Lack of Evidence | The Honest Courtesan

Posts Tagged ‘Lack of Evidence’

In the News (#782)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged avails laws, Between the Lines, Bogeymen, Celebrities, Check Your Premises, Colombia, cops, FBI, hysteria, Kentucky, Lack of Evidence, Madonna/whore, Moving Pictures, Much Ado About Nothing, Netherlands, Nevada, Never Call the Cops, Out of Control, propaganda, rape, rescue industry, To Molest and Rape, underage, violence vs. sex workers, West Virginia on October 14, 2017| Leave a Comment »

In the rush to “save” people, little attention is paid to sex workers swept into…prison and a lifetime of punishment. – Victoria Law

Lack of Evidence

Hey amateurs, you want to avoid being profiled as sex workers? Fight for decrim so persecution of this sort is illegal:

…There just seems to be something about a woman that takes care of her appearance being by herself in certain locations that rubs people up the wrong way. As though it is completely out of the question that she could be in a luxury hotel by herself as a result of her own successes…As though a woman wearing makeup couldn’t possibly have an interest in history, culture, and world issues…I have received plenty of lecherous looks from males thinking that I was on sale, and disapproving looks from females about my lack of self-respect. To feel eyes burning into you, silently judging you because of this untrue and ignorant assumption is probably one of the most humiliating feelings in the world…and almost makes you feel ashamed as if you were actually there soliciting…

But no, it’s much better to draw pathetic lines between yourself and sex workers, and to bloviate about how insulting it is to be mistaken for one of us.

Much Ado About Nothing

Reporter makes poor attempt to hide his envy under a veneer of pearl-clutching:

A firm offering X-rated holidays has brazenly advertised packages featuring orgies with prostitutes on a ‘”drug friendly” Colombian island. Two videos advertising the resort show men arriving for unlimited sex, drugs and alcohol…On the second day of the four-day sex fest clients will have half an hour with 16 women at once – and organisers say customers will be able to find their “true self”…

Celebrities (#31)

Breaking news! Las Vegas shooter ate food the day of his crime!

A US official has said investigators believe the Las Vegas shooter may have hired a prostitute in the days before the shooting, and they are interviewing other call girls as they look for clues into his motive…The official said a note containing a series of numbers was found on a nightstand in Paddock’s room at the Mandalay Bay hotel after the shooting…

Mass shooters are always men. 20% of men hire sex workers at least occasionally. So why is this news?

Bogeymen (#317)

Why you should be wary of talk about “going after pimps”:

The Netherlands…new prostitution policy will include a pimp ban, criminalizing any pimp without a license…Some news…are reporting that…”illegal pimps” will not just be fined, but even will get jail time…the list of people that could be considered “people who financially profit from prostitutes without a license” is very long. For example, my bookkeeper financially profits from prostitutes, and he doesn’t have a prostitution license. Or for example my mother, whom I frequently send money to, to support her…chauffeurs who drive around escort girls…security guys, who protect prostitutes from harm, they also don’t have a prostitution license…there are a lot of people who profit from prostitutes financially without a license. But that doesn’t make them bad people. In fact, many of these people help us. But that just might be exactly the plan…to make our work much more difficult…

Sex Rays

Because sex rays can piggyback on radio waves, obviously! “Seattle radio host Mitch Levy put out a statement…about leaving his job with KJR Radio…[after being] arrested in a prostitution sting in September…” If every man who ever paid for sex were forced to quit his job, the entire economy would collapse.

Out of Control (#410)

What is wrong with doctors who do this shit? It’s not like they can’t afford escorts:

Already in jail on 11 criminal sex charges, a New Mexico psychiatrist and the medical center where he worked face a civil lawsuit from 12 women who say he forced them to discuss their sex lives and perform sex acts on him under the guise of therapy…Dr. Alan Emamdee…was charged with six counts of criminal sexual penetration, five counts of criminal sexual contact, and denied bond…Plaintiff T.T.B. says that Emamdee told her he could help her regain custody of her children if she would give him oral sex, which she did. “He told T.T.B. that he would withhold medications and would negatively impact her custody proceedings if she did not continue to comply with his demands”…After she refused his request to meet him at a hotel for sexual intercourse…Emamdee “wrote a note indicating T.T.B. had reverted to…dissociative identity disorder, negatively impacting her custody proceedings.” Some of his requests were bizarre…

Moving Pictures (#564)

One day, “sex trafficking” propaganda flicks may be cult favorites like Reefer Madness:

The movie Trafficked follows the [fictional] story of three young girls from India, Nigeria, and American who are trafficked and try to escape…[has-been] actress Anne Archer…spoke at this year’s Human Trafficking Summit as a…[propaganda mouthpiece]…“It’s written by [“sex trafficking” profiteer]…Siddharth Kara…who [fantasizes]…that there are…46 million slaves in the world today, generating profits that exceed $150 billion per year for their exploiters…That’s more than Nike, Google, and Starbucks combined”…

To Molest and Rape

Never let them anywhere near your kids, either:

…cops Brandon Wood and Kenneth Betts…are charged with felony sex offenses for allegedly abusing Scouts in a program for youths interested in law enforcement …a…mother’s statement…support[s] allegations in a lawsuit filed by another former Explorer that the police department tried to cover up sexual misconduct in the program…Curtis Flaherty…[who] was commander of both the Explorer program and the Public Integrity Unit, which [works to cover up police misconduct, called the mother and told her to keep quiet after]…Betts…sent inappropriate text messages to her daughter and attached “half-dressed” and sexually suggestive pictures of himself…

Between the Lines (#741)

It’s fitting that the first we hear of this year’s “Operation Cross-Country” is from economically-depressed West Virginia, where pervert cops and FBI thugs ganged up to ruin the lives of women for trying to survive:

Five women were arrested on misdemeanor prostitution charges [on October 5th and 6th] in Harrison County as part of an annual nationwide FBI initiative…Operation Cross Country [is a nationwide anti-consensual sex pogrom held] each autumn [under the pretense of “rescuing”] underage victims of prostitution…

Check Your Premises (#771)

The real result of “sex trafficking” laws:

…after more than seven years behind bars, 32-year-old LeeAnn walked out of federal prison. But she’s not a free woman — she will spend the rest of her life on the sex offender registry. Her crime? Letting a girl shower in her mother’s apartment, giving her a clean change of clothes and holding the girl’s $40 while she had sex with a man in another room. These are normal actions in the daily life of sex workers trying to keep themselves and each other safe. But the girl turned out to be 14 and, in the eyes of the federal government, these acts constitute sex trafficking of a minor. It didn’t matter that the girl had told LeeAnn that she was 17. It also didn’t matter that LeeAnn, who was addicted to various drugs and also engaged in sex work, never made money from the girl’s actions…19-year-old Hope Joy Mae Zeferjohn…was sentenced to 71 months in prison for aggravated human trafficking of a minor…[because] she introduced the 14 year old to 26-year-old Anthony Long…It…didn’t matter that the younger teen had never actually met Long and that no commercial sex had taken place. Zeferjohn was charged with nine felonies…

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In the News (#764)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, Australia, bogus studies, cell phones, Colorado, Cops and Robbers, Decentralization, dirty, diversion programs, end demand, End Demand (updates), evidence, Georgia, Hollywood, hysteria, Italy, Lack of Evidence, language, law, neofeminism, North Dakota, rescue industry, Saving Them from Themselves, scams, sexting, Shift in the Wind, statistics, The Notorious Badge, The Widening Gyre, United Kingdom, Washington (state), Watershed on August 12, 2017| 6 Comments »

Radfems…use terms like “sell herself” as though, at the end of the transaction, a woman has sold off a body part. – Lauren Rosewarne

Saving Them From Themselves

Apparently Dan Rubinstein has never heard of this thing called “pregnancy”:

…Ronald Lee Love faces a felony child sexual-exploitation charge for exchanging explicit text-messages with someone with whom it would have been legal for him to have had sex. Love, who lives in Mesa County, Colorado, began corresponding last summer when he was 25 with a 15-year-old girl who lives in New England…he explicitly insisted that their relationship remain digital because he believed physical activity was illegal…In Colorado, however, the age of consent is 15, so long as a sexual partner is not 10 or more years older…Yet authorities in this same state have decided someone…Receiving or possessing sexually-oriented images of someone under age 18…is a felony punishable by one to six years per offense…Local authorities defended their position that sexting is worse than actual sex, contending that…while a real-life sexual liaison might be a one-or limited-time thing, the teen sending Love her photo could “potentially come back to haunt this girl 30 years from now,” said Mesa County District Attorney District Attorney Dan Rubinstein.

Because obviously being saddled with a brat at 15 wouldn’t be NEARLY as bad as the kind of nudie pics that every ordinarily-sexual woman in the developed world has floating around. Do pigs (I count DAs as part of that species) ever sound as stupid as they do when coming up with moronic rationalizations for moronic laws?

I’m Sure You Feel Safer Now

Heroic Irish “authorities” save a man from getting his kidney transplant paid for:

A 73-year-old Brazilian prostitute…working in a brothel in…Kildare…walked free from court because she planned to return home as soon as the…case was over…She…was running the brothel…to pay for her 40-year-old son’s kidney transplant. She also wanted to return home to her seriously ill 98-year-old mother…gardai…found just €80 in cash at the property…but…Judge Zaidan…[stole it anyway] and [gave it to Ruhama]…

Irish judges have a long an sadistic history of robbing sex workers and giving the money to those who want us imprisoned in workhouses and our families destroyed.

The Notorious Badge

You know peak hysteria has been reached when a moral panic features in afternoon soaps:

Young and the Restless (Y&R) spoilers for the week of August 7 and 14 reveal that Sharon…finds herself in grave danger while investigating a sex ring in Genoa City…Crystal…claims she is being held against her will by a prostitution ring…[and] is trying to escape from her captors who are following her… Zack is involved in the prostitution ring and…his dating app project with Abby Newman is linked with the operations of the criminal ring. Abby Newman will soon find out that the dating app she is developing with Zack is part of a sex trafficking operation…

End Demand

Authoritarians would be even more dangerous if they could actually get their shit together:

People convicted of buying sex have, since February, been eligible for a program to [indoctrinate] them [in anti-sex propaganda]…But no one has been sentenced to it yet…[because] Bismarck [North Dakota]…City Attorney Jason Hammes…did not know it existed…”It appears the municipal prosecutors and judges may not be aware of it,” Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem wrote in a letter to city attorneys and municipal judges on July 25…

Watershed

Australia has far more sane feminists than does the US:

While women’s libbers have spent decades fighting to get us dominion over our own bodies, radical feminists have spent almost as long trying to insert caveats. Apparently there are right and egregiously wrong ways to use our bodies – more specifically our genitals – particularly when dollars are involved…I not only vehemently disagree with the radfem position, but I view it as fundamentally un-feminist…If feminists aren’t fighting for my right to use my body how I choose, then they’ve dramatically detoured from their mission…

Decentralization (#444)

Remember “titcoin”?

“Lust” is an initial coin offering based on the Ethereum blockchain platform, designed for prostitutes and their customers to exchange money for sexual services. It uses…anonymity features to escrow funding of the parties and keep their identities private, in order to avoid law-enforcement scrutiny and public shaming. Leaving aside the thorny moral and social questions raised by the currency’s intended use…the “smart contracts” favor one side of the bargain: the “key has to be scanned later if they make an agreement and meet otherwise the contract gets automatically closed in 48 hours, and the client gets his Etherium tokens back in the wallet”…if the “client” has sex with the worker, and then does not scan her (sic) token, the client gets to have sex, and the worker gets nothing. Despite high-minded talk about preventing violence against sex-workers, the major threat-model addressed by these smart-contracts is men who don’t feel like they got value for money when having sex, not women who perform sex-for-money and don’t get paid for it…

Despite Cory Doctorow’s pompous pearl-clutching (since when is consensual sex a “thorny moral question” to anyone but authoritarians?) he’s right about the way this would work, which means no sane sex worker will ever use it. Cash up front, guys, or you get nothing.

Shift in the Wind (#510)

The Adam Smith Institute continues its support of decriminalization with a commentary on a new paper by Ron Weitzer:

…sociologist Ronald Weitzer…gives new insight into the sorry state of the academic literature on these topics. First on his list of grievances is the unreliability of the data that is often used…[but] Flawed data is just the tip of the iceberg…[often] the authors’ approach to study design also leaves a lot to be desired…”The authors use aggregate national trafﬁcking estimates (which combine labor, sex, and other kinds of trafﬁcking) in their attempt to assess whether legal prostitution makes a difference. This means that there is a gross mismatch between the trafﬁcking ﬁgures and prostitution law: In assessing whether prostitution law is related to the incidence of trafﬁcking, ﬁgures on sex trafﬁcking alone should be used, not the totals for all types if trafﬁcking“…A subsequent study by Cho (2016) using a different data source contains another howler…”Without citing any source, Cho claims that ‘prostitution is closely linked to human trafﬁcking because sex trafﬁcking for the purpose of prostitution is the most common form of human trafﬁcking and constitutes the largest fraction of trafﬁcking victims’…This claim is contradicted by the International Labour Organization (ILO)…[which states] ‘Forced commercial sexual exploitation represents 11% of all cases’ of forced labor worldwide“…Weitzer’s paper would be an interesting academic exercise in the perils of low-quality data and poor research methodology, except for the fact that policies being enacted on the basis of [these bad] studies are hurting marginalized women…when it comes to scaremongering stories about sex trafficking epidemics and accompanying calls for the “Nordic Model”, extra caution should be exercised.

Cops and Robbers (#629)

More vigilantes playing with people’s lives and lying to men in an attempt to steal income from sex workers who may need it to pay rent and feed their children:

A new [chat]bot built by Microsoft employees in their spare time…[was] tested recently in Seattle, Atlanta, and Washington…[it] lurks behind fake online ads…posted by [anti-sex worker profiteers]…and responds to text messages sent to the number listed. The software initially pretends to be the person in the ad, and can converse about its purported age, body, fetish services, and pricing. But if a would-be buyer signals an intent to purchase sex, the bot pivots sharply into [prohibitionist propaganda]…”Buying sex from anyone is illegal and can cause serious long term harm to the victim, as well as further the cycle of human trafficking…Details of this incident will be reviewed further and you may be contacted by law enforcement for questioning”…Project Intercept’s lead partner, Seattle Against Slavery, is working with counterparts in 21 other U.S. cities, including Boston and Houston, to deploy the bot more widely…Project Intercept was started in 2012 by two Microsoft employees after seeing a [movie] about sex trafficking…

Given the involvement of the vile SAS and the list of cities involved, methinks Swanee Hunt’s foul reek is all over this.

Lack of Evidence (#696)

As long as these laws exist, all women are vulnerable to persecution by cops:

On July 31, an undercover cop in Columbus, Georgia, invited a 51-year-old woman into his car and offered her $5 for oral sex. When she rebuffed his offer and tried to get out, he arrested the woman for loitering for the purpose of prostitution…a controversial charge commonly used by the Columbus Police Department (CPD) to target those such as homeless women, people who’ve previously been arrested on prostitution charges, or people who don’t meet a [cop’s] standard of gender conformity. On Sunday morning, CPD officers arrested a 24-year-old homeless woman for allegedly waving at two passing cars from the side of the road…Last summer, 24-year-old C. Williams was arrested while sitting at a bus stop because…Williams was carrying condoms and “dressed as a woman”…the city statute…expressly says evidence of an intent to commit prostitution or sodomy includes the person being “a known prostitute, pimp or sodomist”…

The Widening Gyre (#696)

Given the number of companies profiting from “sex trafficking” hysteria, it should come as no surprise when individuals start using it for publicity stunts:

British model Chloe Ayling…claims she was held captive for almost a week after being lured to Milan, Italy, for what she was told was a photo shoot. Her alleged captor, Lukasz Pawel Herba, [supposedly] drugged her and placed her in a large suitcase in a car boot…Ayling was allegedly held hostage for up to six days as her abductors [supposedly a group called “Black Death” with ties to the Russian mafia] tried to sell her as a sex slave…The gang says its victims can be “transported globally” and advertises its activities, saying: “If you wish, we can kidnap a specific target for your needs…The advert claims the abductors “do not sell girls that are terminally ill, pregnant, have STDs or are young mothers”. It has been suggested the gang let Ms Ayling go after realising she had a two-year-old son…While [sensible] people have raised doubts about her story, her lawyer, Francesco Pesce, said investigators believed her claims…

That cops, whose credulity on the topic of crime knows no bounds, believe the story is an argument against its being true, not for it. Another is the notion of a gang which has no problem selling women into slavery, yet revere the sanctity of motherhood, and yet another is the fact that Ayling was seen shopping for shoes with her alleged abductor during the time she was supposedly bound to a chest of drawers (?) at a farmhouse.

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In the News (#763)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, Amsterdam, asset seizure, Backpage, Backwards into the Future, censorship, cops, Dutch Threat, evidence, hysteria, illegal aliens, Lack of Evidence, language, law, male prostitutes, Minnesota, Netherlands, New York, Now They Notice, Ohio, Policing for Profit, Rooted in Racism, Safe Targets, South Africa, surveillance, Swedish model, The Mote and the Beam, The Widening Gyre, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers on August 9, 2017| 2 Comments »

My business was…illegal, but it shouldn’t have been. – Jeffrey Hurant

Safe Targets

Naturally; they can steal more money from whores, and we don’t shoot back:

…Scotland Yard has been…threatening to prosecute women who work in brothels rather than pursue an armed gang of robbers who have been repeatedly targeting premises used for sex work…The shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer…has written to the Metropolitan police in support of one of the victims…who is a constituent of his…Starmer said letters sent by the Met threatening women with prosecution…“could make it more difficult to stay in touch with victims of violent crimes”…The Met denies there is evidence of connected attacks on brothels and [pretends] that criminalising prostitutes is not a priority…

Rooted in Racism

Sometimes “trafficking” just means “bringing in brown people“:

A huge human trafficking ring that has been flying hundreds of Iranian migrants, some as young as five, into Britain has been smashed…The alleged leader of the criminal gang was detained at Heathrow as he tried to escape justice by flying to Brazil. Another 14 gang members were held in Malaga…more than 200 people a year had been smuggled by the gang for around 10 years…Europol said the gang had run a “perfectly structured” criminal operation in which each migrant was charged around £22,000 and provided with accommodation, transfers and flights. There was no immediate information from the Home Office about how many Iranians have managed to enter Britain illegally or whether any of those detained have been removed from the country…

Notice the use of “ring” as dysphemism for “business”, and “gang members” as dysphemisms for “employees”; note also the pretense that just because a business violates stupid laws makes it somehow surprising that it’s well-run. Nobody would consider it newsworthy that an ordinary travel agency had only 200 customers a year; if anything, that qualifies as a rather small business. Note also the phrase “as young as five”, borrowed from “sex trafficking” propaganda; why are we supposed to be shocked that people moving to another country would take their children along? Personally, I think it’d be more newsworthy if they left them behind.

Dutch Threat

A rare victory for sex workers against “sex trafficking” hysteria:

Amsterdam’s policy that prostitutes must share personal information with brothel owners, is in violation of the Personal Data Protection Act, the court in Amsterdam ruled…The court was dissatisfied with Amsterdam’s policy on various points, especially on the intake conversation brothel operators have to have with prostitutes before they start working there. The municipality made this intake conversation obligatory in 2013, with the idea that operators will notice [magical] signals of human trafficking during the talk…The intake forms also contain information about the sexual life of the sex worker and operators must store these forms and present them during inspections…

Policing for Profit

Almost nobody still believes cops’ pretense that this is about anything other than profit:

…Adrienne Chapa was arrested [in Minneapolis] and spent a few days in jail before she went home to Las Vegas…[but] the Hennepin County attorney’s office filed a lawsuit to keep [her] money through [legalized robbery]…It took two years to resolve the legal cases, and $21,000 is finally getting distributed [among various pigpens]…Minnesota legislators outlawed civil forfeiture in 2014…[but Chapa eventually plead guilty on condition that the conviction will be erased in two years]…her attorney, Avery Appelman, said seizing the cash was a “large motivating factor” for her prosecution and that police use forfeited property as a “slush fund”…

What’s that word for men who use force to take money that a woman earns via prostitution?

Lack of Evidence (#678)

As long as these laws exist, all women are vulnerable to persecution by cops:

…New York Penal Law Section 240.37 has criminalized loitering in a public place by anyone the police determine is present for the purpose of prostitution. “Purpose” is not defined…thus the reason for one’s presence is ultimately decided by the opinions of arresting officers…A woman may be surveilled, searched, and detained, in part because an officer takes issue with her clothing…pre-printed affidavits…include “indications of prostitution,” such as: the defendant was standing somewhere other than a bus stop or taxi stand; the defendant was carrying money or “sexual paraphernalia”; the defendant was with someone known to have been previously arrested for prostitution-related offenses…The…N.Y.P.D…Patrol Guide…offers no objective criteria on what attire is suspect, thus failing citizens the ability to anticipate how their fashion could establish cause for their arrest…From 2012 through 2015, nearly 1,300 individuals were arrested in New York City under the law…85 percent of them were black or Latina. According to a class-action lawsuit filed September 30, 2016 by the Legal Aid Society of New York…transgender women are especially victimized…

Now They Notice (#680)

It’s sick and sad how, after an initial show of calculated outrage, Gay, Inc abandoned him to the government:

A federal judge…sentenced Rentboy.com founder Jeffrey Hurant to a six-month prison term…Federal authorities [had] already [stolen] about $1.5 million that they claim was laundered money from Hurant’s company…[but] did not pursue a seizure of $101,000 from Hurant’s personal bank account…the…judge…also fined him $7,500. After sentencing, Hurant told reporters…that…sex work between adults should be decriminalized and destigmatized…

Backwards into the Future (#743)

Virtually no government “commission” will ever suggest taking power away from government:

…the South African Law Reform Commission chose fiction over facts…After taking two decades to draft its final report, it has recommended the continued full criminalisation of consensual adult sex work…The commission also included a last-minute secondary option of [The Swedish model]…These recommendations were made despite mounting evidence that shows that the full decriminalisation of sex work is the most effective and respectful model to ensure improved access to health, justice and support services for sex workers…We have had this apartheid-era model in South Africa for a long time now. What have the results been? High levels of violence and abuse, stigma and discrimination when sex workers attempt to access basic services, and high rates of new HIV infections…And this violence is most often committed by police officers, as illustrated by a review by the Women’s Legal Centre of cases reported between 2011 and 2015. Of the abuse reported to the centre by sex workers, more than 60% of cases identified the police as perpetrators…

The Widening Gyre (#756)

I am so enjoying watching “sex trafficking” hysteria spin out of control of the “authorities”:

A Facebook post [reporting] illegal immigrants are trying to kidnap young girls for human trafficking…[states] Mentor [Ohio] Police are aware…that men are sitting in parked cars in…parking lots…Police [claim] they have received no reports of any human trafficking or related suspicious behavior. Police also [allege] they’ve reached out to security at Great Lakes Mall and the mall has not received any reports…

The War Goes On (#757)

If Backpage is so awful, why do politicians need lies to attack it?

Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley claimed he has “new evidence” showing that the classifieds site “Backpage has directly and actively promoted illegal sex trafficking.” But the only thing new is Hawley’s level of desperation and deceit…Among the “new” evidence…is a January report from the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Despite the senators having access to all of the internal Backpage data and hosting a theatrical in-person inquiry, they found nothing sufficient to spur a criminal investigation or any charges. Hawley also submitted the transcript of an audio recording seized from Philippines company Avion, in which an Avion employee contacts a London sex worker…A state attorney general cannot attempt to prosecute foreign contractors for ads created and posted in foreign countries. And it is legal for Backpage contractors to generate adult ads abroad, where the rules governing web-publishing platforms and legal liability for content vary (and prostitution in certain forms may be legal). Hawley’s actions here should be seen for what they are: a sneaky attempt to build credibility in his illegal crusade…

The Mote and the Beam (#762)

The Unsinkable Liz Brown with more on the censors who want to destroy the internet in the name of “fighting sex trafficking”:

…The underlying reason why no one’s been able to pin criminal charges on Backpage isn’t a “loophole” in federal law that lets Backpage knowingly profit from human trafficking but the fact that the evidence doesn’t support claims that it does so. If it did, Section 230 would be irrelevant, and Backpage execs could be charged under a number of laws—including one 2015 law crafted for just this purpose. The Stop Advertising Victims of Sexual Exploitation Act specifically prohibits the knowing advertisement of sex trafficking victims, under threat of a 10-year mandatory minimum prison sentence…Section 230 doesn’t apply to content that a platform has itself created “in whole or part,” nor to one that…”is directly involved” in the alleged crime. But a website operator “who edits user-created content… retains his immunity for any illegality in the user-created content”…If Backpage is more like the first category, it’s already punishable under criminal statutes and subject to civil claims. If it’s only the former, than opening up Backpage to criminal charges and civil payouts opens up all of the internet to the same…

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In the News (#736)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged Against Their Will, agency denial, All Wet, Backpage, Canada, Cardboard Cutouts, cops, Divided We Fall, Droit du Seigneur, evidence, Fallen Idol, Florida, Georgia, Guam, homosexuality, hysteria, I’m Sure You Feel Safer Now, India, It Looks Good On Paper, Korea, Lack of Evidence, law, lawheads, New York, Pimps Ahoy, politicians, porn, prohibitionist myths, psychology, racism, rape, rescue industry, statistics, streetwalkers, Tennessee, The Mote and the Beam, The War Goes On, United Kingdom, video, Washington (state) on May 6, 2017| 3 Comments »

What you probably know about human trafficking is horseshit.
– Laura Lemoon

Lack of Evidence

A teenage girl riding in a car now constitutes “evidence” of “sex trafficking”:

Three people have been arrested on suspicion of human trafficking after a car transporting a 17-year-old girl was stopped in Preston…the…girl, who is from Romania, is now [in jail]…

Against Their Will

Sunitha Krishnan is a fanatic & compulsive liar who claims all sex workers are “victims” who are “raped by a hundred men a day.” Is it any wonder that a person who quotes her as an “authority” finds sex workers’ desire for individual rights “surprising”?

…Prajwala…headed by Dr. Sunitha Krishnan, is [a prison compound in which] hundreds of women and girls [abducted by cops] from brothels around India [are locked up for brainwashing]…The facility, funded by several [wealthy white prohibitionists], is surrounded by 20-foot high walls with barbed wire atop; its address is not publicly listed. Dr. Krishnan explained that this level of security was needed [to keep] the women [imprisoned there from escaping with the help of friends outside]…What is surprising is that a number of women wanted to go back to their previous life as a prostitute…

It Looks Good On Paper

Another bullshit story touting bullshit “safe harbor” laws that allow “perfect victims” to expunge their records of prostitution charges after going through the hell that is the US “justice” system:

Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee…signed into…law…a bill that…allows victims of human trafficking to clear prostitution convictions, even if the person convicted has been found guilty of committing other crimes…the “new measure states any motion filed to vacate a prostitution conviction must prove ‘by a preponderance of the evidence’ that the applicant’s conviction, along with any other crimes committed, was a result of being a ‘victim of trafficking, promoting prostitution in the first degree or promoting commercial sexual abuse of a minor’”…

The Mote and the Beam

Two stinking piles of filth want to cut sex workers off from the banking system:

U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren…and Marco Rubio…introduced legislation to aid financial institutions in identifying and reporting instances of [sex work]…so that offenders can be prosecuted…The End Banking for Human Traffickers Act would direct federal banking regulators to work with law enforcement and financial institutions to combat the use of the financial system for [sex work]…The bill would further increase collaboration between law enforcement and experts in financial crimes by adding financial intelligence and regulatory officers to the President’s Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, and require the Task Force to…strengthen anti-money laundering programs…

Divided We Fall (#427)

Though Gay, Inc pointedly ignores the connection between queerdom & sex work, some Canadian writers refuse to follow suit:

…[In] conversion therapy…psychiatrists would attempt to suppress same-sex behaviour…by redirecting it toward the heterosexual norm. In other words, the dominant culture sought to impose itself on sexual expression deemed morally objectionable…”John school” has now replaced conversion therapy as a form of state-sanctioned brainwashing that attempts to label purchased sex as a repugnant, unnatural vice…john school engages in psychological repression…Ottawa Citizen…editor Tyler Dawson accurately refers to these therapy sessions as “creepy re-education nights run by the Salvation Army”…For anti-prostitution activists, it’s not enough that johns change their behaviour: they must also change their preferences. Men are told not only that their sexual choices are wrong, but that no “normal” adult would engage in this kind of depravity…advocates of john school continue to stigmatize paid sex between consenting heterosexual adults in private in the same way that the state once stigmatized sex between consenting homosexual adults in private…

Cardboard Cutouts

Liz Brown discusses “Why Is Everyone So Willing to Believe ‘Fake News’ About Sex Trafficking?”

All Wet

Better headline: “Korean Men More Honest About Sex Buying Than Western Men“:

More than half of Korean men have paid for sex at least once in their life, a government report showed…Nearly 26 percent of them had engaged prostitutes in the past year and did so 8.46 times per year on average. The majority of men who had paid for sex, or 53.8 percent, first did so when they were aged between 20 and 24, followed by those aged 25-29 (27.6 percent), 30-34 (10.2 percent) and those under 20 (3.9 percent)…According to a survey of 174 sex workers, 75.6 percent of them were in their 30s. Nearly 48 percent of prostitutes first turned to prostitution in their 20s, while nearly 22 percent began as teenagers…

Fallen Idol

Serial rapist & consent violator James Deen is trying to reframe himself as a protector of children:

…In the last 10 years we have had more free pornography at your fingertips than ever before, to a point where people are no longer learning about sexuality…This is something that is made for a purpose, this is not an example of what sex is, this is people having sex for entertainment…Now, a child, an 11-year-old child, anyone at any age could go to a myriad of places on the internet and be exposed to endless amounts of content…8- or 9-year-olds are not able to properly process what this is. Especially when it’s not just, “Here are two people kissing and some standard sex.” It’s some crazy stuff. And I think now that people…are…seeing these examples, regularly, for years and years and years, of what they believe to be sex…

Droit du Seigneur (#641)

“It’s been an astounding week for abuses of power and sexual violence committed by state agents“:

…In New York City alone, one former cop is on trial for running for running a prostitution ring, another was sentenced to federal prison for soliciting child pornography from mothers he met online, and three others have been indicted on suspicion of trading gun permits for sex, travel, and cash…in…Atlanta, Georgia…arrests continue in a police take-down of two escort services…that also ensnared Gwinnett County Assistant District Attorney Christopher Quinn in January. Quinn was caught on camera paying for and having sex with a woman who worked for one of the escort agencies….[in] the U.S. territory of Guam…Paul John Santos…was found guilty this week of criminal sexual conduct, bribery, and official misconduct after threatening to arrest a sex worker if she didn’t have sex with him…The judge sentenced him to 21 years. That sort of punishment for sex-predator cops is rare…In Memphis, Tennessee, Sergeant Erskine Caldwell…was reported to Internal Affairs by his fellow officers after they spotted him several times with a known sex-worker in his patrol car…Caldwell had harassed her until she complied with his sexual demands…

Just Another Day in America

A Truthout article echoes what I said in the original of this title:

“Our collective focus on police shootings overshadows the reality of what is going on for women on a daily basis,” said Jacqueline Robarge of Power Inside…”The way the police engage women, especially Black women and sex workers, creates a culture of violence. The police use a variety of tactics, including harassment, physical and sexual violence, medical neglect in police custody”…The DOJ investigation prompted by [Freddie] Gray’s killing revealed a number of instances in which Baltimore police officers extorted sex from women they alleged were engaged in prostitution or drug-related activities. The women’s complaints were poorly and partially investigated, if at all, with little or no consequences for the officers involved…a 2014 study by Johns Hopkins University found that 6 percent of…Baltimore [sex workers] had been [raped by cops]…within a given month. In Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color, I summarize the sizeable body of research revealing that the police sexual violence found by the DOJ in Baltimore, and committed by now infamous Oklahoma City police officer Daniel Holtzclaw, is alarmingly commonplace across the country…

Pimps Ahoy

The rescue industry is nasty from every angle:

…Cisgender men, trans folks and anyone who is gender-nonconforming are not going to receive help from these organizations because they don’t fit the stereotype of the sex-trafficking victim in a way that lets these “rescuers” be rescuers. The involvement of government in the suppression and oppression of trafficking survivors also cannot be overlooked…government sanctioning of the maltreatment and exploitation of trafficking survivors is an example of how the current…rescue system is allowed to proliferate…An astonishing 80 percent of survivors who go into [one particular Midwest] shelter end up getting kicked out with a “red dot” status, which means they can’t come back or even engage in any other services…Amber Paulina of Seattle…shares…how two church elders, with no experience or education, opened a residential facility for trafficked girls. She was forced to call the executive director “Mom” and her husband “Dad” — they called all the girls their “daughters”…Amber was grilled about her masturbation habits and was forced to write book reports on “famous” survivors like Rachel Lloyd. “I made bracelets for five bucks a pop that were flipped over at nine bucks a pop en masse at anti-trafficking events and at local boutiques. All material donated. ‘Made by trafficking survivor’ bracelets. All the time. For money. Unpaid,” Amber says…

I’m Sure You Feel Safer Now (#696)

Another case in which a filthy vice pig tricks a desperate survival sex worker with an offer of money plus food so as to ensure public ridicule by the bootlicking press:

Florida [pigs] have charged a [desperately poor] woman with prostitution after she agreed to perform a sex act on an undercover detective for $25 and chicken McNuggets…Alex Direeno was being held…without bond at the Manatee County Jail on charges of prostitution, possession of drug paraphernalia and on outstanding warrants…It’s unclear whether Direeno has retained an attorney.

“Retained an attorney”? Really? With what currency? The $25 they promised her, then stole as “evidence”?

The War Goes On (#711)

The profound stupidity of lawheads is a marvel to behold:

[Sleazy] vice [pigs] in Metro Atlanta say Backpage.com is still a marketplace for prostitution, despite the fact that Backpage removed its adult escort section…in January…[stenographer] Mark Winne spent days [masturbating while following] the DeKalb County…Vice Unit and [is parroting cop propaganda about] how Backpage is still the go-to website for sex trafficking…[Head] Vice [pig] Curtis Williams told Winne that ads for prostitution…simply moved to elsewhere on the site…Winne…asked [one of the cops’ victims], “How come you turned down that officer’s offer of help?” “Cause I don’t want it!” She said…

“Offer of help”. Is Winne a grown man and university graduate? This is the level of critical thinking I’d expect from someone who still believes in the Easter Bunny.

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In the News (#734)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, brothels, California, Canada, condoms, cops, ethics, hysteria, India, Lack of Evidence, Madonna/whore, masturbation, Montana, Neither Addiction nor Epidemic, neofeminism, New York, Nothing New, Oregon, Paint By Numbers, politicians, porn, pregnancy, rape, sex toys, Signs, Spain, The Pro-Rape Coalition, To Molest and Rape, Under Every Bed, Whither Canada?, Whore Madonnas on April 28, 2017| 5 Comments »

The time [for decriminalization] is now. In fact, the time was long ago. – Sandeep Prasad

Whore Madonnas

Melissa Petro on working while pregnant:

…Moonlite Bunny Ranch sex worker…Summer Sebastian…recently announced that she’s pregnant and that she plans to keep working…for “as long as [she’s] healthy” and her doctor tells her there are no problems…Predictably, comments on her blog and on provocative articles about her suggest the move is selfish and a bid for attention, and that she ought to “put the needs of the child first”—as if financial security while furthering her education isn’t in the best interest of her and her kid. People criticize Sebastian for exposing herself to risks…but…sex work—with its flexible hours and good pay—is a job that makes sense for an expectant mother…[absurdly] (considering how babies are made) some people just can’t imagine a woman being both a mother and a whore. The idea that female sexuality and serious work, including the serious work of motherhood, are somehow incompatible is sadly outdated…

Lack of Evidence

Americans like to imagine themselves as ahead of India on women’s rights, but this would never happen in the US:

Observing that the mere presence of women and condoms in a place doesn’t necessarily mean that a brothel was being run there, a [Mumbai] court acquitted and set aside the two-year sentence [a lower court had inflicted on] a…woman accused of running a brothel…The court pointed to the fact that the…women found at the scene, were not examined as prosecution witnesses and neither were any customers found. “There is nothing to show that victims were exploited or abused”…

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic

I could’ve filed this one under “To Molest and Rape”, but take a look at this monster’s “defense”:

…NYPD [pig]…Alberto Randazzo…sought out mothers on websites such as Match.com and Ashley Madison and…”persuaded them to sexually abuse their children and had them send him pictures and videos of the acts”…Three of the women involved have also been arrested on federal charges…Randazzo received a 28-year sentence, plus eight years of supervised release afterward and a sex-offender registration requirement…he had not only requested pornographic images of children—actual children, not teenagers—but also flew to meet mothers of young children to abuse the kids in person. “He showed no qualms about drugging a child so that he could watch the child be molested,” wrote U.S. Attorney Bridget M. Rohde…Randazzo’s shameless defense [was] that he developed an addiction to child pornography following the death of his former police partner…

Under Every Bed

All you really need to know about this article is that it un-ironically includes the phrase “an increase in sex trafficking in northwestern Montana“. What it actually describes is the typical sadistic cops getting their jollies by entrapping horny guys; no “sex slaves” were rescued, no “pimps” were discovered an there was nary a “trafficked child” in sight…which is unsurprising, because Kalispell, Montana has a population of only 22,000.

Paint By Numbers

We’re all familiar with the prohibitionist myth that sex workers are “voiceless”, but these fetishists appear to take that literally:

Advertising students at Portland State University School of Business…In collaboration with the…police…developed a way to help victims of what [fetishists] call modern slavery…their “Red Means Help” campaign launched this month…Signs inside 36 Portland metro area buses tell trafficking victims…to use a red object such as lipstick, toys or sunglasses to signal and [sic] officer or emergency working [sic] that they need help…PSU students plan to place red origami objects around the city at transit stops to spread the word and give victims something red they can use…

Seriously? These people honestly think that if someone were actually being victimized in some way, they’d sit mutely instead of trying to make themselves understood by gestures? And that this paralyzing fear would suddenly be lifted because of a magical sign, and the supposed “victims” will jump up and start waving red paper birds around like a semaphore flag? Who comes up with this infantile rubbish? This is like something a kindergartener would think of, not an actual design to help people fashioned by sane adults.

Whither Canada?

The kind of essay that’s common in the Canadian press, but rare in the US:

The Trudeau government has a moral obligation to address the public health and safety of all…people in Canada, including sex workers…this human rights issue is intentionally being left off the legislative agenda, which is a serious concern…the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health has condemned the criminalization, full or asymmetrical, of sex work as a violation of the right to health by creating barriers to sex worker’s access to health services…In December 2013…The Supreme Court’s Bedford decision marked a huge step in recognizing sex workers’ rights…Almost immediately, the Harper government communicated their intention to…justify the continued aggressive regulation of…sex workers…Like the laws struck down in 2013, this new regulatory regime fails to comply with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms…The Trudeau government has touted itself as one that promotes, respects and fights for Charter rights; yet, their response to sex workers’ Charter rights is dismal…

Nothing New

Remember how I told you that the (very recently-concocted) tale of Victorian ladies being masturbated by doctors because they didn’t know what orgasms were was a huge pile of elephant excrement? Here’s a little more evidence for you:

…Matthews auctioneers in County Meath, Ireland, is offering for sale an “antique carved ivory ladies’ companion”…auctioneer Damien Matthews [said]…“We believe the ivory dates back to the 1840s…in India”…The well-travelled man later fought in the Boxer Rebellion in China from 1899 to 1901, which is where it is thought he had the ivory shaped into something more useful…“This…would have been a very loving gift from a husband to wife. You can see that because the level of detail is incredible, down to the folds of the skin. There’s a heart carved at the base of it, where her finger would have been, and a receptacle in which she could keep a lock of his hair”…

The Pro-Rape Coalition (#545)

Once again, prohibitionists demonstrate their total contempt for the sex workers they pretend to want to “rescue”:

Netflix’s new documentary Hot Girls Wanted: Turned On is…[a diatribe against] the porn industry. Now, at least four sex workers feel the show itself has exploited them — by allegedly featuring them without their consent and, in one case, outing a performer’s real name…Gia Paige…initially agreed to appear and did sign a participant release, but changed her mind after…the [“feminist”] directors kept pushing her boundaries and pressuring her into talking about her family…the show revealed her legal name. During one scene, her Facebook profile is displayed on-screen along with her real first name…Effy Elizabeth, a cam performer, only found out that she was featured…when a friend told her on Twitter. The series used a publicly available Periscope clip of her with fellow cam performer Autumn Kayy. Both women are upset the show…used the footage without their permission and did not warn them that it would appear in the series…

Signs

This is mostly just a hodgepodge of the usual “sex trafficking” nonsense, lies and disinformation: the exaggerated numbers, the agency denial, the pretense that individual thugs are organized into international cartels, the infantilization of African people & fetishization of Asian & Eastern European women, the pearl-clutching, the calls for greater surveillance & more police power, the anti-sex and “end demand” poison, the myth of female asexuality, and so on. But what makes it interesting is the first picture I’ve seen of the one and only case of an actual barcode tattoo, found on the wrist of a Romanian woman in Spain in 2012.

To Molest and Rape

Even though this rapist cop costs taxpayers millions, a newspaper felt compelled to portray him as a hero:

Irwindale [California] paid a $2.75 million settlement…to a young woman who was molested as a teenager by an Irwindale [cop]…for more than a year while she served as a police Explorer Scout…Daniel R. Camerano…pleaded “no contest” in late-2014 to a series of sex crimes for his molestation of the then-14-year-old girl…between May of 2009 and December of 2010. Camerano, who…also [sent]…sexually suggestive texts messages to another 17-year-old female Explorer Scout in 2012, was sentenced to two years and eight months in state prison and ordered to register as a sex offender for life…the sexual abuse…took place during “ride-alongs” with the [pig]…who served as an advisor to the…Explorer program…department officials were aware…that Camerano was sexually abusing the…[girl] but did not stop his access to [her]…

Instead of the mugshot which would’ve been used for someone murdered by a cop, the paper printed a staged portrait with a caption about what a brave hero this rapist was. I am not making this up.

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In the News (#725)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, Australia, Banishment, Broken Record, Canada, cops, cosmetic surgery, Creepy Coppers, domestic violence, Eternal Vigilance, Florida, Follow Your Bliss, Georgia, hysteria, I Saw My Brain, Illinois, Lack of Evidence, language, law, Madonna/whore, marriage, Nevada, No Friend of Ours, Not To Be Taken Internally, porn, prohibitionist myths, racism, rape, rescue industry, Rough Trade, scams, Schadenfreude, sex offender registry, sex rays, Signs, sporting events, Texas, To Molest and Rape, Whores and Wives on March 29, 2017| 3 Comments »

Whores are often the first to feel the effects of exclusion. – Fleur de Lit

Whores and Wives

Please, wives, stay in denial; if you actually took our advice it might potentially reduce our income:

…Social media lit up when sex workers took to news.com.au to tell Australian women they didn’t know how to take care of their male partners, with growing numbers of men paying for “girlfriend” or “companionship” experiences. [Female] readers on the Sunshine Coast Daily Facebook page had the firm view that perhaps if these men used their money to wine and dine their partners, they might get the intimacy they appear to crave…Stacey Brownlie commented… “These men should be there helping their wives with the kids so she has time to connect to (her) husband instead of him sneaking to a hooker to talk to”…Donna Turnley took a similar view. “All these men have in common is that they are liars and cheats…”

You’re exactly right, ladies! Stick to your guns on this, and encourage your friends to do the same! Whores have bills to pay, and you’re giving us a big hand in paying them.

Follow Your Bliss

Understand that people like this are the norm in prosecuting sexual offenses, and always will be:

…Craig Wattier rose through the ranks of his police department…[to] investigati[ng]…sex crimes against children…[since] 2013…he stayed late [at] work…to watch child pornography seized from other people…By the time Wattier was caught more than two years later, he had watched hours of footage and hundreds of videos…[but] the judge [only] sentenced [this very typical cop] to a year in jail…The judge, Katherine McLeod, [also]…watched a sample of the videos on a laptop [even though there was no actual legal reason for her to do so]…

Not To Be Taken Internally

Who could possibly guess that it was a bad idea for someone without medical training to inject large amounts of industrial-grade sealant into a person’s body under septic conditions, after lying to them about the contents of said injection?

A defense attorney for a Dallas woman accused of killing a client by injecting silicone caulk into her backside says no one could have known the procedure would turn deadly…After all, Wykesha Reid had suffered no [apparent] negative side effects following at least three previous butt injections, the attorney for Denise “Wee Wee” Ross said…Reid…died Feb. 19, 2015, when industrial-grade silicone seeped through her veins and filled her lungs…Ross is charged with murder and practicing medicine without a license…

Banishment

OH MY GOD THE SEX RAYS COULD HAVE HARMED THE CHILDREN^TM!!!!!!

…in Palos Park, Illinois…A sex offender drove his car by a school bus stop…He didn’t even get out of his car…but…some parents noticed an unfamiliar red Hyundai and alerted the cops…[who] questioned the man. Turns out he kept driving by each day for the very creepy and bizarre reason that this happens to be the route to his job…And yet the cops praised the parents for calling the authorities…[because] that’s what parents are supposed to do these days: freak out at red Hyundais. Naturally, the police proceeded to notify the school district, and naturally, the superintendent notified even more parents…

Broken Record (#416)

It’s been a few years since we’ve seen this sporting event touted as a “sex trafficking” magnet:

…thousands will be heading to Augusta for the Masters tournament. During that time that a local organization will beef up its efforts to shed light on the dark side of human trafficking that so often happens during major sporting events like this one. The group I’m Aware, held an information blitz at First Baptist Church where they gave out pamphlets to discuss what they’re calling modern-day slavery…The pamphlets gave volunteers information about resources for sex trafficking victims that could travel to Augusta to work during the masters tournament. While here victims tend to frequent places such as bars, hotels and even truck stops…

It’s interesting that “victims” here is being directly used as a one-to-one substitution for “sex workers”, with no mention of “pimps”.

Schadenfreude (#521)

The Dallas outfit cashing in on “sex trafficking” tours has now expanded to Houston:

It’s widely [fantasized among fetishists] that Houston has been a hub for human trafficking. The…profit[eers], Children At Risk, took a group of about 40 people on a bus tour…to [profit from]…the [moral panic]…They took the tour group to about a dozen [pretended] human trafficking hot spots around southwest Houston…James Caruthers [said, in a rare moment of honesty]…”We call it a human trafficking tour…But really it’s an explo[it]ation of the commercial sex industry in Houston that [we pretend] has strong links with the crime of human trafficking”…

Rough Trade (#592)

And the sick fuck just keeps smiling and laughing while facing the possibility of life in a cage:

A jury has found War Machine guilty on 29 felony counts stemming from an attack on adult star and ex-girlfriend Christy Mack and her friend in August 2014. Sentencing is slated for [May 10th]…During the reading of verdicts, War Machine appeared shaking his head in amazement. Several moments, he was even smiling..[he] is possibly facing a life sentence…

Signs

An antecedent is a terrible thing to waste:

The Country Inn and Suites in Albert Lea [Minnesota] held [an indoctrination] session…to teach hotel employees…sex trafficking [dogma]. “Hotels are the perfect location for sex trafficking because they’re so transient”…[grammar moron] Deb Flatness said…Minnesota is one of the top states in the country for sex trafficking…A few signs to look for are people traveling with no luggage or paying with cash…

Gotta watch out for those transient hotels; I hear they follow “circuits” down interstate highways.

To Molest and Rape

Because women always give blow jobs to random cops who show up at their houses unannounced:

An Orlando Police Department detective [who orally raped]…a woman…will not face criminal charges…[because the] State Attorney…[claims] there was no proof the [woman didn’t just want to give a random pig a blow job in his car in broad daylight]…On Dec. 15, 2016 [Angel] Burgos arrived at the victim’s house around 9 a.m. in an unmarked police vehicle, and asked the woman to join him in the car parked outside her home. The two knew each other from a previous case the woman was involved with…Inside, Burgos…expos[ed] his penis….[groped her] and…pleaded with her to “jerk him off”…[when] she continued to say no…Burgos grabbed her by the back of her head and…forcefully pushed [onto] his penis…telling her to “be quiet” and…to “live in the moment.” The woman…pulled away once she felt his grip loosen…Burgos [then]…ejaculated into a microfiber towel…The woman got out and returned to her house…Burgos later yelled at her over the phone and asked whether she was going to report him, [trying to gaslight her by] telling her to not contact him again [even though it was he who had come to her house]…

Eternal Vigilance (#637)

Cops will never stop trying to gain power to rape and rob sex workers until the very concept of prohibition is completely eradicated:

Sydney sex workers would require a licence to work as part of a [scheme] to reduce [imaginary] human trafficking and [once again subject sex workers to police] corruption. It is not a criminal offence to work as a prostitute in NSW, but police [don’t like that they have no power to threaten sex workers with prohibitionist laws]…officers must rely on [getting a warrant]…if they want to investigate abuse claims at brothels. The lack of [police power over sex workers mean cops must rely on tales of]…sex slavery, corruption, blackmail and even child abuse [in order to regain that power]…There are also increasing police [masturbatory fantasies] about…young females coming to Australia from countries such as China, Korea and Thailand on student visas and being forced to sell their bodies for greedy pimps…

I Saw My Brain (#700)

Yet another pogrom in the pocket police-state that is Polk County, Florida:

Basketball fans are excited over March Madness right now. But Polk Sheriff Grady Judd is enthralled with something else: March Sadness. That’s the name of his latest [pogrom]…during [which]…104 sex workers and Johns were arrested. “What you see here is not a star basketball team,” Judd [crowed]…”They are a lot of losers.” Judd [took particular glee in destroying the life and career of a man]…stationed at Cape Canaveral [who] has top secret security clearance [after a sow claims she told him she was 14, though given Judd’s record that is highly doubtful]…

Grady Judd is one of the few people so vile, so utterly evil, that a mere firing squad would be insufficient punishment for him; being burned at the stake would be more like it, assuming it was a nice, low fire.

Lack of Evidence (#716)

Sex workers have been legally prohibited from entering the US for almost 150 years:

…You are not a Muslim for good because you held up a placard on a sunny afternoon in New York City. You can take a sign off and go back to work. It’s like dressing as a hooker on Halloween; you can still enjoy the social privilege of not being a truly stigmatized person…friends of mine…have suffered the same treatment Muslims have of late: called out, zip-tied and paraded through airports, asked questions about their integrity and then banned…My choice, after being warned through my networks, has been not to try to cross the border…In this industry, drawing the ire of people who hold power is dangerous…and…I prefer to avoid such exchanges, which are really just demonstrations of power…I’m not all that fussed that I can’t go to the States, a country simultaneously obsessed with and terrified by expressions of sex that diverge from fundamentalist Christianity…

No Friend of Ours (#720)

For those still laboring under the misapprehension that Nevada is whore-friendly:

A bill penalizing [men who]…buy [sex from independent sex workers instead of those working for licensed pimps]…is intended to [increase the power of the police state]…minimum fine [will increase to] $400…Funds would go to [the pigs]…The bill allows suspended sentences for first-time offenders if they attend [brainwashing] programs like so-called john schools…

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In the News (#716)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, All-Purpose Excuse, asset seizure, Australia, avails laws, Bad Fantasy-Good Reality, brothels, Canada, Checklist, cops, Dirty Laundry, evidence, fantasy, Follow Your Bliss, hysteria, illegal aliens, Illinois, Ireland, Israel, Lack of Evidence, law, Legal Is as Legal Does, Michigan, Nebraska, Paint By Numbers, politicians, pragmatism, prohibitionist myths, rape, sporting events, teachers, Thailand, The Course of a Disease, The Widening Gyre, United Kingdom, Utah, Whimsical Notions, Wisconsin, Worse Than I Thought on February 25, 2017| 4 Comments »

We should…not…[create] barriers that stop vulnerable people seeking help. – Lord Paddick

Follow Your Bliss

Understand that people like this are the norm in anything that involves prosecuting sexual offenses, and always will be:

A secondary school teacher who [enthusiastically] helped the Metropolitan Police grade indecent images of children was caught on film as he abused a sleeping six year-old boy…Craig Keane…now faces jail after pleading guilty to nine counts of sexual assault on a child under the age of 13. He has been suspended from both his roles as a teacher and special constable…the victim was asleep while the assault occurred but another child in the same room hid a camera behind the curtain to capture the abuse after becoming concerned about what was happening…

The Widening Gyre

Everything is a sign of lurking “sex traffickers”! EVERYTHING!!!

When 19-year-old Ashley Hardacre left a late shift at the mall…she found what she feared was a trap. “I…noticed that there was a blue flannel shirt on my windshield,” she wrote later that night on Facebook. “There were two cars near me and one was running so I immediately felt uneasy and knew I couldn’t get out to get it off…I drove over to a place where I was safe and quickly rolled down my window and got the shirt off.” Hardacre…speculated that the way the shirt had been attached to her wiper was intentional…Hardacre’s post…quickly went viral. But it’s not the first time people have suspected strange items left under their windshield wipers. In July last year, a Wisconsin woman wrote that her mother had discovered a fancy jeweled ring on her windshield…“This is exactly how human trafficking and abductions take place,” Savannah Nguyen wrote in the now-removed post…The local police…chief [said]…the department had no evidence linking the ring to a sex trafficking attempt…

You know who else I hear puts things on people’s windshields to abduct them? Satanists. Commies too, I’ll bet.

Worse Than I Thought

Mormon politician fantasizes that sex workers “force” cops to rape us:

The [Utah] Senate criminal justice committee approved enhancing penalties for prostitution-related crimes as well as clarifying the definition of prostitution…Bill sponsor…Todd Weiler…said its language adds protection to [lying pigs] who [lie to rape sex workers] while conducting prostitution stings. “Some of the women involved in this trade…are savvy enough … to force an undercover…to actually touch them, because that’s where the line is currently drawn”…

Checklist

Another ridiculous “study” based purely in the researchers’ sexual fantasies finds that mundane things are actually “signs of sex trafficking”:

Two hundred people are sold for sex every month in Lincoln and another 700 are sold in other parts of [Nebraska]…according to a new report from Creighton University…researchers spent several years [masturbating over] Backpage.com…Crysta Price and Terry Clark, cross-referenced the ads to make sure they weren’t counting one potential victim multiple times [yet couldn’t be bothered to consult even one actual sex worker. A spokespig oinked that]…there are a number of ways to determine if an ad was made by a trafficker or by someone selling him or herself — including if the picture was taken by someone else, the verbiage used in the post and if the pictures were taken in a hotel room…Twenty-five to 30 percent of the ads researchers studied were posted by adults working independently and not being trafficked. About 70 percent showed some sign of advertised individuals being underage or controlled by a third party…

I’m sure this is much better wanking material for prohibitionists than the mundane truth: roughly 2% coercion, roughly 3.5% underage (and only 25% of underage advertise online).

Lack of Evidence (#314)

This will keep happening as long as laws & procedures that stigmatize sex workers are allowed to stand:

A Vancouver man was denied entry into the United States after a US Customs and Border Patrol officer read his profiles on the gay hookup app Scruff and the website BBRT. The officer suspected the man was a sex worker because he found messages from the man saying he was “looking for loads,” and assumed it meant he was soliciting sex for cash…André, a 30-year-old Vancouver set decorator who declined to give his full name for fear of retaliation from US Customs, describes the experience as “humiliating”…Jon Davidson, legal director of the US LGBT organization Lambda Legal…says…“Their agents need cultural awareness training to not misunderstand that people who simply are leading a normal sex life are not prostitutes.”

Fuck you, Jon Davidson. If whores’ sex lives aren’t “normal”, neither is yours. But I guess you’ve got your seat at the Big Table, so we don’t matter, right?

Paint By Numbers

Well, at least golf requires skill & activity:

A golf tournament March 31 at Sunset Hills Country Club will benefit The Covering House, which [profits from “sex trafficking” hysteria]…GENTS (Gentlemen Encouraging No Trafficking Society), a volunteer group…is playing host for the tournament…[blah blah] signs…[blah blah] suspect a child is being trafficked…[blah blah] Top 20 human trafficking jurisdictions…[blah blah] 300,000 children…[blah blah] average age of entry is 13…

Whereas this is the usual total inanity:

…Members of Congress, celebrities including Ashton Kutcher, and others…[changed] their profile photo for the End It Movement’s “Shine A Light On Slavery” Day…You don’t have to be in Washington to take part…in…[uploading] red Xs…You can also take a tube of red lipstick, mark an X on your hand, and snap a photo to post…

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the “End It” yahoos.

Whimsical Notions

Is “the dangerous cycle of prostitution” a used Harley bought with whoring money?

Recently we were exposed to the horrifying phenomenon of soldiers involved in the cycle of prostitution…shocking evidence of male and female soldiers…engaging in prostitution due to severe economic distress. This phenomenon is a badge of shame for the IDF and the State of Israel…Military service is often a lifeline for boys and girls from all sorts of difficult backgrounds. The army should set a moral example and act to stamp out prostitution in its midst, work to save these soldiers and recover them…

As far as I can make out, this dude’s pearl-clutching tone is dead serious. Do you amateurs really believe this kind of shit? “Shame”? “Save them”? “Recover them”? Seriously?

Legal Is as Legal Does (#440)

The danger of a “tolerated” system: cops can suddenly decide to be intolerant:

A major crackdown on massage parlours and brothels across Adelaide has forced sex workers into risky private work where they are more vulnerable to violence and crime…Police have [exhibited] threatening behaviour during a flurry of raids since September that have resulted in the closure of well-established brothels and sex workers who are too scared to report crimes against them…Sex workers…[who] refused [to give cops their telephone numbers were]…threatened with a home visit. Police officers…took sex workers’ car registration details, working names, and…told workers they would be arrested unless they left the premises immediately…[managers and] receptionists [are being hit with avails charges] “because they are the ones that handle the money”…

All-Purpose Excuse

“Human trafficking” can mean anything!

President Trump[‘s]…new policies also target unauthorized immigrants who smuggle their children into the country, as happened with Central American children seeking to reunite with parents living in the United States. Under the new directives, such parents could face deportation or prosecution for smuggling or human trafficking…

Dirty Laundry (#452)

Good for this lady, taking a pompous judge’s attempt to get rid of her & then carrying on as usual:

…Mikaela Niculae…was arrested…last weekend…Ms Niculae had been before Letterkenny District court in June 2014 where she was part of a group of six prostitutes who were given €1,200 by Judge Paul Kelly to fly back to Romania. The money came from a sum of €5,890 [stolen] by Gardai [from sex workers]…the…Judge…fined [her]…€500 and…order[ed her] mobile phone…[destroyed]…

Bad Fantasy, Good Reality (#586)

This is a good, objective look at sex work in Bangkok; it’s refreshingly free of the usual sadfeelz, judgment and imposition of “sex trafficking” fantasies on the interviews with real sex workers. I do find it extremely funny that every Western reporter who visits a brothel feels compelled to assure the reader that he didn’t purchase sexual services; honestly, I’d have a lot more respect for one who admitted that he did, as it was demonstrate he was respectful of both the women’s time and profession.

The Course of a Disease (#652)

This is a huge move forward for a UK political party:

The Liberal Democrats are likely to adopt as official policy a move to quash all historical sex-work convictions – including brothel-keeping, soliciting business and kerb-crawling. The move…will be included in a key motion…as part of the party’s wider drive to decriminalise sex work…The party’s home affairs spokesman Lord Paddick said: “As a former police officer I know what works and the current laws around prostitution do not. They might sound tough but they don’t protect people. The police should be focusing their resources on…coercion rather than policing consenting adults…it is time for an informed debate on this complex issue and I want my party to be leading that debate”…

I’m so pleased by this I’m not even going to quibble over the ridiculous idea that human rights are subject to “debate”.

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In the News (#696)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged A Tale That Grew in the Telling, A War for Peace, agency denial, BDSM, California, Canada, Checklist, cops, Do As I Say, evidence, fantasy, games, Georgia, hysteria, I’m Sure You Feel Safer Now, Imaginary Evils, Kenya, Lack of Evidence, language, law, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, pizza!, prohibitionist myths, psychology, rescue industry, restaurants, serial killers, streetwalkers, Surplus Women, teachers, Texas, The Implosion Begins, The Widening Gyre, Think of the Children!, Train Wreck, underage, Unintentional Hilarity, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers, Washington DC, yellow journalism on December 7, 2016| 10 Comments »

You can’t change your life [after a prostitution arrest], because you got people who just want to ride around and randomly take people to jail for nothing. – Erika Elias

Think of the Children!

“Concerned parents” is a euphemism for “busybodies”:

A [gang] of [busybodies pretend] their quality of life is being affected after [one of them] discovered a business selling adult services was operating in their street…The owner of the house, Nigel Sanders, said…”I have a girlfriend who is a professional dominatrix, she comes to visit me in Exeter and on some occasions she may have found it convenient to see someone for services in…the [house]”…[one of the busybodies] said it made her feel uncomfortable that [people were having consensual sex close to where the products of other consensual sex acts were living]…

Lack of Evidence

As long as these laws exist, all women are vulnerable to persecution by cops:

Erika Elias…was waiting for a ride outside a Columbus, Georgia, trailer-park last month when a local [cop]…spotted her. Because Elias had been been picked up for prostitution nearby previously, and the neighborhood is one where cops regularly make prostitution arrests…Ryan Vardman…arrested [her] for “loitering for the purposes of prostitution” and [she] now faces nearly two months in county jail…The criteria for this crime is entirely subjective: does a cop think you look like someone selling sex?…

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

“…Toledo [cop]…Michael E. Moore, Sr…was indicted by a…grand jury on two counts of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor and two counts of compelling prostitution…[after he] paid for sex with a girl, who was at the time between 13 and 14…”

A War for Peace

Femen’s main purpose seems to be the generation of irony from hypocrisy:

The founder of the Canadian chapter of…FEMEN…Kseniya Chernyshova was arrested in midtown Manhattan on Nov. 11…[for] “sexual intercourse in exchange for $300”…The Ukrainian-born Chernyshova…has been trying to [stop other] women [from making money the same way she does]…

Surplus Women

Why can’t reporters write about the murders of sex workers without lurid bullshit?

It has been 10 years since a suspected serial killer prowling the streets of Atlantic City claimed Molly Dilts, 20, and three other women, Kim Raffo, 35, Barbara Breidor, 42, and Tracy Ann Roberts, 23. The women, whose lives had unraveled under the weight of drug addiction, worked as prostitutes in the shadow of the resort’s neon-lit casinos. Over five weeks, the killer took them one by one, dumping their bodies in a brackish, trash-strewn drainage canal…The killings spawned lurid headlines around the nation for months…Before drugs took hold of their lives, the four…were mothers and daughters…

A man who implies that sex workers can’t be “mothers and daughters”, and who apparently views women as only having worth in our relationships to others, has the nerve to call similar reporting on the same subject “lurid”.

The Widening Gyre

It’s fascinating to see fetishists convincing themselves their fantasies are real:

New details are emerging about the kidnapping of Northern California mom Sherri Papini, who was able to provide basic descriptions of the two Spanish-speaking women she says abducted her. Authorities say the motive for the kidnapping is still unknown, but one private investigator says there are signs that sex trafficking could be involved.

Another caption below this piece claims Papini was “branded”, which as longtime readers know is total bullshit. This smells to me like a troubled woman looking for attention by faking her own “sex trafficking” abduction. The “Spanish-speaking women” seem kin to the imaginary dark-skinned men usually featured in such hoaxes.

Train Wreck

It looks like Kenyan articles about sex workers can be just as weirdly stupid as Nigerian ones:

The increasing number of commercial sex workers touting for business at the Central Business District in Nakuru during the day is scaring away potential investors and customers…the Nakuru Business Association [pretends]…that the twilight girls some who are under age, strategically position themselves outside business premises disrupting human traffic to shops…The commercial sex workers are now considered as a big hindrance to normal operation of business in the city…

So now “disrupting human traffic” is a bad thing? Please tell this to the “end demand” people.

Checklist

Fetishist admits her “information” is bullshit, yet teaches it anyway:

Sex trafficking in the United States is a “hidden epidemic”…an [opportunist]…told Longview [Texas patsies]…during a workshop. “No one is an expert in this yet,” said Traffick911 Director of Programs Lindsey Speed…”as soon as we learn the way pimps do their business, they change it up”…Speed [fantasized about]…sex trafficking and how people can spot signs of potential victims…Speed offered up [nonsense] statistics about the industry…

Traffick911 is a coalition of Christian groups best known for claiming that their imaginary bogeymen can be chased away by saying prayers over highways.

Unintentional Hilarity

Quite possibly the stupidest prohibitionist argument of the year:

Pokemon Go is a game in which you capture little monsters inside balls and trade them for candy or use them to fight other Pokemon to gain points…But, as with prostitution, when you look more closely at Pokemon Go, you see a nastier side. In the game, I lure and drug beautiful little wild animals in their natural environment to calm them for capture, then bombard them with ever stronger Pokeballs in which I eventually confine them…I put Pokemon in my collection, inspect their vital statistics and, if it suits me, sell them to an authority figure (the Professor, a wise old white man) in return for candy. Or I may keep them, send them to battle others and get them hurt in the process. Like a pimp lures and (sometimes literally) captures a woman in prostitution and then rents her out to men to control and enjoy…

Yes, she’s actually comparing living adult women to imaginary cartoon monsters and apparently implying that “pimps” have magical entrapment abilities. Also, some clients refer to seeing sex workers as “The Hobby”, not “The Game”. But prohibitionists never let actual facts contaminate their bizarre, sex-hating beliefs.

Imaginary Evils (#348)

A deep look at the Maoist cult whose members were at first called “slaves” by the media:

When Aravindan Balakrishnan was growing up, in Kerala…his mother often warned him not to curse people when he was angry…she believed that her eldest son possessed occult powers, and nicknamed him Black Tongue; later, as an adult, Balakrishnan would boast that he could set people aflame by looking at them. He was a good student, and won a British Council scholarship…to study at the London School of Economics…By 1967, Balakrishnan had suspended his studies at the university and joined the Communist Party of England. He…later…persuaded a small group of people—including Chanda Pattni, a classmate from Tanzania, whom he later married—to follow him. Together, they founded their own party, the Workers’ Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought…Eventually, they moved in to a communal house in Clapham, South London…Balakrishnan enforced control by encouraging rivalries among the women and keeping them financially dependent. He warned them that if they strayed, an invisible machine would punish them. He called it JACKIE, an acronym of Jehovah, Allah, Christ, Krishna, and the Immortal Easwaran—the last of these being a scholar and spiritual teacher from Kerala. If any of the women tried to flee, Balakrishnan said, JACKIE would zap them with lasers. If they had disloyal thoughts, JACKIE would make the household appliances go haywire…

A Tale That Grew in the Telling (#574)

Americans disapprove of teaching kids about sex, but they’re all for filling their heads with stupid anti-sex propaganda:

Dozens of teachers gathered in [California]…to learn about how to [indoctrinate]…students in fifth to eleventh grades [in “sex trafficking” propaganda]. Tiffany Lavoie, a [fetishist, lied that]…”The average age of a victim of human trafficking in the United States is eleven to fourteen years old. Some studies say fifteen…my mom trafficked me from the age of three until I was 13″…Lavoie said her goal is not to scare kids about strangers…

Bullshit; that’s exactly her goal. And more importantly, to scare their parents & “authorities” so she can keep making money off of this moral panic.

I’m Sure You Feel Safer Now (#693)

Liz Brown has discovered a rather revolting pattern in US vice cops’ recent behavior:

One disturbing new trend I’ve noticed of late is undercover cops posing not just as vanilla sex-buyers or women looking to get cash for sex but as prostitution clients with unusual kinks or women demanding payment in things like cheeseburgers. Then, after a sex worker or would-be client is arrested by undercover officers, the police—and the media segments that parrot them—are sure to highlight the more…mockable and attention-grabbing…elements of the bust…In [one] case, they set up a sting wherein sex workers advertising online were asked to oblige an undercover cop’s fetish request, which involved gummy worms in some way. But the gummy-worm fetish part has no bearing on whether the elements of the crime of prostitution are satisfied, so it’s hard to see why [cops] would include it but for their own amusement or to ensure that the sting would be irresistible to the press afterward (or both)…

The Widening Gyre (#694)

I’m glad this happened; it isn’t until moral panics start disrupting the lives of the well-connected that they finally end:

A man who said he was investigating a conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton running a child sex ring out of a pizza place fired an [“assault rifle”] inside the Washington, D.C., restaurant on Sunday…Edgar Maddison Welch…was charged with assault with a dangerous weapon…the pizza place has been hammered by thousands of threats and bizarre, unsubstantiated tales about child sex trafficking online for weeks…two women, who declined to give their names, [were found] banging on the patio…in late November. The women were looking for the alleged tunnels used to traffic children. “All of this is an underground tunnel that…transport them back and forth so they can can do these rituals,” said one of them. “They are putting a lot of curses and spells over the city”…

The tie-in to the Satanic Panic makes it even better.

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In the News (#679)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged An Ounce of Prevention, Backpage, brothels, California, censorship, Challenge, clowns, cops, Crying for Nanny, disease, Do As I Say, Dutch Threat, Egypt, Fever Dream, Girls Girls Girls, hysteria, King of the Hill, Lack of Evidence, law, Mississippi, Netherlands, New York, politicians, prohibitionist myths, racism, rape, red-light districts, restaurants, robots, Seizing Power, Send In the Clowns, Shift in the Wind, South Carolina, stripping, Tennessee, Texas, The Pygmalion Fallacy, To Molest and Rape, Uncommon Sense, United Kingdom, Utah, virginity on October 8, 2016| 4 Comments »

Political opponents of [Backpage] like to imagine that without it, sex trafficking and the sexual exploitation of minors would simply cease. – Elizabeth Nolan Brown

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

Of course they didn’t accuse him of faking:

Ten men, including a South Carolina police chief, have been arrested in an undercover prostitution sting…Chief Freddie Lorick Sr…told officers he needed medical treatment and was taken to a local hospital. It’s unclear whether he has been released…

An Ounce of Prevention

There have been a few close approaches, but this could be the most promising yet:

British man could become the first person in the world to be cured of HIV using a new therapy designed by a team of scientists from five UK universities…presently the virus is completely undetectable in the man’s blood, although that could be a result of regular drugs. However if the dormant cells are also cleared out it could represent the first complete cure…

Girls, Girls, Girls!

While the feds actively persecute some sex workers…

The federal government is again suing a Mississippi strip club, saying its owner still discriminates against black strippers…Danny’s Downtown Cabaret…managers require African-American strippers to work exclusively at the neighboring Black Diamonds club or pay extra to work at Danny’s. The suit alleges patrons at Black Diamonds were allowed to grope strippers in a building where air conditioning sometimes didn’t work…

The Pygmalion Fallacy

This double dose of stupid reminds me of those old Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup commercials: “Hey! You got your robot whore fantasy in my blow job cafe fantasy!” “No, you got your blow job cafe fantasy in my robot whore fantasy!”

An entrepreneur who hopes to open London’s first “fellatio cafe” has revealed his staff will be made up entirely of sex robots…Bradley Charvet…claims the sex-bots will be programmable to a person’s needs and will soon be seen as “totally normal”…

Shift in the Wind (#131)

An interesting article on getting funding for sex worker rights projects:

As human rights and social justice funders, we try to reach those people who are most marginalized and excluded from services and protection. Those who are least empowered, least resilient, and hardest hit by inequality. But one group that ticks all those boxes is systematically excluded from funding opportunities: sex workers. Why are not more funders stepping into this gap? What makes even human rights funders so hesitant to take on the human rights of sex workers?…

Lack of Evidence (Extra Edition)

Future generations will marvel at their ancestors’ deeply weird obsession with female virginity:

An Egyptian MP has called for women to be forced to undergo virginity tests before being admitted to university…Elhamy Agina called on the Minister of Higher Education to issue a mandate requiring him or his officials to enforce the virginity tests…Agina reportedly [said]: “No one should be upset by this decision. If you’re upset then that means you’re scared that your daughter is in an ‘urfi’ marriage behind your back.” Urfi marriages can be entered into without the approval of a bride’s guardian and can only require two witnesses, resulting in a cultural perception among some segments of Egyptian society that they are covert or secret marriages…

Fever Dream

We’re not hearing quite as much of this “highway” bullshit as we used to:

…Chattanooga and Tennessee have become a focal point [sic] in the war against sex trafficking. The effort has involved not only agencies such as the TBI and local law enforcement, it also has…made its way to Congress with the End Modern Slavery Initiative from Bob Corker, the…U.S. senator from Tennessee and former Chattanooga mayor. As the geographic intersection of Interstates 75, 24 and 59, Chattanooga provides an easy path for pimps to transport their victims around the Southeast…That’s especially true for traffickers from Atlanta which, in 2014, was ranked as the No. 1 city in the country for sex trafficking…

Seizing Power (#593)

A win for Backpage on one front:

The Supreme Court announced…it has declined to hear an appeal from…Chicago…sheriff [Tom Dart] who was ordered to cease threatening credit card companies about doing business with…Backpage.com. The justices let stand a lower court order that forbids…Dart from contacting Visa and MasterCard in his effort to [censor] sex [workers’ ability to advertise online]…

However, see “Crying For Nanny” below.

Challenge (#628)

ESPLERP vs. Gascon reaches a court which could potentially do something:

…ESPLERP…filed a brief in the United States Federal Ninth Circuit appealing against the Northern California District Court’s judgement dismissing ESPLERP v Gascon…Maxine Doogan [said]…“[The judge] acknowledged that Lawrence v Texas defined a constitutional right to privacy in individuals’ sexual conduct, and also acknowledged that morality was not a basis to deny that right, but then found flimsy legal arguments to deny that right…“Lawrence v Texas made it clear that governments may not intrude into the private lives of consenting adults by criminalizing their sexual behavior” said Mike Chase, longtime human rights activist…Contributions to support the court case can be submitted through…www.litigatetoemancipate.com…

To Molest and Rape

“A Spring Hill [Tennessee cop] has been charged with rape and sexual battery…Christopher Odom…pulled two women over for traffic stops on two separate occasions, once in June and again in July, [raping] both adult women…”

Crying for Nanny (#659)

It’s difficult to overstate what a huge development this is; the allegations constitute a direct attempt to destroy Section 230 and therefore the entire internet, all so a few megalomaniacal politicians can score a few political points:

State agents raided the Dallas headquarters of…Backpage and arrested Chief Executive Officer Carl Ferrer on Thursday following allegations that adult and child sex-trafficking victims had been forced into prostitution through escort ads posted on the site. Ferrer…was arrested on a California warrant…[issued by] California Attorney General Kamala Harris…on felony charges of pimping a minor, pimping, and conspiracy to commit pimping….Harris…is running for the U.S. Senate in next month’s election…

Here’s more from super ally Liz Brown.

Dutch Threat (#678)

Felicia Anna on the “My Red Light” scam:

…I’ve already talked about this project before…the mayor…proposed…that this brothel would be the first brothel without pimps. A complete bullshit story, since first of all there are very few girls that actually have a pimp…and since this brothel has just as much chance of renting their windows to a girl with a pimp as any other brothel…there are hardly any abuses to begin with, as the numbers from the city of Amsterdam themselves prove…unlike how people (like the mayor for example) often claim…the mayor [is] trying to frame the current brothel owners as the bad guys…so he can have an excuse to close down the other brothels…only 6 sexworkers showed an interest in working in this brothel at all…

Send In the Clowns

As I expected when I wrote yesterday’s column, the clown panic continues to spin out of control:

A Livonia [New York] man was charged with falsely reporting an incident after he allegedly edited a clown image into a photo of [a local] Park…posted it on his Facebook page and then warned people to keep their children out of the park…Hooper…told his Facebook followers “the clown had then run away when he snapped the picture”…Hooper was charged with third-degree falsely reporting an incident…the charge is a misdemeanor…

In New York, making up idiotic stories to frighten the stupid is only a misdemeanor, but in Texas it’s a matter of national security:

..a 14-year-old [Houston] student has been charged…[with] making a terroristic threat. The student is accused of threatening “to shoot up an HISD school with his clown friends” on social media…”We can’t ignore it,” said HISD Spokesman Jason Spencer. “We [completely lack the adult capacity to control our own actions or use any discretion whatsover]…

Just in case you think my editorialization there is a bit extreme:

…”This clown crap is really getting on my nerves,” [suburban Dallas cop] Latrice Pettaway wrote on Facebook Monday night…”Pop a cap in the first clown you see. Someone needs to just hit one and the rest of these fools will learn”…police spokesman Shane Kizer said….said shooting people dressed like clowns is “absolutely not” how the department wants the public to respond to viral reports of clowns…

And Utah cops agree with Kizer: “Police in Orem, Utah would like to make it clear that neither they, nor you, can legally shoot random clowns…“

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In the News (#678)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, brothels, Business As Usual, California, cops, Count the Idiocies, Do As I Say, Droit du Seigneur, drugs, Dutch Threat, escort services, evidence, Florida, Harm Magnification, Having and Eating Cake, hysteria, If Men Were Angels, Iowa, Kentucky, Lack of Evidence, language, Netherlands, New York, Of Course It Is, Oregon, Philippines, pimps, pizza!, prohibitionist myths, propaganda, racism, rape, red-light districts, Saving Them from Themselves, sexting, South Carolina, stripping, They Still Don't Get It, To Molest and Rape, Too Close To Home, transgender, United Kingdom, Washington (state), Where Are the Victims? on October 5, 2016| 1 Comment »

[Sex workers] report…violence more often from law enforcement officials than from any other group. – Alexandra Lutnick

Lack of Evidence

As long as these laws exist, all women are vulnerable to persecution by cops:

…a 40-year-old statute in the [New York] penal code…allows the police broad discretion in arresting anyone they deem to be loitering for the purpose of engaging in prostitution…The law is vague enough to make almost any posture vulnerable to suspicion. You could be arrested while talking to two men on a corner; while talking to someone through a car window; while walking down the street with a bottle of Korbel; for going to your job selling sofas; if it happens that you have worked as a prostitute before; just for wearing something [a cop] decides is too provocative…the Legal Aid Society of New York has handled so many of these cases of wrongful arrest, particularly among transgender women who are black and Hispanic, that…it filed a federal civil rights suit…on behalf of several plaintiffs…challenging the constitutionality of the law. Between 2012 and 2015…nearly 1,300 people were arrested in New York City under the loitering law. More than 600 were convicted, and close to 240 served some time in jail…five precincts…were responsible for more than two-thirds of the arrests, each [ruling over]…neighborhoods that are predominantly black and Hispanic…

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

I love it when they feed on each other: “North Charleston Police arrested Deputy Jason Mitchell at a motel…[after he] contacted [an] undercover cop by phone after seeing a [fake] post on Backpage.com…”

Where Are the Victims?

She “thought she was helping her friends” in the same way I “think” I’m Maggie McNeill:

A transgender woman and her partner who helped bring prostitutes to the UK from abroad have been spared jail by a judge, who said the couple believed they were “helping” their friends. Brazilian former sex worker Angel Gomes and her civil partner Leon Foster ran an organised prostitution ring for four years…they helped to bring in Gomes’ friends from the transgender community in South America, where they were already selling sex…the couple paid for travel expenses and sex aids including condoms. The business traded under the name “Kelly Shemales”…

In other words, it was an ordinary escort service specializing in transwomen.

Droit du Seigneur

Prohibitionists want these guys to “protect” us from pimps:

…Oak Grove [Kentucky] Police Sgt. Benjamin R. Walden [was arrested as a violent pimp after]…the state police…found that three adult women were being held against their will and forced to have sex with men at a…motel…Walden…[also] faces…charges…including first-degree sodomy, first-degree rape…assault…terroristic threatening and intimidating a participant in a legal process…Also arrested in the case were Michael Helton…and Kiersten Napodano…[Dennis] Cunningham, the Oak Grove police chief…described Walden as a “good officer”…

Saving Them From Themselves

THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!

An Iowa county attorney has threatened to brand a teen a “sex offender” because she sent a friend photos of herself scantily clad, the girl’s family [reported] in federal court. The photos…depict a 14-year-old girl, named only as Nancy Doe in the lawsuit, in her underwear. In one photo, she wears a sports bra, and in the other she is topless with her long hair covering her breasts…But the photos emerged again last spring when two male students were caught printing them off using a school printer, along with other photos of nude or partially nude male and female classmates…The school district turned the photographs over to the Knoxville Police Department…the girl’s parents wondered “what the fuss was about,” as the images…”were less ‘racy’ than photographs they see in fashion magazines and on television every day”…To escape…criminal charges, the students [were forced] to participate in a “diversion program” that required them to engage in community service, complete a [brainwashing program] on the [imaginary] dangers…of “sexting,” give up their laptops and cell phones for an unspecified period of time, and submit a written confession about their conduct to juvenile court services…When the Does refused to fill out the questionnaire or to enroll Nancy in the diversion program, [county attorney] Bull continued to threaten her with criminal prosecution…

They Still Don’t Get It

Let’s play “count the idiocies”:

Prosecutors from around the world say the fight against sex trafficking is moving online as traffickers use popular websites to advertise sexual services…an international sex trafficking summit in Waikiki that drew prosecutors from Asia, the US and Canada…victims are often unwilling to cooperate with investigators because they have endured a history of abuse…Jackie Lacey, Los Angeles County’s district attorney [bloviated moronically]…“It’s not like in the 80s and 90s where women were on the street. It’s all done by social media, cellphones, emails, text messages.” Michael Ramos, president of the National District Attorneys Association, said he plans to push for legislation in the US to make it illegal to use websites to solicit illegal sex and to hold internet companies accountable for sex trafficking on their platforms…“It’s just so easy right now…Instead of having prostitutes out on the corner like they used to in a red light district, now they just go online, they hit a button, and it’s like ordering a pizza”…Sonia Paquet, a Canadian prosecutor…said…“If we go on the internet site, we see the girls naked”…

1) “Sex trafficking” as a dysphemism for “sex work”. 2) Women are too stupid to post our own ads, so male “traffickers” must be doing it. 3) Streetwalkers have always been a minority of sex workers, even in classical times. The fraction has dropped from about 12-15% in the “80s and 90s” to maybe 8% now, hardly a vast shift. 4) Women who deny cop/prosecutor BDSM wanking fantasies must be “victims” who are “unwilling to cooperate” because of phantom abusers, not because cops & prosecutors are evil fucks out to destroy their lives; 5) It’s already illegal in the US to “solicit” for prostitution, whether online or off. 6) Courts have repeatedly declared that Section 230 protects websites from being “held accountable” (a moralistic euphemism for “scapegoated”) for third-party content. 7) Is anyone actually stupid enough to think he can get an escort just by “hitting a button”? 8) Do these assholes really expect people to believe getting a date with someone like me is easier than driving over to a stroll? 9) Pizza! 10) Ms. Pacquet unwittingly reveals the real issue with all this posturing & mouth-foaming: pictures of naked women, as always. Ten idiocies in 13 sentences is a pretty high score, even for prosecutors.

On the Simultaneous Having and Eating of Cake

This is actually an excellent analogy:

…As a stripper, the club does not pay you. There is no hourly wage you earn to stand around waiting for someone to ask you to take your clothes off…people believe strippers are independent contractors because they think that the money they pay for dances is given to the club, which in turn is doled out to the dancer in the form of a stipend or salary…but…it is exactly the opposite…Money paid for dances is paid to the dancer, who pays the club an agreed-upon rate for the privilege of conducting her business there. In essence, she is paying rent, or leasing space from the club for commerce…This is how many hairdressers operate their businesses…That hairdresser is running their own business out of that chair, which they pay rent on. Their calendar is their livelihood, and they might even be able to set their own rates based on their level of skill and expertise…they have certain branding to display and house rules they have to play by, and they have to pay rent to their landlord. But beyond that, they are the owner of a business and have their own customers that will often follow them if they move salons…

Dutch Threat

Not even close; the majority of sex businesses worldwide are controlled by sex workers. This level of ignorance is truly astonishing:

A social investment fund has agreed to operate several brothels in Amsterdam’s red light district…The Start Foundation helps vulnerable people find jobs…and…has now agreed to buy four buildings from the city council which had been taken over as part of the city’s [gentrification] efforts for the district…the 14 windows will be rented out to a new foundation called My Red Light…[which] describes itself as “the first sex company in the Netherlands and Europe in which sex workers have control”…Sex worker lobby group Proud has described the project as deceptive. “Lots of sex workers want to be their own bosses but they never get a permit”, [said] spokeswoman Yvette Luhrs…

If Men Were Angels

Sometimes even a little bit of “authority” is enough:

…Mark Alan Laverdure…[was charged in Oregon with 27] counts of…sexual abuse…[against] 5 [underage] female victims…from March 2003 through June 2014…there [may be] additional victims…Laverdure had once been employed with the Native American Youth and Family Center (NAYA)…

Business As Usual

I find it darkly amusing that amateurs are so shocked by this:

…the scandal isn’t just about [Celeste Guap], now known by her [legal] name, Jasmine Abuslin…“If you step back from it, how is it possible that this many [cops] could be engaged in this kind of activity over this period of time and she be the only one?” [Abuslin’s lawyer Pamela] Price [said]…Former victims say this type of police sexual misconduct is not a one-off…FBI [pig] Marty Parker [defends rapist cops by pretending most are impostors]…

If you want to understand the depth of Parker’s treason vs her own gender, compare the number of real-rapist-cop reports which appear under “To Molest and Rape” and “Above the Law” with the number of fake-rapist-cop reports under “License To Rape“.

To Molest and Rape

Cops love to claim they’re “helping” and “protecting” women when they molest or rape us:

…Florida…Trooper David Gonzalez was [only] charged with [simple] battery…after…he…pulled [a woman] over…and said, “you really look good tonight,” before directing her to move her car to a side street…he [then]…took her cell phone and added himself to her Snapchap account…[then] took a selfie with the woman, and…sent it to her friends “to see if she thought he was cute”…he…began hugging the woman “because she looked nervous”…then kissed her neck and reached under her shirt to grope her breast…After the woman reported Gonzalez…investigators began monitoring Snapchat communications between the two….[he told her] “I wanted to treat you with respect and do away with you(r) insecurities about yourself”…

Male readers: do you think you’d only be charged with simple battery if you did that to a woman?

Harm Magnification (#668)

The Philippines’ new president is carrying the “War on Drugs” to its logical conclusion:

…President Rodrigo Duterte said Friday that he would like to kill millions of drug addicts in the Philippines, defying international criticism of his country’s [more severe version of the same] war on narcotics [they all participate in] and escalating his brutal rhetoric with a reference to the Holocaust. “Hitler massacred three million Jews…there’s three million drug addicts. There are. I’d be happy to slaughter them.” Killing that number of drug users would “finish the problem of my country and save the next generation from perdition,” he said…

Too Close To Home (#672)

Liz Brown takes a scalpel to the King County sheriff’s incompetent response to her article, and man, there is blood everywhere:

…The sheriff of King County, Washington, John Urquhart, said [on a poplar Seattle radio show that] my article was not unfair and even “partially true”. What he objected to was the supposedly naive and “unicorn-ish” view it took toward prostitution clients; the idea that it was law enforcement, rather than the press, that sensationalized the story; the implication that finding prostitution customers online is safer than out on the streets; and the suggestion that King County could have acted differently considering existing laws…Urquhart [said] “You’re asking me not to enforce state law.” Nobody is asking that. But there is a huge amount of prioritization that goes into police work, and solving crimes where there are actual victims and public-safety concerns should take precedence. Which probably means not concocting elaborate, expensive, and years-long sting operations in order to entrap adults engaging in consensual sexual exchange and then misrepresent this as some sort of major blow against a sinister syndicate of international sex traffickers…

Please, please read the whole thing, unless you’re squeamish at the sight of a metaphorical evisceration.

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Posts Tagged ‘Lack of Evidence’

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A Few References

Boring but necessary legal stuff