Unlike Takao who is very much missed, Komurasaki is missed by no one. – a Yoshiwara courtesan, quoted in 1683
By now the regular reader should have noticed three recurring themes in my harlotographies: one of them pertains only to whores of pre-modern times; the second up to at least a century ago (though it is more pronounced in ancient stories); and the third up until the present day. Taking these in reverse order, they are as follows: the inability of amateurs to simply report biographical facts without embellishing, dramatizing and romanticizing them; the difficulty of ascertaining even numeric biographical details with any certainty; and the confusion of more than one harlot with the same name. All three principles are highly noticeable in the tale of Takao, a Japanese oiran (courtesan) who lived from 1640 to 1659; the lady in question was one of at least six courtesans (some sources say as high as eleven) with that name, and so is generally designated with the unimaginative moniker “Takao II”. Very little is known about her with any certainty other than the day of her death, December 5th, 1659; however, that didn’t stop talespinners from turning her story into one of the most popular of kabuki plays.
Until 1617 prostitution was completely legal in Japan, but in that year the Tokugawa Shogunate issued an order restricting prostitution to certain areas on the outskirts of cities. Yujo (“women of pleasure”) were licensed and ranked according to an elaborate hierarchy, with oiran (courtesans) at the top and brothel girls (who were essentially slaves) at the bottom. These “red-light districts” were not implemented for the moralistic reasons which spurred their creation in the West, but rather to enforce taxation and keep out undesirables such as ronin (masterless samurai); prostitutes were also not allowed to leave the district except under certain rigidly-controlled circumstances. Soon the districts grew into self-contained towns which offered every kind of entertainment a man might want, all entirely run by women. Once a girl became a prostitute her birth-rank ceased to matter, and her status was determined by such factors as beauty, personality, intelligence, education and artistic skills. Even among the oiran there were ranks, of which the highest were the tayu, courtesans fit to entertain nobles…
Takao was a tayu under contract to the Great Miura, the largest brothel of the Yoshiwara district. Though we know absolutely nothing about her personality or skills, they must have been as striking as her beauty for her to achieve the position of “top girl” at the Miura house soon after her debut, and to become the most sought-after courtesan in Yoshiwara within a short time thereafter. Every contemporary source (of which there are three) say she died of tuberculosis; Takabyōbu kuda monogatari (Tales of Grumbling Otokodate) also states that several of Takao’s clients paid for her funeral even though they had failed to visit her on her deathbed. But despite “consumption” being the traditional cause of courtesan demise in Western romance, Takao’s tragic death at the peak of her success wasn’t nearly dramatic enough for kabuki; for that love, treachery and violent death needed to be added.
Enter Date Tsunamune, who had become Lord of Mutsu at the age of eighteen after the death of his father. Some of his kin, however, plotted against him and managed to trick him into visiting Yoshiwara as a means of getting him out of the way. While there he hired Takao and immediately fell in love with her, proposing to buy out her contract and marry her. This much is largely historical; Tsunamune was a real person whose did indeed face opposition from his family (and was deposed in 1660). He may indeed have visited Yoshiwara, though a letter claimed to be from Takao to him has been proven a nineteenth-century forgery. But the rest of the story as told for generations is the stuff of fiction. Naturally, Takao is supposed to have rejected his offer; some sources feel mere dislike for the man or a desire for independence after the termination of her contract are insufficient motivations for the rejection, and invent a lover who had pledged to marry her when her term of indenture was up. I’m sure y’all can guess where the story goes next: Tsunamune refused to take “no” for an answer and made the brothel owner an offer she couldn’t refuse, Takao’s weight in gold for the contract. The owner accepted, but took advantage of Tsunamune’s lust by putting iron weights into the sleeves of Takao’s robe, boosting her weight to 75 kilograms. Some storytellers say that on the boat trip from the brothel, Takao hurled herself into the river to drown, counting on the weights to take her to the bottom; others say Tsunamune caught her in the attempt and killed her with his sword instead, then dumped her body. Still another version says that Tsunamune had one of her fingers broken for every day she refused his bed, and after he had gone through both hands he had her hanged. But all of these say that her death (whether by murder or suicide) was the excuse used by Tsunamune’s uncle to remove him from power.
Co-opting the lives of sex workers to tell lurid stories of woe and tragedy is nothing new; it’s been done for centuries, perhaps millennia, and shows no signs of stopping anytime soon. But at least in the Japanese variety, the tragedy derives from the freely-chosen actions of a proud, accomplished woman in defiance of fate, rather than from the pathetic subjugation of a cookie-cutter victim stereotype. And I don’t think there’s any need to explain which I prefer.
I think I can safely declare this blog a success. – “Fourth Anniversary”
Due to the decreasing number of daily slots available for general posts, this feature is appearing a little later than usual this year; in fact, I didn’t even get to write it until two days after the date on which it published last year. But here it is, better late than never; newer readers who haven’t seen one before may be interested in the description of how the statistics are derived from last year’s review column.
I received a total of 1,110,606 visitors in 2014, about 100,000 more than in the previous year; the average number of hits per day was 3043. My best month was January, with a total of 106,741 views (3443 per day); as you can see the performance is very consistent, with the high not all that far above the average. Indeed, the record for best single day is still held by October 6th, 2013 (9253 views). As it did last year, Twitter gave me the greatest number of referrals, 45,120 in all; it was followed by Reddit (8877 hits) and Facebook (7131). #4 was Popehat with 3438, #5 ErosBlog with 3339, #6 Girl on the Net with 2632, #7 Reason with 2011, #8 Heartiste with 1955, #9 ECCIE with 1900, and #10 USA Sex Guide with 1662. The top ten countries in which my readers live together account for about 85% of all of my traffic; #1 is the United States with 672,268 hits (60.5%); #2 the United Kingdom with 86,739 (7.8%); #3 Canada with 73,509 (6.6%); #4 Australia with 38,239 (3.4%); #5 Germany with 18,300 (1.65%); #6 The Netherlands with 14,106 (1.27%); #7 India with 13,831 (1.25%); #8 Japan with 13,558 (1.22%); #9 Singapore with 10,823 (0.98%); and #10 France with 10,624 (0.96%).
In a strong sign of my increasing popularity, the most common search which discovered this blog last year was “the honest courtesan” (in various permutations) with 1958 hits; “maggie mcneill” (spelled several different ways) was third with 1710. Perennial favorite “soapland” (in many different forms) was second with a total of 1858, and “rhinoceros” remained at fourth with 1402 hits. Various versions of “ashley madison” (many expecting “free” credits) came in fifth with 971 hits; the many different ways to say “penis shapes” came sixth (about 835 total). “P411” was seventh with about 385, then “escort terms” (various forms) with 358. Ninth place was “anonymous blogging” with 356, and finally many different forms of “vulva shapes” with 337. The numbers for all of these are dramatically lower than last years’; I’m sure this is due to Google’s continuing prudification of its search parameters, which also curtailed my traffic growth dramatically and reduced my page rank from a 5 to a 4.
Dr. Brooke Magnanti’s “How To Blog Anonymously (and how not to)” also had considerable traffic (16,423 hits in all); the reason it doesn’t appear in the table above is that it’s a static page rather than a post (I exclude my “Introduction” page for the same reason). The top post by comment has changed somewhat since last year:
Even with Google’s attempts to silence the voice of anyone who dares to write about sex, comparison with my reports for 2012 and 2013 will demonstrate just how much I’ve grown in both size and reach. And in the coming year, I plan to use every means at my disposal to increase that even more.
It is a somewhat quaint, futile idea that the sex trade, an industry which has continued with hardly a murmur for 20,000 years, will be “ended” by a bill passed through an ineffectual Canadian parliament, but politicians have never had much self-awareness when it comes to the limits of their own power. – J.R. Ireland
…Jennifer Stelly and her boyfriend Channing Castex were…pulled over for speeding in Brazoria County [Texas] in March 2013. Castex said he was handcuffed and put into a patrol car after he admitted to a state trooper that he had smoked marijuana. A female state trooper was called to search Stelly in full view of a dash-mounted camera. “She started going into my clothing and she penetrated areas that I don’t wish to disclose at this point,” Stelly said. “I was scared. I was violated. I didn’t know what to do”…the full, invasive cavity search happened on a busy freeway as people sped by…the same trooper [was] involved in [lawsuits over] two [other] roadside cavity searches two years ago…
Cowboys4Angels is at it again, trying to convince the world that their male escorts only have female clients; the “journalist” who wrote this fluff piece apparently didn’t do enough research to discover that they had to pay women to pretend to be clients on TV. But now agency owner Garren James also wants us to believe the “time and companionship” dodge, which at least in this case is probably closer to the truth.
This article in Cracked entitled “5 Ways Life as a Prostitute is Nothing Like You Expect” is nothing like perfect, and in some places it’s grating. But the reporter troubled himself to interview five actual sex workers for the piece, which is something American non-humor media can’t seem to manage.
…preparations for the upcoming Olympics Games in Tokyo include cleaning up red-light districts…“Nowadays, for job interviews at sex clubs, nine out of 10 women will be refused,” says “pink” writer Taizo Ebina…Such selectivity is due to a decrease in number of such businesses as the city attempts to sharpen its image prior to the arrival of hundreds of thousands of tourists in 2020…Tokyo had 847 “fashion health” joints…in 2007. Six years later, there were 813. Also experiencing declines over the same period were soapland bathhouses (1,239 to 1,218), adult-goods shops (340 to 232) and “encounter” coffee shops…
…Charles Hill, a business school professor…starts from the increasingly validated position that most sex workers have personal agency, and haven’t been coerced to pursue their trade. Dr. Hill suggests that…reducing demand side will [actually] increase supply…conservative aspects of society use morality as a tool to control sexuality, especially that of women, under the guise of providing a social good. And that the ways in which they exercise these tools consistently puts the weakest members of society at the greatest harm…
…[Former sex worker] Love…caught up [with an old friend], hanging out on the corner of Edgewater Road and Lafayette Avenue. When a car circled the block several times, Love assumed it was an acquaintance. She waved. “Hop in,” the man in the car demanded. “I’ve got thirty dollars for a blowjob.”
“OK, officer, have a nice day,” Love shot back. As she walked away, the man shouted, “You must be a cop. You’re calling me a cop.” Love forgot the man, until, as she walked back to the train station, three police officers…arrested Love for prostitution…[she] spent the night in a cell—missing a day of classes. The whole process took 24 hours…At the pre-trial hearings, Love had become increasingly confused. Undercover officers are supposed to wear a recording device in order to have proof that solicitation took place. Since Love never solicited anyone, the police department had no recording to present. Yet Judge Michels would not throw out the case…when the undercover cop took the stand, Love began to panic. She’d never seen this guy in her life. His story was filled with inconsistencies, but the prosecutor later said this only proved he was honest. The stranger on the stand testified that…Love offered him a $20 blowjob. For $30, he said, she’d fuck him in the street…
It’s bad enough that people think anything in a movie most be true; the new thing seems to be that anything written on a card held up by a po-faced person in a photo must be true:
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 Nikiforuk
…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 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…
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.
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…
…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…
…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.
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…
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.
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]…
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…
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…
…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…
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.
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…
…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…
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…
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”…
How about if I see you post this on YouTube, I’ll find a way for the DA’s office to arrest you? – “Trooper” Rosenblatt
It’s not surprising that I have so little for you this week; besides it being Christmas, I’ve had a lovely guest taking up my time (and that is not a complaint). As I explained last week, there were few holiday links this year, not even videos, so I’ve chosen two videos that I think will amuse you and make you feel good. The first (via Aspasia) is pretty self-explanatory, and I don’t know that I’ve ever in my life felt the kind of pure, canine joy the woman in the second video (via Tushy Galore) displays for her sponges. The links above the first video are from Popehat, and those between the two are from Grace, Angela Keaton, Ed Krayewski, Walter Olson, and Nun Ya, in that order.
Apparently learning when to use a turn signal is twice as complicated as conducting an undercover operation that jeopardizes women’s lives. – Samantha Allen
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…
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…
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.
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”…
…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…
…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…
…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]…
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…
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…
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…
…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…
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”…
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…
I wish someone would pull a Ferguson on them and take them out. I hate looking at those African monkeys at work…I enjoy arresting those thugs with their saggy pants. – Michael Elsbury
I’m home again from my tour, and though Links was probably the easiest feature to keep up while on the road I’ll still be glad to get back to my normal schedule. Though as you can see I had a lot of links this week, the only video was the second one, provided by Grace (who also gave us “innocent”); I therefore decided to balance all the awfulness in the links with a lovely song created by remixing samples from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Everything above that video is from Rick Horowitz, and the links between the videos are from Angela Keaton (“koinkydink”), Mike Siegel (“stones”), Tushy Galore (“another day”), Jason Kuznicki (“money”), Jillian Keenan (“Sanrio”), Lenore Skenazy (“powers”), Jesse Walker (“truant”), Brooke Magnanti (“credible”), Radley Balko (“real cops”), Popehat (“tank”), Luscious Lani (“secret rooms”), and Cop Block (“insults”).
We did this now to protect her for now and in the future, because this could get worse. She could be taken. – one of the worst mothers ever
I’m on my way to New Orleans today, and will be home Thursday night; it’s been a wonderful tour, but it’s a good thing it didn’t go on much longer because I’m only barely on schedule now and I really need to catch back up. Today’s first video is from Gideon and is one example of what is probably a very typical situation that, before video, always went undiscovered. The second video is from Jesse Walker (who also contributed “supervillains”), and though I don’t usually like “cute kid” videos I thought this little guy’s “logical” arguments were very funny. Everything above the first video is from Grace, and the links between the videos are from Dave Barry (“headline”), Jemima (“Hello Kitty”), Popehat (“no reason”), Franklin Harris (“texting”), Nun Ya (“lucky”), Michael Whiteacre (“Chelsea”), and Mike Riggs (“life sentence”).
There’s a collective American fixation on the creepy image of a sex offender salivating just beyond the playground fence, but that’s just not how things usually work. – Jesse Singal
For the first time…a country will officially adopt bitcoin as its currency: Dominica…[made] an agreement…[with] Coinapult, Aspen Assurance, Bitcoin Beauties, and the College Cryptocurrency Network (CCN)…[to] send a small of amount of bitcoin to every island resident via text message…[turning] Dominica…into the most densely concentrated bitcoin community in the world…The launch date…March 15, 2015, at 9:26 a.m., coincides with Pi Day, a global celebration of the mathematical constant…
A grand jury indicted a former [Texas cop]…after he…sexually assaulted an underage girl multiple times…Erasmo Mata Jr., 25, is accused of [raping] a 17-year-old girl during work hours [in] five separate incidents…other [cops] watched Mata commit the sexual assaults and…Pharr Police Chief Ruben Villescas met with the victim’s family…and told them not to hire an attorney…
Police are investigating five illegal brothels across the Geelong [Victoria] region…[with] a new specialist investigation unit dedicated to prosecuting unregistered sex operators. Sergeant Aaron Riches said…“We’re not the moral police but…you’ve been committing a crime by soliciting an illegal sex worker”…Registered brothel Lorraine Starr boss David…welcomed the police crackdown on illegals…“We’ve seen illegal ones open up next to the homes of mums and dads and last year even a school”…
…[a “sex trafficking” fetishist publicly fantasized about]…how young at-risk girls fall prey to older “pimps”…victims are typically girls 12 to 14 years of age who encounter older men on the Internet…and are…forced to work as prostitutes, strippers or massage parlor workers in large cities like Atlanta…while there has not yet been a confirmed human trafficking raid in Albany, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation strongly suspects the activity exists…“There are online sites where ‘customers’ can go to ask for a 12-year-old blond, for example and then purchase that girl. Unfortunately, those sites aren’t being shut down”…potential [victims are] more likely to have unsupervised access to a smart phone or…computer…and may walk alone to school or to the local mall…communities can help guard against the threat of human trafficking by…summer lunch programs…and homeless shelters…
Over a dozen Sex Workers…are getting set to travel to Guyana in October where a meeting of Sex Workers from across the Caribbean will take place…Among the countries from which Sex Workers are expected are: Trinidad and Tobago (2), Jamaica (4), Suriname (2), Grenada (3), Antigua (2), and Dominican Republic (3). Some ten Sex Workers from Guyana are also expected to participate…
Police in Japan have adopted a new tactic in the apparently unending struggle against the under-age sex industry, introducing sting operations against minors offering sexual services…In the first six months of this year, officers using these tactics took into custody 220 girls under the age of 18. Instead of arresting first-time offenders, however, the police are providing “cyber correctional guidance”, which warns them of the crimes they are committing and the potential dangers. After a dose of moral re-education, the girls are then taken home and their parents informed…The phenomenon of enjo kosai – which literally means compensated dating…first emerged in Japan in the 1990s. Concerned at the number of men eager to pay for the company of a teenage girl, as well as the appetite of minors for brand-name goods and…the funds to buy them, Japanese authorities passed strict new laws…
Enjo kosai didn’t start in the ’90s, though the term dates to that time; anyone who thinks young girls trading sex for cash is something new is an historical illiterate. As is anyone who isn’t disgusted by the phrase “moral re-education”.
…MU Title IX Coordinator Linda Bennett provided…students…an all-university memo a few weeks ago. Elaborating on an already-overbroadsexual harassment policy, Bennett’s memo seems to prohibit asking for consent for sexual activities. “Examples of behavior that will not be tolerated,” the letter says, include “Requesting another person to engage in a behavior with a sexual body part or enacting a sexual behavior.” (Emphasis added.) How is a student supposed to engage in any sexual activity, except by first requesting that the other person engage in it? Maybe MU doesn’t think consent is sexy, after all…
A highly paid neurosurgeon who indulged his cocaine addiction…and was directly linked to the death of two prostitutes avoided detection and continued to practise…Dr Suresh Nair worked at the Nepean Private Hospital in Sydney’s western suburbs…He would eventually be charged in connection with the deaths of two sex workers from cocaine toxicity and have his medical licence revoked…many of his patients were horrified to learn…[that] Dr Nair had botched their operations and left them with life-long ailments…Victoria McIntyre…died of a cocaine overdose after a booking at Dr Nair’s apartment…the NSW Medical Board…was not informed…another young escort, Suellen Domingues-Zaupa…[later] suffered a cardiac arrest, but Dr Nair left her for dead as he went elsewhere to continue partying with other escorts. Many questions have been raised about how the doctor was allowed to continue practising…
…Zürich…opened Europe’s first municipal drive-in brothel in an old industrial area…Sex workers who agreed to relocate from their traditional…haunts were allowed to ply their trade…with a minimum of fuss…they had to obtain permits and pay tax…”The first year of the service has been positive,” Zurich social services said…authorities admit that not everyone is happy. Some sex workers complain that their earnings have fallen and that they are too far from city-centre bars and nightclubs…
Last December, U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups struck down a central part of the Utah law banning polygamy. [Wednesday] he issued the rest of his ruling…Waddoups found the Utah County Attorney Jeff Buhman violated the Browns’ constitutional rights when he oversaw a 2010 investigation into whether [they were] committing bigamy…Buhman eventually decided not to file criminal charges, but Waddoups said the investigation stifled the Browns’ rights to free speech, religion and equal protection. Waddoups ordered Utah to pay the Browns’ attorney fees…Utah’s attorney general says he plans to appeal the case…
A…doctor who was among the 104 men swept up in the “Flush the Johns” sting last year has been acquitted of patronizing a prostitute, and his attorney is considering suing Nassau County. Richard Obedian…was the fifth defendant…to take his case to a bench trial. Four of those trials have resulted in acquittals. The doctor was the only defendant to continue to trial since District Attorney Kathleen Rice…began allowing the men to plead guilty to…disorderly conduct…At least one other man arrested in the sting has filed a notice of claim…against the county for false arrest and false imprisonment. Asked for comment…Rice’s office [vomited out disgusting “end demand” propaganda]…
…sex offender Keith Constantin was released from prison in July after five years, but in…a few weeks he was run out of town twice…Constantin, convicted of sexually assaulting a seven-year-old boy and a 45-year-old blind woman, faced a concerted backlash orchestrated by 200 angry mothers; his face and crimes plastered on posters on every pole in town. In the end…he [was accused of breaking] his curfew and [re-arrested]…growing numbers of grassroots activists…use…posters, taking pictures, pestering to the point of harassment, anything to send the message that sex offenders are not wanted…Organizations like this say they are not vigilantes, but their messaging is questionable. In a promotional video, [one group] uses graphic images with slogans like: “Hurt my kid and I’ll bury you where they’ll never find the body”…
…According to a new study, women who cheat on their husbands are looking for passion and sex, but they have no desire to end their marriages. Using data from AshleyMadison.com…Eric Anderson…the [business’s] chief science officer…[eavesdropped on] 100 women between the ages of 35 and 45 on the site. After [unethically] reading their conversations with potential lovers, Anderson found that 67 percent of these married ladies were specifically looking for more “romantic passion,” aka sex. None wanted to actually leave their husbands and most even painted their clueless spouses in a positive light…this sample isn’t quite representative — the findings are only generalizable to the women using AshleyMadison…
Britain’s most senior police chief has called for wide-ranging new powers to tackle…terrorism, including a “rebuttable presumption” that anyone who visits Syria without prior notice should be treated as a terror suspect. Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe…also called for a return of control orders and…[backed] Boris Johnson’s proposal for the presumption of innocence to be overturned for Britons who travel to warzones…”If we can get an assumption that when people come back and have been to Syria they’ve been involved in terrorism. If they can prove they haven’t then that’s up to them. It’s pretty hard for us sometimes to prove what they were doing in Syria…”
…OHP Trooper Eric Roberts also sexually assaulted [a second woman who has come forward]…Roberts pulled over her car on July 8…and made inappropriate sexual comments to her. She texted a friend with the Trooper’s tag number because she was afraid she might die when he instructed her to follow him…he drove her to a secluded location and sexually assaulted her. The woman…didn’t report it initially because she…thought no one would believe her…
“Dozens of sex offenders who have satisfied their sentences in New York State are being held in prison beyond their release dates because of a new interpretation of a state law that governs where they can live”…The unfortunate thing about this situation is that laws designed to restrict where sex offenders can live are really and truly useless, except as a means of politicians scoring easy political points by ratcheting up hysteria. There are many tricky social-scientific issues on which there are a range of opinions…among experts, but this isn’t one of them. Among those whose job it is to figure out how to reduce the rate at which sex offenders commit crimes (as opposed to those whose job it is to get reelected, in part by hammering away at phantom threats), there is zero controversy: These laws don’t work, and may actually increase sexual offenders’ recidivism rates…
A three month investigation ends with more than two dozen arrests for prostitution offenses in Rochester [Minnesota]. The police…posted ads to…backpage.com…Of the 29 arrested, close to half wanted someone underage. Experts say this sting highlights a problem bigger than prostitution…
It seems that every few years, some intrepid reporter…[makes] the game-changing discovery that a lot of people use the Internet to conduct their business. Though this sounds like an absolute non-story, when the people in question are sex workers…editors are bound to green-light…stories that all essentially reveal…that sex workers advertise and network online…Some of the stories appear to just be comically out-of-touch…and…many such non-stories perpetuate the myth that sex workers are coming for civilians where they least suspect it! They browse among us…better hide the husbands!…
Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies. – Robert W. Chambers
Tomorrow is May Day, and today May Eve; though the tradition has waned in the past century, it was once viewed in the same way as Halloween: a night for ghosts, haunts and dark doings. In my first column for the occasion I shared my list of the ten scariest short stories, and in last year’s column the scariest TV show episodes I’ve ever seen. This year, I present thirteen main selections (five movies, two poems, one television miniseries, four short stories and a fairy tale) plus a few lagniappe items, ranging from the fun to the beautiful to the horrifying; most can be described by two or even all three of those adjectives, and I doubt many of you will be familiar with all of them. I’ve provided PDF copies of all the tales and poems, and links to view or buy the shows.
The Call of Cthulhu (2005) A group of ambitious Lovecraft fans asked themselves, “What if his most famous story had been adapted for the screen shortly after it was published in 1928?” The result may be the best of all Lovecraft film treatments, especially if you can appreciate silent film.
“Christabel” (1816) is Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s sadly-unfinished poem of a lesbian vampire. Though it has other complexities of theme, it is this overt meaning which has had the strongest resonance; J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Carmilla” (1872) is basically a prose adaptation of it, and the lesbian vampire motif has appeared in many movies from Dracula’s Daughter (1936) to the present.
The Kingdom (1994) Lars von Trier wrote and directed this bizarre Danish miniseries of ghostly, psychic and otherwise-weird goings-on at a super-modern hospital built on what was once a haunted bog. Steven King adapted it for American television a decade later, with predictably piss-poor results; the original is much, much better.
Kwaidan (1964) is Masaki Kobayashi’s gorgeous film version of four Japanese ghost stories translated by Lafcadio Hearn. The word “unforgettable” is badly overused in movie advertising copy, but this is one time it’s richly deserved.
“Man-size in Marble” (1893) by Edith Nesbit used to be very common in horror anthologies; it was one of the first horror tales I can remember reading, certainly before the age of ten. But since it isn’t as commonly collected as it used to be, some of my readers may be unfamiliar with this chilling little example of the traditional English ghost story.
The Monster Club (1981) is one of the strangest and most uneven films ever made. Vampire Vincent Price brings horror writer John Carradine to a London nightclub whose members are all humanoid monsters, and there tells him three stories: one sad, one absurd and one horrifying. There’s also music and a stripper. Don’t take this one too seriously; just enjoy the weirdness.
The Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933) Though Vincent Price’s performance as the mad sculptor in House of Wax (1953) was superior to Lionel Atwill’s in this original version of the story, this two-strip Technicolor gem is better than the remake in almost every other way. I especially love Fay Wray as Lois Lane prototype Charlotte Duncan, the ambitious and hardheaded “girl reporter” whose curiosity leads her to the brink of a gruesome fate.
Psychomania (1973) is another oddball British horror movie in which a sorcerer’s son turned motorcycle gang leader discovers how he and his followers can become undead, and after they do they embark on a reign of terror only his mother can stop.
“The Tongue-Cut Sparrow” was my favorite fairy tale as a wee lass; I must’ve asked Maman to read it to me hundreds of times. You may wonder why a fairy tale is on a horror list, until I tell you it’s a Japanese fairy tale; if you still don’t get it, read the story. Yes, I was a strange child.
“The Vampyre” (1819) is the only other surviving product of the famous “ghost story” contest between the Shelleys and Lord Byron that rainy summer on Lake Geneva. Though Frankenstein eclipses it in every way, Dr. John Polidori’s entry (based on a plot by Byron) is the first known vampire short story in English, and influenced all which came after it.
“The Very Sad Tale of the Matches” (1845) Germany is probably the only country whose children’s literature is more horrific than that of Japan; I’m sure most of you are aware of what the original un-Disneyfied Grimm’s fairy tales are like. Heinrich Hoffmann was a psychiatrist who wrote a cheery little book (originally for his son) named Der Struwwelpeter, in which minor childhood misbehaviors (such as nose-picking) precipitate horrific punishments (like having the offending fingers cut off by a man with gigantic shears). This selection from the book has, in my opinion, the most striking disconnect between the tone and language and the awful goings-on therein.
“What Was It?” (1859) Fitz-James O’Brien wrote only a small number of tales before his untimely death in the American Civil War, but they reveal a talent which might have made him one of the greats had he lived to develop it. This is the very first example of a story in which there is a creature who is invisible, yet tangible; it is not a ghost but a living being, and its invisibility is ascribed to an undiscovered scientific principle rather than a supernatural one. If anything, the tale is even creepier because of that.
“The Yellow Sign” (1895) If you have watched the television series True Detective, you’ve heard references to the Yellow King and the city of Carcosa; both are borrowed from this story and others by Robert W. Chambers, which revolve around a mysterious play called The King in Yellow which brings madness to all who read it (or even own a copy). Chambers’ work is of very uneven quality, but this one and “The Repairer of Reputations” (also included in this PDF) are outstanding.
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By now the regular reader should have noticed three recurring themes in my harlotographies: one of them pertains only to whores of pre-modern times; the second up to at least a century ago (though it is more pronounced in ancient stories); and the third up until the present day. Taking these in reverse order, they are as follows: the inability of amateurs to simply report biographical facts without embellishing, dramatizing and romanticizing them; the difficulty of ascertaining even numeric biographical details with any certainty; and the confusion of more than one harlot with the same name. All three principles are highly noticeable in the tale of Takao, a Japanese oiran (courtesan) who lived from 1640 to 1659; the lady in question was one of at least six courtesans (some sources say as high as eleven) with that name, and so is generally designated with the unimaginative moniker “Takao II”. Very little is known about her with any certainty other than the day of her death, December 5th, 1659; however, that didn’t stop talespinners from turning her story into one of the most popular of kabuki plays.
Enter Date Tsunamune, who had become Lord of Mutsu at the age of eighteen after the death of his father. Some of his kin, however, plotted against him and managed to trick him into visiting Yoshiwara as a means of getting him out of the way. While there he hired Takao and immediately fell in love with her, proposing to buy out her contract and marry her. This much is largely historical; Tsunamune was a real person whose did indeed face opposition from his family (and was deposed in 1660). He may indeed have visited Yoshiwara, though a letter claimed to be from Takao to him has been proven a nineteenth-century forgery. But the rest of the story as told for generations is the stuff of fiction. Naturally, Takao is supposed to have rejected his offer; some sources feel mere dislike for the man or a desire for independence after the termination of her contract are insufficient motivations for the rejection, and invent a lover who had pledged to marry her when her term of indenture was up. I’m sure y’all can guess where the story goes next: Tsunamune refused to take “no” for an answer and made the brothel owner an offer she couldn’t refuse, Takao’s weight in gold for the contract. The owner accepted, but took advantage of Tsunamune’s lust by putting iron weights into the sleeves of Takao’s robe, boosting her weight to 75 kilograms. Some storytellers say that on the boat trip from the brothel, Takao hurled herself into the river to drown, counting on the weights to take her to the bottom; others say Tsunamune caught her in the attempt and killed her with his sword instead, then dumped her body. Still another version says that Tsunamune had one of her fingers broken for every day she refused his bed, and after he had gone through both hands he had her hanged. But all of these say that her death (whether by murder or suicide) was the excuse used by Tsunamune’s uncle to remove him from power.
