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That Was the Week That Was (#438)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged adolescence, Against Their Will, agency denial, animals, Another Fine Mess, Arizona, asset seizure, Bad Girls, bogus studies, Broken Record, brothels, Canada, Catholicism, cops, Craigslist, Dirty Laundry, escort review sites, Facebook, fantasy, Florida, genitalia, Germany, hysteria, Imaginary Crises, imaginative fiction, India, internet, Ireland, Korea, language, law, Law of the Instrument, LGBT rights, Like a Horse and Carriage, Louisiana, Lower Education, Maggie in the Media, Mexico, Minnesota, neofeminism, Never Call the Cops, New Mexico, New Zealand, Ohio, Paint By Numbers, Perquisites, politicians, prohibitionist myths, psychology, rape, rescue industry, Scapegoats, So What Else Is New?, Sold Out, Spain, sporting events, stage names, streetwalkers, Swedish model, Switzerland, The Clueless Leading the Hysterical, The Widening Gyre, Uncommon Sense, Under Every Bed, United Kingdom, Whither Canada?, yellow journalism on September 20, 2014| 7 Comments »

I was…struck by how the…treatment for these women mostly consisted of convincing them that they were victims. – Jessica Gutiérrez

Bad Girls

I suspect missing information:

…sex worker…Aarti Yadav…was arrested…[for] the murder of a constable, Dilip Borole…”Yadav owed him money and Borole had been insisting that she [repay him]…Yadav offered him a drink laced with a sedative. After he passed out, she strangled him…[then] wrapped the body in a mattress, before setting it on fire…”

Maggie in the Media

Jayant Bhandari, who attended my presentation in Philadelphia, interviewed me for his podcast by phone last week after I returned home. And a few weeks ago, I got my own IMDb page because of my appearance on The Independents.

Perquisites

Tip for reporters who don’t want to look like prohibitionist ignoramuses: when reporting on sex work in East Asia, don’t simply say “prostitution is illegal”, but rather point out it was traditionally legal and only criminalized in the past few years due to American pressure:

…just as [US] companies…pick up the tab for employees’ lunch meetings, in Korea they subsidize…hard core boozing and…the…sex trade (never mind that prostitution is illegal)…To Koreans, the business districts of American cities appear staid, orderly and a bit dull…[Koreans say] North America is a “boring heaven” while their country is an “exciting hell.” No salesman…gets far here unless he can sing mean, inebriated karaoke and then slug through negotiations the next morning with a thumping headache…

Against Their Will

Nobody in the Indian media seems to think it’s strange that “rescued” women want so badly to escape their “rescuers”: “The Pune rural police have launched a search…[for] three women who escaped from a government hostel…A few months back, [they] were rescued from a brothel in Aurangabad…” See also the next item.

Law of the Instrument

A social worker explains why she rejected the “sex trafficking” paradigm:

A few years ago I worked as a psychotherapist in a governmental institution in Mexico…we [were forced] to participate in…raids…to “rescue” victims of human trafficking…I saw how the rights of the women found in the hotel were trampled on. I witnessed [their] physical maltreatment…This single experience made me resign my job…psychologists and social workers…were…sent in to win the confidence of the women and then use this information in an unethical way…the…[“victims”] were unwilling or even angry at the idea of receiving therapy. Some escaped from the refuges where they were housed “for their protection”. They didn’t seem to see it as rescue…

The Clueless Leading the Hysterical

…ABC News [wrote]: “A 14-year-old girl was arrested after allegedly setting her family’s house on fire in what authorities suspect is the latest case of Slender Man-inspired violence“…This past spring, two girls stabbed a classmate as part of a bizarre plan to prove the fictional creature was real…many reporters seemed to think it was not a weird one-off but a harbinger of a new trend, and a short burst of Slender Man media hysteria followed…the supposed Slender Man connection in the new story? “…The teen…admitted to using the websites Creepypasta.com and SoulEater.com, which are associated with The Slender Man“…She…”admitted” to “using” (which I assume means “reading”) Creepypasta.com, a vast depository of online horror stories that is “associated with The [sic] Slender Man” in the sense that he is one of the many characters one might encounter there…

So What Else Is New?

…a…recent report…published in the journal Nature Reviews Urology by Emmanuele Jannini…found that, essentially, the G-spot is just a sensitive area that’s part of the larger pleasure center that includes the vagina, clitoris, and urethra…a…2012…study by…Dr. Amichai Kilchevsky…found…that…what [women are] likely experiencing is a continuation of the clitoris…

Scapegoats (TW3 #10)

Given that politicians who obsess about certain kinks are nearly always practitioners of those same kinks, what are we to make of Joe Arpaio’s crusade against zoophilia?

…Arpaio says sexual deviants continue to flock to Craigslist…to locate like-minded deviants to engage in sex acts with animals. Several suspects…have been arrested by Sheriff’s deputies, and many were later convicted and jailed…Terry Wayne Haupt…went to meet up with the Sheriff’s Office undercover black lab for the purposes of engaging in various sex acts…Arpaio says he has written to Craigslist…on three separate occasions asking the company to consider forbidding this type of solicitation…Craigslist…has never responded…

Yes, Arpaio is now doing bestiality stings. Meanwhile, nearby in Albuquerque…

Broken Record

How low can they go?

Prostitution is common during the [New Mexico State] fair, and Albuquerque police are running…[stings in which] female officers dress up as prostitutes and [trick]…men [into talking to them]…“The officers have to be very careful about how they approach…to avoid entrapment,” [pig mouthpiece Tanner] Tixier [lied]…police are seizing the vehicles of men who are arrested…

As regular readers know, they aren’t “careful” in the least; they simply invent accusations against anyone they choose to target. And what, pray tell, constitutes “dressing up as a prostitute”? High-heeled boots or skinny jeans, perhaps?

The Widening Gyre

Lock up your daughters! Sex traffickers are EVERYWHERE!!!

A new study…reveals…victims of sex trafficking are recruited in places we like to think are safe havens…girls as young as 12 and 13 are first approached…at schools, malls and even parties…The study looked at five years of cases in Minneapolis…Some 40 percent…come from families [with whom] child protection had contact…a potential [excuse] for intervention…police say major events like this summer’s All-Star Game can change the dynamics of what has become a big time business…

FYI: looking at a bunch of police reports doesn’t qualify as a “study” of anything except cops’ and prosecutors’ masturbatory fantasies about underage girls.

Like a Horse and Carriage

Gay marriage supporters claim that for two men who love each other to marry “makes a mockery of marriage”:

Two men got married in New Zealand…and people aren’t happy about it. Heterosexuals Travis McIntosh and Matt McCormick tied the knot…as part of a radio competition to win tickets to the Rugby World Cup. The “best mates” got hitched…with tens of thousands listening live. But…gay rights groups and social conservatives…have both condemned the sham marriage…

Picket-fence gays: if the state is going to involve itself in people’s interpersonal contracts, I support your right to make such contracts as you see fit. But your busybody concern for whether two people who make such a contract are habitually shoving their body parts into each other’s orifices is deeply disgusting, and you need to STFU.

Under Every Bed

I had an ad in the Baton Rouge phone book for years, and it only barely justified its cost:

…Emily Morrow-Chenevert…said the Interstate 10 and Interstate 12 corridor makes Baton Rouge a hub for sex trafficking. New Orleans is among the top 20 cities…and Houston and Memphis are other big destinations. Baton Rouge…serves as a convenient stop between those places…there’s an estimated 27 million victims of sex trafficking worldwide…

It’s a “convenient stop” an hour away from New Orleans and on no credible route between it and Memphis. Note also that the 27 million claim has shifted from all “human trafficking” victims to specifically “sex trafficking” victims.

Lower Education

Ohio State essentially defines all unscripted human contact as rape:

At Ohio State University, to avoid being guilty of “sexual assault”…you and your partner now apparently have to agree…“regarding the who, what, where, when, why, and how this sexual activity will take place”…[this] impractical “agreement” requirement…[also applies] to…“touching”…[and] Ohio State’s Student Wellness Center seeks to radically narrow the concept of consent further (and ban “kissing” without verbal consent as “sexual assault”). It says consent must be “verbal,” “enthusiastic,” and must be “asked for every step of the way”…Consent also must also be a litany of other things, such as “sober,” “informed,” “honest,” “wanted,” and “creative”…

Sold Out

Would Facebook dare to target picket-fence gay folk this way?

In a frankly creepy overreach of authority, Facebook is going after…drag queens, requiring that they use their “real names”…In some cases they’ve requested users send in a copy of their drivers license to prove a name is legit…Facebook just rolled out gender-neutral family options, so clearly they’re trying to appear sensitive to nonconforming identities. So what’s with the name police?

Facebook temporarily backed down after protests, but hasn’t changed its policy.

Uncommon Sense (TW3 #335)

Once again: No, Zurich’s was NOT the first tippelzone in Europe:

…Vienna is considering installing…”drive-in brothels”…to improve working conditions for street prostitutes…The facilities were first installed in Zürich a year ago…Street prostitution in Vienna is generally legal, but…more and more restrictions [have been] enacted in recent years…

The rest of the article is actually a very good discussion of the bottleneck effect.

Paint By Numbers

Yet another cut-and-paste “sex trafficking” story:

Florida…ranks among the top five states for human trafficking…local authorities formed a team to recover victims and…increase public awareness…”it’s hidden…everywhere”…Polaris Project…Traffickers…use drugs to keep their victims…Florida…has enacted stricter laws…such as requiring strip clubs to…keep [workers’ personal] information on file…Parents should monitor…their children…on social media…because…traffickers…Salvation Army…conference…how to get men to stop purchasing sex, along with a prayer walk outside of massage parlors and strip clubs…

The only novel element is the assertion that “Traffickers often change locations…using standard transportation that wouldn’t raise eyebrows…” As opposed to what, howdahs? Pogo sticks? Dirigibles? Amphibious landing craft?

Dirty Laundry (TW3 #405)

…a public inquiry into historical child abuse…has heard…of the abuse…at the Sacré Coeur orphanage…[in] Jersey, [where nuns] beat children with spoons and forced them to work in a knitwear factory…in one nightmarish instance, nuns confined a child no older than six to a room where a dead nun had been laid in a coffin…Other punishments included the children having sheets pulled up tightly over their heads so they couldn’t move and having to eat meals in a toilet…

Imaginary Crises (TW3 #410)

Dr. David Ley shares the story of a young man with OCD who made the mistake of telling a “Mental Health Crisis Team” (which includes a cop) about his persistent rape fantasies, resulting in his suspension from university and dozens of strangers prying into his private thoughts. Ley writes,

…This young man is terrified that his thoughts…of rape make him dangerous to others. Unfortunately, that’s the message that he is getting, everywhere he turns. I’m truly sad that this young man…is now learning that asking for help can result in punishment…he…is…surrounded by a system…driven by panic and fear…[which] is making problems worse, not better…

Uncommon Sense (TW3 #433)

The German Association of Female Lawyers (DJB)…rejects the prohibition of prostitution and criminalization of clients…A ban would mean a return to the times of social stigma and lack of rights for women, yet would not change the fact that prostitution takes place…[if clients alone are criminalized] an important group of witnesses in criminal proceedings would be lost…the DJB rejects the introduction of [licensing] for sex workers…the risk of stigmatization is…high and the benefits of such a scheme questionable…

Another Fine Mess (TW3 #435)

Ordinary business practices don’t magically become newsworthy when hookers use them:

The company that operates Ireland’s biggest sex-worker website has moved its headquarters to Spain and is expanding its business across Europe…Escorts Ireland…[was] previously…based in London to avoid [Irish anti-advertising laws]…chief executive Audrey Campbell…confirmed the company has moved to Spain because of its “more accepting” attitude…[and favorable] tax [framework]…Campbell set up the company with…Peter McCormick…who has a conviction for brothel-keeping in…the 1990s…McCormick’s son Mark was imprisoned for 16 months for brothel-keeping in 2010…

Translation: “Internet-based company expands its operations and moves its domicile to a country with more advantageous laws and regulations. Both owners are experienced in their field.”

Whither Canada? (TW3 #437)

Terri-Jean Bedford…[has a list of] names of politicians who hire sex workers…compiled from sex workers across Canada, and…is carefully considering which…to release…after [C-36]…receives royal assent. This would shame the hypocrites who secretly go to prostitutes while publicly moralizing against sex work or [voting] for laws that endanger sex workers…C-36 will either be undone by the next government or struck down by judges…[it] is a doomed rearguard action — aimed at winning donations and votes — and the Conservatives know it. What they don’t know: whose names are on Bedford’s list.

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That Was the Week That Was (#429)

Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, An Example to the West, asset seizure, Bad Girls, Bangladesh, brothels, Buttons Bags & Banknotes, California, Canada, Central Asia, cops, Devil's Advocate, dirty, Divided We Fall, Do As I Say, Down Under, Drawing Lines, drugs, end demand, evidence, Florida, Google, Hollywood, hysteria, Islam, language, law, LGBT rights, Madonna/whore, Maggie in the Media, masturbation, Mexico, Middle East, New Zealand, Passive Voice, pathologization of males, Pennsylvania, Policing for Profit, psychology, rescue industry, robots, Rooted in Racism, Schadenfreude, streetwalkers, Sweden, Swedish model, They Just Don’t Get It, Traffic Circle, Under Every Bed, United Kingdom, video, Virginia, What a Week!, Whatever They Need To Say, Whither Canada? on July 19, 2014| 12 Comments »

An abolitionist is an abolitionist…whether Radfem or Muslim. It is a little bit moot whether you kill someone with a bullet or by making their lives impossible while cranking up the stigmas…You are still just as dead, and in my honest opinion the bullet is quicker and cleaner. – Maggie Jones

Bad Girls

Ladies, it is NEVER a good idea to provide drugs to a client, because if something goes wrong they’ll be looking for a scapegoat:

An alleged prostitute has been charged with manslaughter for injecting a Google executive with heroin and then leaving him to die of an overdose…Alix Tichelman …is being held on…$1.5 million [bail]…Forrest Timothy Hayes…died Nov. 23 on his 50-foot yacht, Escape…His body was discovered the following morning by the yacht’s captain…Police say security footage from the yacht shows…Tichelman… gathering her belongings including drugs and needles, downing a glass of wine and lowering the blinds before leaving…Tichelman had an “ongoing prostitution relationship” with Hayes that began when she met Hayes on SeekingArrangement.com…

Only the sick mind of a cop could belch out a phrase as moronic as “ongoing prostitution relationship.”

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

Get it straight, cops; you have to rape a whore not to get in trouble. Fairly paying her demonstrates you’re not the kind of person they want in their ranks: “[Florida cop Trenton Moore] was arrested for soliciting a prostitute. Now he’s out of a job…” And stealing the cash from the leaders of your cop gang is an even worse idea:

….£120,000 of seized criminal cash was taken from [a Scottish] police office by…Robert Moffat…£90,000 of that cash was found in Moffat’s house and buried under a slab in his back garden…That cash was then taken by…Dean Burnett as part of a £205,000 haul he blew on gambling and vice girls…Burnett…was jailed for 45 months…but was only ordered to pay back £5000…

Rooted in Racism

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

A 30-year-old man has been sentenced to six months in prison for attempting to smuggle refugees into Sweden, after claiming he met them at a wedding in Germany and offered them a lift back…the man…hired a car from a rental firm in Stockholm. He opted for a vehicle which could accommodate seven people, arguing that he needed the space as he intended to transport a set of large loudspeakers…He offered a lift to six people from Eritrea, who…were seeking asylum in Germany. He said he received €600…as a thank you…but when he was picked up by border police he had €1,150 in his pocket…

They Just Don’t Get It (TW3 #18)

Reading stuff Pennsylvania reporters write about cops is like watching fellatio porn:

…Sgt. Rick Blake said…he’s discarded the notion that prostitution is a “victimless crime” because women choose to sell their bodies. He said many women are forced into it…”backpage.com…is a way for them to advertise without being directly out in the view of…law enforcement,” Blake said…”None of them want to lead this life”…When a Florida woman was picked up in a sting…”She thanked us because this was truly her only way to escape from the people she was being used by”…

As Mistress Matisse pointed out, “women we arrest thank us” is the moral equivalent of “she liked it when we raped her”.

Whatever They Need To Say

Bangladesh’s oldest brothel has been shut down following pressure from local clerics and politicians…More than 750 prostitutes in Tangail City were forced out of a cluster of houses that made up the 200-year-old Kandapara brothel…after the dwelling’s owners ordered them shut…[following] a march last week demanding the eviction of the sex workers…Monowara Begum, who heads a sex-workers group at Kandapara, accused the local mayor…of…threatening the women…“He…sent dozens of young men…they told us that we have only one hour to leave…or they would burn down the brothel with kerosene”…

Under Every Bed

Just the same old revolting “all prostitutes are pimped addicts”, but nearly all of these wastes of ink include this nowadays: “South Burlington [Vermont] is a busy city of more than 18,000 people…right on Interstate 89…”

An Example to the West (TW3 #316)

To commemorate the National Day of Sex Work, the Secretariat of Labour and Employment Promotion (STFE) of [Mexico City] gave 50 credentials to persons exercising sex work and recognized them as self-employed workers with social and labor rights. The event…represents the second delivery of these documents…since last March, when the first group of 19 persons filed an injunction against the Law…which criminalized prostitution [in the city] as a crime “against the peace of the people”…[agency head] Patricia Mercado… admitted that public policy change was driven by the “Elisa Martínez” Street Brigade in Support of Women directed by Elvira Madrid and Jaime Montejo…[and] litigated by attorney Barbara Zamora…

Passive Voice

Radley Balko on a syndrome I’ve discussed before:

…Use of the passive voice in an admission of wrongdoing has become so common that the political consultant William Schneider suggested a few years ago that it be referred to as the “past exonerative” tense. You’ll often see a similar grammatical device when a police officer shoots someone. Communications officers at policy agenies are deft at contorting the English language to minimize culpability of an officer or of the agency…

Policing for Profit

When you’re a cop, armed robbery becomes “misdemeanor embezzlement” and decades in prison becomes a few weekends in the county jail:

[Virginia cop Michael Mobley] was sentenced to 30 days in jail…for stealing more than $3,000 from three prostitutes…he…pleaded guilty…to two counts of misdemeanor embezzlement…[and] can serve his sentence on consecutive weekends…Mobley…questioned [the victims] under the guise of a police investigation…[and stole their] money…

If he’d turned the money in to the head thugs, this would’ve been legal.

Buttons, Bags & Banknotes

Dr. Brooke Magnanti on the latest development in British “feminism”:

…Twitter has been a-bubble with prominent feminists endorsing Who Made Your Pants, a company which employs refugee women…to sew…underwear…with prices between £18 and an eye-watering £21.50 a pop…the implication (from people on Twitter, not the company itself) that not wearing them makes you not ethical or not feminist leaves a bad taste in the mouth…Many of the people who can’t afford to spend £20-plus [$34] on purportedly feminist knickers are themselves workers in a marketplace that devalues their labour. This does not make them bad feminists, bad consumers, or bad people. If we who are in a position of financial privilege are unable to recognise that, the fault lies with us – not with them…

Traffic Circle

Even the more ethical “human trafficking” folks are now starting to distance themselves from “sex trafficking” hysteria:

Human trafficking has become the cause célébre for sensationalist…media…a great deal of the…content is both inaccurate and irresponsible …[This] sensationalizing or falsification…is often excused…[as] “raising awareness”…[but] misinformed people…support policies and organizations that are ultimately counter-productive…

The author, Ryan Turner, goes on to list what he considers the worst offenses:

…All human trafficking statistics should be regarded with some skepticism…Misleading statistics obscure the true nature of the problem and…when…inevitably exposed as false or methodologically unsound, it undermines the credibility of the whole anti-trafficking movement…Conflation of sex work and sex trafficking often leads to policies that criminalize prostitution, making sex workers more vulnerable to violence and exploitation. Meanwhile, the distinct needs of trafficking survivors are ignored in favor of “demand reduction” programs that…harm…sex workers…Reveling in graphic details does not help victims and survivors, nor does it contribute in any meaningful way…The myopic focus on sex trafficking…draws attention away from the fact that the tomatoes we eat may be the product of forced labor in Florida…

Down Under (TW3 #350)

Prohibitionists insist decriminalization doesn’t work:

Police resolved a dispute between a sex worker and a client who refused to pay — by escorting the man to a cash machine to settle his $100 bill…A [New Zealand] police spokesperson said…”It…is a routine thing. Police would help any citizen having a disagreement whether they were a sex-worker or working in a pizza shop”…

What a Week! (TW3 #402)

Gunmen…attacked two buildings…in Baghdad’s Zayounah neighbourhood, killing at least 33 people including 29 women…there are suspicions the buildings were being used as a brothel. The words “This is the punishment of those practising prostitution” were scrawled in black on one of the buildings…

Here’s an excellent commentary on the story from another Maggie:

…where is the outrage…Where is the team of “British specialists” sent… to Bagdad to investigate…Where is Michelle Obama gormlessly holding up a #BringBackOurGirls sign? Where is the hysterical Twitter campaign? Perhaps if we were to relabel those women as “vulnerable victims of evil sex traffickers” their death might attract more sympathy? As independent women…supporting themselves, not relying on some well funded NGO organisation to “rescue” them…they were…simply the “wrong kind of women” to be deserving of the ritual hand wringing…

Devil’s Advocate

Intellectual honesty is dead in the West:

Once we start creating sex-robots, what will be the limits we put on them? It’s not a human being so you should theoretically be able to rock your human-like Rumba however you want, but there may be some situations that create moral panics even if the Cylon-victim involved is just a bundle of algorithms and plastic. I asked the panel how society would deal ethically and legally with a hypothetical company that starts producing child sex-robots to satisfy deviant sexual desires…

You can guess the result. Nobody wants to admit that a child-shaped toaster is still a toaster.

Drawing Lines

Another excellent Marijke Vonk essay:

…It’s a mistake to think that prostitutes are fundamentally different from other people…that sex is obviously and clearly different from non-sex, that sex work is strictly different from other types of work, that prostitution is clearly different from non-prostitution. Violence against sex workers should be stopped…but it’s a mistake to think that violence won’t harm us all. There’s no clear line between sex workers and the rest of us…

Maggie in the Media (TW3 #424)

Recorded while I was in Los Angeles early last month:

Schadenfreude (TW3 #425)

More and more reporters are discovering the truth about “sex trafficking”:

…Eden supposedly follows the life of Chong Kim…whose…story has been trumpeted [by “trafficking” fetishists while]…activists…have been busy poking holes in…it…In 2004, Kim published an essay titled “Nobody’s Concubine”…[which] has little in common with Eden. Kim writes that she suffered abuse at home and was…raped by an acquaintance…She started working as a stripper and then for an escort service after escaping an abusive boyfriend and falling on hard times…Missing…is the desert warehouse full of teenage sex slaves in Nevada and the daring escapes described in her later accounts. Over the years, Kim’s story has grown more lavish and sensational as the bad guys morphed from abusive clients and boyfriends to international gangs of kidnappers, pimps, human traffickers and johns that included law enforcement agents and even an unnamed former state governor…

Consult my research paper “Mind-witness Testimony” for an explanation of the psychological mechanism behind the inflation of stories like Kim’s.

Divided We Fall (TW3 #427)

Canada’s Bill C36 is merely the hook for this excellent essay against sexual prohibition:

…“unnatural” sex has always been problematic for moral crusaders. For example, masturbation and homosexual acts were previously depicted as “harmful” to individual and collective health; yet such claims proved not only to be unfounded, but dangerous. This, however, has not stopped the perfectionists among us from endorsing a new cause: the present obsession with prostitution …the so-called deleterious effects of masturbation [were] widely discredited in…[the early] 20th century…and…by 1973, the American Psychiatric Association no longer considered homosexuality a disease…Yet here we are in the 21st century, justifying state repression of prostitution…we can get over our anxiety…whenever we come to realize that sex workers and their clients do not require “treatment”…

Whither Canada? (TW3 #428)

Many religious groups in Canada…have been enthusiastically supporting the government’s new prostitution bill…But dozens of Anglican clergy say the proposed law is immoral and endangers sex workers, and they are urging the government to withdraw it. Rev. Bruce Bryant-Scott…has submitted an open letter to the justice committee signed by 33 of his…colleagues…

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That Was the Week That Was (#426)

Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, Music, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged A Tale That Grew in the Telling, Absolute Corruption, agency denial, Arizona, Between the Lines, bogus studies, Brazil, brothels, Canada, Change a Few Words, Colorado, Cooties, cops, dehumanization, Do As I Say, drugs, FBI, Feminine Pragmatism, Hard Numbers, hysteria, Indonesia, Islam, It Looks Good On Paper, Korea, language, law, left-right myth, Magic Formulae, Mexico, Missouri, Montana, neofeminism, Netherlands, New York, New Zealand, Number Puzzle, Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs, pathologization of males, Pennsylvania, prohibitionist myths, red-light districts, sex offender registry, sporting events, Sweden, The Naked Emperor, Traffic Jam, Under Every Bed, underage, United Kingdom, Washington (state), Whither Canada?, Yellow Fever, yellow journalism on June 28, 2014| 11 Comments »

The left-right divide might be a division between social identities based on class or region or race or gender, but it is certainly not a clash between different political ideas. – Crispin Sartwell

Reading Between the Lines

FBI myth: crack experts at hunting dangerous criminals. FBI truth: lazy pickers of low-hanging fruit: “…The Grand Junction [Colorado] Police Department…and the Federal Bureau of Investigation gathered evidence at [four] massage parlors…on possible human trafficking and prostitution…” Here’s the FBI press release; note that they’ve realized huge numbers of sex worker arrests make them look bad, so they only provide figures for underage workers arrested (under the euphemism “recovered”) and men (probably mostly male sex workers) accused of being “pimps”. If the proportions hold from previous operations, over 2000 adult sex workers were arrested in all.

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

This is especially hilarious given the location: “Authorities…say they’ve arrested…Phoenix police officer…John Geroulis…as part of a multi-agency undercover operation targeting human trafficking and prostitution…the 25-year veteran suddenly retired [the next morning].” But this one is even more so:

A sheriff’s deputy and SWAT team member in Washington state was arrested…Darrion Holiwell…physically abused his wife and promoted her as an escort on…backpage.com. He is also charged with using and distributing steroids, and with stealing thousands of pounds of brass and bullets from the police firing range and selling them to gun shops…

It Looks Good On Paper

I get that the writer is a “feminist” rather than a journalist, but surely the New York Daily News has editors qualified to recognize an incoherent mess when they see it:

The world is awaiting the return of nearly 300 Nigerian girls abducted from their school…girls as young as 14…are a familiar sight in the sex trade. Demand is so great that traffickers not only import women from abroad, but target…American kids…Brianna [was]…kidnapped…by a school janitor at the age of 9, she was sold to a pimp…The bill she is championing creates the crime of…buying a child for sex…

Change a Few Words

Note how little you’d have to change in this excerpt from the first draft of Radley Balko’s book to make it about the war on whores:

…Nixonians…pushed the idea that drug use was connected to crime…They took their…absurd estimate of heroin addicts…multiplied it by another absurd figure—the amount of money the administration estimated the typical heroin junkie spent each year to get high…then capped off the equation with a third faulty assumption: that heroin addicts steal all of the money…The resulting figures, which seemed to increase with each reiteration of them, were several times larger than the total amount of property stolen in the entire country…Nixon’s top aides themselves didn’t believe their own bull…They were knowingly lying to bring the country along on a drug war. The press jumped in with sensational stories to help dehumanize the drug offenders…

Pick a Color

It’s such a pleasure to see someone admit this in the mainstream media:

…the left-right axis…is conceptually confused, ideologically tendentious, and…infested by contradictions…the idea that…political and economic power…can be pulled apart and set against each other…is…obviously false, because hierarchies tend to coincide… corporate capitalism has always completely depended on state power, and the basic practical thrust of left statism has always been annexation of the economy…The…robber-baron period is often held to have been…[eventually] constrained…by the state [but] the…procedures employed by [industrialists]…depended fundamentally on state sponsorship and state violence…in the so-called Progressive Era…specific cartels and fortunes were compromised, [but] the consolidation…continued, as…government became the central bank…and the modern bureaucratic corporation emerged…the…spectrum stretches from authoritarianism on…one end to authoritarianism on the other, with authoritarianism…between…Instead of left and right, we should be thinking about vertical versus horizontal arrangements of power and wealth.

Yellow Fever

Jezebel swallows the “trafficking town” myth like a big, slimy…

In an extensive investigative series called Pimp City: A Journey to the Center of the Sex Slave Trade, Fusion explores Tenancingo, Mexico, a town that makes virtually its entire living from sex trafficking…According to the documentary…”women are actually a commodity to be used over and over and over again…a pimp can make half a million dollars a year with three women working for him, each seeing an average of 20 clients a day, each for 15 minutes”…

In case you didn’t know, Fusion is a site attempting to position itself as the sleaziest organ in the yellow corpus, like an unfunny Weekly World News.

Number Puzzle

…the Dutch National Rapporteur Human Trafficking...recommends…to register individuals as victims more frequently, regardless of if there is an indication of actual trafficking…she acts as if the false positives …are not a big deal…we’re making reports…of situations that have nothing to do with human trafficking, which is making our data completely meaningless…only 2% of the so-called victims want help…[laws] make it impossible for…a sex worker to arrange [travel or visa] for…yourself, but if you get help then that’s called trafficking…Having a guard is seen as suspect, having lots of friends, too, and also having few friends…[even] if an agent…“feels” that it’s trafficking…that’s [enough]…

Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs (TW3 #312)

…mayor…Tri Rismaharini…announced the closure of the “Dolly” prostitution complex in [Surabaya]…hundreds of prostitutes and others who said their livelihoods depend on the sex trade blocked streets…in protest…The government plans to provide $425 to each of about 1,500 sex workers to help them start a new life…

Sex workers have defiantly vowed the district will remain open despite the edict.

Under Every Bed

One day, we’re going to look back on all this and laugh. All of us, that is, except people rotting for decades in prison on bogus “sex trafficking” charges.

…”The truckers…of Montana have partnered with us to put…human trafficking awareness posters on their trucks,” said…Attorney General Tim Fox. “The truckers move all across the country, they’re in…a lot of places that human trafficking might take place…We’ve had…young girls…trafficked out of Montana…and…into Montana. Even right here in Billings…because…we’re…in the intersection of I-90 and I-94″…

Traffic Jam (TW3 #318)

I welcome ugly bandwagon-jumping like this because it hastens the day when the public is utterly sick of “sex trafficking” nonsense:

There are few things in opera more depressing than watching great singers struggling in the face of an obstructive and pretentious production. Yet alas that is the case with the Royal Opera’s first presentation of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut for more than 30 years. Jonathan Kent…opts for a contemporary setting in which wide-eyed Manon arrives – from eastern Europe? – with her pimp of a brother at a sleazy casino and becomes the fluffy mistress of a banker. He forces her into soft porn…and then kicks her into sex-traffic hell…Puccini creates an atmosphere of lush melancholy romance, but Kent can interpret it all only in terms of today’s headlines…

Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs (TW3 #318)

It’s time once again for the pompous, asinine, methodology-free “Washington is the World’s Daddy” report (AKA the “Trafficking in Persons” Report), in which the US State Department presumes to judge and rank how every other country “deals with” an imaginary problem defined into existence by American prudishness and “analyzed” chiefly by how closely that country apes American anti-whore brutality. Canadian prohibitionists are happy to cite the report this year in order to shore up their criminalization crusade, but New Zealand has no such agenda and therefore told Uncle Sam where he could stick his demeaning “report card”:

…The US State Department Trafficking in Persons 2014 Report…criticised New Zealand’s lack of a comprehensive anti-trafficking law, and recommended New Zealand’s legal framework be expanded to prohibit and punish all forms of human trafficking…The report [included evidence-free accusations]…of…children…subjected to street prostitution…[and infantilized Asian] women…at risk of coerced…prostitution…[Immigration Minister Michael] Woodhouse said all allegations of human trafficking were investigated, but none had resulted in substantiated evidence…

The Naked Emperor (TW3 #324)

In which danah boyd takes a few more steps toward the light:

…journalists and the public reify a Hollywood narrative of what trafficking is supposed to look like — innocent young girl abducted from happy, healthy, not impoverished home with loving parents and then forced into sexual acts by a cruel older man…the…reality…is much darker and implicates many more people in power…many youth…are not pimped…[they] begin trading sex for basic services — food, shelter, protection…when it comes to minors, most anti-trafficking advocates and government actors argue that it’s all trafficking. Except when that label’s not convenient…

Magic Formulae

Most of this vile article glorifies the FBI’s pogrom against consenting adults under the guise of “fighting sex trafficking”, but this section needs to be pasted to the foreheads of every whore who believes in magic formulae:

…At least two of the women inquired…whether the supposed client was in fact a police officer…[one] woman…“did a cop check” on the officer and then said, “Okay, I just want to make sure you‘‍re not a cop.” Undercover detectives agreed to a price…and exchanged the money — usually it had to be placed on a bedside table or television, as the women refused to handle the money directly. The detectives then signaled for back-up, and detectives and agents swarmed the room…

Absolute Corruption (TW3 #326)

Jesse Friedman…filed a defamation suit against Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice for knowingly publishing false and defamatory statements in a report summarizing her review of Friedman’s 1988 conviction…In one example, DA Rice made the entirely fabricated claim that Jesse Friedman “wrote, possessed and distributed” shocking pornography involving incest, bestiality, and child rape while he was in prison. The DA provided as proof a printout of a series of…stories…[from] the Internet, written by and credited to someone else, whose email address appears at the bottom with an invitation to contact her. As the DA was well aware, Jesse Friedman was incarcerated at a maximum-security prison, and had no access to the Internet…

A Tale That Grew in the Telling (All Traffick, All the Time)

How low can they go? “[Cop] Adam Kavanaugh…said…'[a sex worker] is a person who has been victimized and probably raped at age 8 if not earlier’…”

Whither Canada? (TW3 #423)

While I’m happy to see political conservatives calling for decriminalization, I have to wonder why Tom Flanagan can’t see the moral panic is already well underway:

…Perhaps the most alarming thing about Bill C-36 is its potential to reunite the coalition of radical feminists, social conservatives, and law-enforcement authorities that gave us the triple moral panic of the 1980s over imaginary sexual abuse of children…I hope we’re not seeing a new moral panic over prostitution, but the signs are worrisome. Conservative MPs are talking darkly about pimps in schoolyards. The Minister of Justice has started to create a new class of folk devils by calling the customers of prostitutes “perverts”…

Hard Numbers (TW3 #424)

I do keep telling you so.

…The World Cup is supposed to be good for sex workers’ wallets…But…sex workers aren’t having an easy time of things at Brazil 2014…with sex workers allegedly pushed out of their usual haunts by police looking to crack down…it’s…more difficult for the workers to find clients. And when they do, the…crowd isn’t quite as imagined. “They came here all dirty, thinking we are obligated to go out with them…They…get drunk and won’t spend money with us,” [one sex worker] said…

Feminine Pragmatism (TW3 #425)

Matthias Lehmann, who studied Korean sex workers’ situations for several years, has some choice words for that “sex working grandmothers” story:

…Lucy Williamson…leaves out the police almost entirely…and…fails to mention the…[government’s offer] to pay…rewards of up to one hundred million won (US$98,000) for tip-offs about prostitution activities…Williamson also omits that…South Korea’s constitutional court is mulling over the constitutionality of the country’s anti-prostitution law…

Cooties

Note the weird dehumanization of sex workers by calling them “networks”:

Swedish police have issued warnings that it’s increasingly common for prostitutes to rent apartments for work…”The better the hotel personnel get in seeing prostitution, the more unwilling these networks are to stay in the hotels” [said creepy cop Simon] Häggström [who] added that the number of rented apartments where prostitution occurs is minimal, but still “tragic”…

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That Was the Week That Was (#422)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged Above the Law, acting, Africa, Argentina, Arizona, Blood on the Sand, bogus studies, Brazil, California, Catholicism, censorship, Check Your Premises, China, Comfort Zone, consensual crime, cops, Deafening Silence, drivers, ethics, France, Gorged With Meaning, guest columnist updates, Hard Numbers, harm reduction, hysteria, If It Were Legal, illegal aliens, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Juxtaposition, Latin America, Mexico, Middle East, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Orleans, New York, politicians, porn, prisons, psychology, rape, Real People, sex offender registry, sex work is work, Something Rotten In Sweden, South Carolina, streetwalkers, Swedish model, That Old Black Magic, The Course of a Disease, The End of the Beginning, The Missing Word, The Mote and the Beam, The Punitive Mindset, Three Steps Back, Traffic Jam, Washington DC, witchcraft on May 31, 2014| 12 Comments »

Preteens selling goodies, the police…lectured [her]…was unfair to establishments…like Starbucks. – Robert Fernandes

Juxtaposition

Popehat suggests we compare and contrast this:

Just days after Iran’s president denounced Internet censorship as “cowardly,” six young Iranians were arrested and forced to repent on state television…for the grievous offense of proclaiming themselves to be “Happy in Tehran,” in a homemade music video they posted on YouTube…The arrest of the young dancers, and their televised public humiliation, angered Iranians at home and abroad…

And this:

U.S. Park Police arrested five people…at the Jefferson Memorial. Their offense? Dancing. The dancers were protesting an appeals court ruling…that the national monuments are places for reflection and contemplation — and that dancing distracted…

Real People

…Photographer Bénédicte Desrus spent six years…documenting Casa Xochiquetzal, a home in Mexico City for…retired sex workers…She only took photographs of the women who gave her permission and provided them with prints, which often inspired other women to participate…Desrus then teamed up with journalist Celia Gómez Ramos, who began interviewing and transcribing the residents’ stories. They eventually decided to publish…as…Las Amorosas Más Bravas (The Toughest Lovers)…

Check Your Premises

…34-year-old…Vanessa Gumataotao of Sacramento…was arrested on suspicion of prostitution…as well as child abuse and endangerment for allegedly using [a] 17-year-old [boy] as her pimp. The…boy was arrested on suspicion of pimping…

If It Were Legal

Too bad he lost the suit; this kind of ethical breach is unforgiveable:

A top London solicitor who had sex with a Chinese law student [and sex worker]…has lost his claim for damages after she told his daughter and colleagues about previous affairs. The solicitor…identified only as AVB, sued the young sex worker, known as TDD, for breach of confidentiality…after she found information about past liaisons on his laptop. Senior…Justice Tugendhat…said TDD broke a duty she entered when she accepted money for sex. But…AVB…would not receive damages because although he experienced “some embarrassment” he “has suffered no real distress”…

Something Rotten in Sweden (July Updates, Part One)

Cops busting kids’ lemonade stands isn’t news any more, but this is a new low:

[San Francisco cops busted] two…lemonade stands…the 11-year-old proprietor of one…was informed that simply giving away the fudge brownies and lemonade the police forbade her…to sell would result in a $1,500 fine…Not long after police cleansed the…area of unlawful lemonade dispensaries…they returned due to complaints about “a live band.” This stemmed…from a neighborhood tradition of setting up a drum kit during [a public event] and allowing local kids to keep the beat. At the time the police showed up, the unlicensed live bandmember was…a toddler…

The Punitive Mindset

Because obviously, female guards’ delicate ladyfeelings are more important than men’s lives:

…Bradley Ballard, a…schizophrenic [inmate at New York’s Rikers Island] died…after he was confined to his cell…for seven days for making a lewd gesture at a female guard…Denied…his medication, the agitated inmate tied a rubber band tightly around his genitals…Ballard was found naked and unresponsive on the floor, covered in feces, his genitals swollen and badly infected. He died at a hospital of…[massive systemic] infection…

Above the Law

Two [Atlantic City cops] have been arrested on charges they sexually assaulted a 16-year-old in separate incidents…Andre Corbin and…Ralph Pereira…were…[each] charged with…sexual assault…endangering the welfare of a child and official misconduct…

That Old Black Magic

A man was killed by a mob…in…Burkina Faso, after being accused of making another man’s penis “disappear”…a local mechanic…claimed that his penis had been “stolen” by the second man, who was not from the district. The first man called the police. But by then…the residents decided to lynch the man in the middle of the street…

I’ve mentioned West African “penis stealing” hysteria before in Links #141.

Traffic Jam (TW3 #51)

The acquittal of the 13 people “sex trafficking” fanatic Susan Trimarco implicated in her witch hunt provoked such an outcry among her disciples that two of the three judges were pushed into retirement, the third has been threatened with impeachment and the Argentine president swore to “reform” the judiciary because it is too objective and not sufficiently influenced by public opinion. A higher court then convicted ten of the 13 defendants on charges of running an “evil network of sexual exploitation…with…international connections, and satanic rituals.” Still think this hysteria is different from the Satanic Panic?

The End of the Beginning

The California Sex Offender Management Board…[recommends] that lawmakers…overhaul registration laws so that some offenders can be removed from the list after 10 or 20 years. The list — which currently includes almost 100,000 registered offenders — is too large to be useful to law enforcement or the general public. Under current laws, all sex offenders must register for life regardless of the offense they committed…[the list] includes…almost 900 [people] who have not committed a sex-crime in more than half a century…Ninety-five percent of sex-crimes are committed by individuals who are not on the registry, and the existence of the registry has not worked as a deterrent…

Comfort Zone (TW3 #320)

The endgame of “sex trafficking” hysteria:

…U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said the debate over…immigration reform is prompting undocumented minors to enter the United States… “And…you know that some get sucked into sex slavery,” Gohmert said…adding…“This administration, and this Congress also, is complicit in helping lure people into sex trafficking”…

The Course of a Disease (TW3 #349)

The [French] National Consultative Commission on Human Rights (CNCDH)…has [rejected] the law…which seeks to punish “the purchase of sexual acts”…[The Commission] consulted many experts…and…[outlines] the three-point position of the committee:

“Chosen prostitution” is legal, so clients are not criminals.

Legal prostitutes should be easier for clients to access.

Victims of trafficking and exploitation need better support…

Hard Numbers (TW3 #351)

Mobs with torches are back in fashion, it seems:

An international association of Catholic nuns has launched a public awareness campaign to combat human trafficking and prostitution during the World Cup in Brazil. The nuns will use social media, billboards and rallies…to draw attention to the heightened risk of exploitation…Sister Gabriella Bottani said…that for previous World Cups in Germany and South Africa, the level of “exploitation” had gone up by 30 per cent and 40 per cent respectively…Among past and upcoming initiatives will be…a torchlit procession in Brasilia…and handing out pamphlets at…beach resorts…

Naturally, the usual predators are taking advantage of the anti-whore hysteria:

…police…invaded…a building where…prostitutes operated…in [the suburbs of]… Rio…Without a warrant, police…[arrested] more than 100 women…and seized their goods. Women were attacked and raped – police forced them to perform oral sex and put their hands on the women’s genitals…One woman…had…[her] whole week…[of] money…robbed, including any money to take the bus home…

Guest Columnist: Sarah Woolley (TW3 #406)

Amnesty International has urged Northern Ireland’s politicians to ditch plans to criminalise the purchasing of sex. The human rights organisation wants a clause contained in a bill against human trafficking to be excised because…it would create a “hierarchy of criminal liability” among sex workers…Amnesty stressed it was not taking sides on the debate over sex work and prostitution, but said sex work and human trafficking were “two very complex social phenomena” that required different laws…

“Those who…sit on the fence do indeed side for a political party: The ruling party.” – Max Frisch

Sex Work is Work (TW3 #407)

Another blow against the absurdity of consensual crime:

…Italy’s national statistics office, will include estimated dealings from drugs, arms trafficking and prostitution in its GDP figures from now on…This move should increase Italy’s economy by at least 1.3 per cent in the first year, helping it to comply with EU rules on indebtedness, which limit member countries to spending no more than 3 per cent of their GDP…the calculation would also include revenues from contraband tobacco and alcohol…The Bank of Italy estimated the value of the criminal economy at 10.9 per cent of GDP in 2012…The move…is motivated by the EU’s desire to measure its member countries’ economies more closely…

Traffic Jam (TW3 #409)

…community members carrying information and harm reduction supplies were threatened with arrest and were not allowed to communicate with sex workers…who had been…forcibly transported to Project ROSE…[which has] come under intense scrutiny because of a long list of rights violations…advocates from the Best Practices Policy Project and SWOP Phoenix traveled to the United Nations to raise concerns about these abuses to the Human Rights Committee…a group of social workers, Social Workers United for Justice, is petitioning the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) and the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) to “demand an end to Arizona State University School of Social Work’s involvement with Project Rose” because it violates socials work’s core professional principles…

Gorged With Meaning (TW3 #410)

Unfortunately, not every outed sex worker has Belle Knox’s incredible strength and resolve:

Nineteen-year-old Alyssa Funke…bought a shotgun, drove to her family’s boat, and killed herself there on April 14. Students at her former high school had outed her as the star of a “casting couch” porn video, and her parents say the subsequent online harassment contributed to her suicide. Funke…did her first and only porn video…earlier this year…Soon after the video went up, Funke started getting nasty Twitter and Facebook messages from students at her former high school in Minnesota, calling her a slut and worse…Funke’s parents said she had long suffered from depression, but they believe the harassment…played a major role in her [suicide]…

Belle also wrote an open letter to Alyssa after hearing of her death.

Deafening Silence (TW3 #413)

…discussion of whether the sex trade should be legalised [in China]…came to the fore…after Huang Haibo, a 39-year-old actor best known for his “nice everyman” roles, was arrested…for allegedly soliciting prostitutes…The news led to a surprising outpouring of sympathy on social media…after the crackdown in…Dongguan…[there were many] online comments like “Dongguan, hang in there” and “the public has your back”…

The Missing Word

Silly preacher, only politically-connected companies are allowed to do this:

A South Carolina pastor has been accused of turning his Bible College into a forced labor camp for foreign students. Reginald Wayne Miller…made the teens toil for no or little pay for more than 50 hours a week while housing them in rooms without hot water, heating or air-conditioning. He…threatened to revoke their student visas if they complained or failed to comply with his demands…Students reportedly told [federal] investigators that classes “were not real” and that the main focus of the school was to have them working full-time at its campus and Miller’s home…In 2006, [Miller] was…detained on charges of lewdness and prostitution for exposing himself to an undercover cop in a bathhouse…

Three Steps Back (TW3 #418)

A bill designed to help New Orleans police crack down on prostitution is headed to Gov. Bobby Jindal’s desk…The legislation…makes it illegal…to solicit money or rides with the intent to exchange it for sex acts. Marjorie Esman [of the ACLU says the law]…does nothing that isn’t already covered by Louisiana law. Esman also had problems with an earlier version…[that banned] solicitation for any purpose…which…would have effectively outlawed panhandling…the bill gives police a mechanism to [harass] suspected prostitutes…enough so they might move on…

The Mote and the Beam (TW3 #419)

The US House of Representatives passed all five of the “sex trafficking” bills before it; most of them are the usual political boondoggles, but one creates a “criminal advertising” crime to stack on people being railroaded for “sex trafficking”, and the most dangerous one allows the federal government to give even more money to local cops for sex work stings under the guise of “fighting sex trafficking”. But the most shocking example of political hubris comes from Representative Randy Hultgren of Illinois, who seems to imagine that the U.S. Congress has the power to criminalize prostitution in foreign countries; he supports this with a lot of nonsense including the discredited Neumayer, Cho & Dreher report.

Blood on the Sand

…[Vanessa] Stiviano…is now the subject of a criminal probe…[due to] accusations that Stiviano sought money from Sterling to stop her from releasing more recordings…Stiviano’s attorney has denied she leaked the recordings that set off the scandal, saying a friend did it without her permission.

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That Was the Week That Was (#419)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Philosophy, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged A Tale That Grew in the Telling, Above the Law, acting, Acting and Activism, activism, adolescence, agency denial, All About the Men, Arizona, Backpage, Backwards into the Future, Birth of a Movement, Broken Record, Canada, Caring Professionals, censorship, China, comics, cops, dirty, disability, drugs, Georgia, hysteria, India, internet, Lack of Evidence, language, lawheads, LGBT rights, Little Boxes, Little Tin Gods, Madonna/whore, Magic Formulae, Maryland, Mexico, Minnesota, Moloch, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Philippines, politicians, porn, prisons, prohibitionist myths, rape, sex offender registry, Sex Rays (updates), Shame Shame, streetwalkers, stripping, Swedish model, The Mote and the Beam, The Pro-Rape Coalition, The Red Umbrella, The Widening Gyre, Thought Control, Under Every Bed, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers, virginity, Whither Canada?, yellow journalism on May 10, 2014| 18 Comments »

[Mary Anne] Franks couldn’t care less who is turned into a felony sex offender, as long as some variation of her pet law is enacted, the hated men go down along with the innocent, and she gets credit for it. – Scott Greenfield

The Red Umbrella

A [Filipino man]…fell to his death while trying to evade police arrest…for allegedly beating up a [sex worker]…the man [hired] her…and…they had sex [but he] started to beat her after she refused to take [methamphetamine]…

The Mote and the Beam

Here’s a long, confused article on the latest attempt to destroy the internet in the name of “protecting children”. Among its other lovely features: it would criminalize advertising “illegal sex” on the internet. The article is packed with the usual asinine claims (including the ludicrous assertion that 82% of all prostitution advertising is on Backpage) but does state that the proposed law is basically similar to the ones that judges keep striking down as unconstitutional. You’d think they’d learn, but why bother? The consequences don’t fall on them. Politicians are like stupid kids egging somebody’s house: it only takes them a short time and very little effort to “send a message”, but the mess they leave behind takes others a very long time to clean up.

Moloch

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court is weighing whether it’s constitutional to force all juvenile sex offenders to sign up with the state sex offender registry…Pennsylvania law requires anyone 14…or older who is convicted of [a sex crime]…to register for life…they can petition for removal…only after 25 years, and only if they’ve had no subsequent offenses, even of a non-sexual nature…

Above the Law

Note that this particular rapist cop works for the same department that wanted to “live tweet” a prostitution sting: “John Warhurst [was arrested] for sixteen…sex offenses…[including] rape…Warhurst is a Prince George’s County Police Officer…” In a rather odd twist, his wife was also arrested on similar charges.

Broken Record

If you though a gem and mineral show as “sex trafficking” magnet was ridiculous…

…twice a year High Point triples in size with crowds numbering more than 80,000 people…[for] the weeklong Furniture Market…[which] draws more people than any other event in North Carolina. Unfortunately, with any large crowd there comes the opportunity for anonymity, and sex traffickers are all too eager to take advantage…

What kind of mind calls anonymity “unfortunate”?

The Widening Gyre

Lawheads are willing to shut down a city to stop consensual behavior, but can’t even conceive that maybe their stupid laws are the real problem:

[Cincinnati] police…[have installed] concrete road blocks all along McMicken Avenue…While most agree something must be done to stop human trafficking…some say stopping traffic all together [sic] isn’t the answer…officials plan to keep the closures in place for…three months…[and] are…considering other drastic measures…like publishing the names of people convicted of prostitution related crimes, notifying their spouses and increasing fines…

Thought Control

Here’s an excellent article on how the amazing diversity of the Golden Age of comics was destroyed by the repressive Comics Code Authority, a sort of self-lobotomization performed to save the industry from Congressional censorship after Frederic Wertham’s witch hunt:

…Distributors agreed not to carry comic books that didn’t abide by the Code, making it functionally as effective as law…independent women, and people of color, and all sorts of stories that didn’t fit with the compulsory patriotism and cop-worship of the 1950s, essentially vanished from comics for decades…What was left didn’t interest adults nearly as much, and comics slowly began to become less ubiquitous and more associated with pasty adolescent boys…

Little Boxes (TW3 #40)

An American medical student is auctioning off her virginity…Using the alias “Elizabeth Raine” and operating a blog entitled, Musings of a Virgin Whore, the 28-year-old…said she is willing to submit to a medical examination or polygraph as proof to the winning bidder…[and will consummate]…in Australia [to]…circumvent…American prostitution laws…Raine says she does not care about being labeled a prostitute…and…while she does not advocate prostitution she supports [its] “decriminalization and destigmatization”…She has promised to donate 35 percent of the auction proceeds to a charity “that brings education to women in developing countries”…

Caring Professionals

When they’re not infantilizing sex workers and demonizing our clients, they’re doing the exact opposite:

A disabled British retiree has ended up in court after he punched a council official who stopped him from seeing a prostitute. Alan Thipthorpe, 88, was furious after he was prevented from seeing…Terri-Lee Pearce…[who] had regularly visited his care home. Swindon council…stopped the visits because [they accused Pearce] of fleecing him out of his life savings…An angry Thipthorpe said…he should be able to spend the money how he wanted…

Under Every Bed

A “sex trafficking” cluck lectures us about the importance of word order, but apparently isn’t too concerned with number agreement: “There is no such thing as children prostitutes, they are prostituted children who can be found in…any neighborhood and any town.” Whenever I read something like this, I hear the voices from Chickenman crying “It’s everywhere, it’s everywhere!”

The Pro-Rape Coalition (TW3 #316)

There cannot be a complete ban on Internet pornography in [India]…the government has told the Supreme Court…the…servers…are…quite often located in foreign countries, where such publication is permissible…even if a website is blocked, the same content can be hosted on a different server, may be in a different country, within a few seconds…

Birth of a Movement (TW3 #323)

…a few hundred women [marched] down a busy commercial street in Mexico City during a May Day demonstration…to highlight the rights of sex workers… members of la Brigada Callejera (“the Streetwalkers Brigade”)…emphasized that…marchers were in the sex trade of their own free will…Mexico City’s government is currently attempting to redevelop La Merced and close down various hotels that it [pretends] are involved in trafficking…

Magic Formulae

A Minnesota law firm posted a page busting the common myths I’ve often written about, such as the notion that there are certain things cops can’t do or that one is safe if one has some kind of payment ritual. I’d really like to see more whore-friendly entities posting information like this.

Acting and Activism (Extra Edition)

Another empty-headed actress attacks the less-privileged branches of our shared profession with stupid lies and moronic myths:

…Jada Pinkett Smith…[is working on] a CNN documentary…about…sex trafficking. Jada…had her eyes opened wide by two strippers who made clear to her that strip clubs in Atlanta, ground zero for the sex trafficking industry —are a gateway to…slavery…

Little Tin Gods

Sheriff Ed Brown considers himself to be the owner of every human being…in North Carolina’s Onslow County – but he counsels his subjects not to worry, for his is a benevolent dictatorship administered by quasi-divine people endowed with transcendent wisdom…in [an ad] for his re-election campaign [Brown wrote] “Those in the law enforcement profession have complete power over you, your life, your family, your loved ones, your rights, your freedom, your future and everything precious to life”…After the ad prompted criticism…Brown objected that his words were misunderstood…Brown apparently can [also] command the very elements themselves to surrender valuable secrets that remain inaccessible to lesser men. While investigating the murder of…Maria Lauterbach, the Sheriff didn’t bother to collect shoeprints, choosing instead to conduct a forensic investigation using a divining rod made from a coat hanger…

Sex Rays

…For months, Amazon has been deleting the wish lists of porn performers, models, and other…adult [entertainers]…Often, Amazon will cite “inappropriate” use of the wish list, such as it being used for “bartering” purposes…even when…there is no real evidence to that effect…Amazon has also deleted adult entertainers’ wish lists on the grounds that they include “inappropriate” items, such as adult toys or DVDs, despite the fact that Amazon offers these products…

Lack of Evidence (TW3 #344)

New York City has agreed to pay $450,000 to settle a lawsuit…by a man who said he was falsely arrested on a prostitution charge outside a Manhattan adult video store…Robert Pinter…says the settlement was a victory for 40 or so men…targeted [because cops] believed [them] to be gay…

A Tale That Grew in the Telling (TW3 #345)

So much for “Sin City”:

…the [Las Vegas] Police co-sponsored [a] “Choose Purity” event…to show young girls what can happen when they don’t wait until marriage to have sex…Typically four things: sexual assault, gangs, drugs and prostitution. Avoid sex and avoid those perils, [organizer Regina] Coward said…The room of about 125 parents and children watched recorded interviews with a pimp and prostitutes, learned modern-day slavery exists in the form of the sex trade, and saw grisly images of…a woman who’d lost limbs in a methamphetamine lab explosion and a man who’d had his face partially gnawed off by a meth user…The monologues concluded with each girl getting on a gurney and into a body bag…

Shame, Shame (TW3 #348)

When Mary Anne Franks began her Jihad against revenge porn, it was pointed out that…her law would also criminalize the revelation of Anthony Wiener’s dangerous selfie…Franks adamantly denied her law suffered from significant…deficiencies. But quietly, while no one was looking, the law morphed to include a…“Sydney Leathers exception”…even though few people know or care who Sydney Leathers is…Then came the viral twit…of a woman whose model plane strayed off course…and some snarky lawyer pointed out that anyone who retwitted it may well have committed a crime under Franks’ law. Deniers strained to contend that could never happen, convincing no one. But it didn’t take long before…Arizona [enacted]…its…revenge porn…law…The crime went from misdemeanor to felony…and it has no “~~Anthony Wiener~~ Sydney Leathers exception”…The sound you hear is Mary Anne Franks applauding as Crazy Joe Arpaio rounds up as many people…as he can find…

Backwards into the Future (TW3 #352)

Stephanie Wilson was reaching for a receipt inside a paper shopping bag from Saks Fifth Avenue when she found a letter pleading, “HELP HELP HELP”…from a man who…made the bag while being unfairly held in a Chinese prison factory…The note…was signed Tohnain Emmanuel Njong and was accompanied by a small passport-photo sized color picture… DNAinfo New York…located…Njong…who…said he had been teaching English in…Shenzhen when he was arrested in May 2011 and [wrongly] charged with fraud…he was forced to work long days in a factory, starting at 6 a.m. and continuing as late as 10 p.m…in December 2013…he…was put on a plane back to Cameroon…relatives…had believed him to be dead…

Whither Canada? (TW3 #415)

Can you imagine this in an American paper?

…the government is leaning heavily towards the…Nordic model…as featured in [Joy Smith’s] Tipping Point report…Smith starts with a pre-conceived notion that presumes something which is simply not true, but is rather a sop to her own sensibilities…Eliminate prostitution? With a law?…Maybe if Smith jumps up and down, holds her breath until she turns blue, and wishes really, really hard that’ll happen. But I doubt it…

Best part: the author’s an ex-cop.

All About the Men

Heather Berg’s criticism of Katha Pollitt’s ninnyish “OMG, men might see WHORES!!!1!!” essay from early last month makes the same point I made in “Dilemmas”: workers are not responsible for the moral failings (real or imaginary) of those who employ them.

…By making sex work exceptional, analyses like [these] ask us to forget that the wage system functions precisely by compelling us to work…If only everyone who opposes forcing people to work under threat of poverty and homelessness would join the struggle for a guaranteed annual income…the nature of a product is irrelevant to how we should theorize, legislate, or organize the labor involved in producing it. Workers are not socially accountable for whatever may come from their work. To accept otherwise encourages the over-identification with work that management finds so efficient in getting us to do more for less. It allows capital to extract not only time, but also ethical responsibility from workers…

Though Berg’s view proceeds from a Marxist background and mine from a classical liberal one, we agree on both this subject and on the advisability of a guaranteed income.

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That Was the Week That Was (#411)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged A Narrow View, Above the Law, agency denial, Arizona, Barbie, Between the Ears, bogus studies, Bottleneck, Buried Truth, California, Canada, censorship, condoms, cops, diversion programs, Don’t Take My Word For It, drugs, evidence, First They Came for the Hookers, gangs, harm reduction, Higher Education, hysteria, Illinois, Imagination Pinned Down, It Looks Good On Paper, Italy, Ladies of the Night, Latin America, law, lawheads, Long Spoon, male prostitutes, Mexico, Michigan, Middle East, neofeminism, Never Call the Cops, New Orleans, Not For Everybody, Ohio, politicians, porn, prohibitionist myths, psychology, rape, Recognition, sex work is work, South of the Border, Spain, sporting events, stripping, survivors, Sweden, Swedish model, Texas, That Old Black Magic, The Course of a Disease, The Crumbling Dam, The Widening Gyre, To Protect and Serve, Traffic Jam, United Kingdom, video, violence vs. sex workers, witchcraft on March 15, 2014| 16 Comments »

After breaking down doors and waving…guns around, it’s gratifying [for cops]…to pacify terrified slaves by tasering them. – Joyce Arthur

Recognition

An elderly Italian man got a rather unwelcome surprise when he ordered an escort – and his…40-year-old son’s South American girlfriend…arrived at his house…the pair declined to take the encounter further and swiftly parted ways. The man [decided]…to tell his son…prompting a bitter fight between the pair…the son [sued] his father for injuries…

Barbie

While whitebread feminists wet themselves over the newest version of “Happy To Be Me”, Virginia Postrel isn’t having any of it:

…All right-thinking people seem convinced that Barbie instills in her pre-school fans a false and remarkably detailed standard of beauty. Hence the widespread praise for Lammily, the latest anti-Barbie concept doll. A crowd-funded project from artist Nickolay Lamm (the source of her ungainly moniker), Lammily is based on the average proportions for a 19-year-old…[but] the average 19-year-old female American stands 5 feet 4 inches tall. She has a 33.6-inch waist and…weighs 150 pounds…If Lammily were true to life…she’d have rolls of fat, not a firm plastic tummy…Celebrating one version of average as “normal” and “realistic” implicitly stigmatizes everyone who doesn’t meet that standard. Barbie doesn’t pretend to do that; Lammily does…

A Narrow View

This NPR article on diversion programs is full of the usual “sex trafficking” nonsense and dishonest platitudes about the programs’ effectiveness, but one section was especially troubling:

…Judge Pratt says that initially her treatment-focused approach…improved the ability to prosecute the traffickers. But…a lot of the boys…were becoming pimps. “The foster care system and juvenile justice system is creating both sides of this market, the suppliers and the goods,” she says…

Her revolting dehumanization of girls as “goods” is bad enough, but her willful mischaracterization of young male sex workers as “pimps” in order to prop up the vile “pimps and hos” myth is utterly reprehensible.

To Protect and Serve (August Updates)

San Diego cops use “sex trafficking” as an excuse to send a SWAT team to a strip club:

A manager at Cheetahs strip club says his dancers felt violated by police who photographed them almost nude…10 officers swarmed the building with guns and bulletproof vests, interrupting business for a couple of hours…to make sure all 30 dancers had proper permits and were in compliance…

Don’t Take My Word For It

Male delusions about sex work start extra-early in Sweden: “Swedish police have received a report that three underage boys [as young as ten] speaking bad German tried to sell sex to women at a busy commuter hub in central Sweden…”

Not for Everybody

Though Meg Munoz had a very bad time as a sex worker and for a while supported prohibition, she eventually recognized the harm it creates:

…Poorly conducted, [biased]…research needs to stop being used as the foundation for fundraising…the refusal to have sex work acknowledged as real work…has all but halted any civil discourse…Allowing moral biases to dictate policy is dangerous for those who are there by choice and force…

Above the Law

No, you lying asshole, it’s exactly what police officers do, which is why this is the second most common subtitle on the blog:

…while police responded to [a] domestic violence call, one of the officers allegedly took the woman into an upstairs bedroom and sexually assaulted her…Deon Nunlee has been charged…Detroit Police Chief James Craig said…“This is an anomaly. This is not what our police officers do”…

In fact, here’s another in the same city:

A former Detroit police officer who was convicted of criminal sexual conduct involving participants in his boot camp for misbehaving teens is being sued by two of the victims…Geoffrey Townsend…began making unwelcome sexual advances [eventually culminating in rape when one]…victim was 13 years old…and…the…[other] 16…

And it’s not limited to the US, either:

[Durham, Ontario police Constable Scott Andrew Terry] sexually exploited [a 16-year-old girl] …with whom he first came into contact after she was busted for shoplifting in May of 2000. Instead of filing charges…he…[offered] her a rental room in his house…[then] began making advances which…escalated to nude photos, sexual touching and eventually rape…“in exchange for the rent”…

First They Came for the Hookers…

This dumb story about dumb strip-club restrictions in Chicago is, as you might expect, mostly just dumb. But these comments from anti-whore zealot Bob Fioretti venture into a higher realm of dumbness: “we have an underlying social problem. Between 15,000 and 25,000 women a day engage in prostitution…in this city. That underground activity undermines us a city — a world-class city…” I’ll bet you didn’t know we were so dangerous, or that roughly 4% of the adult female population of Chicago were whores.

Higher Education (TW3 #23)

Unlike the last time we saw this, these teachers are actually qualified:

An enterprising association of sex workers in Barcelona has angered some of Spain’s most prominent feminists by offering an “intro to prostitution” course…at a cost of €45…the four-hour intensive course for aspiring sex workers was held last month by the Asociación de Profesionales del Sexo…Lidia Falcón…[who] has spent years fighting to have prostitution [criminalized] in Spain…said…the problem with the course lies in its underlying suggestion that some women are working in the profession out of their own free will…

So Falcón wants the course banned because it blatantly disproves her lies.

Imagination Pinned Down

Though the social climate which led to the Satanic Panic had been building for years, it was the McMartin Preschool hysteria that really launched it. Now that it’s a generation in the past, even media outlets like the New York Times which fully embrace “sex trafficking” hysteria recognize its earlier incarnation for what it was. Here’s a good retrospective called “McMartin Preschool: Anatomy of a Panic”; watch it with the current hysteria in mind and note the many parallels.

The Widening Gyre

If “authorities” don’t want stupid myths about women being abducted spreading around, they sure have a strange way of showing it:

[A rumor] warns of attempts to abduct women and girls in broad daylight at crowded shopping centers. It warns that a new gang initiation requires members to kidnap, rape and beat women and then dump them in parking lots. For years, authorities have tried to keep such messages from spreading, debunking their claims as urban myths…

To clarify: Women being abducted by gangs for quick rape = “right up there with Bigfoot”, but women abducted by gangs for years of captivity and sexual slavery = 100% credible.

South of the Border

In Mexico, a respected advocate is arrested as a “pimp” for helping sex workers organize:

…the recent arrest of Alejandra Gil…[is due to] new legislation, which…conflates sex work with human trafficking…Gil has worked tirelessly for the human rights of sex workers for many years…Laws and policies that target “third parties” under the premise of “protecting” sex workers, increase our vulnerability to abuse and exploitation, and create real barriers for sex workers organising…

Bottleneck

Considering that more than 90% of whores prefer to work illegally than submit to licensing, how well do you think this colossally stupid Italian law will work?

…prostitution will be permitted in private houses, subject to certain conditions, including the use of condoms…the draft law, which was presented…by…Maria Spillabotte…includes the issuance of a licence, stating that the holder is free of sexually transmitted diseases and confirming that a payment has been made…of €6,000 for a full-time licence or half that amount for part-time work…Prostitutes will also be required to get a certificate of mental fitness. “This is a fundamental way of getting women away from coercion,” says Spillabotte. “During an interview, the specialist will be able to tell if the girl is being forced into prostitution or if it is her free choice”…

That Old Black Magic

“The Sharjah Police…arrested an Arab woman and a man for forcing women into prostitution and engaging in black magic…”

Buried Truth

When a politician obsesses about “protecting children from porn”, this is usually the reason: “A senior aide to David Cameron resigned…the day before being arrested on allegations relating to child abuse images. Patrick Rock…was involved in drawing up the government’s policy for…online pornography filters…”

Between the Ears (TW3 #133)

This article on “Why Viagra Ruined Sex Work” quotes a few ladies whose names regular readers may recognize:

…“I wouldn’t say ED drugs are the worst thing, but they are really annoying,” laughed…Jolene Parton…“it…makes it harder for the client to come.” Anna Gristina…dubbed [it]…“The working girl’s worst nightmare come true…It went from wham-bam, thank you ma’am,’ to ‘Oh my god, can you just finish, man’”…Amanda Brooks…says…men become obsessed with having an erection at the expense of any enjoyment for anyone…

It Looks Good On Paper (TW3 #311)

Texas joins the states arresting people to force them into “diversion” programs: “The Corpus Christi Police…conducted a ‘Jane Sting’…in conjunction with the Red Cord Diversion Program…all six arrested persons were signed up to participate…rather than have criminal charges immediately applied.” Yes, they actually referred to sex workers as “janes”.

The Crumbling Dam (TW3 #315)

Joyce Arthur hits it out of the park with this satire:

In a bold move aimed at protecting workers from exploitation while on the job, the government today passed a new law that criminalizes most employers and customers…Law and Order Minister Punter MacCunny…pointed out that 95 per cent of people hate their jobs and want out, according to a new government-commissioned study…Police welcomed the new law, which gives them sweeping new enforcement powers to target the huge increase in organized crime. According to Det. Sgt. Billy Clubber, head of the RCMP’s new Slave Save Squad, “We’ll be cracking down on slavery rings, basically any place where workers are bribed with wages to provide services”…The law now designates employers and customers as “pimps” and “johns,” respectively…

Long Spoon (TW3 #351)

Reason’s video on condom criminalization specifically refers to the Human Rights Watch report condemning the practice in New Orleans:

Ladies of the Night

Saith Dr. Brooke Magnanti in The Telegraph:

It’s an unusual move to go from policy and social commentary to fiction, especially as the stories cover a range of genres from romance to crime to sci-fi. And yet it works. The eye for detail that fans of Maggie’s non-fiction writing appreciate is well played here. She invents worlds with ease and populates them with thought-provoking, yet never two-dimensional, women and men. If you love plots with twists, she has them to spare. (If you’re not into twists, or women who aren’t always whiter than white, probably best to stay away.) And the cover art by acclaimed cartoonist and Louis Riel author Chester Brown is wonderful.

She also reviews Daddy by Madison Young and Playing the Whore by Melissa Gira Grant.

The Course of a Disease (TW3 #410)

Sex columnist Suzi Godson presents “10 Things You Need to Know Before You Support the Swedish Model of Sex Work” in response to the new push by UK prohibitionists. It’s not anything new for readers of this blog, but it’s possible ammo for online discussions you may get involved in.

Traffic Jam (TW3 #410)

Dominique Roe-Sepowitz answers the many criticisms of Project ROSE by denying them to Christian Post after refusing interviews with mainstream reporters. And if you imagine the denials are substantive or backed by facts, think again: her entire rationale for cooperating with cops to railroad people and deny them lawyers is, “sex-work…is against the law.” Meanwhile, in last week’s other installment of “Traffic Jam”, a demonstration of the motivation behind the fakery:

A study of advertising placed during the recent Super Bowl in New Jersey suggests the volume of sex trafficking that will occur when the event comes to Arizona in 2015 will likely exceed the ability of any one law enforcement agency to address. Phoenix Police Lt. James Gallagher, who co-authored the study…said law enforcement must coordinate to combat sex trafficking during major events…

In other words, “give us more money and power!” Here’s a Storify of the fun several of us had with this mess last Saturday.

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Links #161

Posted in Current Events, History, Links, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged adolescence, Africa, animals, Canada, Central Asia, child "protective" services, comics, cops, disease, drugs, games, imaginative fiction, India, internet, Islam, Japan, Latin America, lawheads, Mexico, Michigan, Oklahoma, Pakistan, Pennsylvania, porn, slavery, Texas, Things We Choose To Do Together, universal criminality, video, welcome to our world, Wisconsin on August 4, 2013| 26 Comments »

I’m thankful that the police officer came out quickly, that we live in a city where we can depend on police to react quickly. – Chris Reeves

I’m mostly back to my normal schedule now, though only one week ahead so far; by the next Links column I should have a comfortable two-week buffer again. We’ve got the usual assortment of amusing, interesting and infuriating links this week, but a few words of explanation are in order for the videos. The first, “I Am Here”, is a project started by two Chilean university students, Violeta Pinda and Felipe Guzman, to call attention to stray dogs that people usually ignore. All they did was to attach balloons on which they wrote things like “scratch me”, “play with me” and “don’t leave me” to the dogs…but when creatures who were essentially invisible suddenly become visible, magic happens (and Maggie cries). The second video is an animation of XKCD’s unique comic strip “Time”, which changed every half hour for the first week and every hour thereafter, from March 25^th to the end of July. Everything down to the first video was provided by Radley Balko, the second video by Mike Siegel and the links between the two by Jesse Walker (“Sahara Sea”), Popehat (“baby prize”), Luscious Lani (“graffiti”), Kevin Wilson (“weapons”), PWS (“Detroit”), Lenore Skenazy (“school cops”), Brooke Magnanti (“whistleblowers”), and Antonio Lorusso (“child porn”).

From the Archives

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Theatrics

Posted in Current Events, Perception, tagged agency denial, California, dirty, Florida, harm reduction, hysteria, illegal aliens, Latin America, law, Mexico, neofeminism, Pennsylvania, racism, rape, restaurants, Theatrics, Where Are the Protests? on April 11, 2013| 30 Comments »

If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction. – William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (III,iv)

The moral panic over human trafficking has grown more aggressively than most; in its earlier form, the Satanic Panic, it only barely got out of the United States. But once the cultists metamorphosed into “criminal gangs”, two powerful and wealthy types of organizations recognized that the hysteria provided the perfect plot for media theatrics designed to disguise sleazy agendas which might have mobilized considerable resistance had they been openly revealed. The anti-sex cabal of neofeminists and evangelical Christians use “trafficking” as camouflage for an anti-whore crusade, while governments use it as an excuse for tighter controls on immigration; the net result is an awful lot of money being invested into dramatic displays, and an awful lot of disinformation being spread through official channels, while real victims of exploitation are ignored.

In the US, “human trafficking” is practically synonymous with “sex trafficking”; though lip-service is paid to the existence of other forms of exploitation, virtually all of the money, manpower and press coverage is devoted to “sex trafficking”, which bogus statistics declare to be the most common form (with claims ranging from 60% to “almost all”, despite the insistence of other reports that it’s more like 10%). This is due partly to the fact that most of the money either comes from or flows through prohibitionist organizations, and partly because sex sells in the media. But there’s another, more sinister and far dirtier reason why so much attention is paid to whores who are not “enslaved” in any reasonable sense of the word, and so little to people who are clearly coerced and exploited: modern Western economies depend upon dirt-cheap labor, so by harassing harlots they can make a great and entertaining show of “doing something” about exploitation while yet ensuring that the vegetables get picked and the garments get made. Americans in particular leer over lurid accounts of “child sex trafficking” which is so rare as to be almost nonexistent, while ignoring widespread and pervasive sexual abuse among women who, if they were sex workers, would be called “trafficking victims”:

The majority of women farmworkers interviewed…by the Southern Poverty Law Center and Human Rights Watch had experienced some form of sexual harassment or assault, which ranged from verbal abuse to rape. One…study…estimated that as many as 80 percent…have been sexually harassed or assaulted on the job…Women make up slightly more than 20 percent of U.S. farmworkers, and of these, the majority are immigrants from Mexico. Women become migratory workers for the same reasons men do—in many cases, to escape rural poverty…“Generally, [the perpetrator] will have some kind of legal immigration status,” says Liz Maria Chacko, a supervising attorney at Friends of Farmworkers in Philadelphia. “This gives them power over their victims”…lack of fluency in English makes the women even more vulnerable. Their immediate supervisors, who tend to be their harassers, also tend to be bilingual. If a woman complains, the perpetrator can directly present his case to the farm owner in English. The woman who’s been victimized cannot…Chacko says owners often react defensively to accusations of harassment. “The response we get is usually denial”…Women who are the victims of serious crimes, including rape, domestic violence and sexual harassment, are eligible to apply for a U-Visa. But in order to qualify, they must cooperate with law enforcement—and thus risk deportation…

And when the US government itself is the “trafficker”, it’s even worse:

Alleging unpaid wages and repeated retaliation, McDonald’s workers in central Pennsylvania launched a surprise strike [on March 6^th]…The strikers are student guest workers from Latin America and Asia, brought to the United States under the controversial J-1 cultural exchange visa program…[which] is officially intended to promote educational and cultural exchange. But advocates allege that J-1, like the other guest worker programs that collectively bring hundreds of thousands of workers in and out of the United States each year, is rife with abuse…According to [National Guestworker Alliance (NGA)] the visiting students each paid $3,000 or more for the chance to come and work, and were promised full-time employment; most received only a handful of hours a week, while others worked shifts as long as twenty-five hours straight, without being paid overtime. “Their employer is also their landlord,” said [NGA Director Saket] Soni. “They’re earning sub-minimum wages, and then paying it back in rent” to share a room with up to seven co-workers. “Their weekly net pay is actually sometimes…as low as zero”…management required [them] to be on call twenty-four hours a day, ready to show up for work at thirty minutes’ notice, and…workers have been subject to threats and retaliation for speaking up or turning down work. [Striker Jorge] Rios said that…“they actually threatened one of our roommates by saying that they’re just a call away from sending him back to his home country”…

Let’s see now; we’ve got people being misled about the conditions under which they’ll work, then paid starvation wages that are docked for “fees” so they can never get clear, and threatened with deportation if they complain…sound familiar? Yet Nicholas Kristof, Polaris Project and the other “rescuers” who purport to care so much about victims are mysteriously silent on the issue, probably because they’re too busy trying to get sex workers and our clients arrested and our faces splashed across TV screens from coast to coast. This is hypocrisy on an epic scale; either governments need to start paying attention to real labor exploitation (most of which doesn’t involve sex work) and cease harassing those who neither want nor need their “help”, or else drop the whole pretense and admit their real and ugly motives for funding “anti-trafficking” theater instead of simply ensuring the rights of all people, whether native or migrant.

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That Was the Week That Was (#313)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Q & A, Tyranny, tagged A Tale That Grew in the Telling, A War for Peace, Above the Law, Advice for Clients, agency denial, Australia, Bogeymen, Bottleneck, brothels, Canada, condoms, cops, Cops and Condoms, Decentralization, dirty, disability, Down Under, Droit du Seigneur, Dutch Threat, Egypt, ethics, France, gangs, Hollywood, hysteria, India, internet, Islam, King of the Hill, Latin America, law, lawheads, Legalization a Good Idea?, Lying Down With Dogs, Mexico, Middle East, Minnesota, neofeminism, Netherlands, New Jersey, New Zealand, North Carolina, Oregon, politicians, prohibitionist myths, psychology, rape, rescue industry, Reviews, Russia, Sales Pitch, sex work is work, Skin To Skin, streetwalkers, Sweden, Swedish model, The More the Better, The Public Eye, Thought Experiment, underage, video, violence vs. sex workers, Whorearchy on March 29, 2013| 32 Comments »

We are simply sisters, mothers, neighbors and friends. We shop where you shop, we vote where you vote and we pay taxes like the rest of you. – Kristen DiAngelo

Cops and Condoms

…Bill Gates has…[offered] a $100,000 grant…to…develop “the next generation of condom”. Though condoms are the most reliable…method to protect against pregnancy and STIs, it doesn’t take your ex-boyfriend to tell you how much they kind of suck (oh, and will he tell you). So the foundation is requesting proposals for a…condom that “significantly preserves or enhances pleasure, in order to improve…regular use”…

Advice for Clients

Amanda Brooks published her own set of tips for clients; I think it’s worthwhile for a gentleman to read as many of these as he comes across, because every woman is different and may include something others didn’t think important.

Lying Down With Dogs

Ask yourself once again: Is this really the company you want the US to keep?

Egyptian prosecutors ordered the detention of 17 women and a Lebanese man…[for]…commercial phone sex…security forces raided [their] office…and confiscated phones and computer devices…Investigations showed “gang members” recruited female university students through job ads in newspapers and then agreed with them to perform acts “that run contrary to morality”…

Sales Pitch

Sweden says its “model” has reduced prostitution and deters clients: “[A] newspaper…published an advert about a fictional 19-year-old [sex worker]…Over the weekend, the phone had 130 missed calls and seven texts. After a week, the number had grown to 287 calls and 57 texts…[a] local police [spokesman claimed]…the callers were more curious than interested in buying sex…” What a pathetic rationalization! Here’s the real attitude of Swedes toward the law:

Down Under

Can you imagine American cops contradicting a prohibitionist politician’s lies?

Police say they’ve seen no evidence to back up [a New Zealand] MP’s claims that girls as young as 13 are working as prostitutes in south Auckland…Asenati Lole-Taylor says there is “growing prevalence” of underage girls selling sex…and she’s backing a bill to ban all street prostitution and confine sex work to brothels…[she also claims] she has witnessed police dealing with young prostitutes …That was news to police Area Commander…Chris de Wattignar. “It’s not something that police have seen ourselves. We also work with a number of agencies and community partners in the Otara town centre and that’s certainly not the information we have”…

Decentralization

The US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has [issued] regulations on…Bitcoin…there’s been zero regulation…[so far, because that] would essentially admit that it’s legitimate…The nature of Bitcoin makes it untraceable so unless firms are coaxed into cooperation, it’s hard to imagine the regulations being enforced.

Droit du Seigneur

“A former Bolshoi ballet dancer has called the acclaimed company a ‘giant brothel’…Anastasia Volochkova claimed that female dancers were forced to sleep with wealthy patrons…”

September Q & A

Though the main Wikipedia entry for “Prostitution” is an unusable (and uncorrectable) mess due to aggressive sabotage by neofeminists, there is a new article on “Migrant Sex Work” which is comprehensive, fact-based and non-judgmental and includes citations from many good writers like Laura Agustín, Elizabeth Bernstein, Pardis Mahdavi, Nick Mai and Rhacel Parrenas. Here’s hoping the author is able to keep control of it.

Thought Experiment

Charlotte Shane’s “’Getting Away’ With Hating It: Consent in the Context of Sex Work” is a brilliant exploration of how the weakness of the concept of “enthusiastic consent” (now being pushed by the “rape culture” folks) is demonstrated by sex work. This is definitely a must-read, especially for my male readers, as it looks at an area of female sexual psychology most men seem to have difficulty understanding. Even the comment thread is worth your time, especially the reactions to a Good Men Project writer who apparently thinks it’s only OK to pay a whore if she doesn’t need the job and is only doing it as a hobby or something.

The More the Better

The Australian Woman’s Weekly published “When Sex is Your Day Job”, an interview with five sex workers (including Rachel Wotton) about prejudice, sex work myths, discrimination and sex as a human right. What a difference from the United States!

Above the Law

…New Jersey [prison guard]… Juan R. Stevens, 50, was charged with…sexual assault and…criminal restraint…Stevens would call…escorts…[and tell them] he was a police officer in order to intimidate them into having sex with him for free…

A War for Peace (TW3 #11)

For once, I agree with a Femen leader’s analysis; too bad they don’t see it also applies to sex work:

A 19-year-old Tunisian activist who was threatened with death by stoning after posting topless pictures of herself online has reportedly been admitted to a psychiatric hospital. The woman, known only as Amina, posted the photographs…to the Femen-Tunisian Facebook page…Amina’s aunt claimed…”She had decided to kill herself and so posted nude pictures of herself online.” [Femen leader Inna] Shevchenko described the move as “a typical way of reacting to a woman’s demand to be free – they say she’s gone crazy or is being too emotional”…

Whorearchy

A…Mexican politician who…[appeared] in a…lingerie video is taking legal action against political rivals who claim she was [an] “escort girl.” Giselle Arellano says the…accusations resulted in her failing to win the nomination of Mexico’s conservative National Action Party (PAN)…She wants the election annulled on the grounds that she was “slandered” by her rivals…Arellano…resides in Las Vegas, Nevada, where she has done stints as a model and also runs a small company that offers “concierge services” to visitors. She was running for a seat in the Zacatecas State Legislature that is reserved for Mexicans who emigrate abroad…

Besides conventional services, Black Rose Services plans bachelor parties and group excursions to strip clubs and only takes clients by referral.

Bogeymen

Microsoft recently sponsored a “hackathon” based on the theme “combating human trafficking”, and a story on the ever-credulous NPR reports that one of the entries is a smartphone app that middle-class teenage girls who are suddenly “trafficked” by surprise (presumably by “pimps” leaping out at them from bushes) can use to surreptitiously “connect with resources, like a hotline number or a chat room where they can get help. ‘One of the requirements of this project was to make it covert, so it’s not easily detectable…and [that] it’s for girls ages 11 to 21.’ So the app, which they call Blossom, is disguised to look like it’s just about fun for teens…” Because captives would certainly be allowed to keep their phones, and university-age adult women are interested in the same sorts of games as 11-year-olds.

Bottleneck

“Authorities” not only refuse to recognize the damage licensing laws do, but often insist on congratulating themselves that they’re “helping” sex workers:

Saskatoon’s new adult services licensing bylaw…gives police new…powers to keep a closer watch on a large part of the sex industry…Anyone advertising sexual services…is now required to get a licence from the city…This is…taking part of the sex trade out of the shadows to protect vulnerable women, police and city officials say…”Prostitution is not against the law. If a person is working at a hotel and communicating in a private place, then they are not committing a criminal offence”…

And that obviously wouldn’t do, so they had to find a way to make it into one. For our own good, of course.

King of the Hill

North Carolina’s entry into the “trafficking hub” competition is especially hilarious for its claim that rural areas with low populations are “attractive” to those in the “sex trafficking trade”:

…On Eagles Wings Ministries plans to [build]…a haven for girls involved in the sex-trafficking trade…Gaston County provides a location that’s close enough to Charlotte to help girls there, but far enough away to keep traffickers at bay…North Carolina has become a hotspot for human trafficking…[due to] major highways and interstates, transient populations and large rural areas…

Book Reviews (October 2012)

Two of the authors of books from this column (Rob Arthur of You Will Die and Laura Agustín of Sex at the Margins) were interviewed on the subject of what inspired them to write those books; I think you’ll find their answers illuminating.

A Tale That Grew in the Telling (TW3 #50)

It’s a very hopeful sign when a review of a movie based in “trafficking” myth can conclude with this passage: “Eden…[is] not a documentary, it isn’t entertainment, and…[it] sure as heck isn’t art. It’s just a message, screaming on and on at people who agreed with the point before they bought a ticket.”

The Public Eye (TW3 #131)

More on the escort from American Courtesans who was arrested after complaining to police about a stalker:

Last month Lora LePoudre, who goes by the escort pseudonym Hilary Holiday, was arrested by the Eden Prairie Police department in Minnesota following an anonymous tip off by a neighbor and a subsequent sting operation…Neighbors in her family-friendly condo complex [said] they were thankful police had arrested her…

As you may remember, there was no “complaint” except from Hilary herself; the reporter also cherry-picks neighbors, spews inanities like “family-friendly” and misquotes Kristen DiAngelo as saying escorts are “very different” from other sex workers, when actually she said there was a difference between free and coerced prostitution.

Skin To Skin

…The head of the Essonne department…Jerome Guedj…called for allowing sex surrogates…as part of regular social services…[noting] that [they]…are permitted in some other European countries…But…[removed] the term…just ahead of the vote…after coming under criticism for opening the door to legalized prostitution…a national ethics council…ruled that authorizing sex surrogates would essentially “merchandise the human body”…

But while France says it’s OK to neglect disabled folks in order to “send a message” to dirty whores, New Zealand sees stories like this one:

I hired a sex worker for my late 93-year-old father. He had dementia and lived in a nursing home when he said to me, “You’ll need to find me a woman”…I took his request seriously [because]…I’m a disability support worker and I’ve seen how an individual’s sexuality needs to be considered…Touching Base put me in contact with…the person they thought most suitable: ‘Emma’…After time with Emma, my father’s well-being and consequently his behaviour improved…He wasn’t as agitated. He didn’t obsess over things like he used to. He was serene, happy and relaxed…

For Those Who Think Legalization is a Good Idea (TW3 #139)

The Indian government has now completely reversed its sneaky criminalization attempt: “Sex workers and women’s rights activists across India have welcomed the…move to drop the word ‘prostitution’…from the amended…Penal Code. The new formulation targets sexual exploitation and not adult consensual sex work…”

Dutch Threat

What could possibly go wrong?

There is considerable sympathy among Dutch MPs for moves to get tougher on people who visit prostitutes and don’t report suspected exploitation or abuse…The senate…is currently considering legislation that would force prostitutes to sign up to an official register. Clients who fail to check if a girl is registered, could face prosecution…[some] want to go further and say clients should be prosecuted for failing to report to the authorities if they suspect a woman may be being abused or forced to work as a prostitute…

King of the Hill (TW3 #312)

Oregon is really ramping up the hysteria; between two different stories on the same legislative/cop antics we are told that “trafficking happens in small towns” to 9-year-olds, that “80 children are victims of sex trafficking each year” in Portland, that prosecutors want to use “racketeering laws” to prosecute whoever a girl names as her “pimp” after being jailed indefinitely (for her own good, of course), and that “men looking to buy sex from minors describe the victims they want to order.” All this on the word of unnamed women who present no evidence; you know, kind of like witch trials.

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That Was the Week That Was (#311)

Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged activism, Africa, agency denial, Arizona, Australia, Backlash, bogus studies, California, Check Your Premises, Comfort Zone, Coming and Going, condoms, cops, crypto-moralism, diversion programs, escort services, ethics, evidence, Finding What Isn’t There, Grace Bellavue, Hard Numbers, hysteria, illegal aliens, Ireland, It Looks Good On Paper, Lack of Evidence, language, Latin America, law, LGBT rights, marriage, Mexico, Neither Addiction nor Epidemic, neofeminism, Nevada, New York, No Friend of Ours, Obfuscation via Dysphemisms, Oklahoma, One Size Fits All, Peeping Toms, politicians, Politicizing the Personal, prohibitionist myths, psychology, Real People, Reviews, Saint Death, Scrambled Eggs, streetwalkers, Sweden, Texas, That's the Ticket!, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers, Virginia, welcome to our world on March 16, 2013| 15 Comments »

In the field of human trafficking, I detest data because most of it is made up and bogus. – Martina Vandenberg, Human Trafficking Legal Resource Center

Lack of Evidence

It’s good to see the media finally noticing this:

There is no law that says…condoms [are] illegal…and yet NYPD…routinely…[uses them] as…evidence for…prostitution…one city agency conducts a public-health campaign and…[those] who take advantage of it are…promptly arrested by a different city agency—leading to cases being thrown out of court, a suppressed and redacted…study of the problem, and a bill to address the matter in…the state legislature…arresting people because they are in possession of condoms…distributed…by the city itself…looks an awful lot like entrapment…

Nor are the arrests limited to sex workers; as I’ve explained many times, laws which violate whores’ rights invariably violate everyone’s.

Real People

I love seeing profiles like this one of Australian escort Grace Bellavue; the more the public sees of real sex workers, the harder it will be for prohibitionists to sell their stereotypes and myths about us.

Check Your Premises

This is only “stunning” to those who believe in the “pimps and hos” myth:

A sex-trafficking case got the hook in…Brooklyn…when prosecutors revealed their victim was advertising herself as an escort…the woman, now 19, who claimed defendant Robert Pannell forced her into prostitution in April 2011…advertised herself online…last month. The stunning revelation contradicted the accuser’s testimony that her ordeal as a 17-year-old runaway was the only time she ever turned tricks…

Backlash

The Women’s Legal Centre…in Cape Town…provides legal services for sex workers…[who] face routine harassment, intimidation, and…abuse from police…[who] threaten, arrest, or detain [them] for days at a time…many are released only after paying large fines…WLC began its outreach by offering weekly group workshops…[but] soon expanded, employing four former and current sex workers as paralegals…

Recognizing Doubletalk

An internal investigation of the Wilmington [North Carolina] Police Department’s narcotics enforcement team revealed inadequate documentation of funds, poor…supervision…and a “code of silence” cover-up of a March 2012 undercover prostitution operation…Police Chief Ralph Evangelous…[claimed] the undercover operation was in response to a citizen complaint about…escort services…the narcotics enforcement unit came up with a “unique approach” in [which]…more than $2,000 in city funds…were used…

Translation: The narcotics squad had a party but got caught, and it took the police chief a year to come up with a cock-and-bull excuse.

Peeping Toms

A federal appeals court struck down Virginia’s anti-sodomy law…a decade after…Lawrence v. Texas…The appeal originated in a 2005 case in which a 47-year-old man was convicted of soliciting a 17-year-old girl for sex. The girl refused and reported the incident to police, resulting in a “crimes against nature” charge…

One Size Fits All

As you might expect, Swedish neofeminists do not like surrogate motherhood and consider it a form of “human trafficking”:

Surrogate motherhood is a serious crime against women’s human rights…Even when the woman has voluntarily become a surrogate…she gives up the rights to her own body…surrogacy…opens the door for viewing women and children as goods, and to regarding women as containers…having children is not a human right…

Nor, in the minds of neofeminists, is using one’s natural abilities in a way which violates the neofeminist religion. Though this collectivist stance is evil because it denies women the right to control their bodies, it is more philosophically consistent than that of the US (which allows surrogacy but bans sex work) and Australia (vice-versa). But lest you believe that Swedish neofeminists are truly motivated by concern for women’s well-being:

Equality Minister Maria Arnholm wants Sweden to keep the right to deport women whose relationships with Swedish spouses end within two years…The…rule was introduced in an effort to clamp down on sham marriages and to put an end to so-called “wife imports”. But it has been blamed for forcing women to remain in abusive relationships…[and] a 2012 government-ordered inquiry [recommended it] be abolished…The Centre Party’s Women’s Association has also demanded that the…rule be…[replaced with] “immediate action” against “the practice of wife importation”…

It Looks Good On Paper

Prohibitionists just love to tout “diversion programs” which supposedly “help” whores instead of criminalizing them, but if these are so great why do they need cops to force women into them, and why are their standards so strict that very few qualify to avoid jail? In a recent example from Tucson, Arizona, members of SWOP warned sex workers away from a sting they had learned about, but 13 women still got caught…and only four qualified to escape jail. The scheme’s organizer Steve Kozachik, a local politician with a reputation as a control freak, claimed SWOP’s protecting women from cops was “unnecessary” and that “This is not anti sex worker.” Tell that to the nine women whom the prohibitionists “helped” into cages and branded with lifelong criminal records for trying to earn a living.

Politicizing the Personal

Dr. Laura Agustín feels the same way I do about the concept of “empowerment”, as she explains in this older essay she recently republished:

The verb is transitive: someone gives power to another, or encourages them to take power or find power in themselves. It’s used among those who want to help others identified as oppressed…[the] emphasis [is] on the helper and her vision of her capacity to help, encourage and show the way…To empower me as a sex worker you assume the role of acting on me…

Scrambled Eggs

…a California…law prohibits women from being compensated for donating their eggs for medical research, despite payments to subjects in other human research studies…[and] eggs…donated for fertility treatments…[but] a recently introduced bill…would allow women to be compensated…the California Family Council…[claims sponsor Susan] Bonilla’s bill opens up “dangerous medical ground.” The…anti-abortion group…said eggs should be treated like organs and should not be sold…Bonilla said…”I think women are able to decide for themselves if they want to participate in a clinical trial”…

Saint Death

Jesse Walker published a good short piece on Santa Muerte which includes links to a recent AP article, an FBI scare-screed and an essay comparing anti-Santa Muerte hysteria to the Satanic Panic.

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic

Neuroskeptic points out the deep connection between addiction rhetoric and crypto-moralism:

…The dopamine theory of addiction is extremely popular today…[but] if you view addiction as essentially about reward (pleasure), surely that means…anything pleasurable could…be addictive?…if…addiction is the direct consequence of over-indulgence in a reward, then aren’t you saying that reward itself is ultimately what’s addictive?…If everything from food to friends to music are rewarding because they trigger dopamine release, then surely all of those things could be ‘addictive’…The more fun, the more (potentially) addictive…this idea – for all its medical, neurobiological, scientific language – actually undermines the concept of addiction as a ‘disease’ and reduces it to what amounts to a moral failing – it casts addiction as over-indulgence…

Finding What Isn’t There

Ministers, the police and social workers have been accused of a “shocking” failure to prevent the spread of modern slavery in the UK, leading to sexual exploitation, forced labour and the domestic servitude of adults and children…Describing government ministers as “clueless”…[about] human trafficking…the most exhaustive inquiry yet conducted into the phenomenon concludes that the approach to eradicating modern slavery is fundamentally wrong-headed. Instead of helping vulnerable victims…the legal system prosecutes many for immigration offences…

Though I hate to defend government officials, I feel compelled to point out that it’s difficult to adapt to ever-expanding definitions, and impossible to produce enough “victims” to satisfy “estimates” which are essentially just made up.

Obfuscation Via Dysphemisms

Gloria…Giammalva…was [sentenced]…to…[21] months in prison and to be partially responsible for a $600,000 money judgment…U.S. Attorney Trent Shores…[claimed] the conspiracy…charged $30 per encounter, which he said meant that 20,000 commercial sex acts were performed by the women who were exploited…Giammalva…conspired with others in the operation of a multistate prostitution business that coerced and enticed women across state lines to participate in commercial sex acts…

Trim off all the dysphemisms and what remains is: she owned an escort service and the prosecutor lied about the fee to ratchet up the number of “counts”.

Coming and Going (TW3 #35)

Dallas officials are trying to push their “prostitution diversion” scheme on the rest of Texas as a replacement for locking women up. While any move away from incarceration is good news, the motivation is a desire to save money rather than a recognition that criminalization of consensual adult behavior is wrong; whores are still regarded as “criminals” to be “rehabilitated”, and all are assumed to be miserable victims who want out of sex work.

Book Reviews (October 2012)

When Rob Arthur (author of You Will Die) noticed that Chester Brown (author of Paying For It) had expressed interest in his book in the comment thread of this post, he asked me to forward his email address to Chester and the two of them each sent the other a book. I am both pleased and honored to have facilitated the meeting of two awesome authors whose works I greatly enjoyed.

Hard Numbers (TW3 #48)

…Steph Key will introduce new laws to [the South Australian] Parliament…to decriminalise all forms of sex work, after a previous attempt was rejected by one vote in November. The new Bill, based on a New Zealand model, would…allow local government…regulatory control…but…prevent councils from outlawing brothels simply because they offer sex work…Ms Key and [Status of Women Minister Gail] Gago were confident the new attempt was more likely to pass…

That’s the Ticket! (TW3 #138)

Dr. Brooke Magnanti on Comic Relief’s subscription to prohibitionist lies:

…This figure comes from a paper that surveyed only street-based sex workers, who represent less than 20% of prostitution…we should be…wary of…any group that throws around this number as if it represents sex work in general…Similarly, we are regularly told that the “average” age of entry into sex work is 13. This is actually incredibly mathematically unlikely, unless there is an epidemic of infants being sexually exploited we don’t yet know about. Former librarian and escort Maggie McNeill has broken down why this oft-repeated assumption is incorrect…The Comic Relief site continues: “The UK is a major destination country for trafficked young people. They are at a very high risk of being sexually exploited.” No source is given for this statement – probably because no such data exists. Confirmed trafficking cases in the UK are more likely to enter other jobs like agriculture, hospitality, and domestic service than they are to become sex workers…

No Friend of Ours

In the process of criticizing Nevada’s proposed “Everyone is a Sex Trafficker” Act, Jennifer Reed also debunks the “sex trafficking” panic:

…Prostitution in the U.S. was largely legal until changing women’s sexual norms led to a “white slavery” panic that resulted in the closing of brothels with the White-Slave Traffic Act, better known as the Mann Act in 1910…The reality was numerous young women were drawn into prostitution for “mundane” economic reasons [but] the ambiguous language of the Mann Act…was used to criminalize forms of consensual sexual behavior for many years…The [American] conception…developed because a crusade against prostitution…[conflated it] with human trafficking, a claim for which there is no evidence, even according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. An executive summary of human trafficking put forth by the non-profit Center for Health and Gender Equity concludes that “conflating human trafficking with prostitution results in ineffective anti-trafficking efforts and human rights violations because domestic policing efforts focus on shutting down brothels and arresting sex workers, rather than targeting the more elusive traffickers”…investigations…[focus] almost entirely on commercial sex. It is a structure built on vice squads rather than labor investigators…

Comfort Zone

I wrote: “…many European countries seem more interested in ‘trafficking’ as an excuse to restrict immigration than as a genuine concern for the human rights of migrants.” Jim Cusack of The Independent wrote: “The Department of Justice and the courts are turning down ‘nearly all’ asylum requests from African women who say they fled [to Ireland] to escape sex traffickers in other European countries…”

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