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Posts Tagged ‘neofeminism’

Useful Idiots

Posted in Current Events, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, cops, dirty, end demand, ethics, law, Madonna/whore, neofeminism, shame, Swedish model, Useful Idiots on March 15, 2012| 36 Comments »

Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage. – Henry David Thoreau

As far as anyone can tell, Lenin never actually used the phrase “useful idiots” (or its Russian equivalent) to describe Soviet sympathizers in Western countries; it appears to originate with some journalist or historian and first appeared in an Italian newspaper in 1948. But it’s an apt description of ideologues so blinded by their own beliefs that they unwittingly support tyranny. As I’ve pointed out before, neofeminists fall into this category: they are so fixated on their monstrous jihad against men and male sexuality that they don’t realize predominantly-male political establishments used them to help establish the current regime of universal criminality, and continue to use them to further establish women as legal incompetents. If you’re angry at the current US drive to make abortion and/or birth control unavailable to many women, or at fascist “child protective services” in many Western countries, direct part of that anger toward the neofeminists who pushed “mandatory prosecution” laws and the Swedish Model. Once the precedent that a woman is incompetent to make her own decisions about her sexual relationships is firmly established, even a first-year law student can write a compelling argument that she isn’t competent to make decisions about the pregnancies and children which might result from such relationships, either.

But the useful idiots can’t see things like this, and even if they could they wouldn’t blame themselves for it. So they’re entirely unable to comprehend the danger of the weapons they’ve handed legislators via “end demand” rhetoric; consider the Georgia law I discussed in my column of one year ago today which defines a prostitute as a passive contraband object (much as drugs are defined). Or, the push by Washington insider Swanee Hunt to allow the government to take and retain DNA samples from virtually anyone the police feel like pointing a finger at:

For the last six years, police across the United States have been empowered by federal and state law to collect DNA from the people they arrest in order to build a government DNA database…[which] includes those who have yet to face trial as well as people who are later found innocent. Now…[prohibitionists] want to…scare people out of involvement in the sex trade…by threatening [them] with the possibility of being marked for life in a government database…In 2005, a provision added to the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act permitted the collection and indefinite retention of DNA from, as the Center for Constitutional Rights understood at the time, “anyone arrested for any crime whether or not they are convicted, any non-U.S. citizen detained or stopped by federal authorities for any reason, and everyone in federal prison.”

In the intervening years, there have been several challenges to pre-conviction DNA collection and retention, with some courts divided as to whether or not DNA collection is a violation of the Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure. Despite the questionable constitutionality…[Swannee Hunt’s group] Demand Abolition has commissioned a study proposing that men who buy sex should be added to government DNA databases. Demand Abolition…is engaged in a national campaign to increase arrests and criminal penalties for prostitution…[and] explicitly recognizes and exploits the consequences of being added to a government DNA database for people arrested merely under suspicion of committing misdemeanors, and who have not yet been tried or convicted. In fact, many people arrested for buying sex never go to trial; instead, they are routed to a growing number of scared-straight programs, sometimes known as “John’s schools,” offered by law enforcement. People arrested for buying sex are also disproportionately drawn from low-income communities, communities of color and immigrant communities…Some [are] arrested for not walking away from a decoy cop fast enough, which officers [take as]…”intent” to buy sex…Despite concerns that the…programs are creating an incentive for cops to step up policing…in order to collect fines…they’ve become part of policing practice in dozens of cities [and] are…part of a larger national…[push for] greater punishment…by organizations like the Hunt Alternatives Fund and its Demand Abolition program…

Constitutional considerations are apparently beyond the scope of organizations like Demand Abolition, which advocates for extra-legal means to, as it claims, abolish the sex trade, but which, in practice, threaten and jail people involved in the sex trade…Demand Abolition also advocates for a range of [extralegal] programs that use…public shame against people who pay for sex: placing their mugshots on billboards and Web sites, or seizing their cars and property — before trial or conviction. DNA collection may be an extension of these tactics…but…the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is among those who have argued that the Fourth Amendment applies to DNA…[and that] pre-conviction DNA collection runs the risk of reversing our legal standards of presuming innocence…There’s currently one case…on its way to the Supreme Court, which has yet to decide if it will hear the case this year.

…In its mission to eliminate all commercial sex, anti-prostitution campaigners like Demand Abolition have seized on an issue of inequity that sex workers have long identified. Women selling sex face far more severe criminal consequences than men who buy sex. So it could sound like gender equity to some ears when they claim that the solution is…to increase the consequences of arrest, to stoke a cultural and criminal atmosphere where no man would dare risk his reputation or livelihood over even one arrest. If it sounds a bit Victorian, you’re not wrong. Theirs is an understanding of prostitution that hasn’t advanced much in the last century, including the casting of women from the “helping class” — researchers, clinicians and philanthropists — as those who have the scientific, legal and moral authority to shame men out of buying sex. The difference today is, for activists who want to cloak their evangelism for a world without prostitution in science, there’s far more advanced science to draw from…

Defining men who buy sex as a special class is one way Demand Abolition attempts to make the case for enhanced policing…[but] in order to qualify…[as a] non-sex buyer [men] had to avoid some activities so common that nearly anyone who has been on the Internet twice in the past week may not pass…The claims that men who buy sex are more prone to criminal behavior than other men are what inform the call for a DNA database of men arrested for buying sex. In an interview this week with the Demand Abolition study’s most vocal author, Melissa Farley (who has referred to sex workers as “house niggers” in testimony before the Rhode Island legislature), she doubled-down on the study’s claims, stating that “[men who buy sex] are committing lots more crimes, including crimes associated with violence against women…” The number of men who reported that they committed one of these crimes is, even for the study’s size, not quite “lots.” Six men of the 100 identified as sex buyers reported they had committed assault and battery, as compared to the two men of the 101 non-buyers. Four sex buyers had possessed marijuana, versus two non-buyers…the real purpose of the database…is to act as a deterrent…Even if the establishment of DNA database could improve the lives of people in the sex trade, that isn’t the immediate goal, if it is a goal at all, of the Demand Abolition activists. Their focus, as has been the focus of nearly 150 years of anti-prostitution campaigns, is almost exclusively limited to tactics for scaring men out of buying sex. As they seek to define yet more people as criminals, they are also unconcerned with due process and the law itself.

The article is by Melissa Gira Grant, and is worth reading in its entirety. She and the attorneys she interviews recognize what prohibitionists don’t and won’t: that because there is no real way to distinguish a prostitute from any other woman, allowing the state to collect DNA from those accused of “intent to solicit prostitution” allows it to add any man to the database on the whim of a cop. And when this precedent is combined with that of female incompetence to allow women to be involuntarily added as well (for our own good, of course), you can bet Farley, Hunt and the rest of the usual gang of useful idiots will point fingers at “patriarchy”, the “pimp lobby”, or anybody else but themselves.

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Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs

Posted in Current Events, Perception, Tyranny, tagged archeofeminism, censorship, cops, dirty, East Asia, end demand, harm reduction, holidays, hysteria, India, law, neofeminism, Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs, rescue industry, sisterhood, surveillance, Swedish model, violence vs. sex workers on March 3, 2012| 19 Comments »

The prostitute is the scapegoat for everyone’s sins, and few people care whether she is justly treated or not. Good people have spent thousands of pounds in efforts to reform her, poets have written about her, essayists and orators have made her the subject of some of their most striking rhetoric; perhaps no class of people has been so much abused, and alternatively sentimentalized over as prostitutes have been but one thing they have never yet had, and that is simple legal justice. – Alison Neilans

Today is International Sex Workers’ Rights Day, which started in 2001 as a huge sex worker festival (with an estimated 25,000 attendees) organized in Calcutta by the Indian sex worker rights group Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee. Prohibitionist groups tried to pressure the government to revoke their permit, but DMSC prevailed and the following year decided to celebrate their victory by establishing the event as an annual one. As I wrote in my column of one year ago today,

Perhaps its Asian origin has slowed the day’s “catching on” in Europe and the Americas, but in the light of the current trafficking hysteria and the growing problem of American “rescue” organizations in Asia, I think it’s time to remedy that. Whores and regular readers of this column are acutely aware of the paternalistic attitude taken toward prostitutes by governments, soi-disant feminists and many others, and it’s no secret that many Westerners still have very colonial, “white man’s burden” ideas about Asia; imagine then the incredible paternalism to which Asian sex workers are subjected by American busybodies! I therefore think it’s a FANTASTIC idea to popularize a sex worker rights day which began in India; its very existence is a repudiation of much of the propaganda which trafficking fetishists foist upon the ignorant public.

As I’ve written in the past, American cultural imperialism in Asia is still very much a fact; despite our loathsome record on civil rights the US State Department presumes to judge other countries on their response to so-called “human trafficking”, based on secret criteria which obviously include classifying all foreign sex workers in a given country as “trafficked persons”. The annual “Trafficking in Persons Report” results in cuts in foreign aid to countries which don’t suppress their prostitutes brutally enough to please their American overlords, and therefore provokes mass arrests and mass deportations in the countries so targeted. Nor are these operations instigated only by governments; wealthy NGOs, enabled by money from big corporations looking for a tax dodge, from empty-headed celebrities in search of good publicity, and from clueless Americans desperate to “do something”, invade Asian countries and abduct prostitutes, forcing them into “rehabilitation” which consists largely of imprisonment under inhumane conditions and brainwashing them to perform menial labor for grueling 72-hour weeks at one-tenth of their former income. When the women escape from “rescue centers” or protest, they are said to be suffering from “Stockholm Syndrome” and their children are abducted and given away.

Nor is this sort of violence restricted to Asia; local US police agencies, often financed by wealthy prohibitionists like Swanee Hunt, routinely use prostitution as an excuse for mass arrests, robbery and grotesque intimidation tactics:

Tania Ouaknine is convinced the police are watching her. She’s not paranoid — it says as much on the red sign painted along the side on the hulking armored truck that’s been parked in front of her eight-room Parisian Motel for several days: “Warning: You are under video surveillance”…From the front bumper of the menacing vehicle, another sign taunts: “Whatcha gonna do when we come for you?”…[it’s loaded with] surveillance equipment…and [decorated]…with [Fort Lauderdale, Florida] police emblems…[which they] leave…parked in front of trouble spots…”They say I am running a whorehouse,” said the 60-year-old innkeeper…[who has] been the subject of an undercover operation targeting prostitution starting in September. Ouaknine was arrested on Oct. 28 on three counts of renting rooms to prostitutes for $20 an hour…She says she’s doing nothing illegal. “They’ve tried everything to shut me down and have failed,” she said. “Now they bring this truck to intimidate me and my customers.” Some neighbors surrounding the Parisian Motel say the truck is another form of constant police harassment. On a recent afternoon, Leo Cooper watched as two undercover…[cops molested] a group of men gathered at the corner. Within minutes, one of the men ran away. A second man was charged with loitering. “This is what happens here every day. We can’t sit outside without being harassed,” said Cooper…

This is why sex worker rights should concern everyone, even those who aren’t prostitutes, don’t know any prostitutes, have never hired a prostitute and don’t give a damn about the human rights of strangers: prostitution, especially as it’s viewed through the lens of “human trafficking” myth and “end demand” propaganda, is simply the latest excuse employed by governments in their campaign to control everything and everyone. The 2005 re-authorization of the so-called “Violence Against Women Act”…

…permitted the collection and indefinite retention of DNA from, as the Center for Constitutional Rights understood at the time, “anyone arrested for any crime whether or not they are convicted, any non-U.S. citizen detained or stopped by federal authorities for any reason, and everyone in federal prison.”

Using this, Swanee Hunt (through her “Demand Abolition” organization) is now pushing for collection and retention of DNA from every man cops can accuse of patronizing a sex worker…which given the low standards of “suspicion” favored by police, means essentially any male found by cops in certain neighborhoods or in the company of a woman to whom he isn’t married. While fanaticism-blinded neofeminists cheer, the war on “violence against women” (and by extension prostitution, which is defined as exactly that by neofeminists) is used to justify the same kind of egregious civil rights violations as those resulting from the “wars” on drugs and terrorism.

I think I can safely speak for virtually all sex workers when I say that we don’t want to be passive tools used by governments and NGOs as the excuse for tyranny; we simply want to be left alone to live our lives like anyone else, with the same rights, privileges, duties and legal protections as people in every other profession. We are not children, moral imbeciles or victims (except of governments, cops and NGOs), and we do not require “rescue”, “rehabilitation” or special laws to “protect” us from our clients, boyfriends, employers or families to a greater degree than other citizens. And we certainly don’t need others to speak for us no matter how much they insist we do. Almost a year ago, Elena Jeffreys published an article entitled “It’s Time to Fund Sex Worker NGOs” and I wholeheartedly agree; furthermore, I would argue that it’s long past time to defund “rescue” organizations and all the others who presume to speak for sex workers while excluding us from the discussion. How can someone who hates a given group and opposes everything its members want be considered a valid representative of that group? It would be like allowing MADD and Carrie Nation’s Anti-Saloon League to represent distilleries and bar owners. The very idea is absurd; yet that’s exactly what governments do, even in some countries where our trade isn’t criminal. Millions of people claim to care about the welfare of prostitutes, yet contribute to groups who advocate that we be marginalized, criminalized, censored, hounded, persecuted, registered, confined, stripped of our rights, robbed of our livelihoods and enslaved…all because they don’t like what we do for a living. It’s a lot like contributing to the KKK because you claim to be concerned about minorities.

If you actually care about the rights of women, or want to look like you do; if you’re opposed to imperialism and police brutality; if you support the right of people to earn a living in the jobs of their choice, and to organize for better work conditions; or even if you just want to protect yourself from yet another head of the ever-growing hydra of government surveillance, you should consider supporting the cause of sex worker rights. Fight prohibitionist propaganda, speak out for decriminalization, contribute to sex worker organizations, vote against candidates who espouse prohibitionist rhetoric, and oppose local efforts to increase criminal penalties against whores and/or our clients. And if anyone asks why you care, please feel free to quote from this essay or just hand them a copy. Sex worker rights are human rights, and laws or procedures that harm sex workers harm everyone.

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Why is Sex Such a Taboo?

Posted in History, Perception, Philosophy, Q & A, Tyranny, tagged Aphrodite, archeofeminism, censorship, dirty, ethics, harm reduction, law, lawheads, Madonna/whore, marriage, naturalness, neofeminism, pathologization of males, porn, psychology, sacred prostitutes, sex offender registry, stripping, tits, yin and yang on February 28, 2012| 71 Comments »

Both magic and religion are based strictly on mythological tradition, and they also both exist in the atmosphere of the miraculous, in a constant revelation of their wonder-working power. They both are surrounded by taboos and observances which mark off their acts from those of the profane world. – Bronislaw Malinowski

One year ago today I published “February Q & A”, in which I answer the questions, “Do you know an escort who works in my city?”, “Would you please give us a few pointers on how to perform oral sex on a man?” and “Why do so many more escorts kiss nowadays?” But every so often I get a single (complex) question whose answer is enough for a whole column; this is one of them.

Why is sex such a taboo in human culture and civilization? I am in my 20s and I find that the cultural conditioning is not allowing the natural sex urge to express itself naturally. Which social, economic and political factors are responsible for such a situation? The expression of sex urge has become more artificial in modern society. How much role does pornography play in making sex experience artificial? Do you think marriage is necessary in our modern society?

I suspect the sexual taboo derives from two different but related factors. First, consider birth; once our ancestors recognized the link between sex and babies they (understandably) developed a sense of awe about it. To them, it was magic (which in the end really just means “anything we don’t understand”), so they devised rules and ceremonies around it (such as marriage and sacred prostitution). And once religion and law get into the act, everything becomes more complicated and artificial. The development of the concepts of private property and the ability to organize society on a larger level than the tribe allowed the growth of cities and nations and the appearance of social classes, and heredity became important; since it was the responsibility of each family to care for its old, children became vital not merely as heirs but as caregivers in old age. Thus taboos developed around the generative organs, from which descendants sprang; if an enemy or evil spirit wished to harm one, causing his genitals to malfunction via magic could be an effective way. The ancients believed that words (especially names) had magical power, so people became reluctant to speak aloud of the genitals or sex acts, and it became more important to hide the organs and behaviors from sight and to describe them with euphemisms. In women, the mammae were sometimes hidden as well since they produce milk without which babies die.

Once such trends start, they continue by themselves even after people have forgotten the reasons they began in the first place. The modern welfare/police states have managed to turn children into a liability rather than an asset and birth control has made it possible to avoid them, yet we still pretend that every sex act is a magical ritual which may produce the most valuable of resources. We no longer believe that words have magical power, so we instead ascribe pseudoscientific explanations to the imagined “harm” they can cause and continue to legislate against them. And we cloak taboos against nudity with meaningless words like “decency” and pretend that for a woman to undress in front of strange men will somehow cause harm to society as a whole.

The increasingly-artificial expression of sex has nothing to do with porn (which has existed since man discovered art and language) and everything to do with burgeoning legal penalties for those who express sexual urges in anything resembling a natural fashion. Religious fundamentalists use the old excuses, neofeminists use new ones equally unfounded in reality, and governments seize upon any excuse whatsoever to harass, impoverish and imprison citizens. We’ve added new crimes to the old, and devised ever-more-fiendish punishments like “sex offender registration” for those who sin against the Holy Ritual of Sex; we’ve added an entirely new field of civil law in which individual women (no matter how warped or unrepresentative their views) are the sole arbiters of acceptable male sexual behavior; and in many cases we have elevated these previously-unprecedented civil torts into criminal law. People (especially men) are therefore increasingly wary of stepping into any of the arbitrary, subjective and often-invisible snares governments have designed to entrap them, and now have to consider any interaction with others (even their own children) as a soldier considers crossing a minefield; any misstep could result in swift and total disaster. Is it any wonder modern sex is artificial?

Finally, marriage. Though I’m a strong believer in traditional marriage, I think it’s like the riding of horses: a novel curiosity accessible only to the very few. And for nations to expend the time, money and effort they do on its continuance is equivalent to mandating horse lanes on motorways. It is an anachronism, and needs to be abolished; simply put, government needs to get out of the marriage game entirely except in its role as the adjudicator of private contracts. All marriages should be contracts written and freely entered by citizens of legal age, the number, sex and conditions of which are determined by nobody other than the participants. The function of the registrar would merely be to inspect the contract to ensure it contained all the necessary provisions (such as child custody and alimony/support) and no illegal ones. If such a contract were broken, the injured party could sue in civil court just as he could if any other contract were breached. There would be no such thing as “family law” or “divorce court”, which would remove the unfairness inherent in the current system and make it difficult for either party to use his or her natural advantages (money, sex or children) as a crowbar with which to leverage a lopsided deal into which no sane person would enter without compulsion.

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That Was the Week That Was (#8)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged A False Dichotomy, A Procrustean Bed, agency denial, animals, Australia, Backpage, brothels, censorship, cops, Counterfeit Comfort, dirty, disease, drivers, drugs, Dubai, ethics, Facebook, harm reduction, Hollywood, hysteria, internet, Israel, law, Louisiana, Madonna/whore, Massachusetts, Middle East, nanny state, Neither Addiction nor Epidemic, neofeminism, Nevada, Oklahoma, pimps, porn, psychology, Scapegoats, Sex Lies and Busybodies, sex offender registry, stereotypes, streetwalkers, Swedish model, Texas, The Course of a Disease, The More the Better, The Rescuers, TSA, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, What a Week! on February 26, 2012| 34 Comments »

A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped. – Norman Mailer

Just after midnight Wednesday night, I reached half a million total page views; thanks to all my readers for making it happen! And here are twelve other things that happened this week, in the form of updates:

The Rescuers (August 25^th, 2010)

This story is an update both to “The Rescuers” and “Bad Girls”…which, strangely enough, was published the day before:

…Erik Garcia…ventured on to [sic] the Houston back pages [sic] website with the idea of calling up an escort service…”I would preach to that person and try to get them [sic] to change their [sic] ways, and low [sic] and behold, I got mugged,” Garcia said. Investigators say the woman who answered…was Jamie Vaughn…who’s been arrested more than 10 times…for drugs and prostitution…she picked up Garcia…and allegedly robbed him…

I also made a comment on the story, commenting on its numerous factual errors and pointing out that, while I’m glad Garcia wasn’t hurt, one might point out that he attempted to trick someone and was tricked in return.

What a Week! (November 28^th, 2010)

Remember the man with half a head who was victimized by cops for trying to hire a hooker? Well, somebody who knows him made a video, as reported on Huffington Post:

…The Miami New Times, who first spotted the cheerful alleged prostitute-solicitor in its “Mugshots Friday” series, ran across a YouTube account…in which the gentleman himself explains the traumatic injury. Answering to the name “Halfy” and smoking what looks an awful lot like a blunt, he suggests it’s best to stay off drugs…[he] then alleges the president of the United States uses drugs, affirms his love of large women, and makes several sexually explicit remarks…

The video was removed from YouTube but is still available here, at least for now. As you can see Halfy’s statements aren’t anti-drug, they’re against impaired driving and marijuana criminalization.

The Coffee Klatsch (April 28^th, 2011)

Our friend Kelly James is now a full-time libertarian activist in Keene, New Hampshire; some of you have probably seen her “Don’t Strip Our Rights” video, which documents her handing out anti-TSA pamphlets clad only in lingerie. Well, it’s attracted a lot of attention, including this recent story on Huffington Post. Congratulations, Kelly, and good luck!

A Procrustean Bed (May 19^th, 2011)

Massachusetts has enacted a new law which defines all prostitutes as raped infants and all men who have anything at all to do with them as international gangsters. Fortunately, somebody at the Boston Herald thought to ask the actual experts their opinions:

…a sweeping new human-trafficking law…[is supposedly] aimed at protecting child prostitutes but also hits adult hookers’ clients with fines of up to $5,000 and up to 2½ years behind bars, as part of a broad crackdown aimed at snuffing out prostitution…women of the night…are treated as victims of human trafficking, still facing the same misdemeanor charges but with new rights to sue those who exploited them. “The penalties we’ve had have been far too low,” [said] Attorney General Martha Coakley…But one high-priced online hooker said she’s no victim — and she doesn’t know any women who are. “If you are an escort, you go into it of your own free will,” she said. “Absolutely no one is forced into doing this…” Another call girl who’s happily hooking online said she doesn’t feel like a victim either. Her johns even provide references from other prostitutes…Coakley said the law brings equity to enforcement that for decades targeted streetwalkers almost exclusively, often letting their clients and pimps walk away scot-free. “This is about leveling the playing field and making it fair…”

I’m sure you recognize the Swedish reek on all this, complete with Orwellian redefinitions. I wonder if any crafty attorney will be willing to take on a class-action suit in which escorts sue politicians for exploiting them for PR value by robbing them of a livelihood?

A False Dichotomy (June 22^nd, 2011)

In Pardis Mahdavi’s new book Gridlock: Labor, Migration, and Human Trafficking in Dubai she joins Laura Agustín and many others in criticizing the whole “trafficking” paradigm; here’s a review from Rights Work:

…Gridlock offers a fascinating report of the negative consequences…the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Dubai [suffer] as a result of…the UN Trafficking Protocol and the U.S. anti-trafficking law. Mahdavi focuses…[on] migrant workers, ranging from…construction workers to…sex workers…[and offers] a powerful critique of the current paradigm of international anti-trafficking law…arguing that [the laws] hurt the very people they seek to protect…[She says] contemporary anti-trafficking discourse has been inordinately preoccupied with the increased criminalization of sex work…[and] successfully argues for reframing trafficking as an international migration and human rights issue…the term trafficking is used…primarily [to] connote women…who have been duped or forced into sex work…Consequently, the exploitative conditions under which a large percentage of Dubai’s migrant non-sex worker population labors is not considered seriously…[but] all sex workers…are considered to be trafficked…This has been reinforced by US influence on trafficking discourse, particularly, the US TIP Report…which…political and social actors in the UAE experience…as an instance of US imperialism and hegemony…

…sex workers cannot be easily characterised solely as victims or agents…Any attempt to ignore this reality and dictate that all sex workers are ‘victims’ translates into rescue operations, which go against sex workers’ wishes…women who can legally enter…domestic work often choose to enter…sex work for the relative autonomy and higher pay that it offers. They prefer sex work to the highly exploitative working conditions…they face as domestic workers…[furthermore, maltreated] domestic workers [may]…run away from their employers…[rendering] their immigration status illegal…many women [thus] enter sex work through legal migration channels…[US pressure drove] the UAE to step up law enforcement efforts…tighten borders…and dramatically [increase] surveillance of female migrant workers…anti-trafficking discourse…renders abuse in non-sex work sectors invisible, while ‘fetishizing victimisation’ in the sex industry…

Mahdavi characterizes “trafficking” hysteria as a “global moral panic” and states that officials need to stop obsessing about sex work and border crossing and instead improve migrant workers’ rights by improving work conditions. We need more researchers like her, and more organizations like Rights Work which are more concerned with facts and helping people than with promoting anti-sex agendas.

In Denial (Part Two) (August 16^th, 2011)

I just love it when actresses clearly demonstrate that our professions haven’t diverged much: “…Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel…got engaged over the holidays…’She wants a fidelity clause in the prenup giving her at least $500,000 if he [strays]’…[Timberlake]…is offering a cash settlement with no fidelity clause or alimony…”

Counterfeit Comfort (August 28^th, 2011)

Control freaks won’t be satisfied until every conceivable behavior of “sex offenders” is criminalized; then they can get to work on expanding the list of registerable crimes to include everyone who isn’t a politician or cop:

A federal judge in…Louisiana has struck down a state law barring sex offenders from using Facebook and other social media…Chief Judge Brian Jackson ruled…that the law…imposed “a sweeping ban on many commonly read news and information websites”…The definition of “chat room” in the law is so broad…the court’s own website could fall under the ban, he said…

Unsurprisingly, a spokesman for Facebook said it supports the law, and the governor’s office opined that it was “necessary” to keep prostitutes, guys who relieved themselves in the wrong place while drunk and other “dangerous predators” from magically reaching through the internet to molest “innocent children.”

Neither Addiction nor Epidemic (December 4^th, 2011)

Sex isn’t the only thing busybodies attack with ridiculous exaggerations and addiction rhetoric:

…Britain’s boozing has reached ‘scandalous’ proportions…UK prime minister David Cameron declared last week, referring to what he called the “rising tide” of irresponsible drinking across the country. But it’s not just loud yobbish drunks…it’s also the ‘hidden alcoholics’, the middle-class wine drinkers…As well as emphasising the ‘anti-social behaviour’ alcohol causes, the government and campaigners alike are quick to point to what the Observer…called “the intolerable burden being placed on the health services”. Even by overindulging on the vino by ourselves at home, we are apparently being irresponsible and causing a public nuisance – by potentially contributing to what David Cameron claims could be between £17 billion and £22 billion per year spent on “alcohol-related costs”…The precise way such figures are arrived at is questionable. It is certainly the case that the amount of revenue brought in through taxation on alcohol covers the NHS bill for alcohol-related issues, with a couple of billion pounds left to spare. And, strikingly, the increase in hype about a drinking ‘epidemic’ in Britain coincides with…a steady drop in the amount…drunk by people of all ages…

Just one teensy thing more; remember how some of you thought I was being alarmist when I pointed out that a government which provides health care will eventually make laws against consensual behaviors that tend to increase medical bills?

The More the Better (January 9^th, 2012)

My heart lifts a little every time I see another article about how single mothers are increasingly turning to sex work to support their kids; here’s a long one entitled “The Family Prostitute” from LA Weekly. Think the prohibitionists will still be able to sell doom, degradation, “violence against women” and “no real choice” once most women at least have acquaintances who have been there, done that?

Scapegoats (January 26^th, 2012)

Though Oklahoma is in the “Bible Belt”, even there the old religious rationalizations for bestiality laws are giving way to “abuse” rhetoric:

…[After a] Pittsburg County woman [traded a dog for two laptops]…she discovered videos depicting a man engaging in sex acts with a dog…[and] drove all the way back to Owasso to alert police about the former computer owner…she worried the dog she traded for the computers was in danger of being molested…[police said] the nineteen year-old Owasso woman [who previously owned the laptops] was being investigated for sodomy and crimes against nature, but once she was booked in jail, she was held on a felony complaint of…distributing obscene material…

The story also states that Lori Hall, the head of Tulsa’s SPCA, said animals can be victims of sexual abuse, “just like children”. Does anyone else wonder what the Owasso police were smoking? The video showed a man shagging a dog, but they arrested a woman instead? Did they suspect her of being a shapeshifter? And now she’s accused of “distributing obscene material”, i.e. giving someone a computer with porn on it. Don’t they have any actual crime in Oklahoma, or is this just the usual police preference for victimizing women rather than going after criminals who might shoot back?

Sex, Lies and Busybodies (January 27^th, 2012)

Remember the claims that Aussie whores were spreading disease in mining towns?

Absolute total rubbish, was the response from Sexual Health Services specialist Dr Arun Menon to [newspaper claims]…that the rise in syphilis cases in the North West was due to dubious sex practices in illegitimate brothels in Mount Isa. “The problem isn’t with sex workers or brothels; it’s with young people aged 15 to 30…” Dr Menon said…Queensland Health’s senior director of Communicable Diseases, Dr Christine Selvey, also took exception to the article…”There have been NO cases of syphilis involving the sex trade industry, illegal or otherwise, or indeed the mining industry workforce,” she wrote.

The Course of a Disease (February 16^th, 2012)

According to an article in the Jerusalem Post, a new poll shows that 59% of Israelis oppose the proposed client criminalization law, and only 34% claim to support it. But considering that proponents of the Swedish Model never care what sex workers, health experts or anyone else thinks, I hardly believe this will matter.

One Year Ago Today

“Crime Against Society” discusses activists’ efforts to defeat Louisiana’s vile “Crime Against Nature” law.

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Olympe de Gouges

Posted in Biography, Harlotography, History, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged archeofeminism, courtesans, ethics, Europe, France, hysteria, neofeminism, stage names on February 25, 2012| 14 Comments »

Woman, wake up; the tocsin of reason is being heard throughout the whole universe; discover your rights. The powerful empire of nature is no longer surrounded by prejudice, fanaticism, superstition, and lies. The flame of truth has dispersed all the clouds of folly and usurpation. Enslaved man has multiplied his strength and needs recourse to yours to break his chains. Having become free, he has become unjust to his companion. Oh, women, women! When will you cease to be blind? What advantage have you received from the Revolution? – Olympe de Gouges, Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Citizen

When one reads the histories of famous women who started out as whores, one cannot fail to be struck by the way their harlotry is frequently downplayed, couched in euphemisms or completely ignored. Theodora and Nell Gwyn are described as “actresses”, Lola Montez as a “dancer” and Édith Piaf as a “street singer”. And Wikipedia diffidently describes Olympe de Gouges’ means of support with the evasive, “She chose to cohabit with several men who supported her financially.” One can almost excuse this Victorian stuffiness in 19^th-century biographies or those written for children, but in a modern account written for adult readers it constitutes an unforgiveable distortion of the truth designed to render the lives of “feminist” heroines palatable to prudish modern sensibilities and to disguise their refutation of the neofeminist dogma that prostitution is degrading. This would no doubt have infuriated de Gouges, who rejected traditional norms of female propriety, specifically listed women’s beauty as one of the qualities we “bring to the table”, and argued that the sexual freedom of women is an intrinsic part of our political and social freedom.

She was born Marie Gouze in the south of France sometime in 1748 (her birthday is variously reported, but was probably either on May 7^th or December 31^st) to the beautiful Anne Olympe Moisset, wife of a butcher named Pierre Gouze. The marriage was not a happy one, and Anne was rumored to have had an affair with Jean-Jacques Lefranc, the Marquis de Pompignan; this rumor, together with the facts that Gouze died when Marie was two and that his name does not appear on her birth certificate or baptismal records, convinced her that the Marquis was her biological father and contributed to her passionate support of the rights of illegitimate children. Historians now generally agree that Gouze probably was her real father, and that Marie preferred to believe otherwise for the same reasons many exceptional or unhappy children like to believe that they are “really” the child of someone other than their common or disliked parents. She also felt a burning desire to climb the social ladder, and a noble pedigree (even an illegitimate one) supported this drive in her mind.

Marie was not formally educated, and in 1765 her mother married her to Louis Aubrey, a minor government official from Paris. He died in 1768, a year after the birth of their son, Pierre; Marie was actually quite relieved because she despised him. She refused to conduct herself as a widow was supposed to, instead moving to Paris in 1770 (sources disagree as to whether she left Pierre with her mother or took him along) and changing her name to Olympe de Gouges. She supported herself as a courtesan, relying on her exceptional beauty and the carefully-encouraged rumor of her noble paternity to gain entry to higher social circles and a wealthier clientele. In 1773 she established a long-lived association with the wealthy and educated Jacques Biétrix de Rozières, who introduced her into the salons where she made a number of influential friends and professional contacts. Around this time she learned to read and write, and decided to become an author; accordingly, she embarked on a campaign to educate herself by reading everything recommended to her by her intellectual friends and clients. By 1784 she began to publish essays and plays, always on social and political topics; Zamore et Mirza, for example, had an anti-slavery theme. Unfortunately, her plays were terrible; the dialogue was awkward and wordy, and her grammar was very poor. But her essays made up in energy what they lacked in style; she was extremely passionate about human rights, and therefore supported equal rights for men and women and the abolition of slavery. She did not believe that men and women were the same, but rather argued that our different strengths and weaknesses combined to form a better and more balanced society.

Maximilien Robespierre

As political tensions increased in the 1780s, de Gouges advocated reforms which she believed would head off revolution, accomplishing change without violence. She urged the King to grant reforms, and when he failed to do so she suggested he abdicate in favor of a regent government which could bring the growing revolution under control. Her writings criticized and lampooned extremists on both sides, and she continued to preach moderation as conditions degenerated into chaos. Though she supported the Revolution, she abhorred its violence and the fact that women had been denied equal rights; she considered this a betrayal of one of its core principles, égalité. In October of 1789 she spoke before the Assembly and proposed a feminist agenda which included legal equality, marriage and divorce reform and better education for girls, but her concerns were dismissed and she grew increasingly disenchanted with the new government. In 1791 she organized a feminist association called the Society of the Friends of Truth and published Déclaration des Droits de la Femme et de la Citoyenne, a response to Déclaration des droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen (the primary declaration of Revolutionary principles).

The situation continued to spin out of control, and de Gouges became increasingly vociferous; she believed in a constitutional monarchy, and after Louis XVI was arrested and tried in the latter half of 1792 she spoke out against his execution. But the Jacobin party (led by Maximilien Robespierre) was in the ascendancy; Louis was executed in January of 1793, and on June 2^nd the moderate Girondists, de Gouge’s allies, were arrested. Her own arrest came in July, following her publication of a poster which demanded the people be given a choice between a republic, a federal government and a constitutional monarchy. Her house was searched and unpublished writings used against her at her trial three months later; she was found guilty of sedition and executed by guillotine at 4 PM on November 3^rd, just 18 days after Marie Antionette. Though she attempted to delay her fate by falsely claiming to be pregnant (a doctor examined her and pronounced otherwise), she mounted the scaffold without tears and said to the crowd, “Children of the Fatherland, you will avenge my death.”

Though her last words are not known to have come true in any direct fashion, I gave them a fictional consummation in my story of one year ago today, “Carnival”, which takes place almost four months later. Even in real life, though, history has a far higher opinion of Olympe de Gouges – courtesan, writer, philosopher and feminist in the truest and noblest sense of the word – than it has of her enemies, whose names have become synonymous with bloodthirsty tyranny.

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That Was the Week That Was (#6)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged A War for Peace, Africa, Backwards into the Future, censorship, condoms, cops, dirty, disease, Don’t Buy It, drugs, Europe, Facebook, Girls Girls Girls, harm reduction, hysteria, internet, Kenya, law, lawheads, libraries, marriage, Missouri, Namibia, neofeminism, Not An Addiction, porn, psychology, sporting events, stage names, stereotypes, stripping, The Dogs Do Bark, WWOHD?, yin and yang on February 19, 2012| 11 Comments »

Goodsex is any form of sex considered acceptable by the Party…all other forms…are considered sexcrime. – George Orwell, 1984

Eight updates from the sixth week of 2012:

Just Drawn That Way (July 21^st, 2010)

This is another of those “dog bites man” things which are only news because neofeminists have worked so hard to convince everyone that they’re not true:

New research is demonstrating what many people already knew from experience: Women lose interest in sex over time, while men don’t…researchers Sarah Murray and Robin Milhausen…of the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, asked 170 undergraduate women and men who had been in heterosexual relationships for anywhere from one month to nine years to report on their levels of relationship satisfaction, sexual satisfaction and sexual desire…The participants reported being generally satisfied with their relationships and sex lives, but women reported lower levels of desire depending on the length of their relationship…In fact, relationship duration was a better predictor of sexual desire in women than both relationship and sexual satisfaction. While the…decrease in female desire was small, it contrasts with male desire, which held steady over time…evolutionary theorists predict that male desire should remain perpetually high in order for them to produce many offspring, while female desire should decrease as their attention turns, historically, toward child-rearing…

…Hormonal changes that occur as couples move from the passionate early stage to the compassionate later stage…sometime between six and 30 months may also mediate changes in desire over time. Pharmaceutical companies are currently researching the impact of testosterone on women’s desire, but so far, the results have been inconclusive…In an earlier study, Murray found that women who reported more realistic expectations about what sex would be like in a long-term relationship also had higher levels of desire than those with less realistic expectations. “I think that individuals who expect to maintain the high level of excitement and passion that often exists in the first few months of a new relationship are setting up unrealistic expectations about what is to come and will be more disappointed when the desire and passion take on different forms,” she said…

I’ve frequently pointed out that both sexes need to view the others’ differing desires realistically: women need to either provide enough sex or expect that their men will get it elsewhere, and men who feel so driven need to hire professionals rather than entering into dangerous dalliances with amateurs.

Don’t Buy It (February 1^st, 2011)

In this column I provided links to a number of studies demonstrating that mega sporting events don’t attract increased numbers of prostitutes, but it never hurts to have a couple more. Here’s a new one from the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW):

A widespread belief that major sporting events fuel sex trafficking is unsubstantiated and has a negative impact on groups that campaigners purport to protect, undermining anti-trafficking objectives…Activists opposed to sex work say large groups of men attending the Olympics, FIFA World Cup and U.S. Super Bowl competitions create a high demand for sex work causing large numbers of women to be trafficked…[but] there is no correlation between those beliefs and the actual number of trafficking cases found, the report titled “What’s the Cost of a Rumour?” said…“Despite increased scrutiny by the media, political figures and law enforcement, there is no evidence that large sporting events cause an increase in trafficking for prostitution,” Julie Ham, the author of the study, said…GAATW reviewed literature from United Nations (U.N.) agencies, government offices, academic researchers, anti-trafficking organisations, sex-workers rights organisations, non-governmental organisations and the media.

The claim sex work will increase is perpetuated in part because it is useful as a fundraising strategy, as a way to grab attention and be seen to “do something” about trafficking, and as a more socially acceptable guise for prostitution abolitionist agendas and anti-immigration agendas, the report said…[but] anti-trafficking campaigns that are based on unproven claims can…result…in increased criminal penalties and human rights violations against sex workers…[and] controls on women’s movements, intended to stop trafficking, can actually lead to increased trafficking…

Even better, the mythbusting website Snopes has now officially listed the rumor as false, which will greatly accelerate its demise among the internet-savvy portion of the population.

Not an Addiction (February 11^th, 2011)

Why must every strong urge now be described as an “addiction”?

…A new study shows…the urge for a Facebook fix is at least as strong as the lure of tobacco and alcohol. The survey of 250 people was published…in the journal Psychological Studies, and revealed that sex and sleep were the two things most longed for during the day, yet the need to check Facebook was too hard for most to overcome…alcohol and cigarettes generated lower levels of desire than the urge to check social networks…

The fallacy here, of course, is the pretense that Facebook is a “substance” to which one can become addicted. It isn’t; it’s simply a process by which many people communicate with their social groups. The urge to check Facebook is nothing more or less than the desire for social interaction, which is extremely strong. If checking Facebook can be an “addiction”, then all human interaction is an “addiction” and the word loses all meaning.

Backwards Into the Future (March 30^th, 2011)

South Africa, once the human rights pariah of the Western world, is now advancing in its treatment of sex workers while the United States moves backward into the sort of human rights model one associates with third-world dictatorships. And now Kenya and Namibia are joining the list of African countries with a more civilized attitude toward sex work than that of the US:

…Nairobi is considering [decriminalization]…Mayor George Aladwa said…the council was working to harmonise by-laws with provisions of the new Constitution before allowing commercial sex workers to operate without restraint…“We will certainly find places to have them operate freely without any harassment. These are people who have dedicated themselves to do their work, there is no need to continue harassing them”…

And though Namibia isn’t that far along, it’s still way ahead of the US:

The Director of Namibia’s largest sex-workers’ organization, Rights not Rescue, has called upon the government to decriminalize prostitution as an important step in the fight against HIV and AIDS. Nicodemus Aochumub, better known as ‘Mama Africa’, [said]…“Government should decriminalize sex-work to [allow sex workers]…access to universal health care and to enable them to lay charges with the police without the fear of being arrested. Discriminating against prostitutes will inevitably increase the HIV rate because they are helplessly exposed to abuse, even by police…How can we fight this deadly disease when law-enforcement officers take away condoms from the girls…They throw them away and tell us we don’t deserve to use condoms. Some police officers force us into sex, otherwise we will end up in jail…We…are not free even 21 years after independence. Prostitution is work and feeds many families,” emphasized Mama Africa…HIV infection among sex-workers has declined significantly in countries where prostitution is legalised. Prostitutes in Germany, for instance, are registered with the legal and health authorities, are required to undergo regular medical checks and pay tax.

What Would Orrin Hatch Do? (April 17^th, 2011)

Is it so damned hard to just orient the computers so nobody can accidentally see what someone else is viewing?

…Libraries around the country are frequently troubled by the conflict of your First Amendment right to view “protected speech” and others who just have to watch pornography in a public library setting. The most recent publicly exposed incident in Seattle occurred at the Lake City branch of the Seattle library system. Julie Howe said in a public email that her 10-year-old daughter was disturbed after looking over the shoulder of a man last month as he watched pornography at the branch…Andra Addison, spokeswoman for the Seattle Public Library, told the Seattlepi.com: “…We don’t tell people what they can view and check out…Filters compromise freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment. We’re not in the business of censoring information.” However, in 2010 the State Supreme Court ruled in favor of a library that had taken a much less permissive attitude toward porn on its computers. The court ruled that public libraries in Washington can filter Internet content to block things like pornography…Howe says she understands the predicament the library is in, but wants there to at least be signs warning patrons to watch out where they look…New Yorkers can [also] watch internet porn at the city’s public libraries thanks to a policy of free speech protected by the First Amendment, the New York Post reported in April…

Apparently, the Jefferson Parish Library is less averse to censorship; when I logged on there with my husband’s laptop on February 6^th, the first thing that popped up on my screen was a warning that I better not look at “adult” materials, or else. So I made sure I viewed my red umbrella picture, just on principle.

A War for Peace
(May 12^th, 2011)

I have no real comment to make about this, but I figured my male readers might enjoy these pictures of Femen’s latest protest.

Girls, Girls, Girls!
(December 15^th, 2011)

There’s more than one way to skin a lawhead:

At least one Kansas City adult business is taking a creative approach to increasing attendance while attempting to follow tough new regulations limiting what its dancers can wear onstage. Bazooka’s…now [features]…large, flat-screen televisions adjacent to the stage. While a dancer performs live with her intimate areas covered, as the law requires, a video of the same dancer — with those areas exposed — appears on the screens…The latest strategy may help the business sidestep a new state law requiring “sexually oriented businesses” to close at midnight…Had the dancers exposed those areas in the flesh they would have broken the law, or at least forced the club to close at midnight. But because they appeared on screen, [owner Dick] Snow said, they’re as legal as a general-interest movie. “There is some full frontal nudity in these videos, but there’s full frontal nudity in every theater in the city,” he said. Dick Bryant, an attorney who represents adult businesses, said, “The projection of the images of the nude dancers fully complies with the statutes and the U.S. Constitution”…A spokesman for the Kansas City Police Department said the department had received no complaints about Bazooka’s videos and said it did not appear that the establishment was violating any local or state laws…

Hark, Hark, the Dogs Do Bark (January 11^th, 2012)

Everyone whose mind isn’t hopelessly mired in neofeminist dogma knows that hormones cause most differences in gendered behavior, but a new study shows which genes are affected:

…a team of scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) has uncovered many genes influenced by…testosterone and estrogen that…govern several specific types of male and female behaviors in mice. The UCSF team selectively turned many of these genes off one by one and found they could manipulate individual behaviors in the mice, like their sex drive, desire to pick fights, or willingness to spend extra time caring for their young. “It’s as if you can deconstruct a social behavior into genetic components,” said Nirao Shah, MD…”Each gene regulates a few components of a behavior without affecting [others]”…Identifying how genetic differences in our brains account for the differences in our behavior may also be a starting point for understanding how to better address human mental illness and neurodegenerative conditions in which such gender differences exist. For example, autism is four times more common in males than in females…

Of course, this won’t convince “true believers”, but every such discovery makes it harder for them to peddle their lies to others.

One Year Ago Today

“John Law” presents four short articles about cops and hookers.

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That Was the Week That Was (#5)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged Africa, Australia, brothels, California, Canada, censorship, condoms, cops, cosmetic surgery, disease, end demand, Europe, Florida, genitalia, Good News-Bad News, harm reduction, hysteria, Islam, law, marriage, neofeminism, Netherlands, psychology, rescue industry, Scientific Detachment, semen, South Africa, St. James Infirmary, Swedish model, tabula rasa, teachers, The Camel's Nose, The Dogs Do Bark, The Enlightenment Police, underage, Welcome to Our Updates, welcome to our world, Who Did Your Tits?, yin and yang on February 18, 2012| 11 Comments »

The good news is that Jesus is coming back. The bad news is that he’s really pissed off. – Bob Hope

Three new stories and six updates from the fifth week of 2012.

Good News, Bad News

Sometimes, reading stories about prostitution law is like the classic joke format. GOOD NEWS: 77% of Canadians support decriminalization of prostitution and UNAIDS has condemned criminalization of sex work (including the “Swedish Model”, “end demand” schemes and the rescue industry) as a danger both to sex workers and to public health:

…Forced rescue and rehabilitation practices lower sex workers’ control over where and under what conditions they sell sexual services and to whom, exposing them to greater violence and exploitation…this leads to social disintegration and a loss of solidarity and cohesion (social capital) among sex workers, including reducing their ability to access health care, legal and social services. Low social capital is known to increase vulnerability to sexually transmitted infections among sex workers and therefore has a detrimental impact on HIV prevention efforts…undermining sex worker organisations is one of the most important negative effects of law enforcement practices…anti-trafficking efforts typically ignore the possibility of engaging sex workers as partners…[even though they] are often best placed to know who is being trafficked into commercial sex and by whom, and are particularly motivated to work to stop such odious practices…Organised groups of sex workers are also best placed to establish safe working norms within the sex industry, and influence other[s]…to ensure that trafficked adults and children are not retained in sex work…

BAD NEWS: Western Australia is starting to buy into the “trafficking” narrative:

Federal police have launched an operation to rescue people trafficked into WA for forced labour, prostitution and servile marriages. There are fears that an increasing number of women are being brought to Perth and forced into the city’s sex industry. Supt Glyn Lewis…said human trafficking was insidious and abhorrent and many victims were never found…There have been only 14 convictions for human trafficking since legislation came into force in 2003. People working in the area in Perth fear trafficking is a real and emerging issue “under the radar” of authorities and the public. Australian Catholic Religious Against Trafficking in Humans said the problem had to be addressed…

None of these people stop to consider that maybe the reason that there are so few convictions and “many victims were never found” is that there was no crime in the first place. But hey, we can’t let facts get in the way of hysteria and fear-mongering by cops and religious groups.

Scientific Detachment

The ability to look at sensitive subjects dispassionately and to present evidence without emotion is an admirable one, but as Professor G.S. Brindley (the doctor who developed the first medical treatment for erectile dysfunction) discovered in 1983, it’s probably best not to assume that the majority of one’s audience possesses that capacity to any great degree. This January 27^th article on the Discover magazine blog explains, and since synopsizing it in any way would do it a disservice, I’ll just leave you with the link.

Fundraiser for St. James Infirmary

I’ve been asked to publicize an online fundraiser for St. James Infirmary, which provides compassionate healthcare and social services for sex workers in San Francisco. It will be held tomorrow (February 19^th, 2012) at 3 PM EST on BlogTV; even if you can’t attend please spread the word!

Week 5 of 2012 Updates

Nothing in the Dark (August 8^th, 2010)

This story demonstrates not only the reason for considering condoms a “safety net” against disease rather than a first line of defense, but also the reason I’m hesitant to entrust my health to a government bureaucracy:

…South Africa’s leading anti-AIDS group said…that…faulty condoms are among more than 1.35 million handed out at the African National Congress’ 100^th birthday party…[they were] recalled but the Treatment Action Campaign said no warning has been issued to people that they may have carried away defective condoms…The third recall in less than five years raises questions about the quality of some of the 425 million-plus condoms that the government gives away each year, and the competence of the South African Bureau of Standards [SABS] that is supposed to ensure their quality…In 2007, the government recalled more than 20 million defective condoms…but recovered only 12 million…a [previous] recall…[resulted after] a testing manager at [SABS took] a bribe to certify the faulty contraceptives…

[AIDS activist Sello Mokhalipi] said people started coming with complaints about the condoms…three days after the celebrations ended…”We poured water into the condoms and they were leaking, not just in one place, they were leaking like a sieve,” he said. Looking at them, “you can see there are small pores” like pinpricks…the Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce, said many of the 10,000 to 15,000 prostitutes they work with often complain about the free government condoms…[so] they instead use a brand provided by an international charity…South Africa’s government sources its condoms from several companies and rebrands them with its colorful CHOICE packaging, in bright blue, red, yellow and green…

Any time there’s a lucrative government contract, there’s going to be graft. And anything sourced out to the lowest bidder…

Who Did Your Tits? (October 1^st, 2010)

Most women who have boob jobs feel they confer psychological and/or financial benefits, but I never considered this possibility:

A 41-year-old Florida woman says the breast augmentation surgery she had three months ago saved her life…her ex-fiancé’s new girlfriend…attacked her…stabbing her repeatedly in the left side of her chest…the knife had punctured the implant and she was soaked with saline. Doctors say the salt water and walls of the implant prevented a deadly blow.

The Camel’s Nose (October 2^nd, 2010)

Yet another spooge sneaker; this one is so reprehensible he constitutes a one-man argument in favor of sex offender registries:

…Mark Berndt, a third-grade teacher [at Miramonte Elementary School in California]…is charged with committing lewd acts on 23 boys and girls, ages 6 to 10, between 2005 and 2010…[he] was removed from classwork in January 2011 and fired within the month, but only parents of children identified as victims were told…some angry parents…complained that they only learned of the investigation through the media after Berndt’s arrest this week. School officials and investigators said proper procedures were followed…but…two former students…said school officials were informed about [Berndt’s] odd behavior two decades ago…

…Berndt is suspected of snapping nearly 400 photographs of…students, some with a giant Madagascar cockroach from a classroom terrarium on their faces. Others were blindfolded or had clear tape over their mouths, and some were shown with a spoonful of milky liquid placed near their lips…The photo sessions were treated as a game and some children were given sperm-laced cookies to eat as treats…The investigation began in the fall of 2010 when a film processor became suspicious about the photographs and turned them over to…police…an investigator…found a blue spoon…in a trash can [in Berndt’s classroom] that appeared to be the one seen in the photographs, but it took months before analysis determined there was semen on the spoon and more time before DNA testing matched it to Berndt…Meanwhile, investigators kept trying to identify children in the photographs…

I would hope that prosecutors build their cases on photographic and DNA evidence, and that they, cops and parents have the sense not to question the children or (even worse) subject them to the ordeal of trial participation; adult eyewitness testimony is unreliable at best, and that of children is often worse than useless. Alas, I fear that’s a vain hope; adults just can’t resist traumatizing young children by subjecting them to frightening and confusing interrogations and filling their heads full of horrible images, thus exploiting them just as monstrously as the criminal did.

Welcome To Our World (January 20^th, 2011)

I think my readers can answer David Reber’s questions, which he seems to consider rhetorical:

…What could a teacher possibly know about education? Countless arguments used to denigrate public school teachers begin with the phrase “in what other profession…” and conclude with practically anything the anti-teacher pundits find offensive about public education…In what other profession, indeed. In what other profession are the licensed professionals considered the LEAST knowledgeable about the job? You seldom if ever hear “that guy couldn’t possibly know a thing about law enforcement – he’s a police officer”, or “she can’t be trusted talking about fire safety – she’s a firefighter.” In what other profession is experience viewed as a liability rather than an asset? You won’t find a contractor advertising “choose me – I’ve never done this before”, and your doctor won’t recommend a surgeon on the basis of her “having very little experience with the procedure”. In what other profession is the desire for competitive salary viewed as proof of callous indifference towards the job? You won’t hear many say “that lawyer charges a lot of money, she obviously doesn’t care about her clients”, or “that coach earns millions – clearly he doesn’t care about the team”…For no other profession do so many outsiders refuse to accept the realities of an imperfect world. Crime happens. Fire happens. Illness happens…People accept all these realities, until they apply to public education…

Well, Mr. Reber, there is at least one other…

The Enlightenment Police (October 1^st, 2011)

One would think the usually-sensible Dutch would have waited to see what the European High Court will do with the French version of this first:

The Dutch…government plans to ban Muslim face veils…”People should be able to look at each other’s faces and recognize each other when they meet,” the interior affairs ministry said…The ban will also apply to balaclavas and motorcycle helmets when worn in inappropriate places, such as inside a store, Deputy Prime Minister Maxime Verhagen told reporters, denying that this was a ban on religious clothing…The face-veil law, which still needs to win approval in both houses of parliament, excludes clothing worn for security reasons such as that worn by firemen and hockey players, as well as party clothing such as Santa Claus or Halloween costumes. The ban does not apply to religious places, such as churches and mosques, nor to passengers on airplanes or en route via a Dutch airport…

Hark, Hark, the Dogs Do Bark (January 11^th, 2012)

Since neofeminists insist that all gendered behavior is “socially constructed”, I’m sure they’ll deny these findings just as creationists deny fossils and carbon dating:

Testosterone makes us overvalue our own opinions at the expense of cooperation, research from…University College London has found…Problem solving in groups can provide benefits over individual decisions as we are able to share our information and expertise. However…collaborating too closely can lead to an uncritical groupthink, ending in decisions that are bad for all…research has shown that people given a boost of the hormone oxytocin tend to be cooperative. Now…researchers have shown that…testosterone has the opposite effect — it makes people act less cooperatively and more egocentrically.

Dr Nick Wright and colleagues…[tested] 17 pairs of female volunteers who had previously never met…On one…day…[they] were given a testosterone supplement; on the other day, they were given a placebo. [Men were not used because supplements can trigger a drop in their own testosterone production, invalidating the results]…as expected, cooperation [in a task] enabled the group to perform much better than the individuals alone…but, when given a testosterone supplement, the benefit of cooperation was markedly reduced. In fact, higher levels of testosterone were associated with individuals behaving egocentrically…”Most of the time, this allows us to seek the best solution to a problem, but sometimes, too much testosterone can help blind us to other people’s views,” [said Dr. Wright.] “This can be very significant when we are talking about a dominant individual trying to assert his or her opinion in, say, a jury”…

One Year Ago Today

“Not the Same Tree” showcases a Detroit reporter’s excellent and very perceptive article about the federal persecution of an escort service.

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The Anti-Life Equation

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, Words, tagged abortion, agency denial, anecdote, censorship, comics, cops, ethics, law, lawheads, nanny state, neofeminism, psychology on February 17, 2012| 31 Comments »

Suppose that humans happen to be so constructed that they desire the opportunity for freely undertaken productive work. Suppose that they want to be free from the meddling of technocrats and commissars, bankers and tycoons, mad bombers who engage in psychological tests of will with peasants defending their homes, behavioral scientists who can’t tell a pigeon from a poet, or anyone else who tries to wish freedom and dignity out of existence or beat them into oblivion. – Noam Chomsky

When I was writing That Was the Week That Was (#3) I started thinking about the name of “The Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine”, and how it cleverly forces its opponents to give it a compliment and essentially promote its own propaganda just by saying its name. As I explained in that column, the PCRM is “a fanatical animal-rights group with ties to PETA which relies primarily on scare tactics and gross-out ads in its continuing attempt to impose veganism on everyone, and less than 5% of its members are physicians.” But because its name contains these positive, respectable words, one can’t speak of opposing them without sounding to the uninitiated as though one opposes physicians or responsible medicine.

This is of course the same tactic employed by the prohibitionists; they call themselves “abolitionists” or “anti-trafficking activists” or the like, to imply that anyone who is against them is in favor of slavery. It’s a cheap trick, but it does put one’s opponents at a subtle disadvantage; that’s why I refuse to use such terms. When it’s an actual name I use initials wherever possible, and when it’s a common descriptor I substitute my own; thus I call them “prohibitionists” rather than “abolitionists” (because they do in fact work for prohibition of something), and anti-prostitute or anti-sex worker activists rather than “anti-trafficking” or “anti-prostitution” activists. As Furry Girl rightly points out, anti-sex worker activists try to pretend they’re not against people but rather practices and concepts, but in reality the laws and policies they advocate result in the persecution, marginalization, imprisonment, rape and death of actual human beings. They claim to be against ideas, but are really against people, and should be so labeled.

The day after I wrote that column, another good example of it turned up; an Anne Summers essay entitled “There is No Such Thing as a Pro-Life Feminist” appeared in The Age, and as I saw that title “tweeted” over a dozen times it began to sound ever more bizarre to me. Yes, I understand that Anne Summers was using the anti-abortion people’s own preferred term, and that by “pro-life” she really meant “anti-abortion”, so why didn’t she just say “anti-abortion”? Why give them what they want? People who want something banned or outlawed (whether it be meat, prostitution or abortion) need to be described as “anti” whatever it is, not “pro” some vague positive concept like “responsibility”, “equality” or “life”. Summers’ title makes it sound as though she’s actually calling her fellow feminists mass murderers or something. If feminists aren’t pro-life, what does that make them? Anti-life?

The late, great Jack Kirby was a prolific comic book writer and artist from the 1930s to the 1980s who created many well-known characters including Captain America, the Hulk, Iron Man and the Fantastic Four. But one of his most intriguing creations was the godlike supervillain Darkseid, ruler of an evil planet named Apokolips. All of Darkseid’s complex machinations were aimed toward one end: the discovery of a mysterious formula called the “Anti-Life Equation”, which he believed was somehow hidden in the minds of humans. Despite what you might think, this equation was not a death ray or anything like that (Darkseid already had one of those, the “Omega Force”), but rather a means of destroying all free will and controlling every sentient being. Kirby understood (as “pro-life” fanatics, opponents of assisted suicide and others of their ilk do not) that for a sentient being, “life” is not mere biochemical function but rather the capacity to make one’s own decisions. To “live” in the biological sense while being denied volition, agency and the control of one’s own body and mind is not to be a man or woman; it is to be the equivalent of a cabbage or a sponge, a thing without freedom, dignity or humanity. It is not life at all, and anyone who opposes the right of human beings to make their own choices, no matter what lying excuse he gives, is therefore anti-life.

Kirby is said to have intended Darkseid to be the apotheosis of every power-mad tyrant there ever was, so one might say there is a little bit of him in every petty dictator on Earth. Every prohibitionist, moralist, crypto-moralist, lawhead, control freak, cop and politician; every censor who wants to prohibit certain substances, sex acts, ideas, tools, words, images or types of clothing; every busybody who wants to deny others the right to privacy, self-defense, profit, free movement or free association; every official or “concerned citizen” who thinks it’s his job to tell others what to eat, watch, read, think, say and do; and every costumed ape who thinks he has the right to brutalize the bodies, steal the property and control the movements of those without a costume, has in his mind a minute fragment of the anti-life equation. It doesn’t matter whether they claim to be “pro-life”, “pro-woman”, “pro-law”, “pro-safety”, “pro-family”, “pro-health”, “pro-morality”, “pro-equality”, “pro-Homeland”, “pro-nature”, “pro-God” or pro-anything else, because in reality they’re all anti-choice and anti-freedom, and therefore anti-life.

One Year Ago Today

“An Educated Idiot” presents a study of street prostitution in New York City by a sociologist who, while he seems to sincerely want to get at the truth, has to be among the most credulous people on Earth.

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The Course of a Disease

Posted in Current Events, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, Australia, brothels, Canada, censorship, cops, Denmark, dirty, disease, East Asia, end demand, Europe, France, hysteria, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, law, Middle East, neofeminism, New Zealand, Norway, porn, Sweden, Swedish model, The Course of a Disease, United Kingdom on February 16, 2012| 20 Comments »

This sickness doth infect the very life-blood of our enterprise. – William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part One (IV,i)

If you pay any attention at all to the “debates” amateurs indulge themselves in over how prostitution should be “handled” or “regulated” (discussions that rarely, if ever, involve actual prostitutes), you’ve encountered the term “Swedish Model” (AKA “Nordic Model”). My column of one year ago today contained a simple explanation of this “model”, its shockingly sexist basis and a short synopsis of its progress at that time:

The Swedish Model…is based on the premise that women are moral imbeciles who are psychologically incompetent to determine the conditions under which we will consent to sex, and the state therefore assumes the right to set those conditions for us. Like girls under the age of consent in most countries, women in Swedish Model countries are neither allowed to consent to certain sex partners, nor can they be held liable for their actions if they violate the law; since only men are considered fully competent to make sexual decisions, Swedish Model law only punishes men for violating that law. Up until now only three Scandinavian countries (Norway, Sweden and Iceland) had such a low opinion of women’s competency, but despite the total lack of demonstrable positive results the Swedish disease appears to be spreading; several jurisdictions in the United States appear to be flirting with it, a neofeminist group presumed to “demand” that Canada adopt it last year, Labour MSP Trish Goodman has repeatedly tried to force it through the Scottish parliament, and England only narrowly averted it by replacing its last Labour government. The latest country to jump on the repressive, misogynistic bandwagon is Ireland…

Though I have nothing to add about the model itself, I thought a report on how the various patients exposed to this political disease were faring might prove instructive.

Sweden: “Patient Zero” is like a psychotic HIV-positive man who makes an effort to give it to as many others as possible. The Swedish government is actually proud of its deeply-twisted view of male-female relations and works hard to export it, even to the point of producing pamphlets and sending representatives to lie to other governments about its “success”. But despite its grandiose claims about overwhelming public support for the “model”, its attempts to brainwash toddlers so as to ensure future support for it and its harsh suppression of women who dare to challenge its “philosophical” basis, the truth is that 81% of Swedes say they are “angry” about the law and 10% of Swedish girls report having taken money for sex at least once. A few brave Swedish politicians keep opposing the law while others use their positions to run clandestine brothels, and there is no evidence sex work has decreased even one iota, just as it never decreases under any criminalization regime.

Australia: The Aussies appear highly resistant to this particular malady, and have even attempted to help others overcome it by releasing a report which “dismiss[es] it as a load of politically-motivated codswallop unsubstantiated by facts.”

Canada: The efforts of neofeminists to infect this portion of the Commonwealth have failed dramatically, and despite government efforts to dehumanize prostitutes and deny them rights, the opinions of the public, the media and the courts are all moving toward decriminalization. At the time of this writing a constitutional challenge against the anti-whore laws is in progress, and the Himel Decision striking down the laws in Ontario is still being discussed by an appeals court.

Denmark: Though sex worker advocates are fighting it and few politicians support it, “sex trafficking” fetishists have even succeeded in exposing this usually-sensible country to the Swedish disease. Though the fetishists would like to believe they have a chance of full infection, Laura Agustín tells me advocates there are reasonably confident that it hasn’t a chance.

Europe: Despite the fact that individual European countries have their own prostitution policies and most are quite happy with their own versions of legalization, the soi-disant “European Women’s Lobby” managed to scam public funds to produce a ridiculous “end demand” commercial; some highly-placed officials were not at all pleased by the fact that the Swedish-born (and openly anti-whore) “Commissioner for Home Affairs” gave public funds to a fringe group to advance a personal agenda.

France: The French have long had a love-hate affair with filles de joie which rivals that of the United States in its depth and intensity; after the Second World War whores became the scapegoats for Gallic self-loathing and the country has been officially “abolitionist” since 1960 (except in the military, which provided its troops with whores until about 15 years ago). France is now “considering” the Swedish Model, but those who support it are in conflict with those pushing total criminalization. And since France doesn’t shy away from criminalizing clothes and opinions, why not motivations for sex as well?

Iceland: The Swedish infection is so acute in this westernmost outpost of Scandinavia that it might well prove terminal. In addition to prostitution, Iceland has also criminalized stripping and is working on banning porn; this climate has bred a large group of misandrist vigilantes who use the laws to stalk and attack men and who demand censorship powers over all print, electronic and internet communication in the country.

Ireland: Irish sex worker advocates have fought the massed forces of prohibitionists for a year now, despite interference from anti-whore behemoth Google and media-supported “sex trafficking” hysteria very similar to that in the American media; as in the US, the chief struggle for Irish prostitutes is simply to be heard (much less considered) above the Puritanical din raised by neofeminists, fanatical Christians and control-freak politicians. I’ll be keeping an eye on Turn Off the Blue Light and Feminist Ire for further developments; the matter seems poised to come to a head in the spring.

Israel: The Knesset (Israeli parliament) “Ministerial Committee on Legislation” unanimously approved a client criminalization bill on February 12^th; it now passes to the full legislature for consideration. And if this recent editorial from the Jerusalem Post (which portrays all women as helpless moral imbeciles at the mercy of caricatured mustache-twirling male villains) is any indication, Israeli plague carriers are just as willing to use outrageous claims and blatant lies to promote their agenda as those in the US and Scandinavia.

Norway: The second country infected by this vile illness hasn’t completely succumbed yet; as I reported on February 5^th the country’s official report to UNAIDS listed significant public health and human rights problems which it directly blamed on the ban. Of course, the opinion of one government department won’t change anything, but since Norway isn’t as politically invested in the “model” as Sweden is, it could be some small sign of hope.

United Kingdom: This patient offers the most hopeful prognosis after Canada; despite a close brush with an especially virulent case in 2010, Britain now seems to be moving in the direction of decriminalization. The Association of Chief Police officers supports it, as does the new assistant commissioner at Scotland Yard, and in December several politicians met with Tim Barnett, the British-born New Zealand MP who sponsored decriminalization there. Recent developments in Scotland could lead to problems, but it’s too soon yet to tell.

United States: The US State Department continues to pour money into “anti-trafficking” campaigns which encourage persecution and abuse of prostitutes in countries which depend on American charity (especially in the Far East), and while these campaigns aren’t directly tied to the “Swedish Model” they often feature “end demand” rhetoric which directly meshes with it. In addition, wealthy American individuals with personal agendas and corporations eager to capitalize on popular hype continue to bankroll “rescue” operations which victimize women and children and “end demand” efforts which result in the arrest and officially-sanctioned robbery of hundreds of men.

All in all, then, I think we can be guardedly optimistic about the danger of this epidemic continuing to spread. Though some countries (Ireland and the US) seem to be sinking into the disease, others (such as Canada and the UK) appear not only to have avoided the sickness, but to be headed in the healthy direction of family members like Australia and New Zealand. In most countries (such as France and Denmark) it looks like business as usual, and though two of the three full-blown cases appear to be worsening, the third has shown a few faint signs of improvement. I’ll continue to keep all the patients’ charts up to date, and let y’all know as the prognosis changes for each one.

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Lupercalia

Posted in Current Events, History, Holidays, Perception, tagged Aphrodite, brothels, courtesans, dirty, holidays, neofeminism, Rome, slavery, streetwalkers, United Kingdom on February 14, 2012| 20 Comments »

I passed by the brothel as though past the house of a beloved. – Franz Kafka

Today is Valentine’s Day, the modern version of the Roman Lupercalia (as explained in my column of one year ago today). Because the festival was dedicated in part to Lupa (who, as I explained in “Larentalia”, may have actually been a courtesan rather than a wolf), it’s appropriate that I use it to present yet another small peek inside the world of Roman harlots, especially in light of a recent discovery which I’ll mention in a bit. By providing a window into the minds of prohibitionists, however, this discovery actually tells us a great deal more about the deeply sick modern view of sex than it does about the healthy Roman one.

Longtime readers have probably noticed that I mention the Romans quite often, and in fact even have a “Rome” post tag with more entries than the tags for a number of modern places. The reason for this is simple: though people often refer to “ancient Rome” in order to distinguish it from the modern city, there was nothing “ancient” about Imperial Rome; in many ways, it was the first modern civilization. Historians have long considered the Battle of Actium (31 BCE), at which the forces of Octavian defeated those of Mark Anthony, the dividing line between the ancient and modern worlds. And that isn’t just because of its convenient proximity to the beginning of the Common Era; in fact, it might be argued that if not for the world created by the Romans, the Christian religion could never have developed enough to inspire a calendar (built, of course, on the Roman one reformed by Julius Caesar). The entire Western world was shaped by the Romans; we owe most of our holidays, many of our legal traditions and political structures, a good fraction of our titles and offices, the names and locations of many of our places and the languages spoken by ¹/₆ of the world’s population to them.

Unfortunately, one of the ways in which we have not followed in their footsteps is in our collective treatment of whores. The Romans respected the institution of harlotry; a number of goddesses were worshipped with acts of prostitution, and Roman society recognized a bewildering variety of different types of hookers. Even the very word “prostitute” derives from a Roman term for an unregisted sex worker; registered ones, especially those who worked in brothels, formed an important part of the Roman economy. But since modern “authorities” have a far less reasonable and practical attitude toward sex in general and sex work in particular, they decline to learn from the sensible Roman example and some even do the opposite by trying to rewrite history to reflect not the modern reality, but rather modern mythology. This January 4^th article from The Guardian (first called to my attention by regular reader Aspasia) is an example:

[A recently-discovered Roman coin] made from bronze and smaller than a ten pence piece…depicts a man and a woman engaged in an intimate act. Experts believe it is the first example of its kind to be found in Britain. It lay preserved in mud for almost 2,000 years until it was unearthed by an amateur archaeologist with a metal detector. On the reverse of the token is the numeral XIIII, which historians say could indicate that the holder handed over 14 small Roman coins called asses to buy it. This would have been the equivalent of one day’s pay for a labourer in the first century AD. The holder would then have taken the token to one of the many Londinium brothels and handed it to a sex slave in exchange for the act depicted on the coin…

…The token has been donated to the Museum of London, where it will be on display for the next three months. Curator Caroline McDonald said: “This is the only one of its kind ever to be found in Great Britain. When we realised it was a saucy picture, we had a bit of a giggle but there’s also a sad story behind it because these prostitutes were slaves. It has resonance with modern-day London because people are still being sold into the sex trade.” The object, dated to around the first century AD, was protected from corrosion by the mud. Similar tokens have been found elsewhere in the Roman Empire, but this is the first time one has been unearthed in the UK. Some historians believe the Romans invented prostitution in the modern sense. It played a significant part in the empire’s economy – with sex workers required to register with the local authorities and even pay tax.

First of all, I find Caroline McDonald’s deliberate lying more disgusting than the mud in which this coin was found. Anyone with more than a cursory knowledge of Roman society knows that the majority of Roman prostitutes were not slaves; in fact, many were of the upper and middle classes and as I’ve previously explained, the great majority were independent practitioners who plied their trade either in licensed lupanars or in various unlicensed venues, including temples and bakeries. But this weed in Clio’s garden isn’t concerned about that; like other neofeminists, the truth to her is a tool to be distorted in whatever way is necessary to promote her agenda…which is clearly a prohibitionist one. Ironically, a recent study of London prostitutes demonstrates that McDonald’s statement has more truth in it than she intended; like their sisters in Roman Londinium, most of them aren’t slaves, either. Her duplicity is clearly revealed in the text: 14 asses was a day laborer’s pay, which is far more than slave-prostitutes have ever cost at any time in history. Consider Solon’s one-obol brothel slaves or the 50¢ “cribs” in Storyville for comparison; most bottom-end hookers have always cost roughly 2 hours’ pay, which in 1^st century Rome would’ve been about 2 asses rather than 14. If this was indeed a brothel token, it purchased the services of a proseda, not a slave.

It’s not at all certain it was a brothel token, though; it may have been a gaming token or something else, as explained by Professor Mary Beard of Cambridge:

The object in question is…what archaeologists term a “spintria”. This is a Latin word for male prostitute…but it is an entirely modern practice to apply it to these little objects; we haven’t got the foggiest clue what the Romans called them…or (despite what you read) what they used them for…The favourite idea circulating about this recent discovery is that it was part of the highly developed Roman brothel economy…as there is no evidence…at all, no-one could actually disprove that. But remember that there is no Roman mention of such things, none have been found in any place that has been identified as a “brothel”…and just think of the kind of infrastructure of the ancient “brothel industry” that this kind of internal currency would imply…So what is a more likely explanation?

…Almost certainly these were tokens whose main function was the numeral, and the sex scene on the back was “decoration”…More likely, if you ask me (and as the curator at the Museum of London concedes it might be so), is that it is a gaming token, for one of the many Roman board games…whose rules and customs were anyway shot through with sex (the best throw of the Roman dice was called a “Venus throw”). This belonged, in other words, on a board in a Roman bar, not in a brothel.

But though Professor Beard is still woefully ignorant of the sex trade (she also states “most sex for money in the ancient world — like now –happened at street corners, under bridges, after closing time at the bar…“) and pays lip service to trafficking mythology, she has enough respect for both the Romans and the truth to give her honest opinion rather than vomiting out politically-correct filth intended to advance the cause of suppressing modern prostibulae of all types.

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