Mexico | The Honest Courtesan

Posts Tagged ‘Mexico’

That Was the Week That Was (#136)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged A Moral Cancer, A Working System, Above the Law, activism, agency denial, apes & monkeys, Australia, avails laws, bogus studies, brothels, censorship, Central Asia, comics, cops, crypto-moralism, cult of the child, dehumanization, dirty, disability, disease, Don’t Buy It, Georgia, Get Out of the 19th Century Often?, Having and Eating Cake, hysteria, Illinois, India, Japan, Japanese Prostitution, Kansas, Latin America, law, lawheads, Legalization a Good Idea?, Mexico, Middle East, Monkey Business, My Readers Write, Neither Addiction nor Epidemic, neofeminism, New Orleans, New York, No Other Option, Pakistan, pimps, porn, prohibitionist myths, psychology, See No Evil, So Close and Yet So Far, sporting events, stereotypes, streetwalkers, stripping, Traffic Jam, Under Duress, United Kingdom, video, Yellow Fever, yellow journalism, yin and yang on February 10, 2013| 48 Comments »

Whorephobia…can manifest in various forms, including…rejection of a fellow…human being…projection of one’s own life experiences onto another…and in severe cases, frothing at the mouth…and feverishly campaigning for extreme punishment and prohibition of Whores and Whore-adjacent peoples, places, and objects. – Aspasia Bonasera

No Other Option

Another good article about sex work with disabled clients, this one a first-person account from reader Laura Lee. Due to the movie The Sessions this has become a very “hot” topic, which is good because it deals a strong blow to the “victimized prostitute” narrative. For more on the subject, here’s Becky Adams:

Japanese Prostitution

Customers…now have another option…at [Tokyo]…cuddle club Soineya…For $11 per minute, patrons…can ask for the oshiri makura (butt pillow) service and rest their heads on the behinds of its female staff…Customers must first pay an admission fee — starting at 3,000 yen (around $34) — and then have the option to purchase premium services, such as foot massages…[or] laying in a female employee’s lap…

Don’t Buy It

Interestingly, “sex trafficking” fetishists waited until Super Bowl Sunday to trot out their claims this year, probably to avoid the high-profile debunking which will soon be inevitable; the story was updated less than 38 hours after its initial appearance to include a reference to an article for which I was consulted last year and the opinion of Rachel Lloyd, a “sex trafficking” promoter who has criticized the rampant exaggerations and the “gypsy whores” myth. The main attraction is yet another soi-disant “survivor” spouting the typical tinned narrative (brutal pimp, 50 clients a day, etc), and there’s a bonus appearance by SOAP. The most interesting bit is this snapshot of “Chinese Whispers” in action: the story claims that “133 underage arrests for prostitution were made in Dallas during the 2011 Super Bowl,” when in actuality a very-typical 133 adult arrests of all types (not prostitution alone) were made in the 2½ weeks before the Super Bowl. The number of actual “pimps” arrested? One, an idiot who got the idea from the hype.

Get Out of the 19^th Century Often?

Atlanta’s police chief…George Turner has asked city council to approve a…banishment law…the first conviction would result in the accused prostitute being ordered not to return to the area they were arrested…upon second conviction, the accused prostitute would be banished from city limits forever…Larry Miller…said he supports anything that would put a dent in the prostitution plague…

Human beings are now a “plague” to be “banished” from an autocrat’s realm.

Chupacabra

Dr. Brooke Magnanti on the “pimp” myth:

…I have never met a person even remotely like the stereotypical pimp, and yet I “know” they exist, largely because I have been told so over and over again. I’ve met streetwalkers, both drug-addicted and not; escorts and call girls, same; not one ever had what popular imagination would classify as a “pimp,” but then I keep getting told I’m not representative, so maybe the literally hundreds of…sex workers I’ve met are just “not representative” too?…Independent sex workers who organise their own affairs…Roommates who share a flat…escort agencies with a dozen or so girls…Massage parlour owners. Women whose house is used by other sex workers…People who set up message boards and internet forums…All of these are…called “pimps” by the anti-sex lobby. A guy in a crushed velvet suit on a street corner, keeping his girls high and working the neighbourhood? Not so many of those…

A Working System

Look past the fashionable “sex slave” rhetoric to what’s actually going on here:

…Chee Mei Wong…[allegedly] ran the Diamonds brothel in …Sydney…between…2008 and 2010…[and] employed six women…who…were told they would have to work until they paid off the cost of their airfare, visa and course fees [around $5000]…Despite…having paid off their debt after a “short period of time” it is alleged Ms Wong threatened she would have their visas revoked if they left. But Ms Wong’s barrister Bruce Quinn said she…only worked at the brothel as…receptionist…[and] the matter was simply an “industrial dispute” and a “sham” created so the women could stay in Australia…

These sorts of conflicting claims are not unusual in contract disputes, and unfortunately many people are quick to accuse others of wrongdoing in order to divert government attention from themselves. The important thing is that nobody here was criminalized for her profession, and the same situation could have arisen in any industry employing migrants.

My Readers Write

Aspasia published a bang-on and hilarious parody of medicalized pop-psychology entitled “Join Me in the Fight Against Whorephobia” which you simply MUST read in its entirety to appreciate. I also recommend this thoughtful essay in which Obsidian proposes that the same shortage of eligible women which is at the root of so much violence in the Middle East may also influence the differences between homicide rates in American cities:

…the Big Apple saw a 50-year record low of just over 400 murders in a city of over 8 million; while for Chicago, the murder rate topped 500, with a population of roughly 2.5 million. Much has been said about the differences…in…their approaches toward fighting crime…Chicago has a proportionately larger police force than does NYC…[but] there are more Women to Men in NYC, than in Chicago…it’s been long known that whenever there are more males to females anywhere, trouble ensues. Indeed, we are beginning to see this manifest itself in earnest in places like China and India, where the male to female sex ratio is so off the chain that extreme exhibitions of behavior are being seen on the part of the males…

See No Evil

…U.S. District Judge Dean Whipple sentenced Christjan Bee of Monett, Missouri, to three years in prison for “possessing an obscene image of the sexual abuse of children…[namely] a collection of electronic comics, entitled ‘incest comics,’…[containing] multiple images of minors engaging in graphic sexual intercourse with adults and other minors”…In other words, he is going to prison for drawings; no actual children were involved at any point.

A Moral Cancer (Metaupdates)

You may have seen the latest “meat kills!” pseudo-study; of course, the media didn’t bother to report that the “researchers” and sponsors were all vegetarians who didn’t bother to control for little things like diabetes and age.

Above the Law

Well, this is different:

[Vincent Burroughs of] Oregon…has filed a lawsuit against an IRS agent…claiming he was coerced into [a sexual] relationship…Dora…Abrahamson contacted Burroughs about an audit…flirted with [him] over the telephone…offered him massages and sent him a photo of herself in her underwear…”She said that she could impose no penalty, or a 40 percent penalty, and that if he would give her what she wanted, she would give him what he needed”…

Traffic Jam

Mexican officials broke up a bizarre cult that allegedly ran a sex-slavery ring…The “Defensores de Cristo”…allegedly recruited women to have sex with a Spanish man who claimed he was the reincarnation of Christ…Followers were subjected to forced labor or sexual services, including prostitution…prosecutors were still trying to work out which of the detainees may be considered victims, and which were abusers…

Cult messiahs invariably have sex with female followers, and how is contributing sexual labor any different from contributing money or other labor as members of established religions do? But due to “trafficking” hysteria, it becomes “sex slavery” even though the “authorities” themselves admit that any assignment of “victim” and “abuser” status will be arbitrary.

Yellow Fever

The high standards of American journalism have reached Pakistan:

Meet Doctor Maria Zulfiqar Khan…In her recent programme, she conducted a self-styled raid on a massage center in Lahore…and harassed the women…police [accompanied] her, but she played being in charge…we see women helplessly trying to hide their faces…[and Khan]…going through handbag of a lady…picking up a condom…and shouting…”what is this? what is this?”…Khan also plays being an interrogator…and…at one point, not agreeing to the answers…says sarcastically, “yeah right, tell that to the cops when they take you”…At the end of the programme…she visits [the] house of one of the girls…and…tells her audience “this man made [his] daughter a prostitute, what an animal he is”…

Under Duress

For those who suspect I’m biased, here’s legal scholar Michelle Alexander:

…police have a special inclination toward confabulation…[and] an incentive to lie…[they] shouldn’t be trusted any more than any other witness, perhaps less so…Peter Keane, a former San Francisco Police commissioner…[decried] a police culture that treats lying as the norm…Gustin L. Reichbach of the [New York] Supreme Court…condemned a widespread culture of lying…in…drug enforcement units…the Bronx district attorney’s office was so alarmed by police lying that it decided to stop prosecuting people who were…arrested for trespassing at…housing projects…Numerous scandals involving police officers lying or planting drugs…have been linked to federally funded drug task forces eager to keep the cash rolling in…

For Those Who Think Legalization is a Good Idea (TW3 #34)

The Indian Supreme Court’s waffling on decriminalization has emboldened prohibitionist legislators, who tried to quietly criminalize prostitution by defining all sex work as “exploitation” and therefore illegal under existing law. The National Network of Sex Workers has appealed to the President of India to veto this sleazy back-door scheme, but if he does not you can bet a court challenge will not be long in coming since Indian sex workers, unlike most in the United States, are unified to fight for their rights.

Monkey Business

A minor war has broken out…in the village of Kiad [Saudi Arabia,] where large groups of hungry baboons from nearby valleys are attacking residences in search of food and drink…Adel Medini [said]…“The baboons are targeting empty houses and are well aware of what they are doing…They proceed according to studied plans. That’s why their attacks do not fail…a resident…[returns] to find his home in disarray. Some people…thought that thieves had…ransacked their houses…”

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic (TW3 #39)

Remember the scientists who proved one could find neural activity in a dead fish? Well, here’s a video of a thought forming in the brain of a larval zebrafish:

So Close and Yet So Far

I really wish people who support legal prostitution would talk to actual sex workers or even just do a little research before writing articles which perpetuate ugly myths such as “It’s no longer just a drug-addled woman forced onto lonely street corners” (it never was), and “sex workers are likely reticent to draw attention to their illicit life by divulging STDs and surely no one checks customers for STDs”. The latter is an especially damaging myth because you can guess his proposed “solution” to this nonexistent problem: compulsory disease checks for registered whores (but not amateurs, who are free to spread disease at will).

On the Simultaneous Having and Eating of Cake

The Kansas…Supreme Court ruled that exotic dancers are employees of the club where they work, not independent entertainment contractors…[at] Club Orleans [in] Topeka…dancers were required to pay non-negotiable “rent” for use of the stage and dressing rooms, as well as extra fees for the disc jockeys and bouncers…House rules governed what the dancers could do in their shows and the prices they had to charge for specific types of dances…The women were required to sign in with the bouncer at the beginning of a shift and weren’t allowed to leave…until the end of the shift…

The Devil’s Toys

In this book review, Harvey Silverglate made the same point I did yesterday:

In Unlearning Liberty, [Greg] Lukianoff…[presents many] examples of campus censorship …65% of liberal arts campuses have speech codes that violate…free speech norms…Lukianoff…persuasively argues that…contemporary campuses can be seen essentially as incubators for a future society governed by censorship of iconoclastic ideas and kangaroo courts that enforce those prohibitions…some…now sitting on the federal bench do not blanch when innocent citizens are convicted of violating statutes and regulations that no normal person could possibly understand [because] students…get accustomed to the administrative tyranny…and…don’t have much adjusting to do when they gain, and abuse, real power of their own…

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Q & A (January 2013)

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, Q & A, tagged agency denial, bad customers, consensual crime, cops, disease, ethics, genitalia, GFE, halfway whores, hysteria, Latin America, law, Mexico, orgasm, psychology, screening, yin and yang on January 16, 2013| 36 Comments »

Does the Eagle know what is in the pit
Or wilt thou go ask the Mole?
Can wisdom be put in a silver rod,
Or love in a golden bowl? – William Blake, The Book of Thel

As I explained in December, I’m going to start answering reader questions individually in short columns rather than saving them up for the ends of months. However, December was so incredibly hectic for me that I let several of them stack up, and will answer them together today. If you have a question of your own, please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.

My single adult daughter (age 26) has recently discussed becoming my mistress. Though this taboo in our society, she is 100% consensual, high class and very attractive; she has needs that I can fulfill and I have needs that she can fulfill. What do we look out for in order to make this work?

As you know, I firmly believe that what consenting adults do in private is nobody’s business but theirs. Since you’ve asked my advice, however, I feel it isn’t out of place for me to tell you that I don’t think this is the best of ideas for either of you. Even if the biological reasons for the taboo are removed by birth control, that won’t change the way other people (not to mention the “authorities”) feel; furthermore, how certain can you be that both of you can totally shed the social norms you’ve internalized? If you were equals in the eyes of the law and society that wouldn’t matter; many relationships involve complex and conflicting emotions, and getting hurt by such relationships is simply part of the experience of living. But despite what you may think, you are not equals under modern law; if the relationship were to be exposed you would be cast as the villain, all the more so if you’re supporting her in exchange for sex, and an ambitious prosecutor could turn that into prison time (especially while “sex trafficking” hysteria is still going full steam ahead).

What it all boils down to is this: you can’t be sure exactly what is going on in your daughter’s head, and if she has a strong internal conflict about it (which wouldn’t be surprising), it might bubble to the surface at some future time (such as during a heated argument), resulting in disaster for you if she tells someone else about it. Even if she regretted the confession five minutes later, neither of you could control the actions of the confidant…actions that might set a legal juggernaut in motion. My advice to you is that you help your daughter financially until she can find an independent income or sugar daddy of her own, and satisfy your own needs with escorts or sugar babies to whom you are not related. If you decide to go ahead with the incestuous relationship, though, please make a thorough study of the applicable laws in your country, state or province and city so that you’ll know exactly what the potential hazards might be, and tell absolutely no one else about the arrangement no matter how trustworthy you may think he is.

Is a relationship likely to fail if a man is attractive in many ways, but suffers from such severe Peyronie’s Syndrome that sex is painful for the woman?

I would imagine that severe Peyronie’s Syndrome would indeed make a sexual relationship extremely problematic, but there may be hope; recent studies suggests a better treatment is on the horizon. Even if the procedure described there isn’t yet perfected, perhaps the gentleman you speak of could consult an andrologist to see what therapies are already available?

Is squirting real?

Squirting (so-called “female ejaculation”) is real enough, but there’s still considerable controversy over exactly what it is and what causes it. It’s usually associated with the so-called “G-spot”, whose nature is likewise controversial.

I’m an older American man and for a number of reasons, I have not had sexual relations in over 10 years. I have become convinced that the best thing for me right now would be to hire hookers rather than finding a long-term partner, but I don’t have the income for an escort in the States and so it’s going to have to be budget prostitutes in Mexico. However, in my past experiences with prostitutes I have never been able to get over the “business” aspect; I seem to be unable to function if the lady is not sexually turned on. How can I get over feeling it’s all business with no sexual desire?

On the one hand, your budget precludes being very picky, but on the other hand you need a talented professional who can create the illusion of mutual desire. Seeing randomly-selected ladies in a foreign country is just not going to do the trick, especially if there’s a language barrier. My advice to you is to save up a little so as to afford a lady who lives in your city, has a reputation for being especially friendly and is willing to do short (half-hour) appointments. If you get along well with her, keep seeing her exclusively (even if you can’t do it often) and eventually she may be willing to give you a lower “regular client” rate. Don’t ask for it right away; most escorts have very sensitive bullshit detectors and asking for a regular rate before she actually perceives you as a regular is a good way to alienate her. But once you do have a regular relationship with an escort, a genuine affection will probably develop between you and that will probably go a long way toward helping you to get over the feeling that it’s all business.

Do most sex workers enjoy sex with clients? Can they have orgasms several times in a day? And isn’t there such a thing as too much sex?

Most of the time, we don’t enjoy the sex. Besides the lack of intimacy (which is part of the enjoyment for most women) there is also the fact that we’re concentrating on making the client happy, and can’t really tell him to stop doing annoying or unpleasant things without hurting his feelings. Most women are capable of multiple orgasms, either in rapid succession or spread out over a day, but while it’s certainly possible for an escort to orgasm with a client it isn’t the norm. And of course too much sex, like too much of any physical activity, can be very tiring.

What do you think about verification services like Date Check and P411?

I think they’re fantastic for both parties; the only time they fail is in the rare instance when some idiot fails to stick to the plan, gets caught in a sting and then ransoms his worthless hide by giving the busybodies his login info so they can pop several girls before the service gets wise (I understand this actually happened to P411 once). No system is perfect, especially when those trying to sabotage it are completely without moral scruples or basic human decency, but screening services can take a lot of the guesswork out.

What’s the solution to male sexual frustration beside prostitution or masturbation?

I assume from your question that you don’t have a regular partner and don’t foresee yourself getting one, that you can’t afford professionals, and that masturbation doesn’t relieve your frustration as well as you’d like. If any of those assumptions are incorrect please let me know, because I suspect you wouldn’t ask unless those solutions weren’t working for you. Most of the guys I’ve talked to about this say that the traditional “cures” (such as cold showers, a bland diet and meditation) are essentially useless, and though age and medical intervention are effective the former takes a very long time and the latter is both drastic and has side effects you would definitely not like (such as developing a feminine derrière). So I’m afraid I’m going to have to “outsource” this to my male readers; guys, how have y’all coped with dry spells if self-service just isn’t working?

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Money Changes Everything

Posted in Miscellaneous, Music, Perception, tagged anecdote, Hollywood, Latin America, Mexico, streetwalkers, video on November 30, 2012| 12 Comments »

We think we know what we’re doin’
We don’t pull the strings
It’s all in the past now
Money changes everything. – Tom Gray, “Money Changes Everything”

One year ago today I published “If I Can’t Sell It…”, another in my series of hooker song columns, so I decided to follow it up today before taking a break from the subject for a few months; there are still lots of them I haven’t featured yet, but most of the ones I’m digging up lately are really negative (like Iron Maiden’s four-part “Charlotte the Harlot” series), and since these columns are meant to be light I really don’t like doing any of the “whores’ lives are nothing but degradation and despair” type unless I absolutely have to. In fact, let’s start with one that’s essentially a parody of that genre:

I’m Tired (Mel Brooks)

Here I stand, the goddess of Desire
Set men on fire
I have this power
Morning, noon and night it’s drink and dancing
Some quick romancing
And then a shower
Stage door johnnies constantly surround me
They always hound me
With one request
Who can satisfy their lustful habits?
I’m not a rabbit!
I need some rest!

I’m tired
Sick and tired of love
I’ve had my fill of love
From below and above
Tired, tired of being admired
Tired of love uninspired
Let’s face it, I’m tired!

I’ve been with thousands of men,
Again and again
They promise the moon
They’re always coming and going
And going and coming
And always too soon
Right girls?

I’m tired,
Tired of playing the game
Ain’t it a crying shame?
I’m so tired
God dammit I’m exhausted!

Tired, tired of playing the game
Ain’t it a crying shame?
I’m so tired!

[Male chorus:]
She’s tired (She’s tired!)
Sick and tired of love (Give her a break!)
She’s had her fill of love (She’s not a snake!)
From bellow and above (Can’t you see she’s sick?)
Tired (She’s bushed!)
Tired of being admired (Let her alone!)
Tired of love uninspired (Get off the phone!)
She’s tired (Don’t you know she’s pooped?)

I’ve been with thousands of men,
Again and again,
They sing the same tune!
They start with Byron and Shelly
Then jump on your belly
And burst your balloon!
Aye!

Tired, tired of playing the game,
Ain’t it a friggin’ shame?
I’m so…
Let’s face it, everything below the waist is kaput!

While we’re out west, let’s hear one from Texas favorites ZZ Top, whose song “La Grange” I featured last year in “Inappropriate Women”. Obviously the boys have a soft spot for working girls because this one is positive as well; while I was previewing the video Grace mentioned that Billy Gibbons’ first band, Moving Sidewalks, also had a couple, so I’ll try to dig one of those up for next time. Incidentally, the reason I chose this particular still image “video” rather than the one with their own album cover is that the movie From Dusk Till Dawn is about vampire whores.

Mexican Blackbird (Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill & Frank Beard)

If you’re down in Acuña and you ain’t up to being alone
Don’t spend all your money on just any honey that’s grown.
Go find the Mexican blackbird and send all your troubles back home.

They all call her “puta” ’cause no one really knows her name.
She works the cantina, dancin’ and a-lovin’s her trade.
Her mama was Mexican and her daddy was the ace of spades.

(spoken) Oh, let’s drive that old Chrysler down to Mexico, boy.
Said, keep your hands on the wheel there.
Oh, it sure is fine, ain’t it?
Now, ya got it! Hand me another one of them brews from back there.
Oh, this is gonna be so good.

Mm, she’s hot as a pepper but smooth as a Mexican brew.
So head for the border and put in an order or two.
The wings of the blackbird will spread like an eagle for you.

(spoken) Oh, one more time,
Can you roll me another Bull Durham, please?
Can’t you do it with one hand, boy?

I’ve maintained a list of possible song candidates ever since I did my very first one over two years ago, and though our next selection has been on it since the very beginning I’ve resisted featuring it because, to be honest, I cannot stand Hall and Oates, and the song has rubbed me the wrong way since the very first time I heard it. Still, I can’t deny it fits the theme, and at least my research revealed it was written by Mr. Tubular Bells, Mike Oldfield (a fact of which I was previously unaware).

Family Man (Mike Oldfield & Tim Cross)

She had a sulky smile, she took her standard pose as she presented herself.
She had sultry eyes, she made it perfectly plain that she was his for a price.

(refrain) But he said, “Leave me alone, I’m a family man,
And my bark is much worse than my bite.”
He said, “Leave me alone, I’m a family man,
But if you push me too far I just might.”

She wore hurt surprise as she rechecked her make-up to protect herself,
Dropped her price and pride, she made it totally clear that she was his for a night.

(refrain)

She gave him her look, it would have worked on any other man around.
He looked her up and down, she knew he couldn’t decide if he should hold his ground.

(refrain)

She turned, tossed her head, unlike her opening move, her final exit line.
He waited much too long, but by the time he got his courage up she was gone.

Then he screamed “Leave me alone, I’m a family man,
And my bark is much worse than my bite!”
He said, “Leave me alone, I’m a family man,
But if you push me too far, I just might.”

Now, in order to exorcise that earworm, I’d like to close with another one that’s been on the list for a while; actually it’s one of my all-time favorite songs from one of my all-time favorite bands, and the only reason I haven’t previously featured it is that it’s technically about that fabulous creature, the wealthy heterosexual male prostitute. But dammit, this is my blog and the lyrics (except for those in the bridge) are vague enough that they could just as easily be about an expensive call girl, and I know I’m not the only call girl who thinks so. This is Blondie’s second appearance in a song column as well; I featured “X Offender” in “Sweet Painted Ladies”.

Call Me (Deborah Harry)

Call on me, oh call up, baby.
Call on me, oh call.
Call on me, oh call up, darling.
I know who you are.
Come up off your calling chart.
I know where you’re coming from.

Call me (call me) on the line.
Call me, call me any anytime.
Call me (call me), I’ll arrive.
You can call me any day or night.
Call me!

Cover me with kisses, baby,
Cover me with love.
Roll me in designer sheets,
I’ll never get enough.
Emotions come, I don’t know why,
Cover of love’s alibi.

Call me (call me) on the line.
Call me, call me any anytime.
Call me (call me), I’ll arrive.
When you’re ready we can share the wine.
Call me.

Ooh, he speaks the languages of love.
Ooh, amore, chiamami, chiamami.
Ooh, appelle-moi, mon cheri, appelle-moi.
Anytime, anyplace, anywhere, anyway!
Anytime, anyplace, anywhere, any day!

Call me (call me) my love.
Call me, call me any anytime.
Call me (call me) for a ride.
Call me, call me for some overtime.
Call me (call me) my love.
Call me, call me in a sweet design.
Call me, call me for your lover’s lover’s alibi.
Call me (call me) I don’t mind.
Call me, call me any anytime…
Call me.
Oh, call me, ooh ooh ah.
Call me my love.
Call me, call me any anytime

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The Day of the Dead

Posted in History, Holidays, Miscellaneous, Philosophy, tagged censorship, cult of the child, Day of the Dead, harm reduction, holidays, hysteria, Mexico, psychology, Thanatopsis on November 1, 2012| 50 Comments »

Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living. – Arthur C. Clarke, 2001

As I wrote yesterday, last night would have been a fine one for trick-or-treating, were most children still allowed to roam unsupervised as we did; unfortunately, our decaying society is far too obsessed with “safety” to let the kids be kids. It’s a peculiar paradox: the Child Cultists enshrine an idealized, romanticized view of childhood “innocence” to the point of trying to force it upon young adults who have long since grown out of it, yet are so frightened of the imaginary haunts their timid souls see in every shadow that they cheat actual children of the joys of childhood.

That self-defeating retreat from the world is especially poignant today, the one our ancestors set aside to remind themselves of the omnipresence and inescapability of death. As I pointed out in last year’s Halloween column, every last one of us will join the departed majority in the briefest of moments (cosmically speaking); fear of death is therefore futile because death is the one inescapable experience of material existence. You will die, and so will I, and there is absolutely nothing any of us can do about it…yet vast numbers are so obsessed with this simple and indisputable fact that they waste much of their time on Earth in a struggle they absolutely cannot win. In a pathetic attempt to stretch their allotted quantity of days just a little further, many are willing to dramatically reduce the quality of the whole. And while it’s certainly their right to use their own lives this way, it is not their right to inflict upon their children a lifetime of paralyzing dread of every activity which might conceivably end in the grave just a little bit sooner than hiding indoors would, no matter how remote the possibility of its occurrence. Such an existence is not living, but vegetation.

“In the midst of life we are in death,” reads the familiar text from the Book of Common Prayer; people used to understand that, and though individual responses to it ranged from the hedonistic to the morbidly religious, practically nobody was in denial about it until a couple of decades ago. What happened? How did we go from understanding this to ignoring it like small children with our hands over our ears shouting, “I CAN’T HEAR YOU BLAHBLAHBLAH”? I think there are several causes, the most prominent of which is Western culture’s increasing urbanization; when one lives on a farm one sees death almost every day, but it’s possible for an urban office worker to go months without seeing any identifiable carcass larger than that of a cockroach. Even most of the meat eaten by modern urbanites doesn’t really look like part of a dead animal; the one exception, chicken, is increasingly encountered in the form of nuggets, chunks or “boneless, skinless breast portions”. Another cause is the fact that our society is a lot less violent than it used to be; people live longer and far fewer are killed by direct action of man or beast than in centuries past. And while that’s a good thing it has a bad side effect: the less familiar a phenomenon, the more likely people are to view it with irrational fear.

Neither of these social changes is likely to be reversed anytime soon (and I hope the second is never reversed), but there is a third cause, no less important than the other two, which we could easily undo if we really wanted to. And that is the disappearance of cultural rituals designed to remind us of exactly what I’ve discussed here. Every culture has rites, celebrations and observances to honor the dead; in Mexico, for example, today is El Dia de los Muertos, from which this column takes its name. But while the Mexicans and many other peoples have continued these traditions to the present day, most people of European descent (including Americans and Australians) have tamed and neutered All Hallows Day until it’s nothing more than another excuse for overindulgence. And though we once understood that an annual dose of controlled fear and mild chaos helped children to cope with the existence of Mortem Imperator Mundi in much the same way vaccines protect them from disease, we have forgotten the former (and many of us the latter as well). In past times, The Day of the Dead was just a formal observance of what most people already recognized, a ceremonial declaration of the omnipresence of death. But now that the more mundane and routine encounters with the Grim Reaper are so much less common for the average Westerner than they were for his grandfather, we need the ritual – in all of its morbid glory – more than ever.

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That Was the Week That Was (#41)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Q & A, Tyranny, tagged Africa, agency denial, anal sex, Australia, Backpage, Backwards into the Future, bogus studies, brothels, California, censorship, Change of Heart, child "protective" services, condoms, cops, disease, Down Under, ethics, Europe, evidence, harm reduction, Housewife Harlotry, hysteria, Lack of Evidence, language, Latin America, law, License To Rape, Maine, Malawi, marriage, Mexico, Netherlands, pimps, porn, rape, Saint Death, Saving Them from Themselves, See No Evil, sexting, So Close and Yet So Far, stage names, stereotypes, streetwalkers, Texas, The More the Better, The Rape Question, Tyranny by Consensus, Umpteen Thousand People, Uncommon Sense, United Kingdom, video, Without Let or Hindrance, yin and yang on October 13, 2012| 14 Comments »

Prostitution has a social value, and it’s necessary in a city.– Daniël Termont

Without Let or Hindrance

Those who have dealt with “Child Protective Services” know that they are granted powers of which the Inquisition would have been envious. They routinely abduct people’s children on the flimsiest of pretexts, often on hearsay and without even a warrant, and once this happens parents may never regain custody; if they do it is after years of jumping through ridiculous and ever-changing hoops, playing endless games of “Mother May I?” with power-mad bureaucrats, submission to outlandish violations of their rights and privacy, hundreds of hours in court and total financial ruin…and that’s not even counting the emotional damage to the children. On Wednesday, an activist named Kathi Duran began a hunger strike on the steps of the California state capitol to call attention to these abuses; as expected, she was arrested almost immediately. She asked me to call attention to her protest and share this press release, and I’m happy to do so and will provide updates as I get them.

Updates

License To Rape

This result doesn’t happen nearly often enough:

An ex-Houston police officer [named Abraham Joseph]…was sentenced to life in prison…for raping a waitress…Joseph could have received as little as five years…but jurors chose the maximum sentence instead.

News articles always refer to criminal cops as “ex-cops”, implying they had already been fired when they committed the crimes.

Lack of Evidence

The San Francisco Police Department announced…that [it] will [temporarily] stop using condoms as evidence in prostitution cases…Under current city policy, police cannot confiscate condoms…But…police sometimes broke the policy…A July report from Human Rights Watch criticized San Francisco, along with New York, Washington, DC and Los Angeles, for [the practice]…

Spam received by a reader; if this isn’t a hoax, the cops, voyeurs or pimp wannabes who set it up labor under truly mythic levels of ignorance and disinformation.

December Q & A

Sex educator Debby Herbenick on the need for more research on anal sex: “…In an incredibly short period of time, anal sex has become a common part of Americans’ sex lives. As of the 1990s, only about one-quarter to one-third of young [Americans]…had tried anal sex at least once. Less than 20 years later, my research team’s 2009 National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior found that as many as 40-45 percent…in some age groups had…[yet] taboos persist and…the list of what we don’t know about anal sex is far longer than the list of what we do. This makes it difficult for sex educators to feel truly confident in answering people’s very real and important questions…”

Backwards into the Future

Add Malawi to the list of countries whose legal experts understand human rights better than those in the US; one of them said that “Despite the fact that Malawi has not outlawed sex work…police officers on night patrols pounce on sex workers and…charge…[them] with rogue and vagabond…This is a clear violation of rights of sex workers…” He also commented on the unsanctioned compulsory HIV testing I reported in TW3 (#24), stating that it “is not recommended by…UNAIDS” and “it is impractical and unworkable and more effective results can be reached by supporting sex workers’…access [to] testing, prevention, and support…”

Housewife Harlotry

No, marriage isn’t prostitution; not at all:

…Several [New York] attorneys have shared the craziest [prenuptial agreements] they’ve penned…[including] items like “no piano playing while the husband is home”, cash bonuses…if either is caught cheating and an agreement to terminate a pregnancy if one should occur…[some include]a weight clause…[another] said [the wife] would never wear green and if she did, her husband [could]…destroy the item…One husband demanded “wife not allowed to cut her hair”…

The article also mentions the wives’ demands, including husbands being home by a certain time and (surprise!) being paid for sex.

Saving Them From Themselves

Amanda Hess adds to our list of good articles about “sexting” hysteria:

When Polaroid inventor Edwin Land introduced the first commercial instant camera…in 1948, he ushered in what Christopher Bonanos …in The Atlantic calls a “magnificent new era” in photography…for “instant, shareable nudie pics”…The new…format for…nude photographs—sexting—[is]…basically the same: instant explicit photographs, taken under the radar, shared between lovers and friends. In a recent report on a new study of teen sexting…dating “expert” Dr. Wendy Walsh favored terms like “embarrassment,” “shame,” “risky,” and “pressure” to describe the photographic form. And negative terms like those permeate the…discussion around teen photo sharing, though for years research has shown that the media-wide concern-trolling is overblown…

Tyranny By Consensus

On November 6^thLos Angeles county will decide whether to impose AHF’s “condoms in porn” measure; this video explains the real motive behind the whole thing:

Uncommon Sense

…In Ghent’s red-light district, as in many other cities, prostitutes sit in windows to attract potential clients. According to the new law in Ghent, women must wear something in addition to lingerie and may not dance or make suggestive gestures…[Mayor Daniël] Termont…stressed that the measures were intended to reduce the nuisance caused by customers…rather than to victimise the workers.

Saint Death

This US Army report on the Santa Muerte belief refers to it as a “death cult” (technically true, but the phrase has false and pejorative connotations), declares that it isn’t a “true” religion and states that “Although not all members of the cult are criminals, all live an existence that is dominated by crime.” I’m sure that bartenders, taxi drivers and prostitutes (who are not criminalized in Mexico) might disagree that their lives are “dominated by crime”, though cops (another large segment of her devotees) probably wouldn’t.

Umpteen Thousand People Can’t Be Wrong

It’s good to see some journalists finally starting to listen to us:

…Backpage’s critics say they are facilitating sex slavery…[but] all the figures quoted in the media come from a single source, a consultancy called AIM Group…[whose] methodology is shaky at best…they ignore major adult ad networks and mainstream ad networks that accept adult ads…and traffic, revenue and share-of-market numbers, even accurate ones, are no indication of how many…ads…actually convert into…transaction[s]…nor what subset of those…are with a minor or…coerced [person]…Backpage publishes about 3.2 million…ads a month…about 11 percent…are listed in…Adult Services…Backpage removes over a million ads a month…[mostly] for spam and fraud…Only 1.6 percent of the [removed] ads…are from the Adult Category…Only 2 percent of that 1.6 percent, or about 400…a month, are suspected of advertising a minor. Backpage reports those…immediately (and under no legal obligation) to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). In other words, about 1/25 of 1 percent (.04 percent) of the ads Backpage removes…are suspected of advertising a minor for sexual services, a number that represents 1/100 of one percent (.01 percent) of its…ad volume…

Instead of the usual prohibitionists, the article interviewed folks like researcher Ron Weitzer and Kate D’Adamo of SWOP.

The More the Better

…Lucinda Latimer…whose real name is Jan…was…broke, isolated and almost suicidal… she had sold her car and had no idea where her next penny was coming from when she saw a documentary on former career women who turned to the sex industry to make a living. Previously, she had [earned] up to £1000 a night as a graphologist…but ill health and the break-up of her marriage forced her back to Perthshire…[she now does phone sex work and] what has struck her about the men is how normal and pleasant most are and how well educated…Trying to hide her work would have made it shameful and sordid…[so] Jan decided to speak out…she has written…The Diary of a Rookie Phone Sex Floozie, and is about to launch volume two…

The Rape Question

Jezebel’s “sex advice” columnist gives a reader advice on how to shove her finger up a guy’s arse without his consent because she wants “to massage someone’s prostate goddamnit!”. Take note of the tepid protests to the columnist’s suggestions on how to trick and bully him into it, then imagine the firestorm if a male writer gave a man advice on how to pressure a woman into something because he wants “to fuck some chick in the arse goddamnit!”

Change of Heart

I’m never happy to see a sister pilloried, but I suspect the police decision to expose her customers is going to backfire so badly that this may have some positive results in the long run:

[Alexis Wright has]…been charged with running a prostitution business out of her Zumba dance studio [in Kennebunk, Maine] and secretly videotaping her encounters…Police have begun issuing summons to Wright’s customers and will release the names in the weeks ahead. Townspeople say they’ve heard that lawyers, doctors, law enforcement officials, a television personality and other well-known people in town are included in a detailed clientele list police found. A lot of people would rather not see the names made public because it will hurt families, children and careers…

So Close and Yet So Far

Another would-be ally undermines her own case by accepting the false claims of prohibitionists:

…In the Netherlands, prostitution is legal. Nonetheless, over 60% of the women involved in prostitution are involved in the sex trade illegally. The Mayor [of Amsterdam] and others refer to these as ‘trafficked’ – either because they are exploited and involved in the sex trade against their will…or because they are illegal workers brought to the country to work voluntarily in conditions different from those they expect…the argument for legalization included belief that it would…decrease trafficking, it has had the opposite effect…prostitution has gone from a predominantly home-grown industry to one very heavily dependent on illegal foreign workers…a [recent law criminalizes hiring]…a prostitute who is not registered with the government…But…this…means that…[the] information must be public so that…[clients] can verify that the sex worker is…licensed…[this] invades the privacy of both…prostitutes and…customers…

Prohibitionists intentionally confuse legalization and decriminalization, ignore the bottleneck effect of registration, pretend that correlation equals causation and conflate “unregistered” with “trafficked”, and the author, Dr. Nancy Darling, fails to question any of it.

Metaupdates

See No Evil in TW3 (#24)

Ilfracombe, the English town which claims to be unique in the world by being absolutely whore-free, proves it can be as prudish about lumps of bronze as anyplace in the Bible Belt: “Damien Hirst refers to ‘Verity’ as a ‘modern-day allegory for truth and justice’…[but hundreds of local residents and law officials]…call the 66-foot bronze statue of a half-exposed pregnant woman ‘soft porn masqueraded as art’…”

Down Under in TW3 (#40)

Australian sex worker activist Christian Vega has more to say on that “end demand” story from St. Kilda:

…As I read through [the article] the stench of bovine excrement almost made my eyes water…street sex work doesn’t relocate itself to another suburb on the other side of town…there is not an itinerant population of these workers who move en masse from one place to the next like migrating wildebeest across the African savannah…It’s more comfortable for people to think that sex work doesn’t happen in their community…and…that street sex workers must board a shuttle from planet Whore to our neighbourhoods under the cover of darkness before disappearing as the sun rises…

I think I like that imagery at least as much as my own.

This Week in 2010 and 2011

A federal judge enjoyed pleasures he persecuted others for and escaped with a slap on the wrist because officials always have different rules for their own class than for others; they’re also hilariously clueless about sex work and are only beginning to realize what a scam the “anti-trafficking” industry is. I discussed America’s weird love-hate relationship with prostitutes, what a 1947 sci-fi story can teach us about the nanny state, how sex workers arrive at our prices and how prostitution is a much older profession than most people think, and I related the story of a famous whore-obsessed preacher, told some hooker jokes, shared my answers to some amazingly stupid prohibitionist statements and presented two spooky stories for the Halloween season.

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South of the Border

Posted in Current Events, Perception, Tyranny, tagged Backpage, censorship, drivers, ethics, hysteria, illegal aliens, Latin America, law, Mexico, pimps, racism, South of the Border, stereotypes on July 16, 2012| 20 Comments »

Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one. – A.J. Liebling

Considering that “sex trafficking” hysteria grew from the same fertile racist manure as “illegal alien” hysteria, one would have thought that Mexico, long the chief target of American xenophobia about migrants, would’ve been named as the chief North American source, destination or corridor of “sex trafficking” from the very beginning. So why wasn’t it? Maybe it was because the anti-immigration panic-mongers had already cast Mexican women as welfare cheats and producers of the dreaded “anchor babies”, so the “trafficking” alarmists were concerned that there weren’t enough of them to go around. But whatever the reason, it seems to have gone by the wayside now; prohibitionists and their flying monkeys in the yellow press are touting stories about whole Mexican towns populated entirely by “pimps and hos”, and apparently making up for lost time by multiplying claims about their numbers of clients far beyond the bounds of logic and sanity.

We might theorize that if immigration reform becomes a reality American racists will have to recast Mexican women as “trafficked slaves” and Mexican men as “traffickers and pimps” in order to keep using them as convenient bogeymen. But that wouldn’t explain why the Mexican media have jumped on the bandwagon as well; up until a year ago Mexican prohibitionists had little success in pushing an aggressive anti-whore agenda in their country, where most news coverage of sex workers recognizes that sex work is work and that women engage in it to get an education, provide for their children, etc. So why has Mexico now passed an “anti-trafficking” law which “…establishes penalties for those who buy space in newspapers or on websites to serve ads that encourage trafficking, even if they disguise themselves as a legal activity“? It sounds suspiciously like the US campaigns against Backpage, and is comparable in the damage it will cause if not overturned; in a recent editorial in El Norte, Sergio Sarmiento pointed out:

…Mexican law has always prohibited trafficking in persons…[and] prostitution is legal. The new law does not prohibit it. It has long proscribed pimping…[and] the new legislation…does not add anything on this subject…What is new…is the punishment, with penalties of 5 to 15 years in prison and a fine of a thousand to 20 thousand minimum daily salary wages of those “who lead, manage or edit…print, electronic or virtually…publish[ed] content…which facilitates, promotes or procures any criminal conduct…” This provision violates the freedoms of expression and publication…[by seeking] to punish publishers and media executives that publish advertisements for prostitution, although prostitution remains legal in our country…[furthermore] Article 33 speaks of publishing “content”, not just advertisements, “through which…to facilitate, promote or provide any of the criminal conduct” [covered by the law]…With this law the Mexican government would not only [have] imprisoned Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita, but also his publisher and the marketing director of that publisher. A similar problem arises from Article 34, that punishes with 2 to 7 years imprisonment those who, “knowingly” give a loan, lease or rent a property, house or room in the commission of offenses established under this law. It punishes not only those who participate in trafficking, but who rents and leases real estate…

As I pointed out in the discussion about New York’s new “taxi sex trafficking” law, “knowingly” is a mighty thin defense once the police and prosecutors decide to railroad someone under such a law. In the US we’ve been building toward this sort of tyranny for years, but in Mexico it happened rather suddenly; when I asked the Mexican journalist who provided me with this editorial and its translation why that was so, he explained (paraphrased to help retain his anonymity):

In Mexico most big newspapers carry adult ads of all kinds (including independent sex workers) both in the paper and on the website. Well, about a year ago Reforma (a paper in Mexico City) uncovered an illegal deal between Televisa Network and Nextel Telephony and Radio which was accomplished while the government looked the other way. Lots of people got in trouble and many millions of dollars were lost. In revenge, Televisa started a big “investigation” which alleged that the sex ads in Reforma were being sponsored by “Sex Traffickers”, including the owners of the newspaper. Despite huge amounts of TV coverage they could never prove that any ads were sponsored by sex traffickers, but the politicians Televisa owns were instructed to revive the moribund sex trafficking law and push it through with additions stipulating severe punishments for the owners of media carrying sex ads. You should have heard how the Televisa news anchormen emphasized that part…

Armed with this information, I think we can see why Mexican “sex traffickers” have also become big news in Los Estados Unidos during the same time period. And beyond that, one has to wonder if there isn’t some similar rivalry involved in the anti-Backpage crusade supported by rival media outlets such as CNN and The New York Times.

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Mythbusters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Net illegal migration has stopped almost completely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Saint Death

Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged Africa, Catholicism, censorship, cops, drivers, drugs, holidays, Latin America, Mexico, paganism, Saint Death on November 1, 2011| 18 Comments »

It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come. – William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar (II, ii)

As I mentioned in yesterday’s column, in Mexico today is El Dia de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead), a festival honoring the departed. And though it takes place on the Catholic observance of All Saints Day (continuing into tomorrow, All Souls Day), it is a far more important and popular holiday in Mexico than in other Catholic countries because it is in reality a descendant of the Aztec festival of the goddess Mictecacihuatl. As we’ve discussed a number of times before, nearly every Christian holiday is an older pagan observance reconsecrated to the newer religion, and many pagan gods are still revered as holiday figures (such as Santa Claus or Befana) or Christian saints (such as St. Brigit). But in the Americas, Christianity never completely replaced the native religions as totally as it had in Europe, and many peasant religious practices in Latin America are fusions of Catholic teachings and pagan beliefs in much the same way as Voodoo and Santeria are combinations of Catholicism with African and Caribbean beliefs. For example, Our Lady of Guadalupe is a syncretism of the Blessed Mother with the Aztec mother-goddess Tonantzin (“Guadalupe” is a Hispanicized pronunciation of one of her titles, Coatlaxopeuh); it is even possible that her cult was an artificial one designed by Catholic clergy as an aid in converting the natives. But while the Church was happy to allow the festivities of Mictecacihuatl to be transferred to All Saints Day, it had no use for the death-goddess herself; her worship therefore went underground and did not reappear in public for centuries. Her modern name is Santa Muerte (“Saint Death”) and today is her feast day.

Since Christian theology has no place for apotheosized Death, the Church could not convert Mictecacihuatl into an official saint or folk figure; like so many pagan goddesses she was therefore condemned as a devil and her worshippers persecuted as witches or Satanists. But the Aztecs had a strong reverence for death that could not be ground out of them by the conquerors’ religion; most Mexicans were satisfied with the elaborate Day of the Dead festivities, but others continued to venerate La Señora de las Sombras (The Lady of the Shadows) in secret. Researchers have discovered relics from hidden temples and references to suppressed rites dating back to the early 18^th century, and the cult began to emerge into public view during the political unrest of the late 19^th century. The cartoonist José Guadalupe Posada created a secularized representation of her called La Calavera Catrina (The Elegant Skull) which has become popular in association with the Day of the Dead, but worship of the goddess was still harshly suppressed by the Church until the 1940s, when it began to appear in poor neighborhoods of Mexico City. By 1965 many of her devotees started openly declaring themselves, and by the 1990s they numbered about two million. The first public shrine to Santa Muerte was established in Tepito in 2003, and since then others have sprung up all over Northern Mexico and in Mexican communities in the United States; a full-sized church to her is supposed to be built in Mexico City.

Santa Muerte appears as a skeleton in a robe or dress, usually white but sometimes other colors depending upon what the devotee wishes to invoke her for. She usually carries a scythe and a globe, or sometimes an hourglass. Her rites are borrowed from Catholicism and include praying the rosary; sometimes her images are placed alongside those of Jesus, Our Lady of Guadalupe, or even Jesús Malverde, a Robin Hood-like folk hero revered by many Mexicans as a saint. Candles maybe burned as prayers to her, and believers also offer her small gifts of fruit, flowers, cigarettes, coins, etc. Santa Muerte is particularly revered among the very poor and those whose lives are more dangerous than those of others, especially those who work at night or feel unwelcome in traditional churches because they live outside the law. She is extremely popular among prostitutes, taxi drivers, bartenders, policemen and soldiers, but also among petty thieves, drug traffickers, smugglers and prisoners. Though criminals are the minority of her worshippers, the Mexican government has sometimes used the association (and the Church’s condemnation) as an excuse to persecute the sect and to consider the presence of a Santa Muerte shrine or altar as “evidence” of criminal behavior, just as the Pima County, Arizona Sheriff’s Office tried to claim that a picture of Jesús Malverde was “evidence” that José Guerena (who was murdered by the Pima Country SWAT team last May 5^th) was connected to a “narcotics ring” on the grounds that Malverde is revered by drug traffickers (and also immigrants and those who have been robbed, but obviously that’s not important).

I don’t ever recall reading that the Catholic Church was reviled during Prohibition because most Mafia members were Catholic (many Americans were anti-Catholic due to their protestant upbringing but that isn’t the same thing). But as traditional religion has decreased in importance to many people, governments have become increasingly emboldened to persecute people on religious grounds. This has nothing to do with the government itself or its members being less religious; states with official religions are perfectly happy to oppress members of minority religions as well. But for those regimes, the official religion serves the purpose of social control, just as the state-sanctioned religions called “political parties”, “feminism”, “socialism”, etc do today. It is only minority religions which oppose the status quo or encourage private, personal behavior of which the state disapproves that are targeted for suppression nowadays, and if a few members of the religion are violent outlaws, it provides a convenient excuse for persecution of the entire group. Those who revere Santa Muerte have not been singled out for vigorous suppression yet, but given her popularity among those who live outside of middle-class society in both Mexico and the U.S., it’s only a matter of time.

One Year Ago Today

“Amsterdam” is a short history of prostitution in the famously-tolerant city.

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Chupacabra

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, tagged agency denial, dirty, disease, domestic violence, drivers, ethics, fantasy, hysteria, Latin America, Mexico, neofeminism, pimps, psychology, Puerto Rico, statistics, stereotypes, streetwalkers, underage on May 26, 2011| 28 Comments »

Oh, I know they exist. Ok well I’m pretty sure they exist. I’ve never seen or met one that I know of. I’ve seen videos on YouTube and JohnTV. I’ve read newspaper accounts of them and heard the horror stories from women who have been controlled by pimps. So I’m pretty sure they are out there. Kinda like the Chupacabra. – Brandy Devereaux

For international readers who maybe unfamiliar with the American legend, the chupacabra (from the Spanish for “goat sucker”) is a cryptid (a legendary animal like the yeti or Loch Ness monster) said to live in Puerto Rico, Mexico and the American Southwest. The legend is of relatively recent vintage (March 1995) but spread quickly through Hispanic communities; reports describe the animal as being canine, rat-like and hairless, and its name derives from its habit of drinking the blood of livestock (especially goats). Though the critter has attained a considerable reputation, its reality is both smaller and far more pragmatic: every carcass brought in to scientists as that of a chupacabra has been identified as that of a coyote, mutant coyote or hybrid coyote with an advanced case of sarcoptic mange. Yet the legend persists, because it’s more exciting to believe in a fantastic monster than a rather mundane reality.

The exciting myth

This is, as Brandy so astutely observed, exactly the mechanism involved in the legend of the pimp. Like the mythical chupacabra, the storied pimp is a common and powerful bloodsucking monster who can be found nearly everywhere, leaves a trail of exsanguinated victims and evades every attempt to stop him. But in reality, he is either a fairly rare (morally) diseased individual or else a rather normal and mundane creature misidentified as a monster by those who love a good tall tale. I’ve written before about this syndrome; the short version is, “When an outsider looks at a whore’s life, he tends to interpret every non-customer male who has any kind of relationship with her as a ‘pimp’, because of course everybody knows that all whores have pimps.” I’ve estimated the prevalence of all prostitutes encumbered with the stereotypical abusive, controlling pimp (of which prohibitionists are so fond) at 1.5%. That’s roughly the same as the percentage of women who report that their husbands or boyfriends are “extremely violent” (1.2%) and not-dissimilar to the percentage who say he is “extremely controlling” (2.3%); in other words, pros have roughly the same rate of abuse by their pimps as amateurs have with the men in their lives, yet I don’t see politicians hurrying to outlaw marriage and heterosexual relationships because of it. And lest you think my figures are too low, I advise you to consider the recent study discussed in my column of April 29^th which found that only 8% of underage prostitutes in New York City had been forced into prostitution by a “pimp,” only 10% currently worked with one and only 16% had ever even met one. Considering that I think we can all agree that underage girls are probably more vulnerable to abuse and manipulation than adult women are, and that these figures represent ALL pimps of underage prostitutes rather than just abusive, controlling ones, it may be that my 1.5% figure (derived as it was from a base estimate of 10% of all streetwalkers controlled by pimps) was actually too high!

But those are statistics for advanced, Western countries; surely it’s higher in the so-called “third world”, right? Well, no. Brandy discussed this in her column of May 19^th:

…I’m not talking about a manager who helps hookers out with security (like a bodyguard) or with helping her find clients and ensuring that they aren’t cops. When I say pimp I’m talking about the typical stereotype – violent, knocks women over the head cuz honey didn’t make him any money, supplies drugs, forces them on the street – you know, like in the movies and those 70′s tv shows. The Farleys want you to believe that every hooker MUST have a pimp that they allow to find men to rape them. No woman in her right mind would choose sex work. No man that works with or for a hooker has any other motive except to beat the snot out of the woman and steal all her money. They push this ‘research’ they have done into most news stories and papers and arguments against prostitution. It’s ALL trafficking, we are all VICTIMS, and someone must be controlling us by force/coercion…Why then are women around the world, yes even third world countries where we all KNOW it’s all about minors and forced prostitution, standing up for their rights as prostitutes (sans any “pimp”)?

The mundane reality

She follows this up with numerous links backing up her point, which is the same as mine: actual pimps (as opposed to husbands, boyfriends, managers, escort service owners, bodyguards, drivers and male friends who are accused by “authorities” of being pimps) are actually pretty rare all over the world. There are indeed chupacabras, and they do pose a danger to livestock. But they’re not 70-kg monsters who occur in vast numbers and mercilessly decimate herds while evading all attempts at capture; a few are underfed, mangy coyotes which prey on the weak, and the rest are simply normal coyotes, wolves, dogs, foxes and other creatures which are mistaken for chupacabras by hysterical monster-hunters.

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King Day

Posted in History, Holidays, Miscellaneous, tagged anecdote, carnival, Catholicism, cops, Europe, holidays, Italy, Latin America, Mexico, New Orleans, Philippines, restaurants, Rome, Russia, Spain on January 6, 2011| 6 Comments »

Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him. – Matthew 2:1-2

In the Catholic calendar today is the feast of the Epiphany, popularly called “Little Christmas” or “King Day” in some places because it is the observance of the visit of the Magi, also called the “Three Kings”, astrologers of Persia or Babylon whom Matthew described as coming to visit the infant Jesus. Though Matthew only refers to them as “wise men”, the legend grew until they became kings in accordance with Isaiah 60:3, “And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.” The tradition eventually assigned them the names Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar; these appear to derive from an early 6^th century Greek manuscript composed in Alexandria. Because Matthew describes them as bringing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh many Christian countries shifted their Christmas gift-giving to this day. This was the prevailing custom in Christendom from the Dark Ages until the Reformation, when it returned to Christmas Eve in most countries (though Spain and former Spanish colonies such as Mexico and the Philippines still give gifts to children on the eve of this day). Indeed, in some countries the traditional gift-givers are the Three Kings themselves rather than one of the many versions of Saint Nicholas/Father Christmas, and children in those countries fill their shoes with straw on the eve of the Epiphany so as to provide fodder for the kings’ camels.

Italian children also receive their gifts on Epiphany Eve, but not from the Three Kings; the traditional gift giver is instead a witch named Befana, a Christianized version of the Roman goddess Strenia (who was associated with ancestral spirits, forests, and the passage of time and identified with the Greek Hecate). Some authorities claim that her name is derived from an Italian mispronunciation of the Greek epiphaneia (epiphany), but if that is the case it is likely in combination with the word Bastrina, the Latin word for the gifts given by Strenia. Like Santa Claus she flies, enters through the chimney and leaves presents for good children and coal for bad ones (even good ones receive a lump of black rock candy because all children are bad sometimes). It is also customary to leave her food and wine just as Santa is left cookies and milk (or sherry in England). But while Santa has a sleigh drawn by flying reindeer, Befana flies on her broom and often sweeps the floor of a house before she leaves.

In Russia, today is not Epiphany but rather Christmas Eve; the reason for this is complicated. The Gregorian calendar was developed in 1582 on the order of Gregory XIII, a Roman Catholic pope, so the only countries which adopted it immediately were Roman Catholic ones. Protestant countries took longer; Denmark and her possessions adopted it in 1700, and the British Empire in 1752. But Eastern Orthodox countries took longest of all; Russia remained on the Julian calendar until the revolution of 1917, and Greece until 1923. In 1582 the accumulated error of the old calendar was ten days; by the time the British Empire switched the error was eleven days, and by the time Russia adopted the new calendar it had grown to thirteen days. But though the new Communist regime had accepted the Gregorian calendar for pragmatic and scientific reasons, the Russian Orthodox Church would have none of it; Orthodox Church leaders saw no reason to use a calendar developed by Roman Catholics and endorsed by atheists, and so remained on the Julian calendar despite its 13-day error. Pre-revolutionary Russians celebrated Christmas on what their calendar said was December 25^th, but the rest of the world called it January 7^th and so it is today. And unless the Russian Orthodox Church adopts the Gregorian calendar within the next 89 years, Russian Christmas will after that time occur on January 8^th.

In New Orleans, King Day is the official beginning of Carnival, the season between Christmastide and Lent. The last day of the Carnival season is Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras in French), so called because it is the last day of normal eating and drinking before the fasting season of Lent begins on the next day, Ash Wednesday. The latter changes from year to year; it is always 40 days before Easter, but Easter is defined as the first Sunday after the first full moon of spring and can thus vary by as much as four weeks. Since Epiphany occurs on a fixed date, Carnival season is of variable length. It is a festive time in New Orleans, dominated by parades, Carnival balls, private parties and the eating of king cakes (see yesterday’s column for recipe). Carnival is the most lucrative time of year for New Orleans whores; locals in a celebratory mood spend more freely, and since no other part of the United States has such a tradition tourism sharply increases as well. Best of all, the police are far too busy with crowd control at parades to have any time to spend on harassing prostitutes. So though I did not realize it at the time, January 2^nd was a very advantageous point at which to start my career; I think I made more money in the next two months than I had in the previous six as a stripper.

I don’t live in New Orleans any more, and I must admit I miss it most at this time of year. Though I was never all that fond of parades, I enjoyed the high spirits and festive atmosphere of Carnival despite the hassles caused by parade traffic and blocked streets. Still, you can take the girl out of New Orleans, but you can’t take New Orleans out of the girl; I always make our first king cake of the year on this day, and while it’s rising and baking we put away the Christmas decorations and take the tree down, just as most New Orleanians do. And at some point in January, we always take a trip down to New Orleans to visit and exchange presents with Frank and Olivia and with Denise, to eat at a few of our favorite restaurants and see a few of our favorite places, and to stock up on some of the foods unique to the Crescent City.

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