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The Princess de Caraman-Chimay

Posted in Biography, Harlotography, tagged , , , , , , , , , , 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 19th century saw the third great flowering of courtesans in Europe (the previous two being Golden-Age Greece and 16th-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 18th, 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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The More the Better

Posted in Current Events, Perception, Philosophy, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 9, 2012| 29 Comments »

Familiarity is the test of truth.  –  Mason Cooley

Most of you have probably seen the recent articles bemoaning the fact that the recession has induced a number of women who had never previously done sex work to take such jobs (especially the legal varieties like phone sex operator, stripper or sugar baby).  And as you’ve read here, it’s the same story among escorts.  As Whitney Jefferson of Jezebel pointed out, mainstream articles on the subject tend to be characterized by anti-whore judgmentalism and the pretense of horror, which Jefferson characterizes as an “I can’t believe this is actually happening …in America” tone.  And of course one of the Jezebel commenters, demonstrating an almost total recto-cranial insertion, posted a comment which illustrated that attitude better than the author could have:

It seems like men never have to resort to this kind of stuff.  People seem less squeamish about taking a job at McDonalds than they do about sex work, for obvious reasons.  Some women aren’t comfortable with sex work but feel like it’s either that or starve…I think that it’s problematic that society is able to shrug and say, “eh, at least she can be a stripper or a phone sex operator” despite the fact that lots of women do not want those roles.  Then we can all collectively wash our hands of the responsibility of providing better jobs.

Because in the neofeminist mind, no job could possibly be worse than one with good pay and flexible hours, and to the Neomarxist mind governments are somehow magically able to provide such jobs regardless of market factors…something even Marx himself recognized was impossible: (“A thing cannot have value, if it is not a useful article.  If it is not useful, then the labor it contains is also useless, does not count as labor and hence does not create value.”)  Though Marx might have disagreed, sex work is valuable for the simple reason that real human beings unmotivated by a political agenda are willing to pay their own money for it, which is a far different thing from make-work jobs paid for with stolen money.

But even though I’m opposed to women who aren’t suited to sex work participating in it (for reasons I discuss in my upcoming January 17th column), I don’t think there are really all that many of them.  Because of the noise created by prohibitionists and prudes (like the commenter quoted above), and the outsized footprints left by embittered malcontents who should never have entered the sex trade in the first place, it sometimes seems to the casual observer that there are plenty of unhappy sex workers.  But studies show this simply isn’t the case; though streetwalkers often report being dissatisfied with their jobs (a fact wrongfully extended by lying prohibitionists to the more than 85% of prostitutes who are not streetwalkers, and thence to strippers, porn actresses and even PSOs), most brothel workers are satisfied with theirs and most escorts see theirs positively.  An Australian study even found that half of all prostitutes surveyed ranked their work as a “major source of satisfaction” in their lives, and 70% said they would definitely choose prostitution again if they had their lives to live over.

In other words, despite the claims of yellow journalists and neofeminists the great majority of the inexperienced women entering sex work due to economic pressure find that work no more odious than that of other women forced by economic pressure into other jobs that might not have been their first choice.  As I pointed out in “A False Dichotomy”,

The only people who can truly claim to have made an absolutely free choice to do any kind of work are the Paris Hiltons of the world, those who have a guaranteed inheritance, income and secured future no matter what they choose to do with the present.  Every other person has no choice but to work in some fashion; the choice not to work at all simply doesn’t exist unless one considers starvation an option.  At that point, then, the choice boils down to what kind of work one is able and willing to do.

And that being the case, I think it’s fantastic news that more women are choosing to do sex work.  A great deal of prohibitionism is fueled by the myth that all whores are monsters, criminals, defectives or victims rather than what we actually are:  women using our natural abilities to make a living, just as men use their natural abilities to do so without anyone as much as batting an eyelash.  The more women try sex work, the more people will know a woman who has done it and the more the stigma will evaporate; the less the stigma, the less the support for criminalization.  As it has happened with homosexuality, so it will with sex work; once the majority of women know someone who has done sex work, the majority of men who have employed sex workers will more easily be able to admit it and the more people will recognize prohibitionist propaganda for what it is.

Not so very long ago, gambling was portrayed as a monumental social evil, but Nevada made it easy for many Americans to experience it and by the 1980s Las Vegas had even succeeded in dispelling much of the seedy atmosphere that had frightened more timid souls away.  Indian casinos, riverboat casinos and state lotteries proliferated throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s and the internet brought online gambling, the persecution of which by the federal government is predestined to fail for reasons which should be obvious.  And now it looks like the “gentrification” of Nevada brothels may be starting with the appearance of themed brothels (thanks to Krulac and Dean Clark for sending me that item), which have been popular in Japan for years.

Repression thrives on ignorance; when people see others as human beings they are less likely to support the persecution of those people, and when they see behaviors as normal rather than strange and “scary” they are less likely to support bans on those activities.  The more women try sex work the more people will know someone who has and the less prohibitionists will be able to present lies and exceptions as the norm.  In the present climate of ignorance, women who have bad experiences with sex work are seen as far more representative than they actually are, but with knowledge comes perspective and the recognition that sex work is like any other kind of work:  awful for a few, tolerable for many and perfect for some.

One Year Ago Today

“Grow the Hell Up” examines the support for prohibition which derives from ignorance acting in conjunction with a desire to avoid personal responsibility.

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First Updates of the Year (Part Two)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 4, 2012| 29 Comments »

It is as hard for the good to suspect evil, as it is for the evil to suspect good.  –  Marcus Tullius Cicero

Four more articles which relate to earlier columns.  Male readers who are sensitive should probably skip the third item; you have been warned!

Gorged With Meaning (November 21st, 2011)

In this column I discussed silly British people who, by trying to impress a rigid and incorrect definition of “prostitute” on reality, get all upset upon discovering that young, attractive women are whoring themselves to older, wealthier men as they have since the dawn of civilization.  In this December 14th column from the Daily Mail, Dominique Jackson makes essentially the same point:

…The rise in tuition fees, soaring living costs and government cuts to maintenance grants are all reportedly forcing more and more young women to turn to prostitution and other forms of sex work…I am afraid I have to disappoint but these headlines, with their sly mix of prurience and moral outrage, are not in the least bit new.  The vast majority of students, those who cannot rely on the Bank of Mum and Dad, have always had to come up with ingenious ways of making ends meet.  Intelligent girls…have never been averse to using their patent attractions to part gullible men from their money.  It is, of course, the oldest profession in the world…

Doctor Ron Roberts from Kingston University said their own recent studies showed that the number of students who knew someone who has worked in the sex industry to fund their studies had gone up from three per cent to 25 per cent.  He also said 11 per cent would consider escort work and called the statistics:  ‘worrying’.  Eleven per cent?  Is that all?  I am pretty sure that working as an escort…has crossed plenty more bright young female minds.  Escort work would seem to be the most palatable end of a spectrum which presumably includes pole or lap dancing, stripping and goes through to full-blown intercourse in exchange for money…There was a strictly enforced ban against taking on jobs during term time when I was a university student in the 1980s.  Nevertheless, many of my bolder friends chose to defy the authorities, usually by working a few shifts as a waitress in Brown’s Restaurant, where the only qualification needed was to look good in an absurdly short mini-skirt.  Back then, I wasn’t aware of any of my own peers capitalising on their assets in any more direct way.  However, scores of cannier girls made sure they bagged a boyfriend who they knew could well afford to take them out for nice dinners and, ideally, had a car to boot.  As most women realise, it is more or less the same form of exchange…

I am still in close touch with several dozen young women from my old college…In the best traditions of popular journalism, I carried out a quick straw poll which revealed that the furthest any of these girls had been prepared to go was to stoop to silver service waitressing at the local stately home.  Curiously, though, almost all of them had certainly heard of, or even knew of one or even a couple of fellow students who had indeed, worked as an escort, or funded their studies with the occasional pole dance.  So nobody owned up to turning to sex work themselves, yet the anecdotal evidence that some students definitely do turns out to be overwhelming.  Funny that, isn’t it?

Funny indeed, Dominique; like you, I suspect that many of these ladies took advantage of their natural assets, but simply won’t admit it.

Toys for Tots (November 25th, 2011)

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve donated to Toys for Tots every year since I started sex work in 1997, and I’m not remotely alone; last year I mentioned that a friend of mine was offering extra time in exchange for donated toys.  But when the sick, evil minds of cops (and some suburban housewives) see a charity offer like this, they imagine it as the sort of twisted scheme they would come up with to victimize someone, and the piggish, juvenile minds of yellow journalists see only a way to get a story literally at the expense of women and children:

A toy drive during the holidays — but this one unlike any we’ve ever seen before.  An ad posted on an adult escort website promises more time with the woman in exchange for donations to Toys for Tots…The person who answered the phone told me that she was, in fact, Robin Jordan — the woman who was arrested earlier this year and convicted last month for operating an Internet-based prostitution operation out of her Fort Bend County home…The site, which shows an undressed woman in provocative poses, wishes you “Happy Holidays” and claims if you pay for one hour of services and bring an unwrapped gift, your second hour will be free.  “It’s awful, obviously, especially in a neighborhood like this,” said neighbor Jennifer Vontz…”For them to use that just to lure people in, I think that’s just really sad,” said neighbor Valerie Work…

Jordan would not confirm she placed the ads, but by phone earlier told me she would meet for us to hear her side of the story.  Jordan never returned calls when we repeatedly tried to contact her this afternoon, nor did anyone wish to comment at her…home.  The Houston Police Department has launched an additional investigation, based on the evidence we have submitted to them.  We’ve learned Jordan faces a charge of child endangerment in Fort Bend County.  Child Protective Services is also attempting to terminate her parental rights based on this case and the way she allegedly treated her three-year-old daughter.

The fact that it’s “unlike anything he’s seen before” demonstrates the reporter’s colossal ignorance.  My opinion of “child protective services” is well known, and as for the Houston police…I wouldn’t waste my water spitting on them.  The TV station, neighbors and cops involved in this story are all beneath contempt.

Not To Be Taken Internally (December 11th, 2011)

Feminists who believe that only women have unrealistic body-image issues, please take note of this item from the December 13th Huffington Post:

Authorities say a New Jersey man who died after having his penis injected with silicone was trying to get it enlarged…The Essex County prosecutor’s office says 34-year-old Kasia Rivera gave 22-year-old Justin Street the injection in May.  She has pleaded not guilty [to manslaughter] but remains in jail on $75,000 bail…[after] a medical examiner [determined that Street] died of a silicone embolism.  Rivera also faces charges [for] the unauthorized practice of medicine out of her…apartment.  Authorities say they’re investigating whether she gave other people similar injections.

The Liars’ Club (December 13th, 2011)

Maybe the adult film industry won’t have to fight Michael Weinstein’s asinine “your sex life is our business” ballot initiative after all, because according to this December 9th press release from the Free Speech Coalition, the City of Los Angeles is doing it for them:

A lawsuit was filed yesterday by the City of Los Angeles challenging the constitutionality of AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s (AHF) ballot initiative…[which] would force local officials to enforce mandatory condom regulations on adult production sets.  Named as defendants in the suit are various AHF personnel, including AHF President Michael Weinstein.  “Clearly AHF has chosen to squander its donors’ resources by filing frivolous lawsuits and ballot initiatives instead of providing valuable resources toward the prevention and treatment of HIV,” FSC Executive Director Diane Duke said.  “It is heartening to know that the City of Los Angeles will draw the line on AHF’s political grandstanding when it comes to wasting taxpayer dollars.  History has shown us that regulating sexual behavior between consenting adults does not work.  The best way to prevent the transmission of HIV and other STIs is by providing quality information and sexual health service, all of which are successfully provided through adult industry protocols and best practices,” Duke added.

The city’s complaint argues that the ballot proposal is preempted by state regulations that require barrier protection on adult sets and that enforcement of those regulations falls under state jurisdiction.  There have been two previous rulings in complaints filed by AHF, where the judge decided that L.A. County officials are not compelled to enforce regulations on behalf of state health & safety agency Cal/OSHA.  The city also states that the process involved in bringing the ballot measure to the voters would be a “waste” of taxpayer money…[and] that the ballot initiative is potentially unconstitutional; if passed by voters in June, the city raised concerns of more money being spent if the initiative was overturned on constitutional grounds…

I suspect that somebody in LA government woke up and realized how much money the city stands to lose if the adult film industry moves its shoots elsewhere.

One Year Ago Today

“Doublethink” explains the concept from George Orwell’s 1984 and provides real-life examples.

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First Updates of the Year (Part One)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 3, 2012| 16 Comments »

Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised when others believe him.  –  Charles DeGaulle

As I said last month, it’s amazing how many of these stories seem to crop up around the holidays!  So without further ado, here’s the first batch of the year.

Real People (February 6th, 2011)

It’s a classic Catch-22; because of criminalization prostitutes need to be discreet, but anonymity allows the prohibitionists to invent lies about us that further support for criminalization.  So it’s always good to see articles that show sex workers are people like anyone else; this one is from the December 12th Daily Sundial, the student newspaper of California State University, Northridge:

 “I started stripping when I was 19 because I had huge debt…” said Jane Doe, 32, a doctoral student at USC…“I loved it…Of all the shit jobs I had ever had, it was the only shit job that was not a shit job.”    Doe’s story is not atypical; according to a recent study on…sex work by Widener University’s Sarah Elspeth Patterson…“10 percent of students know of students who engage in sex work in order to promote themselves financially, with 16.5 percent indicating that they might be willing to engage in sex work to pay for their education”…

For Jessie Nicole, 25, sex work was the only employment option that allowed her to make ends meet and remain a full-time student.  “I was broke,” Nicole said.  “I had a scholarship that paid my tuition and 70 percent of my books, but that doesn’t pay your rent, that doesn’t give you food, and you still have 30 percent of your books.”  Nicole, now the director of SWOP’s Los Angeles chapter, began dating “sugar daddies” when she was a 19-year-old undergraduate at Florida State University, but turned to escorting when she moved to Chicago for graduate school.  “One of the easiest things about escorting in grad school was that I could pay to live and work a couple of hours a week,” Nicole said.  “That was so crucial to me.  I had a thesis to write…[My] time [was] really precious.”

Though sex work helped pay for both Doe and Nicole’s schooling, the cost of education left each of them in an incredible amount of debt.  According to the Widener University study, 2010 college graduates are carrying an average of $25,250 worth of debt…“I did sex work to live and be a student and then I graduated and couldn’t find a job because I have a master’s in humanities,” Nicole said.  “…So I kept doing sex work.  And I’m still using sex work to pay off my student loans”…According to Nicole…many who critique and condemn sex work see the industry as coercive and degrading.  “(Sex work) is a job like any other job,” Nicole said…according to [her], there are more student sex workers than one might think.  “I didn’t (out myself) when I was in school,” Nicole said.  “When I did come out, I found at least three other friends that were doing sex work in Tallahassee at the same time that I was.  I was like, ‘are you fucking kidding?  Is this just my group of friends or is everyone carrying this around?  Why didn’t we work together?’”…

The story also interviews a professional submissive and has a short section on neofeminist anti-whore rhetoric.  Nicole’s last point is very true; in my experience university students are the second largest group among escorts, after young divorcees with kids.

Heroines (May 16th, 2011)

OK, so breast self-examination is a little off-topic, but I’ve mentioned superheroines before so I just had to tell you about this PSA from Mozambique in which Wonder Woman gives herself an exam.  Other ads in the series feature She-Hulk, Catwoman and Storm of the X-Men.  The only thing I want to say is that I find it easier to do my exams topless, but I guess then we wouldn’t know who they were (except for She-Hulk, who’s pretty recognizable in any state of dress).

A Procrustean Bed (May 19th, 2011)

Though this essay was about a Massachusetts law, the principle applies to any part of the US:

…trafficking  mythology…requires that the state produce victims other than the amorphous “public decency” or the faceless “state”.  A “human trafficker” requires a human to “traffick”, so the law amputates prostitutes’ legal “legs” (i.e. the presumption of adult self-determination), reducing us to victims unable to walk into or out of prostitution on our own.  And if all whores are victims, all those who assist us in our work must therefore be victimizers…[such laws define] anyone who “manages” a prostitute (of course, “manage” is not specifically defined) as a “pimp” and all pimps as “human traffickers”, thus stretching escort service owners, drivers, boyfriends and husbands into international gangsters.

Here’s the Big Apple’s version, courtesy of the December 14th New York Times:

…As prostitution has shifted off the streets and into hotels and apartments, the drivers who transport prostitutes have emerged as some of the industry’s most powerful players.  Sofia, who uses a pseudonym because she fears retribution from traffickers, said that when she was enslaved as a prostitute, her drivers organized her schedule, drove her to appointments and took half of her earnings before she turned over the remainder to her pimp…On Wednesday, Sofia will testify, from behind a screen, before a joint hearing of the City Council’s Transportation and Women’s Issues Committees, on two pieces of proposed legislation that would penalize drivers who knowingly transport prostitutes.  The first proposal…would raise the fines on drivers who knowingly transport trafficking victims, and would direct the Taxi and Limousine Commission to add training for all its drivers on the subject of sex trafficking…Sofia estimates that she worked with 70 drivers, who brought her to 5,000 clients…Sofia said that the drivers rarely spoke to her, except when they tried to recruit her away from her pimp.  “They promised us a better life,” Sofia said.  “I know a lot of girls who said they left the pimp they were working with.  In the end they just worked for the driver.”

Is there any truth at all to this story?  Who knows?  It’s hard to take seriously an article whose very first sentence is based in a fallacy (that the majority of prostitution used to take place on the street, which it never has), and which characterizes low-end employees as “the industry’s most powerful players”.  It also uses the phrase “enslaved as a prostitute” but then at the end states that the so-called “slaves” can work for whoever they like (including, logically, themselves).  The huge numbers (70 different drivers?  5000 clients?) sound suspiciously like “reframed experiences” to me, and a lot of dubious assertions are trotted out to justify giving pigs and prosecutors the power to railroad (mostly immigrant) cab drivers as “human traffickers” for the “crime” of giving rides to hookers.

The Enlightenment Police (October 1st, 2011)

French prosecutors with nothing productive to do now want to send Hind Ahmas (whom we met in this column) to prison, as explained in this December 13th article from the Daily Mail:

A 32-year-old mother from France is set to become the first woman ever to be sent to prison for wearing an Islamic veil.  Hind Ahmas refuses to accept the legitimacy of a Paris court which has ordered her to spend 15 days learning her civic duties…Ahmas was not allowed into the hearing…because she refused to remove her face covering.  But prosecutors made it clear to her lawyer, Gilles Devers, that Ahmas now faces two years in prison and a £27,000 fine.  ‘There is no possibility of me removing the veil,’ Ahmas said.  ‘I’m not taking it off.  The judge needs citizenship lessons, not me.’  Ahmas, who has already refused to pay a fine of around £100 for wearing a veil on another occasion, intends to take her case to the European Court of Human Rights…If Ahmas does become the first woman in the world to go to prison for wearing a veil, then it will be seen as a huge propaganda coup for Islamic-rights campaigners.

Mr Sarkozy said the ban on head coverings was not aimed at persecuting Muslims, but merely to make France a more tolerant, inclusive society…But the sight of a young mother being led away to the cells merely because she refuses to take off her veil will cause outrage around the world.  Mr Devers said the veil ban was ‘unconstitutional’, while senior police officers have told judges that it is unenforceable without persecuting women…

Only a politician could believe that it’s possible to create a “more tolerant, inclusive society” by being intolerant and exclusive.

One Year Ago Today

“The Cold, Grey Light of Dawn” provides several examples of “the first feeble rays of light…[creeping] into the brains of those who, while perhaps not actually prohibitionists themselves, have always gone along with government policy on the matter.”

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New Year’s Eve 2011

Posted in Current Events, Holidays, Miscellaneous, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 31, 2011| 21 Comments »

Fast away the old year passes,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
Hail the new, ye lads and lasses,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.  –  Traditional Christmas carol

It’s hard to believe that another year and 365 columns have gone by since I wrote my last New Year’s Eve post.  At that time, I was worried about running out of steam and even thought I’d decrease my rate of posting, but by February I had hit on a few strategies which made the process both easier and more flexible (such as pre-posting columns days ahead if I know I’ll be busy or away from home), so I’ve been able to continue at the same rate without burning out.  And let me tell you, I’m really glad I managed it; I really feel like what I’m doing here is important and I’d like to keep up this pace for as long as possible.

mountain of paperBut the ability to persevere in the effort is nothing without the motivation, and a lot of that comes from y’all, my readers.  Every week I receive numerous complimentary comments and emails, plus a plethora of links and attributions all over the internet (and that means all over the world).  That started in earnest only a few weeks into the year, largely due to my efforts at debunking the trafficking mythology in general and the “Super Bowl sex slave invasion” in particular.  But it would’ve only lasted the proverbial fifteen minutes if not for the unflagging loyalty and tireless support of my readers; please don’t ever think your kind words, enthusiastic participation and topic suggestions are superfluous, because they mean more to me than you can possibly know.

2011 was a strange, eventful year; it started with the aforementioned Super Bowl hype, fed by a general explosion of “sex trafficking” hysteria which was accelerated by endorsements from a number of second and third-rate celebrities.  One of these, Ashton Kutcher (along with his soon-to-be-ex-wife, Demi Moore) started a really stupid anti-prostitute ad campaign supported entirely by misinformation, and when called on it by the Village Voice he responded with a rather absurd tirade on Twitter which called unwelcome attention to his advisor’s disregard for facts.  And though the campaign against Backpage which Kutcher championed has gained in popularity, the fact that it hasn’t a legal leg to stand on has robbed it of any real relevancy.  Yellow journalism on the subject from CNN, the New York Times, Newsweek and Huffington Post reached new lows, but other media outlets support our rights and study after study after study after study confirms what prostitutes and our advocates have been saying all along.

Witch-hunts against sex workers of all kinds, carried out by busybodies who are almost entirely fueled by American dollars, driven by American State Department propaganda and threats and encouraged by self-promoting journalists, continued unabated around the world, while some other jurisdictions preferred to persecute men and infantilize women by promoting  the “Swedish Model” of anti-prostitute law (or rhetoric) and/or schemes derived from it, and still others simply resorted to robbing sex workers or their associates or clients instead.  Several sex worker rights organizations have fought these crusades via ad campaigns that demonstrate sex workers are not victims or slaves but ordinary people, and several lawsuits defending the sexual rights of individuals have been filed.

While American police departments continue to harass and rob strip clubs and waste tremendous sums pursuing high-profile campaigns against escorts and our advertising venues, New York police have made no progress whatsoever in finding the Long Island Killer except to decide that he’s one man and probably a cop.  And of course there was the usual mixed assortment of politicians who were caught with their pants down.

Moral panics always get worse before they get better, so I don’t think we can expect things to improve anytime soon; however, they can only go so far, and perhaps by this time next year we’ll at least have passed the climax of the hysteria.  And that, I think, is a worthwhile subject for a New Year’s toast.

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Girls, Girls, Girls!

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on December 15, 2011| 27 Comments »

Girls, Girls, Girls
Long legs and burgundy lips
Girls, Girls, Girls
Dancin’ down on Sunset Strip
Girls, Girls, Girls
Red lips, fingertips.  –  Nikki Sixx, Mick Mars & Tommy Lee

I don’t really write about stripping very often, because I have a lot less to say about it than I do about whoring.  Part of that is because in the United States it’s closer to being completely legal than prostitution is, and part of it is because, though it paid the bills for two years and served as my “gateway” into full-fledged harlotry, I didn’t like it nearly as much as I liked escorting.  But despite what some women of each profession might like to believe, strippers and strumpets are sisters under the skin; we’re both sex workers, both persecuted by neofeminists and other religious fanatics, both subject to absurd laws which affect no other jobs and both subject to maltreatment at the hands of the police.  And in recent years, we’ve both been repeatedly targeted by “human trafficking” lies from busybodies who would like to see all sex work abolished; Estes & Weiner considered young strippers as part of their “youth at risk of sexual exploitation”, and Icelandic neofeminists succeeded in closing down strip clubs last year as part of their ever-more-extreme interpretation of the Swedish Model.  Today I’d like to look at three recent American news articles involving strippers; I think you’ll agree that the attitude displayed therein isn’t all that different from that displayed toward whores.

Let’s start with this November 16th article from Riverfront Times:

The Missouri Supreme Court yesterday handed strip club owners yet another loss in their legal fight to overturn a sweeping law  regulating “adult-oriented businesses.”  The law passed in 2010 prohibits exotic dancers from displaying their genitals and most of their breasts, bans the sale of alcohol inside strip clubs and requires the businesses to close at midnight.  Adult bookstore and strip club operators have argued that the law violates freedom of expression under the First Amendment…[and] also claim that Missouri legislators didn’t fully consider the fiscal impact that the bill would have on the economy — with several adult-oriented businesses going out of business since the law went into effect.

In yesterday’s 41-page ruling, the state’s high court sided with a circuit court ruling last year that upheld the law.  In its decision yesterday, the state’s high court [claimed that]…“the restrictions are not content-based limitations on speech but rather are aimed at limiting the negative secondary effects of sexually oriented businesses on the health, welfare and safety of Missouri residents…”  The strip club owners say they may appeal yesterday’s ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court…

This really isn’t surprising, considering that modern American courts increasingly seem to consider themselves the handmaidens of legislatures rather than equal branches of government as they were intended to be.  The “secondary effects” mythology has become a very popular one because it allows moralists to ignore the total lack of any provable negative effects from sex businesses; you’ll find the same nebulous claims made about porn and prostitution.  But when it comes to statements about sex work, who needs proof?  Wild assertions without a shred of evidence are more than good enough, as this November 30th Huffington Post article proves:

…Attorneys doing business at [Miami’s] Federal Detention Center — a maximum security prison — say the joint is overrun with dancers posing as paralegals.  Lawyers hired by imprisoned drug kingpins pass the women off as legal assistants and authorities let them in, according to a report by Miami New Times.  This being Miami, it was apparently no big deal until other attorneys realized they might start losing clients to those whose billable hours come with a little bada bing.  “They take off their tops and let the guys touch them,” veteran defense attorney Hugo Rodriguez told New Times.  “The majority of these young, very attractive women are noncitizens brought in exclusively for the purposes of visiting the FDC.  Any lawyer can sign a form and designate a legal assistant.  There is no way of verifying it.  The process is being abused.”  The report alleges one ‘paralegal’ was caught having sex with an inmate in a room used for legal meetings, while another was busted stripping in a Special Housing Unit — also known as solitary confinement — and banned from the prison altogether…

This isn’t the first instance of one or more lovely Miami ladies with cartel clients in super max prisons.  In 2009, the Denver Post profiled a woman named Lulu who left the Magic City to be closer to clients who paid her $125 an hour to deliver legal docs and keep a little company.  And just north of Miami in Broward County, there’s less security but a lot more ‘access’ — female corrections employees are the ones getting friendly, with one caught having sex with an inmate in a broom closet.

Well, if lawyers say this is happening, it certainly must be true!  Even if it is, I find it difficult to get all that worked up over, because the U.S. government is ignoring the best way to really punish these so-called “drug kingpins”:  simply decriminalize all drugs, and their empires will crumble overnight.

I’m sure you caught the “human trafficking” trope Mr. Rodriguez threw into his spiel; it’s also the central motif of our last story, from the November 30th New York Daily News:

The Mafia teamed up with the Russian mob to smuggle Eastern European beauties into New York to work as strippers — and even arranged sham marriages to keep them here, the feds say.  Twenty suspects…were arraigned in Manhattan Federal Court…on charges ranging from racketeering to visa fraud.  The schemers allegedly recruited women in Russia and neighboring countries through Facebook and newspaper ads…Visa rules barred them from adult entertainment, so the suspects arranged bogus offers for summer waitressing jobs and had the women apply for seasonal visas, prosecutors said…In the most audacious part of the scheme, the mobsters sent female emissaries to upstate New York to find young, single men willing to marry ex-patriate [sic] ecdysiasts in exchange [for] $5,000.  The nuptials secured green cards so the dancers could continue to work in the clubs.  Asked why the clubs needed to bring strippers from overseas, Hayes said, “Based on what we’ve learned, they were particularly marketable.’  Some of the women didn’t realize they would be giving lap dances when they signed up for visas.  They had to fork over $150 a day for housing, transportation and the right to work, Hayes said…

If this country were run by sane people, you might ask why visa rules bar women from even legal branches of sex work.  But it’s not, so I think you know the answer.  Raise hands, how many believe the girls didn’t know they were going to be strippers?  Now, another show of hands:  how many of them do you think really wanted to travel halfway around the world to make a maximum of $400 a week (before taxes) as waitresses in one of the most expensive cities in the U.S.?

One Year Ago Today

“Ho, Ho, Ho” reports on the first person ever cured of HIV, one celebrity trying to make himself look good, another trying to make her ex-husband look bad and Japan’s answer to Hooters.  Lubbu-lubbu!

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My Favorite Things (Part Two)

Posted in Favorites, Miscellaneous, Music, tagged , , , , on December 2, 2011| 29 Comments »

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes
Silver white winters that melt into springs
These are a few of my favorite things.  –  Oscar Hammerstein II

Yesterday I wrote about my favorite (non-horror) movies, though as some of you undoubtedly noticed a few of them were borderline horror or contained horror elements.  Two of those films (and one from my horror movie list) have connections in today’s column, in which I discuss my favorite music.  I’m going to limit myself to popular music here, but since I’m sure some of you would like to know my favorite composers are Bach, Beethoven, Haydn, Holst, Shostakovich and Vivaldi (though the first two stand out above the others).  Since chronological order is useless in discussing popular musicians, let’s list these in alphabetical order:

1)  The Beatles:  Because my father used to set a radio to lull me to sleep, my first experience of the Fab Four was when “Let it Be” was in heavy rotation on WTIX in 1970.  The first Beatles album I actually owned was The Beatles: 1967-1970 (the “Blue Album”) which I bought (on vinyl, of course) sometime in high school.  I played that album so often it would be a candidate for my favorite-album list (see below) had I not purchased every single Beatles album on CD while I was stripping.

2)  Blondie:  My first exposure to this now-legendary band was “Heart of Glass”, and the album from which it came (Parallel Lines) and its successor (Eat to the Beat; see below) were among those I got “free” with my first Columbia House membership in high school.  Unfortunately, they went sharply downhill after that, though I later bought and enjoyed their first two albums (Blondie and Plastic Letters).

3)  Blue Oyster Cult:  I don’t really much care for their early work; the first song which caught my attention was “Don’t Fear the Reaper”, but I never considered them a favorite until Fire of Unknown Origin (see below), which I came to know through the Heavy Metal soundtrack (also below).  Strangely, the band went into decline immediately thereafter.

4)  Enya:  When I bought Watermark as a Christmas present for Olivia, I listened to selections in the music store and got a copy for myself as well; I later purchased everything Enya had ever recorded (or has done since).  Her popularity has faded since the turn of the century, but not with me.

5)  Heart:  I fell in love with the Wilson Sisters from the first time I heard “Crazy On You”, and it’s still one of my favorite songs; Dreamboat Annie (see below) was one of the first albums I ever bought with my own money (from a neighbor’s garage sale a couple of years later for 25¢).  Though I liked their ‘80s heavy metal incarnation less than their original sound, it was still much better than the Private Audition/Passionworks era.

6)  Meat Loaf:  One of my university boyfriends introduced me to Bat Out of Hell (see below), and it quickly became one of my favorites.  After buying a number of his other albums I discovered that though I do enjoy his singing in general, the songs I really like are those written by Jim Steinman, so it’s most accurate to say that the Meat Loaf/Steinman collaboration is among my favorite music acts.

7)  Queen:  With a few exceptions, it’s their earliest stuff I like the most; I bought A Night at the Opera at the same garage sale which gave me Dreamboat Annie.

8)  Rush:  This particular band came to reside among my favorites by a circuitous route; they were the favorite of a boy I knew in 7th and 8th grades who was very friendly to me when his male friends weren’t around (he lived next door to my Maman) but rude to me when they were.  Later, they were also the favorites of a friend of mine’s stoner boyfriend whom I couldn’t stand.  So, I never gave them a chance until the 1984 hit “Distant Early Warning” caught my attention.  Frank slowly worked on me, exposing me to the group on every possible occasion throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, and though I came to like them it was my husband’s influence (Rush is his favorite band) which finally pushed them into my top ten.

9)  Joe Satriani:  “The Crush of Love” was released in November of 1988 and was played nearly every night on my favorite classic rock station while I drove home from a horrible retail job; driving much too fast down I-10 late at night while that composition played refreshed my soul, and I went out and bought the CD on which it appeared, Dreaming #11 (see below) as soon as I could.  Others followed, and Satriani is one of the few artists whose work I will buy simply because his name is on it; I own every one of his albums.

10)  Vangelis:  Most Americans only know his soundtrack for the movie Chariots of Fire, but that is IMHO among his weakest work!  My first exposure to him was through the passage from Heaven and Hell which was used as the theme to Carl Sagan’s Cosmos television series, and when I learned the name and composer of the piece in the Times-Picayune TV supplement, I absolutely begged Jeff to take me to New Orleans’ then-best record shop, Leisure Landing, so I could buy it.  In those pre-internet days it was nearly impossible to discover every album released by a European musician, but by the time I met my husband I had most of them and he helped me uncover the rest.  I thought I had them all, but my research for this column indicates I missed his very first soundtrack commission, which I’ve added to my Amazon wishlist.  Personally, I think Vangelis’ best and most productive period was from 1975 to 1979, though 1978’s Beauborg is below average and 1984’s Soil Festivities is as good as any of his golden ‘70s oeuvre.

There are favorite artists, and then there are favorite albums.  Some musical anthologies are just pure synergy; it’s like all the cosmic forces were in alignment when they were created, and every song contributes to that whole.  I think most people have certain albums they feel that way about; such a favorite becomes more than JUST a collection of songs, and instead becomes an experience in itself.  They certainly differ from person to person, but the experience is the same; they’re played so often one memorizes all the notes and all the lyrics, and may even have to be replaced due to wear!  Here are mine, in alphabetical order by title:

1)  Bat Out of Hell (Meat Loaf)
2)  China (Vangelis)
3)  A Clockwork Orange (original movie soundtrack)
4)  Dreamboat Annie (Heart)
5)  Dreaming #11 (Joe Satriani)
6)  Eat to the Beat (Blondie)
7)  Fire of Unknown Origin (Blue Oyster Cult)
8 )  Heavy Metal (original movie soundtrack)
9)  Jesus Christ Superstar (original rock opera)
10)  The Stranger (Billy Joel)
11)  Tubular Bells (Mike Oldfield)
12) The Turn of a Friendly Card (The Alan Parsons Project)

These particular albums were just lightning in a bottle for me; I mentioned most of them above, and of course the two soundtracks are from movies discussed yesterday.  I was introduced to Jesus Christ Superstar in 8th grade and bought it almost immediately; it may be the one album I have heard all the way through more often than any other, and the only stage play I’ve paid to see more than once.  The Stranger and The Turn of a Friendly Card came to my attention via my second roommate at UNO, and are interesting in that I actively dislike several other albums by the artists who recorded them.  And then there is Tubular Bells, which I first encountered via one passage used as the theme of The Exorcist but came to love after I bought a copy from a used-record store in high school.

Well, I think that’s enough for now; as I said yesterday, if you’re curious about my favorite whatever-else-I-didn’t-mention, just ask in a comment!

One Year Ago Today

“The Slave-Whore Fantasy (Part One)” proposes that the reason so many men choose to believe in “trafficking” mythology is that it allows them to deny the uncomfortable truth that women are in control of the sexual sphere by pretending that prostitutes, the most sexually powerful of all women, are pathetic victims who are controlled by men.

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Slap on the Wrist

Posted in Current Events, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , on October 8, 2011| 24 Comments »

Trial.  A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors.  –  Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

One year ago today I reported the story of Jack T. Camp, a federal judge in Atlanta, Georgia who made a career of throwing the book at people for consensual crimes; he fell for a stripper whom the F.B.I. then bribed into betraying her client by promising to drop other consensual crime charges against her.  So she led him into a fake drug deal and the FBI arrested him and charged him with an assortment of drug and weapon charges for which any normal person would’ve faced decades in prison.  But since he is a member of the ruling class (albeit a disgraced one), what he actually got was far less time in jail than a Georgia woman who was accused of agreeing to have sex with someone for the “wrong” reasons (like, you know, to pay the bills and feed her kids) might have been sentenced to.  This story is from last March, but was only called to my attention a few weeks ago by Norma Jean Almodovar’s guest column:

After telling him he has “a scarlet letter chiseled on his forehead the rest of his life,” a federal judge sentenced disgraced ex-jurist Jack Camp to 30 days in prison for committing repeated crimes with a stripper.  “He has disgraced his office,” Senior U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan said…“He has denigrated the federal judiciary.  He has encouraged disrespect for the law.”

Camp, who was arrested [on October 1st, 2010] in an undercover drug sting, pleaded for leniency.  He asked to be allowed to remain in his home and community to repair his marriage and rebuild his name.  “When I look back at the circumstances which brought me here, it makes me sick to think I did them,” he said.  “They were illegal, wrong, foolish…The only thing I can say is that I’m so very sorry.”  In court filings, Camp’s lawyers told Hogan that depression and a bipolar disorder as well as brain damage sustained in a 2000 bicycle accident — all exacerbated with improper prescriptions — help explain the ex-judge’s erratic and reckless conduct last year.

…Camp’s son, an Atlanta lawyer, asked Hogan to sentence his father to probation…but Hogan…said he could not get around the fact that a high-ranking government official had committed such serious offenses.  He then read aloud the oath of office Camp took 22 years ago…[which] included Camp’s pledge, he noted, to follow the law.  “Instead, for whatever reasons, the demons he had made him go another way,” Hogan said…[adding] “There was no suggestion this conduct was ending.”  Hogan also ordered Camp to serve 400 hours of community service, pay a $1,000 fine and reimburse the government for the cost of its prosecution, which has yet to be determined.  Camp will get credit for the weekend he spent in jail after his arrest.

…In one ruling issued Friday, Hogan found that Camp had not committed a felony, as prosecutors believed he…had when they signed the plea agreement.  Instead, Camp committed three misdemeanors, exposing him to a sentence of up to 6 months in prison.  Prosecutors asked Hogan to sentence Camp to at least 15 days…Camp’s lawyers asked for probation and community service.  Camp said the past few months had been a nightmare for him and said it has been a struggle to go out in public because of his humiliation and shame.  “I had worked hard as a judge and earned a respected reputation,” he said.  “Now I’ll be known as the judge who disgraced himself at the end of his career.”

I’m sure most people who are arrested in elaborate and expensive stings and charged with federal drug offenses feel sick and sorry; I’ll bet lots of them suffer from depression and could even hire quacks to diagnose them with serious mental illnesses or “brain damage” (especially since the Drug Warriors claim that illegal drugs cause brain damage).  I’m positive that lots of them would just love to be allowed to remain in their homes to repair their marriages and rebuild their names, and I’m certain they’d be overjoyed if the felonies for which they had already agreed to a plea bargain magically diminished into misdemeanors.  And I daresay most of them would consider a $1000 fine plus court costs assessed after only five months of worry to be a bargain compared to the years-long, repeatedly-delayed, resource-draining, often-escalating nightmare of a typical federal prosecution.  But they’re not judges, so they are humiliated, bankrupted, forced to commit perjury and betray others and then thrown into prison for an average of six years.  But someone who “…disgraced his office…denigrated the federal judiciary…[and] encouraged disrespect for the law” gets a slap on the wrist, because, you know, he’s “suffered enough”.  Well, at least this gives us a new legal dodge; we’ll call it the “bicycle defense”.  Too bad it won’t work for anyone but a politician.

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October Updates (Part Three)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 4, 2011| 10 Comments »

The trouble with this country is that there are too many politicians who believe, with a conviction based on experience, that you can fool all of the people all of the time.  –  Franklin Pierce Adams

The last part of our monthly roundup of short news stories that remind me of past columns.

A Tale That Grew in the Telling (April 2nd, 2011)

Like children playing a game of “Chinese Whispers”, fanatics repeat statistics that were weak or bogus to begin with, warping them into more and more fantastic shapes with each iteration.  The Estes & Weiner study used very questionable methodology to state that “100,000-300,000 American children and youth are at risk of sexual exploitation” based on such perilous circumstances as having their own cars or living near the Canadian or Mexican borders.  “Youth” was undefined, but included people old enough to work legally in bars or strip clubs, so I’m guessing they meant the 18-20 range.  The authors also included statistics which showed that the average underage prostitute enters the trade at 16, then in their text erroneously stated the average as 12-14, absurdly contradicting their own data!

These shaky statistics were then distorted again and again; “at risk” became “currently involved in”, “sexual exploitation” became “sex trafficking”, “children and youth” became “children”, and the wildly erroneous underage prostitution guess was added to the mixture to produce the often-heard myth that “100,000-300,000 children are trafficked for sex in the United States, and the average age at which they enter prostitution is 12-14”.  But it didn’t stop there; oh, no!  Soon “each year” was added, and the idea that child prostitutes started at 12-14 was replaced by the idea that the average “child sex slave” is currently 12-14.  By March the fanatics were stating that “100,000 – 300,000 children between the ages of 12 and 14 years old are victims of the child sex trade in this country”, and now it’s taken another step; this absurd article (which was called to my attention by regular reader Iain D) claims that there are 27 million people “trapped in modern-day slavery” (for comparison, that’s 5 million more than the entire population of Australia and almost half that of the UK) and that “The average age of sex workers is a saddening 12-14 years old.”  Shades of Melissa Farley!  Actually, I’m glad their declarations are growing so outrageous; not only is it a fascinating sociological study, it also accelerates the day when the whole house of cards comes crashing down.  Already, “human trafficking” researchers themselves are talking about a “credibility gap” in even official government “human trafficking” figures, so it’s only a matter of time before this hysteria goes the way of the “Satanic Panic”.

August Updates, Part Two (August 4th, 2011)

In this update to the earlier “Against Their Will” I reported South Korean whores’ massive protests against the persecution inflicted on them to satisfy American state department propaganda.  Here’s a short item published in Huffington Post on September 22nd, which features eight pictures of a recent protest by 1600 workers; note the odd inclusion of the pejorative “pimp” (presumably used to mean “brothel owner”) as I pointed out in the previous article.

Give It a Rest (August 18th, 2011)

The organized crime rackets which do business as “the police” in Texas continue their campaign of terror against scantily dressed women; this time, forty cops in Edinburgh, Texas literally committed armed robbery of a strip club (as reported in The Monitor on September 12th):

About 40 police officers descended on [Jaguars Gold Club]…looking for drugs…[they] did not find any…but took about $1,500 in cash and another $8,000 worth of club “tokens”…Jaguars’ owners filed suit against the city Aug. 26, accusing it and [Police Chief Rolando] Castañeda of attempting to strong-arm the all-nude club out of business.  They ask for monetary damages and for property seized by police to be returned.

For years, the club…sat outside the city limits.  But as Edinburg expanded, it eventually annexed the property…[which now] violates several of the city’s development codes.  But because it first existed in rural Hidalgo County, the establishment is grandfathered in and may continue to operate…Jaguars’ owners maintain its problems came “Once Castañeda assumed the position of the city’s police chief…unable to close down Jaguars on zoning grounds, he began a campaign to eradicate” the club…[It] began in late May, when three marked police units staked out the nude club for three nights…to intimidate potential customers…[then in] August…dozens of officers swarmed the club…zip-tied each person’s hands…and handcuffed Tony Hadaway, the club’s manager…Beyond taking the cash and club tokens, officers allegedly seized laptop and tablet computers, backpacks and one manager’s wallet.  Hadaway asked officers to keep an inventory list of the seized items, which “they declined to do and have never done,” the lawsuit states.  A second manager’s wallet was seized and never returned…

In other words, the city invaded and stole the land on which an established business already existed, and because it can’t force that business to abide by its arbitrary rules has simply decided to force it out of operation instead by frightening away its employees and clientele and robbing the owners blind.  So much for the “rule of law”.

Tyranny By Consensus (September 1st, 2011)

In this column I reported the latest attempt by Michael Weinstein and his “AIDS Healthcare Foundation” to force porn performers to use condoms whether they like it or not, even if such use would create more problems than it solved.  Following that article regular reader Marla posted a very informative comment in which she called attention to this video called AHF: Follow the Money which reveals a few things Weinstein would prefer people didn’t know:

Michael Weinstein of AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) is a man with an agenda, and it’s got nothing to do with public health…Weinstein opposes government funding of research to cure AIDS; instead, [he] wants those billions of government dollars to be diverted toward treatment and prevention services, the kind that he and his organization provides.  Michael Weinstein and AHF even sued Pfizer over Viagra, alleging it encouraged risky sexual behavior…after Pfizer turned down his multi-million dollar funding request…Weinstein is an opportunist who shamelessly exploits the misfortunes of others.  When news hit that a single adult industry performer had tested positive for HIV, Weinstein revealed his plan to make the world a better place by demanding that adult performers be required by law to wear condoms.  And which AHF supporter provided the picket signs for AHF’s protests outside the Hustler Hollywood store?  LifeStyles Condoms.  Want to know the key to Weinstein’s real agenda?  Follow the money.  Michael Weinstein sure does.

I have maintained since the beginning of this “controversy” that the porn actors themselves should be allowed to decide what’s best for them, so you may be interested in the viewpoint of porn actress Lorelei Lee on Weinstein’s latest shenanigans, published in Tits and Sass on September 19th.  She explains how the AIM system (which was closed down by a lawsuit from AHF) kept performers safe, and points out that:

…at least half of the positive HIV tests that Weinstein touts as being ‘proof’ of the need for a condom mandate occurred due to circumstances in the performers’ private lives.  Mandatory on-set condom use would not change this…six positive tests in ten years, among thousands of performers in hundreds of thousands of shoots, strikes me as a shockingly low number…we don’t know how safe or unsafe we are as adult film performers because we don’t have comparable statistics from other populations.

Her conclusion says it all: “How dare Michael Weinstein claim that we as an industry have shown a disregard for each other’s health and safety? His is the only outrageous disregard I’ve seen exhibited lately.”

To Spite Their Faces (September 6th, 2011)

Leftover second-wave feminists are desperately trying to keep women from moving forward, rediscovering their femininity and abandoning the sex war aggressively promoted by neofeminists for decades.  So it’s no surprise that feminist journalists have tried to trash Dr. Catherine Hakim’s reputation in order to discourage women from reading her new book, Erotic Capital, which advises them to use their natural advantages.  What’s sad is that, as reported in this column, the Guardian gave two of them a pulpit from which to spout their hatred.  Fortunately, the Sunday Times had more sense and invited Dr. Hakim to write a response to those criticisms; it was published in the Sunday Times Style magazine on September 11th under the title “Know Your Assets”, but since no online copy is available Dr. Hakim kindly provided me with this copy, which I have stored in PDF form for my readers.

One Year Ago Today

“All in the Family” examines the relationships between escorts and their relatives, which range from the strained to the supportive.

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Don’t Take My Word For It

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, tagged , , , , , , , on September 29, 2011| 47 Comments »

A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.  –  The Sherman Brothers

In my column of September 18th I related the story of how my 17-year-old self tried to gently explain to a very unattractive young man (whom I called “Ralph”) what he might do to make himself less so; it wasn’t easy because while I was trying to tell him the truth, I was also trying very hard not to hurt his feelings.  That’s very important to most normal women; we don’t really like distressing people, especially not men, so when put into a position where something unpleasant has to be said, many women simply lie to spare the other person’s feelings.  Those who don’t lie outright generally attempt to  soften the impact, often by downplaying the most painful aspects or using humor to cut the sting.

One of the things I said in the aforementioned column was, “Unfortunately, Ralph wasn’t really all that unusual; there are a lot of men who admit they don’t understand how women think, yet angrily deny any explanation a woman tries to give them.”  One of the most common denials takes the form of “that’s just your opinion”; by pretending in his own mind that the woman’s explanation is not a fact but a mere personal belief, he can still convince himself that many (perhaps most) women feel differently.  That’s the reason for the “racism” defense to the NBA issue; by accusing the woman of “racism” he pretends that the problem is based only in her (bigoted) opinion rather than in reality, and his ego is safe.  Most of my male readers are pretty open-minded guys, and judging by the comments I think most of y’all recognize that I know what I’m talking about and I’m careful to distinguish my opinions from things I’ve observed as fact or discovered through research or analysis.  Even so, there are probably a few of you out there who have your doubts about the whole women-look-at-sex-differently thing, so today I’d like to call your attention to a pair of recent essays from other women (one pro and one amateur) which back me up.  I think it’s important to do this because there are very few honest essays about this subject; neofeminists lie about it to promote their agenda, many sex-positive feminists misrepresent it for their own reasons, and most regular women lie or avoid the topic so as to spare men’s egos.  But these ladies have tackled it, using humor to provide Mary Poppins’ spoonful of sugar.

The first is an August 28th blog post from an English escort named Sensuous Amanda, which I discovered via cross-posting on Harlot’s Parlour:

If I had a penny for every time I’ve heard “I reckon I’d make a great male escort, don’t you think so?”  I’d have a significant amount of pennies.  What’s your point/the problem?  I hear you ask.  Well, there are several, to be honest.  For starters, the men who have the most unshakeable belief that they would be perfect male escorts, tend to be the ones who are 5’2”, average looking and (most importantly) humourless little personality vacuums…

Whilst I won’t say there is no market for straight male escorts, I will tell you that it is a teeny tiny market and it is awash with bright eyed hopefuls.  As far as I know, even the successful guys do it part time and have another job to pay the rent.  My guess (and that’s all it is) would be that there is a small demand for two types of male escort:

1)  The educated, well spoken, reasonably handsome, good listener.  The perfect gentleman who can listen to your problems, massage your feet, snuggle up on the sofa and can accompany you to any social occasion without drawing attention to himself for the wrong reasons and will have your fellow W.I. members frothing at the mouth with jealousy.  Not because he’s a young stud, (women – in general – don’t really work like that.  We would point, laugh and pour scorn upon the woman who turned up with a 20 year old shag toy)…but because he was the perfect gentleman.  The coveted Mr. Darcy.

2)  The 20-30 year old buff, tanned shag toy…[who] won’t be taken out in public…

The thing is though, that in general, women don’t want the first type to be a charade.  We want a man to be all of those things to us because he wants to be.  Not because we’ve just handed him a wad of twenties…Anyway, the point I was going to make, which has got completely lost in an avalanche of waffle, is this.  Boys, go for it if you want, but don’t rely on it for income.  For instance, my ex – a tall strapping chap, pretty good looking, in his early 30s at the time – advertised his services.  He’d seen what I was earning and decided that he wanted in on the action.  He never made a sodding penny.  Nothing.  Not so much as an email or a call.  Not even a timewaster.  However, he missed a trick.  He was bisexual and if he’d announced that in his advertising, things may have turned out very differently.  And THAT dear wannabe male escorts is the thing.  You wanna be a male escort?  Fine, you go for it sweetie.  You wanna make real money as a male escort?  Lube up, bend over and take one for the team.

The second one was a September 15th post on The Gloss which I discovered via a link on Tits and Sass:

The phenomenon of hiring a male stripper to celebrate your impending nuptials is a hard one to explain.  I, for one, do not quite understand the void that it fills in the life of the soon to be married woman.  In fact, if aliens arrived on this planet and the first thing they encountered was a greased up naked man tossing around a group of women, they would probably annihilate the lot of us, for being a superfluous species.  And yet, women continue to enlist oiled up muscle heads to entertain them at bachelorette parties, so clearly I am missing something.  I had a strict No Penis Policy at my own bachelorette party, a theme which one of my friends pointed out may have gone too far when we ended up at a strip club with topless ladies dancing around for us early Sunday morning.

Note the three chicks at stage right.

But to be honest, female strippers just make more sense to me than male strippers.  They’re (usually) hot ladies who take their clothes off while (mostly) men watch.  Men are highly visual beings, and there are actually a surprising number of body types on stage at the strip clubs I’ve been to…Male strippers are much different.  For starters, I’m sure some women lust after bare chested juice heads.  But most don’t.  And that is the standard model male stripper that arrives at your door…Simply put, women aren’t as visual about their desires as men are.  I think I can prove this with a simple comparison.  Men love magazines filled with scantily clad women.  This fact has kept Hugh Hefner wandering around a mansion in his pajamas for the last six decades.  Women?  Not so much.  This is probably why Playgirl  is a magazine for gay men.

All of that might also explain why male strippers don’t just dance for their patrons.  Often times they toss women in the air, rub themselves on their privates and bend them into positions and shapes that resemble terrible yoga poses.  If women weren’t paying for the pleasure of such treatment, these things would likely be considered criminal in a court of law…what you can expect when hiring a male stripper…[is] more like a gay cabaret show than anything involving my sexual fantasies.  And yet, women continue to pay for the pleasure of being swung around by these men before their friends get married…

And there you have it.  If you’ve got the time, I suggest reading them in unedited form because they’re  both quite amusing and the pictures on the male stripper one are priceless, and there’s one feminist commenter there whose tail-chasing performance (trying to convince the female author that her feelings and experiences are wrong because they contradict “social construction of gender”) is a lesson in itself.

One Year Ago Today

“One Step Forward” reports the Ontario High Court decision, still being appealed by Ottawa a year later, which struck down Canada’s dangerous and tyrannical prostitution laws.

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