New Excuse | The Honest Courtesan

Posts Tagged ‘New Excuse’

In the News (#676)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged A Year Later, agency denial, Australia, California, Canada, cell phones, condoms, Cops and Condoms, drugs, Dysphemisms Galore, Germany, hysteria, Innocence Never Had, Italy, language, Madonna/whore, neofeminism, New Excuse, New Jersey, New Orleans, Pakistan, politicians, Profit from Panic, prohibitionist myths, rescue industry, surveillance, Swedish model, The Widening Gyre, Too Young To Know, Uncommon Sense, Under Every Bed, underage, Vendetta on September 28, 2016| 4 Comments »

Wearing pumps is now considered code for…“Help, I’m a sex traffic victim being made to sell my body for sex.” – Carmen Barika

Profit from Panic

“Buying These Jeans Will Help Stop Human Trafficking.” No, it won’t, but it’ll make these opportunists wealthier:

“It started with myself and my wife…watching the movie Taken“…[said] James Bartle, founder of Outland Denim…”We spent the next few years bringing girls in and training them…We started as a not for profit business and we were able to grow to five girls, but we then realised it was nearly impossible to get beyond that, so we changed our model to a profit for purpose business…Since then we have grown to having 29 local seamstresses over there and two other Cambodian staff”…

Too Young To Know

This judge apparently thinks it’s her job to convince a young sex worker that she’s a victim:

A court in Rome has handed down an unusual penalty to the client of an underage prostitute, ordering him to buy her 30 books on the theme of women’s dignity…including novels by Virginia Woolf, Anne Frank’s diary and the poems of Emily Dickinson…Judge Paola Di Nicola [was apparently annoyed that]…the teenager…used [her earnings] to “buy new clothes and the latest mobile phones”…“the judge favoured a remedy that would [convince] the young girl to [believe] the real ‘damage’ that she had suffered was damage to her dignity as a woman”…

Under Every Bed

I’m not going to try to quote any of this massive garbage fire, an accumulation of most of the currently-popular myths and bogus “statistics” on “sex trafficking”, every one of which has been repeatedly debunked. But given that this website belongs to the National Conference of State Legislatures, i.e. a collusion of money-grubbing, power-hungry politicians from every state in the US, that is hardly surprising; lies are a proven way to shore up prohibitionist police-state regimes.

Dysphemisms Galore

“Threatening the peace.” Seriously.

Lahore…is housing at least 1,906 “safe heavens” [sic] in the three categories of crime, posing a potential threat to the peace…Of them, 1,123 dens deal in drug selling, 318 in prostitution and 465 in gambling…a senior police official…said the consolidated data on the hateful crime surfaced for the first time…a non-stop crackdown under a ‘zero-tolerance’ policy towards these notorious crimes would help bring peace to the city…Similarly, out of total 330 hate spots, the Saddar Division is housing 47 gambling, 78 prostitution and 205 drug selling dens…

Innocence Never Had

Because “children” are merely inanimate objects who can’t move from one place to another without being carried by “pimps”:

…Anjelique…[is a] troubled 12-year-old…[who ran] away from home…Police ended up finding Anjelique but they didn’t bring her back to her mother. Instead they dropped her off at Alameda County Social Services’ assessment center in Hayward…Anjelique made friends with a teenage girl…who took her to a nearby motel…where the family says she first got lured into the sex-trafficking pipeline…even though the county keeps the assessment center’s location a secret, pimps know exactly where it is and could potentially use children inside to recruit others…Anjelique’s grandmother is convinced exploiters are lurking in the shadows. “So you think there are pimps that are waiting outside the assessment center?” we asked her…

This would be hilarious if it weren’t being used as an excuse to destroy lives.

New Excuse

Sometimes the two “wars” blur into one:

A joint investigation into human trafficking in Ocean City [New Jersey] concluded…with three [simple] prostitution arrests…[cops stole] over 270 Baggies of heroin…a small amount of marijuana, $350 in currency, a 2011 Honda Odyssey mini-van, five cell phones and a police-style baton…Each of the suspects was offered victim services…

A Year Later

Ricochet is running a series on the effects of Canada’s new anti-whore laws:

…With Bill C-36 now law, sex workers are struggling…customers are pushing for more incall services at more private locations to avoid police detection. More than 75 per cent of the inquiries I now receive want to meet at my home…I’m considering forsaking my safety in order to pay the bills. In recent months I’ve broken my own rule about never meeting a client in an 18-wheeler truck…The rationale behind the criminalization of clients seems to be that causing clients to feel bad about purchasing sex will deter their desires and end sex work. It doesn’t work that way. It only makes sex workers and clients more creative as we both try to find ways to not get caught…

Uncommon Sense (#557)

Because whores are morons whose lives and businesses must be micromanaged by governments:

German politicians have approved a law making it illegal to have sex with prostitutes without using a condom, among other regulations on the sex trade…Anyone attempting to open a commercial premises for prostitution will undergo checks attempting to crack down on the involvement of gangs, traffickers and criminals…Prostitutes must also register with local authorities, gaining a certificate that must be renewed every two years, and attend an annual health “advice” session…

In other words, the number of whores working illegally will skyrocket as soon as this goes into effect; no licensing regime in the world has higher than a 10% compliance rate.

Vendetta (#607)

Another way to destroy lives, funded by the sociopathic Swanee Hunt:

Cook County’s Tom Dart, the prostitution-obsessed sheriff…has found a new way to threaten people’s privacy, screw over sex workers, and grow the police state. The latest Dart-led initiative involves creating a national database of prostitution customers, using solicitation-arrest data submitted by cops through a phone app. Demand Abolition…reported on Sheriff Dart’s new plot in a late-August post crowing that “1,300 sex buyers—a record—were arrested across 18 states in just one month” of Dart’s National John Suppression Initiative. Now, the sheriff is using data from that sting to start a national database of people arrested for soliciting prostitution. You know, for research purposes…This is thanks to a new app that streamlines the logging of prostitution arrest information….developed at a January “social justice hackathon”, in which a hundred or so techies were presided over by a team of anti-prostitution zealots from across the country…During the last John Suppression Initiative, cops logged info from 80 percent of all arrests into the database…

Cops and Condoms (#654)

WARNING: Lelo Hex condoms are NOT safe!

As I looked through the press-kit Lelo sent me, I was faced with a distressing image. An animated GIF of a stretched-out Hex being repeatedly poked with a pin. Lelo was showcasing a feature of their new condom, which was still latex by the way, that you could poke a hole in it without breaking the it in any noticeable way. Read that again. This is an advertised design feature…While it sucks to have a condom break, the way in which they break acts as, whether intentionally or not, a red flag system. The shattering of the condom means you know that your barrier has failed and that you now need to take steps to address the situation- emergency contraception, STI testing, post-exposure STI prophylaxis…whatever an instance of exposure means to you. The manner in which Hex fails, however, means the sex act can be completed and there be no sign that there was a breach of security…

The Widening Gyre (#670)

This example of “grocery store sex trafficking” lunacy resulted in cop harassment of three people:

This past spring I was cornered in the parking lot of the Whole Foods on Veterans Memorial Boulevard in Metairie by two [cops]. They said they’d received a 911 call from an anonymous caller who — after observing my father and me eating breakfast biscuits at the Chick-fil-A up the street and then watching as I was dropped off in front of the Whole Foods several miles down the road (yeah, he had followed us) — somehow surmised I was a part of a prostitution/sex-trafficking ring…The…stalker…I mean, caller…had also identified my father and some guy parked nearby, whose license plates he had taken time to record, as a part of the suspected ring…Consequently, the three of us spent the next 20 to 30 minutes standing in the parking lot with…five surrounding police cars…waiting to be cleared from any salacious, solicitous, unwholesome “ho-dom,” all the while wondering how three people grocery shopping at Whole Foods could have induced such an “unsolicited,” inconvenient misunderstanding…

Read Full Post »

In the News (#619)

Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged Above the Law, activism, agency denial, Alabama, Arizona, Australia, BDSM, Birth of a Movement, California, Checklist, cops, drugs, Europe, Florida, France, gangs, Germany, hysteria, Imagine the Sky, law, Minnesota, New Excuse, Peeping Toms, prohibitionist myths, racism, rape, Romania, Rooted in Racism, Russia, sacred prostitutes, sex rays, sexting, Size Matters, South Carolina, teachers, Tennessee, Think of the Children!, Traffic Jam, Twitter, Uncommon Sense, universal criminality, Universally Criminal updates, violence vs. sex workers, Wise Investment on March 9, 2016| 8 Comments »

Sex workers are still most commonly depicted in the mainstream media as victims, pests or, in the odd case, saints. – Eurydice Aroney

Think of the Children!

That the pictures were stolen is immaterial; she was fired for having a sex life:

A South Carolina high-school teacher may be charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor after a student stole her cellphone and distributed partially nude photos from it around the school. Administrators say she should have password-protected the phone. The male student grabbed the phone from…Leigh Ann Arthur’s desk while she was making required…rounds between classes…he went through Arthur’s photos, eventually finding some sexually oriented shots that Arthur says she took for her husband. By the time she returned to the classroom, the student was texting the photos to other students. According to Arthur, he told her: “Your day of reckoning is coming.” One might think that the student would at least face disciplinary action…if not criminal charges of some sort. But thus far, the school has not moved to hold the 16-year-old student accountable at all. Arthur, however, is another story…she resigned when district officials gave her the choice to do so immediately or start the firing process…More than 1,600 people have signed an online petition created by students…in support of their former teacher…

Rooted in Racism

Mainstream anti-trafficking and abolitionist discourses construct the image of the victim by channelling “white slavery” myths. Eastern European women (along with other women from the ex-peripheries of global capital) are attributed a central role…Apart from the restrictions faced by most migrants from the former “eastern bloc” in so-called developed states, eastern European migrant sex workers encounter even tougher barriers…Even when legally residing and working, simply owning a Romanian or Russian passport can make female sex workers the target of rescue, detention, and re-socialisation and/or deportation programmes implemented by governmental agencies and carceral NGOs…The imaginary [status] of [these] countries as sources of “forced prostitution”…coincides with a Cold War hangover and…serve to doubly vilify and infantilise European women sex workers…

Peeping Toms

The late Justice Scalia was of course right about this; Lawrence vs. Texas actually overturned all laws against consensual adult sex, including those against prostitution. But now that picket-fence gays have their seat at the big table, they’re not going to say much while further court decisions attempt to turn Lawrence into a “monogamous vanilla amateurs only” club:

Uh-oh, kinksters: sex cops could be coming for you next. According to a new federal court decision, Americans have no constitutional right to engage in consensual BDSM because “sexual activity that involves binding and gagging or the use of physical force such as spanking or choking poses certain inherent risks to personal safety.” Thus officials could constitutionally ban or regulate such activity in the interest of “the protection of vulnerable persons,” the court held. In striking down bans on things like sodomy and adultery, U.S. courts have repeatedly said that citizens have a right to engage in whatever sort of consensual sexual activity they choose within the privacy of their own rooms (that is, as long as money isn’t involved). But federal judges now say that the Constitution “does not prohibit the regulation of BDSM conduct”…

Wise Investment

Every decision like this, in any country, brings us closer to the goal:

…sex workers in Macedonia…have been awarded protection…against the unlawful treatment of the police and the criminal court. On a November night in 2008, the police carried out [a pogrom]…in which 32 individuals, 23 of whom sex workers, were deprived of liberty. The police unlawfully detained the sex workers longer than 20 hours in inhuman and degrading conditions…without food, water or any possibility for sanitary hygiene. Some of them were left without medical help…The following day, all of them were taken for [involuntary STI] testing without any explanation…fourteen (14) sex workers filed a lawsuit…against the…Ministry of Interior…Seven years [later]…the Primary Court…partially granted the lawsuit of the sex workers and again established that…the police action “Suppression of Street Prostitution” violated the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights, i.e. violated the…sex workers’ rights…

Universal Criminality

When a cop wants to destroy someone, universal criminality makes it so easy:

A [Florida] sheriff’s deputy was fired and likely will face charges of obstruction of justice and tampering with evidence after he tried to plant [drugs] on a [man cops considered a troublemaker]…Stephen LeBlanc…is accused of persuading a man in [what police call] a known drug neighborhood to help [him]…plant evidence on Thomas Parisi, who LeBlanc in November arrested for spray-painting…“Sex workers are people, too,” and an anti-law enforcement sentiment [on a wall]…LeBlanc then began [stalking] Parisi…to “get him jammed up on more charges,” the sheriff said…

Above the Law

Just imagine any non-cop getting a deal like this for aggravated rape:

[An] Alabama State Trooper who was…charged with rape and sodomy of an accident victim…has reached a deal with prosecutors that will see him plead guilty to misdemeanor sexual misconduct…Samuel McHenry…put the woman…in his patrol car before [vaginally and anally raping her]…under threat of jail time…McHenry [must] serve six months in the Butler County Jail…in increments at his own discretion…within the next year…pay a $500 fine and restitution, and is ordered not to contact the victim…state law requires he register as a sex offender.

The Birth of a Movement

Yesterday, an English version of Eurydice Aroney’s French radio documentary “The Revolt of the Prostitutes” was broadcast on Australia’s ABC network. To promote it, she wrote this article on the occupation of the Church of St. Nizier in 1975, the event which gave birth to the international sex worker rights movement. I was especially touched by this passage:

…Little has changed for these workers since the strike in 1975. I spoke to…one of the original St Nizier strikers who now works in her van in Gerland. I asked if she knew that the St Nizier Church occupation was commemorated in Australia and across the world as International Whores’ Day. “No, I didn’t know that. Really?” she said. “And in Australia, are there lots of sex workers? And they aren’t being hassled by the police?” I told her that no, sex work is decriminalised in NSW…

Traffic Jam (#323)

See the resemblance to the “Satanic Panic” yet?

In the press, it was a “wide-reaching sex-trafficking operation” run by Somali Muslim gangs who forced “girls as young as 12” to sell sex in Minnesota and Tennessee. In reality, the operation—which led to charges against 30 individuals, sex-trafficking convictions for three, and an eight year legal battle—was a fiction crafted by two troubled teenagers, a member of the FBI’s human-trafficking task force, and an array of overzealous officials…federal prosecuters had no evidence whatsoever to support their “child sex trafficking conspiracy” case outside the seriously flawed testimony of two teenagers, one of whom had “been diagnosed as insane and was off her medication”…The [cop] was…caught lying to the grand jury and lying during a detention hearing, while Doe and the state’s other primary witness were, according to the court, almost entirely “unworthy of belief”…

Size Matters (#337)

Sadly, this was a foregone conclusion:

The leader of the Phoenix Goddess Temple that offered spiritual and touch-based healing services in exchange for donations has been convicted of operating a house of prostitution…Tracy Elise [was pronounced] guilty…on all 22 counts including 12 of money laundering. She also was convicted of six counts of pandering and one count each of conspiracy to commit illegal control of an enterprise, illegal control of an enterprise, prostitution and operating a house of prostitution…Elise is scheduled to be sentenced on April 8…

Imagine the Sky

The most interesting part of this article for me isn’t the location of historical New York brothels {yawn}, but rather the dogged persistence with which ignoramuses cling to the myth that prostitution was criminalized in the US before the 20^th century:

…Sex workers have been operating illegally in New York since before the Revolutionary War. In the early 19^th century, prostitutes worked in Five Points — above present day City Hall Park — and along the East River. But it wasn’t until the middle of that century that prostitution concentrated in SoHo and formed the city’s first sex district. While the districts moved northward over time…the manner in which johns found out about the districts remained consistent for decades: cheaply printed guidebooks…patrons needed help finding the city’s illicit brothels that law enforcement mostly turned a blind eye to…

New Excuse

Sometimes politicians’ rhetorical devices are blatantly transparent:

At a hearing on new measures to address human trafficking, California Assemblyman Reggie-Jones Sawyer [said]…”the last time we’ve had this kind of emergency was…the crack-cocaine epidemic.” Sadly, Sawyer was not referencing the ways in which the current popular panic about sex trafficking and governmental responses to it mirror the outlandish, hysteria-based, and detrimental state approach to the war on drugs. Rather, Sawyer sees our attention to the “crack-cocaine epidemic” as something we should now strive to emulate…In many, many respects…officials already are treating sex trafficking in the same way they did the drug war. The dominant legislative response has been increased criminalization of all sorts of commercial sexual activity…

Checklist (#514)

So about a month ago, this ridiculous air hostess person who’s hawking a book started tweeting nonsense about “sex trafficking” (because her wonderful “signs of trafficking” training makes her an expert, donchaknow). And she just couldn’t understand why all us mean hookers attacked her when all she wants to do is rescue people! So she wrote about it, and of course some ass published it:

As a flight attendant, I’ve been trained to spot trafficking in the air…It’s made me take a special interest in the topic, and I was even motivated to speak to my City Council…You…might think human trafficking is a topic we would all agree on. Right? Wrong. I recently learned there are a lot of people who disagree…some sex worker advocates argue we’re creating more victims: That when I speak out against human trafficking, that I’m contributing to the mass incarceration of sex workers…I met a woman in my neighborhood who works with a nonprofit organization that fights trafficking…so trafficking, in my town of Redondo Beach, has become an off-duty interest for me. On the drive to my son’s school, we pass 18 massage parlors — in less than two miles. Every single day I look at these massage parlors, and wonder what might be going on behind those covered up windows surrounded by security cameras…The average person hasn’t had their employer teach them how to stop human trafficking like mine has. The average person doesn’t have a daily reminder that trafficking is going on in the world the way I do…

Poor Heather; the weight of the world is on her shoulders! If she doesn’t defend “sex trafficking” victims in Redondo Beach against us bad ol’ whores, who will?

Uncommon Sense (#557)

If any job indicates a need for “counseling”, it’s politician:

…A group of sex workers protested…in Hamburg against a new government bill that would force sex workers to register with the state [every two years or, for women ages 18 to 21, every year] and receive counseling. The protesters held symbolic “prostitute cards” to illustrate what it would mean for them to be forced to carry with them registration, said Friederike Strack of the Berlin-based consulting center Hydra…

Read Full Post »

In the News (#617)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged A Mound of Filth, Above the Law, agency denial, Arizona, asset seizure, Australia, Canada, cell phones, cops, halfway whores, hysteria, law, Massachusetts, Monsters, New Excuse, O Canada!, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, pragmatism, propaganda, rape, rescue industry, Rhode Island, sex offender registry, Something Rotten In Sweden, stripping, Texas, The Public Eye, The Rescuers, transgender, Unintentional Hilarity, United Kingdom, video, Washington (state), Worse Than I Thought, yellow journalism on March 2, 2016| 1 Comment »

Such is the extent of the harm caused by anti-prostitution zealots that we must question whether their actions are fundamentally any less harmful than those they are seeking to “save” women from. – Laura Connelly

The Rescuers

…the UK has a rapidly-growing “rescue industry”…that makes its living from identifying and creating victims of “sexual slavery”. It is in its interest to find them. Lots of them. In a sort of sex industry “neighbourhood watch” scheme, some Christian organisations send their congregation out on to the streets to search for sex workers that they can impose victim status upon. Other organisations have infiltrated university campuses. There’s even a “Slave Detective” offering anti-trafficking consultancy. In the face of mounting evidence that they’re doing more harm than good, people recklessly continue on their rescue missions…many do not wish to be saved. If they’re a migrant sex worker, their “rescue” can result in deportation…back to communities where they are shunned or worse still, put to death for bringing shame to their family. Far from helping…the actions of the rescue industry limit the freedom of sex workers. I’ve heard about women having their mobile phones confiscated in trafficking safe houses, to ensure they can’t sell any more sex…

Something Rotten in Sweden

After they succeed in defining all whores as mindless vegetables, who’s next?

…the…Western Massachusetts Human Trafficking Task Force…is striving to embody…a “paradigm shift” in moving away from law enforcement’s traditional view of those who sell their bodies as criminals or prostitutes and viewing them as victims moved by “force, threat, coercion or all of the above…Now we understand correctly and view them as as vulnerable victims”…

O, Canada!

As one reads these fetishist politicians’ words, one can practically hear the fapping:

[Rescue industry] organizations…are urging the Ontario government to adopt a private member’s bill to take immediate action to address what they [fantasize is] a crisis. “Sex trafficking is a growing and significant issue in Ontario,” said Cynthia Bland, founder of Voice Found…“The average age when most girls are trafficked into prostitution is 14, and many don’t even recognize that they’ve been trafficked until it’s too late”…Laurie Scott has a private member’s bill that would give police the power to enforce protection orders against traffickers on behalf of the victims…The bill would also allow victims to seek compensation in court and add convicted traffickers to the province’s sex offender registry…Scott’s bill…[is] called the “Saving The Girl Next Door Act”…Ontario has become a “major hub” for human trafficking…

Above the Law

Some police departments hesitate to protect rapist cops when their victims are underage:

[Typical] Ohio cop…Justin Bentz was found guilty of [rape]…kidnapping and sexual battery. Hours before he raped the girl in June 2015, Bentz had taken a class warning of the dangers of underage sexual assault. But that didn’t stop him from making sexual advances towards the 16-year-old girl after handing her a bottle of 80-proof alcohol, allowing her to get drunk to the point where she could barely stand. However, Bentz insisted the girl had come on to him…She was found by her sister in a closet wearing only a tank top, curled up in the fetal position. Her blood alcohol content was up to .19, more than twice the .08 legal limit. A nurse determined she suffered blunt force trauma to her vaginal area. A DNA test found his semen on her stomach…

The Widening Gyre

No, Snopes, it isn’t “odd” at all; this is the typical pattern of “sex trafficking” rumors. So when are you going to stop pruning leaves and go for the trunk?

On 25 February 2016, multiple high-volume Twitter [advertising] accounts published warnings claiming that the meetup app “Down to Lunch” was a tool for human traffickers…It was an odd claim, since purpose of Down to Lunch was well documented, the app was hugely popular, and there was no information available to substantiate the allegations…on 24 February 2016, a tweet shared a screenshot of an App Store review from a few weeks earlier. The review claimed that Down to Lunch was a covert trafficking app, but the story that it offered (which featured strangers in sunglasses and trench coats, random middle-aged people crashing lunches and talking about photography, and — of course — a creepy van) wasn’t substantiated by any evidence…

Worse Than I Thought

The oppression committed in the name of “fighting sex trafficking” rolls on:

A comprehensive bill that would significantly expand Rhode Island’s human-trafficking law was well received by [authoritarians]…Human trafficking is considered to be the world’s fastest-growing criminal enterprise…the legislation has already been adopted by six states, and four others have enacted partial provisions…The bill…imposes substantial penalties on traffickers and those who pay for sex with someone who is trafficked…and forfeiture of property from people involved in trafficking. That could include places that rent to massage parlors…The bill also would establish a permanent council on human trafficking to work on prevention and public awareness…The committee also heard a bill that would require sex traffickers to register as sex offenders…

And just in case you think that’s nothing to worry about, remember that all prostitution is increasingly defined as “trafficking”, and that the definition of “prostitution” is expanding:

…Under a measure passed unanimously by [Oregon] Senators…the offense of “promoting prostitution” will include…receiving goods, services, or anything of value in exchange for aiding, promoting, or “caus(ing) someone to engage” in prostitution…Lawmakers [pretend] the measure is needed in order to prosecute sex traffickers, who [they fantasize] often receive things other than cash…[even though] no one has any evidence of this happening at all, let alone frequently…Sex-worker advocates…say the measure will harm…homeless young people [who] wind up exchanging sexual favors for shelter, food, and other basic needs…Criminalizing these attempts to survive…will just make survival that much harder. While we haven’t gotten dystopian enough quite yet for cops to target conventional dating under this statute, it seems plenty plausible that it would be used to go after…”sugar baby” relationships…

The Public Eye

My friend Caroline handled this interview like a champ; I just wish they hadn’t sullied her words by surrounding them with prohibitionist lies:

…“There are a lot more of us than you think,” said Caroline McLeod…43 and a single mother of two. And, for the last eight years, she’s been a sex worker. “It is illegal and I’m doing it and it’s all good, for me…So I made a leap of faith and it’s been fabulous”…McLeod got tired of her long workweek at a startup tech job while her daughter spent the day in day care. She said she needed to find a way to provide for her kids and be there as they grew up…However, McLeod doesn’t look for her clients on the street and she doesn’t come from an abusive home like so many of the women who turn to street prostitution…She says she’s never been hurt or had problems with any of her clients, but many women in the sex trade do get roughed up. In fact, law enforcement has shifted its focus to combat prostitution…

Monsters

Just a couple short days after Veronica Banks Cano, a Black trans woman from San Antonio, was found dead in her hotel room, another Black trans woman is dead. Maya Young was pronounced dead after being stabbed multiple times in Philadelphia on February 21st…

Unintentional Hilarity

Remember the imbecile who gave a strange man all her savings, then claimed she had “escaped sex trafficking” because he told her strippers make more money than waitresses? Well, she’s still clucking about her non-experiences as though they meant something:

Brianna Myers…told an audience of more than 80 the story of how she nearly became a victim of human trafficking…“We’re not here to share fear and paranoia,” said Jo Lembo…for Shared Hope International…[sow] Ariana Ridgely…[oinked that] “Small towns can be even more dangerous than a big city”…Myers offered warning signs that might identify a potential trafficker. “A guy who is always available to you is…just preying on your vulnerabilities”…someone who will [offer a girl compliments] buy her new clothes, make her salon appointments, drive nice cars or take her to big cities…is someone to be wary of, Myers said…Strip clubs are like the minor league baseball equivalent to major league prostitution, Ridgely said. And with the plethora of nude dance clubs in Portland, the city is a “hotbed for trafficking”…

So according to Myers, the only safe boyfriend is a loser who never takes you anywhere or spends any money on you. And the baseball simile may quite possibly be among the ten stupidest things ever said about sex work in the entire history of the profession.

A Mound of Filth

“Cuckoo Clock” McCain now wants to vomit her poison all over the entire world:

Cindy McCain told a Senate committee…that the U.S. should be the leader in the global fight against human trafficking. “We need to recognize that we have a global problem and it calls for a global solution,” McCain said…She is…[also seeking] to [impose a “sex trafficking” propaganda regime]…in [Arizona] schools…

New Excuse

Eternal Vigilance (#610)

Perhaps it’s just because I’m a born whore, but I honestly don’t get why this is considered news at all:

Sex-for-rent advertisements continue to appear online in southeast Queensland…The advertisements, some subtle, others more overt , target vulnerable women, students and backpackers…Exchanging sex for rent is not illegal in Australia provided it is consensual and does not involve coercion or violence…Gold Coast centre against sexual violence director Di Macleod said the issue had existed for many years…

They “target vulnerable women”? How, exactly? Do the ads say, “Vulnerable women only need apply”, or are prospective tenants required to pass (fail?) some sort of vulnerability test? And most importantly, when will Western society stop treating adult women as if they were wayward kindergarteners?

Phantasm

WTF, Atlantic? Have you lost your collective mind, or is some wealthy prohibitionist like Swanee Hunt paying y’all to run this kind of garbage?

How do you identify sex-trafficking victims when such cases go largely undetected or unreported?…human trafficking is a lucrative industry that around the globe rakes in $150 billion…victims might be fearful of going to law enforcement and being charged with a crime…Women can be pulled in to commercial sex through gangs or pimps—the former function as delivery services, taking women to houses in the area they control, while the latter focus on hotels and street level prostitution…law enforcement…[works] to identify victims who are afraid to identify themselves.

The portrayal of cops as heroes that sex workers need to be brainwashed into being wary of is enough to make anyone who lives in the real world vomit.

Read Full Post »

Printed To Fit

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, Perception, tagged asset seizure, Florida, left-right myth, New Excuse, politicians, yellow journalism on January 22, 2016| 6 Comments »

The narrative that law enforcement loves to go after sites like this is that they’re saving us, that they’re rescuing us. They’re only rescuing us from being able to pay our bills. – Me, in a KING 5 interview

One thing that sex worker activists quickly learn when dealing with the media is that reporters and/or producers can take a long or moderately-long interview and chop it away to virtually nothing; the topic has come up in discussion quite often among Seattle activists recently due to the media exposure surrounding the recent raids. All in all, I’ve been relatively lucky the past few years; even when an hour-long interview is reduced to a few sentences, they’ve generally chosen quotes that reflect well upon me (such as today’s epigram). The one major exception I can think of was the interview I gave to the Baltimore ABC station in the summer of ’14; I was asked for my opinions on decriminalization, and had no idea the reporter would do a feature in which she adopted the sleazy prohibitionist strategy of defining the Swedish model as “decriminalization”, then editing me to make it seem as though I supported that vile, misogynistic tyranny.

Anyhow, on Wednesday I gave a short interview to a reporter from the Daily Beast; the first part was by email and I was rather pleased with my own answer, so I thought it might be interesting to share it with you, then show how little of it was printed to fit. The reporter’s question was:

Writing a story about Marco Rubio, who as Florida House speaker [in 2006] proposed that whistleblower status “should be afforded to everyone who reports prostitution, even if they are involved in the act. As an incentive for reporting the illegal activities, whistleblowers should also receive half the proceeds from any forfeiture actions brought in this case.” Wanted to see what you thought about this proposal…

And this was my complete answer:

As I began saying in public appearances two years ago, the “War on Whores” is the new “War on Drugs”. It serves exactly the same functions as the War on Drugs: as an all-purpose excuse for mass surveillance, mass incarceration, aggressive policing, asset forfeiture, social controls, universal criminality, etc. And like the Drug War, useful idiots can be counted on to support it “for the children”. Take a look at nearly any law purported to fight “sex trafficking” (which has become nothing more than a dysphemism for sex work) and you’ll find that it’s essentially a drug war law with new terminology…the ridiculously-long sentences, the harsh corollary penalties, the brainwashing of “victims” under the guise of “rehabilitation”, the surveillance measures, the artificial sense of urgency (“it’s a growing problem!”), the disproportionate enforcement vs. minorities & the poor, and ESPECIALLY the asset seizure*. So it doesn’t surprise me that an ambitious politician in Florida (one of the three states – the other two being Arizona & Washington – which has come up with the most terrifying & profoundly stupid anti-whore laws of the past few years) came up with yet another asinine & tyrannical proposal to infringe upon the rights of individuals to own & control their own bodies & lives; Florida has, after all, been at the forefront of such efforts (previously in “Drug War” guise) since at least the ‘80s.

One more thing: as with powder cocaine vs crack, politicians make sure that THEIR version of a vice isn’t the one targeted as much as OTHER people’s versions; mistresses, sugar babies & so-called “high class” escorts like me aren’t the ones being targeted by these anti-whore campaigns because politicians employ us & don’t wish to be hoist with their own petards. Instead, the extramarital sex favored by poor & working-class men, such as street workers, massage parlors & Backpage girls, are the ones which are demonized and subjected to horrific “sting” operations.

*Elizabeth Nolan Brown has also written about this:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/justice-for-victims-of-sex-trafficking-war-on-crime-118512
http://reason.com/blog/2015/08/28/asset-forfeiture-for-sex-workers
https://maggiemcneill.com/2015/10/07/in-the-news-577/#excuse
https://reason.com/blog/2015/10/17/sex-traffickers-in-blue

In our phone conversation later that afternoon we covered several more points, the most important of which was first brought up by Mistress Matisse: given that asset forfeiture doesn’t require a criminal conviction, what’s to stop disgruntled boyfriends and estranged husbands from accusing their exes of prostitution so they can bankrupt them and steal half of their possessions? For that matter, what’s to stop jealous neighbors from doing the same? As I’ve pointed out many times, “evidence of prostitution” is whatever the cops say it is; this insane law would literally be an excuse to rob anyone blind. Given that the single quote which made it into the final story was “It would incentivize false claims,” I reckon the reporter wasn’t really listening to the rest of what I said; he seems to have been much more interested in criticizing one particular stupid, evil idea from one particular power-mad politician than in analyzing the greater fabric of universal criminality of which Rubio’s proposal is an intrinsic part. And since that kind of narrow, partisan focus is not at all unusual among journalists, it should be obvious why activists need to be careful of what we say to them.

Read Full Post »

In the News (#598)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged A Tale That Grew in the Telling, adolescence, agency denial, BDSM, California, Canada, consensual crime, cops, dirty, Droit du Seigneur, drugs, fantasy, FBI, Georgia, hysteria, Innocence Never Had, law, Little Boxes, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Netherlands, New Excuse, Now They Notice, O Canada!, pathologization of males, prisons, prohibitionist myths, psychology, racism, rape, Social Construction of Eunuchs, Sweden, Texas, The Red Umbrella, Too Young To Know, transgender, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers, Washington (state), Welcome to Our Updates, welcome to our world, Worse Than I Thought on December 23, 2015| 8 Comments »

The bottom line is that the criminalization of prostitution is at the root of the risk that sex workers face. – Elizabeth Nolan Brown

The Red Umbrella

Elizabeth Nolan Brown demonstrates her amazing allyship:

Each December 17, sex workers and their allies around the world commemorate the “International Day To End Violence Against Sex Workers”…it’s not just psychos and serial killers who put sex workers in danger—a large share of violence against sex workers comes at the hands of cops…who…target sex workers for assault because they have an easy bargaining chip (do what I say or I’ll throw you in jail) and they know the stigma around prostitution makes people less likely to believe these women. But even cops who are just doing their jobs commit violence against sex workers every day, by arresting and locking them up in jail just for trying to earn a living. Then, when sex workers suspect clients are capable of violence, we wonder why they didn’t go to the police? Please…

Social Construction of Eunuchs

The title’s not usually this literal:

…The drug Lupron tricks the hormone in the brain that tells the pituitary gland to produce testosterone. Dr. Renee Sorrentino is one of a handful of psychiatrists offering Lupron to patients in Massachusetts. She first saw the drug in action while working in Canada and was amazed at how it changed men’s lives by “turning down the sexual volume of the mind,” allowing patients to work through the causes of their behaviors with therapy. Sorrentino says that about 20 percent of her current Lupron patients are there voluntarily, often desperate to curb their troubling sexual thoughts or actions. One of her patients, a 62-year-old man…started taking shots of Lupron after his wife discovered he’d spent the last eight years sleeping with prostitutes. Identifying as a sex addict, he felt the only way to stop his behavior — and save his 45-year marriage — was to medicate his body into submission…

Droit du Seigneur

Does anyone actually believe this excuse would’ve worked for a poor man?

A millionaire businessman has been found not guilty of rape after claiming he accidentally penetrated her when he tripped and fell. Ehsan Abdulaziz…was…accused of forcing himself on the 18-year-old as she slept on a couch at his London flat after a night of drinking. The Saudi property developer said he had already had sex with the young woman’s 24-year-old friend and it was possible his penis may have been poking out of his underwear when he tripped…Abdulaziz said he had accidentally fallen on the teenager and that she tried to seduce him, and that was how his DNA got onto her vagina…He also told the court it was possible he had semen on his hands after having sex with the young woman’s friend…

His penis “accidentally” entered her? Seriously? Has anyone on this jury ever actually had sex? Or were they all Swedish immigrants?

Little Boxes

Adult human beings with Important Titles actually thought this was something that needed to be discussed:

Driving instructors in the Netherlands can legally trade driving lessons for sex, government ministers have confirmed…Some novice drivers have been learning the rules of the road in exchange for sex, in deals which the conservative opposition party ChristenUnie has labeled “illegal prostitution”. The Dutch government has been researching the appropriate legal stance on such transactions and concluded that offering driving lessons in exchange for sex is not illegal. However it would be illegal if the transaction was to be reversed, with a learner driver offering sex for the lessons…

Too Young To Know

This is the same paper which has printed several “lock ’em up” prostitution editorials in recent months:

…Follow the money that Washington state spends intervening with runaway kids and those who skip school, and you might believe this state wants to see them all locked up in jail. The laws that underpin this embarrassment were passed 20 years ago under what’s known as the Becca laws, named for a 13-year-old Tacoma girl who ran away from home repeatedly, became addicted to crack…fell into prostitution…[and] was murdered [due to the criminalization this paper supports]…the laws have become a vehicle to routinely jail youths. The state spends millions to funnel noncriminal adolescent rebellion into juvenile courts…Washington sends more truant and runaway kids to jail than any other state by at least a factor of two…in 2014 this state jailed one-third of the 7,466 young people detained across the nation for so-called “status offenses” — running away from home or skipping school…one out of every six kids admitted to a juvenile detention center aren’t there for crimes, but for violating court orders regarding truancy and running away…

Worse Than I Thought

For the “crime” of seeking an adult partner for consensual sex:

Three…men facing gross misdemeanor charges for soliciting prostitution in a public place in [a Minnesota] County have pleaded guilty…The men [were entrapped using fake]…online advertisements for escort services…one…was sentenced to two years of supervised probation, during which he must submit to random searches of his personally owned cellphones or computers…[and] is also not allowed to use Craigslist, backpages.com [sic] or other internet [advertising] sites…[he] was required to [endure a “john school”]attend and…was fined $750…[another]…was [threatened with]…30 days in [a cage if he refuses to endure “john school”]…he…was fined $1,685. [The third]…was [also threatened with the cage and]…must submit to random searches of his person, residence…vehicles…electronic devices…cellphones and computers, and [must surrender] his passwords to any social networking accounts…[he] was fined $2,085.

Innocence Never Had (#401)

“Rescue bags” are the newest way for the hopelessly ignorant to pretend they’re “doing something” about “child sex trafficking”:

…One hundred rescue bags were put together for child sex trafficking victims in Clayton County. Donations of personal hygiene items, clothes, socks and blankets were collected from agencies all over Clayton…“Everyone has been 150 percent behind us in this,” said Joanne Southerland, coordinator of Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children Awareness, Training and Prevention…

Note that Clayton County, Georgia has about 260,000 inhabitants, which means these fetishists fantasize that 8 of every 10,000 female inhabitants are “child sex slaves”. But I guess one can’t expect much mathematical comprehension from people who think it’s possible to give 50% more of something than there is of it.

New Excuse

Beginning to sound familiar yet?

Sacramento has been selected as one of six locations…to form new federal task forces to combat human trafficking…[as] part of the Anti-Trafficking Coordination Team Initiative, an interagency federal law enforcement initiative aimed at streamlining the…[persecution of people using] federal human trafficking [laws]…Anti-Trafficking Coordination Teams bring together federal prosecutors and federal agents from federal investigative agencies to [coordinate schemes for harvesting victims]…The new team will include personnel from the FBI, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations and the U.S. Department of Labor. Other sites selected to form the new task forces are Cleveland, Minneapolis, Newark, N.J., Portland, Maine, and Portland, Ore.

A Tale That Grew in the Telling (#503)

Another good way to give lies weight in the minds of the Great Unwashed: embed them in an infographic.

Note that the absurd “25% of all victims” has now inflated a little.

BDSM (#505)

Naturally. It’s obsessing about what other people do in private which is a sign of mental illness:

University of Alabama and University of Central Florida researchers surveyed over 800 kinky people…and found they were mentally and emotionally healthy…The study, “Psychological Functioning and Violence Victimization and Perpetration in BDSM Practitioners from the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom”, also investigated people’s preferences for BDSM activities and fantasies, and explored whether violence is perpetuated against kinky people. It joins a growing body of research that refutes the stereotype that people who are kinky are inherently dangerous to themselves and others, which is at the root of the discrimination and persecution that kinky people experience…says Robert J. Cramer…Co-Principal Investigator…”Contrary to popular perceptions, our study shows kinky persons are largely mentally healthy when it comes to conditions such as depression, anxiety and suicide”…

Welcome To Our World (#512)

Sweden isn’t racist, nope. And neither is the “human trafficking” narrative:

Swedish police have compiled a controversial register, listing information about members of the Roma community found begging on the street. Roma beggars up and down the country have been questioned about their income, whether or not they beg voluntarily or under duress and if they pay others to be guaranteed a certain spot in a town or city…Roma…had also been asked to show…ID…and to give details about their home towns…Police [pretended]…the [surveillance] was necessary in order to fully investigate potential human trafficking…But Hans Caldaras, a spokesperson for the Roma community, said that the study was an excuse to compile statistics based on ethnicity (which is not usually done in Sweden) and to get Roma “out of the country”. A previous similar initiative co-ordinated by police in southern Sweden in 2013 was severely criticized by Sweden’s parliamentary watchdog, and those included in the register were awarded damages…

O, Canada! (#596)

You wouldn’t know this was Canadian if not for the specifics:

…a…provincial task force is required to combat domestic human trafficking…over 90% of the young female victims of human trafficking are Canadian-born…the highest incidence of human trafficking in Canada occurs in Ontario. The typical victim of human trafficking…is the girl next door. She’s the pretty, popular girl who hopes no one ever finds out that deep down inside she doesn’t feel pretty at all…these young women are psychologically manipulated by their “boyfriends”…the victims are confined, beaten, and sexually exploited by traffickers who earn over $280,000 a year from just one victim…women as young as 13 are moved from one community to another. In Ontario, this frequently occurs along Hwy. 401. Their traffickers advertise their services online. It is estimated that on any given day, 500 of the online sex ads involve victims of human trafficking…

I’m surprised Laurie Scott isn’t more wary about sharing the exact details of her masturbatory fantasies with her constituency.

Now They Notice (#596)

If this is what it takes to get Gay, Inc interested in sex worker rights, I’m all for it:

There are countless reasons many transgender people decided to engage in sex work in order to survive. Employment discrimination, family rejection, unsafe educational environments and other forms of discrimination all contribute to high rates of economic insecurity and poverty for transgender people…Being convicted of a crime for engaging in sex work leads to negative lifelong consequences…[such as] their ability to attain employment. And in the many cases where they are placed on sex offender registries, this will affect nearly every aspect of their lives, including where they can live and work…sex workers face constant threats of violence…because of the lack of spaces in which sex workers can more safely engage their clients — and a disproportionate…[number] of those…are transgender women…safe spaces…are constantly being shut down by law enforcement agencies and those involved risk being indicted on punitive criminal charges — as we’ve seen recently by the federal raid on Rentboy.com. This type of approach further pushes sex work deeper underground…

Read Full Post »

In the News (#581)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged asset seizure, BDSM, Buried Truth, California, Change a Few Words, Colorado, cops, drugs, Dysphemisms Galore, escort services, Femme Fatale, Forward and Backward, Good Fantasy-Bad Reality, harm reduction, hysteria, Innocence Never Had, New Excuse, North Carolina, porn, prisons, psychology, Switzerland, The Sky is Falling!, underage, United Kingdom, yellow journalism on October 21, 2015| 11 Comments »

Why is it so hard for us to see how profoundly a $100 billion illegal market in anything, even in popcorn or “My Little Pony” toys, would distort a society? – Danielle Allen

Good Fantasy, Bad Reality

So how would Dr. Blakemore react to an amateur physician injuring someone through incompetence?

A female GP who left her businessman lover covered in bleeding welts following a caning session has been cleared of assault. The sex life of Elvira Blakemore, 41 and James Austin, a 57-year-old businessman, culminated in a trial…the couple began to experiment sexually after Dr Blakemore was said to have been interested in the fantasies portrayed in the film, 50 Shades of Grey…At the heart of the case was whether the caning amounted to assault or was, as the GP insisted, purely consensual…On one occasion, Mr Austin told the court, she hit him with the cane after he had passed out on their bed. “She was violently hitting me with the cane very many times on the back. There was a cut on my cheek also, but she just kept going and by the end there was blood on the bed,” he said…

Forward and Backward

The fact that “prostitution-free zones” are unconstitutional never deters politicians:

Police in North Carolina could soon have the authority to designate “public safety zones” and ban citizens arrested for certain crimes within those areas from returning for up to a year. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department officials are flirting with the plan, which was tried with limited success in other cities and briefly used to target prostitution in Charlotte a decade ago…The plan…would allow police commanders to designate a section of the city as a “public safety zone” in response to specific crimes and aggressively police that area. Anyone arrested for one of the targeted crimes inside the safety zone would face a one-year ban…

Change a Few Words

Need I point out that the War on Whores is the same?

…The drug war is a perfect example of the breakdown of the rule of law and the knock-on effects of such a breakdown. Our drug laws are fundamentally unenforceable, and this distorts the judicial system, including by producing prosecutorial overload, which is a driver of low homicide clearance rates, which beget a culture of increasing violence, which puts more fathers of young children behind bars or under the ground, makes it harder for children in poor, urban areas to walk to school safely, and forces on those children a choice between the culture of the schools, inside the rule of law, and the culture of the streets, outside the rule of law…

The Sky is Falling!

Radhika’s clutching her pearls so hard she’s about to break them:

…Porn is no longer shocking. It has become normalised to the point where young children are getting their first sex education lessons via RedTube. Recent studies show that pupils as young as 11 watch pornography…The consequences have been severe. These porn videos showed a one-sided, male perspective of sex – with overly-eager girls and absolutely no emphasis on female pleasure. A number of my peers now have sexual issues they directly relate to porn, such as struggling to orgasm, hating pubic hair and needing “stimulants” such as rough sex in order to come. As scientists have previously suggested, many can also struggle with intimacy…While girls of my generation would watch porn simply to learn what third base was, now a new generation of girls is watching it for career advice…

Buried Truth

Vociferous opposition to anything sexual should be considered strong evidence of an attraction to it:

[Porn prohibitionist] Donny Pauling Jr. pleaded no contest…to four felony sex charges involving two minors, a plea deal that would send him to state prison for six years…Pauling, 41, acting as his own attorney, admitted to oral copulation and having sexual intercourse with a victim 14 years old in 2012, continuing into 2014…Pauling also must register as a sexual offender for life…A former Chico-based pornography producer, Pauling had said he found God and traveled to churches around the country as an anti-pornography activist…

Innocence Never Had

…Prax(us)…will shutter its doors this December. The nonprofit set itself apart from the army of Christian anti-sex-trafficking organizations that demand participants be abstinent and sober, by focusing specifically on homeless youth in exploitative situations and offering individuals support without judgement. Prax(us) didn’t require youth be sober. It didn’t require them to work with law enforcement. It didn’t stigmatize youth for criminal activities or participating in sex-work…encouraged clients to reduce harm by learning about and practicing safer drug use and safer sex. Staff handed out condoms, dental dams and lube, and referred clients to the local syringe exchange where they could trade dirty needles for clean ones…Refusing to turn away active sex workers limited the amount of money Prax(us) could get from government grants. Foundations preferred money that went to clear-cut human trafficking cases — not services for sex workers who don’t feel exploited…

Femme Fatale (#409)

…Since neither medical episodes nor deaths suffered at Nevada’s brothels are publicly available statistics, how often does it actually happen? And what are the protocols for when they occur?…We interviewed employees at three of Nevada’s 20-plus legal brothels, all of whom denied that anyone has ever had a medical episode at their establishments…Bella Cummins, owner of Bella’s Hacienda Ranch…[claimed] the prostitutes are all so good at their jobs, no John so much as passes out…However, according to one Swiss report, seven customers died while visiting brothels between 2004 and 2014. And that’s just in Switzerland. An American Heart Association report found that 93 percent of married men who died of sudden death during sex did so due to extra-marital sex in unfamiliar settings—both of which increase stress levels…

Stupor Bowl (#424)

The Bay Area tries desperately to cash in on the “gypsy whore” myth before it collapses completely:

Preparation for Super Bowl 50 has been well underway for more than a year and includes a massive collaboration amongst local law enforcement agencies, prosecutors and the FBI as criminals engaged in human trafficking are anticipated to take advantage…officials are certain federal and local agencies must work together to crack down on pimps and Johns while assisting victims. For the ninth year, the FBI is setting up a human trafficking operation center while bringing in additional agents and intelligence analysts specifically in response to the Super Bowl…In previous host cities, there’s been “an increase in activity with respect to…sex trafficking and the exploitation of juveniles and minors around the Super Bowl”…[FBI agent Bertram] Fairries [lied]…

Dysphemisms Galore (#565)

Amber Batts, convicted as a “sex trafficker” for running exactly the same kind of business I did, has sent a letter to supporters from prison:

I have lost much through this ordeal, but the one thing I cannot ever replace is time…I am…unable to call my family or friends unless there is an expensive phone account set up and prepaid…I ran an escort agency…but I was more than that person. I was a mom and a friend. I paid my bills, my taxes, I was a wife, I had hobbies…I will continue to have hope as I live what feels like a surreal nightmare at times…

New Excuse (#568)

I love Liz Brown, and I mean that in whatever way she finds most appealing:

…the tough-on-crime approach to sex-trafficking is about arresting as many people as possible and wresting as many assets as possible from them, not legitimately helping sex trafficking victims (legitimately helping people means paying attention to what they actually need, not threatening them with arrest if they don’t testify against others or sending them to church-run “prostitution diversion” camps or giving them bags filled with socks and toiletries and calling it a day.) Just look at the language used by Marinus Analytics, a company getting lots of attention for using big data analysis to aid in human trafficking investigations. In its intro, Marinus promises to help cops and prosecutors “focus your attention to high value criminal targets” and “track the highest value criminal targets in less time.” The assets that can be seized are the prize, the teens selling sex are just convenient cover…

Read Full Post »

In the News (#577)

Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged Above the Law, activism, Amnesty At Last, brothels, cops, Dutch Threat, Dysphemisms Galore, Five Women in Whitechapel, Having and Eating Cake, hysteria, Ireland, language, law, lawheads, Neither Addiction nor Epidemic, Netherlands, New Excuse, Ohio, pimps, Played Out, prisons, prohibitionist myths, psychology, racism, robots, Rooted in Racism, serial killers, Something Done Right, Storyville, stripping, Sweden, The Pygmalion Fallacy, United Kingdom, video, West Virginia on October 7, 2015| 34 Comments »

Mainstream feminism rejects sex work as an acceptable choice. So…I don’t describe myself as an adherent to a political philosophy that wants to eliminate me. – Mistress Matisse

Five Women in Whitechapel

Almost certainly not:

…They All Love Jack: Busting the Ripper [is] more than 800 pages in length…Michael Maybrick was a hugely popular singer and composer in the Victorian era, who is virtually forgotten today – for reasons that Robinson believes are no accident…Maybrick was close friends with Sir Arthur Sullivan and the painter Frederick Leighton, among many other prominent public figures. Both Sullivan and Leighton were Freemasons, as was Michael Maybrick. He was…on the Supreme Grand Council of Freemasons, whose members also included the Prince of Wales…Maybrick was 47 at the time of the murders; a bachelor and, [author Bruce] Robinson believes, homosexual…

Yes, it’s a new version of the Masonic theory.

Above the Law

When you’re a cop, rape becomes “official misconduct”:

A [Tennessee cop]…who resigned amid allegations of [raping prisoners]…pleaded guilty…to one count of official misconduct…Judge John Dugger sentenced Jeff Sowers to 18 months in jail…Dugger denied a request by Sowers’ attorneys for judicial diversion, which would have allowed for Sowers’ record to be expunged after his sentence…

The Pygmalion Fallacy

Such a lot of stupid writing on something that not only doesn’t exist, but will never exist in the way and on the timescale these idiots are wanking to the fantasy of:

…a recent report claims intimacy between robots and humans will be more common than that between two people by 2050. The work, written by futurologist Dr. Ian Pearson, purports that engaging in virtual sex acts will be as prevalent in 2030 as our engagement with porn today, and that the majority of people will own sex toys that employ an alternate reality in some way come 2035…

Storyville (#139)

…Over the last 150 years, rights for sex workers have…diminished, according to West Virginia University journalism professor Alison Bass. In her book Getting Screwed: Sex Workers and the Law…Bass surveys the history of laws regulating prostitution in America and abroad. In the past and today, Bass finds, sex workers have been marginalized by stigma that portrays them as immoral, dangerous, even diseased figures. But while the stigma hasn’t changed, the laws have—in many cases…for the worse…

Dutch Threat

Lawheads are completely unable to comprehend the bottleneck effect:

Entrepreneurs in Amsterdam who want to open a brothel must speak at least one common language with the sex workers they rent space to, according to a…ruling handed down by the European Court of Justice. The court [claimed] the decision as…a way to guarantee the safety of the women, [reduce] human trafficking, and…help prevent pimping…and [pretended it] was…not discriminatory in any way…the court also noted the Council of State’s notion that the seeming overreach in authority was meant as a protection of public order, and that being able to converse with a sex worker allows a brothel owner the possibility of stopping child prostitution…

Dysphemisms Galore

Because nobody would care about a headline reading, “Man minds his daughter while mother works”:

A Michigan man held his 9-month-old daughter in a motel room while the baby’s mother had sex with another man for money…Derohn Wilburn…is charged with…felony promoting prostitution and misdemeanor child endangering…Melissa Coleman…is charged with misdemeanor child endangering and prostitution…police released the baby to a family member. She was unharmed…

Played Out

I don’t know who Robert Fullinwider is, but I thank him for taking the time to read through Moran’s drek so as to be able to rip it to shreds:

…Moran is not content to offer her particular life-story…She also sets herself up as the Universal Prostitute, a woman whose experiences define prostitution and trump the “experiences” of anyone else — sex worker, academic, or otherwise — who views prostitution differently than she does. She is not content to let her story speak for itself but instructs the reader on the proper conclusions to draw, and engages in arguments based on her experiences and “research”…Moran writes: prostitutes are “coerced” into prostitution (pp. 49, 227); they have no “choice” (p. 161); they have no “free will” (p. 201); they act out of “desperation” and “destitution” (pp. 43, 96)…Moran…[claims] she didn’t consent to prostitution because “it is not possible to consent to a lifestyle you don’t comprehend” (p. 50). Yes it is. People do it all the time. “I didn’t know marriage was going to be like this!” “I didn’t know how stressful being a parent would be!” “I didn’t know military life would be this tough!” [She claims] she didn’t consent to prostitution because she wasn’t an adult and children can’t consent (pp. 50-51). Yes they can. Society frames laws that say people below certain ages can’t “consent” – to contracts, to mortgages, to sexual relations, and the like – but the “no consent” here is a legal fiction…a sixteen year-old girl who finds prostitution utterly repulsive, revolting, and disgusting, and who is “desperate to escape,” yet who passes up on an opportunity to get out of the trade because she’s unwilling to be bound by any rules, is a person who’s made a choice— a bad choice, to be sure, but a real choice…Moran…speaks of allowing herself to be coerced (an odd locution) into prostitution by her boyfriend. What did her boyfriend do? Did he beat her? Did he threaten her? No, he “suggested” that she turn tricks; he “encouraged” her (pp. 47, 186)…Moran seems to think you haven’t acted freely unless you are as happy as a lark with what you’ve chosen (p. 227); that you are not self-determining unless you are “controlling the totality of your life” (p. 175). These are just fundamentally unserious engagements with the notions of freedom and self-determination. We always act under constraints, we never control the totality of our lives, and we are often unhappy with what we’ve chosen, just less unhappy than with the alternatives…

Rooted in Racism (#429)

Sweden’s “liberal reputation” is bullshit:

…a recent report by the United Nations…concludes that a rising level of racist violence and “Afrophobic” hate crimes in Sweden are “an extensive social problem”. “There continues to be a general Swedish self-perception of being a tolerant and humane society, which makes it difficult to accept that there could be structural and institutional racism faced by people of African descent,” says the report…The country’s official [lie] of equality and respect for human rights “blinds” it to the racism faced by African-Swedes, it says. Hate crimes against the 200,000 or so black people…in Sweden increased by more than 40% between 2008 and 2014…with more than a fifth of incidents last year involving violence…

On the Simultaneous Having and Eating of Cake (#505)

On Working It, the magazine at the center of the stripper labor rights movement in Portland:

…Each magazine brings together about 50 pages of writing and art by sex workers from around the country. In addition to permanent sections including “Client Hall of Shame” “Best/Worst Tip$” “Tales from your Shift” and art, each volume of Working It has a theme…After Danzine went dormant, [Matilda] Bickers and Portland’s sex worker activism also went relatively dormant. [SWOP] took over Danzine’s bad date list. In 2005, Bickers and her friends tried to start a dancer union — “but that failed miserably, and I was really burnt out for a while,” Bickers says. In the following years, Bickers worked at strip clubs and…graduated from Portland State University. “I kind of never stopped doing sex worker activism,” Bickers says…

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic (#550)

The history of the concept of sex addiction is a complex, somewhat contentious one…I’ve often cited the concept back to the initial writings of Patrick Carnes…Now, three New Zealand historians have contributed a wealth of astounding, rich and often surprising information to the issue…Sex Addiction, A Critical History…represents a remarkable detailing of the troubling, often hidden, history of this concept…Reay and his coauthors found powerful writings by Hatterer from the 1960’s and 70’s, where he blamed a sexually addictive process for sexual excesses. Powerfully, they detail [Dr. Lawrence] Hatterer’s disturbing history of treating homosexuality as an illness, and the way he treated homosexuality “like an alcoholic”…in his writings…from its inception, the concept of sex addiction has been applied to treatment of homosexuality as an illness…

If You Want Something Done Right…

I have the most awesome friends:

…Mistress Matisse…heard about Heather’s experience and was determined to help. Through other sex workers she tracked Heather down, called her and booked a flight to West Virginia. She showed up at Heather’s door…organized fund-raising, lined up medical assistance and connected Heather with nonprofit help. This isn’t a new role for Matisse. She’s worked as a sex worker in various capacities since she was 19. But as she’s gotten established in Seattle, she says, “I have gotten to the point in my career where it is in many ways self-sustaining.” As a result, she’s had more time to devote to activism. Matisse was there to help Heather because she’s made it her business to help sex workers who are in crises. I talked to Matisse about her activism, her work with Heather and why sex workers are the best ones to help sex workers…

Amnesty At Last

Here’s an NPR show which purports to present a “discussion” of the Amnesty International position statement on decriminalization, but which was designed from the get-go to promote prohibitionist propaganda by stacking the panel three to one (Swanee Hunt, Rachel Moran and Andrea Powell) vs. Maxine Doogan. Unfortunately for the antis, Maxine had logic and facts on her side and acquitted herself quite well. What you won’t hear: Sol Finer of SWOP-Seattle called into the live show and Moran absolutely lost her mind, screaming and shouting at Sol in such a clearly unbalanced manner that the tirade was edited out of the archived version of the show. So much for NPR’s commitment to the truth.

New Excuse (#576)

Read Full Post »

In the News (#568)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged Above the Law, Arizona, Ashley Madison, asset seizure, blogging, Bottleneck, California, cops, Florida, Germany, Get Out of the 19th Century Often?, language, law, License To Rape, marriage, My First Million, Neither Addiction nor Epidemic, New Excuse, New York, porn, prisons, prohibitionist myths, psychology, rape, scams, streetwalkers, The Mob Rules, transgender, Tyranny by Consensus, Uncharted Seas, Vendetta on September 2, 2015| 2 Comments »

Government officials…think it’s not easy enough to steal people’s things. – Elizabeth N. Brown

License to Rape

Why is it so hard for US journalists to use the word “rape” when whores are the victims?

…a South Florida man told a prostitute that he was a police officer and that he would arrest her if she refused to have sex without a condom…22-year-old Mark William Rose was arrested…and charged with impersonating a police officer in the commission of a felony and false imprisonment…Rose told arresting deputies he had previously used the…bluff about a dozen times, with three women conceding to sex…

Get Out of the 19^th Century Often?

News reports about prostitution stings in southern states are usually shockingly stupid, and often have not one word about “sex trafficking”:

Over two dozen men were arrested [after falling for]…a cop [decoy]. “We dirtied her up. We told her, you know, you gotta, you can’t be, this is not Pretty Woman,” [pig mouthpiece Joey] Davis [oinked]…Davis explains prostitution is a day job…”a little kid, they don’t need to see that stuff going on”…Some of the women get paid in heroin further spreading disease. Unknowing wives may become victims. “Was it worth it? They didn’t ask for that. And you don’t know, you might be signing your own death warrant”…

That’s right, kiddies; heroin causes disease!

Tyranny By Consensus

I wonder how much Michael Weinstein has cost the state of California so far?

Adult performers are speaking out against a ballot initiative that mandates condoms in porn throughout the state of California…The measure empowers everyday citizens to sue adult film producers for creating condomless porn—and offers a financial incentive for doing so. Several industry insiders…[say] they worry this would expose them to harassment from stalkers, trolls, disapproving family members and anti-porn activists…

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic

Josh Duggar…has “checked himself into a long-term treatment center,” according to a statement issued…by the Duggar family. Several media outlets reported that “Josh Duggar is going to rehab for porn addiction“, as if a “porn addiction” were a demonstrably real thing instead of a concept that should be relegated to the scariest of scare quotes. Duggar’s problems are many but porn addiction is a psychological fiction propped up by the same moralism that Duggar has espoused for years. By crying “addiction” and going to rehab, Duggar…gets to appear penitent while implicitly sending the pious message that pornography is an evil from which one must be saved…

Above the Law

Although the term “gay” has now come to include women, I’m honestly not sure what it’s doing in the victim’s description here:

A gay transgender inmate transitioning into a woman was repeatedly raped by a Rikers Island [guard] and jail officials did nothing to stop it, a new suit charges. The inmate, identified in court papers only as M.T., was assaulted on Dec. 2, 2012 by…L. Galan after months of harassment…Galan gave M.T. gifts like an iPod Touch, headphones, a charger, a case and $20 in cash to not report the abuse…

Bottleneck

…commercial sex wasn’t “illegal” in Germany prior to 2002…ProstG removed morality language…”pimping” [laws]…limited legal recognition for contracts…and…ensuring sex worker access to employment benefits…What the 2002 Act failed to do was create federal mandates on zoning, registration, health and safety, and police power. This left substantial jurisdiction to German states…an estimated 98% of Germany geographically, and over 90% of German towns and cities are restricted areas, and over two-thirds of German residents live in a city where commercial sex is prohibited…Berlin is one of only three german cities without restricted areas. In other cities, street-based sex work is limited to a few blocks…if not completely forbidden…In Munich, which only allows commercial sex in 3% of the city, sex workers say police regularly stage sting operations to lure sex workers into prohibited zones. Also unchanged by ProstG…are state police laws, which–even in liberal cities like Berlin–give police the free reign to enter wherever they suspect commercial sex is taking place…including a sex worker’s home…

Uncharted Seas

The title says it all: “All the Bad Arguments Against Polygamy, Debunked“:

Since the marriage equality movement’s recent triumph in the Obergefell vs. Hodges decision, national attention has settled on the status of polygamy, or the legal recognition of marriage between more than two partners. Several national publications have printed arguments both for and against polygamy rights…Both right and left have taken turns making the case for polygamous marriage, and both right and left have taken turns criticizing the idea…but it’s remarkable just how many bad, sloppy, unconvincing arguments have been marshalled. Let’s go through and refute them one by one…

My First Million (#437)

I hit the 4 million pageview mark at about 19:30 UTC last Sunday, August 30^th. Thanks to all the readers who made it happen!

Vendetta (#518)

Let’s hope the moralists all start devouring one another:

A billboard along an exit from Phoenix Sky Harbor airport could give visitors the wrong impression, according to some…travelers. The billboard…urges men not to buy sex from prostitutes. “Buy sex [,] lose everything” is the billboard’s message…”We need to remove it, take it down,” said John Rejebian…”I think the public needs to be spared these things”…A logo for CEASE Network is in the lower-right corner of the billboard…

New Excuse (#544)

Elizabeth N. Brown examines the profit motive behind the War on Whores:

…the government’s interest in stopping commercial gay sex is surely more motivated by the commercial aspect here than the man-on-man component. We’re riding high on a wave of state successes in shutting down prostitution-related businesses…[under] the guise of stopping “human trafficking,” and aided by massive amounts of federal funding plus newly granted wiretapping, asset forfeiture, and other law enforcement powers. As Scott Shackford pointed out, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the New York City Police Department (NYPD) didn’t go after Rentboy.com out of a conviction that gay sex workers pose a threat to national safety but because they could seize $1.4 million from employee bank accounts, along with their homes and other assets. This is not so much a moral crusade—not for police, prosecutors, or federal agencies anyway—as a money-grubbing one…

Ashley Madison (#557)

Computer security expert John McAfee on the Ashley Madison “hack”:

Ashley Madison was not hacked – the data was stolen by a woman operating on her own who worked for Avid Life Media…A hacker is someone who uses a combination of high-tech cybertools and social engineering to gain illicit access to someone else’s data. But this job was done by someone who already had the keys to the Kingdom. It was an inside job…In my first IBTimes UK article about Act One of the Ashley Madison Affair, I alleged that the group of hackers claiming responsibility for the “hack” simply did not exist. I gleaned this information from reliable sources within the Dark Web – which have yet to fail me. I also claimed that it was the act of a single person. Any adept social engineer would have easily seen this from the wording in the first manifesto published by the alleged hacking group…

I have to wonder if this employee wasn’t the anonymous tipster who provided the material for “Show and Tell“. I also found this tidbit rather amusing:

The chief executive of…Ashley Madison is resigning…following a hack that revealed millions of user names meant to be kept secret. Noel Biderman founded the site in 2002 to make it easier for married people to find other married people to have affairs with…Biderman…has sworn that he would never cheat or use the site. But the hack…uncovered emails suggesting that he was conducting multiple affairs…

What Were You All Waiting For?

The Amnesty International statement is such a big deal, even the 38 “anti-trafficking” groups that make up the “Freedom Network” came out in support of it. This is not the first time people who adhere to a version of the “trafficking” paradigm have come out for decriminalization; the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women is the most important one, and Kate D’Adamo (first listed author of the statement) is well-known as an opponent of criminalization. But the fact that a number of organizations who fly the “trafficking” flag are willing to break ranks with the others is a powerful sign of the beginning of the end of the hysteria.

Read Full Post »

In the News (#552)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged Above the Law, animals, Australia, brothels, Catholicism, Coming and Going, France, hysteria, Italy, law, marriage, Montana, New Excuse, Nigeria, prohibitionist myths, racism, rape, Real People, Scapegoats, Texas, That Old Black Magic, Uncharted Seas, Welcome to Our Updates on July 5, 2015| 4 Comments »

People you know and love purchase sex. And it doesn’t make them bad people at all. – Sarah Penello

Welcome To Our World

How irrationally stupid are people about sex? This much:

…a study out of the University of Toronto Mississauga…looked at attitudes [on indoor prostitution and offering cash for organ donations. and] found that people generally disapprove of both, but are more firmly against indoor prostitution than they are against selling organs – particularly so among women…

Real People

More of this, please:

I worked for a legal brothel in Australia and it was the best job I ever had…I loved and admired the women I worked with. I took great pride in the pleasure I could give to people. It was a job that I enjoyed, and I was better at it because I enjoyed it…Besides the inherent pleasure of a job well done, the monetary rewards of sex work are unmatched. Try finding another job that allows me to choose my own hours and make over $1,000 per week on a part-time schedule. In a legal, regulated and safe environment, the real trap of sex work isn’t usually the stuff of horror movies but the less exciting reality of the intoxicating quality of money…

Scapegoats

He’s lucky he didn’t try to pay the pony:

A 74-year-old Frenchman who was caught in the act of having sex with a pony this week has walked free after escaping punishment…[he] was caught in the act…by a member of staff in the pony’s stable at a horse-riding centre…the witness…was unable to be absolutely sure that intercourse took place [so]…police released [him] due to insufficient evidence…

Above the Law

What a brave hero!

…[Texas cop] John Van Trump was [convicted] of sexually assaulting a girl younger than six-years-old…[he faced] a minimum sentence of 25 years in jail and the potential for life…The details of Trump’s crimes were so heinous that they were not released publicly. We only know that Trump sexually assaulted the daughter of his former girlfriend on multiple occasions. At the time of the…crimes, she was 5…However, instead of the minimum 25-year sentence he originally faced, Trump received far less time. In fact, he received no time. Trump will not serve one day in prison. Trump was sentenced to 10 years deferred adjudication. In other words, Trump, a convicted child rapist, will avoid jail altogether after admitting to these heinous accusations…

Uncharted Seas

…Nathan Collier and his wives Victoria and Christine applied at the Yellowstone County Courthouse in Billings [Montana] on Tuesday in an attempt to legitimize their polygamous marriage…The Supreme Court’s ruling on Friday made gay marriages legal nationwide. Chief Justice John Roberts said in his dissent that people in polygamous relationships could make the same legal argument that not having the opportunity to marry disrespects and subordinates them…

New Excuse

I’m really pleased to see others talking about the War on Whores as the new War on Drugs:

…As the drug war has lost popularity, the war on trafficking has gained momentum. Both the war on drugs and the war on trafficking are housed within the criminal justice system, operating through punishment and incarceration. Both wars seek to eliminate their abstract opponents by attacking communities of drug users and sex workers, composed mainly of poor people of color. One way in which both…operate is through the use of increased sanctions. The criminal justice system imposes harsh penalties on drug and sex related crimes, which in turn leads to mass incarceration, blocking upward mobility for those targeted…

Another Fine Mess

Though this story has some good features, it’s far too mired in the notion that prior to the internet, a very large fraction of sex work was street work (when in fact, street work has always been a minority). And near the end of the story, the reporter makes the shockingly-incorrect statement that in the US, indoor sex work isn’t criminalized; I can’t imagine how anyone who hadn’t literally just arrived from some other country could possibly be so ignorant about the status of sex work in this country.

Coming and Going (#515)

Given his record of persecuting whores as Texas attorney general, I think we know which it is:

[Texas] governor Greg Abbott, three weeks after effectively telling drug overdosers to drop dead by killing a bill to protect Good Samaritan 911 callers from prosecution…took another…regressive potshot at the Legislature’s attempts to make Texas’ criminal justice system just a bit more humane. Among the measures killed by…vetoes…was Dallas state Representative Eric Johnson’s HB 1363, which would have reduced penalties for certain prostitution offenses…It’s hard to find a policymaker in Texas…who isn’t in favor of cautiously reducing penalties for nonviolent offenders, and Johnson’s bill is nothing if not cautious. That leaves only a few possible explanations for Abbott’s veto: He’s a true believer in an outmoded punitive, tough-on-crime approach to criminal justice; he’s not a true believer but is in thrall to people who are; or he bears a deep-seated animosity toward prostitutes, as he does with drug users.

That Old Black Magic (#546)

Witch doctors do magic vs magic of other witch doctors that kings’ magicians dislike:

…thousands of Nigerian women trafficked to Europe…become sex slaves every year [have] been told [they owe tens of thousands of euros]…for [the] journey…Although the chains…are only psychological, they are extremely powerful. In their desperation to break the hold over the girls, many of which are sent on the migrant boats crossing the Mediterranean, the Italians have even resorted to get Catholic priests to perform exorcisms on them. There are estimated to be 25,000 Nigerian girls working as prostitutes in Italy and the numbers arriving rose 300 per cent in 2014, experts say…in Nigeria [witch doctors perform] voodoo [over them and]…promise…hairdresser [jobs but force them into prostitution instead. They believe they must]…pay off the debt or face terrible repercussions…

Read Full Post »

In the News (#544)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged acting, Acting and Activism, Africa, agency denial, An Example to the West, bogus studies, brothels, Catastrophic Consequences, cops, Follow Your Bliss, Held Together With Lies, Hollywood, homosexuality, India, Ireland, Islam, Latin America, law, LGBT rights, Monsters, Naked Truth, neofeminism, Nevada, New Excuse, Nicaragua, Nigeria, prohibitionist myths, rape, Surplus Women, Swedish model, Texas, The More the Better, Traffic Circle, Train Wreck, underage, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers, Washington (state), Welcome to the Future on June 6, 2015| Leave a Comment »

The assumption made by [neofeminists] is that sex workers are blind automatons, blithely wandering from one rape to the next, too blinded by the overwhelming glare of the “male gaze” and too fuzzy and confused in their stupid whore brains to differentiate between consensual sex and a violent, unwanted encounter. – Clare Bowden

Acting and Activism

Tits and Sass does a good guide to the most loudmouthed and ridiculous Hollywood “sex trafficking” fetishists, including Susan Sarandon, Meg Ryan, Ashton Kutcher, Jada Pinkett-Smith and of course Mira Sorvino.

Surplus Women

The only reason this cop is on trial for the rape and murder of a sex worker 30 years ago is that he just couldn’t give up the habit:

Shortly after Richard J. Aguirre appeared in court…in his Franklin County rape case…he…was arrested by Spokane police for the murder of a prostitute in 1986…The one time Officer of the Year and 27-year veteran of the force in Pasco has been charged…with first-degree murder…bail is set at $500,000…Aguirre voluntarily submitted DNA during the recent rape investigation and the sample…matched…DNA recovered from the [earlier case]…police interviewed Lawrence Cole, who grew up with Aguirre…The two men apparently frequented bars and strip clubs and solicited prostitutes at least once…After a night of drinking, Cole reported that Aguirre said he “hit a woman” and “choked her”…And when Aguirre walked away “he thought she was still moving.” Detectives investigating the case determined it was likely [Ruby] Doss and her killer got into a struggle inside a manure pit after they had sex…She ran more than 250 feet before she was hit in the back of the head and forehead with an object. [She]…was then strangled and the suspect returned to the pit to hide her fur coat, wig and earrings…

Follow Your Bliss (#38)

A [former underage sex worker]…says a lawyer who was supposed to take her to a shelter for abused girls instead raped her at a posh Dallas hotel…a lawsuit filed by the girl’s mother…alleges that Michael Harssema was…“employed and/or volunteering for Traffick 911,” an anti-trafficking organization…Traffick 911 officials deny any connection with Harssema…

Train Wreck (#48)

Looks like Nigeria’s getting into the “asset forfeiture” racket, too:

The Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Special Task Team on City Cleaning and Management in Abuja has arrested 3,000 commercial sex workers in the last 90 days…[they] have been handed over to the Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB) for prosecution and rehabilitation. The task team also arrested 2,534 street hawkers and beggars…and…impounded 4,790 commercial motorcycles, 883 [motor tricycles], 645 unpainted commercial vehicles and 84 illegal commercial buses…

The More the Better (#135)

As is so often the case in articles about brothels, this one dips into grotesquery. Even so, it makes a few interesting points about how brothels like Sheri’s Ranch are still thriving while other, less competitive ones are dying off.

Monsters

A teenager in India was allegedly forced to have sex with his own mother in an effort to “cure” him of being gay, Gay Star News reports. According to LGBT Collective, a gay rights group in Telangana…there are more and more reports of “corrective rapes” being carried out by members of the victims’ own families. Often families will handpick a cousin to carry out the act…

An Example to the West (#331)

Nicaragua’s Supreme Court has made sex workers official representatives of the government and the judicial system. A pilot group of 18 sex workers have been provided with technical and legal training to try to manage the most common conflicts that arise in their line of work…The vice president of the Nicaraguan Judicial System, Marvin Aguilar…[said] “We are the only country in the world that treats sex workers as ‘judicial facilitators’…We do not put them in prison for the sexual work. There are countries close to Nicaragua in which sex workers are sought after like any other criminal so to be sent to prison.”

Naked Truth (#346)

A prostitution-themed film from Morocco that had its premiere at…Cannes…in May has set off a furor there…the government last week banned the movie from theaters, the female stars received death threats and a male actor was attacked with a knife…Much Loved, by…Nabil Ayouch, includes scenes of prostitutes in Marrakesh partying, speaking raunchy Arabic and servicing wealthy Saudi clients…The movie became the subject of protests outside Parliament in Rabat and of heated discussions on social networks in Morocco and France. Conservative Muslims view Much Loved as scandalous. Moderate Moroccans are offended that the film’s dark portrayal of their country was shown at a prestigious international film festival…

Catastrophic Consequences (#407)

MSP Jean Urquhart speaks up for sex workers again:

…When the highly successful tolerance zones for street prostitution were abolished in Edinburgh…sex workers reported a 95% increase in violence over 12 months…it is hard to understand how…threatening the key witnesses to trafficking and coercion – the clients – with a sex-crime record if they come forward would help with investigating and prosecuting [sex trafficking]…There is little evidence that the criminalisation of clients even achieves its proponents’ aim of reducing demand for sex work…What sex workers tell us would actually protect them would be to ensure their labour rights, including the right to work in a shared premises, to eliminate stigma and discrimination against sex workers, and to decriminalise sex work.

New Excuse

Elizabeth Brown on the War on Whores as replacement for War on Drugs:

…the “War on Sex Trafficking” that the federal government is waging will fail, just as the “War on Drugs” has failed…just as giving local police and prosecutors an urgent mandate to fight drugs led mostly to the prosecution of low-level drug users and dealers rather than big-time drug traffickers, the fight against sex trafficking—plus federal funding to do so, contingent on arrests and convictions—sets up perverse incentives to treat everyday prostitution as sex trafficking. All over the country, we’re now seeing what would have been deemed “vice” work reframed as human trafficking stings. And who gets swept up in these stings? Willing, adult sex workers. Their would-be patrons. Petty pimps…under the new banner of human trafficking even relatively minor crimes related to sex work can come with serious felony status, a sex offender registry requirement and a mandatory minimum prison term…

Held Together With Lies (#447)

It’s difficult to believe that anyone could take this idiocy, which only starts with that “35.8 million slaves” nonsense, seriously. Oliver Twist! “Potential victims”! Nail salons! Unfortunately, all this foolishness is used to justify something very serious: mass incarceration.

…the Modern Slavery Act…[increased] maximum custodial sentences…from 14 years to life and offenders with prior convictions for very serious sexual or violent offences face automatic life sentences. “It gives law enforcement more flexibility, more powers”…Home Office minister Karen Bradley says the government has “succeeded” in putting modern slavery at the top of the agenda and is “determined to eradicate it”…

Traffic Circle (#542)

Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post “Fact Checker”, continues to hammer at “sex trafficking” myths:

…The sex trade is an underground industry, so on what basis would the revenues from the trafficking of children…in the United States be calculated so precisely…as $9.8 billion?…a…graphic posted on the Internet by Shared Hope International…says it…[came from] a 2005 International Labour Organization report…But that report contains no mention of a $9.8 billion figure for…the United States…only a broad estimate of about $13 billion…for “forced commercial sexual exploitation” for 36 industrialized countries (of which the U.S. represents about 30 percent of the population). ILO officials say they have never given a breakdown by country…it…is…a fantasy, unconnected to any real data…One could certainly say that the underground sex trade in the United States likely is worth more than a billion dollars, but it would be a serious mistake to conflate that with human trafficking…

Welcome to the Future (#543)

…trafficking is being used as a flimsy justification to stigmatise sex workers…Trying to stay as inconspicuous as possible means that these women are forced to take unnecessary risks with their safety, thereby increasing the likelihood that they will be victims of a violent crime. When this point was raised to the Justice Committee by Laura Lee…she was wilfully humiliated, effectively called a pimp, threatened with legal action, told to have sex with disabled people for free and otherwise completely disregarded…

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »

Visit my bookstore
This Month
April 2026

S M T W T F S

1 2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9 10 11

12 13 14 15 16 17 18

19 20 21 22 23 24 25

26 27 28 29 30

« Mar
Old Posts
Old Posts
Call me

Enter your email address to follow "The Honest Courtesan"; you'll be notified by email whenever Maggie posts something new.

Email Address
Become a Blog Patron

If you want to donate but don't want a recurring charge, you can send any amount you like via PayPal to my email address (see below). Be sure to include a note so I can thank you!
Contact Maggie

If you’d like to ask me a question, click here.

If you made a comment and it doesn’t appear within a few hours, click on this one.

If you’d like to alert me to an interesting item, use this one.

And if you have a request, bouquet or brickbat or just want to introduce yourself, this is the one for you.
A Few References
Boring but necessary legal stuff

All original content on this website (i.e. all of my columns, pages and anything else which I write myself) is protected under international copyright law as of the time it is posted; though you may link to it as you please or quote passages (as long as you attribute the quote to me), please do not reproduce whole columns without my express written permission. In other words, you have to say “pretty please with sugar on top” first, and then wait for me to say “okey-dokey”.

Frank commentary from a semi-retired call girl

Posts Tagged ‘New Excuse’

Visit my bookstore

This Month

Old Posts

Call me

Become a Blog Patron

Contact Maggie

A Few References

Boring but necessary legal stuff