Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘Not So Different’

In the News (#1425)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 30, 2024| Leave a Comment »

No one should fear a knock at the door from police simply because of what the YouTube algorithm serves up.  –  Albert Fox-Cahn

Not So Different

Politicians can’t resist using popular web services to expand surveillance:

A bill recently introduced in Colorado  aims to make dating apps such as Hinge and Bumble [worse] for users [under the pretext of “safety”].  The first section…would force all dating services with any users in Colorado to submit an annual report to Colorado’s attorney general about misconduct reports from users in the state or about users in the state…[or] the entire United States.  These reports would all become public…Scorned lovers, racists, incels, and others with hostile motives could file false reports and harm people’s job and dating prospects in the future.  And a report on a government website looks a lot more legitimate than someone mad on social media.  These reports might even lead to [cops harass]ing innocent users…

Permanent Record (#1275)

Teachers are supposed to be robots who have no lives outside of school:

Domonique Brown was a history teacher…in the Detroit area, but in her off hours…worked as an aspiring rapper named Drippin Honey…she was [fired] from her job…[because one single] parent complained that she was a “bad influence” on her students because she’s a rapper, despite being voted teacher of the month in December…the parent [was allowed to] remain…anonymous [after the drive-by character assassination,] and didn’t [even bother to] go into detail about what they found objectionable about her rapping…Brown said she plans to take legal action against the school…

Stalkers in Blue (#1313)

Even seemingly-consensual sex with a cop may actually be something else:

A [typical and representative FBI] agent…has been arrested for…secretly filming women [he had] sex [with] at his home in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with [cops] estimating there could be more than 80 victims.  Mark Allen Wells…stored the pornographic images and videos on his computer in neatly organized files.  Morgan Ballou, who dated Wells off and on between 2016 and 2022 said that he had shown her the library of nudes, at which point she contacted one of the women whose name showed up, his now ex-fiancé Savanna Smith…The pair went to the police [last] May…and…over the following months, more victims were identified.  His ex-wife came forward [to report] that he had secretly recorded her via a hidden camera on the bookshelf in one of their bedrooms.  It was also revealed that Wells…sent sexually explicit images of them to at least eight people…

Schadenfreude (#1376)

“Nonprofit” merely refers to the organization; those who run it often make plenty of profit:

…Candace Lierd is the founder and former CEO of a [Utah-based “rescue industry organization named]…Exitus…[who embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars] donated to the organization…she made false claims that she was a nurse or physician, [that she] had a position with the United Nations[,] and [that she had] founded several multimillion-dollar companies…Lierd has a stack of 42 charges filed against her…[most of which are] fraud[-related]…felonies…Exitus…did not renew its business license after it expired in 2022, but continued to seek donations on Facebook and Instagram….[with fantasies about fictional] orphan rescues in Europe…Exitus raised over $1,697,000 through [lies and fabric]ations…the[n used the] money…to buy a…new home[, a car for her son, and other things, but]…much of the money is still unaccounted for.

Micromanagement (#1381)

A “Tornado of Bad Ideas”:

In keeping with law enforcement’s grand tradition of taking antiquated, invasive, and oppressive technologies, making them digital, and then calling it innovation, police in the U.S. recently combined two existing dystopian technologies in a brand new way to violate civil liberties. A police force in California recently employed the new practice of taking a DNA sample from a crime scene, running this through a service provided by US company Parabon NanoLabs that guesses what the perpetrators face looked like, and plugging this rendered image into face recognition software to build a suspect list…scientists have affirmed that predicting face shapes—particularly from DNA samples—is not possible.  But this has not stopped…police [from] using DNA to create a hypothetical and not at all accurate face, then using that face as a clue on which to base investigations…Not only is this full dice-roll policing, it also threatens the rights, freedom, or even the life of whoever is unlucky enough to look a little bit like that artificial face…

I Spy (#1385)

Curiosity offends the state, comrade:

Federal [spooks] have ordered Google to provide information on all viewers of select YouTube videos…the orders are unconstitutional because they threaten to turn innocent YouTube viewers into criminal suspects…Kentucky…cops sought to identify the individual behind the online moniker “elonmuskwhm”, who they suspect of selling bitcoin for cash, potentially [ope]ning [him up to persecution under] money laundering laws…In conversations with the user in early January [2023, spooks] sent links of YouTube tutorials for mapping via drones and augmented reality software, then [demand]ed Google [dox everyone] who…viewed the videos [that week by exposing]…the names, addresses, telephone numbers and user activity for all Google account users who accessed the…videos…and…the IP addresses of non-Google account owners who viewed the[m]…court records do not show whether or not Google [licked the boot that time]…

To Molest and Rape (ROTW #8)

Once a cop, always a cop:

[A retired] Utah [cop]…Sheriff’s Office administrator…[and] mental health counselor…[named] Mitchell McKee [has been] arrested…[for molesting] a teen[age boy].  The teen…told police he was abused by an adult man in exchange for vape pens…he is [considered dangerous because he is] a retired [cop who]…knows where…[his] victim lives…

 

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

Read Full Post »

…And Don’t Forget To Wash Behind Your Ears

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 27, 2011| 14 Comments »

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.  –  Thomas Jefferson.

One of the first ways a child knows his mother recognizes that he’s growing up is that she stops reminding him of commonsense things.  Obviously, there are some mothers who never stop, but this gets pretty irritating because it tends to mean the mother doesn’t really trust her child to remember it himself; in other words, it’s a sign she views him as immature and therefore irresponsible.  A mother who regularly called to remind her adult son or daughter to take typical adult precautions such as locking doors, brushing teeth or dressing warmly in wintertime would certainly be perceived as annoying and interfering; such reminders are at best patronizing and at worst examples of a pathological need to infantilize the one to whom they are delivered.  Any normal woman would resent such behavior if her mother did it…so why do we accept it from busybody strangers?

In my column of April 4th, I offered a few safety tips for my amateur sisters who date strangers (including men they meet online).  But I’m not in authority over any of my readers; my suggestions are intended in the spirit of sharing my considerable experience in dealing with strange men in sexually-charged situations with women who may not have been in that position.  You don’t have to take them, don’t even have to read them and in fact can say “up yours, Maggie” if it pleases you to do so.  I’m certainly not going to put the suggestions on my front page so you’re forced to look at them every time you sign on, and I couldn’t take measures to “protect” you from your own decisions even if I wanted to.

Others, however, have a lower opinion of the adult competency of those who use the internet.  After an entitlement junkie recently sued Match.com for failing to warn her that meeting strange men for potentially sexual purposes might be, like, dangerous, the popular dating site announced that it will now screen users via the national sex offender registry.  Because obviously, anyone who isn’t on the registry must be perfectly safe, and anyone who is on it deserves never to have sexual contact ever again with anyone for the rest of his life, even if he’s there for screwing his 16-year-old girlfriend when he was 19, or she’s there for prostitution or taking nude pictures of herself as a teenager.  Match.com is a business and if it decides to nag its users with commonsense warnings or discriminate against certain groups as a ward against future lawsuits, that’s certainly its right.  But as this AP release, from last Thursday (April 21st) explains, Big Nanny wants to force websites to do those things:

… Amid accounts of sex offenders using matchmaking sites to find victims, lawmakers in several states are trying to pass legislation to help make online daters more aware of the potential pitfalls of the process.  Bills are pending this year in Connecticut and Texas to provide users with more information to protect themselves.  Connecticut’s bill, mirroring a law in New York, requires Internet dating services to provide a safety awareness notice during registration that offers advice such as never including your last name, email address, place of work, phone numbers or identifying information in an Internet profile.  Similar laws are already on the books in Florida and New Jersey…”I’ve heard a lot of stories, not only people who had their physical safety endangered, but also financial safety,” said Connecticut…[bill sponsor] Mae Flexer…”I’ve heard from a number of people who unfortunately met someone online, they gave them too much information and were damaged financially as well.”

The Texas legislation requires online dating services to clearly disclose to customers whether they conduct criminal background checks on each member before allowing them to contact other members on the site.  The same bill requires the sites to remind customers that background checks are not a perfect safety solution and they can be circumvented by criminals.  New York lawmakers are considering a similar bill that would supplement last year’s law.  It would also require the companies to clearly notify users whether they conduct criminal background screenings…

Donna Rice Hughes, CEO and president of Enough is Enough, a Virginia-based nonprofit that focuses on improving Internet safety for children and families, said it makes sense for corporate matchmaking websites to proactively take steps to make their services safer…”The last thing they need for business is for somebody to get harmed by something through their site… They should be running their database against the sex offender registries.  That’s a no-brainer.”  [But] Alex Vasquez, founder of the L.A.-based blog theurbandater.com, said not everyone in the online dating community likes the idea of background checks.  “It’s definitely going to be a hot-button item because there’s definitely that privacy issue,” he said.  Vasquez recommends both women and men use common sense when meeting their online dates face-to-face…

One would think that since Mrs. Hughes made her own highly questionable choices involving men without the assistance of the internet, she would understand that it’s dating strangers which carries the risk, not the method by which people find each other.  Meeting strangers via online personals ads is no different from meeting them via print personals, except that the online personal is likely to contain a great deal more information (not to mention a picture and the ability to “chat” electronically without exchanging phone numbers).  If anything, using computer ads vs. print ones actually decreases the danger; it certainly has for escorts.  The real change isn’t the medium, it’s the percentage of people using such ads for dating.  But even then, does anyone really believe meeting a man online is remotely as dangerous as meeting him in a singles bar?

Mr. Vasquez has it right; if people would simply use common sense, they wouldn’t need corporate and political nannies telling them whom they’re allowed to meet and talk to and insulting their intelligence with “advice” which should be obvious to any rational adult.  Alas, common sense has gone out of style; taking personal responsibility for one’s choices and the consequences thereof make it much more difficult to sue somebody if one screws up or unforeseen circumstances occur, and people who accept personal responsibility tend to reject the efforts of “authorities” to control their lives, beliefs and finances…and we certainly can’t have that.

Read Full Post »

December Updates

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 20, 2010| 20 Comments »

In poison there is physic, and these news,
Having been well, that would have made me sick,
Being sick, have in some measure made me well. –  William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2 (I, i)

A collection of links, comments and items relating to previous columns.

The Biggest Whores (September 6th)

In this column I reported that Craigslist had bowed to governmental pressure and blocked its adult services section from being accessed in the United States, though it was still available to everyone outside the reach of American censorship.  But now the website has apparently bowed to pressure from the Canadian government and prohibitionist groups and removed the section entirely, thus allowing all those who advertised in it to return to posting free and unmonitored ads in other sections of the website.  An article in yesterday’s New York Post reported:

The popular classified ad website Craigslist has pulled the adult services section from its websites around the world; the section has been removed from international Craigslist sites in Canada, Asia, Europe, South America and Africa.  The adult services section was removed from US Craigslist sites in September after complaints from 17 states that it facilitated prostitution.  The section was replaced on US sites with the word “censored,” but its removal from international sites came without announcement or comment from Craigslist.  A spokeswoman for the site declined to comment on the removal of the section.

Craigslist apparently believes this will silence the fanatics, and it certainly may as the crusaders move on to annoy Backpage.  Of course, it’s also possible that a few of them will recognize that most of the whores who advertised on Craigslist are still there in the personals, massage, etc as they used to be and demand that Craigslist control them, such as by creating a ghetto in which their ads can be confined and then requiring payment so courts can order the info turned over to them.  Oh, wait, that’s what they just forced them to close.  Oops.

Think of the Children! (September 30th)

In this column I wrote:

The dogma of [the Cult of the Child] preaches that children are as emotionally fragile as soap bubbles and the merest hint of sexual imagery before puberty can cause irreversible trauma; its adherents also believe that teenagers (whom they equate with “children”) should be lied to, spied on or even criminally prosecuted to prevent them from engaging in any kind of sexual behavior, and some even believe that adults should not be allowed any form of entertainment or reading material which is inappropriate for even the youngest child, on the grounds that a child “might see it” and thereby be petrified as if he had looked into the eyes of the Gorgon.  Child cultists can be recognized by their stated belief that any degree of tyranny is acceptable “if it saves even one child,” and by their fondness for promoting unconstitutionally broad legislation lugubriously named after dead little girls.

Until the Cult of the Child again goes into decline, you can be sure we’ll keep seeing proposed legislation of this type.

Yesterday (October 20th)

In this column I opined:

What’s going to be needed [to achieve decriminalization] is for some big moneybags like Bill Gates to get behind sex worker rights so we can advertise and thereby attract a bunch of empty-headed Hollywood stars who are looking for a new cause to adopt.  In the minds of the hoi-polloi, the opinion of one celebrity who knows nothing about the subject is worth the life-experiences of a thousand veteran whores, and once the cause becomes “sexy” enough all of a sudden people will be coming out of the woodwork to support it.

Here’s a case in point from yesterday’s MTV News.  Neither Lady Gaga nor Katy Perry have horses in this race; they’re not in the military, they’re not homosexual and they’re not male.  Yes, it affects lesbians too, but let’s be honest here; the opposition to the repeal of DADT came overwhelmingly from men for reasons which should be obvious.  Yet somehow, the public considers the opinions of pop-tarts with no personal experience in the issue to be more important than those of activists who actually know what they’re talking about.

Something Rotten In Sweden (November 13th)

In this column I talked about the rise of “Swedish Model” rhetoric in American police departments; by pretending that all whores are degraded victims, they can hide the outrageous sexism of prostitution laws from the gullible.  One example of this infiltration is the increasing popularity of  “john schools”, government programs which hire brainwashed ex-streetwalkers to scream neofeminist victimization propaganda at men arrested for soliciting prostitutes.  Brandy Devereaux recently published a column in which she reports on a recent proposal for one of these so-called “schools” in Colorado, then explains her ideas of what a real “john school” might be like.

Barbie (December 5th)

In my column on Barbie I mentioned that I played with mine as though she were an action figure, and then I saw this hilarious spoof advertisement for toys that, unfortunately, do not actually exist.  For those who slept through 19th-century English lit, I should mention that Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte avoided the Victorian prejudice against female authors by publishing their works under the male pseudonyms Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.

Not So Different (December 8th)

For years now internet escorts have employed sites like Date Check to screen potential clients, and now our amateur sisters have gotten into the act with some of the very same sites, proving once again that the line between prostitution and dating is far too fine to justify criminalizing the former but not the latter.  And just as governments think escorts are mental incompetents who must be protected from ourselves, so they apparently think the same about women who date online; New York’s “Internet Dating Safety Act” now requires dating sites to post common-sense safety tips, like “meet in a public place,” for those who are too dimwitted to be dating without a chaperone in the first place.  And the nanny state being what it is, I’m sure other states (and eventually the federal government) will follow New York’s lead.

Bits and Pieces, Part Two (December 10th)

For weeks there have been conflicting stories about what Julian Assange has actually been accused of, but now Sweden has finally bothered to release a report detailing the exact claims.  Assange calls the case a “smear attempt” filled with “incredible lies,” but even if the report is exactly true (and it may very well be), that doesn’t change the fact that Sweden, as pointed out in Saturday’s column, doesn’t expend nearly this much energy catching alleged rapists who have not embarrassed governments.

The Red Umbrella (December 17th)

I don’t really approve of the concept of “hate crimes”; after all, if a man kills me just because I’m in his way I am no less dead than if he kills me because he hates me.  But if we’re going to have any “hate crime” laws at all, it’s only fair that whores be among the protected groups because, as we discussed on Friday, we get far more than our share of violence.  Well, the city of Liverpool is now treating violence against sex workers as a “hate crime”; what a difference from the United States, where the police themselves are among the worst perpetrators of that very same crime!

Read Full Post »

Not So Different

Posted in Current Events, Perception, The Dark Side, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on December 8, 2010| 36 Comments »

I don’t think a prostitute is more moral than a wife, but they are doing the same thing. –  Prince Philip

In my column of November 21st I discussed “halfway whores”, and I mentioned that there are websites dedicated to helping potential sugar babies meet with potential sugar daddies.  Well, one of those sites is now in the news after a rapist used it to lure a victim into a trap.  Here’s the story, paraphrased from the original report in the Orlando Sentinel:

Marcelo Alves was convicted last Friday (December 3rd) of four counts of sexual battery with a deadly weapon for the rape of a 22-year-old woman from Tampa he met on a dating website called SugarDaddyForMe.com; he faces a potential life sentence.  In the days before jurors found Alves guilty, his victim related graphic details of the explicit online chats and then phone conversations she shared with a man she knew as “Mark Garcia”; those communications eventually led to an arranged meeting outside a mansion in the Dr. Phillips neighborhood, where Alves, wearing pantyhose over his face, tackled her in an isolated driveway area, put a knife to her neck and told her to “shut up” repeatedly before raping her.

“I kept saying, like, ‘Please don’t kill me,'” the crying victim testified Tuesday. She recalled being raped in the rear passenger area of her car and outside the vehicle, as well.  Alves also testified, saying the sex was pre-arranged and consensual, but too many other factors undermined his defense, including the fact that he used a large knife, wore the pantyhose as a mask, lured the victim to an isolated location outside a vacant mansion and portrayed himself as another man online.  At the time of the attack in March 2009, Alves helped run the Valencia Community College website as a contract worker.  He also had a wife, kids, a nice home — all lost as a result of his actions.

The case, however, illustrates larger issues about the potential dangers of online dating and the way a victim’s character can be impugned when online communications are part of the criminal investigation.  Before describing the attacks, the victim explained that she registered with the online dating site, which is designed for men wanting “to mentor, pamper & spoil” and women wanting to be “pampered” by “that classy, caring and mature partner.”  The site claims it prohibits “members from offering money in exchange for sex.”  A message left with the site’s management this week was not returned.

The victim acknowledged she was looking for just such a Sugar Daddy-type relationship; she had problems paying bills and wanted to meet someone who could help her financially, she testified.  So she created an online profile on the site, stating she was “fun, outgoing and crazy.”  She even set an allowance on her profile, in other words the monetary amount she expected to receive periodically.  Alves, 40, discovered her profile on the site, where he went by the screen name “ReadyToSpoilYou37.”  He then contacted her through Yahoo Messenger and they chatted several times, discussing the possibility of sex and also the exchange of money.  “We talked about possibly $1,000,” the victim said.

This admission prompted prosecutor Kelly Hicks to ask the victim, “Were you a prostitute?”  The victim answered in the negative, claiming that she was willing to meet with the man she knew as Garcia even without the expectation of money.  But she said when she arrived for the date, Alves wasn’t the man she expected to be there.  Still, defense attorney Timothy Berry asked the victim about the encounter with Alves and about online conversations in which they discussed having sex.  Alves testified that he was supposed to pay the woman $1000, but the amount changed as the sex progressed and he refused to pay.  The woman then threatened to contact police and say he had raped her, he claimed.  But in her closing argument, Hicks stared at Alves, saying the woman involved “is a real victim” of an attack she will remember for the rest of her life”; pointing at Alves, she then said, “That is a real rapist …Find him guilty because he is.”

Jennifer Dritt, executive director of the Florida Council Against Sexual Violence, said casting doubt on a victim’s character or suggesting she somehow deserved what happened are common defense strategies; she also said the case is troubling because of its origins online.  “While most online dating relationships don’t end up this way, you really don’t know who you’re talking to,” Dritt said.  “I think, potentially, they’re very dangerous.  And where money is exchanged, people can have different interpretations of what’s offered and promised.”

Alves, originally from Brazil, told detectives soon after the crime that he had met about 10 other women online in the same way, but denied raping any of them.  As for the victim in this case, Alves told the detectives, “I didn’t want to hurt her.  I am not like that.”  Aside from the sexual battery counts, Alves was also found guilty of false imprisonment, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon while wearing a mask and witness tampering.  He is set to be sentenced on February 9th.

I’m very glad to see Alves get what he deserved; like so many other rapists, he clearly considered a whore to be a safe target whom a jury wouldn’t convict him for raping even if they did believe her, and it’s good to see that the jury proved him wrong.  But I have to wonder if the outcome would’ve been the same had his victim been a full-fledged professional rather than a would-be sugar baby.  From the way the article is written it seems the prosecutor and reporter both wanted to call attention away from the fact that the victim fully intended to transact a compensated sex arrangement; the report coyly refers to SugarDaddyForMe as a “dating site” when it’s obviously much more akin to an escort site, and the prosecutor accepted the victim’s rather incredible claim that she was willing to meet “Garcia” even without the promise of money despite the fact that she was specifically looking for a sugar daddy.  Now, obviously it did not behoove the prosecutor to question further because she was trying to convict the rapist; had she been Alves’ defender I’m sure she would’ve tried to roast the poor girl alive.

But what about the reporter?  Certainly it’s possible that he’s a bit naive, but it seems more likely he was attempting to downplay the commercial nature of the transaction in a vain attempt to avoid arousing the “dirty whore got what she deserved” crowd.  But whatever his motivation, it was not really the right thing to do; pretending that a sugar daddy arrangement is a form of dating rather than “hooking lite” perpetuates the myth that whores are intrinsically different from other women and our clients intrinsically different from other men, which is exactly what vice cops, trafficking alarmists and “Nordic Model” crusaders want the public to think.  But such arguments don’t carry the weight they once did; more and more people are awakening to the realization that harlots aren’t really all that different from our amateur sisters, and our clients aren’t at all different from other men.  The author of this Jezebel article set up a profile at SugarDaddyForMe for research purposes and was surprised to discover how normal most of the members were; perhaps she can next be prevailed upon to join an escort site, where she will discover exactly the same thing.

Read Full Post »