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Posts Tagged ‘survivors’

Race to the Bottom

Posted in Current Events, Perception, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 6, 2013| 40 Comments »

Here is true immorality: ignorance and stupidity; the devil is nothing but this.  His name is Legion.  –  Gustave Flaubert

Will someone who lives in the state of Washington please tell me what the hell is going on up there?  “Sex trafficking” hysteria is epidemic in every state, and “authorities” all over America seem embroiled in a competition to see who can march the farthest up his own arse, produce the most ludicrous, specious nonsense and generally look the most like a credulous clown devoid of even the smallest particle of that elusive quality erroneously called “common sense”.  But despite the fact that Washington has a reputation for being sort of laid-back and generally pro-civil rights (it was, after all, one of the first two states to decriminalize marijuana for recreational use), some of the silliest, most absurdly exaggerated and just plain stupidest “trafficking” tripe in the entire country erupts forth from the Pacific Northwest at least once a week these days.  You may remember that in the name of “fighting sex trafficking” the Washington legislature actually passed a law which would have totally destroyed the internet as we know it, and despite a federal slapdown they’re at it again;faceless idiocy this is also the state which devotes hundreds of man-hours to trying to trick coffee-stand waitresses into flashing their tits so they can be charged with “prostitution”.  And who could forget the hilarity which ensued  when Shared Hope International held a program warning high school girls, “Don’t run off to the other side of the country with strange adult men after turning over your life savings to them, because pimps are cool and abortion is sex trafficking”. Or something like that.  Well, for your amazement and incredulity here’s another one; most major American cities published some local kiss-up to the latest iteration of the FBI’s Crusade Against Harlots, but this one has that special Washingtonian touch:

…Noel Gomez is a former Seattle prostitute who now works with teens in the King County Juvenile Detention Center.  Gomez said that the typical age for a girl entering prostitution…is just 14…Gomez offers emotional support and challenges the girls who equate love with bondage to ask themselves a simple question about their pimp:  “If you weren’t out there making money, would he be with you?  And the answer is ‘no’ because pimps are pimps.  That’s what they do,” Gomez said…

She claims to be an ex-hooker, yet she vomits out the “average debut at 14” crap nobody who has ever personally known more than two whores could possibly believe; methinks somebody is either lying or totally delusional.  But wait, it gets worse:

…The FBI said the victims are being offered help with job training, housing, counseling, and medical and education assistance…

…these “offers” are apparently so very attractive the girls have to be dragged to them in handcuffs.

…Last year, five members of the Underground Gangster Crips contacted teens at school or through Facebook, DateHookUp.com or other online social networking sites, enticing the girls to use their looks to earn money through prostitution…

OMG they CONTACTED THEM!!!!!!!!  Surely their evil vampire-like powers of mind control can reach through the screens and FORCE INNOCENT CHILDREN INTO SEX SLAVERY!  WON’T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!?!11?

…In earlier sweeps, child prostitution victims have been recovered at major sporting events — including the NCAA Final Four and Super Bowl…

No, they haven’t. But apparently that tired myth isn’t enough for the “trafficking” fetishists any more; get a load of the next one:

In the 1990s, gangs took control of street prostitution across America; that forced pimps to move girls into sporting events where security existed, said Dr. Lois Lee, founder and president of Children of the Night, a nonprofit group that has rescued 10,000 children from prostitution since 1979…

gangster threatening whoreI don’t know what Dr. Lee was smoking while she apparently watched Sin City 17 times in a row without sleep, but it must’ve been something potent for her to come up with such a bizarre, wholly unprecedented and totally unsupported fantasy.  It’ll be interesting to see if this original urban legend, which I have never seen any cop or prohibitionist spout before, becomes part of the body of “trafficking” mythology the way the “gypsy whores”, “average debut at 13” and “50 clients a night” myths have.

…Pimps operate wherever vulnerable potential victims can be found.  Some are being recruited right out of foster care facilities…

It’s true; they lurk in huge, overdressed packs right outside the doors, and infiltrate the facilities disguised as Bibles, rubbish bins and bars of soap so as to “recruit children” right out from under the noses of their valiant rescuers.

For the past decade, the FBI has been attacking the problem in partnership with…the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.  John Ryan, the head of the center, called the problem “an escalating threat against America’s children.”  The Justice Department has estimated that nearly 450,000 children run away from home each year and that one-third of teens living on the street will be lured toward prostitution within 48 hours of leaving home…

NCMEC doesn’t exactly have a sterling record of honesty, but that’s not surprising considering the money they make from “missing children” hysteria.  And the Justice Department knows damned well that 90% of underage hookers aren’t “lured” in any meaningful way, and that they do it because it’s the best, most dependable way to support themselves on the street; it knows because it paid for a major study that told it so.  But since that doesn’t support the official panic narrative, we don’t get to hear about it; instead both state and federal “authorities” compete in this fantastical and ugly race to the bottom, and though it’s still too early to declare a winner, Washington state is among the obvious favorites.

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Zurvivor

Posted in Current Events, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on June 3, 2013| 53 Comments »

When cowardice is made respectable…it easily becomes a fashion.
–  Eric Hoffer

Alexis WrightSo, the saga of the “Zumba prostitute” comes to a close, and we have a new inductee in the Hall of Shame.  But I’m getting ahead of myself; here’s the essential portion of the story:

A Zumba fitness instructor at the center of a prostitution scandal…told a judge who sentenced her…to 10 months in jail that she’s happy to have escaped her former life…Alexis Wright said she felt relief when police raided her business on Feb. 12, 2012, because she wanted out.  “In my eyes I’m free. I’m free from this,” she told the judge. “I have an incredible amount of strength that I knew was in me somewhere. Now that I have the strength I want to encourage others to come forward”…The former single mother was accused of conspiring with insurance business owner Mark Strong to run a prostitution business in which she videotaped clients without their knowledge…the defense said…that Wright became part of Strong’s private investigation firm and was manipulated into believing she was an “operative” working for the state with the task of investigating “all manner of sexual deviants.”  Her attorney, Sarah Churchill, said…said self-deception is a coping mechanism for women involved in prostitution…

Fuck you, Alexis.  Fuck you for that bullshit story about how you were manipulated, for that bootlicking garbage about how you were “relieved” at being arrested, for calling your clients “deviants”, and for letting your lawyer mouth bogus prohibitionist “false consciousness” filth.  It was obvious from the start that you were extremely unprofessional and had no clue about the ethics of our trade, but hundreds of thousands of your fellow-whores around the world felt sorry for you anyway, spoke harsh words about your persecutors, hoped and prayed that you would get a lenient sentence and be able to put your life back together after this public pillorying.

And how do you repay us?  By throwing us all under the bus.  By standing up there and embracing every fucking myth the prohibitionists have used to attack us for the past decade.  By confirming all the stupid stereotypes of how all sex workers were sexually abused, that we never do it voluntarily, that there’s always a big, bad pimp “exploiting” us, that we’re “relieved” when the cops smash down our doors to “rescue” us by caging us, stealing all of our profits and subjecting us to public ridicule.  And worst of all, by letting your fucking shyster stand up there and vomit out Farleyisms about how we “survive” the horrible assault on our sexual purity (which is a woman’s only important characteristic) by convincing ourselves we like our work when deep down we just want out.  The message being, of course, “Don’t listen to all those whores demanding their rights; what they really want is to be ‘saved’ by the police.”

kissing the bootSome of my readers may think I’m being unnecessarily harsh, that maybe you really were abused as a child (after all, some people are), that maybe you are as dumb as the proverbial box of rocks and got yourself into a situation you couldn’t handle.  Maybe you have such a supple spine that your lawyer bullied you into reciting that script as the best way to appeal to the judge’s and prosecutors’ pathologically-swollen egos.  Maybe.  But even if that’s all true, it matters not one whit in my opinion of you, because the difference between my level of contempt for evil and my level of contempt for moral cowardice is so minuscule I probably couldn’t shove your scruples between them.  Even if you had made all the same revolting claims but left out the bit about being happy to be arrested, I might have found room in my heart to give you the benefit of the doubt.  But to sanctify the actions of tyrants, to provide the enemies of all our kind (and that means your kind, sister, no matter how much you deny it now) with another excuse to justify their barbaric tactics to the Great Unwashed, is utterly beyond the pale.  You disgust me.  The judge said to you, “I know that you will succeed when you’re released,” and she’s probably right because, unfortunately, amoral quislings willing to collaborate with the oppressor to save their own skins usually do.

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The Story Behind the Story

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, The Dark Side, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on April 2, 2013| 9 Comments »

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
You’re on your own. And you know what you know.
And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.  –  Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

Go the Fuck to SleepI’m sure most of you recognized yesterday’s column as a tribute to Dr. Seuss’ first published work, And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street; you may even have recognized that it’s a line-by-line parody, and that I retained the good Doctor’s own words wherever I could.  But it just wouldn’t have been half as good without the Seussian illustrations; they were kindly provided by Ricardo Cortés, illustrator of the bestselling Go the Fuck to Sleep (and now that y’all know he’s a fellow reader, I’m sure some of y’all may be even more interested in some of the other books he’s illustrated).  Anyhow, Ricardo had a few questions about my parody and since I’m sure some of you have similar ones, I figured I’d share my answer.

…I’m curious about the context of the piece, and why April Fools?  It’s clearly a response to the all-sex-workers-are-slaves narrative.  Is it directed to a particular event or charge?  Obviously any Save-Them-All campaign is limited and patronizing. On the other hand, there certainly are prostitutes who are exploited and trafficked, etc., no?…perhaps you can direct me to some writing you’ve already made about this question…I’m curious as to how you address the other side of the equation (when sex workers are actually exploited by organized crime, etc.)

I wanted to do it on April Fool’s Day just because it’s kind of silly; I’ve never done a full-blown parody before so that seemed like a good day for it.  Though it is in part a response to the “enslaved whore” narrative, it’s even more a sharp criticism of the neofeminist practice of “re-framing experiences”.  Unhappy ex-hookers who are recruited by anti-whore organizations are encouraged to “re-frame their experiences”, which means make up things that didn’t happen so as to “sell” the public, media and politicians more strongly on the “evils of prostitution”.  Women who resist lying in this way are chastised, browbeaten and (if they persist) kicked out of the “movement”, while those who play along are praised and rewarded with money and attention.  An example of a reject is Jill Brenneman (who discussed the matter in her interview on this blog two years ago); an example of a perfect shill is Stella Marr, about whom I’ve written on several occasions.  The most striking example of “reframing” I’ve written about so far is the story of Long Pros, whom celebrity prohibitionist Somaly Mam used to advance her crusade:  Pros was a Cambodian girl from a poor family who never did any sex work in her life, but lost an eye to a tumor; under Mam’s coaching she invented the lurid story that she was a “sex trafficking” victim who had been enslaved in a brothel and had her eye gouged out by a brutal pimp.

Satanic Abuse fantasyThe really creepy part of the whole thing is that the longer the “survivor” stays in the movement, the more her stories start to converge with those of others; she internalizes the preferred narratives, and they form a pattern in much the same way that any mythology begins to form a whole.  In the early ‘80s, the preferred feminist “survivor” narrative was that the “victim” had been abused by her father, uncle or other male relative; in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s it was that her abusers were part of a Satanic cult, and by the late ‘90s they had morphed into “sex traffickers” driven by profit.  By the early ‘20s it will change again, but of course we have no way to predict what that change will involve.  It’s fascinating from a psycho-sociological perspective, but extremely dangerous because the courts have abandoned the necessity for proper evidence and the presumption of innocence, so that even the most outlandish “eyewitness” testimony is taken seriously.

As for “organized crime”, that doesn’t really mean what the tale-spinners want you to believe; in criminology, “organized crime” just means any group (which could be as few as 3 or 4 people) who plan to carry out illegal activity together.  My escort service would be classified as “organized crime” because we “conspired” to “commit prostitution”.  The same goes for so-called “human traffickers”; two guys in Nigeria with a friend in Denmark and a border guard who is paid to ignore them sneaking willing immigrants into the country, make up an “international human trafficking ring” if the women work as maids, and an “international sex slavery ring” if one or more of them works as a hooker.  It’s not about enormous criminal cartels smuggling thousands of crying women in cages as the propaganda wants you to believe.  The best book for putting this all in perspective is Laura Agustín’s Sex at the Margins; Agustín has been studying migration and sex work for twenty years and will open your eyes to the truth of all this.  But for the most part, so-called “sex trafficking victims” are really just women going from a relatively poor country to a relatively wealthy one to do sex work, sometimes breaking the rules of the destination country in the process; anyone who helps her is therefore a “criminal” and a “trafficker”, even if the “victim” entered into the arrangement willingly and is as satisfied as any conventional worker with the terms of her employment.

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Mulberry Street

Posted in Fiction, Holidays, Perception, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 1, 2013| 20 Comments »

With sincere affection and admiration for the work of T.S. Geisel; all illustrations done specifically for this presentation by Ricardo Cortés. 

When I first joined the Rescue League
The leaders said to me,
“Marcia, you must open up,
The truth will set you free.”

But when I talked about my life
To the assembled band,
They looked at me and sternly said,
“Your story’s much too bland.

“It just won’t do, your tale so tame.
To fight prostitution you must re-frame.”

So, what can I say
To reporters today?

They all want me to say
That I was “prostituted”
And the money I made
By “exploiters” was looted.
But I walked into hooking
Upon my own feet,
And my usual stroll was
On Mulberry Street.

That’s nothing to tell of,
That won’t make the score…
Just a typical street
And a hard-luck-case whore.

That can’t be my story; their interest will fade.
I’ll say that a PIMP forced me into the trade!
He played on my trust, and he threatened to beat,
And he sent me to turn tricks on Mulberry Street.

Yes, the pimp is just fine,
But his method is weak;
Being talked into hooking
Makes me look far too meek.
The story would really be better, I hope
If the pimp had controlled me by giving me dope.
A dope-addled hooker is something to meet,Mulberry Baldie by Ricardo Cortés (2013)
Looking for johns out on Mulberry Street!

No, that’s much too mundane…
Why not say he used pain?

Brutal beatings are better;
Give the sadists a treat,
To visualize that
On Mulberry Street.

Hold on a minute!
I just had a brainstorm!

It would really feed their tragedy-hunger
If I claimed that I started out very much younger.

It would be a more pathetic scene
If he turned me out at age thirteen.

Hmmmm…a teenage runaway…

But that whole thing’s been done to death;
The runaway hooker on crystal meth.
If I can’t do better, I’m wasting my breath.

If I ponder this problem, I’m sure I can lick it…
A whole GANG of pimps!  Now there’s the ticket!

I’ll invent one with plenty of power and size:
I was the white victim of forty brown guys.
And then, just to make them a little more vile,
I’ll say they tattooed me in some branding style.

SAY!  That makes a story that no one can beat,
When I say it all happened on Mulberry Street.

But now I don’t know…
It still doesn’t seem right.

Even if I could see fifty clients a night,
Split up so many ways would be income too slight.

It would be worth their fuss
Were there eighty of us!

To provide for that many would take lots of dope;
Half the gang would be needed in order to cope.
I’ll make them drug dealers!  Then some of their stash
Can be used for the hookers who bring them more cash.

But for drug-dealing on that kind of scale,
It would make far more sense if they bought it wholesale.
Mulberry Police by Ricardo Cortés (2013)They’re top-level importers, real kingpins of crime,
And they smuggle in girls at the very same time.

But now there’s a hitch of a whole new order;
Mulberry Street isn’t close to the border.

A trafficking business on that kind of scale
Needs special protection, or else it would fail.

Organized crime will do the trick;
Those big-time gangsters are mighty slick –
And shady lawyers don’t miss a trick.

They know just who to lean on, and just who to pay
To ensure the police will not get in their way.

They’re bribed not to see things that just might look “funny”,
And they stick out their hands for a cut of the money.

Other public officials are on the take, too,
In every town in the Red, White and Blue.

And that is a story that NO ONE can beat
When I say that it happens on every street!

The pimps sell their sex-slaves through ads on Backpage,
And they’re fed on dog food, and are kept in a cage.
And that makes a story that’s really not bad!
But it still could be better.  Suppose that I add…

…GPS trackers placed in the girls’ purses…
A black magician casting curses…
Each girl makes 300 grand a year…
No time for more, the press is here.

I heard my name called
And I felt my heart sink;
As I walked up the steps
I just couldn’t help think,

“There no way that these writers will buy all this bunk!”
As a sex-trade “survivor”, I knew that I stunk.

But they listened intently
To all I averred,
And I saw they believed me…
Yes, every last word.

I was wholly amazed; were they really this dumb?
Were their critical faculties totally numb?
They started applauding; each rose from his seat,
And continued to clap as they stood on their feet.
What a wonderful day!  How it made my heart beat!

And I knew once I learned it through endless repeat,
I’d believe my own story of Mulberry Street.Mulberry Press by Ricardo Cortés (2013)

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Puppet Show

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 4, 2013| 23 Comments »

I can laugh at a puppet show, at the same time I know there is nothing in it worth my attention or regard.  –  Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

punch and judyBy the end of the nineties, neofeminist leaders knew their movement was in trouble; though they had become extremely powerful in the Scandinavian countries, their power and influence had begun to wither nearly everywhere else.  The reasonable goals of second-wave feminism had been met, and feminist ideas had become so normal that mainstream feminism no longer had a monopoly on them; the neofeminists had lost the crowbar by which they had pried and beat so many young women into their ugly, twisted gender war, and the internet had made it more difficult for them to sell their anti-sex snake oil to the impressionable.  But fanatics are driven by their psychoses, and are thus unable to admit defeat; instead, the neofeminists formed an alliance with another large group of anti-sex authoritarians, namely fundamentalist Christianity, and together they repackaged their old ideas so as to sell them all over again.  Instead of being merely “sinful” or “misogynistic” porn became “addictive”, and mercenary “researchers” with questionable credentials were hired to supplement the fabrications of the True Believers on any aspect of sex work one might name.

The keystone of this whole strategy was the myth of “sex trafficking”; as the “Nation Strategy” of Swanee Hunt’s Demand Abolition organization clearly states, “Framing the Campaign’s key target as sexual slavery might garner more support and less resistance, while framing the Campaign as combating prostitution may be less likely to mobilize similar levels of support and to stimulate stronger opposition.”  In other words, the anti-sex coalition recognized it had already lost the war on sex work, so it was necessary to use its favorite tactic, re-framing (i.e. calculated lying), to paint prostitutes (and to a lesser extent strippers and porn actresses) as “sex slaves” controlled by evil “pimps” straight out of 1970s blaxploitation films.  There was, however, a problem with this scheme; as I explained in “The Odor of Socks”,

…they present the “reframed experiences” of “survivors” to support their claims, but since these are a small minority the usual approach …is to present the same stories over and over again with slightly-altered details so as to “pack the collection” of available narratives.  This can only go so far against the huge number of vocal whores, however; even the most credulous of prohibitionist marks will eventually notice that while we regularly post new material and interact with our readers, the supposed plethora of “human trafficking victims” are represented only in third person.  And so a new weapon has become necessary:  the sock puppet…while the anonymity of the internet makes it possible for whores to speak out without fear of arrest or other persecution, it also allows trolls to set up multiple accounts so as to create phantom “supporters” of their views…

Right now in Ireland, the nuns who enslaved many thousands in the Magdalene laundries are trying to once again suppress whores, this time via the odious Swedish model.  Like other modern prohibitionists they use sock puppets, but because Ireland really isn’t a very big country they don’t have a large number to choose from…and it shows.  Irish activists called these three videos to my attention; even with shaded faces, it’s pretty obvious that this is the same woman under three different names.  Let’s start with “Mary”; you needn’t watch this whole thing, just enough so that you can be pretty sure you’ll recognize her voice, accent and characteristic syntax when you hear it again.

And now here’s “Sandy” who is supposedly a different woman:

And then “Marian”:

And just for good measure, let’s look at “Lisa’s” word choices and syntax:

…I got tired of being used and to being sold like a tissue; – used, then throw away.  I believed Ruhama was for foreign girls but I wanted out and I was willing to try anything…so I rang straight away and was greeted with kindness, understanding and offered so much help…I wandered in like a stray dog, I felt so low, only then to see I have a future there…Ruhama have it all, its up to you to ask…no money is worth what prostitution takes, every thing in life has a cost, sell your body and your soul goes.

Justine ReillyThe real woman behind all these aliases is Justine Reilly, shown here in a photo from the 2003 prohibitionist book Sex in the City; if she didn’t want to be recognized she probably should have changed that rather distinctive hairstyle.  Irish sex worker groups repeatedly petitioned the government to allow them a say in the hearings on imposing the Swedish model, but this kangaroo court never had any intention of allowing real testimony; the only ones allowed in were Justine and other Ruhama shills.  They spouted the usual nonsense such as you can hear in the videos above,  including the lie that there are literally NO independent sex workers in Ireland, because all of them are “controlled” by pimps.  But perhaps that’s less a lie on Justine’s part and more a case of wishful thinking, since she herself was convicted of “pimping” twelve years ago yesterday:

A woman has been fined £11,500 and given a 12-month suspended sentence…for managing and running brothels in Dublin.  Justine Reilly (33)…pleaded guilty…to four…counts of brothel-keeping and one of managing a brothel on dates from October 1999 to March 2000.  She admitted full responsibility and told gardai she was earning about £3,000 a week.

My, my, what would Stella Marr say?  With her brothels closed down, she apparently had trouble paying off that fine, because a year and a half later she applied for and was granted a taxi license in Dublin:

A convicted brothel keeper was yesterday granted a taxi licence after a court heard she needed to work as a cabbie to pay off a €14,600 fine.  Justine Reilly (36) challenged a Garda decision to refuse her a public-service vehicle licence…She said since her conviction she had been ostracised by her family and…had done a number of jobs, including cleaning and working in bars and restaurants, but it was not enough to meet the fine…

Running a taxi in fiercely-competitive Dublin wouldn’t be enough to pay it, either; my sources tell me it would be extremely difficult for a cabbie there to clear €14,600 in a year, and that’s before living expenses.  Somebody eventually paid that fine…perhaps in exchange for PR services rendered?  Ruhama was certainly a good fit for Justine; take a look at how she was already reinventing herself by the time she got the license:

The brothel operation she had been involved in was a joint arrangement between herself and other women who had previously worked for “unsavoury characters…Myself and a few girls decided to get an apartment and when the police came I accepted responsibility because these other girls had husbands and children and I didn’t.  I went forward and said I was responsible, although I did not realise the seriousness of the situation”…

You can see that she isn’t yet denying the independence of most whores, though her journey toward victimhood (by way of martyrdom) is clearly well underway.  It’s clear that the Irish government fully intends to fund and assist evil religious fanatics in their persecution of whores, just as it has for almost a century.  But its rather insulting that they have invested so little effort in disguising the puppeteers, and given Ruhama’s wealth one would think it could afford more than one makeshift puppet.

(I am indebted to several activists for providing the information contained in this column, but they prefer to remain anonymous due to the fact that the UK’s tyrannical libel laws make it very easy for the wealthy and well-connected to censor those who are less so.)

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That Was the Week That Was (#28)

Posted in Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 14, 2012| 42 Comments »

We should all take care not to become part of the hype producing machinery that continually presents opinions or ideology as ‘facts.’  –  Ann Jordan

Welcome To Our World

The government just can’t resist trying to control anything involving sex:

[A lesbian who]…is trying to conceive a child…wants to use…sperm from a man she trusts.  But…under federal regulations, the donor must undergo…expensive and time-consuming [tests] so…she…is suing…Jane Doe wants to…get pregnant on her own, without paying for a fertility clinic or a sperm bank, and without government interference…But the FDA does not permit…informal transactions.  A donor is required to have his blood and urine tested in a medical setting within a week of every body-tissue transfer…

Where Are the Victims?

They’re only women, and therefore incompetent to know what’s best for them:

…Father and son accused pimps Vincent George, Sr., and Vincent George, Jr., had an unlikely cheering section in a Manhattan courtroom today — the very five admitted prostitutes who they’re accused of threatening and coercing.  “We are not victims!”…the…women shouted at reporters…the son’s lawyer, David Epstein [said] “They came in and out of Manhattan by themselves, they had their own houses and bank accounts, and they could have left anytime they wanted.”  John Temple, who heads the Manhattan DA’s human trafficking program, counters that phone taps prove both the dad, 55, and the son, 33, built up a million-dollar escort business by keeping their five women terrified virtual prisoners…six limo drivers accused of ferrying the women to their assignations are also charged.

Harm Magnification

Yet another case of government interference magnifying harm:

…On July 3 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first “rapid home” test for HIV…[which may] prevent…more than 4,000 new HIV infections in its first year of use alone…[but] the…approval…did not occur until…24 years after the FDA received its first application…[until recently it] forbade [any] tests…[other than] those…performed in a clinical setting…Out of concern that some people might respond…irrationally to the extremely valuable information a home test could provide, everyone was deprived of that option…imagine the number [of infections] that could have been averted if a rapid home test…had been approved five years ago.  Or ten.  Or 15…

Decentralization

Despite government efforts to quash bitcoin it’s still going strong, and one writer suggests it might help in the Greek monetary crisis:

…the drachma is not Greece’s only [non-euro] option…an alternative currency could emerge or an already existing one could be adopted.  In some parts of Greece social entrepreneurship, technology, and skepticism of politicians have already…created an environment where cryptocurrencies could become increasingly popular…The most prominent of these…is bitcoin…[which] frees those who use it from political uncertainty [and] fiat policies, and is less affected by international money markets than traditional currencies…There have been reports of more Europeans using bitcoin as their confidence in political solutions diminishes…

Rooted in Racism

Obviously, the NIJ is unacquainted with William of Occam:  “An overwhelming majority of human trafficking cases involve sex trafficking, according to a recent study issued by the National Institute of Justice…Nearly all identified sex trafficking victims were female and 70 percent of suspects were male…”  In other words, cops arrested a bunch of people and labeled them “victims” or “perpetrators” almost purely on the basis of gender, then a “study” was done to justify the assignments rather than recognizing them for what they are: rubbish based in the sexist notion that women are incompetent victims.

The Prudish Giant

A former Facebook executive wants to outdo Google by linking an anti-whore campaign to an expansion of the number of people condemned to “sex offender” registration:  “Facebook’s former chief privacy officer is bankrolling an anti-human trafficking ballot measure that…would toughen penalties for sex trafficking and add those convicted of the crime to the state’s sex offender registry.  Most significantly, it also would require all registered offenders to surrender their “Internet identifiers” to law enforcement, including user names and email accounts…Chris Kelly…has contributed $1.6 million to the initiative since December…”  The campaign is based largely on lies such as “Every girl sold on the street today is also being sold on the Internet”, a triple-whopper which 1) equates performing a service with chattel slavery; 2) uses passive voice to imply girls do not choose prostitution when in fact over 86% do; and 3) bizarrely defines 25% as “every”.

Presents, Presents, Presents!

A new reader who found me via The Agitator sent me a copy of Prince of Darkness  this week, but I only have his real name and I’m not sure if he posts under that or uses a screen name.  I hope he reads this and emails me so I can thank him properly!

Not for Everybody

Though Argentina has its own problems with “survivors” agitating against improved rights for sex workers, at least they aren’t pushing for increased criminalization yet:

In Argentina, women who [have] sex in exchange for money have splintered into two groups.  The one group…who call themselves “sex workers” to reflect their choice to work in the profession, is finalizing a bill…for…greater rights…The other group…prefers the term “prostitutes,” insisting that they are victims…of the industry…[they propose] policies that offer subsidies and create alternative employment opportunities…

Sex, Lies and Busybodies

Australian prohibitionists just won’t let go of that Queensland mining bone:

…police officer Inspector Paul Biggin says while sex workers have also been a major beneficiary of the [mining] boom, there are growing concerns about women being brought in from overseas and exploited by criminals…”A lot of…women come from Asian countries and they’re the types…that certainly do get exploited because of their poor education or the fact that they’re easily tricked,” he said… few women…have reported any mistreatment.  “A lot of times they don’t because there is a fear factor involved,” he said.

Translation:  “poor Asian women are stupid”.  And the reason they don’t tell him what he wants to hear must be “fear”; after all, he can’t possibly be wrong.

…Jules Kim, the migration project manager at Scarlet Alliance, said…”Using ‘doesn’t speak English’ as an indicator would not be applied to any other profession…English skills are not tied in to education levels at all so someone could be highly educated and yet have poor English skills.”  Ms Kim says the extent of the problem in mining communities has been exaggerated…

The Course of a Disease

It’ll be interesting to see what other workers’ rights this eventually leads to:  “Swedish prostitutes won the right to claim benefits, including sick days and parental leave…’As long as sex workers pay their taxes, they should have the same access to sick-leave benefits and parental leave as anybody else,’ [said social insurance director] Joakim Jarnryd…’We don’t make any moral judgments’…”

Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs

US officials hoped to silence whore’s voices by barring them from attending the International AIDS Conference in Washington on July 22nd-27th, but India’s Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee had other ideas and organized a “hub” which will be digitally linked with the main event.  Andrew Hunter of the Asia [Pacific] Network of Sex Workers said, “We are holding this Global Hub…in India because sex workers are not allowed entry into the U.S. to attend the main AIDS conference. This event will allow us to participate as well as give sex workers from around the globe a chance to still contribute to important discussions…”

Health officials have long criticized US anti-whore policies as destructive, and a new report released for the conference by the Global Commission on HIV and the Law has gone even further, as explained in this article by Cheryl Overs:

The report of the Global Commission on HIV and the Law…recommends the repeal [of] laws that prohibit consenting adults from buying or selling sex, including those laws that have the effect of prohibiting commercial sex such as laws against “immoral” earnings, “living off the earnings” of prostitution and brothel-keeping.  It calls for an end to police harassment and violence against sex workers and a prohibition of mandatory HIV and STI testing…It also recommends withdrawal of the Pepfar anti-prostitution pledge.  This marks a significant advance for sex workers’ struggle for sex work to be decriminalised and recognised as an occupation…

I’ll have more to say about this article in my upcoming column of the 27th.

Above the Law

What makes this news rather than a typical abuse is that the cops are being prosecuted:  “A Kansas City police officer has been…accused…of having sex with two women in exchange for not arresting them.  One woman told police she was working as a prostitute, and the other said she had outstanding warrants and marijuana in her motel room when she met Jeffrey Holmes…prosecutors in neighboring Platte County charged another Kansas City police officer with misappropriating about $75,000 from his elderly mother…”

Held Together With Lies

This thorough debunking of the oft-repeated claim that “human trafficking is the third most profitable business for organized crime” by Ann Jordan and Lynn Burke was published over a year ago, but only came to my attention this week:

…Evidence for this claim either does not exist or is impossible to locate.  Despite the efforts of the authors and two professional reference librarians to locate the original reliable source, the research only turned up similar statements and not one article was uncovered that contained any evidence to support the claim…it is not unusual to hear statements that claim to be about trafficking but are really talking about smuggling…It would certainly make more sense to say that smuggling is the third largest source of organized crime profits…

Imagination Pinned Down

Compare to the outrageous claims made by other FBI agents about “human trafficking” cases they claim to have been personally involved in:

A former police officer who retired from the FBI…has written a book about seeing legions of angels guarding the Pennsylvania site where a hijacked airliner crashed [on September 11th, 2001].  Lillie Leonardi…remembers the burning pine and jet fuel stinging her nostrils.  She said she also remembers a smoldering crater littered with debris too small to associate with the jetliner or 40 passengers and crew on board…”That’s when I started seeing like shimmery lights…and it was kind of misty and that’s when I first saw, like, the angels there,” Leonardi said…[she] kept it to herself for the better part of two years [but] as…[symptoms of] post-traumatic stress disorder [surfaced] she began telling a close circle of friends and colleagues what she saw…

Metaupdates

Reading Between the Lines in TW3 (#26)

The San Francisco Bay Guardian interviewed an escort who was targeted by the recent “Operation Cross Country” because somebody thought she looked under 18.  The article also revealed the ratio of adult sex workers to underage ones arrested in the Bay Area: 61 adults to 6 “children” (i.e. 16- or 17-year-old women).  10 to 1 is a very poor ratio considering that about 3.5% of all hookers are underage and the cops were specifically targeting youthful women.

The Course of a Disease in TW3 (#26)

“Hundreds of…sex workers protested in Paris…against plans to make soliciting prostitution illegal…France’s minister for women’s rights, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem…[has said] she would seek to make prostitution disappear by punishing those who pay for sex…but her remarks unleashed a hail of criticism from sex workers’ unions, which argued that punishing clients would drive business underground, endangering prostitutes…”

This Week in 2011

The last column of my first year was a two-part interview with my husband using reader-supplied questions, and the first of my second year explains why streetwalkers are a “Bone of Contention” among activists.  “Housewife Harlotry” demonstrates that transactional sex is an important part of marriage, “The Proper Study” is a short history of prostitution research and “Sisters in Arms” looks at the inevitable result of laws which infantilize women.

This Week in 2010

Though I’d write “Streetwalkers” a bit differently now, it still has some good points to make.  “Wanna Date?” asks whether it’s really possible to draw a sharp line between dating and whoring, and “Madonna and Whore” discusses the infamous duality and shows how girlfriends straddle it.  Finally, “Do You Party?” looks at my deep hatred of cocaine.

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Heart of Ice

Posted in Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on July 11, 2012| 53 Comments »

It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice! – Samuel T. Coleridge, “Kubla Khan”

My oldest surviving male friend, whom I’ll call “Charlie”, once said to me, “You’re extremely rational, for a woman.”  He meant it as a teasing compliment, a way to say something nice while still having a bit of fun with me, and I appreciated it in that spirit.  People (mostly men) have been complimenting my rationality for almost 20 years now; regular reader PWS wasn’t the first person to remark that I might be part Vulcan.  But other people (for about 30 years now) have expressed the same general idea from a less sympathetic frame of reference; I’ve been called “cold-hearted”, “cruel” and even (in extreme cases, again mostly by men) “inhuman”.  That’s very strange to me, because others describe me as “sweet”, “warm”, “kind”, “sympathetic”, “generous”, etc.  It’s almost as though they’re describing two different people, but they’re not:  water and ice are the same thing, after all, only in different states.

To those I care about, those who approach me as friends, those who seek out my help, and even those who smile at me in the aisles of shops, I am full of the milk of human kindness.  But those who harm or insult me or mine, those who approach me with hostility and those who demand my obedience or attempt to control me via threats, find that milk frozen harder than antarctic ice.  That’s when my “Vulcan” side comes out, and I treat the threat, human or otherwise, as I would treat any troublesome situation:  as a problem to be solved.  Allowing oneself to feel sorry for a venomous serpent about to strike is a good way to get killed, and allowing quarter to an implacable enemy is like nursing such a serpent at one’s bosom.  I’m all for fairness and rules of engagement, and as I said in Monday’s column I have no desire to harm potentially-innocent bystanders.  But only a fool desists from smiting an actively aggressive enemy; any foe who expects mercy from me must first break off combat and retreat.

One would think this would be an elementary concept, yet in the escalating conflict between those who want all individuals free to make their own sexual decisions and the busybodies who want to make those decisions for everyone, advocates like myself are now being asked to feel sympathy for people who would like nothing better than to see our entire profession eradicated, our members enslaved in sweatshops or committed to reprogramming, and our clients imprisoned, humiliated and ruined.  On a number of occasions in just the past few weeks I’ve been asked to spare the feelings of people who would as soon put a bullet in my brain as look at me, and who have used every available opportunity to libel, defame and insult sex worker rights activists.  To anyone who wants me to empathize with “survivors” who allow themselves to be used as weapons by prohibitionists, I say this:  If I were in a country troubled by violent fanatics and I saw a six-year-old girl running toward me with enough high explosives to send me to my ancestors six times over, I would indeed feel sorry for her; I might even cry later and say a prayer for her soul.  But I also wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger before she could get close enough to take me with her.  And if you think it’s better to let her blow up everyone in the general vicinity just so you can go to Hades with a clear conscience, you’ll have to forgive me for calling you a silly ass.

One final point:  most of the people who criticize my apparent lack of compassion for soi-disant “survivors” make the completely unsupported assumption that these women’s statements can be taken at face value, which they cannot; real sex work experiences, like real human experiences in any area, are complex and nuanced, and vary with the individuals who experience them.  This is not so with weaponized “survivor” narratives, which are simple, one-dimensional and sensationalistic, and vary very little from the prescribed model invented by Melissa Farley, Donna Hughes, Sheila Jeffreys, et al.  Real sex work experiences can often be verified by empirical evidence, such as corroborating accounts and methodologically-sound studies; “survivor” narratives must be accepted on faith, without any valid evidence whatsoever…according to some, even in the face of evidence that proves their falsity.  As I explained in “Imagination Pinned Down”, “trafficking” and “survivor” narratives not only strongly resemble each other, but also the tales told by those who claim to have been Satanically abused or abducted by aliens.  If these women were as harmless as UFO cultists we could afford the luxury of empathy, but that is not the case; as long as fanatics and governments use them as tools to restrict the rights of millions, we have no choice but to turn a cold, scientific eye to their stories.  If someone’s claims that vaccines cause autism were being used as the excuse to ban them, wouldn’t you want those claims proven?  How sympathetic would you feel toward self-proclaimed “victims of vaccination” whose efforts might result in the deaths of thousands of children from diseases conquered decades ago?  Not very, I’ll wager.  I’m sympathetic to women who have truly suffered, or even believe they have suffered, as long as they do not use their trauma as an excuse to interfere with the lives of others.  But once they align themselves with dangerous, aggressive enemies, I can’t afford that empathy any longer.

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The Odor of Socks

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on June 1, 2012| 30 Comments »

What!  Would you make no distinction between hypocrisy and devotion?  Would you give them the same names, and respect the mask as you do the face?  Would you equate artifice and sincerity?  Confound appearance with truth?  Regard the phantom as the very person?  Value counterfeit as cash?  –  Molière, Tartuffe (I, v)

The internet has made it much more difficult to lie about an entire group of people; now that everyone can blog, “tweet” and otherwise self-publish the members of that group can speak up for themselves, thus revealing the truth for everyone to see.  As I pointed out in “Objectification Overruled”,

…the average person doesn’t deal with members of any given minority nearly as often as with members of the majority, and if hate or fear toward that group can be maintained he isn’t likely to have an intimate enough relationship with any of its members to learn that the prejudice and propaganda are false.  If black people or Jews are segregated into ghettos and prohibited from frequent interaction with the majority, members of that majority don’t get the opportunity to learn the truth about them; and if homosexuals and whores are criminalized they are afraid to expose themselves…  

The internet, however, allows whores to write about our lives without revealing our legal names to cops and prosecutors, and blogs like this one expose large numbers of people to the fact that most hookers are pretty much like anyone else, with a wide variety of temperaments, personalities, interests, educational levels, personal histories, etc.  Needless to say, this makes prohibitionists very angry; their whole strategy relies on convincing the public that the vast majority of us are broken dolls with bad childhoods, a history of sexual abuse, poor education and a total absence of other options (either because of extreme deprivation or because we were literally enslaved by evil “pimps”).  As I’ve pointed out to a number of journalists, can you imagine prohibitionists using me as a poster child?  “This poor, eloquent, 33-year-old masters-degreed librarian with high self esteem had no choice but to accept sexual slavery?”  They’d be laughed out of the marketplace of ideas so fast their pointy heads would spin.  No, they have to make it seem as though people like me are fabulous beasts in stark contrast to emotionally damaged “child” prostitutes who are regularly dragged down streets behind pimps’ cars without sustaining life-threatening injuries or being seen by any witnesses.  But how can they accomplish that when there are so many of us telling the truth?  “Well, Maggie’s not representative, nor is Brandy, nor Kelly, nor Emily, nor Aspasia, nor Norma Jean, nor Brooke, nor Audacia, nor Tracy, nor Charlotte, nor Elena, nor Cheryl, nor Melissa, nor Sina, nor Ariane…” It begins to get pretty damned unbelievable as that list increases in length.

When I was in library school I once did a research paper on collection packing; I called it “Censorship by Commission” (as opposed to traditional censorship, which is accomplished by omission).  Collection packing is when an unethical librarian purchases (with library funds) a large number of books representing a minority view, so that a casual library patron will believe that view is more mainstream than it actually is.  For example, an unscrupulous creationist librarian might obtain as many books on “scientific creationism” as she could find and file them alongside books on geology and evolutionary theory, instead of consigning them to the religion section or the 001.9 ghetto where they belong.  Prohibitionists do this as well; they present the “reframed experiences” of “survivors” to support their claims, but since these are a small minority the usual approach (as practiced by Farley, Kristof, et al) is to present the same stories over and over again with slightly-altered details so as to “pack the collection” of available narratives.

This can only go so far against the huge number of vocal whores, however; even the most credulous of prohibitionist marks will eventually notice that while we regularly post new material and interact with our readers, the supposed plethora of “human trafficking victims” are represented only in third person.  And so a new weapon has become necessary:  the sock puppet.  Every tool can be used for good or ill, and while the anonymity of the internet makes it possible for whores to speak out without fear of arrest or other persecution, it also allows trolls to set up multiple accounts so as to create phantom “supporters” of their views.  Some writers and activists suspect that a number of “big names” are directly behind the ever-increasing number of supposed “survivors” who write in an eerily-similar manner and tend to tell the same stories, but I think it’s far more likely that some of the copious grant money flowing from the likes of the US State Department, the Hunt Alternatives Fund and Google is going to hire full-time shills (some “survivors” but most just ghostwriters) to write blogs, post in comment threads and insult activists on Twitter.

You may feel I’m being paranoid, but I have several strong reasons for believing this.  First, the number of such accounts has increased dramatically in the past year; if terrible experiences in prostitution were common, one would’ve expected that the proportion of “survivor” narratives to “happy hooker” narratives would have remained relatively constant for the past decade (with perhaps a gradual increase as “trafficking” hysteria grew).  But that isn’t the case; the proportion has instead grown quickly in just the last few months.  Second, these narratives appear to pop up just where they can do the most damage (such as in places considering the Swedish Model) rather than in areas such as Australia where they wouldn’t have a great deal of effect.  Third, they often seem to be targeted against specific writers; for example, few if any self-professed “prostituted women” ever called themselves “call girls” before, but since January the phrase (which is especially associated with the works of Tracy Quan, Brooke Magnanti and yours truly) is suddenly popping up in the blog titles and screen names associated with neofeminist-flavored anti-sex worker propaganda.  Finally (and in my mind most damningly), the style of many of these accounts is the same:  they use the same terms, the same tactics and the same idiosyncratic phrases; they rely on the same propaganda techniques and commit the same logical fallacies; and they tend to tell the same stories and rely on the same sources (though this last is true of most anti-sex worker activists).  These various online personas are either maintained by one small group of prohibitionists, or else a somewhat larger group of professionals working from a style sheet as the writers of Doc Savage and Tom Swift books did.  But in either case, the result is the same:  a number of mysterious “women” who share similarly stylized and melodramatic pimp-dominated “histories” in prostitution, and whose blogs, comments and “tweets” all bear the unmistakable odor of dirty socks.

One Year Ago Today

“Mind Reading” looks at “authorities” who claim to be able to read minds and unerringly discern the motives of people they wish to persecute.

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Feet of Clay

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 5, 2012| 18 Comments »

You, O king, saw, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before you; and its form was frightening.  This image’s head was of fine gold, its breast and its arms of silver, its belly and its thighs of bronze, Its legs of iron, its feet part of iron and part of clay.  –  Daniel 2:31-33

Because I don’t live in New York and am comparatively new (about two years) to the whole blogging scene, I had actually never heard of Nicholas Kristof until autumn of 2010 (which is only fair, since he apparently hadn’t heard of me until March 18th).  As I’ve since discovered, he’s been trying to make a name for himself for years, but petty little men like Kristof can never climb on their own; they always do so by trying to bring down others, and if that takes lies so be it.  In the last few years he has used “sex trafficking” hysteria (and crusades against prostitutes, brothels and Backpage) to establish himself as a hero to legions of adoring  fans, and while those of us working to dispel the myths about the subject have seen him for what he is for quite some time, it’s only recently that more mainstream writers have begun to call attention to this idol’s feet of clay.

The process started the same day he “tweeted” about my column, March 18th; on that day he published one of his typical lurid “sex slavery” accounts, claiming that Backpage was somehow responsible for the “pimping” of a 16-year-old girl he called “Alissa”.  As regular readers know, Kristof always plays fast-and-loose with the facts in such columns, but this time he went too far; while he usually uses anonymous women’s stories (often without permission) and then distorts and exaggerates them into unrecognizability (to “protect” the women, of course), this time he left enough facts to allow the story to be checked.  So Village Voice (owners of Backpage) did, and guess what?

Nicholas D. Kristof…wrote about an underage victim of human trafficking:  “Alissa says pimps routinely peddled her on Backpage.”  A video that accompanied his online op-ed was headlined:  “Age 16, She Was Sold on Backpage.com”  That is not true.  According to Alissa’s court testimony, she was 16 in 2003.  Backpage.com did not exist anywhere in America in 2003…she…came to the FBI’s attention in August, 2005 [and] was…relocated away from the corners and hotels she worked in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Atlantic City…In the summer of 2005 Backpage.com did not exist in Boston, New York, Philadelphia or Atlantic City.  Had Kristof followed any of The New York Times’ standards of journalism, he would have known this.  He could have read the court transcripts.  He could have read the testimony…He could have Googled the case and read the coverage in The Boston Globe…Neglecting to do any of the above, Kristof could still have asked us.  Despite extensive correspondence with our attorney, he never mentioned Alissa or sought confirmation about her purported link to Backpage.com at the age of 16.  Instead, he concocted a story to suit his agenda and then asked his readers to boycott Village Voice Media…


It’s possible that Alissa lied either in her testimony or to Kristof, or both; it would be typical of the “reframing of experiences” neofeminist prohibitionists teach to “survivors”.  But given Kristof’s track record, it’s just as likely he made it up without her help.  Jacob Sullum of Reason covered the story on the 21st, and one of the commenters on that column provided a link to a May 2010 article in The Atlantic about the ordeal of Dr. Steven Hatfill, who was railroaded by the FBI for the September 2001 anthrax scare…and as it turns out, Kristof helped to lay the rails:

…Some journalists became convinced there was plenty pointing to Hatfill’s guilt.  Among those beating the drum early and loud…was Nicholas Kristof…[who initially] stopped short of naming Hatfill publicly, instead branding him with the sinister-sounding pseudonym “Mr. Z.”  Without identifying his sources, in a July column Kristof wrote:

If Mr. Z were an Arab national, he would have been imprisoned long ago.  But he is a true-blue American with close ties to the U.S. Defense Department, the C.I.A. and the American biodefense program…With many experts buzzing about Mr. Z behind his back, it’s time for the F.B.I. to make a move:  either it should go after him more aggressively, sifting thoroughly through his past and picking up loose threads, or it should seek to exculpate him and remove this cloud of suspicion.

One of those threads, Kristof reported, pointed to the possibility that Mr. Z was a genocidal racist who had carried out germ warfare to slaughter innocent black Africans.  Kristof addressed his column directly to the FBI:

Have you examined whether Mr. Z has connections to the biggest anthrax outbreak among humans ever recorded, the one that sickened more than 10,000 black farmers in Zimbabwe in 1978–80?  There is evidence that the anthrax was released by the white Rhodesian Army fighting against black guerrillas, and Mr. Z has claimed that he participated in the white army’s much-feared Selous Scouts.  Could rogue elements of the American military have backed the Rhodesian Army in anthrax and cholera attacks against blacks?

Kristof didn’t mention that the majority of soldiers in the Rhodesian army, and in Hatfill’s unit, were black; or that many well-respected scientists who examined the evidence concluded that the Rhodesian anthrax outbreak emerged naturally when cattle herds went unvaccinated during a turbulent civil war.  Kristof also failed to mention that Mr. Z had served in that war as a lowly private.  To have been involved in some sort of top-secret Rhodesian germ-weapons program “would’ve been like a Pakistani army private being brought in to work on a project at Los Alamos,” Hatfill says today.

Kristof wrote that Mr. Z had shown “evasion” in repeated FBI polygraph examinations.  He also claimed that following the anthrax attacks, Mr. Z had accessed an “isolated residence”…where…“Mr. Z gave Cipro to people who visited it.”  Other journalists would later describe this mysterious residence as a “remote cabin,” a kind of Ted Kaczynski–style hideout where a deranged scientist could easily have prepared anthrax for mailing.  In fact, the “cabin” was a three-bedroom weekend home…in rural Virginia owned by a longtime friend of Hatfill’s, George R. Borsari Jr., an avuncular Washington communications lawyer and retired Army lieutenant colonel.  Borsari says he found speculation that his place had been a haven for spies or bioterrorists laughable.  When an FBI agent asked Borsari if he would allow a search of the property, Borsari said no.  “I told him, ‘I’m not going to be a part of your publicity game,’” Borsari says.  No search was ever conducted, but by then the damage to Hatfill had been done…

Kristof’s grown more ambitious in the past decade; he used to be satisfied with libeling individuals, but now he targets entire corporations.  Nor is it only sex worker rights advocates and libertarians who question Kristof’s motives and methods; consider this March 21st  article (also from The Atlantic) by Teju Cole, in which he compares Kristof to the disgraced “Invisible Children” crusaders:

…This weekend, I listened to a radio interview given by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof…best known for his…  accounts of his activism or that of other Westerners.  When I saw the Kony 2012 video, I found it tonally similar to Kristof’s approach…I do not accuse Kristof of racism nor do I believe he is in any way racist…But that, precisely, is what worries me…His good heart does not always allow him to think constellationally.  He does not connect the dots or see the patterns of power behind the isolated “disasters.”  All he sees…is need, and he sees no need to reason out the need for the need…I disagree with the approach taken by…the White Savior Industrial Complex…because there is much more to doing good work than “making a difference.”  There is the principle of first do no harm.  There is the idea that those who are being helped ought to be consulted over the matters that concern them…

I think Cole is being too kind in saying Kristof is good-hearted and not racist; in fact I agree with Dr. Laura Agustín that he’s very much a racist, because he believes his own race and culture’s way of doing things is the right way for everyone.  True charity does not come at the point of a gun, good causes need not be shored up with lies, and worthy idols do not have feet of clay.

One Year Ago Today

“April Updates” discusses the suppressed Rind-Tromovitch-Bauserman study, reports on the Egyptian women subjected to “virginity tests” and two New Orleans cops fired for harassing streetwalkers, criticizes the conviction of a Massachusetts sportswriter for “pimping” and marks the publication of Satoshi Kanazawa’s column about me.

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That Was the Week That Was (#4)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 12, 2012| 21 Comments »

Nothing can be more surely established by a larger experience than that a Government which interferes with any trade injures that trade.  –  Walter Bagehot

Seven updates to previous columns from the fourth week of 2012.

All Shapes and Sizes (September 8th, 2010)

In this column I mentioned Peyronie’s Syndrome, which causes penile deformity; according to this January 23rd article from Science Now a more effective therapy may be on the horizon:

…A new study in rats shows that lacing a penis graft with adult stem cells yields better healing and sexual function…Men with penis injuries, deformities, or severe Peyronie’s disease…sometimes need surgery to reconstruct their genitalia and restore their sexual function.  Many receive a graft made of their own tissue, cadaver tissue, or pig intestines, but the surgery can cause complications, including erectile dysfunction.  Wayne Hellstrom, a urologic surgeon at Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans…wanted…a surgical intervention with fewer side effects.  So he teamed up with colleagues in California and China [to seed] pig intestine grafts with adult stem cells taken from fat tissue in rats…the researchers…found that rats with stem cell-laden grafts had less scarring and better erectile responses…than did those with stem cell-free grafts.  The rodents’ erections were comparable in rigidity, blood flow, and response time to those in the…control rats…The results…suggest that lacing the grafts with stem cells enhances blood flow and boosts the production of molecules that make and maintain erections, all of which makes for a better penis reconstruction…Hellstrom and colleagues plan to test the method in primates next and then eventually in people.  “Peyronie’s affects 3% to 9% of adult males and causes a lot of psychological distress,” Hellstrom says.  “If we can improve what we have now, it seems like the logical thing to do.”

The Red Umbrella (December 17th, 2010)

“As we’ve discussed many, many times in the past, violence from the police [and] bad customers…is all too common a part of the lives of prostitutes, most especially streetwalkers; too many men…consider whores to be disposable, “non-persons” against whom assault, robbery or rape is permissible.  A large part of the reason for this is the suppression of our trade; the laws criminalizing our profession allow weak-minded men…to convince themselves that since we are “criminals” we don’t deserve to be treated like human beings, and the attitude of both the law and the police makes it difficult to impossible for…prostitutes to even be heard by the police much less have crimes against us investigated.”  This story from the January 10th Orlando Sentinel  demonstrates the first part of my statement and provides a welcome exception to the latter part; too bad Juarez will never recognize the poetic justice of the date he was arrested:

…Ernesto Juarez, 32, is facing several charges in a Dec. 17 attack, including sexual battery with a deadly weapon…[he] admitted to attacking, raping or attempting to rape five prostitutes…[but] detectives have yet to charge him in four of the cases.  One of his alleged victims…told [reporters] about her dangerous encounter…Juarez…picked her up on the afternoon of Dec. 10…agreed to pay her $40…and said he was going to take her to his house…[but when he] head[ed] into a secluded area and stopped at a metal gate, the woman became suspicious…[he] got out…went around to her side of the vehicle and pulled off his pants…[but when she asked for her] money, he punched her in the face…[then] pulled her outside and continued hitting her…[she got free and] crawled under the truck, grabbed ahold of the frame and held on as he tugged on her legs…[eventually she got] away…and [ran] to a nearby business screaming for help…A week [later] the property owner noticed Juarez’s pickup parked in the same [spot]…[he] found Juarez [raping] another prostitute in the front seat and called police…Juarez managed to drive away but didn’t get far…he first denied hurting the woman…but later changed his story and described how he had beaten and raped several prostitutes beginning in September.  [He claimed] he would “lose control” when the prostitutes asked him for money up front, because he viewed it as a sign of “disrespect”…Juarez is being held without bail at the Orange County Jail.

One wonders if he “loses control” when cashiers expect him to pay before taking groceries from a store, or if he just reserves his indignation for women he thinks won’t call the cops.

Real Men Support Sex Worker Rights (April 22nd, 2011)

In this January 26th essay in Reason, Jacob Sullum demonstrates his balls not only by opposing the popular campaign against Backpage and criticizing Forbes columnist Daniel Fisher (who ruined his own attack on Backpage’s critics with a mealy-mouthed anti-whore statement), but also by standing up for our rights and slamming Nicholas Kristof as one of the perpetuators of the system which exposes us to harm:

…Fisher hastens to add, “I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with trying to shut down the vigorous market for human flesh.”  Well, I am saying that, if…he means the exchange of sex for money.  It makes as much sense to ban prostitution because some prostitutes are forced…as it does to ban agriculture because farms have been known to use slaves…prohibition forces…prostitutes to work in dangerous conditions, picking up customers on the street or covertly connecting with them online, and makes it harder for them to seek legal remedies when they are cheated or abused.  These hazards, similar to those seen in black markets for drugs and gambling, are not inherent to the business of selling sex; they are inherent to the policy of using force to suppress peaceful commerce.  Since these dangers are entirely predictable, prohibitionists like Kristof should be reflecting on their role in perpetuating them, instead of making scapegoats out of businesses that run classified ads.

I strongly urge you to read the whole thing!

Full of Themselves (June 7th, 2011)

“I always find it fascinating when women in professions which are only barely different from prostitution (such as stripping or domination) or historically connected to prostitution (such as acting and massage) get all holier-than-thou, proclaiming themselves ‘better’ than we are…”

Would you believe…competition pole dancers trying to distance themselves from strippers?

Three Russian pole dancers…applied for visas to travel to the United States…they were told that it was best not to mention…that…[they were] in a pole dancing competition…the visa authorities decided to do some poking around…on…Facebook…[and discovered] they weren’t just tourists…their visas were…canceled…[and they] were subjected to an humiliating…grilling by three federal agents…Any other dance competition would have been above suspicion, but since it was pole dancing, they immediately [made] the stripper connection and…presumed that the competition was just window dressing for human trafficking, prostitution and illegal stripping!  This sad lack of comprehension is unfortunately still a reality and we have a long way to go before the stripper association is dislodged from people’s minds.  As of now the stereotype that people still have about pole dancing prevents them from viewing it as the legitimate art form that requires creativity and imagination and a sport that requires tremendous skill, athletic ability and great strength.

Because, you know, when a stripper does it to make a living it isn’t “legitimate” and requires no creativity, imagination, skill or athletic ability.  The writer doesn’t criticize the whole “sex workers are trafficked” nonsense; she’s only irate because the dancers were confused with “common” strippers.

Forward and Backward (November 22nd, 2011)

Remember those “prostitution-free zones” that enable Washington, DC cops to arrest people for “looking like prostitutes”, and how they’re trying to make them permanent?  Well, a coalition of civil rights advocates and transsexuals (who suffer disproportionately because cops assume they’re all drag streetwalkers) are fighting it, and the DC attorney general reluctantly agreed with them.  According to the January 24th Washington Post:

The D.C. attorney general’s office said…that the District’s temporary “prostitution-free zones” are probably unconstitutional, raising fresh doubts about a bill…that would broaden the zones and make them permanent…In [such] areas…police can make arrests for up to 24 consecutive days if two or more people congregate in public…and ignore dispersal orders…Council member Yvette Alexander…has introduced a bill that would empower police to make the zones permanent.  But [assistant AG Ariel] Waldman and Assistant Police Chief Peter New­sham expressed broad reservations about the bill…The statements…and…concerns from social service and gay rights activists, present fresh hurdles for Alexander’s efforts to combat prostitution…

When a politician says something is “probably unconstitutional”, it really means “this is so obviously unconstitutional we haven’t a snowball’s chance in Hell of slipping it past the civil libertarians without raising a huge stink.”

Legal Is as Legal Does (December 14th, 2011)

Yet another example of the dangers of legalization, in this case laws which presume hookers are so stupid we need Nanny to “protect” us from big bad pimps (unless they have a government license, of course):

A young prostitute was caught out in a covert operation called Operation Heatwave after she and three other prostitutes went to visit clients who turned out to be undercover police.  Aimee Louise Roy, 21, went to a hotel…with three other sex workers on October 23 to meet clients…[who were secretly] police and the group was arrested.  Roy was charged with knowingly participating in providing prostitution…If she was acting on her own, she wouldn’t have been in trouble.  There are two forms of legal sex work in Queensland – sole operators (private work) where a single sex worker works alone and sex work conducted in a licensed brothel…Magistrate Matthew McLaughlin noted the law was designed to catch out “pimps” and told Roy if she wanted to keep up that line of work she should do it through a licensed premises.

The story also demonstrates that pigs are pigs and will inevitably use whatever loophole the law gives them to harass and victimize whores.

The More the Better (January 9th, 2012)

The “gentrification” of Nevada brothels continues:

…a legal brothel near Reno [Nevada is]…taking the world’s oldest profession into the modern age of luxury recreation, featuring a cabaret…a fully equipped spa, and 10 deluxe suites.  “We see this as the Ritz-Carlton of brothels,” [said] Lance Gilman, co-owner of the Mustang Ranch Resort…[which] seeks to earn 40 percent of its revenue from goods and services unrelated to private time with the ladies…It costs nothing to stay at the resort [but] guests have to pay at least one of the women to accompany them around the Ranch at all times…Gilman and [his wife Susan] Austin said they were inspired by Walt Disney, who famously took his children to a shabby carnival and imagined building what would become the world’s first theme park — Disneyland.  “Most brothels are basically trailer parks in isolated places and there’s nothing to do once you get there other than have sex,” Gilman said…

This is great news; it was after Vegas casinos started “gentrifying” in the ‘80s that people from other states dropped their prejudices against gambling, and now casinos are everywhere in the US.  Of course,

…That’s not good news to people like Anne Bissell…[a] former prostitute…[whose self-appointed] mission is to deglamorize the…sex industry, which she believes to be full of what are not victimless crimes.  “The sex industry has hijacked so many terms, like freedom of choice…It used to be the definition of an empowered woman was a doctor or lawyer.  Now it’s a stripper or prostitute…”

This incredibly stupid statement has become very popular among prohibitionists; I wonder what looking-glass world they’re living in?  Because in this one, legally barring women from certain jobs is a restriction of choice, and the government and media paint sex workers as powerless victims.

One Year Ago Today

“February Updates (Part One)” features items about a hooker accused of spreading HIV, a former madam pandering to popular prohibitionist myths and an Anglican priest fighting for strippers’ rights.

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