It always makes me smile when I walk down to the mailbox and find an Amazon box addressed to me when I know I haven’t ordered anything, because that means somebody has been thinking of me! Last week I received three such packages as 14th-anniversary gifts: A Study in Emerald from Geekdownrange, Devoted to Death from Steve Kempson, and a Blackmore’s Night album from Antonio Lorusso; at least, I think that’s who sent what, because I kept the slips but they don’t say the name of the item with the name of the sender! And surprise surprise, Amazon was no help in sorting it out. So if I got y’all wrong, please let me know! But it doesn’t really matter, because I appreciate all my presents and never put anything on my wishlist that I don’t actually want!
Posts Tagged ‘Saint Death’
Diary #734
Posted in Diary, tagged imaginative fiction, Presents, Saint Death on July 23, 2024| 1 Comment »
In the News (#1370)
Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged Alabama, censorship, Choke Point, cops, drugs, Facebook, fascism, hysteria, If Men Were Angels, internet, law, Louisiana, Maine, Mexico, politicians, porn, psychology, Robocops, Saint Death, surveillance, The Mob Rules, Ukraine, Unsafe for Human Consumption, Wisconsin, You Were Warned on September 6, 2023| 1 Comment »
There’s seemingly no policy turd that lawmakers are unwilling to polish in the name of “the children”. – J.D. Tuccille
Apparently, popular and social media have played a large part in the global expansion of her worship:
…one Latin American New Religious Movement has reached Kyiv that perhaps few would expect: The cult of Santa Muerte – Holy Death…Dr. Andrew Chesnut of Virginia Commonwealth University, probably the foremost expert on Santa Muerte, says that the Mexican folk saint depicted as a female skeleton, from whom her devotees seek protection and favors, is the fastest-growing new religious movement in the world. The skeleton saint went off the historical grid until the 1940s when American anthropologists “re-discovered her,” in Mexico. [The religion] became known to the larger American audience due to the television series Breaking Bad, as an object of devotion for Mexican drug cartels…the professor…[says] Santa Muerte “made her way to Europe via social media, especially Facebook and Instagram”…
“Pastor and sex offender” is a large and ever-expanding group:
…Allan Kyle Jones…pastor at Lifeway Community Church in Loxley, [Alabama,] was [arrested and charged with possession of child pornography]…
The House Judiciary Committee is investigating banks for sharing Americans’ financial information with the FBI without regard for privacy concerns…there’s no doubt about the threat to civil liberties posed by the government’s leverage over the financial industry; that’s long established. At question in this investigation is whether…that cozy relationship is being wielded in political warfare between the country’s political factions…financial institutions have long operated as surveillance arms of the state, tracking transactions and movements, making assumptions about what they might mean, then turning that information over to government officials under regulatory pressure…based on idiosyncratic interpretations of vague laws and regulations…such power creates incentives to over-interpret activity as “suspicious” and to snitch on customers to stay on the good side of federal agencies…
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Waylon Bailey…of Rapides Parish, Louisiana, made a joke on Facebook that alluded to the 2013 Brad Pitt zombie movie World War Z. “RAPIDES PARISH SHERIFFS OFFICE HAVE ISSUED THE ORDER,” he wrote, that “IF DEPUTIES COME INTO CONTACT WITH ‘THE INFECTED,'” they should “SHOOT ON SIGHT.” He added: “Lord have mercy on us all. #Covid9teen #weneedyoubradpitt.” That post went up on March 20, 2020…that same day, about a dozen deputies wearing bulletproof vests descended upon Bailey’s home with their guns drawn…[screaming obscenities] and arrested him for violating a state law against “terrorizing,” a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison…the Rapides Parish District Attorney’s Office [wisely] declined to prosecute Bailey. But when [he] sued…[a] judge…dismissed his claims with prejudice, concluding that his joke was not covered by the First Amendment, that the arrest was based on probable cause, and that [the pigs were] protected by qualified immunity…the 5th Circuit [has now] ruled that…was wrong on all three counts…
[Maine politician] Lois Reckitt…intends to submit a proposal for consideration in the 2024 legislative session modeled after a porn age-verification law in Louisiana …[joining six other] states — Arkansas, Mississippi, Montana, Texas, Virginia and Utah — [in the monkey see, monkey do parade]…with unanimous or near-unanimous support from…[censorious imbeciles with the social sense of lemmings. Unsurprisingly, the puritanical] Reckitt…[was also behind the scheme which recently imposed the dangerous, misogynistic Swedish model on] Maine…
Some politicians apparently believe that KOSA doesn’t destroy the internet thoroughly enough:
…the Protecting Kids on Social Media Act…borrows bad proposals from another federal bill and combines them with legislative idiocy enacted at the state level. The resulting concoction could destroy internet privacy, subjecting all our online activity to government scrutiny in the name of shielding wee ones from harm…the Protecting Kids on Social Media Act generates the sort of cross-aisle consensus that generally only accompanies terrible ideas. The bill “contains elements of the dangerous Kids Online Safety Act“…and…doubles down on bureaucratic control and surveillance of internet activity…its authors find substituting restrictive laws for parental responsibility…a convenient excuse for imposing controls that people would be unlikely to tolerate under any other circumstance…the digital ID pilot program is the real warhead in this particular legislative weapon, since…[politicians hate] online anonymity. The bill provides a clear path towards linking internet activity to identities so that, for example, politicians could identify their critics…
Unsafe for Human Consumption (#1366)
…Milwaukee co[p]…Adriean Williams had an unexpected [panic attack after touching a scary]…blue sweater…”It’s terrifying” [he whimpered, remembering the scary, scary fuzziness. Then another cop wasted]…Narcan, a nasal spray that counteracts the effects of opiates [and can act as a placebo for hysterical cops who imagine they’ve touched magic insta-fentanyl. Actual doctors have explained time and again that]…incidental fentanyl exposure [has no such] immediate and profound reactions, but [cops are superstitious children who imagine they know better. This mass hysteria affected another of]…Williams[‘ cronies]…the very next day…[when he] believe[d] cocaine….[was] fentanyl [and had a panic attack]…
I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one. Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful. But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer. So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets. Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements. Thanks so much!
In the News (#936)
Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged A Procrustean Bed, A Woman's Point of View, abortion, agency denial, censorship, China, cops, Cops and Robbers, cult of the child, Denmark, dirty, Disaster, drugs, Facebook, fascism, Florida, Georgia, Guinea Pigs, Haiti, harm reduction, Hawaii, hysteria, illegal aliens, internet, law, Madonna/whore, marriage, Massachusetts, neofeminism, New Zealand, Ohio, One Size Fits All, Oregon, Pakistan, Permanent Record, porn, pragmatism, propaganda, Property of the State, racism, rape, Real People, Saint Death, sex offender registry, sex rays, shame, streetwalkers, surveillance, teachers, Texas, Thailand, Things We Choose To Do Together, Think of the Children!, Top Cop, Worse Than I Thought on May 15, 2019| 2 Comments »
We don’t know what we’re doing. – rare true prohibitionist statement
…My mother came to Denmark as a marriage migrant. She received a tourist visa in Thailand, came to Denmark, and put an ad in the local newspaper with the headline “Thai Woman Seeking”. The man who became my stepfather answered. They got married, and shortly thereafter I came to Denmark to live with them…People have always looked down on my mom or pitied her. They have condemned my stepfather. And they have felt misplaced sympathy for me…If my mother had not migrated from Thailand, I would probably still be in Isaan today. I would have two or three children and work in my family’s rice paddies, at a factory, or have some other kind of low paying job. Maybe I would have to migrate to Bangkok to work an unskilled job at a factory, leaving my children in the care of their grandparents in those months where there is no work to be done in the fields. Maybe I would have to work in the sex industry in Pattaya and send home money to my children and my mother, because sex work is the field where you earn the most as an unskilled female labourer…Why are the women who change their lives by selling sex or by getting married scorned?…Why do we look down on women who simply use the opportunities they have been given? There is no right or wrong way to migrate. There are just women trying to create better lives for themselves and their children with whatever cards they have been dealt…
Pakistan…arrested eight Chinese nationals [and accused them of] trafficking Pakistani girls to China and forcing them into prostitution…and organ trade…Pakistani…[cops also] raided a wedding ceremony…and arrested the Chinese groom…after…[calling the] marriage [false]…
If this keeps up, soon we’ll just be able to abolish nearly all laws and call everything cops choose to accuse anyone of “human trafficking”. Think of the time and labor savings! Threaten everyone with life in prison, let them plead down to one of a few minor and equally-vague offenses like “money laundering”, “conspiracy”, “racketeering” or “hate”, then put them on ankle monitors for a decade or two. International Utopia!
Another bunch of racist vigilantes playing games with people’s lives:
This is the story of a group of [busybodies] so agitated by news of [women of] other [races running lucrative businesses instead of doing menial labor for whites]…that they launched a vigilante response…[like all busybodies] the women weren’t affected by the massage parlors personally. They’d been driving right by them for [their whole lives] without noticing them at all…But the spas loomed large for the women after they learned [how much money migrant]…women…from China [could make]…as prostitutes [without having to kowtow to bourgeois white Boston puritans]…“We decided as a group we want to [harass] the women”…
First they tried to spy on them, then sic the pigs on them; when the cops told them luggage and TV sets were not evidence of “sex slavery” they decided to start a new NIMBY club called “Operation Rescue”. Go ahead and read the whole thing if you want a deep dive into the tiny, ugly, racist minds of women who aren’t satisfied with merely keeping the brown folks in line by occasionally calling the cops on them for existing in public spaces.
Government is just a word for the things we choose to do together:
Juan Leon-Gomez…was arrested…after a mother reported that her daughter was missing…the [now-pregnant] 11-year-old was found in [Leon-Gomez’s] bedroom closet…[he] was already the subject of an ongoing sexual assault investigation involving the girl…Ohio’s new “heartbeat bill”, which is slated to take effect in mid-July, means that the 11-year-old girl could be forced to carry the child to birth, regardless of the fact that she was raped…
“Narco saints,” or patron saints of the drug cartels, are making the criminals even bolder…[according to racist propaganda the] Drug Enforcement Administration…has [been trying to push for over a decade]…with…li[ttle success except among bootlickers and deeply credulous cops]…Atlanta DEA [pig]…Robert Murphy…[imagines] shrines of “narco saints”…are [magically] facilitating the flooding of Georgia streets with illegal drugs including heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and fentanyl…[via their magic powers] to recruit and embolden the…[drug dealers this pig tellingly refers to as] soldiers…[illiterate redneck] District Attorney Tracy Graham Lawson says she was so alarmed by the “narco saints”…she [went to church and then] used [stolen] money to bring an expert [propagandist] from Texas to [indoctrinate] local [cops so they’d have another convenient excuse to murder Hispanic men on sight]…“Why it’s so dangerous…is they believe they’re [bulletproof warriors] and they’re not afraid of death,” Lawson said…
Obviously this sex-ray contaminated money would have “sexualized” the childen!
Robert Kraft tried to donate $100,000 to a charity that educates children in Haiti—but it rejected the money because of allegations he [had consensual] sexual [contact with an adult woman]…“The last thing I wanted was a donation from Robert Kraft,” [said] Patrick Moynihan of The Haitian Project…“I could not be [sensible]. I had to [be a prudish moron who cares more about virtue signaling than the education of children in poverty]”…
Sex workers need to bury all prohibitionists of every kind in lawsuits:
Nicole Gililland…had been doing well as a nursing student at Southwestern Oregon Community College…She was making the dean’s list and was about a year away from graduating…when…the college decided to run her out of school after it found out she used to perform in porn. This February, she filed a federal lawsuit against the school and some of its personnel, charging them with breach of contract, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and subjecting her to a hostile educational environment. Experts say this…could be the first time a plaintiff has used Title IX to make an accusation of discrimination based on a person’s status as a current or former sex worker…
Just a reminder that one of Palantir’s first contracts was helping cops spy on sex workers:
Palantir, the CIA-funded data analysis company founded by billionaire Trump adviser Peter Thiel, provided software at the center of a 2017 operation targeting unaccompanied children and their families…newly released Homeland Security documents show….[that] Palantir…spokespe[ople were lying when they claimed]…that Palantir software is strictly involved in criminal investigations as opposed to deportations…Far from detached support in “cross-border criminal investigations,” the materials released this week confirm the role Palantir technology played in facilitating hundreds of arrests, only a small fraction of which led to criminal prosecutions…
A Woman’s Point of View (#805)
The push for decrim in Hawaii isn’t dead yet:
…Harm Reduction Hawaii…sponsor[ed] presentations by Dame Catherine Healy…on May 9 and 10. She is a former sex worker and advocate for sex worker rights. In 1986 she was a cofounder of the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective. She was made a Dame of the British Empire due to her long time work aimed at…decriminalization of prostitution in 2003. Recent reports from the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women indicate there is no evidence of sex trafficking there. This is in a country with four times the population of Hawaii…We believe evidence-based approaches need to supplant the sorts of hysteria that has often taken over the public press in discussions over sex work…
Facebook has the money to protect itself from the monster it helped unleash on the internet:
Under FOSTA/SESTA…Section 230 no longer protects platforms from liability in cases where third-party content is [claimed by a prosecutor or ambulance-chaser to be] somehow connected to sex trafficking…Facebook support[ed this censorship] effort…But now [it] has been forced to send lawyers to defend itself from two lawsuits brought in Houston, Texas, under the same FOSTA/SESTA law that [it] backed…and it…is…argue[ing] that Section 230 of the CDA protects the firm from being held liable for the activities of users, no matter what those activities may be…[even though] thanks to [Facebook’s own support of] FOSTA/SESTA, that protection no longer exists…
A lawsuit filed by Harris County seeks to [rob and harass] sex workers in the Bissonnet Track, a Houston [stroll]…The lawsuit, which targets 86 “nuisance” individuals, is [intended to bleed marginalized people with] fines in addition to…criminal charges. [SWERFs are angry that] the measure ignores the[ir preferred narrative] that most sex workers are victims [because they want sex workers starved, evicted and enslaved in sweatshops rather than openly criminalized]…
Florida prohibitionists are now tripling down on their awful anti-whore laws:
Florida lawmakers just voted to create a public registry of people [accused by cops of] attempting to pay for sex. After an initial defeat…the registry—arguably the worst part of a new Florida crime bill capitalizing on human-trafficking propaganda—was revived and reinserted before the measure’s passage…The final version…creates a database of [adults caught in cop sting operations]…targets strip clubs, and mandates that a slew of state workers and businesses jump through new hoops to accommodate a few politicians’ latest attempt to get their names in the press…The Soliciting for Prostitution Public Database will list anyone who has been convicted of, or plead guilty, to “soliciting, inducing, enticing, or procuring another to commit prostitution, lewdness, or assignation” [which of course includes sex workers arranging duos or giving references or other help to other sex workers]…The new measure also classifies strip clubs as “adult theaters”—then makes it a first-degree misdemeanor criminal offense for the operator of any adult theater to fail to keep proper records. The law also creates wide new categories of workers and businesses that are [forced to endure]…anti-prostitution and pro-surveillance propaganda disguised as tips for teaching bystanders how to prevent human trafficking…
Just in case you needed another reason to be disgusted by this power-mad sociopath:
Kamala Harris is making the potential punishment of social media platforms that don’t censor what she [represents] as hateful speech a focal point of her presidential campaign…[she] wants social media to do more to stop…ideas [she disapproves of, such as sex worker rights] from being expressed and spread online. It’s not clear what she thinks the companies should specifically do, but she’s definitely laying the blame on Facebook and Twitter and YouTube for the existence and proliferation of angry people online…what she wants with her prosecutor background is to force compliance with whatever rules she puts into place and use the threat of punishment to shut down resistance…just [like] California parents who were threatened with jail time because of her support for criminal truancy laws…or [her repeated and illegal]…attempt[s] to bring pimping charges against the publishers of Backpage…
Eros and Thanatos
Posted in Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged Aphrodite, holidays, paganism, pragmatism, psychology, Saint Death, Thanatopsis on November 1, 2018| 2 Comments »
When [the universe is] over it will fade away, leaving nothing behind except the fact that it existed, and that it was savagely beautiful. – “Whistling Past the Graveyard”
Every year on this day, the Day of the Dead, I publish a thanatopsis, a meditation on death. This is not to say that I myself only think about it at this time of year; as regular readers already know, Death and I are old friends, and “when he at last come to collect me it will be a rendezvous rather than a capture.” Accordingly, he’s never very far from my thoughts, and I generally think and speak about him with the nonchalance most people think and speak about minor medical problems; at a recent checkup, my doctor questioned my disinterest in undergoing an expensive and extremely unpleasant cancer-screening test which is apparently considered routine for people above 50, to which my response was a shrug and “I’ve got to die of something.” Some people think this odd, but I remind them that I am a courtesan, and sex and death are but two sides of the same coin: the former is the door through which we enter the world, and the latter the door through which we leave it. For the first few millennia of human civilization, sex-goddesses were usually also associated with war and death; the Sumerian Inanna was the twin sister of Ereshkigal, ruler of the dead, and once tried to usurp her sister’s throne (a misadventure which resulted in the death of Inanna’s husband, the vegetation-god Damuzi, and therefore the origin of the seasons). And Mexican sex workers are among the most devoted worshipers of Santa Muerte, the personification of death. My belief in the goodness of death is not merely a result of my pagan philosophy, though; it is also based in the practical understanding of the inevitability of death and its role as the redistributor of resources from the moribund to the young, and also in an unsentimental recognition that gerontocracy is the enemy of human progress:
…if you like working your arse off to support the decades-long retirements of a bunch of old dinosaurs whose cognitive norms formed a generation before you were born, just imagine how much you’d love it right now if 90% of the population were born before the Second World War, and a sizeable fraction of the people voting on stuff like sexual rights came of age in an era when it was still considered OK for humans to actually, legally own other humans. The current rulers of our world were mostly born in the 40s-60s, and their ideas provide ample proof of that; imagine how it would be if most of them had been born in the 19th century…
Humans may be the smartest monkeys, but we’re still monkeys, fragile creatures controlled by poorly-developed minds dominated by primitive fears and foolish ideas. So perhaps it’s fitting that Western culture’s impending demise is being driven by tyrants whose destruction of freedom and justice is enabled by the masses willing to give them any power in exchange for their impossible promises to delay death, both personal and cultural, just a little longer.
That Was the Week That Was (#428)
Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged adolescence, Africa, agency denial, Arizona, asset seizure, Bread and Circuses, brothels, Canada, censorship, cops, dirty, Drawing Lines, drugs, escort review sites, escort services, evidence, FBI, Finding What Isn’t There, France, Germany, Hall of Shame, harm reduction, hysteria, If Men Were Angels, Indonesia, Innocence Never Had, internet, law, lawheads, Marching Up Their Own Arses, neofeminism, Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs, Opting Out, Parable, politicians, porn, prohibitionist myths, psychology, red-light districts, Saint Death, Saving Them from Themselves, sex offender registry, sexting, stereotypes, streetwalkers, Swedish model, The Course of a Disease, The Mote and the Beam, underage, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers, Virginia, Whither Canada?, Wisconsin, Wise Investment on July 12, 2014| 14 Comments »
Theoretically, all children in the United States are at risk of being trafficked. Theoretically, I’m at risk of drowning in a bucket or getting eaten by a cannibal. – Elizabeth Nolan Brown
Enjoy this thorough denunciation of sex work “abolitionism” as “the worst abomination created by [neo]feminism” (from the French):
…these vile bastards…attempt to starve the prostitutes, to make them homeless, to…force them to change jobs…They claim that the vast majority of prostitutes are sex slaves enslaved by pimps…[feminists] are…[as] proud of the damage [they do] as the soldiers were once proud banner of the Crusades because each pillage every rape, every murder was an expression of superiority over the enemy…they pull figures out of nowhere…and prostitutes are not allowed to talk at their meetings unless they “repent”…
Another excellent parody of “sex trafficking” nonsense, this one from Marijke Vonk:
…“Marriage is happening right in our neighbourhoods” warns Angela Tite, co-founder of Concerned Maidens for America, a non-profit organisation against domestic abuse and romantic slavery…“Young women are lured in with promises of love and respect, only to find themselves entrapped in what can only be called modern-day slavery…it is estimated that over 70% of wives experience some form of violence or coercion…Nobody would choose that kind of life voluntarily” …According to the FBI, the average girl becomes involved in romantic relationships between 13 and 15, and some 500,000…are at risk of becoming victims of marriage and domestic violence every year. “Child abuse is most commonly found inside homes” explains Mary Addington of No Child Left At Home…Over three thousand children and women have been taken out of homes into…protective shelters, where home-raised children and wedlocked women are rehabilitated…deputy [Tom] Kreapy makes it very clear: “if it saves just one child, we must continue home-stings and neighbourhood raids”…
Cops want to create “child porn” to prosecute teen for creating “child porn” of himself. I am not making this up:
A Manassas City [Virginia] teenager accused of “sexting” a video to his girlfriend is now facing a search warrant in which…police and…prosecutors want to take a photo of his erect penis…by taking him to a hospital and giving him an injection, the teen’s lawyers said…The teen is facing two felony charges, for possession of child pornography and manufacturing child pornography, which could lead not only to incarceration…but inclusion on the…sex offender data base for…life…
…the “indicia” of drug-dealing has always been…bizarre…The defendant had $324 in cash in his pocket? Proof he’s a drug dealer…If he has no cash…it’s proof he’s a major drug dealer…[who has] people who do the dirty transactions for [him]…It used to be the beeper that proved someone was a drug dealer…Then it became cellphones…The prosecution will put a cop on the stand…to explain to the ignorant…jury why that cash in the defendant’s pocket is so fundamentally different than the cash in their pockets. (Hint: It’s because he’s a criminal)…the latest…is [representing icons of] Santa Muerte…[as] “tools of the drug traffickers’ trade”…the…notion [of] “narco-saints” borders on incomprehensible…But give it a cool name like “narco-saint” and it suddenly turns religion into proof of guilt…
At least US “authorities” don’t yet lock up people who debunk “sex trafficking”: “Police in [The Gambia]…detained Sanna Camara, a journalist…as a result of a story…[in which police officials] admitted that [they] face challenges in combatting human trafficking…due to the unwillingness of victims or their families to aid investigations…” In other words, those identified as “victims” refuse to play their assigned roles.
…The Chief Justice of the British Columbia Supreme Court, Allan McEachern, ruled on July 4, 1984, that sex workers on the Davie Street stroll were a “blatant, aggressive, and disorderly public nuisance”…and…banned [them] from their neighbourhood…[they] were forced to relocate…to what became the killing fields of…Downtown Eastside, with 65 women murdered since the mid-1980s…we seek a formal, public apology from Vancouver…[and] financial reparations…for a permanent memorial near the corner of Bute and Davie streets…
Emi Koyama on how the “trafficking” paradigm harms young sex workers:
…please don’t refer to the youth as “children”…most are 16- and 17- year olds who resent being referred to as “children”…”Rescue” approach presumes that young people have a safe home to go back to and the only problem is the presence of the “trafficker.” That is not the reality for the vast majority…Youth often engage in sex trade in order to escape from violence and abuse at home or in the child welfare system…”Rescue” only sends them back to the unsafe situation that they are escaping from in the first place…It may be convenient for…society to pretend that…violence only comes from pimps and sex buyers, but it is not true…police, hospitals, and schools are much larger source of violence than pimps in the life of street youth…
The parental filters of U.K. ISPs are blocking 20 percent of the 100,000 most-visited websites…according to the Open Rights Group…”Different ISPs are blocking different sites and the result is that many people…can’t access their websites…there is a lack of information about how to get sites unblocked”…
Your periodic reminder that Dennis Hof really is a revolting excuse for a human being:
The man who owns a well-known brothel in Nevada…is submitting plans to Phoenix city leaders asking permission to open a similar business…a month before the Super Bowl and then close it down a month after…”After [an] initial $500,000 up front, the city would take in additional tax dollars…I was raised in Phoenix…and prostitution was rampant then and is still a problem now…I do background checks on all my girls, they get tested frequently, I will cut down on the pimps and the clients will not go to an illegal source for sex if they have a legal source…Phoenix is one of the worst sex trafficking places in America and this will combat that”…
Another good one from Belle Knox, this time on Jezebel:
…I am often asked if there is solidarity among sex workers. The answer, as I’ve come to slowly and painfully discover, is no. We’re all essentially doing the same job — selling tickets to a fantasy — so you might imagine that, like retail, food service, or any other profession, we might have some form of solidarity. But what I’ve learned about the…whorarchy…has helped shed some light on some of the lies I believe all women are buying to one degree or another…
Meanwhile Margaret Corvid, the dominatrix whose writing I criticized in the original of this title, apologized for her original wording and wrote this article to demonstrate her real feelings on the subject:
…I’ve seen the reports of people…forced to do sex work. They are called trafficked women, and are often depicted at the point of a police raid, with flashing cameras shoved in their faces…I write today to stand with Agustin, Grant, and Maggie McNeill, who have so powerfully argued that this portrayal, and the very concept of “sex trafficking” that underpins it, is a myth…[which] deprives sex workers of agency and identity, as it…fetishises our lives and bodies…
Marching Up Their Own Arses (TW3 #414)
If your local cops claim that “prostitution is…one of the biggest problems they face,” I suggest it’s time to stop wasting money on a police department. The most hilarious part of this article: the idea that there is such a thing as a “legal escort service” that can be “differentiated from illegal prostitution”. Blah blah blah “not a victimless crime”, blah blah children, blah dirty whores, blah disease, blah licenses, booga booga SEX TRAFFICKING!
The Mote and the Beam (TW3 #419)
Elizabeth Brown analyzes the danger of the latest “sex trafficking” Trojan horse:
The “Stop Advertising Victims of Exploitation (SAVE) Act“…would…require all sites that host adult advertising (whether paid or free)…to review ads before publication, request a valid telephone number and credit card number from each poster, “prohibit the use of euphemism and codewords”…and prohibit the use of prepaid debit cards or cryptocurrencies in placing paid ads. For sites that run paid adult advertisements, publishers would be responsible for verifying the identity of every person who placed an adult ad by obtaining a copy of a government-issued ID containing their name, photo, and date of birth. The publisher would have to hold on to these records for seven years and make them…available to the [“authorities” on demand]…The bill insists that information won’t be used against registrants in criminal proceedings unrelated to sex trafficking. But knowing how fond government and law enforcement officials are of privacy and keeping promises, you can see why those advertising adult services…may be reluctant to hand over such information…
The most important real-world effect of this law would be to drive virtually 100% of adult advertising to sites hosted outside of the US.
The Course of a Disease (TW3 #422)
France avoids the Swedish rot for now:
A landmark bill in France that would see clients of prostitutes hit with fines of up to €1,500 may never see the light of day after senators voted to scrap the legislation…Senator Esther Benbassa cited the bad example…[of] Sweden where…it has failed to reduce prostitution and simply made life more dangerous for sex workers…
The proposed prostitution bill could make sex work even more dangerous and may be unconstitutional, more than 200 legal experts said in an open letter to the prime minister …In fact, they argue, it’s no better than the old law struck down by the Supreme Court late last year for violating sex workers’ Charter rights…
A job centre employee has admitted demanding sex from unemployed former prostitutes in exchange for work…[and] is now facing sexual assault and bribery charges…The man had been responsible for a project since 1990 in which women who wanted to escape prostitution were found work…
Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs (TW3 #426)
Digging through the prohibitionist nonsense in this article yields this kernel:
…Dolly has been home…to 1,187 sex workers and 311 pimps (according to official data)…Unofficial reports found no fewer than 9,000 people, including those operating hundreds of lodges, cafés, karaoke bars, massage parlors and food stalls, were involved either directly or indirectly in the…sex industry…The possible massive exodus of former Dolly residents has caused great concern among provincial and regional governments…health campaigners, women and human rights advocates and members of community-based organizations across Indonesia, especially in Bali, which many consider a…perfect spot for sex tourism…“Within the framework of our [Bali’s] efforts to end the HIV epidemic, the closure of Dolly could become a time bomb — a social and health disaster for the island,” a doctor who conducts outreach programs for sex workers…said…
The June 25 seizure of…MyRedBook…by the FBI has been heralded by some as another win in the war against…child sex traffickers…the FBI and CNN…fail to mention that the site also functioned as a critical exchange for sex workers looking to reduce harm and share best practices…the seizure has not only cut off a source of income for sex workers, but also a source of information and community…among crusaders committed to criminalizing sex workers and the people who purchase their services…sex workers…are either trafficked girls shackled to beds when they’re not servicing sadistic ghouls, or they are thrill-seeking degenerates blissfully unaware of their privilege…The former daydreams of a police raid that will liberate her…while the latter feverishly supports the “Pimp Lobby” from Twitter…The massive gulf of silence between these two caricatures gives space to a convenient narrative that…the overwhelming majority of sex workers require intervention by benevolent law enforcement agencies…
Lucy Steigerwald points out that there are scary implications for amateurs, too:
…The warning on My Red Book states that domain names count as property, therefore they can be taken under racketeering laws. But that is a wide and rocky road towards censorship which needs to be challenged. A website is speech…Shutting one down without due process is nothing more than censorship. Just because the federal government wants to shield our eyes from prostitution doesn’t mean we should let it…
That Was the Week That Was (#339)
Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged A Procrustean Bed, A Tale That Grew in the Telling, Above the Law, adolescence, agency denial, Alabama, An Ounce of Prevention, animals, Arizona, Australia, bad customers, Bad Girls, Be Careful Who You Rape, brothels, California, Canada, Change of Heart, comics, cops, disease, drugs, ethics, Florida, Georgia, harm reduction, hysteria, Imagination Pinned Down, India, internet, Ireland, Juxtaposition, law, Madonna/whore, neofeminism, Netherlands, New York, North Carolina, Perquisites, politicians, porn, prohibitionist myths, psychology, rape, rescue industry, Reviews, Rough Trade, Saint Death, Scapegoats, Shift in the Wind, statistics, stereotypes, Still a Child, stripping, Swedish model, Texas, The Proper Study, Theatrics, United Kingdom, video, Watershed on September 28, 2013| 68 Comments »
What Feministe did is like pissing on your host’s carpet, then storming out indignantly when they point out that you just pissed on the carpet.
– Chris Hall
Australia agrees with what I have stated before: cheating a whore is a form of rape: “Akis Emmanouel Livas…pleaded guilty to sexual intercourse without consent after he left the woman with a white card bearing a printed red rose instead of the agreed $850…”
Ladies, if a client treats you badly, it’s probably best just to add his name to an “ugly mugs” or “bad date” registry and leave it at that: “Angela Dawn Specker…cut a former john on his forearm when she saw [him] in…a liquor store the [next] day…Specker told the cop…that…he…had been very aggressive…pulling her hair and slapping her…[then throwing] the $100 at her and [leaving]…”
New York officially classes all whores as passive objects without agency:
New York…is creating a statewide system of…criminal courts to handle prostitution cases and provide services to help wrest…sex-trafficking victims from the cycle of exploitation and arrest, the state’s chief judge announced…The new Human Trafficking Intervention Courts will handle all cases involving prostitution-related offenses that continue past arraignment…the court will refer defendants to services like drug treatment, shelter, immigration assistance…health care…education and job training, in an effort to keep them from returning to the sex trade…women typically enter prostitution…between…12 and 14, Judge Lippman said…
As we have often seen, basic mathematical literacy is not a requirement to hold office in New York.
A San Francisco strip club is suing Oracle after one of its employees ran up $33,540 in charges on a company credit card – and Oracle refused to pay the bill…Jose Manuel Gomez Sanchez…[charged] $16,490…at the New Century Theater…[then] returned two nights later and rang up another $17,050…
For the first time the men and women selling sex indoors in Ireland have been asked about their lives. The findings harshly contradict the popular media image…The 195 escorts who took part…were from 29 different countries. Most were…in their 20s or 30s and highly educated…97.3 percent were self-employed independent escorts…there was no evidence of the involvement of any under 16s and only one participant was aged under 18. Participants reported low alcohol and drug use [and] high condom use…
A common drug that dermatologists prescribe to treat nail fungus appears to…completely eradicate infectious HIV from cell cultures…the virus doesn’t bounce back when the drug is withheld…[so] it may not require a lifetime of use to keep HIV at bay…the fact that it’s already deemed safe for one type of human use could make the regulatory process faster than usual…
“…A…$3.4 million settlement with the family of Jose Guerena will end a two-year legal battle…Guerena…was [murdered] by SWAT team members…when they raided his house…[a spokesman claimed] the settlement is not an admission of any wrongdoing…” You may remember that the cops tried to claim that Guerena, a retired Marine, must have been a “drug trafficker” because he had a picture of Jesus Malverde.
I get that there’s not technically a federal rape law, but this seems to seriously downplay what this cop did: “Jason Glenn Thomas…a…Police sergeant in Tuscaloosa, Ala., was sentenced…to…ten years in federal prison…for sexually assaulting a…woman in violation of federal civil rights laws…[after detaining her and transporting her] to a remote area…”
In Phoenix, dog porn is a higher law enforcement priority than rape:
A…man accused of burning his initials onto the genitals of at least one woman was arrested again…after…deputies allegedly found pornographic videos featuring a dog at his home. Christopher Jackson…was arrested on suspicion of bestiality…“If you saw the video, you’d be pretty sick,” Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said…Police also arrested…Josephine Erikson, who they say is seen in the videos…
While Arpaio seems to be motivated by the desire to leer at women in person after watching them in stolen dog videos, over in North Carolina they’re motivated by weird ideas about sexual purity:
A…woman is accused of having sex with dogs while her…husband filmed them [for]…the Internet…Ruben Chance James Fox and his wife, Amber Nicole Fox…face…charges of bestiality, conspiracy…disseminating obscene materials…[and] soliciting a crime against nature. The Humane Society tipped off the…police…
Edinburgh sauna chiefs have compiled a “hypocrisy hit list” of senior public figures who paid for sex at their premises in recent years…[it] includes police officers, council officials, lawyers and even two “celebrities”…[and] is due to be unveiled at a civil court case next month…the list…proves double standards among public officials trying to shut the city’s sex industry down…
Melissa Gira Grant on the increasing desperation of prohibitionists:
I’ve written before about Equality Now (in Jacobin, and in Reason)…[who] deny that anyone involved in the sex trade dissents with their approach. Lately their op-eds have turned explicitly against sex workers’ rights, which makes sense, as the past two years have seen the mainstream of the global health and human rights community joining sex workers in calling for an end to…criminalization…Equality Now appear to be losing credibility as human rights advocates…As more and more…advocates…demand…that sex workers be understood as the experts…the anti-sex work campaigners begin to look quite out of step with the…people they claim to protect…
Lauren Hersh, who wrote the op-ed to which Grant refers, was a prosecutor who resigned in disgrace after she was caught railroading two black men on rape charges. Grant also commented on a Scott Long article which examines Equality Now’s lies and schemes at great length, ending with this bombshell:
…The Milano School of International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy is offering a practicum for students…in a project for Equality Now. “This project would analyze the legalization of prostitution and formation of sex workers’ rights groups…Equality Now seeks to better understand the movement…in order to refute arguments for legalization and lobby for adoption of the Nordic Model instead”…
In other words, Equality Now is paying a prestigious institution to spy on sex workers so as to help it create fake sex worker rights organizations which will lobby for the Swedish model, thus confusing politicians and others into thinking there is legitimate debate among sex workers about decriminalization being best. The strategy itself is nothing new; it’s why Swedish model missionaries often deceptively and incorrectly label it “decriminalization”. But that they are willing to go to this extent demonstrates the depth of their desperation, and the fact that the school took down the page as soon as they realized activists had found it (but not before Melissa got this screenshot) shows that they are fully aware of how incredibly unethical this is.
A Tale That Grew in the Telling (TW3 #50)
Sunitha Krishnan’s lies get more outrageous all the time: 
Yes, that’s 100 clients a day she’s claiming there.
For over two decades, Chester Brown has been one of Canada’s leading cartoonists, known…internationally for such works as Yummy Fur, Ed the Happy Clown, I Never Liked You, and Paying for It…For this year’s McCready Lecture, Chester Brown will present an illustrated talk…[to complement the] presentation in the Canadian galleries of a selection of the original drawings created for Louis Riel and will launch the new anniversary edition of the book…
…last week…Feministe made a very embarrassing and controversial post about sex work disappear from their site, along with several hundred comments…they have not posted any explanation, apology, or retraction for the post, apparently hoping that they can just make it vanish down the memory hole…”Dear Feminists” by Sarah Elizabeth Pahman…pretended to be about…impoverished sex workers, [but] it was all about Pahman, and how seeing them for the first time made her feel…[the incident] shows how deeply institutionalized their problems with sex work are…
The Joy of Juxtaposition (TW3 #312)
Georgia appears to be competing with Washington for the state with the most ridiculous and extreme manifestation of “sex trafficking” hysteria:
…a new Georgia law requires certain businesses to post…notices letting sex trafficking victims know who to call for help…The list includes: adult entertainment establishments, bars, airports, train stations, bus stations, truck stops, emergency rooms, urgent care centers, farm labor contractors, privately operated job recruitment centers, rest stops, hotels, and massage parlors without licensed massage therapists…
What, not ethnic restaurants and nail parlors?
Did you see that ridiculous video which claims that most whores in Amsterdam were “trafficked”? Here’s Dr. Brooke Magnanti on what’s wrong with the entire mindset that produced it:
…[in] Stop the Traffik’s recent “viral”…bystanders who think they’re enjoying a show are suddenly broadsided with a ham-fisted…message…It neatly employs a trick that has been used by what Laura Agustin calls the “Rescue Industry” for some time now: conflate all trafficking with sex trafficking, and all sex work with trafficking…it’s then perfectly acceptable…to mislabel consensual sex work as abuse…and at the same time to ignore the more widespread and less fashionable phenomenon of forced labour happening in domestic and drug sectors…the people who influence public taste and public policy definitely don’t want anyone looking too closely at where their cleaners and their drugs come from, but everyone hates sex work, so attacking that is A-OK. Raids that rescue exactly zero trafficked individuals and put plenty of willing others behind bars are fine…
The UK is moving toward defining people in their early twenties as “children”:
…Child psychologists are being given a new directive…that the age range they work with is increasing from 0-18 to 0-25…the change follows developments in our understanding of emotional maturity, hormonal development and particularly brain activity…There are three stages of adolescence – early adolescence from 12-14 years, middle adolescence from 15-17 years and late adolescence from 18 years and over. Neuroscience has shown that a young person’s cognitive development continues into this later stage and that their emotional maturity, self-image and judgement will be affected…
Keep in mind that since “adolescence” is largely an artificial concept, dividing it into periods like this is equally artificial. But at least someone with sense is quoted in the article:
Frank Furedi, professor of sociology at the University of Kent, says we have infantilised young people…”There is a loss of the aspiration for independence…and…psychology…reinforces that kind of passivity and powerlessness and immaturity and normalises that…we hold our children back from a very early age. When they’re 11, 12, 13 we don’t let them out on their own. When they’re 14, 15, we hover all over them and insulate them from real-life experience. We treat university students the way we used to treat school pupils”…
Another excellent article by evolutionary psychologist Peter Gray explains that one of the biggest culprits is the eradication of unsupervised play:
…around 1960…adults began…reducing children’s freedom to play on their own…Adult-directed sports…began to replace “pickup” games; adult-directed [activities]…began to replace hobbies; and parents’ fears led them…to forbid children from going out to play…away from home, unsupervised…Over the same decades…[there has been] a continuous…increase in anxiety and depression in young people…the suicide rate…has more than doubled, and…[there has been] a decline in empathy and a rise in narcissism…[which is] exactly what we would expect to see in children who have little opportunity to play socially. Children can’t learn these social skills…in school, [which] is an authoritarian…setting…[where] children…are not free to quit when others fail to respect their needs and wishes…Yet policymakers…are continuing to push us in the opposite direction — toward more schooling…more adult direction…and less opportunity for free play…
The “deals went bad”. Seven times.
…Van Dralan Dixson, 38, confessed to police that he was responsible for a Sept. 1 rape in which he [attacked] a woman who was leaving work at a fast food restaurant…he told police…that the [only] two incidents that [he was sorry for]…the one…“with the kids and the ‘chicken lady’”…but the rest were prostitute deals gone bad and he had nothing to apologize for…
That Was the Week That Was (#311)
Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged activism, Africa, agency denial, Arizona, Australia, Backlash, bogus studies, California, Check Your Premises, Comfort Zone, Coming and Going, condoms, cops, crypto-moralism, diversion programs, escort services, ethics, evidence, Finding What Isn’t There, Grace Bellavue, Hard Numbers, hysteria, illegal aliens, Ireland, It Looks Good On Paper, Lack of Evidence, language, Latin America, law, LGBT rights, marriage, Mexico, Neither Addiction nor Epidemic, neofeminism, Nevada, New York, No Friend of Ours, Obfuscation via Dysphemisms, Oklahoma, One Size Fits All, Peeping Toms, politicians, Politicizing the Personal, prohibitionist myths, psychology, Real People, Reviews, Saint Death, Scrambled Eggs, streetwalkers, Sweden, Texas, That's the Ticket!, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers, Virginia, welcome to our world on March 16, 2013| 15 Comments »
In the field of human trafficking, I detest data because most of it is made up and bogus. – Martina Vandenberg, Human Trafficking Legal Resource Center
It’s good to see the media finally noticing this:
There is no law that says…condoms [are] illegal…and yet NYPD…routinely…[uses them] as…evidence for…prostitution…one city agency conducts a public-health campaign and…[those] who take advantage of it are…promptly arrested by a different city agency—leading to cases being thrown out of court, a suppressed and redacted…study of the problem, and a bill to address the matter in…the state legislature…arresting people because they are in possession of condoms…distributed…by the city itself…looks an awful lot like entrapment…
Nor are the arrests limited to sex workers;
as I’ve explained many times, laws which violate whores’ rights invariably violate everyone’s.
I love seeing profiles like this one of Australian escort Grace Bellavue; the more the public sees of real sex workers, the harder it will be for prohibitionists to sell their stereotypes and myths about us.
This is only “stunning” to those who believe in the “pimps and hos” myth:
A sex-trafficking case got the hook in…Brooklyn…when prosecutors revealed their victim was advertising herself as an escort…the woman, now 19, who claimed defendant Robert Pannell forced her into prostitution in April 2011…advertised herself online…last month. The stunning revelation contradicted the accuser’s testimony that her ordeal as a 17-year-old runaway was the only time she ever turned tricks…
The Women’s Legal Centre…in Cape Town…provides legal services for sex workers…[who] face routine harassment, intimidation, and…abuse from police…[who] threaten, arrest, or detain [them] for days at a time…many are released only after paying large fines…WLC began its outreach by offering weekly group workshops…[but] soon expanded, employing four former and current sex workers as paralegals…
An internal investigation of the Wilmington [North Carolina] Police Department’s narcotics enforcement team revealed inadequate documentation of funds, poor…supervision…and a “code of silence” cover-up of a March 2012 undercover prostitution operation…Police Chief Ralph Evangelous…[claimed] the undercover operation was in response to a citizen complaint about…escort services…the narcotics enforcement unit came up with a “unique approach” in [which]…more than $2,000 in city funds…were used…
Translation: The narcotics squad had a party but got caught, and it took the police chief a year to come up with a cock-and-bull excuse.
A federal appeals court struck down Virginia’s anti-sodomy law…a decade after…Lawrence v. Texas…The appeal originated in a 2005 case in which a 47-year-old man was convicted of soliciting a 17-year-old girl for sex. The girl refused and reported the incident to police, resulting in a “crimes against nature” charge…
As you might expect, Swedish neofeminists do not like surrogate motherhood and consider it a form of “human trafficking”:
Surrogate motherhood is a serious crime against women’s human rights…Even when the woman has voluntarily become a surrogate…she gives up the rights to her own body…surrogacy…opens the door for viewing women and children as goods, and to regarding women as containers…having children is not a human right…
Nor, in the minds of neofeminists, is using one’s natural abilities in a way which violates the neofeminist religion. Though this collectivist stance is evil because it denies women the right to control their bodies, it is more philosophically consistent than that of the US (which allows surrogacy but bans sex work) and Australia (vice-versa). But lest you believe that Swedish neofeminists are truly motivated by concern for women’s well-being:
Equality Minister Maria Arnholm wants Sweden to keep the right to deport women whose relationships with Swedish spouses end within two years…The…rule was introduced in an effort to clamp down on sham marriages and to put an end to so-called “wife imports”. But it has been blamed for forcing women to remain in abusive relationships…[and] a 2012 government-ordered inquiry [recommended it] be abolished…The Centre Party’s Women’s Association has also demanded that the…rule be…[replaced with] “immediate action” against “the practice of wife importation”…
Prohibitionists just love to tout “diversion programs” which supposedly “help” whores instead of criminalizing them, but if these are so great why do they need cops to force women into them, and why are their standards so strict that very few qualify to avoid jail? In a recent example from Tucson, Arizona, members of SWOP warned sex workers away from a sting they had learned about, but 13 women still got caught…and only four qualified to escape jail. The scheme’s organizer Steve Kozachik, a local politician with a reputation as a control freak, claimed SWOP’s protecting women from cops was “unnecessary” and that “This is not anti sex worker.” Tell that to the nine women whom the prohibitionists “helped” into cages and branded with lifelong criminal records for trying to earn a living.
Dr. Laura Agustín feels the same way I do about the concept of “empowerment”, as she explains in this older essay she recently republished:
The verb is transitive: someone gives power to another, or encourages them to take power or find power in themselves. It’s used among those who want to help others identified as oppressed…[the] emphasis [is] on the helper and her vision of her capacity to help, encourage and show the way…To empower me as a sex worker you assume the role of acting on me…
…a California…law prohibits women from being compensated for donating their eggs for medical research, despite payments to subjects in other human research studies…[and] eggs…donated for fertility treatments…[but] a recently introduced bill…would allow women to be compensated…the California Family Council…[claims sponsor Susan] Bonilla’s bill opens up “dangerous medical ground.” The…anti-abortion group…said eggs should be treated like organs and should not be sold…Bonilla said…”I think women are able to decide for themselves if they want to participate in a clinical trial”…
Jesse Walker published a good short piece on Santa Muerte which includes links to a recent AP article, an FBI scare-screed and an essay comparing anti-Santa Muerte hysteria to the Satanic Panic.
Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic
Neuroskeptic points out the deep connection between addiction rhetoric and crypto-moralism:
…The dopamine theory of addiction is extremely popular today…[but] if you view addiction as essentially about reward (pleasure), surely that means…anything pleasurable could…be addictive?…if…addiction is the direct consequence of over-indulgence in a reward, then aren’t you saying that reward itself is ultimately what’s addictive?…If everything from food to friends to music are rewarding because they trigger dopamine release, then surely all of those things could be ‘addictive’…The more fun, the more (potentially) addictive…this idea – for all its medical, neurobiological, scientific language – actually undermines the concept of addiction as a ‘disease’ and reduces it to what amounts to a moral failing – it casts addiction as over-indulgence…
Ministers, the police and social workers have been accused of a “shocking” failure to prevent the spread of modern slavery in the UK, leading to sexual exploitation, forced labour and the domestic servitude of adults and children…Describing government ministers as “clueless”…[about] human trafficking…the most exhaustive inquiry yet conducted into the phenomenon concludes that the approach to eradicating modern slavery is fundamentally wrong-headed. Instead of helping vulnerable victims…the legal system prosecutes many for immigration offences…
Though I hate to defend government officials, I feel compelled to point out that it’s difficult to adapt to ever-expanding definitions, and impossible to produce enough “victims” to satisfy “estimates” which are essentially just made up.
Gloria…Giammalva…was [sentenced]…to…[21] months in prison and to be partially responsible for a $600,000 money judgment…U.S. Attorney Trent Shores…[claimed] the conspiracy…charged $30 per encounter, which he said meant that 20,000 commercial sex acts were performed by the women who were exploited…Giammalva…conspired with others in the operation of a multistate prostitution business that coerced and enticed women across state lines to participate in commercial sex acts…
Trim off all the dysphemisms and what remains is: she owned an escort service and the prosecutor lied about the fee to ratchet up the number of “counts”.
Dallas officials are trying to push their “prostitution diversion” scheme on the rest of Texas as a replacement for locking women up. While any move away from incarceration is good news, the motivation is a desire to save money rather than a recognition that criminalization of consensual adult behavior is wrong; whores are still regarded as “criminals” to be “rehabilitated”, and all are assumed to be miserable victims who want out of sex work.
When Rob Arthur (author of You Will Die) noticed that Chester Brown (author of Paying For It) had expressed interest in his book in the comment thread of this post, he asked me to forward his email address to Chester and the two of them each sent the other a book. I am both pleased and honored to have facilitated the meeting of two awesome authors whose works I greatly enjoyed.
…Steph Key will introduce new laws to [the South Australian] Parliament…to decriminalise all forms of sex work, after a previous attempt was rejected by one vote in November. The new Bill, based on a New Zealand model, would…allow local government…regulatory control…but…prevent councils from outlawing brothels simply because they offer sex work…Ms Key and [Status of Women Minister Gail] Gago were confident the new attempt was more likely to pass…
Dr. Brooke Magnanti on Comic Relief’s subscription to prohibitionist lies:
…This figure comes from a paper that surveyed only street-based sex workers, who represent less than 20% of prostitution…we should be…wary of…any group that throws around this number as if it represents sex work in general…Similarly, we are regularly told that the “average” age of entry into sex work is 13. This is actually incredibly mathematically unlikely, unless there is an epidemic of infants being sexually exploited we don’t yet know about. Former librarian and escort Maggie McNeill has broken down why this oft-repeated assumption is incorrect…The Comic Relief site continues: “The UK is a major destination country for trafficked young people. They are at a very high risk of being sexually exploited.” No source is given for this statement – probably because no such data exists. Confirmed trafficking cases in the UK are more likely to enter other jobs like agriculture, hospitality, and domestic service than they are to become sex workers…
In the process of criticizing Nevada’s proposed “Everyone is a Sex Trafficker” Act, Jennifer Reed also debunks the “sex trafficking” panic:
…Prostitution in the U.S. was largely legal until changing women’s sexual norms led to a “white slavery” panic that resulted in the closing of brothels with the White-Slave Traffic Act, better known as the Mann Act in 1910…The reality was numerous young women were drawn into prostitution for “mundane” economic reasons [but] the ambiguous language of the Mann Act…was used to criminalize forms of consensual sexual behavior for many years…The [American] conception…developed because a crusade against prostitution…[conflated it] with human trafficking, a claim for which there is no evidence, even according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. An executive summary of human trafficking put forth by the non-profit Center for Health and Gender Equity concludes that “conflating human trafficking with prostitution results in ineffective anti-trafficking efforts and human rights violations because domestic policing efforts focus on shutting down brothels and arresting sex workers, rather than targeting the more elusive traffickers”…investigations…[focus] almost entirely on commercial sex. It is a structure built on vice squads rather than labor investigators…
I wrote: “…many European countries seem more interested in ‘trafficking’ as an excuse to restrict immigration than as a genuine concern for the human rights of migrants.” Jim Cusack of The Independent wrote: “The Department of Justice and the courts are turning down ‘nearly all’ asylum requests from African women who say they fled [to Ireland] to escape sex traffickers in other European countries…”
That Was the Week That Was (#41)
Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Q & A, Tyranny, tagged Africa, agency denial, anal sex, Australia, Backpage, Backwards into the Future, bogus studies, brothels, California, censorship, Change of Heart, child "protective" services, condoms, cops, disease, Down Under, ethics, Europe, evidence, harm reduction, Housewife Harlotry, hysteria, Lack of Evidence, language, Latin America, law, License To Rape, Maine, Malawi, marriage, Mexico, Netherlands, pimps, porn, rape, Saint Death, Saving Them from Themselves, See No Evil, sexting, So Close and Yet So Far, stage names, stereotypes, streetwalkers, Texas, The More the Better, The Rape Question, Tyranny by Consensus, Umpteen Thousand People, Uncommon Sense, United Kingdom, video, Without Let or Hindrance, yin and yang on October 13, 2012| 14 Comments »
Prostitution has a social value, and it’s necessary in a city.– Daniël Termont
Without Let or Hindrance
Those who have dealt with “Child Protective Services” know that they are granted powers of which the Inquisition would have been envious. They routinely abduct people’s children on the flimsiest of pretexts, often on hearsay and without even a warrant, and once this happens parents may never regain custody; if they do it is after years of jumping through ridiculous and ever-changing hoops, playing endless games of “Mother May I?” with power-mad bureaucrats, submission to outlandish violations of their rights and privacy, hundreds of hours in court and total financial ruin…and that’s not even counting the emotional damage to the children. On Wednesday, an activist named Kathi Duran began a hunger strike on the steps of the California state capitol to call attention to these abuses; as expected, she was arrested almost immediately. She asked me to call attention to her protest and share this press release, and I’m happy to do so and will provide updates as I get them.
Updates
This result doesn’t happen nearly often enough:
An ex-Houston police officer [named Abraham Joseph]…was sentenced to life in prison…for raping a waitress…Joseph could have received as little as five years…but jurors chose the maximum sentence instead.
News articles always refer to criminal cops as “ex-cops”, implying they had already been fired when they committed the crimes.
The San Francisco Police Department announced…that [it] will [temporarily] stop using condoms as evidence in prostitution cases…Under current city policy, police cannot confiscate condoms…But…police sometimes broke the policy…A July report from Human Rights Watch criticized San Francisco, along with New York, Washington, DC and Los Angeles, for [the practice]…
Spam received by a reader; if this isn’t a hoax, the cops, voyeurs or pimp wannabes who set it up labor under truly mythic levels of ignorance and disinformation.
Sex educator Debby Herbenick on the need for more research on anal sex: “…In an incredibly short period of time, anal sex has become a common part of Americans’ sex lives. As of the 1990s, only about one-quarter to one-third of young [Americans]…had tried anal sex at least once. Less than 20 years later, my research team’s 2009 National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior found that as many as 40-45 percent…in some age groups had…[yet] taboos persist and…the list of what we don’t know about anal sex is far longer than the list of what we do. This makes it difficult for sex educators to feel truly confident in answering people’s very real and important questions…”
Add Malawi to the list of countries whose legal experts understand human rights better than those in the US; one of them said that “Despite the fact that Malawi has not outlawed sex work…police officers on night patrols pounce on sex workers and…charge…[them] with rogue and vagabond…This is a clear violation of rights of sex workers…” He also commented on the unsanctioned compulsory HIV testing I reported in TW3 (#24), stating that it “is not recommended by…UNAIDS” and “it is impractical and unworkable and more effective results can be reached by supporting sex workers’…access [to] testing, prevention, and support…”
No, marriage isn’t prostitution; not at all:
…Several [New York] attorneys have shared the craziest [prenuptial agreements] they’ve penned…[including] items like “no piano playing while the husband is home”, cash bonuses…if either is caught cheating and an agreement to terminate a pregnancy if one should occur…[some include]a weight clause…[another] said [the wife] would never wear green and if she did, her husband [could]…destroy the item…One husband demanded “wife not allowed to cut her hair”…
The article also mentions the wives’ demands, including husbands being home by a certain time and (surprise!) being paid for sex.
Amanda Hess adds to our list of good articles about “sexting” hysteria:
When Polaroid inventor Edwin Land introduced the first commercial instant camera…in 1948, he ushered in what Christopher Bonanos …in The Atlantic calls a “magnificent new era” in photography…for “instant, shareable nudie pics”…The new…format for…nude photographs—sexting—[is]…basically the same: instant explicit photographs, taken under the radar, shared between lovers and friends. In a recent report on a new study of teen sexting…dating “expert” Dr. Wendy Walsh favored terms like “embarrassment,” “shame,” “risky,” and “pressure” to describe the photographic form. And negative terms like those permeate the…discussion around teen photo sharing, though for years research has shown that the media-wide concern-trolling is overblown…
On November 6th Los Angeles county will decide whether to impose AHF’s “condoms in porn” measure; this video explains the real motive behind the whole thing:
…In Ghent’s red-light district, as in many other cities, prostitutes sit in windows to attract potential clients. According to the new law in Ghent, women must wear something in addition to lingerie and may not dance or make suggestive gestures…[Mayor Daniël] Termont…stressed that the measures were intended to reduce the nuisance caused by customers…rather than to victimise the workers.
This US Army report on the Santa Muerte belief refers to it as a “death cult” (technically true, but the phrase has false and pejorative connotations), declares that it isn’t a “true” religion and states that “Although not all members of the cult are criminals, all live an existence that is dominated by crime.” I’m sure that bartenders, taxi drivers and prostitutes (who are not criminalized in Mexico) might disagree that their lives are “dominated by crime”, though cops (another large segment of her devotees) probably wouldn’t.
Umpteen Thousand People Can’t Be Wrong
It’s good to see some journalists finally starting to listen to us:
…Backpage’s critics say they are facilitating sex slavery…[but] all the figures quoted in the media come from a single source, a consultancy called AIM Group…[whose] methodology is shaky at best…they ignore major adult ad networks and mainstream ad networks that accept adult ads…and traffic, revenue and share-of-market numbers, even accurate ones, are no indication of how many…ads…actually convert into…transaction[s]…nor what subset of those…are with a minor or…coerced [person]…Backpage publishes about 3.2 million…ads a month…about 11 percent…are listed in…Adult Services…Backpage removes over a million ads a month…[mostly] for spam and fraud…Only 1.6 percent of the [removed] ads…are from the Adult Category…Only 2 percent of that 1.6 percent, or about 400…a month, are suspected of advertising a minor. Backpage reports those…immediately (and under no legal obligation) to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). In other words, about 1/25 of 1 percent (.04 percent) of the ads Backpage removes…are suspected of advertising a minor for sexual services, a number that represents 1/100 of one percent (.01 percent) of its…ad volume…
Instead of the usual prohibitionists, the article interviewed folks like researcher Ron Weitzer and Kate D’Adamo of SWOP.
…Lucinda Latimer…whose real name is Jan…was…broke, isolated and almost suicidal… she had sold her car and had no idea where her next penny was coming from when she saw a documentary on former career women who turned to the sex industry to make a living. Previously, she had [earned] up to £1000 a night as a graphologist…but ill health and the break-up of her marriage forced her back to Perthshire…[she now does phone sex work and] what has struck her about the men is how normal and pleasant most are and how well educated…Trying to hide her work would have made it shameful and sordid…[so] Jan decided to speak out…she has written…The Diary of a Rookie Phone Sex Floozie, and is about to launch volume two…
Jezebel’s “sex advice” columnist gives a reader advice on how to shove her finger up a guy’s arse without his consent because she wants “to massage someone’s prostate goddamnit!”. Take note of the tepid protests to the columnist’s suggestions on how to trick and bully him into it, then imagine the firestorm if a male writer gave a man advice on how to pressure a woman into something because he wants “to fuck some chick in the arse goddamnit!”
I’m never happy to see a sister pilloried, but I suspect the police decision to expose her customers is going to backfire so badly that this may have some positive results in the long run:
[Alexis Wright has]…been charged with running a prostitution business out of her Zumba dance studio [in Kennebunk, Maine] and secretly videotaping her encounters…Police have begun issuing summons to Wright’s customers and will release the names in the weeks ahead. Townspeople say they’ve heard that lawyers, doctors, law enforcement officials, a television personality and other well-known people in town are included in a detailed clientele list police found. A lot of people would rather not see the names made public because it will hurt families, children and careers…
Another would-be ally undermines her own case by accepting the false claims of prohibitionists:
…In the Netherlands, prostitution is legal. Nonetheless, over 60% of the women involved in prostitution are involved in the sex trade illegally. The Mayor [of Amsterdam] and others refer to these as ‘trafficked’ – either because they are exploited and involved in the sex trade against their will…or because they are illegal workers brought to the country to work voluntarily in conditions different from those they expect…the argument for legalization included belief that it would…decrease trafficking, it has had the opposite effect…prostitution has gone from a predominantly home-grown industry to one very heavily dependent on illegal foreign workers…a [recent law criminalizes hiring]…a prostitute who is not registered with the government…But…this…means that…[the] information must be public so that…[clients] can verify that the sex worker is…licensed…[this] invades the privacy of both…prostitutes and…customers…
Prohibitionists intentionally confuse legalization and decriminalization, ignore the bottleneck effect of registration, pretend that correlation equals causation and conflate “unregistered” with “trafficked”, and the author, Dr. Nancy Darling, fails to question any of it.
Metaupdates
Ilfracombe, the English town which claims to be unique in the world by being absolutely whore-free, proves it can be as prudish about lumps of bronze as anyplace in the Bible Belt: “Damien Hirst refers to ‘Verity’ as a ‘modern-day allegory for truth and justice’…[but hundreds of local residents and law officials]…call the 66-foot bronze statue of a half-exposed pregnant woman ‘soft porn masqueraded as art’…”
Australian sex worker activist Christian Vega has more to say on that “end demand” story from St. Kilda:
…As I read through [the article] the stench of bovine excrement almost made my eyes water…street sex work doesn’t relocate itself to another suburb on the other side of town…there is not an itinerant population of these workers who move en masse from one place to the next like migrating wildebeest across the African savannah…It’s more comfortable for people to think that sex work doesn’t happen in their community…and…that street sex workers must board a shuttle from planet Whore to our neighbourhoods under the cover of darkness before disappearing as the sun rises…
I think I like that imagery at least as much as my own.
This Week in 2010 and 2011
A federal judge enjoyed pleasures he persecuted others for and escaped with a slap on the wrist because officials always have different rules for their own class than for others; they’re also hilariously clueless about sex work and are only beginning to realize what a scam the “anti-trafficking” industry is. I discussed America’s weird love-hate relationship with prostitutes, what a 1947 sci-fi story can teach us about the nanny state, how sex workers arrive at our prices and how prostitution is a much older profession than most people think, and I related the story of a famous whore-obsessed preacher, told some hooker jokes, shared my answers to some amazingly stupid prohibitionist statements and presented two spooky stories for the Halloween season.
The Hits Keep Coming
Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Philosophy, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged Africa, agency denial, bad customers, Barbie, BDSM, bogus studies, censorship, drivers, drugs, Elephant in the Parlor, ethics, Europe, fantasy, Good Fantasy-Bad Reality, Ireland, law, male prostitutes, marriage, Mississippi, neofeminism, Norway, politicians, porn, Recognition, Saint Death, streetwalkers, Sweden, Swedish model, Welcome to Our Updates, welcome to our world, witchcraft on December 18, 2011| 13 Comments »
Enough! or Too much! – William Blake
As I said in my column of December 9th, there always seems to be an explosion of interesting news articles at the end of the year, and here are seven more updates. After today, I’m officially done with this sort of thing until January!
Recognition (August 19th, 2010)
In this early post I discussed the awkwardness which results when an escort discovers that she knows a client in real life, but none of the examples I gave can compare with this UPI story from December 3rd:
…Titus Ncube of Bulawayo [Zimbabwe] said he called for a prostitute to come to the hotel room in which he was staying while having marital problems and was shocked when his 20-year-old daughter arrived…Ncube said he collapsed to [the] floor upon recognizing his daughter, who quickly fled, crying. “I am sorry for what I did,” Ncube said. “I spoke to my wife and daughter. I apologized for my actions as I just wanted my family back. My daughter has stopped doing what she was doing and is going back to school next year. My marital problems are not over, but we have a counselor who is helping us to get over this most difficult period”…
R.I.P Bob Guccione (October 26th, 2010)
In this article I pointed out that men’s magazine publishers have “to be given credit for pushing the envelope and helping to advance the cause of sexual liberty in the US by bringing both porn and frank discussion of sexual topics (including prostitution) into the mainstream.” Now a new book by Mike Edison explores the history of American men’s magazines in depth so as to prove that assertion, and the author promotes it with “How Sex Magazines Made The World A Better Place” in the December 7th Huffington Post.
Good Fantasy, Bad Reality (October 27th, 2010)
From the Jackson, Mississippi Clarion-Ledger of December 12th:
A truck driver claims his prostitute fiancee suffocated as they celebrated their engagement with a meth and bondage sex party. Then he drove from California to Mississippi with the corpse in the cab…and set fire to the truck – with himself and the body inside. Mark Andrew Rice pleaded guilty to arson and desecrating a corpse and was sentenced Monday to six years in prison…[with] two years…suspended for time served.
Rice, 49…met [Natasha] Carpenter at a truck stop in Texas. He fell in love after several encounters…and [gave] her an engagement ring…[on] Sept. 15, 2009. As part of their celebration in Barstow, Calif., Carpenter agreed to let him bind…and…gag…her…When he found her dead, Rice panicked and bought “all the meth his dealer had” and drove to…[Mississippi, where he] planned to say goodbye to his family and kill himself…[but they] took a gun away from him so he climbed into the rig and set it ablaze. Deputies eventually pulled him from the burning truck…Hancock County authorities believe he would’ve been charged with manslaughter or worse had she died in Mississippi…Prosecutors in San Bernardino County, Calif..said there was “insufficient evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”
It’s really quite a sad story, since he seems to have genuinely loved her; I’m guessing the methamphetamine increased her metabolism so that she suffocated more quickly than he allowed for.
Barbie (December 5th, 2010)
In this column I pointed out that “People with a lot of free time and more math skills than sense have published complicated calculations showing that at 1/6 scale, Barbie would be 5’9” tall, with measurements of 36”-18”-33” and a weight of 110#”
and that “The campaign to suppress or neuter Barbie derives from the same repressions and insecurities as the campaign to ban porn and abolish prostitution…” And just as neofeminists aren’t too scrupulous about getting their facts right with regard to porn or prostitution, so they aren’t in their Barbie-attacks either:
Galia Slayen…[told NBC’s “Today” show that] she first created [a 6’ tall] Barbie-like figure — with a 39-inch bust, 18-inch waist and 33-inch hips…for the first National Eating Disorders Awareness week in 2007 while she was [an anorexic] high school student in Portland [Oregon]…”I’m not blaming Barbie [for my illness] — she’s one small factor, an environmental factor,” Slayen said. “I’m blond and blue-eyed and I figured that was what I was supposed to look like. She was my idol. It impacted the way I looked at myself.”
The grotesquely distorted microcephalic figure in the picture (which, as you will note, bears little resemblance to a real Barbie doll) is a perfect symbolic representation of the grotesquely distorted “prostitute” caricatures described by people like Melissa Farley, except that Slayen’s distortion of the math isn’t nearly as severe as that practiced by Farley et al.
Welcome To Our World (January 20th, 2011)
It’s funny how efforts to suppress consensual activities always end up looking a lot alike, as in this December 5th story from the Associated Press:
…Lithuania’s capital [Vilnius] recently introduced a ban on panhandling that not only punishes those who beg but those who give, with fines of up to 2,000 litas ($770). Outraged rights groups say the ban spells misery for the needy in one of Europe’s poorest countries, as winter kicks in and economic turmoil spreads across the continent…”Begging is a human right,” said Linas Kukuraitis, director of the Lithuanian chapter of Catholic charity group Caritas. “It was there long before cities emerged. There have always been those who begged and those who helped them.”
But Vilnius Mayor Arturas Zuokas says the ban will help beggars to find more sustainable ways to make a living. “Giving money to people on the street is wrong,” Zuokas said. “By doing this we doom them to stay there forever”…police…are not issuing fines just yet. Instead they are handing out cards to beggars with addresses and phone numbers of charities and homeless shelters. Stricter enforcement is expected to begin in January. The mayor himself rode his bicycle…looking for violators of the ban. Zuokas made a splash on YouTube earlier this year by riding an armored personnel carrier over a luxury car as a publicity stunt for his crackdown on illegal parking…He said there are plenty of homeless shelters for the poor in Vilnius, “but they stay on the streets because it is a kind of business.”
…Some Asian countries have laws targeting both beggars and almsgivers but European…laws typically focus only on [beggars] and aren’t always strictly enforced. However, police in Ireland cracked down on panhandlers this year…[and] Austria’s Styria province…introduced a begging ban in February. None of them punish almsgivers. By contrast, Norway, one of the world’s richest countries, abolished a more than 100-year-old vagrancy law in 2005, making it legal to beg in the streets. It’s also legal in Sweden, Germany, Spain and Portugal…
Note that Sweden and Norway officially believe that beggars have more right to self-determination and making a living in a way that suits them than women do.
Elephant in the Parlor (October 23rd, 2011)
A politician being caught with a prostitute isn’t really news, but for the prostitute to expose the politician is. This one’s from the December 6th Huffington Post:
The…married mayor [of Medford, New Jersey], accused on a website two months ago of having sex with a prostitute at a California hotel, [has] resigned…The anonymous allegation against…Chris Myers…included a photo of…him in his underwear…[The accuser] claimed to be a prostitute…[whom] Myers contacted…through a male escort website…Myers paid him $500 but didn’t fulfill promises of a car and other gifts…[and that] the broken promise was the reason he was taking his story public. The website was [soon] taken down…[and though] Myers…refused to comment on the allegations [he] didn’t deny them…His resignation letter…did not mention the scandal…
Saint Death (November 1st, 2011)
The December 10th Miami Herald featured this article on persecution of Umbanda, another syncretism of Christianity with African and Indian beliefs. The crusade is largely driven by Pentecostal Christians who…wait for it…want to “save” believers from their choices:
…many Brazilians…view Umbanda…as…witchcraft…In many parts of the country, [it] was outlawed until the 1950s, and in the following three decades believers were supposed to register with the police…Brazil’s…1989 constitution enshrined [religious] freedom…but…followers say official disdain and intense prejudice still put their lives and shrines at risk…[they] report on average 100…physical or verbal attacks a year…in…Rio de Janeiro alone…Cases…have increased along with the…power of Pentecostal religions…”There is always a discourse of ‘taking them from the hands of the devil'”…[theologian Fernando] Altemeyer said…Such tensions have come into relief in Sao Goncalo, where Mayor Aparecida Panniset, an outspoken Pentecostal, has been accused of failing to protect Umbanda sites, or even destroying them. In October, she ignored pleas by religious tolerance activists to stop the demolition of the house where the first Umbanda rituals were held in 1908. She also turned down requests to meet the activists…then moved ahead with efforts to raze another traditional Umbanda house…
One Year Ago Today
“The Swedish Pimpocracy” shows how the government of Sweden exploits women to “implement a plain old-fashioned tyranny while hiding under the cloak of ‘enlightenment’.”
Saint Death
Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged Africa, Catholicism, censorship, cops, drivers, drugs, holidays, Latin America, Mexico, paganism, Saint Death on November 1, 2011| 18 Comments »
It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come. – William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar (II, ii)
As I mentioned in yesterday’s column, in Mexico today is El Dia de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead), a festival honoring the departed. And though it takes place on the Catholic observance of All Saints Day (continuing into tomorrow, All Souls Day), it is a far more important and popular holiday in Mexico than in other Catholic countries because it is in reality a descendant of the Aztec festival of the goddess Mictecacihuatl. As we’ve discussed a number of times before, nearly every Christian holiday is an older pagan observance reconsecrated to the newer religion, and many pagan gods are still revered as holiday figures (such as Santa Claus or Befana) or Christian saints (such as St. Brigit). But in the Americas, Christianity never completely replaced the native religions as totally as it had in Europe, and many peasant religious practices in Latin America are fusions of Catholic teachings and pagan beliefs in much the same way as Voodoo and Santeria are combinations of Catholicism with African and Caribbean beliefs. For example, Our Lady of Guadalupe is a syncretism of the Blessed Mother with the Aztec mother-goddess Tonantzin (“Guadalupe” is a Hispanicized pronunciation of one of her titles, Coatlaxopeuh); it is even possible that her cult was an artificial one designed by Catholic clergy as an aid in converting the natives. But while the Church was happy to allow the festivities of Mictecacihuatl to be transferred to All Saints Day, it had no use for the death-goddess herself; her worship therefore went underground and did not reappear in public for centuries. Her modern name is Santa Muerte (“Saint Death”) and today is her feast day.
Since Christian theology has no place for apotheosized Death, the Church could not convert Mictecacihuatl into an official saint or folk figure; like so many pagan goddesses she was therefore condemned as a devil and her worshippers persecuted as witches or Satanists. But the Aztecs had a strong reverence for death that could not be ground out of them by the conquerors’ religion; most Mexicans were satisfied with the elaborate Day of the Dead festivities, but others continued to venerate La Señora de las Sombras (The Lady of the Shadows) in secret. Researchers have discovered relics from hidden temples and references to suppressed rites dating back to the early 18th century, and the cult began to emerge into public view during the political unrest of the late 19th century. The cartoonist José Guadalupe Posada created a secularized representation of her called La Calavera Catrina (The Elegant Skull) which has become popular in association with the Day of the Dead, but worship of the goddess was still harshly suppressed by the Church until the 1940s, when it began to appear in poor neighborhoods of Mexico City. By 1965 many of her devotees started openly declaring themselves, and by the 1990s they numbered about two million. The first public shrine to Santa Muerte was established in Tepito in 2003, and since then others have sprung up all over Northern Mexico and in Mexican communities in the United States; a full-sized church to her is supposed to be built in Mexico City.
Santa Muerte appears as a skeleton in a robe or dress, usually white but sometimes other colors depending upon what the devotee wishes to invoke her for. She usually carries a scythe and a globe, or sometimes an hourglass. Her rites are borrowed from Catholicism and include praying the rosary; sometimes her images are placed alongside those of Jesus, Our Lady of Guadalupe, or even Jesús Malverde, a Robin Hood-like folk hero revered by many Mexicans as a saint. Candles maybe burned as prayers to her, and believers also offer her small gifts of fruit, flowers, cigarettes, coins, etc. Santa Muerte is particularly revered among the very poor and those whose lives are more dangerous than those of others, especially those who work at night or feel unwelcome in traditional churches because they live outside the law.
She is extremely popular among prostitutes, taxi drivers, bartenders, policemen and soldiers, but also among petty thieves, drug traffickers, smugglers and prisoners. Though criminals are the minority of her worshippers, the Mexican government has sometimes used the association (and the Church’s condemnation) as an excuse to persecute the sect and to consider the presence of a Santa Muerte shrine or altar as “evidence” of criminal behavior, just as the Pima County, Arizona Sheriff’s Office tried to claim that a picture of Jesús Malverde was “evidence” that José Guerena (who was murdered by the Pima Country SWAT team last May 5th) was connected to a “narcotics ring” on the grounds that Malverde is revered by drug traffickers (and also immigrants and those who have been robbed, but obviously that’s not important).
I don’t ever recall reading that the Catholic Church was reviled during Prohibition because most Mafia members were Catholic (many Americans were anti-Catholic due to their protestant upbringing but that isn’t the same thing). But as traditional religion has decreased in importance to many people, governments have become increasingly emboldened to persecute people on religious grounds. This has nothing to do with the government itself or its members being less religious; states with official religions are perfectly happy to oppress members of minority religions as well. But for those regimes, the official religion serves the purpose of social control, just as the state-sanctioned religions called “political parties”, “feminism”, “socialism”, etc do today. It is only minority religions which oppose the status quo or encourage private, personal behavior of which the state disapproves that are targeted for suppression nowadays, and if a few members of the religion are violent outlaws, it provides a convenient excuse for persecution of the entire group. Those who revere Santa Muerte have not been singled out for vigorous suppression yet, but given her popularity among those who live outside of middle-class society in both Mexico and the U.S., it’s only a matter of time.
One Year Ago Today
“Amsterdam” is a short history of prostitution in the famously-tolerant city.
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