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In the News (#729)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged activism, agency denial, brothels, Business As Usual, Canada, cops, dehumanization, end demand, France, Georgia, Hollywood, Legal Is as Legal Does, Myanmar, Netherlands, New York, No Escape, Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs, politicians, prisons, prohibitionist myths, rape, serial killers, Surplus Women, Swedish model, The Course of a Disease, The Notorious Badge, To Molest and Rape, Too Close To Home, Torture Chamber, Turkey, underage, violence vs. sex workers, Washington (state), Washington DC, Whither Canada? on April 12, 2017| 1 Comment »

How it is I can give sex away and nobody cares, but as soon as I capitalize on it, it’s a problem? – Betty Lynd

Surplus Women

This is only being investigated because unsolved cases make cops look bad:

With the arrest of a 58-year-old man from Rotterdam the police believe they made their first breakthrough in a cold case investigation into the murders of 85 prostitutes in the 80’s and 90’s…the suspect can definitely be linked to two murders, and possibly to three others as well…The judiciary has evidence against the man for the murders of Berendina Stijger in 1990 and Maria Hofland in 1991. There are also similarities between these two murders and the murders of Beppie Michels, Mientje Balkom and Jeanet Sip in 1989 and 1999 – four of the five victims’ throats were slit and there were “similar sexual acts”…

Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs

When political activists like Daw Sander Min were imprisoned for their campaigns…they were locked up alongside sex workers criminalised by Myanmar’s harsh laws against prostitution. Now Sandar Min is an MP and Thuzar Win addresses parliament on behalf of the Sex Workers in Myanmar network, and they’ve joined forces to improve the lives of Burmese people…the women…are adamant that Myanmar’s future wellbeing…depends upon the decriminalisation of prostitution…journalist Thin Lei Win is…finding out how Sandar Min and Thuzar Win are getting on in their bid to amend legislation which dates back 70 years…One young woman, mistaken for a sex worker and imprisoned for six months, says whoever changes the law will get her vote.

Legal Is as Legal Does (#139)

Turkey continues its campaign to close brothels despite their legality:

The registered brothel in Antep [may] be closed due to the reason that it “does not suit Antep”…[politicians] told [the owners of] the brothel that if they “don’t transfer their properties without making any trouble, they would [steal]…the brothel’s land in other ways”…Leyla works and stays at the registered brothel. She has two children studying in another city. “How are we going to pay our debts if this place is closed?…They don’t care about us…We are not captives nor slaves here. We pay our taxes…What are they protecting us from? If they want to protect, they can buy us a home, grant us early retirement”…some 60 women work at the registered brothel, which…has employees other than sex workers; cafeteria workers, hair cutters, cleaning workers. So, there are as many as 100 workers in addition to the sex workers…

Torture Chamber

“Having sexual conduct” is an especially clumsy euphemism for “rape”:

A Chatham County Sheriff’s Deputy was arrested…for reportedly having sexual conduct with an inmate…Deputy Jermaine Minor…was terminated, arrested and charged with four counts…

Whither Canada?

Two years into Canada’s vile experiment with the horrible Swedish model, I’m going back to using this subtitle because “A Year Later” no longer makes sense:

As police in Edmonton, Alberta, clamp down on the demand for paid sex with mass “john stings” in the name of protecting women, sex workers and experts say such efforts are ineffective and have already made conditions more dangerous…So far this year, the Edmonton police have carried out one sting a week on average, resulting in 63 arrests…The force [brags] it’s on track to arrest more than 200 johns in 2017, nearly twice the 104 arrests made last year…[Edmonton pigs] recently changed [the] name [of its] vice unit to the human trafficking and exploitation unit, and conducts most of its john stings online by posting fake ads…the vast majority of men caught in the sting are first-time offenders who typically get diverted into so-called “john schools”…Chris Atchison, a sociologist at the University of Victoria…says…john stings typically don’t end up curbing the demand at all, but send it further underground…he’s seen no evidence that “john school” is effective in changing the desires of clients, and they are primarily run by groups that seek to abolish the sex trade — not make women safer. “These programs are based on a very particular…moral agenda based on misinformation and fear mongering,” he said…

Edmonton has a long history of abusing & dehumanizing sex workers, literally treating them like wild animals.

The Course of a Disease (#634)

One day I hope to see myself described in print as a “rebellious prostitute”:

…sex workers took to the streets of Paris protesting a lack of clientele and poor working conditions…[due to imposition of the Swedish model on] April 13, 2016…the incomes of [many] prostitutes fell sharply, as they had to significantly lower their prices in an attempt to attract more customers…In some extreme cases, girls committed suicide; some were infected with AIDS because for the sake of earning they were forced to agree to any demands made by men. Also, there have been cases of women being beaten by aggressive and drunken customers…Since the law [was] implemented more than 800 people have been fined…

To Molest and Rape

He paid an underage sex worker, then pulled a gun on her to steal the cash back, but he’s been charged with “prostitution” rather than rape:

A Washington, D.C., [cop] has been charged with soliciting sex from a 15-year-old…and then robbing her at gunpoint…Chukwuemeka Ekwonna…[hired the] girl…[but after he raped her] Ekwonna pulled out a handgun…[and] demanded his money back…the girl complied and left…Ekwonna faces a number of charges, including armed robbery, assault, prostitution and two counts of third-degree sex offense…Judge Eileen A. Reilly said…that he could pose a “danger to the community”…Ekwonna…[was previously] accused in a civil lawsuit with beating an inmate…at a Washington, D.C., jail [but] the plaintiff settled the lawsuit…

“A danger to the community” is what you inevitably get when you let armed thugs run around doing whatever they like to people without consequences.

Too Close To Home (#701)

Another of the men who claim they want to “protect” Seattle from consensual sex:

A 46-year-old Kent man sued Seattle Mayor Ed Murray…[saying] Murray “raped and molested him” over several years, beginning in 1986 when the man was a 15-year-old high-school dropout…“D.H.” [reported that] Murray sexually abused the crack-cocaine addicted teen on numerous occasions for payments of $10 to $20…the man, now sober for a year, said…he was coming forward as part of a “healing process”…Murray, who is running for re-election this year, [naturally] denied the [accusations]…D.H. is not the first to accuse Murray…of sexual abuse that occurred decades ago…Jeff Simpson and Lloyd Anderson, said they knew Murray when they were growing up in a Portland center for troubled children, and later as teenagers. They accuse Murray of abusing them in the 1980s when he was in his 20s. Simpson made the [accusation] as a teen in 1984…[yet Murray’s mouthpiece pretends that] “The…accusations were promoted by extreme right-wing anti-gay activists in the midst of the marriage equality campaign, and were thoroughly investigated and dismissed by both law enforcement [who worked for Murray] authorities and the [lapdog] media”…

Business As Usual (#717)

Isn’t it weird how defining a non-crime as a “crime” creates all kinds of problems?

NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill said recently that he is shifting the department’s sex [work persecution] tactics, in an effort to [improve PR]…”Like all crime, we can’t just arrest our way out of this problem,” he said. O’Neill’s new plan, he explained, is to focus on arresting [his way out of the problem while pretending that sex workers are “victims”]…prostitution arrests continue, and this week, O’Neill [pretended to have]… an “open mind” about moving prostitution from the criminal code to the civil code [while simultaneously representing sex workers as dumb animals that need to be forced to accept “help” at gunpoint]. Mayor de Blasio agreed. “I think that the concern at the jump is that if you only have those civil penalties, that it is harder to [pretend sex work is a]…crime”…”I don’t know what movie the mayor is watching,” said Kate Mogulescu, who heads up the Legal Aid Society’s human trafficking advocacy program. “Please don’t justify arrests by saying we’re helping people”…Her team has argued that not all prostitution is exploitative, and that focusing the narrative on trafficking—suggesting that police sweep in as saviors—has bolstered criminalization all around…

The Notorious Badge (#726)

Never mind; this tells me all I need to know:

Harlots is a lavish 18th-century period drama about dueling houses of ill repute and the ruthless women who run them. With all the power, lust, and flashes of humanity that we usually associate with male antiheroes, Margaret Wells (Oscar nominee Samantha Morton) and Lydia Quigley (stage and screen legend Lesley Manville) pit their considerable intelligence and stable of girls against each other for control of Georgian-era Soho. But unlike the fictional liars and feuders currently flooding the Peak TV market, these sex workers aren’t manipulated by men—onscreen or off. Harlots is the rare show entirely written and directed by women…[the reporter asked] Were you surprised to learn how much power these prostitutes and madams actually had in the 18th century? [And Morton replied]…You know, the sex industry, the sex trade with children, with trafficking—it is a very contemporary, present day issue. The only difference with this—and this is what made me incredibly sad—is that women seemed to be more in control of the industry back then. Certainly in Margaret Wells’s house, these women have a choice. It’s a business…I think that back then women did hold a lot more power in that regard…

Gee, if only there were a way for actresses playing sex workers to talk to real sex workers and find out our reality so they don’t need to make ignorant guesses. You know, maybe a computer-based way for activist sex workers to make themselves publicly available to interact with, like a form of media designed for social interaction…

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In the News (#727)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged abortion, agency denial, Between the Lines, bogus studies, brothels, Check Your Premises, dirty, Dutch Threat, evidence, FBI, Finding What Isn’t There, Florida, Gorged With Meaning, Iowa, Netherlands, pimps, pragmatism, pregnancy, prohibitionist myths, Property of the State, rescue industry, Saving Them from Themselves, sexting, South Carolina, statistics, Watershed, Who Watches the Watchmen? on April 5, 2017| 1 Comment »

There are about 200 stranger kidnappings in the U.S. every year. Your kid is more likely to get killed by lightning. – Marty Klein

Check Your Premises

A judge lectures young sex workers with myths about the “danger” of sex work while actively working to destroy their lives for the “crime” of agreeing to consensual sex:

Three college students in Florida were [brutalized by pigs after tricking them into meeting]…at a ritzy Miami hotel…Maury Noun, 21, is [accused] of pimping out 19-year-old Samara Charlotin and 23-year-old Acacia Friedman…The detective offered Noun $10,000 to have sex with both Charlotin and Friedman. Noun [stupidly] consented…telling the cop that he would have to pay extra for unprotected sex. [Pigs]…arrested them as soon as they arrived…and…arraigned on a slew of prostitution charges…Charlotin was also charged with drug possession…Charlotin told Judge Mindy Glazer that she’s pursuing a degree in biology…”You’re a smart girl, if you want to live to see age 20, you need to find a new line of employment,” Glazer [pompously pontificated]…

I wonder when Miami cops will start arresting college football players so Judge Dipshit can lecture them about finding a different line of work if they want to make it to 20 without brain damage?

Saving Them From Themselves

Poor, helpless little piggies; they HAVE TO stick their snouts into young people’s personal lives and then destroy them. It’s not their fault, they’re robots without discretion or free will!

The Polk County [North Carolina] Sheriff’s Office has had 12 cases in the last year and three months at Polk County Middle School and high school…where students were charged with criminal acts for sharing pictures and videos…Capt. B.J. Bayne said cell phones are the cause of most of the charges and since there’s really not a crime that fits juveniles, the charges have to be related to adult porn charges. “The goal is to correct the issue, not punish the issue,” Bayne said. “We really have a good team trying to get these kids educated [by traumatizing them & giving them a criminal record]”…

Gorged With Meaning

When sex is involved, a poison pen letter is considered proof:

The Coastal Carolina cheerleading team has been suspended after being accused of engaging in prostitution…[in] an anonymous letter mailed to…University President Dave DeCenzo, alleging that the cheerleaders were engaging in prostitution, buying alcohol for minors and paying others to do their homework…

Scorched Earth

NCMEC is among the most dangerous of the anti-sex organizations due to its shameless hiding of its agenda behind “protecting children”:

…NCMEC—The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children…[has] for decades…told parents to fear “stranger danger,” and instructed them to transmit this fear to their kids…By conflating “missing” and “exploited,” they have panicked Americans into thinking the average child is “at risk” of being kidnapped. By talking about “children” they conflate the experiences of five-year-olds and 17-year-olds. According to their own website, over 90% of “missing” teens are not “missing,” they have run away…over 3/4 of…[them] from institutions like foster homes…By expanding the definition of “sex trafficking” to include every sex worker…they have successfully convinced Americans that huge numbers of Americans are sex trafficked. It’s a lie. NCMEC can’t document even a half-dozen cases of women forced to act in porn, but they’ve planted the idea that porn actresses are trafficked…NCMEC champions government stings in adult chatrooms where adults roleplay age games, pursuing adults for thought crimes that harm no one…actual child molesters don’t look for kids in adult chatrooms…NCMEC also champions Amber Alert, an enormous waste of money and…resources [whose]…main accomplishment is to terrify…parents. Similarly, NCMEC favors punitive, counter-productive sex offender laws and registries—which includes putting children on these registries when they mistreat (“molest”) their peers…

See also “Who Watches the Watchmen?” below.

Watershed

Because of the neofeminist lie that having sex for pragmatic reasons magically harms women’s infantile, subhuman brains, it’s especially important that women be making arguments like this:

Economists are obsessed with markets…yet the sex trade has for too long been left to operate with virtually no official support or recognition. And sex workers have therefore been left vulnerable to exploitation…from the authorities. The usual justification for brushing the sex trade under the carpet is that the sale of sex is “immoral”…However, there is a logical inconsistency with the way that we think about consensual prostitution – a largely female trade – compared with the male-dominated spheres of soldiering and boxing – all of which come at significant risk to the body and the brain. As Barbara Einhorn, emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Sussex, wrote in a 2016 letter to The Guardian, “prostitution and soldiering are arguably the oldest professions. While doubts about their legitimacy are understandable, both provide a service that society appears to need. Yet one is heroised, the other vilified.” As a society, we are also…completely comfortable with people in effect pimping their brains. If you have high-level numerical or literacy skills, it is fine to work long hours, for example, at a multinational bank or law firm. But if you’re born with a great body and are able to hone your erotic skills, it is seen as animalistic and shameful to make money from those “assets”…And since women have traditionally been seen as inferior, it has been assumed that making money from the female-associated body is less respectable than making it from the male-associated brain…

Who Watches the Watchmen? (#649)

Once again, actual figures disprove the hysteria:

…American children today are no more likely to be kidnapped than they were decades ago, and much more likely to be returned safely when they are…there were just 105 “stereotypical kidnappings” in America between late 2010 and late 2011, the last period for which we have data. (For reference, there were about 73.9 million children in America that year.) Just 65 of these kidnappings were committed by strangers. Less than half involved the abduction of a child under age 12. Only 14 percent of cases were still open after one week, and 92 percent of victims were recovered or returned alive…The Department of Justice (DOJ) defines stereotypical kidnappings as those in which 1) the victim is under 18-years-old, 2) the kidnapper is either a stranger or a “slight acquaintance”, 3) the abduction involves moving the victim at least 20 feet or detaining them for at least one hour, and 4) the victim is either held for ransom, transported at least 50 miles, detained overnight, held with an intent to keep permanently, or killed…DOJ defines slight acquaintance as someone the child or their family have known for less than six months, someone they’ve known for longer than six months but see less than once per month, or someone who might be recognizable to a child or their parents but not known by name. In one…case…a 16-year-old girl ran away to live with an adult boyfriend, who is defined as a “slight acquaintance” because she had only been seeing him a few months. So the number of stereotypical kidnappings that the general public would consider stereotypical is actually lower than the feds’ estimate…

Dutch Threat (#678)

Even if PROUD supports this, I’m still skeptical of the subtext:

…project My Red Light…enables prostitutes to determine their own work routine…while offering more protection from the pressures and abuses inflicted by intermediaries. Fourteen windows…in the Red Light District are expected to come into operation in May…If the initiative proves to be a success, the business model may be expanded to other Dutch cities. Yvette Lurs, president of the Dutch Union for Sexworkers (PROUD), supports the project. “It would be great if sex workers had more opportunities to open their own brothels,” she says…the spokesman for My Red Light, Richard Bouwman, says that its main goal is to “empower sex workers and, more specifically, to give them the support and the knowledge to run their own business”…

…which most sex workers already do, so why pretend the opposite?

Finding What Isn’t There (#710)

You’d think a business news site could understand that hysterical phone calls don’t correlate meaningfully with actual events. And you’d be wrong:

Reports of domestic human trafficking continued to increase in 2016, jumping 35 percent over 2015, according to a report released…by the National Human Trafficking Resource Center and the Polaris Project…Due to the [imaginary] nature of the crime, authorities and academics alike [are free] to [wildly exaggerate] the scope of the problem. One source of quantifiable information about [the level of] trafficking [hysteria] in the U.S. is a hotline set up in 2007 by Polaris, an anti-[sex work] organization…it’s unclear whether the rise of an online sex market over the last twenty years has increased the sex trade, or just made it more visible. In previous decades, sex work was [understood by rational people]…to be a “victimless crime”…but that perception has changed, thanks in large part to [propaganda promoted] by [anti-sex] groups, and now a sex worker is more likely to be [fantasized] as a trafficking victim…

Property of the State (#719)

If I lived in one of these fanatical “all your uteri belong to us” states & my ability to have children wasn’t already decades in the past, I’d get myself sterilized immediately:

An Iowa state representative…[said] women who miscarry after 20 weeks of pregnancy should be forced to carry their dead fetuses [until the mothers die of septicemia]…During a hearing…which would clear the way for a state ban on abortions after the 20-week mark…Shannon Lundgren…[said] “This bill wasn’t written for the intent to protect or govern on the side of the woman. It was written to save babies’ lives, giving the choice and being the voice of those babies”…

Between the Lines (#722)

Moralistic control freak clutches her pearls and screeches that facts are evil once somebody says “THE CHILDREN!!!”

…in an article for…Reason magazine, Elizabeth Nolan Brown takes the FBI to task for [its annual pogroms vs consenting adults]…Brown declares the FBI’s yearly Operation Cross Country investigation expensive and ineffective and says they do not rescue a significant enough number of underage victims to justify the cost…Her main complaint, however, is that…the FBI is functioning as a “national vice squad,” arresting more adults on charges stemming from prostitution activities than finding underage trafficking victims…Brown continues by asserting that underage youth who are not being forced by a trafficker into selling sex do not need to be rescued and should not be [locked in cages and brainwashed]…

The rest denies the agency of sex workers, quotes the usual absurd myths and Farley’s made-up BS, etc.

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In the News (#720)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged activism, All-Purpose Excuse, BDSM, Brazil, Capricious Lusts, China, crypto-moralism, Don't Call It Trafficking, drugs, Dysphemisms Galore, FBI, Follow Your Bliss, hotels, hysteria, illegal aliens, internet, left-right myth, License To Rape, Monsters, Morality Lessons, Netherlands, Nevada, No Friend of Ours, Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs, politicians, porn, prisons, prohibitionist myths, psychology, rape, slavery, South Africa, streetwalkers, surveillance, teachers, Tennessee, transgender, TSA, Ukraine, United Kingdom, yellow journalism, Zimbabwe on March 11, 2017| 5 Comments »

The TSA…[is] an expensive, intrusive show, put on by poorly trained, poorly managed and…dangerously out-of-control actors. – Scott Greenfield

License to Rape

The TSA joins cops in the elite group who can rape, sexually assault & molest citizens without consequence:

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration has declined to say exactly where—and how—employees will be touching air travelers as part of the more invasive physical pat-down procedure it recently ordered. But the agency does expect some passengers to consider the examination unusual. In fact, the TSA decided to inform local police in case anyone calls to report [a TSA agent sexually assaulting her]…The physical search, for those selected to have one, is what the agency described as a more “comprehensive” screening, replacing five separate kinds of pat-downs it previously used. The decision to alert local and airport police raises a question of just how intimate the agency’s employees may get…

Criminal defense attorney Scott Greenfield had this to say about it:

…Put aside, for the moment, that TSA agents are not law enforcement officers, but rather the nice folks who you last met inquiring whether you wanted to supersize, now wearing blue shirts to create the impression of important authority…the way to improve [their inept performance] is to direct these pizza lovers to engage in conduct that would, under most other circumstances, constitute crimes. Why isn’t it a crime? Because it’s consensual, travelers having consented to their children, their spouses, themselves, being touched on any part of their body…by electing to travel by airplane a privilege, not a right. Hey, you could walk across country. Is it TSA’s fault you chose to fly?…

Follow Your Bliss

What better job could there be for a queer sadist with control issues?

…John Smyth…stands at the center of a widening scandal of sadistic abuse of dozens of boys over three decades…Smyth…“quoted from the Bible and told me I had to bleed for Jesus,” said a…victim, who attempted suicide on his 21st birthday, after Mr. Smyth promised him “a special kind of beating” for the occasion. “When he was done, he would lean in towards me and put his face on my neck telling me how proud he was of me,” said the man…Some of the victims received up to 100 strokes at a time for masturbating, having indecent thoughts or looking at pornography — beatings that caused some to faint or bleed for up to three weeks…Smyth was removed from the trust in 1984 and sent to Zimbabwe, where he set up similar Christian summer camps for…boys…In 1997, Zimbabwe’s prosecuting attorney arrested…Smyth on a charge of culpable homicide in the death of…a 16-year-old boy who was found dead at the bottom of the swimming pool of one of Mr. Smyth’s camps…a year later all charges against him were dropped…In 2002…Smyth moved to South Africa, where new accusations of abuse have surfaced in news outlets in recent weeks…

Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs

The story is the same the world over:

Dozens of sex workers and human rights campaigners gathered in Kiev on [Sex Worker Rights Day] demanding the [decriminalization] of prostitution in Ukraine. Some 50 activists holding red umbrellas and wearing red plastic helmets staged the first-ever march through the capital…the protesters held placards reading “Sex work is work”, “We stand for decriminalisation of sex work”, and “My work is my choice”…there are some 80,000 sex workers in Ukraine who feel vulnerable — particularly to police abuse…[Yuliya] Dorokhova said…“women…have to hand police their…earnings as ‘protection’ money”…to avoid fines and…beating[s]…

Capricious Lusts

Another study shows what’s already been shown over & over again:

Paul Bisschop of SEO Amsterdam Economics…compare crime data for nine Dutch cities with tippelzones and 16 cities without. The data from 1994 to 2011 include measures of sexual, drug-related and violent crime…The authors provide “causal evidence” of a 32 to 40 percent reduction in rape and sexual abuse within two years of a city opening a tippelzone…

No Friend of Ours

More evil prohibitionist drivel from Nevada:

A state lawmaker has proposed that Nevada give cities and counties the explicit authority to shut down hotels where prostitution arrests are repeatedly made…John Hambrick [fantasized] that his bill would help curb human trafficking…at by-the-hour hotels that work with or overlook [unlicensed] pimps operating at their establishments. “I’m trying to get to a situation where communities can be safe and not have to worry about the scourge of human trafficking,” Hambrick said…

Monsters

In which the Daily Fail pretends to care about transwomen so it can print torture porn pics:

A transgender woman was brutally beaten to death by a group of thugs who dragged her from her home and attacked her in a sickening transphobic attack. Dandara dos Santos…was…kicked, punched, and hit with shoes and a plank of wood…in Fortaleza…Brazil. Harrowing footage of the attack shows Dandara begging the savage attackers to spare her life, but her…attackers simply lift her into a wheelbarrow and roll her away to a back alley where she was beaten to death amid cheers and laughter…

Dysphemisms Galore

One wonders if the author has similar sadfeelz about the “forced smiles” of people in other retail & customer service jobs:

…hundreds of women who are trafficked to Hong Kong from mainland China, Southeast Asia, Europe and South America for forced prostitution in the city’s brothels, bars, spas and pornography industry, [prohibitionists pretend]…Many victims do not speak out for fear of being punished by their traffickers, some of them linked to the powerful Triad organised crime group. Others are afraid of being deported home or criminalised for being in the possession of fake papers arranged by their pimps…cocaine, marijuana and other drugs are used by clients and forced on the girls…

Because sweet, innocent women never snort coke or smoke weed, not ever. And it’s funny how all the actual studies, ignored by this single-interview-based article, repeatedly find what activists keep saying: sex work in Asia, like everywhere else, is work.

Don’t Call It Trafficking

It’s never called “trafficking” when the government or a crony does it:

Tens of thousands of immigrants detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement were forced to work for $1 day, or for nothing at all — a violation of federal anti-slavery laws — a lawsuit [explains]. The lawsuit, filed in 2014 against one of the largest private prison companies in the country, reached class-action status…after a federal judge’s ruling. That means the case could involve as many as 60,000 immigrants who have been detained. It’s the first time a class-action lawsuit accusing a private U.S. prison company of forced labor has been allowed to move forward…At the heart of the dispute is the Denver Contract Detention Facility…in Aurora, Colo., owned and operated by GEO Group…detainees at the…facility are forced to work without pay — and that those who refuse to do so are threatened with solitary confinement…

Morality Lessons (#689)

Remember this the next time politicians tell you that the point of anti-porn laws is to “protect children”:

Justice Dept. lawyers are asking a federal court to drop a case against a dark web child porn site because it says it [will] not reveal how it used a browser exploit to target thousands of unsuspecting visitors to the site…because the government is “unwilling to disclose” how it carried out the hacks, it has “no choice but to seek dismissal” of the case…Playpen…[was] a dark web site accessible over the Tor anonymity network…[the FBI] seized the server…[and] continued to run the website for almost two weeks…[it used] malware…to deanonymize the users of the Tor browser…[and] gather…IP addresses…which should have been protected by Tor…

Morality Lessons (#703)

Yeah, it’s porn making men less interested in marriage. Horrible divorce laws couldn’t have anything to do with that:

A joint resolution in the Tennessee General Assembly condemning pornography as a “public health crisis” that is making men less interested in marrying passed unanimously in the Senate…without any discussion…It calls for education, policy change, prevention and [bogus] research [specifically designed to “find”] negative effects of pornography…

I’m sure that “call for education” doesn’t include actual sex education.

All-Purpose Excuse (#718)

Hey Democrats, are you ready to disavow this lunacy you helped create & abandon it to the GOP?

The shadow government led by former President Barack Obama is working overtime to delegitimize President Donald Trump and his administration…Why is Obama remaining in Washington D.C. and moving his top adviser Valerie Jarrett into his new mansion?…the mainstream media is ignoring Trump’s massive sex trafficking busts…the MSM…appear to be censoring stories that expose child sex trafficking and pedophiles…could the shadow government’s coup against Trump be tied to child sex trafficking?…Hillary and Bill Clinton’s [have] ties to sex crimes…there are people at the top tied to child sex trafficking…our corrupt MSM [has a] sick scheme to protect pedophiles and cover up sex trafficking…

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In the News (#690)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged Above the Law, California, Canada, Change a Few Words, cops, dirty, drugs, Florida, Guinea Pigs, hysteria, Ireland, language, Netherlands, Peeping Toms, porn, prisons, prohibitionist myths, rape, robots, serial killers, statistics, Surplus Women, surveillance, Swedish model, The Pro-Rape Coalition, The Public Eye, Torture Chamber, Tyranny by Consensus, video, violence vs. sex workers, Virtual Unreality on November 16, 2016| 9 Comments »

There is no thought that a person should be able to have which lands them in jail. – Brian Shuster

Surplus Women

Rolling Stone manages to do an entire article on serial killers who target sex workers without bothering to mention the reason so many do: the criminalization that forces us to operate in the shadows:

The Killing Season, A&E’s upcoming documentary series about…unsolved murders of prostitutes…starts by looking into the Long Island Serial Killer investigation…but…is not just about LISK…the show…found there are likely many, many more predators who have been able to keep their killings sprees unnoticed. “These guys aren’t getting away with murder because they are such geniuses,” [filmmaker Rachel] Mills tells Rolling Stone. “They have identified the perfect victims. They know that those are the types of people that maybe they should go after because they don’t leave as much of a trace as a soccer mom who posts on Facebook”…families of…victims…[have] a hard time convincing law enforcement to take their concerns seriously…

Peeping Toms (#331)

Cops just love their “crackdowns” against queers, but in the current environment of tolerance they’re having to get more creative with their excuses:

Toronto police are helping residents…take back a park that has allegedly been used as a place for sexual activity at all times of the day. Police said…they have laid 89 charges, mainly bylaw infractions, against 72 people…to clean up Marie Curtis Park…[cops], during their “plain clothes enforcement,” were solicited for sex in the park. At other times, officers witnessed open sexual activity or men soliciting other men…police [pretend they] are not targeting any one particular group….[but] ninety-five per cent of those charged are men…the community wants the park to be a family friendly place where adults and children can enjoy the outdoors without fear of witnessing sexual acts. There have also been complaints about litter left behind, including condoms…

Note the close resemblance to typical excuses for “stings” vs sex workers (including public sex and discarded condoms), the similarity of tactics and the typical dehumanizing language such as “take back” and “clean up”.

Above the Law (#405)

Once in a while a rapist cop gets his comeuppance:

A former Lake County [Florida] sheriff’s deputy convicted of [raping] a woman during a traffic stop on New Year’s Day 2014 has been sentenced to 12 years in prison. Matthew Donnelly was sentenced [November 8th] and his attorney filed an appeal the same day…

Torture Chamber (#407)

What happens when government stops obsessively prohibiting things and treats prisoners like human beings:

While the UK and much of the world struggles with overcrowded prisons, the Netherlands has the opposite problem. It is actually short of people to lock up. In the past few years 19 prisons have closed down and more are slated for closure next year…Fewer than 10% [of Dutch prisoners] return…after their release. In England and Wales, and in the United States, roughly half of those serving short sentences reoffend within two years, and the figure is often higher for young adults…A decade ago the Netherlands had one of the highest incarceration rates in Europe, but it now claims one of the lowest – 57 people per 100,000 of the population, compared with 148 in England and Wales…police…have shifted their focus away from drugs and…judges often use alternatives to prison such as community service orders, fines and electronic tagging…Angeline van Dijk, director of the prison service in the Netherlands, says jail is increasingly used for those who are too dangerous to release, or for vulnerable offenders who need the help available inside…critics…[pretend there are criminals hiding all over who haven’t been caught] and…many of…van Dijk’s staff are not happy about the lack of people to lock up…

The Public Eye (#449)

Tyranny By Consensus (#528)

This isn’t the first time Weinstein’s been accused of financial shenanigans:

…The Free Speech Coalition…is taking aim at Weinstein and his nonprofit over…improper political spending. FSC filed a formal complaint…charging that Weinstein’s spending push related to promoting measures such as the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, an anti-development initiative designed to curb building in Los Angeles, has been dubious…[and] constitutes a breach of the Internal Revenue Service’s requirements for an organization to maintain non-profit status, since much of the spending is not directly related to AHF’s own AIDS-related mandate…AHF has…spent in excess of $10 million on local ballot measures and lobbying…[and] almost $20 million on statewide ballot measures…while continuing to receive government grants and not paying taxes on pharmacy sales…[of] over $800 million annually…

Guinea Pigs (#623)

Palantir is the same company which is helping cops spy on sex workers:

California’s secretive gang database, with information on hundreds of thousands of predominantly black and Latino men, uses a controversial overlay of…data analysis and surveillance technologies…they are being employed by law enforcement without public use policies or privacy safeguards beyond the database’s own rules. The 19-year-old CalGang database has relied on facial recognition technology at least since the mid-2000s…Yet facial recognition, so imprecise that the Federal Bureau of Investigation accepts an error rate of up to 20 percent, is even more inaccurate when used to identify African Americans…at least one jurisdiction was allowed to employ a powerful dataset-linking program created by Palantir Technologies, a Pentagon contractor, and indicate that the CalGang Executive Board has considered using social media mining software…intelligence [is gathered] from stops by police, such as pulling someone over for a traffic violation or jaywalking. Any information collected during those stops and uploaded into CalGang, including photos of an individual’s face…people [are] classified as gang-affiliated based on flimsy evidence, record keeping [is] sloppy and gang intelligence [has] been used for employment background checks in violation of federal law and CalGang’s own policies…

Change a Few Words (#625)

It’s good to see more and more doctors attacking the drug war:

Richard A. “Red” Lawhern, Ph.D. is a long-time advocate…for chronic pain patients…”Over the past 20 years, I have interacted with thousands of pain sufferers…In many of these people, prescription opioids have made the difference between total disablement or death by suicide, versus at least a marginal quality of life and function…During the last two years, I have increasingly heard from patients who are being subjected to a systematic campaign of medication denial and personal stigmatization by the mainstream medical establishment. Patients who have been successfully and responsibly managed for years on prescription opioids are now being labeled as addicts and denied renewal of medication…Doctors are being driven out of pain management…by an over-zealous witch hunt headed by the…DEA…the most prevalent causes of opioid deaths are street heroin, a flood of imported fentanyl from China and Mexico, and the diversion of stolen or fraudulently obtained prescription opioids…Chronic pain patients did not cause the “overdose epidemic”…a quarter or fewer of overdose victims have a current medical prescription for pain relievers…

Virtual Unreality

Prudes will turn anything related to sex into a problem:

Realistic sex robots are still a very long ways away — but realistic virtual reality sex has already arrived…we are already hearing about the potential for virtual sexual assault. Last month, Jordan Belamire shared a now-viral story of getting groped during a multi-player VR video game, which she said “felt real, violating”…[prudes are freaking out about simulated] sexual encounters with [nonexistent electronic images designed to look like] children…[fetishists imagine] VR sex will become so technologically advanced that it is actually preferable to real world sex. Kathleen Richardson…is…director of The Campaign Against Sex Robots…but she’s also [judgmental] about the nearer-term reality of virtual reality sex. She believes that things like VR, and sex robots, encourage us to see other humans as property and decrease our empathy…The issue of acting out sexual assault on a purely computer-generated character is…fundamentally not all that unlike the sometimes hysterical worries that have come up with past technological advances — whether it be cybersex in AOL chatrooms, the proliferation of internet porn, or the advent of swipe-based dating…there is no evidence [violent video games] lead to real world criminal behavior…

The Pro-Rape Coalition (#635)

It’s interesting to see how much more critical mainstream media in the British Isles can be about anti-porn hysteria:

…a study by researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin was mentioned as evidence that porn causes changes in consumers’ brains…the researchers actually concluded that they could not prove if the people in their study had this type of brain before their exposure to porn, or if porn was responsible for changing the brain. To generalise about this small-scale study of 64 Danish men is disingenuous…and the experience of men cannot be said to be exactly the same as the experience of women…It was also stated that there is research to show that women in porn are abused and mistreated, however…there is no large-scale, longitudinal research done with porn performers. The closest to this was the Griffith study in 2013 which asked 177 female performers about their history of sexual abuse and their levels of self-esteem. They reported lower levels of childhood sexual abuse and higher rates of self-esteem, social support, sexual satisfaction, and spirituality compared to the control group of non-porn performers…a statistic…claimed porn receives 30,000 hits a second – but…comes from a Christian website that campaigns against porn…YouTube…receives a billion views a day…PornHub received just over 4 billion hits for the whole year. PornHub also [reports] the average viewing time worldwide is about ten minutes each visit. We must also ask how much time people spend watching Hollywood films, social media, or Netflix, and what kind of content they are consuming on there…

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In the News (#682)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged A Tale That Grew in the Telling, agency denial, Arizona, brothels, California, Canada, Challenge, clowns, cops, diversion programs, Eternal Vigilance, Florida, Hall of Shame, hysteria, If Men Were Angels, India, Ireland, It Looks Good On Paper, law, Madonna/whore, Netherlands, Nevada, New Zealand, O Canada!, Pennsylvania, pimps, porn, Power Play, propaganda, rape, rescue industry, Rough Trade, Send In the Clowns, statistics, streetwalkers, The Proper Study, Too Close To Home, underage, United Kingdom, Washington (state), Wisconsin, Wise Investment on October 19, 2016| 4 Comments »

The criminalization of sex work exposes not only sex workers but all women to more violence. – Alison Bass

The Proper Study

Yet another study confirms what we’ve been saying all along:

…a recent study in…Las Vegas uncovers what anti-trafficking organizations might not like to hear. The majority of youth selling sex on the streets have no pimps, or even third party managers, countering one of the key narratives of the sex trafficking movement that all youth involved are victims doing this work against their will…three fourths of the youth interviewed about the sex trade said they were not working with any pimp or other kind of third party manager…24 percent of the study’s participants reported use of a third party to find clients at some point in their lives, but only 4 percent…reported use of one at the time of the study…youth sex workers who do use pimps do so inconsistently and intermittently…[they] are finding their clients independently and negotiating their own prices…

It Looks Good On Paper (#340)

Remember that religious brainwashing program which “partnered with the Sarasota…Police Department…to bring victims into their care”?

The conversations happening by phone are ones that the Sarasota Police Street Crime Unit hope will turn into a positive outcome. “I want you to know you are not in any trouble,” [oinked a pig]…”We are just trying to reach out and let you know there are options”…Sergeant Robert Armstrong and his unit are [harassing and intimidating] women who have active ads online for escort services. Many are involved in prostitution…The team is focused on connecting women with Selah Freedom…

“Many are involved in prostitution”? Are these people actually pretending not to know what an escort is? Look beneath the pious exterior; we don’t actually know what stated or implied threats these cops are using to try to intimidate women into this “program”, which is so unpopular the only way it gets participants is by cops literally forcing or frightening women into it. If the tactic seems familiar, it’s because it’s much like Canada’s “Operation Northern Spotlight” except that the cops are (for now) merely terrorizing sex workers by phone instead of showing up at their doors.

If Men Were Angels

“Youth pastors” are nearly as bad as cops:

A Pennsylvania pastor faces charges he impregnated a 15-year-old girl from his youth group during a seven-month sexual relationship…Wesley Blackburn, youth pastor at Faith Brethren Bible Church, told the New Paris church’s head pastor he had confessed to the relationship and asked for a divorce…church leaders immediately fired Blackburn…and alerted police last week. He was charged Oct. 6 on hundreds of counts of statutory sexual assault and indecent assault…

Rough Trade (#446)

A setback for women’s rights in India:

The Supreme Court…ruled that a sex worker cannot file a case alleging rape if her customers refused to pay her…The judgment…acquitted three people of rape charges in a case that is close to 20 years old…the Karnataka High Court had convicted them of raping the victim, who used to work as a maid; the victim’s roommate had revealed that she works as a sex-worker at night…the Supreme Court…[claimed] that the woman’s “conduct during the alleged ordeal is unlike a victim of rape and betrays somewhat submissive and consensual disposition”…

A Tale That Grew in the Telling (#502)

In which po-faced twits with tape over their mouths walk down a street holding pre-printed propaganda cards:

A long, single-file line of people donned [sic] in black, some with their mouths taped shut, silently made its way down Stephen Avenue [in Calgary] to [promote anti-sex work propaganda]…The [po-faced] group remained speechless, but handed out [propaganda] pamphlets to bystanders…former Manitoba MP Joy Smith [spoke] at the event…part of a global initiative by A21…

The tape is supposed to signify that sex workers are “voiceless”, a convenient lie for those who wish to talk over us. A21, the NGO which sponsored this charade, is infamous as the source of the high-water mark of the “clients per day” competition of a few years ago: 110.

Eternal Vigilance (#610)

Just a reminder that prohibitionism still exists in decriminalized regimes:

New Zealand celebrities will be donning aprons to serve dinner with a difference at Destiny Rescue’s Dark Secret Pop up Dinner on International Anti-Slavery Day, Tuesday 18 October…Another special menu, thankfully not available in New Zealand, will shine the spotlight on the dark secret of the near two million children trapped in sexual slavery in countries like Thailand, India and the Philippines…

The table-waiting gimmick is appropriate given that Destiny’s idea of “rescue” is to teach brown urchins to sew, wait table and draw with crayons.

Wise Investment (#673)

Picket-fence gay men are such wonderful, dependable sex worker allies:

In his recent attempt to revise the history of sex workers in Vancouver’s West End, Kevin Dale McKeown…erases the West Sex Workers Memorial Committee and our eight-year campaign to secure financial reparations and a formal civic apology from the City of Vancouver. He instead claims that his recollections are more truthful and authentic than the voices of sex workers…In McKeown’s distorted revision…expelled sex workers become the villains. However, our archival research found close to 1,000 news articles revealing that power elites in the early 1980s — including Mayor Mike Harcourt, MP Pat Carney, Attorney General Brian Smith, Concerned Residents of the West End (CROWE) and Shame the Johns — forged a “war on hookers” with lethal consequences…Residents like McKeown moved into the West End when it was a thriving [24-hour] entertainment zone…McKeown…frantically disavows his own and other white gay men’s complicity in hooker-bashing tactics…McKeown makes a failed attempt to hide his investment in a “quiet” and “peaceful” gaybourhood cleansed of “noisy” hookers…

Too Close To Home (#677)

These are the people who claim they want to “protect” women, and portray the men we choose to have sex with as “sexual predators”:

…after settling a sexual-harassment lawsuit for $1 million in 2013, the King County Sheriff’s Office…is again embroiled in a legal fight over its treatment of female officers. This time, two…deputies and one sergeant are accusing the county of gender-based discrimination, sexual harassment, sexual-orientation based harassment, and retaliation…a former head of internal affairs [is] seeking whistleblower protections before he talks. Central to many of these claims is King County Sheriff John Urquhart…[whose] tenure so far…has been ignominious, involving the two sexual-harassment lawsuits, a cop convicted of pimping his wife and selling his colleagues steroids, a bogus “sex trafficking bust,” a chief-of-staff with polygraph problems, and more…this latest lawsuit…specifically calls out the actions of Sheriff Urquhart, Major Sean Ledford, and Sergeant Dewey Burns…defensive tactics instructor Melissa Deer…claims [Burns] grabbed her crotch during a training exercise…text messages showed the sergeant making racist, anti-gay, and sexually explicit comments to other staffers, including…Deputy Amy Shoblom…who…is one of three plaintiffs in the current suit, along with Diana Neff…and Julie Blessum…[Burns’] antics included texting her half-naked photos of women he was sleeping with, asking during a roll call if she had “hooked up” with a male deputy, and drawing a penis on the hood of her car with hand sanitizer…

There’s a lot more, and it’s by the awesome Liz Brown so you should read it all.

Send In the Clowns

The most disturbing thing about the clown hysteria is the way in which it has so quickly given rise to organized violence and naked authoritarianism. A “Clown Lives Matter” protest against the panic, to be held in Tucson, was cancelled due to amateur threats of violence, and the professional violence-inflicters are responding by criminally charging people and destroying young childrens’ lives. The hysteria has also spread to Ireland, and while police in Dublin have responded calmly, those in Belfast have responded with US-style threats of violence and lifelong imprisonment. Dutch police are moronically calling for a prankster there to turn himself in, and the ever-lunatic British tabloid press have found a way to merge the clown panic into “sex predator” panic:

…The basic premise of [this] story is that some men get off on women dressed as creepy clowns, they’re causing a spike in clown-porn searches and clown-fetish requests at escort services, and soon their “sick fetish” may lead them to commit real-world sexual assaults “as the adrenaline junkies seek more ‘extreme thrills'”…what the story lacks in logic it makes up for in references to “sex-mad sickos” and quotes from an anonymous escort-agency head…[it] also quotes a woman who counsels rape victims and worries that the “clown craze” provides cover to predators…Popular millennial women’s website Elite Daily published a clown-sex-panic story…warning readers that “the sexual deviants partaking in the madness are allegedly dressing up as clowns and experimenting with BDSM” and “those who are involved in the aggressive clown porn are potentially dangerous.”

Power Play

Your periodic reminder that Dennis Hof is a revolting excuse for a human being:

Dennis Hof…said that while he supports law enforcement aggressively enforcing laws against underage sex trafficking, he believes that law enforcement in the United States would have an easier time doing its job if adult prostitution were [legalized]…using the [Nevada]…model…Hof said [independent sex workers spread]…sexually transmitted diseases…”My brothel business model [magically] puts the…pimps [who aren’t politically connected] out of business, [magically] stops underage girls from working illegally [?] and [magically] ends sex trafficking [even though 99% of Nevada sex workers prefer to work illegally than to submit to the onerous brothel regime]”…

In the first version of the press release, Hof actually cheered the arrests of the owners & CEO of Backpage; I guess he later realized that was vile even by his standards.

Challenge (#681)

The ACLU has finally done something to act on its theoretical support for decriminalization by filing an amicus brief in the ESPLERP case:

…The ACLU brief supports the lawsuit’s contention that California’s penal code violates fundamental constitutional rights to sexual privacy and is enforced in a discriminatory manner…Lawrence v. Texas…recognized that “liberty gives substantial protection to adult persons in deciding how to conduct their private lives in matters pertaining to sex”…The ACLU brief also argues that the California penal code is unconstitutional because the way it is enforced is discriminatory. Certain groups, such as transgender women, LGBT youth, and female sex workers are targeted and arrested for prostitution in disproportionately higher numbers than other people…

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In the News (#679)

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

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

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

Of course they didn’t accuse him of faking:

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

An Ounce of Prevention

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

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

Girls, Girls, Girls!

While the feds actively persecute some sex workers…

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

The Pygmalion Fallacy

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

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

Shift in the Wind (#131)

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

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

Lack of Evidence (Extra Edition)

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

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

Fever Dream

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

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

Seizing Power (#593)

A win for Backpage on one front:

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

However, see “Crying For Nanny” below.

Challenge (#628)

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

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

To Molest and Rape

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

Crying for Nanny (#659)

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

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

Here’s more from super ally Liz Brown.

Dutch Threat (#678)

Felicia Anna on the “My Red Light” scam:

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

Send In the Clowns

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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In the News (#678)

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

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

Lack of Evidence

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

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

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

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

Where Are the Victims?

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

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

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

Droit du Seigneur

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

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

Saving Them From Themselves

THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!

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

They Still Don’t Get It

Let’s play “count the idiocies”:

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

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

On the Simultaneous Having and Eating of Cake

This is actually an excellent analogy:

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

Dutch Threat

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

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

If Men Were Angels

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

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

Business As Usual

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

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

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

To Molest and Rape

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

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

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

Harm Magnification (#668)

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

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

Too Close To Home (#672)

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

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

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

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In the News (#671)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Q & A, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged Above the Law, Arizona, bad customers, Bad Jobs, bogus studies, California, Cardboard Cutouts, censorship, Choke Point, Coming Out, cops, drugs, fantasy, Feminists and Other Puritans, Florida, guest columnist updates, Ireland, It's What They Do, Lack of Evidence, left-right myth, male prostitutes, Moving Pictures, Neither Addiction nor Epidemic, neofeminism, Netherlands, Never Call the Cops, New York, Of Course It Is, politicians, psychology, rape, robots, sex offender registry, Somehow I Doubt..., statistics, surveillance, Swedish model, The End of the Beginning, The Pygmalion Fallacy, transgender, Twitter, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers, virginity on September 10, 2016| 3 Comments »

Our perception of what makes a service “safer” isn’t always universal. – Lux Alptraum

Bad Jobs

Like something Melissa Farley would make up, only true: “A new survey shows 90% of social care workers [in Ireland] have experienced violence in the workplace…75% experienced physical assaults – some on a daily basis…”

Somehow, I Doubt She Thought This Through

Never call the cops for any reason whatsoever, especially if you’re a whore:

A prostitute was arrested after she told police a clients handcuffed her and robbed her of $2,000 in cash and her belongings…At some point after the man paid her…he pulled out a police [badge], claimed he was a [cop] and handcuffed her with fake cuffs…He took his $190 off the hotel room dresser, swiped $2,000 in cash…and…the woman’s $1,000 iPad Mini, a $40 backpack and a $100 MetroPCS phone…Police arrested the woman and charged her with prostitution…However, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office declined to prosecute the case…

Above the Law

There’s nothing here saying he harmed or threatened any of the sex workers he looked up, but of course there’s no way to know that given that he stalked them by looking up their fucking police records:

A disgraced cop who used his force computer to contact sex workers…was allowed to keep his job…[Neil Hempsall] admitted four charges and escaped with a community order…[the prosecutor said] “He…had been using the services of sex workers and accessing their record on the police computer system”…There was…[also] evidence he was tracking down a former lover…

The Pygmalion Fallacy (#46)

I can’t help laughing at pathetic losers wanking to their fantasies of superhuman sex robots, but the ones who suffer reaction formation from such fantasies elicit a mixture of pathos and disgust:

According to a [soi-disant] expert in the field, we’ll need to be careful we don’t get addicted to artificial-intelligence lovemaking. Joel Snell is an [academic who fantasizes]…there’s a real risk linked to the robots…because they’ll offer great sex at any time of the day and night…it’ll never be able to turn you down. “People may become obsessed by their ever-faithful, ever-pleasing sex robot lovers,” he warned. “People will rearrange their lives to accommodate their addictions”…

Bonus stupid anti-sex trope: “sex addiction”.

Lack of Evidence (Extra Edition)

It’s a sign of our culture’s deeply-sick sexual attitudes that people still believe in “virginity tests”:

[Dear Dr. Petra, my boyfriend is] like me…a virgin. But when he checked my vagina he said he could tell I wasn’t a virgin and he doesn’t feel able to be with me until I can be truthful. I don’t know how to convince him that I am a virgin and don’t know what signs he can see that tell him I’m not…I’m now worried I might be mistaken about myself…[Dr. Petra Answers:] I’m sure everyone reading this [is]…wondering what the circumstances were that led up to him checking your vagina?…You may have told him to get better educated about virginity and women’s bodies. You might have told him his actions felt alarming and controlling…You could have said he clearly had no idea what he was talking about. Any or all of these responses would have been reasonable. And all of them are a good enough reason…to end the relationship without further discussion…There will be other people who are kinder, more sexually informed, more respectful, better communicators and won’t subject you to virginity checks…

Cardboard Cutouts

Note that 1.5% is my standard estimate of coercion among Western sex workers:

This week new statistics on human trafficking in The Netherlands where presented by the Dutch National Rapporteur Human Trafficking [and]…the city of Amsterdam…the Dutch Rapporteur reported…1,321 possible victims of trafficking…66%…from the sex industry…these are not proven victims, but simply people of whom other people (police, marshals, city officials and social workers) have (slight) suspicions about that perhaps they could be victims…if…there are about 827 possible victims in prostitution, and the total amount of sexworkers in The Netherlands are estimated at around 20.000…it would come down to about 4,1%…only 102 possible victims in prostitution where reported in Amsterdam…[which] would come down to about 1,5% of all the sexworkers in Amsterdam…what’s interesting is to compare the suspected victims with the actual number of victims that annually actually press charges…in 2015…33 victims actually [pressed] charges for human trafficking, which is almost the same as the year before (29 in 2014) and the year before that (32 in 2013). In short, quite a bit lower than how many people are being reported as “possible” victims…

Feminists and Other Puritans

Once again: NO, a coalition between two different fundamentalist groups to fight what they perceive as a common enemy is in no way “surprising”:

…the surprising nexus between radical feminists and Christian Right culture warriors has been with us a long time. In the 1980s, anti-porn feminists like Catherine McKinnon and Andrea Dworkin teamed up with anti-porn conservatives like Edwin Meese, leading to the passage of laws censoring sexual speech in the name of protecting women. In the last decade, anti-prostitution feminists have joined forces with fundamentalist Christians to prosecute sex workers under the aegis of sex trafficking laws. And now, some essentialist feminists – pejoratively nicknamed TERFs, for “Trans-Exclusive Radical Feminists” – have provided the pseudo-philosophical basis for fundamentalist Christians’ anti-transgender laws…[while] TERFs…approvingly cite…anti-trans [Christian]…right-wing scholars and writers…Feminists…and…Conservatives don’t oppose porn because they want to protect women; they oppose porn because they oppose sexual licentiousness and free sexual expression. Just like they oppose protecting trans people because transgender reality scares them, disgusts them, or offends their outdated theologies. A similar shell-game has recently arisen in the context of sex trafficking…This was a deliberate deception on the part of anti-sex activists like the anti-prostitution group Demand Abolition. As exposed by The Washington Post in 2014, that group’s internal document said that “framing the Campaign’s key target as sexual slavery might garner more support and less resistance, while framing the Campaign as combating prostitution may be less likely to mobilize similar levels of support”…

Hey, Jay Michaelson: I appreciate your mentioning my work, but the standard practice when doing so is to name the author rather than just the publication, and to include a link to the piece cited.

Guest Columnist: Kaytlin Bailey

My friend Kaytlin Bailey, on coming out to her father:

…I was afraid to tell him about my having been a prostitute because he was a great dad. I didn’t want him to think one had anything to do with the other. I didn’t want to burden him with this indulgent, selfish secret because I feared the images that “your daughter was a prostitute” would conjure might break him, even when his various tours of duty didn’t…We talked for hours, never addressing my prostitution directly. We got tipsy, and…he said…that he was proud of me, and that I could always come home. “No matter what.” I could see he wasn’t angry. He was nervous for me the same way he’s always been…

Go read it. Please.

They Never Learn

Since this self-aggrandizing fascist wankfest hasn’t sold as a TV show, they made a pilot movie:

“Just like the book Uncle Tom’s Cabin brought awareness to slavery and helped start a civil war, this movie can instantly turn that dial of public awareness to sex trafficking,” [fantasizes] director Chet Thomas. Toward the beginning of The Abolitionists, a film with a limited release…the audience is introduced to “Batman”…a flawed hero with a troubled past who now works largely in the dark of night, protecting the vulnerable from unimaginable horrors…Batman…spent 15 years laundering money for drug cartels in Latin America…[until he had] a Christian epiphany…Nowadays, he works undercover, largely with a former Homeland Security officer named Tim Ballard. The two of them set up sting operations worldwide that result in the capture of those who sell children as sex slaves…The directors of the documentary…also are working on a TV show. They say they have enough video — taken with cameras disguised as sunglasses, pens and phones — for 25 episodes…Ballard’s organization, Operation Underground Railroad, has rescued 573 children worldwide and put 160 criminals behind bars…

Choke Point (#610)

The government-encouraged gentrification of the internet is tightening the noose on sex workers:

Lately, it seems like every website wants to see my ID. Facebook was the first…then Airbnb started asking me to submit both a Facebook account and legal identification…And now Twitter’s opened up its verification process to all sorts of users—provided, of course, those users are willing to send the staff a copy of their legal identification…this push towards a verified internet…makes me concerned that the next iteration of the social media sites that have been essential to the destigmatization of sex work…won’t be quite so amenable to sex work…It should be relatively obvious why a tweeting escort would want to avoid providing her legal information…but even practitioners of legal sex work such as porn and stripping might not be too keen on the idea…it’s…possible that the potential chilling effect on sex worker voices is more than just an unintentional side effect…

The End of the Beginning (#668)

A reminder that in most of the US, the situation is still worsening:

When he was 18, David Clark had sex with a 14-year-old. In 1982 he pleaded guilty to sexual misconduct…and was sentenced to four years of probation. The following year, the state legislature passed a law that retroactively required Clark to register as a sex offender. In 2009 he was arrested for failing to register…He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison. Last week a federal appeals court [pretended] there was nothing constitutionally amiss about this series of events, because the law threatening to put Clark behind bars is [supposedly] not punitive…retroactive application…violates the Constitution’s ban on ex post facto laws…[but politicians and courts pretend that] forcing sex offenders to register is not a punishment…

Of Course It Is

It’s nice to know that at least a few reporters get this:

…TV stations plastered [Celeste Guap’s] image on newscasts. Reporters hounded her for interviews and shared images from her social-media accounts on their websites. During this time, Guap was [using heroin]…to cope with depression related to her [sexual abuse by cops]…last week…Florida deputies arrested Guap and charged her with felony battery…How did the Bay Area media react to this news? At least four local outlets — including KTVU, SFist.com, ABC 7 and KRON — published Guap’s true identity and legal name, along with a “mug shot” from Florida jail…some local journalists are arguing that Guap’s case already was widely publicized, so it was OK to disclose her legal name…Bullshit. The only reason her story is news…is because she was an underage victim of sexual assault [by cops]…And her legal name and identity should be protected as such…and…what the hell was Guap doing [in Florida] in the first place?…She’s a witness to…crimes committed by numerous Bay Area [cops, including]…human trafficking, statutory rape, interfering with a police investigation, illegal use of a police computer system, and pandering…she’s…trapped with a $300,000 bail and detoxing from hard street drugs cold-turkey, and…experiencing [jailhouse] harassment from [jailers]…

It’s What They Do

Thanks, Iain, but we don’t want to be “legalized and regulated”; we just want to be left the Hell alone:

The politician in charge of the Commons committee reviewing the laws on prostitution is caught in a prostitution scandal. It is right for Labour MP Keith Vaz to resign as chairman of the Commons Home Affairs committee for the time being…But beyond that, Jeremy Corbyn is right about it being “a private matter”…Mr Vaz has done nothing illegal. Even the “poppers” he was alleged to have taken are a legal stimulant. But a lot of people seem to believe that Mr Vaz should now stand down as an MP simply because he was unfaithful to his wife…Yet…people have always had affairs…gay men should surely not be forced do disclose their sexuality if they feel uncomfortable about doing so…Some of the criticism has clearly come from supporters of what is called the “Nordic model” who believe that the buying of sex should be illegal. But this story vividly illustrates the problems associated with changing the law to criminalise men who purchase sex…I can’t really understand why the sale of sexual services should ever be illegal unless it involves trafficking, pimping, compulsion or other forms of coercive behaviour. The Vaz case – if the allegations are true – demonstrates why prostitution should be legalised and properly regulated. So long as it is underground, the sex trade will remain in the hands of the criminals and blackmailers…

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In the News (#638)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged A Procrustean Bed, agency denial, Bangladesh, Bogeymen, bogus studies, Bottleneck, Broken Record, Canada, Checklist, cops, Do As I Say, drugs, Dutch Threat, Dysphemisms Galore, end demand, End Demand (updates), FBI, Florida, Georgia, hysteria, India, Ireland, language, law, Missouri, Netherlands, New York, pizza!, prohibitionist myths, So Close and Yet So Far, sporting events, stripping, Texas, Under Every Bed, Washington (state), What Were You All Waiting For?, Worse Than I Thought, yellow journalism on May 18, 2016| 3 Comments »

You can only really help people if you respect them. – Emily Bazelon

Broken Record

Canadian prohibitionists are desperate to cash in before the panic implodes:

…Ernie Allen…[helped to write] a new [wanking fantasy] study…The study refers to increased prostitution, some of it involving minors, during the annual Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal…“During (the Grand Prix) weekend, many adolescent girls run away from youth centres…because their traffickers need them to cater to tourist demand,” the study [fantasizes]…many of the girls are threatened, beaten up and enslaved…Atlanta and Las Vegas are also highlighted in the report. “These are hub cities, magnet cities where people go for sporting events, for conventions, for trade shows…These are people who travel to a location for another purpose and while there encounter a situation where there’s an opportunity to have sex with a child and they do it…The purchaser doesn’t have to go to a city street. He can shop online for a child for sex from the safety of his home or hotel room”…

I’m disappointed that Ernie didn’t compare these “slave children” to pizza.

Bogeymen

Because women are passive dolls without volition who never make any decision without male coercion:

A New Port Richey [Florida] man is accused of being at the center of a human trafficking ring and targeting some of the most vulnerable women…Clent Ruffin…was already in jail on major drug charges…Melanie Snow, a spokesperson for the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office [claimed] Ruffin would target women in strip clubs…and convince them to come back to his house…then get them hooked on drugs, like heroin, and force them to do sexual favors for his customers…

Obviously, women never decide to take drugs on our own; there’s always some Svengali with magical pimp mind-control powers “getting then hooked”.

Worse Than I Thought

Missouri wants to define escort ads as “sex trafficking”:

The Missouri legislature has passed…a…bill [which] would add advertising sex with trafficking victims to the state’s definition of the crime of trafficking. Trafficking is a felony punishable by 5 to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, or 10-years in prison or life, depending on the age of the victim…

Bottleneck

Susan Shepard of Tits and Sass compares the persecution of ridesharing companies to the absurdity of stripper licensing:

…Stripper licensing [in Texas] is, like cab licensing, done on a city or county basis. There isn’t yet any state-level licensing, although…representative Bill Zedler proposed one in 2013 that would have required strippers to take a training course on human trafficking, and in 2015 a Pennsylvania proposal to create a statewide stripper registry stalled out. In both cases, the legislators were fairly transparent that they wanted to use the proposed licenses as disincentives…Like most laws around the industry, what is touted as protecting women and children is actually about controlling women’s movements and policing nonwhites. The licensing process in most jurisdictions only looks for drug- and prostitution-related charges and convictions…a felony—even a homicide charge—isn’t going to disqualify someone from a stripper license, but a mere arrest on one of the specified charges can be enough to prevent the granting of a license even if the applicant was found not guilty…

So Close and Yet So Far

Protip: If you’re writing an article about “feminist” reasons to support decriminalization, do NOT get your definition of it from a prominent prohibitionist who led a successful re-criminalization campaign: “…decriminalization…essentially ‘eliminates all laws’ regulating sex work, according to Professor Donna Hughes at the University of Rhode Island…” This is a common prohibitionist lie intended to frighten & confuse law-and-order types and progressives who think people shouldn’t be allowed to blow their own noses without some sort of government regulation. Decriminalization is the removal of criminal laws intended to control or “regulate” sex work, hence that word “decriminalization”. Hughes’ statement is exactly as true as the statement, “there are no laws regulating food service”; of course there are, but they’re not criminal laws. This is about the highest level of rhetoric of which prohibitionists are capable, yet the naive and ignorant just keep lapping it up.

Dutch Threat

The Dutch seem determined to slowly throttle sex work to death:

…The leader of our Christian Party…wants to make it illegal to pay for the services of a sex worker when you should have been able to know she’s a victim of exploitation. “For example, when she’s working from a cellar somewhere, bruised, with two big Bulgarian guys at the door”…Politicians often paint this picture of the perfect victim…many fall into a semi-pornographic style when describing their fantasies…In the last couple of years, over half of legal working places for prostitutes have been closed. Brothels are shut down, windows are closed, and no new licences to work are given to anyone…Those who still work from a licenced location are harassed by police, their workplaces broken into, their homes smashed up and their belongings taken. They are subject to random semi-arrests, where they’re put into police vans and taken to the station for questioning because they’re suspected of being a victim…Many hotels no longer accept escorts or try to keep them out. Renting an apartment to work from is all but impossible, and working from home means your landlord can kick you out. So voluntary workers are pushed into basements and sheds and caravans. Regular security companies will not work with prostitutes…So if you’re working from a shed somewhere and you want some big guys to keep you safe, you’re forced to work with people who will do it. You know, off the record. Two big Bulgarian guys, perhaps. And there you have it: the girl working from a shed with two big guys at the door…

Dysphemisms Galore

It’s like they’re competing to see who can write the most cop-fellatory article imaginable:

Nothing shocks Sgt. Torrey Kennedy anymore…“We’re going after John’s [sic] and pimps, and calling them what they are — pedophiles and sex offenders,” he says…“Finding sex trafficking in Atlanta is easier than shooting fish in a barrel”…inviting CBS46 on a wild and exclusive ride into the city’s naked underbelly, teeming with predators…Thousands of women in Atlanta are sold for sex every day, including an estimated 200-300 underage girls a month…Kennedy straps on a bullet proof vest, and we head to a shopping center to join his backup; a squad of patrol cars circle a giant dumpster and hatch a plan take out the human trash…

Do As I Say, Not As I Do (#410)

Anyone who is “shocked” by this should probably consider moving to a remote farm without television or internet:

A female garda has allegedly been accused of working as an escort in her spare time…after gardai at a Dublin station allegedly received a tip-off…Gardai are allegedly probing whether the woman in question only started working as a call girl in the last two months. If the claims are true, she will be facing the sack…A garda representative source also confirmed that they are aware of the shocking claims…

A Procrustean Bed (#502)

Molly Crabapple profiles a woman who fought New York’s agency-denying “trafficking courts”:

…Love…had once been a sex worker…but by the time she was arrested on the charge that brought her to the courtroom, she was out of the business and pursuing a degree as a surgical technician. The problem was, the cops still knew her face, and…figured she was…an easy stat-padding arrest. They snatched her, threw her in a cell, then charged her with misdemeanor prostitution…Love…demanded a trial…the prosecutor offered no hard proof any crime had been committed. Instead he had only her prostitution record and an undercover officer’s word…the judge declared her not guilty. Love wasn’t content just to prove her innocence. She…hired an attorney to sue the city for false arrest. The case was settled out of court for $15,000, and, exactly a year after the initial trial, in November 2015, Love had the money in hand…

What Were You All Waiting For?

Though this editorial is a bit too accepting of “end demand” rhetoric, it’s a good counter to the Seattle Times‘ nauseating bootlicking & pompous prohibitionism:

The title of a powerful feature published in The New York Times Magazine on Sunday posed the question: “Should Prostitution Be a Crime?” Reporter Emily Bazelon spoke with dozens of sex workers around the world, including several from Seattle, to draw a nuanced portrait of the underground sex economy…Many of Bazelon’s subjects (much like Amnesty International and the Human Rights Watch) want to decriminalize sex work. She describes the health benefits of removing criminal sanctions from in New Zealand and part of Australia, achieved without any discernible increase in the overall sex trade. She lists the harms that well-intentioned crusaders have wrought upon their rescue targets. She details the unholy alliance between the Christian right and…“carceral feminists” to turn the abolition of sold sex into a moral crusade. She describes an influential abolitionist casually dismissing sex workers’ very capacity for consent. And she raises questions about…the extent to which violence and coercion influence people’s choices about whether to do sex work…

End Demand (#576)

KIRO, you have my phone number; next time call it before printing this kind of ludicrous garbage:

…the Washington Technology Industry Association…has teamed up with [fascist organ] Businesses Ending Slavery & Trafficking to try and eliminate sex trafficking in the tech industry…“It’s predominantly white men exploiting women of color” [lied] Michael Schutzler of the WTIA…Schutzler said 75 percent of sex trafficking transactions happen at about 2 p.m., and 62 percent of prostituted people meet clients on company property…

Since “trafficking” is used to mean “sex work” these days, just let the absurdity of this claim sink in; I can assure you that there is no way anything like even 6% of outcalls are to clients’ offices, and not even restaurants do 75% of their business in such a narrow window. Yet idiots lap up this shit like a dog eating its own vomit.

Checklist (#599)

Why do people just accept these ridiculous made-up numbers?

A new app tracks vulnerable girls in India and Bangladesh so nonprofits can help prevent trafficking and child marriage…Girl Power…has already helped save more than 200 girls from being exploited, NDTV reported. Community facilitators and teachers are given tablets or Android phones, which have the app installed, and are tasked with registering young girls in 20 villages…

“Maggie McNeill’s providing a sexual outlet to frustrated husbands has already saved over 2000 marriages, Maggie McNeill reported.” That statement is exactly as credible as the one in the story, and based on exactly the same type of “evidence”.

Under Every Bed (#631)

Spokane guys, please be careful; your local cops are on a fanatical crusade targeting YOU:

…Local law enforcement and federal agents teamed up for what is called, [sic] Operation Cross Country…It is a problem that…unfortunately exists in the Spokane area…FBI leaders said they are currently looking into participating in the operation again in 2016 to help rescue even more victims. Before the operation in 2015, the FBI brought [pigs] over from Seattle from the Child Exploitation Task Force to [indoctrinate pigs] in the Inland Northwest on the [newest popular anti-whore propaganda]…

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In the News (#606)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged Above the Law, Africa, An Example to the West, brothels, Cambodia, Checklist, cops, Droit du Seigneur, Dutch Threat, fantasy, India, internet, Kenya, language, Latin America, law, Netherlands, Ohio, politicians, porn, prisons, rape, red-light districts, Russia, Schadenfreude, sex rays, statistics, Surplus Women, Sweden, Swedish model, Tennessee, The Course of a Disease, The Proper Study, The Swedish Pimpocracy, Think of the Children!, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers, Worse Than I Thought on January 23, 2016| Leave a Comment »

Whilst the Government looks to the law as a means to manage commercial sex, violence and abuse will continue for…sex workers. – Teela Sanders

Think of the Children!

“Woman has two jobs” is not news:

Katya Gorlova…was [filmed without her consent] accepting cash from a customer [to do her job]…During conversation she told the man her [other] job involved teaching signing and dancing to young children at a school…She now faces an enquiry…She said her part-time prostitution work did not in any way hinder her job at the school…

The Swedish Pimpocracy

Sweden, the feminist paradise:

A Swedish doctor fed a woman drug-laced strawberries and then repeatedly raped her in a homemade bunker that he planned to use for more victims…the man, who has not been named…was an intellectual who was socially awkward and secretive…He once showed pals the outside of his underground dungeon, which he spent five years building…The doctor allegedly gave the woman…a box of chocolate-covered strawberries spiked with Rohypnol while at her place in Stockholm. He then drove her to his lair 350 miles away…he…planned to keep the woman locked in the dungeon for years. But he panicked when she was reported missing and drove her to a nearby police station, and was then arrested.

The Proper Study

But what does “porn” mean?

…Pornhub…just released its annual review of country-by-country data on porn searches and consumption. By percentage of traffic, the United States was Pornhub’s biggest 2015 consumer, followed by the U.K., India, Canada, and Germany. The most-searched term on Pornhub last year was lesbian, followed by teen, step mom, cartoon, and milf. Pornhub also looked at which searches have gained the most over 2014. Some of the more safe-for-work words: giantess (up 1,091 percent), real public sex(up 583 percent), romantic sex (up 267 percent), and lesbian seduces straight (up 244 percent). For U.S. users only, hardcore lesbian scissoring saw the most gain (up 918 percent), followed by celebrity sex tape (up 553 percent). Other leaps included extreme gangbang (260 percent), step mom shower (213 percent), and yoga (133 percent)…

Droit du Seigneur

Given that “ring” is a dysphemism for “suppressed business”, how can one have a “prostitution ring” that caters to government officials and is managed by the cops in a country where prostitution is legal?

Colombia’s national police force is facing allegations that it wiretapped a high-profile journalist…investigations into the allegations…are being hindered by death threats and conflicts of interests…The…scandal broke when prominent radio host and former news anchor Vicky Dávila announced that she, her family, and her reporting team had been trailed and wiretapped by the national police. Dávila…was investigating allegations that some 300 police cadets were engaged in a prostitution ring catering to top officials…four other prominent journalists investigating the police have also claimed to be victims of wiretapping and harassment…

Above the Law

These are the people prohibitionists want in charge of sex workers:

[An]…Ohio [cop] has been charged with raping a woman in 2014 and then using the police database to stalk her after she reported the crime….Jeffrey Martin…was arrested last month on charges of rape, stalking and menacing…Martin [also] pretended to be a private investigator so he could stalk his victim onto Ursuline College campus…he had been suspended four times by the Pepper Pike Police Department. Two of the suspensions were related to inappropriate conduct toward women…

Checklist

Note that most of these revolve around either bogus “signs” or masturbatory “awareness raising”:

After first learning about human trafficking, many people want to help in some way but do not know how. Here are just a few ideas for your consideration…Learn the red flags that may indicate human trafficking…so that you can help identify a potential trafficking victim…Incorporate human trafficking information into your professional associations’ conferences, trainings, manuals, and other materials…Join or start a grassroots anti-trafficking coalition…Distribute public awareness materials…Host an awareness event to watch and discuss a recent human trafficking documentary. On a larger scale, host a human trafficking film festival…Set up a Google alert to receive current human trafficking news…Train your staff on how to identify the indicators of human trafficking…Look for signs of human trafficking among your clients…

Dutch Threat

The slow death of Die Wallen:

…The constant claim people make on us is that they are helping us, but really what they’re doing is just dumping more shit on us. They don’t really listen, they just talk with you so they can say they talked with you and listened to you. But…if they really would’ve listened to us, the city government would’ve immediately stopped buying up more windows than the more than 100 workplaces that we’ve already lost. But they don’t…[the] 37 [new] window…[closures mean] work space [for] at least 135 prostitutes…these…on top of the estimated 375 women that [have] already [lost] their workplace, bringing the total to more than 500 women…We can’t work elsewhere, because all over this country they’re closing down legal workplaces for prostitutes. In fact, between 2006 and 2014 in total 40% of all the legal prostitution businesses closed down. Between 2000 and now, 729 prostitution windows alone closed down. That’s more than 1/3 of all the prostitution windows in this country! And than they’re still surprised that illegal prostitution is a growing problem?…

Worse Than I Thought (#322)

In other words, he was a time waster, not a “sex trafficker”:

A Nashville judge has overturned the conviction and 22-year prison sentence for a man whose case was [touted] by prosecutors as the first of its kind in the state…Kohlmeyer testified…that he was lonely and bored during his job as a forklift driver…when he began chatting with a prostitute he found on…Backpage…they talked for more than 90 minutes over two days…[and] Kohlmeyer offered “5000+ for you and someone YOUNG!” The woman went to police, and Nashville Detective Sheba Cantrell took over, posing as the prostitute. She…had conversations with Kohlmeyer about what age of girls he was looking for…”Just over 8 not over 16,” Kohlmeyer replied…Cantrell pushed for a meeting…[and] Kohlmeyer…cut off contact…Kohlmeyer never had the money discussed…Public Defender Chaucey Fuller…later filed a motion for acquittal arguing — among other things — that the law requires an actual person being trafficked, and that fictitious girls offered by an undercover detective did not meet that standard…Kohlmeyer is [currently also] facing [child porn] charges…

An Example to the West (#349)

…thousands of sex workers in [Bengaluru,] India…want to be part of the mainstream society and enjoy all their rights…till a few years ago most of these women had no access to even a ration card…Today things are different. Around 5,700 sex workers in the city have recently been benefited from various social security schemes and entitlements, which include, pension schemes, ration cards, Aadhar cards, Voter ID cards, Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), Jan Dhan Yojana scheme, legal services and loans, to name a few. All these have been made possible by the Sahaya Single Window project under the aegis of the Centre for Advocacy and Research (CFAR), an NGO. It was first implemented in 2013…

A Tale That Grew in the Telling (#449)

Fantasy film double feature:

…in northwest Ohio…the…film…Chosen was presented as part of an event highlighting Human Trafficking Awareness Month at Van Wert Cinemas. The free event attracted over 75 to see the documentary. A free showing of Star Wars: The Force Awakens followed…

The Course of a Disease (#449)

Swedish model fanatics just won’t stop trying to impose their filth on the UK:

MPs are to launch a major inquiry into how sex workers are treated in UK law…The Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry will examine whether criminal action should still be focused most heavily on those who sell sex, rather than those who buy it…Professor Teela Sanders of the University of Leeds…said shifting criminal action onto those who pay for sex risked driving the activities underground. She said: “We have had two decades of reviewing, legislating, guidelines…and none of them have prioritised the safety of sex workers and the broader issues around human rights to protection. There have been various consultations and parliamentary groups in recent years including attempts to make it a crime to pay for sex in 2009 and the more recent 2014 report Shifting the Burden from the All Party Parliamentary Group – none of these had the safety of sex workers at the fore”…

Schadenfreude (#566)

This is the place sex workers “rescued” by the likes of Somaly Mam are sent:

Police in Phnom Penh arrested at least 274 sex workers…last year before sending them to the notorious Prey Speu social affairs center…The Women’s Network for Unity (WNU), which is run primarily by current and former sex workers, assisted in [their] release…street workers reported being arrested eight to nine times per year, on average. Eighty percent of those surveyed reported being “violated” by police officers, either physically or sexually…district governor Kouch Chamroeun angrily denied that police…abused sex workers…[but also bloviated that] police had every right to arrest street workers…because sex workers held at Prey Speu have not received due process, nor faced prosecution in court, their detention is unlawful…

Surplus Women (#586)

Nakuru [Kenya] sex workers say a serial killer is targeting and mutilating them…they protested on Kenyatta Avenue against the rise in murders. They demanded county police catch the killer. Four sex workers were found dead under mysterious circumstances between September and October last year. Two had their skin peeled off and the others’ eyes were gouged out, the sex workers say…[on January 9^th] another sex worker, 20-year-old Grace Wangari, was killed…

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