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Posts Tagged ‘See No Evil’

That Was the Week That Was (#24)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Philosophy, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 16, 2012| 32 Comments »

Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it.  It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever.  –  Nadine Gordimer

Eleven updates and four meta-updates.

Who Did Your Tits? (October 1st, 2010)

Happy 50th birthday, silicone implant!:

…Timmie Jean Lindsey, 80…said she…[went to Dr. Frank Gerow of Houston, who invented the implants in 1962] because she wanted some rose tattoos removed from her chest, and he told her she was the perfect first candidate…“It wasn’t a big deal to me.  I went from a B to a C cup.  But it made men more aware of me.  More men would whistle at me”…She said she feels fortunate she never experienced many of the side effects that plagued other recipients…

The reason she didn’t have any side effects, of course, is because lawyers hadn’t invented them yet.

An Older Profession Than You May Have Thought (October 12th, 2010)

Remember those cute little Adelie penguins?  Well, it turns out that prostitution isn’t their only “perverted” sexual behavior; George Levick of the ill-fated Scott expedition also observed rape, sexual abuse of chicks, homosexuality and necrophilia.  He was so upset by the whole thing that he recorded his findings in Greek so that they couldn’t accidentally be read by English speakers, and those facts were left out of the official accounts until very recently.  I’m not surprised; any bird which practices “cash and dash” is capable of anything.

Another Example of Swedish “Feminism” (May 30th, 2011)

Did you read the one about the Swedish housewife who set herself up a BDSM dungeon in an abandoned bunker?  It became news when two fishermen discovered it and called the cops.  When Aftonbladet told her that many of her neighbors were scandalized she said, “I think it is because many are afraid.  Sweden is not really such a free country when it comes to sexuality…”  Sex workers and their clients wholly agree.

Surplus Women (September 27th, 2011)

Yet another maniac chooses his victims from among sex workers:

A Mississippi sheriff’s investigator hopes surveillance video from Bourbon Street in New Orleans will provide clues about the death of a strip club dancer whose dismembered body washed ashore on the Gulf Coast…22-year-old Jaren Lockhart reported for work Tuesday (June 5th) night and left early Wednesday.  Her torso was found late Thursday in Bay St. Louis.  Other body parts…were found later…Lockhart had been a resident of the Capri Motel…

The Capri is one of those dirty, scary places where only truly desperate girls live, so I suspect she was murdered by a client who promised her extra money to go off with him.  At least the story seems to make some effort to treat her as a person rather than concentrating on her sex work as so many do.

See No Evil (November 26th, 2011)

Res ipsa loquitur:

…Phillip Cosby…objects to [a] donated statue at the Overland Park Arboretum [in Kansas City], because it portrays a woman…taking a photo of herself while her breasts are exposed…he has started an online petition…to start a grand jury investigation…he objects to the statue’s availability to children and is seeking a charge of promoting obscenity.  Overland Park has posted signs at the park about the statue’s content but says it has no immediate plans to remove the sculpture.

A statue has no “content”; any “obscenity” is projected into it by dirty minds.

Neither Addiction nor Epidemic (December 4th, 2011)

Regular reader Franklin Harris wrote a column on sex in film in which he stated:

Movies and television take a lot of heat for promoting supposedly immoral, promiscuous and irresponsible sexual behavior.  But when it comes to movies that actually make sex their main focus, you may be left wondering why anyone has sex in the first place. Sex in these movies is awful, joyless and nothing good ever comes of it.  On second thought, that does sound like a pretty irresponsible depiction of sex, just not the one we’ve been led to expect…despite depressing movies such as Shame and a few high-profile celebrity cases of suspect credibility, one fact remains: There is no such thing as sex addiction…[it] is not recognized by the American Psychiatric Association, and there is no scientific evidence it exists…

Harris also has sharp words for The Girlfriend Experience and points out the deep irony implicit in Hollywood’s typical condemnation of any kind of sex for pay.  I can’t tell you how pleased I am to see this sort of column becoming ever more common in mainstream media.

Above the Law (March 8th, 2012)

Another cop using his position for rape:  “A former Hopewell [Virginia] police officer was convicted…of sexually abusing three women…In exchange for his pleas, a fourth charge of forcible sodomy was withdrawn by the prosecution.  Baggett faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison on each count…”  Notice that cops in these stories are nearly always described as “former” police officers, subtly implying that they were sacked out for their conduct, when in fact that only happened as a direct result of a probable conviction.  Had the case been less clear, Baggett would still be a cop right now.

An Example to the West (April 3rd, 2012)

Sex workers in Thailand recently sent a letter to their Prime Minister asking him to stop licking Uncle Sam’s boots:

…Empower alleges that successive Thai governments have sacrificed the rule of law, their international human rights obligations and the well-being of migrant sex workers and their families, in an attempt to please the US government and satisfy the American anti trafficking agenda.  We accuse the United States government of using the issue of human trafficking to coerce its allies into tightening border and immigration controls.  The US agenda has also created a climate where women crossing borders are all seen as suspect “victims” of trafficking…Empower sees the Trafficking in Persons Report issued by the US State Department as subjective and bias [sic] against the Thai Entertainment Industry…

The Naked Emperor (May 15th, 2012)

Though danah boyd (who like e.e. cummings prefers her name uncapitalized) is generally critical of moral panics about kids and the internet, and has said that “the most deadly misconception about American youth has been the sexual predator panic”, she seems to have bought into sex trafficking hysteria…or has she?  This article also seems subtly critical of anti-Backpage crusade; is she, like others, simply afraid to say the emperor is naked?

…when we as a society see technology being used in horrible ways, we want to blame and ban the technology…I know that technology is being used in the commercial sexual exploitation of minors.  I also know that many people have responded to the visibility of “child sex trafficking” on commercial websites by wanting to shut down those commercial websites…my goal is to make sure that we understand what we’re doing so that we actually address the core of the problem, not just the most visible symptoms of it.  Unfortunately, we know very little about how children are advertised, bought, sold, and exploited through the use of technology.  There are plenty of anecdotes, but rigorous data is limited…

Read the article and let me know what you think:  more research is good, but only if it’s conducted in an atmosphere of free inquiry; most of the projects she mentions make unwarranted assumptions and seem tailored to produce specific anti-sex work outcomes.

First They Came for the Hookers… (June 5th, 2012)

I really wish politicians would stop proving me right:

…the government says it will end giving work visas to foreign strippers once and for all…”The problem is, under the current Immigration Act we don’t have the legal authority to deny people visas based on the industry they’re working in,” [said] Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Jason Kenney…”Now we have the power, which we’ll [soon] begin using…to deny visas to people who we think…might have a high chance of trafficking or exploitation”…

Once again, “trafficking” rhetoric is really an excuse for bigotry.

R.I.P. Ray Bradbury (June 9th, 2012)

Anyone who’s read more than a token amount of Bradbury has noticed the libertarian ideas in his work, and in this extremely interesting essay by Ilya Somin of The Volokh Conspiracy he demonstrates that Bradbury was not alone: “Libertarianism is better represented in science fiction and fantasy than in any other literary genre.  From Robert Heinlein to the present day, libertarian writers have been among the leaders in the field.  Even many genre writers who are not self-consciously libertarian have often made use of libertarian themes in their work…”

Metaupdates

Welcome To Our World in February Updates (Part Two) (February 13th, 2011)

A UK organization is fighting for the sexual rights of mentally disabled people:

…Everybody has the right to have sex and relationships…however they choose.  But some people in society, such as people with learning disabilities, aren’t always given the automatic right to have relationships and flourish as sexual beings.  They have to persuade others to “allow” them to do it.  FPA believes passionately that everyone has the right to enjoy sexual health…

I applaud FPA’s efforts; whores also know what it’s like to be denied the right to sex on our own terms.

The Scarlet Letter in TW3 (#19) (May 12th, 2012)

Another example of sex workers fighting oppression via civil courts:

…State-sanctioned forced HIV testing of sex workers also occurs [in places other than Greece]…But in Malawi…sex workers are fighting back…in 2009…police…forced [arrested sex workers] to undergo HIV tests…[and those] who tested HIV-positive were charged with  “spreading disease dangerous to life,”…fourteen [of them] decided to sue the government and challenge the constitutionality of forced HIV testing…

Much Ado About Nothing in TW3 (#19) (May 12th, 2012)

Dania Suarez, the escort whose mistreatment kicked off the Secret service scandal, “has announced plans to open a non-profit organization to support women who have been affected by prostitution” just after turning down “a $500,000 pornography contract with Vivid” in favor of a TV documentary on her life.  As long as she only works with women who genuinely want to leave the trade I’m all for it, but if she turns to “rescue” and/or starts mouthing “child sex trafficking” rubbish, she’ll be following Kristin Davis into the Hall of Shame.

Finding What Isn’t There in TW3 (#23) (June 9th, 2012)

Considering that prostitution is not illegal in either part of Ireland and that police found no “traffickers” or “victims” in their highly-publicized joint raid, all of the residences belonged to “innocent people”; I reckon what this article is trying to say is that half didn’t belong to the people named on the warrants:

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) is facing a serious legal backlash after it emerged that as many as half the residences it raided as part of its cross-border anti-prostitution operation with gardai belong to innocent people…the PSNI is now facing a highly embarrassing and potentially very expensive legal fall-out from what appear to have been a series of botched raids based on intelligence that, in some cases, was at least a year out of date…

Though I feel bad for those who were raided, high-profile jackboot buffoonery like this only helps our cause in the long run, because it demonstrates the fact-free basis for police actions and results in ever more editorials like this one:

…”Rape for profit,” stormed Philip Marshall of the PSNI…Everyone would agree if he had freed dozens of sex-slaves and charged their traffickers…So far, though, the only people charged were three Polish girls, who…were…working willingly…is it really worth months of police time…to arrest and shame…three young people?…Or should we consider…offering prostitutes the protection of the law when they are abused or coerced?…Prostitution has always been with us…We can’t legislate it out of existence, but we could legislate to reduce its damage to the health and welfare of those involved.

One Year Ago Today

“June Miscellanea (Part Two)” reports on yet another censorship law, a decentralized online currency system, New York’s declaration that sexy dancing isn’t dancing and more extra-blog activities by yours truly.

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That Was the Week That Was (#21)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 26, 2012| 25 Comments »

Censors tend to do what only psychotics do: they confuse reality with illusion.  –  David Cronenberg

Eleven updates and two metaupdates.

Japanese Prostitution (October 21st, 2010)

This is just so awesome:

…alibi-ya provide women in the…sex industry with a reputable but totally fictitious identity…[using] things like fake business cards, references and employment certificates…[and] even…fake [bosses] for birthday speeches and other family events…Shintaro Sakamoto runs an alibi-ya in Tokyo.  “We provide assistance to mainly hostesses and prostitutes,” he said.  “We help them to rent apartments, and we help them get their kids into nursery schools”…[if] parents ring the office their daughter supposedly works at, the alibi-ya will be ready with the deception, explaining their daughter is in a meeting and will call back shortly.  The alibi-ya will then ring the woman’s mobile and tell her to call home.  Even the caller ID is fixed so it looks like the woman is calling from the landline in her fake office.  There is nothing illegal about the service…

Real People (February 6th, 2011)

Louise and Martine Fokkens are 69-year-old identical twins in Amsterdam who have worked as whores since the age of 19, owned their own brothel for a time and set up the first trade union for prostitutes.  A new documentary, Meet the Fokkens, looks at the colorful lives of these very unconventional ladies.

See No Evil (November 26th, 2011)

I only wish lunacy like this was confined to Sweden; unfortunately, it happens all over the West now:

…Simon Lundström was convicted of possessing child pornography…despite the fact the “manga images” used to convict him featured no real children…The punishment Lundström faces is relatively minor – a fine of around $780…but…still marks him as a sex offender…[plus he lost] his job [as a manga translator and]…can no longer offer his services as a “manga expert”…the prosecution…argued that the images could be used to entice children…and even went as far as to suggest the artists…could have used real children as models…

Sex, Lies and Busybodies (January 27th, 2012)

The Los Angeles City council has apparently begun to recognize that its stupid condom law is unenforceable:

The city administrative officer has asked for a 90-day extension…[citing] “complexities”…In recent weeks the…panel has heard from a contingent of vocal…industry officials who say the ordinance is faulty and unneeded…adult industry attorney…Allan Gelbard…[said] the…extension may give the panel more time to logically think things through.  “Perhaps, if they take a more thorough look at the constitutional issues involved…they will realize what a mistake…this ordinance truly was”…

The Immunity Syndrome (March 5th, 2012)

It now appears the damage done by “abstinence-only sex education” may be even worse than previously believed:

Sixty percent of young adults between the ages of 18 and 29 may not truly understand how proper use of contraception can prevent pregnancy, according to a new study from the Guttmacher Institute, which reports abstinence-only sex education may be leaving young adults with a subpar understanding of sexual health.  Forty percent of respondents…said birth control was not important because “when it is your time to get pregnant, it will happen”…Although…69 percent of women and almost half of the men… agreed they were “committed to avoiding pregnancy,” they seemed to question whether contraceptive devices such as condoms or birth control pills were an effective way to achieve that goal…

Thou Shalt Not (March 6th, 2012)

Alas, the US does not have a monopoly on crypto-moralism:

…according to a study…in the…journal Pediatrics…young adults who listen to…music…with ear buds are almost twice as likely as non-listeners to smoke pot…And those who attend concerts or frequent dance clubs are nearly six times as likely as homebodies to go on a binge-drinking bender.  These findings are based on survey results collected from 944 low-income students…in the Netherlands…[who] ranged in age from 15 to 25…Risky music-listening behavior was defined as listening to music at 89 dBA for at least an hour per day…That music exposure can cause noise-induced hearing loss…[and] “increased feelings of isolation, depression, loneliness, anger, and fear”…But that’s not where the health risks end.  The researchers found that…those who put themselves at risk…were:

* 1.99 times more likely to [have] used cannabis in the last four weeks;
* 1.19 times more likely to smoke cigarettes daily; and
* 1.10 times more likely to have sex without using a condom every time.

…those who put themselves at risk by attending noisy concerts and clubs were:

* 5.94 times more likely to have consumed five or more alcoholic drinks in a row at some point in the last four weeks;
* 2.03 times more likely to have sex without using a condom every time; and
* 1.12 times more likely to smoke cigarettes every day.

…The researchers…say…public health officials…could design practical interventions, such as handing out condoms along with earplugs at concert venues, or by printing messages about alcohol abuse on concert ticket stubs…

Remember, kids, rock and roll is dangerous!  But at least it can’t make you as clueless as people who actually get paid to write rubbish like this, or who publish articles about adult behavior in a magazine for pediatricians.

Feet of Clay (April 5th, 2012)

Walter Olson on Nick Kristof’s latest exercise in fatuity:

Is there a New York Times columnist as insufferably moralistic, or as neglectful of facts that contradict his argument, as Nicholas Kristof?  Last week Kristof mounted yet another of his high-horse save-the-children campaigns, this time against…Anheuser-Busch.  Kristof asks readers to join his boycott of the leading brewer for…permitting its output to be sold…just across the state line from the Oglala Sioux’s Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.  Though notionally dry, the reservation is in practice wracked with alcoholism…Unlike Kristof’s  column and blog post, the Times‘ earlier reporting on the dispute at least makes a few concessions about how the tribe’s alcoholism…has more complicated origins than [a new] lawsuit would make it seem.  For example, it quotes Oglala members who say the unusual Pine Ridge policy of complete alcohol prohibition…has been a failure…Kristof by contrast appears to have swallowed the lawsuit’s contentions in one hearty draft…

Olson goes on to point out that under Nebraska law, brewers have no control over distribution of their product by state-licensed wholesalers; in other words Anheuser-Busch couldn’t stop beer from being sold near the reservation even if it shared Kristof’s belief that “enlightened” white people should “protect” childlike non-whites from their own choices.

Much Ado About Nothing (April 18th, 2012)

I hope this keeps up; if they fire every government operative who has ever hired a whore, the few remaining bureaucrats will be too busy filling out forms to have any time to intrude in the private lives of citizens:

Three Drug Enforcement Administration agents are under investigation for allegedly hiring prostitutes in Cartagena, Colombia…Sen. Susan Collins…[said] “It’s disturbing that we may be uncovering a troubling culture that spans more than one law enforcement agency…the evidence…indicates that this likely was not just a one-time incident”…

Senator Collins, that is the understatement of the century.

Little Boxes (April 29th, 2012)

Amanda Brooks has a knack for discovering oddities like “Fake Internet Girlfriend”, which describes itself as “a service that allows our clients to discreet [sic] employ real females to pretend to be their girlfriend online and communicate with them as if they were dating the person on various social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter or in some cases in gaming communities like World of Warcraft.”  So if it’s more important to you to look like you have a girlfriend than to just use that money to actually have sex (which could potentially relax you enough that you might actually attract a real girlfriend), this is for you.  Of course they insist that they aren’t an escort service, and I‘ll grant that…but honestly, isn’t this on the periphery of sex work?  It’s not at all unusual for a client to pay a girl just to have someone to talk to or to be seen with in public, with no sex involved; is this so different?

Pyrrhic Victory (May 17th, 2012)

For those who felt I was being an alarmist about drones:

…Chief Deputy Randy McDaniel of the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office in Texas…is considering using rubber bullets and tear gas on its drone…“It’s simply not appropriate to use any of force, lethal or non-lethal, on a drone,” [said] Catherine Crump [of the ACLU]…“An officer at a remote location…[Tasing or targeting] people…[could be considered] unconstitutional force…”

Today, remotely-piloted aircraft armed with tasers and tear gas; tomorrow autonomous killer robots with machine guns.  And y’all thought that was just dystopian science fiction.

Traffic Jam
(May 20th, 2012)

Phoenix, Arizona joins the “major sex trafficking hotspot” competition, implements a version of the Swedish Model and violates the separation of church and state in one fell swoop:  “…Phoenix has become a hot spot for sex trafficking in part because we’re a destination point and our major highways…Rather than arrest sex trafficking victims, Project Rose enables officers to bring them to Bethany Bible Church…” where they get all these wonderful services as long as they claim to be “trafficked” and invent a bunch of “leads” to keep the police happy.  Look for the creative claim that “trafficked children” are kept in “dog crates” to show up in more trafficking porn over the next few months.

In this article I also pointed out that the practice of young female gang members contributing to gang finances via prostitution is now being called “sex trafficking”, and as Emi Koyama explained in a recent post about a public forum on the topic, the government recognizes the truth:

…a [government] representative…was invited to make a statement, which she was completely unprepared for…she slipped the information that confirmed what many activists knew was the case but most government experts were smart enough to conceal:  that the U.S. Attorney’s Office views domestic minor sex trafficking as “primarily gang-related,” and has moved the issue to its “gang unit”; transnational human trafficking on the other hand was moved to the civil rights unit…human trafficking is becoming yet another way for young men of color to be criminalized and imprisoned…

Metaupdates

Backwards into the Future in TW3 (#6) (February 19th, 2012)

Once again, Namibians prove that they understand human rights better than Americans do:

The Executive Director of…Rights Not Rescue, Nicodemus ‘Mama Africa’ Aochamub says…”we are thankful that Kazenambo Kazenambo [a government minister who called for legalization of sex work] is brave to stand up for us, but we…prefer that sex work be decriminalised…With legalising, we will work under municipal laws such as registration…red-light districts and [forced]…medical checks [and] identification cards…Time has come for sex work to be regarded like any other employment”…

Sales Pitch in TW3 (#9) (March 4th, 2012)

Wendy Lyon on what a “sex trafficking” trial reveals about the “Swedish Model”:

…last week several men were convicted for what Swedish prosecutors have called one of the largest trafficking rings of its kind…You can read…about it here, here and here…but there are a couple things…worth drawing attention to.  The first is…[that “there was no lack of buyers”]…one of the women…[said] she had seven or eight customers on her very first night.  This doesn’t say much for the supposed deterrent effect of the sex purchase ban.  The second is the breakdown of [clients’] ages…36% were born in the 1960s, 21% in the 1970s and 30% in the 1980s…nearly a third…were teenagers when the ban was introduced in 1999:  further evidence (as I discussed here) that it hasn’t had the normative effect it was supposed to have on younger men.  The 17-year-old’s conviction is interesting for another reason…Sweden’s age of majority is 18, which means that he is legally still a child…The ideology underlying the sex purchase ban is that women cannot choose to sell sex; evidently, however, Swedish law considers that male children…can choose to buy it.  In other words, when it comes to trading sex for money, adult women are less competent than male children.  Could there be any clearer illustration of how this law infantilises women?

One Year Ago Today

“Chupacabra” compares the truth about pimps to their oversized legend.

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That Was the Week That Was (#13)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 31, 2012| 15 Comments »

Beware of purity workers [who are]…ready to accept and endorse any amount of coercive and degrading treatment of their fellow creatures in the fatuous belief that you can oblige human beings to be moral by force.  –  Josephine Butler

Two new items, ten updates and four metaupdates.

Lysistrata

Aristophanes’ comedy depicts an Athenian woman who convinces the women of both Athens and Sparta that the only way to end the Peloponnesian War is to withhold sex from their husbands; in the play, as in real life, the problem is getting all the women to cooperate.  The ridiculous sex strike American activists plan for April 28th is foredoomed to failure (as if a one-week strike could have any effect anyhow) because the wives of those making the objectionable laws won’t be participating, and even if they did the politicians would simply go to their regular pros.  But if all the whores cooperated…

…The largest trade association for luxury escorts in the Spanish capital has gone on…strike…for bankers until they go back to providing credits to Spanish families, small- and medium-size enterprises and companies…a…spokeswoman [said] “…We have been on strike for three days now and we don’t think they can withstand much more.”  She has revealed that bankers have made some pitiful attempts to use their services by pretending to be engineers or architects…The bankers reportedly became so desperate that they even decided to call in the government for mediation…

Zero Information

Well, not zero exactly, but I couldn’t resist my first title beginning with “Z”.

A man who police say sometimes poses as a female prostitute to flag down motorists was arrested…Terrence Elliott…had been warned several times in the past few weeks…But Elliott was also found with a…crack pipe…and…charged with possession of drug paraphernalia [and]…loitering…

What the hell does this mean?  Is Elliott a drag prostitute, or does he dress in drag to rob or panhandle?  News stories are a lot more informative when they actually contain information.

Updates

Feminine Pragmatism (April 7th, 2011)

Because this was practically inevitable, she was a fool for waiting until her marketability dried up:

At the height of her fame…Octomom aka Nadya Suleman was offered a lot of money to show her body.  Vivid even offered her a $1 million deal to star in one of their films.  At the time…[she] swore she would never do nudity.  But dignity doesn’t feed 14…babies so…she [started] doing fetish photoshoots and now…topless shoots…However, she’s not commanding the same price she used to.  TMZ reports that days away from being foreclosed upon, Nadya has decided to go naked for…Closer.  Sources say she only made $10,000…

Subtle Pimping (April 8th, 2011)

“Making money off of whores without giving them anything in return…is as good a working definition of ‘pimp’ as I can imagine…”

…On Friday, March 30th…[the] 2012 Hooker Beauty Pageant…[will be held] in Hollywood…According to…[organizer] Natalia Fabia, the word “hooker” could be loosely defined as (excuse the pun) “someone who sells one’s talents and abilities, talent, or name for money, (but it also means) a rad, strong, talented, tough, colorful, independent, stylish, and beautiful woman.”  This pageant is Fabia’s platform for highlighting real women in Hollywood’s music and art scene…

Umm, how about highlighting real hookers – or more specifically, our mistreatment?  I googled Fabia and found no statements about sex worker rights or decriminalization, and nothing about part of the proceeds from her “hooker art” or publicity stunts going to hooker organizations, hooker rights advertising, outreach to street hookers…in short, she’s pimping our image.

Down Under (June 9th, 2011)

Australia continues to be what Sweden wants so desperately to be:  the world leader in demonstrating the proper way to deal with prostitution:

[A new study shows that]…New South Wales…is the best place in the world [for]…prostitutes…”Jurisdictions that try to ban or license sex work always lose track as most of the industry slides into the shadows,” [said]…Professor Basil Donovan…of [the] Kirby Institute… “In NSW, by contrast, health and community workers have comprehensive access to and surveillance of the sex industry.  This has resulted in the healthiest sex industry ever documented.”  The report, prepared for the NSW government, found…[that most] sex workers surveyed also reported being “well adjusted and comfortable with their occupation”…

The Crumbling Dam (October 14th, 2011)

Today the Ontario Court of Appeal delivered a landmark decision on …prostitution laws…All five judges…found that…the provision restricting “common bawdy houses” is grossly disproportionate and overbroad, and…that the provision restricting “living on the avails”…is overbroad because it would criminalize non-exploitive relationships…However, three of the five…upheld the provision criminalizing communicating for the purpose of prostitution, holding that the purpose of the provision…is legitimate and must be weighed against the harms it causes…The…decision will most certainly be appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada…

Here’s the full decision.  If there’s any justice in the universe, the Supreme Court will not only uphold the decisions of both lower courts overturning the bans on brothels and avails laws, but also reinstate Justice Himel’s decision overturning the “communicating” law.

Elephant in the Parlor (October 23rd, 2011)

Not news, but I want to catalog as many of these as possible:

…John Edwards is denying a report that he used the services of a prostitute in New York…a call girl for…Anna Gristina told investigators she had sex with Edwards for money back in 2007…“Mr. Edwards categorically denies that he was involved with any prostitute or service”…  said…a statement.  “These allegations are false, defamatory, and he puts those who would publish or repeat them on notice that they acting [sic] with actual malice”…

I’m publishing and repeating them, and I fully admit malice toward career politicians, especially those who bear a huge part of the blame for America’s sky-high medical bills.

Divided We Fall (November 16th, 2011)

Gay activists could’ve demonstrated a commitment to supporting sex worker rights this week when “[Malaysian]…Deputy Minister…Datuk Mashitah Ibrahim…said…’The (LBGT) issue…can lead to prostitution, drug abuse, psychological problems and also mental illness…Part of the LBGT problem is caused by natural reasons, such as being born with two private parts…’” but instead many of them were just as indignant about being compared to prostitutes as they were with the mental illness and hermaphrodite stuff.  I guess once you win your rights in the West it’s OK to join in with stigmatizing other groups who haven’t yet, just to show you’re part of the gang.

See No Evil (November 26th, 2011)

An inability to tell fantasy from reality would normally be considered evidence of psychosis, but in law enforcement it’s a job requirement:

…the Canadian government [has] dropped all criminal charges against Ryan Matheson, [an] American…charged with…child pornography [due to] Japanese comic book images on his laptop…Matheson accepted a plea deal…[in] which he admitted to “a non-criminal regulatory offense…”

Presents, Presents, Presents! (December 29th, 2011)

I got three new presents this week!  Ted sent me The Science of Fear by Daniel Gardner, and Gumdeo sent me the movie New Orleans and a Cuddly Cthulhu!  Thank y’all both so much for thinking of me!

The Course of a Disease (February 16th, 2012)

Apparently Canadian neofeminists, angry at their inability to infect their native land with the Swedish Disease, have decided to poison the well in a country which is already sickening:

[Canadian MP Joy Smith] has taken it upon herself to encourage Knesset members [via email] to support recent legislation…which will make paying for sex services a criminal offense…“Israel now has the opportunity to pass progressive legislation and to be a leader in the fight against this form of modern slavery,” Smith wrote in the email.  “I urge you to support MK Zuaretz’s bill and help make Israel a country that others aspire to emulate.  The world is watching and waiting for Israel to take this important step and eliminate the demand to purchase sex…”

Obviously, Israeli reporters don’t bother to check their facts any more than American ones do; this one erroneously states that “most” Western countries have adopted some form of the Swedish Model, and swallows the easily-debunked prohibitionist lie that most prostitutes are coerced.

Above the Law (March 8th, 2012)

Apparently, the American federal government believes it’s only OK to grope people if one puts on a uniform and does it without their permission:  “[Bryant Jermaine Livingston, a TSA] manager at [Dulles International Airport] has lost his job after being arrested on prostitution-related charges…”  The story explains that Livingston was running a kind of cheap temporary brothel in a hotel room, stupidly returned to the same hotel and was ratted out to the Gestapo of Montgomery County, Maryland by the irate manager.

Metaupdates

J’accuse in November Updates (Part Three) (November 4th, 2011)

“in France…it’s OK to be a whore as long as you have no friends, family, employees, assistants, managers or other human contact other than customers”, and if you’re an official who has embarrassed Paris one too many times, you can be charged with the horrible crime of helping legal workers to conduct their legal business: “…Dominique Strauss-Kahn…is under investigation for “aggravated pimping” for his alleged participation in a prostitution ring in France…”

Whores in the News in Further Developments (November 18th, 2011)

It’s now official; the government will steal $6.4 million from the former owners of Escorts.com.  As usual, the state’s claims read like an FBI drama, with heroic cops “investigating” hardened criminals; in reality, the feds botched an attempt to take over the site surreptitiously in order to use it to entrap thousands of escorts and clients.  The bogus “money laundering” charge was just a way for them to recoup their losses; despite FBI claims to the contrary, federal judges have repeatedly ruled that “facilitating prostitution” is not a federal crime and websites are not responsible for the content of ads.

Sex, Lies and Busybodies in That Was the Week That Was (February 4th, 2012)

Sean McBride, AKA “John Curtis”, has resigned as head of “The Grey Man”.  After it was discovered that a group of Thai children the group claimed to have rescued from “sex traffickers” were in fact ordinary village schoolchildren, Curtis issued a series of increasingly-absurd and self-contradictory “explanations” (including one on this blog), mostly based on a paranoid fantasy that a competing “rescue group” had conspired with the Thai government to discredit him.  But after new revelations that McBride routinely lied about the age of “victims” and the number “rescued”, he stepped down voluntarily before he was thrown out.  Good riddance to bad rubbish; let’s hope every one of the con artists who profit by the persecution of whores is similarly exposed, and soon.

Knights Erroneous in That Was the Week That Was (#12) (March 24th, 2012)

I’m pleased to see the number of voices raised in criticism of Nick Kristof’s anti-whore crusades is growing; ever-larger numbers of writers are pointing out the absurdity of the claims made by “trafficking” fetishists and calling attention to the harm this moral panic inflicts on women.  I suspect The Guardian will be one of the first major media outlets to officially denounce the hysteria; it’s published a number of articles on the subject, most recently last Monday:

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof is on the move and his  latest target is the Village Voice.  This attack appears to be part of a broader campaign to shut down the sex industry and to rescue  and rehabilitate women and girls working in it.  Kristof’s allies range from women’s rights organizations to religious organizations…the  critical lens applied to Kony2012…must [also be applied]…to the  crusades against sex trafficking…when women and girls are “rescued” by the anti-trafficking organizations, they may be taken to state-run rehabilitation homes that have jail-like conditions.  Human rights and sex worker organizations have long documented what rehabilitation might mean for a sex worker:  overcrowded conditions, a lack of healthcare, and violence at the hands of the police and guards…

It’s wonderful to see statements like these in a large newspaper, and even more heartening to read the many supportive comments beneath.

One Year Ago Today

In “March Q & A” I answer questions about cunnilingus, men pretending to be women online, and the sex drives of middle-aged escorts.

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See No Evil

Posted in Current Events, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 26, 2011| 36 Comments »

‘Tis the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil.  –  William Shakespeare, Macbeth (II, ii)

Very young children are unable to distinguish image from reality; they perceive frightening pictures or hostile words as equivalent to concrete threats.  Rational adults understand that this is not so; things without physical power to harm, however shocking or unpleasant they may be, can be dismissed by the disciplined mind and therefore cannot be compared to tangible phenomena.  That’s why many people enjoy horror movies; they enable us to confront terrifying images or ideas in a safe environment.  No matter how awful the fictional spook, it has no actual power to harm us, so we’re free to experience fear without long-term repercussions.  The same could be said of tragedies, adventure stories and even porn; the feelings they evoke are mere specters, with no ability to reach into the physical world unless we give it to them.  Like vampires, the emotions produced by words and images can only cause harm by invitation; as Eleanor Roosevelt wrote, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent,” and no one can make you feel anything else without your consent, either.

But somehow, people in Western countries have lost sight of this simple principle.  I suspect it’s due to the fact that so many of them live in a state of  complete isolation from Nature; because they are rarely (if ever) in any real danger, words and pictures (which they encounter frequently) seem to be more of a threat than actual physical menaces.  How many people in Western countries are really worried about, say, bubonic plague or lightning strike?  These dangers are far too remote to cause alarm, because everyone knows they’re rare.  The “threats” about which middle-class Westerners express the greatest concern are either those they hear of frequently or those which the media can convince them are omnipresent, which is why groups who derive income and power from some particular fear (rape, “illegal aliens”, terrorism, “human trafficking”, child sexual abuse, etc) cook up bogus statistics to make those threats seem vastly more common than they actually are.

This obsession with the insubstantial and/or inconsequential has created a bizarre inversion of priorities in many Western countries; major issues which are largely hidden from public view, or which affect a comparatively small number of people, are virtually ignored in favor of absurdly expensive, intrusive and punitive campaigns against “crimes” which actually injure nobody.  One example of this is the crusade against “child porn”; mere possession of an image is deemed a “crime” equal to using actual children to create that image, and artificial images such as sketches or written descriptions are in many cases considered equivalent to the real thing; this is tantamount to banning fictional depictions of murder.  The excuse used is that artificial images “create a demand” for porn, but this is mere sophistry; human beings are not computers to be programmed, and as any marketing expert will tell you it’s impossible to “create” a demand for something without somehow tying it to a real demand such as the desire for food, sex, status, health, wealth, etc.  In other words, one can’t “market” child porn to anyone who isn’t already sexually attracted to children, and to argue that draconian anti-porn legislation is justified on “end demand” grounds is equivalent to arguing that everyone should be sterilized at puberty because the male sex drive leads to rape and pregnancy to abortion and child abuse.  Demand for movies and music leads to copyright violation, but I don’t see anyone campaigning to ban music and movies because of it.

This obsession with the image over the fact leads to abominations like a recent case reported in Reason on November 7th:

Last week a Florida judge sentenced Daniel Enrique Guevara Vilca, a 26-year-old with no criminal record, to life in prison without the possibility of parole for looking at forbidden pictures.  A jury convicted Vilca on 454 counts of possessing child pornography, one for each image found on his computer.  Under Florida law, each count is a…felony punishable by up to five years in prison.  Sentencing guidelines indicated a minimum term of 152 years…”Had Mr. Vilca actually molested a child,” The New York Times notes, “he might well have received a lighter sentence.”

…the draconian punishments prescribed by state and federal laws for mere possession of child pornography seem to be based on the premise that anyone who looks at records of heinous acts must also be committing them or at least planning to do so.  But as I  [previously] noted…that simply isn’t so:  Research indicates that child porn consumers, like fans of violent movies, do not necessarily copy what they see.  As Troy Stabenaw, a federal public defender who wrote a devastating 2009 critique of federal sentencing guidelines for child pornography, tells the Times, “we ought to punish people for what they do, not for our fear.”

…the familiar argument that “consumers of child pornography drive the market for the production of child pornography…” [is hardly] relevant…now that people typically obtain child porn online for free…[and the prosecutor’s claim that] “…when the images are shown over and over again, they’re victimized over and over again”…seems even more problematic, since any such injury would require (at the very least) that victims know when people are looking at images of them…[and] would not apply to child pornography featuring victims who are no longer alive…[Furthermore] the offense is not in the same moral ballpark as other crimes that are punished by life sentences…a life sentence is what we give first-degree murderers, and possession of child pornography is not the equivalent of first-degree murder…

The fact of the matter is that possession of child porn is vastly more common than child rape, therefore cops, prosecutors and judges see it more often, therefore they conclude it’s a more important issue and push for harsher laws on it.  In other words, the punishment is based on the personal emotional discomfort of those in power rather than physical harm to any person.

The current hysteria over “bullying” is another example; what person has never been bullied or observed another being bullied?  Such behavior is merely the human equivalent of animals posturing and snarling to establish a pecking order; it cannot be eliminated without lobotomizing the entire population at about the age of four.  If the anti-bullying people were concentrating on instances of actual, physical assault I would find their arguments much more convincing, but they’re largely talking about words.  I was bullied in grade school; I was unusually bright, read a lot, was a bit plump, hit puberty at 10, had a severe overbite, used “big words”, liked science fiction…you name it, I got picked on for it.  And you know when it stopped?  When I grew a spine and a thicker skin and stopped letting words get to me.  Bullies crave an upset or submissive reaction; when they don’t get it they move on in search of easier prey.

But now the sheeple want the nanny state to “correct” human nature, and not just among children; now we’ve got biologically-adult women whining and crying because men say mean and “sexist” things to them online.  And it isn’t just sheltered coeds and mommy-bloggers, either; this November 7th article from The Guardian features pathetic laments from professional women who have somehow managed to succeed in journalism while failing to develop the psychological barriers I had established by the age of 14.  They argue that death-threats or “I hope you get raped” type nonsense is different from “you’re ugly” or “you’re stupid” or whatever, and in a way I agree; it’s certainly symptomatic of a less-evolved individual.  But as long as he sticks to writing empty threats to strangers, he’s nothing but a barking dog; people have been making such threats since language was invented, and every statistic shows they are now much less likely to carry them out.  Still, these women argue that Nanny should censor or even punish men who hurt their feelings online, though at least one of them (Zoe Williams) seems to think that bullying is OK as long as a soi-disant “feminist” directs it against another woman.  Not that this surprises me; “feminists” are famous for dishing out hatred but being unable to take it.

As I pointed out in my column of one year ago today, people used to understand that it’s better to tolerate minor “evils” which prevent greater ones than to indulge oneself in a doomed and quixotic crusade to rid the world of  all unpleasantness.  If artificial child porn reduces the chance of child rape, and if posting ugly threats on the internet prevents real violence, these things need to be tolerated; I for one would much rather endure empty rape-threats than to know a real woman was raped.  Words and pictures are not real, and adults need not concern themselves with painted devils.

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