Shazam! | The Honest Courtesan

Posts Tagged ‘Shazam!’

The Schizoid State

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, Perception, tagged Africa, Canada, censorship, cops, Europe, hysteria, Madonna/whore, Middle East, neofeminism, psychology, Shazam!, stripping, Sudan, The Schizoid State, underage, yin and yang on June 19, 2012| 21 Comments »

For men…, however apparently contradictory to common sense, and the very principles of all their knowledge; have let loose their fancies and natural superstition; and have been by them led into so strange opinions, and extravagant practices…that a considerate man cannot…avoid thinking them ridiculous, and offensive to a sober man. – John Locke

The human mind is an astonishingly complex system which contains so many separate and often conflicting schemata and cognitive mechanisms, both conscious and unconscious, that there will inevitably be times when the mind holds two contradictory thoughts, ideas or feelings at the same time. This induces cognitive dissonance, an unstable (and emotionally unpleasant) state which must be remedied in order to restore psychic equilibrium. The rational person usually resolves the dilemma by conscious introspection, while the typical person generally clings to his beliefs or emotions and denies the facts which conflict with them. But some deeply delusional individuals are such masters of doublethink that they can accept two completely contradictory cognitions at exactly the same time, and when they reveal these schizoid thought processes to the world via word or deed the rational person cannot help but feel a sort of fascinated pity mingled with fear, disgust or contempt.

Take, for example, the Ukranian protest group Femen, which protests topless because according to founder Anna Hutsol, women “have the right to use our bodies as weapons”. So far, so good; people have the right to use their bodies as they please. So why does Femen oppose sex work?

The controversial women’s rights group known for their provocative protests of world affairs, has taken to the streets of Hamburg…armed with…wearable sex toys…their bodies painted with Swastikas and Hitler mustaches, gesturing their way down the streets in similar fashion to Hitler’s regime nearly 70 years ago…chanting, “Sex slavery is fascism”…

So according to Femen, it’s OK to use one’s sex appeal to get in the news, but not to make a living; even by neofeminist standards this is psychotic. But the cognitive contortions involved are no worse than those in this article about male strippers from The Independent, whose writer (one Francesca Steele) manages to convince herself that male stripping is “empowering” while female stripping is “demeaning” (she tells us that male strippers are “gods on stage”, but female strippers are “objectified”, presumably because the girls make a lot more money than the guys do). The funniest part? Steele seems completely oblivious to the fact that most of male strippers’ clients are other men.

The police are another group who are masters of schizoid thinking:

Police in Ottawa are calling a case in which two 15-year-old girls are charged with human trafficking “shocking.” They say they have never seen anything like it before…[they] allege that on three separate occasions, the girls lured three female victims ranging from 13 to 17 years of age to a city residence…[from which they] were driven to other locations for the purposes of prostitution. The accused girls face multiple charges, including human trafficking, robbery, procuring, forcible confinement, sexual assault, assault, uttering threats and abduction…the victims were confined and somehow forced to engage in prostitution. Police said there was no indication pimps or men played any role…

In plain English: the two 15-year-olds figured out how to place escort ads and talked their three friends into it. But since anyone under 18 is an innocent, asexual “child”, they couldn’t possibly have gone along for money and kicks; they must have been “forced” by “traffickers”. Remember: breaking a law, no matter how stupid or arbitrary, is the one thing which can cause the magic Shazam lightning to strike even one second before midnight on a person’s 18^th birthday, thus transforming an innocent child into a ruthless adult criminal. The Kanadian Kops claim they’ve “never seen anything like it before”, so they must not communicate with their American counterparts; teens here are often arrested for “sexually abusing” their consenting partners and prosecuted for “child porn” when they take nude pictures of themselves.

But the undisputed champion of contradiction, the Schizoid Sultan, the Duke of Doublethink, is New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. Regular readers are familiar with the way he criticizes others for restricting women’s sexual choices while advocating the restriction of those choices, decries the “exploitation” of women while using lurid “sex slave” porn to sell ads for his employers, and attacks some instances of government meddling while praising others and simultaneously stating that it’s natural and good for government intrusions into private affairs to continually increase. Even so, I think he surpassed himself last week:

I’m generally an admirer of Obama’s foreign policy, but his policies toward both Syria and Sudan increasingly seem lame, ineffective and contrary to American interests and values. Obama has shown himself comfortable projecting power — as in his tripling of American troops in Afghanistan. Yet now we have the spectacle of a Nobel Peace Prize winner in effect helping to protect two of the most odious regimes in the world…[Sudan’s] leader has been charged with genocide, has destabilized the region, has sponsored brutal proxy warlords like Joseph Kony, has presided over the deaths of more than 2.5 million people…and the Obama administration doesn’t want him overthrown? In addition, the administration has consistently tried to restrain the rebel force here…Likewise, in Syria, the United States has not only refused to arm the opposition but has, I believe, discouraged other countries from doing so…we should make clear that unless the security forces depose Assad in the next 30 days, our Middle Eastern allies will arm the Syrian opposition. We should work with these allies, as well as with major powers like Russia and China, to encourage a coup…That’s not too much to expect of a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Yes, you read that correctly: Kristof says that Obama should prove he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize by starting two new wars. I can’t believe that absolutely nobody outside the libertarian press noticed the glaring contradiction, so I suspect that nearly everyone who read any of these stories recognized the conflicts in them immediately…and then promptly discarded such realizations as sources of cognitive dissonance when juxtaposed with their fawning respect for self-proclaimed authorities.

One Year Ago Today

“Whores in History Revisited” is an extended review of a fantastic book I cannot possibly recommend enough.

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The Shape of the Spoon

Posted in Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged adolescence, agency denial, cops, ethics, Europe, harm reduction, nanny state, psychology, Shazam!, The Shape of the Spoon, underage on May 8, 2012| 26 Comments »

Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon. – E.M. Forster

Part of the process of growing up is becoming an individual, defining oneself as a unique entity separate from one’s parents and other authority figures; it starts at about the age of two, when we begin to set boundaries by the act of refusal. From that point there develops a dynamic interaction in which children continually seek to expand their autonomy while parents work to contain that expansion to a greater or lesser degree (depending upon the temperaments of both parent and child). Wise parents apply only as much constraint as is strictly necessary to keep the child from undertaking risks for which he is unprepared and might seriously harm him, but those less wise and/or more controlling attempt to establish regimes ranging from the somewhat overprotective to the wholly tyrannical. My mother was somewhere near the middle of this spectrum; as I explained in my column of one year ago yesterday she “seemed bound and determined to control my natural free-spiritedness and to delay my sexual maturation for as long as possible,” and so tried to bind me with rules more appropriate to girls several years younger. I of course saw these limits as arbitrary and unfair, and therefore disobeyed them in every way I could; because I was clever and resourceful and my mother was not equipped with the spying resources and cultural support available to modern overprotective parents, I was nearly always able to break the rules without getting caught and suffering the consequences.

Unfortunately for modern teens, overparenting has now become the rule rather than the exception, and even those parents who might be inclined to allow a healthy and stimulating degree of autonomy are hampered by ever-increasing legal restrictions on young people, a large fraction of which inflict criminal penalties on parents for the “crime” of actually allowing their offspring age-appropriate levels of autonomy rather than treating them as helpless children until 18. Lenore Skenazy’s Free-Range Kids chronicles these outrages, including cases of a mother threatened with “child neglect” for allowing her daughter to bicycle to school, a 12-year-old boy arrested for “walking alone” and a father charged with “child endangerment” for letting his kids play in the park without hovering over them. Legal restrictions on young people have constantly increased since the mid-19^th century, and our society now expects people to remain irresponsible, incompetent “children” until they’re 18 (in some ways, 21) and then to instantly transform into adults upon reaching a certain date on a calendar, without any preparation for that assumption of responsibility whatsoever.

I recently found a March, 2007 Psychology Today interview with psychologist Robert Epstein in which he explains how Western culture invented the concept of “adolescence” and why it’s terrible both for young people and for society:

In every mammalian species, immediately upon reaching puberty, animals function as adults, often having offspring. We call our offspring “children” well past puberty. The trend started a hundred years ago and now…the whole culture collaborates in artificially extending childhood, primarily through the school system and restrictions on labor. The two systems evolved together in the late 19th-century; the advocates of compulsory-education laws also pushed for child-labor laws, restricting the ways young people could work, in part to protect them from the abuses of the new factories. The juvenile justice system came into being at the same time. All of these systems isolate teens from adults, often in problematic ways…

Imagine what it would feel like—or think back to what it felt like—when your body and mind are telling you you’re an adult while the adults around you keep insisting you’re a child. This infantilization makes many young people angry or depressed…we have completely isolated young people from adults and created a peer culture. We stick them in school and keep them from working in any meaningful way, and if they do something wrong we put them in a pen with other “children.” In most nonindustrialized societies, young people are integrated into adult society as soon as they are capable, and there is no sign of teen turmoil. Many cultures do not even have a term for adolescence…But [in the West] young people can’t own things, can’t sign contracts, and they can’t do anything meaningful without parental permission—permission that can be withdrawn at any time. They can’t marry, can’t have sex, can’t legally drink. The list goes on. They are restricted and infantilized to an extraordinary extent. In recent surveys I’ve found that American teens are subjected to more than 10 times as many restrictions as mainstream adults, twice as many restrictions as active-duty U.S. Marines, and even twice as many as incarcerated felons. Psychologist Diane Dumas and I also found a correlation between infantilization and psychological dysfunction. The more young people are infantilized, the more psychopathology they show. What’s more, since 1960, restrictions on teens have been accelerating. Young people are restricted in ways no adult would be—for example, in some states they are prohibited from entering tanning salons or getting tattoos…Teens in America are in touch with their peers on average 65 hours a week, compared to about four hours a week in preindustrial cultures. In this country, teens learn virtually everything they know from other teens, who are in turn highly influenced by certain aggressive industries. This makes no sense. Teens should be learning from the people they are about to become. When young people exit the education system and are dumped into the real world…they have no idea what’s going on and have to spend considerable time figuring it out…

Though I don’t have kids of my own, I clearly remember how the word “child” was applied like a branding iron every time I had an idea of my own or wanted to do something outside the rigid script. I hated the triviality of the “adolescent” world and longed to escape it, and I’ve often wondered how much less rebellious I might’ve been had the limits placed upon me by “authorities” been more reasonable and acknowledged my right to autonomy, self-determination and independent thought. And due to the exponential growth of laws restricting even adult behavior, that really hasn’t changed except for the merciful removal of one layer of government (my parents) from my back; I still have to deal with busybodies who think they understand what’s good for me better than I do, and who are dedicated to sticking their noses into every aspect of my private life and punishing me with violence, robbery and forcible confinement if I have the nerve to demand full control over my own body, sexuality, property and life. Epstein’s article demonstrates that most of the problems we associate with teens derives from the artificial restrictions we place upon them, and tomorrow I’ll show how these problems reflect in miniature the damage a police state inflicts upon our entire culture.

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That Was the Week That Was (#18)

Posted in Biography, Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged Another Small Victory, archeofeminism, Ashley Madison, Australia, Backpage, bad customers, brothels, Bullies With Badges, censorship, cops, dirty, disease, East Asia, Elephant in the Parlor, Feminine Pragmatism, Good News-Bad News, harm reduction, hysteria, imaginative fiction, infidelity, internet, Latin America, law, lawheads, Madonna/whore, marriage, Michigan, Much Ado About Nothing, My Favorite Updates, neofeminism, Never Call the Cops, New Mexico, Nicaragua, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Philippines, politicians, porn, Presents, prohibitionist myths, Prudish Pedants, red-light districts, serial killers, sex offender registry, Shazam!, Shifting the Blame, stripping, Swedish model, Texas, They Just Don’t Get It, Twitter, Umpteen Thousand People, underage, violence vs. sex workers on May 5, 2012| 18 Comments »

“That is no excuse,” replied Mr. Brownlow…”the law supposes that your wife acts under your direction.”

“If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, “the law is a ass – a idiot.” – Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

Two new stories, nine updates and three metaupdates.

The Law is an Ass

Today in “Never call the police for any reason whatsoever”:

…Christina Marie Lopez [of Oregon]…pleaded guilty…to attempted use of a child in a display of sexually explicit conduct…in December…Lopez complained to police and media that a strip club had hired her…[then 17-year-old] daughter…Investigators later obtained surveillance video…”that showed Lopez in the club watching her daughter dance and providing her money”…[but] now 18-year-old Nicole Madril, said…”It’s not like she came in there and got 50 lap dances from me…She came in and gave me money so I could get myself something to eat”…Lopez was sentenced to 3 years in prison, 3 years of post-prison supervision, and must register as a sex offender. Lopez’s daughter told the judge the sentence was unfair and that it was her own choice to strip.

Lopez obviously forgot about the Law of Shazam; even if her daughter was at most four months shy of her 18^th birthday, she was still the exact legal, moral and intellectual equivalent of a newborn infant, and therefore easily controllable by any adult.

Bullies With Badges

Police in riot gear and masks saved Houston from evil harlots Thursday: “At least six women were in custody…after prostitution stings at three…massage parlors…Investigators said most of the women who were arrested appeared to be under the age of 30 – some as young as teenagers…Investigators said…they were looking into whether any of the women may be victims of human trafficking.” News flash: Many Asian women look younger than most white women; those who “looked like teenagers” may have been much older. The “trafficking” claims were obviously to head off valid criticism of the incredible waste of this “raid”, but if they were sincere their actions are even more reprehensible, as pointed out in this must-read column from Radley Balko.

Updates

They Just Don’t Get It (April 12^th, 2011)

What is wrong with journalists in Pennsylvania? Their fawning treatment of cops and other “authorities” reads like fellatio porn, and their feigned ignorance of anything whore-related is astonishingly stupid:

Prostitution has plagued any number of internet sites in recent years – notably Craigslist – but now the CBS 3 I-Team has found a new hideout for hookers on…Twitter…used by call girls all the time as a free way to advertise…some prostitutes right in your backyard are even setting up appointments over Twitter, which is used by kids of all ages…“It gives…that ability to reach their customers immediately,” says Rob D’Ovidio, a cyber crime expert at Drexel University. “If it’s a slow day, and they want to lure in customers, they can quickly get that blurb out there”…

Reading stories like this feels like looking into a dirty toilet; one wonders what sort of filthy mind could write it, despite the fact that “kids of all ages” could see it on TV. Apparently nobody told Mr. “Cyber Crime Expert” that we’re all “victims” now and that we’re the ones who are “lured” rather than vice-versa. Except, obviously, in Pennsylvania (where we’re still criminals) and Texas (where they ain’t sure).

Another Small Victory (July 16^th, 2011)

A group of US Representatives petitioned the Supreme Court to reverse a lower-court ruling striking down the anti-prostitution pledge; Congressman Chris Smith characterized agencies who provide condoms and testing to all women (without excluding sex workers) as “international groups that promote and enable prostitution and sex trafficking”. The mindless self-destructiveness of this position becomes evident when one realizes that people like Smith wrongly believe whores to be the major vectors of STIs, yet want us excluded from health programs anyway. He’s also ignorant on the ruling, which only freed domestic agencies from the ridiculous “pledge”; international ones are still bound by it, which leads me to wonder how this group keeps its funding:

A new NGO in Nicaragua aims to protect the rights of women who voluntarily work in the sex trade, raising the question of whether sex work should be seen as a legitimate job, or should be treated as a component of organized crime that is inherently linked to problems like human trafficking. Girasoles de Nicaragua…is backed by USAID [and] formed…to fight “stigma, discrimination and violence”…the organization has…deployed 25 employees across the country, reportedly providing some 500 women with health aid, literacy training, and legal support. It plans to partner with the police in investigating crimes related to the sex trade, and form alliances with other international organizations that promote sex workers’ rights, including Argentina-based network RedTraSex. The group argues that sex work should be recognized as a respectable form of self-employment…that allows women to support themselves and their families…

The rest of the article, as should be evident from the lede, devolves into the usual “human trafficking cartel” nonsense, branding the group’s statements to reporters “confused” and implying that they know less about their own field than lay people who read “trafficking” propaganda.

Elephant in the Parlor (October 23^rd, 2012)

Politician. Whores. Yawn.

Michael Wiener, a…[New Mexico] county commissioner …is being asked to resign after a picture of him posing with scantily clad women in a well-known red light district in the Philippines…[was posted by] photographer John Keatley…on his blog. Wiener…[wrote] that…”NOTHING untoward ever happened…The pictures taken are as innocent as any that could be taken at Twin Peaks or Hooters here“…[but] Keatley said “…It was very obvious to me that he was not respectful to women. He was there to have a good time”…

Because to the neofeminism-addled mind, “respectful to women” and “good time” are mutually exclusive.

Umpteen Thousand People Can’t Be Wrong (November 12^th, 2011)

“A group of senators has introduced a resolution urging Village Voice Media to take down the ‘adult entertainment’ section of its classified-ads site, Backpage.com.” Blah, blah, blah. You know the rest.

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

Darren Thompson sent me an Amazon gift certificate this week, which I used to get several small items: The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb, Pretty Baby and two discs of Warner Brothers cartoons that weren’t on my wish list. Thank you so much!

Sleazier Than Thou (January 30^th, 2012)

Ashley Madison is well known for its lies, deception and sleazy advertising, but this is slimy even for them:

For the past four years, infidelity-based matchmaking site AshleyMadison.com has seen an influx of married women signing up for its services on…the day after Mother’s Day. According to the site’s founder, Noel Biderman, more married women join the site on that day than on any other…”If that day comes to pass, and once again what [women] experience is a lack of appreciation, affection and respect, that is when the idea of taking on a potential lover takes full form,” Biderman said…

Note found by an amateur on her door.

Guys, very few actual living women sign up for Ashley Madison on ANY day. The majority of those who do are whores, and the rest aren’t being truthful about their age or weight; Biderman is a lying shyster out to take your money. That having been said, it’s probably best to be extra-sweet to your wife on Mother’s Day; yes, I know she isn’t your mother, and I agree…but she may not, and that could mean trouble.

Prudish Pedants (March 22^nd, 2012)

And all it took was triple jeopardy and lying to the jury about the legality of nullification:

A jury today found fetish filmmaker Ira Isaacs guilty on five counts of violating federal obscenity laws. He’ll be sentenced on Aug. 6. It was the third…trial…The first two ended with mistrials…[the] federal prosecutor…said…that Isaacs’ goal…was solely to make money, but Isaacs’ attorney…said…that the case is about testing the First Amendment… Judge George King…told [the jury] that it’s their duty to weigh and evaluate all the evidence and decide the facts based solely on the law, reason and common sense and not their opinion or speculation…

Much Ado About Nothing (April 18^th, 2012)

Agent Cheapskate has finally been unmasked as Arthur Huntington, who “lives in Saverna Park, Md. [and] is a married father of two whose wife leads Bible study in the neighborhood…the Secret Service has created new rules forbidding all foreigners but hotel staff in agents’ rooms and barring them from visiting ‘seedy establishments’.” In other news, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee admitted that the whores were just whores, not spies or international gangsters: “It does not appear that these guys were targeted. [It wasn’t] a foreign organization attempting to seduce Secret Service agents…There’s no evidence that any of the women have any involvement with narco-terrorists or any type of terrorist organization. Basically, they’re prostitutes.”

Which, of course, every hooker in the world already knew.

My Favorite Books (April 26^th, 2012)

I think these folks are reading far too much into a discarded first draft, but it’s still interesting:

Newly-discovered draft pages of Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s “The Little Prince“…will be auctioned off later this month after a rare public viewing…The first page contains a piece of text that’s partly retained in chapter 19 of the published work. But the second leaf of the work is completely original…In 1943, the text turned from a scribbled manuscript by a relatively unknown author, into a literary phenomenon that has since sold 140 million copies, in about 260 languages. After The Bible, “The Little Prince” is the most translated book in history, according to the…Saint-Exupery Foundation. Sadly, the author would never know the extent of his book’s success: he died shortly after its first publication in a mysterious plane crash in 1944 while on active service in World War II…

Metaupdates

Shifting the Blame in The Beat Goes On (Part One) (January 18^th, 2012)

“Two men were held for questioning Tuesday as part of an investigation into the slayings of four Detroit women whose bodies were found in car trunks after three of them placed online escort ads…”

Feminine Pragmatism in TW3 (#13) (March 31^st, 2012)

“Octomom” Nadya Suleman, who filed for bankruptcy this week with $1 million in debts and $50,000 in assets, has agreed to do a masturbation video for Vivid for $100,000. She insists it isn’t really porn (which she has sworn never to do) because it’s a solo act; do you think I should send her a copy of “Little Boxes”?

Good News, Bad News in TW3 (#14) (April 6^th, 2012)

Elena Jeffreys explains the probable effects of the sleazy political deal which could impose a version of the Swedish Model on Western Australia:

Adele Carles is no friend of the HIV sector, no friend of STI prevention, and her $5.5 million sex worker ‘rescue’ centre is going to cost the WA Liberals, and any future government, that friendship as well. What will it cost sex workers? Our ability to protect ourselves. Our health. And our dignity…The…centre is being horse-traded in Western Australia…for votes over Christian Porter’s anti-sex work Prostitution Bill. Doomed from the start, Porter authored the Bill by not listening to his own policy staff, ignoring sex workers and the sex worker movement, and thumbing his nose at the Liberal’s own ‘numbers people’…With a lack of buy-in from the industry, total opposition from the churches and zero support from both the ALP and the Greens, suddenly Independent MP…Adele Carles, has the power to call the shots…[Carles’ scheme would be funded by] gutting the existing sex worker service and building a new service geared towards the redemption, exit and retraining of sex workers out of the industry rather than the current approach of harm reduction for current sex workers…

One Year Ago Today

“May Updates (Part Two)” reports on harm reduction for untreatable alcoholics, junk science equating a vital food component with hard drugs, and government busybodies trying to “protect” babies from the scourge of mother’s milk.

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They Still Don’t Get It

Posted in Current Events, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged archeofeminism, cops, dirty, end demand, ethics, internet, law, lawheads, Nebraska, prohibitionist myths, Shazam!, stereotypes, streetwalkers, They Still Don't Get It on April 12, 2012| 32 Comments »

It is the true believer’s ability to “shut his eyes and stop his ears” to facts that do not deserve to be either seen or heard which is the source of his unequaled…constancy. He cannot be…baffled by contradictions because he denies their existence. — Eric Hoffer

On several occasions I’ve mentioned Maier’s Law, “If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be disposed of.” But when the facts cannot be disposed of because they’re too well-known, the true believer must indulge in complex mental gymnastics which tend to make him look like a complete idiot to anyone unencumbered by the flawed theory. One such unsupportable theory is that prostitution is a “crime” (in a real sense rather than just by arbitrary definition) and that prostitutes are “criminals”. No other major Western nation but the US defines prostitution itself as a crime (though many define various ancillary actions as such), every methodologically-sound study ever done demonstrates that decriminalization virtually eliminates what cops are pleased to call “associated crimes”, and even the vast majority of prohibitionists have shifted to the more-easily-defensible “victimization” model. But to a dyed-in-the-wool lawhead, anyone defined as a criminal must actually be a criminal, just as anyone defined as a “child” must actually be the equivalent of a four-year-old in a real moral and neurological sense (until he commits a “crime”, at which point he instantly transforms into an adult criminal and is treated as such). And so lawhead cops (and their journalist henchmen) must come up with elaborate and ludicrous explanations as to why “prostitution is not a victimless crime” (the Prohibitionist Creed). I presented one rather amusing example one year ago today, and though today’s example isn’t at all funny its descent into tautology is illustrative of the inevitable result of attempts to defend the indefensible. This comes from the Omaha (Nebraska) World-Herald and is encumbered by the pompous title “Omaha Prostitute Speaks Out”:

…Prostitutes don’t have to stand out on the street corner anymore, lean into a car window and negotiate a deal for sex in exchange for money. That’s what the Internet is for, said Melissa Sykes, 23, who is serving time in the Douglas County Jail for prostitution. Like any criminal enterprise, prostitution has evolved. Sykes said the new wave of prostitutes can be self-employed. They post an ad on the Web and just wait for a call. It’s a system that worked for Sykes for about a year, until Wednesday, when she got arrested by an undercover Omaha police officer.

Regular readers are of course familiar with the popular but astonishingly ignorant belief that before the internet, all whores were streetwalkers. But reporter Sam Womack’s ignorance goes even beyond that; I daresay he has never read as much as a single word on the history of prostitution, or he wouldn’t claim that self-employment – the norm in the trade since its earliest beginnings in the mists of prehistory – was some sort of recent innovation. Though he doesn’t say it, the statement carries the reek of the “pimps and hos” myth. But the most telling phrase here is “like any criminal enterprise.” I’m sure Womack isn’t such a fool that he doesn’t understand that businesses use the internet to a far greater extent than any “criminal enterprise” does; he’s just struggling to force Sykes’ story into the “crime” narrative.

City Prosecutor Marty Conboy said Sykes is one of more than 50 people charged with prostitution and solicitation this year. He said the recent crackdown on sex for money in Omaha is part of a larger FBI investigation into human trafficking…but the solicitation and “john” arrests are also crucial. “It’s important to deter the crime, to remind them it is illegal and people are watching. It’s like putting up radar on a busy street,” he said.

It’s obvious that Conboy doesn’t recognize the moral bankruptcy of his statement (or at least hopes we won’t). He claims prostitutes are the “victims” of “traffickers”, but says they need to be arrested as a “deterrent”; that’s like claiming that arresting robbery victims will deter theft. Conboy clearly isn’t stupid; in the next paragraph he states that “while there continues to be a relationship among street prostitution, violence and drug abuse, the same can’t be said for online solicitation…women arrested say they chose this path for economic reasons.” His is the typical moral retardation of the prosecutor, which holds conformity to completely arbitrary laws above real people’s economic survival.

It’s after Conboy’s statement that the story gets most interesting; Womack goes into detail about how and why Sykes became a hooker:

Sykes, a single woman with a 5-year-old son, said she was working at a mall in Portland, Ore., making barely more than enough for gas money. She has her high school diploma and took a few college courses, but lost her financial aid last year…[she] knew a few girls in the sex business and decided to give it a try. Her son remained in Oregon with family…[while she] traveled from city to city…[charging] $120 for 30 minutes and $180 for an hour — definitely more than her mall job paid…

Yet even after hearing this story, Womack doesn’t get it; he doesn’t recognize that Conboy’s whining “the women who move from town to town make enforcing the law difficult” conflicts with his earlier claims about deterring “human traffickers”, nor does it arouse his suspicion that women smart enough to use language which “isn’t explicit enough to bring a criminal charge” in ads suddenly become stupid enough to use such language in person. He apparently went back to the office from the jailhouse, made no attempt whatsoever at further investigation, ignored the clear absurdity of classing a young mother as a “criminal” for asking to be paid a living wage for a service that would have been totally legal if she had done it for free, and typed “the law is the law”. But it’s not Maier’s Law; he hasn’t even bothered to dispense with the facts because he is too deeply invested in lawheadedness to recognize the glaring contradiction.

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Book Reviews (March 2012)

Posted in Miscellaneous, Philosophy, tagged agency denial, anal sex, archeofeminism, censorship, dirty, drugs, ethics, Europe, harm reduction, hysteria, law, lawheads, neofeminism, psychology, Shazam!, sisterhood, social purity on March 26, 2012| 6 Comments »

One can never read all the books in the world, nor travel all its roads. – Anonymous

In “Presents, Presents, Presents!” I mentioned a few books readers sent me for my birthday and Christmas, and despite being frightfully busy for the past couple of months I’ve managed to read four of them so far. Also, Dr. Sadie Allison sent me a copy of her new “how to” on anal sex and asked if I’d let her know what I thought, so I figured now was as good a time as any for a new book review column.

All or Nothing: A Short History of Abstinence in America by Jessica Warner

Throughout history there have been those who abstained from one vice or another, and religious devotees who abstained from all or most of them. But Protestant reformers like Martin Luther rejected the concept that anything should be abstained from completely as some Catholic religious orders practiced; instead, they preached the virtue of moderation. But less than two generations after Luther abstinence was back in fashion among the Puritans, and by the 18^th century it became an inextricable part of evangelical Protestantism. Warner traces the development of the notion that moderation is undesirable, which caught on in America as it never could have in Europe because it was based in the sort of misguided optimism we’ve discussed before, the notion that man is perfectible. She shows how in the late 19^th century abstinence went from a personal choice to a thing to be imposed upon society by force (i.e. prohibitionism), and how it eventually permeated American culture in general and led to modern excesses such as anti-sex laws, dietary fascism and the “War on Drugs”.

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

Though I had heard about this book before, I became interested in reading it through Satoshi Kanazawa’s discussion of the epilogue to its sequel; I really wanted to read Superfreakonomics, but it seemed silly not to read the first one first so that’s what I did, and I found it fascinating. Levitt is an economist who isn’t good at math and isn’t interested in analyzing the things one generally associates with economics, but instead wants to explore “the hidden side of everything”. What that “everything” entails is most easily demonstrated by telling you the names of the book’s six chapters: “What Do Schoolteachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have In Common?”, “How is the Ku Klux Klan Like a Group of Real-Estate Agents?”, “Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live With Their Moms?”, “Where Have All the Criminals Gone?”, “What Makes a Perfect Parent?” and “Perfect Parenting Part II; or: Would a Roshanda By Any Other Name Smell As Sweet?” Need a bit more enticement? The star of chapter 3 is Sudhir Venkatesh, the answer to the title of chapter 4 is “Roe vs. Wade”, and chapter 2 (in combination with material from All or Nothing) provided the inspiration for “Circle”.

Harmful To Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex by Judith Levine

There is almost nothing in this book that will be new to regular readers; Levine’s position is essentially identical to my own. She points out that only in America is sex in general and sex among legal minors in particular treated as pathological; that sexuality starts at an early age, surges at adolescence and develops throughout the teens rather than springing into existence at midnight on a person’s 18^th birthday; that the suppression of teen sexuality is far more harmful than teen sex itself; that keeping kids in ignorance creates a whole host of problems which only barely exist in Europe; that the “predator panic” has caused grievous harm to society in general and kids in particular; that sexuality is natural and involuntary, and that sexual impulses cannot merely be ignored; that normal childhood behaviors, especially in boys, are now pathologized and even criminalized; etc, etc, etc. What makes the book worth reading is Levine’s backing up her points with exhaustive research, and providing numerous examples which you can be sure I’ll employ in future columns on the subject. As so often happens with books on sexual topics, the few negative reviews on Amazon actually serve as positive reviews to those who recognize them for what they are.

Tickle My Tush by Sadie Allison

Dr. Sadie has released several previous manuals (covering subjects ranging from sex positions to toys) through her own imprint, Tickle Kitty, and in this new book promises “Mild-to-Wild Analplay Adventures for Everybody.” I must admit I had a little anxiety about reading it; though I have no hang-ups about my own bottom, “pegging” and prostate massage are just not my cup of tea. I needn’t have worried; though there’s plenty of information here, Dr. Sadie’s playful, light style presented it in a way calculated to reduce the squick-out factor to approximately nought. The book is a quick read, divided into chapters and short “subchapters” of two pages or less each, with plenty of illustrations; it’s designed to be perused by couples together, and to be easily consultable later. After a general overview she moves on to discuss safety, hygiene and anatomy before proceeding to topics arranged in order of increasing “wildness”, starting with massage of the butt cheeks and ending up with positions. One especially clever feature of the book is two different “FAQ” chapters, one at the beginning (the sort of questions asked by total neophytes) and the other at the end (the sort asked after reading the book or enjoying some experience with analplay). The only thing I didn’t care for was her use of “cute” words for the body parts and activities, but that’s just me; I totally understand that she was trying to avoid being clinical, and I think most readers will probably be much more comfortable with, for example, “o-ring” rather than “sphincter”.

A Vindication of the Rights of Whores edited by Gail Pheterson

This volume, published in 1989, provides a snapshot of the whores’ rights movement of a quarter-century ago through essays from a number of different writers and almost five dozen contributors, including a number whose names you already know (such as Annie Sprinkle, Margo St. James and Norma Jean Almodovar). The second part of the book is comprised of a series of transcripts from the first and second World Whores’ Congresses (in 1985 and 1986), including the World Charter for Prostitutes’ Rights. I found the book especially interesting in two ways: First, it gives a window onto the very beginnings of “Third Wave” feminism by raising the issue of sexual self-determination and presenting a series of statements from feminists who attended the Second Congress and became convinced that their previous belief in prostitution as “exploitation” or “violence against women” was ignorant and incorrect. Second, it contains what may be the earliest published statement against “trafficking” mythology, considering that few people outside activism or feminism even knew what the term meant until a decade later: “The ICPR objects to policies which give women the status of children and which assume migration through prostitution among women to be always the result of force or deceit…”

One Year Ago Today

“A Foregone Conclusion” is the story of the short, failed career of Markus, the “prostidude” of the Shady Lady Ranch in Nevada.

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Metaupdates

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, tagged A Moral Cancer, Arizona, bogus studies, California, cops, crypto-moralism, cult of the child, dirty, disease, ethics, illegal aliens, Madonna/whore, porn, semen, sex rays, Shazam!, stereotypes, teachers, The Camel's Nose, Think of the Children!, Thinking with the Wrong Head on March 2, 2012| 23 Comments »

A priest, a rabbi and a leprechaun walk into a bar. The leprechaun looks around and says, “Begorrah, I’m in the wrong joke!”

The prefix “meta” means “after” or “beyond”, sometimes in the sense of a recursive function; for example, “metacognition” means “thinking about thinking” and a “meta-joke” is a joke about jokes. A “metaupdate” is therefore an update of another update, in this case items which have appeared in previous update columns. I’m going to organize these in chronological order of the updates, rather than the order of the original columns the updates reference.

Think of the Children! in Further Developments (November 18^th, 2011)

Child Cultists apparently believe that sexually-active adults emit invisible “sex rays”, and that if any of that sex wasn’t entirely vanilla the intensity of those “sex rays” increases exponentially and never, ever fades away. Therefore no such person, no matter how long ago she committed these dreaded acts, can ever again be allowed with 10 meters of children lest her pervy emanations induce the dreaded “premature sexualization”, which might {Gasp!} cause innocent children to have sexual thoughts or feelings at some point before the magical Advent of Shazam at exactly midnight on their 18^th birthdays.

That was in reference to outcry over former porn star Sasha Grey’s presuming to actually read to children in a volunteer program. Though she was initially accepted by administrators, they now seem to believe that sex rays can even contaminate the money handled by harlots, and magically seep from bank accounts into educational programs, thence to schools and into the brains of poor, innocent little soap-bubble urchins:

…being deep in the red isn’t deterring one [educational] group from publicly rejecting money [from]…former adult film star Sasha Grey…Although she retired…last April, one of Grey’s scenes is featured [apparently without Grey’s consent] in adult film “Anal Artists,” set to debut this week…In support of her “recent efforts to expose children to the world of literature,” Assence Films will donate a portion of the film’s proceeds to the National Education Association’s Read Across America program…But…NEA officials said…”Sasha Grey is not affiliated with the…program nor has she been invited or endorsed…to read at any…events, and NEA will not accept any proceeds from…any of her films”…Howard Levine of Exile Distribution …[said this] is discriminatory. “Anyone that’s supporting reading and helping kids and donating money to their cause should be accepted…they’re trying to be politically correct”…

I’ve got news for the NEA; if money which has paid for sex work is “contaminated” then every child in the country is already affected, because the money earned by sex workers of all types flows into local economies just like everyone else’s does. It is virtually a statistical certainty that some of the money you’ve given your kids this month as allowance or whatever was paid to a sex worker at some point between leaving the mint and ending up in your hands. If our money is “dirty”, then every church and school in the world is hopelessly polluted by our “sin” because they’re all supported by money we’ve handled or even directly contributed.

A Moral Cancer in That Was the Week That Was (#2) (February 5^th, 2012)

Actually, this is a double meta-update; remember the “bacon causes cancer” scare story? Well, it turns out that it was not only inconclusive, but promoted by a radical animal rights group of the same ilk as the PCRM, which I discussed in That Was the Week That Was (#3):

Link between eating processed meat [such as bacon or sausages] and pancreatic cancer in Swedish research is bogus and paid for by animal rights groups…But the…World Cancer Research Fund suggested the link may be down to obesity…Prof Susanna Larsson, who conducted the study at the Karolinska Institute, [said] links to…cancers [other than bowel cancer] were “quite controversial”…

As JunkScience.com pointed out, “This is a meta-analysis of 11 studies, none of which…link processed meat-eating with pancreatic cancer. So 11 x 0 = zero.”

The Camel’s Nose in That Was the Week That Was (#5) (February 18^th, 2012)

The disgusting saga of Mark Berndt, the third-grade teacher who fed his semen to children for years and documented it with photos, just keeps getting worse. The original story broke on January 11^th, then on February 3^rd a second teacher from the same school was arrested:

…The arrest of Miramonte Elementary School [second-grade] teacher Martin Bernard Springer, 49, came three days after L.A. prosecutors accused former teacher Mark Berndt of bizarre acts in his classroom …The allegations against Springer…come from two students he allegedly touched improperly within the last three years…Springer was ordered out of his classroom Thursday morning…Authorities are looking for other potential victims in both cases as well as past episodes of possible misconduct…Supt. John Deasy said he wants to fire Springer as soon as next Tuesday, when the Board of Education will discuss the case in closed session…At the same meeting, Deasy said, he also will urge the board to fire Hamilton High music teacher Vance Miller…[after] two former students, now adults…accused Miller of having sexual relationships with them…

By Monday, the district had decided on a scorched-earth policy instead:

…Los Angeles school officials said they will temporarily replace the entire staff of an elementary school…where two teachers have been accused of lewd acts…Supt. John Deasy announced the action at a tense public meeting…in which…parents chanted “cover-up!” and accused the school system of failing to protect their children…More than a quarter of the students enrolled at Miramonte didn’t show up Monday as parents kept them home…Officials emphasized that no other educators at the school are under suspicion but that a bold act was needed…Many, maybe all, of the current Miramonte staff will be returned to the school eventually…In the interim, their places will be filled by teachers and other workers on a rehiring list. The Miramonte staff will continue to be paid…Once students return, each will be interviewed by the district, and a psychiatric social worker will be present in every classroom, Deasy said…

So much for not traumatizing the kids. I can’t even begin to imagine how much a social worker in every classroom will cost, but obviously the district has plenty of money:

The Los Angeles Unified School District paid Mark Berndt…$40,000 to drop the challenge to his dismissal last year. The payout consisted of four months of back salary plus reimbursement for the cost of health benefits. Berndt was fired by the Board of Education in February 2011…but…fought to keep his job…until he settled with the school system and resigned in June…counsel David Holmquist [said]…”We were told we could not do any investigation” to avoid interfering with a law enforcement probe…”We didn’t have any evidence, and we couldn’t put on any witnesses. We didn’t have anything to successfully defend a challenge.”

The cops are still being proprietary about the whole thing, and on the 18^th told the parents to butt out:

The investigation into a former third-grade teacher…could be hampered by the flood of civil cases related to the scandal and public statements made by alleged victims, according to Los Angeles County sheriff’s detectives…Since the charges were announced, civil attorneys say they are representing more than 60 victims…Earlier this week two alleged victims appeared with their attorney on the “Dr. Phil” television show. “The lawyers are making it that much more difficult,” [said] William McSweeney, chief of detectives…”It is going to raise issues of credibility.” The civil attorneys have made claims about Berndt that are not contained in the original charges, including some accusations…that Berndt fed the alleged victims cookies with his semen on them…Detectives are still investigating and are urging families to contact the Sheriff’s Department before seeking private counsel.

I’m glad the cops get to see how it feels to have outsiders interfering with their work for a change.

One Year Ago Today (Meta-edition)

“Thinking with the Wrong Head” discussed Chris Lee, the congressman who stupidly documented his indiscretions with photos. Well, here’s another example of the same syndrome, this time from Arizona:

…well-known border hawk Sheriff Paul Babeu, who’s now running for Congress in Arizona, was…[accused by] a Mexican immigrant who said he dated the sheriff for years and was threatened with deportation if he ever told anyone about their romance. The Phoenix New Times…broke the story on its website…complete with text messages…[and] compromising photos…reminiscent of recent sex scandals that ended the careers of Congressmen Anthony Weiner and Chris Lee…The New Times identified the accuser only by his first name, José…he met Babeu through the dating website gay.com in 2006…Babeu was a police officer in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler at the time and was elected as sheriff of Pinal County in late 2008… José volunteered for Babeu’s campaign, maintaining his websites and social media accounts…They were apparently together during Babeu’s fast rise to becoming a national figure in the fight against illegal immigration…[but] their relationship went sour…when [José] began to suspect that Babeu was using a website for casual hookups…

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Scorched Earth

Posted in Current Events, Perception, Tyranny, tagged censorship, dirty, Florida, harm reduction, hysteria, internet, law, lawheads, porn, psychology, rape, sex offender registry, Shazam!, stereotypes on February 27, 2012| 34 Comments »

He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death. – Thomas Paine

The 21^st century American view of sex is warped beyond that of any other historical culture. The official and popular paradigm appears to be based on the belief that sex is such a horrible, monstrous abomination that the mere mention of it to an adult can constitute “violence”, that participating in it for taboo reasons can be a “crime”, and that if a person is exposed to sexual contact, conversation or imagery (observing, creating or modeling for) even one minute before midnight on her 18^th birthday she will be instantly and irreversibly ruined beyond any hope of redemption. Unwanted but non-violent sexual contact is portrayed as equivalent to murder or mayhem, and looking at a picture of a nude person younger than the sacred Moment of Shazam is worse than some forms of murder, even if the “victim” is already grown up, dead or unaware the picture exists, or if the models are only pretending to be underage or (in the case of drawings) aren’t even real.

Given this sick, obsessive paranoia over a simple biological function, it’s really not surprising that America has declared total war on it. And I don’t just mean a regular war, either; this is a win-at-any-cost, scorched-earth, throw-babies-to-Moloch, morals-and-honor-be-damned Götterdämmerung. The “authorities” are willing to sacrifice civil rights, legal precedents, our kids’ health and happiness and even decency and common sense to “win” it…and it shows. Its clearest illustration is the “sex offender registry”; those who are condemned to it face ostracism, exile, unemployment, harassment and sometimes risk of assault or murder, usually for the rest of their lives, for horrible “crimes” such as prostitution, getting their girlfriends angry, having sex while teenaged or drunken bladder relief within sight of a cop. No other crime which doesn’t end in corpses earns a lifetime of punishment for a single action, and no other offense of any kind results in such a disproportionate and cruel sentence. But when sex is involved, logic and proportion are disposable, as is the law itself:

…Corey Hipscher…was accused of fondling…[three] young girls…[whom he] had taken…on boat rides [at a Florida water park where he worked], pulling them behind him on a flotation device, the girls and other witnesses testified during trials in August and November 2011. Hipscher’s lawyers argued that the girls misinterpreted innocent contact. [He was tried and acquitted twice]…for those who may not appreciate it, obtaining an acquittal against accusations of this nature are notoriously difficult, as the natural inclination to believe and protect children tends to overcome all other evidence. To prevail twice in such cases is, well, quite extraordinary…[Broward Circuit Judge Martin] Bidwill was unimpressed, finding that Hipscher committed a new crime while on probation for an old one. And while he legally could not impose the life sentence Hipscher would have received had he been convicted of child molestation, Bidwill gave the defendant the stiffest sentence he could…15 years imprisonment, based solely on the same evidence for which had been acquitted…

Hipscher was on probation for a 2002 conviction, having nothing to do with children…[he] was accused of sexual battery on his then-girlfriend [and]…told Bidwill the whole case was a lover’s quarrel, and [that] his girlfriend [had filed] charges against him so she could qualify as a victim for a program that would pay for her relocation to Illinois. Nonetheless, this conviction put him on the sex offender registry, which included a condition that he stay away from children. Worse still, he had two prior “technical” violations, neither involving the commission of a new crime, for which he had served under a year each. But this time…prosecutors turned to the probation violation after losing both criminal cases. “We pursued all avenues to get prison time for this defendant,” said Broward prosecutor Maryanne Braun. “We absolutely believe those girls who said he molested them, and the court believed them as well.” The only people who didn’t buy guilt were the people sitting on the jury. And who cares what they think where the prosecution and court face a defendant…they’ve decided needs to go down…guilty or innocent, he never had a chance. The only question was how he would be burned, not whether. His fate was sealed.

…When the acquitted defendant gets 15 years for the crime, we lose faith. We lose hope. We see a system that cannot be trusted, a judge and prosecutor who have spit at the jury, telling them they couldn’t care less that he was acquitted…No doubt the prosecution was sure of Hipscher’s guilt, but…there is almost always a cavalier certainty by prosecutors that they somehow know deeper truths than ordinary people. But there is a judge…whose job it is to prevent the system from falling into clutches of the prosecution and being reduced to no more than a tool to convict…

Ernie Allen, the president of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), would no doubt cheer Judge Bidwill’s actions, but then he is a moral retard who accepts governmental claims that registration “is not punitive [but] regulatory”, doesn’t care that a third of all who “commit sex offenses” against “children” are “children” themselves, and thinks it’s permissible to defend the system with lies such as “[there is a] high risk of re-offense” (no, there isn’t), “most of the victims of America’s sex offenders are younger than 18 years of age” (no, they aren’t) and “common-sense steps…better protect the public, particularly the children” (no, they don’t). Allen’s $1.3 million salary and compensation package depends on keeping the hysteria going, so that’s what he’ll try his utmost to do…even if it means lifelong torture for three quarters of a million Americans, of whom 90.3% were not convicted of violent offenses.

Nor are those accused of “offenses” (and their families) the only victims of the panic; as one of my favorite non-whore bloggers (Lenore Skenazy of Free-Range Kids) constantly points out, the restrictions parents place on their children due to hysteria are far more dangerous to their development, self-esteem, happiness and health than the remote possibility of harm from a “predator”. In the above-linked article she quotes a New York Times profile…

…of Danah Boyd, an Internet researcher who hops over hysteria… “It’s not that the Internet is doing something bad to these kids…” [one of Boyd’s colleagues said], “…it’s that these bad things are in kids’ lives and the Internet is just a component of that”…This is something I try to remind parents about: The Internet is a lot like the real world. In fact, it IS the real world: It’s where kids hang out…and one of the main reasons they ARE gathering online, rather than at the mall or even — I know this sounds crazy — the PARK, is that:

“Children’s ability to roam has basically been destroyed,” Dr. Boyd said…“Letting your child out to bike around the neighborhood is seen as terrifying now, even though by all measures, life is safer for kids today.” Children naturally congregate on social media sites for the relatively unsupervised conversations, flirtations, immature humor and social exchanges that are the normal stuff of teenage hanging-out, she said.

As for the fear that predators and bullies lurk everywhere on the Web, Boyd says there is no evidence that bullying is more prevalent on line than in the “real world,” nor is there any evidence that it is on the rise in either place! And predators?

“The most deadly misconception about American youth has been the sexual predator panic,” she said. “The model we have of the online sexual predator is this lurking man who reaches out on the Internet and grabs a kid. And there is no data that support that. The vast majority of sex crimes against kids involve someone that kid trusts, and it’s overwhelmingly family members.”

So basically, we have become afraid of our kids hanging out beyond the home, for fear of predators, bullies, sexual situations, etc. Meantime, we are afraid of our kids hanging out inside the home, on line, for fear of predators, bullies, sexual situations, etc. And it’s all part of the same thing: An unrealistically grim perception of anything our kids try to do on their own…

It’s time to stop being afraid of the activity to which every single one of us owes his existence, and to stop fighting a war whose casualties are far greater than any the “threat” itself has ever produced.

One Year Ago Today

“See How Well It Works?” examines the efforts of “Super Bowl Sex Trafficking” hysterics to pretend that their hysteria itself was the reason for the failure of their hysterical predictions to materialize.

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Moloch

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, Tyranny, tagged cops, dirty, harm reduction, hysteria, law, lawheads, Moloch, neofeminism, paganism, psychology, rape, sex offender registry, sexting, Shazam!, welcome to our world on January 29, 2012| 29 Comments »

MOLOCH, horrid King besmear’d with blood
Of human sacrifice, and parents tears,
Though, for the noyse of Drums and Timbrels loud,
Their children’s cries unheard that passed through fire
To his grim Idol. – John Milton, Paradise Lost (Book I)

Moloch is the traditional (via the Bible) name for a Semitic god worshipped by the Canaanites, Phoenicians and Carthaginians. There is some debate over whether the word is actually the name of the god himself, or else the type of sacrifice he demanded in times of crisis: living human children thrown into a furnace at the base of the idol, sometimes in the shape of an open mouth. Some historians dispute the scale of the practice, claiming that it was exaggerated by enemy writers, but there is little doubt of its historicity considering that it is described independently in Hebrew, Greek and Roman sources. A cemetery in which the charred remains of such offerings were buried was called by the Hebrews tophet, a word which has since become synonymous with “Hell”. And the name of Moloch has come to mean any institution or cause which requires a horrible sacrifice, especially of children. Some Victorian writers used the name as a metaphor for industry which employed child labor, and modern America has its own Moloch: our viciously-misnamed “justice” system, into the maw of which uncaring functionaries hurl kids by the thousands for the sake of a “war” as barbaric and ultimately futile as those lost by the Carthaginians over two millennia ago.

In the early ‘90s, politicians responded to rising crime rates with a number of measures designed to convince the Great Unwashed that they were “tough on crime”, including “three strikes” laws, wildly disproportionate sentencing and trying juvenile offenders as though they were adults. And while some ruthless teenagers undoubtedly deserve more serious sentences than those available in the juvenile court system, most do not…and some states allow even prepubescent children (most of whom have not even achieved adult cognitive levels) to be tried and convicted as adults, with results that endure for decades if not for life. Furthermore, this draconian “crackdown” occurred just as America was relapsing into a state of hysteria about sex, especially sex among legal minors; despite a total lack of evidence for the belief, the public and legal establishment became convinced that any kind of sexual contact (including mere conversations or the taking of nude or simply suggestive photos) before the magical age of 18 was inherently harmful, and that the older party – even if under 18 himself – was automatically “exploiting” the younger one, even if they were not in physical proximity to one another or the younger one was unaware of the sexual interpretation the older placed on such interaction. This eventually led to the absurdity of charging teenagers with “child pornography” for “sexting” (because the little monsters should know better than to sexually exploit their innocent, childlike selves), and when combined with the nightmare of “sex offender registration” we arrive at a formula for mindless, destructive tyranny and child-sacrifice on a scale that would’ve made the Carthaginian priests avert their eyes in horror.

This article, which appeared in Time on January 8^th, gives some idea of the full scope of the injustice:

…more than one-third of the sexual abuse of America’s children is committed by other minors…these juvenile offenders pose a profoundly complicated challenge for the child-protection and criminal justice systems. It’s a diverse group…encompassing a minority of youths who represent a threat…and a majority who are…unlikely to reoffend…[Our] public policy includes a federal law…with a requirement that states include…offenders as young as 14 on their sex-offender registries. Many [experts]…object to the requirement, saying it can wreak lifelong harm on adolescents who might otherwise get back on…track…Some states have balked at complying…even at the price of losing some federal criminal-justice funding. Other states have provisions tougher than the federal act, subjecting children younger than 14 to the possibility of 25-year or lifetime listings on publicly accessible registries that include [their] photos…Delaware recently [registered] a 9-year-old…Several other states have registered 12- and 13-year-olds. “We’re bringing down a very heavy hammer on the head of kids, with significant life-altering consequences,” said Marsha Levick…of the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia. “It’s a knee-jerk reaction that’s foolhardy beyond imagination.” [And] Nicole Pittman, a Human Rights Watch researcher…says states should halt the practice…”Most legislators do not believe children should be on the registry — yet it’s the kiss of death for most politicians to vote against any sex offender law,” she said.

…[A government] analysis…found that juveniles accounted for 35.6 percent of…[those accused of sex offenses]…against minors…93 percent [of them] were male [with an average age of 13]…and…59 percent [of “victims”] were younger than 12 and 75 percent were female. The report referred to a popular misconception that juvenile sex offenders are likely to reoffend, and said numerous studies over the years have shown the opposite — that 85 to 95 percent of offending youth are never again arrested for sex crimes. University of Oklahoma pediatrics professor Mark Chaffin…says efforts…are complicated by the tendency…to lump them together with adult sexual predators…”Now that the data has shown most of those assumptions were wrong, it’s difficult to undo those messages that people in the advocacy and treatment fields were putting out a generation ago.”

…While some youths commit violent, premeditated acts of sexual assault and rape, others get in trouble for behavior arising from curiosity, naivete, peer pressure, momentary irresponsibility, misinterpretation of what they believed was mutual interest, and a host of other reasons. Some cases involve sibling incest; sometimes the offenders have autism or other developmental disorders that lessen their ability to self-police inappropriate conduct…sociologist David Finkelhor…of the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center…[says the system] “…needs to differentiate between the kids we should stigmatize as little as possible…and others who need a lot of intervention…”

…The latest juvenile crime data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics indicates that arrests of juvenile sex offenders declined by about 25 percent from 2000 through 2009. That would mesh with a decline in child sex abuse committed by adults, as well as a decline in the overall juvenile crime rate. But data from New York City, Florida and elsewhere indicates that the prevalence of child-on-child sex hasn’t dropped noticeably. In any case, forms of abuse evolve with the times as sexting becomes a common youth activity and easily accessible online pornography affects some children…”There’s a fear of technology — parents don’t think they can control it,” said Marsha Levick, who has been working…to dissuade prosecutors from criminalizing commonplace teen sexting activities…Nancy Arnow of Safe Horizon, a New York-based victim services agency…said the child-on-child sex abuse cases are among the most difficult. “We have to distinguish between sexualized behavior that might be pretty normal — experimenting, touching each other — versus molesting, subjecting another child to harm,” she said. She recalled investigations of children as young as 7, and the arrest of an 8-year-old…

Another challenging type of abuse cases involves youths who are autistic…[Jay Deppeler, who runs a treatment program for adolescent male sex offenders,] recalled one autistic young man who…had committed a sex offense as a 14-year-old and later — after turning 18 — committed a property…offense…[he was then] obligated to apprise prospective employers of his full record, including the juvenile sex offense — making him “virtually unemployable…Long term, I fear his prospects are quite bleak,” Deppeler said. “What do we end up doing with a guy like that?”

Though there’s some good information in the article, it has a major flaw: it doesn’t actually question any of the established “child sex abuse” narrative. Oh, we’re told that the majority of the “offenders” are no real threat, but the assumption is still that they did something wrong and need “correction”. The basic idea that it’s OK to punish someone for life for a non-lethal offense goes unchallenged, and though the article calls the belief in high recidivism among sex offenders a “misconception”, it wrongly qualifies the term with the adjective “juvenile” (in fact, adult sex offenders have a low recidivism rate as well). Even Nancy Arnow, who clearly states that adolescent sexual experimentation is normal, feels compelled to add the qualifier “pretty” and to say it’s “difficult” to distinguish harmless activities from crime. Adolescent sexual experimentation isn’t just “pretty normal”, it’s absolutely normal. And there’s a very easy way to distinguish sex play from molestation: did the supposed “victim” complain or draw adult attention via obvious stress or anxiety, or did some busybody adult discover the young people together and impose “exploitation” and “crime” paradigms on what was actually a harmless and mutually consensual activity?

One Year Ago Today

“Aggressive Ignorance” demonstrates the truth of James Baldwin’s statement that “ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.”

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Umpteen Thousand People Can’t Be Wrong

Posted in Current Events, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, Backpage, censorship, dirty, ethics, hysteria, language, law, lawheads, neofeminism, pimps, prohibitionist myths, Shazam!, slavery, stereotypes, streetwalkers, tabula rasa, Umpteen Thousand People, underage on November 12, 2011| 32 Comments »

Democracy encourages the majority to decide things about which the majority is blissfully ignorant. – John Simon

One of the more insidious forms of lawheadedness is the widespread belief that political fictions have a basis in reality. For example, neofeminism rests on the confusion of legal equality with actual equality, in other words the belief that because the law generally treats the sexes alike that means they actually are alike. Another such belief is that the legal equation of teenagers with children (both are “legal minors”) means that teenagers actually are children in some real way, and that a man who is attracted to a hot 16-year-old is therefore a “pedophile”. But possibly the most dangerous confusion of all is the idea, common in the modern world, that because leaders are chosen and a few legal questions decided by majority vote, it also means that the truth can be decided the same way. We often hear some permutation of the phrase which forms today’s title, but it’s total and complete nonsense: the majority not only can be wrong, on subjects requiring specialized or firsthand knowledge, it nearly always is wrong. I can assure you that no matter how many people vote on it, no matter how many signatures one collects on a petition, no matter how many self-appointed “leaders” demand it, facts will stubbornly remain in place. You can’t make men and women psychologically identical by majority vote, you can’t raise the speed of light by petition and you can’t legislate pi to be a rational number. And no matter how many people claim that “children are being sold for sex” on Backpage, it’s still pure bullshit.

Where do we even start with this? First of all, no prostitute (voluntary or involuntary) is “sold for sex” or “sells her body”; as has been pointed out many times by many whore-activists, the act of selling automatically includes a change of ownership: if the supposed purchaser does not take possession of the goods supposedly “sold”, no sale has taken place. I still own my body, therefore I have never sold it; the same can be said for any other prostitute, either above or below the local age of consent. And since nobody is alleging that anyone ever advertised on Backpage to literally sell a girl as a slave, with ownership changing hands, the statement that “children [or anybody else] are sold for sex [or any other purpose] on Backpage” is prima facie fraudulent.

Next, there’s that word “children” again; every supposed case I’ve ever seen lists the alleged prostitute’s age as 13-17. I doubt anyone other than a hopeless lawhead would consider a 17-year-old to be a “child” in any meaningful sense, and considering that the age of consent in some American states is as low as 14, clearly the legislatures of those states don’t consider someone of that age to be truly a “child” either. That leaves 13-year-olds, most of whom are biologically capable of pregnancy and are therefore not children. Using the phrase “underage prostitutes are often advertised on Backpage” wouldn’t have nearly the emotional impact as “children sold for sex”, but at least it would be true, wouldn’t it?

In a word, no. See, there’s still that passive voice issue: “are sold for sex” or “are advertised” imply that the whore is the passive subject of some “trafficker”, but as we have seen fewer than 16% of underage prostitutes have even met a pimp, and 75% of them work only on the street. There are fewer than 16,000 underage prostitutes in the U.S.; if only a quarter are other than streetwalkers, and if only 16% of <4000 girls are “pimped”, we’re looking at about 600 “pimped” underage girls in the entire country who aren’t streetwalkers…and the majority of those probably work in clandestine brothels rather than even attempting to advertise online. The F.B.I.’s lugubriously named “Operation Innocence Lost” barely even bothers with the internet; as reported in my column of one year ago today, most of the young hookers they arrest (excuse me, “rescue”) are caught on the street or at truck stops. Altogether, there are probably about 100 prostitutes in the entire country who meet all the hysterics’ criteria (underage, pimped online advertisers), or about 2 per state…sad, but hardly enough to justify shutting down an entire advertising venue on the grounds that those 2 girls might possibly choose to advertise on the targeted venue rather than one of the many other sites available. It would be like banning peanuts because they’re the agent of a common food allergy and 11 people die each year from all food allergies combined.

But since the fanatics are so fond of saying “if even ONE CHILD is saved it will be worth it!!!!11!!eleven!!”, I hardly think that they’ll respond to this logic, so let’s look at the final issue: a pesky thing called the Constitution. A federal judge recently ruled that, as previously established many times, internet advertising venues are not responsible for user-generated content. Nor is the case a generic one; the ruling specifically dismissed a lawsuit by a former teen prostitute who claimed Backpage was responsible for an ad she was persuaded (not forced) to allow a pimp to place. Of course, the attorneys general of 44 states (who apparently labor under the delusion so common to state-employed lawyers, that the law is whatever they want it to be) greeted this ruling with a toothless demand that Backpage take down its adult services section; Backpage ignored the demand because, as the attorneys surely recognized themselves, it had no legal validity.

As one might expect, this inspired the fanatics to redouble their efforts (as Santayana tells us fanatics are wont to do) by starting a petition to “force” Backpage to stop doing what it’s legally and morally entitled to do, namely give adult women a low-cost place to advertise an honest and necessary service. And as Laura Agustín reported, a group of 36 clergymen took out a full-page ad in the October 25th New York Times to make the same demand. Their “open letter” begins with the spectacularly asinine statement “It is a basic fact of the moral universe that girls and boys should not be sold for sex”; I’ve already pointed out the absurdity of the phrase “sold for sex” above, and Laura Agustín says the rest perfectly:

There are no rules of the moral universe because there is no moral universe, even about children and sex, not to mention about the exchange of money for sex. The idea that there is some absolute place where everyone will agree on morality is an illusion held by some people with little imagination, who universalise their own experiences. On top of that fantasy they build campaigns in which all other moral senses are turned into crime, sin and perversity.

Dr. Agustín also called attention to this Huffington Post coverage of the story, illustrated with a picture of Demi Moore exploiting an old Indian woman for her publicity. I wonder if she asked the woman to move into position for the photo? If so, the woman was “trafficked”. And if Moore paid her, she was “sold for publicity”. Sounds stupid, doesn’t it? And to those of us who recognize that sex isn’t some magical sacred taboo which destroys anyone who uses it in a way prudes pronounce “wrong”, the mythology of “sex trafficking” sounds just as stupid…no matter how many people believe it.

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Maier’s Law

Posted in Current Events, Perception, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, cops, dirty, escort review sites, fantasy, law, lawheads, Madonna/whore, Maier's Law, neofeminism, New York, pimps, prohibitionist myths, psychology, Shazam!, stereotypes, streetwalkers, underage on November 7, 2011| 39 Comments »

If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be disposed of. – N.R.F. Maier

In 1960 N.R.F Maier, writing about the neurotic behavior of experimental psychologists like himself, proposed Maier’s Law, which forms my epigram above; he explained that for one who has become convinced of his own correctness…

…the theory supersedes the fact. It is the fact that must conform; and it is the theory that we must strive to nurture, develop, and abstract…The method of how psychologists as scientists dispose of facts is of special interest. One of the most common is to give the facts a new name. In this way they are given a special compartment and therefore cease to infringe on the privacy of the theory…Giving disturbing facts a name is almost as good as explaining them because a name supplies a useful answer to inquisitive people. Other ways of disposing of facts are omitting them in reference books, and the most efficient method…that of failing to report them…

Of course, psychologists aren’t the only ones whose misguided minds adhere to Maier’s Law; politicians also practice it, and cops follow it obsessively. And nowhere is this more evident than in the interactions of modern police with prostitutes. Only a few years ago, prostitution was regarded as a “crime” and prostitutes as “criminals”, and police defended that theory by ignoring well-adjusted hookers and concentrating on the maladjusted minority, even creating criminal conspiracies in their minds and claiming without the faintest shred of evidence that discreet indoor prostitution magically “attracts crime”. But now police departments are switching to “trafficking” rhetoric, which teaches that all whores (especially those even one day under the Age of Shazam) are “victims” in need of “rescue”, and that they are always and without exception “forced into prostitution” by evil men. The fact that an official study sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice found that only 8% of teenage prostitutes in New York City were forced into prostitution by a “pimp,” and only 10% currently worked with one, is immaterial; the “trafficking” theory says that 100% of them have pimps so that inconvenient 90% who don’t has to be explained away somehow. How they do it is explained in this October 19^th article from Metro, called to my attention via Laura Agustín’s column the next day:

New York City police say they are trying to rescue teens forced into prostitution, only to find that the girls often don’t want their help. A state law enacted last year considers prostitutes under the age of 18 victims, not criminals, and police are encouraged not to charge them with a crime. But according to Inspector James Capaldo, head of the NYPD’s new anti-sex trafficking division, their efforts to help girls forced into prostitution are often spurned, he told the City Council at a hearing on sex trafficking yesterday. The teens are often terrified of being punished by their pimp, or they’re brainwashed into thinking he is a boyfriend, said Capaldo. They also often lie and say they are 19. “Sometimes they refuse to talk,” he said. “If it takes a man six weeks to put this woman in a situation, how do we undo that in 46 hours?” The teen prostitutes often advertise their illegal services on Backpage.com, according to the Brooklyn district attorney’s office. Earlier this year, in Brooklyn, a tip led police to “Jennifer,” 18, who refused to testify against her pimp. Instead, prosecutors found him through a prostitution website. He was charged with sex trafficking.

That’s right, it’s the social engineer’s best friend, “brainwashing” again. When people act like free-willed individuals instead of victims and behave in a way contrary to what the control freaks consider “right thinking”, that person must somehow be deranged. And if someone the “authorities” label a victim insists she isn’t victimized, obviously it must be brainwashing (or as they sometimes prefer to call it, “Stockholm Syndrome”). As Maier pointed out, the most common way to ignore facts is to give them a new name, to redefine them. When a woman says she doesn’t want to be “rescued”, her statement is called “lying” and her desire is said to be the result of “programming”. When the 90% say they are not victims, they’re suffering from “false consciousness” or else they’re “terrified of their pimps”. And when a legally-adult woman refuses to “testify against” a pimp she doesn’t have, she is treated as a child and the police railroad somebody she had some contact with through a hooker board (a client or moderator, perhaps?) to play the role of the nonexistent “pimp” in their sick psychodrama.

This is, as many of you may remember, exactly what I predicted would happen once such laws became popular; if all prostitutes are victims it follows that each of them was victimized by someone, and if there is no such person it becomes necessary to manufacture him out of an innocent bystander so the “theory” is not revealed as arrant nonsense. The fact that most prostitutes, including teenage prostitutes, are acting under their own volition doesn’t fit the trafficking/coercion/ “no woman would prostitute herself voluntarily” theory, so it must be disposed of.

One Year Ago Today

“November Book Reviews” discusses A Renegade History of the United States, Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do, The Internet Escort’s Handbook and Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry.

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