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In the News (#635)

Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged Across the Pond, agency denial, Alabama, bogus studies, Canada, Dubai, fantasy, Florida, hysteria, law, Louisiana, Maier's Law, Massachusetts, naturalness, Ohio, Older Than You Thought, Original Sin, Paint By Numbers, politicians, porn, racism, Romania, Rooted in Racism, Saving Them from Themselves, sexting, Soap Opera, streetwalkers, Surplus Women, Sweden, Swedish model, The Course of a Disease, The Last Shall Be First, The Pro-Rape Coalition, transgender, Under Every Bed, United Kingdom on May 7, 2016| Leave a Comment »

America is a complicated, conflicted country founded by Puritans, constituted by libertarians and built by salesmen. – Mark Simpson

An Older Profession Than You May Have Thought

It’s impossible to state this too often:

While, on the surface, discussion of sex has become far more acceptable in recent years, in practise, many facts are still considered unpalatable. And no subject arouses more emotion than the evolution of sex as a tradeable commodity: the biology of prostitution. The idea that prostitution might be a biological impulse can deeply upset those with dogmatic viewpoints. For religious people, the thought of a God that created prostitution is too much to take…But revulsion at the thought of sex trade goes far beyond religion. As the political left has become increasingly conservative in its attitudes, it has become common to blame the existence of prostitution on Patriarchy or Capitalism. Thus, for some feminists, banning prostitution is a part of their war on Patriarchy. And for socialists, attacking prostitution is part of a righteous war against Capital. But the history of sex trade goes back many millions of years before humanity…

The Pro-Rape Coalition

This excellent article about anti-porn hysteria is also very droll at points:

PORN HORROR! headlines zoom repeatedly into our sightlines, warning us that pornography is “addictive” (despite an inconvenient lack of evidence), “ruins relationships” and “rewires men’s brains“, turning them into sex zombie automatons…The UK Government…is currently in the sweaty grip of…this hysteria. With David Cameron’s controversial (and somewhat porous) ISP porn filters only recently installed, MPs are now turning their attention to the popularity of anal sex in online pornography…it’s important to note that the religious and legal definition of “sodomy” is not restricted to anal sex – it is essentially any non-procreative naughtiness, whatever the shape of the genitals involved…porn today is basically broadband sodomy – non-procreative sex acts piped into people’s hands for them to commit non-procreative sex acts over. Current porn panics represent a digital-age, socially-concerned update of warnings about the terrible fate of Sodom and Gomorrah…The crusade against “fapping” is eerily reminiscent of the anti-masturbation movements of the 19th century …Dr John Harvey Kellogg…was one of the most famous foes of the “solitary vice”. His bland cornflakes were supposed to save you from it – like porn today, an exciting diet was thought to lead to overstimulation…

Rooted in Racism

How can people not see that “sex trafficking” hysteria is firmly rooted in xenophobia?

…Although freedom of movement is guaranteed within the European Union, the right to stay – after the first three months – is dependent on new arrivals “exercising their treaty rights”, for example, by working or studying. Operation Nexus, a combined police and immigration initiative…has been targeting [European migrants] …since 2012. Among those detained and served with deportation papers are an increasing number of [sex workers] from…Romania…Several women fighting deportation are now being supported by the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP)…Previous EU law cases have established that prostitution constitutes self-employment…

Saving Them From Themselves

Another teen’s life destroyed for flirting:

Another male teenager’s future is in jeopardy after police charged him with possession of child pornography…because he swapped sexy photos and videos with a girl. Levar Allen, a 17-year-old athlete at his Louisiana public school, is black. The girl, a 16-year-old, is white. Local news stories note that she initiated the sexting, and he reciprocated…For what it’s worth, the girl was also charged with sexting. But since she’s under the age of 17, it’s a misdemeanor. Since Allen is a year older, he’s technically guilty of a felony…

Surplus Women

A prisoner is seeking an early release after having spent 15 years out of a life imprisonment…the Dubai Court of First Instance jailed the Uzbek convict, K.S., for life for trying to kidnap [a] Russian [sex worker], asphyxiating her and throwing her body from the balcony of [a] seven-storey flat…in 2001. The 59-year-old petitioner has been…at Dubai Central Jail since his arrest on March 19, 2001…

Maier’s Law

Fanatic finds data disproves “sex trafficking” theory, concludes we need new data:

Sarah Godoy…has now authored a new comprehensive literature review of sex trafficking in the United States, with components of global human trafficking as well…Godoy included more than 135 pieces of [prohibitionist] literature [based] on [the] sex trafficking [narrative], dating from 1999 to 2016…While she found some enlightening and often horrific statistics…what she didn’t find was equally disturbing. “Weak methodologies in empirical evidence, and small data sets that urge readers to not republish as…representative…That’s what we found. We don’t really have a comprehensive, representative sample of what sex trafficking in the U.S. really is”…the [made-up] numbers compiled by Godoy are daunting. According to the study, human trafficking is the fastest-growing criminal enterprise in the world…21 million…”I think it shows that not enough resources are being put into adequately capturing data…We have [myths about] what traffickers look like, but in every single capacity, there are a lot of gaps”…

Across the Pond

…The main laws governing prostitution in the UK are still the 1956 Sexual Offences Act, which makes brothel-keeping an offence, and the 1959 Street Offences Act, which criminalises solicitation. The Street Offences Act was created on the back of a 1957 document called the Wolfenden Report…[which] didn’t include testimony from a single working prostitute…Since sex workers began to demand a voice in law-making, there have been victories – the 1984 defeat of a dangerous bill; 2014’s quashing of another – but the pattern of legislating over their heads continued…And here we are in 2016, discussion raging once more. Sex workers sidelined, once more. When the current UK inquiry gathered oral evidence there [was]…just one current sex worker, Laura Lee…

The Last Shall Be First

…the Marion County [Florida] School Board approved a North Carolina-style Gender Inspection resolution that will prohibit transgender students from using the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity. Over 100 people showed up to the School Board meeting…where this resolution was brought forward as an “emergency” agenda item just six days after it was introduced. Forty-six people testified at the hearing, and the majority of testimony was in strong opposition…

The Course of a Disease

As I’ve said before, there can never be too many anti-Swedish model articles:

…What adherents to [the Swedish model pretend they]…don’t understand is that such laws only make working conditions much more dangerous for sex workers and do very little to curb the demand for commercial sex…laws criminalizing buyers…make…screening much more difficult…Since 2000, studies show, [Swedish] sex workers…have a much more difficult time negotiating safe sex (i.e. sex with condoms) and assessing dangerous clients…Sweden’s approach has actually increased the overall number of sex workers in that country and did not reduce trafficking in the region at all, according to the Swedish government’s own reports. By contrast, countries that have decriminalized sex work…report no increase in…trafficking…and…sex workers in those countries are better able to protect themselves…

Soap Opera

For some reason, “sex trafficking” fetishists seem to trot out even more lurid masturbatory fantasies than usual for the Republican convention:

Both law enforcement and advocacy groups are predicting an increase in sex trafficking during Cleveland’s Republican National Convention in July…the Renee Jones Empowerment Center and the Collaborative Initiative to End Human Trafficking are actively working to [spread hysteria about] human trafficking in the weeks leading up to the convention. “We know that it will occur,” said founder Renee Jones. “There’s no question in my mind”…Save Our Adolescents from Prostitution…visit…local motels to [harass]…employees [with nonsense about]…potential trafficking victims. S.O.A.P volunteers…handed out…small bars of soap with a national trafficking hotline number. The group’s founder, Therese Flores, [has made a career out of claims she] was once herself a trafficking victim and [repeats masturbatory fantasies about being] auctioned off at Detroit motel…

Original Sin

Officials invite religious fanatic to speak about her dogma, then feign surprise when she does:

…guest speaker Tajuan McCarty…told…roughly 300 people who attended…[an] event [at the US Army’s Redstone Arsenal] that “the only way to truly overcome the horrors of rape and sex trafficking is to have Jesus as your ‘King'”…McCarty is director of The Wellhouse in Birmingham, Alabama, often described as “a Christian home” for women rescued from the sex industry…[and] has told her [tragedy porn]…[on] 700 Club...

Under Every Bed

Another ridiculous tale of spineless women & pimps with magical powers:

…Yarmouth [Massachusetts] police raided a…house…and arrested a man on charges of running a prostitution operation…Police Chief Frank Frederickson [bloviated about] “Bringing women into this seedy atmosphere”…Kenneth E. Silva Jr…pleaded not guilty…Police…searched the house [and claimed] they found evidence of human trafficking…At least three women were working for Silva…Police did not arrest them because they were considered victims…pimps…control women through…a…”mind shift” [fantasized prohibitionist Stacy Gallagher]…”just like at major sporting events, women and kids are being sold.”

Paint By Numbers

“Anti-trafficking” publicity stunts are growing ever more bizarre:

Eddie Quann [imagines changes in propaganda represent changes in reality]…“Two years ago, 13-15 million people a year were being trafficked…Now…it’s 30-35 million. It’s doubled.” Human Trafficking — a modern-day form of slavery — is the second largest organized crime in the world next to drug trafficking…The workshop is a hands-on craft that runs about two-and-a-half hours. Everyone is given a partially-made cloth doll, and with needle and thread, ribbon, yarn and so on, they stuff their doll and decorate it…As the dolls are sewn, participants learn all about human trafficking…“You can decorate it everywhere but the face,” said Gina. “The faceless doll represents all those sold into trafficking as faceless people. To the ones selling them, who they are doesn’t matter.” The doll goes home, hopefully to a prominent place in the house, as a reminder to pray daily for the millions of victims trapped in a degrading, powerless life…

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In the News (#630)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged Above the Law, agency denial, Backwards into the Future, cell phones, comics, cops, dating, Dating Game, disease, Full of Themselves, Girls Girls Girls, Guinea Pigs, Hollywood, Illinois, Madonna/whore, Malawi, masturbation, Neither Addiction nor Epidemic, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, politicians, prohibitionist myths, psychology, rape, Reviews, Sales Pitch, stripping, surveillance, Sweden, Swedish model, The Course of a Disease, The Notorious Badge, The Rape Question, United Kingdom, With Friends Like These on April 16, 2016| 10 Comments »

Self-professed progressives fight for middle class utopias at the expense of the socially weak. – Cas Mudde

Book Reviews

An interview with Chester Brown about his newest graphic novel:

…Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus may be the most provocative comic book published this year. Beginning as a series of short Bible stories, many of them with a sexual edge—Tamar grappling with her husband, Onan, Bathsheba’s affair with King David—it gradually transforms into a polemic. Drawing variously on academic scholarship, apocryphal texts, and his own keen interpretative eye, Brown argues that Jesus’ mother was a prostitute—and that Jesus’ own appreciation of prostitution was suppressed by later authors. Though he tells familiar stories, Brown often pushes them in surprising—and sometimes even shocking—directions. In one especially memorable sequence, he suggests that the anointment of Jesus described in all four gospels may have been sexual…Brown defends this conclusion in a series of lengthy exegetical endnotes that capture both the scope of his inquiries and the shape of his own fascinations…

Remember, Chester will be signing books in Seattle tonight!

Sales Pitch

The Swedish model has virtually eliminated prostitution in Sweden!

Streetwalkers have largely disappeared from the sidewalks but prostitution remains alive and well in northern Europe where laws criminalising the purchase of sex have been in place for years, illustrating the limits of legislation…Sweden was the first country to do so in 1999, and Norway and Iceland followed suit a decade later. But prostitution is far from being eradicated in these countries, despite the fact that sex clients risk heavy fines or even prison sentences…Authorities…however [pretend to be] satisfied with the effects the legislation has had…

Girls, Girls, Girls!

Laws banning alcohol in strip clubs are among the most Puritanical and asinine of all sex industry “regulations”:

For years, the city of Chicago has prohibited businesses from mixing alcoholic beverage sales with nude dancing. Strip clubs within the Windy City limits have to choose between serving booze and featuring dancers that exhibit their “genitals, pubic hair, buttocks” or, if female, “any portion of the … breast below the areola”, though clubs may permit patrons to bring their own drinks. But now some Chicago city lawmakers are trying to open topless establishments for alcohol business…of course the dispensation doesn’t come without strings attached: “If a would-be owner sought to open a new club with drinks and partial nudity, it could do so only if it obtained a cabaret license,” a new designation which would require meeting “strict zoning codes” and “a special-use permit that would require community hearings”…

Our descendants will view such laws with much the same horror as many Westerners view strict hijab laws.

The Course of a Disease

One can never have too many anti-Swedish model editorials:

…The so-called “Nordic Model” is a return to the darkest periods of left-wing paternalism, in which…the opinions of the “protected” are either ignored or dismissed by the “protectors”. Sex workers, who in large majority oppose the criminalization of people who buy sex…are stripped of their agency, reduced to “victims” of the “sex industry” who suffer from “false consciousness”. A recent editorial of The Guardian, the British standard bearer of the European progressiveness, gives an interesting insight into the increasing difficulties that progressives have with justifying criminalization of sex work. It is a remarkable combination of confusion and desperation. While it actually refers to some of the little reliable research that is out there, it largely ignores its implications and recommendations. This is because most serious research shows that the “Nordic Model” has neither improved the situation of sex workers nor significantly decreased the “sex industry”…

Above the Law

It’s hard to be sure, but this one may have really been an ex-cop:

A former Carolina Beach police officer is being accused of pretending to [still] be a cop and threatening to arrest women if they didn’t [submit to rape]…Joseph Adam Silva…[raped one] escort…on March 15…[but he] allegedly committed [others] between Jan.1 and Jan. 20…he reportedly told [one] victim he was a police officer investigating a prostitution sting…he is now facing a total of 18 charges. [Six] women have come forward…and…Detectives [claim] that anyone who comes forward will not be incriminated…

I wouldn’t trust the cops, ladies; just because they don’t prosecute you now doesn’t mean you won’t go on a watch list for later harassment.

The Notorious Badge

I don’t own a TV set, so I won’t be watching this show. But Lux Alptraum’s review jibes very well with my impressions from watching the trailer, including my opinion that the lead was dreadfully miscast:

The Girlfriend Experience…is a strange beast. Despite being made seven years after Soderbergh’s Sasha Grey vehicle, it feels, weirdly, more regressive in its attitude towards sex work. The film sought to draw comparisons between escorting and other service industries…In contrast, the show seems determined to double down on the “exotic” nature of the industry…at no point does Christine seem like a woman who would be drawn to escorting. I don’t mean that she’s “too smart” or “too driven” or that she has “other options” (many of the sex workers I know are smart, driven, and with plenty of career options). It’s more that she seems to completely lack any of the basic skills that are necessary for the job. Escorts who cater to wealthy gentlemen tend to place a great emphasis on being able to blend into expensive environments, something Christine seems incapable of doing even in her straight life. Most notably, she’s not very good with people — in most of her interactions throughout the episode, she seems distant, disengaged, and bored. In other words, she’s the exact opposite of what a good sex worker needs to be: empathetic and able to connect with other people…

With Friends Like These…

Janet Street-Porter basically argues that whores are passive animals who should be harvested by the state:

…the sex industry is thriving – and a huge amount of money changes hands every day, none of which is subject to tax. This means millions of euros that governments could be profiting from…The vast majority…who offer sex for sale…are poor migrants…controlled by organised crime and a large number are addicts…Please don’t…tell me there are happy prostitutes who love their job…every time a massage parlour is raided in the UK, who do you see cowering in the police vans? Vulnerable women who have been trafficked…Women regularly get beaten up by clients, they are rarely in control and abusive clients can make their lives a misery…

Apparently, Porter believes that people of other professions who are arrested by cops and know their entire lives may be destroyed go happily smiling, singing and dancing into the police vans.

Backwards Into the Future (#408)

Malawi continues to do what the US won’t:

Sex workers in Mwanza district have received a boost as the district’s council has revealed plans to recognise them and help improve their trade…the council hopes the female sex workers alliance will give the sex workers opportunities to find solutions to problems they face…Mwanza District Aids Coordinator, Pearson Mphangwe said the move will help curb the spread of HIV and AIDS…

The Rape Question (#409)

Considering the doctrine that consent can be retroactively revoked months or years after the fact, I sincerely doubt an informal contract without a lawyer witness would really offer much protection:

…A mother of three aims to…confirm mutual consent before sexual intercourse via Yes to Sex, an app…for both iOS and Android. In less than 25 seconds, partners can whip out a smartphone, fire up the app and flash through a series of one-touch agreements that culminate in a request to record a short audio confirmation that the parties have agreed to intercourse. A safe word is generated. Both parties agree to stop having sex if one partner says the word. The app essentially amounts to a technological record of consent. Once a user closes out of the app, no information remains saved on any phone. The date, time, place and voice recordings are stored on Yes to Sex’s secure servers, which according to a company news release…”can only be retrieved with court-endorsed orders, ensuring anonymity”…

Full of Themselves (#414)

Even though “massage therapists” are pushing back on this idiocy, they just can’t resist anti-whore posturing:

Owners of some of Evanston [Illinois’s] estimated 50 massage therapy businesses turned out…to protest a proposed city licensing ordinance that they said could force them out of business…James Specker…[of] the American Massage Therapy Association…said city staff had failed to reach out to the profession before developing the new regulatory scheme. That failure to consult with affected businesses also marked a city effort four years ago to impose zoning restrictions on massage businesses — a proposal ultimately defeated after the massage therapists turned out in force to oppose it. Sarah McLaughlin…said the ordinance’s definition of prohibited areas for massage is overbroad and raised objections to other provisions, including one that would forbid locks on the doors of rooms where massages were given…She suggested…prohibiting overnight operating hours, when, she said, no legitimate massage business would be operating, as ways to address the prostitution problem. Steve Rogne [fantasized] a need for more regulation to protect against human trafficking…

Guinea Pigs

Remember: they say it’s about “pimps”, but really it’s about sex workers and clients today, and about everybody once they get it perfected:

…21-year-old Emily Kennedy trawls through hundreds of online ads offering up women for sex. The ads are posted publicly online, and they’re endless. Emily’s trying to find patterns in ads posted by pimps in the illegal sex trade – consistent phone numbers, spelling mistakes, syntax, phrasing; any clues to link handfuls of ads together. It’s 2011. By 2016, those nights…have paid off. Emily’s senior thesis research has become the basis for Traffic Jam, a piece of software that finds patterns in ads posted by pimps. Those patterns now help detectives – even in agencies like the FBI – to figure out who’s behind each post. Traffic Jam has helped detectives rescue hundreds of victims of human trafficking in the US, Emily Kennedy [claims]…

Dating Game

I don’t date outsiders except for money, but I think the way everyone just assumes breaking off with a woman because she’s a sex worker is the “right” thing to do, is kind of revolting:

The [UK] culture secretary, John Whittingdale, is facing calls to withdraw from his role in the regulation of the press following the disclosure that he had a relationship with a sex worker. Whittingdale, who is divorced, was forced to explain…how he had a six-month relationship with a woman who he did not realise worked in a brothel. But campaigners for tighter press regulation have claimed his position is compromised after it was reported that a number of newspapers had investigated the claims but decided not to run the story…Whittingdale described the situation as embarrassing…“Between August 2013 and February 2014, I had a relationship with someone who I first met through Match.com…She was a similar age and lived close to me. At no time did she give me any indication of of her real occupation and…As soon as I discovered, I ended the relationship. The events occurred long before I took up my present position and it has never had any influence on the decisions I have made as culture secretary”…

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic (#625)

“Sex addiction” is the defense of choice for non-violent sex offenders:

Jeffrey Zapora…avoided jail, and was instead sentenced to four years of probation for three counts of indecent exposure…Zapora [claimed]…increasing stress in his life…led him to act out…[by using] masturbation and sexual behaviors as a coping mechanism, and the flashing was an extension of that…Zapora said he attends a 12-step program for sex addiction, as well as counseling, and started going to church again…Before his arrest, Zapora was a first-year plastic surgery resident with Lehigh Valley Health Network…he was terminated from the program following his arrest…

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In the News (#626)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, An Example to the West, Bad Fantasy-Good Reality, brothels, Cambodia, Canada, Challenge, Colorado, cops, dehumanization, Denmark, Europe, fantasy, Georgia, Ireland, language, law, Madonna/whore, Mumbo Jumbo, neofeminism, Not For Everybody, politicians, porn, Profit from Panic, prohibitionist myths, psychology, racism, rescue industry, Rooted in Racism, Sales Pitch, Saving Them from Themselves, Sex Rays (updates), sex work is work, sexting, shame, stereotypes, Sweden, Swedish model, Thailand, Too Close To Home, United Kingdom, video, Washington (state) on April 3, 2016| 8 Comments »

Arrest is not a service and it doesn’t help people. – Tara Burns

Sales Pitch

The indispensable Wendy Lyon has for several years been looking at Swedish police reports which reveal the truth about the country’s much-ballyhooed “model”; the most recent one contains this bomb:

…On page 43, we find what may be the single most heinous thing I’ve ever read about this law. Discussing penalties (and why the doubling of them doesn’t seem to have worked as well as expected, although of course that’s not stated in so many words) the report says: “classification of the offence by several severity levels could bring more disadvantages for the fight against [sex work]…Police…fear that graduation would lead to resources being exclusively devoted to crimes considered more reprehensible and that the investigation of the crime of purchase of sexual services would therefore not be prioritised“…One of the arguments that has been made against the introduction of this law in Ireland is that it would divert resources away from serious offences (like actual trafficking and exploitation) because the police would need to use those resources going after just any man who pays for sex. So, here the Swedish police are confirming that that’s exactly what they want it to do. As with the increase in stigma against sex workers, the reduced ability of the police to focus on “more reprehensible” crimes against them is a feature, not a bug of the law…

Rooted in Racism

Danish prohibitionists claim sex work is “spreading”. You know, like a disease:

There are now so many foreign women working as prostitutes in Copenhagen that the sex trade has expanded beyond its traditional locales in the city and into more visible and tourist-packed areas, [prohibitionists claim]…“When it spreads this much, there is clearly not enough being done to fight prostitution and to help these women, who are controlled by organizers in their home countries,” [bloviated] Sisse Marie Welling of the Socialist People’s Party…[prohibitionist] Kira West…said that most of the prostitutes…come from either Nigeria or Eastern Europe. They are often brought to Denmark by financial backers who they then need to pay off…

Profit from Panic

“Sex trafficking” fetishists’ ignorance is exceeded only by their delusions of grandeur:

…marketing professor Tammy Crutchfield is passionate about fighting sex trafficking in Middle Georgia. She said parents should be wary of their younger daughters’ older boyfriends…[who will] lure the girls into prostitution…”All you have to do is get on Backpage and see how many young girls are offered,” [salivated] Crutchfield, who teaches a yearlong capstone marketing course based on Traffick Jam, a student organization that [indoctrinates] high school students…[in] sex trafficking [propaganda]…The group…created its own brand to market…T-shirts and jewelry…Their goal is to establish similar Traffick Jam groups on college campuses across the country…

Challenge

How convenient for the State:

A court case that would have tested the right of sex workers to offer services together…to protect themselves has collapsed after a police officer refused to give evidence. Three women appeared before a crown court after the brothel they had run together in Greater Manchester was raided in July 2011. Jane Young, Deborah Daniels and Catherine McGarr had all been charged with keeping a brothel and faced up to seven years in jail if they were found guilty…the women were planning to argue that under the Human Rights Act it was against the rights of sex workers not to allow them to work together in safety…[but] DC Philip Anderson, who had brought the case against the women, [claimed he] would not be able to give evidence…due to his “worsening health”…

Mumbo Jumbo

Oooooh, it’s a SPOOOOOOKY hub!

…human trafficking is what Angels of Hope founder Cristina Scarpellini calls a “ghost crime,” for its hidden nature and the slipperiness of its largely male perpetrators. “It’s so hard to prosecute, because the girl is your evidence — and try keeping the girl all the way up until trial,” she says…the victims also become ghosts to their family members…disappearing without a trace…”I deal with a lot of young girls who will tell me they’ve been approached to be sold” she says…Sudbury is even “a hub” for human trafficking…trafficked girls and their oppressors will often “ask for a hotel room near an exit, so they can make a quick escape if they have to”…a girl who is naive or needy will simply be swayed by a Svengali…

In case you missed the reference, there’s the “magical pimp mind control” again in the last sentence there.

Bad Fantasy, Good Reality (#342)

Eyes gouged out for insolence, moms selling daughters to pimps, girls showered with maggots — if it happened in a Cambodian brothel, the story is never too shocking for Westerners to believe. These tales, all propagated by fundraising charities in Cambodia, depict the nation’s sex trade as an otherworldly hellscape…most of these women aren’t so clueless and weak, says…Heidi Hoefinger…an anthropologist and Berkeley College professor who’s spent more than a decade befriending, interviewing and, at times, living with women who work in Cambodia’s hostess bars…Her research has produced a counter-narrative that is strikingly different from the “trauma porn”…churned out by fundraisers…[like the now-disgraced] Somaly Mam…one of the more authoritative studies, published in 2011 by the United Nations’ top human trafficking agency, estimated only 1,058 sex trafficking cases in Cambodia; 127 were underage. (An estimate from Somaly Mam’s foundation? A whopping 40,000 Cambodian “sex slaves”)…

An Example To the West (#343)

Thai sex worker activists are made of awesome:

Chantawipa Apisuk is tired of hearing…that…”free sex” with [a] lover is morally better than an encounter with a professional sex worker. But to Apisuk, it’s all just sex, whether money exchanges hands or not…For three decades, Apisuk has challenged conventional beliefs about the sex industry. Through educational services and international summits, Empower provides support to the 250,000 women estimated to work in Thailand’s…sex trade without pressuring them to leave it. One day, Apisuk hopes to see sex work treated with the same respect as other professions…Now, she has opened This Is Us, an appointment-only museum that celebrates Thailand’s centuries-old reputation as a hub for brothels. Housed in an innocuous building on the outskirts of Bangkok, it “brings a different perspective to the issue of sex work”…

Not for Everybody (#411)

Even most women who really were coerced into sex work know criminalization is horrible:

The reason why trafficking works so well is because there are no resources that could exist to help victims out of their situation. It is majorly fear and conditioning that traps [them]…Telling a sex worker they are naive to their own exploitation feels like another way to assert control over them and dismiss their autonomy. It can’t help them…Nordic model supporters…think victims of trafficking are silent and that they have a right to be our voice, saying criminalisation is best for us and that it’s what we would want…they really couldn’t be more wrong. My experiences have been treated with much more sensitivity and respect by sex worker rights activists than those opposing them…I’m pro-legalisation on a political and personal level. I know that for traffickers, it would be really, really bad for business, and I’d love to see how fast their empire would crumble…

Habitable Room

Molly Smith debunks Swedish model proponents’ claims that their pet tyranny “decriminalizes” sex workers:

…the…Irish…”Swedish Model” Bill omitted to decriminalise soliciting…the most clear and direct form of criminalisation that sex workers in Ireland are subject to. Then, in January 2016, [Justice Minister Frances] Fitzgerald amended her Bill to increase the penalties for [solicitation, yet]…A press release from CATW…lauded Irish policymakers for…“decriminalizing prostituted individuals”…In Scotland…Trish Godman [used Swedish rhetoric]…while launching a Bill titled Criminalisation of the Purchase and Sale of Sex [bold mine]…MSP Rhoda Grant attempted…to introduce…a Bill presented as the Nordic Model….[which] did not include repeal of the soliciting law…

Sex Rays (#549)

Sex Work is Work (#575)

Tara Burns with a guide on reporting about “sex trafficking”:

…Words mean things. Sex trafficking is a legal term with many different definitions in different states and countries. The legal term has become confused with the common mainstream usage—which tends to involve people being forced into prostitution—and this has led to a lot of confusion all around. As journalists, our job is to be precise with language and provide accurate information to the public. When reporting on sex trafficking, or sex trafficking cases, consider describing what has been alleged or what the statute the person is being charged with actually says—because it rarely refers to people being forced into prostitution…

Too Close To Home

The Seattle Times continues its revolting badge-licking; though this reporter seems to be struggling to be more fair, the story is still full of nauseating cop pontification like this:

“I haven’t seen a lot of people who are not damaged in this life,” [a vice pig vomited out]. “If you’ve got prostitution, you’ve got drug dealing. And if you’ve got those two things, you’ve definitely got gang activity, and that fuels other crimes. It’s all connected.”

Because clearly, the first word anyone thinks of when they meet me is “damaged”, and my drug-dealing is well-known. The most revolting part? Somebody in this story is part of a violent criminal “gang”, all right, but it ain’t the whores.

Saving Them From Themselves (#613)

A Colorado bill that would reduce the criminal penalties for teenagers who exchange nude images of each other has run into opposition from critics who say it still treats such behavior too harshly. Under current law, consensual sexting involving anyone younger than 18 qualifies as “sexual exploitation of a child“, a felony that triggers registration as a sex offender and a penalty of up to six years in prison, even for teenagers who take and send pictures of themselves. H.B. 1058 would make underage sexting a misdemeanor known as “misuse of electronic images by a juvenile,” punishable by three to 12 months in jail, with no registration requirement. Although that sounds like a big improvement, lighter penalties are apt to encourage prosecution, and it is not clear why this sort of activity should be treated as a crime at all. In Kansas, where the state Senate last month approved a similar bill, its chief sponsor explicitly argues that it will lead to more prosecution…

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In the News (#618)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged A Moral Cancer, A Whore in Church, Australia, bogus studies, brothels, Catastrophic Consequences, censorship, cops, crypto-moralism, dating, Dysphemisms Galore, Enabling Oppression, end demand, Europe, hysteria, Indonesia, law, New York, Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs, politicians, porn, psychology, red-light districts, Reviews, Romania, Shift in the Wind, streetwalkers, Sweden, Swedish model, The Pro-Rape Coalition, Too Close To Home, Twitter, United Kingdom, video, violence vs. sex workers, Welcome to Our Updates, yellow journalism on March 5, 2016| 5 Comments »

It’s the oldest profession in the world for a reason. – Jami Rodman

A Moral Cancer

As a lass, I never imagined there was a Western culture more puritanical than the US:

Sweden needs to limit the number of public spaces where people are allowed to smoke, according to a lengthy review of tobacco laws… “One should not be exposed to the temptation to smoke,” concluded the report’s author Göran Lundahl…It suggests that legislation should be extended to include “certain public places outdoors, such as café and restaurant terraces, entrances to establishments and other spaces to which the public has access”…The review also argues that e-cigarettes, herbal cigarettes and other products which simulate tobacco smoking should be banned…

The Pro-Rape Coalition

I don’t think I need to tell you that there’s absolutely no evidence for these claims, even if they constituted a valid argument for censorship (which they don’t):

Children as young as five are sexually abusing their peers after being exposed to pornography, a Senate inquiry has been told. In chilling evidence that would shock parents, a [former] child development expert has outlined a [parade] of cases where primary school aged children were coercing classmates into performing sex acts including intercourse. University of South Australia Emeritus Professor Freda Briggs…cited her own work that found fathers were watching online porn with their young sons for “fun” because “that’s what guys do”. The prevalence of internet pornography — especially how children can stumble on it while innocently doing homework — has alarmed…[the] inquiry [on] the harm it is causing children, including sexualising them at a young age…Senator Back said he was keen to explore what could be done to protect children, including seeing whether technological advances had made internet-wide filtering possible…

Note that Australia dumped a countrywide censorship plan as unworkable four years ago.

A Whore in Church

Sex worker tells preacher exactly why she does sex work; preacher ignores her and blathers about imaginary “pimps” instead:

New Day Ministry Pastor Helen Wolfe…[pretends that] prostitutes proposition her church members before and after church services. “These ladies are literally chasing them to the front door,” she said…[this wonderful Christian threatened] one of them, “Somebody is going to cut you up, somebody is going to kill you…Tell the pimps I’m coming after them.” One of the ladies agreed to come inside the sanctuary and share her story…”I had a good job, a nice home, car, everything, and I got really badly hurt and got on pain pills.” She…[is] no longer be addicted to drugs but continues to work as a prostitute because she can’t find another job…”The pimps are now getting into my pocket,” Helen said. “Now the daycare is decreasing because…they say they get chased down by the prostitutes. I’m going to flip this and get in the pimp’s pocket.” Pastor Helen plans to start taking pictures of people involved in criminal activity outside her church, including the men who pick up the prostitutes, and sending them to the police…

Enabling Oppression

What could be more outrageous and tone-deaf than prohibitionists trying to link their campaign to increase state control over individuals with the drive to end slavery? How about linking support for an increasingly-violent and all-pervasive police state with a famous victim of such a state?

[Rescue industry-supporting BDSM fantasist “One-Hand”] Kristof and [violent prohibitionist “Cuckoo Clock”] McCain were presented with the 2015 Anne Frank Award and the Anne Frank Special Recognition Award, respectively, for their work fighting [advertising websites and consensual sex between adults]…The award ceremony took place February 25 in the Members Room of the Library of Congress…

Dysphemisms Galore

Accurate headline: “Life Continues As Usual When Foreign Politicians Visit City”

As politicians grappled with Britain’s EU future at a crunch summit, other more sordid deals were being thrashed out nearby. David Cameron was locked in talks at the European Parliament as the Brussels’ sex trade was thriving from an influx of well-off EU politicans and officials…hundreds of prostitutes from Romania, Albania and Bulgaria were plying their trade. Flooding in to meet increased demand at the time of top EU meetings, they blew kisses to smart-suited men trawling the fleshpots of Rue d’Aerschot. Some offered “40 euros for one sex position or 50 for several”…

Catastrophic Consequences

Much more of this, please:

The Crown Office has dropped the cases against eleven people charged with brothel offences, prompting criticism of Police Scotland for its high profile raids on Edinburgh’s saunas. Six men and five women were set for a court hearing in November, but prosecutors backed off and have now abandoned the proceedings. Many of Edinburgh’s saunas have effectively operated as brothels since the mid-1980s. The approach had the tacit support of the former Lothian and Borders police force and the council in Edinburgh, which provided saunas with public entertainment licenses…

Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs (#431)

Indonesian officials decide to prevent a repeat of the Dolly fiasco by means of extreme violence:

One of Indonesia’s oldest red-light districts was demolished in an operation overseen by hundreds of police and troops…Dozens of illegal bars and brothels along a…strip in north Jakarta…known…as Kalijodo…were reduced to rubble by excavators….leaving behind nothing but splintered wood, brick and old mattresses…North Jakarta Mayor Rustam Effendi…said…the demolition would make way for a public park. “There was open prostitution there and all kinds of other things as a result, like liquor,” he [said]…During the eviction of residents over the past week, police seized and destroyed large quantities of alcohol…The government last week instructed local authorities to shut down an estimated 100 red-light districts across the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country…

Shift in the Wind (#451)

Fraught With Complications

Here’s a good, thorough article on what to do if you fall in love with a whore:

…So you met a hooker and at first you were cool with it. You didn’t freak out when they first told you about their job and you didn’t freak them out with your response. You started seeing each other and maybe you had some reservations but figured you would…talk them into your way of thinking…Or you figured whatever you had with them wasn’t so serious so it didn’t need to be a big deal…But…Over time and as your feelings for them have grown, you’ve found your acceptance for their job has diminished…So now what?…

Welcome To Our World (#588)

Maybe the Times thinks if it backs away slowly enough, nobody will notice:

When New York Times editors were defending the paper’s two-part series on alleged labor abuses in nail salons last year, they repeatedly pointed to the high rate of violations uncovered by a state inspection task force…A spokesperson for the paper later used the same defense when responding to my own critical appraisal of the nail salon series. After Bernstein and I demonstrated that the original articles…by…Sarah Maslin Nir…were filled with blatant mischaracterizations and misquotes from key sources…the…editors clung to the notion that the state’s findings demonstrated that Nir basically got the story right. Now the Times has taken a close look at those labor inspections and discovered that they “reveal another reality” that doesn’t match up with Nir’s findings. As reporters Russ Buettner and Kim Barker explain, immigrant nail salon owners were often tripped up by the technicalities of New York State wage and hour regulations…”In two dozen cases, for instance, owners paid employees an equivalent of at least the state minimum wage and overtime for the hours they worked, but because they did not correctly account for the overtime hours, they were still cited for underpayment…” If you exclude those two dozen cases, Buettner and Barker report that 67 nail salons, or a little more than one quarter of those investigated by the state, paid less than the minimum wage. And of those 67, 25 missed the mark by less than $50. In other words, the original Times story argued that three-quarter of nail salons in New York paid less than the minimum wage, but the state inspections have found roughly the opposite to be true…

Too Close To Home

Once again, the Seattle Times demonstrated its deep prohibitionism and disgusting obsequiousness by publishing this asinine regurgitation of prohibitionist feces its editors eagerly lapped off the boots of King County cops and prosecutors. And when Mistress Matisse called those editors out via Twitter for publishing lies that five minutes of high-school-level Googling would have disproven, they either ignored her or doubled down defending this dumpster fire of an editorial. Fortunately, not every reporter in Seattle feels that “journalism” is a synonym for “fellating authority”; Sydney Brownstone of The Stranger responded thus:

…it’s clear that the Ed Board…has not interrogated the sex work “research” cited by King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg very deeply…The “age of entry” myth—a common one—has been challenged by sex work advocates and research from anti-trafficking group Polaris…the “local” research being cited by Satterberg’s office….[is] a collection of studies that drew flawed, biased conclusions about sex work and trafficking based on small sample sizes of populations that already skewed heavily toward victims of abuse or street workers…when I asked legislators to send me research about the claim that sex workers often come from a background of abuse, I was forwarded a letter from local anthropologist-activist Debra Boyer that incorrectly cited…a famed book on trauma research…[which] had used clinical vignettes from sex workers already in trauma treatment to illustrate the idea that survivors of child abuse are vulnerable to revictimization…[it] did not claim that a majority or plurality of sex workers came from backgrounds of abuse…Even if sex workers did have histories of sexual abuse or assault—histories that many women share, regardless of their occupations—does that mean they’re incapable of making decisions in their own best interest?…

The Public Eye (#608)

Another shrug-inducing interview with Jami Rodman. At the risk of sounding conceited, I have to tell you there’s nothing here I haven’t covered before (and in greater detail, and far more eloquently); however, I’m still glad to see the facts of our lives getting out there from as many sources as possible, and her conclusion was strong.

Book Reviews (#616)

Some people are just so hateful:

…On the 18th of February, my follower count was 34,872. It started going up sharply, by about 500 a day…I remembered seeing a tweet from @Popehat from a few years ago. Someone had maliciously bought the account thousands of followers; this is something people do so they can report the account for the fakes, and try to get them kicked off Twitter. I DM’d a couple of people with experience of both being the target of online harassment and of communicating with Twitter. The response was unanimous: someone is trying to get you banned. Lock your account and start deleting the fake followers…Publishers increasingly expect authors to use social media presence to publicise their work to readers. My publisher likes that social media is embedded in my writing and that I engage with a lot of people online – without the Internet, I would never have become a writer at all…By Friday night the Twitter follower count was touching 40k with no sign of slowing. I didn’t have much choice anymore. I locked the account and started blocking the bots and declining the hundreds of follow requests from fakes coming in. This is an ongoing effort. If you have recently followed me and find yourself blocked, I apologise — there are going to be some false positives in this process…

I wish my friend the best, and I encourage all of you to support her writing in the most pragmatic fashion possible.

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In the News (#616)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged Above the Law, agency denial, Australia, Bad Fantasy-Good Reality, cops, dehumanization, disease, Eye of the Beholder, homosexuality, hysteria, Korea, law, Monsters, Nebraska, New Jersey, Oops, pimps, prisons, rape, Reviews, statistics, Sweden, Swedish model, Texas, Thailand, The Course of a Disease, The Swedish Pimpocracy, The Widening Gyre, They Still Don't Get It, Traffic Circle, transgender, United Kingdom, video, Washington (state) on February 27, 2016| 7 Comments »

What emerges from [DoJ “sex trafficking” statistics] is an interesting portrait of a solution in search of a crisis. – Elizabeth Nolan Brown

Book Reviews

My friend Brooke Magnanti has written her first crime novel, and here’s a video promo for it:

Here are the other four videos in the series, and you can buy the book on Amazon.

Oops

Most incompetent pimp ever:

A Seattle-area sex offender accused of offering to pimp an undercover police detective has been charged with promoting prostitution. Jerry G. Wood Jr. is alleged to have offered to protect the detective in exchange for 40 percent of her prostitution earnings. What protection Wood might have provided is unclear – the 39-year-old was hospitalized rather than jailed after his arrest due to a claimed medical malady…Wood offered to provide her with “many Microsoft and Amazon clients who call him for ladies,” the detective told the court…

Above the Law

No, NBC, this is not “bribery”; it’s rape.

…federal deportation officer…Arnaldo Echevarria…demanded and pocketed $78,000 in bribes from…immigrants in exchange for hiding the fact that they were in the country illegally…He also demanded sex from two of the immigrants, and one of them got pregnant…Echevarria encouraged her to have an abortion, but she had the child — and he continued to [rape] her afterward…

They Still Don’t Get It

These types of stories are often stunningly incoherent:

…Members of the Child Exploitation Task Force…[arrested] 15 [adults]…14 are facing prostitution charges and one was arrested on a warrant for probation violation…Julie Shrader [of] Rejuvenating Women…[imagines] prostitution is a real problem [in Omaha, Nebraska]…and with every bust comes hope that this will be their chance to leave the business…“They need intense trauma counseling.” She [pretends that] according to research, only one to three percent of prostitutes voluntarily stay in the business…“these guys that are buying these girls are sex addicts and they need help, too…The girls have been so desensitized to sex that it doesn’t mean anything to them and to survive they sell themselves”…

So if a guy has sex prohibitionist dislikes he’s an “addict”, but a woman who does is “desensitized”. And they all need “help” to be brainwashed into Shrader’s way of thinking.

King of the Hill

WE’RE NUMBER FOUR! WE’RE NUMBER FOUR!

…Statistics from the National Human Trafficking Resource Center in Washington, DC show human trafficking cases in Ohio are some of the highest in the nation…Ohio reported 289 human trafficking cases in 2015…the fourth-highest tally in the nation, behind only California, Texas and Florida…

Monsters

Unless prisons in Western Australia are guarded much more closely than those in the US, she’s facing a lot worse than mere “discrimination”:

…a trans woman living with HIV, who is a sex worker…has been moved to a men’s prison…“People For Sex Worker Rights in WA spokeswoman Rebecca Davies told reporters [the prisoner] was distressed… “Someone who identifies as a woman has been put in a male prison where they’re probably going to be subject to discrimination, possibly abuse from other prisoners”…the woman…was arrested over allegations of unprotected sex with a male client, resulting in charges of grievous bodily harm…

Seeking Sappho

I am a woman in her mid-40s, in a same-sex relationship, suffering the same problem as many couples out there: The sex part has died. Absolutely everything else is wonderful…I decided last year to start looking into escort services, and I’ve grown to love my time as a female client.

The Eye of the Beholder (#340)

Do Swedish politicians think about anything else other than who’s allowed to fuck whom?

The youth wing of the Swedish Liberal party has filed a motion to legalize necrophilia and incest. Liberal Youth of Sweden said that just because it is “viewed as unusual and disgusting”, does not mean that the…acts should be illegal. They want to legalize sex between two consenting siblings over the age of 15, and sex with a corpse if there is a written permission made before the person died…The controversial announcement was quickly criticised by…several senior figures within the mother party. Former Liberal MP Carl B Hamilton lashed out at the youth wing, calling them “nitwits”, accusing them of craving publicity over politics…

But outlawing consensual sex between adults based on a motive is totally sensible, and not at all done for publicity.

Traffic Circle

In a series of three articles the Queen of Whore Allies, Elizabeth Nolan Brown, mines a Department of Justice report for government “sex trafficking” statistics. The first part shows that highly-touted “tough on crime” laws don’t actually increase arrests or prosecutions; the second part demonstrates that most arrests are bogus and don’t even result in prosecutions; and the third part is a frightening look at government ideas about sexual thoughtcrime.

The Widening Gyre (#546)

These are getting funnier and funnier:

In a Facebook status shared by more than 139,000 people, Texas mom Amanda Cropsey Florczykowski tells of a harrowing run-in with child sex traffickers at an unnamed store in Longview. Florczykowski is “convinced” that her two-year-old daughter was the target of a brazen ring of traffickers who literally pluck children out of their mothers’ arms in checkout lines. Luckily, with her wits and the Lord at her side, Florcyzkowski was able to thwart the nefarious gang, retrieve her child, and use the experience as a warning to others…Longview, Texas…police…reviewed surveillance video and…the interaction in question lasted approximately “two seconds”…this isn’t the first time a “strange encounter” in a chain-store checkout line has spurred rumors of roving, calculating criminals intent on abducting women and children in public. Last spring, for instance, an Oklahoma woman was convinced that she’d been the target of intended abduction at her local Hobby Lobby…

I think it’s safe to say we’ve reached the “possessed toaster” level of hysteria.

Bad Fantasy, Good Reality (#586)

Korean cops are learning US-style agency negation:

South Korean police have alerted Thai police to a crackdown on prostitution rings…that resulted in the arrest of 48 Thai women and five prostitution brokers…Some of the women entered South Korea as tourists after the brokers promised them jobs in massage parlours but were forced to work as prostitutes…Of the 48 Thais arrested on Thursday, 12 [have] already been deported…Thai police would determine if the women arrested in the raids were victims or chose to do sex work…

The Swedish Pimpocracy (#606)

It’s illegal to pay for sex in Sweden, unless you’re using it as a defense against rape charges:

A Swedish doctor who kept a woman locked up in a soundproofed bunker for almost a week has been sentenced to 10 years in prison. Stockholm District Court…[found] Martin Trenneborg guilty of kidnapping the woman…[but] not guilty of aggravated rape. He was also told to pay 180,000 kronor ($21,200) in damages to the victim…”They had sexual intercourse, but that was consensual. She’s a sex worker and he paid for the sex he had,” his defence lawyer Mari Schaub [said]…

The Course of a Disease (#606)

Governments now think they own their citizens:

British men who [hire] prostitutes while abroad…should be prosecuted in the UK under new laws that make paying for sex illegal, according to a report…commissioned for the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Prostitution by the [prohibitionist] group End Demand…

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In the News (#614)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged A Procrustean Bed, bad customers, California, Cooties, cops, diversion programs, Do As I Say, Droit du Seigneur, Facebook, Florida, Full of Themselves, games, hotels, hysteria, Iowa, Louisiana, massage, New York, Ohio, Paint By Numbers, Part of the Picture, politicians, porn, stripping, Surplus Women, surveillance, Sweden, The Widening Gyre, Under Every Bed, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers, Whorearchy on February 20, 2016| 5 Comments »

Behind the opposition to decriminalise both abortion and sex work lies the belief that…women…are incapable of physical autonomy, that their choices are so socially harmful, so deluded, they must be legislated against. – Frankie Mullin

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

If you’re raped by a cop, accuse him of offering to pay you for sex instead; that, they’ll try him for:

…Columbus [cop]…Bobby G. Schoolcraft…is charged with solicitation and engaging in prostitution…[after] the woman reported…that an unknown officer had paid her $20 to $40…Schoolcraft admitted 20 days later that he was the officer involved…The woman has a history of drug and prostitution arrests…

Part of the Picture

Is it just me, or is this hilarious?

…Covenant Eyes was created by evangelical Christians…For $10 a month, you can get an Internet Accountability report sent to your spouse, a friend, or anyone who would understand your struggles with erotic desire. This report is customizable, so you can set it to only report what times you went online, or the most “highly mature” sites you visited…You can also add filtering services to your account. One person, designated the “Filter Guardian,” chooses an age-appropriate level of internet restriction for family members, and Covenant Eyes blocks domains they deem unacceptable…the app also provides a “Panic Button” you can hit when you’re in crisis and worrying you might give in to temptation. This effectively shuts down all web access until you call Covenant Eyes personally, and ask them to reinstate your connection—after you confess to them that you wanted to look at porn…Whether it’s possible to be addicted to porn or sex…is still officially up for debate…

No, it isn’t.

Surplus Women

This is about the least-infuriating coverage of this story I could find:

A mother was only uncovered as a sex worker after her dead body was discovered in a flat in Aberdeen. A 25-year-old man, Bala Wadzani Chinda, has…[been] charged with the murder of the woman…37-year-old Jessica McGraa…She kept the nature of her work private, and her friends and ex-husband were shocked to find out she worked as a prostitute…

As you might expect from the sickeningly-yellow British press, other versions of the story focused on how much she charged and other such salacious details.

Whorearchy

The more sex workers and former sex workers come out, the better:

…there exists what sex workers like to call a whore hierarchy: The closer one gets to full service sex work, the closer one gets to being a whore and the further she is from being seen as a whole, complete woman. As though the qualities of being a whore negate one’s humanity. At the bottom of this hierarchy are the full-service sex workers who are most at risk by the stigma and fear mongering…Many women in the stripping community harbor a widespread disgust for escorts who come into clubs with clients, porn workers who occasionally perform at clubs and strippers who offer customers “extras” (i.e. more than just a lapdance). Some even label fellow strippers who dance more aggressively or work at fully nude clubs as “more whore-ish.” As if by distancing themselves from those further down the whore hierarchy — in this case, those who show pussy or grind harder — they can save themselves from experiencing whore stigma…

The Widening Gyre

Snopes sez: “this warning makes it sound as though the bad guys are stymied in their search for victims and don’t know where to look for kids to abduct until they see pictures of them on Facebook“:

One day you receive a friend request, as you often do every week or so. It’s a nice looking man who you don’t seem to recognize…Later that day you decide to post photos of your little 6-year-old girls birthday party, and you tag all of her friends through their parents…You’ve essentially just given a trafficker and his customers multiple pickings not to mention the school they attend and the park which they frequent…stop posting your children’s photos on the internet…All it takes is one account to be hacked and you’ve just offered up your children’s images to all kinds of freaks, molesters, and yes, traffickers…Please share this important warning with all your friends! It can prevent a tragedy…

Under Every Bed

Population 126,326.

Cedar Rapids is a crossroads for human trafficking. Police say our location between larger mid-west cities makes eastern Iowa a frequent stop for victims and those who control them…”Only 1-2% of human trafficking victims are ever rescued,” says Teresa Davidson, President of Cedar Rapids Gives…

How do you know this, Theresa? Are you in collusion with the “traffickers” and therefore know how many “victims” they enslave? And do you possess even the most rudimentary form of common sense? Meanwhile, in Ohio, cops ominously inform us that “…the same Ohio roads that are used legitimately are also used by human traffickers and smugglers to transport their victims and further their operations…” OH MY GOD! NO!!!! SAY IT ISN’T SO!! THE SAME ROADS???? THE FIENDS!!!!! I’ll bet they even use standard transportation that wouldn’t raise eyebrows.

Paint By Numbers

“Anti-trafficking” stunts grow ever stupider:

Members of a [University of Florida] fraternity used a children’s game to [indoctrinate] students about human trafficking…60 silver and red blocks each had a [propaganda trope] about human trafficking. A student would read the block he or she picked before placing it back on the stack…Rafael Cruzado…learned human trafficking is a problem in Alachua County because of its proximity to Interstate 75…Jason Feliciano…[said] “People don’t know that it is still happening”…

Seriously, debunking this nonsense isn’t even fun anymore; it’s just too easy.

A Procrustean Bed (#339)

Another jurisdiction officially classifies women as passive objects without agency:

People ensnared in the cycle of prostitution and the criminal lifestyle it engenders now have a lifeline…[Shreveport, Louisiana] District Court…in partnership with faith-based Purchased: Not for Sale…have begun a diversion program called Exit Strategy…[It is] the brainchild of Assistant District Attorney Holly McGinness…[who despite her apparent possession of a law degree, and thus presumably understanding the principle of separation of church and state] said, “The idea behind the name is that no person is for sale, we’ve already been purchased by Jesus”…Most people who engage in prostitution and other “sex industry” crimes, which begin as victimless misdemeanors, cannot engage in other meaningful productive work and often have underlying drug or mental problems that contribute to their cycle of criminal activity…

I wonder what underlying mental problems contribute to an attorney’s flagrant violation of one of the most basic principles of American government?

Droit du Seigneur (#401)

Reminder: Spitzer’s a fan of choking women during sex:

…Eliot Spitzer was [regularly] seeing a…25-year-old blond [escort]…but became enraged when [she]…wanted to move back to her native country…The disgraced former governor is accused of attacking Svetlana Travis…a day before she flew home…Travis…wrote a 2014 article for…Medium that was headlined “Sex Is Sex, But Money Is Money”…after Spitzer…allegedly choked and pushed Travis…she cut herself with a broken glass…In the hours after the alleged scrap, Spitzer was caught on hotel video wearing a wool cap pulled down low over his eyes, sources said. While Travis was in the hospital, a man identifying himself as “George” called twice to ask about seeing her…but was told he could not…Police believe the caller and the visitor were Spitzer because hospital video shows him wearing the same wool cap…

Property of the State

As with abortion…so with sex work…almost every form of labour reflects and is shaped by social inequality. Yet there’s no call to ban, for instance, the cleaning industry…No one is claiming that agency always equals feminism. However, the removal of it, the demand for state intervention in women’s choices, is deeply anti-feminist. There’s nothing radical about denying us agency over our bodies. A view of the state as a responsible arbiter of justice, and of the police as a benign force for good, is one that comes from a place of privilege…[prohibitionists often] claim to be protecting the vulnerable – unborn babies, trafficked women – but by allowing the state increased access, the outcome is yet more danger…

Full of Themselves (#553)

Oh, California Massage Therapy Council, please never change:

City Attorney Barry DeWalt will present a report to the Redding City Council…on the connection between illegal massage parlors and sex-trafficking, highlighting the need for an ordinance regulating businesses that could act as a front to human-trafficking…the Northern California Anti-Trafficking Coalition suggested the Police Department send officers to personally inspect each massage business and issue city permits, with associated fees…DeWalt will recommend massage therapists operating in Redding receive certification by the California Massage Therapy Council, ensuring therapists have at least a minimum number of hours of therapy education. The report will also suggest hours of operation for the businesses and appropriate dress or conduct for massage therapists…

The Course of a Disease (#606)

…Some [politicians] including…MP Fiona Bruce are calling for buying sex to be criminalised under laws similar to those in Sweden…But the idea has drawn an angry response from Britain’s sex workers, who say they fear it could put them in danger. Around 96 per cent of those who took part in the survey by National Ugly Mugs…said people should not be criminalised for buying sex from a consenting adult and 82 per cent said they would feel less safe if the law were introduced. More than 200 sex workers took part in the survey, along with 52 organisations that offer frontline services to between 20 and 2,000 sex workers…

Cooties (#612)

Remember, kids, the Swedish model^TM eliminates prostitution!

…Swedish police reported an increase in human traffickers taking advantage of people renting out their homes through…Airbnb. This is an obvious nightmare for anyone whose bed has been used to host this kind of sexual exploitation, but an even more nightmarish situtation for people being prostituted, often having to face numerous sex-buyers every day. The vast majority of people exploited in prostitution are trafficked into it…[“pimps”] are in fact intentionally luring innocent people into contributing to what is best described as transnational organized crime…Sweden’s sex purchase act…has come to be regarded as the archetype for preventing prostitution and trafficking of human beings for sexual purposes…Because of the significant increase in knowledge among hotel staff to be alert to possible prostitution…traffickers now seem in desperate need of new venues to ensure the continuation of their criminal activities without being detected by police…the police badly need more resources. This has even been pointed out many times by the police themselves…

Wow, what a surprise; the police agree that they need more money and power.

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In the News (#612)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged Above the Law, agency denial, anal sex, animals, asset seizure, Available Weapon, Birth of a Movement, Canada, Checklist, Cooties, cops, Dirty Laundry, Do As I Say, drugs, Fallen Idol, First They Came for the Hookers, France, Harm Magnification, Ireland, law, Michigan, New York, Ohio, porn, rape, Saving Them from Themselves, Scapegoats, sexting, Sweden, Swedish model, Tennessee, The Course of a Disease, United Kingdom on February 13, 2016| 1 Comment »

This is like consulting the school bully on how to make the schoolyard safer. – anonymous Toronto resident, on consulting cops about harm reduction

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

If you’re raped by a cop, accuse him of offering to pay you for sex instead; that, they’ll fire him for:

…Fairview [Tennessee] Police Chief Terry Harris and assistant chief Mark Sutton have both been suspended…after one of their officers, Ronnie Williams, was arrested by…Nashville police in a prostitution sting…Williams was allowed to resign rather than be fired, which would be notated on his post certification possibly preventing him from going to another department…

Harm Magnification

Naturally, because it’s cops’ job to cause harm, not reduce it:

When word got out in mid-December that undercover [cops] had arrested two men accessing Toronto Public Health’s (TPH) needle exchange program…TPH’s own harm reduction workers scrambled to warn the drug user community…harm reduction workers [wondered]…Were plainclothes police riding in…mobile outreach vans? Were they present during the highly sensitive and confidential process of rapid HIV/AIDS testing?…The Toronto Harm Reduction Alliance says police participation in the program has fractured the trust the harm reduction community has cultivated over decades with street-involved people…Zoe Dodd, a long-time harm reduction worker and community activist [said] “I don’t recall drug users ever saying they wanted -police to be involved. This really just shows me that these agencies are more committed to their relationship with police than they are to their relationship with drug users”…

Saving Them From Themselves

Apparently, this stupid pig doesn’t think a lifetime on the “sex offender” registry is a “real severe thing”:

A Three Rivers, Michigan, teenager is both the victim and perpetrator of a sex crime. He might land on the sex offender registry, and face criminal charges, all because he took…a nude photo of himself on a girl’s cell phone. That girl sent the picture to another girl, who sent it to another. Preliminary charges are pending for all three—the boy was charged with manufacturing child porn, and the girls with distributing it. A prosecutor is still weighing whether to pursue the charges. Police Detective Mike Mohney…[bloviated] that sexting is a serious crime because it leads to “bullying,” and “real severe things like people committing suicide or violent crimes against others because they’re so embarrassed about it”…

Scapegoats

Actually, the truth is worse. The bill doesn’t add a new sodomy law, because Michigan never repealed its old one. Politicians are just too spineless to repeal a blatantly-unconstitutional (and therefore unenforceable) law:

The Michigan Senate just passed a bill that makes sodomy a felony, despite the U.S. Supreme Court declaring such a law unconstitutional. The…law…makes anal sex punishable by up to 15 years in prison…[and] is directly linked to a law against bestiality…saying…it is a felony for anyone to commit “the abominable and detestable crime against nature with mankind or with any animal”…Senator Rick Jones says [changing the wording] could put the entire bill, created to protect animals, in jeopardy. “The minute I cross that line and I start talking about the other stuff, I won’t even get another hearing. It’ll be done…Nobody wants to touch it. I would rather not even bring up the topic, because I know what would happen. You’d get…a big fight that’s not needed because it’s unconstitutional.” Jones believes that the sodomy ban can only be repealed if a bill is created to strike all unconstitutional laws from the state’s books, but he is not willing to do it at the expense of his dog bill…

Above the Law

US cops don’t have a monopoly on raping whores: “David Gibson…is on trial [in] Liverpool…after [raping]…a…sex worker [under threat of arrest]“…And this other arsehole was a serial offender:

A [rapist cop] has pleaded guilty to voyeurism after secretly filming himself [raping] prostitutes – but he was cleared of stalking them. Irshad Kamal, 47, made dozens of films between 2010 and 2012 without informing the women involved. His video library was discovered [after he attacked a sex worker]…by tearing her clothes off and grabbing her by the throat…Kamal was arrested when she posted his details on “Ugly Mugs” – a sex industry site for dangerous punters…

Naturally, neither was charged with rape.

First They Came for the Hookers…

If prohibitionists really want to “rescue” sex workers, why do they keep trying to stop us from getting other jobs?

When Cheryl’s manager discovered…[she] used to work in the sex trade…he joked that a name plate on her desk read “pubic relations.” Kayla…was in a new job too when she says a [cop] informed a colleague she had formerly been a “prostitute and a junkie.” She lost the job and saw no option but returning to the sex industry. Both women encountered the degrading treatment when they attempted to leave sex work for new occupations, an obstacle that a recently published study calls the “whore stigma”…The women, whose names were changed in the study to protect their identities, reported challenges from name calling to violence, identifying the stigma they faced as the most challenging barrier to leaving the sex trade…

Checklist

Is there any profession that the fetishists don’t think requires “signs of trafficking” training?

Cosmetologists all over Ohio have begun training to spot signs of human trafficking in their clients. The new educational push was a requirement passed by the State Cosmetology Board for licensing…Director Christopher Logsdon said when Ohio’s more than 108,000 cosmetologists are trained; they will collectively touch tens-of-thousands of lives. “Trafficking is a reality in Ohio and Ohio agencies are engaged to train as many as possible on identifying the signs of human trafficking,” Logsdon said. “We hope and pray that one day this Human tragedy will no longer plague our state and the nation”…

Birth of a Movement (#312)

It only starts with us:

Racial profiling, arbitrary house arrests, detentions, and deportation threats—they’re all too common in France these days as part of the “state of emergency” declared to fight terrorists. But they’ve been familiar to France’s sex workers for quite a while, which is why they have joined those fighting to try to stop an extension of what some people have called the French “Patriot Act,” only worse…Authorities may search homes and place suspects under house arrest without a judicial warrant…and the government can set curfews and forbid large demonstrations…Morgane Merteuil…joined [a protest vs the “emergency” powers] on behalf of STRASS, France’s only sex-worker-led labor union…”The state of emergency doesn’t really change things for sex workers,” [said] Merteuil…”But it’s an extension of police practices that are already in effect for certain segments of the population, including sex workers”…

Available Weapon

Weapons forged for use against whores will work on anyone:

…The nuisance abatement law was created in the 1970’s to combat the sex industry in Times Square. Since then, its use has been vastly expanded, commonly targeting apartments and mom-and-pop bodegas even as the city’s crime rate has reached historic lows. The NYPD files upward of 1,000 such cases a year, nearly half of them against residences…The process has remarkably few protections for people facing the loss of their homes. Three-quarters of the cases begin with secret court orders that lock residents out until the case is resolved. The police need a judge’s signoff, but residents aren’t notified and thus have no chance to tell their side of the story until they’ve already been locked out for days. And because these are civil actions, residents also have no right to an attorney…residents can be permanently barred from their homes without being convicted or even charged with a crime…

Cooties

Swedes just can’t admit that whores can do things for ourselves:

Police in Stockholm say the rise of Airbnb…has resulted in pimps booking apartments by using fake profiles…growing numbers of prostitutes [use] sublet apartments to charge for sexual services…prostitutes are active at around 200 addresses on a typical day in the city, with hotels no longer their accommodation of choice…pimps [create] fake profiles of respectable couples…

Dirty Laundry (#452)

Apparently, there’s at least one decent judge in Ireland:

A judge has rejected a State application to confiscate the “hard earned” income of two prostitutes which was stolen and later recovered. Judge Patrick McCartan…praised the courage of the two women in attempting to stop…Mantas Grazevicius…until gardaí arrived…prosecuting counsel Tony McGillicuddy BL [had tried to steal] the € 2,675…for…the state as the proceeds of prostitution…

Fallen Idol

…only three months have passed since the horrifying allegations and James Deen appears to have been welcomed back with open arms…Deen walked the red carpets of the XBIZ and AVN Awards, smiling and posing as if it were business as usual…Though Deen received a whopping 33 XBIZ nominations between him and his company, the popular porn star left without a single award. AVN was a different story. There, at the “Oscars of Porn,” Deen was awarded two statues as part of ensembles…While prominent companies Evil Angel and Kink were applauded for cutting ties with Deen in the wake of the sexual assault allegations, the scenes he has done for them will continue to be available for purchase…As his work continues to sell, companies will be inclined to hire him. This is the nature of the business (and reliable male performers are hard to come by)…There is a clear divide within the industry among those who believe the allegations and those who do not, but few on either side…are willing to comment publicly, since he still carries considerable weight within porn…

The Course of a Disease (#606)

It’s always so great to see academics stand up for us in print:

…MP Fiona Bruce published an article…urging the home affairs select committee…to criminalise the purchase of sex. Her core argument…[is] fundamentally flawed. The laws she so vociferously calls for are likely to have disastrous consequences for the safety of sex workers…Fueled by dogmatic radical feminists and ideologues from the religious-right, anti-prostitution sentiment transcends traditional party politics…Bruce’s piece offers an oversimplified and paternalistic argument in favour of the Swedish model. She argues that prostitution – the sale of sex between two consenting adults – represents “sexual exploitation”. In so doing, she dismisses a wealth of evidence that many women choose to sell sex and enjoy their sex working. It is not uncommon for advocates of the Swedish model to argue that sex workers who claim to sell sex of their own volition suffer from “false consciousness” – they hold a distorted image of their own social situation. They are victims without knowing it…

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Links #290

Posted in Current Events, History, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Tyranny, tagged asset seizure, carnival, consensual crime, cops, France, New Orleans, stripping, surveillance, Sweden, Tennessee, TSA, United Kingdom, video, weaponry on January 24, 2016| 3 Comments »

All people of Sweden can try and draw penises. – Emilian Sava

This week’s video was sent to me on Twitter by Mistress Matisse; it was a kind of private joke, but I still think you’ll enjoy the song. The links above the video and after “Yuggoth” were provided by Wendy Lyon, Myles Jackman, Anna Pulley, Nun Ya, Tim Cushing, Jesse Walker, Radley Balko, and Carol Fenton, in that order.

From the Archives

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In the News (#606)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged Above the Law, Africa, An Example to the West, brothels, Cambodia, Checklist, cops, Droit du Seigneur, Dutch Threat, fantasy, India, internet, Kenya, language, Latin America, law, Netherlands, Ohio, politicians, porn, prisons, rape, red-light districts, Russia, Schadenfreude, sex rays, statistics, Surplus Women, Sweden, Swedish model, Tennessee, The Course of a Disease, The Proper Study, The Swedish Pimpocracy, Think of the Children!, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers, Worse Than I Thought on January 23, 2016| Leave a Comment »

Whilst the Government looks to the law as a means to manage commercial sex, violence and abuse will continue for…sex workers. – Teela Sanders

Think of the Children!

“Woman has two jobs” is not news:

Katya Gorlova…was [filmed without her consent] accepting cash from a customer [to do her job]…During conversation she told the man her [other] job involved teaching signing and dancing to young children at a school…She now faces an enquiry…She said her part-time prostitution work did not in any way hinder her job at the school…

The Swedish Pimpocracy

Sweden, the feminist paradise:

A Swedish doctor fed a woman drug-laced strawberries and then repeatedly raped her in a homemade bunker that he planned to use for more victims…the man, who has not been named…was an intellectual who was socially awkward and secretive…He once showed pals the outside of his underground dungeon, which he spent five years building…The doctor allegedly gave the woman…a box of chocolate-covered strawberries spiked with Rohypnol while at her place in Stockholm. He then drove her to his lair 350 miles away…he…planned to keep the woman locked in the dungeon for years. But he panicked when she was reported missing and drove her to a nearby police station, and was then arrested.

The Proper Study

But what does “porn” mean?

…Pornhub…just released its annual review of country-by-country data on porn searches and consumption. By percentage of traffic, the United States was Pornhub’s biggest 2015 consumer, followed by the U.K., India, Canada, and Germany. The most-searched term on Pornhub last year was lesbian, followed by teen, step mom, cartoon, and milf. Pornhub also looked at which searches have gained the most over 2014. Some of the more safe-for-work words: giantess (up 1,091 percent), real public sex(up 583 percent), romantic sex (up 267 percent), and lesbian seduces straight (up 244 percent). For U.S. users only, hardcore lesbian scissoring saw the most gain (up 918 percent), followed by celebrity sex tape (up 553 percent). Other leaps included extreme gangbang (260 percent), step mom shower (213 percent), and yoga (133 percent)…

Droit du Seigneur

Given that “ring” is a dysphemism for “suppressed business”, how can one have a “prostitution ring” that caters to government officials and is managed by the cops in a country where prostitution is legal?

Colombia’s national police force is facing allegations that it wiretapped a high-profile journalist…investigations into the allegations…are being hindered by death threats and conflicts of interests…The…scandal broke when prominent radio host and former news anchor Vicky Dávila announced that she, her family, and her reporting team had been trailed and wiretapped by the national police. Dávila…was investigating allegations that some 300 police cadets were engaged in a prostitution ring catering to top officials…four other prominent journalists investigating the police have also claimed to be victims of wiretapping and harassment…

Above the Law

These are the people prohibitionists want in charge of sex workers:

[An]…Ohio [cop] has been charged with raping a woman in 2014 and then using the police database to stalk her after she reported the crime….Jeffrey Martin…was arrested last month on charges of rape, stalking and menacing…Martin [also] pretended to be a private investigator so he could stalk his victim onto Ursuline College campus…he had been suspended four times by the Pepper Pike Police Department. Two of the suspensions were related to inappropriate conduct toward women…

Checklist

Note that most of these revolve around either bogus “signs” or masturbatory “awareness raising”:

After first learning about human trafficking, many people want to help in some way but do not know how. Here are just a few ideas for your consideration…Learn the red flags that may indicate human trafficking…so that you can help identify a potential trafficking victim…Incorporate human trafficking information into your professional associations’ conferences, trainings, manuals, and other materials…Join or start a grassroots anti-trafficking coalition…Distribute public awareness materials…Host an awareness event to watch and discuss a recent human trafficking documentary. On a larger scale, host a human trafficking film festival…Set up a Google alert to receive current human trafficking news…Train your staff on how to identify the indicators of human trafficking…Look for signs of human trafficking among your clients…

Dutch Threat

The slow death of Die Wallen:

…The constant claim people make on us is that they are helping us, but really what they’re doing is just dumping more shit on us. They don’t really listen, they just talk with you so they can say they talked with you and listened to you. But…if they really would’ve listened to us, the city government would’ve immediately stopped buying up more windows than the more than 100 workplaces that we’ve already lost. But they don’t…[the] 37 [new] window…[closures mean] work space [for] at least 135 prostitutes…these…on top of the estimated 375 women that [have] already [lost] their workplace, bringing the total to more than 500 women…We can’t work elsewhere, because all over this country they’re closing down legal workplaces for prostitutes. In fact, between 2006 and 2014 in total 40% of all the legal prostitution businesses closed down. Between 2000 and now, 729 prostitution windows alone closed down. That’s more than 1/3 of all the prostitution windows in this country! And than they’re still surprised that illegal prostitution is a growing problem?…

Worse Than I Thought (#322)

In other words, he was a time waster, not a “sex trafficker”:

A Nashville judge has overturned the conviction and 22-year prison sentence for a man whose case was [touted] by prosecutors as the first of its kind in the state…Kohlmeyer testified…that he was lonely and bored during his job as a forklift driver…when he began chatting with a prostitute he found on…Backpage…they talked for more than 90 minutes over two days…[and] Kohlmeyer offered “5000+ for you and someone YOUNG!” The woman went to police, and Nashville Detective Sheba Cantrell took over, posing as the prostitute. She…had conversations with Kohlmeyer about what age of girls he was looking for…”Just over 8 not over 16,” Kohlmeyer replied…Cantrell pushed for a meeting…[and] Kohlmeyer…cut off contact…Kohlmeyer never had the money discussed…Public Defender Chaucey Fuller…later filed a motion for acquittal arguing — among other things — that the law requires an actual person being trafficked, and that fictitious girls offered by an undercover detective did not meet that standard…Kohlmeyer is [currently also] facing [child porn] charges…

An Example to the West (#349)

…thousands of sex workers in [Bengaluru,] India…want to be part of the mainstream society and enjoy all their rights…till a few years ago most of these women had no access to even a ration card…Today things are different. Around 5,700 sex workers in the city have recently been benefited from various social security schemes and entitlements, which include, pension schemes, ration cards, Aadhar cards, Voter ID cards, Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), Jan Dhan Yojana scheme, legal services and loans, to name a few. All these have been made possible by the Sahaya Single Window project under the aegis of the Centre for Advocacy and Research (CFAR), an NGO. It was first implemented in 2013…

A Tale That Grew in the Telling (#449)

Fantasy film double feature:

…in northwest Ohio…the…film…Chosen was presented as part of an event highlighting Human Trafficking Awareness Month at Van Wert Cinemas. The free event attracted over 75 to see the documentary. A free showing of Star Wars: The Force Awakens followed…

The Course of a Disease (#449)

Swedish model fanatics just won’t stop trying to impose their filth on the UK:

MPs are to launch a major inquiry into how sex workers are treated in UK law…The Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry will examine whether criminal action should still be focused most heavily on those who sell sex, rather than those who buy it…Professor Teela Sanders of the University of Leeds…said shifting criminal action onto those who pay for sex risked driving the activities underground. She said: “We have had two decades of reviewing, legislating, guidelines…and none of them have prioritised the safety of sex workers and the broader issues around human rights to protection. There have been various consultations and parliamentary groups in recent years including attempts to make it a crime to pay for sex in 2009 and the more recent 2014 report Shifting the Burden from the All Party Parliamentary Group – none of these had the safety of sex workers at the fore”…

Schadenfreude (#566)

This is the place sex workers “rescued” by the likes of Somaly Mam are sent:

Police in Phnom Penh arrested at least 274 sex workers…last year before sending them to the notorious Prey Speu social affairs center…The Women’s Network for Unity (WNU), which is run primarily by current and former sex workers, assisted in [their] release…street workers reported being arrested eight to nine times per year, on average. Eighty percent of those surveyed reported being “violated” by police officers, either physically or sexually…district governor Kouch Chamroeun angrily denied that police…abused sex workers…[but also bloviated that] police had every right to arrest street workers…because sex workers held at Prey Speu have not received due process, nor faced prosecution in court, their detention is unlawful…

Surplus Women (#586)

Nakuru [Kenya] sex workers say a serial killer is targeting and mutilating them…they protested on Kenyatta Avenue against the rise in murders. They demanded county police catch the killer. Four sex workers were found dead under mysterious circumstances between September and October last year. Two had their skin peeled off and the others’ eyes were gouged out, the sex workers say…[on January 9^th] another sex worker, 20-year-old Grace Wangari, was killed…

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In the News (#600)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Obituary, Tyranny, tagged A Procrustean Bed, acting, agency denial, Blasphemy, brothels, California, censorship, cops, dirty, diversion programs, Here We Go Again, hysteria, illegal aliens, Ireland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Dakota, politicians, prisons, prohibitionist myths, racism, Real Men, Russia, Sales Pitch, Saving Them from Themselves, sexting, streetwalkers, Surplus Women, Sweden, Swedish model, Texas, The Last Shall Be First, The Punitive Mindset, transgender, Under Every Bed, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers, Welcome to Our Updates, welcome to our world, What Were You All Waiting For? on December 30, 2015| 7 Comments »

Americans have been taught to treat the state like a god, to equate its many acts of evil…with the greater good of a plan that none of us asked to be a part of. – Brittney Cooper

R.I.P. Madame Claude

Fernande Grudet, who under the name Madame Claude operated a deluxe [escort service] in Paris in the 1960s and ’70s…died on [December 26^th] in Nice…She was 92…“Two things in life sell,” she once said. “Food and sex. And I was not meant to be a chef”…Ms. Grudet zeroed in on “failed models and actresses, the ones who just missed the cut,” [said] high-society columnist Taki Theodoracopulos…Only one in 20 candidates made the grade. Requirements included beauty — plastic surgery could be arranged — poise and a familiarity with history, literature and current events. Also, talent in bed…assessed by…male acquaintances who took candidates for a trial run and reported back to her…Many of her “Claude girls” went on to find success in film, fashion or business. Quite a few married rich clients…[her clients] included John F. Kennedy, the shah of Iran, Muammar el-Qaddafi, Gianni Agnelli, Moshe Dayan, Marc Chagall, Rex Harrison and King Hussein of Jordan…

Here We Go Again

Maybe someone should tell them the AJWS supports decrim?

…the National Council of Jewish Women…and its members are…still trying to end…sex trafficking, just as their foremothers had done…Liz Robbins…[of] the New York Times…[wrote] a piece…last year about a human trafficking court in Queens…Lori Cohen…learned about the “white slave trade” in the 1890s to 1930s, which resulted in the trafficking of thousands of young Jewish women from Eastern European shtetls to the Americas on false promises of marriage or employment. In 1910, she discovered, an estimated 900 Jewish women were sold for sex in Philadelphia…

For those who don’t realize: literally no reputable historian believes the “white slave trade” was anything other than a moral panic.

Real Men Support Sex Worker Rights

What’s that, Asstoon? “Real men don’t buy girls”, you say? Oh, my:

Ashton Kutcher…was seen last week ducking out of a Thai massage parlour…women employed at the Ancient Therapy Massage Parlour in LA offer sexual favours after a massage. There is no suggestion Ashton…engaged in any of these acts. But our investigator visited the shop later and was offered sexual favours…

Is there a single male prohibitionist who doesn’t enjoy whatever he crusades to deny to others?

Sales Pitch

Remember, kids, the Swedish model eliminates “human trafficking”!

…98 cases of suspected human trafficking have been brought to the southern regional police division’s attention in 2015 – up by 700 percent on the year before when 14 incidents were reported…Most of the cases involve people driving others across the Öresund bridge connecting Denmark to Sweden…While some are believed to be the victims of organized smugglers taking advantage of vulnerable people and charging copious amounts of money for fake travel documents, others are helped by friends or relatives – who could also be charged with human trafficking…

Blasphemy

I find this essay somewhat myopic and disorganized, not to mention needlessly clannish and sectarian; however, at its core it contains the important truth that America’s fascist statism is indeed a religion:

We all saw Sandra Bland’s penultimate moments, being bullied and violated for failure to signal a lane change…before threatening to “light her up” with his taser, he never really gave a reason for pulling her over. It is probable that he didn’t have one, other than the making of revenue…one of the young Black [Lives Matter] activists…spoke to me of the stress of her first arrest, of the feelings of disempowerment at having the state be in control of your body, of the feelings of disorientation and lack of concept of time in a jail cell, of the feelings of hopelessness such conditions induce…Because grand jury proceedings are secret, we have no idea what happened to Sandra Bland. And if Waller County has [its] way, we never will…no police department in America is worthy of trust, or of the benefit of the doubt. Sandra Bland’s death is just one more worm at the rotten core of the theology of one bad apple. It is a theology and not merely an ideology because Americans have been taught to treat the state like a god…It is amazing how comfortable we are nailing innocent bodies to the cross of the unjust American imperialist justice system…

Saving Them From Themselves

Don’t be fooled; the only reason cops aren’t charging these kids is because their numbers are so great it would cause an uproar:

…Michigan…state police, after uncovering “a massive sexting scandal” involving “200 nude and semi-nude pictures” of female high school students…are not planning to charge the teenagers with producing, possessing, and distributing child pornography, offenses that carry penalties of up to four years in prison per image…[and] registration as a sex offender…Sgt. Jason Wickstrom…said that when some of the girls’ parents demanded criminal charges against the boys, “I told them, ‘We could go after these boys, but then your daughter is going to be charged too.’ That is the way that it would have to be”…

Surplus Women

…Daria Pionko…was found [severely injured] in…Leeds in the early hours [of] December 23…Police…were called to the scene by a friend of the woman, who reported the attack. She was taken to Leeds General Infirmary by ambulance but was pronounced dead a short time later…Detective Superintendent Simon Atkinson…said: “We are treating this woman’s death as murder and a full investigation has been launched…the victim was a sex worker and the incident has taken place in the managed [red light] area”…a 38-year-old man has been arrested in connection with the incident…but [police] insist they are keeping an open mind about the case.

The Last Shall Be First

Anti-trans people just can’t get their minds out of the toilet:

Republican presidential wannabe Chris Christie may have just come up with the single weirdest argument I’ve heard about where transgender kids should go to the bathroom…”I don’t think we should be making life more confusing for our children…Think about those kids in Los Angeles who…had their entire district closed because of a threat. Think about what they felt like the next day when they went back to school. Did they feel completely comfortable, did they feel like they were safe?…every place in America is a potential target for terrorism…children learn better, grow up better, mature better when they live in a safe and secure and loving environment…we want our kids not to have to decide which bathroom they get to go in…And not to be subject to the embarrassment that could come with going in a bathroom where somebody maybe doesn’t agree that they should be in there or not,” Christie said. So trans kids shouldn’t get to pick which bathrooms they use because they might be embarrassed, and also TERRORISM TERRORISM TERRORISM TERRORISM TERRORISM. Um…thanks for the thoughts, Governor…

A Procrustean Bed (#339)

Sacramento classifies women as passive objects without agency, then pretends it doesn’t:

…An acronym for “Reducing Sexually Exploited & Trafficked”, RESET is a diversion court that allows adult sex workers to exchange misdemeanor criminal charges for programs that, if completed, dismiss the charges…the program created an incentive [for cops] to keep it supplied with participants…Prostitution arrests in the county…[steeply increased] last year…a 45-percent increase over 2013…RESET requires participants to plead guilty before they can participate, which irks advocates at the Urban Justice Center and Sex Workers Outreach Project. But court officers [pretend] the guilty plea [sends a message]…Unlike an earlier version that [more obviously exploited sex workers by charging] participants $250 a pop…RESET is free and doesn’t require participants to say they were trafficked, which can be a sticking point for sex workers who don’t want victimhood thrust upon them…

Their “reward” for completing the program? A “free” cup of coffee. I am not making this up.

The Punitive Mindset (#414)

If there’s anything narrower and meaner than the mind of a prison official, I’m not sure what it might be:

The American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire…and the law firm Bernstein, Shur, Sawyer & Nelson…filed a federal lawsuit on…behalf of a prisoner’s mother and three-year-old son challenging the constitutionality of a mail policy…that prohibits prisoners from receiving greeting cards, picture postcards, and drawings in the mail. This policy violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution…The policy applies to all “drawings” or “other depictions”, all “greeting cards”, and all “postcards from particular locations or featuring any type of printed design, picture, or depiction.” The ban includes Christmas cards, as well as prayer cards with pre-printed images often sent to individual prisoners by religious organizations…[prison officials pretend that] the new policy was put in place to prevent drugs like Suboxone from being smuggled into the state’s prisons through the mail…

Welcome To Our World (#439)

Recognize the rhetoric?

…[Russian] MP Yelena Mizulina, known for her staunch [anti-abortion] stance, has proposed…a law that would equate intermediary services in surrogacy to human trafficking and punish it with 10 years in prison…The senator emphasized that the only people who would face punishment under her bill were…those who arrange the process of surrogate childbirth and receive money for their services. Surrogate children, their biological parents and women who give birth will all be treated as crime victims…“We are calling to put the commercial component of this phenomenon under strict control,” she emphasized. “As soon as the services of surrogate mothers became available in Europe, criminal groups immediately appeared there and started recruiting women from Hungary, Moldova and the UK…This is a scary form of human trafficking and one of the obvious threats to mankind“…The future bill isn’t Mizulina’s first attempt to introduce surrogacy regulation in Russia. In April 2014, she prepared another draft that banned hired surrogate mothers [and] made it obligatory for biological parents to get an agreement from a special medical commission…and…[perform] the necessary medical procedures…in state-owned clinics…

Under Every Bed (#520)

Nobody would believe North Dakota was a “hub”, so now they’re calling it a “funnel”:

…Under a “john school” law that takes effect Friday, judges can sentence those convicted of hiring someone for sex to attend an offender [re-]education program to [be forced to endure propaganda] about the [mythical] harmful effects of the commercial sex industry. It was among a raft of bills…aimed at curbing sex trafficking in North Dakota, where an oil boom has attracted pimps hoping to cash in on a thriving economy full of male workers flush with disposable income…Sen. Mac Schneider [bloviated]…“If there was no demand for the illicit services offered by sex traffickers…there would be no sex trafficking here”…The concept for North Dakota’s john school came from the Offenders Prostitution Program run by the St. Paul, Minn.-based [rescue industry] group Breaking Free…Terry Forliti, a [shill]…who works as systems analyst for Breaking Free…said…“North Dakota has been a huge funnel for sex trafficking for years”…

What Were You All Waiting For?

This isn’t the first time the Open Society Foundation has backed sex worker rights, but it is (to my knowledge) the first time it has openly backed an anti-criminalization campaign:

George Soros, the billionaire investor…is supporting a campaign by…Sex Workers Alliance Ireland against [the Swedish model]…he…[has long funded] campaigns on issues like immigration reform and drug legalisation…[including] an estimated $80 million on the cannabis legalisation effort over a 20 year period…the Soros-chaired Open Society Foundation…has long supported organisations…that are governed by sex workers, like the International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe and the Sex Workers’ Rights Advocacy Network…

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Boring but necessary legal stuff

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A Few References

Boring but necessary legal stuff