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In the News (#511)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, Music, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged A Whore in Church, Amsterdam, Anatomy of a Boondoggle, animals, Arizona, Australia, brothels, Buried Truth, Catholicism, Choke Point, cops, Craigslist, cult of the child, dirty, Dirty Amateurs, disease, Divided We Fall, Egypt, evidence, hysteria, Illinois, language, Mind Over Matter, neofeminism, Netherlands, Oregon, Paint By Numbers, politicians, porn, prohibitionist myths, psychology, red-light districts, rescue industry, robots, Scapegoats, sex rays, sex work is work, sporting events, stripping, Stupor Bowl, Swedish model, The Public Eye, The Pygmalion Fallacy, The Rescuers, Too Young To Know, transgender, United Kingdom, universal criminality, Whatever They Need To Say on February 7, 2015| 12 Comments »

The enormous variations in prostitutes’ life stories make it impossible to fit them in binary categories like “forced” and “voluntary”. – Linda Duits

The Rescuers

The youth of the Christian Union conducted a demonstration…in the Red Light District, but the prostitutes wanted nothing to do with it…Mariska Majoor of PROUD, the sex workers’ union…[said] “The Christian fundamentalists make customers afraid while the…women in the Wallen just want to work”…PROUD performed a counteraction to make it clear that sex workers do not need to be saved by Christian fundamentalists…

Dirty Amateurs

Cruising for sex on Craigslist personal ads resulted in a 15.9 percent increase in HIV infections after the website entered various U.S. markets, according to a recent study by the University of Minnesota …Jason Chan…found that HIV incidence began to increase about a year after Craigslist entered a market, then climbed through the study period…the association…occurred only with respect to personal ads — not professional escort services. Chan figures that sex workers took more precautions than people seeking sex in a social context…

Scapegoats

Universal criminality in action. Can’t prove a charge? Just add another in mid-trial that you don’t actually have to prove:

A factory worker has been jailed for four years after he was cleared of having sex with a Shetland pony but convicted of outraging public decency. Alan Barnfield was…spotted putting something around the neck of the…pony and leading it and another horse to the darkened end of the paddock. Worried residents called police and he was found “sweating profusely and smelling strongly of horses”…the outraging public decency charge was only added halfway through the trial [because] it…carried an unlimited sentence whereas the main charge…[only] carries a two-year maximum. The second charge was added when lawyers…realised that…[they would] actually [have]…to…prove…[the main charge]…

Too Young To Know

Anyone who whose memory extends back to a time earlier than the age of eighteen should know that the doctrine of “sexualization” is total bullshit, yet people believe it anyway. Will Matheson argues that since humans are naturally sexual, the actual problem is what we might call “Puritanization”, the societal suppression of those healthy, natural urges. It’s a good essay, and I’m not just saying that because he quotes me right below Carl Sagan.

Whatever They Need To Say

This cannot be repeated too many times:

One of Amsterdam’s most iconic landmarks is being torn down. The lights have been switched off in the famous Red Light District…the city’s politicians…have undertaken a massive gentrification project under the guise of rescuing women from the sex trade. Project 1012 is…buying up brothels with public funds [and] re-selling the realty to “high-grade” enterprises: dining, design and fashion…It was then Alderman Lodewijk Asscher…who managed to “sell” the project…[by pretending] that sex work is inextricably bound up with exploitation, oppression and human trafficking…This…cannot be substantiated with scientific data…Project 1012 has never been about the faith of sex workers, but about…ownership…of valuable real estate…That’s why brothel owners had to leave, despite the fact they were never charged with actual crimes, let alone convicted. They merely needed to be branded as social pariahs…

Buried Truth

Surprising no one:

A preacher who claimed that Starbucks flavour their coffees with semen has admitted that he…has been tempted himself by the gay lifestyle. “Absolutely, no doubt about it. I spent three and a half years in prison…I was tempted, but I didn’t yield to temptation…”

The Pygmalion Fallacy (#137)

A hi-tech “teledildonics” contraption…lets lonely men thrust into an artificial vagina – and have a robot dildo penetrate webcam girls in time to their thrusts…They’ll have to be quite brave – the Shockspot produces 18lb of thrust…

What could possibly go wrong?

Paint By Numbers

“Fighting sex trafficking” by standing on lawns is so passé:

A group dedicated to saving young women from forced prostitution…[stood around on] Interstate-5 off-ramps for hours in the rain. Interstate 5 is…where [prohibitionists pretend truckloads of]…sex trafficking victims are taken from Washington to Mexico. A group of people in Portland…did something about it…[by standing around holding] bright pink signs…

Stupor Bowl

I think we can safely close the lid on the coffin of the “gypsy whores” myth; “Video Vigilante” Brian Bates (no friend of sex workers) is celebrating its demise, and a Phoenix criminal defense attorney mocked it with a poem which also lampooned cops and crusading prosecutors:

‘Twas the night before the Superbowl, when all through the state,
Not a hooker was stirring, who wasn’t a fake;
The cops posted their escort ads on the internet with care,
In hopes that potential Johns soon would surf there;

The police were nestled all smug on their hotel room beds,
While visions of entrapped soon-to-be sex offenders danced in their heads…

…The wrinkles on the face of the undercover cop
Gave the look of old age even with the tube top,
When, what to the client’s disbelieving eyes should appear,
But a detective with cuffs, claiming her age should’ve been clear…

Mind Over Matter

Nobody has any damn business telling people that their reasons for having sex are “wrong”:

Rashida Jones doesn’t think women are deriving pleasure from amateur porn. “It’s performative, women aren’t feeling joy from it,” Jones said…while promoting Hot Girls Wanted, a documentary she produced on the amateur porn industry…”It’s fulfilling a male fantasy…what is the real cost to your soul and to your psyche?”

Yes, she thinks having sex can damage one’s soul. But neofeminism isn’t a religion, noooooooo.

Choke Point

In what seems to be a retreat from its Operation Choke Point initiative, the FDIC has…[instructed] banks to judge their relationships with their customers on a case-by-case basis, rather than refusing to provide…services to entire categories of industries…[even] leading banks to close the…accounts of many churches…[because] a large percentage of [their] contributions [are] in cash…The Washington Times…argues that [this] effectively ends Operation Choke Point…

The Public Eye (#423)

This author is too deeply soaked in prohibitionist thinking to write a proper story, but the words of the sex workers shine through anyway:

…the critically acclaimed Sex Workers’ Opera…[was] scripted…to…speak out against…criminalisation…UK…policies are…geared towards rescuing “sex slaves”…but for…sex workers…there is nothing more terrifying than the idea of “being rescued”…In one skit, the cast compares [Swedish model proponents] to naïve fishermen, who tell others to go and fish in safer seas where there are, in fact, no fish…

A Whore in Church (#425)

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

A group of nuns and residents who live near a west suburban strip joint…[alleged] prostitution and liquor law violations…at the club, which they…have been seeking to shut down…the Missionary Sisters of St. Charles Borromeo and others [now] claim Club Allure…promotes and allows certain touching and “high friction rubbing” that could be considered prostitution…They also say the club…violates…liquor laws by serving alcohol in close proximity to the nuns’ convent…

Anatomy of a Boondoggle (#439)

Good riddance to bad rubbish:

A private investigator who gets paid by councils to have undercover sex inside illegal brothels has been fired after withholding information about a prostitute whom he met on a job…the investigator was accused…by [prohibitionist NGO] Brothel Busters…of having “deliberately omitted” important details…to…protect…an illegal sex worker, with whom he had become “enchanted”…

Divided We Fall (#445)

Prostitution charges are such a convenient bludgeon against minorities:

A court in Cairo has sentenced a 25-year-old transwoman named Malooka Aldlouah to six years in prison under a law that criminalizes “debauchery”. Aldlouah may be the first person sentenced…since an appeals court announced…it would uphold the acquittal of 26 men accused of participating in a “gay sex party”…in December…police [pretended] that [Aldlouah] had posted “hardcore” videos on YouTube that were intended to advertise sexual services including “sadistic sex”. But a review of [her] YouTube and Facebook accounts…showed only videos of her dancing clothed…and none had been posted within the past year…

Sex Work is Work (#507)

A group of South African sex worker rights activists have published “A Guide to Respectful Reporting and Writing on Sex Work“, a hefty 4.7 meg compilation which covers everything from recommendations on language and stock photographs to admonitions against outing sex workers. Given that it’s in English, it shouldn’t be too hard to adapt for American usage.

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2014 in Review

Posted in Miscellaneous, tagged activism, Australia, blogging, Canada, France, Germany, India, internet, Japan, Netherlands, statistics, Twitter on January 19, 2015| 7 Comments »

I think I can safely declare this blog a success. – “Fourth Anniversary”

Due to the decreasing number of daily slots available for general posts, this feature is appearing a little later than usual this year; in fact, I didn’t even get to write it until two days after the date on which it published last year. But here it is, better late than never; newer readers who haven’t seen one before may be interested in the description of how the statistics are derived from last year’s review column.

I received a total of 1,110,606 visitors in 2014, about 100,000 more than in the previous year; the average number of hits per day was 3043. My best month was January, with a total of 106,741 views (3443 per day); as you can see the performance is very consistent, with the high not all that far above the average. Indeed, the record for best single day is still held by October 6^th, 2013 (9253 views). As it did last year, Twitter gave me the greatest number of referrals, 45,120 in all; it was followed by Reddit (8877 hits) and Facebook (7131). #4 was Popehat with 3438, #5 ErosBlog with 3339, #6 Girl on the Net with 2632, #7 Reason with 2011, #8 Heartiste with 1955, #9 ECCIE with 1900, and #10 USA Sex Guide with 1662. The top ten countries in which my readers live together account for about 85% of all of my traffic; #1 is the United States with 672,268 hits (60.5%); #2 the United Kingdom with 86,739 (7.8%); #3 Canada with 73,509 (6.6%); #4 Australia with 38,239 (3.4%); #5 Germany with 18,300 (1.65%); #6 The Netherlands with 14,106 (1.27%); #7 India with 13,831 (1.25%); #8 Japan with 13,558 (1.22%); #9 Singapore with 10,823 (0.98%); and #10 France with 10,624 (0.96%).

In a strong sign of my increasing popularity, the most common search which discovered this blog last year was “the honest courtesan” (in various permutations) with 1958 hits; “maggie mcneill” (spelled several different ways) was third with 1710. Perennial favorite “soapland” (in many different forms) was second with a total of 1858, and “rhinoceros” remained at fourth with 1402 hits. Various versions of “ashley madison” (many expecting “free” credits) came in fifth with 971 hits; the many different ways to say “penis shapes” came sixth (about 835 total). “P411” was seventh with about 385, then “escort terms” (various forms) with 358. Ninth place was “anonymous blogging” with 356, and finally many different forms of “vulva shapes” with 337. The numbers for all of these are dramatically lower than last years’; I’m sure this is due to Google’s continuing prudification of its search parameters, which also curtailed my traffic growth dramatically and reduced my page rank from a 5 to a 4.

My top ten posts for the year were as follows:

Name	Date	# of hits in 2014
A Visit to Soapland	October 21^st, 2011	52,920
All Shapes and Sizes	September 8^th, 2010	47,454
Ashley Madison	January 30^th, 2011	23,593
A Whore in the Bedroom	September 9^th, 2010	20,403
More Terminology	September 7^th, 2011	17,816
Black Men	September 18^th, 2010	16,315
Something in the Milk	January 28^th, 2014	14,944
Advice for Clients	August 21^st, 2010	12,995
The Going Rate	October 9^th, 2010	10,301
Rhinoceros	January 21^st, 2012	9342

Dr. Brooke Magnanti’s “How To Blog Anonymously (and how not to)” also had considerable traffic (16,423 hits in all); the reason it doesn’t appear in the table above is that it’s a static page rather than a post (I exclude my “Introduction” page for the same reason). The top post by comment has changed somewhat since last year:

Name	Date	# of comments by 12/31/14
The Privilege Paradigm	August 22^nd, 2013	230
That Is So Hot!	April 19^th, 2011	202
Speaking in Prostitute	June 17^th, 2011	191
Pendulum	April 9^th, 2011	146
The Enlightenment Police	October 1^st, 2011	145
TW3 #409	March 1^st, 2014	144
Universal Criminality	January 15^th, 2012	140
Their Lips Are Moving	April 25^th, 2011	133
Denunciation	September 2^nd, 2013	126
Creeping Rot	April 18^th, 2011	123

Even with Google’s attempts to silence the voice of anyone who dares to write about sex, comparison with my reports for 2012 and 2013 will demonstrate just how much I’ve grown in both size and reach. And in the coming year, I plan to use every means at my disposal to increase that even more.

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In the News (#505)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged A Tale That Grew in the Telling, A Year Later, Africa, agency denial, Arizona, Backwards into the Future, BDSM, BDSM Updates, California, Canada, condoms, halfway whores, Having and Eating Cake, hysteria, law, LGBT rights, Mexico, Netherlands, Number Puzzle, Oregon, politicians, porn, prohibitionist myths, psychology, restaurants, Russia, sporting events, statistics, stripping, Stupor Bowl, Surplus Women, Swedish model, The Widening Gyre, Tyranny by Consensus, violence vs. sex workers on January 17, 2015| 18 Comments »

While there’s a thick “rescue” sauce smeared all over [modern prostitution law], the “punish the dirty whores” attitude is still obvious. – Marijke Vonk

BDSM

BDSM carries a stigma nearly as heavy as that of sex work, and indeed is still criminalized, semi-criminalized or quasi-criminalized in many parts of the US. But up until the recent release of DSM-V, it was also classified as a mental illness and could thus be used by “authorities” as an excuse for all manner of rights violations, including abduction of one’s children. Here’s a thorough article in the Atlantic on the 30-year fight to “de-classify kink as a psychiatric disorder”, largely accomplished by the efforts of the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom.

Tyranny By Consensus

The Free Speech Coalition…denounced the AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s proposed California ballot measure over mandatory condoms on the porn set and said that, if enacted, the act would likely amount to a new “Prohibition” for adult filmmaking. AHF’s statewide proposal not only would make condoms mandatory on the set, but it would require adult filmmakers to be licensed and subject them to additional record-keeping requirements beyond 18 U.S.C. § 2257…FSC CEO Diane Duke’s said that AHF’s proposal…would destroy the industry as most know it and drive existing producers underground…

Surplus Women

A…Russian policeman who raped and murdered 22 women…has been jailed for life…Mikhail Popkov, raped and axed or stabbed the victims late at night in the Siberian city of Angarsk after offering to give them lifts in his police car…the victims…included a teacher, a shop assistant and several prostitutes…One had been decapitated and another’s heart had been removed, while it is reported he had sex with some of the bodies after killing them…Two other women managed to survive…but suffered serious injuries…[Popkov] described himself as a “cleaner” who was purging the city of prostitutes…The murders [started in] 1994 [and ended abruptly]…in 2000, when…he became impotent and contracted syphilis…

The Widening Gyre

They actually thought “sex trafficking” was a more credible explanation than jealousy:

Residents in a block of flats were horrified when they complained that the water tasted “funny” – and were told that the unusual flavour was due to the rotting corpse of a young woman in the water tank…Carmen Yarira Noriega Esparza…was last seen leaving her gym in…Mexico City in February last year…Police are now focusing their enquiries on her relationship with a wealthy businessman who was paying the rent for her flat, and who she had recently dumped…The week before she was supposed to move out of the flat, she vanished and had not been seen since…A police spokesman said…”We had…been looking into suggestions that she may have been taken by a gang involved in the sex slave business. It appears that was not the case.”

Backwards Into the Future (#137)

Sweeping laws that could see gays, prostitutes and drug injectors enjoy full rights while cutting back on what the media can say about them are in the offing…For example, it will be criminal for police to profile [them]…using their sexual activity…The groups want a policy which makes it possible to have them represented by their own in oversight bodies…They also recommend…a law that protects the confidentiality of their medical data…barring the media from identifying them and the places they work from. This could mean it may be illegal to [out] prostitutes during police swoops or investigative pieces…

Stupor Bowl

Sign of the decline of the “gypsy whores” myth: it’s only weeks before the Super Bowl and we’ve barely heard a peep from the Arizona moon-barkers yet.

Prostitutes and the people who pay for their services…could face harsher punishments. Phoenix City Council members are set to discuss…a mandatory jail booking for anyone arrested…and requiring “John school” for anyone convicted of soliciting a prostitute…A man who directs the current “John school” expects a surge in prostitution during the Super Bowl timeframe…”These are guys that are used to being in control…they’re used to having things their own way,” [Dr. Jon] McCaine [bloviated ignorantly]…It is unclear whether, if approved, the changes would be in effect by Super Bowl weekend…

Number Puzzle (#426)

This long, thorough article by Marijke Vonk on the facts about Dutch sex workers has a lot to recommend it, but I found these figures especially interesting:

– 90% don’t even know anyone who is being forced
– 93% like or are neutral about their colleagues
– 92% have never experienced violence at work
– 86% is happy or even very happy with their job
– they see 10 to 30 customers per week
– 84% like their customers
– 80% never experienced any trouble with a customer ever
– 90% feel unrepresented in politics
– 90% feel government does not protect their interests
– 95% claim politicians have no idea what is going on in the sex industry

On the Simultaneous Having and Eating of Cake (#441)

Two ex-dancers are suing the Portland strip club Casa Diablo for back pay and damages for alleged harassment—including unwanted touching—by patrons and the club’s employees. Matilda Bickers and Amy Pitts…each performed at Casa Diablo for about two and a half years…[they] allege Casa Diablo—billed as the city’s only vegan strip club—failed to pay them a minimum wage, took a 30 percent cut of their nightly tips, and fined them as much as $40 if they showed up late and $70 for missing a shift. Even their performances could bring penalties—for example, $10 if they didn’t undress quickly enough on stage…Portland…dancers, social workers and lobbyists are crafting legislation that may clarify employee status for Oregon dancers…

A Year Later

Imagine being such a control freak that you would be willing to disrupt your own life and do an unpleasant job solely for the opportunity to inflict violence on other people for having private, consensual sex in a way you don’t like:

…Joy Smith has decided, now that the controversial prostitution law is in full force in Canada, her job in Parliament is done…and…she will devote herself full-time to [prohibitionism]…She never intended to be an MP but rather a school principal…“I’m not a very good politician. I’ve never been attracted to it but I’m really glad I did it…the reason I went to Parliament was to stop human trafficking. What I want to do now is continue that work”…Smith [imagines]…that sex work can’t be consensual, that all prostitution is human trafficking…

A Tale That Grew in the Telling (#503)

Mark Draughn thought that stupid “trafficking hotspot” map looked familiar:

“…The other data source is a map of every McDonald’s location in the United States. Note that every single sex trafficking hotspot corresponds to a cluster of McDonald’s restaurants. The conclusion is obvious: McDonald’s food is turning our women into whores!…”

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In the News (#504)

Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged Ad Absurdum, Alabama, An Example to the West, animals, BDSM, California, Canada, censorship, cops, dehumanization, Don’t Take My Word For It, Dutch Threat, games, genitalia, Here We Go Again, hysteria, Indiana, Ireland, law, Little Boxes, male prostitutes, neofeminism, Netherlands, orgasm, politicians, porn, psychology, rape, Rough Trade, Scapegoats, sex rays, So What Else Is New?, Subtle Pimping, surveillance, teachers, Thailand, The Camel's Nose, The Notorious Badge, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers on January 14, 2015| 16 Comments »

The pain [US sex policing] produces in the lives of sex workers…is nothing short of depraved and barbaric. – David Masciotra

Rough Trade

A middle-aged Dublin criminal who is classified as one of Ireland’s most dangerous sex offenders has been arrested in Spain…after fleeing Ireland more than 18 months ago…At least four prostitutes…were raped and robbed by the man between 2010 and 2012…They…were [drugged] and then…sexually assaulted…

Don’t Take My Word For It

Here’s an article on a San Francisco service called ManServants, which has polite guys that women can hire to do romantic but not-directly-sexual stuff for them, like conversation, wine-pouring and hand massage:

For men, hiring a stripper has always been about performing a certain type of masculinity as much as it is about enjoying an attractive woman’s body. In much the same way, ManServants is a performance. Even among sexually adventurous urban-dwellers, it’s déclassé to post photos of your friend receiving a lapdance from a male stripper. But a handsome man in a tux refilling her cocktail? Instagram gold. According to the women behind ManServants, women want to be adored…They want a touch of theatricality, and to feel the thrill of male attention without worrying about whether they are sending the wrong signals or will have to shoo him away at the end of the night…

Heads in the Sand

We like to think that education changes people for the better, helping them critically analyze information and providing a certain immunity from disinformation. But if that were really true, then you wouldn’t have low vaccination rates clustering in areas where parents are, on average, highly educated…researchers decided to look at a number of issues that have become politicized, such as the Iraq War, evolution, and climate change. They find that, for these issues, education actually makes it harder for people to accept reality, an effect they ascribe to the fact that “highly educated partisans would be better equipped to challenge information inconsistent with predispositions”…

Scapegoats

I’m sure you feel safer now that these dangerous criminals have been arrested:

A married couple from Indiana were charged with bestiality after police say they made a video showing the wife performing sex acts on their dog…[which was] discovered by a police detective in Fairfax County, Virginia, on the website Beastforum. The [cop]…was able to determine that the posts came from Anderson, Indiana, and then forwarded the information to local police…Their pit bull, Lucky, [was abducted by cops]…If convicted, the Johnsons could face…two and a half years in prison and a $10,000 fine…

So What Else Is New?

…gynecologist Samuel Salama and his colleagues…have some evidence supporting the reality of female ejaculation. Salama and his team have carried out the first ever ultrasound scans on women who express large amounts of liquid at orgasm. The results…have been published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine…the research showed that there are two forms of female ejaculation. In the first form, a small amount of milky white fluid is expressed…by the Skene glands which drain into the urethra. But other women [were observed] “squirting” a much larger amount of fluid…from the bladder…for two participants, there was no chemical difference between the urine and the squirted fluid. But…samples of the other five women contained prostatic-specific antigen (PSA) which was not present in their first urine samples…

Dutch Threat

…the biggest mistake Jojanneke [van den Berge] made was to think that sex workers would keep silence, she seems genuinely surprised to be hearing from them and has not managed to keep her composure. It used to be you could just make up stuff…Sex workers who didn’t fit into the role of passive victim were simply ignored. But with twitter and other forms of social media, sex workers have a place to get their voices heard and they are noisy indeed! Jojanneke has attempted to fight back against those unruly whores and tried to silence them, but mainstream media is picking up on this story…Jojanneke claims she has never talked to a happy hooker while in a conversation with a happy hooker. I know at least four genuinely happy, well-educated women who decided to get into sex work out of their own free will who have talked to Jojanneke, but [she] continues to lie she’s never spoken to them…

An Example To the West (#343)

…In February 2008, Thailand passed the Prevention and Suppression of Human Trafficking Act. Two months later…Fifty-four migrants from Myanmar suffocated and died while being transported…inside a cold-storage delivery truck…increased punishments, penalties and stricter border controls associated with combating human trafficking saw a change from open transportation to closed; and longer journeys resulted in diversions from normal smuggling routes to avoid checkpoints…The media portrays human trafficking in a one-dimensional way. We see police carrying out raids and apprehending…women [who] are…stood over and herded like inanimate objects…countries such as New Zealand have reduced corruption and almost eliminated exploitation…by replacing prostitution under criminal law with labour and civil laws…

The Camel’s Nose (#344)

…Dutch Ruppersberger, the NSA’s personal Rep in Congress…has announced that he’s bringing back CISPA, the cybersecurity bill designed to make it easier for the NSA to access data from tech companies…he’s using the Sony Hack as [an excuse even though]…it wouldn’t have helped…Even if Sony had opened up its system to the government, it seems unlikely that the NSA would have magically spotted this hack and done anything about it…

Here We Go Again (#344)

Though she doesn’t mention it in the video interview I posted before, and it’s pretty far down in this Alternet article, apparently Jessica Pliley does mention the connection of “white slavery” hysteria to the modern “sex trafficking” hysteria in her book Policing Sexuality: The Mann Act and The Making of the FBI. This review makes it sound very worthwhile, so I’m adding it to my wishlist.

Little Boxes (#350)

I’m not sure which is more ludicrous, the cops’ insistence that this is prostitution, or the cuddlers’ insistence that it isn’t:

Two professional cuddling services, one from Vancouver and one from Montreal, are snuggling up to Toronto…cuddling services have popped up throughout North America in recent years…[but] controversy…has often followed, amid concerns these businesses lead to illicit activity…The Cuddlery and CuddleMe.ca both [pretend] their services aren’t sexual in nature…But [ex-cop] Dave Perry…said there are risks of sexual assault for both clients and employees with kind of service…

Ad Absurdum (#441)

“Victim”. Can these people even hear themselves?

A 23-year-old high school teacher was arrested in Tuscaloosa [Alabama]…after police investigated an on-going relationship with one of her students…Jessica Bonnett Acker…was charged with engaging in a sex act or deviant sexual intercourse with a student under the age of 19…the victim was an 18-year-old male student…

The Notorious Badge (#452)

Is this dude for real?

…Jamie Dornan [said] …“I fear I’ll get murdered, like John Lennon, by one of those mad fans at the premiere…I’m a father now, and a husband. I don’t want to die yet”…

He keeps waving his wife and child around as though he thinks they’ll ward him from contamination by those dirty sex rays.

Subtle Pimping (#503)

I’m not going to quote any of it because it’s vile even by her incredibly low standards, but here’s neofeminist lunatic Meghan Murphy on the subject of the pro-sex worker video game currently being developed in Canada. A warning for those unfamiliar with her: nearly everything the evil MM writes is the prose equivalent of a parody of The Exorcist, wherein MM’s head spins wildly about at dozens of RPMs, spewing horrifying volumes of noxious green vomit on everything within range. It’s definitely not for the faint of heart or those with weak stomachs.

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That Was the Week That Was (#442)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged Above the Law, agency denial, apes & monkeys, Australia, Bad Girls, Broken Record, brothels, Business As Usual, California, Cambodia, Canada, censorship, Colorado, Connecticut, cops, Damned If You Don't, Do As I Say, East Asia, Enough is Enough, Finding What Isn’t There, Florida, hotels, Hussies, hysteria, imaginative fiction, India, Innocence Never Had, internet, Ireland, law, male prostitutes, Monkey Business, Monsters, neofeminism, Netherlands, New York, O Canada!, Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs, Philippines, porn, prisons, prohibitionist myths, rape, red-light districts, rescue industry, Sales Pitch, Schadenfreude, sex rays, sex work is work, Sweden, Swedish model, Texas, That Old Black Magic, The Pro-Rape Coalition, The Roof Caves In, The Widening Gyre, Think of the Children!, Traffic Jam, transgender, underage, United Kingdom, video, violence vs. sex workers, Washington DC, Wise Investment, witchcraft on October 18, 2014| 2 Comments »

[To a prohibitionist California judge] “help”…means keeping a pregnant teen locked up in juvenile jail because she accepted payment for sex, but still talking to her in really nice tones. – Elizabeth Nolan Brown

Think of the Children!

I’m sure this sleazebag reporter is proud of himself:

…Slicing Beauty is a fairly typical…slasher flick, featuring gratuitous nudity…[which] was produced and directed, under an alias, by the principal of [a Connecticut] Middle School. And the film’s script…was written, also under an alias, by a guidance counselor at [another] Middle School…Mark D. Foley…[and] Aaron Vnuk…have been making movies together since at least 2008…the pair formed a company that became Moongoyle Entertainment…in movie credits, they use the names Mark Daniel and Aaron Thomas Howell…[but busybody Matthew Kauffman] determined their identities by comparing information in state corporation records…to state educator records…

And this, kiddies, is why Maggie McNeill, LLC is registered in Delaware.

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

A…Dallas…vice detective accused of giving a prostitute protection in exchange for sexual favors coached the woman to say she was his confidential informant if questioned about the relationship…Jose Luis Bedoy…was…charged with…obstruction of…justice…Bedoy met the woman…in early 2009 during a raid…[he] alerted her to police investigations and sought sex in return…

Sales Pitch

At least a few Swedish politicians seem to get it:

Sweden’s new coalition government is trying to make it an offence for Swedes to use prostitutes when they are…in other countries…But their plans look set to be blocked by the centre-right parties that made up the former governing Alliance…Some argue that making it illegal for Swedes to pay for sex in places where prostitution is…legal, could lead to other countries starting to punish their citizens for activities that are allowed in Sweden…”It would be terrible if people got punished because they had a homosexual relationship…or…an abortion in Sweden,” [said] Moderate party Justice spokesperson Beatrice Ask…

Schadenfreude

Yet another rescue industry fraud:

…Frits Rouvoet regularly walks in Amsterdam’s Red Light District…most prostitutes see [him] as “this idiot that always brings flowers”, and often try to get rid of him by pretending to be on the phone…[he] regularly claims to have “saved” a woman…and has been doing so for years, while I still see the same girls at work every day…how come nobody has noticed the women that have gone missing, because he has “saved” them?…It also makes one wonder [why]…these “oh so violent pimps”…let Frits…take away “their girls” without a fight…Does Frits Rouvoet possess some kind of supernatural…powers, that [protect] him…?

Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs

Somaly Mam and Uncle Sam will not be happy:

New [Cambodian] government regulations for the entertainment industry…aim to offer sex workers…increased protection under the Labor Law…Chan Dyna…of the National Entertainment Workers’ Network, said…“The government has finally recognized that entertainment workers are actually workers, like all others”…

Above the Law

Rapist cops come in two main types, the sleazy: “Florida sheriff’s deputy [Ted Arboleda] was arrested…after he was accused of allowing a woman to avoid arrest in exchange for oral sex…”…and the openly brutal:

Authorities have arrested a…[Colorado] sheriff’s deputy…The woman told investigators she was driving [Timothy Joseph] Hay home after drinking at a bar…when Hay asked her to pull over at a warehouse…[he then slammed] the woman’s head to the ground and [raped] her…

Finding What Isn’t There

This story makes much more sense when one realizes that the word “evidence” was substituted for the proper term, “propaganda”. Here, I’ll demonstrate:

New figures…which…show a continuing decline here are “very alarming”…said the Immigrant Council of Ireland. The figures are contrary to European [propaganda]…There was…just one reported case of a trafficked child, compared to 16 last year…[Denise] Charlton said…“It is worrying that the figures have come down…There is so much [propaganda] that those who enter the sex trade do so as teenagers. Why are we not finding these children?”…

Damned If You Don’t

…New York…Port Authority police…have arrested more than 60 [men] this year in the bus terminal on public lewdness charges…Most…were accused of masturbating in the second-floor bathroom…by plainclothes officers…[spying on] them at an adjacent urinal…the Port Authority’s interpretation of the law [seems] to criminalize the use of public urinals…

Enough is Enough

Monkey Business

They certainly deserve it more than zygotes:

…a New York court will decide whether or not Tommy the Chimpanzee qualifies as a legal person…late last year…lawyer Steven Wise discovered him being held in a small, unclean cage and receiving inadequate care…if Tommy is declared a legal person, it does not mean he is human…it would just afford him protection beyond existing animal cruelty laws. Personhood would give him rights pertaining to his self interest that would hold up in a court of law, similar to a parent or guardian acting on behalf of a child or disabled adult…The Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP)…acts on behalf of nonhuman animals who are intelligent, self-aware and autonomous, including great apes, elephants, and dolphins…

That Old Black Magic

…Scotland Yard has received 27 allegations of ritual child abuse linked to witchcraft in the past year, with police believing many more remain “hidden” by families…one child was swung round before being smacked over the head in order to “drive out the devil”. The Telegraph reported instances of children having chili rubbed into their eyes…[or] dunked in baths and forced to drink noxious liquids in exorcism ceremonies…

The Pro-Rape Coalition (TW3 #316)

Watching pornography could soon be banned in Telangana…as a means to reduce crimes against [women]…state police said they have been asked to…use technology similar to the one used by the Chinese government to block content on search engines…banning pornography may not have any effect in ensuring security of women as several studies have shown that such content does not instigate…rape…

In fact, studies show it has exactly the opposite effect, but prohibitionists never care about little things like facts.

Monsters

This has been a month of horrible violence against transwomen, from Australia:

…Marcus Volke worked around the world as a male prostitute before moving to Brisbane just weeks before he murdered his wife and cooked her on their…apartment’s stovetop. Volke, who was found with Mayang Prasetyo’s dismembered body…the couple had both worked in a Melbourne brothel and Volke had also made a living from sex work in Copenhagen. After moving to Brisbane he was working under the name of Heath XL while his wife was [working] as a “top high class Asian shemale”…Volke took his own life while fleeing police…

To the Philippines: “A US Marine has been detained over the murder of a transgender woman…26-year-old Jennifer Laude Sueselbeck was found dead by strangulation…with her head in the toilet…” To New York: “A 28-year-old trans woman was beaten by four men on a Bushwick street…with a 2 X 4…She is…in stable condition…but [may]…have permanent brain damage…”

Traffic Jam (TW3 #318)

Another stupid “sex trafficking” play:

…It’s Not Fair is a collection of tales taken from all over the world…from the cocoa farms of the Ivory Coast to the dingy bars of the back streets of Thailand, behind the respectable facade of a London home and into the offices of an anti-trafficking organisation…Using a unique blend of theatre, storytelling and music, the performance brings these stories to life in an entertaining, powerful and moving way…that raises awareness of the problem…

Hussies

The horror of good customer service:

…Anna Burgese…says she was attacked early last year in the lobby of a South Beach W Hotel by drunken hookers who mistakenly believed she was competition…As a result…[she] hired undercover agents to visit W Hotels all over the country…[and] claims that they found…prostitution runs rampant in the hotels…The filing also alleges that The W…provides guests with free condoms and that its website advertises sex toys. “These agents engaged…employees who openly, and without hesitation, procured the services of prostitutes for the agents…”

In other words, these supposed agents “found” that a W concierge does exactly what the concierge in any expensive hotel will do.

Broken Record (TW3 #333)

The lies in this article are outrageous even by “sex trafficking” standards. First, cops’ arrest of 25 underage sex workers and 45 other people (labelled “pimps”) magically transmogrified into “[NGO members] successfully rescued 66 children, and made more than 120 arrests.” But the second claim was even more egregious: “a group of experts went to Sturgis, SD during the large motor cycle rally and were successful in rescuing more than a dozen young girls.” In fact, no sex workers were arrested (“rescued”) at all; photos of adult women were supposedly “age-regressed” and the results were used to entrap seven men.

Innocence Never Had

…Because people don’t like the idea of teens engaging in sex work…they want the government to do something about it, and the way to get people under state jurisdiction is to define them as either criminals or helpless victims. So if teen sex workers aren’t criminals, they must be children whom the state has an obligation to protect coercively…”to prevent them from returning to their pimps”…Teenagers may not have the full capacity to consent…but they’re not mentally incapacitated. The government shouldn’t be able to lock up a 15-year-old girl ’til her 18^th birthday to stop her from having sex in a way of which it disapproves…

O, Canada! (All Traffick, All the Time)

The idea that women might have minds and agency is unacceptable to Canadian Cops:

…Called Operation Northern Spotlight, the officers in each city used ads on the Web to book “dates” with escorts over two nights last week — then met to [harass and intimidate them]…“Almost all the girls we meet, they say they’re independent,” said Sgt. Rob Huber…Despite denials…Huber suspects most are turned out by someone who reaps the bulk of the lucrative profits. “But until that girl basically tells us, we don’t have a victim”…

The Widening Gyre (TW3 #416)

Most of this article is the usual ludicrous nonsense from one of the usual suspects (in this case, Washington DC “rescue” opportunists FAIR Girls), but it does have one notable line: “…the average victim is sold three to five times per night…” Not 50 or 100? Very interesting.

Business As Usual

…a video showing a policeman beating a young woman…in…Sri Lanka…has generated heated discussion in the media…the police…first…[pretended that] the video [was] unreliable…[then admitted] that the particular policeman…has been identified…but that [the sex worker he beat] appeared to be in hiding…[meanwhile] the woman…began to reveal her ordeal in public…The [attacker’s] name has now been revealed as P.P. Thissera…he…has not been arrested or charged with a criminal offence…

Bad Girls (TW3 #438)

Remember the sex worker who killed the cop, and I said there was more to it?

…the 29-year-old woman told the police that she killed the constable as an act of revenge as it was he who had pushed her into prostitution and ruined her life…although she could have easily escaped after the murder, she chose to…set the body on fire [as]…a warning to corrupt cops…the deceased constable…sold her to a brothel [in 2002, then] three years ago, the woman again met…him…and [he] would often visit her…When she refused to give in to his demands, the constable would…threaten to arrest her…

Wise Investment (TW3 #440)

I’ve heard this woman is actually kind of a nasty character, but it’s still good news if her lawyer can get a raid thrown out: “The defense attorney for a Salem, N.H., woman accused of running a…brothel wants a police search of his client’s home and vehicle tossed out as evidence in the criminal sex-trafficking and prostitution case. Lori Barron…is accused of hiring young women [to work in an ordinary massage parlor]…”

The Roof Caves In (TW3 #440)

Somaly…Mam’s ex-husband Pierre Legros [said]…”Simon Marks…did his job as a journalist and verified the facts. I have not met Abigail Pesta who wrote the Marie-Claire story and I…doubtful…[of] her version…Somaly has at least two different versions of her biography …you know fabricated stories are used by everyone to get funding. But I received death threats from Somaly and her entourage, telling me not to speak”…

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Cardboard Cutouts

Posted in Current Events, Perception, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, asset seizure, brothels, Cardboard Cutouts, cops, ethics, fantasy, hysteria, law, Madonna/whore, Netherlands, psychology, rescue industry, stereotypes, violence vs. sex workers on September 26, 2014| 11 Comments »

This essay first appeared in Cliterati on August 31^st; I have modified it slightly to fit the format of this blog.

To those who aren’t sex workers and don’t make a full-time job out of following the developments in our persecution, it must sometimes seem as though I’m exaggerating the awfulness of the situation. Furthermore, those same people may not think the difference between decriminalization (as practiced in New Zealand) and legalization (as practiced in The Netherlands) is all that big a deal; many times I’ve been asked some variation of “every other job is regulated these days, so why should sex work be an exception? And what about all the trafficked children?” So I’m always glad to see someone else write about some specific aspect of the War on Whores in a degree of detail that neither my format nor my crowded schedule allow me time to match. Today I present highlights of a recent article by the Dutch sex worker Zondares; the original is almost 5000 words and only the last in a series of six. However, it is well worth your time, especially if you’re skeptical about the situation as I’ve described it; I’m hoping to whet your appetite by these selections, so that you’ll be moved to read the whole thing.

…very hostile actions against prostitutes have become not just accepted by the general public, but are actually viewed as productive efforts to combat trafficking…It started out with police raids on window prostitution areas. The neighborhood would be closed down, a huge police force would storm the streets, with a ratio of more than 8 policemen per girl…These policemen would force their way into the work areas and take the sex workers to…government buildings for an all-night interrogation. Meanwhile, police ravage the working areas and adjoining rooms, destroying any closed lockers, boxes, suitcases or bags…Police claim the women are free to go during these raids. However…if you do try to leave they can order you to stay, and you’ll be arrested if you don’t comply…Every raid is claimed to be a success…[but] very few arrests are attributed to raids – and on closer inspection, this is always found to be false. So far none of the raids have started any investigation ending in conviction…

So if the raids don’t do what they’re supposed to do, what’s the profit in doing them?

…Communications equipment like telephones or computers are taken, mostly never to be returned, and…there is…great emphasis on tracing your money. If they can track down where your money has gone, it will be impounded, and never be released. This is supposed to strike at the heart of trafficking. If you don’t have a pimp to siphon off your earnings, you can lose much. Hiding it at home doesn’t help you, because while you’re being interrogated, police has broken down your home door and is ransacking the place…As long as [your money was] moved legally, they can easily find it and take it…They claim you could get it back if detective work shows it to be clean, but so far I haven’t heard from anyone who actually had any returned. Procedures to get anything returned are a waste of effort…

Think it’s better for independent escorts? Think again:

…The municipality is informed you’re working without a license…whether you need [one] or not…you’ve been in violation during your whole career, and they’re able to fine you tens of thousands of Euros…unless you submit to some other stipulation, like leaving the municipality or joining a licensed brothel. Police will inform your building society, landlord or mortgage bank that you’re “running an illegal bordello” in your house. This very often means eviction…If you’re the owner of your house, and it is not mortgaged, there is still the option of evicting you because you’re in breach of zoning laws…If [a part time] sex worker is caught…and they manage to track down where you work, they commonly inform your employer. This very often ends in dismissal…In rare cases, insurance companies and banks have been informed their client was a sex worker. Even those few financial institutions that don’t flat-out refuse services to hookers will do so after being “warned” by police. Whether this is done intentionally to further ruin the sex worker or is a side-effect of police trying to track down money to impound is unclear…As if all the above weren’t enough, they go after your loved ones. Not only do they tend to inform parents if you’re still in your early 20s, but if you have kids, those will come into the sights of youth services….Men in the house must mean violent pimps, another woman must mean that this was a crowded brothel where clients are tag-teamed, and when a 15-year old girl was present…the press…[didn’t ask who she was]…Prostitution to them is a world of cardboard cut-outs, who don’t have relatives, who can’t babysit for a neighbour when between clients, who don’t live in houses where they also have a family, so anyone near them must be part of the misery porn story…

So why all of this torture; is it just petty sadism? Not quite:

Once they’ve threatened you with all they’re willing to do to make you miserable, childless, homeless and jobless, they explain that if you would turn out to be a trafficking victim, then all this would disappear. You would even get help, if you wanted. All you have to do is claim that you were coerced, and accuse somebody. Then everything will be right…every time a sex worker doesn’t want to give enough information to actually put anyone in prison, the cops are baffled…the National Rapporteur in her reports calls for even more explicit explanation of the choice between the government ruining your life or you coming up with an accusation. Because if it isn’t because we’re too stupid to understand the decision we’re making, then she doesn’t understand why we would choose bearing the brunt of what government can throw at us over falsely accusing an innocent. It can’t be morals, whores don’t have any, right?

The driver for all this, as you may have guessed, is “sex trafficking” hysteria:

The police [are] pretending to be fighting…gangs that don’t exist anymore, mafia structures that never did exist, claiming success after success, but never getting any real gangsters. They use excessive violence to force whores to help them shore up their fantasy war on trafficking…the media are completely uncritical of government…and…choose to be complicit in hoaxes…pornographic element in the stories is camouflaged by pretending it is a story of heroism and courage…A small number of semi-professional victims dominate the soft news, misery porn books and documentaries. They get new fake names for each publication, and because their stories change each time to fit prohibitionist fashion, the public tends to view each appearance as a new case…Nor are the media ever disillusioned when large scale police raids fail, over and over, to uncover any significant amount of trafficking, let alone coercion…

And absolutely everything constitutes “evidence”:

…If your husband picks up your work phone, he is obviously controlling you. If you both testify you love each other, then that is an obvious lie, because no real loving husband would tolerate his wife doing something so vile as prostitution…If you work during your period, you’re working while sick, and that’s proof of coercion. If your friend spots for you by calling for security words before and after bookings, that’s controlling your work and therefore evidence of coercion. If your man bought lingerie or condoms, then he is supplying your work and this is proof of coercion…If [your husband] carries your handbag, he’s controlling your documents …If there are deeds to his name, that’s evidence of him exploiting you – and if the deeds are to your name, that’s evidence he’s using you as a shield…

There’s a lot more, but I think you get the idea. Of course, some who read this still won’t believe it:

People are very hesitant to question trafficking dogma, even if they can see that it defies facts. They will not…doubt the overarching mythology despite seeing it conflicts with reality in any part they can actually see for themselves…They view us as bizarre caricatures, and find it difficult, inconceivable, embarrassing, painful even, to consider that we might be people in charge of our life, with different choices and different values…

Cardboard cutouts are useful for acting out childish narratives; they can be moved around and put in any part of the flat, simply-colored background picture one wishes. And unlike real people, they don’t argue and refuse to play the parts for which they were created.

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Guest Columnist: Marijke Vonk

Posted in Current Events, Guest Columns, Perception, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, Amsterdam, bogus studies, brothels, cops, Dutch Threat, end demand, fantasy, harm reduction, hysteria, Netherlands, politicians, psychology, red-light districts, rescue industry, streetwalkers, Swedish model, video, violence vs. sex workers on August 11, 2014| 35 Comments »

Marijke Vonk is a Dutch sex-positive psychologist who specializes in working with sexual minorities; besides working as a therapist, she is a writer and lecturer on various topics concerning sexuality. Since I discovered her blog a few months ago I’ve been repeatedly impressed by both her thoughts and the way she expresses them; if we had a thousand allies like her sex worker rights would be all but accomplished. So naturally, I had to ask her to do a guest column for me!

When it comes to sex, the Netherlands is known as a tolerant country. We’ve got marriage equality for same-sex couples, a usually laid-back attitude towards sexual diversity, famous red-lights districts and since 2000 legalised brothel-keeping. But in recent years, the human trafficking panic has caught on and attitudes towards sex work have changed. “The happy hooker does not exist” claimed Dutch politician Gert-Jan Segers, one of the initiators of new legislation to criminalise clients of sex workers. “All prostitutes are forced” states Frits Rouvoet, an “expert” on sex work. It’s interesting how these men will not change their minds, not even when numerous sex workers contact them to let them know they are indeed happy and not forced.

As in the rest of the world, inflated numbers of incidences of trafficking are used to reduce sex workers’ rights. The National Reporter on Trafficking in the Netherlands claims thousands of reported cases of possible victims of trafficking, but these reports include registration of non-sex worker women travelling alone (!) and sex workers visiting family abroad. Even sex workers who buy new things, have a lot of friends or like their workplace are regarded with suspicion and reported as possible victims. Sadly, these “thousands of reported cases” are repeated by politicians and NGO’s who claim more action (and money) is needed to combat this extensive problem. When confronted with the inaccuracy of their claims they seem wholly uninterested. “Maybe the problem is slightly exaggerated. If that means we get more help for victims I have no moral objection”.

Most people involved in the Dutch rescue industry don’t seem to mean any harm towards sex workers themselves, they genuinely appear to want to help victims. They don’t see the harm, and I think that’s where one of the major issues in Dutch sex workers’ rights lie. They truly don’t see how their actions are harming both victims and sex workers. And from a psychological viewpoint this makes sense: it feels good to fight for a just cause, to help powerless innocent victims, to be one of the good guys. Accepting that the “victims” not only refuse your help but are actually victimised by your actions causes a great deal of cognitive dissonance, something we all try to avoid. It’s no wonder then that rescuers deny facts and sex workers’ experience, but their ignorance is far from harmless.

During recent raids on legal brothels hundreds of policemen violently forced their way into the workplace of twenty or thirty sex workers, smashing up their belongings, taking their earnings and bringing the women, their clients and anyone else near the establishment to police stations for questioning. Scaring clients of sex workers is currently a popular method, not only by harassing them during raids but also by lying about the prevalence of forced prostitution: This has caused a noticeable drop in business for Eastern European sex workers in red light districts. New legislation is being proposed to criminalise clients of sex workers when they “should have known” those sex workers are forced to work. To be clear, sex with people who are obviously forced is of course already illegal and called rape. But the major initiator of this new legislation is of the opinion that all sex workers are forced, this is simply a step towards end-demand laws. Eastern European women are disproportionally stalked by police under the guise of anti-trafficking, they are followed around airports and stopped and questioned in public areas. Prostitutes working from home are raided, their belongings confiscated and are even kicked out of their homes. Necessary permits for brothel-keeping are impossible to get, which has resulted in a strong power imbalance between brothel-workers and the proprietors, a situation which almost begs for abuse and exploitation. Sex workers have no legal way of arranging a work place for themselves. The lies about trafficking and forced prostitution have resulted in increased funding of rescue organisations and ceased funding of sex workers’ rights organisations. Actual victims are becoming more and more invisible under all the bloated claims, making them harder to reach. Outside of the Netherlands the situation is even worse; anti-trafficking laws and regulations have hurt the position of sex workers and has increased police brutality towards sex workers. Rescue organisations are currently the biggest perpetrators of human trafficking in the world, abducting women and girls from their homes and workplaces, keeping them in shelters against their will and forcing them to do manual labour under terrible circumstances and for a criminally low wage.

In order to change this, we need to make people see the harm they are doing. But it’s difficult to convince people of the idea that they believe in lies and that their actions have resulted in the harm and even death of others. In couples therapy I often explain the idea of “the golden bridge out” of a conflict. If you and your partner disagree you need to give the other person a graceful way of admitting they are wrong; if the only way they can change their mind and agree with you is by agreeing they are a lying piece of garbage with no sense of empathy, they’re not going to agree. Always give the other person a golden bridge out, a graceful way of changing their minds that doesn’t necessarily involve crushing their self worth. I think we need such a bridge out for the antis, the rescuers, a graceful path for them to change their minds without having to state they were the bad guys. They need a story in which their egos can stay intact. They need a golden bridge out of their far from victimless crimes.

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That Was the Week That Was (#432)

Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged A Procrustean Bed, activism, agency denial, An Example to the West, Arizona, asset seizure, brothels, Canada, Central Asia, Check Your Premises, consensual crime, cops, disease, Do As I Say, drugs, Dysphemisms Galore, end demand, Facts in the Case of Monica Jones, fantasy, First They Came for the Hookers, Florida, France, gangs, Hollywood, hysteria, I Saw My Brain, Illinois, India, internet, Ireland, King of the Hill, language, Neither Addiction nor Epidemic, Netherlands, New York, Nigeria, Ohio, Oregon, pathologization of males, Pennsylvania, politicians, porn, prohibitionist myths, rape, Remembrance, rescue industry, Rough Trade, Saving Them from Themselves, shame, South Africa, South Carolina, sporting events, Stand-Up Guys, streetwalkers, stripping, surveillance, Swedish model, The Scarlet Letter, Traffic Jam, transgender, United Kingdom, Vendetta, What Were You Thinking?, Wisconsin, witchcraft, Yellow Fever, yellow journalism on August 9, 2014| 13 Comments »

Law enforcement stings designed to shame men who pay for sex are nothing more than the state blowing its own morality horn. – Jim Norton

Rough Trade

A convicted rapist…has been jailed for 11 years…Jason Oates…approached [a sex worker]…and agreed to pay £20…but…produced a large-bladed hunting knife…and demanded that she submit…to sex without charge…Oates…[previously served] three…years [for another rape]…

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

I just can’t imagine how it got there:

Gardai are investigating after a laptop and documents belonging to a garda were discovered in a brothel in Amsterdam…The high-level investigation will probe how the individual’s bag was found in the brothel…

Check Your Premises

Cops in a country preparing to criminalize the purchase of sex insist men won’t be arrested if they confess to attempting to buy sex:

…PACT-Ottawa [reported that] more than half of…sex buyers they surveyed…said they…would call police if they suspected coercion. That jibes with research…by sociologist Chris Atchison…Sextrade101 founder Natasha Falle, who [claims] she [was] trafficked…[in] her teens…[pretends that] “They never questioned our bruises, our broken bones…I used to see between one and five guys a night and I was in it for 12 years”…Det.-Const. Chris Lavergne has yet to field a call from a client…”Is there a way to make Johns understand, you’re not going to get in trouble for calling the police and giving us the information”…

1) Falle is full of shit; I bruise easily and was quizzed every time I had an unusually large one. I daresay nearly every sex worker has had that experience. I do, however, think it’s interesting that she reports a realistic number of clients; I’m sure it will grow later.
2) Lavergne can’t conceive that the reason he “has yet to field a call” is that overt coercion in the sex industry is actually pretty rare.

The Scarlet Letter

What is it with New York state DAs and their sophomoric attempts at “humor”? “Albany County DA David Soares rolled out a new initiative…to combat sex trafficking…Frontpage…will post a photo of every person convicted of paying for sex in the county…” And this op-ed commenting on the “strategy” is so over-the-top it almost has to be a joke:

Some people say that prostitution is a victimless crime…but…there are victims. A lot of them. Children are often forced or compelled into prostitution at an early age…drug addicts sell their bodies to support their habits…prostitutes are often beaten and raped in order to keep bringing in the money for their pimps. Families are harmed by the “johns” patronizing prostitutes. Full neighborhoods fall victim to the plague. Diseases are spread. Human trafficking — a $32 billion-a-year business in New York alone — is now an international crisis…

Saving Them From Themselves

If it had been pictures of himself, I’m sure the cops would’ve taken action:

A mother in South Carolina called sheriff’s deputies on her [15-year-old] son…after finding porn playing on her living room TV…the [woman] “immediately turned off the TV” and ushered her 2-year-old daughter out of the room…before calling the police on her son…the sheriff’s office did not make an arrest or issue a citation…

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic

A federal judge has sentenced a 40-year-old suburban Chicago doctor to nearly six years in prison for using a classified-ad site to trade prescription pills for sex. Joshua D. Baron…blamed what he called “demons” of sexual addiction…the pediatric neurologist placed ads on Craig’s List [sic] offering pills for sex and requesting photos of respondents. He later e-mailed hospital website links to prove he was a physician…

An Example To the West

Patoo Abraham has led protests…to ensure that prostitution is legalized in Nigeria and that sex workers be protected and respected…“We are tired of dying in silence; we want to be able to practice our profession with pride like every other person…Sex work is normal work and there are sex workers everywhere under one form of disguise or the other”…

Stand-Up Guys

Comedian Jim Norton’s article in Time is definitely flawed, but I applaud any client who comes out and has the balls to write about it:

I’m not ashamed to pay for sex—and other men shouldn’t be either…The illegal aspect of prostitution has never deterred me, nor would legalizing it cause me to engage in it more…in a free society, people must be allowed to make choices for themselves that are incomprehensible to others. By keeping prostitution illegal and demonizing all of its parties, we (you) are empowering pimps and human traffickers and anyone else who wants to victimize sex workers…

Traffic Jam

This farrago of racism, xenophobia and “sex trafficking” nonsense is even over the top by Daily Mail standards:

…London has become the hub, the epicentre for a global trafficking enterprise involving thousands of children for exploitation, sexual abuse and even…ritual voodoo killing…Hundreds of children have been abducted from their families in Africa and trafficked to the UK…Many are raped and sexually abused…there is a vast reservoir of lost children…anonymously shuffled from flat to shabby flat – a dark pool feeding child exploitation and misery across the planet…Britain’s generous child benefits system has become an international magnet for fraudsters who…traffick…thousands of children into this country every year to take advantage of payments and these young victims are prey for other vices, too – a ready made market for sexploitation…

I love the way it grows from hundreds to thousands in just a few paragraphs; in his next article I’m sure it will be millions.

First They Came for the Hookers…

These “complaints” are always from cops:

An Oshkosh [Wisconsin] strip club is closed [after]…the…District Attorney’s office filed a civil suit against the owner…in response to several prostitution complaints…The assistant district attorney says Naughty Girls is a nuisance to the community. He is asking a judge to close the business for a year and that all moveable property be sold…

Yellow Fever

Bars and clubs = “hub for underage prostitution” because travel agents say so:

Indian men are flocking to Kazakhstan in droves, if travel and tour operators are to be believed…Reason? The thriving sex industry. Thailand, Singapore and Dubai have been the traditional destinations; but that is changing…Kazakhstan…has become a hub for underage prostitution over the past few years…bars, cafes and club [sic]…are used as pick-up joints…

King of the Hill

Are you slipping, Toledo? In the original “King of the Hill” entry you were #3, but according to WKYC you’ve dropped to fourth place. Maybe if you give grants to “pimps” to build more hair salons you can reclaim your lost glory from Miami or Tampa Bay.

What the Hell Were You Thinking? (TW3 #135)

The term “rescue” used in this context is utterly tone-deaf:

…[South African] University students…[designed] a device intended to…help sex workers’ organisations keep an eye on the safety of their members…[it] has eight Wi-Fi transmitters linked to armbands that will be worn by the sex workers in the vicinity…the armband…[has] four buttons…on-line, off-line, jump [check in to a call] or panic…Should a sex worker send a distress call, the control room will forward her…precise location…to sex worker organisations who will alert the emergency services…

I Saw My Brain

Polk County, Florida…Sheriff Grady Judd assembled a press conference…[to brag about a huge sting operation, but] either didn’t realize – or didn’t care – that a number of the 132 men whose faces appeared on his mugshot “big board” had already been cleared of committing crimes…”It’s fair…Because…when we arrest them as ‘sexual perverts on children,’ I’m going to call them [that]…we have a very liberal…criminal justice system, sometimes it’s more difficult to prove ‘beyond…every reasonable doubt’…”

Given that our “liberal” incarceration machine imprisons five times as many people as civilized nations do, imagine the nightmare that would result if maniacs like Judd got their way.

Dysphemisms Galore

Even by the low standards of the modern American press, this article is hilariously yellow:

…Domestic sex trafficking…is an increasingly common and highly lucrative underground business …involving American girls and young women (but sometimes boys) forced into sex slavery by sick pimps…in places as unassuming as a mall or a train station. Pimps can earn $150,000 to $200,000 a year on each victim they force into prostitution…experts say Philly’s location creates a particularly attractive opportunity for the brokers of enslaved women. “We are sort of in a unique hub area because we’re between New York, Atlantic City, Washington, D.C., Harrisburg – all of which have child-prostitution problems,” said Michelle Morgan, an assistant U.S. attorney…”There are a lot of places for pimps to go from here to make more money, to buy new girls, to trade girls, so it’s a lucrative area”…Tiffany…[was] swept into the dark underbelly of sex trafficking…she [was forced]…to sell her young body to dozens of men…she would have sex with them or do whatever else popped into their twisted minds…

One can barely help picturing “journalist” Morgan Zalot masturbating furiously as he writes those last few lines. The mall occupies the place in modern “white slavery” hysteria that the ice cream parlor did in the first cycle a century ago.

A Procrustean Bed (TW3 #339)

Because “rehab” to “get us off the streets” is a perfect “solution” for the 90% or more of sex workers who are neither “on the streets” nor addicted to any drug:

Members of the Zanesville City Council attended a neighborhood barbecue…to discuss…prostitution…Sandy Gentry…said…the…ideal response…would be to create some kind of rehabilitation facility where prostitutes could go to get help and get off the streets…helping reform their lives would be the best solution…

Vendetta

Buried under all the monstrous male-demonizing and female-infantilizing rhetoric is the unstated fact that the “National Day of Johns Arrests” ballyhooed in this article is the brainchild of one sad, sick woman acting out her twisted psychodrama on thousands of strangers who never did anything to hurt her:

Law enforcement agencies across the country collaborated in a recent series of sex stings that netted the arrests of almost 500 men seeking to buy sex and 14 pimps and traffickers…[as] part of an annual “National Day of Johns Arrests”…Officials said 111 prostitutes were recovered during the operation, including 13 juveniles…

“Recovered” means “arrested and caged”. Note that this big “rescue” found only 13 underage girls in 14 states; so much for the “epidemic of child prostitution”. Phoenix can always be counted on to put an extra-stupid spin on a story like this; a cop with the Dickensian name Trent Crump blathered, “We want people to understand this is not because of Super Bowl, but with the Super Bowl coming, this may be a venue in which people believe and people believe they can come here.” Trent, Maggie McNeill believes and Maggie McNeill believes that you are an idiot.

Remembrance (TW3 #410)

A sequence of a dozen images…taken by [an English] Lieutenant…are believed to be the only photographs ever to surface of British officers from the 1914-1918 war inside a “blue lamp” – the refined category of brothel reserved by secret edict of the British army for the officer classes…Other ranks…were restricted to crude “red-lamp” brothels…

Traffic Jam (TW3 #415)

This is mostly a lot of asinine and self-contradictory political “sex trafficking” bullshit; for example, the mayor belches out “The program saves women’s lives,” but two short paragraphs later the women morph into teens (all of whom are said to be “12 to 14 years old”), and four paragraphs later they’re vomiting out “the needs of the child”. The really interesting thing is the continued harping on “gangs” and the obvious grooming of “sex trafficking” to be the new excuse for the police state once the drug war inevitably dies: “Gangs and other criminal organizations prefer humans [to drugs] because they’re a reusable resource; they can be resold…”

Facts in the Case of Monica Jones

…Emmy-nominated actress Laverne Cox of the hit series Orange is the New Black is lending her support to [Monica] Jones [during Jones’ appeal of her conviction for “manifesting prostitution”]…Cox, like Jones, is a transgender woman of color. She has some serious concerns about the Phoenix law, which some call “walking while trans”…

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That Was the Week That Was (#426)

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

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

Reading Between the Lines

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

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

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

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

It Looks Good On Paper

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

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

Change a Few Words

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

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

Pick a Color

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

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

Yellow Fever

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

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

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

Number Puzzle

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

Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs (TW3 #312)

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

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

Under Every Bed

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

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

Traffic Jam (TW3 #318)

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

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

Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs (TW3 #318)

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

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

The Naked Emperor (TW3 #324)

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

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

Magic Formulae

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

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

Absolute Corruption (TW3 #326)

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

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

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

Whither Canada? (TW3 #423)

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

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

Hard Numbers (TW3 #424)

I do keep telling you so.

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

Feminine Pragmatism (TW3 #425)

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

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

Cooties

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

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

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That Was the Week That Was (#425)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged A Procrustean Bed, A Whore in Church, activism, agency denial, An Example to the West, Backwards into the Future, BDSM, bogus studies, Brazil, Broken Record, California, Cambodia, Canada, Catholicism, Check Your Premises, China, Choke Point, condoms, cops, Damned If You Don't, disability, drivers, drugs, Dutch Threat, Feminine Pragmatism, Hollywood, hysteria, Illinois, Korea, law, Libertarianism Happens, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Netherlands, One Born Every Minute, porn, pragmatism, prisons, prohibitionist myths, Property of the State, rape, rescue industry, Rhode Island, Schadenfreude, sex rays, Somewhere in the Middle, sporting events, stripping, teachers, Tennessee, The Roof Caves In, Think of the Children!, Tyranny by Consensus, United Kingdom, Utah, Whither Canada?, yellow journalism on June 20, 2014| 17 Comments »

I’m hungry, I don’t need respect, I don’t need honour, I just want three meals a day. – Elderly Korean sex worker

Think of the Children!

A teacher who describes note-passing as “scary”? The jokes write themselves.

A…woman has been charged with prostitution at the Tewksbury [Massachusetts] Public Library…a…plain clothes detective claimed Brittany Macintyre…handed him a pen and…paper. The two passed notes back and forth until she allegedly asked for $60 in exchange for a sex act…one library patron [said] “I’m quite shocked because a lot of kids come here and I’m a teacher, so it’s pretty scary”…

Feminine Pragmatism

Koreans could once be sure that their children would look after them in their old age, but no longer…As a result, some elderly women are turning to prostitution…”Bacchus Ladies” [are] older women who make a living by selling tiny bottles of the popular Bacchus energy drink to male customers. But often that’s not all they’re selling. At an age when Korean grandmothers are supposed to be venerated as matriarchs, some are selling sex…they invested their savings in the next generation. In a Confucian society, successful children are the best form of pension. But attitudes here have changed just as fast as living standards, and now many young people say they can’t afford to support themselves and their parents…The government…is scrambling to provide a welfare system that works [but] in the meantime…[the elderly] have no savings, no realistic pension, and no family to rely on…

One Born Every Minute

A neuroscientist who claimed to have fathered 58 children while running [an]…insemination service preyed on three women desperate to become mothers by sexually assaulting them…during the…process…[Professor Gennadij] Raivich told one alleged victim she had to give him oral sex repeatedly in order to get a sperm sample. He told another she was more likely to get pregnant if she orgasmed…

Tyranny By Consensus

…Michael Weinstein [spoke to]…the press…on the…condom mandate bill…armed with what he claimed to be the smoking gun that justified his campaign to force condoms down performers’ throats…a survey done by the UCLA School of Public Health which, according to Weinstein, proved that there was a “public health danger” involving porn performers…Weinstein presented this “pictographic” which attempted to…paint a picture of porn performers as oppressed, drugged out, abused, exploited, and basically unable to think for themselves…[so] the state absolutely had to step in and rescue them with condoms…Both AVN’s Mark Kernes and The Real Porn Wikileaks have done fine efforts to debunk this agitprop, but there are some points that even their efforts do manage to miss which deserve additional attention…

A Procrustean Bed (First Updates of the Year)

The evil clownishness continues:

[Rhode Island Senator] Gayle Goldin…is urging her…colleagues to…reject [a “sex trafficking” bill which]…conflates sex trafficking with prostitution…the bill as written could mean that [a] cab driver [who carries a whore to a call could be convicted of] sex trafficking…Goldin said [a] slight change [to her original wording] has fouled the intent of the legislation. It “would mean that the penalties intended specifically for the traffickers could also be used to penalize sex workers themselves,” she [wrote]…

A Whore in Church

This is absurd on so many levels:

The Roman Catholic sisters whose convent fence-line is mere inches from a flashy new strip club…were unable to prevent the business from opening last year. But they haven’t given up…and…the Village Board of Melrose Park voted to join the nuns…in a lawsuit against…Club Allure…and the Village of Stone Park, which granted its license to operate…One of the main arguments in the lawsuit is expected to center on a provision of state law that…prohibits such businesses from operating within 1,000 feet of a place of worship…

Broken Record

I don’t know what’s more pathetic, Rachel’s idea of “big events” or her mathematical illiteracy:

Soon hundreds of thousands will pack [Omaha, Nebraska] for the College World Series…any big event…creates a bigger opportunity for…prostitution…Rachel Davis escaped such a life 15 years ago…[and] now helps others get out…“During…the world series…the Olympic Swim Trials, the Berkshire meeting…quotas…go up to $2,000 a night”…

Damned If You Don’t

…Among those arrested [in a Sacramento, California sting] was the Rev. John Oselsky…who…stopped at a fast food parking lot…to purchase a meal when he was approached by two women who knocked on his vehicle window…Oselsky…speaks fluent Russian, Ukrainian and Romanian. But his English is not good…Oselsky never…offered money [and] had [only] $13 in his wallet…

An Example To the West (TW3 #39)

Brazilian prostitutes…played a football match …in World Cup host city Belo Horizonte…to raise awareness about sex workers’ rights…the women set up an impromptu pitch using traffic cones for goalposts and played to the enthusiastic cheers of onlookers. The prostitutes, calling themselves the Naked Football Club — though in fact they played in the green and yellow uniforms of Brazil — teamed up with the visiting evangelicals from the United States to take on a local university team…

Libertarianism Happens To People

…Mark Shurtleff…Utah attorney general…set up a unit…[which] sent armed police to raid businesses that were suspected of employing undocumented workers…Shurtleff…also…[over]saw a dramatic increase in the use of SWAT teams and…opposed an important ballot initiative to rein in the abuse of civil asset forfeiture…[now] Shurtleff…[is] under investigation for allegedly violating campaign finance law…and…”accused law enforcement agents of using ‘Dirty Harry’ tactics when they searched his house, breaking through his door and pointing automatic weapons at his children…“

Somewhere in the Middle

…Chris Atchison…[has] been studying [sex workers’ clients] for about 20 years…[and] doesn’t think…there is…such a thing as a “typical john”…”People who purchase sexual services come from all walks of life…[and] all racial and ethnic categories…they don’t all [have]…identical reasons or…identical needs…Some…are physically disabled. Some of these individuals have great social stigmas, social-anxiety disorders. And some are individuals who…just…are lacking a partner, a widower, and so on and so forth…most [clients] would never hurt their escorts, from whom they mainly seek “companionship”…

Check Your Premises (Hysteria on Parade)

Another warped view of touring:

…Taken from one hotel to the next, she’s been forced to have sex with men for money again and again. And there are many more like her. Hundreds of young women and girls are coerced into doing this on any given day, police…say. Most are…sent along what’s commonly described as The Pipeline, which takes them to cities such as Montreal, here to Ottawa and all the way to Windsor. Shipping girls along circuits such as The Pipeline is a crucial component to a trafficker’s success. The constant movement helps pimps avoid police detection, isolates the women and girls from their family and friends, and attracts a larger clientele by offering up fresh-faced girls…

Backwards into the Future (TW3 #352)

…dozens of prominent legal experts…are calling for the abolition of the police-run “custody and education” system, which…resembles the “re-education through labor” system in all but name, and has no basis in Chinese law…which forbids the state to deprive citizens of their freedom without any basis in legislation. The first…facilities began to be built in 2002, in line with a 1993 directive from…the State Council, which ordered that those found engaging in sex work should be given “legal and moral” education, subjected to tests for sexually transmitted diseases and organized to take part in productive work…a person can be incarcerated by police for up to two years without trial for involvement in the sex industry, whether as a sex worker or a client…

Dutch Threat (TW3 #418)

Another excellent essay from Felicia Anna:

…the [Dutch] minister of Justice Ivo Opstelten presented…the government’s…new campaign against human trafficking…[with] an overview of the results of the last campaign…[which] got 392 anonymous tips…[this was] 93% more…then the years before…[but] 392 reports out of 20,000 estimated legal working prostitutes in Holland isn’t very much. In fact, it’s only about 2%…while the police [claimed] in their own ‘report’ “Schone Schijn“…that it was somewhere between 50 and 90%…of those 392 reports…the police only decided to investigate 250…a whopping 28 arrests where made, which comes down to about 7% of the total amount of reports…This means that only 7% of the reports leads to an actual arrest, and…93% of the cases are false alarm…In short, people report it much more then before, but the actual number of people arrested has not changed at all…

Choke Point

A mysterious group of business people will spend up to $5 million campaigning against…”Operation Choke Point”…The United States Consumer Coalition says the…operation unfairly targets legal businesses by choking off their access to banks and third-party payment processors…Brian Wise, a partner in the Washington strategic communications shop Wise Public Affairs, began forming USCC at the beginning of the year. A Facebook site was launched in March, and the group has stepped up its media campaign…[to] highlight…business that…have been hurt by Choke Point…

Property of the State

Tennessee moves to criminalize smoking during pregnancy:

When newborn babies begin to withdraw from powerful drugs, they shriek at a high, telltale pitch. Cut off from the substances they ingested through their mothers, they convulse, projectile vomit or writhe from skin-scorching diarrhea. Their tiny bodies shudder violently…Tennessee…has made its mark in trying to understand what triggers the painful symptoms in babies going through nicotine and opioid withdrawal. Researchers and insurers alike are looking for ways to reach out to and treat pregnant women with addictions…

The Roof Caves In

“The Somaly Mam Foundation has pledged to change its name following the resignation of its founder…executive director Gina Reiss-Wilchins says the organisation has ‘been working tirelessly to chart the best path for…rebranding, renaming, and re-launching our organisation’…” Meanwhile, there’s a petition for the New York Times to fire Nick Kristof for his lies and his perpetuation of Mam’s scam. But as Dr. Laura Agustin points out, it’s a mistake to concentrate on Mam and Kristof:

…if some [donors] do stop funding SMF, they will simply shift support to other similar institutions engaged in the same cause…And some new figure with the ability to stir feelings will eventually emerge from the hundreds of groups now dedicated to sex trafficking…The current fuss about Kristof and Mam reproduces the cult of personality that caused trouble in the first place. To focus on individuals is to avoid addressing structures. A couple of self-promoting showoffs pale beside proliferating government machinery that now churns out salaries and prestige for thousands worldwide caught up in a movement based on fraud.

Whither Canada? (TW3 #423)

…In what was billed as a national day of action, rallies against the government’s new prostitution legislation were [held] in several cities…Dozens of demonstrators gathered around red umbrellas…in a downtown Toronto park to speak out against the proposed law, which would…”simply move sex workers out into more isolated and more marginalized areas of the city”…said Jean McDonald, head of…Maggie’s …She said that…the Conservatives are “spitting in the face” of the Supreme Court’s landmark prostitution decision and ignoring the vital input of sex workers…

Schadenfreude (TW3 #424)

Noah Berlatsky on Chong Kim and Eden:

…Breaking Out, an anti-trafficking organization, announced that [it]…had been unable to confirm [her tale and]…is contemplating legal action against her. Kim’s supposedly true story was the basis for a 2012 film, Eden…the…exploitation tropes…are clustered about so densely and insistently that it’s hard to believe anyone missed them. There are women-in-prison shower scenes…The trope of giving prisoners kittens to love is straight out of Caged from 1950…There’s also some S&M fetish (again a staple of the genre), and…stylized violence a la Tarantino…To just point out the most obvious issue, the movie details a copious number of murders, several of them committed by the main character herself. This is standard issue for a Hollywood film, but in real life, this amounts to mass murder, including the killing of multiple law-enforcement personnel…where’s the massive investigation? Why is this being covered in an entertainment review, rather than on the front page?…

TRPWL presented a catalog of the many inconsistencies in Kim’s story, including her omission of the fact that she was convicted of fraud in 2009.

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A Few References
Boring but necessary legal stuff

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Frank commentary from a semi-retired call girl

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A Few References

Boring but necessary legal stuff