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That Was the Week That Was (#312)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Obituary, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 23, 2013| 37 Comments »

Humanity has a bad track record of selectively appealing to authority to justify our biases.  –  Andrea Castillo

R.I.P. Harry Reems

Harry ReemsHarry Reems, the first male porn star, died of pancreatic cancer on Tuesday (March 19th) at the age of 65.  For his role in Deep Throat, Reems was convicted in 1976 of “conspiracy to transport obscene material across state lines”, and though that sentence was overturned a year later the stress of the trial drove him to start drinking; he spent the late ‘80s as a homeless alcoholic before sobering up in 1989, then getting married and going into real estate a year later.  Unlike his co-star Linda Lovelace, however, he never regretted his choices or blamed porn for his troubles, and went by his stage name (his birth name was Herbert Streicher) until the end.

Bad Girls

I left out the very rarest, but worst type:  “[Houma, Louisiana] police arrested 15 men…alleging they solicited a prostitute through [Backpage]…one of [two] prostitutes…[was] issued a summons…[but] the other…was not arrested [because she] agreed to be a part of the sting…”  There is absolutely no lower life-form in the whoring ecosystem than a person who collaborates with cops to ensnare others in order to save his or her own worthless hide.

Dr. Schrödinger and His Amazing Pussycat

Andrea Castillo’s “When Science Looks Like Religion” explores the territory discussed in Monday’s comment thread:  When people blindly accept scientific findings which reinforce their irrational beliefs while rejecting equally-valid results which contradict those beliefs, the result is not science but religion.  The last part is doubly germane:  it describes Norwegian social scientists’ knee-jerk denial of all data which contradicts their cultic social constructionism.

micro-drug-dogSecret Squirrel

A new low in intra-family spying:

…Suspicious moms and dads are hiring trained drug detection dogs to sniff out their kids’ drug stash…the RK Agency…[charges] $350…[to] “discreetly perform a thorough inspection of your entire property”…Jeffrey Gardere, a child psychologist …[told] the Today Show… “I don’t know if you can [have a relationship with your kids] if you’re bringing in drug-sniffing dogs”…

Size Matters

According to this post from Dr. Annie Sprinkle, Tracy Elise of Phoenix Goddess Temple has been “deemed…’incompetent’ to go to trial…she will be sent to psych ward and forced to take psychiatric drugs for about 15 months until she’s ‘competent’…I feel that if…sex workers…criticise Tracy Elise…we are in a way colluding with the [police]…and…contributing to the problem, which is exactly what the ‘sex negative society’…wants us to do…”  I totally agree.

The Last Shall Be First

[Arizona] legislators…are attempting to pass legislation that forces transgender people to only use public restrooms…associated with the gender…on their birth certificate…in response to a [Phoenix] …bill…which prohibits gender identity discrimination in public accommodations…

Lupercalia

Dr. Brooke Magnanti on the lessons we can learn from Pompeii:

…women in Ancient Rome [married] sometimes as young as 14…[but] were permitted to own land and houses and have jobs.  Women of the upper classes were educated to a high standard…It’s well known that Pompeii…boasted a large sex industry…and…open attitudes about sexuality and prostitution didn’t hold back other women from achieving…

And if you just can’t get enough of Brooke, here’s a short but wide-ranging interview with her in The Age.Rong Chen

A Broker in Pillage

Once again, the British government displays its dedication to literally robbing sex workers of their life savings:

A Chinese brothel madam and her husband have been ordered to pay back £125,000 within six months or she will face another jail sentence and he will join her…Rong Chen…and her husband Jason Hinton…only [have] £125,000 of realisable assets…[namely] their marital home in…Worcestershire, which…will have to be sold or remortgaged…

Note the weird euphemism “pay back”, implying that the money is refunded to customers; in reality it is split between the police, court and Inland Revenue.

Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs

If politicians’ minds weren’t befuddled by prohibitionist idiocy, they wouldn’t be so confused by wholly predictable outcomes like this:

…Jakarta…has tried…to offer sex workers ways to escape the sex industry…[for] example…sex workers…[given] a dressmaking course…did not return to their villages…but rather…to their old lives in Jakarta…the income from sewing was just too far below sex work…A high ranking health official…[said] it would be better to legalize prostitution; closing Kramat Tunggak would result in the dispersion of prostitution sites to several unidentified locations — making health checkups impossible…Surabaya…is still trying to phase out Dolly, East Java’s famed prostitution site…

But as this second article from the same newspaper explains, closing Dolly would be an economic disaster:

…Dolly…consists of at least 300 brothels…employing thousands of prostitutes…[plus] numerous supporting businesses — clinics, mini markets, sexual enhancement medicine vendors, parking lots, banks, rented houses, Internet cafes, small restaurants…University of Indonesia economist Lana Soelistianingsih said that…economic transactions triggered by prostitution [alone] could contribute around Rp 1.5 trillion to Surabaya’s gross domestic product…

Oscillation

Family Research Council…fellow Pat Fagan…claims that Eisenstadt v. Baird, the 1972 case that overturned a Massachusetts law banning the distribution of contraceptives to unmarried people, may rank “as the single most destructive decision in the history of the Court”…because it effectively meant that “single people have the right to engage in sexual intercourse…Society never gave young people that right, functioning societies don’t do that, they stop it, they punish it, they corral people, they shame people, they do whatever”…

Fokkens twinsReal People (TW3 #21)

…Amsterdam’s oldest prostitutes have retired after more than 50 years each in the business.  Louise and Martine Fokkens, 70, have decided they are too old…Louise…says arthritis now makes some sexual positions “too painful”…and Martine…admits she finds it hard to attract punters – though one elderly man still has his weekly sadomasochism session…The pair were the subject last year of a documentary Meet The Fokkens and they have written a book called The Ladies Of Amsterdam…

First They Came for the Hookers…

As I pointed out recently, Nevada isn’t remotely pro-whore:  “Two [Nevada] state Senators introduced bills…[to] regulate strip clubs…Mark Manendo…wants to charge …a $10 per customer fee…[to fund] programs related to domestic violence…Barbara Cegavske…would ban anyone less than 21-years-old from performing…”

The Public Eye

Caty Simon of Tits and Sass interviews well-known activist Audacia Ray on the Red Umbrella Project, speaking to the media, condom criminalization, the Long Island Killer and why sex workers need to ally with harm reduction and anti-drug war activists.

Monkey Business

Baboons have been observed keeping dogs as pets:

Birth of a Movement (TW3 #39)

French sex workers continue to push back against increased criminalization:

10 years ago, the Internal Security Act (LSI) penalized public solicitation, including so-called “passive solicitation”…[this] has reinforced the isolation of sex workers, relegating them to more remote places where they are…more prone to violence…since the introduction of the LSI, “the conduct of the police deteriorated sharply.  Their attitude is less respectful and humiliation increased…their protective function…has virtually disappeared and [they are]…most often perceived as strictly punitive”…Médecins du Monde demand the immediate repeal of the offense of soliciting…[and] rejects any proposal to penalize customers…

Women’s Rights Minister Najat Belkacem responded in a typically clueless manner; though she promised repeal of the law, she also made the absurd claim that “90% of [sex workers] are victims of human trafficking” and refused to back down on her scheme to impose the Swedish model.

King of the Hill

Portland, Oregon’s bid for the “largest trafficking hub” title isn’t a new one, but now they’re claiming that this is “proven” not only by highways, but by rivers:

…Portland [has]…one of the largest sex industries of any U.S. city…human trafficking…is a growing problem in Oregon due in part to the traffic permitted by Interstates 5 and I-84 [and] the Willamette and Columbia rivers…the problem [is] one that’s inextricably linked to gangs…“When people think of prostitution, their first instinct is a girl walking on the street,” [police spokesman Pete] Simpson says.  “They’re not thinking about the fact that she’s being traded as a commodity, sold as a product”…The change [in strategy] humanizes the victims…

Simpson robs women of agency, then claims he’s “humanizing” whores who were already human before he turned them into things to be acted upon.  It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.An Intimate Life

Accredited Whores

Charlotte Shane’s review of An Intimate Life: Sex, Love, and My Journey As A Surrogate Partner, the memoirs of sex surrogate Cheryl Greene (of The Sessions fame), covers much the same ground as my column, and that’s a good thing; the more of us there are speaking out against these artificial lines drawn between types of sex work, the more people will finally get it.

Like a Horse and Carriage

I’m glad to see that others are recognizing that “marriage equality” applies just as well to polygamy as it does to same-sex marriage, and are making good arguments for it:

I’m in favor of leaving marriage to the religious institutions, and registering households in whatever configuration people want to live.  If a same-gender couple, or a heterosexual couple, or an elderly couple who can’t have children, or any couple want to be responsible to and for each other, let them.  If three people want to be responsible to and for each other, let them.  If a gay man and his female best friend want to be responsible to and for each other, let them.  Let’s stop worrying about who is screwing who, and just make it easier for people to be responsible in their relationships.

Still More Mentoring

SWOP-NOLA posted these “Client Screening Tips and Helpful Links from a New Orleans Provider”; I already mentioned a few of these, but she provides many more I didn’t know about.

The Joy of Juxtaposition

One would never know that these claims have been repeatedly debunked:

The Georgia attorney general and other law enforcement officials kicked off a public awareness campaign…[which] bears the slogan “Georgia’s not buying it” and includes a [commercial] featuring professional athletes…”We’ll continue to go after the pimps and rescue the victims, but we know that the only way to truly eradicate this evil is by ending the demand,” Attorney General Sam Olens said…It is a problem throughout Georgia, in both urban areas and in small towns and rural areas…

Georgia is indeed “buying it”, wholesale.  I’m sure millions in federal grants and an excuse to further erode civil rights have nothing to do with all this.

Skin To Skin

An Australian sex therapist argues that disability insurance should cover the hiring of sex workers:

Sexual expression is a fundamental part of being human…Decades of research have uncovered the many benefits of sex, which include physical health, quality of life, psychological well-being and sexual self-esteem.  Unfortunately, because of social taboos and hypocrisy…barriers are created to stop people from fully realising these benefits…Some people with disabilities have limited opportunities for sexual relationships because they lack privacy and are dependent on others…Maggie in Albany

Comfort Zone

The video of the Albany Law School symposium is now available!  If you don’t have the time or inclination to watch the whole thing (4 hours), my part runs from minute 170 to 185.

An Ounce of Prevention (TW3 #310)

Earlier this month, doctors announced that a baby had been cured of…HIV…Now…it appears that 14 adults have…been successfully treated…70 people…[received] combination antiretroviral therapy (cART)…much sooner than…normal…[because] all [were] diagnosed…early…they…stuck to the [regimen] for an average of three years…[but then] stopped…for various reasons…Normally, HIV will return when patients stop taking their ARVs.  But this time…14…patients…were functionally cured…

Hard Numbers (TW3 #311)

Apparently, the proposed legislative reform in South Australia isn’t quite decriminalization (though it’s a lot closer to it than anything we’ll see in the US anytime soon):  “…it makes special provisions for sex work such as special licensing, laws about safe sex and possibly restrictions on location…once a ‘reform’ law has been passed the chances of getting better legislation in the near future drop to zero.  So many people feel it’s better to stay with a bad situation and hope to get good reform rather than settle for an unsatisfactory ‘improvement’…”

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Skin To Skin

Posted in Perception, Philosophy, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on February 17, 2013| 48 Comments »

This essay first appeared on Cliterati on January 27th; I have modified it only slightly so as to fit the format of this blog.  I figured it might be a good idea to republish at least some of my Cliterati essays here so they can be discovered by future readers in the index.

Harlow rhesus monkeyFew people would deny the importance of skin-to-skin contact in the psychological, emotional and even physical health of the newborn infant; study after study since Harlow’s seminal work with Rhesus monkeys in the 1950s have demonstrated that even if all of a baby’s physical needs are met clinically and dispassionately, it will not thrive in the same way as one whose bare flesh is pressed against that of its mother.  Indeed, in some cases an infant deprived of this contact will actually sicken and lose weight.  As time goes on, the need becomes less critical; adults can survive without it for much longer periods than babies, and some people manage to go years without touching the naked skin of another person.  But though an adult deprived of such contact is not likely to die, the effect can still be quite harmful; despite the denials of prudes and others who wish to control sexuality, physical intimacy with others is indeed a basic human need, and denying people the right to obtain it from consenting partners is a cruelty verging on barbarism.

In some countries, these statements would be wholly uncontroversial and it would be difficult to find a health professional, lay person or even politician who disagreed with them.  But in others (especially the United States and United Kingdom) the idea of sex as more closely akin to food, sleep and shelter than to television watching is a politically unpopular one, and I won’t be at all surprised to see comments insisting that sex is no more vital to health than candy.  I’m afraid I must politely disagree with them in advance; even in my private life I’ve seen too many examples of the erratic behavior of men long deprived of sex to ignore it, and as a sex worker I was privileged to be a regular witness to the profound restorative effects of simple human touch.  The power was demonstrated to me most dramatically after Hurricane Katrina, when the male population in New Orleans outnumbered the female by a substantial margin and many a client was willing to pay me just to hold and touch him gently, without anything a literal-minded person would describe as “sex”.

For most healthy, socially-adept adults – especially women – the distinction is at best an academic one, because they have little or no trouble securing voluntary sex partners on a regular (or at least occasional) basis.  But this is not so for everyone; some people (a highly disproportionate fraction of them male) have a great deal of trouble attracting partners willing to give them sex for the usual “socially acceptable” reasons such as love, lust, gratitude or even pity, leaving them unable to obtain it except by purchase.  And if a society criminalizes that option (or creates so many impediments to commercial sex that it might as well be illegal), even that route is closed to the man who is too afraid of the police or social censure to take the risk.

wheelchair guy with chickBecause of the movie The Sessions and the news of retired madam Becky Adams’ plan to open a brothel for the disabled, the topic of sex work and disability is a trending one right now; I’ve probably seen more articles on the subject in the last two months than I had in the preceding two years.  And while I think this is an extremely important subject, I’ve written about it elsewhere and there are some very good charities (and in some countries, even government agencies) working diligently to raise public consciousness on the matter so that the skeptical can be helped to recognize that disabled people have the same need for intimacy as everyone else.  What I’d like to call your attention to now is a fact that may seem obvious, yet tends to get lost in the shuffle whenever the topic comes up for discussion:  not all disabilities are physical.  In my first essay on the subject over two years ago, I primarily discussed physical disabilities such as paralysis, blindness, cerebral palsy and even extreme obesity.  But in the months that followed the majority of men who wrote to thank me for speaking up for them, either in the comments or via email, suffered from “invisible” disabilities such as autism, stuttering, schizophrenia or even crippling social anxiety.  Like those with more obvious problems they found it difficult or even impossible to interact with women in the way most men take for granted, and as a result relied on sex workers for that contact.  A number of them asked my advice in finding the right sex worker for their needs, and one corresponded with me about his plans to travel to Nevada to lose his virginity in a legal brothel, and shared his joy with me afterward.

If someone were to seriously argue that it was wrong to pay for food, and that the restaurant business was by its very nature exploitative and demeaning, we would dismiss him as a crank or a lunatic; if a politician were to propose laws against the buying and selling of shelter, clothing, entertainment, medical care or other needs he would be ridiculed in the press and his chances for re-election would be seriously in doubt.  Yet sex workers are attacked thus every day; our agency is denied, our clients and employees are demonized, our profession is ridiculed and the very real social value of our work is dismissed.  And though we ourselves are the chief victims of this persecution, we should never forget that there are others as well: those people who rely upon us to provide a basic human need which, if not strictly necessary for mere biological survival, is nonetheless vital to make life worthwhile.

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That Was the Week That Was (#52)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 29, 2012| 19 Comments »

How can people reasonably be expected to conform their behavior to the law when it is impossible for them to figure out what actions it proscribes until after they’ve been arrested and prosecuted?  –  Jacob Sullum

mega-brothelWhat a Week!

It looks like prohibitionists are getting more desperate:

A car bomb was defused in…[the] parking lot…[of]  Paradise, one of Spain’s largest legal brothels…masked men sped up to the brothel in two cars.  A man got out of one…and shouted he was leaving behind a car with a bomb in the back…it took a bomb squad several hours to deactivate the device…Town Mayor Sonia Martinez said she would take action to try and close Paradise, because it “seriously damages the image of the town”…

Welcome To Our World

This is exactly why most whores in legalization regimes refuse to register:

…In a piece titled, “The gun owner next door: What you don’t know about the weapons in your neighborhood“, the [New York] Journal News [published] the names and addresses of local residents who are licensed to own handguns…[in] Westchester [and] Rockland…counties…The article includes an interactive map…

Nor is this the only lesson the anti-gun crowd could learn from sex work legalization regimes; those who have studied them could explain to Sarah O’Leary that when the police are allowed to “regulate” something, corruption and abuse are the inevitable results:

…It’s unrealistic to think we can get the estimated 300 million guns off the streets…Lawful gun owners…are not the ones who endanger the masses of us.  The ones who use massive amounts of ammo against innocents do…If we used law enforcement venues…to regulate gun owners’ access to ammunition, we would greatly limit the unstable person determined to commit mass murder…Require gun owners to log on to a centralized government website to order their ammo, then pick it up at their local police stations…the only places where anyone can legally buy ammunition. Put limits on how much ammunition can be purchased at any given time, and over any given period…

The density of ignorance in this article is truly mind-boggling.  O’Leary imagines “mass murderers” use more ammo in a spree than target shooters use in an afternoon, that police are incorruptible, that a centralized database is a good thing (see article directly above) and that people can’t make their own ammo; in fact her level of ignorance approaches that of sex work prohibitionists, and that’s staggering indeed.

Backward, Turn Backward

In the profoundly perverse minds of “trafficking” fanatics, teaching someone to keep herself safe or work more efficiently is a “crime”:

…Police say 25-year-old Emilie Cook negotiated a $500 deal for herself and the teen to have sex with…an undercover cop.  “[She]…was instructing a 16-year-old runaway on how to conduct prostitution,” said Trooper Melissa Matey with Louisiana State Police.  “The 16-year-old has been taken into custody, and…[Cook] has been booked in the Orleans Parish Prison for trafficking children for sexual purposes…state police is [sic] anticipating more arrests and this case is ongoing…”

Note the pretense that this simple example of mentoring is part of some larger criminal conspiracy.Potential Prostitutes

The Scarlet Letter

A new and revolting twist on “involuntary porn” extortion sites:

Potential Prostitutes  is only the latest sleazy site to wed personal photos to public humiliation…any woman may be be anonymously tagged as a prostitute…in a browsable “offender” database seeded with mugshots of convicted prostitutes.  Entries may be removed by those listed…[for] a hefty removal fee.  Along with Predators Watch, a nearly-identical sister site…it’s part of a growing fad for shakedowns that exploit public records, police mugshots, compromising Facebook photos and other embarrassing personal information…the sites were registered to a P.O. Box in Stockholm, Sweden, in the last few weeks…Its Twitter feed consists only of a burst of links to prostitution stings and scandals from early November.  Status People reports that only 6 percent of its followers are “good”, the rest being fake or inactive accounts…[Ken White of Popehat] writes that…”Courts are still determining application of Section 230 to extortion sites, [but] even the most generous application…wouldn’t apply if…the purveyors of the site were themselves the ones populating it with pictures under the guise of users doing it…Moreover, Section 230 is not a defense to criminal charges. Extortion is a…federal crime…[and if] the site makes deliberately false statements…to extort money, it…may [constitute] fraud…”

Backwards into the Future

Consider how closely this statement from a third-world militocracy resembles American anti-whore rhetoric:

Burma’s new quasi-civilian government has vowed to improve its record on tackling human trafficking…police chief Yam Len Mun…noted that Burma has already moved from tier three to tier two in the [US Trafficking in Persons] report…he said…the first priority for next year should be to educate workers in every factory in the country about the dangers of human trafficking.  Other…measures…include setting up telephone hotlines in border towns…and…[setting] up rehabilitation camps for trafficked workers who have been rescued…

The Mote and the Beam

The US Senate asking someone else to be a “responsible global citizen” is unbelievable hypocrisy, its ignorance is shocking and its embrace of “sex trafficking” is just sad.  But its sending the demand to the wrong corporation is totally hilarious:

The Senate passed a resolution…that calls on the newspaper Village Voice “to act as a responsible global citizen” by taking down its “adult entertainment” section of its classified advertising website…“The numbers are rising, in part because it has become frighteningly simple to order a child prostitute on the Internet…” Sen. Mark Kirk…said…“Just a few clicks on this site easily enables ‘johns’ to purchase children for sex.  Law enforcement believes that the existence of Backpage encourages the recruitment of victims for sexual exploitation because it allows traffickers to operate out of sight from police patrols”…Kirk said that experts estimate that each year as many as 300,000 children are at risk of commercial sexual exploitation in the United States and cited cases where those prosecuted for such crimes have used Backpage.com to advertise…“The profit-first mentality at Village Voice Media, which prioritizes the rights of pimps, not children, must end.”

Size Matters

The Mystic Mother of the Phoenix Goddess Temple was arrested again after investigators said they found her posting ads on backpage.com seeking sex in exchange for cash “donations.”  Tracy Elise, 51, was re-arrested on December 13, fifteen months after her initial arrest for running a suspected brothel.  Elise insists her church was misunderstood because it combines spirituality and sexuality…Prosecutors argue that the Goddess Temple was a ruse for prostitution and even though religion was discussed…that doesn’t change the fact that money was expected after sex…

Posting a new Backpage ad while awaiting trial for prostitution is such an incredibly bad idea, I must assume either the cops are lying or Elise is trying to create a test case.

Presents, Presents, Presents!

Treasury of Great RecipesI receivedjelly babies two extraordinarily generous gifts this week: from Juan Iglesias, a copy of Vincent Price’s highly-regarded 1965 cookbook A Treasury of Great Recipes; and from Dr. Brooke Magnanti,  over a kilogram of jelly babies plus several packets of Parma violets.  Thanks so very much to both of you!
.

Change a Few Words

It’s gratifying when others see the resemblance between decriminalization of drugs and prostitution:  “Now that a couple of states have made it clear that pot is legal within their own borders, it looks like the momentum has shifted on drugs…Perhaps now is a good time to start directing some attention to another prohibition, and that is prostitution…”  While the author buys into “sex trafficking” hysteria and the “dirty whore” myth, he nonetheless recognizes that criminalization creates most of the problems, and that is a good sign for the future.

The Course of a Disease

Though England fought off the Labour Party’s last attempt to persecute sex workers and clients by imposing the tyrannical Swedish Model, the misogynistic puritans who run the party are at it again:  “The government is coming under increasing pressure to…follow…Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland…[in imposing] the so-called Nordic model…”

Feet of Clay

Kristof’s awfulness is becoming so obvious, even the ignorant (such as someone who writes without a hint of sarcasm, “Paul Krugman is right about everything“) recognize him for what he is:

Nick Kristof travels the globe rescuing sex workers by getting them arrested and then attempting to find them jobs in sweatshops…His writing always features morally unambiguous black-and-white heroes and villains.  The heroes are frequently rescuing helpless maidens.  Kristof declines to see complexity in every great crisis he tackles, and largely refuses to acknowledge that money and American “intervention” are frequentlySanta on the moon, courtesy of C. Andrew…the cause of [them]…Kristof’s reliance on anecdote and personal narratives above all else…lead him to deeply stupid conclusions…

The Young and the Brainless

It’s for their own good!  “[On Christmas Day] police arrested three men, 53 women and 16 transvestites for engaging in prostitution across Bangkok…to suppress human trafficking issues during the New Year holidays.  All suspects will be sent to local police stations for further prosecution.”

Metaupdates

Counterfeit Comfort (TW3 #16)

You may remember that when New York wanted to unconstitutionally punish people who had already served their sentences, it simply applied political pressure to get private corporations to do its dirty work for it:

New York State has teamed up with several major online game services to purge another 2,100 accounts held by registered sex offenders…New York’s Electronic Securing and Targeting of Online Predators Act (e-STOP) requires convicted sex offenders to register all of their email addresses, screen names and other online identities with the state.  That information is passed along to sites and services so they can show predators to the door…

Obviously, there’s no possible way guys caught pissing in public or having sex with their girlfriends could ever start new anonymous accounts and not tell Big Brother about it.

Capricious Lusts (TW3 #37)

While Hollywood figures are lining up to climb on the “sex trafficking” bandwagon, Bollywood figures are beginning to support decriminalization:

…Legalising prostitution in India would be a step…to bettering…conditions…Prohibiting all activities related to prostitution…does not seem to be curbing the booming sex trade…Prostitution has been in existence since organised society came into being, and…these women provide services to all existing societies even today.thought police poster  Isn’t it time we give…[them] the respect and dignity they deserve?…

See No Evil (TW3 #51)

…a Montreal jury acquitted  special-effects artist Rémy Couture of “corrupting morals” by creating gory photographs and short films…The government said his images were obscene…

Traffic Jam (TW3 #51)

Another judge acquits “trafficking” witch hunt victims due to a total lack of evidence:

A federal judge…overturned the convictions of three men on sex-trafficking charges…based on the government’s failure to prove the men were part of a single, overarching conspiracy…[and] because the government failed to turn over [to the defendants]…documents [which] showed contradictions in the testimony of the government’s principal witness…The [alleged] victim testified…that she was used as a prostitute…starting at age 12.  But…new evidence…suggests…[she] lied about her age…[and was actually] 18 or 19…

Gorged With Meaning (TW3 #51)

I’ll bet those pearl-clutching Welsh academics didn’t expect this:

…Former madam Becky Adams, who is taking part in a Swansea University project examining youngsters in the sex trade, said that the market was almost flooded with people trying to pay their way through university…“The market is almost flooded with them…An hour used to be £150 in the 90s and now you can find an hour for £70 or £80.  That is a result of supply and demand because there are so many more people at it.  And you cannot just blame the Eastern Europeans…”

This Week in 2010 and 2011

Beside the original “Presents” post and my previous columns for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day, this week also featured two columns about whore goddesses, a response to criticism from another activist, a biography of the Madame de Pompadour, a deconstruction of the ridiculous claims of “social scientists”, a report on Google’s support of anti-whore activism and my answers to reader questions on vaginal looseness, sluts, P411, anal sex, penis size and talking to children about prostitutes.

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The First Christmas

Posted in History, Holidays, tagged , , , , , , , on December 25, 2012| 9 Comments »

Snowflakes in the air
Carols everywhere
Olden times and ancient rhymes
Of love and dreams to share.  –  Lee Mendelson, “Christmas Time is Here”

As I said yesterday, I suspect the festival we now know as Christmas began about 3900 BCE, when the climate abruptly cooled and dried all over the world.  For about 2000 years before that, the climate had been wet and warm enough for agriculture to succeed even in areas which are arid in modern times, and with little irrigation or centralized planning.  But once the long drought set in (around the same time copper started to replace stone as the favored tool material), everyone started to crowd into the comparatively small areas of the river valleys: scattered villages gave way to large cities, wars were fought over the limited arable land, and hierarchical social structures appeared in order to keep track of which land belonged to whom and what would happen to it when he died.  Because warfare and rigid hierarchies appeal more to the male mind societies became more patriarchal, and because heredity was now important sex laws and taboos started to appear.  Now that agriculture was a bit trickier calendars were needed so people would know the best times to plant and to reap, and rituals were developed to appease the gods so as to ensure bountiful harvests.

Marduk vs. TiamatBy the late 4th millennium BCE, the most important of these rites was the one which commemorated the creation of the world by the sky-god Anu after his victory over the forces of chaos; the Babylonians assigned this role to their god Marduk, and personified chaos as the dragon Tiamat.  The battle was believed to have lasted for 12 days, so the festival (which the Babylonians called Zagmuk) did as well, and though it occurred at the end of winter (the two weeks before the vernal equinox) rather than at the beginning, this was the origin of our 12 days of Christmas.  As in many later cultures, the time between the end of the old year and the beginning of the new was a time of chaos, and the rituals were thought to help Marduk beat back Tiamat for another year.  The priests and nobles enacted a pageant (the ancestor of our Christmas pantomime) in which the king played Marduk, and he was supposed to be sacrificed so as to join the god in the underworld and fight by his side.  But because it was impractical (not to mention counterproductive) to have a new king every year, what actually happened was this:  on the first day of Zagmuk, the king abdicated his power and a condemned criminal was invested as king.  He was feted and given homage, and played the part of Marduk in the early part of the festival; he was then sacrificed and the true king resumed his station, receiving the power to rule by consummating a ritual marriage with the entu (high priestess of Ishtar).  To provide a mystical balance, another prisoner was chosen at the same time as the temporary king; instead of being sacrificed, he was set free in order to bear the sins of the nation away with him (a similar ritual was later practiced by the Hebrews using goats).  And while the ruling classes enacted all this, the common people helped by burning effigies of Tiamat in bonfires.

Sumer was the Great Mother of Western civilization, and her culture infused all which came after it.  The Zagmuk festival spread to all parts of the Near East, and though it changed as it spread its influence can be clearly seen.  The dedication of a human sacrifice to represent the death of the god, followed immediately by the investiture of another person as the reborn god, was adopted by the Ancient Greeks as part of their primitive festival of Lenaea.  And while the human sacrifice eventually vanished in a literal sense from the Babylonian festival (later called Akitu), it survived in symbolic form; during the twelve days of the festival the social order was reversed, with masters waiting upon slaves and one slave chosen to be the head of the household for the duration, just as a criminal had been made king in earlier times (but without the unpleasant conclusion).  And after the battle-pageant the common people thronged in the street, rejoicing in the victory of their god with shouted invocations and joyful songs.  The festival was extremely popular, and survived conquest after conquest for millennia; the Kassites, Elamites, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Persians and Seleucids each adopted it in turn.  By late classical times many of its elements (including the social reversal and the singing in the streets) had entered the Greek Kronia, descendant of Lenaea and ancestor of the Roman Saturnalia; the latter adopted its practices wholesale in 217 BCE, at the same time (and as part of the same Sibylline reform) as the Venus Erycina  was brought to Rome.

Six thousand years ago the climate shifted, driving our ancestors from a pleasant Eden where food was plentiful into a harsher world where winter was a time of crisis.  And though the elaborate ritual devised by the ancient Mesopotamians to drive back the chaos is no longer solemn or bloody, many of its elements – feasting, mumming and masking, pantomime, bonfires, caroling and even the twelve-day duration – became traditional parts of our winter holiday season, and have endured even to the present day.  From the unnamed festival of ancient Uruk to Zagmuk to Lenaea and Akitu, then via Kronia to Saturnalia to Sol Invictus, and finally to Christmas and Carnival, there runs one long, unbroken cord which none who opposed it, whether king, priest or ideologue, has ever been able to sever.An Orgy in Imperial Rome by Henryk Siemiradzki (1872)

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Gunung Kemukus

Posted in History, Miscellaneous, tagged , , , , , on November 8, 2012| 15 Comments »

Religion is probably, after sex, the second oldest resource which human beings have available to them for blowing their minds.  –  Susan Sontag

Westerners, mired as they so often are in black-and-white, all-or-nothing thinking, often have difficulty understanding syncretism, the tendency for deities, religious practices or even entire religions to combine into new forms; they can’t imagine how a person could be, say, a Christian and a pagan at the same time.  Faced with religions like Voodoo or goddesses like Santa Muerte, the typical response of a Christian or Muslim is to brand such beliefs “heresy” or even “devil worship”; even most secular Westerners tend to think of their political faiths in the same way, as comprehensive systems that must be embraced completely or rejected totally, with no allowance for drift or fusion.  But while the Occidental mind tends to think of religion as a checklist, the Oriental mind tends to view it as a buffet from which each individual can pick and choose whichever elements of each faith appeal to him.  Chinese people traditionally practiced a mixture of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism; the Japanese mixed Buddhism with Shinto; my Vietnamese manicurist in New Orleans attended an Asian Catholic Church but displayed a crucifix, a picture of the Blessed Mother and a shrine to the Buddha in her shop.  And the Islam practiced in Java, syncretized with a mixture of Buddhism, Hinduism and the native Kejawen belief system, would probably be quite shocking to orthodox believers living much closer to Mecca (both physically and psychologically).  I recently discovered a fascinating article about how this fusion has combined with two other practices – ancient sacred prostitution and modern capitalism – to create the unique observances of Gunung Kemukus, a shrine in central Java.

…Every 35 days, the Friday of the Gregorian calendar intersects with Pon, one of the five days of the ancient Javanese lunar calendar.  Its eve is an auspicious date at Gunung Kemukus…[site of a] ritual [which] can guarantee success in business, usually for those at or near the bottom of the ladder…Pilgrims mostly come from Indonesia’s Javanese-speaking core, but some travel days across the massive archipelago to get here…First, prayers and offerings must be made at the grave of Pangeran Samodro and Nyai Ontrowulan…[then] pilgrims must wash themselves at…[a] sacred spring…then they must find a sex partner…of the opposite sex…[to whom they are not married]…Many people believe the ritual only works if you return at seven consecutive, 35-day intervals, either the night before Friday intersects with Pon, or when it crosses with another Javanese day, Kliwon…

…Pangeran Samodro was [the prince of] Demak, a [16th-century] Muslim sultanate [which was one of the successor-states of the recently-fallen Majapahit Empire.  He had]…an affair with…Nyai Ontrowulan, [one of his father’s wives,] and the two were forced to flee.  They were staying on Gunung Kemukus when they were found…[in the act by the father’s soldiers,] killed, and buried together in the one hole…[the legend arose] that whoever [finishes] their sex act will receive blessings from Nyai Ontrowulan…local government and religious authorities promote a G-rated version of the story, with the prince cast as a devoted proselytiser of Islam…but…no one is…trying to shut the ritual down…scores of traders [sell] aphrodisiacs, food, novelties, miracle cures and kitchen appliances…[while] shacks [offer] drinks, karaoke, prostitutes and rooms for sex.  There are multiple tolls to get in, and businesses are levied a daily charge.  With between 6,000 and 8,000 pilgrims arriving on the busiest nights…it’s…big money…for the local community and…government…about half of the women who show up are commercial sex workers.  Another 25 percent are “part-timers”…who…accept money if it’s on offer.  The 1980s was when…sex workers, as well as other businesses, started moving into the area…[and] also when the local government decided to spread its own cleaned-up version of the ritual — while at the same time profiting from sex-seeking pilgrims…Since the 1998 fall of the Suharto regime, religiously-minded authorities have cracked down on many legal red-light districts…[but] Gunung Kemukus…has come to be seen as a safe place…

Neither the ritual itself nor the way the local government unofficially protects it while officially disavowing it are any surprise to me; government officials in every land and time have always been among the greatest patrons of and parasites upon harlots.  What I find especially interesting, though, is how religiously-connected prostitution, which is persecuted in both traditional and modern forms in other countries, has survived here by changing its form; and also how religion, which in some places is used as an excuse for persecuting whores, is in Java used as an excuse for protecting them.

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Sexual Healing

Posted in Call types, Perception, Philosophy, Q & A, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 17, 2012| 38 Comments »

When I was a call girl, men were not paying for sex.  They were paying for something else.  They were either paying to act out a fantasy or they were paying for companionship or they were paying to be seen with a well-dressed young woman.  Or they were paying for someone to listen to them.  –  Roberta Victor

I recently received an email from a gentleman with two friends, each with confidence issues that my reader thought might be ameliorated with the help of an experienced professional.  This is not at all unusual; in my early column “Madonna and Whore” I wrote,

I have gently coaxed sexual response from the impotent or inhibited, or those sexually shell-shocked by disastrous relationships; on a multitude of occasions I have provided a man with some sexual outlet he needed, yet for which he could not or would not ask his wife (usually because she had turned him down cold when the subject was mentioned).  I have given much-needed intimacy to men so deformed most women couldn’t bear to look at them, held men while they cried because they were too ashamed to do it before their wives, and played mother-confessor for a host of sins.  I have lent a sympathetic ear to clients’ problems, given them relationship advice, comforted them when they were in pain and reassured them when they were overcome by uncertainty.


I’m not remotely unusual in this respect; most whores can say the same.  Though prudish American culture prefers to deny it, sex has a powerful healing function (especially for men), and sex professionals can often do far more for a man than a doctor, psychiatrist or priest.  In addition to the basics like massage and release of debilitating tension we give virgins their first experiences with women, minister to the sexual needs of the disabled and even help to relieve stress in men who have suffered through traumatic situations; in the following questions we’ll look at two more cases in which a talented professional would be more therapist than tart.

My first friend is a gentleman in his late 40’s who has not been with a woman in the 3 years since his divorce.  His friends believe he is completely over his ex, but we have noticed an uncharacteristic lapse in his confidence; we’ve tried to reintroduce him to dating, but it’s as if he doesn’t remember how to behave around women and he pulls back within his shell.  Do you think it a good idea to arrange for a discreet professional to meet with him as if by accident and accompany him for an evening, but conceal the true reason for their serendipitous meeting?

Though you can probably find a lady who would be willing to playact with your friend, I’m not at all sure that would be the right thing to do.  I’m a big believer in honesty, and though there are certainly some circumstances in which duplicity for a good cause is acceptable, I honestly don’t know if this would be one of them.  My concern is that if he ever found out it could be even worse for his self-confidence, and there are a number of ways in which he could find out; it might happen during the date due to perceptiveness on his part or a slip on her part, and what happens when he asks for her phone number at the end of the evening (as he certainly would)?  Or what if he goes surfing escort sites (you may think he doesn’t, but what if you’re wrong?) and discovers her pictures online?  Spending an evening with an experienced call girl can do wonders for a man’s sexual self-confidence, but I honestly feel it’s better for him to know what’s really going on rather than being fed a fantasy.

My other friend is much younger (in his late 20s) and has almost the opposite issue; he gets so excited that he finishes much more quickly than he would prefer.  I shared with him some tips to calm himself, and though he said one of those suggestions has truly helped him it only increased his time from immediately to a few minutes.  His last girlfriend moved away and now he’s afraid to deal with another one because he doesn’t want to embarrass himself by “being so disappointing”.  He can’t really afford a sex therapist, so I was wondering if a lady of the evening might help him?  If so, should he let her know exactly what she’s signing up for? 

It’s possible you may already have corrected his problem.  You say he used to climax immediately, but now can last “a few minutes”; how many is a few?  Because as I explained in an interview with the London School of Attraction,  most women don’t want nearly as much actual intercourse as most men seem to think we do.  If your friend can go for five minutes that’s enough for most women, especially if he takes the time to give his partner all the foreplay she wants.  A good escort might indeed help him, but maybe not in the way you’re thinking:  she might be able to teach him to slow down if necessary, but more importantly she could help him develop his confidence and foreplay techniques, and let him know if he really is too fast or just thinks he is.

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The Daughters of Shamhat

Posted in History, Perception, Philosophy, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 24, 2012| 52 Comments »

She was not ashamed to take him, she made herself naked and welcomed his eagerness; as he lay on her murmuring love she taught him the woman’s art.  For six days and seven nights they lay together, for Enkidu had forgotten his home in the hills; but when he was satisfied he went back to the wild beasts.  Then, when the gazelle saw him, they bolted away; when the wild creatures saw him they fled.  Enkidu would have followed, but his body was bound as though with a cord, his knees gave way when he started to run, his swiftness was gone.  And now the wild creatures had all fled away; Enkidu was grown weak, for wisdom was in him, and the thoughts of a man were in his heart.  –  The Epic of Gilgamesh (Tablet I)

While I understand why many activists and allies argue decriminalization from human rights, libertarian or harm reduction viewpoints, and indeed use these arguments myself because they are all valid ones, it’s sad that almost nobody wants to acknowledge another, equally important factor:  human society needs whores every bit as much as it needs farmers, soldiers, physicians and builders, and far more than it needs preachers, academic feminists, politicians and 90% of the other control freaks who work so assiduously at rousing the rabble against us.  Our ancient ancestors understood this; it’s not accidental that in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the temple harlot Shamhat is the one who tames the wild man Enkidu, turning him from a beast to a man.  But in the 5000 years since that powerful myth was first pressed into clay, Man’s world has forgotten its debt to us and has generally succumbed to the hubris of believing it no longer needs us; even in areas where our trade is legalized or decriminalized there is the self-important pretense that we are merely being tolerated as a magnanimous landlord might allow stray cats to eke out a marginal living on his property.

The change was very gradual; it wasn’t until about half the time between the writing of Gilgamesh and that of this essay had elapsed that someone first conceived of the idea of bringing the civilizing power of whores under the control of the state.  As discussed in one of my earliest columns, the Athenian politician Solon passed laws to reduce the relatively high status of Greek wives, and attempted to undermine the power of both independent prostitutes and the cult of Aphrodite by establishing cheap state-run brothels staffed by Asian slave girls; the failure of his attempt is a demonstration of the futility of proposals by certain historically-ignorant academics to establish a similar system with machines in place of slaves.  The Romans, Japanese, Catholic Church and other powers of the next two millennia did not even attempt to replicate Solon’s scheme, but rather contented themselves with taxing, regulating and socially isolating whores in order to establish patriarchal dominance while still allowing us to perform our vital social function:  giving men, whose demand (as Paglia put it) “always exceeds the female supply,” an outlet for that surplus libido.

Wise whores all know what feminists, preachers, politicians and pundits vociferously deny:  our trade saves far more marriages than it endangers, by allowing men the sexual variety they crave without endangering the social, emotional and economic arrangements of marriage.  In fact, I would even say that it was the emergence of commercial prostitution in the first millennium BCE which made widespread monogamy feasible; I predict that an historical study would reveal that few if any cultures abandoned polygamy before hookers were widespread in that society.  Nor are wives the only women whose safety and happiness are protected by harlots; prior to the late 19th century everyone from saints to kings understood that whores allow male passions which might lead to rape or other unsavory sexual behaviors to be siphoned off harmlessly in a manner which helps support some women while simultaneously preventing harm to others.  A 2004 study by Kirby Cundiff showed that the rates of rape and other sex crimes decrease in societies where prostitution is decriminalized or otherwise tolerated, and Swedish statistics document a sharp rise in rape after the implementation of their much-vaunted client criminalization model.

In some parts of the world, prostitution is already widely viewed as a job like any other, and most non-totalitarian governments recognize the need for our trade despite a refusal to publicly acknowledge it; even the United States pointedly ignores the existence of escort services and massage parlors except for periodic raids designed to “keep us in our place” and to please the stupider elements of the Great Unwashed.  Some very limited groups (such as the more educated and/or wise among both sex workers and clients, the majority of sex therapists and the more enlightened among advocates for the disabled) already recognize the vital role whores play in human society, and I can envision a future (depicted in the story I published one year ago today) where even most governments understand it at least as well as they did for most of history.  But for now, I’ll have to content myself with urging activists and allies to stop ceding ground to prohibitionists by pretending that prostitution is an evil to be tolerated rather than a good to be celebrated.

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Fictional Interlude: Vocation

Posted in Fiction, Miscellaneous, Philosophy, tagged , , , , , , , , , on May 11, 2012| 15 Comments »

Badness you can get easily, in quantity; the road is smooth, and it lies close by.  But in front of excellence the immortal gods have put sweat, and long and steep is the way to it.  –  Hesiod

Maru had been done with her packing for hours.  Not that there was all that much to do; the few meager belongings she could call hers had been tied up in a cloak, and she had donned her ornaments and her good gown.  Soon she would leave for the assembly, and when it was over she would bid her friends and family goodbye and accompany the priestess back to the temple.

The narrow dirt  streets of the village were thronged with girls and women eager to hear the priestess speak.  Once per month (on the sixth day after the full moon), a priest or priestess would arrive to address the people; everyone would gather in the square to hear the latest news from other parts of the kingdom, to ask questions and present grievances to be taken to the Priest-King, and to listen to the sermon.  An acolyte also accepted letters to be delivered to other parts of the realm, and handed out any letters from elsewhere.  After dinner would come a talk about vocations, and those youths or maids who wished to return to the capital to be trained for one of the available positions would come forward to give their names, and early next morning would join the priestly entourage on its journey to the next village.

The first and second months of spring were slightly different, though.  Last month the priest of the war-god had come, resplendent in his magnificent armor, to speak only to the men and boys; as usual, several of the youths who had reached manhood in the past year had departed with him to be trained as priests, warriors or (in cases of unusual ability) both.  And this month it was the priestess of the love-goddess, whose meeting was open only to women and girls; Maru had decided several years ago that once she became a woman, she would follow the call to become a temple harlot.  She was widely recognized as the most beautiful maid in the village, and her natural grace and clever mind had long been remarked upon.  More than anything else she wanted an education and a chance to serve her people by caring for the needs of the great men in the service of the Priest-King, and the old women of the village were all certain she would be accepted.

But as she listened to the priestess, Maru began to doubt.  The holy woman was the epitome of poise and grace; her clothes were magnificent and her hair beautifully arranged, and if she had ever spoken in some provincial dialect there was no trace of it now in her perfect elocution.  She was everything Maru could ever wish to be, but she feared it was hopeless; still, she had come this far, and had to try.  All through the long afternoon she worked to reassure herself, but had no appetite at dinner and began to worry that her voice would fail when it came time to speak.

At last, the moment arrived; the call for vocations had been given.  Maru felt herself stand and heard her own voice speak her name, but it was almost as if someone else had accomplished it for her.  She felt every eye upon her, but the tension was broken in an instant when the priestess smiled and said, “I’m so glad you’re joining us, Maru; I’ve had my eye on you for two years now, and I’m sure the goddess is as pleased as I am.”  A great shout broke out among her friends and kin, and she felt she would be suffocated by hugs and kisses.

When she met the priestess in the square at dawn she was given a novice’s gown of plain white linen, and on the journey to the next village some seven hours away the great lady braided her hair and spoke to her as if they were peers, answering every question Maru could think of and listening while the girl told her more about the village and its people than she could possibly want to know.  The acolyte, Zuza, was only about two years older than Maru; she was as friendly as her mistress, and by the time they arrived at their destination Maru felt as though they had been friends for a long time.  Her heart swelled with pride as she saw the way the village girls looked at her, but she followed Zuza’s example and carried herself humbly, as a servant of the priestess.

They travelled thus from town to town for three weeks, and were joined on the way by three more girls; one aspired to the priestesshood, another wished to learn the healing arts and the third was an orphan whom the priestess had accepted as a servant of the temple; had even one more joined their number someone would have had to ride up front with the driver.  At last the tour was over, and on the day of the next full moon they arrived at the city which served as the capital of this province; from here they would depart for the City of the Gods, where the Priest-King ruled and all the great temples stood.  Maru’s father had been to the provincial capital once, years before she was born; but none of her family had ever been to the Royal Seat, which lay so far to the east it would take months to get there even on a fast horse.

But there were no longer any roads upon which to make such a journey; the great thoroughfares crossing the wastelands had fallen into ruin since the end of the Golden Age, and the only practical means of travel across the wilderness was the one they would board in the morning.  Though Maru had heard them described and even seen pictures, nothing could prepare her for the awesome sight of the airship, longer than the main street of her village, gleaming like burnished brass in the last rays of the setting sun.

One Year Ago Today

“The Eye of the Beholder” explains my philosophy of tolerance:  we all have the right to our own preferences, but nobody has the right to impose his own preferences on others.

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Floralia

Posted in History, Holidays, Miscellaneous, tagged , , , , , , , on May 3, 2012| 13 Comments »

Now every field is clothed with grass, and every tree with leaves; now the woods put forth their blossoms, and the year assumes its gay attire.  –  Virgil

Spring was a festive time of year for Roman prostitutes.  April was the month of their patron goddess, Venus, and opened with Veneralia, the festival of Venus Verticordia;  the 23rd was Vinalia Urbana, on which whores made offerings of myrtle, mint and roses to Venus Erycina at her temple outside the Colline Gate.  Five days later Floralia began, and lasted until today; this was the festival of the goddess Flora, who because of her association with fertility (and an identification or confusion with Acca Larentia) was also revered by prostitutes.  And on the last day of Floralia, May 3rd, a group of them would strip in the arena and perform erotic dances until young men in the audience were enough overcome by lust to throw off their clothes and inhibitions and join them for ritual public sex.

Flora was, as you probably guessed, the Roman goddess of flowers; she was, like her Greek counterpart Chloris, a fairly minor deity until the mid-3rd century BCE.  At that time a disastrous crop failure occasioned a consultation of the Sibylline Books, which directed that a new festival be established in her honor; after a few years the celebration was allowed to lapse, but it was reinstated in 173 BCE after a series of violent storms destroyed many crops, and this time it caught on and was celebrated until the end of the Empire and beyond.  During Floralia, Romans of both sexes eschewed their normal white garments for colorful ones, especially green; they also wore floral wreaths and decorated their homes and other buildings with even more flowers.  Offerings of milk and honey were made to the goddess, and people gave gifts of fruit to one another; hares and goats (both symbolic of fertility) were released into gardens and fields and allowed to run freely about the city.  As one might expect there was also tremendous consumption of wine, accompanied by boisterous singing and dancing (intended to awaken nature), plus games and theatrical performances culminating in the spectacle of the whores I described above.

By the time of the Caesars the festival had grown as popular as Saturnalia, and spread to all corners of the Empire; since nearly all ancient cultures had spring festivities around the same general time, each province made its own contributions and so the celebration survived the advent of Christianity.  In pre-Roman times these May festivals were timed by the phases of the moon or the blossoming of certain plants, but the establishment of the Julian calendar synchronized them with Floralia, and after the Roman decline they became fixed on May Day all over Europe.  Hence the appearance of Flora in the graphic I used for Beltane on Tuesday; the artist obviously wished to acknowledge the origin of the holiday in Flora’s festival.  It’s impossible to tell which traditions other than the crowning of the goddess with flowers came specifically from the Roman observance and which were independent fertility traditions, which are generally sexual in every culture for sympathetic magical reasons.  But it’s good to know that the ritual orgy first celebrated by Roman prostitutes almost 2300 years ago is still remembered specifically in the sexual Neopagan Beltane rituals, and generally in the reputation of May as the month of lust.

One Year Ago Today

“No Fun Shall Be Had” reports on the incredibly asinine behavior of humorless neofeminists who felt compelled to crucify a respected surgeon for making a silly joke they didn’t like.

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Vinalia Urbana

Posted in History, Holidays, Miscellaneous, tagged , , , , , , , , on April 23, 2012| 24 Comments »

Mother of Rome, delight of Gods and men,
Dear Venus that beneath the gliding stars
Makest to teem the many-voyaged main
And fruitful lands – for all of living things
Through thee alone are evermore conceived,
Through thee are risen to visit the great sun.  –  Lucretius, De Rerum Natura

In Roman times today was the Vinalia Urbana, a wine festival shared by Jupiter (as patron of fine wine) and Venus (as patroness of ordinary wine).  Upper-class women observed the holiday with libations to Venus Erycina at her main temple on the Capitoline Hill, but prostitutes offered myrtle, mint and roses at her temple outside the Colline gate (one has to wonder which observance Messalina, whose story I told one year ago today, preferred).  How is it that one goddess could be patron of so many things, and could be revered by empresses and whores alike?  It’s because the Romans believed one deity could have many “aspects”, or faces.  Just as a human can play many roles, and seem very different in each of those roles, so could a god or goddess.  But for them these guises were not mere roles but almost separate beings, like multiple personalities with different powers.

In primitive times gods were not so complex; they were worshipped by small groups of people who had little (if any) contact with strangers with different beliefs.  But once people began to travel and trade, they naturally compared their gods to those of others and developed myths to explain the differences and similarities.  The reason the Greeks depicted Zeus as such a Casanova is that this was how his cult absorbed local ones; the local goddess (Europa, Io, Callisto, Leda, etc) became one of his amours and the local god became one of his forms.  The Romans did something similar: local or even foreign deities were syncretized with the Roman ones they most closely resembled, and continued to be worshipped as aspects.  The Venus of Imperial Rome was a combination of the Greek Aphrodite, the Etruscan Turan and the original Roman Venus, who was a goddess of gardens (hence patroness of homemade wines).  But she had many aspects, and today I’d like to tell you about them.

Venus Caelestis (Heavenly Venus) was a syncretism with the Magna Mater who was first worshipped in the 2nd century CE.  She probably arose due to the adjacent festivals of the Magna Mater and Venus Verticordia, and from an identification of the Magna Mater with Venus Genetrix, the mother of Rome.

Venus Calva (Venus the Bald One) is known only from Christian-Era accounts which may actually have been invented to explain a statue of a bald woman who had nothing to do with the goddess.  One version of the story says that early Roman matrons shaved their heads to make bowstrings during a siege, and another says that the hair was sacrificed to Venus in order that she might restore the hair of Ancus Marcius’ queen and other noblewomen, who lost it due to a disease.

Venus Cloacina (Venus the Purifier) was invoked for cleansing and purification, and protected the Cloaca Maxima (the central sewer).  Though this may seem a strange association, remember that Aphrodite (“foam-born”) was also a water goddess, and water is mystically associated with femininity:  it’s yielding, yet powerful; it can change its shape, yet cannot be compressed; it is necessary for life, yet can also destroy.

Venus Erycina (Venus of Eryx), the patroness of prostitutes, is the third-oldest known aspect of the goddess.  After Rome suffered a humiliating defeat to Carthage at the Battle of Lake Trasimene in the Second Punic War, the Senate consulted a set of ancient prophecies called the Sibylline Books and learned that in order to secure victory, Rome should capture the temple of Venus at Eryx, Sicily (whose Greek inhabitants were allied with Carthage) and bring the image of the goddess back to Rome.  So they did so, and in 217 BCE she was installed in a new temple on the Capitoline Hill and a group of priestesses were charged with convincing her to support Rome over Carthage.  Rome won the war and Erycina, who was more like the Phoenician Astarte  than the patrician Venus Obsequens, brought warrior and harlot functions to the increasingly-composite goddess.

Venus Felix (Venus the Lucky) was an aspect which developed from the association of Venus Verticordia with Fortuna Virilis.

Venus Frutis is the name by which Venus Erycina was worshipped at Lavinium; the name “Frutis” appears to be a local one for the same Italic vegetation-goddess the Romans called Venus.

Venus Genetrix (Venus the Ancestress) was an earthly avatar who bore the Trojan prince Aeneas for Anchises, first cousin of King Priam.  Aeneas fled the burning city and his mother guided him to Italy, where his son Ascanius later founded the city of Alba Longa, from whose kings Romulus and Remus sprang.  Aeneas’ second wife was Lavinia, princess of Latium; their son Iulus was the founder of the Roman gens (clan) Julia, from which the Julio-Claudian emperors were descended.  She thus became much more important after the rise of Julius Caesar, who dedicated a temple to her on September 26th, 46 BCE (on which date her festival was then celebrated).

Venus Kallipygos (Venus of the Beautiful Bum) was originally called Aphrodite Kallipygos, and was worshipped at Syracuse.  It’s not entirely clear whether this was a title for the goddess herself (perhaps a byname for Venus Erycina) or merely for the statue, a now-lost Hellenistic bronze from the early third century BCE which was copied in marble by an unknown Roman sculptor and later imitated many times.

Venus Libertina (Venus the Freewoman) was the patroness of slaves seeking manumission; see also Venus Libitina.

Venus Libitina  The oldest known aspect of Venus was originally a syncretization of the Etruscan goddesses Turan and Libitina, the former the Etruscan Venus and the latter the patron of funerals and undertakers; her worship is known from the 5th century BCE and a temple was erected to her in what was once Libitina’s sacred grove somewhere around 300 BCE.  This rather strange combination seems to have caused a great deal of confusion after the expulsion of the Etruscans from Rome, and the name was soon altered into two more seemingly-appropriate forms, Venus Libertina and Venus Lubentina, thus creating two new aspects.

Venus Lubentina (Venus the Passionate) was a popular aspect of Venus as goddess of sex and passion, patroness of lovers and those seeking to obtain love (including by the use of love philters).  See also Venus Libitina.

Venus Marina  (Venus of the Sea) was an aspect worshipped at Pompeii as a protectress of trade (thanks to her status as a water deity).  Also known as Venus Pompeiana.

Venus Murcia (Venus of the Myrtle) arose by association of Venus (to whom myrtle was sacred) with the obscure minor goddess Murcia.  Myrtle was believed to be an aphrodisiac, but also had cleansing properties and protected from the evil eye.  Since passion is the province of Lubentina and cleansing Cloacina, Murcia seems to have been invoked for protection from hexes and curses.

Venus Obsequens (Venus the Gracious) is the second-oldest known aspect; she appears to have more of Turan and less of Aphrodite in her, and was a protector of marriage.  Quintus Fabius Gurges dedicated a temple to her on Vinalia Rustica (August 19th) of 295 BCE after she granted him victory against the Samnites; it was funded by fines on matrons  convicted of adultery.

Venus Physica (Venus of Nature) was a very primitive aspect whose characteristics were much like those of the original goddess before she was syncretized with Turan or Aphrodite; she is chiefly known from Pompeii.

Venus Pompeiana (Venus of Pompeii)  See Venus Marina.

Venus Verticordia (Venus the Changer of Hearts) was recognized in August of 216 BCE after Hannibal slaughtered the Roman Army at Cannae; a series of omens (including a Vestal Virgin killed by lightning) convinced the Senate that the disaster was due to three Vestal Virgins (the dead one and two others) breaking their vows of chastity and several members of the cult of Fortuna Virilis sinning in other ways.  Because the persons of Vestals were sacrosanct (it was a capital crime even to injure one), the offenders were buried alive, but the punishment of Fortuna’s cult was dictated by the Sibylline books:  a new statue of Venus as protectress of sexual oaths (including marital vows) was installed in the Temple of Fortuna to keep watch over it, and from then on she shared the Veneralia with Fortuna (though she was given her own temple in 114 BCE).

Venus Victrix (Venus the Victorious) was brought back from the Middle East by soldiers; she was a syncretism of Venus and Ishtar, who was also a war-goddess.  Pompey claimed her as his patron and built a temple to her in 55 BCE; her festival was on October 9th.

Venus Volgivava (Venus the Streetwalker) was a by-name of Venus Erycina when invoked by lower-class prostitutes.

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