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My Favorite Movies

Posted in Favorites, Miscellaneous, tagged archeofeminism, California, Hollywood, imaginative fiction, Japan, Middle East, New York, rape, United Kingdom, video, witchcraft on January 27, 2013| 49 Comments »

In our family we don’t divorce our men; we bury ’em! – Stella (Ruth Gordon)

In common with most people, I like movies. I don’t pretend to know much about movie criticism, I’m painfully ignorant about directorial techniques and I probably couldn’t recognize a “great” film even if I had a cheat-sheet. I do, however, know what I like, and can often even tell you why I like it. I’m not going to claim that any of these films are “great” in the artistic sense, and though I’ve seen several of today’s selections on “great film” lists I don’t like them for that reason. Despite today’s title, these are not actually my favorite movies; I already listed those in my very first “Favorite Things” column over a year ago. Other columns have discussed my favorite horror movies, musicals, short films, obscure movies, Christmas movies and monsters and horror stars; this one lists 16 more of my favorite movies that don’t fall into any of those categories (though I did mention #8 in the “obscure movies” column), listed in my usual reverse chronological order.

1) Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) What I like best about this movie and its sequel is that they’re unrepentantly dumb. In other words, they make no pretense to be anything other than good, clean fun. And while most time travel movies defy logic due to poor writing or failure to think things out, I get the feeling the writers of this one made a list of time travel rules and then broke every one on purpose. My love for these flicks has rendered me totally unable to take Keanu Reeves seriously no matter what role he plays.

2) Highlander (1986) Truly unique movies are rare in modern Hollywood, but this was one; the aesthetic failure of several moronic sequels and a TV series ripoff prove that. If you’ve never seen it, the trailer is a decent introduction, though I have one major quibble with it (and with the film itself): the hero’s modern love interest is completely unbelievable and pales into insignificance besides the beautiful depiction of his first marriage, which never fails to reduce me to tears.

3) Dune (1984) Yes, I’ve read the book, and I’m aware of how the film departs from it; I’m also aware that Herbert was satisfied with it. There are three cuts of this movie: the theatrical cut, which leaves out far too much exposition; the extended television cut, which includes the additional material but removes important scenes that were deemed too intense for broadcast, and a combined cut from a region 2 DVD (of which I own a bootleg) which has all the scenes from both theatrical and TV cuts. The best part about this film is that there were no concessions to modernism chauvinism; the culture is depicted in all its strangeness and political incorrectness.

4) Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (1982) As I’ve stated before, this and The Undiscovered Country are IMHO the only Star Trek movies truly worthy of the legacy; Khan is the only one which feels directly connected to the series, and in all of Hollywood history it may be the sequel which surpasses its progenitor by the greatest margin (though you’re welcome to make other nominations).

5) Time Bandits (1981) Terry Gilliam’s visions are always baroque and usually tinged with darkness (except when they’re absolutely immersed in it), and Time Bandits is no exception. Though the movie is absolutely hilarious, its portrayal of a chaotic universe ruled by a rather cold and disinterested God is rather like Monty Python meets H.P. Lovecraft, and can be disquieting if one thinks too hard about it.

6) Serial (1980) This little-remembered satire of Bay Area ‘70s nuttiness is probably best appreciated by those old enough to remember the time period, and though it doesn’t bear quite as much repeated watching as most of the other titles on the list I still enjoy it every time I see it. Bonus for horror fans: Christopher Lee in a very unorthodox comedic role.

7) Bedazzled (1967) This isn’t the only film on this list who memory has been sullied by a shoddy remake, but it may be the only one so completely eclipsed by that remake that almost nobody seems to remember the original. And that’s truly sad, because this one is very funny, very clever, very wicked and very, very British. Dudley Moore plays a hapless and rather silly short-order cook who sells his soul to the Devil (Peter Cook) for seven wishes and learns about the proverbial “long spoon” over and over again, but the bits between the wishes are actually the funniest.

8) Lord Love a Duck (1966) One of the blackest of all black comedies; it would not be out of place on a double bill with Dr. Strangelove, though this one prefers to take pot-shots at a large number of cultural absurdities (often in drive-by mode) while Strangelove is a sustained attack on one target. The trailer isn’t lying; Roddy McDowell’s character really does commit mass murder (during the opening credits!) and the rest of the movie explains what drove him to it.

9) Goldfinger (1964) In a sense, this movie is here as a representative of all the Sean Connery Bond films, but I also feel it would stand on its own merits without the others. Everything that is right with the series is exemplified in this one, and its problems less apparent here than in other installments; even some of the series’ conventions are lampooned here, but without devolving into self-parody as the later Roger Moore films did.

10) Bell, Book and Candle (1958) The lovely Kim Novak is a modern witch who casts a love spell on her neighbor in order to get back at his awful fiancée, an old schoolmate of hers…then finds herself falling in love with him for real. Though this film was one of the inspirations for Bewitched, the witches here are not semi-godlike but rather just people with an extra talent (stronger in some than others). The supporting cast is fantastic; of especial interest for readers of this blog is Ernie Kovacs’ character, a writer whose utter ignorance of the witchcraft on which he claims to be an “expert” calls to mind certain self-proclaimed “experts” on prostitution.

11) Twelve Angry Men (1957) One set. Twelve actors. No special effects. Virtually all talk and no action. But if you’re anything like me, it will rivet your attention from start to finish. One conscientious holdout juror (Henry Fonda) in a murder trial eventually helps the others to recognize the gaps in the prosecution’s case that they at first ignored or did not want to see. One of those movies that’s more timely now than when it was first filmed.

12) Rashômon (1950) The story of a rape and murder in feudal Japan, told from four points of view: that of the murderer, those of the two victims, and that of a witness the others did not know was there. This device has since become a trope, and the film’s name practically an idiom, but none have ever done it as well as the original.

13) Mighty Joe Young (1949) Though the movie was a conscious imitation of King Kong (and even shared a writer, star and special-effects director), I must admit that I really like it better than its more iconic predecessor. Joe is a character rather than simply a monster, and thanks to the wizardry of the young Ray Harryhausen his personality really shines through; the audience cares about him in a way we never really care for Kong, and later incarnations of the King have included more than a little Joe in him.

14) Rope (1948) An underappreciated Hitchcock adaptation of a 1929 play based on the Leopold and Loeb murder case. Like Twelve Angry Men, it’s a very “pure” drama: one set, a small number of characters, mostly talk with little action, and designed so as to resemble a stage play as closely as possible. Beside the masterful buildup of suspense, one of the things I like best about it is its use of very long takes (up to ten minutes each), cut so as to appear like one long, seamless filming.

15) Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) You’ve probably noticed that I like black comedies, and here’s another one: Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant) discovers that his elderly maiden aunts are bumping off lonely old men with poisoned wine and burying their bodies in the cellar. And then there are his two brothers…as Mortimer explains to his new bride, “insanity runs in my family…It practically gallops.”

16) The Thief of Bagdad (1940) Though I love Arabian Nights movies in general (such as The 7^th Voyage of Sinbad, which just barely missed the cut), I have an especial love for this one. It has been remade several times, but this one is by far the best; if you’ve never seen it, you’ll be amazed at the extent to which Disney plagiarized it for Aladdin.

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That Was the Week That Was (#132)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged Above the Law, Backpage, bad customers, Brazil, brothels, California, censorship, cops, courtesans, dirty, disability, disease, Droit du Seigneur, ethics, First They Came for the Hookers, Hard Numbers, Heroines, Hollywood, hysteria, India, internet, Iowa, language, Latin America, lawheads, Middle East, Much Ado About Nothing, nanny state, neofeminism, No Other Option, Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs, Presents, prisons, rape, rescue industry, restaurants, Secret Squirrel, South Carolina, stereotypes, stripping, surveillance, Tennessee, Texas, The Immunity Syndrome, The New Victorianism, The Prudish Giant, The Punitive Mindset, United Kingdom, Utah, video, Washington DC, Wise Investment, With Folded Hands on January 13, 2013| 32 Comments »

The Constitution tells us that…the state may not use a butcher knife on a problem that requires a scalpel to fix. – Judge John T. Nixon

No Other Option

A former madam…[will] open the UK’s first brothel…for disabled clients. Becky Adams…said: “People have the same sexual urges whether they’re disabled or not…A soldier who comes home from war disabled doesn’t stop being a normal, healthy person with normal, healthy needs…Our new brothel will be kitted out with ramps and hoists for wheelchair access, just like any other service for disabled people.” The two-roomed establishment, called Para Doxies from the old English word for prostitutes, will be sufficient for two sex workers…and staff to assist clients…the brothel will provide transport to collect clients and take them home afterwards…

Heroines

As I’ve mentioned before, Irene Adler was one of my favorite fictional heroines, yet a number of people seemed surprised when I was displeased with the BBC turning her from a courtesan into a dominatrix in its “updated” Sherlock Holmes series. This recent io9 article by Esther Inglis-Arkell explores the problems of modern Adler adaptations at some length:

Irene Adler only appeared in one of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, but she’s considered a pivotal figure in the Holmes canon, nonetheless. And we’ve seen several of the latest…interpretations debut their own versions of Irene Adler in recent years…Why is Arthur Conan Doyle’s Irene Adler so much better than the versions crafted by Steven Moffat and Guy Ritchie?…In both…Irene Adler is not simply an admirable person with a taste for sleuthery and adventure. In the movie series, she’s both a woman who marries rich men for a living and a thief…In the TV series, she’s a dominatrix who dabbles in blackmail and international terrorist intrigue (on the side of the terrorists). Both characters lean very heavily on sexuality and criminality…and…while the original Adler was independent, they’re both pawns of Moriarty…

Secret Squirrel

Intra-family spying gets ever more intrusive:

…KidTrack™…monitors text messages, incoming and outgoing phone log, each web site visited, location and media…“We see this as being no different than a parent examining the contents of a backpack…” said Ernie Rush of Rush Software…[customer] Rebecca Quesada [said] “As a mother, I feel much safer knowing that I have access to every single text message my daughter sends and receives…I can know where she is at all times, know who she is calling and who she is being called by and have access to every picture that she takes, as well as every single web site that she visits”…KidTrack silently captures this information and periodically uploads it to…servers where it can be viewed by the parent via a web browser…

“Silently” = “without the kid’s knowledge”. And that means it can just as easily be loaded onto a spouse’s or employee’s phone. My mother was incredibly overprotective by ‘70s standards, but you know what? She respected my privacy, and never once (to my knowledge) snooped in my purse, read my mail or censored my reading material.

Droit du Seigneur

Normally I’m against lynch mobs, but in the case of “authorities” I make an exception because it’s often the only way they will face any consequences for their actions: “…a politician in northeast India accused of rape was stripped and beaten by a crowd of women. Bikram Singh Brahma is a member of the Congress Party in Assam…He was arrested…[after attacking] the woman…while he was staying at her family’s house…”

The New Victorianism

Apparently, the average age of Xactware board members is 12:

The Lehi [Utah] City Council has renamed Morning Glory Road after a technology company planning to relocate to the street raised concerns about the name’s sexual connotation…”Morning glory” is the name of a flower…but…is sometimes used to describe male arousal. Councilman Johnny Revill…[said] he didn’t know about the term’s slang meaning previously but was happy to appease Xactware officials…

With Folded Hands

This reaction to a terrible freak accident is, apparently, not a parody:

A 22 year old stripper in Cleveland, OH [died]…after a freak lap dance accident. She apparently launched herself over a railing, falling head first to the floor 15 feet below…she should have been provided with adequate safety gear. Safety straps and fall netting should have been an absolute minimum protection…something clearly needs to be done. Better equipment and improved training are clearly called for…drug testing might also be in order…

The Punitive Mindset

Time tries to glorify the controlling behavior of a pathologically-entitled prude:

Administrators let offenders at one of Iowa’s most dangerous prison units watch violent and sexually explicit movies and TV shows…despite repeated complaints from a female officer who said it encouraged inmates to sexually harass her…administrators told [Kristine Sink] not to turn off the…shows. When she did, they accused her of insubordination…Sink said she has fought a lonely battle under four wardens against movies that caused inmates to become sexually aggressive — through “10 years of misery.” She filed a lawsuit…against prison officials alleging sexual harassment, discrimination and workplace retaliation, seeking an unspecified amount of damages…

I have a solution for you, Kristine. If you are too prissy to handle the sort of raw behavior any sane person would expect from male prisoners, why don’t you get a job someplace other than a FUCKING MEN’S PRISON?

Presents, Presents, Presents!

I received two more generous presents this week: the whole series of Bullshit! from Paul Reinerfelt, and the Sex Power soundtrack from Pat Murphy. Also, I’ve discovered that it was Gumdeo who sent the copy of Crisis and Leviathan last week. My sincere thanks to all of you!

Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs

Notice that “feminists” aren’t too concerned with “stereotyped gender roles” when it comes to “rescuing” sex workers:

…in an endeavor as far removed from their former lives as the gleaming banks and trendy boutiques of Tel Aviv are from the city’s sleazy subculture…former prostitutes…have received…training in dress design and sewing…[and] are now aiming to find a place in the world of fashion…

One later passage is absurd even by lawhead standards:

Up until a few years ago Israel was a prime destination for traffickers of women. An estimated 3,000 women per year were smuggled in, mostly from Eastern Europe, to work in the sex industry. That number has declined since Israel passed an antitrafficking law in 2006…and most of the prostitutes here are now said to be Israelis.

3000 per year for, say, 10 or 15 years…where did they all go? Obviously, they must have obediently vanished into Sheol when the magical law was passed.

The Prudish Giant (TW3 #9)

Paypal is at it again; they’ve blocked the account of regular reader Frank Adamo for distributing “sexually oriented material” involving a minor. Girl Becomes Woman is a photo-documentary of breast development, starting at age 9; Frank said, “[It’s] no more ‘sexually oriented’ than a documentary about pregnancy, childbirth or breastfeeding…I used Paypal to process donations to create the Breast Pride Education Foundation, and after a year…[and] approximately 100 donations Paypal suddenly decides to protect itself from possible scandal by blocking my account and holding my money for six months!” He filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, but they closed the complaint without action. Frank notes that the sudden condemnation of his work as porn conveniently came just after he tried to transfer $1000 from Paypal into his bank account.

Above the Law

Yet again: As long as government actors have excessive power over individuals, this will keep happening:

Two Los Angeles Police…officers…allegedly [preyed] on women…[for] five years, luring them into an unmarked car and forcing them to perform sex acts…Luis Valenzuela and James Nichols targeted at least four women whom they had arrested previously or who worked for them as informants…The pair repeatedly used the threat of jail to get women into their car and drove them to secluded areas where one…demanded sex while the other kept watch…

And keep happening: “…[South Carolina cop] Larry Heyward [has been arrested and charged with sexual] offenses on a child between the ages of 11 and 14 years [while assigned to the child’s school]…”

And keep happening:

[Washington, D.C. cop] Wendel Palmer…pleaded not guilty…to charges of first-degree child sexual abuse…[which] occurred while Palmer directed [a church] youth choir…Palmer would tell the girl to stay with him…while the rest of the choir members went to a store. The assaults began in August 2004 when the girl was 11…[and] ran through August 2006…she told investigators there were “too many incidents to count”…

Much Ado About Nothing

Foreign officials visiting Colombia: Pay your damned hookers! Colombian hookers: Please start charging your damned clients in advance! “…prostitutes stole numerous items from the Honduras embassy in Bogota, Colombia…an employee of the Ambassador…organized a party with alcohol and sex at the facility…[but] they were not paid for their services…[and retaliated by stealing phones, computers and national security documents]…” And just in case you thought American media had let go of the story featured in the original column of this name: “Two [DEA] agents ‘facilitated a sexual encounter’ between a prostitute and a U.S. Secret Service agent…in April 2012…a third DEA agent present on the night of the incident was not involved…” Translation: two guys helped a co-worker find someone to provide a legal service he wanted. Oh, be still my heart.

The Immunity Syndrome (TW3 #19)

In the past year, cephalosporin-resistant gonorrhea has become five times as common in North America:

…drug resistance has now reached North America in sizable numbers…of 133 patients [in a Toronto study]…6.77 percent…failed to respond to treatment…experts…call “its arrival deeply troubling; clinicians now face the emergence of cephalosporin-resistant N. gonorrhoeae without any well-studied, effective backup treatment options”…

First They Came for the Hookers…

Texas just won’t stop until it makes all sex work as dangerous as criminalized streetwalking:

After years of battling in court, the City of Houston and the popular…strip club, Treasures, have reached an agreement…in exchange for dropping three separate lawsuits against each other, Treasures will pay $100,000 into City-administered Nuisance Abatement Fund to help combat human trafficking. Additionally, the club must post signs at every table stating no illegal activities, including lewdness, prostitution or drug use are permitted…The agreement effectively ends a court battle stretching back to 1983…attorneys for Harris County continue to move ahead with a lawsuit alleging Treasures is a haven for drug trafficking and prostitution…

Meanwhile, in Dallas:

State Representative Bill Zedler first gained attention…when he led a…crusade to block a Hooters from opening near his neighborhood in Arlington…claiming it would serve as a magnet for sexual predators…[he has] [continued] the fight against Hooters while expanding his focus to battle…other sexually oriented businesses. His latest salvo…HB 337…would…license [strippers]…New York considered a similar measure several years ago. And Alabama apparently passed one…But Zedler’s bill…would…require [dancers] to “conspicuously display the…license on his or her person when conducting business…” The bill’s stated purpose is to prevent human trafficking and protect public health…More likely, it will be used as a pretext for hassling businesses Zedler disapproves of…

Wise Investment (TW3 #31)

“Sex trafficking” is already criminal; what this law actually intends to do is wipe out inexpensive escort advertising: “A federal judge has temporarily barred [Tennessee] officials from enforcing a law…intended to criminalize sex trafficking of minors, after a challenge by…Backpage.com…”

Hard Numbers (TW3 #37)

While “authorities” in Rio de Janeiro try to persecute sex workers into hiding before the World Cup, other cities are instead helping them:

Prostitutes in one of Brazil’s biggest cities are beginning to sign up for free English classes ahead of this year’s Confederations Cup and the 2014 World Cup. Cida Vieira, president of the Association of Prostitutes in the city of Belo Horizonte, said…”It will be important for the girls who will be able to use English to let their clients know what they are charging and learn about what turns them on…for the same reasons we are also thinking of offering free French and Italian classes”…

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The First Christmas

Posted in History, Holidays, tagged Aphrodite, carnival, Greece, holidays, Middle East, paganism, Rome, sacred prostitutes on December 25, 2012| 9 Comments »

Snowflakes in the air
Carols everywhere
Olden times and ancient rhymes
Of love and dreams to share. – Lee Mendelson, “Christmas Time is Here”

As I said yesterday, I suspect the festival we now know as Christmas began about 3900 BCE, when the climate abruptly cooled and dried all over the world. For about 2000 years before that, the climate had been wet and warm enough for agriculture to succeed even in areas which are arid in modern times, and with little irrigation or centralized planning. But once the long drought set in (around the same time copper started to replace stone as the favored tool material), everyone started to crowd into the comparatively small areas of the river valleys: scattered villages gave way to large cities, wars were fought over the limited arable land, and hierarchical social structures appeared in order to keep track of which land belonged to whom and what would happen to it when he died. Because warfare and rigid hierarchies appeal more to the male mind societies became more patriarchal, and because heredity was now important sex laws and taboos started to appear. Now that agriculture was a bit trickier calendars were needed so people would know the best times to plant and to reap, and rituals were developed to appease the gods so as to ensure bountiful harvests.

By the late 4^th millennium BCE, the most important of these rites was the one which commemorated the creation of the world by the sky-god Anu after his victory over the forces of chaos; the Babylonians assigned this role to their god Marduk, and personified chaos as the dragon Tiamat. The battle was believed to have lasted for 12 days, so the festival (which the Babylonians called Zagmuk) did as well, and though it occurred at the end of winter (the two weeks before the vernal equinox) rather than at the beginning, this was the origin of our 12 days of Christmas. As in many later cultures, the time between the end of the old year and the beginning of the new was a time of chaos, and the rituals were thought to help Marduk beat back Tiamat for another year. The priests and nobles enacted a pageant (the ancestor of our Christmas pantomime) in which the king played Marduk, and he was supposed to be sacrificed so as to join the god in the underworld and fight by his side. But because it was impractical (not to mention counterproductive) to have a new king every year, what actually happened was this: on the first day of Zagmuk, the king abdicated his power and a condemned criminal was invested as king. He was feted and given homage, and played the part of Marduk in the early part of the festival; he was then sacrificed and the true king resumed his station, receiving the power to rule by consummating a ritual marriage with the entu (high priestess of Ishtar). To provide a mystical balance, another prisoner was chosen at the same time as the temporary king; instead of being sacrificed, he was set free in order to bear the sins of the nation away with him (a similar ritual was later practiced by the Hebrews using goats). And while the ruling classes enacted all this, the common people helped by burning effigies of Tiamat in bonfires.

Sumer was the Great Mother of Western civilization, and her culture infused all which came after it. The Zagmuk festival spread to all parts of the Near East, and though it changed as it spread its influence can be clearly seen. The dedication of a human sacrifice to represent the death of the god, followed immediately by the investiture of another person as the reborn god, was adopted by the Ancient Greeks as part of their primitive festival of Lenaea. And while the human sacrifice eventually vanished in a literal sense from the Babylonian festival (later called Akitu), it survived in symbolic form; during the twelve days of the festival the social order was reversed, with masters waiting upon slaves and one slave chosen to be the head of the household for the duration, just as a criminal had been made king in earlier times (but without the unpleasant conclusion). And after the battle-pageant the common people thronged in the street, rejoicing in the victory of their god with shouted invocations and joyful songs. The festival was extremely popular, and survived conquest after conquest for millennia; the Kassites, Elamites, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Persians and Seleucids each adopted it in turn. By late classical times many of its elements (including the social reversal and the singing in the streets) had entered the Greek Kronia, descendant of Lenaea and ancestor of the Roman Saturnalia; the latter adopted its practices wholesale in 217 BCE, at the same time (and as part of the same Sibylline reform) as the Venus Erycina was brought to Rome.

Six thousand years ago the climate shifted, driving our ancestors from a pleasant Eden where food was plentiful into a harsher world where winter was a time of crisis. And though the elaborate ritual devised by the ancient Mesopotamians to drive back the chaos is no longer solemn or bloody, many of its elements – feasting, mumming and masking, pantomime, bonfires, caroling and even the twelve-day duration – became traditional parts of our winter holiday season, and have endured even to the present day. From the unnamed festival of ancient Uruk to Zagmuk to Lenaea and Akitu, then via Kronia to Saturnalia to Sol Invictus, and finally to Christmas and Carnival, there runs one long, unbroken cord which none who opposed it, whether king, priest or ideologue, has ever been able to sever.

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Christmas Eve 2012

Posted in History, Holidays, tagged Catholicism, Europe, holidays, Middle East, paganism, Rome on December 24, 2012| 28 Comments »

There are no strangers on Christmas Eve. – Michael O’Brien (Charles Winninger) in Beyond Tomorrow

Christmas is the oldest continuously-celebrated holiday in the world, dating back at least 5000 years to the ancient festival of Lenaea, celebrated by the ancestors of the Mycenaean Greeks; it may be much older still, but since even our oral traditions don’t go back before the early Bronze Age we have no real way of knowing. Personally, I suspect it dates back to 3900 BCE, when the climate abruptly cooled and dried, creating the Sahara and spurring the settlement of river valleys, the first large, centralized governments and the development of agricultural calendars. One can imagine the dread with which those early people would have reacted to the failure of the rains and the shortening of the growing season; over time the stories of how pleasant things used to be would have become exaggerated until they grew into the belief that man had once existed in a paradise from which he had been expelled due to some dreadful offense against the gods. They might have seen each winter as a threat of worsening conditions, and developed religious rituals to placate the gods and bring back the sun. Nearly every temperate-zone agricultural society had some sort of “return of the sun” ritual at this time of year, and even today Christmas is celebrated by a larger fraction of human beings than any other holiday.

To anyone who knows anything at all about the origin and development of Christmas, the insistence by American Christians that the holiday belongs to them and them alone is bizarre indeed; it’s rather like someone buying a used car, giving it a new paint job and then declaring that he was the inventor of the internal combustion engine. What makes this even stranger is that Christmas has been a largely-secular festival rather than a high-religious one for about 2500 years, since the formal Lenaea gave way to the popular Kronia. The early Church fathers were not at all pleased when recent converts associated Jesus with the sun-god and assigned the latter’s birthday to the former; Pope Benedict recently pointed out, “We don’t even know which season he was born in. The whole idea of celebrating his birth during the darkest part of the year is probably linked to pagan traditions and the winter solstice.” But as I wrote in my first Boxing Day column,

…they were [eventually] forced to admit that, like prostitution, Christmas was not going to go away, so by the Middle Ages the Church embraced the celebration and worked to insert as much Christian symbolism into it as possible. Nativity scenes first appeared in 10^th-century Rome, and were popularized by Saint Francis of Assisi beginning in 1223 (St. Francis also popularized religious Christmas carols sung in the vernacular). Christian explanations were developed for pagan traditions like the Christmas tree…By the Renaissance Christmas was fully established as an important Church festival…and then the Reformation came, bringing preachers who thundered against Christmas as “popery” or even the dreaded “heathenism”. The Church responded by trying to make the festival more religious, and many German Protestants continued the celebration quietly but replaced Saint Nicholas or other traditional gift-giving figures with the Christkindl (Christ child), a term corrupted in English to “Kris Kringle”…in the English-speaking world the Protestants continued to hammer away at Christmas, which was actually banned in England under the Commonwealth government from 1647-1660…Puritan influence made it unpopular [in America, and]…it was [only] due to German, Dutch, French and Spanish influence that Christmas finally “caught on” in the United States in the first quarter of the 19^th century…

In other words, the whole “Keep Christ in Christmas” nonsense is based on a premise as spurious as the fallacy that “Xmas” is a modern abbreviation intended to “X” Jesus out of the holiday (in reality, the “X” is a Greek Chi, short for “Christ”, and the use of “Xmas” dates back to the 11^th century). Christmas belongs to the entire world, not just to the most selfish members of one religion, and we cannot allow this Cult of Grinches to steal it and all of its symbols, the majority of which predate their sect by centuries.

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That Was the Week That Was (#49)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged A Load of Farley, activism, agency denial, An Educated Idiot, An Example to the West, animals, Australia, bad customers, Buried Truth, China, Coming Out, consensual crime, cops, dirty, Down Under, Europe, Germany, Gorged With Meaning, hysteria, illegal aliens, India, Ireland, Israel, Latin America, law, License To Rape, Maine, Middle East, Neither Addiction nor Epidemic, neofeminism, New York, One Born Every Minute, Oregon, Parable, pragmatism, prohibitionist myths, psychology, rape, restaurants, Scapegoats, sex offender registry, slavery, South Carolina, South of the Border, streetwalkers, Sweden, Swedish model, Texas, The Course of a Disease, The Public Eye, The Slave-Whore Fantasy, Traffic Jam, United Kingdom, video, violence vs. sex workers on December 8, 2012| 33 Comments »

I don’t want to teach ESL. I don’t want to work in food service. I would rather sell sex. – Melissa Petro

License To Rape

A woman…coerced into oral sex by [a] Beaverton [Oregon] police officer in 2010 accepted a settlement in her lawsuit…[Joshua] Jensen pleaded guilty to…official misconduct and coercion charges…[stemming] from two incidents…in which [he] arranged to meet a prostitute…and…[showed] up in uniform, in a marked police car. Both women [said] he ordered them behind a garbage container. The woman who sued him said he grabbed her head, forced it down and demanded that she perform oral sex…Jensen was not charged with a sex crime and did not have to register as a sex offender. He was sentenced to two and a half years in prison…[but] completed his sentence in November 2011 through an Alternative Incarceration Program.

Other rapists get lifetime sentences on the “sex offender” registry; Jensen got a slap on the wrist.

The Slave-Whore Fantasy

Another example of what real sex slavery looks like:

A Chinese court sentenced [Li Hao, 35] to death for holding six women as sex slaves…and killing two of them…the former local government employee kidnapped six nightclub and karaoke bar workers and repeatedly raped them in a self-built dungeon. Two of the six were found dead when a 23-year-old woman escaped and led police to the basement. Li forced them all into prostitution and filmed them in pornographic videos he put on the internet…He then instructed three women to kill two of the other captives. The three women were found guilty of murder but were given lenient sentences. One was jailed for three years and two were put on probation…

An Educated Idiot

It seems credulity and sloppy scholarship aren’t Sudhir Venkatesh’s only flaws:

…Sudhir Venkatesh…is a celebrity…through his research on gang life and prostitutes…but…some of his peers say that…he takes liberties not appropriate for a scholar: sensationalizing his experiences, exaggerating the reliability of his memory and, in one case, physically assaulting someone…and…he was the subject last year of a grueling investigation into [$241,364.83] of spending that Columbia auditors said was insufficiently documented, misappropriated or outright fabricated…auditors said that Professor Venkatesh directed $52,328 to someone without any “documented evidence of work performed”…He charged Columbia for town cars to take him around, to take his fiancée home from work…[and] to take someone…from [his] address to a building that houses a nail salon and a psychic…

Parable

Flexibeast presents a clever satire making the same comparison I did, namely sex and food:

I’d like to discuss…the commodification of food, and the scourge that is the food industry. Food…is an essential human need. When people buy and sell food, the act of preparing and eating food becomes mere support for, and reinforcement of, the notion that it’s acceptable to transform relations between humans into relations between a human and an unimportant unfeeling object. We must reject all buying and selling of food…

After you enjoy this very funny parody, try this Onion article on “abstinence-only school lunch programs” linked by one of Flexibeast’s commenters.

Down Under

This may have something to do with the good example of Fiji’s closest large neighbors, Australia and New Zealand: “Health authorities want sex work legalised to remove discrimination…the Ministry of Health’s acting permanent secretary, Dr Josefa Koroivueta…said Fiji was working towards a human rights-based approach and discrimination of sex workers was against human rights…the new legislation should be ready by next year.”

A Load of Farley

One can never have too many scathing critiques of Melissa Farley, so I present this very effective one from Glasgow Sex Worker, which criticizes both her horrible personality and her awful “research methodology”, with lots of pertinent links.

Hanukkah

Hanukkah starts at sundown today; Khag Urim Sameakh to all my Jewish readers!

Scapegoats

It’s nice to know that at least one European government is so free from economic concerns that it has time to deal with the little things:

…The German parliament…is considering making it an offence not only to hurt an animal but also to force it into unnatural sex…Germany legalised bestiality…in 1969, except when the animal suffered “significant harm”. But animal rights groups have campaigned for a change in the law…a fine of up to 25,000 euros…is proposed if someone forces an animal to commit “actions alien to the species”…Bestiality is banned in…the Netherlands, France and Switzerland…in the UK…the maximum sentence [was reduced in 2003] from life imprisonment to two years…[it is legal] in Belgium, Denmark and Sweden, though Stockholm is considering a change…

It’s also nice to know that under current Swedish law, animals can consent to sex while women can’t.

An Example to the West

…[Maharashtra] state minister for women and child Varsha Gaikwad told [the Times of India], “The state women’s policy aims to recognize the concerns of [marginalized] communities…[so] the expert committee reviewing the policy will have…three representatives from the transgenders and the sex workers in order to ensure that their concerns get reflected in the policy document”…

Traffic Jam

Harvey Silverglate reminds us that some of the victims of the Satanic Panic are still rotting away in prison for “crimes” that never happened:

…Elizabeth Ramirez, Kristie Mayhugh, Anna Vasquez and Cassandra Rivera…[were] accused in 1994 of repeatedly raping Ramirez’s two nieces, then 7 and 9 years old…Mayhugh, Vasquez and Rivera are twelve years into a 15-year sentence. Ramirez was accused of being the ringleader, so she received 37½ years. All four of the women refused pretrial plea deals…and three have refused parole offers conditioned on an admission of guilt and completion of a “rehabilitation” course for sex offenders…In September, one of the accusers recanted, saying she now seems to recall a quiet, even boring, weekend with her aunt, her sister and her aunt’s friends. She has vowed to do everything in her power to help exonerate the four women still imprisoned as a result of her earlier false accusations…

As in other “Satanic Panic” cases and most “sex trafficking” cases, the total lack of concrete evidence, the fact that the accusers’ stories changed frequently and their history of false rape accusations (instigated by their sociopathic father) made absolutely no difference to prosecutors, jury or judge, who wanted to “send a message” that “alternative lifestyles” (the women are lesbians) would not be tolerated.

Coming Out

Melissa Petro is broke, and therefore thinking “a lot” about going back into hooking even though she has often said she didn’t like it. That’s why her voice is valuable; as I said before, “I think it’s extremely important for women who don’t love the work to come out, because I honestly believe they’re the majority. Everybody hears from the ‘happy hookers’ and the ‘survivors’, but…for most of the women I’ve known it was a job like any other, with its own advantages and disadvantages…”

South of the Border

Funny how “sex trafficking victims” magically get their agency back when they’re Mexicans the “authorities” prefer to deport: “Three people pleaded guilty…to bringing illegal immigrant women to [South Carolina] to work as prostitutes whose clientele were migrant farm workers…The prostitutes were illegal immigrants but none were being held against their will, [the US attorney] said…” Apparently, the immigration stooge interviewed for the story got a different memo; he opined that “the women…have been rescued from lives of misery as a result of this investigation.”

The Public Eye

Jessie Nicole reviews American Courtesans, a new documentary about the lives of eleven high-end escorts:

Each of the eleven women had profoundly different experiences…[proving] that there is no single narrative of the sex industries. Though each one seemed happy and relatively stable at the time of the interviews, many had experienced violence, arrest, and economic desperation…there was no sugarcoating or romanticization …the film also includes testimony from clients and family members…American Courtesans was a good step in the right direction, but we need to keep pushing further…[with] more and better media projects…

Buried Truth

James Cameron, the federal drug prosecutor who fled Maine after his child porn conviction was upheld three weeks ago, was arrested Sunday morning at a used-media store in Albuquerque, New Mexico. US marshals theorize he was headed for Mexico.

Metaupdates

Gorged With Meaning (First Updates of the Year, Part Two)

Pearl-clutching Brits just can’t let this two-year-old study go:

Undergraduates have traditionally pulled pints or waited tables to pay their way through university, but…a significant number are now turning to sex work to make ends meet. The rise in fees which will see some students graduate with projected debts of up to £53,000 …is being blamed for persuading young women and men to take up pole dancing, escort work or even prostitution. Experts say that university welfare officers are largely ignorant of the growing phenomenon and poorly equipped to deal with issues arising from young people’s involvement. Research by Dr Ron Roberts…published in 2010 suggested that one in four students know someone who had worked in the sex industry to fund their studies – up from three per cent in 1990. Dr Roberts found 16 per cent would consider working in the industry while more than one in 10 were open to the idea of being an escort. Research by Teela Sanders and Kate Hardy, of the University of Leeds, found that a quarter of lap dancers had a degree whilst a third of the women they interviewed were using the job to fund new forms of training…

This poster won the Irish “sex trafficking” contest described in TW3 #40; all pictures are stolen.

Coed sex workers have never been rare; they’re just more apt to admit it these days, which is good for everybody. The funniest part of the article is that its clueless author appears to believe the claims of the con-man behind “Sponsor A Scholar”.

The Course of a Disease (TW3 #8)

Prohibitionists are furious that the Israeli legislature allowed the wildly-unpopular (opposed by 59% of Israelis) Swedish model to die in committee, but what makes this prohibitionist op-ed entitled “Prostitution in Israel: Myth vs Reality” so interesting (if nauseating) is that it completely inverts the two, labeling myths as “facts” and vice-versa. One wonders how people manage to make it through life in such a deeply-delusional state.

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic (TW3 #20)

Despite a few good advance hints, the news about DSM-V is mostly bad:

…The [APA] has given its final approval to a deeply flawed DSM 5 containing many changes that seem clearly unsafe and scientifically unsound…Fortunately, some of its most…unsupportable proposals were eventually dropped under great external pressure (most notably…internet and sex addiction…) But…DSM 5 will start a half or dozen or more new fads which will be detrimental to the misdiagnosed individuals and costly to our society…

Dr. Frances’ list of the ten worst changes includes DMDD; the redefinition of normal grief into “Major Depressive Disorder”, the normal forgetfulness of old age into “Minor Neurocognitive Disorder”, and gluttony into “Binge Eating Disorder”; and (most dangerously) the introduction of “use disorders”, essentially “Behavioral Addictions that…can…make a mental disorder of everything we like to do a lot.”

One Born Every Minute (TW3 #48)

The man uncovered as running a “sex for tuition fees” website…[was] secretly filmed…[and identified as] Mark Lancaster, but when contacted by a television programme refused to speak about the Sponsor a Scholar scheme…

The Course of a Disease (TW3 #48)

Dr. Brooke Magnanti vs. Rhoda Grant on this week’s Sunday Politics Scotland.

This Week in 2010 and 2011

Beside a two-part column on the myth that most whores are enslaved by pimps, this week also featured posts on Barbie, Saint Nicholas, toys, the Salvation Army, my favorite bands and albums, “sex addiction”, sugar daddy sites and the bizarre pretense that historical courtesans were not prostitutes. We also saw articles on the anti-whore hostility of Canadian “authorities”, the lack of outrage when criminals use Craigslist to commit non-sex related crimes, and why ignorance really is bliss for some people, and I gave advice to a young man who wanted to “rescue” a hooker.

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Links #126

Posted in Current Events, History, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Tyranny, tagged animals, Arizona, California, censorship, China, Colorado, cops, drugs, East Asia, Egypt, Europe, Facebook, Florida, genitalia, homosexuality, hysteria, internet, Kentucky, Korea, Michigan, Middle East, neofeminism, Never Call the Cops, New York, psychology, Sweden, Swedish model, Thailand, video on December 2, 2012| 51 Comments »

Superstition belongs to the essence of mankind and takes refuge, when one thinks one has suppressed it completely, in the strangest nooks and crannies; once it is safely ensconced there, it suddenly reappears. – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

This week saw a strong rebound from the Thanksgiving slump, and though we haven’t seen any worthwhile Christmas items yet there were an unusual number of astronomy-, death- and monster-related items. Radley Balko was top dog in links as usual (contributing everything down to the first video), but four others provided two each: Walter Olson (first video and the link below it), Mike Siegel (“Pat Robertson” and the link above it), Michael Whiteacre (“Kentucky” and “censored elbow”), and Brooke Magnanti (second video and the link above it). The others came from Aspasia (“demon sex”), Wikileaks (“Swedish attitude”), Franklin Harris (“cyber terror”), Jesse Walker (“sic transit”), and Jack Shafer (“snow in Hell”).

“Never call the cops for any reason whatsoever”, dog edition.
Another segment in the growing school-to-prison pipeline.
Headline of the week, “not for the squeamish” edition.
Chinese newspaper falls for Onion spoof.

Here’s a cute, funny PSA from the Melbourne Transit Authority.

Why won’t Yoko Ono go away?
“Brain and brain! What is brain?”
This happened in Sweden. ‘Nuff said.
Man builds ark in preparation for supposed Mayan doomsday.
The exception that proves the rule; or, can we clone this dude?
For those who claim socialized medicine doesn’t lead to prohibitionism.
Cop forces crippled old woman off the road, destroying her truck, for the “crime” of exceeding speed limit by 2 miles per hour.
Monster watch: Serbian village council issues warning that a legendary vampire is on the loose again, and North Korea announces proof of the existence of Asian unicorns (Qilin).

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Links #124

Posted in Current Events, History, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Tyranny, tagged abortion, Australia, censorship, cops, dirty, drugs, East Asia, Egypt, ethics, Europe, FBI, games, Georgia, Hollywood, hysteria, Illinois, internet, Ireland, Islam, Korea, language, law, marriage, Middle East, video on November 18, 2012| 21 Comments »

It is not to be forgotten that what we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts. – Thomas Huxley

As I predicted in last week’s links column, I had a surfeit of material this week, so much so that I cut off the flow Friday and allotted the links which came in yesterday to next week’s column (which may be short again due to the Thanksgiving holiday). This week’s champ was perennial Linkfinder General Radley Balko (who contributed everything down to the first video), but five others contributed two links each: Jesse Walker (first video and the first link below it), Walter Olson (“baseball bat” and “psychotic judge”), Furry Girl (“fan death” and the one just above it), Lenore Skenazy (“zip ties” and “oak trees”) and Franklin Harris (“omnishambles” and “sphinx”). “Bird passwords” was contributed by Antonio Lorusso, “tased boy” by Thomas Larson, “d20” by Nick Tolman, “Hays code” by Cthulhuchick and the last link before the second video by Melissa Gira Grant. One more thing: most of you have probably heard that Irish doctors murdered a pregnant Indian dentist this week, but because the defenders of the law which allowed this travesty to happen have thrown up a cloud of obfuscation, here’s an explanation of what happened by regular reader Korhomme.

Headlines of the week.
Cops tase man for trying to put out a fire.
Dear Jezebel: snitching to “authorities” is worse than juvenile racism.
Journalism student suspended and threatened by university for practicing journalism.
NOT an Onion story: Top Georgia GOP lawmakers host briefing on secret Obama mind-control plot.
Cops kick 5’3” (161 cm) tall handcuffed, disabled man in the head, then set fire to his disabled mother.

In 28 years we’ll be able to laugh at the more extreme “trafficking” excesses as easily as we laugh at this sample of “Satanic” hysteria from a May, 1984 episode of the Today show.

Long but interesting: “The Great New England Vampire Panic”.
The bird that teaches secret passwords to its unhatched chicks.
Reminder to attorneys: Don’t beat your clients with a baseball bat.
Legislators in four more states announce bills to legalize marijuana.
Korean fan death.
How to escape from zip ties.
The OED’s word of the year is the superb “omnishambles”.
Cops pepper-spray and tase 14-year-old boy hiding under a van.
For the D&D player who has everything: a d20 from Ptolemaic Egypt.
I’ve often mentioned the Hays Code, but y’all might like to know what was actually in it.
Woman demands that city chop down oak trees because her children are allergic to nuts.
Apparently, this particular call by a radical Islamist to destroy the sphinx and pyramids is not a hoax.
Chicago re-elects incompetent judge who is prone to psychotic episodes and currently suspended due to being charged with criminal battery.
“The FBI…devoted substantial resources [and] engaged in highly invasive surveillance…to…find out who was very mildly harassing [a friend of one of its agents] by email.”

Rachel Bloom (the “Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury” girl) has a new video:

As above, so below: “The sun…had a companion…that tipped the solar nebula…then fled the scene after the planets arose.”
Only in a sick, puritanical culture could giving in to begging be classified as “felony assault”.
This woman really needs to read and understand my column “Honored in the Breach”.
FBI agents smash into house and shoot at teenage girl for no apparent reason.
How to remove yourself from “people search” websites.
I’ve always found rogue planets fascinating.

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Thaïs

Posted in Biography, Harlotography, History, tagged archeofeminism, courtesans, marriage, Middle East on October 23, 2012| 21 Comments »

Thaïs the courtesan [conducted] the ceremony. She was the first after the king to throw her blazing torch into the palace…What was most remarkable was that the sacrilege committed by Xerxes…against the Acropolis of Athens was avenged by a single woman, a fellow-citizen of the victims, who many years later, and in sport, inflicted the same treatment on the Persians. – Diodorus of Sicily

In order to give the broadest and most interesting picture of the lives of harlots, I try to choose the subjects of my harlotographies from as wide a range of time periods as possible. I have decided that I won’t write on anyone who is still alive, but that still means I can cover contemporary figures such as Deborah Jeane Palfrey or Robyn Few, who have passed on very recently. But on the other end, the boundary isn’t nearly as clear; I would be willing to write about a whore of Uruk or Mohenjo-Daro could I find a biography of one to draw from, but it seems as though Rhodopis of the 6^th century BCE may be about as early as I’m able to go; her life story is a mixture of fact, surmise and legend, and though we know the names of earlier whores (such as Shamhat and Rahab), they are largely inhabitants of the sphere of legend. This is really not so surprising when one considers that we know little more than the names and dates of most kings from earlier times, and virtually nothing about anyone else unless they had some impact on the affairs of kings.

Thaïs was an Athenian hetaera who, unlike most of her profession, enjoyed travel. Nothing is known of her life prior to 334 BCE, but she must have already achieved quite a reputation as a courtesan because sometime around that date she attracted the attention of Alexander the Great (either directly or through a relationship with his general and close friend Ptolemy) and afterward accompanied him on all of his Persian campaigns. Her exact relationship with Alexander is unclear; obviously the fact that she was often seen with him demonstrates that he was extremely fond of her, but it is unknown whether she was his lover or Ptolemy’s at this time. It may be that he merely enjoyed her company; she was said to have been very wise, an accomplished orator and a ready wit with a large repertoire of dirty jokes.

Her most famous (or infamous) contribution to history came soon after Alexander took Persopolis, capital of the Persian Empire. After allowing his troops to loot the city for several days, Alexander decided to rest here for a few months and set up his headquarters in the Palace of Xerxes. Historians have varying views about what exactly happened next, but let’s look at some facts and see if we can’t connect the dots: Xerxes invaded Greece in 480 BCE and, after defeating the Spartans at Thermopylae, occupied Athens. Immediately after he took possession of the city it (including the Temple of Athena on the Acropolis) was largely destroyed by fire; though this may have been an accident caused by Athenians fleeing Xerxes’ approach, naturally the leaders preferred to claim that the conqueror had done it on purpose, and by the time Thaïs was educated almost 150 years later this was taught as historical fact.

Now, Alexander was a heavy drinker, and after one of his legendary wild parties had been underway for long enough for his judgment to be well and truly numbed, Thaïs stood up and made a speech which convinced him that Xerxes’ act of sacrilege against Athena should be avenged by burning down his palace. A great procession was arranged in which all the participants either played music or carried torches, and Thaïs ordered the building evacuated; when everyone was safely clear she egged Alexander into hurling his torch into the building, and hers immediately followed. Everyone else then did the same, and the blaze was so great that it soon spread out of control and consumed the entire palace district, though apparently the neighbors fled quickly because there were no recorded fatalities.

If she ever was Alexander’s lover, she had ceased to be by 327 BCE; in the spring of that year he was smitten by the strikingly beautiful Roxana, Princess of Bactria, who married him and accompanied him until his death four years later. Whether Thaïs had started with Ptolemy or not, it is certain she ended up with him and bore him three children named Lagus, Leontiscus and Eirene. After Alexander’s death Ptolemy became the King of Egypt, but though he married Thaïs around this time she did not become his queen because he opted for a political marriage instead. Her daughter Eirene, however, did become a queen as the wife of Soli, King of Cyprus.

Though history records a few minor references to her children, Thaïs herself lapses into obscurity after their births; we do not even know the year of her death. Like so many people of pre-modern times we see her only in proximity to great events in which she was involved: she emerges from shadow into the great circle of light cast by that burning palace, is visible while she crosses the area, and then vanishes again into the darkness on the other side.

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That Was the Week That Was (#40)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged abortion, acting, Acting and Activism, activism, Africa, Australia, Backwards into the Future, BDSM, California, Catholicism, contraception, cops, Cosmopolitan, Counterfeit Comfort, dirty, disease, Down Under, drugs, end demand, ethics, Europe, Feet of Clay, Follow Your Bliss, Good Fantasy-Bad Reality, harm reduction, holidays, Hollywood, hysteria, imaginative fiction, Iran, Ireland, King of the Hill, Latin America, law, Little Boxes, Madonna/whore, Middle East, Misdirection, Missouri, My Body My Choice, Neither Addiction nor Epidemic, neofeminism, porn, Presents, Profit from Panic, Prudish Pedants, psychology, sex offender registry, sex rays, South Africa, streetwalkers, tabula rasa, The Public Eye, Think of the Children!, TSA, video, virginity, yin and yang on October 6, 2012| 22 Comments »

[A] silly uberfeminist crusader…once called me a sex addict in a national newspaper…To some…[that] would be the gravest insult; to me it was the intellectual equivalent of claiming I am Father Christmas. – Brooke Magnanti

King of the Hill

The latest entry in the contest to claim bragging rights for “biggest sex trafficking hub in the United States”: “Reports from cities with federal Innocence Lost Task Forces lists Toledo [Ohio] as the third largest city for human trafficking and sex slavery…” Previous claimants include New York, Dallas, Miami, Atlanta, Portland, Oregon and Sacramento, California; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Phoenix, Arizona; and the entire state of Tennessee.

Updates

Good Fantasy, Bad Reality

A southwest Missouri woman who says she shared her bed for years with her husband and his sex slave has decided she needs help defending herself against five federal charges. Marilyn Bagley… is charged with conspiracy, sex trafficking, forced labor trafficking, document servitude and use of an interstate facility to facilitate unlawful activity. She and her husband, Edward, are scheduled for trial in February.

My Body, My Choice

Note that prohibitionist “feminists” had no comment on this: “Former U.S. Congresswoman Linda Smith…[who] founded Shared Hope International…said that efforts to stop the sell [sic] and trade of minors in the sex industry should be an extension of the ‘pro-life’ cause.”

Acting and Activism

“President Obama is not alone in the fight to end sex trafficking. Academy Award-winning actress Mira Sorvino…[is] starring in a new Hollywood film, Trade of Innocents, following a sex trafficking ring in Cambodia.” Thanks, CNN; had you not told me that Obama wasn’t alone in pandering to hysteria, I would never have known.

Backwards into the Future

Even some politicians in Zimbabwe have more respect for human rights than their American counterparts:

Zimbabwe Parliamentarians against HIV and AIDS…wants government to decriminalise commercial sex work…The Director of the Public Personalities against AIDS Trust, Tendai Westerhof, [also] condemned criminalisation of sex workers…“It is disappointing that the country still criminalises sex work…these people suffer a lot as a result of the discriminatory laws…They are raped and cannot report such abuses. As a result, they cannot access health services”…

Meanwhile, in South Africa, sex worker rights group SWEAT recently made a presentation in their parliament.

Down Under

Though the Australian cops in this story subscribe to fashionable “end demand” malarkey, some of them also admit that client persecution harms streetwalkers:

As a crackdown on kerb crawlers in St Kilda intensifies, street sex workers could be moving…to…Dandenong or Footscray, or [using smartphone] apps to meet clients in unsafe areas. Police tried unsuccessfully for decades to curb the trade by targeting workers…But halfway through the new two-year strategy, they noticed that the switch to targeting clients was having unwanted consequences. ”If we do push them out of the area, they won’t necessarily all leave the industry – and they’ll either adopt online or they’ll go and work in another location”…said [Senior Sergeant Brad Daly]. ”We might be creating things that we haven’t thought of yet”…lawyer Vanda Hamilton works with more than 50 legal and illegal sex workers and said…she feared many were being forced into troubling scenarios. She said the only way to ensure safety was to follow New South Wales’ example by legalising street-sex work…”You’re never going to stop sex work, you’re just going to push it so far underground that you can’t help people”…

Guess what, Brad? Virtually none of them are leaving the industry; they’re just going where you can’t see them.

Counterfeit Comfort

More of this, please (but where’s the ACLU?)

Less than a month after approving restrictions on Halloween activities by registered sex offenders, the city of Simi Valley has been sued…the…law bans Halloween displays and outside lighting every Oct. 31…[and] requires a sign on the front door in letters at least an inch tall: “No candy or treats at this residence.” Both the prohibition on decorations and the mandatory sign violate free speech rights, according to the lawsuit. A total of 119 registered sex offenders live in Simi Valley…None has been involved in crimes involving children on Halloween, according to police, who say they have no records of any such crime occurring in Simi Valley during Halloween trick-or-treating…

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic

Dr. Brooke Magnanti on the newest, even stupider adjunct to “sex addiction”:

…The Daily Mail…claims [that young men] are addicted…[to] Viagra…[which unlike sex] is a pharmaceutical drug…[which] could [conceivably produce] physical dependency…[their “proof” consists of an]…interview [with] exactly one guy who uses Viagra a lot during sex…and…one…“psychosexual counselor”…who says this is “just a small sample of the problem”…Any studies…Any scientific research in any labs anywhere? Because I…don’t see any. At. All. Reading further down the article I see their real target: porn “addiction”…[and] sexually empowered women…How dare the ladies express interest and enjoyment in sex! Why won’t we just lie back and think of England like we’re supposed to!?…

Presents, Presents, Presents!

Mere days after I added it to my Amazon wishlist, a reader who prefers to remain anonymous sent me a copy of The Handmaid’s Tale, which I somehow never got around to reading before. Thank you so very much!

Profit from Panic

Hey, kids! Fight “human trafficking” for fun and profit! Implicate your neighbors! Persecute sex workers! Win big prizes! “To raise awareness of human trafficking…the Department of Justice and Equality in Dublin and the Department of Justice in Belfast will launch a photography and video competition for Third Level students…Research human trafficking and present your understanding of the issue through a photograph or short video…Winners of each category will receive…1^st prize €1,000…2^nd prize €500…3^rd prize €250.”

Prudish Pedants

Here’s an interesting article debunking the fallacious notion that some kinds of porn are more “positive” than others, that “erotica” is intrinsically different from porn and that men can be “taught” to reject the kind of porn they prefer in favor of the kind women prefer…argued from a marketing perspective rather than a traditionally psychological one. One important point: “Human minds are not passive and infinitely malleable receptacles prone to any form of socialization and learning. Successful marketers are well aware of this reality. Ideologues, including some academics in the ivory tower, have much to learn!”

Misdirection

Remember when controversy over contraception was only something we read about in history books or in reference to unusually conservative Catholics? I sure do. But over the last two decades that equine carcass has been dragged out of the glue factory and is once again being set upon by sex-hating control freaks trying to call attention away from the uncontrolled tumescence of government, national debt and the police state. The fact that the public obediently paid attention to this distraction has enabled lots of crazy people, including a group of nuns who produced an anti-contraception video chock full of propaganda because they obviously forgot that lying makes Baby Jesus cry:

Feet of Clay

Anne Elizabeth Moore and Melissa Gira Grant write:

This week Kristof and his wife Sheryl WuDunn’s book Half The Sky premieres on PBS as a two-part miniseries, providing an opportunity for his audience to step into his well-worn white savior shoes…viewers will survey the lives of young women whom Kristof and WuDunn have chosen as the best ciphers for their agenda…to…“turn oppression into opportunity”…[by] proposing dubious schemes for advancing women’s rights—like arresting sex workers in order to “rescue” them from prostitution, or enthusiastically supporting the creation of “sweatshops” to accommodate sex workers and other women in the global south…

In response, Moore & Grant presented a “collective evaluation” of Nicholas Kristof, in other words excerpts from essays by Laura Agustín, Teju Cole and many others (including yours truly). The article is also mentioned in this Buzzfeed article, which shows the outcry is getting big enough for even the usually-oblivious media to notice.

Little Boxes

Catarina Migliorini says that cooking, driving, reading and every other human activity magically become different things if one only does them once:

…A 20-year-old Brazilian woman is auctioning off her virginity for a one-time tryst on an airplane…Catarina Migliorini says she’ll donate some of the money to provide housing for poor families in her native Santa Catarina…the Internet bidding [has already] reached $160,000…[and] ends Oct. 15…Migliorini insisted in a statement to the Sao Paulo daily Folha that…”For me, it’s not prostitution…when someone does something once in his or her life, this is not considered a profession. If you take a picture and it comes out good, you are not a photographer because of it”…The Daily Mail reported that Migliorini is [also]…part of an Australian film project called Virgins Wanted. She’s getting $20,000 and a 90-percent cut of the auction price…

The HuffPo comments are, of course, predictably disgusting. Meanwhile, Slate presents this series of portraits of female Iranian singers, who are legally barred from singing on stage for a general audiences because it is “immodest”. This is not a hypothetical reductio ad absurdum; it is the natural result of busybodies having control over women’s interactions with men and attempting to draw imaginary lines between “good” and “immoral” behavior.

The Public Eye

Rachel Aimee, one of the founders of the late $pread magazine, covers one specific aspect of the “sex workers as mothers” topic: deciding if, when and how to tell one’s children that one is a sex worker. She interviews an escort, a stripper, a dominatrix, a nude model and a sex educator, and though as you might expect she doesn’t reach a definitive conclusion, she presents a lot of worthwhile food for thought.

Metaupdates

Think of the Children! in TW3 (#11)

Another good, clean organization refuses charity from nasty, dirty whores:

A pornographic website has launched a fundraising effort for Susan G. Komen for the Cure, but the nonprofit says it wants nothing to do with the campaign…the…website said it would donate 1 cent for every 30 views of certain videos featuring breasts during October, which is Breast Cancer Awareness Month…[but the Komen organization said] “We are not a partner, not accepting donations, and have asked them to stop using our name”…

Obviously, the Komen Foundation has not yet learned that they are supposed to care more about women’s health than about prudishness.

I Really Shouldn’t Even LOOK at an Issue of Cosmopolitan in TW3 (#25)

Priya-Alika Elias imagines what it would be like if Homer, Shakespeare, Joyce, Tolkien and others wrote Cosmo sex tips. Alas, she didn’t do Lovecraft, but it’s still pretty damned funny.

Follow Your Bliss in TW3 (#37)

The…TSA…didn’t bother to do a background check on a priest who had been defrocked for molesting girls before they gave him a job, which included doing pat downs on children at Philadelphia International Airport. The Philadelphia Inquirer…reported that…65-year-old Thomas Harkins…has since been promoted from the…job that required him to pat down children and now oversees screening operations for checked baggage.

This Week in 2011

I answered questions on NBA policies, Wikipedia, gravatars and epigrams, discussed busybody control freaks who use women’s dignity as an excuse for oppression, introduced you to a young courtesan named Su Xiaoxiao, reported on a complaint to the APA about Melissa Farley’s numerous ethical violations, and shared short items on marital sex issues, Gardasil, a Sydney mega-brothel, a pervert cop, BDSM persecution, Edmonton’s attempt to create a bottleneck, a claim that the average hooker is 13, cops’ armed robbery of a strip club, AHF and an essay by Catherine Hakim.

This Week in 2010

I introduced the concept of “sex rays”, talked about my boob job, explained how criminalization exposes whores to danger from real criminals, discussed the families of sex workers, presented brief biographies of the five victims of Jack the Ripper, looked at the archetypal “hooker with a heart of gold”, and shared short items about Congress’ first attempt to control the internet and two creepy men’s attempts to sexually violate women unnoticed.

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That Was the Week That Was (#34)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged A False Dichotomy, A Tale That Grew in the Telling, Africa, An Example to the West, An Ounce of Prevention, Australia, bad customers, California, cops, Damned If You Don't, disease, East Asia, Enabling Oppression, ethics, Europe, hysteria, India, Ireland, Islam, Kenya, Korea, law, Legal Is as Legal Does, Legalization a Good Idea?, Middle East, Peeping Toms, Philippines, rape, Rough Trade, sex work is work, Soap Opera, South Carolina, streetwalkers, stripping, Swedish model, The Course of a Disease, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers, Walking Stereotype Sues Whore, welcome to our world, Whorearchy on August 25, 2012| 38 Comments »

Innocent people should not be trapped for engaging in their legal right to ask to have sex in private with another adult. – Ezekiel Edwards

Beneath the Veil

It isn’t often we hear anything credible about sex work in strict Muslim countries, which are among the few places in the world more oppressive of sex workers than the United States, but this one seems both realistic and relatively non-judgmental:

…In Yemen, sex work is punishable by stiff prison sentences of up to three years…women earn 50,000 to 60,000 riyals [$230-$280] per client…Wealthy Gulf playboys are known to drop 100,000 riyals [$470] or more per woman…[but women] picked up at a restaurant or club…earn [only] 10,000 [to] 15,000 riyals ($47-$70). Condoms are standard…testing for sexually transmitted diseases is less common but not rare…Because of the illicit nature of the work, sex workers have virtually no protections against abuse. It is not uncommon for men to refuse to pay. Sometimes, a woman will meet a client, only to discover his three friends have accompanied him…

The reporter’s source is a Somali woman working in Yemen who, like so many of us, has been in and out of sex work for much of her life.

Updates

Rough Trade

At least British juries recognize that a prostitute can be raped: “Arturas Vasilivas attacked the girl…on October 13 last year…Prosecutor Mary Loram…[said] ‘He clearly viewed her as an object with which he could do as he pleased. She was absolutely terrified’…” He was convicted after only 3½ hours of deliberation and will be sentenced next month. In the United States, however, the rapist usually has to be shockingly violent to ensure conviction:

A limo driver faces up to 14 years in prison…[for] running down a teenage prostitute…Adekunkle Adefeyinti, 42, of Chicago, [was convicted] of two counts of aggravated battery…[for injuring] the 16-year-old girl while fleeing in his Hummer to avoid payment…part of her scalp [was] ripped off and [she suffered] facial nerve damage…

Walking Stereotype Sues Whore

Of course, criminalization also allows whores to cheat clients as well:

…Ernesto S. Tapang, 42, and Shuzhen Santos both have been charged with misdemeanor prostitution…Tapang…paid Santos $120 for an hour of sex…[but] twenty minutes later she allegedly told him…it was over and…refused to give [him] a refund so he flagged down a patrol car and reported her to police…

A False Dichotomy

It’s always a pleasure when people who have never done sex work get it:

Beyond the simplistic dichotomies within western feminism on the nature of sex work there is a complex picture in which many women take a pragmatic approach, negotiating with their sexuality an income while withstanding the “occupational hazard” of rampant violence, says Sehin Teferra. In Ethiopian cities…many young women become sex workers having failed to make ends meet by waiting tables or working as house-help, or [after] personal hardship such as an unplanned birth…[or running] away from home…Nearly all the women [Teferra] spoke to had faced violence at some point…[but] did not portray themselves as victims, and neither were they presented as victims by the men…Despite the low stature of women in Ethiopia in general, sex workers [including casual ones who do not identify as such] are recognized as making good money…[so] many couples and families [depend] on a young woman who sells sex. Many male partners of sex workers expressed frustration that as unskilled labour, they cannot find work that pays as well, and as regularly, as their partners’ sex work…while many sex workers…express a desire to leave their line of work, others recognize that [it] has allowed them to provide for themselves and their families…

Peeping Toms

Until I read this thorough and sensible article, I hadn’t realized that both major American presidential candidates this year are descended from polygamists (and much more recently in Obama’s Kenyan family than in Romney’s Mormon one). But that fact has not escaped the notice of those fighting for the right to live in whatever consensual arrangement suits them, who also point out that banning a practice because a minority abuse it is tyranny. This should obviously sound familiar, but the similarities don’t stop there; Romney has stated, “I can’t imagine anything more awful than polygamy,” which is exactly the same sort of absurdly-exaggerated denunciation politicians usually emit when talking about sex work.

An Ounce of Prevention

Y’all may discuss this in the comments as you wish; please just keep it factual and avoid “mutilation” hyperbole and unverifiable claims about sensitivity:

A 20-year decline in male circumcision has cost the country $2 billion in medical costs that could have been prevented, Johns Hopkins researchers say in a [new] study…boys who are not circumcised are more prone to sexually transmitted diseases and other [costly] health problems over a lifetime…”The economic evidence is backing up what we already know medically,” said Dr. Aaron Tobian…about 55 percent of the 2 million baby boys born each year are circumcised, compared with a peak of 79 percent in the 1970s and 1980s…Studies have long shown that when babies are not circumcised…bacteria and viruses can get trapped in the extra layers of skin left on the penis…circumcision reduces the number of infant urinary tract infections. Men who are uncircumcised are more at-risk for cancer-causing HPV, HIV, herpes, bacterial vaginitis and other sexually transmitted diseases…

Legal Is as Legal Does

As I’ve stated many times, any artificial bottleneck in the legality of sex work (such as licensing, venue restrictions or immigration controls) inevitably creates problems in the restricted sector. This excellent article by Christian Vega explains the problems Asian sex workers face in the legalized system in Victoria.

The Course of a Disease

Considering the progress of Swedish Rot in Ireland, it should come as no surprise that Northern Ireland has contracted the disease as well:

…the Human Trafficking and Exploitation Bill…aims to enhance services for victims as well as making it an offence to pay for sexual services from a prostitute…Lord Morrow said…”In Sweden, there’s a very clear message of zero tolerance for the purchase of sex that has had a clear impact on trafficking”…

His Lordship is correct: it has made trafficking worse.

Enabling Oppression

If these women were vulnerable to arrest for prostitution, would this have turned out the same way?

The six-year-old daughter of a sex worker, who was allegedly being tortured by her mother and her partner for the past few months, was rescued by other sex workers…[who heard her] yelling out in pain…and…took her to Medical College and Hospital Calcutta for treatment…The little girl, who looked relieved, kept saying that she did not want to return to her mother…”If the girl meets this kind of treatment from her own mother, she would surely become a victim of circumstances soon…we want the girl to stay at a safer place,” said a member of DMSC.

Soap Opera

“Tampa Police have arrested nearly 20 women at area strip clubs as part of a crackdown ahead of the Republican National Convention…Tampa Police said they are investigating prostitution and human sex trafficking of minors based on tips that prostitutes may be coming to Tampa to work in adult establishments during the convention.” Because if Telisia Espinosa says pimped, trafficked streetwalkers work out of strip clubs, that’s good enough for them.

Damned If You Don’t

Maybe if this sort of thing keeps happening, the ACLU will get off its collective arse and actually start challenging these laws:

The South Carolina chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union is accusing the Greenville County Sheriff’s Office [of] routinely making unlawful arrests of women they suspect of being prostitutes and men who have sex with men, even though they haven’t broken any laws. The ACLU says it sent a letter [outlining] “several incidents in which undercover officers approached people parked in their cars, sitting on their own porches or walking down the street and asked suspects to engage in illegal sexual activity, including prostitution and having sex in a public place. The individuals either declined or offered to engage in lawful private sexual contact, but were arrested anyway”…

Metaupdates

For Those Who Think Legalization is a Good Idea in August Updates (Part One)

It looks like the Indian Supreme Court is starting to back down from its year-old decision to move toward decriminalization:

A year after trying to provide a dignified life to sex workers, the Supreme Court on Thursday said its orders should not be construed as an encouragement to prostitution…Justice [Gyan Sudha] Mishra said, “I prefer to add…sex workers have a right to live with dignity but the collective endeavour must be on part of the sex workers to give up the trade in case they are given alternate platform”…Justice [Altamas] Kabir said: “It is all very good for your (government’s) policy to say prevent prostitution but will you provide to fill their stomach. Even a prostitute has a right to live with dignity”…

The other judges waffled even more, and one claimed he was only talking about “sex trafficking” victims. Well, at least they rejected the government’s attempt to remove DMSC from the advisory panel.

A Tale That Grew in the Telling in October Updates (Part Three)

A news release of the Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO), said…[a human trafficking] hotline…established a year and a half ago…”has received 11,000 calls from local and overseas sources, with…165 case calls, of which 52 are reportedly victims of human trafficking”…the CFO said “many victims still do not file charges against their recruiters.”

Would that be “many” more than the 11,000 callers, the 165 operators opened files on, the 52 staff represent as real or the much smaller, undisclosed number which actually turn out to be cases of victimization?

An Example To the West in TW3 (#14)

Here’s another article by Matthias Lehmann on sex work in South Korea, this one in response to an article written by a woman who seems to believe that volunteering at a woman’s shelter for a few months makes her a “sex trafficking” expert. It includes an excerpt from this excellent letter (dated last September) to “human trafficking ambassador” Luis CdeBaca from Ann Jordan and other respected academics:

“…[W]e are concerned that the Obama Administration has produced a document that asserts as matters of proven fact a number of statements, which…are unsupported or unproven by valid research methods and data…the document is illogical, misleading and therefore potentially damaging to on-going efforts globally to prevent trafficking and protect the rights of trafficked persons…these assumptions are not proven in any empirically meaningful way, and [we] believe that they only serve to deflect attention away from the structures and actors that in fact lead to trafficking of women, men and children. The proposals and statements in the document threaten to divert precious resources from protecting victims of trafficking who urgently need help into a politically contested and futile anti-prostitution campaign…”

Interestingly, Lehmann also compares the “anti-trafficking” campaigns in South Korea with California’s Proposition 35, about which I wrote last week.

Whorearchy in TW3 (#19)

Barcelona’s ill-considered and Swedish-flavored campaign to drive vulnerable women into poverty continues:

…[As of ] 17^th August, street prostitution will be totally banned in Barcelona…the…ban will persecute both prostitutes and clients; although the later will have to pay significantly higher fines. Clients might be fined between €1,000 and €3,000…[while] prostitutes will…[be fined] €100 [to] €750, depending on the situation…

This Week in 2011

I examined a claim that porn causes terrorism, described my “girls’ night out” with two other whore activists, discussed attempts to restrict adult behavior under the excuse of “protecting children”, expressed my opinion on a conflict between two activists, published the tale of an experiment in sexual robotics, looked at several examples of sex work scams and criticized the demonization of “sexting”.

This Week in 2010

What happens when an escort already knows her client personally or because he’s famous? How should clients treat hookers, and what sorts of presents do they give in addition to fees? What kinds of tricks do unscrupulous whores use? What do we think about people who try to “rescue” us? And what does one do with a talking painting?

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