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That Was the Week That Was (#316)

Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged A Whore in the Bedroom, A Working System, activism, Africa, agency denial, An Example to the West, Australia, avails laws, Backpage, Barbie, bogus studies, brothels, California, censorship, Central Asia, Change a Few Words, condoms, consensual crime, cops, dirty, disability, Divided We Fall, drugs, end demand, evidence, Feminine Pragmatism, Held Together With Lies, hysteria, Illinois, India, infidelity, internet, Lack of Evidence, language, Latin America, Legalization a Good Idea?, LGBT rights, male prostitutes, marriage, Minnesota, Missouri, neofeminism, Not the Leading Players, Ohio, politicians, porn, pragmatism, Prohibition (alcohol), psychology, Real People, rescue industry, Reviews, screening, sex education, sex work is work, Something Rotten In Sweden, Swedish model, Texas, The Immunity Syndrome, The Pro-Rape Coalition, The Story Behind the Story, transgender, Uncharted Seas, video, We Told You So, Where Are the Victims?, Wise Investment on April 20, 2013| 25 Comments »

The truth doesn’t have a sound bite. – Hadil Habiba

A Whore in the Bedroom

While working as a high-class escort for nine years, Rebecca Dakin saw hundreds of married men turn to her to fulfill sexual needs not being met by their wives. In 2009, she…became an infidelity counselor, using her experience…to teach women about how to satisfy their husbands…Dakin says that the number one reason men look outside of their relationships for sex is because they’re not getting enough of it at home…other reasons…include…feeling bored by the sex they receive…or feeling hesitant to share their intimate desires and fantasies with their spouse…

November Book Reviews

Thaddeus Russell lectures on A Renegade History of the United States at the recent New Hampshire Liberty Forum:

Barbie

The pathetic losers who believe young girls can perform complex calculations in their heads are at it again, informing us that if Barbie were both alive and life-sized she wouldn’t have room for intestines. That’s ironic, because it’s obvious that doofuses who obsess about plastic dolls have no room in their heads for comprehending that the smaller any animal is, the more slender its proportions tend to be, and that kids don’t actually notice this kind of stuff in any case.

Real People

It’s surprising that this article on Bay Area sex workers (including Kitty Stryker and Siouxsie Q) who cater to the tech sector appeared on CNN, of all places; the phrase “human trafficking” occurs only once, in a very short passage about a vice cop. Maybe a few people over there are starting to wake up (or just seeing the writing on the wall). The same holds true in the next item:

Feminine Pragmatism

The anti-whore rhetoric in this New York Times piece about Afghan sex workers is minimal, and the word “trafficking” entirely absent:

…Mazar…is…Afghanistan’s unofficial capital of prostitution…[this is] partly [due]…to the city’s culture, which is considerably more forgiving of vice than is the rest of the country. Alcohol, though still illegal, can be found without too much trouble. Women…can be seen socializing with men in…public parks, a rare sight even in Kabul…In recent years, the city’s economy has flourished as its proximity to Central Asia and its relative peace and stability have transformed it into a trading hub…The sex trade has [always] existed in one form or another…even under the ultraconservative rule of the Taliban. But officials here say the rapid spread of mobile technology has made the business easier to manage and harder to detect…Women…host clients in a series of apartments…The point of contact is typically a man who orchestrates the meet-ups by cellphone. This has made the business tough to infiltrate for those police officials eager to crack down…[sex workers] are almost always impoverished and typically divorced or widowed, struggling to support a family…they risk death if they are discovered…

The Pro-Rape Coalition

“The Supreme Court [of India] sought response from the government on a plea to block and ban porn sites on the internet, particularly those showing child pornography…The petition filed by Indore-based advocate Kamlesh Vaswani said watching obscene videos is not an offence but it is one of the major causes for crime against women…” As we know, this is the exact opposite of the truth.

Where Are the Victims?

Even the police state seems unable to explain what legitimate public interest is served by jailing a 69-year-old quadriplegic polio victim who breathes through a ventilator for the “crime” of having sexual feelings. In 2011 he was “convicted” of helping sex workers find safe clients by running a screening service, and apparently the terms of his probation demand he not be sexual in any way; unsurprisingly, he has been caught violating that condition twice so far.

We Told You So

…As part of a legal settlement, Tennessee-based Stop Child Trafficking Now…will agree to follow a list of requirements if it returns to Missouri…some of the stipulations include [detailing] how donated funds will be spent in the Kansas City area…[and] an accurate depiction of the organization’s accomplishments. A 41 Action News investigation…followed the money trail and fact-checked some of SCTNow’s bold claims made on its website…hundreds of thousands of dollars [went] to fund private “special operatives” teams to gather undercover intelligence about child sex trafficking…[but] when pressed for more details, SCTNow could not point to a single case in the country where information lead to an arrest or prosecution…

Divided We Fall

The Gambia introduced…new laws…criminalising male prostitution [and] cross-dressing…Any man or boy who solicits, is “attired in the fashion of a woman” in a public place or who “practises sodomy as a means of livelihood or as a profession” now faces a hefty fine and jail term of up to five years…

Where’s the outcry from picket-fence gay activists? {sound of crickets} I reckon they don’t want to be soil their newfound respectability by speaking up for drag hookers any more.

Change a Few Words

Dr. Laura Agustín on how all prohibitionism is the same:

…outlawing activities accomplishes only one thing…It tells citizens that government has decided something is Wrong…Sending A Message is the principle …behind the Swedish state’s…law against buying sex, and…behind all the [others]…who want the law for their countries. Everyone wants to be seen to be Taking a Stand against immoral behaviour. Try bringing evidence into the conversation and you will quickly learn how irrelevant it is; you can find Swedish promoters themselves saying things like We know it doesn’t work but we want to be in the forefront of Gender Justice…Any other claim about what prohibitionist laws achieve when they outlaw social activities like sex, drinking and drugs is not supported by evidence. That’s because, after the law is passed and the message is sent, individuals deal with prohibition deviously…So buyers and sellers of drugs, alcohol and sex become creative, some of them maintaining a disapproving stance in public at the same time…

This is, of course, why self-reporting about paying for sex has become so absurdly inaccurate.

The Immunity Syndrome

A new Ohio law bans teachers from discussing “any gateway sexual activity or health message that encourages students to experiment with sexual activity” and allows parents to sue for “damages” if they claim a teacher has done so. What exactly are “gateway sexual activities”, you ask? The law doesn’t say, but we know that in Tennessee they include hand-holding.

An Example to the West

Add Latin America to the list of regions that do sex work activism more effectively than the US:

A new study, designed and carried out by the network of female sex workers in Latin America and Caribbean (REDTRASEX), has documented legislation that affects sex work – as well as detailing what this means in practice…independent sex work is not prohibited in any of the countries studied. What is criminalized…is proxenetism (or ‘pimping’) and…“immoral” behaviours or disturbances to the peace or public order are applied in relation to sex work. Furthermore…confusing sex workers…with trafficked persons…silences the legitimate voices of sex workers and actually blocks discussions on how to end human trafficking. This creates a framework of legitimacy for police repression and state violence…[and] results in a culture of secrecy around sex work, increasing stigma and the vulnerability of sex workers…

The study is available in Spanish, and I’ll provide the English translation as soon as it’s available.

The Leading Players in the Field, Not (TW3 #14)

Gloria Steinem is at it again, now in collusion with rescue industry NGO Apne Aap: “On April 18, human rights activists Gloria Steinem and Ruchira Gupta will kick off a two-day symposium at Smith College, ‘Trafficking Sex: Politics, Policy, Personhood’…” Note the unintentional irony of prohibitionists borrowing the term “personhood” from their anti-abortion rights soulmates.

Held Together With Lies (TW3 #28)

Despite a total lack of evidence (“[trafficking] convictions [declined] 13 percent”), Chicken Licken and other overly-excitable barnyard fowl ordered EU member states “to get a move on with adopting tough new rules against human trafficking or face sanctions as a first report on the problem showed ‘modern-day slavery’ worsening”. Obviously math isn’t the typical politician’s strong suit, but one would think even they could comprehend that the larger estimates might have something to do with the fact that they “[broadened] the definition of the crime” two years ago; now they’re claiming “the trafficking business is second-only in illegal activity to the weapons trade”, up from the equally-bogus assertion that it was third. Anyone want to take bets on whether it will rise to first before the hysteria collapses?

Wise Investment (TW3 #31)

“Texas lawmakers…[want to criminalize] advertisements soliciting prostitution…‘the Backpage Bill’…would make it a felony to buy such advertising and might press Backpage.com to get out of the business.” It will do nothing of the kind and these politicians know it. But because they don’t pay the cost of defending tyrannical and patently-unconstitutional laws, they’re perfectly happy to buy votes from control freaks at taxpayer expense.

Lack of Evidence (TW3 #41)

The news that “San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón has agreed to make a ban on using condoms as evidence of prostitution permanent” is good (though as a policy rather than a law it could be revoked at a moment’s notice), but dig Gascón’s bizarre and Orwellian claim around mid-article that criminalization and police harassment of women are for our “protection”.

Uncharted Seas

…we’ve been hearing it for years. Gay marriage is a slippery slope! A gateway drug! If we legalize it, then what’s next? Legalized polygamy? We can only hope…let’s not forget that the fight doesn’t end with same-sex marriage…Legalized polygamy in the United States is…constitutional, feminist, and sex-positive…we really can make our own choices. We just might choose things people don’t like…Arguments about whether a woman’s consensual sexual and romantic choices are “healthy” should have no bearing on the legal process…It’s condescending, not supportive, to minimize them as mere “victims” without considering the possibility that some of them have simply made a different choice…

A Working System (TW3 #136)

A Sydney madam has been found guilty of keeping young Malaysian students in sexual servitude…Chee Mei Wong, 39, forced the six young women to work up to 20 hours a day in the Diamonds brothel…and ordered them to perform unusual sex acts against their will so they could pay ”debts”…

Something Rotten in Sweden (TW3 #138)

More on the ugly campaign of disinformation currently being waged by “End Demand Illinois”:

…Who are the organizers of this campaign trying to communicate with? My suspicion is…people who already have a soft analysis of prostitution gleaned from watching 20/20…or true crime TV shows about sex trafficking busts…who is going to step up and be “in favor” of “modern day slavery” or “sex trafficking?” …I really want to know what it’s going to take for people to actually think about how complicated the sex trade is, and that it’s not all the same, and that ads that make us all the victims of overwhelming violence don’t do anything to actually improve our circumstances…

For Those Who Think Legalization is a Good Idea (TW3 #313)

Remember, prostitution was recently re-confirmed as legal in India, but brothels are still illegal; it’s therefore a simple matter for cops to redefine a business as a “ring”, label women of 20 to 25 as “girls”, call their arrest a “rescue” and describe imprisonment under psychological torture as “rehabilitation”. That way the money from the US and NGOs keeps rolling in.

The Story Behind the Story

…Fox 2000…[is] adapting Go the Fuck to Sleep for the big screen…the bedtime-story parody, written by Adam Mansbach and illustrated by Ricardo Cortés, has become something of a viral hit…It is unclear how the filmmakers plan to turn what is essentially a nursery rhyme with one punchline…into an entire feature- length film…

I hope this proves lucrative for Ricardo and also opens more doors for him.

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Q & A (September 2012)

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, Q & A, tagged archeofeminism, dating, ethics, GFE, harm reduction, infidelity, marriage, naturalness, psychology, yin and yang on September 28, 2012| 67 Comments »

The liberally educated person is one who is able to resist the easy and preferred answers, not because he is obstinate but because he knows others worthy of consideration. – Allan Bloom

Only two questions this time, though both are fairly long ones. If you have one you’d like me to answer, please email me at maggiemcneill@earthlink.net; I’m a bit slow with my correspondence lately but I should still be able to answer you within a few days.

I’m in my twenties and single, but very much do want to get married some day. I know that as a wife it will be extremely important to keep my husband sexually satisfied as best I can; I also know that if I don’t, I’d much rather he meet his needs with a hooker than an amateur since, like you’ve mentioned time and time again, the former is likely to be discreet and not destroy my marriage. However, even if I do perform my “wifely duties” well, do you think it’s still inevitable that a man is going to cheat for sexual variety? And if so, how would one go about having a conversation about it with a husband prospect? “I’d really prefer if you didn’t cheat on me at all, but if you do, please do it with a professional!”? I feel like that’d encourage a man who wasn’t even thinking of such a thing to go for it! I know this is probably a strange thing for me to be stressing over when I’m not even so much as engaged, but I’d love to hear your perspective!

No, it’s not inevitable; roughly 67% of all married men cheat, which still means about 1 in 3 don’t. And you have to remember that those figures are for all marriages, with bad or inattentive wives mixed in with the good, attentive ones. I would suspect that if we could figure out a way to only survey the husbands of good wives, that number would be much lower. It would not, however, be zero; I suspect it would be something like 20%, the fraction of men who see whores “occasionally” (I don’t have any specific rational basis for this comparison; it’s more like an educated guess modified by instinct). Given that, I don’t think it’s at all silly to have the conversation you suggest at some point. I’m not suggesting you just blurt it out in the middle of sex or dinner, but sooner or later a related subject is bound to come up and you can segue into it. He will almost certainly insist that he’ll never do that, and he may even really mean it at the time, but years later if he feels the need he may remember what you said and take the harm-managed path. Don’t worry about “giving him ideas”; when it comes to sex people will invariably think of such things on their own whether you mention it or not. Plus, you can certainly stress that you’re not exactly giving your blessing to his hiring hookers, but rather just telling him that the professional option would hurt you less and you’d find it easier to forgive.

Your stressing about it now is indeed “strange” in the sense of “unusual”, but not in the sense of “weird”; in fact, I think it’s a sign of remarkable good sense. Most girls never even consider these things, and as a result they tend to react that much more badly when faced with the revelation that their husbands are not superhuman paragons of virtue. In fact, I suspect that a young woman who can think so clearly about an emotional subject like this is much more likely to choose her mate wisely and to consider factors like economics and sexual compatibility rather than simply rushing into marriage in a biochemical haze, and that will dramatically increase your chances for a good match characterized by mutual honesty.

A little over two months ago, I met a whore with whom I share a social chemistry that I never experienced with a woman before, and I feel such intense affection for her that I equally look forward to our conversations after my basic physical need has been satisfied. At the same time, I respect our professional boundaries; I feel scheduling an appointment with her once a month does the trick. I have become much more responsible in my personal life. I feel better motivated to tackle life’s challenges, get my sleep and exercise, keep my space clean and organized, feel more at ease around others, and am more affectionate with my family. I no longer feel as though I have resigned myself to a cheap substitute for a conventional relationship. Even more bizarre, I have begun to feel that compensating a woman is more natural than conventional relationships. Have I gone nuts? Perhaps I’m romanticizing this too much? Secondly, do you think it’s plausible for a whore to have such a quasi-intimate relationship with a client, genuinely feeling some affection for him that doesn’t cross professional boundaries?

Your question is kind of tangled, but I’m going to tease out what I think are the pertinent strands. First of all, as I’ve written many, many times before, there really isn’t a bright, clear line between prostitution and dating (or even marriage) as people like to pretend. All lasting relationships have an economic component, because once the flare of biochemical passion fades there needs to be something more substantial to hold the partners together, and mutual economic benefit is about as strong a glue as there is. That does not preclude genuine affection, however; most everyone has had the experience of genuinely liking a customer, employee, boss or co-worker despite the fact that the relationship is primarily an economic one, and though I love my husband I also recognize that our socioeconomic arrangement is the bedrock of the relationship. Expressed another way, economics is the cake, and love the icing, not the other way around as modern Americans like to pretend. So, answering the last question first: Yes, a whore can have genuine affection for a client and vice-versa, and since some whores feel no need for sexual companionship outside the job, I can’t see where the opposite couldn’t be true.

Next, you have to remember that the male need for sexual variety is pretty powerful, and more so in some men than others; though some men certainly yearn for a lifetime companion, others may prefer serial monogamy and still others may be perfectly happy with getting their sex from women and their companionship from deep male friendships. The idea that every man (or every woman, for that matter) must or even should form long-term relationships that combine social, economic and sexual factors is asinine; though such relationships are often rewarding and are probably better for raising children than the culturally-available alternatives, that doesn’t mean they are right for everyone, or that everyone is going to crave them. So no, you’re not crazy for finding your relationships with whores rewarding and satisfying; what’s more, you need to stop looking a gift horse in the mouth. If you’re happier, better-adjusted and more productive now than you’ve ever been before, why question it just because closed-minded bigots might not like it? The only person you have to please is you, and if you’re accomplishing that you’re in an enviable position. Keep on the way you’re going as long as it works for you, and if you ever arrive at a point where it doesn’t any more you can calmly take stock of the situation and proceed from there.

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Q & A (July 2012)

Posted in Perception, Q & A, Tyranny, tagged anecdote, archeofeminism, Australia, cops, courtesans, ethics, hysteria, infidelity, law, Madonna/whore, marriage, pragmatism, psychology, stereotypes, yin and yang on July 31, 2012| 20 Comments »

When I pressed her for a reason
She refused to even answer… – Billy Joel, “The Stranger”

Got a question? Email me at maggiemcneill@earthlink.net. The last question is from a recent comment thread, but I thought it was worthwhile repeating in a more prominent location.

Inasmuch as “trafficking” is a problem, what should be done about it? I personally think that full deregulation of voluntary personal physical activities would pretty much take care of the problem, but I don’t think my countrymen would go for that. I understand that nothing will satisfy the anti-sex zealots who use trafficking as an excuse to persecute sex workers, but is there any degree of regulatory compromise that you would be comfortable with that could also allay the fears of those who talk about trafficking?

The short version is that there isn’t any such thing as “trafficking”, at least not as depicted by the fanatics. It’s a boondoggle, a moral panic, a new version of “white slavery” or the Satanic Panic. There are no vast criminal cartels “trafficking in humans” for sexual or any other purpose, and the overwhelming majority of the people labeled “trafficked” are actually either regular hookers, or people who have migrated to work; of course there is sometimes exploitation just as there is everywhere, but to depict these incidents as part of some gigantic conspiracy is no different from pretending all child sexual abuse is part of a Satanic cult network.

According to a recent study done of the decriminalized sex work industry in New South Wales, your surmise that deregulation would solve most of the problems is 100% correct. As for the rest of your question, it’s a lot more complex issue than “trafficking” fanatics pretend; here are a few columns which will serve as a good introduction of those issues: A False Dichotomy, Chupacabra, Déjà Vu, Don’t Buy It, Held Together With Lies, Here We Go Again, Rhinoceros, Rooted in Racism, Thought Experiment and Umpteen Thousand People Can’t Be Wrong. And here are a few others on the problems caused by a criminalization, law enforcement or “rescue” approach: Against Their Will, As Young As Possible, Bad Fantasy, Good Reality, Enabling Oppression, Finding What Isn’t There, Hard Numbers, Knights Erroneous, Law of the Instrument and One Size Fits All. Finally, you can learn a great deal from Dr. Laura Agustín, many of whose essays are real eye-openers.

Have you had a regular job since retiring from prostitution? How do you deal with nasty comments about prostitutes from people who don’t know your background? And have you ever met a prostitute and had her “read” you as a former whore?

I haven’t had a “straight” job since I left the library in 1995. When my husband proposed he knew full well I would never agree to retire if that involved working for someone else again, so he had to agree to support me or it was no deal. Technically, I’m still a whore, but I only have one client now and it’s a very long-term contract. That’s really a good thing for my readers, because writing this column is literally a full-time job so I wouldn’t be able to do it if I had to spend 40 hours a week plus commute time doing something else.

Though I’m not really “out”, I publicly oppose all laws restricting consensual behavior, so my support for whores isn’t really a giveaway; my recent Friday the 13th column listed the sort of arguments anyone can use to argue impersonally against anti-whore bigotry one might hear in public. And I’ve done a whole column on the topic of people “reading” me.

Will you ever let your husband write a column?

My husband has written three columns, actually; a two-part interview and an account of his visit to a “soapland” in Japan.

How did you go from being a sex industry pro to being married and living in a completely remote area? Do you miss the variety, and do you do anything about it if you do? Also, do you think jealousy is ingrained in us, i.e. part of our instincts, or do you think it exists due to socio-cultural imprints?

The best way to answer the first part of your question would probably be to refer you to the interview with my husband linked in the question above; the second part was covered in my Q & A columns for November 2010, May 2011 and August 2011. As for jealousy, the proof of its biological origin is the fact that men and women tend to experience it differently. Most men are far more concerned with physical infidelity, and most women with emotional infidelity (which is why most well-adjusted women don’t really care about whores). This makes sense when you realize that since a woman can only have one baby per year, physical infidelity results in a huge genetic opportunity loss and resource drain for the male if his woman is impregnated by someone else. For women, it doesn’t matter how much seed her husband spreads around because he has plenty; it’s his resources being diverted to other women and their children which concerns her. That’s why men tend to feel more threatened by hearing about their wives’ past one-night stands than about ex-husbands, while women tend to feel more threatened by ex-wives than by past flings.

Maybe you’ve commented on this before, but do you think there is a connection between intelligence (or, more accurately, intellectual vigor and curiosity) and sexuality?

I think there certainly can be. People who are intelligent, open-minded and imaginative tend to be harder to restrain by arbitrary rules because they see no rational reason for those rules. And a woman with a mind of that sort who is faced with bills is far more likely than her duller, less imaginative sisters to recognize that sex work is a viable source of income, and far less likely to buy the propaganda designed to keep her from doing it. So although I don’t think it’s correct to make the broad statement that “whores are smarter than amateurs”, I do think it’s fair to say that the average intelligence of high-opportunity-cost sex workers is probably higher than that of their amateur sisters, for the simple reason that in situations where there are multiple options of which sex work is the best, less-intelligent women are far more likely to discard it as a viable option due to arbitrary rules and false propaganda which are more readily disregarded by women of greater intellectual agility.

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Mythbusters

Posted in Current Events, History, Perception, Tyranny, tagged Arizona, California, Catholicism, censorship, condoms, cops, dirty, disease, Egypt, Europe, harm reduction, hysteria, illegal aliens, infidelity, Latin America, law, lawheads, Mexico, Middle East, Mythbusters, paganism, porn, prohibitionist myths, rape, Rome, Sweden, Texas, United Kingdom on May 22, 2012| 12 Comments »

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie–deliberate, contrived and dishonest–but the myth–persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. – John F. Kennedy

Yesterday I defined a “myth” as “a framework or paradigm used to explain and interpret observable phenomena in the absence of (or contrary to) hard data, usually via the involvement of a supernormal force or entity which is not discernible by ordinary means and therefore must be taken on faith.” Some myths arise naturally, while others are specifically designed by rulers, priests, politicians or other would-be dictators as a means of social control. For example, Alexander the Great’s successor Ptolemy I of Egypt combined the Greek god Hades and the Egyptian gods Apis and Osiris into a new god named Serapis, so as to have a deity all his subjects could worship; half a millennium later the Roman Emperor Elagabalus combined the Roman Sol, the Persian Mithra and the Syrian El-Gabal into a single god named Sol Invictus for much the same reason; and 13 centuries after that Catholic priests combined the Blessed Mother with the Aztec mother-goddess Tonantzin to produce Our Lady of Guadalupe in order to convert the Aztecs. Similarly, the modern Swedish government has created a mythology of “state feminism” to control brainwashed “feminist” women and to suppress men and uppity women. In my column of one year ago today I discussed a study which busted that particular myth wide open (though as I discussed yesterday, that won’t stop true believers from embracing it); today I’d like to observe that anniversary by sharing two other articles which bust modern myths, and one in which ignorant modern busybodies “bust” an ancient one.

Let’s start with one I myself have busted before: the “disease as punishment for sin” narrative, which holds that prostitutes and other people with “immoral” lifestyles carry more venereal diseases than those who simply “fall” into extramarital sex on occasion. This is of course related to the ridiculous notion that only “bad girls” make rational decisions about sex, with predictable results:

[According to a new study] people who cheat on their partners are more likely to have unsafe sex than those in open relationships who don’t need to hide their sexual straying…[they] were less likely to use condoms, and less likely to discuss their history of sexually transmitted diseases…compared with people in open relationships who had sex with someone other than their primary partner…The results suggest those who are unfaithful have a higher risk of acquiring a sexually transmitted disease, and possibly transmitting it to their partner, than those in open relationships…The researchers found that 48 percent of unfaithful people reported using a condom during their sexual digression, compared with 66 percent of individuals in an open relationship…34 percent of unfaithful individuals reported talking about their sexual history and previous STD testing before engaging in sex, compared with 63 percent of those in open relationships. The cheaters were also less likely to cover or sterilize sex toys before using them, compared with those in open relationships. Previous research has shown unfaithful people do not accurately perceive the effect their cheating will have on their partners’ mental health, and the new results suggest those who cheat also misperceive, or do not accept, the physical health risks of sex outside their relationship…

A great deal of the basis for “trafficking” mythology lies in myths about international migration, which are more prevalent now than at any time since the 1910s. For example, everybody knows that the US is being flooded with ever-increasing numbers of Mexican immigrants, right? Wrong:

…Douglas Massey, the founder and co-director of Princeton’s Mexican Migration Project…[demonstrates] that…

• We are not being flooded with illegal Mexican migrants. The total number of migrants from Mexico has varied very little since the 1950s. The massive influx many have written about never happened.

• Net illegal migration has stopped almost completely.

• Illegal migration has not stopped because of stricter border enforcement, which Massey characterizes as a waste of money at best and counterproductive at worst.

• There are indeed more undocumented Mexicans living in the United States than there were 20 years ago, but that is because fewer migrants are returning home — not because more are sneaking into the country.

• And the reason that fewer Mexican citizens are returning home is because we have stepped up border enforcement so dramatically.

…If Congress had done nothing to secure the border over the last two decades…there might be as many as 2 million fewer Mexicans living in the United States today…heightened border enforcement…[shifted] the problem. Unable to cross where they traditionally had — into California and Texas — Mexican migrants instead…[made] the dangerous Sonoran Desert crossing into Arizona…then moved on to other states. Arizonans who complained during the 1990s and early 2000s about a surge in illegal migration were not imagining things. But it was the American government…that…had channeled the flow of migrants into their backyard.

…migration traditionally was seasonal and cyclical. Young men would head to El Norte in search of agricultural or construction work, earn money, and then return home. But when it became too risky and too expensive to migrate seasonally, migrants simply chose to stay in the United States. Because they no longer were returning home regularly, they could look for work farther from the border. They also settled down and had families, which made them even less likely to leave…

Behold the Law of Unintended Consequences at work. It is literally impossible for a government to stop or even control complex and widespread social phenomena by passing laws, especially prohibitionist laws; such legislation never stops what it’s intended to stop, and invariably creates a host of new problems. But that never stops lawheads, who are always looking for something to ban…even if their target has been around for thousands of years before they were born:

A photograph of a naked woman and a swan was taken down after a police officer complained that it appeared to “condone bestiality”…the Scream gallery in Mayfair had exhibited the [depiction of the Greek myth of Leda and the Swan] for a month with no complaints from the public…But a Metropolitan police officer…saw the Derrick Santini image from a bus…and two uniformed officers went to the gallery…“They said the photograph suggested we condoned bestiality, which was an arrestable offence”…said [Jag Mehta, the gallery’s sales director]. “It’s crazy. Perhaps the cultural references were lost on them.” As the exhibition was already over, they took down the artwork…“We would of course have fought to keep the piece up otherwise. If anyone wants to view it, we still have it at the gallery” [said gallery owner Jamie Wood]… Miss Mehta said the myth of Leda’s rape by Zeus was an acceptable form of erotica in Victorian times. However, this argument failed to impress the police. “They said they didn’t know anything about the myth,” she said. “They asked if we had had any complaints and we said quite the contrary. Lots of people were intrigued by it”…

Somehow I’m not surprised that the coppers were unfamiliar with the myth, or that their perverted minds saw only ugliness and sin where everyone else saw art. But that’s what happens when two mythologies clash…especially when one set of believers is willing to threaten the other with violence in order to impose its own mythology on everyone.

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That Was the Week That Was (#18)

Posted in Biography, Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged Another Small Victory, archeofeminism, Ashley Madison, Australia, Backpage, bad customers, brothels, Bullies With Badges, censorship, cops, dirty, disease, East Asia, Elephant in the Parlor, Feminine Pragmatism, Good News-Bad News, harm reduction, hysteria, imaginative fiction, infidelity, internet, Latin America, law, lawheads, Madonna/whore, marriage, Michigan, Much Ado About Nothing, My Favorite Updates, neofeminism, Never Call the Cops, New Mexico, Nicaragua, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Philippines, politicians, porn, Presents, prohibitionist myths, Prudish Pedants, red-light districts, serial killers, sex offender registry, Shazam!, Shifting the Blame, stripping, Swedish model, Texas, They Just Don’t Get It, Twitter, Umpteen Thousand People, underage, violence vs. sex workers on May 5, 2012| 18 Comments »

“That is no excuse,” replied Mr. Brownlow…”the law supposes that your wife acts under your direction.”

“If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, “the law is a ass – a idiot.” – Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

Two new stories, nine updates and three metaupdates.

The Law is an Ass

Today in “Never call the police for any reason whatsoever”:

…Christina Marie Lopez [of Oregon]…pleaded guilty…to attempted use of a child in a display of sexually explicit conduct…in December…Lopez complained to police and media that a strip club had hired her…[then 17-year-old] daughter…Investigators later obtained surveillance video…”that showed Lopez in the club watching her daughter dance and providing her money”…[but] now 18-year-old Nicole Madril, said…”It’s not like she came in there and got 50 lap dances from me…She came in and gave me money so I could get myself something to eat”…Lopez was sentenced to 3 years in prison, 3 years of post-prison supervision, and must register as a sex offender. Lopez’s daughter told the judge the sentence was unfair and that it was her own choice to strip.

Lopez obviously forgot about the Law of Shazam; even if her daughter was at most four months shy of her 18^th birthday, she was still the exact legal, moral and intellectual equivalent of a newborn infant, and therefore easily controllable by any adult.

Bullies With Badges

Police in riot gear and masks saved Houston from evil harlots Thursday: “At least six women were in custody…after prostitution stings at three…massage parlors…Investigators said most of the women who were arrested appeared to be under the age of 30 – some as young as teenagers…Investigators said…they were looking into whether any of the women may be victims of human trafficking.” News flash: Many Asian women look younger than most white women; those who “looked like teenagers” may have been much older. The “trafficking” claims were obviously to head off valid criticism of the incredible waste of this “raid”, but if they were sincere their actions are even more reprehensible, as pointed out in this must-read column from Radley Balko.

Updates

They Just Don’t Get It (April 12^th, 2011)

What is wrong with journalists in Pennsylvania? Their fawning treatment of cops and other “authorities” reads like fellatio porn, and their feigned ignorance of anything whore-related is astonishingly stupid:

Prostitution has plagued any number of internet sites in recent years – notably Craigslist – but now the CBS 3 I-Team has found a new hideout for hookers on…Twitter…used by call girls all the time as a free way to advertise…some prostitutes right in your backyard are even setting up appointments over Twitter, which is used by kids of all ages…“It gives…that ability to reach their customers immediately,” says Rob D’Ovidio, a cyber crime expert at Drexel University. “If it’s a slow day, and they want to lure in customers, they can quickly get that blurb out there”…

Reading stories like this feels like looking into a dirty toilet; one wonders what sort of filthy mind could write it, despite the fact that “kids of all ages” could see it on TV. Apparently nobody told Mr. “Cyber Crime Expert” that we’re all “victims” now and that we’re the ones who are “lured” rather than vice-versa. Except, obviously, in Pennsylvania (where we’re still criminals) and Texas (where they ain’t sure).

Another Small Victory (July 16^th, 2011)

A group of US Representatives petitioned the Supreme Court to reverse a lower-court ruling striking down the anti-prostitution pledge; Congressman Chris Smith characterized agencies who provide condoms and testing to all women (without excluding sex workers) as “international groups that promote and enable prostitution and sex trafficking”. The mindless self-destructiveness of this position becomes evident when one realizes that people like Smith wrongly believe whores to be the major vectors of STIs, yet want us excluded from health programs anyway. He’s also ignorant on the ruling, which only freed domestic agencies from the ridiculous “pledge”; international ones are still bound by it, which leads me to wonder how this group keeps its funding:

A new NGO in Nicaragua aims to protect the rights of women who voluntarily work in the sex trade, raising the question of whether sex work should be seen as a legitimate job, or should be treated as a component of organized crime that is inherently linked to problems like human trafficking. Girasoles de Nicaragua…is backed by USAID [and] formed…to fight “stigma, discrimination and violence”…the organization has…deployed 25 employees across the country, reportedly providing some 500 women with health aid, literacy training, and legal support. It plans to partner with the police in investigating crimes related to the sex trade, and form alliances with other international organizations that promote sex workers’ rights, including Argentina-based network RedTraSex. The group argues that sex work should be recognized as a respectable form of self-employment…that allows women to support themselves and their families…

The rest of the article, as should be evident from the lede, devolves into the usual “human trafficking cartel” nonsense, branding the group’s statements to reporters “confused” and implying that they know less about their own field than lay people who read “trafficking” propaganda.

Elephant in the Parlor (October 23^rd, 2012)

Politician. Whores. Yawn.

Michael Wiener, a…[New Mexico] county commissioner …is being asked to resign after a picture of him posing with scantily clad women in a well-known red light district in the Philippines…[was posted by] photographer John Keatley…on his blog. Wiener…[wrote] that…”NOTHING untoward ever happened…The pictures taken are as innocent as any that could be taken at Twin Peaks or Hooters here“…[but] Keatley said “…It was very obvious to me that he was not respectful to women. He was there to have a good time”…

Because to the neofeminism-addled mind, “respectful to women” and “good time” are mutually exclusive.

Umpteen Thousand People Can’t Be Wrong (November 12^th, 2011)

“A group of senators has introduced a resolution urging Village Voice Media to take down the ‘adult entertainment’ section of its classified-ads site, Backpage.com.” Blah, blah, blah. You know the rest.

Presents, Presents, Presents! (December 29^th, 2011)

Darren Thompson sent me an Amazon gift certificate this week, which I used to get several small items: The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb, Pretty Baby and two discs of Warner Brothers cartoons that weren’t on my wish list. Thank you so much!

Sleazier Than Thou (January 30^th, 2012)

Ashley Madison is well known for its lies, deception and sleazy advertising, but this is slimy even for them:

For the past four years, infidelity-based matchmaking site AshleyMadison.com has seen an influx of married women signing up for its services on…the day after Mother’s Day. According to the site’s founder, Noel Biderman, more married women join the site on that day than on any other…”If that day comes to pass, and once again what [women] experience is a lack of appreciation, affection and respect, that is when the idea of taking on a potential lover takes full form,” Biderman said…

Note found by an amateur on her door.

Guys, very few actual living women sign up for Ashley Madison on ANY day. The majority of those who do are whores, and the rest aren’t being truthful about their age or weight; Biderman is a lying shyster out to take your money. That having been said, it’s probably best to be extra-sweet to your wife on Mother’s Day; yes, I know she isn’t your mother, and I agree…but she may not, and that could mean trouble.

Prudish Pedants (March 22^nd, 2012)

And all it took was triple jeopardy and lying to the jury about the legality of nullification:

A jury today found fetish filmmaker Ira Isaacs guilty on five counts of violating federal obscenity laws. He’ll be sentenced on Aug. 6. It was the third…trial…The first two ended with mistrials…[the] federal prosecutor…said…that Isaacs’ goal…was solely to make money, but Isaacs’ attorney…said…that the case is about testing the First Amendment… Judge George King…told [the jury] that it’s their duty to weigh and evaluate all the evidence and decide the facts based solely on the law, reason and common sense and not their opinion or speculation…

Much Ado About Nothing (April 18^th, 2012)

Agent Cheapskate has finally been unmasked as Arthur Huntington, who “lives in Saverna Park, Md. [and] is a married father of two whose wife leads Bible study in the neighborhood…the Secret Service has created new rules forbidding all foreigners but hotel staff in agents’ rooms and barring them from visiting ‘seedy establishments’.” In other news, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee admitted that the whores were just whores, not spies or international gangsters: “It does not appear that these guys were targeted. [It wasn’t] a foreign organization attempting to seduce Secret Service agents…There’s no evidence that any of the women have any involvement with narco-terrorists or any type of terrorist organization. Basically, they’re prostitutes.”

Which, of course, every hooker in the world already knew.

My Favorite Books (April 26^th, 2012)

I think these folks are reading far too much into a discarded first draft, but it’s still interesting:

Newly-discovered draft pages of Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s “The Little Prince“…will be auctioned off later this month after a rare public viewing…The first page contains a piece of text that’s partly retained in chapter 19 of the published work. But the second leaf of the work is completely original…In 1943, the text turned from a scribbled manuscript by a relatively unknown author, into a literary phenomenon that has since sold 140 million copies, in about 260 languages. After The Bible, “The Little Prince” is the most translated book in history, according to the…Saint-Exupery Foundation. Sadly, the author would never know the extent of his book’s success: he died shortly after its first publication in a mysterious plane crash in 1944 while on active service in World War II…

Metaupdates

Shifting the Blame in The Beat Goes On (Part One) (January 18^th, 2012)

“Two men were held for questioning Tuesday as part of an investigation into the slayings of four Detroit women whose bodies were found in car trunks after three of them placed online escort ads…”

Feminine Pragmatism in TW3 (#13) (March 31^st, 2012)

“Octomom” Nadya Suleman, who filed for bankruptcy this week with $1 million in debts and $50,000 in assets, has agreed to do a masturbation video for Vivid for $100,000. She insists it isn’t really porn (which she has sworn never to do) because it’s a solo act; do you think I should send her a copy of “Little Boxes”?

Good News, Bad News in TW3 (#14) (April 6^th, 2012)

Elena Jeffreys explains the probable effects of the sleazy political deal which could impose a version of the Swedish Model on Western Australia:

Adele Carles is no friend of the HIV sector, no friend of STI prevention, and her $5.5 million sex worker ‘rescue’ centre is going to cost the WA Liberals, and any future government, that friendship as well. What will it cost sex workers? Our ability to protect ourselves. Our health. And our dignity…The…centre is being horse-traded in Western Australia…for votes over Christian Porter’s anti-sex work Prostitution Bill. Doomed from the start, Porter authored the Bill by not listening to his own policy staff, ignoring sex workers and the sex worker movement, and thumbing his nose at the Liberal’s own ‘numbers people’…With a lack of buy-in from the industry, total opposition from the churches and zero support from both the ALP and the Greens, suddenly Independent MP…Adele Carles, has the power to call the shots…[Carles’ scheme would be funded by] gutting the existing sex worker service and building a new service geared towards the redemption, exit and retraining of sex workers out of the industry rather than the current approach of harm reduction for current sex workers…

One Year Ago Today

“May Updates (Part Two)” reports on harm reduction for untreatable alcoholics, junk science equating a vital food component with hard drugs, and government busybodies trying to “protect” babies from the scourge of mother’s milk.

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Sleazier Than Thou

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, tagged anecdote, Ashley Madison, disease, ethics, fantasy, harm reduction, infidelity, Madonna/whore, marriage, politicians, prohibitionist myths, stereotypes on January 30, 2012| 41 Comments »

Blessed be they as virtuous, who when they feel their virile members swollen with lust, visit a brothel rather than grind at some husband’s private mill. – Cato the Younger

Those who read my “2011 in Review” column may have noticed that after adjusting for several very popular picture searches, my second most popular column was “Ashley Madison”, published one year ago today; discounting those who viewed it on the home page, it was viewed 3569 times last year. The reason for this is simple; upon seeing an ad for this con game disguised as a dating service, many people try to look it up online to see what others have to say about it. Noel Biderman, the Toronto shyster who dreamed up this scam, anticipated this and acted accordingly:

Do a Google search for any phrase like “Ashley Madison scam”, “Ashley Madison fraud” or “Ashley Madison review” and you’ll find websites stocked with testimonials for the agency and either insinuating or outright stating that escorts carry venereal diseases. Of course, as my regular readers know this is a crock of shit; escorts have a vested interest in staying clean, and promiscuous amateurs have far higher rates of every known STD. Why are these sites so eerily similar and why do they all carry praise for the agency when their names suggest otherwise? Because they’re all owned by Biderman, of course, as a quick whois search will reveal. It took me a bit of diligent digging to find any REAL criticism of the agency…

What I found was revealed in last year’s column, and it’s not pretty; male customers have to…

…buy “credits” which are needed to do pretty much anything on the site (send a message, receive a message, start a chat, etc). The agency employs a number of shills and/or robots which bombard male members with fake messages that cost credits to open, and sending messages to the fake “too good to be true” ads costs credits as well and goes nowhere…Everything is set up like a casino or a carnival con game, enticing the poor bastard to keep throwing good money after bad in a futile effort to get something for nothing.

Biderman has himself a sweet little racket going, but he couldn’t have anticipated that a certain website which exposes the swindle would end up as the second result from the top whenever someone Googles “Ashley Madison testimonials” (in fact, mine is the only site on the first page which isn’t owned by Biderman). I’m also the first result on page two for the search “Ashley Madison scam”, and I’m sure you’ll get similar results by combining the agency’s name with words like “fraud”, “flim-flam”, “hustle”, “rip-off”, “shakedown” or “sucker game” (at least, you will now).

There are lots of hucksters out there pulling the wool over people’s eyes, so you may wonder why Biderman’s con in particular annoys me so. There are two important reasons: First, as I’ve stated many times, I think it’s reprehensible for a married man to cheat on his wife with an amateur, because she could jeopardize his whole marriage and even put his wife in danger, yet here is Biderman trying to convince people that the immoral course of action is moral and vice-versa. Second, as I stated above, his fake “testimonial” websites all either imply or directly state the outrageous lie that escorts carry venereal disease while cheating housewives are somehow magically protected from viruses, spirochetes and even pthiridae via the prophylactic power of most holy matrimony. As if that weren’t enough, he’s added other prohibitionist myths to his smear campaign in the past year; Aspasia recently sent me this photo of an Ashley Madison ad which Mariko Passion posted on her Facebook page. Seven men a day, my high-priced fanny; that’s not “average” by any stretch of the imagination, except in the dirty minds of prohibitionists. I only did that many in a day twice in my entire career, once in 2000 and again in 2005. And though it may be true that the average woman has sex with seven men in her lifetime, the average woman doesn’t cheat on her husband either (and even the average cheating woman doesn’t hook up with random strangers on the internet). As for that last line…92% of statistics are made up on the spot, eh Noel?

Now, sleazy Ashley Madison ads are nothing new; they’re practically a trademark. But one has to wonder if Biderman hasn’t “lost his Ouija board” (as Grace would put it) on this one, reported in Huffington Post on December 20^th:

…Ashley Madison, a “pro-adultery” website whose slogan is “Life is short. Have an affair,” put up a billboard in Bucks County, PA, that “endorses” Newt Gingrich for president. Gingrich has famously admitted to extramarital affairs in the past. The billboard boasts a large picture of Gingrich, with the text, “Faithful Republican, Unfaithful Husband. Welcome to the AshleyMadison.com Era”…site founder Noel Biderman explained further in a statement:

Now that Newt is the leading contender in the race for the GOP nomination, we felt compelled to make a point to illustrate how times have changed when a serial divorcee/adulterer is capturing the hearts of the American people. Gingrich proves that marital fidelity has no bearing on someone’s ability to do a job. Rather than judge him, Americans have finally embraced the reality that affairs are commonplace, and perhaps paradoxically, might be an indication of great leadership to come. He is not the first nor last politician who will step outside of their marriage.

Of course, most smart politicians do their cheating with whores; those foolish enough to try it with amateurs risk losing everything, which makes them pretty much the same as other men…though Biderman would rather you forget that.

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The Beat Goes On (Part Two)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, tagged A False Dichotomy, Australia, bad customers, BDSM, brothels, condoms, cops, dirty, disease, East Asia, ethics, harm reduction, infidelity, law, Madonna/whore, marriage, Michigan, neofeminism, pimps, Secret Squirrel, semen, sex work is work, sisterhood, stereotypes, streetwalkers, surveillance, Thailand, Where Are the Protests? on January 19, 2012| 24 Comments »

The grocery store’s the super mart, uh huh
Little girls still break their hearts, uh huh
And men still keep on marching off to war
Electrically they keep a baseball score. – Sonny Bono, “The Beat Goes On”

Three more variations on previous themes.

A False Dichotomy (June 22^nd, 2011)

As I’ve pointed out many times, prohibitionist laws (and legalization regimes) are based in the ridiculous notion that sex work is magically different from all other work, and that whores somehow need “protection” from our own choices; accordingly, artificial lines are drawn and false dichotomies constructed between whores and other women, “sex buyers” and other men, streetwalkers and “indoor” workers, “free” and “coerced” prostitutes, those who cross borders to buy or sell sex and those who don’t, etc. This January 1^st op-ed in the Sydney Morning Herald by Elena Jeffreys (no relation to Sheila as far as I know) deconstructs a lot of this nonsense:

…Sex workers… make money from sex work. The clients…pay for sex work. This is a relationship, this is negotiation and this is a system in our culture. Yet our laws, social mores and the morality police tell us it’s scandalous – a one-way ticket to hell. Or jail, if you live in Sweden. All this assumes that sex workers and clients are supposedly doing something wrong. But what makes it wrong? The government, even when it legalises or reforms laws in favour of sex workers, does not want to be seen to be endorsing sex work – just regulating it for those who are in it and need ”protection”. What are we being protected from? Why should it be reasonable to criminalise the negotiation of financial arrangements for sex? Rape is criminal. Violent assault is criminal. But consensual sex with a dollar figure attached to it is not. In [New South Wales] sex work is decriminalised and workers, clients and health advocates believe it should stay that way. We are talking about 30 minutes or so of massage, sex, nakedness, talking, showering, then getting on with your life. Is that evil or wrong? Negotiate, pay or be paid, have sex, see ya later.

…Now I know what you are thinking. It’s OK for me. I’m articulate, educated. I get articles published by newspapers. I’ve been president of the Australian Sex Workers Association. I can see what you might prefer to imagine: a typical downtrodden, desperate sex worker without any choices or an education, struggling on the streets with pimps breathing down her neck and unable to use condoms. Facing violence. Facing addiction. Facing a personal hell prescribed to her by men who want to pay for quick sex. Let’s examine some facts. Sydney’s…street-working area was the first site of condom use in Australia…Why? Because street-based sex workers knew about HIV and didn’t want to catch a life-threatening disease. In the brothels…owners were stopping sex workers from using condoms, threatening sacking, and worried about losing business. But because street-based sex workers were demanding condom use, it made the brothel workers more able to stand up for themselves and demand condom use also…Street-based sex workers are organised about their rights in ways that go unnoticed on night-time TV cop shows…[they] are often imagined as victims…In fact, [they] are victimised by laws, police and lack of access to justice. Not by clients who spend money to have sex with us.

The same applies to sex tourism…Even if…1 million Australian clients travelled to Thailand for sex tourism, Thai men even at the conservative estimate of 15 per cent visiting sex workers, STILL outnumber potential Australian clients 3 to 1…Thai sex workers [state] that their bread-and-butter income is from local clients and that travelling Anglo men make up only a small – but consistent and welcome – clientele. What’s more, it is our racist Western attitudes when we see a Thai sex worker with a white, fat, old Western man that lead us to believe she is being victimised by him…But as the sex workers in the Chiang Mai offices of EMPOWER say: ”Many fat old men are very respectful, kind, entertaining, generous and polite customers. We don’t discriminate.”

In the words of author and sex worker Juliet November, ”Sometimes sex work is about being gentle with someone’s need for touch; sometimes it’s about being kind toward a man who’s ashamed of his body; sometimes it’s about being friendly and fun with someone who’s lonely; sometimes it’s about holding someone’s vulnerability very lightly in your hands; sometimes it’s about making someone feel desired…sometimes it’s about sharing intimacy, cigarettes and a laugh.” So let’s rid ourselves of our prejudices and preconceptions and repeat after me: IT’S OK TO PAY!

Secret Squirrel (July 16^th, 2011)

I’ll slightly modify my own previous statement to introduce this January 5^th item from Jezebel: “I guess the concept of ‘trust’ has gone out of style. And perhaps I’m old-fashioned or idealistic, but I think it would irreparably shatter my relationship with a person if I found out he or she had used this nasty little Secret Squirrel [procedure] on my [underwear]”:

…Infidelity DNA Testing’s incredibly creepy press release asks, “How many times have victims had the horrible feeling that their husband, wife or partner was cheating on them but were afraid to confront their partners without 100% non-disputable proof?” Really, if there’s anything the Clinton presidency taught us, it’s that all infidelity scenarios are made much better by semen analysis. And with just a little underwear subterfuge…satisfaction — of a sort — can be yours:

The process is real [sic] simple. Just provide us an article of clothing preferably underwear or panties and we will do the rest. We can identify if semen is present, make sure it’s viable for dna [sic] extraction and then do a final comparison to make sure the DNA belongs to the correct person.

He adds, “There is just no legitimate reason or lie that a wife can come up with for having another man’s semen in her panties.” And why stop with wives? Users can submit men’s underwear too, to be tested for semen or for incriminating ladyjuices. The real piece de resistance of creepiness, though, is Infidelity DNA Testing’s suggestion that you use its semen detection service to find out if “your daughter is having sex.” Because having your child’s panties analyzed is definitely a better option than talking to her about sex…in order for it to work, your partner (or, cringe, daughter) would have to have unprotected sex and then leave underwear soiled from such sex around for you to find. If your wife or girlfriend is doing that, chances are she’s also giving you other signs that she’s cheating. And if you’re even thinking about stealing some of her underwear for DNA analysis, your relationship is probably in trouble. Actually, I think Infidelity DNA Testing does provide one useful service: breakup advice. If you are seriously considering working with them, you should break up. And this test is actually free!

I totally agree; if you have that little trust for your wife, your relationship is doomed so you might as well save the money and just break up. With “no fault” divorce it doesn’t matter if she’s cheating anyhow, so why bother? And if it’s your daughter, you stand to lose a lot more from spying on her than from letting her have sex.

Where Are the Protests? (December 3^rd, 2011)

From the December 30^th Huffington Post:

A health alert warning residents of Michigan’s Kent County that “possibly hundreds of people have been exposed to HIV” was issued…after the arrest of David Dean Smith, a 51-year-old HIV-positive man who told police he was on a mission to infect as many people as possible, MSNBC reports. Smith allegedly told Grand Rapids police…that over the past three years, he had engaged in unprotected sex with as many partners as he could – a number he estimated to be in the “thousands” – in an effort to infect them with HIV and kill them…Smith targeted Michigan residents as well as those living many states away, whom he contacted via Yahoo! Personals…It’s unclear why Smith chose to alert authorities of his behavior at this time, but…he has a history of mental illness which includes a recent admission…for threatening suicide….hospital records say that Smith is “sexually aroused by causing pain to females”…

Now, I don’t believe for one second that “thousands” of women gave this loony free bareback pussy. But as I wrote in the previous column, “Where are all the protests, the online petitions and the expensive full-page newspaper ads demanding that [Yahoo] close its [personals] section? After all, it’s being used by [psychos] to lure [women] to their deaths! Sure, [attempted] murder…[isn’t] as bad as prostitution, but [his method involved sex], so surely that counts for something?”

One Year Ago Today

“Hello, Dolly!” is a short birthday tribute to Dolly Parton (she turns 66 today), who has never disguised her admiration for and support of hookers.

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Neither Addiction nor Epidemic

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, Perception, Philosophy, tagged censorship, crypto-moralism, dirty, ethics, Hollywood, hysteria, infidelity, marriage, Neither Addiction nor Epidemic, neofeminism, pathologization of males, porn, psychology, yin and yang on December 4, 2011| 110 Comments »

Thought is an infection. In the case of certain thoughts, it becomes an epidemic. – Wallace Stevens

Back in February I published “Not an Addiction”, in which I criticized the popular confusion of the word “addiction” with the related concepts of habituation and obsession. I was (and remain) especially critical of the concept of “sex addiction”:

Craving something the body (food, water and oxygen) or mind (sex and companionship) actually needs is not and cannot be an “addiction”, though it can certainly become an obsession if one thinks about it to the exclusion of all else and indulges in erratic, inappropriate or even dangerous behavior to gain access to whatever it is he is obsessed with. In the late ‘90s certain pop psychologists started throwing the term “sex addiction” around, and though it is totally impossible to be “addicted” to sex…the term has nonetheless become very popular in the general public and even a few psychological professionals have adopted it (though only for use in popular articles). What makes this improper term even more damaging than such asininity as “internet addiction” is that A) it is confused with the real and serious psychological disorder which the DSM-IV calls “hypersexuality” (and which was previously called “nymphomania” in women and “satyriasis” in men); and B) it has been co-opted by neofeminists to mean “sexual behavior which falls well within the normal range of male behavior but outside the normal range of female behavior.” We’ve previously discussed the damage done to society by neofeminist pathologization of normal male behavior; the application of the very strong term “addiction” to behavior characteristic of two-thirds of men is more of the same and should be fought by every man and every woman who loves men.

Given Newsweek’s fondness for promoting hysteria and willingness to jump on the neofeminist anti-sex bandwagon in its increasingly-yellow pages, it will surprise absolutely no one to hear that on November 25^th it published a scare-story under the title “The Sex Addiction Epidemic”. Holy mixed metaphors, Batman! Author Chris Lee writes that this supposed affliction “wrecks marriages, destroys careers, and saps self-worth” and ominously warns that “Americans are being diagnosed as sex addicts in record numbers”; considering that “sex addiction” is not a valid diagnosis (it doesn’t appear in DSM-IV and, as I confidently predicted in February, was rejected for DSM-V), this statement is roughly equivalent to “record numbers of Americans are being diagnosed with orgone deficiency.” But because the truth rarely supports hysteria, Lee eschews interviewing reputable psychologists and instead quotes religious counselors, the director of a “reality” TV show about “sex addicts”, the staff of for-profit “sex addiction” clinics and other quacks.

Salon, on the other hand, published a Tracy Clark-Flory interview with clinical psychologist David Ley entitled “Don’t Believe the Sex Addiction Hype”; it starts out strong:

The sexy alarmism of Newsweek’s latest cover story is irresistible — but it should be viewed with extreme skepticism. Mental health experts haven’t come to the consensus that sex addiction even exists, let alone that it’s an epidemic. The cultural phenomenon of sex addiction, which I first wrote about in 2009, is just that: A cultural phenomenon, not a legitimate medical diagnosis, and the release this week of the much buzzed-about “Shame,” a sex-addiction drama starring Michael Fassbender, further secures the concept’s place in the zeitgeist. Never mind that it was rejected from the upcoming revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), psychiatry’s bible.

…and it just gets better when Dr. Ley comes in:

…The sex-addiction concept is a belief system, not a diagnosis; it’s not a medically supported concept. The science is abysmal…over the past year or two, [proponents of the sex addiction model] have started trying to use brain science to explain it. They’re now talking about morphological changes that supposedly happen in the brain as somebody watches porn or has too much sex. The reality is, careful scientists will tell you they are absolutely unable to identify any brain differences between these alleged sex addicts and non-sex addicts…[and] that the brain changes constantly — any behavior that a person engages in, especially repetitively, changes your brain. So, identifying changes related to this sexual behavior and distinguishing it from anything else is absolutely ridiculous…

And better still:

They are typically unable to put forth a healthy model of sexuality, and when they do, it is so transparently conservative and religiously driven that it’s frightening. Most of the leaders of the sex-addiction movement are themselves recovering supposed sex addicts and religious folks…what they’re advocating for is a moral system, not a medical one. For a while, they were pushing the idea that if you had an orgasm once a day, every day, that made you a sex addict — but they finally had to back off on that because data was building up showing that there are lots of people who have sex once a day and have no problems. That’s the other big hole in their argument: For every one of the behaviors they raise as addictive — whether it’s porn, strip clubs, masturbation, infidelity, going to prostitutes — I can present 10,000 people who engage in the exact same behavior and have no problems, and they can’t explain why that is…This is a moral attack on sexuality…They [want] people to…develop fear of sex. Because they think that if we’re not afraid of sex, people are going to go out and have lots of sex. God forbid.

And best of all:

Instead of examining the application of the concept of monogamy over a 30- or 40-year marriage, and looking at how male sexuality works, it’s much easier to say: “Well, it’s a disease.” I include a quote in my book where a woman says, “When my husband was cheating, it really was a comfort to consider it a disease and that it really wasn’t his fault. Finally, I had to realize that it wasn’t a disease, it was just him being selfish and treating my life and health casually”…There’s incredible risk of pathology here — we only need to look at the history of nymphomania to see that. Women had their clitorises removed, they were subjected to electroshock therapy, all kinds of medication. When female sexuality was diagnosed as a disease. Now male sexuality is diagnosed as a disease, only instead of getting electroshock therapy they get the country-club treatment for 30 days.

If you have time, you really ought to read the whole article; Flory writes well and is consistently sex-work friendly and skeptical of anti-sex propaganda, and Dr. Ley has the balls to buck the politically correct narrative and call a spade a spade. The public sphere needs more people like both of them to help combat the rising tide of ignorance which threatens to engulf us all.

(Thanks to regular reader Marla for calling my attention to BOTH articles!)

One Year Ago Today

“Courtesan Denial” is a species of historical revisionism spawned to resolve the cognitive dissonance caused by the knowledge that courtesans, temple prostitutes and the like were highly respected in their times, coupled with the belief that all prostitution is degrading.

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Part of the Picture

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, Perception, Philosophy, tagged censorship, dirty, Europe, harm reduction, hysteria, infidelity, law, marriage, masturbation, neofeminism, Part of the Picture, porn, psychology, social purity, yin and yang on August 29, 2011| 81 Comments »

Faith…tries to retain a primitive mental condition on merely sentimental grounds. It is unwilling to give up the primitive, childlike relationship to mind-created and hypostatized figures; it wants to go on enjoying the security and confidence of a world still presided over by powerful, responsible, and kindly parents. – Carl Jung

The universe is a very complex place. When human civilization was young we weren’t really able to grasp how complex, so we imagined that most things were largely as they appeared to be and that the mysteries of the world were all caused by intelligent, free-willed beings like ourselves, only more powerful. Thus was religion born; in its earliest form it served to explain the world, to give emotional comfort and to provide a unifying structure over related (but separate) groups of people, thus allowing organization of tribes into cities and nations. But as time went on, humans developed science (which explained things better than religion ever did), civil government (which organized things at least as well as religion ever did), and social and political philosophies which…well, two out of three ain’t bad. And thus religion became a solution in search of a problem, and so it remained until the increasing complexity and uncertainty of the modern world caused many people, overwhelmed by a world they could not understand, to retreat into religions and religion-like belief systems which promised them simplicity and certainty. Since these systems are rigid and simplistic, they cannot possibly describe the world as it is; they therefore exclude facts which do not fit the picture by denying or simply ignoring them. A simple, static view of the world is impossible unless one considers only part of the picture.

Sex is one of the most complex of human realities; it is dark, violent, chthonic, animalistic and occurs in a bewildering multiplicity of forms, yet forms the basis of our most powerful emotions and most enduring social relationships and is an intrinsic part of the human life-cycle (every one of us is the product of heterosexual copulation). Small wonder that it makes nearly everyone uncomfortable to one degree or another, and that humans have been trying to control it, individually and collectively, since practically the dawn of civilization. Primitive societies and religions had few sexual laws, but as humanity aged cultures felt an increasing need to make laws against sexual behavior they considered somehow disturbing. Due to the fact that though the mother of a child is always known, the father never actually was until DNA testing was invented, most of these laws at first concentrated on controlling female sexuality so paternity could be ascertained with a reasonable degree of certainty (in theory, anyhow); the laws which applied to males mostly dealt with incest, bestiality and that sort of thing. For reasons we’ve discussed before Judaism had an unusually high number of sex laws, and when the followers of a certain 1^st-century rabbi managed to build their sect into an international phenomenon those sex laws went with them; when combined with the Platonic distrust of the material world absorbed from the Gnostics, they engendered a rejection of sexuality more aggressive and complete than that of any previous religion.

But though Europe was entirely Christian in name by the end of the first millennium CE, a pagan view of sexuality was still the norm among most of the population (especially the lower classes) until the Protestant Reformation, when the Church’s light-handed supervision of politics and broad tolerance of what it considered minor vices were replaced in many areas by near-theocratic governments and total suppression of vice. Laws derived from religious teachings became more and more common, ebbing and flowing in waves until the “social purity” crusade of the late 19^th century succeeded in establishing anti-sex laws based in a rigid, Protestant interpretation of Christian morality over virtually the entire Western world. And though these laws are still the norm in the United States, they are beginning to erode here and have already largely decayed in most other Western countries. Those of us who believe in self-determination, individual liberty and other such rational principles feel this is a good thing, but those who are disturbed by moral complexities and afraid of self-reliance yearn for a time when puritanical notions of Christian morality were enforced at gunpoint. So they join religious groups whose avowed doctrine is the eradication of “sin” and the promotion of laws against prostitution, porn, homosexuality and other behaviors they perceive as “immoral”.

But lest one believe that these people are thoroughgoing hypocrites, consider this August 21^st article from CNN about various Christian anti-porn “therapy” programs (the link seems very temperamental, so I’ve saved it in PDF form just in case you can’t get it to work). Most of those interviewed are men who have bought into the twisted delusion that masturbation or even looking at pictures of women to whom they aren’t married is a form of infidelity, largely based on a literal reading of Matthew 5:28 (“whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart”) and an 18^th-century interpretation of the story of Onan. This is really nothing new; the idea that some kind of “therapy” can prevent masturbation and “lascivious thoughts” dates to the end of the 19^th century. What is new, though by no means surprising, is the fusion of Christian dogma with feminist rhetoric and “sex addiction” pop psychology; “addiction” is portrayed as an outside force which tempts the “pure” mind to fall into “sin” and thus causes it to depart from “God’s plan”, just as devils were once imagined to do. Some of the programs are simply ordinary therapy with a Christian component; others are a more equal fusion, and still others rely largely or entirely on the imagined power of prayer to exorcise unholy lust. Web-based services hawk porn-detection spyware that sends copies to the user’s spouse or a friend in order to shame him into refraining. And as you can probably guess, practitioners of each method strongly criticize all the other ones.

Nor is it only men who join these programs; because women are generally less at ease with normal sexuality than men are, the majority of anti-sex crusaders are and always have been women. In the past female sexuality was not a subject “proper” women would discuss in reference to themselves, so the fingers of accusation were (and still are, in the case of neofeminists) pointed outward at other women. But now that female sexuality has been removed from the dark cupboard in which it was kept for centuries, women who are uncomfortable with their own sexuality are now free to hop on the self-loathing bandwagon and pronounce themselves “sex addicts” and “porn addicts” just like men. The CNN story rightfully treats Crystal Renaud’s “Dirty Girls Ministries” as part of the larger Christian anti-porn, anti-masturbation movement, but an article in the September Utne Reader rather oddly chooses to portray it as an isolated phenomenon. Considering the magazine’s target audience this was probably done in order to sell the “feminist” angle, but I wonder if the fact that some feminists really do believe male masturbation to be adultery might not have something to do with it. Whatever the reason, the writer, like a Christian anti-sex “therapist”, is only presenting part of the picture.

One Year Ago Today

“Whore Madonnas” offers an anecdotal refutation of the Madonna-whore duality by relating the stories of three women who only became whores because they were Madonnas first.

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Not An Addiction

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, tagged dirty, ethics, hysteria, infidelity, marriage, neofeminism, Not An Addiction, psychology, yin and yang on February 11, 2011| 68 Comments »

Addiction (Psychiatry): A preoccupation with and compulsive use of a substance despite recurrent adverse consequences; addiction often involves a loss of control and tolerance, and may be associated with a biological predisposition to addiction. – The McGraw-Hill Concise Dictionary of Modern Medicine, 2002 edition

An addiction is a physical and psychological dependence on some psychoactive substance (such as alcohol, tobacco or an opiate) which affects brain chemistry; if there is no gross physiological change in the body’s function which renders normal function impossible without the substance, there is no addiction. It’s normal for words to shift their meanings in common usage; sometimes they become more specific (“stench” once meant any odor, but now it specifically means a very bad odor) and sometimes less. The word “addiction” has, in common usage, become confused with the related concepts of habituation (psychological reliance on a substance which is not physiologically addictive) and obsession (psychological fixation on a behavior). And while that sort of confusion is OK for common words, it becomes a problem when the word in question has a specific scientific or academic meaning because legislators and special interest groups often use the popular meaning of such a word in a context where only the scientific meaning should be permitted, thus intentionally or unintentionally creating confusion in the minds of listeners. For example, in the recent defeated attempt to decriminalize marijuana possession in California, opponents repeatedly called it an addictive substance when in fact it is not. Though marijuana is certainly habituating (long-time users crave it and experience psychological symptoms when deprived), it is not addictive to a normal physiology and the pothead deprived of his weed will not experience any medical withdrawal symptoms worth noting.

The same is true of the plethora of behaviors people to which people now claim “addiction” such as computers, television, work, gambling or shopping; I guarantee you that if I locked up a compulsive gambler and denied him access to casinos, he would become upset, erratic or even highly depressed, but he would not die and blood tests would reveal only the neurochemical changes one would expect to result from his mood shifts. An even stupider claim is that of “food addiction”; every last person on the face of the Earth is a “food addict”, because food deprivation will grossly affect our moods, behavior and physiological function and if we are deprived for long enough we eventually die. One might as well claim to be an “oxygen addict”. Craving something the body (food, water and oxygen) or mind (sex and companionship) actually needs is not and cannot be an “addiction”, though it can certainly become an obsession if one thinks about it to the exclusion of all else and indulges in erratic, inappropriate or even dangerous behavior to gain access to whatever it is he is obsessed with.

In the late ‘90s certain pop psychologists started throwing the term “sex addiction” around, and though it is totally impossible to be “addicted” to sex (as explained above) the term has nonetheless become very popular in the general public and even a few psychological professionals have adopted it (though only for use in popular articles). What makes this improper term even more damaging than such asininity as “internet addiction” is that A) it is confused with the real and serious psychological disorder which the DSM-IV calls “hypersexuality” (and which was previously called “nymphomania” in women and “satyriasis” in men); and B) it has been co-opted by neofeminists to mean “sexual behavior which falls well within the normal range of male behavior but outside the normal range of female behavior.” We’ve previously discussed the damage done to society by neofeminist pathologization of normal male behavior; the application of the very strong term “addiction” to behavior characteristic of two-thirds of men is more of the same and should be fought by every man and every woman who loves men.

Here’s a recent example of a professional unethically catering to this misconception of “addiction” in order to make a fast buck from Match.com; though the author states near the beginning of her article that DSM-IV doesn’t recognize the concept of “sex addiction” as valid, she undermines the statement by claiming it’s being considered for DSM-V (it isn’t, though a form of sexual obsession less serious than hypersexuality might be). And since she then for the rest of the article proceeds to use the term to refer to any man who cheats, you can be sure most of her readers will forget she ever said otherwise long before reaching the last sentence.

The news has overflowed lately with salacious tales of cheating husbands…while each of these guys acted despicably toward the women they’d married, do they really fit the “sex addict” stereotype? What, technically, is sex addiction? Counselors say errors in judgment do not classify someone as sexually “addicted.” The Society for the Advancement of Sexual Health reports that “sex addicts” comprise only 3-5% of overall the population. The official handbook of psychiatric diagnoses, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), doesn’t include a diagnosis for this ailment, although it is being considered for inclusion in the 2012 edition.

With the professionals themselves disagreeing on who is and is not a sex addict, how can a single woman assess whether the guy she’s dating will be faithful? Daniel Amen, M.D. reveals that if a man’s fourth finger is longer than his second finger, he is likely to stray…[and] brain scans can identify who will cheat. While the finger test is easy…who would shell out the cash for a brain scan? …Researcher Arthur Aron speculates that a man’s level of commitment grows stronger depending on how much his romantic partner enhances his life. While this discovery won’t change an addict’s history (and altering addictive behavior is difficult), if an addict is dedicated to building an expanded future together with his romantic partner, changing his cheating behaviors may be possible. Morris Halperin, Ph.D., adds that a sex addict is someone whose compulsive behavior prevents him from functioning in his own life…So who is a genuine sex addict — and who is just a very bad partner who struggles to remain faithful? And should the difference matter to a woman who is suffering with the fallout from a cheating mate?

I’m going to interrupt for a moment here to point out how much this article panders to unhealthy female preconceptions. A “test” can uncover if a man is in the third who won’t cheat, if he “really loves you” he won’t stray, and any infidelity makes a man a “very bad partner” no matter how he behaves in other ways.

Sexual addiction is usually accompanied by other addictions. For this reason, single women must be good detectives in regards to potential romantic partners…This CNN report by Elizabeth Cohen warns, “If you continue your sexual activities even under threat of being divorced, dead, fired, or arrested, you’re an addict.”

Yes, she’s advising women to spy, pry and do background checks, because the way to prevent a man from betraying your trust is obviously to betray his first. And we all know how accurate and well-researched CNN’s stories are.

…Elle…chose to stay with her cheating husband. When Elle discovered her husband romping with women and men…she demanded he tell her everything…he revealed that he was secretly working with a sex therapist because, like other sex addicts I interviewed, he hated his hidden life. Elle is still working to eliminate the “mind movies” of her husband engaging in sex outside of their marriage. Both of them continue to pursue therapy together, and he regularly attends 12-step programs…Elle said she saw her mother get sober after 25 years of drinking, so she knew addiction can be overcome…

Are 12-step programs helpful with obsessions as well as true addictions? Well, Overeaters Anonymous and Fundamentalists Anonymous think so. But do women like Elle deserve to know the truth about the real reasons for undesirable male behaviors instead of being told they are “addictions”? Absolutely; it’s called “informed consent”.

Elle tells single women to beware of three red flags:

-“Frat boy” humor consisting of inappropriate comments
-Pawing at your body sexually, despite your objections
-Blatant objectification of women as only being useful for sex

My own suggestions for women who suspect their man may have a sex addiction include:

-Ask questions about your guy’s parents, their relationship dynamic, and explore any possible stories or memories he might have of early molestation.
-Check out the length of your guy’s fourth finger…Even if you’re skeptical about this finding, use the information as a guide nonetheless.

Yes, if your man makes dirty jokes or gropes you while you’re trying to wash the dishes, if his ring finger is longer than his index finger or if he denies he was ever molested or objects when you keep obsessing about it, he’s probably a “sex addict” despite the fact that at least one of those statements applies to probably 95% of heterosexual males.

When people make grandiose, inflated claims, the critical thinker asks “what’s in it for them?” And in this case, the answer lies in the very last line: “If you seek out dates that have the potential for true, caring mates, you may save yourself from broken heart in the end.” And how do you seek out such dates? Why, on Match.com of course, whose links are conveniently located before, after and in the middle of the article.

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