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Posts Tagged ‘The Crumbling Dam’

Any drug can be used responsibly.  –  Andre Picard

The Crumbling Dam

Prohibitionists hate harm reduction because prohibition is based in harm magnification:

The Alberta government has appointed a panel to study supervised drug-consumption sites.  Panel members have been told to not to consider the merits of the facilities, only how they affect neighbouring residents and businesses…this political exercise…is about vilifying one type of drug user…Because the reality is there are already a lot of supervised consumption sites in Alberta and every province and territory – places where clients can be served their poison of choice unadulterated, in relatively safe quantities and not be judged or jailed.  We call these places bars.  What they really are are supervised alcohol-consumption sites: a place people can consume a safe supply of a drug in social surroundings and where if they overdose (i.e. get too drunk), there are friends and bar staff around to help…The assumptions we have that injected drugs are dangerous and bad, while liquid drugs ingested in clean glasses are innocuous and safe, are false.  The best way to minimize the harm caused by drugs is to legalize them, to ensure the supply is safe…

The Proper Study (#572)

Every proper study of any kind of sex work shoots prohibitionist lies down in flames:

…[prohibitionists claim] that porn fuels misogynistic attitudes and sexual violence.  If this were the case, you would think that people who consumed a lot of porn would hold particularly negative views towards women.  So we decided to study a group of men whom we’ve dubbed “porn superfans” – those who are so enthusiastic about porn that they’ll attend the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas…The 294 expo attendees we surveyed…actually expressed more progressive attitudes towards gender equality on two of the questions.  For two others, they indicated just as progressive – or, said another way, just as sexist – attitudes as the general population…

Guinea Pigs (#726) 

In case you had forgotten that banks are actively looking for whores to rat out to the pigs:

The first episode of Forensic Finance discusses human trafficking, with more than 40 million people [pretended by prohibitionists] to be victims…It’s up to [the fascist establishment to feed this hysteria by destroying the lives of sex workers]…and one solution is to analyze bank data…

The rest is mostly a lot of misogynistic, agency-negating bullshit such as “many people who are trafficked might not know they’re victims”.

The Pygmalion Fallacy (#774) 

Return of the Killer Sex Robots:

Sex robots plagued with coding errors could be prone to violent behaviours including strangling, a [doll collector] has [fantasized.  A person who expects to be taken seriously despite calling himself] Brick Dollbanger fears violent repercussions if robotics are not regulated properly.  He believes a simple “coding error” could turn AI girlfriends against their owners [and magically give them souls]…”It scares me to death, it’s a machine and it’s always going to be a machine…If you’ve watched [The Terminator]…I honestly believe synthetics are going to look very similar…It’s not going to be something you can hit with a pipe and it’s going to fall apart…it’s going to be very strong, and it won’t get tired, it won’t stop unless it runs out of an energy supply…

Crying for Nanny (#842)

This is good news; hysteria never stops until it starts harming the wealthy & well-connected:

[Ambulance-chasing shysters are using “sex trafficking” hysteria as a weapon in an attempt to rob] four Atlanta-area hotels [based on the pretense that they] knew sex trafficking was taking place [because they did not actively persecute sex workers and others who might fit the absurdly-broad]…indicator of sex trafficking [propaganda pushed by prohibitionists]…Jonathan Tonge and Pat McDonough…represent four [women who now claim to be]…trafficking victims…

The hotel industry is really going to regret having collaborated with fanatics rather than fighting “sex trafficking” hysteria.

Bad Girls (#923) 

Note how an accomplished adult man is portrayed as a passive victim when sex & drugs are involved:

A prostitute linked to the suspected overdose deaths of three men…including [Andrea Zamperoni] an Italian chef at a popular restaurant…has been arrested on drug charges…Angelina Barini [admitted to providing the chef drugs and later claimed that her pimp gave the chef some kind of fentanyl-based concoction she called “liquid ecstasy”.  After Zamperoni predictably ODed]…her pimp, who hasn’t been identified, would not let her call the police and discussed whether to cut up the body…

Obviously, trying to cover up an overdose by CHOPPING UP A FUCKING BODY is an act of epic stupidity, and if this “pimp” exists, why has he neither been arrested nor named?  Ask yourself:  if drugs were not illegal, would successful men buy unidentifiable and possibly toxic swill from people they don’t know?  And if drug-taking companions weren’t charged under monstrous “felony murder” statutes, wouldn’t people be much more likely to summon help in case of overdose?

Repeat Offenders (#934)

Even when it isn’t garment-related, “rescuers” invariably want to push sex workers into some kind of traditional feminine menial labor:

…76…former sex workers [in Haiti]…have just completed a two (2) year training based on disciplines such as cosmetology, sewing, baking and cooking…This program of social reintegration…was initiated…by Fanm Kore Fanmi Professional Center, Fanm Kore Fanm Association in partnership with Operation Underground Railroad…

The inevitable religious connection is at the very end there; “Operation Underground Railroad” has strong ties to the Mormon Church.

Dangerous Speech (#948)

Why let facts get in the way of a witch hunt?

[Prohibitionists’] claims [against Backpage] have always been bogus. Now, thanks to memos obtained by Reason, we have proof that prosecutors understood this all along…six years before Backpage leaders were indicted on federal criminal charges, prosecutors had already begun building a “child sex trafficking” case against the company.  But this case was hampered by the fact that Backpage kept trying to help stop sex trafficking…”Unlike virtually every other website that is used for prostitution…Backpage is remarkably responsive to law enforcement requests and often takes proactive steps to assist in investigations,” wrote…assistant U.S. attorneys for the Western District of Washington, in the April 3 memo to Jenny Durkan, now mayor of Seattle and then head federal prosecutor for the district.  [The FBI] told prosecutors that “on many occasions,” Backpage staff proactively sent him “advertisements that appear to contain pictures of juveniles” and that the company was “very cooperative at removing these advertisements at law enforcement’s request”…[the memos] would wind up being accidently sent by federal prosecutors to Backpage defense lawyers last year.  But both would be ruled off-limits for defense use, placed under seal, and only subject to public courtroom discussion…after prosecutors tried to sanction defendants for a few paragraphs from the memos appearing in a June Wired article

Unsafe for Human Consumption (#954)

Clownish cops continue to pratfall over fentanyl hysteria; clownish reporters swallow it whole:

…[a hysterical] Harrisburg [Pennsylvania cop suffered a panic attack due to cop disinformation about fentanyl after picking up]…a package [discarded by a fleeing vehicle.  A spokespig claimed]…he was stricken with the classic overdose symptoms [and then described the classic symptoms of a panic attack, not an opioid overdose]…the first [backup pig] to arrive on the scene immediately administered a dose of the opioid antidote Narcan [which of course had no effect because he wasn’t overdosing, but]…EMTs [were able to calm him down with] a second dose, which [acted as a placebo to calm his hysteria]…

Buried lede: “…merely touching fentanyl is…not enough exposure to produce a life-threatening overdose”, but the reporter is so afraid of debunking pig dogma he had to insert qualifiers.

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We have refrigerators with condiments at my law firm, then I must be running a brothel from the law firm?  –  Katie Phang

Monsters 

Just another fatality from the state’s sick need to police women:

Layleen Polanco…[an] Afro-Latina transgender woman was found dead in solitary confinement [on June 7th] at Rikers Island Jail. Polanco was being held on $500 bail owing to misdemeanor charges for a prostitution-related offense, in addition to the lowest-level drug charge.  The New York medical examiner has not yet [invented] the cause of her death…Decrim NY…[said] “Polanco’s death was caused by an all-too-common overlap of three aspects of the criminal legal system: She was criminalized for sex work.  She was held on $500 bail for misdemeanor charges.  And she was placed in solitary confinement”…hundreds of people gathered in downtown Manhattan to pay tribute to Polanco and to join in her family and the broader LGBTQ+ community’s calls for answers…

To Molest and Rape

Just another typical, representative cop:

 A Florida [cop]…has been fired and arrested after…he tried to lure a Polk County child for sex…Okaloosa County Sheriff’s [deputy]…Cansas Sadler, Jr., came in contact with the 9-year-old girl through an online game called, “The Wolf”…[and] pretended to be an 11-year-old named, “Jade” [as cops so often do to their intended victims.  Sadler]…engaged in a sexual conversation…and…ask[ed] the child if she wanted to have sex with a 31-year-old man named “Jason”…then, he [sent her a dick pic]…and…[asked her] to take pictures of herself [to] send to him…the suspect [eventually] called the 9-year-old but the little girl’s mother answered the phone and…call[ed] the cops…[who] traced Sadler’s IP address…

Grady Judd of Polk County expends a lot of effort tricking young men into having sexual conversations with imaginary teenagers, when all he has to do if he wants to arrest “sex predators” is “investigate” his own men.

Not Good Enough (#687) 

Another shitty drug intended to capitalize on an imaginary “problem”:

U.S. [bureaucrats] approved a second drug to [capitalize on what is defined by profiteers as] low [in comparison to men] sexual desire in women…bremelanotide…will be marketed by Amag Pharmaceuticals…under the brand name Vyleesi…it’s a shot that comes in an auto-injecting pen that…would [be] use[d] about 45 minutes before [planned] sex…A spokeswoman for the company said it plans to start selling the drug in September and will announce its price closer to the launch…the FDA said about 25% of patients treated with Vyleesi benefited from an increase in sexual desire score, compared with about 17% who took a placebo.  [This net 8% increase in “desire” was paid for with a] 40% [rate] of…nausea…13% needed medications to [stop throwing up]…8% [of the test group] discontinued due to nausea…the National Women’s Health Network…urged women not to use Vyleesi until more is known about its safety and effectiveness…

So these idiots want women to give themselves a shot and then wait 45 minutes for the outcome, which is 5x as likely to be puking than it is to be horniness.  A nice present would be far more effective, without the vomit.

Disaster (#832)

It’s easy to for US sex workers to forget that FOSTA harms sex workers all over the world:

…[Since] FOSTA…it can seem like two parallel internets have formed:  one ostensibly “free” of sex work, and another, hand-built in the margins by workers now excluded from mainstream platforms…This has especially significant consequences for the more vulnerable sex workers…In the wake of FOSTA, there has been a growing focus on sex worker-led technology companies, set up to address the workers’ own needs…Lola Hunt and Eliza Sorensen, based in Melbourne, have launched several technology platforms serving sex workers through their company, Assembly Four.  One is Switter, a social media network for sex workers; another is a paid advertising platform called Tryst Link.  Neither are hosted in the US, to avoid FOSTA exposure…the Assembly Four team has been “completely bootstrapping” its work…because they haven’t yet been able to receive venture capital funding…getting merchant facilities from banks or the means to accept payments…has been a “nightmare”…

Full of Themselves (#886)

This one eschews the usual puritanical lingo in favor of Copese pomposity:

The Kitsap County [Washington] Sheriff’s Department…[lied about] a large-scale operation…Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office [bloviated that]…”a significant military/U.S. Navy Nexus was identified” [meaning there’s a naval base nearby and sailors often go to massage parlors.  Pigs also oinked that]…they rescued human trafficking victims [when in reality they merely arrested 4 migrant women ranging in age from 51 to 61]…

Pyrrhic Victory (#915) 

Government didn’t need to impose mass surveillance because bootlickers volunteer to be spied on:

…police departments around the country are encouraging [peasants] to register their doorbells to police [so the cops can use them at will to spy on anyone coming or going from their houses].  Right now there’s no such program in Huntsville or Madison [Alabama.  “Crime” rhetoric and a lying sentence fragment, then pigs hilariously claiming] …they respect citizens’ rights to privacy…

The Crumbling Dam (#917)

It’s OK; I’m sure no more than a few dozen people will OD in the next year:

A new effort by California [polticians] to permit a safe injection facility to be built in San Francisco has been put on hold until next year apparently due to struggles getting it through the State Senate…last year state [politicians] crafted a bill that would guarantee…people running a permitted SIF in San Francisco wouldn’t be arrested by local or state police…but when it got to Gov. Jerry Brown, he vetoed it.  In his veto letter, he argued that…drugs [are bad]…

Spotlight (#943)

Take a look at this fawning praise of a fascist surveillance organ, then click on the subtitle link above to see the truth about this topic:

[A pig’s self-aggrandizing, evidence-free tall tale of] the rescue [of a “child” of indeterminate age] illustrates [the level of “evidence” accepted by mainstream reporters when writing about] Thorn…[the fascist surveillance corporation] cofounded in 2009 by actors Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher…Thorn…was named one of eight projects that will share in $280 million from TED’s philanthropic offshoot, the Audacious Project…Thorn initially worked to pressure technology companies to [censor] more…more recently, it shifted to…a more [profitable] strategy of producing and operating new technology for use by…the [police state]…Thorn…offers a[nother] way…[for cops to use] facial recognition…[to] endanger…privacy…[starting by putting every sex worker in the world into a database for pigs to root through]…

Those who wondered why I was skeptical of WIRED‘s recent article about Backpage:  this gullible, swallow-whatever-an-authority-figure-says-about-sex-work-no-matter-how-stupid approach is typical of their treatment of the topic.

Loose Cannons (#947)

Even reporters are starting to see how stupid & blatantly illegal the actions of cops and collaborators were:

Because of Kraft, what would have been a police blotter entry in local newspapers has made international headlines…[thus drawing much-needed outside attention to the] fates of the women [violated, attcked, robbed and caged by cops]…The [persecu]tion that became State of Florida v. Robert Kraft…began when…a [busybody] Florida Department of Health inspector, Karen Herzog, [snitched to pigs] about…Bridges Day Spa…[claiming] proof of human trafficking [consisting of]…a “refrigerator filled with food and condiments”…[even though] Herzog’s state inspection report…attached two photos of a refrigerator that would not look out of place in any workplace kitchen…[after the busts, pigs oinked to reporters that]…“these women…are not citizens and don’t have residency cards, and so they’re afraid…of being deported,” [said lawyer Tama] Kudman…“Well, at [Orchids of Asia], every [masseuse] was not only either a resident or a citizen, but they were in their 30s and 40s.  These were not children.  These were women who held multiple massage and cosmetology licenses.  [The truth] couldn’t have been further from the stereotype that they were trying to paint when this case first occurred”…[owner Hua] Zhang [is] a 58-year-old…grandmother who has a master’s degree…The Martin County Sheriff’s Office is attempting to [steal her]…home, as well as the homes of her son and cousin…“When you start using slogans like human sex trafficker, prostitute, john, these [terms] have a lasting effect on the people that they’re used against,” Kudman said…“our state attorneys and our sheriffs have to be more careful with their allegations before they destroy people’s lives”…

Despite a slightly-Swedish-scented undertone, the article isn’t bad for the mainstream media.

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The government has…tried to financially strangle these defendants at every turn.  –  Ariel Neuman

Droit du Seigneur

Hey, King County; maybe you should consult Matthew 7:3 for your “sex trafficking” policy:

Mark L. Norton, the superintendent of transit security…for King County Metro, was arrested…for allegedly “coercing a female to engage in commercial sex acts in King and Snohomish Counties.”  Norton…allegedly “groomed” the victim for five years while [she] was a babysitter for Norton’s children, using “emotional and psychological coercion [to] convince [her] to participate in prostitution for his benefit…the suspect operated as a pimp and pressured the victim to engage in prostitution on numerous occasions…and kept [her fees]”…ironically, King County Metro’s buses were recently covered with anti-trafficking signs as part of a [propaganda] campaign…by the…County…

What the Hell Were You Thinking? (#335)

Destroying sex workers’ safety net, one internet “improvement” at a time:

…Google could be putting [Irish sex workers] at risk by blocking key functions on an app used to warn of dangerous clients.  The tech giant decided…to include limits on call logs and SMS permission access on apps in the Google Play store…[this could cripple] an Android app called Ugly Mugs, which…has been using advanced access features since 2013…[to] screen…incoming calls and text messages to sex workers and alert…them if [the initiating] number…is in the app’s database…

He Said, She Said (#624)

A psychiatrist who has sex with patients is a fool.  A male psychiatrist who draws vulnerable female patients into kink relationships is a dangerous fool:

…psychiatrist…Keith Ablow…[is facing malpractice lawsuits from three female patients who say he] abused his position while treating them for acute depression…the…therapist…encouraged women to trust and rely on him, then coaxed them into [BDSM] sexual activities, often during treatment sessions for which they were charged…three women who worked for Ablow [also] agreed to file affidavits, included in the lawsuits…that Ablow sexually harassed them, too.  One former staffer, Amy Dixon, said she had sex with Ablow during which he would regularly hit her and that he told her he wanted a “master/slave relationship”…In all three cases, the women…relocated from other states, at Ablow’s request, to be closer to his Newburyport [Massachusetts] office where he…treat[ed them] for depression…[with] Ketamine…in conjunction with talk therapy…

Ablow, who was a consultant for Fox News for years, has been mentioned in this blog before.

To Molest and Rape

When a cop rapes kids, there’s usually at least some chance of a conviction: “…[cops from] the Cascade County [Montana] Sheriff’s Office and agents from Homeland Security [quietly] arrested [rapist pig] Virgil Wolfe on 80 counts of sexual abuse of children…

False Target (#873)

Using “gayness tests” to deport refugees spreads to the UK:

A [67-year-old] man faces deportation to Malaysia, where homosexuality is illegal, after the Home Office [claimed] it did not believe he was gay – suggesting it was suspicious that [a 67-year-old migrant] did not have a boyfriend.  Yew Fook Sam…will be persecuted and imprisoned for his sexuality if he is deported to Malaysia, where homosexual acts are punishable under federal and sometimes sharia law.  He fears he will be forced to undergo gay conversion therapy should he be returned to the country, where the opposition leader last year blamed gay people for causing earthquakes and a lesbian couple were caned publicly for having sex in a car…

Dangerous Speech (#880)

The government keeps making up new rules in its war on thought:

…federal prosecutors are arguing that they’re entitled to all money made by Backpage, even proceeds derived from unquestionably legal ads, and that decades worth of earnings made by former Backpage leaders before the website even existed are also tainted…their lawyers [state in a recent filng that] “Virtually all of the Defendants’ assets have been seized, virtually all of the money in their attorneys’ trust accounts designated to fund the defense has been been seized or is effectively frozen,” and defense lawyers “may expose themselves to criminal liability if they use those funds to pay fees” from the case…the Cato Institute, DKT Liberty Project, and the Reason Foundation…filed a brief in support of the defendants on this matter…”The government has shut down a major internet site and confiscated millions of dollars of assets and proceeds not only from that site, but also from defendants’ numerous other publishing venues—ventures completely unrelated to the alleged criminality of the site and indisputably protected by the First Amendment…The history of government efforts to suppress and censor disfavored speakers, particularly speakers who offer sexually explicit materials, is long [and has]…involved tactics…designed to bankrupt speakers by forcing them to litigate on multiple fronts to prove that their speech is protected by the First Amendment”…

Dutch Threat (#885) 

Dutch authorities are now pretending their attempts to Disnify De Wallen are really intended to help sex workers:

…the De Wallen neighborhood…could soon face [forcible gentific]ation as local government officials strive to implement a new policy, set to increase the number of sex-work permits beyond De Wallen in an attempt to p[ush] sex workers…elsewhere…the Netherlands has been increasingly [aggressive] in [selling its Disnification efforts as] combating human trafficking…the…government…shut down many coffee shops and 112 sex-worker windows…pushing many sex workers towards illegal work or abroad to Brussels…[due to increased harassment] it’s often no longer in the interest of many independent workers to be registered under Amsterdam’s Municipal Ordinance…because sex workers [are rightly concerned] that their…work might be [criminalized or they might be branded “victims” against their will]…sex workers are increasingly demanding…the ability to book clients online and work [legally]  from home…

Traffic in Nonsense (#896)

The “sex trafficking” propaganda from these fetishists is some of the most blatantly derived from sexual fantasy in the entire rescue industry:

A national group is trying to get people not to…[listen to] sex workers, but to [instead label] them as…victims of human trafficking [no matter what they say about their own lives].  The group Truckers Against Trafficking [indoctrinates] truck drivers–and others–[in] how to [project their fantasies about] modern day slavery [on other people without their consent]…Ohio has been [trying to convince people that it’s] a hotbed of human trafficking in recent years…

A Broker in Pillage (#896)

SCOTUS demolishes a major pillar of government extortion schemes:

States are bound by the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against excessive fines and fees when they seek to [steal]…assets from individuals charged or convicted of a crime, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously…It’s a decision that hands a major victory to critics of civil asset forfeiture, and it opens another avenue to legal challenges against that widely…abused…practice by which states and local governments can seize carscashhomes, and pretty much anything else…[under the pretense that it was] used to commit a crime…Timbs v. Indiana, involved the seizure of a $42,000 Land Rover…from Tyson Timbs…During oral arguments in November, Indiana’s solicitor general got boxed into a corner by Justice Stephen Breyer, who managed to twist the government’s lawyer into arguing that Indiana should be allowed to seize vehicles for as small an offense as driving 5 mph over the speed limit, which literally elicited laughter in the courtroom…

The Crumbling Dam (#901)

The law is the law and if more people die, tough shit“:

…The U.S. Department of Justice took aim…at the movement to open a supervised consumption site in Philadelphia…[with] a civil lawsuit…against Philadelphia-based nonprofit Safehouse, asking the the U.S. District Court to rule that safe injection sites violate federal law…Ronda B. Goldfein, vice president of Safehouse…said the federal government is using the “crack house” statute in the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986…[which] was [supposedly] intended to prevent businesses from profiting off drug consumption…

The Widening Gyre (#911)

I’m really happy to see Uber hoist on its own “sex trafficking” petard:

On February 19 2019, a woman shared a [fantasy of the type common in moral panics]…that a phony Uber driver in Tampa had nearly successfully abducted her for the purposes of sex trafficking…Within 48 hours, the post had been shared more than half a million times…[because of] its similarities to long-circulating urban legends involving nearly identical scenarios at locations [such] as Target, Hobby Lobby, and Walmart…police were able to verify that she did indeed get in the wrong car, but [pretended] they were perplexed as to how Hurley concluded that the mix-up was due to “sex trafficking” [despite the fact that they have themselves been spreading scare stories about “sex trafficking” for a decade now]…the car entered by Hurley was in fact a legitimate Uber driver, not an Uber impersonator.  The [hysteric] called for an Uber at the airport and appeared to have entered one of the several other Ubers not there for her…[her claim that] she “later found out” that the Uber driver was “a sex traffic worker”…[even though] police said [no]thing like that at all [is typical of the way “sex trafficking” propaganda tales are boosted by false claims of official verification]…

Pyrrhic Victory (#913) 

The fascists don’t want their surveillance powers limited by mere civil rights:

Microsoft is pushing back on a bill sponsored by a…group of Washington state [politicians] that would ban local and state governments from using facial recognition until certain conditions are met…Microsoft has endorsed a [much weaker]…bill…[with largely cosmetic] facial-recognition rules…Shankar Narayan, director of the technology and liberty project of the ACLU’s Washington chapter, says requiring public notice of face recognition won’t check its use, and he warns that authorities [will] use the “emergency” exception as a loophole. “Microsoft’s bill has us heading to a world where face surveillance is ubiquitous and the norm,” Narayan says…

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The rescue industry is a deeply misogynistic enterprise which…polices the behaviour of women under the guise of saving us.  –  Eleanor Janega

Real People 

The more sex workers come out like this, the better for everyone:

The people that make the porn that a lot of us watch are sick of you pretending that you’re better than them.  Michele James especially is sick of it.  “We are cast out into the shadows…if I could bring a person who didn’t do sex work on set for a day, for them to see what we actually go through, they would realize it’s a job too and we deserve respect, the same as CEOs, and everybody else who goes to work 9-5.”  James…sees part of her responsibility to the industry she loves is helping to destigmatize the performers who make it…she is passionate about her industry; and she gives exactly zero fucks what you think about that…

Moloch 

How many kids need to be sacrificed to this obscenity before it’s enough?

A…High School student in the Florida Keys is facing 15 years in prison and life as a registered sex offender for continuing to date his 15-year-old girlfriend after he turned 18 in December…numerous people, including the girl’s parents, his parents and two sheriff’s office deputies, [warned] Tucker [that the shamans of the booga-booga gods would be angry he was violating the Shazam magic, but] the two continued to see each other…[and] the girl’s mother [decided to destroy her] relationship [with her daughter by ratting them out to] the…school [pig]…cops [then eavesdropped on a private conversation and congratulated themselves for destroying a young man’s life]…

The Crumbling Dam (#739) 

Seattle’s vocal harm magnification community is still going strong:

[Shilo] Jama has spent his career advocating for drug users.  With his work at the [People’s Harm Reduction Alliance], he runs syringe distribution sites, including a drop-in site in the U District…They have a nurse practitioner on site who prescribes medications like Suboxone, which helps with withdrawal symptoms…Over the years, Jama has helped countless people who use drugs, but his efforts aren’t exactly appreciated by everyone.  In December, flyers featuring a photograph of his face started popping up in the University District and elsewhere in North Seattle…The flyer accuses Jama (who legally changed his last name from Murphy a few years ago to honor the family that raised him) of “enabling and encouraging harmful behavior that has caused many deaths”…The flyer claims that Jama, his organization, and the U District needle distribution site are a danger to the public, but according to public health experts, harm reduction projects like Jama’s do reduce overdose deaths and other public health issues…The flyer also says that the Seattle Police Department and the Seattle City Council are “almost powerless” to prosecute Jama and lists a phone number for the FBI’s Seattle office, encouraging people to call and report him…Jama…suspects [the source] was members of Safe Seattle, an organization that, among other issues, advocates against safe injection sites…

The Notorious Badge (#760)

This does a good job of synopsizing my discomfort with The Deuce:

The Deuce uses its promise to reveal the behind-closed-doors happenings of sex work to argue relentlessly for the regulation and oversight of the industry…it is nervous about the way it represents sex work, anxious to inform but not to titillate.  In pinpointing…sex-work…as a “secret,” however, and then exposing it through a surveillance-cum-safety structure, the show satisfies an intellectual craving for knowledge that echoes the pleasures of pornography…[it] takes care to pat viewers on the back, framing their pleasure as different from that of the porn viewer.  Through gridline-marked shots of pornography in the making, for example, The Deuce allows viewers to indulge in pornographic voyeurism under the guise of cautionary surveillance.  At the same time, it frames their viewing position as a sanctimonious one…

“Regulation and oversight” = “legalization”, which only politicians and cops want.  Sex workers, human rights groups, medical groups and academics who have studied our work all recognize decriminalization, not “regulation” by outsiders, as the best model for everyone.

Checklist (#811)

Despite some pandering to “sex trafficking” beliefs, this isn’t a bad article about “signs of sex trafficking” indocrination:

…every year…ahead of the Super Bowl…anti-prostitution [crusaders]…campaign [to indocrinate]…everyone from hospitality employees to Uber drivers…in…anti-[sex worker propaganda such as the claim that]…as many as 40.3 million people were “in modern slavery in 2016”, up more than 5 million compared to five years ago.  And in 2014, the 35.8 figure rose by 6 million people in just a year…the…figures are so alluringly extreme [because profiteers]…are often under pressure from poli[tician]s into producing overestimated figures…crusades of this nature are not…concerned with accuracy, as appearing to be leading the charge against [consensual sex]…hotel chains like Marriott have been reported as looking out for women travelling alone and sexually provocative clothing as signs of…sex…[work, which makes it clear that] consenting adult sex workers [are]…being targeted…

Unfortunately, Lyft may not be a safe alternative to Uber for much longer:

…we are working to help raise awareness and taking action to prevent human trafficking.  Through partnerships with [prohibitionist] organizations like…Businesses Ending Slavery and Trafficking (BEST), we are [indoctrinating] drivers…on how to spot [escorts] and [rat them out to the pigs]…

Original Sin (#824) 

A new statement from a man who says men who seek consensual sex with women are “criminals with a sick mentality”:

Pope Francis has admitted that clerics have sexually abused nuns, and in one case they were kept as sex slaves…his predecessor, Pope Benedict, was forced to shut down an entire congregation of nuns who were being abused by priests.  It is thought to be the first time that Pope Francis has acknowledged the sexual abuse of nuns by the clergy.  He said the Church was attempting to address the problem but said it was “still going on”…

Rooted in Racism (#854)

More European government humanitarianism to “fight human trafficking”:

…[it has been] two years since Italy, backed by the EU, did a deal to spend tens of millions of euros funding the Libyan coastguard, which intercepts boats heading for Italy and returns refugees and migrants to a war zone…detainees in nine different detention centres…use hidden phones to reveal what’s going on at huge risk to themselves.  EU [politicians] continue to promote the idea that arrivals in Europe  and deaths at sea are dropping.  But…thousands of men, women, and children…speak of going days without food and of drinking toilet water to survive.  Some have stopped speaking, forgotten their families, sit crouched in a corner and wet themselves from trauma…Couples are separated – some of the roughly 640 detained children are held with their mothers, though those over 14 are kept in adult cells…infected detainees are locked with others in a dark room and have been repeatedly left without tuberculosis medication…In October, a 28-year-old Somali set himself on fire…after saying he saw no other way out.  In early January dozens of refugees and migrants, brought by the coastguard to the Libyan port city of Khoms, were forced back to smugglers by Libyan [cops]…[and] now risk torture if they can’t raise an the $5,000 ransom that has already been demanded…

Feminine Pragmatism (#891) 

One day, reporters will get that “People Work To Make Money” is not news:

Increasing numbers of public sector workers are [making the pragmatic decision] to [do] sex work due to austerity measures and welfare cuts…a leading campaigning group…says more women in public sector roles are doing sex work to top up their income due to employers making no allowances for the fact they have children…the organisation, the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP), [has] release[d] a new report comparing sex work with other jobs commonly done by women.  The report found sex workers earn significantly more per hour than women working in the other jobs – including those in public sector positions such as nurses and midwives.  Women cited higher wages as their primary reason for entering the sex industry…

Case Study (#892) 

One day, reporters will get that “people sublet flats” is not news:

A special constable and his Hungarian wife have been jailed for [rent]ing [flats to] women from Hungary [in] a Chelsea apartment block [nicknam]ed “10 Floors of Whores”.  Karl Ring and Ivett Szuda…[arranged sex workers’ travel on] the Hungarian low-cost airline Wizz Air to fly women into London from Budapest as they made more than £600,000 [over several years] from [subletting flats]…Szuda…[will be locked in a cage] for six and a half years, while Ring…[will be] locked up for four years…the couple [charged sex workers 50% of their fees, a fairly typical rate for brothels]…Judge Robin Johnson [bloviated a lot of pompous, moralistic nonsense about “exploitation”, ignoring the fact that] the sex workers were happy with the arrangement…

Feminine Pragmatism (#896) 

The villains here aren’t imaginary “trafficking rings”; they’re the fucking politicians who force desperate people to deal with criminals to have a chance to escape hell:

Traffickers are targeting desperate young women in Venezuela by flying them to the Costas to [do lucrative, flexible work]…at least 208,000 have fled the crisis-hit country in the hope of a better life in Spain.  Nearly all of those have travelled on official three month tourists visas which are readily available as Venezuela was once a Spanish colony.  However, a flight costs £1,000 which is a fortune in a land where a cup of coffee costs a month’s wages thanks to hyperinflation of 80,000 per cent…This is when the heartless trafficking gangs of Caracas are stepping in and [giving people a chance to escape despite politicians’ efforts to keep them trapped in Venezuela]…SICAR Cat, a religious organisation that pro[fits from hysteria over]…sex trafficking, [pretends these women are ignorant children who don’t know what sex work is, and calls their jobs]…modern day slavery…Venezuela’s economic mix of unemployment, poverty and inflation has created the perfect conditions for [mass emigration] to flourish…

These stories sure sound stupid when the hype is replaced by objective language, don’t they?

For Those Who Think Legalization is a Good Idea (#905)

Indian sex workers are chipping away at the prohibitionists’ agency-negating lies:

…four organisations…have released a report which states that close to 77% women voluntarily return to sex work after their rescue into shelter homes…the National Network for Sex Workers Association (NNSWA) and UMKO, Saheli – HIV/RAIDS Karyakarta Sangh, SANGRAM and Veshya Anyay Mukti Parishad (VAMP), have released a report “Raided – How Anti-Trafficking Strategies Increase Sex Workers’ Vulnerability to Exploitative Practices”…79% of the women documented in the study returned to sex work – “escaping” their rescue from shelter homes, while almost 11% of the women continued to live in these homes…Kusum, President [of the] All India Network of Sex Workers explained the “horrific” condition of shelter homes and why women want to escape it…“There is no food to eat, and when there is food it is insect infested which makes people sick.  No health care to take care of inhabitants…and even if that was provided the stigma that exists towards HIV persons within these homes is bad enough to kill someone well before their time”…the report contests the…present understanding that most women in the flesh trade are trafficked women ‘pushed into prostitution’…These homes manifest an environment of isolation and deprive the women of identity and income…

The Indian media is so thoroughly brainwashed by prohibitionists that even in an article citing statistics debunking prohibitionist mythology, the reporter feels compelled to put the word “escape” (from a literal prison) in scare quotes, and also scare-quotes the word “horrific” (used to describe conditions any decent person would agree are horrific), while omitting scare quotes from the word “rescue” when used to mean “arrest”.  He also uses “live in” to mean “remain imprisoned in”, and “present understanding” to mean “popular myth”.  It’s going to be a long, uphill battle.

Pyrrhic Victory (#906) 

Please, masters, don’t use this tool we made you in exactly the way it was designed to be used“:

Amazon unveiled new proposed guidelines…for any national legislation regulating facial recognition technology…civil rights groups and privacy advocates…criticized Amazon’s Rekognition contracts with law enforcement agencies, [absurdly concentrating on the] point…that the technology has misidentified people of color [rather than recognizing that high accuracy is even worse for privacy]…Amazon…responded [with the lie that]…”In the two-plus years we’ve been offering Amazon Rekognition, we have not received a single report of misuse by law enforcement”…The proposals from Amazon focus mainly on ensuring that law enforcement uses the technology [to surveil citizens more] effectively and without [being less able to identify] minorities.  “New technology should not be banned or condemned because of its potential misuse,” Amazon said in [typical tech-geek morally imbecilic fashion]…”Instead, the…[overlords] should be [free to do whatever they like]…and…that the[ir ability to oppress the citizens with the] technology…is continuously enhanced.”  Amazon said any national legislation should ensure facial recognition technology [is profitable for]…Amazon…and…governments [alike]…

A Woman’s Point of View (#912) 

Kaytlin Bailey responds to drama some want to whip up against “Decriminalize Sex Work”:

We are disappointed in [Emily Shugerman’s] editorial choice to focus on Rob Kampia in your February 3rd, 2019 [Daily Beast] article titled, “Rob Kampia Weed Activist With #MeToo Past, Is Now Pushing Sex Work Reform”.  By focusing on Rob’s past instead of our efforts to decriminalize sex work, you reduced a rich and vibrant movement to one man’s conduct.  You have also diminished the contributions of the women on our team, who have devoted decades to this cause in order to center the only man among our directors.  You minimized our accomplishments and our mission by publishing a piece that misrepresents not only our organization but the entire sex worker rights movement…whose voices are historically absent from all media reporting.  Yet, you wrote about Rob…To call our life’s work a “vanity project”…is an insult and a willful misrepresentation of who we are, what we’ve accomplished, and what we’re trying to do.  To suggest that allowing Rob Kampia to use his extensive network of donors and political resources to further our work is a betrayal of the sex worker rights movement is to minimize the diversity and breadth of this work, and to minimize the need for change.  We can focus on Rob, or we can talk about the immense harms of criminalization…

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Efforts to abolish sex work…since the 1860s have one thing in common—failure!  –  Paul J. Maginn, Raven Bowen, and Maggie O’Neill

Not So Different

If amateur women weren’t so busy trying to ruin sex workers’ lives, they could learn a lot from us:

…Why don’t more people outside the sex industry organize against the dangers of sexual or intimate abuse in the way that sex workers do?  It’s not because sex workers have more resources or support.  In part, it’s because so many women outside the sex industry still believe that [women] are responsible for the abuses committed against them because they stepped outside of respectable behavior and “should have known better”.  Sex-work communities are often more resilient against these messages…Sex-worker feminism shows us that our safety and freedom should never be conditional, and that we have to come together—on the corner, online, at marches, and beyond—to prevent sexual abuse and resist its insidious effects on us…

Scapegoats 

Why doesn’t this say what kind of animal? A goat? A bitch? A hen? An iguana? A carp? A sea urchin? A cockroach?

A Bossier City [cop]…has been arrested for filming himself having sex with an animal…Terry…Yetman’s residence [was searched for undisclosed reasons, possibly involving domestic violence and]…detectives found pornography involving sexual acts with an animal…The investigation is still open and may result in additional charges [if the cops can figure out what kind of animal is involved]…

Fever Dream (#679)

We’re not hearing quite as much of this “highway” bullshit as we used to:

The newly opened Together Cafe…in Chattanooga…is…dedicated to [harassing sex workers]…Every dollar [of profit after the considerable overhead of cafes]…will go toward [creating prohibitionist propaganda]…Chattanooga has become a focal point…for…sex trafficking because of its geographic intersection of Interstates 75, 24 and 59, which provides an easy path for pimps to transport their victims around the Southeast…the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation [repeats the impossible masturbatory fantasy that] that one in four children who run away will be propositioned by a sex trafficker within 48 hours of leaving home and every year 1.2 million children worldwide are trafficked for sex…the average age of a child sold for six is 13 years

This is not the first coffee shop “rescue” scam we’ve heard of.  Note that the language about Chattanooga, interstate highways and “pimps” is plagiarized verbatim from pig propaganda at least two years old.

The Crumbling Dam (#849)

I’ll be rather pleased if Philadelphia beats the pompous, priggish politicians of Seattle to the punch:

The international law firm DLA Piper has signed on to represent Safehouse — the nonprofit organization attempting to launch a supervised-injection site in Philadelphia — pro bono…the move gives Safehouse some added clout in the legal fight [against federal prohibitionists]…Although Philadelphia’s mayor and district attorney support the opening of a privately funded supervised-injection site, federal authorities have threatened legal action…DLA Piper’s decision to represent Safehouse “demonstrates there’s an ever-increasing group of lawyers who respectfully disagree with the U.S. Attorney’s position,” said Ronda Goldfein…director of the AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania…DLA Piper, which has offices in 40 countries, is also representing the pharmaceutical giant Purdue Pharma…[against a nuisance lawsuit] brought by New Jersey’s attorney general over its marketing of…Oxycontin…

The Widening Gyre (#851)

This article by three academic allies covers a lot of ground, but starts here:

In 2015 British journalist Suzanne Moore wrote a piece lavishing praise on US hip-hop star Nicki Minaj…the…piece…celebrated Minaj’s agency and hypersexuality…[yet] Moore…shudders at the idea that women—especially middle-class women—would engage in real forms of sex work…she…seems to be[lieve] that sex workers come from lower-class backgrounds and lack agency, business acumen and even intellectuality…

For Those Who Think Legalization is a Good Idea (#863)

Indian sex workers’ fight against a terrible new “anti-trafficking” bill is drawing international attention:

…Days after it passed in the lower house of India’s Parliament in July, two United Nations experts said the bill leans too heavily on the criminal justice system.  Without more of a “human-rights based and victim-centred approach,” the UN special rapporteurs on human trafficking and modern slavery warned, India “risks further harming already vulnerable individuals”…In major Indian cities like Kolkata, Hyderabad, and Sangli, sex workers are well organised and politically engaged.  Yet no sex worker groups were consulted during the drafting of the legislation…[which like all “sex trafficking” laws] promotes a dangerous idea that everyone in the sex trade is either a victim or a criminal…

The Widening Gyre (#874) 

The more cops are forced to deny “sex trafficking” scary tales, the harder it will be for them to spread such tales themselves:

Posts on Facebook are spreading quickly, claiming women are attempting to lure other people into sex trafficking at stores in the Mid-South…Memphis [Tennessee] and Southaven [Mississippi] police…said no one has made any official reports…One woman [claimed] she was shopping at…Walmart…when she was approached by two women inside the store…[who] the[n]…followed her back home…[yet]…she didn’t call police…[an]other post…shows a picture of two women…[and] claims they were trying to lure women into sex trafficking [by] taking pictures [of women, like the poster did]…

The Course of a Disease (#884)

Everyone knows prohibitionists are mathematically illiterate, but I figured they could at least count to ten:

The Knesset is set to pass a landmark law against prostitut[es]  making hiring sex workers a crime…The new law will make Israel the 10th country to institute what is called the “Nordic Model” of [persecuting sex workers]…the law…offers the Justice Ministry the option of instituting other punishments, such as “John Schools,” meant to [indoctri]ate [people in anti-sex propaganda]…The law…[also] budgets NIS 90 million over the next three years for the [brainwashing] of [captured sex workers]…the “Nordic Model” [was] first adopted in Sweden in 1999.  In recent years, others passed similar laws, including Ireland, France, Canada, Norway and some states in the US…

So far, only Sweden, Norway, Iceland, the two Irelands, France and Canada have adopted the Swedish model; that’s seven, plus one is eight.  And no US states have adopted it, though of course that’s among the smaller lies in this authoritarian screed (another claims the average sex worker dies at 46).

The Red Umbrella (#885) 

As long as sex work is marginalized, sex workers will be targeted for violence:

Alexander Popenkov, who is trained as an MMA fighter, and his wife, Maryana Kayumova, both 25, trolled online sex [worker] ads for victims [to] set…up phony appointments…on victims they [knew would]…be easy targets and vulnerable…Popenkov and Kayumova savagely beat and robbed at least eight women [in Manhattan], most of whom are Russian immigrants…[They] were arrested on charges including burglary and robbery and released on $35,000 bond each.  [Prosecutor] Danbee [Kim] asked [Judge Maxwell] Wiley to hike the defendants’ bail to $500,000, arguing that they had threatened numerous victims to discourage them from coming forward…[but] Wiley [refused because their victims were just whores]…

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Fucking over sex workers is a way [Democrats] can be bipartisan.
– Sean McElwee

Life Imitates Artifice

Prohibitionist tactics remain the same no matter what they’re trying to prohibit:

Members of Congress…held a press conference…to announce a letter signed by 56 GOP lawmakers calling for investigations into a report from discredited anti-choice group Live Action Network accusing Planned Parenthood of covering up child sexual abuse…[this] follows a familiar game plan, including coordination between an anti-choice activist group and Republican lawmakers.  This round of attacks come as the Trump administration looks to reinstate a…restriction blocking federal family planning funds from organizations that provide abortion services in the same location as Title X-funded services…The Live Action report…includes discredited and extensively edited “sting” footage originally reported in 2008 and 2011…

This laudatory article from Christian Post has a bit more meat:

Laura J. Lederer, president of Global Centurion…[fantasized] that abortions and the sex trade are “inextricably linked.”   She recently conducted a study…in which the findings revealed that approximately 30 percent the trafficking victims surveyed reported multiple abortions.  Traffickers would routinely threaten their lives and beat them if they became pregnant, Lederer said.  One survivor whose abuse was especially brutal at the hands of her trafficker “said that she had 17 abortions over the time she was trafficked, all of them at the same clinic”…

I’m honestly surprised that the “forced sex trafficking abortions” myth didn’t become more popular, given the considerable overlap between anti-whore and anti-abortion activism.

Moloch 

Is this idiotic enough yet?  Can we stop now?

…18-year-old Mariea Starr…[of] Waynesboro, Pennsylvania…was caught by another student allegedly performing oral sex on a boy in a school stairwell…Because Starr had turned 18 two months before the incident and the boy she allegedly engaged in oral sex with…was [16, school pig Matthew Gordon]…charged [Starr] with…felony unlawful contact with minors which carries a Tier II sex offender designation…for 25 years, including being photographed by Pennsylvania State Police twice a year…Gordon brought the case without oversight from the district attorney’s office or school district administration because in Pennsylvania [pigs have absolute power to inflict charges on students]…Franklin County District Attorney Matthew Fogal…reduced the charges against Starr to open lewdness.  She was sentenced to 12 months’ probation and will not be placed on the registry.  Nonetheless, Starr will graduate from high school with a criminal record, which will significantly affect her educational and job opportunities…Starr is far from the only student that Gordon…has [fed] into the criminal justice system…

Dirty Laundry

And yet the Times supports the evil of Ruhama, the Magdalene orders’ rebranding:

…220 survivors of Ireland’s notorious Magdalene Laundries convened for a state-sponsored meeting in Dublin…The laundries were filled not only with “fallen women” — prostitutes, women who became pregnant out of marriage or as a result of sexual abuse and those who simply failed to conform — but also orphans and deserted or abused children…The Magdalene Laundries were part of an interlocking system of orphanages, industrial schools, “mother and baby homes” for unwed mothers and church-run institutions in which Ireland…confined…At least 10,000 women and girls…between independence from Britain in 1922 and the closing of the last one in 1996…

The Spiral of Absurdity 

Why do reporters repeat this egregious nonsense without fact-checking?

A sting on the sex-trafficking trade in metro Atlanta netted dozens of arrests and the rescue of dozens of children forced into sexual servitude, the FBI announced…Operation Safe Summer was a collaborative effort between the FBI’s Atlanta field office and 38 law enforcement agencies…The sting ended with nearly 160 children rescued, including one as young as 3 years old, and nearly 150 arrests, convictions or sentences…

Really?  If cops had really discovered 160 kids being held hostage, this would be international news, not a minor local story.  Looks to me like some mouthpiece repeated the number of arrests as the number of “rescued children”.

Between the Ears (#407)

Velvet Swing is the first female sex aid that actually works:

…it’s not exactly surprising that [Mistress Matisse] ended up in the cannabis industry…It’s even less surprising that her first product is a weed lube, called Velvet Swing.  While weed lube—rightly touted as the first truly effective female sex aid—is nothing new, Velvet Swing is the first water-soluble version.  Which kind of means it’s the first one that really qualifies for the term weed lube.  Oil-based lubricants are…not condom safe, meaning that products like Foria or Bond Sensual Oil are effectively restricted to people in monogamous partnerships…

And naturally, Matisse uses the interview to wake up pot-business folks to sex worker rights.

Bait and Switch

Entrapment so blatant even a judge couldn’t swallow it:

…In 2014…Skagit County [Washington] detective Theresa Luvera…posted a sex solicitation on Craigslist’s casual encounters…Craigslist’s rules required all participants to be 18+. something that has undermined sex stings in the past…After some online exchanges between the detective and the defendant, the detective claimed she is underage (“almost 15 but waaay advanced”).  Even further in…the detective brought up money-for-sex.  At every step along the way but the end, the defendant seemingly made it clear he was seeking free sex with a female adult.  Eventually the defendant shows up at the designated rendezvous point baitwith the requested items…The trial court dismissed the prosecution because the “State engaged in outrageous misconduct in violation of a defendant’s due process right to fundamental fairness”…Now that Craigslist has shut down its personals section, I’m not clear where law enforcement will conduct its online sex stings…

The Crumbling Dam (#709)

Alas, Seattle “officials” think harm reduction principles only apply to drug use:

Seattle’s efforts to find a location for its…supervised injection site has turned up nothing, and now the mayor’s office is looking to go mobile.  Jeff Sakuma…point person in finding a site…[said] there are no city or county-owned buildings that meet the criteria…the $2 million the council had set aside is to low to purchase an existing building or buy land and build…a private party that could partner with the city to allow the use of their property as an injection site, “could be subject to seizure by the federal government”…As an alternative…Seattle & King County would purchase a recreation[al] vehicle and remodel it…The mobile [unit] would park either on the street or in a parking lot near a facility that would provide space for a reception area, a waiting area, restroom storage and utility space…

Worse Than I Thought (#745)

Another shitty law specifically designed to harm sex workers:

Phoenix is ramping up the penalties for [adult consensual sex] as part of the city’s ongoing effort to curb [adult consensual sex].  The City Council voted…to fine individuals convicted of soliciting sex workers $2,000 for a second offense, $2,250 for a third offense and $2,500 for each additional conviction. The mandatory fines will be in addition to jail sentences of 15-180 days.  “If we catch you … we’re going to make it as unpleasant for you as we possibly can and I don’t feel bad about that at all,” said Councilman Jim Waring, chair of the Phoenix [anti-consensual sex] Task Force…

The Widening Gyre (#764) 

Yeahno.  This still smells like a publicity stunt gone wrong:

British model Chloe Ayling has thanked those who “believed in me from the beginning” after a Polish man was jailed for kidnapping her.  Lukasz Herba held Chloe Ayling captive for six days in a farmhouse near Turin in Italy, after abducting her during what she thought would be a photo shoot last July.  He was arrested after releasing her at the British consulate, and has now been sentenced to 16 years and nine months in jail…Ayling…has always insisted she has told the truth about her captivity.  She told police she never tried to escape because she was terrified and believed Herba’s threats that he was part of a bigger criminal gang that was watching her constantly…

Pyrrhic Victory (#836)

Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free.  But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is quietly building what will likely become the largest database of biometric and biographic data…in the United States. The agency’s new Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology (HART) database will include multiple forms of biometrics—from face recognition to DNA, data from questionable sources, and highly personal data on innocent people.  It will be shared with federal agencies outside of DHS as well as state and local law enforcement and foreign governments…HART will chill and deter people from exercising their First Amendment protected rights to speak, assemble, and associate…face recognition makes it possible to identify and track people in real time, including at lawful political protests and other gatherings.  Other data DHS is planning to collect—including information about people’s “relationship patterns” and from officer “encounters” with the public—can be used to identify political affiliations, religious activities, and familial and friendly relationships.  These data points are also frequently colored by conjecture and bias…

Blunt Instrument (#841)

With the demise of Backpage, anti-whore pogroms turn back to low-hanging fruit:

Three indictments were unsealed…alleging massage parlors in Topeka and Lawrence were fronts for prostitution…Five people were charged in federal grand jury indictments alleging prostitution businesses generated millions of dollars in revenue.  Charges included conspiracy, interstate racketeering, bank fraud and money laundering…

Note the way pigs try to make this seem like a big-time cartel by throwing around terms like “millions”; any business that doesn’t gross at least $1 million over a five-year period is probably failing.

Safe Position

If the Democrats were smart, they’d adopt this as their official platform:

…when it comes to the rights of…sex workers…elected Democrats still overwhelmingly side with the religious right and consistently fail to consult the people most affected by their policies…Now, however, a small but growing group of…candidates are heeding the outrage of their constituents and have turned against laws that make it harder for sex workers to safely practice.  At least three Democrats running in competitive House primaries are currently campaigning on their opposition to SESTA/FOSTA, legislation that passed in April and holds websites criminally liable for any [claims of] sex trafficking that occurred on their pages…the bill effectively shut down the websites that were the safest venues for sex workers to ply their trade.  Following its passage, Backpage.com and the personals section of Craigslist immediately folded.  Their collapse has already prompted many sex workers to return to the streets, where conditions are much more dangerous…

Lack of Evidence (#848)

The recrudescence of a public health nightmare:

…If you believe that all prostitutes are forced into it against their will…then prostitutes are victims.  If you believe it’s possible that it’s just a transaction between consenting adults, then it shouldn’t be a crime at all.  If you’re just a prude determined to tell other people how to conduct their sex lives in accordance with your sniffling sensibilities, then it doesn’t matter…As advocates like Maggie McNeill have made clear, there are women who choose prostitution as their occupation without shame or excuse.  This is what they choose to do, and they don’t give a damn about your Victorian mores.  You don’t have to like it, but…the demand exists and always has, and despite your sniffling, it’s not going away.  But is the answer to force prostitutes, and their customers, to risk the choice between contracting a loathsome, if not deadly, disease or enhance their time in jail?  That’s what Allegheny County is trying to do…the possession of condoms means the difference between a summons and a custodial arrest…

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A lot of people…do not want to accept the reality that, for the most part, sex workers are just ordinary women.  –  Jennifer Wright

Surplus Women 

This is going to become much more common due to the ramped-up war on whores:

The three-month-long search for a missing California woman came to a tragic end on the morning of March 25.  Kristen Marti’s body was found by authorities after a lengthy search of Prefumo Canyon, about seven miles west of San Luis Obispo.  Her January 9 disappearance is now considered a murder investigation…When Marti was last seen, she was with an unknown man in a maroon-colored sedan…Marti was “known to frequent hotels” in the San Luis Obispo-area…

Little Boxes (#21)

Long time readers may remember “Fake Internet Girlfriend”:

Every morning I…log into the Tinder account of a 45-year-old man from Texas—a client.  I flirt with every woman in his queue for 10 minutes, sending their photos and locations to a central database of potential “Opportunities”.  For every phone number I get, I make $1.75.  I’m what’s called a “Closer” for the online-dating service ViDA (Virtual Dating Assistants).  Men and women (though mostly men) from all over the world pay this company to outsource the labor and tedium of online dating.  The matches I speak to on behalf of the Texan man and other clients have no idea they’re chatting with a professional…

By the numbers provided, she makes less than $12 an hour maximum. That may be the shittiest-paying sex work ever.

New Excuse

An excellent article by stalwart friend of whores Mark Draughn:

…I’ve long been opposed to all consensual crimes — recreational drugs, gambling, pornography, public drunkenness, vagrancy, homosexuality, food trucks, gun ownership, kink, migration, raw milk, incest, risky sports, transgenderism, loitering, status offenses, braiding hair without a license, whatever — because as long as everybody involved has consented freely and competently…I don’t think it should be a crime.  So I’ve always opposed prostitution laws in theory.  My opposition became somewhat less theoretical a few years ago when I bumped into Maggie McNeill…I became a steady reader of Maggie’s blog, and I began to learn more about the legal issues that concern sex workers in this country…the situation for sex workers seems to be deteriorating, in ways that are sadly familiar to those of us who know the War on Drugs…cops seem to realize that their pearl-clutching over call girls is a dumb waste of police resources, so they’ve tried to recast what they do as fighting a genuine evil.  They’ve hit on the idea of calling everything “sex trafficking,” or even worse, “child sex trafficking”…We’re also starting to see other unpleasant features of the War on Drugs, such as federal funding and inter-agency task forces…I used to get angry whenever I heard of some new atrocity in the War On Drugs, but I was usually able to keep some emotional distance from the worst of it because I didn’t actually know any drug dealers.  It wasn’t personal for me…But when it comes to sex workers, I follow far too many of them on Twitter…I know these people.  And the last few weeks have been pretty bad.  This bullshit is hurting people I know, and they are bitter, hurt, and angry…

Somebody’s Daughter (#434)

Despite FOSTA & the seizure of Backpage (perhaps partly because of them), we’ve definitely passed the watershed on public support for sex worker rights.  It’s now no longer taboo for reporters, columnists and even politicians (!!!) to come out in support of decrim.  Here’s a recent article (in the very mainstream Harper’s Bazaar) which covers arguments readers of this blog will know well, and starts this way:

“But what if it was your daughter?”…Thus goes the common refrain…I do not have a daughter.  But, then, as Elizabeth Nolan Brown points out, the people making this argument do not necessarily have daughters, either.  So, here is a brief list of professions I would not want my fictitious daughter to enter into:  Professionally playing any sport that involves head trauma…Being a war reporter…Any profession that promises people a quick, easy and most likely ineffective way to solve their problems, like hawking untested diet pills…regardless of how I feel about them, my future daughter has a perfect legal right to pursue them.  People are allowed to enter professions that might be unsafe.  People are allowed to enter into professions where their body is seen as a tool of the trade.  People are allowed to enter professions that seem morally questionable.  The only time that isn’t the case is when a woman is having sex as her profession…At least, it isn’t the case in the United States.  There are a great many countries where sex work is legal, such as New Zealand, which decriminalized sex work in 2003…

Eternal Vigilance

The stupidity and evil of politicians is sometimes mind-boggling:

Sex workers in Victoria are under attack as politicians try to [re-criminalize]…“the world’s oldest profession”…the Liberal Party’s Victorian branch will discuss…a motion…by [prohibitionists claiming]…“sexual services have surged into our suburbs in the guise of massage parlours” and “are now closer to our homes and schools than ever before”…the [prohibitionists are] pushing [their party] for the adoption of the “Nordic model”…

Australian politicians can see the success of decriminalization right there in New South Wales, but are still willing to push this evil bullshit to placate prudes with fantasies of sex rays.

The Crumbling Dam (#709)

Alas, Seattle “officials” still adore prohibition of things other than cannabis:

Seattle officials announced…that they have filed a motion to vacate all convictions and drop all charges for marijuana possession for anyone arrested in the city in the past few decades…the proposed move would affect 542 people who have convictions on their records.  “Vacating charges for misdemeanor marijuana possession is a necessary step to correct the injustices of what was a failed war on drugs, [but we’re going to keep pursuing the even more unjust and failed war on consensual sex because we’re hypocrites],” Mayor Jenny Durkan…said in a statement…

An Example to the West (#776) 

The areas Americans dismiss as the “third world” are far ahead of the US in sex worker rights:

Sex workers in Colombia have started a newspaper that is “flying off the shelves”—a rare distinction for any newspaper these days.  La Esquina—which means “The Corner” in English—is made by and for sex workers in Bogotá’s red light district…It’s both distributed as a regular newspaper and, ingeniously, laminated and plastered on the district’s walls for sex workers to read while they wait for clients…The paper was founded last summer by a group of activists and artists…

Tracy Clark-Flory has singlehandedly made Jezebel relevant again.

The Pygmalion Fallacy (#811) 

If this is a “brothel”, then a room with a foosball table is a “stadium”:

Down a dead-end street in a quiet neighborhood south of Dortmund’s city center stands Germany’s first sex doll brothel.  For €80 ($97) an hour, customers can [play with] one of 12 silicone dolls, including one male doll and a model with both breasts and a penis…Evelyn Schwarz …is the founder and owner of Bordoll, which…also [has an actual] brothel and a…BDSM [dungeon]…

Legal Is as Legal Does (#834) 

I’m so glad silly protectionist whores weren’t able to wreck decrim in New Zealand:

…Under a new plan, would-be immigrants can claim points as skilled sex workers and escorts.  The skill is regarded as providing social companionship in the Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations (ANZSCO) list.  In order to meet the criteria of a highly qualified sex worker, would-be migrants will be expected to…have relevant recognized qualifications or have at least three years of work experience in the relevant industry…they would [also] need a formal offer of employment [from a brothel or escort service]…

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It’s psychologically damaging to stay 12 hours in an office getting paid a minimum wage.  –  Andra Chirnogeanu

See No Evil

I’m sure you feel safer now:

Police dug through Walter Korte’s trash four times.  They searched his car, his office, and his home.  They found thousands of…”erotic and pornographic pictures that appeared to be printed off websites.”  The “vast majority” of the images “appeared legal and depicted adults and transgender individuals.”  Some of the photos showed “young men clothed and unclothed,” some of whom “appeared to be in their late teens.”  One of those pictures was ultimately determined to qualify as child pornography under Virginia law, meaning that it was a “sexually explicit” image of “an identifiable minor,” i.e., someone younger than 18.  As a result, Korte, a [73 year old] former film studies professor at the University of Virginia with no criminal record, faces up to a year in jail and registration as a sex offender…According to the proposed plea deal, Korte “knowingly possess[ed] child pornography”…[even though] the police did not know that the single purportedly illegal image, showing a boy in his “late teens,” was child pornography until they consulted experts at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.  It also is not clear why prosecutors, who noted that “police did not find evidence of any hands-on crimes against minors”…are insisting that he register as a sex offender, which is not required by statute for possession of child pornography unless it is a second offense…

The More the Better 

This is actually a very reasonable article, especially considering the BBC’s usual prudishness:

…Working an eight-hour day, [Lana] earns close to 4,000 euros (£3,600) per month – nearly 10 times the Romanian average wage.  As Lana’s employer, Studio 20 also makes 4,000 euros per month from her online sessions.  And at the top of the video chat money-making pyramid, LiveJasmin – the online cam site that streams Studio 20’s content and is responsible for collecting payment from the credit cards of clients – takes double that: 8,000 euros…LiveJasmin is the largest internet cam host in the world.  Between 35 and 40 million users visit it daily, and at any given moment, there are 2,000 models live online…Studio 20 is the largest studio webcam franchise in the world.  It has nine branches in Romania, including one employing “cam-boys” who service the gay market.  Its other branches are in the Colombian city of Cali, Budapest and Los Angeles…

Naturally, they felt compelled to quote a prohibitionist about magical “damage” and camming being a “gateway” to whoredom, and the reporter had to end with an absurd little Utopian “feminist” homily.  But these come across as tacked-on detraction from an otherwise truthful article.

Sex Rays

Half the population of New York City would be contaminated by sex rays!

Porn streaming site RedTube has offered to take Gov. Andrew Cuomo up on his idea to sell naming rights to subway stations…Owned by porn giant MindGeek, RedTube is a YouTube-like service that focuses on pornographic videos.  It boasts 20 million daily users…Required donations range up to $600,000…Earlier this year, RedTube paid to have its logo placed on the shirts of a Massachusetts amateur soccer club.  And three years ago, sister site YouPorn (another MindGeek holding) became the title sponsor of a Madrid, Spain-based esports team – now called Team YP.

Shifting the Blame (#553)

Compare “Hood’s trial on white slavery charges comes as Mr. Bell’s telephone company is under increasing scrutiny for connecting prostitution calls“:

The teen…described being prostituted around the Washington area by two brothers she met at a Virginia motel…Danielle H…testified that one of the brothers, Christian Hood, posted ads for her on…Backpage earlier this year.  His half brother Abdul Bangura was her boyfriend and her pimp, she said.  Hood’s trial on sex trafficking charges comes as Backpage is under increasing scrutiny for hosting prostitution ads that include child-trafficking victims…

Full of Themselves (#591)

What is it about massage parlors that brings the puritans out of the woodwork?

The booming spa and massage parlour business in India has led to an increasing demand for women from Thailand, many of whom are being duped and trafficked into slavery in the country’s sex industry, [cops], [politicians] and [prohibitionists] said…At least 40 Thai women have been [arrested and deported] in 2017 during police raids on massage parlours acting as fronts for prostitution in western cities such as Mumbai and Pune…There are an estimated 40 million sex workers globally, according to French [prohibition profiteers] Fondation Scelles.  [Prohibitionists fantasize] most have been lured, duped or forced into sexual slavery by pimps and traffickers…

Comfort Zone (#651)

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

…in the downtown area and hotel zone of Cancun, more than twenty women of several nationalities were [arrested by] National Institute of Migration (INM) authorities, in order to determine their legal immigration status [using the excuse that] all the detained women were alleged victims of forced prostitution…[pigs] raided night clubs with a warrant to detect any [migrants]…

Theatrics (#677) 

These fake “sex trafficking” websites set up by prohibitionists demonstrate the depravity of their lurid fantasies about our lives and work:

A new hotel ad campaign launched by Toronto Crime Stoppers online is [spreading anti-sex worker propaganda]…in hotels across the Greater Toronto Area.  From a restaurant menu of OxyContin, marijuana, cocaine and heroin, to room service amenities, such as intercourse, threesome, backrubs and bondage, Hotel de Jeunesse’s website aims to [spread disinformation] about sex [work]…The ad also [fantasizes about so-called]…warning signs that hotel staff need to look for…

Pyrrhic Victory (#697)

The word for collaboration between government & private industry to control people is “fascism”:

…the British government has announced  plans…to partner with businesses to come up with the best ways to implement surveillance and crowd-control techniques at heavily-populated venues…The British government already has the “most sweeping” surveillance powers in the western world, thanks to a bill passed last fall.  The new focus of combining that massive surveillance apparatus with crowd-control techniques is what makes this new initiative so jarring.  DASA is offering up to £1 million of funding in the first round to companies that can come up with the best ways to improve current surveillance and use crowds as “sensors” to detect dangers through the use of behavioural sciences…the goal is to find a way to [indoctrinate] the public to…keep a distrustful eye on those around them.  Those ideas seem similar to American initiatives such as the Department of Homeland Security’s “If You See Something, Say Something” program, which essentially incentivizes a sense of paranoia when riding the metro or attending an event where a large crowd is present…

The Crumbling Dam (#709)

I’m rather pleased that somebody beat the pompous, priggish politicians of Seattle to the punch:

For nearly three years, in an undisclosed US city, a social service agency has quietly been inviting people to inject illegal drugs at a clandestine site, without the government’s approval.  More than 100 people have injected drugs at the site…This data provides the first glimpse of what it would look like if the US decided to follow 10 other countries and open supervised injection facilities…two people’s lives were saved because they overdosed at the site, where staff had immediate access to…naloxone, and 90% of people who used there said they would have injected in a public restroom, street, park or parking lot if the site had not been available…The secret site is modeled after legal facilities in countries including Canada, Denmark and France, where users can take drugs in a safe space with clean supplies…

Stupor Bowl (#752)

Even cop-fellating pieces like this one now mostly admit that “Super Bowl sex trafficking” is a myth, but they’re trying to turn the truth on its head by pretending the reason there’s no surge is that the “demand” for “victims” is always sky-high:

Minneapolis [prohibitionists fantasize that] criminal sexual enterprise has taken root in the state and will remain long after the Super Bowl leaves town…So law enforcement agencies and nonprofit groups are [lying about] the big game to bring fresh…funding to anti-sex-[worker pogroms]…It includes coordinated stings and [indoctrination to] train…bus drivers, hotel workers and 10,000 Super Bowl volunteers [spy on people for the pigs]…Authorities aren’t expecting a massive spike in trafficking during the Super Bowl…

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I liked [escorting].  It was very empowering.  I had control over my life and I had options.  –  Jerene Dildine

A Tale That Grew in the Telling 

Meet Christine Dolan, a “trafficking” fetishist so delusional she expects us to believe that the wildly-inflated “slavery” estimates are too low by at least an order of magnitude:

…The numbers are increasing instead of decreasing…President Trump confidently noted the number of slaves globally as 27 million…That number was inaccurate when it was anecdotally concocted years ago by Kevin Bales…It is a bogus number.  With mass migrations, internet generated trafficking, and sophisticated terrorist networks financially fueled by human trafficking, that number was exponentially higher when concocted, and more so, today…The heartbreaking truth of the human trafficking sex trade is that women and girls are repeatedly raped, and get pregnant multiple times.  [A US State Department RFP] creates a loophole that could permit multiple serial abortions to be paid for with U.S. funds.  This is a perverse result that benefits pimps and traffickers by returning their “productive assets” to them for further pimping…the…RFP as currently written could create a giant Fund that supports the aggressive “pro-sex work” stance of many organizations and governments around the world…[it] would permit an organization that promotes prostitution…to receive funds as long as they don’t use USG money to promote prostitution and its decriminalization, legalization, and unionization.  This would position a pro-prostitution organization to build its stature and influence by rescuing children from sex trafficking while simultaneously using that influence to promote older child and adult prostitution as a legitimate form of labor…

For that number to be “exponentially higher”, literally 5% or more of the world’s population would need to be “slaves”.  Methinks Dolan needs to put down her Hitachi and pick up her calculator before submitting another such absurd  masturbatory fantasy for publication.

Rooted in Racism

It’s interesting to see an article which could be synopsized as “OMG an invasion of foreign whores!” nevertheless admit that sex work is work:

Refugees and illegal immigrants are increasingly engaged in prostitution in Finland.  While the exact extent of the shadow market remains to be estimated, this phenomenon is getting increasingly popular, as selling sex has proven to be a real way of earning money…about 70 percent of all workers in the sex market are foreigners, but recently asylum seekers and illegal immigrants have joined their ranks…migrants in Finland often have two alternatives, to seek employment in the shadow economy for a measly pay of several euros per hour or go into prostitution, which is paid much more generously…

Wise Investment 

Every outed sex worker or client should sue the person or institution who did it:

A Denver district court jury awarded a former escort $1.7 million in damages…after concluding that one of her clients, a high end Denver attorney, was guilty of outrageous conduct and invading the woman’s privacy by “outing” her to her family, friends and colleagues…In November of 2013, she was contacted…by Sean Saxon, a Denver attorney who specialized in drug and medical device litigation…within a short time it turned romantic…But…Saxon…became angry and violent at times, and would threaten to expose her…Dildine broke off the relationship and asked Saxon to leave her alone…he refused, continuing to stalk her and threaten her with exposure.  Eventually, Saxon followed through on his threats, sending a letter to Dildine’s mother and father, brother and other relatives describing her life as a prostitute, including revealing sexual photos of her, and online reviews of her sexual services.  He sent the same packet to her classmates and teacher at a Denver aesthetician school she attended, describing her as “a mid- level prostitute. I have attached her escort profile, some of her twitter posts, and some of the on- line reviews she has received for her activities,” wrote Saxon. “I should warn you that much of it is rather pathetically pornographic”…

They Still Don’t Get It

Stenographer parrots clueless cop’s weird & ignorant masturbatory fantasies:

…According to Madera [California] Police Sgt. Daniel Foss, the department has been dealing with the sex industry on the Internet, and is facing the challenges Internet-driven prostitution poses.  “It’s made it more difficult for the fact prostitutes used to be contained in one area fairly well,” Foss said, “and if they went outside that area. [sic] it was immediately obvious to everybody.  Now they’re everywhere”…These women, Foss said, operate by an “in-call/out-call” system.  In an out-call solicitation, the girl, usually delivered by her pimp, will come to the client; in an in-call solicitation, the client makes the order, and goes to the girl.  It’s common during an in-call visit, according to Foss, for the pimp to wait outside for the client to finish…on the Internet…victims of sex trafficking are able to be hidden by their pimps.  They are also able to advertise them as adults…

You can hear the fapping as Foss fantasizes that every sex worker has a “pimp” lurking about; the thought clearly excites him almost as much as his delusion that in the past, whores were “obvious to everybody” if we wandered out of the ghettos he imagines we were confined to.

Watershed

Not just a feminist, but an “anti-trafficking” activist:

Many of those working in America’s spas and massage parlors are Asian immigrants…and…many…police departments routinely conduct raids on spas and massage parlors.  These raids, purported to curb human trafficking, have resulted in the arrests of many Asian immigrants…Some of these immigrants reside in the spa in which they work.  When the spa is shut down, they can be rendered both jobless and homeless.  For those who are the sole income provider for their families, they and their families are left destitute…they are…swept up and arrested indiscriminately and they become deportable, regardless of whether or not they are documented immigrants.  The charge…is “unauthorized practice of a profession”…a felony…In the era of travel bans and Trump’s crackdown…even some supporters of immigrants are latching onto the “good immigrant” vs. “bad immigrant” narrative in an effort to save the so-called good immigrants…mass arrest is not the answer…

As the pogroms continue over the next few years, keep essays like this, appearing in mainstream media, in mind.  We are winning, and this will eventually all be a bad memory just as anti-gay pogroms mostly are now.

Amnesty At Last

Playboy needs to do a lot more articles like this:

…in August 2015, Amnesty International…announced it would join the effort to decriminalize sex work.  In May 2016, the group released its official policy paper on the issue.  The 17-page document states that continuing to treat sex work as a crime infringes on the human rights of consenting adults…Patricia Schulz, a United Nations gender-equality expert…lays out the cost of ignoring those recommendations.  “When prostitution is criminalized, sex workers risk being abused…They risk being [raped by] police workers.  If they’re brought to detention, they might be raped by other inmates…There’s a whole series of violations of their rights arising from the situation.”  This insight comes after years of hearing from sex workers in many countries, studying the issue and, she says, “traveling a long way” from her initial view on the matter…

Big Sister (#631)

Is Iceland just going to recycle this story every spring?

The number of prostitutes in Iceland has increased substantially recently, according to Inspector Snorri Birgisson, at the Reykjavík…Police Department.  That is evident…from websites where escort services are advertised…The number of registrations at one website has increased five-fold in a year and a half.  Snorri believes there is a strong connection between the increased influx of tourists in the country and prostitution.  This, he said, is the dark side of tourism, which must be discussed.  He stated that the women involved in prostitution now come from other countries than before…

To Molest and Rape 

Though the story doesn’t say it because he’s a cop, this would mean his victim was no more than seven when he first raped her:

[Detroit cop] Thomas Pedersen…pleaded guilty to four counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct…[and] sentenced to 42 months to 15 years in prison.  He will have to register as a sex offender when he is released and will be under life-time electronic monitoring…Pedersen…[admitted to raping] a girl younger than 13 for nearly six years…

Hard Numbers (#662) 

Why yes, I do get tired of saying “I told you so.”  Thanks for asking!

…the Olympic Games was a highly anticipated business opportunity in Brazil…Yet many of the sex workers who anxiously awaited the boon from foreign clientele found that it did not materialise.  Only a few benefited financially from the event, while [prohibitionists]…urged authorities to crack down on “sex tourism”.  [One brothel’s]…manager …said…”it is an illusion that FIFA or the Olympics are good for business.  This is a myth.  Some of the biggest [sex-related] businesses in Ipanema went bankrupt during the games.  And now it is worse”…Instead, what surfaced was a heightened security presence in the street, provided in part by Centro Presente – a quasi-public police force, partially funded by the local commercial and business association…

The Crumbling Dam (#709)

“Freed…said…’I don’t want to see heroin-injection sites’,” is this whole thing in a nutshell:

An initiative to ban safe-injection sites in King County [Washington] was announced Thursday.  The proposed initiative requires signatures from 47,443 valid county voters to qualify for the November ballot, said its chief sponsor…Joshua Freed…Freed…said…“I don’t want to see heroin-injection sites”…He said he’d prefer [cops to harass doctors who]…prescrib[e] opiates…The initiative would ban public consumption of heroin and all federal Schedule I drugs except marijuana…[another supporter of the ban is politician Mark] Miloscia…an outspoken opponent of safe-injection sites…[who] unsuccessfully propos[ed] a bill in the Legislature to ban them.  He also wrote a letter urging the U.S. Department of Justice to intervene and stop the sites.  Miloscia…[is also] an opponent of marijuana legalization and an advocate of tighter restrictions on alcohol…[he believes] we should “stigmatize people who get hooked on drugs to get into treatment”…He argued that hard-drug users need to face the threat of criminal sanctions to be steered into treatment…

Dutch Threat (#727)

I’d love to be wrong once in a while:

My Red Light was supposed to be a brothel run by sex workers.  Well, that failed…There’s an entire board of so called “experts” in a “Council of Supervision” who have the real power and control over this brothel.  These people include…a former public prosecutor…But no sex workers…because they didn’t get through the “screening”…The working conditions are the same, since they do exactly the same thing as other brothel operators.  There is absolutely nothing new about this…The rental conditions are mostly either the same or much worse than with other brothels…

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The only thing [cops]…do is…sweep everyone up in antiprostitution policing, and then somehow assert that this is being done in the name of combating human trafficking.  –  Kate Mogulescu

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic 

How long can this scam go on?

A married doctor who romped with an escort in hospital can treat patients again – after claiming cycling has helped him quit his sex addiction.  Father-of-two Dr Rupert Pemsel…had sex with the prostitute…But when she blackmailed him for £10,000 he came clean to the General Medical Council (GMC) and last March was suspended for “deplorable and morally reprehensible” misconduct.  Now he has been given the green light by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service to retrain as a family GP after claiming he has turned his life around…

ozzy-gives-the-birdThe UK media has a bizarre fondness for kindergarten words like “romp” and for obsessing about whether someone in a news story has spawned or not.  But the idea that doctors fucking whores is even remotely out of the ordinary is hilarious; when I was working in New Orleans, probably 20% of my income came from MDs.  Still, the main story here is the way privileged men use “sex addiction” as an excuse when they get caught, a fact not lost on the Ozzman:

Ozzy Osbourne has backtracked on claims he was suffering from sex addiction, which he made in the aftermath of an affair last year…“I’m in a fucking rock band, aren’t I?…There have always been groupies.  I just got caught, didn’t I?…I don’t think I’m a fucking sex addict”…

You’re absolutely right, Ozzy, because there is no such fucking thing as a sex addict.  As my friend Brooke Magnanti once put it, he might as well have claimed he was Father Christmas.

Monsters 

Australian police practice “NHI” as well:

…During the 1980s and 1990s, the Australian authorities now say, gangs of teenagers in Sydney hunted gay men for sport, sometimes forcing them off the cliffs to their deaths.  But the police, many of whom had a reputation for hostility toward gay men, often carried out perfunctory investigations that overlooked the possibility of homicide…Now the police in New South Wales…are reviewing the deaths of 88 men between 1976 and 2000 to determine whether they should be classified as anti-gay hate crimes…

Imagine the Sky

Here’s an interesting article on regulated brothels in 19th-century St. Petersburg.  As in France and Italy, sex workers were confined to specific brothels in an attempt to control them, and as in the US the writer clings doggedly to the myth that laws and cops were in place to “help” us, and just can’t imagine why so many women refused to submit to this “protection”.

Stupor Bowl

Have you noticed we’ve heard almost nothing about “Super Bowl sex trafficking” this year?  Even Sports Illustrated, not exactly known for hard-hitting investigatie journalism, is calling it a debunked myth and quoting those who oppose it (though, alas, no sex workers):

…The Global Alliance Against Traffic In Women makes the case that by focusing on the sex trade, authorities are taking resources that could be used to investigate [actual crimes]…there are signs that the Super Bowl Sex-Trafficking Myth might be splintering.  Minal Davis, the special adviser to the [Houston] mayor on human trafficking, believes that the “sensationalistic” approach at previous Super Bowls “hurts the messaging” and minimizes the severity…

Worse Than I Thought (#433)

I’m honestly surprised the “forced sex trafficking abortions” trope didn’t catch on:

Any woman seeking an abortion in South Dakota would have to be given the name and telephone number of an [anti-sex worker] organization…under a measure introduced…[by] Dan Kaiser…[who pretends] the idea is…an educational measure that might help get women out of dangerous and violent situations…

Quite Possibly the Most Uptight Nerd Ever (#563)

The biggest problem with these stupid “like Uber for sex workers” apps is that their developers don’t bother to consult any actual sex workers while developing them:

A new app…aims to make it easier and safer for sex workers to meet their clients…While sex work is legal in some Australian states, there are a number of risks for both parties.  Rendevu hopes to solve that problem.  Developer Reuben Coppa said sex workers could list themselves on the application list, show when they were working, what type of appointments they were taking and their price points…Both clients and escorts can write and read reviews about their experience.  The app also tracks location and requires credit card details…[to] guarantee the amount of the booking…So far, traffic on the app has been high but the number of bookings has been fewer than expected — there have been about 100 since the launch…

O, Canada! (#617)

Canadian prohibitionists are trying desperately to whip up “sex trafficking” hysteria there to US levels:

…in the densely populated Greater Toronto Area…girls are recruited at school by young males and taken to local motels or condominiums, where they engage in sex work.  Most continue to live at home…[prohibitionist] Katarina MacLeod [parrots,] “You have these guys making regular girls feel special, buying them things and taking them shopping…[The men] know exactly how to build dependence…Girls as young as 13 are getting recruited in”…

The More the Better (#667) 

The law is an ass, and so is this judge:

Claims that First Lady Melania Trump worked as a high-end…escort before she married businessman, billionaire and now President Donald Trump will be argued over in a Maryland court…[after] a Montgomery County judge ruled that Melania Trump’s $150 million defamation lawsuit against a Clarksburg blogger will continue to trial, saying the blog posts implied she acted as a prostitute…”The court believes most people, when they hear the words ‘high-end escort’ that describes a prostitute.  There could be no more defamatory statement than to call a woman a prostitute”…

Fuck you. Judge Sharon Burrell; there are far worse things a woman can be than a prostitute, such as a hypocritical and prudish politician.

The Crumbling Dam (#668)

Alas, Seattle “officials” think harm reduction principles only apply to drug use:

Officials in Seattle…approved the nation’s first “safe-injection” sites for users of heroin and other illegal drugs, calling the move a drastic but necessary response to an epidemic of addiction that is claiming tens of thousands of lives each year.  The sites — which offer addicts clean needles, medical supervision and quick access to drugs that reverse the effects of an overdose — have long been popular in Europe.  Now, with the U.S. death toll rising, the idea is gaining traction in a number of American cities, including Boston, New York City and Ithaca, N.Y.  While [prohibitionists] say the sites promote illegal drug use, supporters say they can keep people alive and steer them toward treatment…

The War Goes On 

Here’s a constantly-updated spreadsheet of sex worker advertising sites; I can’t speak for its contents, but the more resources for sex workers impacted by the censorship of Backpage, the better.

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