The Course of a Disease | The Honest Courtesan

Posts Tagged ‘The Course of a Disease’

In the News (#812)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Obituary, Tyranny, tagged activism, agency denial, Amsterdam, bogus studies, Buttons Bags & Banknotes, California, censorship, Checklist, cops, end demand, evidence, Gorged With Meaning, halfway whores, hotels, hysteria, Japan, Lack of Evidence, language, Minnesota, Missouri, Negative Secondary Effects, neofeminism, Netherlands, New Orleans, New York, Not So Easy, Original Sin, Pennsylvania, politicians, pragmatism, prohibitionist myths, red-light districts, RIP Laura Lee, See No Evil, sex rays, sex work is work, Sex Workers vs Trafficking, Something Rotten In Sweden, sporting events, statistics, stripping, Stupor Bowl, surveillance, The Course of a Disease, The Proper Study, transgender, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers, Why I Wait, yellow journalism on February 10, 2018| 3 Comments »

Bills don’t evaporate when clubs shut down. – Reese Piper

R.I.P. Laura Lee

In the eight years I’ve been writing obituaries for people important to the demimonde, I’ve never before had to write one for a personal friend. It is with a heavy heart that I announce the untimely passing of Laura Lee, a titan of sex work activism, who left us without warning Wednesday morning. Matisse and I were informed Wednesday night, but asked not to say anything until Laura’s daughter was ready to make a public announcement, which she did late Thursday: “My mum unfortunately passed away on Wednesday 7th February 2018. She asked me to let you all know that she was so grateful for everyone’s support. I ask you to continue all of your amazing campaign work in her honour. I’m so proud of all my mum accomplished in her tragically short life. My family have asked for complete privacy at this difficult time. Much love & power to you all!” In respect for the wishes of my late friend and her family, this is all I can say for now, but I’m starting to collect information to write a proper harlotography for her soon. Rest well, sweet lady, and Aphrodite bless thee.

Sex Workers Against Trafficking

GAATW is the largest “anti-trafficking” organization which recognizes that sex workers are the best guardians against real (as opposed to prohibitionist-imagined) coercion:

Sex worker rights organisations are creatively responding to violence, exploitation and other abuses within the sex industry, including instances of human trafficking, according to a new report published by the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women, Sex Workers Organising for Change: Self-representation, community mobilisation and working conditions. The report is based on research conducted with sex worker organisations in…Canada, Mexico, Spain, South Africa, India, Thailand and New Zealand. It highlights cases where sex workers, or sex worker organisations, learnt of situations where a woman was experiencing violence, working under unacceptable conditions, or was brought to the industry through force or deception…sex workers resolved the issue…by providing advice and referral to other organisations, negotiating with the brothel owner/madam, chasing the pimp out of their area, or gathering money to help the woman return home. Despite this important work, sex worker rights organisations are largely unrecognised and even vilified by the anti-trafficking community…

Gorged With Meaning

Both sugar babies and sugar sites are heavily invested in pretending sugar dating isn’t sex work:

Brook Urick approves every piece published on Let’s Talk Sugar, a lifestyle site aimed at sugar babies…[which] is the media arm of SeekingArrangement.com…It may sound strange that sugar dating is attempting to reshape itself into a lifestyle brand. But if you’re familiar with this scene, and familiar with Seeking Arrangement’s legal treatise, you’re well aware of the motives at play. Prostitution is illegal in most of America. Dates that come bundled with a suggested donation? Not quite…Anything that portrays the sugar community as a niche cultural curiosity with an entire lexicon of inscrutable customs, taboos, and salutations, helps the company’s case that sugar dating is fundamentally detached from sex work. Seeking Arrangement’s refusal to genuinely engage with the rest of the adult industry has earned mixed reactions from other, self-acknowledged sex workers. Bobbi Besos, a prostitute who works at the Bunny Ranch in Las Vegas, recently penned a blog post on the brothel’s website—”Sugar Dating: Let’s Stop Sugar-Coating Prostitution“—arguing that the sugar scene’s quasi-legal standing meant that Seeking Arrangement can recuse itself from anything dangerous, coercive, or otherwise destructive that happens over the course of the transactional encounters they help facilitate…

Original Sin

Casual sex causes “sex trafficking”!

During a speech to pastors in Kansas City in December, Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley linked the [supposed] problem of sex trafficking to the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Hawley, the top Republican prospect to challenge Democratic incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill in November…[fantasized] “We have a human trafficking crisis…because people are willing to purchase women…like commodities…The sexual revolution has led to exploitation of women on a scale that we would never have imagined, never have imagined…the false gospel of ‘anything goes’ ends in this road of slavery”…

Missourians have a choice of one lying prohibitionist control freak or another. Lovely.

Buttons, Bags & Banknotes

UK feminists win another battle against the employment of women:

…Formula One’s “grid girls”…will find themselves unemployed as of next season. They are the latest battleground in what has ultimately been a long-fought [prohibitionist] war, which has, at various times, seen arguments about the Sun’s Page 3, Kim Kardashian’s nude selfies, dancers in music videos [etc]…These women are sexually objectified, the argument goes…[and] they send the wrong message to young girls and women…For an argument that is ostensibly about work…any analysis of labour itself is conspicuously missing…Working conditions…would seem a better place to start than sweeping moral judgments on the type of work itself…

Why I Wait

Seeming paradoxes arise when ignoramuses equate marriage rates and childbirth rates with rates of sex-having:

Deaths now outpace births, marriage is plummeting, and young people aren’t having sex. The media are calling it sekkusu shinai shokogun, or “celibacy syndrome”—an alarming trend that has the Japanese government funnelling tax dollars into speed dating and matchmaking services over fears of an impending economic collapse. But in a neon-lit pocket of Tokyo’s Shibuya district, BDSM equipment, mirrored ceilings, vibrating beds, and condom vending machines paint a different reality. Welcome to Love Hotel Hill, where Japan’s sex industry is flourishing…It’s estimated that more than half of sex in Japan occurs in love hotels…There are more than 30,000…in the country, and hundreds in Tokyo alone. With increasing life expectancies, the rising age of marriage, and high population density, multigenerational households are ubiquitous. When married couples live in close quarters with elderly parents and children, love hotels offer a practical alternative to thin-walled Japanese homes where privacy is scarce…Discretion is a love hotel’s most important commodity—they often feature secret entrances, covered garages, and disposable license plate covers. Patrons can make cash-only transactions with clerks stationed behind opaque screens to guarantee anonymity. Others have sophisticated automated systems…

“Sex trafficking” hysteria is being used as an excuse to make it increasingly difficult for US hotels to offer their patrons similar anonymity.

Amsterdam (#530)

What are they going to do to tourists who won’t turn? Arrest them?

Guided tours in Amsterdam’s red light district must ensure tourists turn their backs to windows and not photograph prostitutes. These new measures…aim to lessen the number of tourists visiting the oldest parts of the city…The new rules also ban tours with drugs or alcohol and tighten up the “conditions for bike and Segway tours”…Guided tours will also have to end before 11 p.m. and tourists will not be allowed to stand in bridges or in front of store entrances during working hours…Tour companies that do not respect the new rules…will be heavily fined…

Lack of Evidence (#546)

Remember how New York City claimed doubling the size of its vice squad would magically “help” sex workers? Here’s what the extra vice pigs are doing:

…Raquel is a 23-year-old trans woman from the Bronx, who [was arrested by plainclothes cops for walking down the street]…it wasn’t until she arrived at the 25th Precinct…that she learned she was being charged with prostitution, along with four other trans women arrested that night. A police report [lies] that she agreed to perform oral sex…These arrests occurred against the backdrop of an NYPD [propaganda campaign claiming they would] arrest fewer people on prostitution charges and focus vice resources on arresting men who buy and traffic sex…The announcement won praise from [prohibitionists]…Sonia Ossorio, president of the New York City chapter of the National Organization for Women, called [harassing sex workers and cheating them of income] a “big step toward combating this form of modern-day slavery”…

Something Rotten in Sweden (#710)

California now has its own annual anti-whore pogrom:

More than 500 [people] were arrested…56 [of them were sex workers “authorities” claimed]…were rescued during a statewide [pogrom labeled with the Orwellian moniker]…Operation Reclaim and Rebuild…[only] 11 [of the sex workers were underage]…Among the 510 [men] arrested, 30 [were labeled] suspected traffickers and 178 [were labeled] “johns”…

Checklist (#753)

Just in case you didn’t think you were spied on enough in airports:

If you pass through the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport, you may see new signs asking people to be on the lookout for sex trafficking. Delta Airlines and the airport have [collaborated] with the Super Bowl and [prohibitionist profiteers] Polaris to [raise hysteria about] the [non-]issue…Delta has also [indoctrinated] thousands of its employees [in racial profiling techniques] to [harass passengers]…

The Course of a Disease (#796)

American politicians increasingly use Swedish-scented rhetoric in futile attempts to disguise the stench of tyranny:

Legislation just introduced in the [Pennsylvania] state House would tackle a key [PR issue] identified by [prohibitionists] seeking to improve the way [they are seen by the public]…[sex workers are] arrested while the customers [are less so. Prohibitionists lie, claiming that]…a little more than half of victims of human trafficking are being used for sex work [when actually it’s less than 10%], according to the [prohibitionist] group Equality Now [which is led by disgraced prosecutor Lauren Hersh, who resigned in disgrace after she was caught trying to railroad two innocent black men for rape]…

Not So Easy

Prohibitionists are learning the hard way that the wind is shifting:

With more than 200 strip club workers and advocates filling a makeshift meeting room inside the Rosenwald Center’s gym Feb. 6, the New Orleans City Planning Commission (CPC) rejected parts of a plan from the New Orleans City Council to limit the number of strip clubs on Bourbon Street. The CPC instead followed recommendations from its staff that call for a “soft cap” of 14 clubs, rather than a harder cap limiting clubs to one per block face, as the City Council had proposed…The CPC’s recommendations now head [back] to the City Council…The CPC…said in its report…that it “has not found a direct causality between the number of [Adult Live Performance Venues, or ALPVs] in the [Vieux Carre Entertainment District] and crime”…

That last line is a reference to the thoroughly-disproven dogma of “negative secondary effects“, which claims that sex rays emanating from sexual businesses damage the brains of bystanders, forcing them to commit crimes.

But while the staid Times-Picayune promotes this ludicrous fantasy and worse:

…[Politicians] have been relying on a Times-Picayune investigative series to stoke fears that strip clubs are hotbeds for trafficking…the piece [is]…riddled with more holes than a New Orleans paved road…its authors consistently equate exotic dancing and prostitution with “trafficking”…moreover, the Times-Picayune denies actually having uncovered a pervasive trafficking problem, explaining in the first part of the series that “there has been no evidence that clubs knowingly employed dancers who were victims of human trafficking”…the paper’s gripe with the clubs appears entirely based on the [fantastic] premise that “[s]ome pimps are known to require women under their control to dance in clubs”…

…competing news media are coming out on the sex workers’ side, and the Advocate even gave column space to stripper Reese Piper:

Stripping allows people to not just survive, but thrive, with flexible hours, high earning potential, and a low bar of entry. When I graduated college, I had more than $80,000 in debt. Dancing eased that burden…I am also autistic — a disability that makes it difficult to hold down a traditional job…it’s our right to work without fear just like everyone else…

Stupor Bowl (#811)

The real reason the government keeps pushing the thoroughly-debunked “Super Bowl sex trafficking” myth:

Guests at this year’s Super Bowl game in Minneapolis can expect cops, checkpoints, and security theater everywhere, in no small part thanks to the myth that the Super Bowl is a mass sex-trafficking event…”sex trafficking” gives federal and local authorities an excuse for posting police anywhere and everywhere people are gathering—and for enlisting citizens as spies, too…We’re transforming Minneapolis into a police state to…crack down on an issue that almost everyone admits is imaginary…Even crony charity groups that spread all sorts of sex-trafficking misinformation found this myth too easily debunkable to keep repeating. Pretty much the only folks who haven’t gotten the memo that Super Bowl sex-trafficking panic is bunk are the law-enforcement agents who benefit from promoting it…

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In the News (#799)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged activism, advertising, Against Their Will, agency denial, Alabama, Bait and Switch, bogus studies, Canada, censorship, condoms, cops, crypto-moralism, Dirty Amateurs, disease, drugs, End Demand (updates), France, harm reduction, Harm Reduction updates, homosexuality, hysteria, Monsters, New York, Norway, Ohio, porn, rape, robots, scams, Scrupleless in Seattle, stripping, surveillance, Swedish model, Texas, The Course of a Disease, The Puritan Recrudescence, The Pygmalion Fallacy, To Molest and Rape, transgender, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers, Washington (state), West Virginia, Whither Canada? on December 22, 2017| 1 Comment »

Sex workers…are fed up with being used as pawns…in…a publicity stunt. – Valerie Scott

Dirty Amateurs

Amateurs are a menace to public health; they should be licensed and heavily regulated:

A new campaign’s being launched by Public Health England to get more under-25s to use condoms…a survey carried out by PHE and YouGov revealed almost half of 16-24-year-olds have never used a condom with a new partner. One in 10 of them had never even used one…

Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs

The story is the same the world over:

…The Immoral Traffic Prevention Act 1986, which conflates trafficking and sex trade…and…other laws under the Indian Penal Code…look at trafficking only from the perspective of sex work…people being tricked into or forced into moving for labour related activities in construction, factories etc are left out of the equation…The proposed new anti-trafficking Bill makes small amends. [sic] But, leaves a lot more to be desired…interestingly, the version of the Bill that was distributed to the stakeholders for feedback is not the version that is with the Cabinet. So, when the Bill will be introduced in the Parliament in the Winter Session, the chances are that parts of it will come as a shock to various communities that will be affected by it…Sex workers have constantly expressed their opposition to the Bill, claiming that it presupposes that sex work always entails trafficking and can never be voluntary…

End Demand

The “end demand” strategy carried to its logical conclusion:

21-year-old Creio Chance Bishop did not want his girlfriend dancing at JB’s Gentlemen’s Club in West Virginia. The jealous boyfriend is facing second-degree arson charges after…he set the exterior of the strip club where his girlfriend worked on fire at 3:30 a.m. on December 13. The manager…Jim Reed…[said] “It’s stupid. She’s trying to make a living for herself. He’s not doing nothing. She’s paying the bills, from what I understand.” Bishop fled the crime scene on foot, only making it as far as a Walmart parking lot right across the street before Cabell County Sheriff’s Department deputies detained him…

Monsters

This brings the toll to 28 this year:

A transgender woman was shot to death in Houston’s Sunnyside neighborhood early Wednesday, Dec. 13…Brandi Seals, 26…is at least the 28th trans person murdered in the U.S. in 2017, the deadliest year on record for the community. The vast majority of victims, including Seals, have been trans women of color. Four of the murders have occurred in Texas. Seals was repeatedly misgendered in a Fox 26 report about her murder, including by a Houston police detective who referred to the victim as “a man in women’s clothing”…

Bait and Switch

If you’re tempted to badge-lick about this, reread the original article of this heading:

A 22-year-old college student at Ohio’s Youngstown State University was arrested after falling for a fictional 15-year-old boy created by local cops…[who] used a phony dating-app profile for…an adult to lure in the student…After chatting, the catfish “revealed” he was [supposedly] 15 years old. The college student, A.G. (not his full name), indicated he didn’t have a problem with his age. The conversation eventually turned sexual and A.G. sent the faux boy some nude photos of himself. It was clear from the exchanges, police [admit], that A.G. was developing feelings for the imaginary teen. A.G. described him as “my one and only” and talked about being his husband someday. On December 12…A.G. showed up at what he thought was the boy’s home with homemade chicken alfredo, soda, and lubricant…This a young man who is about 5’7″…weighs 450 pounds…[and] is gay in a part of Ohio where that’s still really difficult sometimes…he…was preyed on by police who pretended to be interested and said exactly what he wanted to hear, even after realizing the emotional attachment he was developing and the potential psychological effect this was having on him. And now he will likely be branded a sex offender and a pedophile for life.

Harm Reduction (#627)

Alas, politicians, being exceptionally stupid creatures, cannot understand that the same principles hold true for all prohibition:

Norway is to become the first Scandinavian country to decriminalise drugs as it focuses on treatment rather than punishment. The majority of the Norwegian parliament, the Storting, backed the historic shift…and…directed the national government to reform its policies on drugs. Sveinung Stensland, deputy chairman of the Storting Health Committee, [said]…“It is important to emphasise that we do not legalise cannabis and other drugs, but we decriminalise…those who have a substance abuse problem should be treated as ill, and not as criminals with classical sanctions such as fines and imprisonment”…

Of course, the vast majority of people who use prohibited drugs have no “problem”, and if this new policy forces people into “treatment” it’ll just be another Scandinavian scheme to dress authoritarianism up as social justice.

The Puritan Recrudescence

“Environmental cost” = “public health crisis”.

…Is pornography in the digital era leaving a larger carbon footprint than it did during the days of magazines and videos?…if pornography experts’ estimates are accurate, they suggest a rare scenario where digitization might have increased the overall consumption of porn so much that…people to spend so much time looking at porn that it’s actually worse for the environment…

The Course of a Disease (#634)

It’s good to see Médecins du Monde make this position official:

Médecins du Monde has officially announced its position in favor of the total decriminalization of sex work…adopting a position similar to that of Amnesty International…Dr Françoise Sivignon [said]…”In France, a little more than a year and a half after the adoption of the law aimed at fighting against the prostitution system, we clearly see the deleterious impact of measures adopted…we are witnessing the isolation…of sex workers, their distance from care and prevention structures, as well as increased exposure to sexually transmitted infections and increased violence”…Doctors of the World had already made known its position against the penalization of the customers during the parliamentary debates of the previous years…The organization…explains…[that] criminalization policies are…incompatible with good access to [medical] care or prevention…

To Molest and Rape

Two more cops, protecting and serving:

Two [Alabama cops]…Jonathan Perry Works…and Brian Edward Walker…were…charged with two counts of first-degree rape and two counts of first-degree sodomy…[for raping a] mentally incapacitated [woman]…

Whither Canada? (#748)

Articles like this are much more common in Canada, while US media self-destructively cheer censorship:

Recently, the owner of a [Greater Toronto] bar began a campaign against NOW Magazine. Decals reading “NOW Sells Sex Slaves” have been appearing in parts of Toronto, including on public art. Letters making false and misleading claims that NOW “facilitates human trafficking” have been sent to many of the magazine’s advertisers and to Chief Federal Prosecutor Morris Pistyner…NOW does not “facilitate human trafficking.” In fact, quite the opposite. By publishing the ads of sex workers, NOW facilitates our ability to remain safe and independent. But religious fundamentalists – and some old-school feminists – have formed alliances and been quite successful in redefining all sex work as human trafficking. In their view, all adult women are incapable of making the choice of whom to have sex with if money is involved…

Scrupleless in Seattle (#772)

These guys dodged a bullet, but you may not; STOP going to see unknowns who may be cops!

After more than a hundred people were arrested early September following an eight-day prostitution sting in Bellevue, 61 of those cases have now been dismissed due to [cops’ violation of] Washington state law…Part of the [scheme] included hidden cameras…[but] state law requires two-party consent to record audio conversations…

The Pygmalion Fallacy (#778)

A talking toaster is still a toaster:

In February…I ran an experiment in which I sexually harassed Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Google’s Google Home to document how these digital personal servants—whose names and voices are already feminized—peddle stereotypes of female subservience, putting their “progressive” parent companies in a moral predicament. Now, those findings are being cited in a petition on the social network Care2 asking Apple and Amazon to “reprogram their bots to push back against sexual harassment”…

The idea that words and phrases without sexual motivation shouted at a circuit board constitute “sexual harassment” is like something out of a Monty Python sketch; the fact that people seriously think of this nonsense as a “moral predicament” doesn’t say much for their grasp of reality.

Against Their Will (#795)

Prohibitionists call this “rescue”:

Yang Song fell four stories onto a sidewalk in Flushing, Queens on the night of November 25th…while [fleeing] police…attempting to arrest her for allegedly engaging in sex work…Hai Song, Yang’s younger brother…and his 65-year-old mother, Yumei Shi…are haunted by details she shared with them over the phone this year. Yang described being sexually assaulted by a man who flashed a badge and gun and claimed to be an undercover cop, they say. Yang also told them that the police [pressured] her to become a [snitch] this fall…“I hope to know the truth,” Shi [said via]…a translator. “We want to know whether this was a retaliation from the police and they forced her to die”…While the police [claim] that they were not in the room when Yang jumped…both Hai and Shi insist that she would not kill herself…they are left with the stories Yang shared with them about her life in Flushing — and of the police she…[was] harassed and intimidated by…

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In the News (#796)

Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged Above the Law, agency denial, animals, asset seizure, Checklist, cops, diversion programs, fascism, Fever Dream, France, Hollywood, hysteria, language, law, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oklahoma, Out of Control, Paint By Numbers, Panopticon, Pennsylvania, Policing for Profit, pragmatism, prohibitionist myths, Pyrrhic Victory, rape, Scapegoats, surveillance, Sweden, Swedish model, tabula rasa, Tennessee, The Course of a Disease, The Lion and the Ox, The Notorious Badge, The Rape Question, To Molest and Rape, Wyoming on December 9, 2017| 1 Comment »

Sexual assault by [cops]…is…the second most frequently reported form of police misconduct, after excessive force. – Andrea Ritchie

The Course of a Disease

Prohibitionist scum understand that decriminalization is the only moral framework for sex work; that’s why they keep trying to trick people into thinking the Swedish model is decrim:

Prostitution would [not] be decriminalized in Massachusetts under a bill that Rep. Kay Khan hopes will [choke off sex workers’ income by criminalizing]…people who buy sex and those who [assist] sex workers…it would not legalize the illicit sex trade. [Sex workers with incalls, or who have any contact with other sex workers] and [clients who provide their income] would remain criminals under the legislation…Khan [fantasizes that consensual]…sex…fosters some unspeakable crimes…

The Notorious Badge

Hollywood recognizes that prior to the First World War, sex workers were businesswomen who did the work because it was lucrative and flexible:

In Netflix’s Godless…Callie Dunn (Tess Frazer) is one of maybe 50 women who live in La Belle, a town almost entirely populated by women…the men of the town died in a mining accident, leaving the wives to operate the town all on their own. Callie is the resident school teacher, and a nascent love interest for Mary Agnes (Merritt Wever). She’s also the richest woman in town because she used to be a sex worker…After the accident…her place of work closed. Lack of men will do that to brothel…In the lawless west (the show takes place in Colorado and New Mexico), there’s not much a woman could do to earn her own money. Even Mary Agnes, the widow of the town’s late mayor, is at a loss for funds. But Callie is sitting pretty on almost $20,000 (almost half a million in today’s dollars)…”Let me take care of you,” Callie begs Mary Agnes in the third episode. She reveals her impressive savings and offers to run away with Mary Agnes. When Mary Agnes looks surprised, Callie responds, “Don’t you know? Whores are always the richest people in town”…

Unfortunately, it also believes we all magically turned into pathetic victims about 100 years ago.

The Lion and the Ox

“Sex trafficking” means whatever “authorities” want it to mean:

Investigations into the many alleged sexual assaults by Harvey Weinstein are now underway all over the world, with the NYPD, the LAPD, the Beverly Hills Police, and UK law enforcement all looking into possible acts of rape, harassment, and other forms of misconduct. Now…the former producer and his namesake company are facing claims of sex trafficking…actress Kadian Noble is alleging that “Harvey Weinstein was able to force or coerce Kadian into sexual activity…because of his promise of a film role and use of his influence on her behalf” — despite having no intention of following through on those promises…“Harvey Weinstein…offer[ed] her something of value, knowing that he would use this offer as a means to defraud, force, or coerce her into a sexual encounter”…

Scapegoats (#49)

If he’d done this two years ago he’d have been safer than if he’d had consensual sex with a human:

An elderly man has been convicted of sexually assaulting a horse in a stable north of Stockholm. The owner raised the alarm after discovering someone had entered the stable during the night. Police found the man hiding under refuse bags…a security camera in the stable caught evidence which led to the conviction. He was sentenced to fines for trespassing and for breaching Sweden’s Animal Protection Act. Few have been convicted of breaching the act since it was brought in last year…

Policing for Profit

Does any sane person still believe cops’ pretense that this is about anything other than profit?

…the Wyoming Attorney General’s Office [claims] Phil Parhamovich was moved during a traffic stop last March to donate $91,800, his life savings, to the state’s Division of Criminal Investigation to help it wage the war on drugs. Parhamovich’s version is rather more plausible: He says state police took his money after pressuring him to sign a “waiver” that circumvented even the limited protections offered by Wyoming’s civil asset forfeiture law…Parhamovich is in state court, trying to get his money back with help from the Institute for Justice, which argues that Wyoming’s roadside waivers are a thin disguise for highway robbery. Parhamovich, a Wisconsin musician, was on his way to a gig in Salt Lake City on March 13 when a state trooper, Jeramy Pittsley, pulled him over on Interstate 80 in Laramie County [using the pretext that he had] fail[ed] to buckle his seat belt. The stop turned into an interrogation…and [search in which] they found $91,800 inside a speaker cabinet. The cops were so excited by their discovery that they high-fived each other. The windfall also apparently made them forget that there was no trace of the drugs that Pittsley’s dog supposedly had detected…

Apparently the judge is sane, because he ordered the state to return the entire sum to Parhamovich.

Out of Control (#410)

Doctors aren’t the only medical professionals who throw their careers away for this stupid shit:

Former [Pennsylvania] nurse James Close will spend up to four years in prison and 20 years on probation for secretly filming female patients, including one underage girl…Judge Wallace H. Bateman also ordered him to…sexual offender and sex addiction treatment…

Above the Law (#418)

Just a reminder that this behavior is intrinsic to policing, not an isolated incident limited to the US:

A Canadian tourist who was…rape[d] by French police…has spoken out for the first time about the night she was attacked…Emily Sponton has decided to waive her anonymity to give her account of the night of April 22nd 2014 when, after meeting three French police at the Galway Irish pub she was…gang rape[d by them] at the nearby Paris police HQ…Sponton said she had been drinking with the three [pigs] who had been regaling her with stories of their work…[they] offered to give her a tour of the building but once there Sponton says they tried to force her to drink large amount of whisky…”when I refused to do what they wanted…they smashed my face against the desk”…She…was raped several times…[and] later found lying on the street outside the police HQ…On [medical] examination she was found to have bruises and lesions in the genital area. She immediately filed a complaint for rape before heading home to Canada…two [were] finally set to face trial on charges of gang rape…after Sponton had won her appeal to see the case brought back to court after judges initially threw it out last year…One of the [pigs claimed the rape was]…”consensual” [as rapist pigs nearly always do]…

Paint By Numbers (#593)

Given the lack of imagination displayed by “sex trafficking” fetishists, I reckon it’s predictable that they keep recycling their stupid stunts:

…Started in 2013, the Dressember foundation is a [profiteering] organization…dedicated to [profiting from]…human trafficking [hysteria]….Those willing to take the more popular approach will opt in by wearing a dress every day of December. Others, who may not have many dresses to wear or who may be a bit more warm-blooded, can still help out by donating to the cause. All of the money donated goes toward [persecuting sex workers]…

The Rape Question (#602)

I’m honestly amazed the dumb “rape is asexual” dogma is still popular:

There are reasons why nobody would tell a child “look only to the left when crossing the street because people are nice and swerve out the way for you” or “don’t wear your seatbelt because nothing will happen to you.” The unfortunate reality is that simply changing our ideas about the world doesn’t actually change the world…in the case of sexual assault, coercion, and rape, omitting crucial pieces of the puzzle (like biological constraints) in understanding these heinous acts could prove to be detrimental…this blank slate version of human nature is riddled with holes…what we’ve seen is a tacit acceptance of the crime when it is committed by “one of our own” and harsh condemnation when it is someone from “the other side” doing it…social role theorists want us to believe that there is a utopian world just beyond our grasp that somehow males and capitalism prevent us from achieving…understanding biology is important in helping us deter sexual violence and why ignoring it could prove to be dangerous…

Pyrrhic Victory (#609)

When it comes to mass surveillance, fascism beats communism hands down:

“Oklahoma has finalized a deal with a Massachusetts company to use license-plate scanners to catch uninsured drivers, and the firm expects to issue 20,000 citations a month starting as early as next year. The program…involves setting up automated high-speed cameras on highways around the state to detect uninsured vehicles and mailing their owners a citation with a fine of $184“…[besides] the mass collection of plate/location data…Gatso USA will receive more than 40% of the revenue…The company hopes to make more than $1.6 million a month…”It will be overseen by the District Attorneys Council rather than law enforcement, and the state’s 27 district attorneys’ offices are expected to receive millions of dollars in citation revenue a year”...

To Molest and Rape

It’s good to see this problem getting attention outside of libertarian and sex worker circles:

…as we furiously unpack the prevalence of sexual assault across many industries, the reality of police sexual misconduct has not found its way into these discussions. That’s a tragedy, because it happens so frequently…One study found that a [cop] is caught in an act of sexual misconduct every five days — and those are just the ones who are caught…national research…show[s] that almost a quarter or more of cases of police sexual assault involve minors…

Fever Dream (#742)

Reporters & prohibitionists are apparently too stupid to understand that when you misrepresent a consensual-crime misdemeanor a person didn’t even actually commit as a serious, violent felony, it’s going to be hard to get a conviction:

Over the past year [TBI has] conducted about a dozen undercover stings and charged more than 200 men…[in one] sting conducted in Nashville in 2016…TBI charged 34 men…27 of them had their cases dismissed and [expunged after paying for the “john school” the prohibitionists wanted, yet they’re not happy that an unproven misdemeanor charge isn’t enough to destroy the lives of the accused]…”Having all these charges expunged sends a very, very clear message that we’re not serious,” [prohibitionist & profiteer Cathy] Gurly said…Assistant District Attorney Tammy Meade…[pointed out] that…these cases are difficult to prosecute because the victims aren’t real, they’re actually undercover agents…

Checklist (#783)

The real purpose of this scheme is to cut sex workers off from the healthcare system:

Advanced Periodontics & Implantology…[of] Michigan, organized a seminar for dentists and hygienists on the topic “Human Trafficking”…Michigan Public Health Code and Administrative rules require all dentists to complete training in identification of human trafficking victims…

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In the News (#793)

Posted in Current Events, Harlotography, History, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged activism, agency denial, Alaska, Buried Truth, consensual crime, dating, disability, Dysphemisms Galore, escort services, Florida, France, Germany, homosexuality, hysteria, McNeill's Law, Ohio, politicians, psychology, sex offender registry, shame, Skin To Skin, Still a Child, Swedish model, The Course of a Disease, The Public Eye, Utah, video, violence vs. sex workers, Virtual Unreality on November 25, 2017| 2 Comments »

With the state charging me, they’ve created an advocate. – Amber Batts

Mata Hari

The 100^th anniversary of Mata Hari’s execution has just passed, and the secret files have been unsealed at last:

Mata Hari…was sacrificed – some say – because the French needed to find a spy to explain their succession of reverses in the war…she was the perfect scapegoat because “loose” morals made it easier to tar her as an enemy of France. Until now the full details of her interrogation by prosecutor Pierre Bouchardon…has been off-limits to historians…Arnold von Kalle, the German military attaché….[sent a] telegram…to his masters in Berlin [containing] the details of a certain Agent H21. It gave addresses, bank details, and even the name of Mata Hari’s faithful maid. There could be no question to anyone reading it that Mata Hari was agent H21. The telegram, intercepted by French intelligence, is now available for scrutiny…Or rather, the official translation of the telegram is available. Because…the whole telegram episode is fishy. The French…had long since cracked the code in which the telegram was written. The Germans knew the French had cracked it. And yet still von Kalle sent the message. In other words, he wanted the French to read it…Why is there only a translation in the archives? Where is the original telegram? Could it be that the French themselves invented the document in order to pin the blame on Mata Hari?…the transcripts also show…that in June 1917, during her umpteenth interrogation, Margarethe Zelle…confessed…Caught outside France at the start of the war, she was desperate to get back to Paris. Karl Kroemer, German consul in Amsterdam, offered her the means…Mata Hari insisted to her interrogators that she just meant to take the money and run. She said her loyalty was to the Allies, as she had shown when she subsequently promised to help French intelligence…

Of course, this “confession” is meaningless; any psychologist will tell you that any “confession” extracted by prolonged interrogation is nothing but the result of the mind doing anything it has to do to escape the torture. The victim will, if hounded long enough, “confess” to anything. And so a century later, we still know no more than we did before.

The Public Eye

The more out sex workers there are, the harder it will be to ignore us:

…Nicole Emma…and three other women — Kyli Rodriguez-Cayro, Bella Arsenic, and Heidi Robinson — led lively discussion aimed at breaking down stereotypes about their industry, which includes a broad range of legal services, from phone sex and stripping to pornography. The conversation was equally broad, touching on the relationship between feminism and sex work, on the opportunity for human connection the industry gives to disabled and transgender people, and on the effects of Mormon culture on the demand for sex services…The women are lobbying state lawmakers in hope of shaping future policies that impact the industry…the group drafted a letter and a petition asking to sit down with [Utah] Sen. Todd Weiler…a known [panderer to sexual hysteria]…

Buried Truth

The McNeill Rule, like its namesake, is a bitch:

An Ohio Republican legislator who campaigned on “family values” and fought against LGBTQ rights has resigned after…an “observer” encountered [him]…in his…office…having consensual sex with a man…The person told the Ohio House chief of staff, who told the Speaker of the House Cliff Rosenberger. Rosenberger met with Goodman, who is married, and Goodman resigned for “inappropriate conduct” immediately after the meeting…

Skin To Skin

Still a Child

How high does one’s ivory tower have to be to imagine that negating the agency of people old enough to vote, marry & join the military (to “protect” them, naturally) is actually a step forward?

…Consent laws, I argue, should allow people within a certain age range (say, 16 to 21) to offer “assent” to sex with a significantly older person — but permit them to revoke that assent at any time. “Assent” is a weaker form of agreement, legally speaking, than “consent”. Such a system would put an extra onus on adults to make sure that they are not taking advantage of a younger person…We now know that the teenage brain does not finish maturing until sometime in the mid-20s. Neuroscience and psychosocial evidence confirms that teens can make cognitively rational choices in “cool” situations — that is, when they have access to information, face little pressure, and possibly have adult guidance. Teens make decisions differently in “hot” situations that involve peer pressure, new experiences, and no time for reflection…age-of-consent laws that draw a bright line of sexual maturity at 18 or younger fail to consider the scientific data…

This lunatic is actually proposing that a university coed who fucks a grad student should be able to declare that consensual sex a rape three or more years later, dragging the boyfriend through a court proceeding in the process. Because “Science!”

Dysphemisms Galore (#581)

Amber Batts was convicted of “sex trafficking” for running an ordinary escort service like I did, the same as many hundreds of such services in the US:

Amber Batts…is now released on parole for sex trafficking…Batts has been serving her sentence on electronic monitoring since March — after spending time incarcerated and in a halfway house…She says she likely wouldn’t have become an advocate for sex workers, had she not been caught…[now] she plans to push for a change in Alaska State Law to redefine “sex trafficking” to match the Federal definition, as well as advocate for the decriminalization of sex work…While Batts doesn’t plan to return, she hopes to see a social shift that would make the work safer for others…

Counterfeit Comfort (#604)

That’ll teach them dirty “sex offenders”!

Florida…has changed the look of its state-issued licenses and ID cards…to…”identify sexual predators and offenders with a distinguishing blue mark on the bottom right front. Sexual predators will have ‘Sexual Predator’ spelled out, while sexual offenders will have ‘943.0435 F.S.’ on their cards“…It’s not bad enough that sex offender registries exist, so we know who to hate and shun…And now…their passports will be marked, so when they check in to the George V in Paris, the bellhop can be on guard. But their driver’s license? So every time they’re asked for identification for some innocuous reason, there will be no doubt that the random person knows they are a sexual threat and should treat them accordingly?…Does failure to use a turn signal somehow involve the mutual sending of naked selfies as a teen? Or is it just in case the cop needs to know who he can dump on if the day hasn’t gone particularly well?…Driver’s licenses are a ubiquitous form of identification, and they’re meant to be. Turning them into a weapon to make the lives of people already suffering societal hatred is unjustifiable. Short of the actual tattoo on the forehead, what more can we do to create a caste of untouchables in America?…

Virtual Unreality (#690)

Any article calling for more laws policing sexuality can safely be dismissed as authoritarian propaganda:

Author Jordan Belamire provoked public debate on the nature of virtual sexual assault last year when she wrote about an unwelcome experience in virtual reality…the sexual harassment common in the real world also extends into online gaming…Legal philosopher John Danaher of the University of Galway, Ireland, takes on these on questions in his paper The Law and Ethics of Virtual Sexual Assault. In Danaher’s opinion, unwanted sexual acts in the virtual realm can indeed be viewed as assault and we may need new laws to cover them…

Elephant in the Parlor (#724)

This guy is a disgusting hypocrite, but this isn’t “child sex trafficking” by any stretch of the imagination:

A[n]…Oklahoma state senator has pleaded guilty to a child sex trafficking charge…Ralph Shortey…had been accused of offering to pay a 17-year-old boy for sexual “stuff” earlier this year. Federal prosecutors will drop three additional child pornography charges against him in exchange for his guilty plea…Child sex trafficking carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison, and a maximum sentence of life in prison…

The Course of a Disease (#729)

Naturally, the bootlicking media doesn’t report the cost to sex workers:

Paris region authorities say 1,142 clients of prostitutes have been fined in the French capital since a law that bans buying sex entered into effect in April 2016…Paris region authorities said in a written statement seven prostitutes have entered a process to get out of the prostitution business…

Seven. Meanwhile, “the incomes of [many] prostitutes fell sharply, as they had to significantly lower their prices in an attempt to attract more customers…In some extreme cases, girls committed suicide; some were infected with AIDS because for the sake of earning they were forced to agree to any demands made by men. Also, there have been cases of women being beaten by aggressive and drunken customers…” But the Swedish model helps women and fights exploitation!

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In the News (#792)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, brothels, censorship, Colombia, cops, Fallen Idol, fantasy, Hall of Shame, Hollywood, Illinois, internet, Italy, Lack of Evidence, Little Boxes, Neither Addiction nor Epidemic, Nevada, pimps, porn, propaganda, psychology, rape, Sweden, Swedish model, Texas, The Course of a Disease, The Notorious Badge, The Spiral of Absurdity, The Swedish Pimpocracy, The Widening Gyre, tits, underage, video on November 22, 2017| 2 Comments »

Any invocation of tradition and moral values in support of a law that facially discriminate among classes of people calls for a healthy dose of skepticism on our part. – Judge Ilana Rovner

The Swedish Pimpocracy

Sweden, the feminist Utopia:

Hundreds of allegations of sexual harassment have surfaced in Sweden in recent weeks…In a single day, 4445 women put their names to a petition in Svenska Dagbladet called ‘#medvilkenrätt’ (with what right) which calls for action against harassment and abuse of power within the justice system…One of the women…said that a district prosecutor had harassed her, repeatedly calling and texting her and, when she declined an invitation to dinner, threatening to destroy her career…”In every message, the threats grew more serious, and they began to include threats of assault and violence,” she wrote. Another woman said that…a retired judge showed her photos of three defendants in a rape case and asked her “which of them I would most like to be raped by”…one woman said a lawyer asked her to collect “all the information on guys, clothes, pictures and so on relating to the plaintiff to show how ‘slutty’ she was”…

The Course of a Disease

Though there’s very little chance of this going anywhere in Latin America, it’s still disturbing to even see this filth appearing there at all:

Three months ago…Columbian legislator…Clara Rojas…began campaigning for new legislation which would fine people who pay for sex with up to $23,000,000 Colombian pesos (around $7,500 US dollars). This proposal has been strongly condemned by Colombian sex workers, activists and academics…

The Notorious Badge

Just for once, it’d be nice to see a realistic show about sex work instead of these lurid wanking fantasies about teenagers:

Netflix has announced its second Italian original, a scripted series titled Baby, about teen prostitution in Rome. The eight-episode show is loosely based on a scandal that created a stir in the Italian capital in 2014 when it surfaced that two…high school students…were engaging in part-time prostitution…

It’s only “loosely based” because the real story would be much too boring and mundane.

Hall of Shame (#525)

The only person interviewed in this video who comes across as sane and reasonable is my friend Christina. Bindel ends up sounding like an obsessed lunatic vomiting up moldy propaganda, and Hof’s denials (the author of The Art of the Pimp proclaiming he’s not a pimp despite owning seven brothels) make one wonder whether he’s as stupid as he thinks we are.

And I wish Reason TV would start interviewing more sex worker activists instead of repeatedly returning to Nevada’s deeply-oppressive crony brothel system, which is about as un-libertarian as one can get.

Fallen Idol

This has been an open secret for a while, so I’m unsure why it didn’t break when the James Deen revelations were in the news:

Last June, a woman named Ginger Banks posted a YouTube video that circulated widely among those in the adult entertainment industry…In the 10-minute clip…Banks compiles allegations against [Ron] Jeremy from all corners of the adult-industry…including stories of everything from indecent exposure, nonconsensual digital penetration and rape…Rolling Stone spoke with more than a dozen women both on and off the record who made such claims against Jeremy, alleging that the famous porn star violated their boundaries, taking advantage of both his status as an industry legend and their status as sex workers as grounds to flout the basic rules of consent…Jennifer Steele…alleges that Jeremy raped her twice, once at a photoshoot and once at his apartment, in December 1997. “He just kinda keeps going and pretends like you didn’t say anything.” Jeremy refutes these accusations, claiming that all the interactions he’s had have been consensual. “These allegations are pure lies or buyers remorse,” Jeremy told Rolling Stone in an emailed statement…

Little Boxes (#748)

Once again, prudishness trumps the Constitution:

To protect public health, safety, and morals, the government has an important interest in preventing women from going topless, a federal appeals court has ruled. And the importance of keeping lady breasts out of public view overrules any First Amendment or equal protection issues that such a policy raises…Going topless might not be inherently expressive, “but to declare, as a matter of law, that it can never be expressive is the quintessence of throwing out the free-expression baby with the non-expressive-conduct bath water,” Judge Ilana Rovner wrote…The case (Tagami v. City of Chicago) stems from the 2014 ticketing of Sonoko Tagami, who took to the Chicago streets with only opaque body paint over her bare breasts to celebrate “GoTopless Day” that year. Tagami was issued a $100 citation for violating the city’s ban on public indecency…

The Widening Gyre (#750)

The “Facebook pimps” myth is one of the silliest of the whole panic:

If there’s new technology that teens are using to communicate, pimps know about it, [fantasizes] special agent Marty Parker, and they’re using it to snare potential victims…”Pretty much every popular social media site out there is being used for recruiting potential victims of sex trafficking”…Where once pimps stalked malls and group homes…now they’re all over the internet. Social media facilitates ease of communication, for better or for worse, and Parker says it’s made the practice of pimping even easier…

In reality, as regular readers know, social media have made pimps unnecessary to most of the women who formerly employed them.

Lack of Evidence (#763)

Hey ACLU, if sex work weren’t illegal laws like this would be easily overturned:

The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois has come out against a [politician’s] proposal to outlaw “prostitution-related loitering” in zones to be created [at will] by the Chicago Police Department, saying the plan is vague and could lead to people getting arrested based on how they’re dressed. Under a plan from…Jason Ervin…the police superintendent could designate zones that are “frequently associated with prostitution-related loitering.” Police could order people to leave those zones if the [cops fantasize that] they intend to engage in prostitution. Anyone who returned to the area within eight hours of the police order to leave could be fined up to $500 or sent to prison for up to six months. ACLU…spokesman Ed Yohnka took a dim view of the proposal, saying in a statement that the language is vague “and seems to encourage police to order people to disperse or even arrest them for what may be innocent and constitutionally protected behavior.” Yohnka said a similar rule in New York City resulted in police arresting people based on how they were dressed, where they were standing, whether they had money on them or whom they were speaking to…

The Spiral of Absurdity (#789)

Texas is vying with Washington, Arizona and Florida for the dubious distinction of being the US state which produces the most dangerously delusional “sex trafficking” propaganda:

The Texas Governor’s Criminal Justice Division awarded four separate grants totaling $4.4 million to provide better victim services and criminal prosecution in cases of…sex trafficking…”Violent criminals toss victims into the criminal justice system” [Harris County District Attorney Kim] Ogg said…Houston is the No. 1 city for calls to the National Human Trafficking Hotline…Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez [vomited out “end demand” fantasies and the tired idiocy about how]…”No child plans to enter the sex industry when they grow up”…

Even for someone as jaded as I am, the sight of a pig (DAs are just highfalutin’ pigs) proclaiming that “violent criminals” are actually the ones responsible for the state’s war on consensual behavior is pretty revolting.

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic (#789)

It’s rather satisfying watching the “sex addiction” myth implode in real time:

…a closer look at the evidence yields little proof that an unhealthy obsession with sex is comparable to an addiction to drugs or alcohol. Sex-addiction therapists argue that their patients experience symptoms of withdrawal and risk-taking…much like substance addicts…Yet these reports are largely anecdotal. Studies have yet to prove that people who feel they have a problem with sex or porn regularly increase the time they spend consuming it, or move on to more “extreme” stuff. As for withdrawal symptoms, people sometimes feel anxious or distressed when they abstain from this behaviour, but these are not analogous to the symptoms of substance addicts, which are often physiologically profound and medically serious…Keith Humphreys, a Stanford psychiatrist…is sceptical of the idea that you can be addicted to things – like food and sex – that we are hard-wired to consume in order to survive. “You don’t need to invoke an unusual pathological explanation for why human beings eat and why they have sex, because if they didn’t they wouldn’t be here,” says Humphreys. Substances like heroin, by contrast, not only more dramatically hijack our brain’s pleasure pathways but also inspire behaviour that threatens people’s survival, so an addictive process is necessary to explain our attachment to them…

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In the News (#778)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged Backwards into the Future, California, China, Colombia, dirty, ethics, fantasy, Feminine Pragmatism, Finding What Isn’t There, hysteria, Ireland, Lower Education, Nevada, Ohio, pathologization of males, politicians, pragmatism, propaganda, PSA, rape, restaurants, robots, Saving Them from Themselves, sexting, statistics, Swedish model, The Course of a Disease, The Pygmalion Fallacy, The Widening Gyre, Venezuela, violence vs. sex workers, Zimbabwe on September 30, 2017| Leave a Comment »

It’s a wonder they lived to tell the tale. A car. A mumbler. More than one person in the parking garage at once. It is all just overwhelming. – Lenore Skenazy

Feminine Pragmatism

Anyone surprised by this knows nothing about women:

…Gabriel Sánchez rattled off the previous jobs of the women who now [work] at his [brothel] for $25 an hour. “We’ve got lots of teachers, some doctors, many professional women and one petroleum engineer…All of them showed up with their degrees in hand.” And all of them came from Venezuela. As Venezuela’s economy continues to collapse amid food shortages, hyperinflation and U.S. sanctions, waves of economic refugees have fled the country. Those with the means have gone to places like Miami, Santiago and Panama. The less fortunate find themselves walking across the border into Colombia looking for a way, any way, to keep themselves and their families fed…But with jobs scarce, many…women are turning to the world’s oldest profession to make ends meet…

Socialism, the way of the future.

Finding What Isn’t There

As I keep saying over and over and over:

Human trafficking arrests are almost nonexistent in most states, according to the FBI’s newly released U.S. crime statistics for 2016…Florida reported 105 investigations into human-trafficking offenses in 2016 but zero human trafficking arrests…Nevada worked on 140 human-trafficking investigations but made only 40 arrests on trafficking charges. Louisiana looked into 123 potential cases of human trafficking but only arrested 16 people for it…this report only includes arrests recorded by state and local law enforcement on human trafficking charges, which allows us to look beyond police propaganda about what they’re doing and see what it is they’re actually doing….the data do little to support the idea that the U.S. is experiencing unprecedented levels of labor and sex trafficking or that we are in the midst of some sort of “modern slavery” epidemic. This is probably why you don’t see UCR trafficking statistics quoted in congressional reports, “awareness” materials, or law enforcement statements to the media on the topic…

Backwards into the Future (#629)

Zimbabwean sex workers demonstrate their clout:

…sex workers in Chiredzi, a small sugar cane growing town in south-eastern Zimbabwe, have forced the reopening of Chigarapasi beer hall, the country’s largest, after threatening to stage a week-long naked vigil at the entrance in protest over its closure. The beer hall…was closed early this year [after] the…Chiredzi council…[claimed] the bar was no longer making a profit – much to the surprise of…sex workers whose livelihood depends on [it]…

Public Service Announcement (#669)

If your candidate’s campaign can be derailed by the peccadilloes of a virtual stranger, you have a shitty candidate:

Anthony Weiner is scheduled to be sentenced on Monday in a sexting scandal that some blame for Hillary Clinton’s presidential loss. The former New York congressman faces up to 27 months in prison after he pleaded guilty to one charge of transferring obscene material to a minor…by having illicit contact with a 15-year-old girl, including asking her to “sexually perform” for him in conversations on Skype and Snapchat…

Also: the word “illicit” makes anyone who uses it sound like a pearl-clutching schoolmarm.

The Pygmalion Fallacy (#718)

Because nothing makes authoritarians lose their shit faster than sex:

…Chinese company Taqu (or “Touch” in English)…launch[ed] their “Shared Girlfriend” app online, which allowed users to rent a silicone sex doll for a daily fee of 298 yuan (US$45.15) or 1,298 yuan per week…news of the service quickly went viral…Two days after its 14 September launch in Beijing, the authorities shut the service down after…a police investigation [called the rental] it to be a “vulgar act that disrupts social order“…

The Widening Gyre (#726)

Watching “sex trafficking” hysteria spin out of control is deeply gratifying:

These “close encounters” with near sex-traffickers are like alien abductions. They are shared wildly — gleefully — by people seemingly thrilled to know this horrible scourge is out there…This latest story, from Reno, involves a mom and dad who noticed every detail about a night that sounds outrageously ordinary. They passed by some people they didn’t know! They went into the parking garage and there was a car — with people in it! They felt scared for their kids and compelled to write a Facebook post warning people everywhere about this terrible thing that…didn’t happen…I, too, walked outside last night and literally every single person I encountered may have “possibly” been involved in a child sex trafficking ring. Each and every person I saw might “possibly” have also been a Satanist. Or the owner of a Segway they’re trying to get rid of. Or been related to the Royal Family…there’s no way to say they AREN’T sex traffickers. So it’s best to just assume they are…”Holland…described [one man] as looking disheveled and wearing a bodyguard-type earpiece“…I’m sure that “bodyguard type earpiece” couldn’t possibly be an earbud. It is so much more likely that the man was being commanded from Sex Trafficking HQ than listening to Beyonce…

Saving Them From Themselves (#735)

Lowered penalties for teen sexting may sound like a step in the right direction, but in actuality they simply encourage prosecutors to file more charges for behavior that isn’t even criminal in the first place:

Ohio state lawmakers have proposed a bill that would ban sexting between teenagers, potentially turning thousands of ordinary young Ohioans into sex offenders…Legislators could instead amend state statute to exempt teens exchanging pics between themselves, and people a few years over 18 texting with those a few years younger, from laws that treat them as child-porn producers and consumers. Prosecutors could decline to bring these charges against sexting minors, and schools could decline to hand these cases over to cops. Instead, this bill would create the new misdemeanor crime of “possession of sexually explicit digital material”…by anyone under age 21…So sexting teenagers might not get labeled child pornographers, but they could still wind up with a criminal record or, at the very least, a lot of court dates and a bullshit DARE-style class on how sexting will ruin their lives. Worse yet, the legislation doesn’t actually change the state’s child pornography laws. If it passes, prosecutors can still bring child porn charges against minors…or…use the threat of that charge to coerce kids to consent to searches, take plea deals on the lesser charge, and so on. The sexting offense would simply be an additional tool at authorities’ disposal…

The Pygmalion Fallacy (#759)

The concept that men can’t tell the difference between a hunk of plastic and a woman insults all humans:

A sex robot with a “resistance setting” that allows men to simulate rape should be banned…[says anti-sex] lawyer…Kate Parker, who…warned the “uniquely sinister” technology normalised sexual assault…

Beware of authoritarians who disguise their deeply pathological need to control others’ sexuality by using words like “normalize” to describe sexual fantasies which are already so normal they’re almost vanilla. For a deeper analysis of why this woman’s beliefs are deeply offensive, see also “Vile Insinuation“.

The Course of a Disease (#772)

It took a few weeks for Irish prohibitionists to figure out how to celebrate the increase in violence vs sex workers directly resulting from their laws without revealing their sociopathy to everyone:

More sex workers have reported rapes to gardai since new laws on prostitution laws were introduced, a [prohibitionist] group has claimed…Sarah Benson, head of Ruhama, which [persecutes sex workers]…said she is hopeful the laws make a positive difference…

Lower Education (#773)

Go on, keep telling me how the slippery slope is a “fallacy”:

Gov. Jerry Brown of California is poised to sign a worrisome bill that…explicitly applies to children in public kindergarten, elementary and high schools. So a first grader could face dire consequences if found to have committed an act of “sexual violence,” which is broadly defined to include any “physical sexual acts perpetrated against a person” without their consent. California lawmakers quickly passed the bill last week after Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced on Sept. 7 that she will roll back the [due-process-banning] guidelines set forth by the Obama administration in 2011…[which] have led to bad outcomes…In case after case, young men were expelled on the basis of allegations that they were not allowed to challenge by seeing the evidence against them or cross-examining witnesses…Put aside for a moment whether a 6-year-old is capable of forming the intent to commit a sexual assault when she plants kisses on an unenthusiastic classmate, or whether it makes sense to bring sexual assault charges against an eighth grader who hugs the girl he has a crush on but who does not reciprocate his feelings. Put aside for a moment whether school administrators should be branding children sexual assailants even if they are 49.99 percent sure the allegations are not true…Heavy-handed disciplinary policies fall disproportionately on students of color. Because of the stereotypes associated with them, including the noxious but persistent trope that black males are inherently sexually predatory, black kids are presumed guilty…

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In the News (#774)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, Backpage, bogus studies, censorship, Comfort Zone, cops, dirty, evidence, France, Google, hysteria, illegal aliens, imaginative fiction, internet, Italy, law, Law of the Instrument, male prostitutes, Missouri, Monsters, New Mexico, Ohio, Prudesville, rape, restaurants, robots, sexting, Social Autoimmune Disorder, surveillance, The Course of a Disease, The Mote and the Beam, The Pygmalion Fallacy, The Widening Gyre, To Molest and Rape, transgender, Uncommon Sense, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers, Washington (state), yellow journalism on September 16, 2017| 1 Comment »

The trade union movement has to decide whether it’s going to back workers…or…police. – Laura Watson

Monsters

The Swedish model protects sex workers!

Last year, France passed [the Swedish model, under the pretense of]…protecting sex workers from prosecution, but…[as sex worker activists predicted] it is simply driving them further underground and exposing them to far more danger. Transsexual prostitutes who work in Paris’s Bois de Boulogne…are disproportionately affected…

Prudesville

A new twist in Everett, WA’s absurd “bikini barista” melodrama:

Bikini baristas…are suing [Everett] over its ban on serving “quick service” food and drinks with bare shoulders, midriffs, or upper thighs…a group of seven baristas and one coffee stand owner filed a federal lawsuit alleging a violation of their rights to free expression, privacy, due process, and equal protection…Everett isn’t claiming that the regulations serve any food safety or public health purposes…the point of the dress code is to prevent…baristas from giving customers a peep show for extra cash…Employee violations can lead to fines for business owners, along with a requirement to register for a special license (which the city can deny)…if the owners are judged to have “facilitated” the “lewd conduct,” they can be slapped with a $5,000 fine and a year in jail. Essentially, Everett has created a crime similar to promoting prostitution—but for facilitating skimpy clothing…

Law of the Instrument (#560)

Picture what you’d think of as “sex trafficking”, then compare it to this:

A St. Louis man who was employed at a high school is facing child pornography and sex trafficking charges after police said he exchanged illicit texts with a 15-year-old male student at the school. Michael A. West…told the [young man] he could get him an opportunity to make money for performing sexual acts…

Cases are this are why even some not-completely-stupid people believe that “sex trafficking” is increasing; “sex trafficking” charges certainly are.

Social Autoimmune Disorder (#594)

Add Dayton, Ohio to the cities mailing blatantly-unconstitutional “Dear John” letters to the registered addresses of vehicles passing through certain neighborhoods:

So far this year, the Dayton police Vice Unit has mailed 18 [threat letters] to the owners of vehicles that were spotted in areas [police claim to be] known for high levels of prostitution. The letters are supposed to [scare] people [by claiming that wanting sex]…is a “serious offense” that carries potential…deadly disease and other sexually transmitted infections…[often] the recipients are spouses or business owners whose vehicles were in the possession of [others] when [cops decided to stick their noses into others’ business]…

To Molest and Rape

The US government claims it takes reports of cops raping women seriously…as long as they’re not US cops:

…two U.S. students…were raped by Carabinieri policemen who [took] them home in a patrol car from a nightclub…three patrol cars went to a nightclub to investigate a fight. Two cars left after calm was restored, but the third remained. The women…told authorities that the [cops] drove them to their apartment building and raped them…witnesses…confirm[ed] they saw the women enter the patrol car…

Uncommon Sense (#669)

The IWW was the first major union to support sex workers rights, but it won’t be the last:

The GMB and ASLEF have come out in support of the full decriminalisation of sex work in Britain, the first major unions to do so…The unions, which have a combined membership of over 600,000, are calling for the UK to adopt full decriminalisation, similar to the approach adopted by New Zealand, which since 2003 has provided sex workers with legal protections…

The Pygmalion Fallacy (#687)

“Sex robot” hysteria gets ever sillier:

A cybersecurity scientist has issued a bizarre warning that sex robots could one day rise up and kill their owners if hackers can get inside their heads…cybersecurity lecturer Dr. Nick Patterson [fantasized] that the lifelike dolls could end up going all “Terminator” on us…hackers could breach the realistic robots’ inner defenses and catch their owners with their pants down…

Does this idea seem familiar to regular readers?

The Widening Gyre (#735)

They finally realized they could expand the panic by adding male “sex slaves”:

The National Center on Sexual Exploitation [formerly “Morality in Media”], Washington College, and The U.S. Institute Against Human Trafficking held a historic press conference…to kick off the first ever symposium on the sexual exploitation harming boys and men. The government, NGOs, and society at large have overlooked male victims of sexual exploitation, the organizations [pandered]…Haley Halverson…of…the [NCSE fantasized]…that [the] estimated range of male trafficking victims hovers in the hundreds of thousands”…

The NCSE is a fundamentalist Christian anti-porn organization which is also behind the recent tactic of getting conservative states to declare porn a “public health crisis”.

Comfort Zone (#769)

Sometimes the attempt to hide migration control behind the “sex trafficking” narrative is especially apparent:

…”It had been more than 10 years since Gari, an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala…had seen his younger brother. So he was surprised earlier this year when he received a call from a federal government agency telling him his teen brother had emigrated alone from the Central American country to the Arizona-Mexico border…the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services…asked Gari to take legal guardianship of his brother….officials [lied]…that it wouldn’t jeopardize his own safety….[but] Gari…was arrested…by federal immigration agents who had used his little brother as bait“…immigration attorney Yazmin Rodriguez…knows at least three other similar cases…ICE [pretends] using children fleeing violence as bait “[is] part of a broader mission to disrupt human trafficking”…

The Mote and the Beam (#773)

The odious Nick Kristof finds it “baffling and perplexing” that internet companies don’t want the internet destroyed by sociopathic politicians on a witch hunt:

Sex traffickers in America have…a…crucial (if secret) ally: Google…organizations it funds have for years been quietly helping Backpage.com, the odious website where most American [passive, vegetable] victims of human trafficking are sold, to battle lawsuits from [ambulance-chasers fantasizing that] children [are] sold there for sex. Now Google is using its enormous lobbying power in Washington to try to kill bipartisan legislation that would [enable profiteers to sue]…websites that [they claim] promote sex trafficking [or virtually any other federal crime]…as Backpage fights off prosecutors and worries about the legislation, the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, Google has emerged as its behind-the-scenes champion…

What I find “baffling and perplexing” is that so few people recognize “One-hand” Kristof’s BDSM masturbatory fantasies about underage girls for what they are.

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In the News (#772)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged Anatomy of a Boondoggle, bad customers, brothels, Colorado, cops, disability, escort review sites, hysteria, Ireland, New York, New Zealand, Oregon, pragmatism, rape, scams, Scrupleless in Seattle, sex offender registry, South Africa, Swedish model, The Course of a Disease, The End of the Beginning, The Sky is Falling!, To Molest and Rape, Under Review, violence vs. sex workers, Washington (state), Whore Madonnas on September 9, 2017| 1 Comment »

Every day that me and my clients aren’t being arrested is a day that my life gets a little easier. – A mother in New Zealand

Whore Madonnas

Imagine this article in an American parenting column:

I’m young, Māori and a sex worker, and my life is harder than you can imagine, but not for the reasons you’re thinking…I’ve lived with chronic pain in my body since I was a child, and my daughter’s severe disability means that I will continue to care for her full time for the remainder of my life…My body isn’t capable of working a 40 hour week, nor allowing me to become qualified at something that pays well…Both my daughter and I will gradually become more and more disabled, but she much sooner than me. She already needs one-to-one care at all times, and she’s still just a small child…I need to plan for her future – and I imagine she will outlive me, so I need to plan for that as well…Being a sex worker means I can work when I am able and have days off when I’m not. I can fit my work around my disability, I choose when and how I work, and there is no pressure from my workplace. I never have to do more hours than I want to, so I can spend lots of time caring for my daughter…Some people [pretend]…that any woman who needs money is not free to truly choose [to] work, but is forced into [work] by circumstance…They say my clients should be arrested, and they want to stop me from being able to work…but…sex work is getting me out of a lifelong predicament, and I’m glad I have the option to do it legally…

Anatomy of a Boondoggle

Note the buried lede: cops sexually assaulted women in order to arrest them:

That a Chinatown spa was busted for prostitution…is further reinforcement of a cliche stereotype…A summons is currently duct-taped to the front door, and…There is also a note on the legal document stating, “prostitution is a right of free people; this is an attack upon human liberty, you evil fucks”…At least two instances were highlighted – both back in April – in which employees “performed a sexual act” on [disguised pigs]…

The Sky is Falling!

Only in the looking-glass world inhabited by prohibitionists can could anyone take seriously the notion that a common arrangement literally as old as human culture is only now becoming “normalized”:

[Prohibitionists] have warned against the normalisation of the “sugar daddy” or “blesser” culture, whereby young girls are lured into sex in exchange for material goods, bringing them one step closer to the threat of sex trafficking…girls lured with promises of setting up with a “sugar daddy” have ended up, trapped as sex slaves. The idea of having a sugar daddy, or “blesser”, is a widely normal…concept in South Africa to describe a transactional relationship struck between young girls and older men who provide them with material goods in return for sex. But [prohibitionists pretend] the normalisation of [something that was described in the previous sentence as already widely normal]…is leading to growing numbers of girls being duped by sex traffickers…

Under Review

I’m completely aghast at everyone involved in the creation of this shitshow, from the pigs, to the prohibitionists who came up with the moronic “sex trafficking” rhetoric they’re using to justify their sadistic game, to the cheapskate haggler, to any board sleazy enough to allow this kind of review, to the reporter with his dysphemisms and weird scare quotes; frankly, I’d like to see all of them put in a weighted sack together and thrown into the Columbia river. Read this pile of rancid filth at your own risk, but you may feel the need to scrub your eyeballs after.

To Molest and Rape

Your periodic reminder that the State covering up for rapist cops isn’t confined to the US:

…The Garda Siochana Ombudsman Commission (GSOC)…has received 47 complaints relating to [rapes]…sexual assaults and similar offences in the last three- and-a-half years, none of which have resulted in any criminal proceedings being taken. [Only] nine of the cases remain open, including a…[report] that a garda had sex with an underage person last year…

Scrupleless in Seattle

Holy shit, guys, STOP GOING TO PLACES YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF TO SEE GIRLS WITH NO REPUTATION! Stick to ladies with an established internet footprint and you’ll be safe from this evil:

…Bellevue police and the King County Sheriff’s Office opened [a fake] brothel…setting up a sting in a condominium…Over the course of seven days, dozens of unsuspecting [men]…answered online ads posted by [pervert pigs pretending to be sex workers]…They were arrested after showing up at the condo…[pigs] arrested 110 men and impounded 105 cars, two motorcycles and one bicycle…

The End of the Beginning (#718)

Maybe, just maybe, we’re about to witness the beginning of the end of these evil laws:

A federal court judge in Denver has called the public sex offender registry…“cruel and unusual punishment”…Judge Richard Matsch has found [registration] to be a violation of the U.S. Constitution. He wrote that the public has been given the “power to inflict punishments beyond those imposed through the court.” Alison Ruttenberg, the attorney for the sex offenders, [said]…“Making them at risk for vigilantes’ action to have their houses burned down, beaten up or even killed…is cruel and unusual punishment…There’s not a single crime in Colorado that has been solved because of the sex offender registry. Sex offenders have probably the lowest recidivism rate of any felon and to single them out for this type of public ridicule and registration is irrational. It doesn’t do anything to keep our community safer”…The judge found the posting of sex offender information to be a violation of two different amendments…The Colorado Attorney General’s office says it hasn’t decided on if it will appeal the ruling…

The Course of a Disease (#745)

This is exactly what prohibitionists wanted, despite their claims to the contrary:

Attacks on [Irish] sex workers have increased dramatically since a change in the law last March which criminalised the purchase of sex…the law change has forced the trade deeper underground…put sex workers under greater pressure to put themselves in riskier situations…[and] makes sex workers less likely to report dangerous clients to gardaí…[Lucy Smyth of Ugly Mugs]…said [the organization] had received 1,635 reports from sex workers who were concerned about clients in the five months since the law change, a 61 per cent increase on the same period last year. Some 137 of these incidents involved violence, including sexual assault, with knives or guns reportedly produced in 12 of these case. A total of 79 incidents of violence were reported in the first five months of last year…

The Notorious Badge (#760)

What was the point of talking to Annie Sprinkle if she wasn’t going to listen?

…Maggie Gyllenhaal…as…Candy is the lone figure in [The Deuce]…who suggests an inner life and the toll the sex trade takes on the human soul…“I needed to talk to someone who’s done this”…[so the] series executive producer…introduced Maggie to Annie Sprinkle…[who]…“hooked me up with a bunch of her friends…Annie was really the key into that world. The women I spoke with were in their 60s. I was so grateful”…

Yes, in a mainstream newspaper in the 21st century, an apparently adult writer is actually claiming that sex has magical booga-booga powers to damage souls, presumably like a curse or the One Ring or something.

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In the News (#757)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged Across the Pond, agency denial, Alaska, Backpage, Bad Girls, Bulgaria, Business As Usual, censorship, cops, dirty, disease, Guinea Pigs, hysteria, Israel, Kentucky, law, Pimping the Pimp, politicians, prohibitionist myths, propaganda, psychology, rape, rescue industry, robots, Russia, streetwalkers, surveillance, Swedish model, The Course of a Disease, The Immunity Syndrome, The Pygmalion Fallacy, The War Goes On, Total Eclipse of the Brain, United Kingdom on July 19, 2017| 2 Comments »

Give up hope — we’ll find you, too! – Je Suis Maidan

Bad Girls

Translation: some robbers employ female accomplices who pose as sex workers to attract victims:

Hundreds of thousands of UK tourists travel to Sunny Beach resort in Bulgaria, where pints are as cheap as 80p…But the flocks of drunk Brits are attracting criminals, the Foreign Office said. It added: “Tourists are targeted by thieves and pickpockets in Sunny Beach. There has been an increase in burglaries from hotel rooms.” Prostitution is not illegal in Bulgaria…but it is believed [by cops] to be linked to the criminal underworld…”We’ve received numerous reports of muggings and assaults of British nationals by prostitutes and their minders…Tourists have been victims of overcharging in strip clubs [and] threatened with violence if they don’t pay”…

This scam has existed for as long as there have been cities; the Romans referred to such women as gallinae (“hens”). To report this as “news” is like pretending the existence of pickpockets and panhandlers is. Also: Try buying something at any business in the US or UK and refusing to pay, and let’s see if you aren’t threatened with violence. The fact that the thugs you’ll be threatened with in those places are more likely to wear costumes doesn’t change the fact that you’re being threatened with violence.

The Course of a Disease (#8)

A watered-down disease culture, but a disease culture nonetheless:

…[Israeli] lawmakers [who happen to have vaginas]…announced they would present legislation punishing the clients of prostitutes…as the Justice Ministry wrapped up a year-long evaluation of the issue…The issue in recent months earned overwhelming support in the Knesset, with 71 lawmakers from both the coalition and opposition lending their support…Justice Ministry Director-General Emi Palmor ruled out leveling fines against those who paid for sex, saying it was not legally viable. However, Palmor said she was “very, very much in favor” of instituting gradual criminal penalties against those who pay for sex, beginning with a warning and building up to court-ordered “John school” attendance, and other criminal punishments…Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked…will then decide whether to pursue legislation that would both punish clients and set up [re-education] programs for the sex workers…

The Immunity Syndrome (#321)

The last “super gonorrhea” scare turned out to be bogus, and I strongly suspect this one is as well:

…the World Health Association is now warning of an globally spreading gonorrhoea superbug which is resistant to all antibiotics…Thus far there have been only three identified cases of people with a strain resistant to all antibiotics, so it’s far from too late for us to stop this becoming a pandemic, or for you to protect yourself…

Observation: three cases of a dangerous disease. Conclusion: “globally spreading” pandemic! Everybody panic!

Pimping the Pimp (#446)

With her exaggerated claims, naked opportunism, and ludicrous misuse of terminology, this woman reminds me very much of Annie Lobert of “Liars for Jesus”:

Elle Snow laces up her combat boots, prepared once again, to go to war with “The Game”…says Snow…”The [sex] traffickers like to move their victims frequently so they can’t get to know anyone and it’s harder for law enforcement to track them”…Snow…says she was 19 when she was first approached by an older man [named David Bernard Anderson] who…[coerced her into prostitution]…Anderson was one of many men and women following a set of carefully laid-out rules and guidelines for how to force women into prostitution. “What happened to me was called ‘The Game,’ this monstrous beast that is this world of sex trafficking…These guys have a complete structure, they have books, they have documentaries, they have podcasts”…Now Snow spends many of her days monitoring sex ads on online classified sites, looking for trends …”I’m looking for tattoos because traffickers like to brand their victims”…

Yes, Snow is intentionally conflating the street term “The Game” (which, like “john”, is used far more often among cops and prohibitionists than among streetwalkers, and virtually never by other sex workers) with “Game”, the pickup artist system. Anyone who’s ever researched the latter knows that it has nothing to do with pimping, but Snow doesn’t let that stop her any more than she lets the demonstrated falsity of that tattoo nonsense stop her from claiming that. Neither CNN nor her intended marks will bother to do any research, because they’re eager to hear more masturbatory fantasies they can pretend are about fighting evil rather than appealing to their prurient interests.

Guinea Pigs (#634)

New surveillance weapons are usually used against sex workers first, but it never stops with us:

In late June, someone launched a website called Je Suis Maidan, identifying people captured in photographs from Moscow’s June 12 anti-corruption protest. On July 7, the website also started identifying demonstrators who attended protests that day in regions throughout the country. Je Suis Maidan relies on the controversial app “FindFace,” which makes it possible to find a random person’s social-media page on Vkontakte [Russian Facebook] with a photograph of that person. Using images that appeared in the news media (including a gigapixel photograph published by the pro-Kremlin tabloid Life.ru), the website finds people through FindFace, listing their real names and Vkontakte pages…

The War Goes On (#705)

Politicians will keep persecuting Backpage until they find a new website to demonize:

Five members of Congress who [ride anti-whore hobbyhorses]…called on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to launch a criminal investigation of Backpage.com after a trove of documents revealed that the website hired a company in the Philippines to lure advertisers and customers…The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations…[claimed] in January that Backpage was removing offensive terms from its sex ads but allowing the ads, some with [imagined] child-trafficking content, to remain posted…

Some of the five named politicians are the same ones working to gut Section 230, thereby destroying the internet as we know it.

Business As Usual (#738)

Even though there’s nothing here which wasn’t already covered in earlier articles on the topic (including mine), its appearance in a mainstream and controversy-averse publication like Glamour is an extremely promising sign:

There’s a heated debate going on right now in Alaska between the police department and sex workers’ rights advocates over a bill that would make it illegal for [cops] to [rape or molest] sex workers before arresting them. If Alaska passes this bill, they’ll become the first state to outlaw any sexual contact between police and the people they’re [trying to entrap]…Advocates…[point out] that police catching sex workers in the act by engaging with them sexually is a human rights violation, and Amnesty International has made an official statement…that…“Such conduct is an abuse of authority and…amounts to rape and/or entrapment”…

Across the Pond (#744)

Here’s that vile use of “safer neighborhood team” to mean “vice squad” again:

After a [supposed] spike in complaints…[cops] are launching the new campaign which they hope will stop the sex trade in Redbridge…Sgt Matt Taylor…was quick to [hide the persecution behind the faddish claim]…that his detectives are targeting the pimps and criminals which organise and use the prostitutes, and not the girls themselves…“We want to [force] them…out of prostitution”…Sgt Taylor said police [pretend] the gangs are “organised”…Insp Lee Canter, the head of Redbridge Safer Neighbourhoods, commented: “I would like to send a strong message out to those who intend to use the services of sex workers as we will seek to prosecute you and if convicted your picture may be published in the local papers”…

Total Eclipse of the Brain

Though it’s too early in the implosion to tell for sure, we may have a winner in the “stupidest gypsy whore magnet” competition:

The eyes of the world will be on Hopkinsville [Kentucky] next month when a total solar eclipse brings tens of thousands of people to the small city. But law enforcement and activists are warning everyone of sex trafficking, a dangerous threat they hope does not become a reality…[profiteer] Amy Leenerts [claims]…“yes, it will definitely happen…it’s a human trafficking ring. And we expect that to probably end up in Hopkinsville”…The FBI is looking into the credibility of human trafficking threats during the eclipse. Meanwhile, the Christian County Sheriff Department is wasting no time preparing for the worst…

The Pygmalion Fallacy (#755)

One way to tell a moral scold’s head is inextricably embedded in his own rectal cavity: he claims supposed disastrous effects of whatever-it-is that are the exact opposite of those claimed by other moral scolds:

The Salvation Army has condemned…sex robots, warning that the technology could increase demand for people trafficked into the UK for sexual exploitation…rather than decrease demand for real sex workers…Kathryn Taylor, of the Salvation Army’s anti-[whore]…unit said…”In the same way that pornography normalises certain behaviours, the availability of sexbots could normalise a distorted power dynamic which devalues the other person involved when transferred to human interactions. This could encourage increased objectification of women and children and a lack of respect for their fellow human beings”…Prof Noel Sharkey…said compliant and uncomplaining sexbots could encourage objectification, abuse, rape and paedophilia…

You know, kind of like Agatha Christie novels and TV cop shows increase real crimes. It’s funny how prudes expect everyone to believe that human beings are only volitionless tabulae rasae when sex is involved.

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In the News (#745)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged All-Purpose Excuse, Backpage, Canada, censorship, Colombia, Connecticut, cops, disability, end demand, Follow Your Bliss, games, Georgia, Germany, hysteria, internet, Ireland, law, McNeill's Law, Micromanagement, Moving Pictures, North Carolina, prisons, Profound Mental Disabilities, propaganda, rape, rescue industry, Schadenfreude, Swedish model, Thailand, The Course of a Disease, tits, To Molest and Rape, Torture Chamber, Uncommon Sense, United Kingdom, video, Washington (state), Welcome to Our Updates, Wisconsin, Worse Than I Thought on June 7, 2017| 1 Comment »

Criminal laws don’t deter hungry humans. – Kate McGrew

Welcome To Our World (May Updates)

Though various tit-related laws are covered in this video, the milk-sharing angle is the one that gets least press:

Follow Your Bliss

Though it’s possible this guy’s telling the truth, I think it much more likely we’re actually looking at a McNeill Rule specimen who’s had a complete mental breakdown:

A London detective is claiming he is being punished for investigating a pedophile prostitution ring, which is being protected by members of Parliament, judges and senior police officers. Jonathan Wedger…had been investigating cases in the London area since the early 1990s involving girls between the ages of nine and 17 who have been driven into drug addiction and groomed for prostitution…he discovered that police, judges and politicians have been aware of the problem and allowed them to continue…The website Funding Morality is raising money to help Wedger with living expenses and medical costs…his case has received only limited media coverage…

Micromanagement

This plan is supported by useful idiots who don’t understand the concept of “precedent”:

…Under new [Canadian] prostitution laws that…criminalized buying (or trying to buy) sex, the [moronically-named] operation [John Be Gone]…resulted in charges being laid against 27 men. Police…held a press conference to name the men…and [publicize] their…addresses…three of the men charged…[were] found not guilty and three had…the charges against them dismissed, but the…public shaming…cannot be reversed…those men found guilty were ordered to supply samples to Canada’s National DNA Data Bank (NDDB)…Back in 2000, when the NDDB launched, there were only 37 designated offenses…By 2009…the list had “undergone significant expansion” to “more than 250 offenses…depending on how you count them.” In 2017, it’s even more extensive…The rapidly expanding list of offenses connected to the DNA database might seem to a cynic like a backdoor way of achieving what police in the UK had hoped to achieve from the get-go — a database including the DNA of the entire male population of the United Kingdom…

Torture Chamber

“Correctional officer” is a term straight out of Orwell:

Twenty-five prisoners told a lawyer the same disturbing story: Two armed correctional officers poured hot sauce into sandwich bags and forced inmates to stick their hands inside and lick the sauce from their fingers…It was not a mild Texas Pete-type sauce, but an “exotic hot” variety sold over the internet and stronger than police pepper spray…it was so toxic that it blistered their skin and mouths…[but] the [screws] wore surgical gloves…the two [screws] forced inmates to smuggle contraband into the prison…[in their anuses so the screws could make] thousands of dollars a week off the sale of cellphones, cigarettes and marijuana…Inmates [were] forced to kiss snakes and throw rabbits in front of oncoming traffic…authorities at the prison knew what was going on…If inmates refused…the [screws]…withheld water, gloves and vests while the inmates worked in the sun. But what the inmates feared most was that the [screws] would kick them off the road crew, jeopardizing their early release from prison…

Schadenfreude (#404)

“Sex trafficking tours” are arguably the most vile, tone-deaf product the rescue industry has yet dreamed up:

Bored of the beach? Done with mini breaks? Time to take an “advocacy journey” and spend a blissful few days in the Caribbean fighting human trafficking…holiday makers can twin a visit to the colonial Colombian city of Cartagena with a…program aimed at [indoctrinating people in “sex trafficking” propaganda. Rescue industry profiteers]…Ecpat-USA and travel company Altruvistas [colluded to profit from the moral panic. The conspirators also]…run…similar [poverty porn] trips to Thailand…

All-Purpose Excuse

If you’re a politician in a city which likes to pretend to be noble and forward-thinking, but you still want to persecute whores & homeless people, the rescue industry has an excuse for you!

In October 2016…the Jungle, a homeless encampment in Seattle, was cleared out and people were forced to leave. The city told some of those who left the Jungle they could safely stay in another encampment nearby. Five months later, the city swept that camp too, citing alleged sex trafficking. During these cleanups, the city allowed a religious organization, the Union Gospel Mission, to be the service provider. UGM claims clients are not required to participate in religious practices to receive services, but the organization’s mission is known. This means anyone who feels uncomfortable with UGM’s religious mission—including sex workers—is left without an alternative…

Moving Pictures

In which an asleep-at-the-wheel editor allows a clueless reporter to publish a pro-censorship story lauding a propaganda film celebration of a court case which would cripple their publisher’s online business:

…child sex abuse and human trafficking are generally considered indefensible crimes. So who’s defending them? According to I Am Jane Doe, that would be Google. And Microsoft. And Facebook. And Yahoo…the documentary advocates for [censorship] of online [advertising sites and provides propaganda for]…members of Congress working to [increase]…Internet [censorship by gutting]…Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act…

Only in the midst of a moral panic do so many so-called journalists bleat out pro-censorship idiocy.

Profound Mental Disabilities (#562)

Sadly, it’s never a good idea for a sex worker to transact with anyone who could be considered mentally disabled to any degree:

[Manchester, Connecticut] police arrested a…woman on prostitution charges after parents of a man with diminished mental capacity complained he had been duped out of his video game system in exchange for sex. Veronica Arroyo…was being held…on bail [much too high for her to afford until] a court appearance on June 19. Police [said] that a 19-year-old man, whose IQ is 80, had paid Arroyo $30 for oral sex…The man’s friend told him he could get “the whole experience” with the same woman if he traded his Xbox…

Though the young man is impaired, it’s not like he has his IQ tattooed on his forehead. Arroyo didn’t “dupe” anyone; the guy offered her a trade and she took it. Only the intervention of the parents, who obviously don’t think their son’s sexual needs are real or important, transformed this into a “crime”. If they were decent human beings they’d have offered to buy the Xbox back from her, asked her not to do business with their son any more due to his disability, and then made arrangements themselves to have his needs cared for regularly.

To Molest and Rape

Another pig claims a random woman he raped wanted to suck his filthy dick:

…Harris County sheriff’s deputy…Thomas Carl Pierson…[orally raped a woman on] Feb. 14, 2016…[after pulling her] over [on the pretext that she was allegedly] speeding about 1 p.m…He wrote her a warning and let her go, but pulled her over again five miles away [and raped her]…After that case made the news last year, two more women [reported similar incidents]…One said that on Oct. 20, 2015, Pierson pulled her over [and molested her]…then showed up at her…home the next day…The other woman said Pierson [molested her] after pulling her over on Sept. 12, 2015, then followed her to her grandmother’s home…“for the purpose of harassing and intimidating” her…Pierson’s defense is that the [rape] in 2016 was [actually] consensual…

Uncommon Sense (#676)

Because whores are morons whose lives and businesses must be micromanaged by governments:

ICRSE launches a briefing paper titled “Professed Protection, Pointless Provisions – Overview of the German Prostitutes Protection Act”…ICRSE has serious concerns about the ways the…Act…will significantly undermine many of sex workers’ fundamental rights. The mandatory registration of sex workers…limit[s] their right to freedom of vocational choice, and the extensive means of surveillance…infringes the constitutional right of the inviolability of the home. The recording of personal data…about persons’ sexual life is a particularly serious issue…The “Prostitutes Protection Act”…only pretends to be a law for the protection of sex workers…What is labelled as protection is in large parts simply a law aimed at repressing sex work…

Worse Than I Thought (#707)

Wisconsin’s entry in the race to make the most mindlessly-draconian anti-sex laws:

A pair of bills proposed by [Wisconsin politicians]…would [attempt to destroy the lives of people seeking consensual sex]…One of the bills…would make the third conviction a felony…sponsor…Joel Kleefisch [vomited out disgusting “end demand” propaganda in the process of pushing his tyranny]…A second bill…would require people convicted of soliciting or patronizing prostitutes — or [having an incall]…to pay $5,000. The money would be used to [spread propaganda & enrich the pigs]…The sponsors of both bills [masturbated to the fantasy] that Milwaukee is known as a hotbed of sex trafficking…

How long are you guys going to sit on your arses rather than supporting the fight against this evil? Until you’re the one whose picture is in the news prior to your entry into the “sex offender” registry?

The Course of a Disease (#715)

This is exactly what prohibitionists wanted, despite their claims to the contrary:

On 27 March it became illegal to buy sex in Ireland – a law which legislators and campaigners said would change the industry for the better. But for many women who offer sexual services throughout Ireland, the new laws have forced them to operate on their own – away from the women they leaned on not just for help with day-to-day activities but for emotional support and other issues…

Across the Pond (#744)

More harassment from another “safer neighborhood team” (ie vice pigs):

Police in Derby will be stepping-up patrols to [harass] communities during Ramadan celebrations…One of the actions being taken will see additional patrols to take action on the problem of prostitution and kerb crawling late at night…

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