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Posts Tagged ‘stage names’

The Notorious Badge

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, tagged acting, courtesans, ethics, fantasy, Hollywood, pimps, porn, stage names, stereotypes, streetwalkers, The Notorious Badge, underage on April 9, 2012| 77 Comments »

It hath evermore been the notorious badge of prostituted strumpets and the lewdest harlots to ramble abroad to plays, to playhouses; whither no sober girls or women, but only branded whores and infamous adulteresses, did usually resort in ancient times. – William Prynne

Sometimes the idea for a column rattles around in my brain for a long time before I get to it; last month’s “The Profumo Affair” was suggested by regular reader Marla almost a year before I actually wrote it, and today’s derives from an October 16^th, 2010 comment by Sailor Barsoom: “When I saw the title, “Playing the Harlot”, I thought this was going to be about all the actresses who have ever played prostitutes (i.e. pretty much all of them). I don’t think Elle Fanning has (yet), but Shirley Temple did, at age four.” I suspect he’s referring to her performance as “La Belle Diaperina” in the one-reel comedy short “Glad Rags to Riches”. In truth, he’s not much exaggerating; if we extend the term “prostitute” to include all sex workers, halfway whores and gold-diggers, and include bit parts, I think we’d be hard-pressed to find an actress with more than three films to her credit who hasn’t played one. But that would make a very long column indeed, so I’m not going to go there; instead I’m limiting this to those who have played a full-on professional whore in an important role. Strippers, fortune-hunters and the like aren’t included, nor minor characters, nor is any role which is more of a MacGuffin than a character, such as the whores in Unforgiven or Doctor Detroit. And for TV shows, I only included regular characters; tracking one-episode appearances would take a whole website. Finally, I’m going to skip the extremely famous whores Nell Gwyn, the Madame de Pompadour and Valeria Messalina except to provide these links for their many film portrayals.

This column is more than just an interesting list; in my column of one year ago yesterday I pointed out that “making money off of whores without giving them anything in return…is as good a working definition of ‘pimp’ as I can imagine.” All of these actresses have made money off of us by playing members of our profession; some of them have made considerable sums. Yet none of them with the exception of Dolly Parton have ever as much as breathed a word in public to defend out rights, and some (such as Mira Sorvino) are actively anti-prostitute. None of them want to acknowledge the fact that up until the late 19^th century our professions were indistinguishable; in the case of actresses who do nude and/or love scenes and that segment of whores who have sex on camera, they are still indistinguishable (just ask Sasha Grey or Traci Lords).

Morena Baccarin as Inara Serra in Firefly (2002)
Monica Bellucci as Malèna Scordia in Malèna (2000) & Mary Magdalene in The Passion of The Christ (2004)
Karen Black as Elizabeth Lucy in The Pyx (1973)
Amanda Blake as Miss Kitty in Gunsmoke (1955)
Mae Clarke as Myra Deauville in Waterloo Bridge (1931)
Jamie Lee Curtis as Ophelia in Trading Places (1983)
Rosario Dawson as Gail in Sin City (2005)
Rebecca De Mornay as Lana in Risky Business (1983)
Catherine Deneuve as Séverine Serizy in Belle de Jour (1967)
Doris Dowling as Gloria in The Lost Weekend (1945)
Britt Ekland as Willow in The Wicker Man (1973)
Yvonne Elliman as Mary Magdalene in Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)
Jane Fonda as Bree Daniels in Klute (1971)
Jodie Foster as Iris in Taxi Driver (1976)
Greta Garbo as Mata Hari in Mata Hari (1931) and as Marguerite Gautier in Camille (1936)
Janet Gaynor as Angela in Street Angel (1928)
Sasha Grey as Chelsea in The Girlfriend Experience (2009)
Melanie Griffith as V in Milk Money (1994)
Helen Hayes as Madelon Claudet in The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931)
Susan Hayward as Barbara Graham in I Want To Live! (1958)
Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly in Breakfast At Tiffany’s (1961) and as Eliza Dolittle in My Fair Lady (1964)
Barbara Hershey as Mary Magdalene in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
Miriam Hopkins as Ivy Pearson in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)
Madeleine Kahn as Lili von Shtupp in Blazing Saddles (1974)
Jaime King as Goldie and Wendy in Sin City (2005)
Jennifer Jason Leigh as Tralala in Last Exit To Brooklyn (1989)
Vivien Leigh as Myra Deauville in Waterloo Bridge (1940)
Shelley Long as Belinda Keaton in Night Shift (1982)
Sophia Loren as Aldonza in Man of La Mancha (1972)
Shirley MacLaine as Irma la Douce in Irma la Douce (1963)
Colette Marchand as Marie Charlet in Moulin Rouge (1952)
Giulietta Masina as Maria Ceccarelli in Nights of Cabiria (1957)
Marsha Mason as Maggie Paul in Cinderella Liberty (1973)
Catherine McCormack as Veronica Franco in Dangerous Beauty (1998)
Melina Mercouri as Ilya in Never On Sunday (1960)
Patty Mullen as Elizabeth Shelley in Frankenhooker (1990)
Ona Munson as Belle Watling in Gone With the Wind (1939)
Alla Nazimova as Marguerite Gautier in Camille (1921)
Kim Novak as Mildred Rogers in Of Human Bondage (1964)
Dolly Parton as Mona Stangley in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982)
Lynn Redgrave as Xaviera Hollander in The Happy Hooker (1975)
Donna Reed as Alma “Lorene” Burke in From Here To Eternity (1953)
Julia Roberts as Vivian Ward in Pretty Woman (1990)
Maya Rudolph as Rita in Idiocracy (2006)
Theresa Russell as Liz in Whore (1991)
Susan Sarandon as Hattie in Pretty Baby (1978)
Brooke Shields as Violet in Pretty Baby (1978)
Elisabeth Shue as Sera in Leaving Las Vegas (1985)
Mira Sorvino as Linda Ash in Mighty Aphrodite (1995)
Barbara Stanwyk as Lily Powers in Baby Face (1933)
Sharon Stone as Ginger McKenna in Casino (1995)
Norma Talmadge as Marguerite Gautier in Camille (1926)
Elizabeth Taylor as Gloria Wandrous in BUtterfield 8 (1960)
Leigh Taylor-Young as Shirl in Soylent Green (1973)
Charlize Theron as Aileen Wuornos in Monster (2003)
Rachel Ticotin as Melina in Total Recall (1990)
Kathleen Turner as China Blue in Crimes of Passion (1984)
Mae West as Ruby Carter in Belle of the Nineties (1934)
Joanne Whalley as Christine Keeler in Scandal (1989)
Shelley Winters as Polly Adler in A House Is Not a Home (1964)

These were all the ones I could come up with from memory, rereading my “Filmography” page and searching IMDb, but I’m sure there are plenty of others I haven’t thought of. Readers, please suggest your favorites in the comments, keeping in mind the criteria in the first paragraph; I’ll edit the column to add those that fit. Incidentally, you’ll notice something strange going on in the comments below; I moved all the comments from “Filmography” here so I could close them there without losing them. That’s why some are so old and/or suggest films already in the list.

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Veneralia

Posted in Biography, Holidays, Miscellaneous, Perception, tagged Aphrodite, archeofeminism, carnival, holidays, paganism, psychology, Rome, stage names on April 1, 2012| 23 Comments »

You seem to me as Dian in her orb,
As chaste as is the bud ere it be blown;
But you are more intemperate in your blood
Than Venus, or those pampered animals
That rage in savage sensuality. – William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing (IV,i)

The lady in the statue is Cybele, the great mother-goddess of Asia Minor to whom big cats were sacred; she was worshipped in Rome as the Magna Mater in the feast of Hilaria, which started at the calends of April (March 25th) and continued through to yesterday. In early times these rituals were rather bloody and not at all nice, including castration of a male sacrifice who thus represented Cybele’s lover Attis (the later myth of Aphrodite and Adonis descended from it). But by the second century CE a bull had replaced the human, in an elaborate sacred drama and sacrifice called a taurobolium.

Today, however, was the feast of Veneralia, a festival dedicated to Fortuna Virilis (“Powerful Fortune”) and to Venus Verticordia (Venus the Changer of Hearts). Remember how I told you that women worshipped Fortuna Virilis by bathing in men’s public baths? Well, on Veneralia the image of Venus Verticordia was taken to a men’s bath by her priestesses and ceremonially bathed. As you can see, Fortuna and Venus had become closely associated by the imperial era and their ceremonies merged; by the second century CE the Magna Mater (due in part to the proximity of their festivals and association with Venus Genetrix) was also added to the mixture and worshipped as Venus Caelestis (Heavenly Venus), while a combined aspect of Venus and Fortuna was called Venus Felix (Venus the Lucky). Confused? Don’t feel dumb; I’m sure many Romans were as well. I’ll do my best to explain it in my column for the 23rd, “Vinalia Urbana“.

But in the meantime, so many readers have asked for more nude pictures I figured it was time to grant their requests in observance of the holiday. But since the pictures are pretty explicit, I figured it would be better to hide them away on a sub-page and require you to click through to get to it, so that those averse to such things don’t have to see my pussy. Those who prefer not to go there (and don’t worry, I’m not offended) can click here instead for a fun, cute way to spend a few minutes which doesn’t involve naked women.

Happy Veneralia!

One Year Ago Today

“A Modest Proposal” describes some imaginative ideas for sex laws proposed by legislators in Alaska and Texas.

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That Was the Week That Was (#13)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged Above the Law, archeofeminism, Australia, avails laws, brothels, California, Canada, censorship, comics, cops, dirty, Divided We Fall, Down Under, East Asia, Elephant in the Parlor, ethics, Europe, FBI, Feminine Pragmatism, France, harm reduction, Hollywood, hysteria, Israel, J’accuse, Knights Erroneous, law, lawheads, LGBT rights, Malaysia, Middle East, neofeminism, New York, pimps, porn, pragmatism, Presents, See No Evil, Sex Lies and Busybodies, sisterhood, Spain, stage names, stereotypes, streetwalkers, Subtle Pimping, Swedish model, The Course of a Disease, The Crumbling Dam, TSA, Washington DC, Whores in the News 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 28^th 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 7^th, 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 8^th, 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 30^th…[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 9^th, 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 14^th, 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 23^rd, 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 16^th, 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 26^th, 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 29^th, 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 16^th, 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 8^th, 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 4^th, 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 18^th, 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 4^th, 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 24^th, 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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La Belle Otero

Posted in Biography, Harlotography, Perception, tagged archeofeminism, courtesans, Europe, fantasy, France, rape, restaurants, Spain, stage names, underage on March 30, 2012| 13 Comments »

Women have one mission in life: to be beautiful. When one gets old, one must learn how to break mirrors. I am very gently expecting to die. – La Belle Otero

Regular readers have probably noticed by now that most of the courtesans of whom I’ve written have two things in common: many die in their forties, and the details of their lives tend to be vague and often contradictory. For the former, I have no explanation except perhaps that “the light which burns twice as bright burns half as long”; a quick scan of the harlotographies will demonstrate that the causes of their deaths vary widely, from communicable disease to cancer to execution, which rather eliminates any common factor. But as for the vagueness of their biographies, that I can explain; it’s simply that when one is in the business of selling an illusion, the details of one’s life may become as fluid and embellished as advertising copy, and one’s biographers are forced to choose between conflicting reports from letters, rumors, the rose-tinted memories of favored clients, the gossip of rivals and the propaganda of moralists. Carolina Otero was unusual in that she lived to a greater age than any of the others I’ve written about, but typical in that it’s difficult to separate the facts of her life from the romantic legend of La Belle Otero.

One thing is for certain; she was definitely not the illegitimate child of a Greek nobleman and a gypsy from Cadiz. She was in fact born on November 4^th, 1868 of a poor family in Galicia, nearly as far as it’s possible to get from Cadiz without leaving Spain. She was baptized Agustina Otero Iglesias, but changed her name to Carolina Otero sometime in her teens. As was not uncommon among the desperately poor of that time, her mother placed her as a maid when she was still quite young, and she is said to have been violently raped at ten; though I was not able to confirm this, it was not at all an unusual fate for pretty servant girls of the time, and could account for her sterility. About two years later she ran away to Lisbon with a boy named Paco in order to become a dancer, and though she later claimed to have married a handsome young Italian nobleman named Count Guglielmo when she was 14, this hardly seems credible considering that she had nothing to show for it and on other occasions claimed to have been the mistress of at least three different Spanish noblemen during the same time period. It does seem as though she married someone around the age of 15, but was divorced by the time she turned up in Barcelona as a 19-year-old café singer and prostitute.

She soon attracted her first long-term patron, who took her to Marseilles and financed her debut on the French stage; the affair lasted only as long as she needed it to, and soon she was billing herself as La Belle Otero, the gypsy dancer who had launched her career on funds she had won in Monte Carlo. By the early 1890s she made it to the Folies Bèrgere, where she soon became a star; by 1895 she was the most desired courtesan in Europe, and her list of patrons eventually included King Edward VII of the UK, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, Czar Nicholas II of Russia, King Alfonso XIII of Spain, King Alexander II of Serbia, Prince Albert I of Monaco, Grand Dukes Nicholas and Peter of Russia and a number of other noblemen and business tycoons. She did marry again in 1906, to an Englishman named René Webb, but this does not seem to have lasted very long. She claimed that six men had committed suicide over her, and though this was almost certainly just part of her hype it is known that at least one duel was fought over her. In August of 1898, she was filmed performing a dance called “La Valse Brillante”; the one-minute movie was played in music halls all over Europe, further increasing both her fame and her demand.

The late Victorian and Edwardian periods in France are referred to as La Belle Epoque, and while England and the United States were descending more deeply into persecution of whores France loved hers, especially Les Grandes Horizontales (as the great courtesans were called). They were in a sense the first modern-style celebrities; reporters followed them about to the opera, the theaters or Maxim’s restaurant (a favorite of the demimonde), and newspapers reported on their doings, including their pastimes and rivalries (such as the infamous competition between Otero and Liane de Pougy, who was less famous but probably wealthier). They even licensed their images for postcards (as Princess Clara did), producing a sizeable secondary income for the most popular.

Otero was sought-after until she was 50 years old, and retired just after the First World War to a large and well-appointed mansion; she had accumulated a fortune of about $25 million (about $360 million in today’s dollars), but neglected to adjust her extravagant lifestyle to her greatly reduced income and burned through it all in the next three decades. Probably the greatest contributing factor was her love of gambling in Monte Carlo, because unlike her fantasy persona she lost prodigious sums. The sale of her estate and the modest success of a musical based on her life (La Bella Otero, 1954) kept her going through the ‘50s, but by the time of her death on April 12^th, 1965 she was living in a one-room apartment at the Hotel Novelty in Nice in a state of poverty nearly as abject as that in which she entered the world 96 years earlier. The last of Europe’s great courtesans had outlived her fame, her fortune and her era; France had turned her back on harlots and declared herself officially “abolitionist”, and the time when a woman of Caroline Otero’s profession could be an admired celebrity had faded with her wealth and beauty.

One Year Ago Today

“Backwards Into the Future” demonstrates how South Africa, once considered among the worst regimes for human rights because of its apartheid policies, is now moving forward on that account while the US slides steadily backwards.

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March Movies

Posted in History, Miscellaneous, Perception, tagged archeofeminism, bad customers, brothels, censorship, cops, courtesans, dirty, ethics, Hollywood, Madonna/whore, marriage, New York, pimps, psychology, stage names, stereotypes, streetwalkers, underage, United Kingdom on March 12, 2012| 14 Comments »

Courtland: When this thing happened, were you working very hard?
Lily: Yeah, but not at the bank. – George Brent & Barbara Stanwyck, Baby Face

I recently watched several more movies with harlot heroines; here’s what I thought of them.

Baby Face (1933) was filmed before Hollywood started enforcing the Hays Code in earnest in the summer of 1934, and it shows. Barbara Stanwyck plays the title character, Lily Powers, whose father employs her as a barmaid in his speakeasy and, as she states quite clearly, has been pimping her to his better customers since she was 14. But an elderly patron of the establishment takes an interest in her welfare and introduces her to Nietzsche, telling her not to be ashamed of her sexuality but to use it to get what she wants rather than allowing herself to be exploited by her father. After Fate gives her a little push she finally takes his advice and goes to New York, where she seduces the hiring manager of a large bank to give her a position, then literally sleeps her way up the ladder of success, ruthlessly trading each patron for a more highly-placed one until she becomes the president’s kept woman. Her rise is metaphorically chronicled by the camera panning up the outside of the building each time she gets “promoted”. Lily is never portrayed as evil; it is her callousness that is shown as negative, not her sexuality, and even that is the result of her desperate struggle to succeed. And though she eventually grows beyond the former she is a whore to the end. Furthermore, her best friend is her black maid, whom she defends against anyone who criticizes her (including the sugar daddy who would prefer her replaced). I sat down to watch this movie for its historical interest, but both my husband and I truly enjoyed every minute of it; I suggest you watch the recently-discovered uncut version, which was too intense for even pre-code censors and so was heavily edited for theatrical release. And keep your eyes (and ears) open for a young John Wayne in a small part.

Idiocracy (2006) Frank has been trying to get us to watch this Mike Judge comedy for several years, and probably would’ve succeeded more quickly had he told me the female lead was a prostitute. The setup is this: a top secret Army project puts a man and a woman into suspended animation to test a plan to freeze highly-trained soldiers until they’re needed. The hero, Private Joe Bauers (Luke Wilson), is selected as a guinea pig because he’s so average, but no female soldier is dumb enough to volunteer so they get a streetwalker named Rita (Maya Rudolph) to do so in return for the Army getting local prosecutors to drop (apparently serious) charges. They’re only supposed to be asleep for a year, but a comedic situation causes them to be bureaucratically overlooked for 500 years; they awaken to find that due to disproportionate reproduction of the hopelessly stupid they’re now the two most intelligent people on the planet. Hijinks of course ensue. I really wanted to like this and it did have some funny moments, but all in all it fell kind of flat; Rita, though likeable and very slightly smarter than the hero, was in the end just a typical “hooker with a heart of gold” and the movie holds on to the tired, stupid “pimps and hos” stereotype right up to (literally) the last second.

Klute (1971) This was one of those movies that left me wondering if I had watched the same film as the critics. Jane Fonda’s portrayal of the troubled call girl Bree Daniels was good but certainly not Oscar material, and Donald Sutherland, whose performances are often drowsy, was positively somnambulistic as private eye John Klute. And though there’s certainly some suspense as to how the murderer will try to get Bree and how Klute will save her, his identity was obvious before the end of the first act (which rather negates any claim to mystery). Fonda portrays Bree as a real person and does have a number of lines which I could imagine as coming out of the mouth of a real escort, but of course she has to be “broken”, has to have a history with a pimp (though she isn’t with him now), and has to be “rescued” not merely from the murderer but also from her life. Maybe some of this was new ground for squares in 1971, but for a modern hooker it’s both old and patronizing.

Unforgiven (1992) When a cowboy takes a knife to the face of a brothel prostitute in a tiny little Wild West town, Sheriff “Little Bill” Daggett (Gene Hackman) displays an extreme version of the “bros before hos” mentality by letting the man off with no penalty other than a fine paid to the brothel’s owner (to compensate his economic loss on the girl, whom he paid to bring from the East). This understandably angers the other whores, who take up a collection and raise a $1000 bounty (over $22,000 in 2012 dollars) for someone to kill the brute and his accomplice. A young assassin wannabe recruits retired gunfighter Will Munny (Clint Eastwood) and his old partner Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman) for the job, and the action proceeds from there. I don’t care much for westerns so I probably wasn’t fully able to appreciate the way the movie upends the genre’s conventions, but I do have a few critical observations. I have no complaints about the way the women were presented; though really minor characters they are individuals rather than cookie-cutter saloon girls, and the most forgiving of them is actually the victim herself. The accomplice is also interesting; he seems to feel genuine remorse for failing to stop his friend’s evil action. But there’s just a little too much stereotyped sexism in the attitudes of some of the others, who come across less as real men of 1880 and more as modern men overplaying 19^th-century attitudes to show how bad they were. The sheriff, for example, rules his town like a dictator (even to the point of gun control), is willing to beat men half to death for disobeying him and is the brothel owner’s friend, yet uncharacteristically lets the cowboy off the hook with neither jail nor violence because his victim is “just a whore”. I realize this was necessary to set events in motion, but it was still a very false note in what was otherwise a very fine portrayal of a brutal, power-mad thug with a badge. I also felt the film’s anti-violence message was a bit heavy-handed, especially considering the way it was conveniently set aside in the last act.

Waterloo Bridge (1931) In this pre-code drama Mae Clarke is Myra Deauville, an American chorus girl who is stranded in London when her show closes on the eve of World War I, and turns to prostitution to support herself. During an air raid she meets a naïve young soldier named Roy Cronin (Douglass Montgomery) on Waterloo Bridge, where she had gone to solicit soldiers coming from Waterloo Station. Roy is American but enlisted in the Canadian Army to fight; he pursues a friendship with Myra because she is also American, not realizing (until someone tells him much later) that she is a hooker. Myra believes herself “ruined” and so does her best to push Roy away before he falls in love with her, but he’s craftier than he is wise and keeps managing to trick her into continuing the relationship. I found the movie both touching and believable; James Whale (who later that year directed Clarke again in Frankenstein) crafts a bittersweet, doomed romance that is far more realistic than the overly-romanticized 1940 remake. Myra’s self-rejection is contrasted both with that of her “happy hooker” friend and that of Roy’s mother, who sees her as a good person and welcomes her as a house-guest even after Myra shares her secret. What Waterloo Bridge tells us is NOT that a whore is a ruined woman who doesn’t deserve love, but rather that a woman who judges herself too harshly can’t accept it.

One Year Ago Yesterday

“A Little Help From Our Friends” criticizes gay-rights activists and self-proclaimed “liberals” and “feminists” who either ignore or actively oppose sex worker rights, and calls upon sex workers to concentrate on our own issues rather than wasting effort fighting the causes of other groups who do not respond in kind.

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That Was the Week That Was (#9)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Obituary, Perception, Tyranny, tagged anecdote, animals, archeofeminism, asset seizure, BDSM, Bits and Pieces, Bootlickers, brothels, censorship, condoms, cops, cosmetic surgery, Creating Criminals, dirty, Dirty Whores, disease, drugs, Elephant in the Parlor, ethics, Europe, Florida, Forward and Backward, Gorged With Meaning, Hollywood, hysteria, India, internet, Italy, law, Madonna/whore, marriage, Michigan, New Orleans, One Size Fits All, Pennsylvania, porn, prohibitionist myths, restaurants, Sales Pitch, Secret Squirrel, stage names, streetwalkers, stripping, surveillance, Sweden, Swedish model, Texas, The More the Better, The Prudish Giant, United Kingdom, Where Are the Victims? on March 4, 2012| 24 Comments »

The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within. – Mahatma Gandhi

One obituary, ten updates and four meta-updates from the past week.

R.I.P. Miss Edna

I’m glad she outlived Zindler by almost five years, after having the last laugh on him in the court of public opinion for almost four decades.

Edna Milton Chadwell [84], the last madam of the Chicken Ranch, an infamous La Grange brothel which inspired a ZZ Top song, a Broadway hit and a movie starring Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton…died in Phoenix…on Feb. 25 of complications from injuries she received in a car wreck last October. The Chicken Ranch…was the oldest continuously operating brothel in the nation when it closed in August 1973, following an expose by KTRK consumer reporter Marvin Zindler…Chadwell…[later] moved to Phoenix, where she lived in relative obscurity until she died…

The full article gives a lot more detail about Miss Edna’s life and management style and tells how The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas came to be.

Updates

Bits and Pieces (Part Two) (December 10^th, 2010)

Politicians are well-known for being two-faced, but on the issue of internet censorship American politicians have raised duplicity to an art form. For the past several years we’ve been subjected to their sanctimonious lectures about internet censorship in countries like China, while they…conspire to shut down Wikileaks via denial-of-service attacks, pressure on companies such as Amazon, Paypal, Visa and Mastercard and a campaign to crucify its founder Assange with what looks suspiciously like a “honey trap”.

When I wrote that I didn’t know the half of it, but my instincts (as usual) were good:

United States prosecutors have drawn up secret charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, according to a confidential internal email obtained from a private US intelligence company, Stratfor…In the [January 26^th, 2011] email…the company’s vice-president…Fred Burton…wrote: “We have a sealed indictment on Assange”…The news…comes as the WikiLeaks founder awaits a British Supreme Court decision on his appeal against extradition to Sweden…[which] Assange…fears…will open the way for his extradition to the US on possible espionage or conspiracy charges…US army private Bradley Manning was last week committed to face court martial for 22 alleged offences including ”aiding the enemy” by leaking classified US documents…Stratfor “senior watch officer” Chris Farnham…referred to a conversation with a family friend who he said knew one of the Swedish women who have accused Mr Assange of sexual assault, and added that “there is absolutely nothing behind it other than prosecutors that are looking to make a name for themselves”…

Creating Criminals (January 15^th, 2011)

Since American politicians insist on making it difficult (sometimes nigh-impossible) to obtain pseudoephedrine legally, I thought I’d help out by sharing the method for making the hard-to-get drug from readily-available methamphetamine. If sinus sufferers are defined as criminals anyway, we may as well be uncongested, headache-free criminals.

Dirty Whores (June 24^th, 2011)

Yet another example of why the incidence of STDs in promiscuous non-prostitutes is up to 160x that in escorts: “…[a new] study revealed…that young women with lower GPAs and more [binge drinking] used condoms less and less frequently over time…”

Secret Squirrel (July 16^th, 2011)

Here’s yet another creepy gadget for spying on spouses; this one is apparently intended for polygamous relationships (we’re told it enables one to “watch them”, “track them” and “catch them”), but I presume it would also work if one only wanted to spy on one person. As I said about the semen snooping service, “if you have that little trust for your wife, your relationship is doomed so you might as well save the money and just break up.”

Bootlickers (July 20^th, 2011)

Remember the “bikini baristas” who were accused of “prostitution”, and the indignant letter from the woman who called the coffee bars “slut stands” that hurt “children” because “the ol [sic] man can’t keep his eyes to himself or his hands off himself?!” Well, Italy has ignorant prudes just like her:

Busty brunette Laura, 34…has dominated newspapers and TV chat shows after pictures of her dressed in her revealing clothes appeared on the internet…Men have flocked to her bar…so much…that…wives and girlfriends in the town…have banned their partners from going…One said: “It is outrageous and should not be allowed. This town is quiet and respectable now we are known across the whole country because of the little amount of clothing this barmaid is wearing to serve drinks…”

One Size Fits All (August 9^th, 2011)

I guess these folks didn’t get the memo that arranged marriages are also considered “human trafficking” now: “…[Fifteen] young girls in Wadia village near Palanpur are getting ready for a mass marriage…For the first time, the girls will not be forced into the flesh trade. Wadia is known as the village of prostitutes in Gujarat. The…marriage…is scheduled on March 11…” Artificial lines between prostitution and other types of female behavior are drawn everywhere, and the Indians seem just as bad at it as Americans are.

Elephant in the Parlor (October 23^rd, 2011)

I can’t vouch for this 2007 story (which I somehow missed before), but I do know the lady:

A former New Orleans prostitute…has said David Vitter was a regular customer in 1999…In an interview…[with] Hustler…Wendy Yow Ellis…said she…[saw] Vitter…[regularly] for several months…”I could not wear any perfume, body lotions, not even take a shower,” Ellis said. “Because he did not want any scent on him whatsoever…” Vitter would [even] take his used condoms with him. Vitter has acknowledged being a customer of Pamela Martin & Associates, a Washington, D.C., escort service…[Ellis] and Jeanette Maier, who…[ran] a brothel on Canal Street, then said that Vitter had also used their services…[after a while she told him her real name] “…and he said, ‘Oh, my God.'” That was the last time they met for sex…Vitter’s wife is named Wendy. Before that, Ellis said, she had used the name Leah…

Forward and Backward (November 22^nd, 2011)

The DA of Washington, D.C. admits that “prostitution-free zones” are unconstitutional, but Florida cops never let a little thing like that stop them:

…anyone convicted in Hillsborough County of three or more prostitution charges can be prohibited from a 6½ square-mile area …called the “prostitution exclusion zone”…that long has been known for prostitution…and while police already…impound vehicles when a prostitution or drug arrest is made, the council agreed in December to raise the cost of reclaiming the vehicle to $500. The new exclusion zone is neither a law nor a city ordinance…it’s a rule that judges can include as a condition of probation for anyone convicted of felony prostitution…

Yes, consensual sex between adults can be a felony in Florida. Surely you aren’t surprised?

The Prudish Giant (December 28^th, 2011)

Apparently, Paypal has entered a “biggest busybody” competition with Google:

…On…February 18, PayPal began threatening indie book publishers and distributors with immediate deactivation of the businesses’ accounts if they did not remove books containing …specific sexual fantasies that PayPal does not approve of…Of course, [this]…would devastate these businesses and all of their authors (not just the erotic writers) overnight…PayPal has a monopoly on the market of online payment processing. There are few alternatives, though none that are widely used by online shoppers…the [banned themes include BDSM, incest and] pseudo-incest (including “daddy” fantasies, step-family)…fantasies about non-consensual sex or rape, bestiality (widened to include non-human fantasy creatures)…[including] shape-shifters – if the shape-shifters were to have sex in their non-human forms…

The More the Better (January 9^th, 2012)

No sooner was this article about a stripper mom published in Redbook than a pompous pearl-clutcher named Penny Nance felt compelled to spew this sick bigotry out on the Fox News site, claiming (among other absurdities) that “the strip club industry has painful ramifications on society and leads to pornography addiction, gangs, drug use and sex trafficking — just to name a few.” I’m glad when people make such ridiculous statements, though, because they’re right about one thing: “Cultural acceptance of pornography, stripping, and prostitution is growing day by day.” And when our descendants look back at this time period, articles like this will allow them to clearly identify people like Nance as the delusional fanatics they are.

Metaupdates

January Updates in February Updates (February 13^th, 2011)

The ersatz plastic surgeon who accidentally killed a young Englishwoman with black-market butt injections may have been caught:

…Padge Victoria Windslowe, 42, was arrested Wednesday night as she prepared to host a “pumping party” where she was to illegally inject clients…She faces charges including aggravated assault and deceptive practices after…an exotic dancer…suffered serious lung problems after an injection… Windslowe…was being held on $10 million bail…[and] is a “person of interest” in the death of the 20-year-old London woman who last year received injections at a hotel near Philadelphia International Airport…

Where Are the Victims? in November Updates (Part Two) (November 3^rd, 2011)

“Considering the economic and social collapse of Detroit (which has lost 60% of its population in the last 30 years), one would think its ‘authorities’ would have better things to do than persecute hookers.” But since the cops disagree, the people of Detroit now have to fend for themselves: “…Justifiable homicide in [Detroit] shot up 79 percent in 2011 from the previous year…the local rate of self-defense killings now stands 2,200 percent above the national average. Residents, unable to rely on a dwindling police force…are fighting back…on their own…” I might point out that not too long ago nearly everyone had this sensible attitude, and it was only after the majority grew too lazy and timid to protect themselves that the police departments with which we are now oppressed were allowed to grow to their present dangerous size, power and level of armament.

Gorged With Meaning in First Updates of the Year (Part Two) (January 4th, 2012)

Another British article bemoaning the fact that women use sex to make a living:

An increasing portion of students in the United Kingdom looking for a way to pay for their tuition are turning to prostitution…the problem may be particularly acute among medical students, who generally go to school longer, accrue more debt and have less time for paid employment, according to the paper by Jodi Dixon, who is studying at the University of Birmingham. Dixon pointed to a study of about 300 British university students, in which 10 percent reported knowing a student who had worked as a prostitute or escort in 2010. That’s up from about 6 percent in 2006, and 4 percent in 2000, Dixon said, a rise that coincided with an increase in college tuition fees…While the ethical implications of soon-to-be doctors working as prostitutes are unclear, “what is unacceptable is a student being forced into prostitution out of financial desperation,” Dixon said…

Waaaah, waaaah, boo hoo hoo. It’s “unacceptable” to be forced into sex work out of financial desperation, but not to be forced into waitressing or au pair work or any other job that makes a whole lot less? And if you think its “unethical” for medical professionals to have ever done sex work, I’ve got some really bad news for you…

Sales Pitch in We’re Not Done Yet (January 28^th, 2012)

Proponents of the Swedish Model insist that there are no brothels in Sweden and that their law makes “sex trafficking” virtually impossible:

Six men are set to be charged…on suspicions of operating a…human trafficking operation which brought young women from Romania to Sweden to sell sex. According to prosecutors, the trafficking ring is one of the largest of its kind ever uncovered in Sweden…Last year in Gothenburg, 255 men were reported and fined for buying sex, a number which led local police to…the discovery of the…trafficking ring…Exactly how many women were selling sex on the streets in Sweden remains unclear, however.

Well, at least there weren’t any government officials involved with this one.

One Year Ago Today

“He Said, She Said” is yet another example of why it’s really stupid for men to get involved in BDSM games with emotionally unstable women.

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Olympe de Gouges

Posted in Biography, Harlotography, History, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged archeofeminism, courtesans, ethics, Europe, France, hysteria, neofeminism, stage names on February 25, 2012| 14 Comments »

Woman, wake up; the tocsin of reason is being heard throughout the whole universe; discover your rights. The powerful empire of nature is no longer surrounded by prejudice, fanaticism, superstition, and lies. The flame of truth has dispersed all the clouds of folly and usurpation. Enslaved man has multiplied his strength and needs recourse to yours to break his chains. Having become free, he has become unjust to his companion. Oh, women, women! When will you cease to be blind? What advantage have you received from the Revolution? – Olympe de Gouges, Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Citizen

When one reads the histories of famous women who started out as whores, one cannot fail to be struck by the way their harlotry is frequently downplayed, couched in euphemisms or completely ignored. Theodora and Nell Gwyn are described as “actresses”, Lola Montez as a “dancer” and Édith Piaf as a “street singer”. And Wikipedia diffidently describes Olympe de Gouges’ means of support with the evasive, “She chose to cohabit with several men who supported her financially.” One can almost excuse this Victorian stuffiness in 19^th-century biographies or those written for children, but in a modern account written for adult readers it constitutes an unforgiveable distortion of the truth designed to render the lives of “feminist” heroines palatable to prudish modern sensibilities and to disguise their refutation of the neofeminist dogma that prostitution is degrading. This would no doubt have infuriated de Gouges, who rejected traditional norms of female propriety, specifically listed women’s beauty as one of the qualities we “bring to the table”, and argued that the sexual freedom of women is an intrinsic part of our political and social freedom.

She was born Marie Gouze in the south of France sometime in 1748 (her birthday is variously reported, but was probably either on May 7^th or December 31^st) to the beautiful Anne Olympe Moisset, wife of a butcher named Pierre Gouze. The marriage was not a happy one, and Anne was rumored to have had an affair with Jean-Jacques Lefranc, the Marquis de Pompignan; this rumor, together with the facts that Gouze died when Marie was two and that his name does not appear on her birth certificate or baptismal records, convinced her that the Marquis was her biological father and contributed to her passionate support of the rights of illegitimate children. Historians now generally agree that Gouze probably was her real father, and that Marie preferred to believe otherwise for the same reasons many exceptional or unhappy children like to believe that they are “really” the child of someone other than their common or disliked parents. She also felt a burning desire to climb the social ladder, and a noble pedigree (even an illegitimate one) supported this drive in her mind.

Marie was not formally educated, and in 1765 her mother married her to Louis Aubrey, a minor government official from Paris. He died in 1768, a year after the birth of their son, Pierre; Marie was actually quite relieved because she despised him. She refused to conduct herself as a widow was supposed to, instead moving to Paris in 1770 (sources disagree as to whether she left Pierre with her mother or took him along) and changing her name to Olympe de Gouges. She supported herself as a courtesan, relying on her exceptional beauty and the carefully-encouraged rumor of her noble paternity to gain entry to higher social circles and a wealthier clientele. In 1773 she established a long-lived association with the wealthy and educated Jacques Biétrix de Rozières, who introduced her into the salons where she made a number of influential friends and professional contacts. Around this time she learned to read and write, and decided to become an author; accordingly, she embarked on a campaign to educate herself by reading everything recommended to her by her intellectual friends and clients. By 1784 she began to publish essays and plays, always on social and political topics; Zamore et Mirza, for example, had an anti-slavery theme. Unfortunately, her plays were terrible; the dialogue was awkward and wordy, and her grammar was very poor. But her essays made up in energy what they lacked in style; she was extremely passionate about human rights, and therefore supported equal rights for men and women and the abolition of slavery. She did not believe that men and women were the same, but rather argued that our different strengths and weaknesses combined to form a better and more balanced society.

Maximilien Robespierre

As political tensions increased in the 1780s, de Gouges advocated reforms which she believed would head off revolution, accomplishing change without violence. She urged the King to grant reforms, and when he failed to do so she suggested he abdicate in favor of a regent government which could bring the growing revolution under control. Her writings criticized and lampooned extremists on both sides, and she continued to preach moderation as conditions degenerated into chaos. Though she supported the Revolution, she abhorred its violence and the fact that women had been denied equal rights; she considered this a betrayal of one of its core principles, égalité. In October of 1789 she spoke before the Assembly and proposed a feminist agenda which included legal equality, marriage and divorce reform and better education for girls, but her concerns were dismissed and she grew increasingly disenchanted with the new government. In 1791 she organized a feminist association called the Society of the Friends of Truth and published Déclaration des Droits de la Femme et de la Citoyenne, a response to Déclaration des droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen (the primary declaration of Revolutionary principles).

The situation continued to spin out of control, and de Gouges became increasingly vociferous; she believed in a constitutional monarchy, and after Louis XVI was arrested and tried in the latter half of 1792 she spoke out against his execution. But the Jacobin party (led by Maximilien Robespierre) was in the ascendancy; Louis was executed in January of 1793, and on June 2^nd the moderate Girondists, de Gouge’s allies, were arrested. Her own arrest came in July, following her publication of a poster which demanded the people be given a choice between a republic, a federal government and a constitutional monarchy. Her house was searched and unpublished writings used against her at her trial three months later; she was found guilty of sedition and executed by guillotine at 4 PM on November 3^rd, just 18 days after Marie Antionette. Though she attempted to delay her fate by falsely claiming to be pregnant (a doctor examined her and pronounced otherwise), she mounted the scaffold without tears and said to the crowd, “Children of the Fatherland, you will avenge my death.”

Though her last words are not known to have come true in any direct fashion, I gave them a fictional consummation in my story of one year ago today, “Carnival”, which takes place almost four months later. Even in real life, though, history has a far higher opinion of Olympe de Gouges – courtesan, writer, philosopher and feminist in the truest and noblest sense of the word – than it has of her enemies, whose names have become synonymous with bloodthirsty tyranny.

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Fat Tuesday

Posted in Biography, Holidays, Miscellaneous, tagged anecdote, carnival, holidays, New Orleans, paganism, restaurants, stage names on February 21, 2012| 50 Comments »

While you stroll in New Orleans
You ought to go see the Mardi Gras
If you go to New Orleans
You ought to go see the Mardi Gras
When you see the Mardi Gras
Somebody’ll tell you what’s Carnival for. – Byrd/Terry, “Go To the Mardi Gras”

Today is Mardi Gras, which I referred to in last year’s column on the subject as “one of the last large-scale pagan festivals left in the increasingly sanitized and homogenized United States”; those of you who didn’t read that essay may wish to do so today. You’ll notice that it is dated March 8^th, because Mardi Gras moves with Easter, which is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox and can therefore fall anywhere from March 22^nd to April 25^th. Likewise, Fat Tuesday (since it’s always 47 days before Easter) can fall anywhere from February 3^rd to March 9^th; last year it was about as late as it could be, and this year it’s pretty typical.

As I wrote in the aforementioned column, one of the weirdest things about moving away from New Orleans is seeing everyone go about his business normally today as if it were any other day, when I know that back in the Crescent City there’s a huge party going on! When we were in town two weeks ago, the signs were everywhere: many places were decorated in purple, green and gold, the stores were full of king cakes, and viewing stands had been erected on the major parade routes in both New Orleans and Jefferson Parish. Unfortunately there weren’t any parades any of the nights we were there, but that doesn’t mean we had nothing to do; we visited friends on three nights of the five, and on Wednesday went out walking on Bourbon Street with an out-of-town friend who had arrived that day. While we were there, we went into a little courtyard called “Musical Legends Park”, where a jazzman named Steamboat Willie was playing. My husband always buys a CD from any live performer we enjoy, and while he was doing so in this case he also requested that Willie perform “Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans?” for me. Well, when he heard my name he insisted on performing two songs for me, the first being his original composition “Maggie” from his album Move ‘N On (you can listen to a sample or download the song or album on Amazon).

Anyhow, even though today isn’t a holiday for most of you, it will always be one for me: You can take the girl out of New Orleans, but you can’t take New Orleans out of the girl. So I’m taking the day off, and I wish all of you a Happy Mardi Gras!

One Year Ago Today

The first installment of my four-part interview of sex worker rights activist Jill Brenneman, who was the victim of real sex trafficking and realizes that “only rights can stop the wrongs”. The first two parts of the interview are both graphic and disturbing, and I caution sensitive readers to consider carefully before reading them.

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That Was the Week That Was (#6)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged A War for Peace, Africa, Backwards into the Future, censorship, condoms, cops, dirty, disease, Don’t Buy It, drugs, Europe, Facebook, Girls Girls Girls, harm reduction, hysteria, internet, Kenya, law, lawheads, libraries, marriage, Missouri, Namibia, neofeminism, Not An Addiction, porn, psychology, sporting events, stage names, stereotypes, stripping, The Dogs Do Bark, WWOHD?, yin and yang on February 19, 2012| 11 Comments »

Goodsex is any form of sex considered acceptable by the Party…all other forms…are considered sexcrime. – George Orwell, 1984

Eight updates from the sixth week of 2012:

Just Drawn That Way (July 21^st, 2010)

This is another of those “dog bites man” things which are only news because neofeminists have worked so hard to convince everyone that they’re not true:

New research is demonstrating what many people already knew from experience: Women lose interest in sex over time, while men don’t…researchers Sarah Murray and Robin Milhausen…of the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, asked 170 undergraduate women and men who had been in heterosexual relationships for anywhere from one month to nine years to report on their levels of relationship satisfaction, sexual satisfaction and sexual desire…The participants reported being generally satisfied with their relationships and sex lives, but women reported lower levels of desire depending on the length of their relationship…In fact, relationship duration was a better predictor of sexual desire in women than both relationship and sexual satisfaction. While the…decrease in female desire was small, it contrasts with male desire, which held steady over time…evolutionary theorists predict that male desire should remain perpetually high in order for them to produce many offspring, while female desire should decrease as their attention turns, historically, toward child-rearing…

…Hormonal changes that occur as couples move from the passionate early stage to the compassionate later stage…sometime between six and 30 months may also mediate changes in desire over time. Pharmaceutical companies are currently researching the impact of testosterone on women’s desire, but so far, the results have been inconclusive…In an earlier study, Murray found that women who reported more realistic expectations about what sex would be like in a long-term relationship also had higher levels of desire than those with less realistic expectations. “I think that individuals who expect to maintain the high level of excitement and passion that often exists in the first few months of a new relationship are setting up unrealistic expectations about what is to come and will be more disappointed when the desire and passion take on different forms,” she said…

I’ve frequently pointed out that both sexes need to view the others’ differing desires realistically: women need to either provide enough sex or expect that their men will get it elsewhere, and men who feel so driven need to hire professionals rather than entering into dangerous dalliances with amateurs.

Don’t Buy It (February 1^st, 2011)

In this column I provided links to a number of studies demonstrating that mega sporting events don’t attract increased numbers of prostitutes, but it never hurts to have a couple more. Here’s a new one from the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW):

A widespread belief that major sporting events fuel sex trafficking is unsubstantiated and has a negative impact on groups that campaigners purport to protect, undermining anti-trafficking objectives…Activists opposed to sex work say large groups of men attending the Olympics, FIFA World Cup and U.S. Super Bowl competitions create a high demand for sex work causing large numbers of women to be trafficked…[but] there is no correlation between those beliefs and the actual number of trafficking cases found, the report titled “What’s the Cost of a Rumour?” said…“Despite increased scrutiny by the media, political figures and law enforcement, there is no evidence that large sporting events cause an increase in trafficking for prostitution,” Julie Ham, the author of the study, said…GAATW reviewed literature from United Nations (U.N.) agencies, government offices, academic researchers, anti-trafficking organisations, sex-workers rights organisations, non-governmental organisations and the media.

The claim sex work will increase is perpetuated in part because it is useful as a fundraising strategy, as a way to grab attention and be seen to “do something” about trafficking, and as a more socially acceptable guise for prostitution abolitionist agendas and anti-immigration agendas, the report said…[but] anti-trafficking campaigns that are based on unproven claims can…result…in increased criminal penalties and human rights violations against sex workers…[and] controls on women’s movements, intended to stop trafficking, can actually lead to increased trafficking…

Even better, the mythbusting website Snopes has now officially listed the rumor as false, which will greatly accelerate its demise among the internet-savvy portion of the population.

Not an Addiction (February 11^th, 2011)

Why must every strong urge now be described as an “addiction”?

…A new study shows…the urge for a Facebook fix is at least as strong as the lure of tobacco and alcohol. The survey of 250 people was published…in the journal Psychological Studies, and revealed that sex and sleep were the two things most longed for during the day, yet the need to check Facebook was too hard for most to overcome…alcohol and cigarettes generated lower levels of desire than the urge to check social networks…

The fallacy here, of course, is the pretense that Facebook is a “substance” to which one can become addicted. It isn’t; it’s simply a process by which many people communicate with their social groups. The urge to check Facebook is nothing more or less than the desire for social interaction, which is extremely strong. If checking Facebook can be an “addiction”, then all human interaction is an “addiction” and the word loses all meaning.

Backwards Into the Future (March 30^th, 2011)

South Africa, once the human rights pariah of the Western world, is now advancing in its treatment of sex workers while the United States moves backward into the sort of human rights model one associates with third-world dictatorships. And now Kenya and Namibia are joining the list of African countries with a more civilized attitude toward sex work than that of the US:

…Nairobi is considering [decriminalization]…Mayor George Aladwa said…the council was working to harmonise by-laws with provisions of the new Constitution before allowing commercial sex workers to operate without restraint…“We will certainly find places to have them operate freely without any harassment. These are people who have dedicated themselves to do their work, there is no need to continue harassing them”…

And though Namibia isn’t that far along, it’s still way ahead of the US:

The Director of Namibia’s largest sex-workers’ organization, Rights not Rescue, has called upon the government to decriminalize prostitution as an important step in the fight against HIV and AIDS. Nicodemus Aochumub, better known as ‘Mama Africa’, [said]…“Government should decriminalize sex-work to [allow sex workers]…access to universal health care and to enable them to lay charges with the police without the fear of being arrested. Discriminating against prostitutes will inevitably increase the HIV rate because they are helplessly exposed to abuse, even by police…How can we fight this deadly disease when law-enforcement officers take away condoms from the girls…They throw them away and tell us we don’t deserve to use condoms. Some police officers force us into sex, otherwise we will end up in jail…We…are not free even 21 years after independence. Prostitution is work and feeds many families,” emphasized Mama Africa…HIV infection among sex-workers has declined significantly in countries where prostitution is legalised. Prostitutes in Germany, for instance, are registered with the legal and health authorities, are required to undergo regular medical checks and pay tax.

What Would Orrin Hatch Do? (April 17^th, 2011)

Is it so damned hard to just orient the computers so nobody can accidentally see what someone else is viewing?

…Libraries around the country are frequently troubled by the conflict of your First Amendment right to view “protected speech” and others who just have to watch pornography in a public library setting. The most recent publicly exposed incident in Seattle occurred at the Lake City branch of the Seattle library system. Julie Howe said in a public email that her 10-year-old daughter was disturbed after looking over the shoulder of a man last month as he watched pornography at the branch…Andra Addison, spokeswoman for the Seattle Public Library, told the Seattlepi.com: “…We don’t tell people what they can view and check out…Filters compromise freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment. We’re not in the business of censoring information.” However, in 2010 the State Supreme Court ruled in favor of a library that had taken a much less permissive attitude toward porn on its computers. The court ruled that public libraries in Washington can filter Internet content to block things like pornography…Howe says she understands the predicament the library is in, but wants there to at least be signs warning patrons to watch out where they look…New Yorkers can [also] watch internet porn at the city’s public libraries thanks to a policy of free speech protected by the First Amendment, the New York Post reported in April…

Apparently, the Jefferson Parish Library is less averse to censorship; when I logged on there with my husband’s laptop on February 6^th, the first thing that popped up on my screen was a warning that I better not look at “adult” materials, or else. So I made sure I viewed my red umbrella picture, just on principle.

A War for Peace
(May 12^th, 2011)

I have no real comment to make about this, but I figured my male readers might enjoy these pictures of Femen’s latest protest.

Girls, Girls, Girls!
(December 15^th, 2011)

There’s more than one way to skin a lawhead:

At least one Kansas City adult business is taking a creative approach to increasing attendance while attempting to follow tough new regulations limiting what its dancers can wear onstage. Bazooka’s…now [features]…large, flat-screen televisions adjacent to the stage. While a dancer performs live with her intimate areas covered, as the law requires, a video of the same dancer — with those areas exposed — appears on the screens…The latest strategy may help the business sidestep a new state law requiring “sexually oriented businesses” to close at midnight…Had the dancers exposed those areas in the flesh they would have broken the law, or at least forced the club to close at midnight. But because they appeared on screen, [owner Dick] Snow said, they’re as legal as a general-interest movie. “There is some full frontal nudity in these videos, but there’s full frontal nudity in every theater in the city,” he said. Dick Bryant, an attorney who represents adult businesses, said, “The projection of the images of the nude dancers fully complies with the statutes and the U.S. Constitution”…A spokesman for the Kansas City Police Department said the department had received no complaints about Bazooka’s videos and said it did not appear that the establishment was violating any local or state laws…

Hark, Hark, the Dogs Do Bark (January 11^th, 2012)

Everyone whose mind isn’t hopelessly mired in neofeminist dogma knows that hormones cause most differences in gendered behavior, but a new study shows which genes are affected:

…a team of scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) has uncovered many genes influenced by…testosterone and estrogen that…govern several specific types of male and female behaviors in mice. The UCSF team selectively turned many of these genes off one by one and found they could manipulate individual behaviors in the mice, like their sex drive, desire to pick fights, or willingness to spend extra time caring for their young. “It’s as if you can deconstruct a social behavior into genetic components,” said Nirao Shah, MD…”Each gene regulates a few components of a behavior without affecting [others]”…Identifying how genetic differences in our brains account for the differences in our behavior may also be a starting point for understanding how to better address human mental illness and neurodegenerative conditions in which such gender differences exist. For example, autism is four times more common in males than in females…

Of course, this won’t convince “true believers”, but every such discovery makes it harder for them to peddle their lies to others.

One Year Ago Today

“John Law” presents four short articles about cops and hookers.

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The Princess de Caraman-Chimay

Posted in Biography, Harlotography, tagged acting, archeofeminism, Belgium, courtesans, drivers, Europe, marriage, Michigan, restaurants, stage names, stripping on January 22, 2012| 29 Comments »

The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness. – Daniel J. Boorstin

Though the popular conception of the Victorian Era is that it was a time of very repressive sexual morality, one must never lose sight of the fact that this was only among those of the middle class. The upper and lower classes were every bit as randy as they had ever been; roughly 8% of the female population of London were prostitutes, and the 19^th century saw the third great flowering of courtesans in Europe (the previous two being Golden-Age Greece and 16^th-century Venice). And in the second half of the century the advent of mass communications, rapid transit and the modern financial system made it increasingly possible for strong-willed women like Lola Montez and Mata Hari to capitalize on their sex appeal, attracting wealthy patrons as actresses had since ancient times: on the stage.

Clara Ward was born in Detroit, Michigan on June 17, 1873; her father was Eber Ward, a millionaire who made his fortune in lumber, mining, steel, shipping and rail. He died of apoplexy (brain hemorrhage) when Clara was two, and the bulk of his fortune passed to Clara’s mother Catherine (née Lyon), his second wife. Since she was only 31 (Ward was thirty years her senior) she soon remarried to Alexander Cameron, a Canadian lawyer she met in New York City. The family moved to Toronto, and at 15 Clara was sent to school in London. In the autumn of 1889 her mother took her on a tour of Europe in order to find her a noble husband, and in Nice they met Prince Joseph de Caraman-Chimay of Belgium, whom she married in Paris on May 19, 1890. This sort of arrangement was not unusual at the time; an impoverished European noble married a wealthy (but common) heiress, and she gained a title while he gained a fortune. It was a mutually beneficial match; Clara became only the second American-born princess (the first was George Washington’s great-grandniece Catherine Gray, who had married Napoleon Bonaparte’s nephew), and she paid off her husband’s debts (to the tune of $100,000) and repaired his crumbling chateau (a further $300,000).

Clara bore her husband two children, Marie Elizabeth and Joseph Anatole (in 1891 and 1894 respectively), but this quiet, settled period was not to last long; she was beautiful, voluptuous and inconstant and had attracted the attention of King Leopold II. As one might expect, the Queen was unhappy about this and the Princess de Caraman-Chimay soon found herself persona non grata in Belgian society. The Prince therefore moved his family to Paris, where things only got worse; while dining at a fine restaurant, Princess Clara became enamored of the Gypsy violinist, Rigó Jancsi. After only a few secret trysts she ran away with him in December of 1896, and her husband was granted a divorce on January 19, 1897. The paparazzi, who had been intrigued by her since her engagement to the Prince was first announced, followed the couple across the continent to Budapest, where a pastry chef named a rich chocolate dessert after Rigó in order to capitalize on the publicity.

Her mother, on the other hand, was deeply ashamed by the press’ attention to her daughter’s escapade and disinherited her; Rigó (whom she married in 1898) had no money, and the divorce court awarded her abandoned husband the children and alimony of $15,000/year (half of her income from her father’s estate). The Princess (she used the title until she died) had to come up with a way of making large sums of money fast, and like most women throughout history she relied on her sex appeal to do it. Capitalizing on her notoriety, she contracted with the Folies Bergère and Moulin Rouge to pose on stage wearing skin-tight costumes while Rigó played the violin. Though she literally did nothing but stand absolutely still (the general term for such a performance is tableau), the novelty, her fame and her beauty attracted sufficient attention for her to take the act on tour, and she made $6800 ($176,000 in 2012 dollars) in Berlin that April. She modeled for photographers, licensed her image on postcards, and accepted money for “private performances”, which caused frequent and bitter arguments with Rigó; they separated in 1900. Her next husband was Giuseppe “Peppino” Ricciardi, an Italian tourist agent in Paris whom she married in June of 1904 and divorced in 1911. Her last husband was her chauffeur, Abano Caselato, to whom she was still married when she died of pneumonia at her Italian Villa on December 18^th, 1916.

Idylle Princière by Toulouse-Lautrec, depicting Clara and Rigó Jancsi

Like so many courtesans, the Princess died very young (only 43), but unlike most the names of her lovers (other than Leopold II and her four penniless husbands) are completely unknown. They must have been quite wealthy, though; despite her enormous expenses, steep alimony and lack of visible income after about 1906, she left a fortune of $1,124,935.96 in cash and about $50,000 in real estate (over $23 million in 2012 dollars). Ironically, her will dated to just after her marriage to Ricciardi and she had never changed it after their divorce, so he inherited a third of her estate (her two children got one-third each). In a way, she was like the Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian of her time: a wealthy sex symbol with no discernible talent who parleyed her highly-publicized sex life into a career as a model and “reality star”.

One Year Ago Today

“Walking Stereotype Sues Whore” may be the most self-explanatory column title I’ve ever used.

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