Original Sin

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All Traffick, All the Time

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged A Tale That Grew in the Telling, agency denial, Arizona, Broken Record, California, Canada, cops, dehumanization, dirty, end demand, Facebook, fantasy, Finding What Isn’t There, Florida, Follow Your Bliss, Gingerbread House, hysteria, Illinois, Innocence Never Had, internet, It's That Time Again, King of the Hill, language, Learning Curve, Louisiana, Minnesota, Montana, New Jersey, North Dakota, O Canada!, Obfuscation via Dysphemisms, Ohio, Oklahoma, Original Sin, pizza!, politicians, porn, prohibitionist myths, psychology, racism, Secret Squirrel, sex offender registry, sporting events, surveillance, Texas, Texas Tall Tales, The Widening Gyre, Traffic Jam, Under Every Bed, underage, United Kingdom, Washington (state) on February 18, 2014| 15 Comments »

I think most of us are shocked to find out that people are actually buying…little girls. They’re…paying for these girls who are then dressed up…to sell them. – Jerry Peyton

Secret Squirrel

Clueless cop claims extending the police state into private homes can “protect” your offspring from “sex trafficking”, when it actuality it creates the sort of oppressive environment teens rebel against or flee from:

[Florida] sheriff Susan Benton is launching a local effort to educate the public…deputies will be making personal visits to local pediatrician offices, hospital emergency rooms, shopping malls and other places frequented by youth, distributing posters and other materials…[about] the ways they may become victims of human trafficking…Some of the tips for parents…include…[knowing] your child’s screen names and passwords…[checking] Internet history and [controlling] sites your children have access to…[and forcing them to sign] a pledge…of their commitment to online safety…

Since when do teens “frequent” hospital ERs and pediatricians’ offices?

Follow Your Bliss

[The] co-founder of a [“sex trafficking” NGO]…is charged with child rape [and] has fled to Nepal…Dhan Pun…is the co-founder, with his wife, of Women’s Prevention and Protection Center Nepal Foundation…[he] is accused of routinely assaulting a teenage relative from 2010 to 2012 while he lived in Seattle…

Finding What Isn’t There

“We don’t have any ‘sex trafficking’ cases, but we know they must be around because we have an interstate highway. End demand! Children! Asians! Backpage! 23 skidoo!”

Even though Batesville is mentioned in the Cincinnati Backpage Report…law enforcement officials say no recent arrests…have been made…The [“trafficking” NGO] director wanted area residents to realize sex trafficking “is a demand-driven situation…[which] only happens because there are customers…who want to pay for commercial sex, sometimes with children”…[a cop] predicted the crime could happen here in the future…“the I-74 corridor creates a lot of our problems”…

Broken Record

This may be the most hilariously absurd iteration of the “gypsy whores” myth yet:

A local advocacy group will be using a dramatic display to protest sex trafficking at major Gem, Mineral, and Fossil showcase sites…Jerry Peyton…of Sold No More…said big events like the Gem and Mineral show attracted sex traffickers from around the country into Tucson…To raise awareneness, the group planned to set up a life sized doll box…[containing] a young girl, representing a victim of human trafficking…Beth Jacobs…who was held as a sex slave from age of 16 to 22 said…”pimps” typically took the girls to big events around the country like conventions, and the World series. Jacobs said events like the Gem and Mineral show brought back some dark memories for her…

Obfuscation Via Dysphemisms

They admit to having no data at all and can’t be bothered to even define the crime, but that doesn’t stop them from trying to increase the penalties and condemn even more people to the barbaric “sex offender” registry:

…Oklahoma…lawmakers have introduced about a dozen bills that were drafted by the Bureau of Narcotics. Among other things, they would…increase prison time for human trafficking and require those convicted…to register as sex offenders…Oklahoma’s problem with human trafficking stems partly from its location at the crossing of several major interstates, but…there is little or no data…because it’s not a crime easily tracked and is severely underreported because victims fear retaliation…

Letting cops write the laws; what could possibly go wrong?

Learning Curve

Here’s the meat of a story you may have heard just after the Super Bowl:

…A 10-month investigation that targeted sex trafficking at Super Bowl XLVIII resulted in the rescue of 25 child prostitutes and the arrest of roughly 45 “pimps”…in New Jersey, federal investigators said…investigators did not find any links between the traffickers and organized crime. Most of the suspects were either members of trafficking rings who traveled to New Jersey…or offenders who normally operate in the area…

Look at it carefully: this had nothing to do with the Super Bowl or “trafficking”. It’s just a harvest of local small-time pimps the cops knew about since last April (“travelled to New Jersey” is meaningless in an area where four states are so close together one could drive through all of them in a couple of hours), but saved until game time to shore up a lucrative but crumbling myth.

Texas Tall Tales (TW3 #310)

A megalomaniac imagines that her new social media site will not only wipe out all others, but also create a universal surveillance state in which nobody can ever hide from Big Brother…and that this would be a good thing:

…on…social media sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Instagram and Twitter…girls are being lured with photos and videos describing a life of luxury and once tempted, threatened into prostitution by gang members…“pimps” or “panderers” use social media sites…to reach out to potential victims…hide behind a false persona…and no one may be the wiser until it is too late…As Flocks.com becomes integrated into school systems nationwide, hiding behind a false profile or impersonating someone else will be a thing of the past…

The Widening Gyre (TW3 #314)

A poster appealing for help finding “missing” six-year-old girl Amy Hamilton has been shared thousands of times on social media – despite being a racist hoax by…the…group Britons against Left-Wing Extremism (BALE)…the Croydon Advertiser revealed that there was no Amy Hamilton, and that Daily Bale editor Steven Sodholmy believed he was “raising awareness… about the harsh reality of Asian grooming gangs”…

Original Sin (TW3 #321)

…Laila Mickelwait…of…Exodus Cry…was the keynote speaker at this year’s Celebrating Life Unity Breakfast…sponsored by the Pro-Family pillar of Patriots United at D’Andrea Banquets in Crystal Lake [Illinois]…“To abolish (trafficking), we have to abolish prostitution and we have to abolish porn,” she said…

Gingerbread House (TW3 #332)

Gee, d’you think?

…One new [Florida] idea is a proposition mandating that rescued victims from sex trafficking be involuntarily admitted to the hospital…Some, however, believe…this…will do more harm than good. Lawanda Ravoira…of the Weaver Policy Center…said…this…could “have serious unintended consequences”…

A Tale That Grew in the Telling (TW3 #336)

Because there aren’t enough real “child sex trafficking victims” to go around, the fetishists often have to make do with “hypothetical” ones: “14-year-old Jenna was the first to speak…following a presentation of The Making of a Girl, an intimate…video journey of a hypothetical preteen girl as she faces a life of sexual exploitation. Jenna spoke of a smooth-talking sex trafficker who would lure…children into a life on the street…” Except that her own story gives the lie to that: nobody “lured” her away from home, because she admits to running away by her own volition. And here’s another one entitled “International Boulevard”, which breathlessly informs us that “girls as young as 8 years old and younger are being trafficked into the sex trade industry. Here in the U.S., between 300,000 and 400,000 children are at risk every day.” How long before we hear “300,000 8-year-olds a day are trafficked”? Oh, and Oakland is “ground zero” for “child sex trafficking”; I’ll count that as a “King of the Hill” entry.

A Tale That Grew in the Telling (TW3 #339)

The Daily Fail is trying to close the gap from the now-typical “50 clients per day” to Sunitha Krishnan’s high-lunacy mark of 100: “…Carmen…was forced into sex slavery at…14…the depraved pimp forced her to have sex with as many as 60 men in one day…”

Innocence Never Had

The language would-be “rescuers” use to describe arrested sex workers is very instructive:

Efforts are underway to open [Louisiana’s] first rehabilitation home for underage, female sex trafficking victims…Beth Salcedo, the director of…the future “Free Indeed Home”…said…“We want to be able to…watch them transform from a caterpillar to a butterfly…From a piece of coal…to a diamond”…the Salcedos want to raise awareness of…the fact that children anywhere can be snatched into sex slavery…by meeting strangers…through the Internet. “You can get a little girl now quicker than you can get a pizza”…

The “pizza” meme may end up being the funniest one of the entire hysteria.

King of the Hill (TW3 #347)

Though the media is still woefully credulous regarding most “sex trafficking” mythology, a few slightly-less-yellow journalists are beginning to question the more obviously-absurd claims:

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn recently…said…”25% of human trafficking victims are located in Texas”…a spokeswoman…told us…that the senator relied on an undated “fact sheet” from the…Concerned Women of America…attributing [the claim]…to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services…An…official [from “trafficking” NGO Children At Risk tried to justify the lie with bullshit, while another claimed that] states [other than Texas] are under-estimating trafficking victims…All told, this claim shakes out as incorrect and ridiculous. Pants on Fire!

It’s That Time Again (TW3 #348)

The detachment of these people from reality is truly astonishing:

…as Minnesota is making its own bid for a Super Bowl, Sen. Amy Klobuchar wants the NFL to consider…efforts to thwart the sex trafficking of minors that often accompany such major events…In a recent meeting with senior NFL officials, Klobuchar…was joined by Cindy McCain…who…thinks the NFL should make strong anti-trafficking laws a criterion for any city getting the Super Bowl…The acceptance of prostitution is somewhat ingrained in the United States, said Lauren Martin…[of] the University of Minnesota…“We have hundreds of years of cultural experience that this is a victimless crime between two consenting adults,” Martin said…

Yes, she’s claiming that the only major Western country which directly criminalizes the sale of sex, and probably has the most anti-whore pogroms of any country, has an “ingrained acceptance of prostitution.”

Under Every Bed (TW3 #350)

Nationalized media: promoting the official narrative, one sensationalized tale at a time:

…the Bakken oil field…workforce is well-paid and…predominantly male. Ask people who live there, and it doesn’t take long before you start hearing about a rise in prostitution…Scan the North Dakota section of…Backpage.com and you’ll find pages of postings from female escorts…Bryan Lockerby…of…the Montana Department of Justice…says…”Seventy percent of the women that have gotten into prostitution started at the age of 13 to 14, when they were recruited by pimps”…

Because the idea that women can choose to migrate for good money just like men can is abhorrent to weak, insecure men like Lockerby; the “pimp” narrative helps them pretend men are always in control of sex.

Traffic Jam (TW3 #403)

There’s some creepy stuff buried in this otherwise-typical “gypsy whores” idiocy:

…the…organized sex trade…can range from a handful of pimps working together to major cartels trafficking women across several states, according to Dominique Roe-Sepowitz…major gangs are known to be deeply involved…keeping the women moving is a common tactic to avoid law enforcement, said Roe-Sepowitz…Super Bowls are an especially lucrative stopping point…Praescient will be using a data analytics platform initially funded by the Central Intelligence Agency…[which] can collate large volumes of data…and identify relationships that a human analyst might miss…

Step 1: Pretend sex workers are always controlled by “gangs”, “pimps”, etc. Step 2: Pretend that touring is “trafficking” and motivated by the desire to “avoid law enforcement” instead of straightforward economic motives. Step 3: Find an ethically-bankrupt academic to invent “research” to support it. Step 4: Use spook-designed surveillance to round up sex workers for looting and permanent consignment to the growing underclass. Step 5: Cash in.

O, Canada! (TW3 #405)

Organizations representing sex workers throughout the country are condemning a recent police operation targeting human trafficking, contending that it will drive the sex trade further underground and away from safety. On Jan. 22 and Jan. 23…police…across Canada participated in Operation Northern Spotlight…Several sex worker organizations — Big Susie’s, Sex Professionals of Canada (SPOC), Sex Workers Action Group Kingston, Stepping Stone, Maggie’s: The Toronto Sex Workers Action Group and Stella, l’amie de Maimie — released a joint statement on Jan. 29 denouncing “police activities that use deception and intimidation”…officers posed as clients to book appointments with indoor sex workers. Several officers then showed up at the workers’ doors, demanding entry…Once inside, officers “bombard” the workers with personal questions and search the premises…

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That Was the Week That Was (#407)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged abortion, Above the Law, activism, adolescence, Africa, Against Their Will, agency denial, avails laws, Between the Ears, bogus studies, brothels, California, Catastrophic Consequences, censorship, China, consensual crime, cops, cult of the child, Deafening Silence, dehumanization, drugs, end demand, Europe, evidence, fantasy, harm reduction, India, infidelity, Innocence Never Had, Ireland, language, lawheads, left-right myth, Legalization a Good Idea?, Louisiana, Naked Truth, Neither Addiction nor Epidemic, Netherlands, New Jersey, New York, Nigeria, Original Sin, porn, prisons, prohibitionist myths, psychology, Pyrrhic Victory, rape, rescue industry, Saving Them from Themselves, sex work is work, sexting, Shazam!, Something Rotten In Sweden, sporting events, Swedish model, The Public Eye, Torture Chamber, Train Wreck, underage, United Kingdom, video, violence vs. sex workers, Virginia on February 15, 2014| 10 Comments »

Sex work can be dangerous; but those dangers are exacerbated, or in many cases even created, by criminalisation. – Jean Urquhart

Something Rotten in Sweden (December Updates)

…sex workers [protested] a San Francisco anti-trafficking panel discussion…about “Discouraging Demand”…[including] the “John School”…Maxine Doogan…[of] the Erotic Service Providers Union…[said] “Using the term ‘john’ to describe our clients is like using the N-word…It’s a derogatory means of dehumanizing the customers.” Law enforcement efforts that go after clients ultimately increase risks for sex workers, she continued. “Any criminalization of our customers is going to bring us more violence”…Doogan also cited the Supreme Court of Canada’s landmark decision…striking down…anti-prostitution laws that the justices unanimously agreed were…dangerous…

For Those Who Think Legalization is a Good Idea

…the law which regulates sex work in India today [is] the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act (ITPA), 1956. This does not criminalise sex work per se, but, as the Lawyers’ Collective that works for sex workers’ rights points out, it results in “de facto criminalisation through prohibition of soliciting, brothel and street work”, and this “has effectively undermined sex workers’ ability to claim protection of law”…Often sex workers are evicted from the only roof they had with their children in the name of “closing down brothels”…[the avails law] criminalises…their children as soon as they cross the age of 18, and old parents and younger siblings who many sex workers support. However…“The criminalisation of soliciting is one of the most obvious legal problems…Sex workers are arrested even when they’re not soliciting”…

Against Their Will

This has a few irksome passages, but it’s probably much more palatable to rescue industry types than the way most sex worker rights activists might express it:

…Imagine someone flying across the country to pick up an individual they only recently met. They are removed from everything they have ever known. Then they’re placed in a home where they can’t have contact with anyone in the outside world. Sounds much like trafficking? It also sounds like a rescue…More often than not the story of Captain Save a Ho and the “fair maiden” ends with the girl running out as friends console the rescuer saying, “You did the best you could”…“She had too many problems”…or “Maybe she was wounded beyond repair”…The term “rescue” naturally implies that a person is incapable of helping themselves, and sometimes this is true…but the effects of being rescued can leave a lasting emotional mark on the survivor, which is difficult to overcome in the new life…

Saving Them From Themselves

…[Virginia] police say a teenager is facing child pornography charges after allegedly tweeting nude pictures of herself…The teen’s phone was confiscated for evidence, and she was charged with one count of distribution of child pornography…this could end up…with jail time…investigators say they are seeing a surge in these types of cases because teens see it as harmless sexting.

How dare they form their own opinions! Only “authorities” have the right to determine what is harmless, and teens must be taught that by the infliction of much more severe harm.

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic

…David Ley…and colleagues conducted a review [showing]…only 27 percent…of articles on porn addiction contain…actual data, while [most suffer from]…poor experimental designs, [low] methodological rigor and lack of model specification…The review…found very little evidence — if any at all — to support…the purported negative side effects…There was no sign pornography was connected to erectile dysfunction, or that it caused any [brain] changes…people reporting “addiction” are more likely to…have a non-heterosexual orientation …high libido…and…religious values that conflict with their sexual behavior and desires…the research team said pornography might improve attitudes toward sexuality…increase quality of life…and…provide…a legal outlet for illegal sexual behaviors or desires, and its consumption or availability has been associated with a decrease in sex offenses, especially child molestation…

Coincidentally, Dr. Ley also appears in “Horns” below.

Above the Law

The lengths to which prosecutors and reporters will go to avoid saying “rape” when the rapist is a cop are nothing short of amazing:

Sorrento Police Chief Earl Theriot admits he committed sex acts with an unresponsive woman…and now faces a federal sentence for lying to the FBI about it…Theriot…placed her in the front seat of his police vehicle and took her to his office where he “engaged in…sexual contact with her”…

And in Hawaii,

[Alexandria Gregg]…is suing the…department of public safety and [prison warden] Neal Wagatsuma…for…[sexually] shaming…her and other female inmates…“During open public meetings of male and female detainees…Wagatsuma repeatedly forced…[female inmates] to stand at a podium and speak about their private, intimate and traumatizing sexual experience”…the warden ordered [them] to elaborate on…incidents of rape as well as sexual preferences. The public questionings were videotaped by male detainees…“Typically, the detainees selected for filming were young attractive women”…

Pyrrhic Victory

Presented with minimal comment: the US continues its descent in the press freedom index; it is now just below Papua New Guinea and Romania, and just above Haiti and Niger.

Naked Truth

A good article by Melissa Gira Grant on the real effects of political crusades against sex work. Note that though Salon chose to point fingers at “the right” in its headline, the article itself makes no false partisan distinctions:

…Super Bowl lent the excuse for New York and New Jersey…to step up their routine anti-prostitution policing, in anticipation of an increased demand for commercial sex that, in Super Bowls past, has never been borne out. NYPD’s vice unit coordinator Anthony Favale doesn’t even seem to mind that the hype is just that, telling Time, ”I don’t know if the increased number [of prostitutes] is a legend or not, but I am exploiting the opportunity”…Long before the media turned the Super Bowl into a…story of violence and exploitation…people engaged in the sex trade have been documenting…all the ways anti-prostitution policing pits them against law enforcement and puts them at risk when they need help…

Sex Work is Work

Sometimes the absurdity of the idea of consensual crime is blatantly obvious:

The European Union is [finally] enforcing laws which…require countries to estimate how much cash changes hands on their black markets. Those figures will be taken into account when calculating national GDP and allocating the £120-billion Brussels budget. EU officials say the change will ensure consistent economic comparisons between member states. As prostitution and drug use is legal in some member states – like the Netherlands – officials say it’s only fair for other states to acknowledge those activities in their national accounts. Prostitution in the UK is expected to be valued at £3 billion a year, and drug dealing at around £7 billion…

Train Wreck (TW3 #48)

An…NGO, Society Against Prostitution and Child Labour in Nigeria (SAP-CLN), in collaboration with Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB) have elected to embark on a controversial campaign to rid Nigeria’s capital city of prostitutes…armed soldiers and police…run amok…[victims are charged] N5,000 each [about $30.50 US]…those [with] the money [are] released instantly [but] others [are held overnight to see a] magistrate…SAP-CLN has many [lawsuits] hanging on its neck [over this]…and…the… Dorothy Njemanze Foundation…has called on the Federal Government to stop SAP-CLN…The group said many female students …employees… shoppers and even married women have been brutalised and abducted…

Original Sin (TW3 #321)

Dr. Brooke Magnanti on the evangelical underpinnings of “sex trafficking” myth:

The scandal of counsellors in “crisis clinics” that claim to offer “abortion support” claiming that terminations can cause breast cancer and women to become child sexual abusers was exposed this week…The vast majority of such “clinics” in the UK…are run by…Christian Action Research and Education (CARE)…the secretariat for the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Prostitution and the Global Sex Trade. This APPG aims to promote the so-called Swedish Model…It’s been revealed over and over again how far left second wavers are beholden to anti-homosexuality, anti-trans, anti-sex work and anti-abortion interests, yet many people refuse to acknowledge the truth…I think Pee Wee Herman says it best…

Deafening Silence

Time bravely denounces police violence against sex workers! But only in China, of course; American anti-whore police violence is A-OK:

…A 6,000-strong [police] force reportedly raided 12 hotels and entertainment venues in Dongguan] leading to 67 arrests — 90-odd cops for each of the alleged perpetrators. Two police chiefs were later suspended, according the South China Morning Post… “Swept Away: Abuses Against Sex Workers in China“…documented torture, beatings, physical assaults, arbitrary detentions and fines. Another report, by Asia Catalyst, found that escaping custody meant paying bribes. Periodic “busts” focus on shaming women, not stemming the trade. In a now-notorious 2010 case, Dongguan officials publicly paraded male and female suspects, barefoot and handcuffed, through the street…But…China’s netizens know where the real shame lies…“clean [up] your so called police troops, that’s what people really want to see” [said commenters]…“Arrest 67 officials [instead]”…

Between the Ears (TW3 #322)

Once again: female sexual desire has nothing to do with blood flow, to the genitalia or anywhere else:

…a pill dubbed “female Viagra”…containing an extract from French pine bark called pycnogenol, goes on sale this month…[under the name] Lady Prelox…The manufacturer…claims its product “boosts libido and increases arousal in women”, because it “encourages blood flow to the reproductive organs as well as the brain”…

Torture Chamber

…the Dutch justice ministry announced the planned closing of…19 prisons…[due to] a continued decline in crime rates. Additionally, those who are convicted are choosing electronic tagging instead of incarceration. This allows people to go back to work and continue as productive members of society. It also saves about $50,000 per year per person…

Horns

…From an evolutionary perspective, the idea that a guy would take pleasure from watching his wife with another man is counterintuitive. Historically, men have gone to great lengths to avoid being “cuckolded”…fear of cuckoldry…shaped how our male ancestors approached sexual relationships and, to this day, is…the reason men tend to get more jealous…about…sexual infidelity than women…Increasingly, scientists favor a biological explanation based on a growing body of work on sperm competition. Research shows that when one woman mates with several men, those men can display behavioral and biological changes intended to increase their likelihood of fertilizing her egg…David Ley…[thinks it’s related to] displaying…one’s sexy wife [as] a status symbol…

Innocence Never Had

More truthful headline: “Underage Sex Worker Murdered in Yorba Linda”

A 17-year-old girl found stabbed to death in…Yorba Linda [California]…was a victim of human trafficking…about two weeks before she was killed…Officers identified Aubreyanna Sade Parks as a victim of human trafficking during a crackdown on prostitution in Santa Ana….Parks was turned over to county social service workers…[and] taken to a shelter but walked out in the following days…Larry Soo Shin [has been arrested for the murder]…

It’s bad enough that criminalization almost certainly contributed to this young woman’s death; do they really need to erase her agency in an attempt to increase that criminalization for living sex workers?

The Public Eye (TW3 #403)

Considering it’s in an Irish newspaper, this is nothing short of amazing:

…Watching [Northern Ireland’s justice committee] in action, you could very well be back in Salem in the final years of the 17th century…Laura…Lee’s treatment was so bad that she has registered a complaint with the Assembly…Lee does much of her sex work with terminally ill and disabled men, offering them a discount from her normal rate…In one of the most repulsive parts of the hearing, Paul Givan asked her, “Why would you exploit a disabled individual and make him pay?”, as though Lee was targeting defenceless men and entrapping them into having sex with her…[these] posturing men…clearly fancy themselves as grand inquisitors, when in reality they mistake boorishness and stupid sneering for incisive interrogation. It is [they], not…Laura Lee, who should be ashamed of themselves.

Catastrophic Consequences (TW3 #406)

MSP Jean Urquhart did something extraordinary this week:

Jean has criticised Edinburgh’s decision to delicense its saunas and massage parlours, and called for a debate on decriminalising sex work in order to improve safety and decrease stigma. Her intervention has been praised by…SCOT-PEP as “courageous”…Jean highlighted calls from sex workers’ organisations for full decriminalisation, as practiced in New Zealand since 2003…

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That Was the Week That Was (#404)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged A Moral Cancer, Africa, Banishment, brothels, Catholicism, cops, cosmetic surgery, crypto-moralism, Denmark, Devil's Advocate, dirty, Drama Queens, drugs, end demand, Europe, First They Came for the Hookers, Florida, France, Georgia, Gullible's Travels, harm reduction, hysteria, internet, language, law, License To Rape, Little Boxes, Lying Down With Dogs, Mother Learns From Her Children, neofeminism, Nevada, Never Call the Cops, Not To Be Taken Internally, oral sex, Original Sin, Philippines, porn, prohibitionist myths, rape, rescue industry, Rhode Island, Schadenfreude, Sex Lies and Busybodies, sex rays, sex work is work, Shazam!, Shift in the Wind, Spain, sporting events, stripping, Sweden, Swedish model, teachers, Texas, The Course of a Disease, The Dogs Do Bark, The More the Better, Think of the Children!, tits, Uncommon Sense, underage, United Kingdom, video, violence vs. sex workers, Washington (state), Whatever They Need To Say, Wisconsin on January 25, 2014| 12 Comments »

Trafficking has become one of the new “it” words in the bankrupt moral vernacular, craftily used by puritans, property developers and rogue feminists to combat the sex trade in general. – Rupert Everett

Think of the Children!

The minute a fragile “child” turns 18, he can turn into a dangerous source of dreaded “sex ray” emissions:

…high school senior…“Noel” has allegedly been suspended and will not graduate this year after several of his [gay porn] flicks found their way onto the principal’s desk…[he was] suspended…for 10 days for “causing a campus disturbance” [which]…will allegedly lead to “an automatic failure from absences,” and he will not be able to graduate come June…

Of course, teachers are still the primary danger:

Edgar Ortiz, a 65-year-old educator…was not fired for sleeping with a sex worker…But…was fined $7,500 by the Department of Education…He’s suing [New York] city to fight the punishment. “Teachers are not indentured servants subject to school direction and control 24 hours a day”…he argues…A…judge…ordered the city to answer his petition…after it “failed to offer any legal basis for penalizing a teacher for illegal conduct that has little or no apparent connection with his teaching duties”…

License to Rape

Never call the cops for any reason whatsoever:

A young woman in Milwaukee called the cops when someone threw a brick through her window…and…began kicking in her front door…two police officers responded. One took her 15-year-old brother outside to speak to him. The other…Ladmarald Cates…asked to see the broken window and [when] she led him…to a bathroom in the back…he…[grabbed] her…by her hair…then [sodomized and] raped her…The cop’s partner had become concerned…and called for back-up. Other cops began arriving and saw a woman screaming incoherently about being raped. Cates appeared…handcuffed [her and] charged [her] with assaulting a police officer…She was…held for four days before being released without actually being charged…

A Moral Cancer

A severely repressed individual penned a misogynistic screed called “9 Reasons Why a Man Should Never Go Down on a Woman”, and it’s as ridiculous as you’d expect. Note that the first four (arguably five) “reasons” are actually one reason, and it is why the article appears under this heading.

Schadenfreude

A new moneymaker for the rescue industry: “sex trafficking” tours!

…New Friends New Life…toured parts of [Dallas]…with [cops], a Homeland Security agent and an assistant city attorney, who talked about…the exploitation of women and young girls…While vice officers…go after the men who pay for sex, they are focused on…[shutting] down complex regional or even international prostitution rings…The bus of [tourists]…gaped at [a poor neighborhood], whispering to one another in disbelief…Shawn McGraw…[of] Homeland Security…[said] “This isn’t a woman’s childhood dream. She’s doing it to survive.”

Don’t worry if you can’t take a bus tour; they’ll bring one to you!

…Putting on headphones at “SOLD: The Human Trafficking Experience” will teleport you to the life of one of nine victims of sex slavery and trafficking…The exhibit is a multi-sensory, multimedia experience that lasts 40 minutes in nine different rooms…People who attend are encouraged to tweet, video blog and share pictures…The “SOLD” bus [travels around Washington and is based in] Seattle…

Not To Be Taken Internally

…Elizabeth Starr fears her banned boob job will kill her after her breasts ballooned to a whopping O cup. The adult film star had now-illegal “string” breast implants 15 years ago to boost her career – but says her life has been ruined…Doctors have recommended Elizabeth face a double mastectomy…she…was already a 32F when she opted…in 1999…[for a] procedure [which] involved inserting synthetic string into the breasts to stimulate fluid production and growth. But [after] just a few days…she began suffering complications…[she] had the string implant removed from her right breast, however, the left one was already too imbedded to be taken out…Over the next 14 years Elizabeth spent a staggering £200,000 on [63] reconstructive operations…

Gullible’s Travels

…Portsmouth Middle School [in Rhode Island sent parents a letter] warning them that students may be snorting and smoking ground-up Smarties candies. The letter warns of risks of cuts, lung infections, nasal passage scarring, nose-wedged maggots (!), and future cigarette and drug use…School [official] Dave Croston…[said] “this behavior raises troubling issue of modeling”…

As a supplement, Radley Balko prepared a short summary of other mind-numbingly stupid pseudo-drug scares of recent years.

Hark, Hark, the Dogs Do Bark

“University of Michigan Economics Professor Raj Arunachalam…hired sex workers in Ecuador and Mexico to interview other sex workers…Arunachalam found that beautiful sex workers…earned approximately 15% more than average and unattractive prostitutes…” Dr. Arunachalam’s next study will demonstrate that people prefer to eat good-tasting food and to listen to music instead of recordings of traffic sounds.

The Mother Learns From Her Children

…two of Britain’s most senior police chiefs…have…[denounced] the police approach to prostitution as a mess…saying that [harassment] operations…are “counterproductive” and…put…women at risk…they call for…[allowing] a group of women to work together. Chris Armitt [said]…”We are not going to enforce our way out of…prostitution. It goes…on in every country in the world”…Martin Hewitt…said…”On the one hand we sit down with sex workers asking them to trust us and give us information. On the other hand we are doing enforcement actions”…Hewitt…also condemned…brothel raids as superficial and offering little value other than as a media stunt…

Sex, Lies and Busybodies (TW3 #3)

…a boom in X-rated production in [Las Vegas was] sparked by a Los Angeles law requiring…condoms…The number of permits…to make porn films in Los Angeles…has declined by…95 percent since the law took effect…from about 480 in 2012 to just 24 through the first nine months of 2013…While Los Angeles charges hundreds of dollars for location permits…Las Vegas…gives [them] for a nominal fee and does not require health permits. The warehouses are cheaper, and it’s also more affordable to rent out mansions and put actors up in hotels…

The Course of a Disease

The European Parliament’s Women’s Rights and Gender Equality Committee has voted through [Mary Honeyball’s] report that recommends the adoption of the “Nordic Model” of prostitution laws…The report [now goes] to the full European Parliament…

As I’ve explained before, the European Parliament’s resolutions are not laws, but they’re a good indicator of the growth of totalitarianism on the continent.

Lying Down With Dogs (TW3 #22)

Africa produces the most ridiculous anti-whore rhetoric outside of the US:

…at alluvial gold mining sites [in Liberia]…women [are] roaming from one…mine to another…rooting and indulging into “sex trade”…in return for gold or money. What is most appalling…is the luring of some of these women into the practice by their peers…”any man who…refuses to settle us financially, will pay the price,” a lady [said]… Several men who stubbornly refused to comply…were taken to the…police…

First They Came for the Hookers…

Florida wants to prove it can harass strip clubs as much as Texas does:

The…Miami Beach strip club where police say a 13-year-old girl danced…has had its business license pulled for six months…Richard Wolfe, an attorney for Club Madonna…and…club owner Leroy Griffith…said they had no knowledge that the girl performed at Madonna…Wolfe…suggested that the city’s actions were retaliatory…[because] Griffith has been locked in a decade-long battle with City Hall to overturn a ban on alcohol in fully nude clubs…

Drama Queens (TW3 #48)

Emil Kirkegaard has translated a recent Danish study comparing the health of sex workers to that of amateurs:

…The percentage with bad mental health and…who often…feel nervous or stressed is smaller among prostitutes…there is no difference between prostitutes and [other] women’s rate of illness…prostitutes have a markedly lower consumption [of medicine]…the prostitutes have more…smoking, alcohol…and use of other drugs…there is a larger percentage [of prostitutes] who are underweight, and a smaller…who are overweight…prostitutes have the same frequency of contact to family and friends…Light violence against prostitutes is more common…[but] other indicators of violence and sexual abuse [are not different]…Prostitutes…often work in bended or crooked positions [and make] repeated and monotonous movements…[but] they [need not carry] heavy objects and [are not] exposed to…noise, cold…and draft. With respect to psychological working environment, the prostitutes come out ahead as well…

Banishment

The Midtown Ponce Security Alliance (MPSA)…is approaching [Georgia] legislators…[with] a law it has dubbed “aggravated prostitution”…“This form of prostitution would be defined along the lines of prostitution in a residential area (we will suggest “within 500 feet of a window or door of any dwelling”), and work to have that designated a felony punishable up to five years incarceration”…

Original Sin

Though there’s plenty of “Super Bowl sex trafficking” nonsense in this story, we’ve seen that so many times before it really isn’t worth noting any more. What’s more interesting to me is the bizarre soup of Christian, neofeminist and police state dogma which produced the “facts” which are tacked on at the end; bogus “statistics” are arranged beside neofeminist “end demand” cant and Christian dogma about sin, including the relatively-new claim that “pornography is the dominant driver for sex trafficking”.

The More the Better (TW3 #325)

In the modern US, prosecutors rule the injustice system; obviously that’s less so in France:

Two French international footballers who are charged with paying for sex with an underage prostitute appeared in court…Franck Ribery and…Karim Benzema both deny the allegations and the young woman involved, Zahia Dehar, testified that neither player knew she was under 18 at the time…Ms Dehar…has since launched her own luxury lingerie line and is reportedly the muse of German fashion designer Karl Lagerfield…prosecutors had sought an acquittal…but investigating judge Andre Dando argued they must have been aware of her real age.

Shift in the Wind (TW3 #328)

First National Review, and now Foreign Policy:

…[Prohibitionists] say they want to protect human rights, but their efforts often undermine those rights: Campaigns and programs to end prostitution in fact lead to violence, stigmatization, and other problems for the exact people they claim to be helping…there is no convincing evidence that punishing “johns” decreases the incidence of commercial sex…Sweden’s sex workers report that criminalization has simply driven [them] underground, with dangerous consequences…and…evidence shows…that criminalization of sale or purchase…makes sex workers…more vulnerable to violence…committed by law enforcement…the World Health Organization (WHO) wrote in a bulletin that…”sex workers who are rounded up during police raids are beaten” and “coerced into having sex by corrupt police officials in exchange for their release”…

Uncommon Sense (TW3 #345)

Prostitutes [in] Ibiza have formed a sex workers’ cooperative to pay taxes and gain social security benefits…Eleven women registered with local authorities as…members of the Sealeer Cooperative…their spokeswoman, Maria Jose Lopez…[said] “We are the first cooperative in Spain that can give legal cover to the girls”…The group is applying to register 40 more women…

Whatever They Need To Say (TW3 #350)

Sex worker ally Rupert Everett published a long, thorough denunciation of December’s pogrom in Soho:

There is a land grab going on in Soho under the banner of morality…200 of our boys in blue raided more than 20…flats, arresting 30 girls and confiscating their earnings…They broke down doors, intimidated girls into accepting…criminal records…and served…eviction papers that, unless you were a lawyer, you would not know had hidden in their depths (20-odd pages) the time and date you were to appear in court if you wanted to appeal. All this in the name of human trafficking…while even the police say that more than 90% of prostitutes work of their own accord…

Everett goes into great detail about the hearings which followed, and the IPC collected these statements from the victims of the raid. Keep in mind when reading them that as bad as they are, the experiences of police victims under fully criminalized regimes like the US are worse.

Little Boxes (TW3 #350)

Devil’s Advocate

A paedophile ring that streamed live child abuse from the Philippines…has been broken up after an operation by UK police and their counterparts in Australia and the US. The National Crime Agency says…it is an “emerging threat”…in developing countries…

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Hysteria on Parade

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged A Fantasy of Hate, A Tale That Grew in the Telling, agency denial, asset seizure, Backfire, bogus studies, brothels, California, Canada, Catholicism, Check Your Premises, consensual crime, cops, dirty, drugs, East Asia, end demand, fantasy, Georgia, Germany, Held Together With Lies, Hollywood, hysteria, Imaginary Evils, internet, King of the Hill, language, law, Law of the Instrument, Middle East, neofeminism, New Jersey, O Canada!, Original Sin, pathologization of males, Pennsylvania, pimps, prohibitionist myths, Pyrrhic Victory, Repeat Offenders, rescue industry, slavery, sporting events, streetwalkers, surveillance, Thailand, The Widening Gyre, United Kingdom, Washington DC on October 24, 2013| 60 Comments »

Most victims don’t know they’re being exploited. – many trafficking fanatics, who apparently believe they get to define other people’s experiences for them

“Sex trafficking” hysteria is growing so rapidly now that in any given week one can see almost as many of these as one cares to look for (consider the effect that has on Kevin Bales’ media-report-driven “algorithm”). Here is a selection of the more interesting ones from the past few weeks, done in TW3 style.

Check Your Premises

Any “method” premised on the twisted belief that heterosexual male desire is “sickening” is doomed to fail:

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Nury Martinez said…she wants city officials to come up with better methods for curbing prostitution, beyond arresting sex workers who end up returning to the streets after a brief stint in jail…she is “exasperated by the reality that…it just isn’t working…it’s time for…additional legal tools…targeting the sickening demand for prostitutes”…Martinez is hoping to…go…after those who exploit the prostitutes and engage in human trafficking…Pimps have also adopted new tactics that include shuffling prostitutes through Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Seattle…to make it harder for police to recognize [them]…

I suspect the notion that whores are “trafficked” in a circuit by “pimps” is a warped view of touring.

Backfire

Critics say a satirical sex-traffic awareness campaign, that issued a fake callout for children to become sex workers, backfired. But the organization behind the campaign is calling it a success. Posters by Edmonton’s Chrysalis Human Trafficking Network, read: “Now recruiting: Child sex workers”…The Twitter feed was ultimately shut down…Jacqueline Linder, executive director of Chrysalis, said…”It looked real and it was meant to look real”…

No, it did not “look real”, as you can see for yourself by clicking on the picture; it looked like ugly prohibitionist bullshit of the sort we’ve seen before. Jemima has more on the sleazy fanatics at Chrysalis, including a typical bogus “checklist” with items designed to describe just about any young person.

A Fantasy of Hate

Even among “sex trafficking” fetishists, it’s rare to see such raw, unfiltered misandry outside of neofeminist hate sites:

…Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape Criminal Justice Training Specialist Krista Hoffman…said…”One of the big problems with sex trafficking is our cultural acceptance of prostitution…[Pimps] don’t mind beating girls up around the face”…One study found that purchasers…actually like the appearance of bruises and cuts. “When it looks like girls are beaten up a bit it heightens the excitement for them,” Hoffman said…

Only in the twisted fantasy world inhabited by neofeminists could anyone claim that the stigma and criminalization inflicted on whores indicates “cultural acceptance”. And only an evil fanatic with almost no attachment to reality whatsoever could imagine that the average man wants to have sex with a woman who has obviously been beaten.

Law of the Instrument

Inspector Haynes just can’t understand why sex workers “don’t even realize that they are victims“:

Five women believed to be sex-trafficking victims have been rescued by police during raids on nine suspected brothels in Birmingham. Police…said they were determined to put a stop to “modern day slavery” in the region…Officers…seized mobile phones, cash, laptops and paraphernalia relating to prostitution…Detective Inspector Darren Haynes said…”Tonight’s action…is about protecting people who more often than not don’t even realise that they are victims”…

Repeat Offenders

The agency-denying, lie-spreading nun-SOAP cabal is at it again:

…Beginning this week, a group of 200 volunteers, including 30 nuns, will be cold-calling or visiting 300 New Jersey hotels to talk about the Super Bowl’s dirty little secret: prostitution…everybody knows hookers follow the game. But most…see only a victimless crime, a business arrangement between consenting adults, where the women are willing opportunists and the men just out for a good time. The nuns don’t see it that way. They see victims…The volunteers…will be distributing soap…with the coalition’s hotline number on the wrapper, so a girl being forced into prostitution has a lifeline…

Held Together With Lies

Since Kevin Bales’ widely-quoted “estimate” is based on media reports, it was only a matter of time before it grew even more ridiculous:

There are 29.8 million people living as slaves right now, according to a comprehensive new report issued by the Australia-based Walk Free Foundation. This is not some softened, by-modern-standards definition of slavery. These 30 million people are…chattel in…absolute ownership…Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe…are blighted particularly by sex trafficking, a practice that bears little resemblance to popular Western conceptions of prostitution. Women and men are coerced into participating, often starting at a very young age, and are completely reliant on their traffickers…You don’t have to go far to see slavery in America. Here in Washington, D.C., you can sometimes spot them on certain streets, late at night. Not all sex workers or “prostitutes” are slaves, of course; plenty have chosen the work voluntarily and can leave it freely. But, as the 2007 documentary “Very Young Girls” demonstrated, many are coerced into participating at a young age and gradually shifted into a life that very much resembles slavery…

Of course, this is absolute poppycock; none of these so-called “slaves” are chattel slaves unless the legal systems of their countries officially recognize slave ownership, and most aren’t even coerced by any legitimate definition of the word. As regular readers have seen, claims of “sex slavery” in Southeast Asia are dramatically exaggerated, and the claims about Eastern Europe are both exaggerated and twenty years out of date. The documentary mentioned is prohibitionist “average entry at 13” propaganda, and if the reporter wanted to quote old stories from his newspaper he should’ve tried this one.

Pyrrhic Victory

NSA says sex workers & associated parties are valid drone targets, then hides the admission:

There was an odd statement from NSA in the middle of yesterday’s WaPo story describing how NSA facilitates CIA’s drone mission… “The NSA is ‘focused on discovering and developing intelligence about …foreign intelligence targets, such as terrorists, human traffickers and drug smugglers’,“…I believe this is the first time since the Snowden leak that NSA has suggested its “valid foreign intelligence targets” include “human traffickers and drug smugglers”…the WaPo explained [that it was] “withholding many details about those missions, at the request of U.S. intelligence officials“……and…the reference has now been removed from the story…

O, Canada! (TW3 #31)

Canadian “authorities” are nearly as obsessed with “trafficking” porn as American ones:

Brianne answers the knock, expecting to see the…man with whom she negotiated sex-for-money over email…Instead, two police officers step inside…“We’re not here to arrest you,” the officer says to Brianne. “We’re here to help you.” Women who are victims of human trafficking don’t fit the profile you might imagine…these girls could be your daughter, says Det. Mark Benallick…of the Toronto Police…“What begins as a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship progresses to increasing control, until these women are treated as slaves…These pimps have the ability to spot vulnerable girls in a crowd…and instantly know which ones can be manipulated”…

Note the increasing tendency to ascribe magical powers to pimps.

King of the Hill

Not just the US; the entire world!

Two girls excitedly walk off their plane that just landed in Paris…their happiness is snatched from them as they are betrayed, dragged and forced into a hard-to-escape lifestyle…Many are familiar with the depiction from the movie Taken, but many fail to realize the reality that lies behind [it]…the University of West Georgia…is…close to one of the biggest sex trafficking hubs in the world…Atlanta International Airport is…a target for human traffickers…the U.S. is not that different from well-known sex trafficking countries such as Czechoslovakia. FBI reports that Atlanta is the center for the sex-trafficking of adolescence and around 200 to 300 youth are prostituted in Atlanta a month…

Original Sin

What planet do these people live on, where “sex trafficking” is “unrecognized”?

Although largely unrecognized, sex trafficking in the U.S. is a serious problem, and its victims needs the loving support that the Catholic Church can give…Candace Wheeler, founder of the Washington, D.C.-based Restoration Ministries…[said] “These girls need the body of Christ, and the body of Christ needs them”…According to the Department of Justice…300,000 children are at risk of sexual exploitation each year…girls at risk for sex trafficking… “have typically been violated before the age of five”…

How much lower in age can the filthy masturbatory fantasies of “trafficking” fetishists go?

The Widening Gyre (TW3 #317)

Pop stars cause sex trafficking!

On Sept. 20, Rihanna tweeted…about a female performer from an illegal sex show she attended in…Thailand…officials say they used Rihanna’s tweets to help lead them to the arrest of the club’s owner. Christian Film & Television Commission founder Ted Baehr says…”Most times these female performers are held in captivity against their will, and most are sold into slavery at young ages and don’t live past the age of 20 because of working conditions and highly-addictive drugs used to keep them in slavery”…Baehr says…Rihanna is supporting the international sex trade…

This is the second time we’ve seen the magical slave-philter, but I guarantee it won’t be the last.

A Tale That Grew in the Telling (TW3 #329)

…Talking about the prostitutes she met whilst filming Jodie Marsh On The Game, [the model-turned-bodybuilder said]…“Mostly the thing they had in common was they’d all been forced into it by a man. And their lives were shit…One girl — who had a gang bang in Germany where 15 men had sex with her one after the other — said she loved it…I’ve been celibate for two and a half years but that put me off sex even more…It made me think nobody is coming near my body ever again”…

I’m glad to hear that, Jodie; it’s best for the world that control freaks like you never breed.

Imaginary Evils

Remember, many huge police operations have found virtually no “sex trafficking” in the UK:

…trafficking of foreign women to be sexually exploited in the UK is worth at least £130 million, a Home Office report suggests. The annual revenue generated by one female sex worker was estimated as £48,000…Organised crime was responsible for all such trafficking…A study…in 2009 identified 2,600 foreign women in England and Wales who were victims of [sex] trafficking…A further 9,200 were identified as vulnerable to being trafficked… Understanding Organised Crime: Estimating the Scale and the Social and Economic Costs, warned that the £130 million figure was likely to be an underestimate. It estimated the social and economic costs…at £890 million…

A Tale That Grew in the Telling (TW3 #341)

Educated white American feminist goes “undercover” in a Turkish brothel; blah blah blah “piece of meat”, blah blah blah “traffickers and pimps”, blah blah blah “girls sold for sex”. Because only educated white feminists are sophisticated and brave enough to take risks to make a living (you know, like by going into Turkish brothels), and only educated white feminists are magically protected from the mustache-twirling pimps with their magical pimp vision and mind-control potions; all other women everywhere are asexual simpletons who could NEVER EVER EVER make valid decisions that contradict feminist dogma.

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That Was the Week That Was (#322)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged acting, agency denial, Arizona, Ashley Madison, Banishment, Between the Ears, Big Sister, bogus studies, brothels, Bullies With Badges, Catholicism, censorship, China, cops, Creating the Crisis, cult of the child, dirty, domestic violence, drugs, end demand, Europe, First They Came for the Hookers, Florida, Follow Your Bliss, France, hysteria, I’m Sure You Feel Safer Now, Iceland, Illinois, India, internet, Islam, Jill Brenneman, law, lawyers, Middle East, Moloch, Neither Addiction nor Epidemic, neofeminism, New York, Objectification Overruled, Ohio, Original Sin, pathologization of males, pimps, politicians, porn, prohibitionist myths, psychology, rape, rescue industry, Schadenfreude, sex offender registry, shame, statistics, Swedish model, Tennessee, The More the Better, United Kingdom, Utah, violence vs. sex workers, Washington (state), What a Week!, Where Are the Victims?, Wisconsin, Worse Than I Thought, yin and yang on May 31, 2013| 16 Comments »

Porn is not addictive. Sex is not addictive. The ideas of porn and sex addiction are pop psychology concepts that…have no legitimate scientific basis. – David Ley

Interview: Jill Brenneman

Jill has largely retired from activism, but has written a guest post about the Cleveland kidnap victims on Amanda Brooks’ blog: “…Gina DeJesus, Michelle Knight, and Amanda Berry…likely have many years of very costly medical expenses and the need for equally costly psychological help…Like me, their lives were interrupted at a young age. Now they have to move on with the physical and emotional issues…and…rebuild their lives…”

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic

Once again, Dr. David Ley tells it like it is:

…when people buy into the belief that porn is addictive, it changes the argument…sex and porn aren’t the problems…one part of this issue is an attack on aspects of male sexuality, including masturbation and use of pornography…which society fears…

Moloch

Though this was first published nearly a year ago, this updated version appeared last week:

…even though experts and studies have denounced the [sex offender registry] as ineffective, the battle cry of its supporters is still, “If it saves one child…!”…There is no evidence that [it] has done that at all. However, many, many thousands of children have had their lives made a living hell because of it…parents on the registry…are subject to the whims of local and state laws, including severe restrictions on where they may live…Vigilantes have murdered registrants, leaving their children fatherless…and…children [as young as]…nine…have been [registered]…Registered 12-year-olds aren’t even rarities…in Wisconsin…a district attorney did everything he could, and bragged about it, to have a 6-year-old prosecuted and targeted…for “playing doctor.” Some of these children find escape only in suicide…

I’m Sure You Feel Safer Now

New Yorkers are so very fortunate to have brave, dedicated professionals protecting them from dangerous criminals:

…Catherina G. Scalia, 47…was arrested after she…gave [an] undercover cop a massage…without a license…She’s also accused of unauthorized practice…[and an] offer for additional services…Scalia disputed the charges at her arraignment…”They keep framing me. I am broke. I am jobless. All these arrests are entrapment”…When CNN…profiled Scalia and her hot dog truck a year ago, Scalia asserted she was a stripper, not a prostitute…

Bullies With Badges

…Anael Ibanez…[was arrested] for distributing pornographic material and exploiting prostitution [in] Syracuse [Utah]…the only ones who actually watched the sex show [Ibanez arranged] were a couple of undercover police officers and…[a man they] charged with sexual solicitation. Four sex show performers also were arrested…and…charged…SWAT team members were dispatched to clear the theater…[they] broke a glass door…to gain entry…Ibanez works for a janitorial company…and had access to the theater after hours…

Yes, they dispatched a SWAT team to bust adults having sex.

Sleazier Than Thou (TW3 #18)

May must be Ashley Madison’s slowest month, because it’s always the one in which owner Noel Biderman makes some claim like this: “…its membership registration spiked [last] week following Sunday’s…season finale of The Simpsons…[Biderman] said new registrations surged a whopping 230% this week after…a frustrated Marge Simpson stumbled onto…’Sassymadison.com’…”

First They Came for the Hookers…

If prohibitionists really want to “rescue” sex workers, why do they keep trying to stop us from getting other jobs?

In June 2011…Reema Bajaj…was accused of prostitution…in June 2012 [she] pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor charge…Although she kept her Illinois law license…she…had trouble attracting clients. Earlier this month, she dissolved her law practice…and…sued three local lawyers: a former prosecutor who worked on her case, Calvin Campbell; one of her own former defense attorneys, Timothy Johnson, who is now law partners with Campbell; and a “John Doe” defendant. Bajaj alleges that the three lawyers circulated nude photos of her, causing her emotional distress and hurting her ability to generate business…

I hope she wins, restarts her practice and specializes in defending sex workers, since she knows firsthand how difficult it is for us to get justice in America.

Where are the Victims? (TW3 #28)

Because you know, “false consciousness” and all:

To hear the testimony of the women who worked for them, Vincent George Sr. and his son were not the violent and manipulative sex traffickers that prosecutors described, but, rather, the heads of a happy extended family…Bridgette Carr, director of the Human Trafficking Clinic at the University of Michigan Law School, said it was…“not shocking” that women would assist the defense, and may actually be evidence of how effective the pimps were in manipulating the women…

Worse Than I Thought

The cancer has now spread to Tennessee:

…12 new laws…include harsher criminal penalties on traffickers…and the creation of a state trafficking task force…a statewide study in 2011 documented incidents of sex trafficking… authorities will be able to prosecute those paying for sex – the “johns” – as traffickers…[thus allowing] for…termination of parent rights…

Read that again: Tennessee is going to call clients “traffickers”, charge them with a felony and steal their children. In other words, they’re going to punish fake “child trafficking” with the real, state-sanctioned variety.

Creating the Crisis

The largest study on domestic violence ever done demonstrates that the MRAs were much closer to the truth than the feminists: men and women commit partner abuse at roughly equal rates. 23% of women and 19.3% of men have been physically abused by a partner, while 28.3% of women and 21.6% of men have physically abused one. Lifetime rates of abuse are higher among women, while past-year rates are higher among men. 41% of women and 43% of men reported emotional abuse. Motives were similar in both sexes. Here’s a short summary of the findings; the full report is available at the first link.

Follow Your Bliss (TW3 #50)

Being an official busybody for an oppressive regime is hard work!

Despite China’s ongoing sexual revolution… anyone found to be producing and distributing obscene material can get three years in jail…[this] requires many pornography censors…[like] 70-year-old Liu Xiaozhen…[who said] “You have to watch even if you don’t want to”…

What a Week! (TW3 #52)

As bad as American prohibitionists are, at least most of them aren’t murderous:

Unidentified gunmen have shot dead at least seven women and five men at a [Baghdad] brothel…[near] where alcohol shops were attacked last week…The attackers apparently…[used] silenced weapons, as residents…said they did not see or hear anything out of the ordinary…Zayouna is an upscale…district…where a number of brothels have opened in recent years…

Between the Ears (TW3 #133)

…Ethicists and feminists are concerned [about]…a drug that can amp up female sexual longings…Male-sexual-enhancement drugs…are about…improving blood flow to the penis…while research so far suggests that most women need more than mere physical arousal…To stoke female desire with pharmacology, then, you need to get into the brain…some feminists anticipate that the marketing of these drugs will pathologize normal losses of desire…when in fact…[they] may result from stress or relationship problems that should be addressed in other ways…

I agree. If female desire were mostly about hormones, placebos wouldn’t be as effective as testosterone; in fact, they are often more so. Nor is this a problem limited to women, as Dr. Marty Klein discusses in the linkback.

Banishment

Florida’s “sex offender” residence restrictions are so bad that a small, isolated settlement named “Miracle Village” has become a haven for them. Meanwhile, David Vitter (who has been the center of several sex scandals) is trying to keep them from getting food stamps:

…This…will…contribute to the continuing cycle of trapping the same individuals in the criminal justice system. All released felons have difficulty gaining employment…those with sexual offenses face even more impediments due to the public registry and the myriad of restrictions placed upon [them]…Studies…show that, denied benefits, there is a higher rate of return to drug use and crime…anything gained financially from a reduction in the food stamp program will just show up as increased prison costs…

But wait, there’s more!

A network of…internet companies is mining data from sex-offender sites…[for] an extortion racket [which demands] up to $499 for removing names…and other personal data…SORArchives.com, Offendex.com and Onlinedetective.com did not take down individual profiles after payments were made and launched online harassment campaigns against those who balked at financial demands or filed complaints…the websites [also] list individuals…who no longer are required to register and…include names and addresses of people who never have been arrested or convicted of a sex crime. The…operators ensure that anyone in their databases can be found easily [via] Google…[and] have prominently profiled specific individuals, published their home and e-mail addresses, posted photographs of their relatives and copied their Facebook friends onto the…websites…

Original Sin

Pope Francis…urged mobsters…to abandon their evil ways, particularly…trafficking rackets…”I think of the great pain suffered by men, women and even children, exploited by so many mafias”…He decried the crime syndicates for “making them do work that makes them slaves, prostitution”…Francis…has branded human trafficking as one of the most terrible evils plaguing the world…

Big Sister (TW3 #317)

This pro-censorship Guardian article isn’t nearly as interesting as Jezebel’s response to it, written by revolting neofeminist toady “Lapdoug” Barry:

There’s a campaign afoot in Iceland to seriously restrict underage access to hardcore porn…the argument that porn is a form of free expression smells…a lot like the sort of bullshit the multibillion-dollar porn industry shovels…the porn industry does not have the interests of Icelands [sic] malleable adolescent minds at heart when it argues that limiting access to its productions is tantamount to government censorship…

The biggest lie of several here is that the porn ban is intended to “protect adolescents”, when in fact it was specifically sold (as part of the Swedish model) to “protect” women. But let’s give Lapdoug’s argument the benefit of the doubt; if he’ll agree to let his writings be censored by a government agency for a trial period (twenty years or so should suffice), I’m sure people who respect human agency far more than he does can be counted on to give a nationwide censorship regime all the consideration it deserves.

The More the Better (TW3 #317)

Are people really so stupid they believe it’s totally different now?

[James Lipton]…of…Inside the Actors Studio used to be a pimp…the youthful 86-year-old admitted…that he had pandered “a whole bordello”…in 1950s Paris…”The French mecs didn’t exploit women. They represented them, like agents”…Lipton…added that…he was against people paying for sex. “I think if you can’t earn it on your own, then you don’t deserve it.”

Because obviously celebrities are morally superior beings qualified to judge what others “deserve”.

Objectification Overruled (TW3 #320)

Pathetic middle-class white British feminists are at it again:

The UK’s main supermarkets could be exposed to legal challenges…if they refuse to remove magazines and newspapers with naked women on their covers…In a letter published in the Guardian, 14 equalities lawyers say…retailers are vulnerable…under sexual discrimination law…A campaign launched by UK Feminista and…Object aims to put pressure on Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Asda and WHSmith to remove lads’ mags from their shelves…[they] threaten…a test case and will support employees uncomfortable with images of naked and near-naked women…

This is a load of rubbish and they know it; such a precedent would mean that anyone could bring a case against any product she finds “offensive”, for example Catholics suing to have birth control removed. But lest you think this idiocy is limited to Britain:

…the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has unanimously passed a proposal…to ban the display of bikini-clad mannequins outside lingerie shops…With Mumbai recording the second highest number of rapes in the country, [law sponsor Ritu] Tawade said the display of inadequately clothed mannequins was indecent and could lead to “wrong acts” by men…corporator Sunil Prabhu backed her…”I agree…that such scantily clad mannequins do invite unwanted attention of men and the resulting surge of sex crimes”…

Schadenfreude (TW3 #320)

Yet another rescue industry “hero” is exposed as a con artist: “[Andy Conner]…the [Washington state] Sheriff’s Deputy who funded a charity to help young women escape prostitution…is on administrative leave while the King County Sheriff’s Office investigates allegations that thousands of dollars may have gone missing…”

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That Was the Week That Was (#321)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged A War for Peace, activism, Africa, Against Their Will, Arizona, Australia, avails laws, Backwards into the Future, bad customers, BDSM, brothels, Cambodia, Canada, censorship, cops, cult of the child, dirty, disability, disease, diversion programs, drugs, East Asia, end demand, evidence, Georgia, Good News-Bad News, Hard Numbers, hysteria, India, Islam, law, Madonna/whore, Malawi, Neither Addiction nor Epidemic, neofeminism, New Jersey, New Zealand, No Other Option, One Born Every Minute, Original Sin, Oscillation, pimps, politicians, porn, Profit from Panic, prohibitionist myths, Prudish Pedants, psychology, rape, rescue industry, sex rays, sex work is work, South Africa, streetwalkers, Tennessee, The Crumbling Dam, The Immunity Syndrome, The More the Better, Think of the Children!, Traffic Jam, vaccines, violence vs. sex workers, What If They Threw a Party?, yin and yang, Zimbabwe on May 25, 2013| 31 Comments »

If they would just remove the police from skulking around and arresting those of us who just want to earn a living from a mutually consenting activity, they could actually focus on these terrible things. – Rachel Wotton

Old Folks At Home

Damned amateurs are always screwing everything up:

A man, 75, and a woman, 66, suspected of using cocaine and running a prostitution ring out of their apartments…have been arrested after residents complained about vagrants, drunks and addicts…James Parham and his neighbor Cheryl Chaney…admitted providing prostitutes — mostly young women with crack cocaine addictions — to…younger neighbors…

Backwards into the Future

The Commission for Gender Equality…called for…decriminalisation of sex work [in South Africa]…[CGE commissioner Janine] Hicks said decriminalisation would…allow sex workers to report brothel owners who were involved in trafficking or hiring children…

Meanwhile, in Malawi:

…Centre for Human Rights Education, Advice and Assistance (CHREAA)…in association with the Southern Africa Litigation Centre, recently conducted…research that shows…a vast majority of sex workers are regularly abused [robbed and raped] by the Police…[executive director Victor] Mhango said…sex workers…are at liberty to call the toll free number 8000333 where they can be assisted… “Sex workers deserve to be protected by the law just like any other Malawian as enshrined in the Constitution,” he said…

Against Their Will

Here’s the way rescue industry group International Justice Mission tells it:

…General Sun Ro…led his team of police and IJM support staff to rescue these young women from a brothel where they had been sold and exploited for sex. “You are now no longer oppressed,” General Sun Ro began, urging the young women to take advantage of the opportunities, vocational training programs and aftercare services available to them as sex trafficking survivors…

And here’s the reality. Obviously, the general doesn’t consider beatings and gang rape by the police to be forms of oppression.

Prudish Pedants

…a federal district court in Georgia ruled that a series of stories written or edited by Frank McCoy were obscene, and thus he violated 18 USC 1462 in “transporting” obscene works…the subject matter is…definitely…extreme [“the sexual abuse, rape, torture and murder of children”]…but…McCoy…had a distinguished English professor testify on his behalf that the works had “serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value”…the judge disagreed…

Oscillation

Another example of how neofeminists play fast and loose with the facts:

A few months ago, a post…[stated] that [when]…junior high…students were asked what they would do if they woke up “transformed into the opposite sex,” the girls showed mixed emotions but the boys [said]…”Kill myself”…the source [was]…The Gendered Society by Michael Kimmel…[whose] reference [was] a 1984 book called The Longest War: Sex Differences in Perspective…the claim…seemed to have no basis at all, other than one comment…The Gendered Society…briefly acknowledges that women’s earnings are driven down by family-related work interruptions–but still treats gender gaps in pay and advancement almost entirely as…discrimination…[it] uncritically repeats tales…that girls’ self-esteem “plummets” in junior high school–without mentioning that they have been strongly disputed…by mainstream psychologists…The Gendered Society also [claims that] the United States…”has the highest rate of reported rape in the industrial world–about eighteen times higher than England”…[but] according to United Nations statistics, in 2010 the reported rape rate in the U.S.–27.3 per 100,000 people–was slightly lower than in England and Wales, at 28.8 per 100,000…if it is indeed the most balanced gender studies textbook available–which may well be true–that says a lot about the rest.

The Immunity Syndrome (TW3 #19)

…the “sex superbug” that “could be worse than AIDS” which was supposedly “found in Hawaii [and] California” turns out to be just another media-promoted terror story. “The [gonorrhea] super-strain…[which] infected a female Japanese sex worker in 2011…has been found nowhere else,” [reported Jonathan Weiss of MedicalDaily.com] The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have affirmed that the bacterium has failed to appear anywhere else in the world beyond the single case in Japan…

The Crumbling Dam (TW3 #20)

This includes far too much “whore as victim” rhetoric, but it’s a step:

[Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario] Police Chief, Bob Davies…[announced] it will be new police policy to not release the names and addresses of individuals involved in prostitution type charges. Moreover, the police department will make a major shift away from enforcement against women (or men) involved in the sex trade. Instead officers will be trained to engage and identify the underlying factors that drive women into a lifestyle of selling sex and then connect them to agencies…which can assist individuals out of the sex industry…

Traffic Jam (TW3 #21)

…Project ROSE—a collaboration between the Phoenix Police Department…and a number of local service organizations–[conducted] a three day raid targeting sex workers…Advocates have distributed “know your rights” information amongst communities who may be affected…[and] a…protest…[was held] Thursday May 16…in front of the “command post” at Bethany Bible Church…Arrestees…with no prior arrests for sex work, no outstanding warrants, and no…drugs at the time of arrest…have the option of “diversion” to Project ROSE or incarceration on a prostitution charge…[which] in Arizona can be a death sentence…

Few arrestees qualify for the “diversion” program, and of those who do only a third complete it.

Think of the Children! (TW3 #23)

“A weekend festival in [Baltimore] that promised classes on bondage, role play and other sexual techniques has been canceled after the new operators of the Clarence H. Du Burns Arena decided the erotic exposition was not appropriate at a facility also used for children’s sports practices…” Obviously, the sex rays emitted from all these dirty people would contaminate the structure, inducing the dreaded Premature Sexualization in the innocent little moppets who entered the building later.

Good News, Bad News (TW3 #30)

Rebecca Davies…and…other sex workers and supporters…will protest against the 2011 Prostitution Bill which is expected to be re-introduced and to demand full decriminalisation…Ms Davies said…the Bill would make WA the most dangerous place in Australia to be a sex worker…licensing, where employee’s full names were available for clients to see, could risk their safety and privacy…only about 10 per cent of sex workers would comply…Sex workers had to advertise a landline phone number, not a mobile, as one of the conditions – a restriction not placed on any other industry…

The More The Better (TW3 #32)

They are likely Hamilton [New Zealand]’s biggest brothel keepers, with 500 girls on their books in the seven years since they began their foray into the sex industry. Tattooed, shady characters with underworld connections? Far from it. She’s the secretary of the PTA and…he’s a well-spoken former musician…the pair own a small…software development business…Hamilton’s two best-known brothels, and soon, a private swingers club…

Zimbabwe (TW3 #33)

This article about Zimbabwe’s repeated “crackdowns” on whores (and the way they keep netting amateurs) is mostly familiar ground and silly stereotypes, but does include two points of interest: one, that “legislator Tabitha Khumalo has…threatened to expose fellow legislators who have gallivanted with those she calls ‘pleasure managers’ if they refuse to back [decriminalization]”; and two, that the Open Society Foundation’s 2012 study of the six nations with similar policies of “harassing and [physically] abusing…sex workers” included Zimbabwe along with Kenya, Namibia, Russia, South Africa, and [wait for it] the United States.

Profit from Panic (TW3 #40)

Hey, kids, be the first in your neighborhood to be “trafficked”! Have fun! Win prizes!

Students at Colonial Middle school [in Memphis, Tennessee] have spent the last few weeks learning about the growing problem…of sex trafficking including prostitution…“I think its [sic] appropriate for middle school because if you look at the statistics of human trafficking the majority of people that get pulled in are between the ages of 12 to 14”…[said teacher Jennifer Shiberou]…

What If They Threw a Party and Nobody Came? (TW3 #42)

…In Australia, which began use of the HPV vaccine in 2007, cases of genital warts in young women aged 12 – 26 dropped 59 percent, and 39 percent for men…The…vaccine caused quite the uproar here in the States. The usual antivaxxers hated it because, well, it’s a vaccine, but there was also mainstream fear-mongering, as well as being demonized by the conservatives, who said it would lead to promiscuity. That last is pure nonsense; in fact, a new study shows no significant increase in sexual activity in young women who have had the vaccine over those who have not…

No Other Option (TW3 #46)

Here’s another good interview with the amazing Australian sex worker Rachel Wotton, who specializes in disabled clients and founded the charity Touching Base. Its only sour note is at the end, where interviewer Wendy Syfret seems determined to drag “trafficking and degradation” mythology into what is otherwise a very positive piece.

Hard Numbers (TW3 #311)

…Steph Key…[introduced] another attempt to decriminalise sex work after her previous bill failed by one vote in November. The new legislation would give sex workers and their employers the same access to the WorkCover scheme as other…businesses…retains laws that make sex work by a person aged under 18, or with a client under that age, illegal…wipes clean past sex work convictions …makes it illegal to discriminate against a person who is or has been a sex worker…[and] removes laws against living off the earnings of a prostitute…

According to Because I’m a Whore, this bill is much better than the last one and has the support of sex workers; if passed, South Australia would be the third place in the world to have true decriminalization.

Original Sin

The “Trafficking in America Task Force” looks at first like any other silly rescue industry NGO, but a little digging reveals some really bizarre stuff, including the assertion that the true cause of “sex trafficking” is PORN!

Statistics show that many times it starts with pornography…One look as a child, continued looks as a teenagers, perhaps buying sex for the first time as a young adult, expecting your female partner, girl friend, or wife to act as the prostituted women act. When they don’t your relationship turns to self gratification rather than intimacy. You ay [sic] turn to violent sex with those you buy…Then…you want to pay for younger victims — and — you — are — stuck — in a — cycle…when you look at pictures of women you are branding us as objects for your own pleasure, objects of no value. We are human beings…Jesus said, “I did not give you a spirit of fear — but a spirit of power, and of love, and of SOUND MIND.” Ask him to help you…Addiction to pornography is a type of emotional and mental trafficking…

A War for Peace (TW3 #313)

I’m beginning to think her mother is right:

…Amina Tyler…passed through heavy security and checkpoints to enter the city of Kairouan, where police were preventing hardline conservative Islamists from holding an annual conference. There she unveiled her bleach [sic] blonde hair and cutoff jeans, scrawled “FEMEN” on the wall of a cemetery near the city’s main mosque, and attempted to take off her clothes…The protest enraged local residents who converged on her, and police took her into custody…Her mother, Wafa, [said] her daughter needed help and was being treated by a psychiatrist…

One Born Every Minute (TW3 #319)

…Shatabdi Saha, a banker…with the Usha Multipurpose Cooperative Society…conducts…sessions…[in spotting counterfeit] because…many customers had started palming off fake notes…for their services…”If customers give them counterfeit notes, it’s a great loss for them,” [said] DMSC secretary Bharati Dey…unlike others, sex workers cannot go to the police to report such fake notes. “The police will start harassing them instead of helping them”…

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic (TW3 #319)

…the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) announced it will no longer fund research based on DSM…for the simple reason that [it] is irrelevant to determining the cause and treatment of psychological problems…it…doesn’t point to the actual causes…that drive and maintain disorders…[its] categories are not discrete…and…it…fails to account for comorbidity…this fifth edition is just moving a few deck chairs on a sinking ship…Soon we’ll need to…lower the lid, hammer it down, and bury the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

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Posted in Current Events, Perception, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, crypto-moralism, dehumanization, dirty, ethics, gangs, hysteria, law, Madonna/whore, nanny state, Original Sin, psychology, rescue industry, stereotypes, underage on March 18, 2013| 47 Comments »

The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought. – Emma Goldman

As I have often pointed out, many of the beliefs presented as “political positions” these days are actually religions, and that includes those which sell themselves as “scientific” or “atheist”. Any organized group which insists on “rigid adherence to a morality and interpretation of reality…derived entirely from knowledge revealed in sacred scriptures by [its] founders…[and] must be accepted unquestioningly by adherents” is a religion, no matter what it calls itself or whether it has a definable deity; it is based in faith, not science or logic, and any attempt to understand and deal with it as anything other than a religion is doomed to failure. This is why the “sex trafficking” myth is so pernicious; its adherents believe in it just as Christians believe in the divinity of Jesus, and no weight of evidence is sufficient to convince them otherwise.

I chose Christianity as the subject of that analogy because “sex trafficking” mythology is an outgrowth of Protestant theology; as Yvonne Zimmerman points out in her book Other Dreams of Freedom, “the theoretical basis of US government anti-trafficking efforts derives directly from Protestant theology and traditional ideas of what she calls ‘sexually pure and pious womanhood’.” The Salvation Army was one of the earliest and most aggressive promoters of the “white slavery” panic (the first iteration of “sex trafficking” hysteria), and is still beating that drum (pardon the pun) today; furthermore, the myth-narrative itself is clearly a development from the Satanic Panic, which was itself merely a recrudescence of the intermittent witch-panics so common in post-Reformation Europe. At first the “trafficking” fetishists were careful to disguise their campaign as a secular one in order to forge an alliance with neofeminists, but as signs of the disintegration of their manufactured hysteria have multiplied in the past year, they have grown more desperate and careless, exposing the fundamentalist Puritanism which underlies the whole paradigm.

Then on February 28^th, the anti-whore crusade experienced a major setback when funding to the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons was sharply reduced as part of more general (but still extremely superficial) cuts in US government spending. For a short while it looked as though the Trafficking Victims Protection Act might not be re-authorized at all, but at the last minute it was added by Senator Patrick Leahy as a rider to the deceptively-named Violence Against Women Act of 2013, whose passage (despite hysterical claims by whitebread feminists) was a political certainty. While this extended the unnatural life of the War on Whores until 2017 (note that date), one wouldn’t know it from this article by Janice Shaw Crouse and Brenda Zurita of the conservative Christian group Concerned Women for America, which clearly reveals the true sin-punishing motive behind the “anti-trafficking” cult:

Do senators and representatives even know…[that the bill] they just voted for…included an amendment with egregious problems[?] The two worst ones are draconian cuts to the…TIP Office…and the…decriminalization of prostitution for minors…The once vaunted TIP Office is now on its way to becoming nothing more than white noise…Ambassador-at-Large John Miller fought hard to protect the office from attempts to dilute its authority and its mission to hold countries accountable in their efforts to end human trafficking through prosecutions and victim protections…[and] the U.S. became the world leader in ending modern-day slavery. Leahy’s…amendment hands the regional bureaus of the State Department the means to undermine the significance of the annual Trafficking in Persons report…The TIP Office was established to be the central location to direct the United States government’s anti-trafficking efforts. By dividing that authority, real leadership will be impossible …[the amendment also] slashes the TIP Office funding by more than 70 percent from $7 million to $2 million. This will make it impossible for the TIP Office to fulfill its statutory mandate as the agency responsible for leading and coordinating the Federal government’s anti-trafficking efforts. Without a strong TIP Office, the TVPA will never be faithfully implemented and trafficking issue decisions will inevitably be subordinated to such traditional agency concerns as maintaining good relations with foreign governments…

On the domestic side…senators and representatives voted to endorse the decriminalization of prostitution for minors in the United States. Did they do this because there are many, many minors being arrested for prostitution? According to the latest Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Reports, there were only 763 arrests of minors…for “prostitution and commercialized vice” crimes in 2011…the DOJ will encourage states to prohibit the charging or prosecution of a minor for engaging in or attempting to engage in prostitution. While this sounds like a compassionate thing to do, it may actually lead to an increase in the number of minors in prostitution…gangs are using prostitution to make money…While pimping would still be illegal…imagine what will happen to minors who think that prostituting is a good way to make money…How many of them will join up with a gang or a pimp to sell their bodies and then facing the horrific reality of the decision…Many will see their pimps as their boyfriend [sic] and will not self-identify as a victim [sic] of sex trafficking. When law enforcement does not have the power to arrest and through that arrest get the minor into a rehabilitation program, minors may remain trapped. When the judicial system no longer has the authority to keep victims in rehabilitation programs through an arrest charge, the victims will be able to walk away from a shelter anytime they choose. Most will walk right back into the arms of their pimps…

One can practically see these busybodies’ faces turning purple and the veins standing out on their necks. While their anger over the partial defunding and potential marginalization of their Holy Mission is understandable, their real apoplexy is reserved for the idea that without the threat of being manhandled and caged by the Soldiers of the Righteous, thousands of junior Jezebels may voluntarily enter into sex work and not even see that they are helpless victims of dirty, dirty sex!!! And what’s more, without the cudgel of law, girls will be able to make decisions for themselves rather than being forced to endure brainwashing designed to convince them of their sinful, fallen state!

The increasing prevalence of articles like this one, which so transparently emphasize Christian dogma of sexual sin, guilt and punishment, are a welcome development to those who support sex worker rights. The more closely “trafficking” rhetoric is linked to anti-sex, anti-choice Christian demands such as criminalization of abortion and suppression of casual sex, the more non-Christians and moderate Christians will be repelled from it, and the faster the coalition which has driven the hysteria for a decade will collapse.

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