United States, a group called the Nonhuman Rights Project is currently seeking similar rights for four privately-owned chimpanzees in New York state…

Banishment (#452)

Predictable as sunrise:

Timothy Poole, the…registered [sex offender who won the Florida] lottery…is being sued by two alleged victims who say he owes them for pain, suffering and psychological damages.  The two are brothers who were 5 and 9 years old at the time of the abuse in 1996…Their attorneys…are seeking a court order to freeze Poole’s [assets] until the proceedings are over because Poole may “squander, hide or otherwise dispose of assets”…

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New Year’s Eve 2014

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 31, 2014| 1 Comment »

The Old Year has gone. Let the dead past bury its own dead.-Edward Powell

Maggie sketch 8-30-14As has been my custom for five years, New Year’s Eve is the occasion for a retrospective of the year’s news.  But while in previous years I mostly reported on the things other people did, the biggest story this year (at least in this blog) is the stuff I did.  Besides too many interviews to count (including one for Reason TV that has been seen over 20,000 times so far), I made dozens of personal appearances all over the country, as detailed in my tour diaries from May until the present.  The excuse for these was the publication of my book, Ladies of the Night (and if you haven’t bought a copy yet, you probably should); I know that last year I said that the second one (tentatively entitled The Essential Maggie McNeill) would be ready by summer, but obviously the tour pre-empted that.  I still hope to have it ready in the next couple of months, but I’m not promising anything because I’ve finally decided to take everyone’s advice and try to make just a tad more time for myself.

The best news of the year is that we’re still right on track for an end of “sex trafficking” hysteria by 2017, as I predicted three years ago; already we’re beginning to see skeptical articles from journalists and academics in addition to consultation of actual experts, prominent reporting on anti-hysteria studies and increased placement for articles from yours truly (including Reason, The Washington Post and a law journal).  Though the hysteria is still in full bloom in most quarters (especially among cops, rescue industry opportunists and others with a vested interest in keeping the panic going), the exposure of “trafficking” darlings Somaly Mam and Chong Kim opened the door to allowing skeptics to openly express their doubts.  Still, just as the bad laws spawned by the last round of “sex trafficking” hysteria have endured to the present day, so will those spawned by this one endure for decades after the panic is over.  This year saw an expansion in efforts (some of them surreptitious) to impose the horrible Swedish model, and while France barely escaped it Canada and Northern Ireland have not, with the Republic of Ireland almost sure to follow.  And while there’s no way the US will ever stop persecuting sex workers without a Supreme Court order halting the practice, Swedish-flavored “end demand” rhetoric provides a palatable “feminist” excuse for endemic police violence and hounding of sex workers.

rapist copBut it’s not only sex workers who are infantilized in the name of “feminism”; female university students, too, are treated as moral imbeciles too delicate to make sexual decisions without the help of coercive patriarchal institutions.  And it’s not only sex workers who are the victims of police violence; nearly every week sees at least one report of a cop raping at least one woman (I reported 60 this year).  Not one of my Links columns is free of at least one incident of police brutality, and cops’ unrestrained and consequence-free murders of young men, especially young black men, has provoked mass protests all year.  Nor do all cop attacks involve physical violence; actual robbery under cover of “law enforcement” pretenses is at an all-time high, and many police and FBI operations are motivated by profit and/or the desire to create a spectacle in advancement of a political narrative.

At first glance, this hasn’t been a good year for sex workers; our rights are even under attack in countries where they’ve been reasonably secure for years, and agency-denying “sex trafficking” propaganda is promoted in virtually every mainstream venue and pretended to be factual in legislatures and police circles worldwide.  But at the same time academics, human rights organizations and many others are beginning to open their eyes to the truth, and everywhere I traveled this summer I found receptive audiences.  Moral panics do not slowly fade away; they usually get worse until they very quickly collapse.  The end of widespread societal support for persecution of sex workers is coming…and sooner than you might think.

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That Was the Week That Was (#452)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 27, 2014| 11 Comments »

Apparently learning when to use a turn signal is twice as complicated as conducting an undercover operation that jeopardizes women’s lives.  –  Samantha Allen lowest depression graph

Bad Jobs

I’ll just point out that sex work is an “amusement and recreation service”.  So much for “PTSD” and “90% would quit if they could”:

A study published last month…suggests that some jobs have much higher rates of depression than others…the…authors calculated the incidence of depression across 55 industries.  The highest rate of depression (16.2 percent) was found among bus drivers.  The lowest (6.9 percent) was…among those in “amusement and recreation services,” a broadly defined group that includes the sports, fitness, and performing-arts industries…

Feminine Pragmatism 

Part-time casual prostitution to supplement meager earnings has been a fact of female existence since at least Roman times, so this is not anything remotely like “news”:

…salaries for Japan’s flight attendants have slumped significantly over the past decade…This has lead to some stewardesses engaging in [casual prostitution]…“Girls willing to do it with a pilot passed their number to a person who was effectively a female pimp,” says [one] stewardess….other stewardesses may take up part-time work as party companions or bar hostesses in Tokyo’s ritzy Ginza district…

The Pro-Rape Coalition

Have I told you lately how much I love Elizabeth Nolan Brown?

So I was going to ignore this silly study about how pornography is serving as a widespread “marriage substitute” for young American men.  But it just keeps popping up on my radar…the study actually found [that]…the more hours of pornography a young man watched, the less likely he was to have a spouse…bachelorhood makes watching a lot of porn…more possible…than it is for people living with a wife and family…and…married individuals are less likely to self-report ample pornography consumption…Correlation does not imply causation. And “low-cost sexual gratification” probably isn’t the end of civilization as we know it.

Meanwhile, over at Slate, Jordan Weissmann goes into even more detail about why the study is, in his words, “deeply silly”.  You will not be surprised to know that the “researchers” used data from the General Social Survey, whose unsuitability for questions of this nature I have noted before.

Above the Law 

They just can’t call it rape when the rapist is a cop, can they?  Especially if his victims are whores:  “A Dallas police officer has been arrested for…using his position…to force prostitutes to perform sexual acts…David Kattner…will be [given paid vacation]…pending the results of the…investigation…”

The Notorious Badge Jamie Dornan

What is it with actors presuming to judge sexual minorities they make big bucks playing on screen?

Jamie Dornan went to a sex dungeon for work.  He was preparing to play Fifty Shades of Grey’s…Christian Grey, and…found it underwhelming.  “I went there, they offered me a beer, and they did…whatever they were into…Then going back to my wife and newborn baby afterwards… I had a long shower before touching either of them”…

Jamie, I’m sorry to hear that your prudish sex life is so boring.  I’ll leave you with a message from my friend, Mistress Matisse:

…Guess what?  There were happily married people at that party doing BDSM.  Some of them have children, too, just like you.  How dare you take a role as someone who does BDSM and then blatantly insult the very people who allowed you into their party and let you observe them in their intimate moments?…I think it’s a shame the makers of 50SOG didn’t cast someone more emotionally mature and more secure in his own sexuality than this.  Perhaps Mr. Dornan is more like the character of Christian Gray than he’d like to think…

Banishment

The continuing crusade to treat “sex offenders” as subhuman:

…A registrant in Florida won a three million dollar scratch-off lottery…Timothy Poole…[is the subject of a] hue and cry…that he should, by any means possible, be denied his winnings…because he is a SEX OFFENDER.  Florida has no prohibition against any convicted felon profiting from lottery winnings, not even SEX OFFENDERS.  I am currently making book that Florida’s next legislative session will see a bill introduced that will do just that…Mr. Poole, since his release from prison in 2006, has maintained a record as spotless as the proverbial driven snow…None of that quashed the flood of outrage or deterred the cesspool of nasty headlines, articles, and commentary as to why he should not receive the money and how inherently wrong it is for him to have won it to begin with…

Dirty Laundry (TW3 #337)

Sadistic Irish judges think it’s funny to rob sex workers and our associates and give their money to an organization dedicated to destroying our entire profession:

…Dublin road engineer [Thomas Lyons] rented an apartment for use as a brothel…[he] has been given a suspended jail sentence and ordered to pay over €10,000 to…Ruhama, an organisation which [profits from the harassment of sex workers]…

The Course of a Disease (TW3 #341)

A rare example of criminalization blowing up in the faces of “authorities”:

A prostitute won a landmark victory against police [when] an Oslo court…ruled that police were wrong to claim taxes for the money she had made selling sex…the court queried whether the state should tax income from prostitution, given that related activity such as pimping and human trafficking are crimes…

Property of the State

A new proposed bill in the Missouri state legislature would require women…seeking an abortion to get consent from the man who is the father of the child.  Exceptions are allowed in cases of rape or incest, but [not]…if the woman is in an abusive relationship…

Or, presumably, if she just doesn’t know who the father is.

Because We Say So (TW3 #421) poverty tourism

Next Generation Nepal (NGN) has launched its…report showing that…orphanages in Nepal contain over 15,000 children, yet at least two out of three…are not orphans…many…are being used as poverty commodities to raise money from well-intentioned but naïve fee-paying foreign volunteers and donors…almost 90 percent of “orphanages” in Nepal are located in the top five tourist districts for this reason…the growing global phenomenon of voluntourism…has the potential to…cause considerable harm…

The Mote and the Beam (TW3 #428)

Remember, consensual sex work is usually defined as “trafficking” in the US; this law would felonize the posting of an ordinary escort ad:

A state representative wants to make it a crime to post an ad on the internet if the person posting it knows it could result in human trafficking.  It could be an ad anywhere – on websites such as Craigslist or Backpage, or even on a gas station bathroom wall…House Bill 152 would make that person guilty of sexual trafficking of a child; a felony that carries a penalty of up to life in prison…[sponsor] Elijah Haahr…says the idea is based on the SAVE Act…

Safe Targets (TW3 #439)

…the relationship between law enforcement and sex workers in Alaska has supposedly altered in recent years…[due to dogma pretending that] sex workers[are] victims who need to be rescued…[but] a new report by Tara Burns titled People in Alaska’s Sex Trade: Their Lived Experience and Policy Recommendations…found…that…the role of the police has not changed that much…the law has been used against people selling sex (who are said to be trafficking themselves)…”In none of the documents I’ve examined since the law’s inception,” Burns says in the report, “has it been used to benefit a victim”…women Burns surveyed and interviewed see the police as a threat…More than a quarter of the women surveyed said they had been sexually assaulted by police; 9 percent said they had been robbed or beaten…

Theatrics (TW3 #446)

On December 19…[a spam] text message [landed] on mobile phones of [about 300,000] users [in Kathmandu, Nepal].  The…message…read “young boys and girls are available for commercial sex inside the Kathmandu Valley” and asked the recipients to call certain numbers for further details…the message was being delivered by Terre des Hommes…whose website says “it works against child exploitation”…[the NGO] defended the message…[as] “part of its campaign to aware [sic] the general public about child exploitation and end commercial sexual exploitation of children”…

Marching Up Their Own Arses (TW3 #450)

For a change, many outside the demimonde recognize anti-whore douchebaggery for what it is:

The retired cop used to interfere in sex worker’s lives by arresting them, now he just ambushes them with cameras…sex workers…rightly call [reality show 8 Minutes] “vile,” “gross,” “terrifying,” and “exploitative”…[Kevin] Brown was profiled in the LA Times…as founder…of Safe Passage OC, a group with a website that looks like it was made in 1998 and a moral worldview from at least a hundred years earlier than that…Volunteers only need to “attend a 16-hour course”…about half as long as it takes to get a learner’s permit in the state of California…

A Year Later

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That Was the Week That Was (#451)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 20, 2014| 30 Comments »

[Sex workers] can’t be slandered, apparently, because our status is THAT low.  –  Mistress Matisse

Out of Control

This was obvious to anyone who’s actually known any actual men, and whose mind is not fouled entirely with “social construction” dogma:

Priests’ vows of celibacy may have led to paedophilia, the Roman Catholic Church in Australia has said…A group advising the…Church on how to deal with thousands of cases of child sex abuse said celibacy may be psychologically damaging for some priests…The…conclusions were quickly dismissed by the Vatican…

Think of the Children! 

The statute under which these people were arrested defines “near” as 100 feet:  “Eleven people…were arrested and charged with prostitution near a school…[in] Memphis…the…arrests were all within a mile and a half from [any of several schools]…“Thierry Schaffauser

Lack of Evidence

On December 16th…Thierry Schaffauser, founding member of STRASS, was distributing leaflets and condoms when he was arrested [in]…Paris…He was accused of having spoken to a sex worker.  Two plainclothes police officers then committed acts of violence against him including strangulation…He was handcuffed …and taken to the police station…without being able to request…a lawyer.  The sex worker he was talking to…was also arrested…Homophobic and racist remarks were made during the arrest, incl. “it is because of people like you that mamas bring in African women for prostitution in France”…

Welcome To Our World

Not the late actor, but rather the president of a fundamentalist Christian group:

…Tony Perkins [claims]…his fight against gay rights is necessary to prevent an economic crash and [is] no different than saving someone from a burning building…the Family Research Council president…told [the Faith & Liberty podcast]…that gay rights present such a grave “threat to religious liberty” that the movement for LGBT equality will inevitably lead to “a rapid downward spiral of our nation, including our economy”…Perkins insisted that his anti-gay activism is motivated by love for the gay community.  Just as an onlooker would try to wake up a person sleeping inside of a burning building, Perkins explained, he is simply trying to tell gay people about homosexuality’s destructive nature…

Whores know all about people who “love” us and want to “help” us by denying our basic human rights, criminalizing our lives and locking us up in state brainwashing centers.

The Pro-Rape Coalition

In which David Horsey un-ironically uses the phrase “women performing like whores” in a fact-free anti-porn rant:

…Thanks to the Internet, Americans have been pushed, unwittingly, into a vast social experiment testing whether unfettered access to the most freakish and foul pornography will warp sexual relations for generations to come…Raunchy actually does not begin to describe the things that any kid can find with a few search words and a couple of clicks…It’s a quick descent into an endless display of photographs and videos…dominated by perverse male fantasies of women performing like whores for men whose sexual techniques appear to have been learned in a prison cell…This is soul-disturbing stuff most human beings have never seen or experienced before…

Because obviously whores aren’t women.  Would-be censors are fond of claiming that online porn is “dominated” by extreme stuff, and that it’s easy to find, but try it yourself sometime.

Imaginary Crises

Women who tell outlandish rape tales undermine the credibility of all women:

In a now-infamous…story in Rolling Stone, disgraced journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely asserted that at least five members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity gang-raped a freshman named Jackie at a frat house party…The Washington Post’s reporting now suggests that Jackie fabricated huge swathes of her gory rape tale, and that Erdely abrogated her duty to properly investigate it…the number of completely fraudulent rape allegations made by women on American college campuses is far from trivial.  With very little effort at all, The Daily Caller has found eight twisted, totally false and especially astonishing rape hoaxes proffered over the years by female college students.  In each case, the cruel hoaxes were initially accepted as true.  In some cases, real lives were ruined…

Surplus Women 

A man obsessed with the Yorkshire Ripper brutally attacked a prostitute and planned to carry out more murders than his idol…David Parsons, 21, bought a claw hammer because it was Peter Sutcliffe’s weapon of choice and used it to repeatedly bludgeon a…call girl he lured to his flat…he was spooked by her screams and fled…[then] told police:  “I have just tried to kill someone”…The victim…suffered head injuries and…psychological damage…Parsons pleaded guilty to attempted murder…[but] showed no empathy or remorse…[saying] “She is a prostitute, I am not even bothered”…

Profit from Panic 

The Global Alliance Against Trafficking in Women (GAATW) recently released its annual peer reviewed publication, the Anti-Trafficking Review…[this year’s] theme…is “Following the Money: Spending on Anti-Trafficking“…The majority of funding dedicated to anti-trafficking initiatives is spent in either prevention or prosecution…there has been little research undertaken into the…effectiveness of funded anti-trafficking initiatives…whether a person is recognised as a “victim” or “migrant” is defined by the media, who are influenced by…political expediency…

Above the Law 

A Louisiana [cop]…has been arrested…[for groping] a woman during a traffic stop…Michael Dayne Selders…touched her breasts…and private areas and tried to kiss her lips…Selders let her leave, saying “don’t tell anyone about this”…Selders [pretended that]…the woman initiated a hug, but denied wrongdoing…he’s [been rewarded with] paid [vacation]…

Meanwhile, in Tennessee:

…Nashville [cop Jonathan Mays] was arrested…for raping a prostitute…The victim had gone to police in June…[and they]…constructed a [sting] to catch Mays in the act…Once confronted, Mays tried to deny having any previous involvement with the woman, but later confessed to the [previous] incident…

The Naked Emperor

Chase Madar’s article about the horrific consequences of the US obsession with policing sex is quite good on issues like “sex offender” registration and the War on Whores…yet breathes not one word about “sex trafficking” hysteria, despite its condemnation of the Satanic panic.

Shift in the Wind

A TED talk about sex worker rights is definitely a step forward:

The Public Eye

Changing the narrative about sex work and battling the stigma  associated with the adult industry are among the primary goals behind a series of events [last weekend]…the Seattle chapter of the Sex Worker Outreach Project…[held] a three-day sex-work symposium to educate the public about consensual sex work, advocate for sex-worker rights and build community among a diverse group of practitioners.  “I hope people who have heard that all sex workers are victims and all sex work is exploitative will see…the adult industry is vast, complex, diverse and not inherently exploitative,” said Savannah Sly…

Property of the State

…a…Wisconsin…woman [was] arrested for drug use…brought to court and twice refused lawyers (even though her fetus was given one), and then sent to jail for 17 days, where she was placed in solitary confinement, denied prenatal care even as she began cramping, and not given her thyroid medication for two days…Tamara Loertscher…refused to submit to in-patient treatment because…she…had stopped using drugs.  She was then jailed for contempt of court…the state of Wisconsin then informed her that it considered her a child abuser, which will prevent Loertscher from ever working again in her profession, as a certified nurse’s aide…

Bread and Circuses

They must have threatened him with decades in prison to secure this deal:

[Eric “Red” Omuro]…pleaded guilty…to facilitating prostitution by running a website that allowed sex workers to advertise services…it was the first federal conviction of a website operator for facilitation of prostitution…MyRedbook…allowed users to post and respond to ads offering services including massage, stripping, domination and sex in San Francisco and throughout the West Coast…the website generated more than $5.4 million in revenue…Omuro…agreed to forfeit $1.28 million in cash and property and the domain names…

Schadenfreude (TW3 #429) 

At long last, Seattle’s The Stranger owns up to its part in promoting Chong Kim’s lies and the movie based on them:

…Mistress Matisse, a professional dominatrix and longtime Stranger contributor…sent an e-mail to her editors here in late June referring to a potential lawsuit.  “You’re getting this e-mail from me because I want some answers,” Matisse began. “I believe that…filmmakers Colin Plank and Megan Griffiths”—the producer and the director—”have perpetrated a fraud in their movie called Eden. Allegations have been made, and it’s time for them to either double down—or fess up.  And as The Stranger played a role in promoting the film, it’s appropriate that The Stranger play a part [in] the truth being told about it”…She [discussed] with a lawyer “the possibility of a class-action lawsuit against the makers of Eden“…[but his]  opinion was that “it would be difficult to prove damages, because the prevailing sentiment of the legal system more or less goes along with us being either helpless victims, as in the movie, or just plain criminals”…

The article debunks Kim’s tragedy porn in great detail, but that wasn’t actually very hard because her own published narratives of her supposed “exploitation” in sex work have grown dramatically in the past decade; had the filmmakers bothered to do even the slightest bit of research they would’ve known she was lying from square one.  But hey, the lies are only about whores and our clients, so it’s all good.

Surplus Women (TW3 #445)

Hong Kong was shocked by another brutal murder [of a sex worker]…as the half-naked body of a 15-year-old girl was discovered bound and gagged at a local dump – just weeks after a British banker was charged with the killing of two escorts…Kwok Wai-ming…had hands and legs bound together with plastic strips and adhesive tape and might have died during a sex game…the girl was involved in compensated dating…and also posed for nude pictures for money…Police have arrested a 34-year-old former clerical worker after analysing security camera footage from buildings in the area…

The Public Eye (TW3 #450)

Nick Clegg today backed Liberal Democrat MPs who are opposing a ban on a list of erotic acts being shown in porn because they have been judged “harmful”.  Three days after a face-sitting protest outside Parliament against new curbs on what can be shown in internet video porn, the Deputy Prime Minister said…the state should not invade the privacy of people’s bedrooms…

A Year Later

The headline makes it sound like “heavily regulated” rhetoric, but what they’re actually calling for is decriminalization:

The Canadian Public Health Association is calling on the government to regulate the sex industry…under existing occupational health and safety regulations…The testimony [leading up to the new law] laid bare a bitter divide…over whether prostitutes are victims or whether they are making a free and valid career choice.  The government considers prostitution a crime against women, and [pretends it can be] stamped out entirely…

That bit about a “bitter divide” is more prohibitionist nonsense; virtually no actual sex workers support client criminalization, and the ones who claim to are a tiny minority of ex-whores paid by prohibitionists to be human sock puppets.

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Links #232

Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 14, 2014| 3 Comments »

For every action there’s a reaction.  –  Javier Ortiz

Here we are mid-month, and still few Christmas links worth repeating despite the fact that decorations have been up since before Thanksgiving.  So to counterbalance the first video (in which a cop stupidly admits on record that he’s going to file false charges against a cop’s daughter who was uploading the whole incident to the internet as it transpired), I present more heavy metal Christmas music from Christopher Lee (courtesy of Michael Whiteacre).  Nobody contributed more than one link, so I’ve collected the unattributed ones above the first video; those between the videos were provided by Cliterati, Jillian Keenan,  Mike Siegel, Eric Barry, Rick Horowitz, Radley Balko, and Clarissa (in that order).

From the Archives

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